Marshal and the Moonshiner

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Notch dove for his car and rolled to the far side. He shot twice around the safety of the fender. Bullets kicked up dirt right in front of me, and I rolled and rolled, firing each time I came on target.

  Notch used the car to stand and ran despite the bullet in his leg. I emptied Goar’s gun at Notch’s back. He dragged one leg like a giant Quasimodo as he made his escape to approaching sirens that became louder.

  I crawled to where Maris and Byron lay in the dirt. He tried to talk, but his head rolled on his shoulders. He was out of it. “Get him to the hospital.”

  “But you’ll need help . . .”

  “I can handle Notch. Just give me what bullets you have.”

  She fished a handful of lead round-nose bullets for her .38. I hit the ejector rod, and my empties fell to the ground. My shoulder screamed at me, and I knew I’d broken more stitches. But I couldn’t let Notch go.

  I stood to follow him when two police cars skidded around the corner. “Retrieve my .45 before those Oklahoma City dicks get a free souvenir,” I yelled to Maris as I ran after Notch. Within a few feet, the streetlight’s influence faded, and I was left to follow Johnny Notch by instinct in the dark.

  By the time I’d made it halfway across the lot, Detective Larin, aka Laurel, yelled at me to stop. His order was punctuated by two rapid shots that went over my head into God-knows-where. Somebody would wake up pissed in the morning with a shot-out window.

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  I stumbled on the soft sand of the vacant lot and caught myself from falling. I squinted and barely made out Notch dragging himself across the street. He stumbled into traffic. Drivers of trucks and cars laid on horns, curses flew from drivers avoiding the large, staggering man. He disappeared into the front doors of the Criterion Theater.

  I pissed off the same drivers weaving myself through traffic. Laurel and Hardy yelled at me as they ran beside a uniformed policeman trying to catch me. They were halfway across the sandy lot and gaining. The marquee claimed Cab Calloway was due to play at the Criterion next week, and I wished it’d been tonight, with wall-to-wall people surrounding the theater to mask my movement. I pushed my way past the ticket boy, and he retreated to the safety of the barrier ropes. “Where did that man go who ran in here?”

  “W-who . . .” the boy stammered.

  “That big bastard.”

  Wild-eyed, the kid pointed to the door that led into the seating area. I flung open the door but did not go in far. After I stepped inside I crouched down and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. A Shakespearean troupe performed onstage. Henry the Fifth shuffled to one side of the stage to await an aside. I squinted. If Notch hadn’t been so damned big, I might have missed him in the dark theater as he slowly worked his way down the middle aisle. I kept my gun tight against my leg as I skirted the wall. I kept my back against the wall, the darkest part of the theater.

  The doors burst open behind me. Light flooded the theater and momentarily destroyed my night vision. Laurel and Hardy and the uniform looked frantically around. As they squinted and shielded their eyes, I walked doubled over toward where Notch now stood in the front row. People yelled for him to move, but he cursed them and looked at his back trail. I couldn’t tell if he made me or not as he staggered to the stage entrance door. He entered beside the enormous pipe organ that sounded as if it were pumping out a funeral dirge.

  “Stop him!” Hardy yelled behind me, finally spotting me. He waddled after me, passed by Laurel and the patrolman.

  I reached the stage entrance and cracked the door a few inches. Footsteps neared from behind, and I closed the door quickly after me. I ascended the stairs, keeping low, the area lit by a single dangling bulb that had seen better days. Halfway up the steps, Notch jumped out—as well as a six-and-a-half-foot man with a bullet in his leg can jump. He shot twice, his rounds deafening in the confines of the narrow stairs. The rounds hit high on the door right where I’d crouched a moment ago.

  Notch yelled something at me, but I couldn’t make it out for all the screaming on the other side of the door, and the herd of thunderous footsteps from fleeing theater goers above me. I had just enough time to imagine Henry the Fifth running in his flowing bloomers across the stage in his escape when Notch shot again. Splinters drove into my face from the wall where his bullet struck.

  I willed my breathing to slow, taking aim in the dim light of the stairwell.

