Marshal and the Moonshiner Page 10

  I took a half step back and slapped him full across the face, hard enough to split his lip. Blood wept onto his shirtfront. I balled my fist up and tapped his nose lightly. “The next one will break it. Again.”

  The whites of his eyes shone like a wild bronc looks at the rider he’ll soon stomp into the dirt. Goar jerked free and threw a loose roundhouse. It glanced off my cheek and did little more than anger me. I reared back to bust him in the nose when someone grabbed my arm.

  “Stop, Nels,” Maris said. “You’re hurting him.” She clung to my arm, and her strength surprised me. Maris had parked in back of the Lincoln, but I’d been too preoccupied with the afternoon’s entertainment to notice.

  “Let me go, and I’ll find out why he’s following us. And why he and his partner beat me the other night.”

  “Dale!”

  Goar turned his attention to her while he kept me in focus out of the corner of his eye.

  “Tell the marshal what he wants to know.” She bent close and whispered, “Because I don’t want you ending up like some rag doll bleeding in the middle of the street.”

  Goar frantically shook his head and looked at me with that same look he had before. I’d caught a mustang in the Red Desert as a kid, and I tried breaking it. It never would knuckle under for me. It bucked me off for the last time into a clump of sharp sagebrush and did its best to stomp me into the dirt. So I’d taken a tree branch lying by the makeshift corral I’d constructed and hit that mustang across the nose. It still hadn’t let me ride him after that, but it sure felt good to whack it. Even now, as I held onto Goar’s coat front, I recalled how good it felt to smack that mustang. And I figured—within moments—I would experience that same elation as I pummeled Goar into the street.

  He saw it, too, in my eyes, and he tried to speak when I realized I’d twisted his coat too tightly, and he couldn’t breathe. I relaxed my grip, and he coughed violently.

  Maris pulled my hand away from Goar’s lapels and straightened them. “Good.” She looked at me. “I think Dale will talk now.”

  “That so, Dale? You going to talk in lieu of an ass-whippin’?”

  He nodded as he massaged his throat.

  “All right, then, why did you follow us from Ft. Reno?” I repeated.

  “Amos,” Goar said, raspy like his throat had recently been squeezed a mite too tight. “Amos has a warrant out for him. Murder.”

  “How can that be? I haven’t asked the federal prosecutor in Wyoming to issue a warrant for him yet.”

  “Not that murder.” Goar bent over and coughed up blood. “From before he fled to Wyoming.”

  “When the hell did that come down?” Now it was Maris’s turn to get up close and angry as she jabbed a finger in his chest. “I never heard of a warrant. Who’d he kill?”

  Goar clammed up, and I drew my fist back. He held up his hands as if he were surrendering. “Two businessmen in the Severs Hotel a few weeks before Amos fled north.” The Severs Hotel murders had generated much publicity in these parts. Two businessmen from Connecticut had been shot to death in the elegant Severs Hotel in Muskogee. Despite the huge reward for the capture of the assailant, the case had grown cold.

  “Amos pulled that?” Maris asked.

  “Muskogee lawmen talked with Stauffer. Amos is the best suspect they have.”

  “But Amos was in Wyoming when that happened,” I said.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Goar said. He patted his fat lip and grimaced. “Amos was down visiting someone for a couple weeks. Stauffer thinks whoever he visited accompanied him to Muskogee. Killed those two and robbed them.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?” Maris shoved her way between Goar and me, and she would have beaten him herself if I’d let her. She grabbed his shirtfront. “I’m waiting for an answer.”

  “All right.” Goar wiped blood from his chin and lips. “Stauffer figured you’d help the Marshal find Amos. Then Stauffer would swoop in for the collar before the marshal had a chance to transport him back to Wyoming. Be great publicity with the election nearing if the sheriff found the murderer.”

  Maris let go of his shirtfront and stepped away. “If that don’t beat all.” She took out her pack of smokes, and her hand trembled in anger as she shook one out. “Why didn’t Sheriff Stauffer just order me to let him know once we found Amos?”

