I started on the pie, the tart, gooey mixture sliding down my throat, begging to be washed down with hot joe. “You’re not one of the Leonards then?” I pointed to a sign plastered across the wall over the kitchen.
“Help. I’m just help. The Leonards are on what I refer to as their sabbatical.”
“There must be a story there.”
Byron laughed. “They got wind that Billy Sunday was going to preach over in Oklahoma City a couple months ago. Once they heard him, they were hooked. They decided to head for South America. Convert those there heathens that just hang around and kill monkeys or tarantulas or whatever they do for fun.”
“Will they be gone long?”
“Months. Maybe longer. Depending on how many of those heathens they find in need.”
“Bodes well that they trust you with their business.”
“I spend more time here than they do when they are in town.” Byron wiped the counter with a towel before he draped it back over his shoulder. “What brings you here, Nelson?”
“Nels.”
Byron smiled. “Why El Reno, Nels?”
“I’m the US marshal for Wyoming. I’m here to hunt a man down and bring him back for murder.” I waited for his expression to change—most folks’ did when they learned a lawman was near. Revenuers had poisoned the well with their arrests of men just making a living selling a little shine on the side.
Byron stood and looked at the people eating in the booth. “We got a live US marshal here,” Byron said, a little too loudly for my taste. A man eating in one booth hurriedly pocketed a hip flask and glanced my way as he eased from his seat. He grabbed his lady by the arm and dropped a dollar on the table before rushing out the door.
Byron tilted his head back and laughed heartedly. “Had to do that. Those SOBs bring that illegal hooch in here, and they deserved to get spooked.”
“Not by me. Like I said, I’m here to hunt a man. I couldn’t care less about the illegal liquor down thisaway.” My instincts told me Byron Black Kettle was a man to be trusted. Still, I refrained from telling him who I was here to arrest.
We talked more. When the others eating had dropped their money on the counter and left, I was alone with Byron and his talkative nature. I learned more about El Reno and the happenings here than I needed. Including why Deputy Red Hat didn’t pick me up at the train depot. “This Deputy Red Hat is a little ;. ;. ;. untrustworthy sometimes. Probably running on Indian time is why you were left stranded.”
“So Red Hat’s an Indian?”
“Like me, a full-blooded Southern Cheyenne.”
The bell above the door tinkled, and a teen couple parted the wet sheets over the door. They made for a corner booth when the bell signaled another patron had entered just behind them. A woman staggered into the diner and nearly lost her balance as she batted the sheets out of her face. As she made her way to the counter, I tried to place her age but couldn’t. Her mascara had run down one cheek, and her bright crimson lipstick was smeared across her thick lips. She plopped down at the counter next to me and gave me the once-over through her bleary eyes. “What the hell you looking at?” Her glazed-over eyes tried to focus on me, and her foul-smelling breath reminded me what mine had smelled like in my drinking days. I ignored her and turned back to my pie and coffee.
Byron leaned over the counter and waved his hand in front of the woman. “You smell like you fell into a vat of bathtub gin.”
She hung her head. “I think you’re right. I better have some coffee, Uncle Byron.”
Byron turned to me. “This is my niece, Maris. At least she will be my niece again when she sobers up.”
He refilled our mugs and placed an overly large one in front of Maris before taking the menu to the couple in the booth. Byron returned and set the pot back on the hot plate on the back counter. Byron turned to Maris and glared at her.
“What?” She sipped her coffee, oblivious to how hot it was. Like the booze had dulled her senses. I remembered that sensation. “You look at me like I done something bad.”
Byron shook his head and talked to me. “Kids nowadays. They got no work ethics.”
“Hell, I got ethics.” She took a pack of Chesterfields from her shirt pocket and patted her other pocket for a match. She came up with a solitary Ohio Blue Tip and struck it on the counter.
When she failed to bring the cigarette to the match, Byron snatched it from her and lit it. “Were you not supposed to be somewhere tonight?”
