Marshal and the Moonshiner Page 21

  “You mean when Amos didn’t want the girl around?” Maris asked.

  Celia frowned. “Yes. The baby was three when Amos and Catherine married. The baby bothered him none then. But soon, he grew tired of having another mouth to feed.” She took up her knitting again. “So you see why I do not care to see the man another time. Even in death.”

  “Grandmother.” Maris scooted a chair up and sat to meet Celia’s eyes. “Do you ever see the child?”

  Celia nodded through the open door to the photos on the wall. “Never. That was our agreement. Those people sent a picture every year for a few years. Then the pictures stopped coming, like they did not want the child to have anything more to do with us Indians.”

  “How did Catherine take that?” I asked.

  “Hard.” Celia stood and walked to the window. She closed the shutters as if closing memories inside that photo wall. “I do not think she ever forgave Amos.”

  “Tell me,” Maris asked. “Did the baby’s father ever come around? Ever contact Cat?”

  “That is not important now,” Celia said.

  “It is to us,” Maris pressed. “Who is the child’s father?”

  Celia took a corncob pipe from her apron pocket and filled it with tobacco. She lit it and stood. She walked quietly into the house and shut the door. “I shouldn’t have pressed her so hard,” Maris said. “Now we won’t get anything out of her.”

  I raised my arm up toward the ceiling to stretch my arm. “She’s right, though; it isn’t important now.”

  CHAPTER 33

  * * *

  By the time we reached the Rock Island depot, the funeral director had just loaded Amos’s casket into the freight car for the trip to Wyoming. He spotted me and rushed over. “You’re that US marshal.” He shook my hand like he was trying to pump water. “I’m glad you came to visit us.” He jerked his thumb at Amos’s casket. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever had for business.”

  “Business?”

  The grin never left his gaunt face. “The funeral business has picked up considerably since you arrived. Come back any time, Marshal. You’re always welcome.”

  Maris and I watched him climb into the truck he’d converted to a hearse. FULLER’S BAKERY was still visible under the paint on the side of the truck. “Ain’t that a bitch,” I said. “The only one who wants me to come back is the town’s mortician.”

  “We’d like you to come back,” Maris said. “Me and Uncle Byron.”

  On cue, Byron stepped from the lobby of the Southern Hotel, and I almost didn’t recognize him. He wore a crisp, white shirt held tight by a turquoise bolo tie under his collar. Creases in his jeans showed he had spent considerable time pressing them, and a tan bowler sat his head at a rakish angle. And, like me, his face showed bruising even a week after Notch’s beating. “You look like you’re going to a wake.”

  Byron winced when he smiled, and his hand rubbed his swollen jaw. “At least it was not my funeral. Or yours. Which I had doubts about there for a while. Makes me think—how do I repay the man who saved my life?”

  I nudged him. “Sounds like something a philosopher would ponder.”

  We stood awkwardly while the line at the ticket counter grew shorter. Soon it would be my turn to get on board. “You know, Byron, I’m the one who owes you.”

  “You owe me?”

  “More than you’ll ever know. After you sobered me up last week and showed me how stupid it was for me to fall off the wagon . . . well, there’s just no way I can thank you enough. For that, and for hiding me when Notch and those Oklahoma City dicks were hunting me, I owe you.”

  “I would have hid anyone from that thug,” Byron said. “As for sobering you up, all it took was someone to talk to you in the right way.” He looked up at the clouds. “I predict that someday there will be more of us alkies around if we need someone to talk to.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe coming together once or twice a week. What do you think?”

  “I think there will always be one philosopher lush that other boozers can turn to.”

  “I like that,” Byron said. “Send me a telegram when you arrive safely.”

  I watched him walk as stylishly as he could with his new limp, courtesy of Johnny Notch, and Byron disappeared around the corner of the Southern.

  Maris had moved off to one corner of the lobby, eyeing the short line to the ticket master. She had her back to me, and I laid a hand on her shoulder. She turned around, and I saw her mascara had run, with the tears flowing down her cheeks cutting tiny rivulets into her rouge. She held up her hand. “Don’t say good-bye.”