  Goar remained silent, and I tapped his chest with my knuckles. “Answer the lady.”

  Goar hung his head. “Sheriff Stauffer doesn’t trust you to tell him. He thinks you would be more loyal to the marshal, having jumped his bones by now.”

  Maris stepped away. “Now you can hit him.”

  I twisted Goar’s lapels hard enough his shirt began tearing as I half lifted him off the ground. I cocked my fist back, but the fire had left me, and I set him back down. “Next time Deputy Red Hat won’t be here as a witness.” He started to talk, but I pressed my fingers to my lips. “And the next time you come after me, you’ll be breaking rocks for assaulting a federal marshal.” I pushed him back, and he hit the side of the Lincoln. “Now scat!”

  “My gun—”

  I kicked him in his butt. “Don’t push your luck. Just get the hell out of here.”

  Goar scrunched behind the wheel. He glared at me as he started the car, and we watched him disappear around the corner.

  “I’m thinking Amos was the guy Dutch visited.”

  “It would fit. Amos comes down here, and the two rob and kill those businessmen. Dutch has an alibi that he was at the fort, and Amos that he was back home in Wyoming,” I said, then nudged Maris. “And it’s so nice that your boss trusts you.”

  “If I didn’t need this job . . .”

  “You’d still find a way to be a pain in his butt.”

  “True.” Maris flicked her cigarette in the direction Goar had gone, and a smile crossed her face. “And how about Stauffer thinking we’re sparkin’?”

  “Yeah, how about that.”

  We stood awkwardly on the side of the road within touching distance. Before temptation overcame my good sense, I told Maris good night and watched as she got into her coughing truck and clamored away.

  Before I headed for the Kerfoot, I bent and picked up Goar’s cut-down .38 and pocketed it. One never knows when another gun will come in handy.

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  “Marshal.” Ragwood waved a telegram at me as I stepped into the lobby.

  I turned my back and opened it: Yancy would wait at the tribal office for my call. “Is there somewhere private I can call from?”

  Ragwood averted his eyes, and I figured allowing someone to have my room key a couple of nights ago caused him some guilt. He nodded to a side room. “The manager’s office. He’s gone for the night.”

  Ragwood led me past the hotel switchboard room with the door cracked open. A young woman sat in front of her electrical panel plugging jacks into receptacles for hotel guests to call out. Inside the manager’s office, Ragwood motioned to a desk. I sat in a captain’s chair and became aware that Ragwood hadn’t left the office yet. He looked at pictures hanging on the paisley-papered wall, and at an Oriental rug under his shoes where he nudged a piece of lint with the toe of his shoe. “Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Marshal,” he blurted out, “for someone getting into your room. I—”

  I held up my hand, and he stopped stammering. “I’d lay a paycheck someone ordered you to give them my room key. I’m not even going to ask you who, ’cause I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just let me know if it happens again—before I get to my room—and we’ll be square.”

  He stood a mite straighter, and a smile creased his freckled face. “Sure thing, Marshal Lane.” He turned on his heels and left me alone in the office.

  I sat back in the chair padded with an overstuffed pillow. Ledgers and pens and envelopes stuck out of the desk’s pigeonholes in front of me. Other compartments hosted pieces of paper bags wi
th notes scribbled, and others, advertisements the manager clipped from magazines for some reason known only to him.

  I picked up the phone and tapped the switch hook several times to alert the hotel operator. I gave her the tribal office number of WYO347. “And after you connect me . . .”

  “Yes?” the young lady asked.

  “Please stay off the line.”

  While I waited to be connected to the Wind River Tribal Office, I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet on an open desk drawer. Out of morbid curiosity, I peered down into the drawer. The manager stored a whisky decanter in there, and I leaned over, inhaling the aroma, sweet and inviting. This was no bathtub gin, but good, aged whisky just waiting for someone to sample it. Just a single drop on the tongue. I caught myself craving a nip from something that had brought me so much misery in years past, and I shut the drawer.

