White Lightning (5 page)

“Or the army,” said Naylor.

“Or them. I still can’t figure why he’s calling them to hunt for Tanner’s killer when they didn’t even find Bill’s body on the rez.”

“Maybe he’s scared the problem will get out of hand.”

“Assuming that he even
has
a problem,” Slade replied.

“You heard the judge. Somebody’s getting whiskey to the Cherokees,” said Naylor. “It must look bad for Berringer, you think about it.”

Slade
was
thinking. He replied, “So, what he needs to do is put a lid on drinking where he has authority to stop it. Hunting ’shiners off the rez is our job, not the cavalry’s.”

“Judge sounded riled about it, too,” Naylor remarked.

“He should be,” Slade replied. “Unless the president proclaims a state of martial law, Judge Dennison’s in charge of law enforcement for the territory. It gets hazy on the reservation, when the army sticks its nose in, but he does his best to hold the line. You know the Posse Comitatus Act?”

“It rings a bell,” said Naylor. “Couldn’t quote it for you.”

“I never heard of it until I started marshaling,” Slade told him. “Congress passed it fifteen years ago. It limits local government from calling on the army to enforce their laws without an order from the president or act of Congress.”

“But the bluecoats still chase Indians,” Naylor reminded him.

“Because the Indians aren’t U.S. citizens,” Slade said, “and Washington considers any crimes committed off the rez an act of war against the government. Moonshiners, now, they aren’t rebelling against anything except the tax on booze.”

“So, if a pack of Cherokees killed Tanner…”

“It could be an army problem,” Slade allowed. “Unless we find them first.”

“But if it’s white men—”

“Then the army has no interest in the case,” Slade finished for him. “They’re all ours.”

“I hope we find ’em, either way,” said Naylor. “Bill seemed like a decent guy, the few times I had dealings with him.”

“Decent sums it up,” Slade said. “And nobody deserves to go the way he did.”

“Nobody?”

“Well…”

“I thought so.” Naylor chuckled. “I can likely think of one or two, I put my mind to it.”

“Don’t think too hard,” Slade said. “I wouldn’t want to wind up hunting you.”

They rode another mile or so before Naylor spoke up again. “You ever work a moonshine case before?” he asked.

“Nope. It’s a first for me,” Slade said.

“I had one, back around the Christmas season,” Naylor said. “A family was cookin’ up by Alva, on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas. Came from Kentucky, as it happened, where the business went back through their generations. Mostly sold their product up in Kansas, though. They lived around too many Injuns—Osage, I believe they were—to want ’em liquored up.”

“How many of the family were in on it?” Slade asked.

“Old grandpa called the shots,” Naylor replied. “There was his son, and he had three boys old enough to work the stills.”

“You took them by yourself?”

“They didn’t want to go, I grant you,” Naylor said. “I had to wing a couple of ’em, then they saw that I meant business and they came along.”

“Lucky for you,” Slade said.

“I guess. The lads were all for roastin’ me until they saw their daddy and the old man bleeding. Then, of course, I let their females off the hook. I figure they were just as guilty as the menfolk, but it just seemed petty, charging them.”

“You have to watch your back with women, sometimes,” Slade suggested, thinking of Kate Bender and the hatchet she’d have split his skull with, given half a chance. After he’d spoken, though, Slade wondered whether Naylor thought it was a reference to Faith, then decided he should let it drop without explaining.

“Do you know much about whiskey?” Naylor asked him.

“Just the kinds I like.”

“I mean the making of it.”

“Never gave that part much thought,” Slade said.

“I hadn’t either, till the job at Alva,” Naylor said. “It’s kind of interesting, though. Let’s say they start with corn. You need at least four bushels, dried and ground to meal. Soak that in eight to ten gallons of water, then toss in a couple pounds of malt, two sticks of yeast, two gallons of hops, and a half bushel of barley. Mix it up and you’ve got mash, which needs to sit fermenting for five or six days.”

“And then what?” Slade inquired, relieved to have the subject changed.

“You put it in a big old copper kettle,” Naylor said, “and
heat it up. The steam comes off through a condensing coil and drips into tub. The first batch comes out clear, around 110 proof, and they call that the
high shots
. Later on, it turns gray and they switch out the tubs for what they call the
low wines
, maybe half as strong.”