  Notch shot. It grazed my shoulder inches from where Dutch had wounded me.

  Aim steady. Breathe slow. Concentrate on the front sight. My first shot hit Notch high on the neck. He dropped his gun and clutched his throat when my second shot tore into his chest. The last one was a lung shot, and he fell backwards, gurgling as he drowned in his own blood. Renewed screams in the theater masked his death throes.

  “Drop your gun!” But it wasn’t the cops ordering me. It was a high-pitched . . .

  “Get your ass up the stairs.” A gun jammed against my back, and I chanced a look over my shoulder. Amos stood in back of me, but his attention was turned to the door behind him. “Quick now, before those Oklahoma City coppers bust through here. I don’t want them finding you. Not just yet.”

  Amos prodded me to climb higher, and I hit my knee on a step. “Hurry up, or I’ll take off your head right here.”

  We ascended the stairs to the roof. When I opened the door, the hot night air hit me a split second before Amos’s blow to my back did. I fell onto the hot tarpaper roof, standing as quickly as I could so my hands didn’t burn. But that was the least of my worries right then.

  “So you’re going to murder me like you did Selly Antelope?” I rubbed my shoulder. Sticky blood had dampened my shirt and crusted onto my skin over the opened bullet wound. “Just like you killed Dale Goar and Jimmy Wells.”

  “I told you I didn’t kill Selly.” Amos kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot. “Now Goar was different. He got greedy. Came around Vincent’s shop demanding a bigger cut for him and Dutch.”

  “So they were partners?”

  Amos forced a laugh. “As much as idiots like that can be partners. And it seems like our buddy Notch was pinching Dutch for more protection money than we knew.”

  I glanced around the roof, but there was nothing I could use for a weapon, nothing I could use as a distraction. I had to keep Amos talking. “And Jimmy Wells?”

  “Notch killed Jimmy. After him and me shot at you and Maris—”

  “You were the shooter?”

  Amos nodded. “We just meant to scare you two off.”

  “You made a damned good showing of wanting to kill us.”

  Amos shrugged. “I’d have done it, too, except I got a soft spot for Maris. Call it solidarity with us Indians. But Jimmy worked for Notch, and Jimmy got greedy like the other two peckerwoods. So Notch offed him when he threatened to go public with the fact that Notch sent him after you. And I drove Jimmy’s panel truck out in the country.” He smiled. “Just business.”

  “Like this?” I inched my way ever so slowly toward the door. Amos countered my moving to block me. “What kind of business makes you want to kill a lawman?”

  Amos’s brows came together, and his squeaky voice was hard to understand through his tightly clenched teeth. “This ain’t business. This is pleasure.” He cocked his shotgun. “For killing Vincent.”

  Before I could tell him Notch killed Vincent, Amos stepped to my blind side and swung the barrel of the shotgun. It hit me flush on the temple. I staggered back, dangerously close to the edge of the roof three stories up. I teetered and nearly lost my balance when he hit me again, knocking me to my knees. “I went to ask Byron where you were and saw the note Notch left. I knew if I found him, I’d find you. You got nothing to say?”

  I used the roof edge to stand.

  “I warned you about coming after me.” Amos hit me in the back of one knee. I dropped and struggled to stand up.

  “But this”—Amos motioned to me—“is perso
nal. This will be for Vincent.”

  “I didn’t kill your brother,” I said.

  “Bullshit! Newspapers don’t lie.” He snapped the butt of the shotgun out. I jerked back, but he hit me flush on the tip of my chin. I stood bent over. Blood dripped from my chin and head and shoulder, soaking my shirt.

  Amos stepped closer to me and jammed the shotgun against my head.

  “Don’t do it!” Maris stepped from the stairwell. She leveled her gun at Amos. Laurel and Hardy and the uniformed patrolman stood beside her. All three pointed guns at Amos.

  He looked sideways at the trio while he cocked both side hammers and shouldered the shotgun. There had been only a few times in my life where I’d prayed to my Maker to spare me. So far, He’d obliged. Right now, I settled on a prayer that Amos’s aim be true and my end swift.

