Marshal and the Moonshiner

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Maris instantly shoved me aside while she drew her gun. She felt around just inside the room for the light switch before she button-hooked inside. But I already knew no one waited inside my room. I knew someone just wanted to send me a friendly warning after I saw the condition inside. The dresser drawers had been upended onto the floor with my clothes scattered about. The bed had been tossed and rested against the far wall as if it had been put there for a purpose. My soap and shaving mug and cologne lay smashed against the bathroom wall, the room reeking of Old Spice and Mennen Shave Cream.

  Maris holstered her gun and bent to the floor. She picked up a pair of my boxers and twirled them on the end of her finger. “Don’t they pay you federal officers enough that you don’t got to wear sacred underwear?”

  “Sacred?”

  “Holey,” she said and let them drop. “I can have them patched.”

  I grabbed my skivvies from her and wrestled the mattress back onto the bed frame. The room began moving, and I sat on the edge of the bed before I fell down. “Was this Amos or that local corruption you mentioned earlier?”

  Maris looked about the room. “Could be either. Could be both.”

  I started to get pissed, then, and grabbed my glasses from my pocket. I used the bedstead to stand and bent to the door. “No forced entry. Whoever got in here used a room key.” I started for the hallway when Maris stopped me. “Where you going?”

  “Downstairs to have a little talk with Ragwood. That little weasel let someone use my key again.”

  Maris led me to the bed and pushed me down. “You stay right here. I don’t want anyone seeing you in the shape you’re in. I’ll go talk with Ragwood.”

  Maris shut the door behind her. When her footsteps faded, I grabbed on to the bed to stand and stumbled into the bathroom. On the vanity under the mirror sat a Mason jar of moonshine. It hadn’t been there when I left, and it wasn’t placed there by accident. I covered it with a towel and cradled it under my arm as I made my way back to the bed. I stashed it under the bed frame and tossed a shirt over it just as Maris returned.

  “Ragwood’s worried. You must have scared the hell out of him last time.”

  “If he gave out the key again,” I said, “I’ll wrap my hands around his scrawny throat and—”

  “He didn’t give out the key.” Maris sat on the edge of the bed and helped me with my boots and socks. I couldn’t even protest; I’m not certain I could have undressed on my own. “Ragwood made his rounds tonight as usual, locking up the maintenance room, making sure all the offices were secured. When he came to the clerk’s desk, he just caught sight of a man who disappeared into the elevator. He thought nothing of it until he returned and noticed your room key was missing from the board.”

  “Did he get a look—”

  “Not at his face, but said the guy was short. Stocky. Figured the guy might be visiting someone.”

  “Like you’re visiting me?”

  Maris didn’t match my grin. “I’m thinking the guy could have been Dutch. Who else knew you weren’t in your room tonight?”

  “Anyone who watched the hotel close enough. And short and stocky fits Amos, too.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Maris neatly folded my socks and draped them over my boots. “Ever since we visited Vincent and you asked for him to have Amos get in touch with you, I’ve thought that was a dumb idea. Maybe Amos finally did come calling, only you weren’t here. You were getting pie-eyed at Ft. Reno.”

  I swung my legs over the bed. “We got to hunt up Dutch. Either we eliminate him in this”—I waved my hand dramatically around the messy room—“or he’s my main suspect.”

  “There’s no we to it.” Maris swung my legs back onto the bed and spread a blanket over me. “You sleep this off. I’ll find out about Dutch.”

  Drunk or no, I awoke at first light as I’d done all my life, whether I was working cows growing up, or hiring out to the neighbors at branding time, or rising in the marines to go out and kill some Germans. The difference was that, this morning, my head felt like it was going to explode. From what I recall in my drinking days, a person really wasn’t drunk unless you could lie on the floor without holding on to something, the dizziness was so pronounced. I was at that place in my life right now with the biggest hangover since I’d quit cold turkey six years ago.