“I’ve never seen gray whiskey,” Slade remarked.

“See, that’s the thing. Before you sell the booze, you have to proof it down. They pour some of the high shots in a bottle, then start adding low wine until beads form in the middle of the mix. If they sink to the bottom, your liquor’s too weak. If they rise to the top, it’s too strong. Then you test it.”

“By drinking, I guess?”

“Not so fast,” Naylor said. “First you pour a smidgen in a bowl and light it with a match. If you get blue flame, then it’s safe to drink. Turn up a yellow flame, forget it. That’s wood alcohol and it’ll blind you, maybe kill you.”

“That’s a lot to know,” Slade said.

“And it goes on from there. They keep the mash, then sweeten it with fifty pounds of sugar for the second batch. Third round, a hundred pounds, fourth time, hundred and fifty. After that, you start again with new mash. Age the liquor in a keg, if you’ve a mind to, or just sell it raw, soon as you get it in a jug.”

“What proof is that?” asked Slade.

“Eighty’s about the average,” Naylor replied.

Meaning forty percent alcohol by volume. Enough to get a Cherokee—or anybody else—stoked up for fighting, if they didn’t pass out first. Slade knew that federal laws banning sale of liquor dated from the turn of the century, buttressed by a statute passed in 1832, forbidding sale of alcohol on reservations. He understood the primal fear of raiding parties fueled by “firewater,” but wasn’t sure if red men
acted any worse than whites when they were drinking heavily. As for blaming murder on a whiskey jug, he’d seen both men and women flare into a rage when they were drunk, but Slade had always thought the liquor simply brought out traits they covered up, to some extent, in daily life.

Forget it,
he decided. Their assignment was to find the man or men responsible for cooking untaxed whiskey and then peddling it illegally to Indians. Lump the crimes together, and a violator might be fined or sentenced to a year in prison for each individual offense. A hundred violations, then, could mean a hundred years in theory, but the courts tended to minimize the penalty or make the sentences concurrent. Add the murder of a marshal, though, and you were looking at a short drop from the gallows.

If the evidence could make it stick.

And they had none, thus far, besides the injuries Bill Tanner suffered as he screamed his life away in agony. Slade needed more than Holland Mattson’s theory about amputation of the feet to pin the crime on Cherokees, but if the killers had been white men, he had even less to go on. Tanner’s wire from Stateline to Judge Dennison remained the only clue, and it contained no names, descriptions, or directions to a suspect.

So they were starting more or less from scratch, and at a disadvantage, too. If Tanner
had
been killed by moonshiners, it meant the men that Slade and Naylor had to find were on alert. They’d know that Tanner’s death would spark a more intense investigation, and they might well know he’d sent a telegram from Stateline to Judge Dennison. Slade wondered if that wire had triggered nervous men to strike, uncertain whether they had been exposed or not.

He couldn’t say, but the idea gave him a place to start when they arrived in Stateline. After talking to the local
law, they’d need to have a chat with the town’s telegrapher. From his reaction, Slade thought they could tell if someone else had had access to the cryptic message Tanner sent. If so, and if the operator didn’t want to share a name—well, there were ways to loosen up his tongue.

Before they finished up in Stateline, Slade decided, they would have at least a fair idea of what had happened. If that knowledge led them to the killers, white or red, he would be satisfied. Justice would take its course.

And Slade would have more time to think about what he should do with the remainder of his life.

The reservation set aside for Cherokees was one of twelve in Oklahoma Territory, the remainder being set aside for Pawnee, Osage, Ponca, Kickapoo, Creek, Nez Perce, Comanche and Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. Oklahoma Territory had been formally known as Indian Territory until May of 1890, when Congress changed its name and started letting more white settlers populate the districts’ unassigned lands. Conflict between the races had been unavoidable, but nothing on the scale that some alarmists had predicted from the outset. Still, there was a fine line between nervous tolerance and open war, and it was patrolled by Slade and other deputies, the army standing by to ride if it appeared civilian officers had lost their capability to keep the peace.

