Marshal and the Moonshiner

by C. M. Wendelboe

  And froze.

  Byron saw me out of the corner of his eye and set a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to go out there.”

  “These yahoos?” Byron said. “Even if they recognized you, they hate Stauffer and his bunch more. These guys won’t rat on you.”

  But they did stare at the man wearing a shirt a size too small and sporting half a roll of toilet paper on his face from a dozen cuts, courtesy of Byron’s dull razor.

  I sat at the counter and kept my back to the door, fearful someone entering the diner would recognize me and tip Stauffer off. Every time a roustabout or a ranch hand or a railroader dropped a fork or coughed morning dust from their lungs, my hand shot to my gun under my shirt. And every time the bells over the door tinkled I expected Laurel and Hardy to come busting through. Or worse: Notch. Now I knew how the men I hunted felt when I was on their trail.

  Maris came into the diner, and conversation turned to a whisper as men stopped eating long enough to stare at her backside while she walked to the counter. She avoided the dust balls collecting on the floor and dropped a morning edition of the Oklahoman on the counter. The front page headline worried me: FEDERAL MARSHAL SOUGHT IN GANGLAND SLAYING OF LOCAL BUSINESSMAN. The paper described me, along with a police theory that Vincent Iron Horse was bludgeoned to death when he resisted my interrogation.

  Byron held the coffee pot as he read the paper over my shoulder. “Now what are you going to do, Nels?”

  “Whatever he does, he better do it quick.” Maris looked nervously around the diner. She had a cigarette going and lit another one off what was left of her short butt. “Stauffer sent two of his deputies to my apartment to roust me. Dragged me into the sheriff’s office. That patrolman . . .” She snapped her fingers.

  “McGavin.”

  Maris nodded. “McGavin. He remembered my license plate when we fled. Stauffer thinks you called me to give you a ride after you murdered Vincent.”

  “That’s horseshit.”

  “Of course it is,” Maris said, “but he gave me two hours to produce you in his office.” She lowered her voice when a drummer got up from a booth. He walked to the cash drawer to pay his tab, his shoes tap-tap-tapping against the hard linoleum floor. Like many folks nowadays, the salesman had repaired his worn soles with rubber from a pulley belt. “Nels, I’m scared. I’m afraid if you don’t show, Stauffer will send Notch to arrest me. And I’ll never make it to the jail. What will we do?”

  “Not we,” I said, polishing off my coffee. “Me. If Stauffer wants me in his office, I’ll oblige him.” I grabbed the newspaper and tore off a corner. “Now draw me how I’d get to Stauffer’s office from the back side.”

  The back lawn of the courthouse looked much like the front: a giant cat box, overgrown with weeds and choked to death with a layer of dust. A scrub juniper fought for survival in one waterless corner of the back lot, and a dead dog lay bloated and hosting a cloud of flies in the opposite corner. I remained hidden behind a car well away from Stauffer’s office window. The last thing I wanted was the high sheriff spotting me and ruining my fun.

  “You be careful up there,” Maris warned me when I told her I was going to this rodeo alone. “I know you think you can handle Stauffer, but with the stitches in your head, and now the bullet wound in your shoulder . . .”

  She had a point. The heat caused sweat to run down into the stitches. I rubbed my shoulder. It didn’t help the itch any.

  I duck-walked to the back door of the courthouse, keeping hidden behind parked cars. When I got within ten yards of the back door, I stood and walked briskly into the courthouse as if I had business there. Which I did. I followed Maris’s map and walked past offices noisy with chattering typewriters and gossip hounds exchanging the newest information. I passed a water cooler abuzz with secretaries talking about the manhunt for the rogue US marshal, none of them paying any mind to the middle-aged man in undersized clothes.

  When I strode into the outer office, Melody glanced up from her typewriter, then did a double take and bolted from her seat. She stood and blocked my way to Stauffer’s office. “You’re the one we’re looking for—”

  “If you want your boss to get an ass beating, step aside.”