  Yancy’s voice came on the line and saved me from backsliding from a thousand miles away. “Speak louder.” I jammed the earpiece flat against my good ear.

  “I said, Cat and her folks left Wind River in 1922.”

  I did the math in my head. Cat would have been fifteen.

  Papers rustled, and I imagined Yancy looking over his notes. “Her folks were making a go of their spread up here. At least that’s what ranchers hereabouts told me. Cat’s family was one of the more successful ranches.”

  “Then why’d they pull up stakes?”

  I could almost see Yancy’s braided hair bob on his chest as he shook his head. “Can’t say. They just moved out sudden-like one night before they could tell anyone good-bye. Moved down to El Reno with their southern relatives.”

  “Did you get anywhere with Cat?”

  “What do you mean, get anywhere?”

  “Not like that. I mean, what did she tell you?”

  Static drowned out Yancy’s voice, and he waited until it cleared. “Seems like Cat’s father and the Antelopes had a falling out the spring they moved. Her father figured he could lease out his place and make as much without the problems with their Shoshone neighbors.”

  “So Cat’s father is still here?”

  “He is.” Yancy chuckled. “In the El Reno cemetery. Railroad accident a few years after they moved to Oklahoma.” Static. “But Cat’s mother still lives there. Cleans rooms at the Catto Hospital. But you be careful, Nels.”

  “Of what?”

  “Amos,” Yancy said. “I didn’t realize just what a mean bastard he was until I asked around about him. He’s got a terrible temper. Cat wanted me to warn you about that. Said he’ll kill you if he gets the chance.”

  “That was sweet as hell of her. She didn’t mention where Amos was staying down here?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “Or won’t say,” I added.

  I dropped my feet to the floor and pinched my nose between my finger and thumb to stave off a rising headache. So far I’d made little progress down here, and Yancy hadn’t learned much that might help me find Amos. “What did you find out about Whiskers?”

  More static, more paper rustling, and I thought I’d lost Yancy. “Whiskers is just a friend of Amos’s. Drifted in one day from El Reno, is how she said Amos introduced him.”

  “And once again, she won’t give up any information that will help us find her husband. Keep digging up there. Ask Cat about a murder charge Amos has hanging over his head from that Severs Hotel double homicide down thisaway.”

  “I’ll get right on her.”

  “That’s what I’m concerned about.” I wanted to tell him my main worry was leaving a beautiful Catherine Iron Horse in the same area as a horny Yancy Stands Close.

  I tapped the switch hook again and asked to be connected to Leonard Brothers Café. When I heard the faint click that told me the hotel operator had disconnected, I asked Byron to relay to Maris that our trip to Ft. Reno tonight was off. “We got some places around El Reno we need to check out first.”

  “She stopped by and told me all about your little trip to the fort.” He chuckled. “And about your little visit with Dale Goar,” Byron said, and I heard him drop a pan. “She was looking forward to Ft. Reno tonight. Something about distracting a good-looking gate guard.” Byron got a serious tone to him. “So you watch your backside.”

  “For Amos or Goar?”

  “For Maris. She’ll be itchy as hell tonight.”

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  I followed Maris down the steps of the Catto Hospital with Celia Thunder’s address in hand. When I told Maris that Cat’s mother worked at either the El Reno Sanitarium or the Catto Hospital, she’d laughed. “If that were the case, I’d know about it. I know—”

  “Everyone in El Reno. So you remind me daily,” I’d chided her. “Everyone except Celia Thunder.”

  Maris had already pouted because we weren’t going to Ft. Reno tonight and did not take the ribbing well. She’d dressed to the nines for our covert trip into the fort and another chance to talk to that gate guard. Her tight dungarees showed off curves no woman ought to flaunt in public, and her low-cut silk top would entice any soldier. She had put her hair up in finger waves that probably took an hour to do, and the odor of rose and vanilla drifted past my nose every time the wind changed. Maris was all dressed up and no place to go. Except around El Reno with an over-the-hill lawman.

