by Lou Cameron
He built a small fire and spread his bedroll in the nearby grass as he waited for his coffeepot to boil. Then he made a few more basic arrangements for the night and left the fire to burn down to coals as he enjoyed his late snack of cold pork and beans up the slope, with his back against a black-willow trunk and the Krag across his lap.
He didn’t light an after-supper smoke. He craved one, but no matter what old Madge had said the night before, he was a man who could control his desires when he thought he might have to.
It got quiet as the campfìre burned down to glowing embers and the ponies settled down. When an owl hooted in its own tree across the clearing, Stringer perked up and quietly put his tin coffee cup aside in the grass. Owls sometimes did that for no sensible reason. But this time, after some time, he heard the cautious crunch of a boot heel on trail gravel.
There was nothing to be done about it just now. So Stringer just lay low like the tar baby until, sure enough, a figure moved between him and the ruby embers of the cook fire, eight or ten yards off. As the rascal pointed his own rifle at the sleeping Stringer he thought was under that fluffed-up bedding, Stringer told him, in a conversational tone, “Don’t gun my bedding. Just drop that Winchester and turn around with some stars in your hands, friend.”
The other man did no such thing. So Stringer shot him before he could swing the muzzle of that Winchester far enough to worry more about, and the rifle ball pitchforked its human target sideways into the campfire. As Stringer rose he expected to see the cuss at least try to roll off the hot coals. But he didn’t, so Stringer had to kick him out of the fire as his duds started flaming and the clearing was filled with the sickly sweet reek of human flesh.
Stringer swore and scooped up the nearby coffeepot to pour over the sprawled man. The coffee was still hot, but he didn’t seem to mind, and it kept his shirt from burning off him entirely. Stringer kicked the fire higher to have a look at what he’d just done. He could see at a glance the rascal was stone dead as well as toasted. He was dressed cow style and still needed a shave, despite the singeing. He was about forty years old at the time of his recent death, and Stringer was sure he’d have remembered such an ugly face if he’d ever seen it before.
Stringer picked up the fallen man’s Winchester and sniffed it. He nodded and told the still form at his feet, “Fired a lot, not long ago, and if you’d come in a bunch, we might not be holding this conversation.”
He hunkered down to go through the dead man’s scorched duds and found a cheap old watch and jackknife he had no use for. He put the fifty-odd dollars and change in his own pocket, which seemed only fair now. There was no I.D. of any kind on the mysterious son of a bitch. Stringer nodded and muttered, “All right, you look mean and shabby enough to gun a man for fifty bucks. So I shall assume the mastermind who’s too yellow to come after me personal got you out from under the same wet rock as old Blue Streak.”
The shabby stranger wasn’t wearing a gun rig. Stringer put his own rifle aside and picked up the dead man’s booted ankles to start hauling him away from the fire, and it occurred to him that the murderous cuss hadn’t wanted to be caught with the .38 he’d used on Blue Streak Bendix back at the town clinic.
He dragged the limp form as far as the creek bank and kicked it over the edge into the churning water, saying, “Adios, you poor bastard. Give my regards to your pals when you get downstream to ’em. I wouldn’t want ’em thinking you’d got lost in the desert.”
As the body vanished, he turned back to look for its earlier means of transportation. He found a maltreated chestnut tethered a hundred yards down the trail. The saddle was older and even more beat-up than the pony. There was no bedroll. He nodded knowingly. He hadn’t figured the hired gun had planned a long trip. He unsaddled the spent pony and struck a match to see if he could spot a brand. He did. A plain U.S. branded on one shoulder. It was Army surplus, bought cheap by almost anyone off the remount service. He removed the bridle, patted the old horse reassuringly and told it, “Well, you’re free to head on home or join my ponies for some free grass. You’re no use to me either way.”