Cherokee land lay northeast of Enid, in the same direction Slade and Naylor had to ride toward Stateline. There was no sign to alert them when they reached the reservation, but his previous excursions had shown Slade the basic landmarks. Shortly after crossing over, Slade told Naylor, “We could meet tribal police at any point from here on in.”

“We’re there already?” Naylor looked around, not agitated, but on guard.

“Ten, fifteen minutes in,” Slade said. “That live oak with the lightning scar’s a marker you can guide by.”

“Oughta be a sign or something,” Naylor said, “so folks can tell.”

White folks, he meant. Slade said, “The reservation’s neighbors have a pretty fair idea of where it is.”

“But someone passing through could have a problem. We should ask the judge about—”

His words dried up, and Slade glanced over to find Naylor staring off to the southeast. Scanning in that direction, out two hundred yards or more, Slade saw three mounted riders watching them, immobile on a ridge top.

“Here we go,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

Naylor was reaching for his Winchester when Slade said, “Stop it! I already told you they’re police.”

“How can you tell from this far out? Could be a hunting party or…you know.”

Hostiles. The younger deputy
was
nervous now, not sweating yet, but with a tenor to his voice that gave away his strain.

“First thing, there’s three of them,” Slade said. “If they were hunting, there’d be one—or two, at most, and then spread out—to keep from scaring off the game. If they were hostiles, they’d be off the rez somewhere, not sitting there and hoping for a white man to ride by.”

“You seem to know ’em pretty well. Let’s hope you’re right, eh?”

“Just sit easy. Let me do the talking when they get here.”

“What? They’re coming over?”

And as if his words evoked the action, Slade saw the three Cherokees start down the near side of the slope,
nudging their horses to an easy trot. All three were armed with rifles, though he couldn’t tell what kind from that far out. Most members of the tribal police, some twenty in all, carried pistols as well, while on duty. They would be the Indians whom Berringer trusted the most, which wasn’t saying much. Most of their time was spent arresting drunks and wife beaters, but renegades who fled the reservation were beyond their jurisdiction. If they’d nabbed a white trespasser on the rez, Slade guessed that Berringer would tell them to apologize.

Which could instill a certain attitude, he thought. Best if they walked on eggshells now and made it clear they’d come to see the man in charge.

Up close, Slade saw the Cherokees
were
wearing six-guns and the stamped tin badges he remembered from his last trip to the rez. He saw the riders checking out his badge and Naylor’s, understanding that they’d been outranked, and not much liking it.

The middle one, a little older than his flankers, wearing braids over a denim shirt and balancing a .50-70 Sharps carbine on his right hip asked, “What brings you marshals here today?”

Slade caught a blink from Naylor, showing his surprise. He’d probably expected Cherokees to grunt and mutter in a language barely comprehensible.

“We’ve come to speak with Agent Berringer,” Slade said, “about the whiskey being smuggled to your people.”

“You wish to arrest the men responsible?” their spokesman asked.

“That’s right. And there’s the matter of a murdered deputy to talk about, on top of that.”

“The yellow-haired marshal,” their greeter replied. “We heard that he was killed.”

“And found not far from here,” Slade answered, pushing just a little.

“You think Cherokees did this?” the trio’s leader asked, frowning.

“Or someone wants us to believe that,” Slade replied. “I try to keep an open mind.”

“You are Marshal Slade, the friend of Little Wolf?”

“I’m hoping he has more than one,” Slade said. “But, yes. We’ve done some hunting.”

“Hunting men who kill our people.”

“Ours, too. What they pay us for.”

“I will take you to Agent Berringer.” The spokesmen gave some orders to his two companions, speaking Cherokee. They peered at Slade and Naylor for another moment, then rode off to westward. “We are seeking stolen horses,” the remaining Cherokee explained.

“No luck, so far?” Slade inquired.

“I think they are no longer on the reservation.” With a sidelong glance at Naylor, he continued. “Sometimes whites come here and steal our animals.”

Slade half expected Naylor to make some remark and was relieved when he did not. “I’ve known some white men who’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down tight,” Slade said. “You get a line on any rustlers who’ve been hitting you, get word to me in Enid and I’ll run them down.”

Addressing Naylor for the first time, their appointed guide said, “Two guns. Are you fast with both?”