  “Just let me do the talking,” Maris said as we started across town in her truck. “Celia’s a woman, and she’s Cheyenne. She’d not open up to you one whit.” She laughed. “Besides, you didn’t get much information out of Dutch today.”

  “But I made up for it when I . . . talked with Dale Goar.”

  Maris choked on a sprig of mint. “And wasn’t that a fine bit of finesse, the way you masterfully eased the answers out of him. You jerk. He’ll cry to Stauffer that I helped set him up for an ass-whuppin’, and the sheriff will give me the bum’s rush.”

  “No he won’t.” I tried to sound positive. “Stauffer knows the best way to find Amos is with us on the trail. So I figure your job’s safe. At least until we find him.”

  As we turned onto Bickford, Maris struck a match on the dash and lit a smoke. The flame caught the note with the address in her hand on fire. She dropped it on the floorboard and stomped it out with her boot, while I jerked the wheel to steer the truck back into the street before she ran over the curb. She glared at me like I’d done a bad thing to prevent a wreck.

  “Celia lives in a one-room cottage behind the church.”

  “I read the note just fine,” she said. She pulled over and parked the truck halfway on the street, halfway on the curb. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and pulled it tight in front to hide her bosom. “Celia’s traditional,” Maris said when she caught me looking at her shawl ritual. “She wouldn’t tell me anything more than she’d tell you if she saw me . . . exposed.”

  The First Baptist Church spanned four entire lots. As many times as I’d crawled into a church to sleep off a bender back in my drinking days, it always amazed me that all churches were first somethings-or-other. There were no Third Methodist, or Fifth Presbyterian, or Last Baptist. Everyone wanted to be the first to go to heaven. That is, until they realized you had to die to get there; then the prospect wasn’t so attractive.

  We stepped from the truck and looked at the small, lavender colored house trimmed in yellow to the rear of the church. Even in the dim light, I could make out the window boxes overflowing with flowers, their colors glowing in the streetlight that lent a warm glow to Celia’s house.

  “How is it Celia’s being a Cheyenne married an Arapaho?”

  Maris stopped and looked at me with her hands on her hips as if to scold me. “Nothing different than you—a big, dumb Norwegian—marrying . . . say, a Dane. Or an Italian.”

  “Point taken.”

  “And remember,” Maris whispered as we started on the walkway that led to Celia’s house, “let me do the talking. You’re a white man,” she added as if to cut off my
protest at the knees. “Just think how many treaties the white man’s broken with us Indians.”

  For once, I had no argument against her logic.

  I followed Maris around back of the church to Celia’s house. A faint glow came from a single window. On the third knock, a short, stout woman in an ankle-length linsey-woolsey dress answered. She held an oil lamp in front of her, and the flickering light revealed the resemblance to Cat even in the dark. Celia’s angular nose, like Cat’s—fine and not over-prominent—jutted forth to give her a distinct profile. Dark eyes penetrated mine, and she neither smiled nor offered a greeting as Maris spoke to her in Cheyenne.

  “How are you, Neske’e?” I recognized the term of respect. Grandmother. “May we talk?”

  Celia led us into the two-room house and motioned to a couch on one side of her cook stove. Maris began to talk to Celia in a language spoken only by a few hundred Cheyenne nowadays. I had worked and lived around Indians long enough that I knew Maris would ask about Celia’s relations: she would ask what clan Celia was born into. She would ask about her father’s name, and about her mother’s father’s name. And then it would be Maris’s turn to tell Celia about her own tribal affiliations. Most folks would call their conversation small talk. But it was necessary that proper introductions take place before anything else was discussed. It was the Indian way.

  When their talk ended, Celia nodded to me. “Tea?”

  “Please,” Maris answered, and Celia turned to the cook stove.

  “I don’t drink tea,” I said.

  “You do tonight,” Maris whispered. She elbowed me in the side and just missed my bruised ribs.