The chestnut followed him back to his campsite. By now the fire was all the way out. Stringer left the dead man’s mount to its own devices and hauled his bedding up into the willows for some shut-eye. He figured with three ponies and an owl to watch for further disturbances, he could safely catch a few winks. So he did, and it seemed no time at all before a lizard was trying to crawl in his ear and the morning sun was trying to burn through his eyelids. So he sat up, cussing, to face another day. He knew it wasn’t going to be any cooler than the one before. But now that he knew, for sure, that someone didn’t want him anywhere near Pleasant Valley, it promised to be at least more interesting.
CHAPTER
SIX
*
Nothing happened. He rode most of the day, holing up in some rocks during the hottest part of the afternoon, but the only thing that seemed to be following him was that dead gun slick’s old Army mount. He had to oat and water it each time he took care of the brutes he had more use for, of course. That was doubtless why it kept tagging along like an infernal pup. This wasn’t good mustang country, even if the poor old critter had wanted to go wild in its declining years. He decided after cussing it some that it was just as well, for as he studied the map Patty had given him, he saw the creek he’d shoved the body in wouldn’t take it back to Holbrook or anywhere near it. If the dead man didn’t wash ashore at, say, Winslow, it was bound for the depths of the Grand Canyon. He hadn’t worried about it, at the time, assuming the rascal’s mount would return to Holbrook without him to alert his pals to the obvious. But if they didn’t ever see him or his pony again, they might just assume he was still up to no good, and as long as they thought that, they might not send anyone else out to finish the job. There was a good chance the hired gun had made the deal to hit-and-run, without reporting back. Meanwhile, just in case he was being optimistic, Stringer worked to put more distance between himself and whomsoever.
He pushed on after sunset as far as the moon would let him, and nothing happened the next time he made camp, dry, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim.
That was about as high and dry as the Colorado Plateau got. The whole huge mass of high dry rock slanted gently mostly from where it had been thrust up from wherever with a considerable drop-off to the south. The Tonto Basin below the Mogollon Rim hadn’t gone anywhere when the Colorado Plateau moved up in the world. So the drainage from the rim south ran into the Salt River to eventually join the Gila on its way to the Sea of Cortez or the Gulf of California, depending on one’s mother tongue.
Not wanting to risk the steep descent in the dark, Stringer camped well off the trail until morning, and as he rode on by the dawn’s early light, he was glad. The Mogollon Rim wasn’t a sheer cliff everywhere, but it was still one hell of a drop, even where the trail hairpinned down it. Staring south, it made Stringer feel he was up in a balloon instead of a saddle. He knew there were other hills, far off across the big basin. He could even see some far below, sort of dividing the headwaters of two winding streams of white water, or at the distance, gray hairs. After winding down a tedious ways he saw the main trail trended to the basin to the west, and the map said that was the wrong way. So when he found what seemed more a deer path forking off to the east, he followed it. A good spell later he found himself following a babbling brook running on down through stirrup-high, albeit summer-dried, grass. He decided that if he wasn’t in or close to Pleasant Valley, he’d sure found one that fit the name.
The nameless brook he was following, neither mapped nor likely running when it hadn’t rained recently, ran in to join another, then another, until he reined in to compare Patty’s map with the fair-sized creek forming up about here. There were what looked like charred ruins among the willows and cottonwoods a ways upstream. He rode up to them, leading the paint, with the old Army mount trailing on its own. As he reined in between the burnt-out homespread and the creek, he n
odded and told his buckskin, “This has to be the Tewksbury place. Legend would have it that old Indian John and his squaw settled at the headwaters of Cherry Creek, and that’s where we have to be at right now.”
He dismounted to poke about among the ruins. There wasn’t much to see. Earlier arrivals had even salvaged such hinges and other hardware the fire had left. Most of the light ash had long since blown away, and a lush bed of wild mustard had replaced any flooring the place had ever had. It made Stringer feel sorry for the old gal, at least, who’d once kept house here. It had no doubt been a step up in the world for an Indian gal. He wondered what nation she’d been begged, bought, or stolen from. He knew the Tonto Basin just over the rise to the west had gotten its name from the so called Tonto Indians. Tonto meant stupid, in Mexican. It hardly seemed likely they’d called themselves that.