  I motioned that there were only two people in line. “I have to.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you to go.”

  I forced a smile. “Maybe I don’t want to.” I drew her close and hugged her. “You’ll probably just miss the intrigue of being on the lam with a wanted man.”

  “Ex-wanted.”

  I held her away where I could look at her. “Thanks to you and Byron—helping me clear things with Laurel and Hardy. And quashing that bogus murder warrant Stauffer had out on me. But I’m sorry you had to lose your job over me.”

  “No big loss.”

  “So what’s your plan now?”

  Maris wiped the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt and smiled wide enough that the dimples on her cheeks showed. “Stauffer comes up for re-election this fall. I’m going to run against his sorry ass. I’m gonna beat him, too.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  The train whistle announced my imminent departure, and I bent and grabbed my travel bag. “After you’re elected, maybe you’ll want to broaden your experience. See how other lawmen handle things. Perhaps you’ll feel like a visit up north.”

  “Visit you?” She grinned wide. “So there might be a chance we can—”

  “Maris . . .”

  “. . . get closer?”

  I cupped her cheeks in my hands. I drew her face close and gently kissed her forehead. “Another life—another time—and maybe we’d make one hell of a couple. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about twice as old as the lucky fella ought to be who finally lands you.” Besides, I failed to tell her, I was thinking about introducing her to a friend. A man just as horned-up as she was.

  “Last call,” the ticket master announced.

  “That’s me.” I started for the ticket counter when I remembered something and turned back. I snatched an envelope from my back pocket and handed it to Maris. She opened it, and her eyes widened when she read it.

  “The lady at the beauty shop assures me it covers the works,” I explained. “Hair. Nails. The works. Just so you can get all ladied-up for the election.”

  CHAPTER 34

  * * *

  The Dodge Agony Wagon hit hard ruts that jarred the stitches in my shoulder. Every time it dropped into a hole made deeper by flash flooding on the Wind River, the casket in the back banged against the side of the truck.

  “I got hold of the preacher,” Yancy said. “He’ll be out this afternoon as soon as he marries two cousins in Lander.”

  I looked sideways at him. “You lined up the preacher?”

  “Cat wanted me to arrange it.” He straightened his string tie. His braid was held tight by a bone clasp, and it bounced in time with the Dodge hitting pot holes. And every time we caught a cross wind, the odor of cologne washed over me. I couldn’t tell if Yancy was going to a funeral or a dance. “The poor woman was distraught ever since she found out Amos was dead,” he blurted out.

  “And you helping the widow was just the neighborly thing to do?”

  “There you have it.” He grinned. “You staying for the service?”

  I shook my head and downshifted. “Wouldn’t hardly be proper, me being the one who put Amos in that box in the back.”

  “I talked with Cat about that. She knows you had no choice.”

  “But the least I can do is talk to her,” I said.

  When we’d crossed
onto Iron Horse land, Yancy directed me to a hill overlooking the house to the north. Yancy had dug Amos’s grave the morning I rode the train home with the body. The mound of dirt was visible on a hill overlooking the pasture separating Cat’s land from the Antelope’s ranch. I cut across the pasture to the gravesite as slowly as possible. When I reached the grave, I backed the truck up close to the hole and gratefully climbed out. I stretched my back and shoulder, every muscle aching from my little sojourn to El Reno.

  Yancy stood by the grave. He clasped his hands in front, and he looked down into the hole reverently. “Pretty good job, don’t you think?”

  “A hole’s a hole,” I said, a little too sarcastically, and caught myself. Yancy must have spent all day digging the grave, probably with little promise of anything except to spend some time with Cat. “It’s just fine, Yancy.”

