Winchester 1887 (19 page)

McCoy told one of the men who had approached from Millard's right to go help with the horses.

The man with a red mustache, dressed like a dollar-a-day cowhand and armed with a Winchester Model 1866 carbine, nodded. His spurs rang out a tune as he jogged off to the north. Most of the men wore lavender bandanas.

“So you want to hear my proposition, Bodeen?”

They think I'm the whiskey runner. It might buy some time.
“Sure.” Millard grinned as he added, “Link.”

The gunman grinned at such recognition. “You flatter me.”

“As you do me. Teaming up with”—Millard slowly turned, sought out until he recognized the one who had to be Zane Maxwell, and gave that man a soft salute—“the McCoy-Maxwell Gang would be an honor.” Then he made himself sound like a businessman. “If the price is right.”

“It is,” Maxwell said from behind him.

“All we want, really, is your whiskey,” McCoy said. “But just to be safe, and so you'd really earn your share of our haul, we'll want to keep you with us. Till we make the score.”

Millard nodded. “I see.” There was just one problem, he realized.

So did the man with a patch over one eye who had placed himself at the back of the big wagon. “Zane! There ain't no whiskey in here!”

McCoy's expression changed instantly. He shoved his way past one of his men and strode toward the wagon, where Robin and James were climbing out, watched by the pockmarked man in the bell crown hat. That one, Millard figured, had to be Tulip Bells. The others he didn't recognize. Then he remembered. Most of the others were already dead.

McCoy jumped into the back of the wagon, but there wasn't much to see. He didn't look for weapons—a stroke of luck—though Millard couldn't figure out what he'd be able to do with two empty guns against seven outlaws bound for the gallows or a shallow grave.

Almost immediately, McCoy leaped out of the wagon and went back to Millard, stopping a few feet from him, bringing up the shotgun, waist-high, and slipping his finger against the trigger. “You couldn't have sold all that liquor, mister. I heard you was carrying a ton.”

Millard shrugged. “You weren't at Wild Horse Creek.”

McCoy glanced at Maxwell, then at another gunman, asking a question with his eyes.

“North of where we picked up the trail,” said the one with the eye patch. He also was missing a left ear. A name flashed through Millard's mind. He remembered seeing a wanted poster on him at the Fort Worth depot.
Jared Whitney.

“Well.” McCoy demanded.

“Chickasaws jumped us,” Millard said.

“They didn't like getting cheated and poisoned?” Maxwell asked.

Millard shrugged, wondering how much longer he could pull off the faux bravado. “I didn't ask them. Had to shove out the barrels just to save our hides. Killed one of them. Maybe more.” He decided to chance another lie, just in case they had seen the body of the real Lamar Bodeen up at the site of the gun battle. “Had one renegade white man with them. Killed him, too.”

McCoy cursed. Maxwell echoed it with his own round of profanity.

“Do we really need hooch?” asked Whitney.

“Yes!” McCoy snapped.

Millard made himself smile. “Boys, y'all don't know me well, I reckon. But you ask anyone in Indian Territory, and they'll be sure to tell you that Wildcat Lamar Bodeen can brew up some good liquor. Right quick like. Me and my boys.” He gave James and Robin a short wave.

“You must not know me very well,” said the tallest one of the outlaws. An edge accented his voice. He had a match dangling between his teeth, dancing underneath the neat black mustache, wore fancy Texas boots, and carried a brace of old Remington revolvers. “But this fellow ain't Wildcat Bodeen.”

Millard's throat turned to sand, but he scoffed. “Then who am I?”

McCoy and Maxwell didn't seem to hear Millard. They stared hard at the one who had been talking.

“What do you mean, Smith?” Maxwell asked.

“Bodeen the whiskey runner is knowed to have only one eye. Like Whitney yonder.”

The gunman with the brown leather patch over his left eye didn't appear to enjoy having his imperfection singled out.

McCoy stepped forward, not stopping until the sawed-off barrel of his ten-gauge pressed against Millard's shirt.

“And,” Millard said, trying to sound calm, “Link McCoy wears a wheat sack over his head when he's pulling a job on a bank or train. So does Zane Maxwell.”

