by Lou Cameron
Stringer felt so smart he wanted to hug himself. But he looked innocent and asked, “Oh? I thought you boys meant to push on to Iron Mountain.”
“In this rain, on a wild goose chase?” Jacobs said. “We’ll likely drown getting back to Cheyenne as it is. But thanks to you, we don’t have to get any wetter.”
The one called Bob grinned dirty and said, “Oh, I don’t know. It might be fun to question that breed gal personal, seeing she’s so friendly.”
Jacobs laughed. “She’s got plenty of sisters in sin back in town if you’re feeling romantic enough to ride through a storm for such conversations, Bob.”
“You’re right,” Bob said. “Let’s go find some. But first I mean to hunt down that informer and give him a good licking for soaking me half to death with that bum steer about Etta Place. How do you suppose he ever got her mixed up with a flashy no-good breed?”
“Easy,” Jacobs replied. “He wanted drinking money and so he just sort of described a trail town tramp that sort of fit. Think how sore you’d be if we’d ridden all that way for nothing.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
*
The summer storm had blown over by the time Stringer was back at the Drover’s Palace. Despite his slicker, he couldn’t really tell until he’d enjoyed a hot tub bath and changed into dry duds and socks. Old Jim Tate had been right about the draws flooding saddle-swell deep, and wind atop the rises had fired raindrops point blank and even up at them.
The city of Cheyenne was still dripping some under a clear gloaming sky when Stringer looked Bat Masterson up at his own hotel a few streets over. The older newspaperman had changed his own socks, he said, as they gathered in the tap room downstairs to compare notes. He said, “I ran for it with everyone else when the thunderbird commenced to poop. But I wasn’t able to catch a cab, and by the time I made her back to town the streets were ankle deep, curb to curb. It was fun, carrying ladies over the roaring rapids—that is, once I decided there was no way to get any wetter.”
Stringer clinked beer schooners with him and said, “When it rains on the High Plains it makes up for the dust all at once. I hope you took notes for the two of us before the sporting events were called on account of rain?”
“Nope. Didn’t get the chance,” Masterson replied. “The storm washed today’s show out before it could get started. Put the main events a day behind schedule. But I don’t think the local merchants are all that upset. Just about everyone in the world seems to be here in Cheyenne right now and the longer they stay the more money they figure to spend. How come you got back so soon, Stringer? I figured you’d be up north until the closing ceremonies.”
“I almost wound up staying longer,” Stringer said, bringing Masterson up to date on his shoot-out with the late Billy Gower and its fortunate aftermath.
The older man whistled and said, “I thought I’d heard the last of such bullshit when I turned in my badge. Billy Gower is a new name to me. They must have raised a whole new generation of the breed since my bullet-ducking days.”
Stringer asked, “Did you ever meet Deputy Marshal Joe LeFors? He’s about your age, no offense, so he has to go back a ways.”
Masterson sipped some suds while he did his thinking. Then nodding, he said, “I knew a Joe LeFors in Dodge well enough to howdy. I can’t say it was the same one, though. I sort of kept an eye on his gun hand while I waited for him to howdy back. He wasn’t working for the law in Dodge. Some said he was just a good old boy who packed all that artillery lest the gals who worked for Madame Moustache scalp him. Others said he was a hired gun. I never had any trouble with him. So I just can’t say.”
Stringer said, “LeFors is an unusual name to begin with and they’d hardly all be named Joseph after that. So the name, the age, and the rep all fit. You’re not the first to opine that the gent’s sort of sinister, no matter what Uncle Sam and the Union Pacific think of him right now. Tom Horn says LeFors swore false testimony against him in court. Today I talked to other lawmen who consider it possible.”
Bat Masterson looked pained. “If I were you I’d drop her, Stringer. I wasn’t there neither, but I did read up on the trial. Somewhere in the small print it said the arresting officer had a secretary taking down Horn’s confession in that saloon, whether it was in Omaha or here in Cheyenne. You can’t expect the papers to pick all the nits.”