He went back out to the weed-grown dooryard and unloaded the ponies, saying, “You brutes go on and graze in this nice shade for now. The sun’s getting high again, and now that we’re here, I’m in no rush. I mean to study this place good before we go on down to see what the Grahams might have left behind in their haste to leave this valley.”
He fed himself as well, seated on the charred sill of the old abandoned house to polish off more beans, washed down with a can of tomato preserves. He didn’t build a fire to make coffee this time. Even in the shade it was too damned hot.
As he rolled a smoke later, he decided the old squaw man and his woman could have picked a worse place to raise sons and sheep. It was warmer down here than up above the Mogollon Rim. But the valley was well watered and the grass all around grew lush as hell for Arizona Territory. There was plenty of firewood, and in season no doubt wild cherries, if the name they’d given the creek meant anything at all. It seemed a shame they’d lost it all. He rose, got the carbon papers from his saddle bag, and sat back down to see if they could offer a more sensible explanation than the legends about two half-witted white-trash clans just killing one another off for the hell of it.
They didn’t. As he read through the old county records, he was sort of glad he’d waited. For although he knew now that he had to be on to something, had he read all this nonsense sooner, he’d never ridden down here, nobody would have tried to stop him, and he’d have no story at all for old Sam Barca.
He didn’t have to take notes, since he knew he could just as easily carry all this confusion back to Frisco with him, when and if he ever figured a story angle out for his paper.
The various county clerks of various counties who’d compiled all this disconnected stuff about Sheriff Owens and all the folk he’d had trouble with, had certainly not been writers with any sense of plot. Stringer could see Patty had picked out only the old records the sheriff appeared in. He knew she’d done so to help him. Had he had her here to fuss at, he’d have told her never to do that to a newspaper man. To research old records right, a man needed all the records, damn it. This hodge-podge, while as exciting as many a penny dreadful, only told him that in his day old Commodore Perry Owens had been a pisser.
There were charges and countercharges about a lot of long-gone gents of Anglo, Mex, and Indian persuasion who’d tried to treat old Pear mean and wound up getting treated meaner. Stringer had to allow that on more than one occasion the hard-cased peace officer had kept the peace way the hell outside his jurisdiction. But while he seemed to take the attitude that any no-good rascal he could get at no doubt deserved some taming, even his enemies had been unable to tar Owens with either cowardly or needlessly cruel behavior. Stringer got so confused trying to sort out where on earth what county’s line had been drawn, as they sort of shifted them about and even renamed them to include or exclude certain voting cliques, that he tended to forgive old Owens for not paying much attention to such petty details. This valley had for certain never been part of Navajo, Apache, or whatever county the old lawman had been elected to police. On the other hand, the county seat of Globe was south of the Salt, and from the records, hadn’t been too interested in shootouts up this way. So old Pear had done what he’d no doubt thought he had to do, and here it was, years later, and what in thunder was so secret about this valley, out of the way as it might be?
He looked up as he heard hoofbeats. He stood up, stuffing the papers in a hip pocket to free his gun as he saw what was coming his way.
There were four of them, dressed cow and loaded for bear. But there was nothing sneaky about their approach. So Stringer just waited, smiling curiously as they rode in, reined to a stop, and one of them demanded to know who the hell he thought he was and what he was doing there.
Stringer said, “You can call me Stringer MacKail. I ride for the San Francisco Sun. I’m here because my editor wants a feature on the Pleasant Valley War.”
The obvious leader—a lean, hungry-looking individual with a hatchet face and eyes to match— laughed in surprise and told Stringer he was a mite late, adding, “The last of the Grahams got kilt back in ’92. September, they say. I wasn’t here. I’m called Montana Mason. We all ride for the Hash Knife. You don’t. Let’s talk about why you’re really here. I could say I writ for The New York Times. But that wouldn’t make it true.”
Stringer nodded and said, “I am reaching, polite, for my press pass. I’ll allow it could be a forgery. But you’ll have to allow that would be a lot of trouble for even a cow thief to go to. I also stand ready to let you search my saddle bags for running irons, if that’s what all this is about. No offense, but aren’t you boys a mite off your own range if you’re searching for missing stock?”