Maris tilted her head and laughed loud enough that the couple necking in the corner came up for air long enough to see what the commotion was about. “Oh, that little detail. I got sidetracked down at the Bon Ton. Billy Taylor challenged me to a game of eight ball. Winner take all. And I won.”
“What did you win?”
“Billy Taylor.” She laughed loud again, and the teen couple left money on the table and hustled out.
I finished my coffee and paid up. As I started for the door, Maris called after me, “You need a lift, old timer? I got my wheels parked at the curb.”
“I can walk,” I answered.
Maris took one step away from the stool and crumpled to the floor. Byron walked casually around the counter and bent to her. By the looks of Maris, she’d have difficulty sobering up anytime this week.
CHAPTER 4
* * *
I woke early to train whistles blaring, the frightening sound of freight cars when they hit their stretch sounding like a woman’s death screams. Instinctively I reached for the nightstand and the bottle, then remembered I didn’t drink anymore. I swung my leg over the feather ticking mattress and stood. I arched my back, stretched to work out the kinks from my long ride here. My head hurt, my body ached, and I could remember mornings back in my drinking days that I’d awakened feeling better than this after a weekend bender.
I stumbled to the bathroom and chanced a look into the mirror. A day’s stubble covered my face, all except the scar I’d picked up in the Great War that ran beside my right eye that didn’t work anymore. “Quit bitchin’,” the army medic told me as I lay recuperating behind lines in France. “Be thankful you still got another eye left.”
I lathered up and scraped stubble with a Gillette Blue Blade I’d been saving for this trip. I’d used them a few times before, but the cost of shaving with them every day was prohibitive on a marshal’s salary. I’d left my straight razor at home; my per diem from the government would cover the cost of this little luxury.
When I finished shaving, I splashed lather off my face with hot water—another luxury the Kerfoot offered that I wasn’t accustomed to. And in a private bathroom.
I walked back into the main room when I got a case of dumb-shit-itis. I rooted through my bag for the bottle of Old Spice and splashed on a liberal amount. The instant burning pain caused me to dance like the boys in some wild Charleston dance contest and reminded me to use witch hazel next shave.
After the stinging subsided, I brushed dust off my Stetson and placed it on my balding head before I walked to Leonard Brothers.
I was surprised to see Byron Black Kettle wiping the counter so early in the morning. “Don’t you ever take off?”
Byron smiled and continued wiping water. “I get as many hours as I can with the owners away. Some hereabouts do not do that. Lazy. But I do not want to have to make my way to California in hopes of finding work like some folks.”
“You always run a café?” I asked as I took off my hat and placed it on a deer-horn rack beside the door. I stepped over crumpled wet newspapers littering the floor to catch dust that settled and sat at the counter.
Byron stopped stocking coffee cups and plates and flung the towel over his shoulder. He looked into the corner of the café and got a faraway look in his sad, brown eyes. “Before the crash of ’29 I was a professor at the University of Oklahoma. Philosophy department. After the Depression hit us here, there weren’t enough paying students to keep some of the programs. Mine was cut.” He laughed. “The o
nly thing a man with a degree in philosophy can do nowadays is have deep thoughts about being out of work.” He patted his belly. “And I like to eat too much to remain unemployed.”
He handed me a menu and headed for a booth where three railroaders had seated themselves for breakfast. A coal tender looked at me with raccoon eyes blackened from working the tender box. Seated across from him was a brakeman, obvious by the wooden leg he’d hobbled across the floor with a click-click-click when he came in. The last was a boy half their age, an apprentice for certain, for what job I could only speculate.
Byron took their orders and disappeared into the kitchen. I closed the menu to order when Byron emerged from in back and set a plate of flapjacks in front of me. “How’d you know I wanted . . . ?”
“I just know things.” He smiled and wiped the counter before placing a bowl of maple syrup beside my plate. He topped off his coffee mug and handed me one.
“You get your niece sobered up last night?” I asked as I took my first bite of the jacks.
