Stringer in Tombstone

by Lou Cameron

  Stringer muttered, “That’s not the way old Wyatt tells it, out L.A. way. But, while we’re on the subject, Miss Annie, what do you recall about the Clantons?”

  “Nothing. Drunken cowboys were not allowed in our part of town. I can’t say I ever met any of those uncouth ruffians. I suppose more people gossiped about the Earps because they lived in town. The Clantons seldom got in to Tombstone enough to draw that much attention to themselves. I just can’t say which bunch was worse.”

  He said that made two of them. He knew he faced a night or more alone at the Cosmopolitan. But without a library card it was likely a waste of time to browse the stacks behind her, so he thanked her for such information as she’d been able to give him and turned to go.

  The recent shave paid off when she called him back and said, “I just thought of something. We lend a lot of books to a sweet old man who stayed on when the Tombstone Expositor went out of business. I think he was either one of their reporters or printers.”

  Looking hopeful, Stringer explained, “On small-town papers, reporters are supposed to know how to set type and vice versa. If he was working here in the eighties for an objective publisher he’d be a gold mine.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, dimpling.

  There was an awkward silence. Then Stringer sighed, “Well?”

  “I’m thinking,” she said, “I’m thinking. If I could remember his name I could get his address for you from the card file. I know the other old-timers call him Dutchy and I think his last name is Dutch or German. Och mo mala! It’s right on the tip of my tongue, but—”

  “Let it go for now and it will come back to you when you least expect it,” Stringer suggested.

  “I know,” she agreed, “but what good will that do if it comes to me in bed, later tonight?”

  He had to laugh and, even though he didn’t say why, she blushed and stammered, “That’s not the way I meant it, you fresh old thing.”

  He nodded, shot a glance at the Regulator Brand school clock behind her, and asked what time they closed. She told him they only stayed open after six on Fridays. He said, “Then I’ll try to be back before six. If not, well, I’m booked in at the Cosmopolitan on Allen Street.”

  She gasped, “Heavens! No respectable lady would be caught dead on Allen Street after dark, or by daylight, without an escort. I’d best just give you my own address in case you, ah, miss me.”

  He didn’t argue. He was no fool. She drew a blank card from a whole box of the same and penciled in her name and address in prim Palmer penmanship. As she handed it across the counter to him she said, as primly, “I generally receive visitors no later than eight, or, well, maybe nine.”

  He carefully tucked the card in a breast pocket and told her he hardly ever kept a lady up past her bedtime. She lowered her lashes and decided, in a firmer tone, “If you don’t come by eight I won’t be expecting you to come at all.”

  He didn’t think she could mean that the way it sounded, so he just left, wondering what on earth was getting into him all of a sudden. He could usually talk to a lady, an ugly one at any rate, without such horny thoughts. Even when they were pretty it was just asking too much of the great god Eros for him to make it with two mild-mannered librarians in a row!

  He wondered some more about old Tillie as he wandered back to the center of town. Her story had made a lot more sense when he’d met her in Tucson than it did right now. She’d either lied or been confused as hell about having a library job lined up here in Tombstone. But, either way, what could her real game have been?

  Stringer had a healthy ego. He knew lots of women just plain fell for him, just as he knew he couldn’t have ‘em all. So it was possible, but just barely, that old Tillie had simply wanted to have an affair with him. She for sure hadn’t been out to roll him. So she’d been fibbing about being stranded in Tucson with neither her baggage nor pin money. Had she been on that train at all? And, if she had, how could she have seen the shoot-out? He’d been trailing the other passengers when that Mex had thrown down on Skagway Sam and Faro Fran. They, in turn, had been between him, the hired gun, and all the other passengers.

  As he entered the lobby of his hotel he muttered, “Someone put her up to it. She never left Tucson. Ergo she was likely local. But how come?”

  As he stopped at the desk to pick up his key the clerk on duty told him, “There was a gent asking for you, just now, Mr. MacKail. I told him you were out and asked him if he wanted to leave a message. He just turned around and left, sort of rude.”

  Stringer pocketed the key as he replied with a frown, “Do tell?? What’d he look like?”

