Whiskey Kills

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “I am sorry,” he said, took the gourd, and drank.

  She sat across from him. “Your mood has soured since you went to see the Pale Eyes agent yesterday,” she said.

  He set the gourd beside him. The way he saw it, Daniel’s mood had been soured for weeks. For at least an hour, he had been sitting outside on this Sunday, his day off, reading and rereading the notes he had scribbled in his Old Glory tablet.

  “I wanted to get a pass,” Daniel decided to explain to her. “To go to Dallas.”

  “The Tejano city?”

  “Haa,” he answered.

  She turned up her nose in disgust. “I have never been to this place called Dallas, but there are many lodges in those cities,” she said. “Many places like that,” pointing at the cabin behind him.

  “Not as many as some cities that I have seen,” he said, first in English, out of habit, then in Comanche.

  “The Pale Eyes agent,” she said, “he would not give you this pass?”

  “No. Agent Ellenbogen was skeptical.” Which was a mild description. Downright defiant.

  “I once rode to a Tejano town,” she said. “Wichita Falls. I did not like it. But I gladly would go to this place in Texas, if you wish. I did not have a pass when I rode to Wichita Falls. It was to help you.”

  “It was a big help,” he said.

  Hugh Gunter had sent her galloping those hard miles—more than fifty—to Wichita Falls to fetch Deputy Marshal Harvey P. Noble. Daniel had worried about her, but Rain Shower was Nermernuh. She could ride better than many warriors of The People, certainly better than Daniel.

  “Then I will go again.” She started to rise, but Daniel reached, took her arm, gently pulled her back. Smiling, he stared at her, slowly shaking his head.

  “It is too far. I will keep asking Agent Ellenbogen. I will attempt to be . . . ahem . . . more persuasive.”

  “And he will keep telling you no. He can be as stubborn as you are. My brother tells me so.”

  He joked with her. “Your brother tells you that I am stubborn or that Agent Ellenbogen is stubborn?”

  She didn’t laugh, not even smile. “The agent. He needs not tell me about you.”

  With a laugh, Daniel shook his head, but Rain Shower cut off his humor with a defiant statement. “No, I will go.”

  “It is too dangerous for you to go alone,” he argued. “And you do not know the way.”

  “I will not go alone. I will go with Quanah.”

  For the longest moment, he just stared at Rain Shower, trying to understand what she had just told him. Tried to find the words, but the only thing he could say was: “Quanah?”

  Enthusiastically she nodded. “Haa. In two suns, he is going to Texas. He and Coyote Chaser and Teepee That Stands Alone, and A’do-eete and Tséeyñ of our friends the Kiowa. They go to another Tejano town to talk to the taibos who wish to use the grass of The People and the Kiowa to feed their cows. Fort Worth. It is not far from Dallas, or so Quanah tells me. He tells me the people of Fort Worth hate the people of Dallas. Like The People hate the Pawnees.” The look on Daniel’s face must have stopped her. She looked at him, curious, then suspicious, and said: “Perhaps you could come with Quanah and me.”

  Leaning over, he kissed her, then stood, heading inside to fetch his buckskin, calling back over his shoulder: “Rain Shower, you are not only lovely, you are brilliant!”

  * * * * *

  Reluctantly Leviticus Ellenbogen handed Daniel a signed pass permitting him, as a sergeant of the tribal police, to accompany Quanah Parker and a delegation of Comanche and Kiowa Indians to Texas, where the Indians would discuss grazing rights for the big Texas cattlemen. Daniel had no illusions. Ellenbogen would have turned Daniel down again had it not been for Quanah.

  Since the death of Yellow Bear roughly two years ago, Quanah had been named—by the Pale Eyes, not The People—as chief of the Comanche Nation. The People were not like the Pale Eyes. Never had they let one man, such as the Great White Father, govern them. Yet if any one warrior could lead The People back to their glory, Quanah Parker was that man.

  He was a man in his thirties or forties—no one, neither white nor red, knew for sure, except Quanah, and he wouldn’t say. His mother had been a Tejano girl The People had captured on a raid. As a warrior, Quanah—which meant Fragrance—had fought against the Long Knives, Texas Rangers, and other enemies with the Destanyuka band, then joined the Kwahadis to continue the fight until he realized the inevitable, that The People must learn to live with the Pale Eyes, must surrender, or starve and die.