Byron came around the counter with his mug of joe and took the stool next to me. “Maris is a damn fool—got a good job, and not the job most Indian women get around here—cleaning or cooking or doing laundry. But a good job. One with responsibility. And she jeopardized it all to get laid.”
“He must have been a hell of a lay for her to risk losing that.”
“With Maris,” Byron said, “every lay is a hell of a lay. Her Cheyenne name is Maseha’e. Means Crazy Woman. Hell of an understatement.”
“She must have something on the ball if her boss keeps her around.” I stood and, walking around the counter, I topped off our mugs and sat back down. “By the shape she was in last night, it’ll be noon before she’s sober enough to function.”
Byron looked over his shoulder at the railroaders, who were too busy tackling their breakfasts to worry about what he said. “It has got nothing to do with her having anything on the ball. Got everything to do with her addiction.”
“Booze hits many folks.”
“She can handle the booze. Most times,” Byron said, lowering his voice. “It is the other addiction: men. And her boss knows all about it.”
“Ah,” I breathed knowingly. “Has her boss been able to . . . bed her?”
Byron smiled and stepped away from the counter, his hands resting proudly on his pudgy hips. “Maris is not picky who she goes home with. But she is not about to tumble in the hay with that jerk she works for.”
I wanted to tell Byron that his niece was no prize either; that she’d need a lot of cleaning up to make herself attractive to men of normal vision. But I didn’t. If Maris left the booze alone and fixed herself up, she might attract someone besides the barroom tramps she’d been spending time with.
I finished my coffee and paid Byron.
“Come back tonight for supper and talk to me,” he called after me. “I’ll be here all night.”
I walked the block to the Canadian County Courthouse while I covered my nose and mouth with my bandana. Dust kicked up with every step, and business owners swept furiously in front of their shops, tiny dust clouds engulfing them until the grit settled in the streets. And just when I thought I’d walked out of it, a one-horse dray trotted by. The bay gelding wore a red bandana over its nose that matched its owner’s. Byron said when the evening winds picked up—as they always did here in Oklahoma—the dust would again assault the shops, with wet sheets being the store owners’ only defense. And tomorrow morning they’d do battle again.
I crossed the street ahead of a Reo delivery van hauling milk bottles and saw the courthouse looming tall a block away. The regality of it cried out that the only one who could afford such a structure was the government in these bitter times. The terra-cotta–trimmed slate roof matched the faded red brick, giving a southwest flavor to the front of the building. I stopped like any other tourist and craned my neck upward to stare in awe at a justice statue perched atop a dome, a definite exclamation point to the regal building.
A stone sign sitting in what used to be the front lawn, but which was now just a giant cat box of sand and dust, proclaimed it to be the Canadian County Courthouse. I walked through double doors into the lobby. I slapped dust off my pants with my hat and stopped at the building’s ledger, searching for the sheriff’s office. I walked past the county treasurer and the county clerk beside that office. The sheriff’s office nestled between that of feeds and the building department. Like Bison’s courthouse. Only a lot bigger.
A receptionist glanced up from her work as I entered. Short and stout and graying, she reminded me of a grandmother. Except when she stopped to glare at me. I saw she didn’t like the way I looked and returned to her typing without saying a word. I leaned over the counter and, with my finest northern drawl, said, “Marshal Lane to see Sheriff Stauffer. He’s expecting me.”
She didn’t look up from her typewriter, and for a moment I thought she didn’t hear me. She abruptly stood and disappeared into an office marked SHERIFF TOBIAS STAUFFER. She returned within moments wearing the same scowl. “Sheriff Stauffer will be free in a moment. Sit anywhere,” she said and returned to her typing.
I didn’t sit but walked around the spacious office, still stiff from my train ride and glad to be on my feet. A large mural had been painted the length of one wall, depicting things going on in Canadian County right now. Oil derricks were painted beside herds of black white-face cows grazing beside deer. The mural showed the cows far fatter than the rib-sided critters we passed on the train ride here. As if those in the picture weren’t affected by this Depression.