  The clerk answered, cautiously, “Sort of mean. I hope he ain’t a pal of yours, but you did ask and I was riz to tell the truth, within reason.”

  Stringer dug into his jacket pocket to haul out the menu Homer Davenport had drawn on. It was creased up and sweat-stained, now, but as Stringer unfolded it he saw the ink hadn’t run too badly. He asked the clerk if the ugly mutt Davenport had drawn could be the jasper they were talking about. The clerk held the wilted menu up to the light before he decided, “I see a sort of family resemblance around the eyes. The one as was just here had brows as met in the middle like that. But, I dunno.”

  Stringer took the drawing back, saying, “If he comes back, tell him I’m in, only ring me on the house phone before you send him up.”

  The clerk said he’d be proud to. Then Stringer mounted the stairs and unlocked his hired room to wash up and at least change his shirt and socks after a day of Arizona Territory.

  To do so he had to go down the hall to a fairly decent common bath. Running water, even at one end of the building, was still a novelty in Tombstone. The telephone set he’d noticed by his bed wasn’t connected up to anything but room service. The hotel lamps, if he wanted to light any, still ran on coal oil. He didn’t know whether that meant the town had no electricity at all or whether Miss Annie had been right about Allen Street being sort of unfashionable. The late-afternoon sunlight through the frosted window of the bath made that point sort of pointless. The tap water came out the same way whether one twisted hot or cold. That didn’t much matter, either, since the water tank on the roof produced water that was about the temperature and, come to think of it, the color, of stale tea. He got himself clean as he could, dried off, and dressed again. He was just strapping on his gun rig when the floor under him and the walls around him were rocked by a tremendous crash.

  A bolt of dry lightning seemed improbable. That left a man-made detonation and, as he opened the door, he only had to take one whiff of nitro fumes to know some joker had just set off some dynamite. Close. So he drew his S&W and advanced through the blue haze until he got to the open door of his hotel room. He hadn’t left it open. Someone had opened it to toss the dynamite bomb inside. The air was too filled with nitro fumes and feathers to make out all the details, but the windowpanes had been blown out and if there was anything to that superstition about mirrors, the bomber had just assured himself seven years of bad luck.

  Stringer was just making sure his gladstone, in the closet, hadn’t suffered any damage when the room clerk and a couple of other gents with drawn guns came in to join him. The clerk gave an anguished gasp and said, “Holy shit! What was you smoking in bed, just now, Mr. MacKail?”

  Stringer replied, “Lucky for me, I was down the hall washing up. I reckon the son of a bitch just lit the fuse, popped the door open, and threw without looking.”

  The clerk stared morosely at the torn-up bed, saying, “Son of a bitch is too nice a term for the murderous motherfucker! It was that same one. The one I told you about. He came back and, like you said to, I told him you was in and gave him the room number. I rang the phone at you, but…Say, where in the hell is that telephone?”

  Stringer said, “Blown back to the Bell factory for repairs, most likely. I get the picture, now. I’m just damn glad he didn’t know I was in the bath. New plumbing could cost like hell.”

 
The four of them had just put their guns away when Wes Rhodes, the town law, came in to join them, stating about in wonder as he put his own gun away and observed, “I might have known you’d be mixed up in all that noise, MacKail. What in thunder’s going on up here? There’s busted glass halfway across the street outside!”

  Stringer told him it had been an infernal device and made an educated guess at who the intended target had been. Old Wes said, “I’d run you out of town if I knew for sure that Knuckles Ashton was gonna make it. It wasn’t him, by the way. They got him in bed over to the Oriental, wrapped up like a mummy and full of opium and chicken soup. I just paid a call on him, less than a quarter-hour ago.”

  Stringer hauled out the menu again as he said, “A gent who looked a lot like this drawing may have sent a wire ahead of me from Soledad, California. The clerk, here, says a gent who could be related to him by eyebrows done the dirty deed with the dynamite. How do you like one brother, or kissing cousin, overhearing me say I was on my way to Tombstone just before he wired the one here that I was coming?”