  He helped me carry the casket to the grave site, a hobbled-up marshal feeling far older than he was, and the young Arapahoe with an eye on the widow. We set the casket beside the grave as Cat emerged from the ranch house fifty yards away. She carried a bundle of flowers in front of her as if she expected them to ward off her sorrow. When she arrived at the casket, she laid the bouquet on top, and I saw there was not a tear in sight. “Preacher coming?” she asked.

  Yancy edged closer to her. “He’ll be here soon.”

  We three stood in silence until I told Yancy, “We need to talk about some things, Cat and me. Some things I need to say to her.”

  Yancy tightened his tie, and started for the ranch house. “I’ll make us some coffee,” he said as if he knew just where the coffee pot and grounds were.

  I took off my hat, and broke our uneasy silence. “I am sorry about Amos. He gave me no choice but to . . .”

  She held up her hand. “Yancy told me the details. I hold nothing against you, Marshal.”

  “Even so, killing’s something I avoid when I can. Makes me have terrible nightmares.” I studied her face. “Ever have nightmares, Cat?”

  Her head jerked up, and she selected her words carefully. “Now and again. Everyone has nightmares.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  “Sure.”

  “About?”

  “Amos getting killed?” she answered.

  “Or nightmares about Selly Antelope.”

  She took a step closer to the casket. She hugged herself, as if she were cold in this hundred-degree heat. “Now why would I have nightmares about that . . . nasty bastard?”

  “Because he was such a nasty bastard.” I let that linger a moment before I told her about Celia. “Your mother admitted you had a baby there at the Catto Hospital when you were fifteen.”

  Cat nodded. “Jessica,” she said, but added nothing more.

  “Your mother didn’t want me to know the baby’s father. And I thought it might be someone in El Reno.”

  Cat stared at the grave.

  “But Maris Red Hat dug up the time frame. She can be pretty persuasive . . .”

  “So Amos said a time or two.”

  “She found out you gave birth six months after you were admitted to the hospital. Celia told folks you were sick. Doc Catto was in on your secret.”

  “Is there a point to this?” Cat said, her voice hard, her innocence gone. And without Yancy here to witness her sudden change, I suspected her true self had begun to emerge. “I don’t see what this has to do with Amos’s burial today.”

  “It has everything to do with it. From the dates Maris came up with, you were admitted to the Catto Hospital just days after you and your family arrived back in El Reno.”

  “Once again, Marshal, is there a point to this?”

  “The point is, the father wasn’t anyone in El Reno. The father was someone on this reservation.” I nodded to the fence separating Cat’s pasture from the Antelopes’. “Probably someone ranching that close.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Is it?” I wiped sweat from my forehead and inside my Stetson before I put it back on. “Me and Amos had a long talk on the train ride back here—or at least I did the talking. It didn’t fit. See, when Amos had the drop on me up on that roof, he had every intention of killing me. He freely admitted to killing other men. But when I asked him why he killed Selly, he denied it.”

  Cat took out a pack of Bull Durham and began rolling a smoke. Her hands shook, and I took the tobacco and paper from her. I rolled and lit it for her. “Amos had no reason to lie. So he had to be covering for someone. Which brought me to Whiskers. Dutch Seugard.”

  “The army deserter?”

  I nodded.

  Cat turned away and she started crying. “Amos made me promise I wouldn’t tell you or Yancy that Dutch killed Selly.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She looked up at me and wiped the tears with her shirt sleeve. “It was horrible. That morning I rode out to check on our heifers I saw Dutch cutting the fence separating our spread from the Antelopes’.”

  “Now why would Dutch cut the fence?” I asked, but Dutch already told me before I killed him in that abandoned building in El Reno. “He and Amos were friends.”

  “Dutch wanted Amos and the Antelopes to start feuding. Make it uncomfortable for Amos to live here. That would draw him back to El Reno.” She blew smoke and watched it drift in the breeze. “Dutch wanted Amos to go back and partner in rum running.”

  “Except Amos wouldn’t rile up,” I said. I bit off a chunk of plug tobacco and pocketed the rest.