  Haa, Daniel thought, he is our chief. Daniel might need Quanah’s help on the reservation, might need him to help wipe away Rain Shower’s anger. When Ellenbogen gave Daniel the pass to travel to Texas, he told Rain Shower that she could not go. Her pouting did not last long, replaced in seconds by wild anger, and she had cursed the agent, Daniel, and Quanah, before storming out of the agency and heading for her camp.

  Quanah lived as a taibo, lived in the Star House, a two-story, wooden mansion near Cache Creek that the Pale Eyes had built for him, with four giant white stars painted on the red shingles. Often he dressed in the finest clothes he could buy from the post sutler. He even wore a bowler from Washington City and a diamond stickpin in his black, silk cravat—gifts from rich Pale Eyes. Yet, also, always, Quanah lived as a Kwahadi. His hair hung in long braids, wrapped in otter skins. He kept as many wives as he needed. He could write his name in English, but he usually spoke in the language of The People. He still fought for The People. He would always fight for The People. He would always be Kwahadi.

  “Daniel,” Frank Striker had told Ellenbogen back at the agency, interpreting for Quanah, “will be our voice. Like Aaron was to speak for Moses.”

  That surprised Daniel almost as much as it had stunned Leviticus Ellenbogen. The agent had no argument, so now Daniel found himself sitting, cross-legged, on the lush grass in front of Quanah’s Star House, waiting with the other Comanche and Kiowa (but no Apache) diplomats for the wagons that would take them to Texas, wondering if Rain Shower remained furious at him.

  Waiting for the Long Knives who would escort them as far as the railroad depot in Wichita Falls.

  For three hours, they wondered if the Pale Eyes had forgotten, then A’do-eete heard the hoofs, and a few minutes later six Long Knives, mounted on dun horses, rode down the road to the Star House. White men, like those under Lieutenant Newly. Not the black buffalo soldiers Daniel was used to seeing at Fort Sill.

  His eyes locked hard on one rider, a black-headed lanky man with hard green eyes, and his right hand in a dirty cast. Daniel remembered him from the post hospital.

  So, Daniel thought, I’ve found Fenn O’Malley at last.

  * * * * *

  They camped that night on the Texas side of the Red River, just beyond Hill’s Ferry.

  Daniel had spent much of the day studying the Irish trooper, the one Major Becker had said had been busted for drunkenness on duty, had smashed another bluecoat while holding a ginger beer bottle. His blue blouse was faded, but a darkness on the sleeves told Daniel that O’Malley had once worn the chevrons of a sergeant, the same as Daniel wore on his scratchy, ill-fitting uniform.

  At camp, the Long Knives picketed the horses and mules between the Indians, closest to the river, and the soldiers, one bluecoat guarding the livestock. Separate fires. Separate food. Separate. Yet there was also a separation among The People. Quanah lay near Daniel, but Coyote Chaser was off in the opposite corner, and Teepee That Stands Alone even farther away.

  The soldiers complained loudly; the Kiowas and The People were silent. Reading a tattered three-year-old issue of the Police Gazette, Daniel waited until his supper had settled in his stomach, then walked toward the horses, nodding politely at the yellow-mustached sentry, and moving into the soldier camp.

  The bluecoats fell silent, staring hard as Daniel approached, removing his hat, running his fingers nervously on the inside of the crown. One man unfastened
the cover of his holster. Another spit a stream of tobacco juice. Daniel stopped in front of the slouched Fenn O’Malley, and, remembering a technique he had read about in the Police Gazette, he said: “I’ve been looking for you, Dakota.”

  “The hell are you talking about, buck?”

  “Well, the author of the Gazette piece had said his trick worked when he questioned a suspected arsonist.”

  An informant from the southern side of Chicago told me that Lucifer Salzburger had been using a bogus name, Hans Fritz, so when two bad eggs walked out of the bar room and one called the other “Fritz,” I decided to take a chance, stepping off the step and calling out in a friendly voice: “Hey, Salzburger, your mother’s been looking for you.”

  Both men stopped, and J.C. “Lucifer” Salzburger, alias Hans Fritz, the notorious fire fiend, whirled, eyes wide, saying: “My mother?”

  Grinning, I drew and cocked my Bulldog revolver, and said to this notorious arsonist: “Hello, Lucifer.”

  “I was told you were called Dakota.”