  “Stop, Amos,” Maris said. “For me.”

  Maris shuffled a step closer, and for that instant Amos took his eyes off me. I lunged for the shotgun and wrapped a hand around the barrels, struggling to keep them away from my face. One barrel erupted inches from my head as I jerked Amos off balance. We struggled, moving around the roof, neither giving up our grip.

  Laurel and Hardy yelled. Maris screamed. The uniform hollered something, though I only vaguely heard them. The only thing that mattered to me was that shotgun and the other barrel close to my head as we fought for control.

  Amos set himself and jerked the gun. I lost my balance and staggered toward him.

  He bit my hand. I let go of the shotgun and hit him flush on the nose. Cartilage gave way, blood spurted over me, getting into my eyes, and I blinked the pain away. But Amos still held tight to the gun.

  He shoved me hard with the gun, and I sidestepped. I heaved with all my weight. I flung him aside, still hanging onto the shotgun. Amos stumbled toward the edge of the roof. He dropped the gun. I lunged after him. My hand clawed at his clothing, anything to keep him from falling.

  He teetered at the edge. I set myself, holding him by the thin lifeline of his belt. Maris ran to help me just as the belt broke under Amos’s weight, and he toppled, screaming, over the edge of the roof.

  The Oklahoma City policemen ran to the edge of the roof while Maris steadied me with an arm around my waist. She sat me down on a milk crate someone had used once as a pigeon pen, judging by the smell. “You all right?”

  I tried speaking, but only gasps of air came out. I bent over to relieve the stitch in my side before standing and staggering to where the policemen peered over the side. Amos had landed on the edge of the marquee, where the Spanish and Mediterranean styles of the building blended together. His neck lay turned at an awkward angle, and he seemed to look up at us. Blood dripped from his ear onto the sidewalk filled with gawkers looking aghast at the corpse.

  Maris drew me back from the roof. Laurel and Hardy still had their revolvers out, and Hardy was the first to holster. “We couldn’t get a clean shot with you two scuffling.”

  “A shot at me or Amos?”

  “Amos,” Laurel answered. “We heard most of that conversation you and he had. I think we can clear you of Vincent’s murder.”

  “And Dale Goar’s murder?”

  “Him, too,” Hardy said. “But first we got to get you to the hospital. Maybe you can share a room with the other rummy.”

  “Byron?”

  “Just don’t keep him away from the diner for too long,” Maris said. “I’m starved.”

  CHAPTER 32

  * * *

  “Uncle Byron will meet you at the train depot,” Maris said. “He agreed to stay with Amos’s casket until you get there.”

  I’d never agreed to accompany a dead man back to his home. Especially one I had killed. But any compassion I had wasn’t for the dead, it was for the living. And in my mind, I had succeeded in doing what I’d come to El Reno for: bring Amos back to Wind River.

  Maris held the door open for me, and I slowly and painfully poured myself inside the Studebaker for the ride to the train depot. Every part of my aging body ached. Fresh bandages wrapped themselves over stitches to my head. And Doc Catto had thrown in fresh ones where the others had broken from my shoulder while I fought with Amos. For good measure, the doctor had wrapped up a broken rib Amos had jammed with the shotgun.

  I settled back for the short ride. Already the intense Oklahoma heat caused me to sweat, and every stitch felt the sting. I felt every bump as we started for the depot. She drove faster than I wanted, even though I told her I was running late to catch the train. Secretly, I wanted her to slow down. It would be good to see my daughter, Polly, again, and Helen’s sister and her husband who took care of her. Though Wyoming wasn’t its usual green landscape, it had fared better in this drought than Oklahoma, and that would be a welcome relief as well. But I wanted to prolong my departure. I’d grown used to Byron’s meals, and especially his ear when I needed it most. And I’d miss Maris. She’d been a trusted partner through all this, once we both got over our misgivings about one another.

  “How is it that I never got a chance to thank you for distracting Amos up on that roof? That saved my ass.”

  “You saved your ass.”

  “But if you hadn’t caused him to look, I would still be wrestling with him.”