  Wes Rhodes spat out a feather that had drifted into his mouth and said, “I don’t like it at all. But it makes sense. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that Skagway Sam and Faro Fran just came back from some business deal they had in California?”

  Stringer’s amber eyes were big-cat cold as he nodded grimly. “It has. I reckon I’d better have another little talk with Skagway Sam,” he declared.

  It was easier said than done. The Oriental Saloon was only a short walk from the hotel. But when Stringer parted the bat wings and strode up to the bar the bald and bullet-headed barkeep told him the boss gambler had just stepped out for supper. When Stringer asked where Skagway Sam generally ate, the burly barkeep merely shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he claimed. “I just work here. Did you come in for a drink, a game of chance, or to get laid? We don’t serve gossip, here.”

  Stringer ordered a beer. As the barkeep worked the tap, Stringer had time to run a casual eye over his surroundings. No lamps were lit, yet, making the interior of the Oriental darker this close to sunset than it would be later. There wasn’t much of a crowd. Most of the suppertime drinkers were old and rather seedy-looking. But, in a far corner, the brassy Faro Fran was holding court, or at least dealing faro, at a corner table. Stringer paid for his schooner, picked it up, and ambled over.

  As he drew close enough to make out the features of the painted adventuress and her two well-dressed but old and lonely-looking players, he could see she used lots of henna in her hair as well as makeup on her face. She looked more like a painted china doll than a woman of flesh and blood. She didn’t look up to meet his eyes as she asked him in a coarse whiskey tenor whether he’d come over to play cards or to stare down the front of her low-cut bodice.

  He said, “Neither, no offense. I’m looking for Skagway. I don’t suppose you’d know where I could find him at this hour?”

  Shrugging her bare shoulders, she asked, “How should I know? Do I look like his mother?”

  Stringer chuckled. “Not hardly. You may not remember me. We sort of met on the train from L.A. to Tucson the other night.”

  She dealt another card from the slipper on the green felt between them before she said, “I remember you. You smoke too much. You might try the Hatch Billiard Parlor if you just have to blow more Bull Durham in Sam’s face. He likes to shoot a game or two of pool to settle an early supper. He don’t get much exercise after dark, unless he catches somebody cheating in here.”

  Stringer thanked her, put his half-finished beer back on the bar, and left. As he started down the street toward the pool hall a rat-faced kid left the side door of the Oriental to dart that way ahead of him. It made finding the right pool hall only that much easier.

  Warned or not, Skagway Sam seemed intent on sinking the ten ball, bent low over the pool table in his vest and shirtsleeves, when Stringer entered. Skagway Sam shot, sank what he was aiming at, and, without looking up, asked, “What can I do for you, this evening, MacKail?”

  Stringer said, “I got a little puzzle I thought you might like to help me out with, Sam.”

  The burly gambler replied, “I just heard about the way they messed up your bed. Infernal devices ain’t my style. The results can be too unpredictable, as you and your playmates just found out. You want to join me in a game of rotation?”

  Stringer nodded, hung his hat and jacket on a hook near the racks, but left his gun on as he selected a cue and moved back to the table. Skagway Sam was already racking the balls to start afresh. Stringer chalked his cue tip, thoughtfully, as he said, “Just before we met in that club car the other night I got glared at by another gent aboard another train.”

  Skagway Sam said, “You ought to smoke another brand of tobacco then. It was the lady I was with as found Bull Durham so obnoxious, by the way. She don’t smoke and she don’t chew and she don’t screw with boys who do. Nickel a point to make this more interesting?”

  “Sure,” Stringer agreed. “What I’m really interested in is why folk keep trying to kill me, ever since I was overheard saying I was bound for Tombstone to write a newspaper feature on the same.”

  Skagway Sam said, “Why don’t you go first? I never sent poor Knuckles after you. Old Fran thinks it might have been jealousy as first set him off. We was sort of singing your praises on arrival, and Jesus Garcia had a rep as well. I figure Knuckles was out to build a rep of his own. Lord knows he sure could use one. He talks a better fight than he fights.”