Montana reached down for the credentials as he said, “If the damned cows were on our range they wouldn’t be missing, would they?”
He read the press pass, handed it back, and said, grudgingly, “You ain’t packing a throw rope on yon saddle, and them damned old cows are most often found in the company of Mexicans these days. We’re missing eight head. Have you seen ’em?”
Stringer said, “I haven’t seen cow one since I came over the rim this morning. What makes you suspicious they could be over in this valley?”
Montana said, “The greasers. Not the greasers as stole our stock. The ones as say this valley is inhabited by spooks. We don’t believe in spooks. But you can see for yourself what a handy place this would be to keep cows.”
Stringer said he sure could, but added, “It’s my understanding this range has been abandoned.”
Montana snorted in disgust and said, “That’s what I just said. There’s grass and water, and no law-abiding folk for miles. The greasers say that there’s even wild cows in parts of this valley. Wild horses too. The coyotes got all the sheep long ago, but nobody ever rounded up the last of Tom Graham’s herd, years ago.”
Stringer gazed about and said, “Well, feel free to round up all the stock you see, branded or otherwise. If it was a herd worth fighting over, someone would have surely claimed it long before this, right?”
Montana said, “Ain’t looking for mavericks. Looking for Hash Knife beef. We don’t hold with wild Texas views on the ownership of stock. The outfit treats us decent, and we try to act the same.”
Stringer nodded and said, “I heard that was what the Hash Knife War was all about. I take it you boys rode for the winning side.”
It had been a statement rather than a question. But all four of them laughed incredulously. Then Montana asked, “Jesus H. Kee-rist, do I look dumb enough to have rid that long without making it to a desk position with the company? You’re talking about a fight back in ’86 or ’7, pilgrim. None of us had rid for the outfit half that long.”
Another Hash Knife rider chimed in, “They’d run all the sheep out of the Tonto by the time they hired us. There ain’t been any kind of war in these parts for years.”
Montana growled, “We’ll see about that when we catch up with them cows and any sons of bitches keeping them company. Let’s go, boys.”
Stringer said, “Wait. Where do I find these Mexicans who say this range is haunted?”
Montana shrugged and said, “Anywhere but on it, of course. Any fool can see how free from care the grass all around has growed.”
Another rider with a kinder face, an easy thing to manage, told Stringer, “Us white riders don’t get over this way much because our own Tonto Creek runs twenty miles or more from this one, with some mighty dry range between. The desert due east is worse. You know about the rimrock country to the north.”
“Then new sellers would tend to drift in from the Mormon-Mex country to the south?”
“They might, if the spooks would let ’em. I’ve never seen a spook my ownself. Like I said, we don’t get over this way much.”
Montana snapped, “You’ll be a spook if you don’t do as I say, and I just said let’s go, damn it!”
The four of them rode off down Cherry Creek as Stringer sort of wondered why. It wasn’t his business to recover beef for the Aztec Land and Cattle Company. But had they been more polite, he could have given them some helpful hints on the subject.
He knew Montana was younger, or dumber, than he looked.
That was fair. In a restless land of opportunity the day had not yet dawned when a man with any imagination would grow old herding someone else’s beef. But Stringer had been a top hand in his own misspent youth, so he could have told them any cow thief with a lick of sense would know better than to run stolen stock down the watered center of a wide-open valley.
As he tossed his spent smoke down and ground it out with a boot heel, Stringer gazed professionally at the distant skyline to his east. They’d said the country over that way was more rugged. A smart thief trying to work stolen stock south to the nearest market would hold them by day in some dry wash and let them graze and water down this way by night. Cherry Creek ran all the way to the Salt, a hell of a ways farther than it would pay the Hash Knife to search for property of finite value. Those four riders, useless or not, had to be costing the outfit five dollars or more a day, and they couldn’t be the only Hash Knife parties out searching for said beef. So, yeah, they’d give up once they’d followed the creek say a day’s ride each way.