“Oh, sure,” Stringer said, “I can just see Tom Horn dictating slow enough for a stenographer as all three of them swill booze together in a saloon. Meanwhile, not one witness put Tom Horn anywhere in Laramie County at the time that Nickell boy was shot. A mess of witnesses saw James Miller stab his father less than six months earlier, and not one was asked to testify at Tom Horn’s trial. Wouldn’t you say that was pretty raw, Bat?”
“Yep. But that’s the way a lot of this country got cleaned up, kid. We’re not talking about a virgin school marm being framed for swiping apples. Some say the trial of Henry McArthy, Kid Antrim, Billy the Kid or whatever you want to call the murderous little bastard was based on the sworn testimony of his sworn enemies. But there’s no getting around the fact that the Kid openly boasted of killing twenty-one men and might have really murdered as many as five or six. What were they supposed to do, let him off, just because they couldn’t prove some of the minor details?”
“That’s the way the Constitution reads, Bat.”
“Yeah, well, them old gents in white wigs who writ it never could have imagined what things would be like out here after Sam Colt made every man equal indeed. Rough justice is better than none in rough country, old son. Look how the Kid acted even after all them sob sisters wrote him up as a misguided youth who never meant no harm. Whether his trial was fair or not, didn’t he kill two deputies busting out of jail and didn’t old Pat Garrett do the right thing by him when they met up at the Maxwell spread a short time later?”
Stringer grimaced. “We were talking about Tom Horn. Joe LeFors never shot it out with a man who thought he was a friend. He got him too drunk to fight that virgin schoolmarm you just mentioned and let him wake up in jail, charged with a confession Horn just can’t remember making.”
“Don’t let this get around, lest Ned Buntline turn over in his grave, but there are times a lawman has to take a bad man as best he can. It just ain’t true, or sensible, that the law owes an outlaw an even break. I don’t know how good this Joe LeFors might be. But Tom Horn could beat nine out of ten mortal men in a sober quick-draw contest. So what was LeFors supposed to do, walk up to Tom Horn like a big ass bird and say, ‘Howdy, you’re under arrest for a hanging offense and I sure hope you’ll come quiet?’” Masterson asked.
“If he’d done that, they’d have had one hell of a time convicting Horn of anything, even if he had come quiet,” Stringer replied.
“I know,” Masterson said. “That’s doubtless why they took him sort of dirty. Every time in the past the law saw fit to question him about a killing, Tom Horn got off for lack of evidence. It’s a pure bitch to hang a killing on a gent when it takes place far from civilization, man-to-man on the lone prairie. As an old Apache scout, Tom Horn left no sign for anyone to read. It’s a cruel fact of nature that when the law can’t get anything on an owlhoot it just has to make something up. You’re wasting your time, Stringer. Even if you could find some evidence clearing Horn of the Nickell killing, Wyoming has made her mind up to hang the poor bastard and that’s all there is to it. You couldn’t get him off with you and Teddy Roosevelt swearin’ on a stack of Bibles that he was playing cards with you at the time Wyoming says he murdered that boy.”
Stringer brightened. “I met President Roosevelt just a while ago and Tom Horn served with the Rough Riders in Cuba.”
“Forget it,” Masterson said. “Old Teddy is a politician and the voters of Wyoming want to see Horn swing. He’d never pardon another outlaw now, even if Wyoming wanted him to. He still hasn’t lived Henry Starr down yet.”
Stringer asked what they were talking about and
Masterson explained. “Starr’s an Oklahoma breed some say could be kin to Sam Starr, the Cherokee husband of the Belle called the same. Following the family trade, young Henry stuck up as many as forty small-town banks before he got into a shoot-out with Deputy U.S. Marshal Floyd Wilson, killed him dead as a turd in a milk bucket, and was sentenced to hang for the deed. The Cherokee Tribal Council raised such a fuss about it that Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and pardoned him. Don’t ask me how they convinced Teddy he was acting rational. Suffice it to say that less than a month after they let him out, Henry Starr held up the bank of Bentonville, Arkansas, got away clean with the contents of the vault, and is still at large. I don’t think this would be a good time to ask a mighty pissed-off president to pardon another western outlaw for old time’s sake.”
Stringer sighed. “Oh, well, Horn told me that if the boys he was with somewhere else at the time don’t come forward to save him he means to tell it all to the papers on his own. You may be right. I’d say I’ve done about as much as anyone on our side of the law could be expected to on his behalf.”