  She paused for only a moment before she grinned and stepped aside. When I entered the office, Maris stood in front of Stauffer’s desk while he screamed into her ear. He grinned wide when he spotted me and pushed her aside. She stumbled over a chair and fell to the floor. “Decided to turn yourself in, huh?” He grabbed a burning cigar from the ashtray and took a deep draw before reaching for his phone.

  “Leave it.”

  “Not on your life,” Stauffer said. “Oklahoma City dicks want you pretty bad—”

  “We got some talking to do about your boy Johnny Notch first.”

  Stauffer ignored me and tapped the receiver. I stepped to his desk before the switchboard operator picked up and snatched the phone from his hand. “I’ll talk with Larin and Howe at my own convenience.”

  He reached for the phone in my hand, but I yanked the cord from the wall and tossed the phone aside. Stauffer’s hand shot to an open desk drawer, but I was quicker and slammed his hand in it. He howled in pain, and I pushed him into his chair. I grabbed his pistol from the desk and flung it across the room.

  “You got a death wish?” Stauffer growled. I let his hand go, and he stood and massaged it. “How dare you come in here and pull this shit.”

  “Let’s say it makes us even for you sending one of your deputies with Dale Goar to beat me that first night.”

  He flexed his fingers. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but I know you need your ass kicked.”

  He came off the chair surprisingly quickly for a big man. But not quickly enough as he threw out a roundhouse punch aimed for my head. For a man who’d boxed professionally, he telegraphed his blow like an amateur. I jerked my head back, and his fist sucked air. I stepped into him and gave him a short, right hook from my good shoulder that staggered him and followed up with a right cross that knocked him sprawling onto his desk. He fell onto his humidor, and cigars went rolling from the broken box.

  I hadn’t intended letting him up, but the wound to my shoulder had broken a couple stitches, and I didn’t trust those in my head to stay put either. The last thing I needed was Stauffer to figure out I was a one-punch fighter right now. So when he came at me again, I sidestepped and drove my fist into his liver. He fell to his knees, the pain severe enough that he couldn’t get out a word as he dropped to the floor. He rolled around and held his backside. He sported a beautiful grimace of pain.

  Maris jerked her head to the door, and I took a chair and jammed it against the knob. Someone on the other side pounded incessantly, but I ignored it and turned back to Maris. “You better help him sit before he pisses himself.”

  She squatted and brought her arms under Stauffer. She grunted as she hauled him off the floor and dropped him in a chair. He spat out a broken tooth and wiped blood from his chin with a silk hankie. “You’ll be in jail for this,” he finally managed to say. “And your girlfriend here for aiding and abetting you in that murder in Oklahoma City.”

  “I haven’t seen Maris for days,” I lied. “I was with someone else when we lost those Oklahoma City officers.”

  “So she said when she crawled in here begging for her job back.”

  “Did she get it?”

  Stauffer nodded. “I don’t want to . . . seem unfair to the Indian community by not having one of them in the department.”

  I leaned over the desk, inches from him. “Maybe you’ll be the one jailed. Last I knew, it was unlawful to assault a federal marshal.”

  “You’re wanted for murder. I can assault you all day.”

  I thumped his split lip with my finger. “And get another ass whipping? You’d better not plan on assaulting anyone for a while.”

  “You come in here just to humiliate me?” />
  “I came in here to talk about your bulldog, Johnny Notch. I’m thinking he killed Vincent Iron Horse. Now where is he?”

  “Screw you.”

  “How about if I strip your fat ass naked and parade you outside in your all-together? Most folks hereabout might have a different view of you.”

  “You couldn’t—”

  I reached over and twisted his shirt. Buttons ripped off, and fine, blond hair fell from his purple undershirt.

  “Aren’t you going to help?” He looked at Maris.

  “She knows if she does, it’s her turn next.” I hoisted him erect and snapped his suspenders down. The rattling of the door didn’t cease, and I whispered in his ear, “Yell out that you’re all right.” He hesitated, and I doubled my fist. He called out that he was fine, and I waited until footsteps faded before I unbuckled his trousers.

  “All right. All right.” Stauffer grabbed his pants before they fell to his ankles. “So you can do it. Now what?”

  “Notch. He killed Vincent—”

  “He never killed anyone.”