  Stringer bent low over the table with his cue, knowing the gambler’s apparent generosity was motivated by the simple fact that the pool shooter who opened the rack seldom sank anything with his first shot. Skagway Sam simply wanted him to spread the tightly racked balls apart so that he could sink one or more.

  Stringer slammed the cue ball as hard as he could into the yellow one ball. By sheer luck the ten ball went in as they all rolled madly in every direction. That gave Stringer a chance to hit the one ball again and sink the three ball. In rotation you got to sink any fool ball as long as you hit the lowest number left on the table first. He missed his third shot and straightened up, chalking his cue tip again as he asked, casually, “How did you know it was Jesus Garcia the two of us shot in the piss-poor light of the Tucson yards, Sam?”

  The gambler bent over the table, saying, “Easy. I was told. Ain’t you never heard of Western Union, old son? Seven in the side pocket. Shit, I thought I had it.”

  Stringer bent over to sink the one ball. He was getting tired of looking at it. He aimed next to sink the two ball, just missed doing so, and said, “Who wired you the glad tidings from Tucson, a mousy little gal called Tillie?”

  Laughing, the gambler said, rather smugly, “If you just have to know, I got a pal on the Tucson force. You got a vivid imagination, that’s what you got. Has it slipped your mind that Garcia was aiming at me, not you, that night?”

  Stringer shook his head. “Nope. I just said it was a puzzle. Almost anyone who’s ever gambled against you might have a reason for wanting you dead. I’ve been busting my brains trying to figure out why they seem to be after me as well. I never said anything about Tombstone in front of either that first sneak or the mysterious Tillie that’s not common public knowledge. All I’ve found out since I got here is that the town’s half-dead and that can hardly be a secret worth even one attempt on my life.”

  Skagway Sam ran three balls in a row before he missed, stood taller to chalk his own cue, and said, “Try her this way. Nobody was after you before you blew Jesus Garcia off my back, for which I said I thanked you. Garcia was a hired killer. His breed tends to run in packs. Don’t it stand to reason that some pal of his was out to pay you back and, respecting your proven skill with a six-gun, decided it might be safer just to blow you up?”

  “Nope. Garcia was after you to begin with. We both put a bullet in him. You and Miss Faro Fran beat me here to Tombstone by almost twenty-four hours. So how come they waited till I showed u
p to seek vengeance?”

  Skagway Sam shot thoughtful glances at both the front and rear windows of the dinky pool hall before he said, “You sure come up with cheerful notions just as darkness is falling. They say Morgan Earp was blasted from outside in this very place, after dark. I suppose you know I was aiming to hustle you into a friendly little game of eight ball. But what say we call us even and move some place where we ain’t such sitting ducks?”

  Stringer said, “I’ve seen the Oriental, no offense, and I’ve other fish to fry. But just for the hell of it, have you ever heard of another newspaperman called Dutchy, here in Tombstone?”

  Skagway Sam seemed sincere enough as he replied, “Can’t say I have. But, then, me and Fran have only been here a few weeks, working with the new owners of the old Oriental.”

  As the two of them were putting their hats and coats back on, Skagway Sam shot another nervous glance at the black rear window and said, “Now, that’s kind of spooky when you study on it. It was years and years ago, of course, but they do say Wyatt Earp once held my very same job at the Oriental. That was when the mines first opened and there was more money in town, dammit.”

  Stringer said, “I don’t think any of the old-time gunslicks want their jobs back. But just how tough have you and your boys found it to keep things under control in the Tombstone of here and now?”

  Skagway Sam sighed. “You saw for yourself that poor Knuckles, for one, hasn’t had to prove himself before you showed up. It gets a mite noisy when the cowhands are in town. But to tell the pure and simple truth, that shoot-out in the Tucson yards was the first serious fight I’ve been mixed up in since we left Alaska. Man, you should have seen the brawls we had up there on many a Saturday night!”

  Stringer said, “I did. I covered the gold rush for the Sun. What there was of it. With the last big gold rush petering out, a lot of rough ladies and gents besides you and Miss Fran ought to be back in the States about now. But…naw, that won’t work.”