When he finished his beer Masterson asked if Stringer’d like another. “No, thanks,” Stringer answered. “While it’s still early I thought I’d mosey over to the fair grounds and catch up on the job I was sent here to do. In a way that unexpected rain may have done me a favor. Aside from giving me extra time to cover the rodeo, it seems to have cooled my head a mite.”
He rose from the table. Bat Masterson said he didn’t want to get his fresh socks wet again but walked with him to the side entrance leading to the street. As they stepped out to shake and part friendly, Masterson suddenly pushed Stringer one way and moved the other, reaching under his frock coat as a rifle round whizzed through the space they’d just been standing in and showered them both with pulverized brick!
Stringer got behind a cast iron watering trough as Masterson took cover behind a parked electric delivery van, snapping, “On the roof across the way. I spotted the glint of sunset on gun-metal just in time. Once you’ve seen it you never forget. What do we do now?”
Stringer said, “Make ‘em work at it. I’ll cover while you duck back inside.”
Masterson didn’t argue. He said, “Now!” and moved with surprising speed for a man his age, running in a crouch. Stringer didn’t spot any movement along the skyline across the way until he heard Masterson call out from the doorway, “I’ve got that rooftop in my sights now, boy. Move your skinny ass!”
Stringer did so. As he whipped by the older man in his own low run Masterson swung the door shut and waited for Stringer to stop skidding on his boot heels across the waxed and sawdust-covered floor before he heaved a great sigh and said, “I told you the whole damned world seemed to be in Cheyenne this evening. But that couldn’t have been Billy the Kid, even if he did favor such methods.”
The other gents who’d been drinking in the tap room were on their feet now. The barkeep yelled a plaintive request for more information about all that unseemly behavior. Stringer rejoined Masterson by the door, saying, “Someone pegged a shot our way just now. It seems to be over, for now.”
That didn’t seem to be good enough for some of the other patrons of the bar. They left via the exit to the hotel lobby. The barkeep swore and started taking down the mirror from the wall behind the bar. He’d no sooner done so when someone began to pound the side door officiously. Masterson said, “I’d say that was a billy club,” and opened the door a crack. Then he nodded to admit the two Cheyenne beat coppers. They naturally demanded to know who might be responsible for all that noise they’d just heard.
“It wasn’t us,” Stringer said. “You can sniff our gun barrels if you like.”
The senior officer protested he was the law, not a durned old dawg, and asked the barkeep’s opinion. The man they knew and trusted, bless him, said, “That gent in the derby hat is a guest at this hotel. Don’t know the one dressed cow. But the two of them was drinking civilized in here up to a moment ago. Then they tried to leave by that door you just came in by and I heard a shot from outside. I can’t say it surprised me to see them two whip back inside. I’d say they were telling it true.”
The senior officer told Stringer and Bat Masterson to put their durned guns away and opined, “Might have been a drunk, shooting wild. We caught a gent this afternoon lobbing quarter-sticks of dynamite out his hotel window.
He was too drunk to explain just why he thought that was so funny. Do either of you gents have cause to think anyone could be after you, personal?”
Bat Masterson stared curiously at Stringer, who shrugged and said, “We’re both newspapermen, here for your Frontier Days. We hardly know anyone here in Cheyenne.”
It worked. They said they’d have a look around the neighborhood and left to get back to their own drinking. Masterson told Stringer, “It’s not my fight. But if I were you, I’d have let the law in on it, son.”
“Until I know just where the law stands in this town I’ll feel safer doing my own fighting,” Stringer replied. “I thought it was over. And it would be, if the bastards would only leave me alone. But since they won’t, it ain’t, and now I’m really starting to get pissed.”
Bat Masterson had been right about the fair grounds being muddy. It wasn’t so bad once you got your boots on the tanbark, though. That was one of the reasons they spread it in the first place. It was still light enough to see where he was going and he found Miss Rimfire Rowena over by the chutes, jawing with what looked like an upright grizzly bear until Stringer got close enough to see it was a big burly colored man in a coffee brown shirt and brown wool chaps. As he joined them Rimfire Rowena said, “Meet Bill Pickett from Texas, MacKail. He just got here and where have you been all this time?”