A photo large enough that I could see it without my cheaters graced another wall. Arapaho tipis stood erected around a central campfire. The notation said “GEARY, 1880,” and beside it was another photo nearly as large of Cheyenne participating in a sun dance. “CONCHO, 1882” had been scratched just under it.
The phone rang, and it started me. “Sheriff Stauffer will see you now,” the receptionist seemed to growl, the sound of her tick-tick-tick of the typewriter keys fading as I entered the sheriff’s office.
A man sat behind an enormous mahogany desk that made even his large size appear small. He stood and walked around it as he approached me. I had to look down at him some, but he had me by forty pounds, some settling in his belly, but much packed onto his barrel chest and thick shoulders. He pushed back wispy, blond hair from his sky-blue eyes. He extended his hand, soft—like most politicians—with nails well-manicured. But his knuckles were misshapen, and his nose had been broken a time too many. At one time he’d been used to hard work and harder beatings.
“Have a seat, Marshal Lane.” His voice retained the last of a slight accent: German, or perhaps Czech, given the number of immigrants that had poured into this country during the last great land rush forty years ago. “Marshal Quinn from the city called me a few days ago. Said you’d be coming down hunting Amos Iron Horse.”
I nodded. “I hope I’m successful. Quinn said you were willing to assign me some deputies to help?”
He laughed and sat on the edge of his desk. “I got bootleggers up to my keister in these parts. Arapaho and Cheyenne braves that get tanked up on whatever panther piss they get hold of and raise hell—getting the call of the wild and killing one another over booze more times than not. And they’re just a little less trouble than the peckerwoods who come over from the city to sell their hooch.
“I got the Barker-Karpis Gang active in my county, and that damned George Kelly is up for parole for selling booze to the Indians two years ago. I can spare one deputy, and it won’t be much.” He checked his watch. “The same one who picked you up at the depot last night. Red Hat. Should have been here by now. About as dependable as a fart in the wind.”
I didn’t expect anything from Red Hat after the damned fool failed to meet me at the depot last night. I started telling Stauffer that Red Hat was a no-show last night when Stauffer picked up his phone. “Johnny, get Red Hat. Marshal Lane’s her
e waiting.”
Stauffer didn’t wait for Johnny, but disappeared through a side door. His yelling became muffled as he walked from his office.
I strolled to the window behind the sheriff’s desk and looked down into the back parking lot. Two new Ford sedans were parked in a spot labeled “Sheriff.” A Canadian County Sheriff’s logo showed through dust caked to the doors. Twin spotlights had been mounted on the roofs, and the windows had cut-outs for gun ports. Guess they did have serious problems with moonshiners.
Beside the Fords sat a Lincoln coupe. Light shone off the deep-blue paint and silver landau irons on the side of the door beneath the roof. A man dressed in white and black striped jail coveralls washed the Lincoln. He’d wash a section, drag his foot heavy with an Oregon boot to his new spot, and wash another area. He looked up at the sheriff’s window, and I saw he held that same hound-dog look I’d seen on other rummies.
Someone yelled outside the office, and I walked away from the window. On Stauffer’s desk sat a framed photo of a much younger, trimmer Stauffer, but sharp in crisp German military uniform as he stood proudly beside an artillery piece. That could have been the same kriegsmortar that took my eyesight and hearing in one ear at the Wood, and I absently rubbed the scar below my bum eye.
“That’s my youthful days.” Stauffer had entered the room from my blind side. Quiet for such a large man. “Eighth Artillery. Were you in the war, Marshal Lane?”
“5th Marines at Belleau Wood.”
The smile left his face as he reached for a cigar in a humidor on his desk. He deftly snipped the end before lighting it. He didn’t offer me one. “You look confused, Marshal Lane.”
“Confused?”
“Yes.” He blew smoke rings that rose up into the twelve-foot ceiling. “You wonder why a German fighting against America in the Great War wound up being a sheriff here.” He returned the cigar cutter to the box. “This is the land of opportunity, no? I immigrated here after the war.”
Marshal and the Moonshiner Page 3