  Maris patted my leg. “Partners look out for one another. And . . .”

  I waited while she gathered her thoughts.

  “And I will miss you.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I guess I’ll miss getting the chance to get closer to you. A lot closer.”

  “What, and have to go about El Reno bragging you made love to your dad?”

  Maris’s smile faded, and she drove with her knees while she shook out a Chesterfield. I lit it for her before she wrecked the car. “That Amos was one sorry SOB. He could have told you all about how he killed Selly. Why’d he keep quiet?”

  “Honor, perhaps.”

  “What honor? He knew he was going to kill you. The least the asshole could do was fess up.”

  “Maybe his honor was in not ratting off Dutch.”

  “But Dutch is dead.”

  “The only ones who knew that are you and me and Byron. And Notch, but he’s dead. For all Amos knew, Dutch was still in hiding in El Reno.”

  “That reminds me, what did you do with Dutch’s body?”

  “I didn’t do anything with it.” A single-horse dray trotted across the road, the wagon piled with corn and beets on the way to the local market. “Byron was gracious enough to find Dutch a home.”

  Maris turned in the seat. “What did Uncle Byron do with Dutch’s corpse?”

  “That pile of horse manure near Ft. Reno . . . the soldiers will find Dutch’s rotting body at the base of it. They’ll figure that’s why no one noticed Dutch’s corpse—he smelled only slightly worse than the horse shit.”

  “Fitting,” she said.

  Maris started toward the depot when I checked my watch. “We got just enough time to stop by Celia’s.”

  “She won’t want to come see Amos off, dead son-in-law or not.”

  “At least I want to offer her the chance. Besides, she might want me to give Cat a message.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Maris drove the three blocks to the First Baptist and pulled to the curb. I got out of Maris’s car slower than when I got in, feeling every stitch, every sore muscle, every blow and boot print since I stepped off the train here two weeks ago.

  I followed Maris around back of the church to Celia’s bungalow. She was bent over, picking weeds from the flower bed along one side of her house. Maris spoke to her in Cheyenne, and she stood. She set her garden trowel down and smoothed her apron before inviting us in for tea.

  “The marshal doesn’t have a lot of time, grandmother,” Maris said. “He’s taking Amos back to Wyoming. Cat wants him there with her.”

  “Good place for him.”

  I leaned against a porch support. “Amos’s body is waiting at the train st
ation. Would you like to pay your respects before I take him home?”

  “I told myself I would never give him respect in life,” she answered. “What makes you think I will in death?”

  I stood and arched my back.

  “Can you tell my daughter something for me when you get there?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell her she is always welcome back home with me.”

  “I will tell her.” My gun butt rubbed my bruised hip, and I moved the holster around slightly. “But I want you to tell me something, too.”

  Celia stood immobile and seemed to stare through me.

  “Tell me those pictures of that little girl on the wall are not Catherine.”

  Celia dropped her eyes.

  “They are Catherine’s baby, aren’t they?”

  Celia looked up, and tears had watered her eyes. “How did you know?”

  “One picture shows the little girl proudly wearing her watch on her left hand. Like a right-handed person usually does. Cat is a leftie. And Doc Catto told us.”

  Celia backed into a rocker on the porch. She used the arms to ease herself onto the seat, and her joints creaked louder than the old rocker. She reached to the side where a canvas bag hung and took out knitting needles and some project she was working on. “The doctor was good to us when we moved back here from Wind River.”

  “You had to move,” I said, “because Catherine had gotten herself into a family way?”

  The clicking of the needles speeded up. “It would have been a disgrace to our family back on Wind River for Catherine to give birth to a baby with no father. Her with no husband. So we moved here. Doc Catto let her remain at the hospital until she had the baby and let me work off hospital fees cleaning rooms there. He let me work after the baby was born.”

  “He’s a good man,” Maris said.

  Celia nodded. “A very good man.”

  “Where is the baby now?” I asked.

  The clicking of the knitting needles ceased, and Celia drew a rough, weathered hand across her eyes. “Oklahoma City. A white family took the child in when Catherine could not keep her any longer.”