Are They Just Blowing Smoke?

By Rick Horowitz

By the time word reached the little town of One Lung, the posse had been in place for hours, up in the hills where nobody goes. It was Little Wheezer, Hack's boy, who first caught wind of it -- he came galloping down Main Street at sunup, waving his arms and howling at the rooftops.

"The Tobacco Gang!" Little Wheezer cried. "They've got 'em surrounded!"

It didn't take a minute for the empty street to fill with people. Some of them were still wearing their nightshirts and their sleeping caps. The Tobacco Gang? Surrounded? It was the most amazing news they'd ever heard.

"Surrounded!" Little Wheezer cried once again. "And they're negotiatin'!"

You could hear the townsfolk gasp. The Tobacco Gang had ruled these parts for generations. They'd left a trail of bodies a mile long. Few had had the guts to stand up to them -- and fewer still had lived to tell about it. From time to time, the authorities would try to crack down, would try to make the Tobacco Gang live by the same rules as average folk.

"We've got 'em right where we want 'em," the authorities would announce, their badges shiny on their puffed-up chests. But the Tobacco Gang would slip through their fingers like wisps of smoke on a southbound breeze. Negotiate? Never!

It was the Liggett boy -- that's what made the difference, Little Wheezer said. The Liggett boy wasn't a big shot in the Tobacco Gang, not like some of the others, but he knew all their plans, their passwords and their secret hideaways. Nobody'd ever quit on the gang before. But when the Liggett boy walked out and started talking, the posse saddled up that very afternoon.

"Follow me!" Little Wheezer screamed, and anyone who could ride a horse headed into the hills right behind him, until they reached a dusty corner of the RJR Ranch nobody had ever seen before. There was a tiny little farmhouse there, and all around the farmhouse crouched the posse: lawmen from every corner of Tombstone Territory.

"Come out with your hands up and nobody gets hurt!" the lawmen shouted. Little Wheezer remembered another time the Tobacco Gang had put their hands up -- when they all swore that oath in front of the Territorial Commission and the Almighty Himself that tobacco didn't grab folks like fish on a hook. "They'll have to do more than raise their hands!" Little Wheezer muttered.

Slowly the farmhouse door opened, but still nobody came out. Instead, a shadowy figure just behind the door tossed dozens of canvas bags into the bright sunlight. "That's billions of dollars!" said a voice from inside. "Take it, it's yours! We're even!"

Nobody there had ever seen that kind of money. "This must be all the money the Tobacco Gang has in the world!" one of the lawmen exclaimed as he rushed forward to scoop up the loot. "They must be really sorry for what they did." (Was that a cough, or a sudden burst of laughter Little Wheezer heard from inside the farmhouse?)

The head of the posse moved closer, cupped his hands and shouted. "We'll take your billions, Tobacco Gang! They're ill-gotten gains, but they'll help us repair some of the damage you've done. It's past time somebody put a stop to you!"

The farmhouse door slowly opened again. And the voice inside the farmhouse shouted back, "Who said anything about stopping?"

4/22/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.