Stringer shook hands with Pickett as he told her, “Chasing rainbows and getting rained on. I’ve met Bill here, before. I doubt he’d remember. I was just a kid when my Uncle Don introduced us out Frisco way.”
The bearlike colored hand grinned and said, “If your uncle would be Don MacKail from Calaveras County, I do remember you and you’re right, you’ve grown some. What might you be entered in, the saddle broncs or the roping?”
“Neither. I’m covering all the events as a stringer for the San Francisco Sun. That’s why they call me Stringer these days, Bill. Which event are you entered in, as if I have to ask?”
The husky black, or as some said, half black and half Indian, smiled sheepishly and said, “Anything but roping. I rope as good as the regular job calls for, I reckon. But some of the tricks they do with ropes these days don’t look possible. Have you ever seen Will Rogers spin a rope, Stringer?”
“Not in any rodeo, if we’re talking about the same stage-show performer. They had a Will Rogers on the bill with Eddy Foy the last time I was in Denver. Could we be talking about the same young gent?”
Pickett nodded. “We could. Young Will and me rode together a spell for the old 101 Spread. He was an Oklahoma breed, only white where he wasn’t Cherokee, so we got sort of close. He was a good cowhand and a roper you had to see to believe. He used to get hell from the ramrod for roping so showboat whilst we was supposed to be branding. Old Will just could not or would not rope a calf natural. He’d throw loops looked like figure eights or butterflies or, hell, squares and triangles when he was really having fun. When they fussed at him for being so silly he’d call his shots, like a pool shark, and rope one leg, two, or all four. Killed a range bull one time, busting it by the forelegs just for fun. When they fired him he run off to the Boer War, riding for the Boers, of course, and then when him and another young cowhand called Tom Mix got deported back to the States by the winning side, he went into show business. I’m sort of sorry he ain’t here to enter the roping events tomorrow. He’d win, sure, and the entrance fees get bigger every season.”
Rimfire Rowena said, “That’s what we was just thinking about, MacKail. As a performing artist I don’t have to put up no prize money. They pay me a flat fee to perform, see-not even the one and
original Annie Oakley dares to face me in a fair shooting match. But some of the boys have been hard put to scrape up the entrance fees they’re asking, here.”
“Oh? What kind of money are we talking?” Stringer asked.
“It depends on the event and the prizes,” Bill Pickett explained. “I reckon it’s fair enough. The prizes get bigger every year and it’s established custom to make up the winner’s purse from the entrance fees of the losers.”
Rimfire Rowena said, “I don’t think it’s fair. It seems to me they ought to pay everyone, win or lose. I know I’d never get bucked on my fool head for nothing, and if nobody ever lost, how much of a show would they have to offer in the first damn place?”
“Now, Miss Rowena,” Bill Pickett said, “they have to charge an entrance fee. If they didn’t, every fool kid in the country would want to ride. By making a rider put his money where his mouth is, they weed out all but the serious gents. Ain’t that right, Stringer?”
Stringer shrugged. “There’s much to be said for both your points of view. They’d have a time awarding enough prize money to matter if they just took it out of the tickets to the show. The promoters who set these contests up must feel they’re entitled to some profit. It’s just as true that asking a rider to bet money on his own skills tends to separate the men from the boys. But, on the other hand, I see Miss Rowena’s point that it’s asking a lot of a man to go home broke as well as busted up with doctor bills if he takes a bad fall.”
Rimfire Rowena said, “Oh, they ain’t that mean, here. I heard some of the committee arguing that point this morning, before the show was called on account of rain and they was still waiting for it to start.”
Both men stared down at her with the same unspoken question. So she explained, “The out-of-towners who organized the show seem to think that a man dumb enough to get hurt should pay his own fool doctor bills. But the townees who agreed to let ‘em hold the show here seemed to take a different view. This one old gent was saying that since the town of Cheyenne could get stuck with unpaid hospital bills if anyone got hurt real bad, the promoters ought to set aside a medical fund to make sure anyone in the show or just up in the stands could get proper attention if they needed it. He was a nice old gent, for a townee. I think they said he was some sort of judge when he wasn’t judging contests.”