  “No red nigger calls me nothing. Get out of here, buck.”

  O’Malley looked away. Daniel kept staring. Read the fellow’s face, Hugh Gunter once told him. Watch his eyes. You can tell if a man’s lying, most times, once you get the knack. Not always, but more often than not. Listen to his voice. That’s another way of telling.

  Daniel decided the soldier wasn’t lying. The man wasn’t called Dakota. He decided not to read the Police Gazette to learn how to be a detective. The editors loved more of those crazy, violent stories, anyway. The magazine wasn’t really known as a training manual for Comanche policemen.

  He waited, kept staring at Fenn O’Malley.

  Finally the Irishman looked up. “What the hell do you want? You don’t get back to your side of camp, I’ll carve your damned eyes out.”

  “Where did you get the whiskey bottle?”

  “What whiskey bottle? The hell you talking about?”

  “Ginger beer. Coursey and Cox Bottling Works.”

  “Beer?” one of the other Pale Eyes soldiers said, and the others snorted. “Sergeant O’Malley has never touched a drop of beer in his life, Sergeant Comanche.”

  “Yeah,” said another, “that’s why he’s no sergeant no more.”

  Fenn O’Malley glared. “You watch your mouth, Dutchie. I can carve your eyes out as quick as I can blind this buck.”

  “Not with no busted hand, mick.”

  “My fingers’ll mend, Dutchie.”

  Daniel spoke again. “Where did you get the bottle?”

  “I answer no questions from no savage.”

  “The bottle?”

  “I don’t know nothing about no beer bottle.”

  “Sure you do, mick,” the one called Dutchie said. “That’s how you busted Sergeant Gasquet’s jaw.”

  “He was asking for it,” O’Malley said. “Same as you.”

  Dutchie laughed. “’Course, that was Lieutenant Newly’s mistake, dumb greenhorn of an officer. Send the Irish on a scout to catch whiskey runners, and they’ll find whiskey, sure as hell.”

  “Fenn found it, all right,” another soldier said.

  “The hell with all of you,” O’Malley said.

  Daniel decided to give the Police Gazette one more chance. “Carl Quantrell told me they called you Dakota.”

  This time O’Malley stood. He towered over Daniel, and his good left hand clenched into a hard, hard fist. “I told you. My name ain’t Dakota. And I never heard of Carl Quantrell, neither.”

  “Company D,” Daniel said. “Texas Rangers.”

  Nothing. No expression on O’Malley’s face, other than contempt and hatred for Daniel.

  “Get the hell out of my sight. Else I’ll give you what you savages gave Custer.”

  “How would you know?” Daniel said. “You weren’t there.” He turned, walked away, half expecting Fenn O’Malley to come after him, but the Irishman had turned his frustrations against the one called Dutchie. The two cursed each other for the next five minutes, before the sergeant, who had been silent while Daniel had been trying to interview O’Malley, threatened them with the stockade. By the time Daniel had settled on his bedroll, Dutchie’s voice sang out, surprisingly pleasant, serenading the camp, Indians and soldiers alike, with “Is That Mister Reilly?”

  Daniel picked up the Gazette, sighed, and tossed it into the fire, then reached for his Old Glory tablet.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dallas made him nervous.

  He arrived late, after leaving Quanah Parker and the Indian delegation at the Hotel Texas, and riding an almost empty T&P smoking car—even though he didn’t smoke—some twenty or thirty miles across rolling prairie and scrub trees to the Dallas depot. It was a growing city, a big city, but didn’t seem as lively as Fort Worth. Men and women crowded the streets and dance halls in Fort Worth, but Dallas looked practically deserted. Maybe, Daniel thought, that is because Fort Worth caters to the cattle industry, and Dallas cottons to farmers.

  The three men in sack suits who got off at Dallas with Daniel quickly disappeared into the night. Daniel found a grouchy, balding clerk in a dirty collarless shirt at the ticket window, and asked for directions to the Coursey & Cox Bottling Works.

  The grouch removed an unlit, soggy cigar clamped between his dentures. “Never heard of it.”

  “Would you have a city directory?”

  Spitting out an oath, the ticket agent ducked out of view, knocked over a bottle, cursed again, scattered some papers, and popped back into sight, sliding an old book, pages yellowed, swollen after getting wet years ago, toward Daniel.