“So?” Link asked icily.

“So it's a disguise, you blasted fool.” Millard shook his head in disgust. “You think I could get along without landing in Judge Parker's dungeon or up at the federal pen in Michigan if I showed everyone how handsome I actually am.” He laughed then sighed, finally letting out a long breath. “You fellows been known to change clothes after a bank or train robbery. You go from looking like men who ought to be in the calaboose to respectable, law-abiding citizens. I heard that once you even pinned on deputy sheriff's badges so you could fool real posses into thinking you was actually looking for yourselves.” He slapped his thigh. “That was a good one. A bona fide stroke of pure genius.” He pointed at his eyes. “I see fine. And I make whiskey fine.”

“Or not so fine.” At least McCoy had lowered his shotgun.

“What's your pleasure?” Millard asked.

“The worst you can brew.”

Millard grinned, but before he could speak, Zane Maxwell shot out, “We don't have a whole lot of time. Let's forget about this whiskey angle—”

“It ain't eighteen-year-old Scotch I'm making, boys,” Millard said quickly. “It's rotgut.” He had to think fast. If they decided against whiskey, he—and James and Robin—were dead.

“I tell you this ain't Bodeen!” cried out Smith.

Thankfully, McCoy and Maxwell didn't appear interested.

“What'll you need?”

“Raw alcohol,” Millard said. “Sugar. I'll burn it. Unless you can find me enough oak sawdust to do the job. Adds color. And some taste. Plugs of tobacco. Cures it, adds some mighty fine whiskey color to the brew, and gives some bite. Some chopped up rattlesnake heads. And strychnine.”

“Strychnine,” Maxwell repeated.

Millard nodded. “Gets the heart started again.”

“Or not?” McCoy asked.

Millard made himself grin. “Or not. You see, in the old days, my grandpa used to make good corn liquor. A bushel would produce three gallons of pure whiskey, if it was the best corn my grandpa growed. But then some distillers learned that if they could mix a bit of strychnine in their yeast, they'd be able to average four bushels per gallon. Take three cents worth of strychnine and a gallon of water, and put that atop the brewed three gallons of pure whiskey . . .”

They stared at him with blank faces.

“I reckon you don't rightly care to hear about stramonium. Some folks like to use it rather than strychnine. Easier to find. Or was, back in Grandpa's day. The problem with stramonium is it makes one's stomach a little irritable, but you can cure that by adding some opium. But then you got to take the opium into account, counteract it, you see, and you do that by just a pinch of potash. That'll give you the right smell, pretty fair taste. Wouldn't cost no more than four cents, maybe five, to make a lot of good sipping whiskey. Back in my Grandpa's day.”

“This gent ain't Wildcat Bodeen!” Smith snapped.

“And who is you?” Millard put a challenge in his voice.

The man started to swing the rifle toward Millard, but stopped and answered, “John Smith.”

Millard laughed hard, though he had to summon every ounce of strength just to make himself laugh and slap his thigh. He almost doubled over. “Well, that's mighty original, fellow.”

Smith started to press against the trigger, but one word from McCoy and one move of his shotgun made the outlaw back off.

“You say he's not Bodeen,” McCoy said.

“I know he ain't.”

“You know Bodeen?” McCoy asked.

“Well . . .”

“Have you ever seen him?” Maxwell tossed in.

John Smith frowned. “Not exactly. But I know of this whiskey runner. Heard him described plenty of times. I got friends—”

“You don't have one friend in the world.” Millard figured that was absolutely true.

The conversation was interrupted when Tulip Bells jumped out of the back of the wagon and came running with the old single-shot horseman's pistol and the Winchester '86. “Look what I found, gents!” he announced proudly.

“They're empty,” Millard said. “Traded with some injuns for a barrel of fine sipping whiskey.”

“Well,” Bells had to agree, “they ain't loaded. That's for sure.”

Millard decided to go back to talking about whiskey. “You can also use cocculus, but it's hard to find. Comes from Africa, or so Grandpa used to tell me, and it can make a body sick, even cause prostration. Unless you use too much. Ten grains would be enough to send a good oxen or strong horse into convulsions and spasms and kill it. Some tribes in India, I hear, would even poison wells with cocculus. And—”

“Shut up!” McCoy snapped.