  Then I remembered the jar of moonshine someone had left on my vanity, and that I’d hidden under the bed. I hauled it out and uncapped it. I took just a small sip—just enough to take the edge off—then a longer pull. Somewhere between then and stumbling into the bathroom, my headache disappeared enough that I could clean up. I found the shaving mug under the commode, shattered, but the soap cake was still useable. And whoever razed my room hadn’t damaged my Blue Blade. I dropped the cake of soap into a glass by the sink and lathered up. I had knocked off my stubble when someone rapped on the door. I cautiously unlocked it and peeked through the crack. Maris brushed past me.

  “You really screwed up last night.” She sniffed the air, and I grabbed my toothbrush and some baking soda and started disguising my whisky breath.

  “I know I screwed up. I didn’t intend getting drunk—”

  “No, I mean you really screwed up—Dutch went AWOL. Again. You should have followed him instead of getting stinko.”

  “You said he went AWOL again?”

  “That’s what the colonel said when I talked with him.” Maris paced the room, stepping over or around all my things that still littered the floor. “Last month he went AWOL somewhere for two weeks. Colonel Boggs set next week for Dutch’s court martial on that little jaunt. That’s if he comes back.”

  I slipped my socks on and looked for my boots. “Did Boggs mention dates?”

  Maris took a notebook page from her back pocket and unfolded it. “Here,” she handed me my boots. “I’ll read the dates off.”

  She finished about the time I’d put my boots on and stood to stretch. “Let me get this straight: Dutch went AWOL about the same time that friend of Amos’s showed up on Wind River, then returned to Ft. Reno a couple days after Selly Antelope was killed?”

  Maris carefully folded and pocketed the sheet of paper as if it was evidence. “That’s about it. I’m figuring Dutch is that Whiskers fella that came to stay with Cat and Amos.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I think Dutch went up to Wind River expecting to lure Amos down to Oklahoma so he could cash in on the reward for that outstanding warrant.”

  Maris snapped her fingers. “That’s another thing I found out.” She shook out a cigarette and handed me one. I lit a match, and my hand trembled so much that Maris had to steady it. I went into a coughing fit before I regrouped.

  Maris picked up a broken chunk of ashtray and set it on the window sill while she blew smoke through the screen. “Amos was cleared of that murder. He wasn’t anywhere near Muskogee when those two were murdered.”

  “But Stauffer said—”

  “That a-hole says a lot of things,” Maris said.

  “How did you find out?”

  Maris grinned wickedly. “I went into the office this morning to check if anyone found out who Jimmy’s partner was. Melody was crossing her legs she had to pee so badly, so I volunteered to watch the front door until she returned.” Maris laughed. “I got a case of the nosies and found the key to the warrant file Melody keeps locked. Amos had been cleared of that double homicide a couple years ago. Happened that he was in the Oklahoma City jail for drunk and disorderly when the murders took place.”

  Maris tapped her foot inches from the jar under the bed, and I hoped she wouldn’t smack it. “You know your boss—why would Stauffer lie to us about an outstanding murder warrant for Amos?”

  “Figured that out, too,” Maris said. “Amos is the key to finding that big moonshine operation here in the county, one big enough to recruit Jimmy and who knows what other deputy. Stauffer figures when we find Amos, he’ll swoop in and put the habeas grabous on him. Get all the credit for ridding the count
y of moonshiners.”

  “So, all he’ll have is Amos. He won’t have who else is involved. He won’t have the brains of the operation.”

  The smile left Maris’s face instantly. “Stauffer will turn Amos over to Johnny Notch,” she almost whispered. “Notch has a . . . talented way of extracting information from even the most stubborn suspects. And that’s why Stauffer hasn’t come down on Dutch. With a small operation—”

  “Looked pretty big last night, if I figured right on the number of customers who stopped by to get their jar filled.”

  “Still, Dutch is small potatoes compared to whoever Amos works for—probably Vincent. It’s just another reason that we don’t want a tail when we pay him another visit.”

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  Maris stopped the car down the street from Vincent’s shop, in front of Clint Morrison’s filling station, closed for the night. It had taken us longer to drive to Oklahoma City than we anticipated. Maris took side roads, dead ends where we had to double back on our trail, and dark alleys, all of which made it harder for someone to tail us without being spotted. The old Studebaker couldn’t outrun anyone, but it might be able to outthink them.