  He looked at the date. The directory was four years old.

  “Best I can do,” the grouch said. “This isn’t City Hall.”

  Daniel turned the pages, reading the small type, sighing upon discovering that several pages had been torn out, a few stained with something that blotted out the words and numbers, but at last he found what he wanted.

  Coursey & Cox Bottling Works, Mfct., Brewery, 1992 Houston Street, at River Road. No telephone. Prop., S.W. Zeske.

  He turned to the back of the directory, found an address and telephone number for Mr. S.W. Zeske, no wife, no children, occupation not listed.

  After scribbling the information into his tablet, he slid the weathered book back to the grouch.

  “Where’s Houston Street?” Daniel asked.

  “Right out that door.”

  “And River Road?”

  “Where’d you expect it to be. Over toward the Trinity River.”

  He glanced at his notes. “And the Mother Bagwell’s House on Commerce?”

  “Do I look like a city map? It’s that way.” He pointed. “Houston runs into Commerce, but it’s opposite of River Road.”

  “Thanks,” Daniel said.

  “Good night,” the ticket agent snapped.

  A Regulator clock on the wall chimed. It was 1:15 a.m.

  Too late to call on S.W. Zeske. Too late to visit the bottling plant and brewery, for that matter, but Daniel had to be back at the Hotel Texas before breakfast to interpret for The People and the Kiowas, and the Texas cattlemen. He hoped he could find a night watchman at Coursey & Cox, get some information from him, then, if needed, use the Hotel Texas telephone to call Mr. S.W. Zeske. The prospect of using a telephone excited him. He wondered what it would be like, what S.W. Zeske’s voice would sound like, what his voice would sound like. Yet when he stepped outside, his excitement waned.

  Outside, the night air remained heavy with the smell of coal smoke and oil. The flames in the gas lamps shown eerily, and, above him, telegraph and telephone wires resembled long black lines, forming nets at some places. A piano banged out a tune somewhere, and a Houston and Texas Central locomotive coughed and belched on one of the side tracks. He heard a voice, quickly turned, startled, but found only a couple of black men dragging crates onto the depot platform. Moments later, bells sang out, hoofs thundered, and a hook-and-ladder tore down the stre
et toward some fire that no one could see from the depot. Daniel and the two black men watched the darkness swallow the firemen, then they looked at each other. One of the workers shrugged.

  “Beg your pardon, but where’s Houston Street?” Daniel asked.

  “Why, you’re standing on it,” the bigger man said.

  “Which way’s the river?”

  The other one pointed.

  Daniel thanked them. He slid a Faber’s No. 2 pencil over his right ear, stuck the writing tablet under his arm, and pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket, rereading the note that had been delivered to him when he was about to board the Fort Worth and Denver Railway car in Wichita Falls.

  My Dear Friend Daniel:

  Sorry I must miss you, but I have contracted a driver to take me to Teepee City. Hope to learn more about the whiskey operation there. I have uncovered nothing more about the Coursey & Cox Bottling Works or the late Blake Browne. His assistant, the man known as Uvalde Ted Smith, departed our fair city. At present, his whereabouts are unknown.

  Daniel, please be careful if you go to Dallas. Yesterday, I learned that Carl Quantrell has returned to that city for reasons unknown. Be on guard, and good luck.

  Let me know what you learn. I shall do the same.

  Your obt. servant,

  Vaughan Coyne

  Attorney-at-law

  * * * * *

  This far down Houston Street, there were no gas lamps. There was hardly a city any more, and the cobblestone road had deteriorated into a muddy bog. Daniel walked on the grass, stopping at one intersection and looking hopelessly for a street sign. There was none. He decided that this was not River Road, and pressed on. Bullfrogs croaked, and bats whipped their wings. He no longer heard the sounds of the city. A cloudless night provided him with some light, but not enough, so he kept walking onward, sweating, panting, uneasy. He was about to turn back, return to the other road, take a chance that it was River Road, when he spotted a giant black cross.

  No, not a cross. Two beams forming a leaning cross, next to a ghostly palisade of timber. Daniel walked through the thick grass. He touched one piece of wood, felt something on his hand, wiped it off on his trousers. Soot. But not recent. He stepped over a rock, heard the crunching of glass beneath his moccasins, used the quarter moon and stars to study his surroundings. He had stepped inside the shell of a burned building.