  “You sure of that?”

  There was a moment of doubt in his eyes, and I knew he suspected Notch as much as I did. “Where is he?”

  For the first time since I’d started spanking the snot out of Stauffer, he grinned. “I think he’s out looking for you.”

  “Where?”

  Stauffer nodded to Maris while his hand massaged his back where I’d hit him. “I think he’s paying your Uncle Byron a visit. But not officially.”

  “Uncle Byron!” Maris screamed and ran for the door.

  “If Notch has hurt Byron . . .”

  Stauffer held up his hands. “If he does, I didn’t order it. Johnny’s his own man, and even I can’t control him.”

  The last thing I heard was Stauffer yelling for Melody to call all his deputies in.

  Maris and I left by the back way and kept close to the building. Sirens neared, and we just managed to clear the side of the courthouse before a deputy’s car slid into the back lot. “What the hell was that up there in Stauffer’s office?” I asked as I peeked around the building. “I told you I was going alone.”

  “I figured if I went there under the ruse of wanting my job back, I’d be there if you needed help. And you did.”

  “I could have hauled his fat ass into the chair by myself,” I said as I watched the deputy run into the courthouse.

  “Sure you could have,” Maris said. “Just as soon as your shoulder heals up.”

  CHAPTER 30

  * * *

  The closed sign hung over the door at Leonard Brothers’ diner when we pulled to the curb. Sheets obscured what was behind the windows, and Maris fumbled for the key. “Uncle Byron never locks up at noon.” She flung the door open and started pushing sheets aside when I stopped her. “Notch may still be inside,” I whispered.

  We drew our weapons and parted the sheets slowly. The first thing we noticed was the smell of burnt coffee. We stepped through the sheets, and I nearly slipped on eggs and sausage on the floor beside a broken plate. Blood droplets led toward the back room. I motioned for Maris to stand on one side of the door while I took the other side. We button-hooked the doorway into the room that had been my sanctuary until this morning.

  My marine knife—issued by a grateful French government—had been rammed into my pillow on the cot I’d slept in, impaling a piece of paper. Feathers fluttered around the room as I grabbed the note and held it to the light. The paper was the receipt from the general store where Byron had bought me clothes. On the back of the receipt Notch had written: MARIS: COME TO THE VACANT LOT BETWEEN BURNS GARAGE AND KING FRUIT ON MAIN, OK CITY. 10:00 TONIGHT. BRING MARSHAL AT GUNPOINT. UNCLE BYRON SAYS HURRY.

  “You know where this place is?” I holstered my automatic and looked about for any clue Notch may have left.

  “We’ll find it.” Maris was shaking and had to make two tries to holster her gun. “We have to find it. He’ll kill Uncle Byron if we don’t. I know he will.”

  “Then we have to stop him.”

  “But I’m afraid the moment he sees us he’ll know I didn’t comply—”

  “Not if you bring a hostage like the note says.”

  “What hostage?” Maris asked.

  “Me.” I rubbed the broken stitches in my shoulder. “Right after we make a quick stop at Doc Catto’s stitch shop for some warranty work.”

  Maris kept the headlights on as she pulled to the curb beside Burn’s Garage. “What if he don’t show?”

  “He’ll show,” I assured her. “He knows I can make a case against him for Goar’s murder, and now Vincent’s.”

  “He’ll just claim your knife was Goar’s murder weapon. And that you had words with Vincent a couple days before he was killed.”

  “He’ll show. I’m the one loose end he can’t leave behind.”

  “Where’s that leave me?”

  “In a shallow grave next to me if we don’t pull this off. He can’t afford to let you live either. Notch will figure you know what I know.”

  Maris took several deep breaths to calm her nerves. “Then let’s do this.” She drew her gun and held it on me. “Get out,” she said, loud enough for Johnny to hear her across town, wherever he was hiding.

  I stepped out and raised my hands over my head as far as my bad shoulder would allow. “If this goes sour,” I whispered over my shoulder, “get the hell away.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Which won’t mean a thing if Notch kills me. Get away—and get hold of Marshal Quinn. Make a case against Notch.”