  She killed the lights and looked around her. The blinking purple and yellow neon sign in Morrison’s reflected off her sweaty face. I was sweating, too, as much from the intense heat as from the thought that someone might have followed us. “What’s the odds that Dutch will be here?” she asked.

  We had come to the conclusion that Dutch going AWOL right now was no coincidence. Last night when I went to the fort under the guise of a soldier who needed his Mason jar refilled, Dutch had somehow made me, whether he recognized me right off when the door to the commissary was open for a second, or later when I got drunk and rowdy with Ned and Shorty. Right now, it was no longer a guise for me. Right now I needed a drink more than I ever had, and I licked my lips instinctively as I recalled the taste of the corn whisky.

  “You really think he’ll be here?” Maris pressed.

  “This would be the logical place for Dutch to run to if he’s connected to Vincent. And if we find Dutch, we’ll find Amos.”

  A car turned onto the street, and Maris stopped mid-smoke ring, the eerie, ghostly blinking of the neon sign reflecting off the building, and she slid down the seat. I was less successful and hit my knees against the dash.

  But the car drove past, and we sat up, relieved, but not before we spotted a couple stroll toward us, arms entwined, laughing at some private joke between them. They came abreast of us and stopped, startled that someone sat inside the car. Maris threw herself over to my side and wrapped her arms around my neck. She kissed me, or at least she slapped her mouth on my startled lips.

  “What the hell . . . ?” I murmured from under the onslaught.

  “Shush,” she whispered and started moaning. I felt pretty good about myself. It had been years since I’d had a woman in my arms, let alone made her moan with ecstasy with so little effort. The couple laughed and continued their nightly walk.

  “Don’t pat yourself on the back, Romeo,” Maris said as we eyed the couple. When they became invisible in the night, she sat back down on her own side. She pulled her shirt down that had ridden over her belly and fluffed her bangs. “They might have been lookouts for Vincent.”

  “You’ve been watching too many James Cagney movies,” I said. “But good point. Right now, we can’t chance anything.”

  We continued to watch Vincent’s shop. The windows, long crusted over with dirt and grime, showed only opaque light from somewhere inside. Someone paced in front of the window, back and forth, but we couldn’t make out who. We were in for a long night.

  “You never say much about Wyoming.” Maris cupped her hand around a match and lit a smoke. I held out my hand, and she lit one for me. I thought if I gave in to this addiction, the other one—much more trouble for me than cigarettes—might be easier to fight.

  “Not much to say. Like you, I’m grateful for a steady job. Lot of folks nowadays can’t say that.”

  She chuckled.

  “Something funny?”

  “I suspect you could get a job doing most anything.”

  I kicked that thought around for a while. I could get a job as a horse doctor or a farrier. I’d worked at both on the ranch growing up. I’d long abandoned the notion of using my degree in English for anything worthwhile. Or maybe I realized being a teacher or something like that would just be too boring. “If I wasn’t a federal marshal, I’d be a sheriff somewhere. Bounty hunter, perhaps. Something connected to putting the bite on bad guys.” I held my hand over my burning ash to hide it. “Why are you a deputy?”

  Maris paused for a long moment. “To be a pain in Stauffer’s Kraut ass.” She laughed, then became dead serious. “I used to see things around the county. Things I wasn’t supposed to see, or wasn’t supposed to comprehend. Things that police and deputies did that weren’t right.”

  “About the corruption here?”

  “That. And how Indians were treated. I thought that, if it were ever in my power, I’d do things different.” She flicked her butt out the window. “Some difference I make here, sitting in the dark waiting for some army deserter.”

  “Ever think of federal law enforcement?”

  Maris cupped her hand to her eyes when a light flickered on and off in the shop. “Pretty limited for a woman, let alone an Indian. The Bureau of Investigation only hires women for clerks. And the marshals don’t hire any women.”

  “I suspect that will change one day.”

