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Updated: June 3, 2025
The very nature of my business makes me cautious about trusting men but I'm going to trust you." He stopped again, taking great pains with the point of a triangle he was drawing. Casey knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rock. "Puttin' it that way, Mr. Nolan, the man's yet to live that Casey Ryan ever double-crossed. Cops I got no use for; nor yet bootleggers.
But to-day, even with interstate shipments of liquors to consumers, a gallon of "blockade" will be watered to half-strength, then fortified with cologne spirits or other abominations, and peddled out by bootleggers, at $1.50 a quart, in villages and lumber camps where somebody always is thirsty and can find the coin to assuage it.
Though, in some parts of southern Florida, bootleggers are so thick that they have to wear red buttons in their lapels, to keep from trying to sell liquor to each other. No, the treasure is considerably bigger than booze or any other form of smuggling. It Hello!" he broke off. "There's your lawn, right ahead of us.
The "bootleggers" were supposed to carry pint flasks of bad whiskey in the legs of their topboots, to sell at a fancy price to thirsty punchers on the ranges. "Dunno how that slate come broken on the roof," grumbled Sam. "The feller knowed just where to go to hitch his rope ladder. Goin' to have one of the boys ride herd on the hacienda at night for a while." This was a long speech for Silent Sam.
Doubtless, had they dared, two or three score of these men would have fought in behalf of the gamblers and bootleggers, but far more than that number would have rallied under Tom Reade's banner, for it is human nature to flock to the banner of the leader who is resolute and unafraid. Besides, there were the foremen, all of them good, hard hitting men.
During the week only one holdup was reported to the police and prohibition officers were surprised to find that bootleggers had stopped their work. There were no burglaries, gambling, picking of pockets, bunko swindling or handbook betting. The traffic in narcotics, police and federal officers reported, was the lowest in years.
"Why," he answered genially, "my game is holding up bootleggers and crooked cops. I'm just guessing, now," he added dryly, "but I'm tolerably good at guessing; a man's got to be, these days." "A man's got to do better than guess with Casey Ryan," Casey remarked ominously. "The last man that guessed Casey Ryan, guessed 'im plumb wrong."
Two hundred soldiers, six or eight liquor shops, the number varies from year to year, three miles off a native village of perhaps one hundred and fifty souls, and dotting those intervening miles cabins chiefly occupied by "bootleggers" and go-betweens that is the Tanana situation in a nutshell. The men desire the native girls, and the liquor is largely a lure to get them.
Four kegs he counted, and lifted out one. "An' how many did YOU lick, Mr. Nolan?" he grinned over his shoulder as he started for the door. Nolan laughed noncommittally. "Perhaps I'm luckier at picking my bootleggers," he retorted. "If you carry the right brand of bluff, you can keep the skin on your knuckles, Ryan. This beats making it, at any rate."
"Now, Nicolas," pressed Reade, turning around at the faithful little brown man, "you tumble back into bed." "But you, Senor?" "Don't worry about me. I've probably done all I need to do to-night. I shall probably sit here on the porch and think until daylight. Then I'll call Hazelton, and go to bed for a few hours' sleep before I appear in court against the gamblers and the bootleggers.
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