Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

“That colt is as green as a grasshopper,” snapped Maddy. Tony was only broke to harness on the island, where there were no stoplights or trains and only a dozen cars, all of which pulled over if they saw Blacklock’s green colt. But the big problem was the middle of the river and Maddy knew it. “If Tony gets spooked on the barge, he’ll take the wagon, the old mare, and everything else straight to the bottom.” Kit would have said straight to hell.

“Now, Maddy, you know Ev can handle any horse,” said Sheldon, surprised to hear pride in his voice. “He’s like those cowboys in the pictures at the Bijou, who get horses to drag them out of quicksand. Anyways, we don’t have time for two trips. The train will be at the station in half an hour and we got to load up before it pulls out.”

“We best get going,” said Everett, cutting off Maddy’s next remark by reaching both hands for the wax-paper-wrapped sandwich she was holding. As he took it, he held her hand a little longer than necessary and gave it a squeeze. Sheldon had never seen them touch, not since they kissed at the altar, and he felt ashamed of noticing.

“I made enough for you, too, Sheldon,” Maddy said, still looking at his brother. “Everett would share his with you anyway.” Then she flicked the lines over the pony’s back and turned back down the road. “Watch yourselves,” she called out over her shoulder.

“A lot of fuss over a ten-minute barge ride,” Sheldon grumbled.

“What can go wrong?” Everett asked as he leapt onto the wagon’s bench seat, the hay towering over him. Of course, he didn’t know the hay was piled two bales thick around ten thousand dollars’ worth of Corby’s whiskey. He didn’t know, either, that smuggling the whiskey to the States was where he came in. Everett really was like those movie cowboys. He never took a drop of liquor, never missed church on Sunday, had never uttered a swearword in his life. Even now, with Pa dead almost six months and no one to live up to anymore, Everett was a rootin’-tootin’ good guy. And he was never, ever searched by the excise men on the other side of the river.

Everett drove the team down the cement incline of the boat ramp with a touch on the lines, calling something Sheldon couldn’t hear. The barge was smallish, just a half-foot bigger around than the wagon and team, and Tony twitched in the tight space until Everett gave the lines another touch and spoke again.

Sheldon climbed aboard and started the motor, the one from the old Chevy truck engine, and it put-putted away as he eased them out into the channel. The wind was up and there was a bit of chop — the water always ran faster on this side of the island — but things went smooth enough for the first hundred yards, until the American patrol boat came up out of nowhere.

They called it a six-bitter, for the half-dozen machine guns mounted along its 75-foot sides. They didn’t even count the one-pound, rapid-fire gun that swivelled to fire in any direction. Sheldon counted it, though; he counted the patrol boat a floating nightmare. Grey as fog and built for the ocean, it had come up the river hunting bootleggers from Detroit and Chicago, the big-time gangsters stealing up from the Great Lakes. Sheldon supposed the gun power must be working, because lately he hadn’t seen any out-of-town thugs in the speakeasies on the wrong side of the Cape’s railway tracks.

But would they turn that gun power on him? The barge was still on the Canadian side of the river, and if Sheldon turned back now the patrol boat couldn’t follow, not legally. He looked back at Everett, who was keeping an eye on the wake the American boat churned up. Then Sheldon looked ahead to Kit, still standing on the point, and she waved with both arms, urging him to her. If he turned back, the G-men would know something was up and he wouldn’t get another chance at a stake that would take Kit out of the town too small to hold her.

As the barge sliced across the invisible border, the patrol boat changed course towards them and someone on the bridge gave Sheldon the sign to cut his engine. He threw the switch and the barge pitched in the boat’s wake. Everett sang out in his soothing voice, but Tony snorted and jerked, lifting one big hoof after another, rocking the wagon back and forth so that one of the top bales tumbled off and into the water. The splash spooked Tony and it spooked Sheldon, too, because that left only one bale between the whiskey and the patrol boat. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and felt the pistol grip, cold as a stone.