  Maris shrugged. “Maybe. And how’d you get appointed marshal?”

  A delivery wagon pulled next to Morrison’s, and I hoped Maris would do her impression of the necking couple again. But the woman driving the delivery wagon stopped only long enough to grab a stack of the morning’s newspapers and toss them on the doorstep before speeding off. “Luck,” I answered at last. “I married Helen before the navy doctors discharged me from the hospital. I had to do something to keep busy while I was on the mend, so I enrolled in college. She brought my books. Gave me my tests. It took nearly two years, but when I was discharged and fixing to move back home, I asked her to marry me. She accepted—Lord knows I’ll never know why—and moved back to Bison, a small town at the base of the Big Horn Mountains. I was shanghaied into running against the crooked sheriff there. And won.”

  “Still don’t answer how you got to be a US marshal.”

  “Abe Riles,” I answered. A truck backfired coming out of the alley behind Vincent’s, and I jumped. “When he retired,” I answered after I found my voice, “I was the only lawman in Wyoming with the requisite college degree. And I had a lot of spare time on my hands, being alone—”

  “Thought you were married?”

  Maris was going places that reminded me why I’d started drinking in the hospital—the usefulness of forgetting. But I felt I owed her an answer. “Helen died, and I took my drinking to a whole new level. I all but abandoned my daughter, Polly, for John Barleycorn, until my brother-in-law dragged me into his meat locker one night and kept me penned up. He force-fed me drugs to get the booze out of my system. When he opened the door a week later, I was about forty pounds lighter and decided I never wanted to go through that again.”

  “You said you were alone.” Maris turned in the seat to watch a taxi slow down going past Vincent’s before speeding away. “What about Polly?”

  “Helen’s sister took her in. And I’m grateful, too. Even after I sobered up, I still needed to be away from home for long periods.” I missed those times when I bounced Polly on my lap, when Helen and she would go to the chicken coop and gather morning eggs, or when they cooked lunch together, letting Polly set the table and announce when the meal was ready. “Polly was five when Helen died. She’s eleven now, and I see her whenever I can.”

  “What’s it like marshaling in Wyoming?”

  “Depends on the weather. It always depends on the weather up nort
h. It can turn an easy stalk-and-arrest of a criminal into an all-day affair, or it can drag the hunt out for weeks on horseback—sometimes on foot if the going gets too rough for a horse, mostly in the mountains.”

  A car rounded the corner driving slowly. It stopped in front of Vincent’s shop, and Maris and I scrunched down. The driver looked about before he pulled to the curb and climbed out, illuminated by the streetlight for a heartbeat: Dale Goar.

  “What’s he doing here?” Maris asked.

  “Didn’t you say he did bounty hunting now and again? My guess is he wants to find Amos and collect on the reward.”

  “But there is no warrant for Amos. He was cleared of those murders.”

  “Goar don’t know that. If you didn’t know the warrant had been adjudicated, he certainly doesn’t. To him, Amos is just a piece of meat with a cool five hundred dollars attached to him.”

  Maris grabbed her revolver. She shoved it inside her vest and opened the door. “Well, the damned fool will tip off Amos if he pokes around Vincent’s shop. Amos will go deep, and we’ll never find him. I’m going to tell him to back off.”

  I pulled my legs up and began to extricate myself from the car when Maris stopped me. “You sit this one out.”

  “What the hell you talking about? Things could get gnarly, sneaking around someone like Vincent.”

  “Listen.” Maris scanned the street. “Some big, dumb-looking rancher-type in this part of town will stand out. I can walk around the shop, and no one would think twice of some woman wandering about. Besides, you wouldn’t be much help with Stauffer keeping your gun.”

  I objected, but Maris put a stop to it. “We need to get that idiot out of there before he fouls things up. Amos will never surface if he learns Goar’s poking around.”

  I hated to admit it, but she was right. I’d be as out of place as a fart in church. “Okay, but sing out if you need help. And if I don’t hear you singing gospel in twenty minutes, I’m going to bust in there, armed or not.”