  Maris exaggerated a push, and I stumbled forward. Tape tugged at the hair on my upper back, one of the few places I still had hair. Maris had slapped an extra strip of the black tape over Goar’s gun—the one I’d kept the night he tried to use it on me—to hold it in place from sliding down my back right before we drove here. I winced, and Maris caught it. “Your shoulder bothering you?” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

  “No. The damned tape is pulling my hair.”

  “Don’t blame me.” She jammed her gun in my ribs for Notch’s benefit. “You’re as hairy as a Yeti back there.”

  I didn’t want to be known as the Yeti from Wyoming and tried to think of a witty comeback, when headlights across the empty lot blinked twice and went dim, leaving us once again lost to the darkness. “Looks like we’re wanted over there,” Maris said. Her voice faltered; her hands shook as she held the gun jammed against my back and pushed me toward Notch’s Cadillac.

  “You watch your butt,” I whispered over my shoulder as we neared the car. “Remember, he can’t let either of us live through this.”

  “Closer!” I recognized Notch’s thick Italian accent.

  My eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness, and I could just make out Notch’s huge form standing beside his open car door. Forty yards. Thirty yards, and I saw another figure beside him. Byron’s hands were taped in front of him, and he looked at me through one eye, the other swollen shut.

  Twenty yards, into the periphery of a streetlight now, and I saw dried blood caked on Byron’s shirtfront.

  “Let my uncle go.” Maris prodded me with her gun, and I stumbled.

  “That’s far enough,” Notch ordered. “Drop your gun.”

  “You said you’d release Uncle Byron if I delivered Marshal Lane.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Notch said. He grabbed Byron and drew him close. He stuck the barrel of his gun into the side of Byron’s face. “You toss that gun over here, and he lives. That’s the only deal you’re getting tonight.”

  Maris and I had gone over the scenarios Notch might run with. Disarming her was the most likely one, and she tossed her revolver at Notch’s feet.

  “Now the marshal’s.”

  “He don’t have—”

  Notch cocked his gun, and the sound was loud in the still night air. “He got his .45 back from Stauffer. Search him and toss it here.”

 
Maris knew right where it was, and she lifted my shirt. She skinned my automatic and tossed it into the dirt at Notch’s feet.

  Notch shoved Byron hard, and he stumbled for a few feet before he fell to the ground. Maris ran to him and held his bleeding head off the dirt. Notch turned his gun on me. “Keep those hands on top of your head.”

  He walked to me and patted me down—along the waist and under both shoulders, in case I favored a hideout gun in a shoulder holster. “Why don’t you just kill us now?” I asked, praying he wouldn’t pat my upper back where I had Goar’s snubbie taped.

  Notch smiled. “Maybe I won’t if you tell me what you know.”

  “I know a lot of things that some ignorant immigrant wop wouldn’t—”

  He hit me hard, and I staggered sideways. I caught myself from going down and stood on wobbly legs. Blood trickled from a split lip, and I struggled to keep my hands on top of my head, Goar’s gun inches from my grasp. “Now, tell me who you told about Goar and Vincent Iron Horse’s murder.”

  “You’ll kill us anyhow,” I said. I waited for a moment when Notch was distracted, when his gun was off Byron and Maris. I so wanted to rip the revolver taped to my back away, but I needed Notch’s mind to be elsewhere for the briefest moment. “A lot of people know what I know.”

  Notch’s eyes narrowed, and his finger tightened on the trigger. Even by the light of a dim street lamp, I saw his knuckles whiten as he brought the gun barrel up and shoved it under my chin.

  Maris bent over and helped Byron to stand. Her tight jeans rode down low over her butt, her top coming up and exposing flesh. Notch noticed it, too, that brief moment I’d prayed for as he glanced at her. Now!

  I lashed out and slapped his gun away from my chin, while I tore at the gun taped to my back. It stuck. Notch recovered. He swung his gun at my head and fired wildly just as Goar’s snubbie ripped free. Notch’s shot went wild and missed. Mine didn’t, and the round caught him high on his thigh. His leg buckled, but he didn’t go down.