  “Amos refused to get mad,” Cat said. “He wanted to ranch so badly, he didn’t want to lose his temper over a fight he knew he’d lose to the Antelopes.”

  I paced in front of the grave as much to stretch my aching muscles as to think things through. “Like that dance where Selly and Amos fought?”

  Cat dropped her cigarette butt and ground it into the dirt with her boot. “Dutch was the one who prodded Selly into dancing with me when Amos left for the outhouse. When he came back, Amos saw how frightened I was dancing with Selly. And he beat him.”

  “But Dutch only cut the fence once?”

  She took her time before she answered. “I only caught him that one time. But the fence had been cut many times after that . . .”

  “And I’d wager,” I said, stepping closer to judge her reaction, “that you have a pair of fence pliers in your saddle bags, too.”

  “Any rancher worth his—or her—salt has a pair.” She suddenly grasped my implication and her jaw clenched. “You accusing me of cutting my own fence?”

  “I am.”

  Cat glared at me, and there was nothing to indicate she had cried moments ago.

  “See”—I started pacing again—“I figure you wanted Amos and Selly to feud over your cows. I figure you wanted them mad enough at one another that Amos couldn’t take it any longer, and they’d fight. Ideally—for you—they’d kill one another.”

  “Dutch killed Selly,” she stammered. “I already told you that—”

  “Selly was your baby’s father,” I interrupted. “Wasn’t he?”

  I watched her carefully. She glared at me right before she dropped her gaze, and I knew I was right.

  She turned away. I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. “Selly was the father, wasn’t he?”

  Cat jerked away. “All right. He was my baby’s father. Selly was one bastard, and the reason we had to move to Oklahoma.”

  “To prevent people finding out? To prevent any disgrace to your family?”

  She nodded and her eyes narrowed, but no tears returned. “My father was beside himself when he found out. He couldn’t stand the thought of the baby with no father to step forward.”

  “There was no feuding between them back there, was there?”

  She leaned against the casket. “Our families got along. Dad and the Antelopes traded business.”

  She came away from the casket, and tossed her cigarette butt into the hole. “I kept Jessica after she was born. When I married Amos,
he was fine with her being with us. Until he got in with his brother Vincent. Running moonshine. Being a big shot. Then Amos wanted me to give her up for adoption.” Cat waved her hand at the treeless, barren prairie where she eked out a living. “That’s when I offered Amos a trade: I’d put Jessica up for adoption if we’d move back here with me to work the ranch.”

  “That’s when your mother found those folks in Oklahoma City to take her?”

  “My mother would have raised her, but she had no money. Especially after my father died in that railroading accident.”

  I remained silent. I’d often found I learned as much from folks when they started spilling their sorrows as from asking fool questions.

  “I told Amos one night that Selly was Jessica’s father. I told him there was nothing romantic between Selly and me when I was younger. That our . . . encounter was a one-time thing. But Amos didn’t believe me. Every time he saw Selly and me in the room together, he flew into a rage.”

  “Like when he found Selly’s bandana at your house?”

  Cat nodded.

  “A bandana you put there yourself.”

  Cat faced me, her face turning a dull crimson. “What are you getting at?”

  “You were truthful a moment ago when you said there was no romance between you and Selly. And you were truthful when you told me you and Selly had sex—excuse the term.”

  “I just admitted he was Jessica’s father . . .”

  “The sex wasn’t consensual on your part. It was anything but.” I bent and stared her in the eyes. “Am I right?”

  She stood and brushed her hand across Amos’s casket as if to apologize. “I was fourteen that day when I was riding fence line.” A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Selly cut a dashing figure on that big Appaloosa he’d bartered from some Nez Perce. He saw me riding fence that first afternoon and he offered lunch. I crossed the fence, and Selly had fried chicken and potato salad in a creel across his saddle. We ate under a cottonwood a mile north.” Tears started, this time genuine. “For dessert, he raped me.” She turned away, and her shoulders shook. “He caught me riding fence three other times after that. And raped me all those times as well.”