“He sure talks like a whiskey runner,” Jared Whitney said.

“Look,” Millard said. “You want whiskey and you want it in a hurry. Who's it for?”

McCoy glanced at Maxwell, and then Maxwell said. “Chickasaw Indians and Texas ranchers.”

Millard nodded. “Well, you don't want to tell the injuns that I brewed the whiskey. But Chickasaws and Texans don't have much in the way of taste buds. They want liquor. They want to get drunk. That's what I can deliver.” He began counting off items on his fingers. “Raw ethyl alcohol for starters. I'll toss in some chewing tobacco, tea, coffee—prune juice if we can lay ahold of some. Nah. Forget the prune juice. Too hard to come by. Red pepper and gunpowder. If you can't get me no sugar—burnt sugar's the best, but molasses can do in a pinch. I can even get some sagebrush if need be. Or creosote.” He looked at the sky, nodded to himself, and went on. “Tartaric acid. Maybe sulfuric acid. Or ammonia. No, those aren't gonna be readily available. But you can get strychnine anywhere there's wolves, and there are wolves and coyotes aplenty. So strychnine. Maybe some turpentine.”

He waited.

“Rattlesnake heads?” Jared Whitney asked.

“The snakeheads ain't what kills the drinkers,” Millard said. “It's the strychnine. Or colossus. Stramonium don't quite do the job if you want to kill someone. Make them sick, stramonium's fine. All the snakeheads do is add a bit of power to my busthead.”

He didn't let any silence linger, but wondered how long he could keep on talking. “Ask folks anywhere, and they'll tell you that Wildcat Lamar Bodeen knows everything you needs to know about bug juice, coffin varnish, gut warmer, nose paint, tanglefoot, tongue oil, skull bender, sheep dip, stagger soup, leopard sweat, corpse reviver, widow-maker, phlegm-cutter, widow-maker, scamper juice, John gas-remover Barleycorn, snake poison, pop skull.”

“Only he ain't Bodeen.” John Smith wouldn't let that notion die.

“We're about to find out,” McCoy said.

That made Millard sweat. “Now I can also make you some halfway decent champagne cider. It'll get you roostered, but won't kill you. Just need brown sugar, water, yeast, and I'll add a little grape juice to it. Cost you only five dollars a quart.”

“Here they come.” Maxwell pointed his Winchester barrel off to the north.

Slowly, everyone turned around.

Millard eyed the new arrivals. The waddie with the Yellow Boy Winchester—the one with the red mustache—was coming back, herding along the other horses. He wasn't alone. Another rider came along, smoking a cigarette. Millard couldn't tell who the man was, but he knew enough to figure his impersonation of the whiskey runner was about to end. Along with his life.

The rider was tall, but from the color of his skin, the length of his hair, and the way he forked a paint horse, Millard knew the man was an Indian.

Still, he'd run his bluff as long as he could.

“You see,” he said to no one in particular, “you heard tell of sink-taller whiskey, I presume. No? Well, if the whiskey has been diluted, you can drop in a piece of tallow. Beef usually, but mutton'll work. If that taller sinks, well, that's how you know the whiskey ain't what it once was. But in good bona fide rotgut hardcore John Barleycorn, that chunk of taller will just sink like an ironclad to the bottom of the keg. And . . .”

A few of the gunmen went to help with the horses, ground-reining or hobbling them, while the Indian remained in the saddle.

“Hey, breed!” Maxwell shouted. “Ride here. We need you to settle something for us.”

Millard wet his lips, glancing over toward the wagon to warn Robin and James with his eyes that the game was up, that they should make for the river, run, swim, hide, just get out of there before they were all gunned down. All he could see, however, were the faces of a few of the gang members.

He kept looking, kept his face turned away from the Indian, just to hold out a little longer. The paint horse's hoofs clopped slowly—an eternity—each sound of the unshod hoof on the ground driving nails into Millard's heart, into his coffin. He had to steel himself not to break through the men circling him. He wet his lips again.

The horse stopped.

“Smith says this ain't Bodeen,” McCoy said. “You tell us.”