Stringer in Tombstone

by Lou Cameron

  Skagway Sam asked what wouldn’t work, so Stringer said, “A second boom, here in Tombstone. I heard how you and your old pal, Soapy Smith, tried in vain to take over Skagway, but …”

  “Tried in vain, hell, we took it!” Skagway Sam cut in.

  Stringer insisted, “Maybe so, for a while, at least. But my point is that nobody fights all that hard to take over a town that’s half-empty and barely surviving on cowboy weekends. This town just doesn’t add up to a prize worth killing for. At least, I don’t think so. What if we’re both missing something? What if somebody thinks we’re after something, or out to write about something, that they know about and we don’t?”

  Skagway Sam snorted in disgust. “There you go with that vivid imagination again. Me and old Fran are in the business of turning a quick profit. If there was anything left more profitable than pushing liquor, cards, and pussy to dollar-a-day cowhands, do you really think we’d have missed it?”

  Stringer didn’t argue. They were out on the street again by this time, so they shook and parted friendly. But Stringer didn’t turn his back on Skagway Sam until the rascal was out of range.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was an outside chance, but back in Frisco the Sun would still have its presses rolling and he knew old Sam Barca was a persistent cuss. So Stringer had another shot at the Western Union up the street and, sure enough, there was a wire from Barca waiting for him. It read, WIRE SERVICE DELETED BY WESTERN UNION UP STOP ORIGINAL MESSAGE READ FLOOD IN TOMBSTONE LODE NOT TOWN STOP SEE LOCAL RETIRED NEWSMAN FRED STEINMULLER FOR DETAILS STOP HOW ARE YOU COMING WITH OK CORRAL QUESTION SAM BARCA.

  Stringer stuffed the telegram in a hip pocket in case he wound up with Steinmuller on the tip of his own tongue as well. Then he got out the card Annie Fraser had given him, asked directions to the address, and left, whistling “Roaming in the Gloaming.”

  Arizona Territory tried to make up for its torrid days with its pleasantly balmy to downright cold nights. As he ambled away from the business center a big yellow moon was rising above the inky crests of the Dragoons to the east and somewhere a night-blooming jasmine was stinking almost too sweet. The side street he was following was narrower and unpaved, with picket fences, cactus hedges, or in some cases ‘dobe walls screening the yards on either side. Despite the moonlight it seemed sort of spooky until he figured out what was wrong. There were hardly any lamps lit in the houses he passed and, this early in the evening, kids should have been playing kick the can or at least a few yard dogs should have been barking at him as he passed. It was silent as a graveyard. Tombstone might not be ghosted entire, yet. But it obviously took a lot fewer residents to run a half-shut-down business district than it had taken to work the silver mines up the slopes. In bonanza times there would have been lights along the hills over yonder, too. Mines worked around the clock, since it was twice as profitable and men working underground didn’t care whether the sun or the moon might be shining, topside. It made him feel sort of sad to think of all the folk who’d lived here and all the kids who’d played here, just a few short years ago.

  But he cheered up when he got to Annie’s ‘dobe and found she’d lit a light above her open door. As he crossed her tree-shaded yard he saw that the gal, herself, was sitting on a porch swing, off to one side in the shadows, as if she’d been expecting company.

  As he joined her she patted the seat cushions at her side and said, “I was hoping you’d stop by. I remembered that old newspaperman’s name just after you left.”

  He sat down beside her and put his hat aside as he asked her if by any chance the name was Steinmuller. She clapped her hands with delight and replied, “That’s right! Fred Steinmuller, better known as Dutchy. How did you know that?”

  He said, “My boss just wired me to look him up. It seems he sends sort of murky leads to our wire service. To be fair, it might have been the work of a careless telegrapher. The old gent seems to have been talking about a flooded mine shaft. So tell me, miner’s daughter, could a flooded mine shaft be considered news?”

  “Hardly,” she said. “The Dragoons are as full of water as silver. They had all the shafts on the pump by the time the veins pinched out. They’d have started to fill with ground water the day the last shift came out of the last pay dirt. Surely Dutchy should have known that.”

  “I reckon I’d have guessed as much, and I just got here. Do you reckon it’s too late to pay a call on the old gent?” he asked.

  She nodded. “It would be, by the time you could get to his place. He lives way up Turkey Creek Road, an hour or more on horseback. I naturally wrote his RFD down for you as soon as I remembered his name and looked his address up in our card index. You’d never find the place in the dark. Why don’t you wait until morning?”

  Stringer said he was willing. She said something in the Gaelic and leaped up to dash inside. He thought she was going to get the old man’s address for him, but she sure seemed to take some time looking for it. It made more sense when she returned with coffee and marble cake. As she placed the tray on a bitty wrought-iron stand she hauled away from the ‘dobe wall Stringer warned her, “You’d best go easy on the Gaelic around me. I only know a few phrases and the usual cuss words. A gal could get in trouble with me, trying to hold a conversation with me in the old lingo.”

  As she poured him a cup she sighed, saying, “Oh, dear, I was hoping to brush up on my Gaelic. You’d be surprised at how few Scots we have in these parts.”

  He said, “No I wouldn’t. That’s why I don’t strain too hard to recall the songs my mother sang to me. My uncle Don MacKail has the Gaelic. Lord knows why. My dad always said that learning the Gaelic was a lot like learning to play the bagpipes. It takes a heap of study and, after you learn it, nobody wants to listen to you.”

  She asked, “Cream and sugar and don’t you care about your heritage, Stuart?”

  He shook his head, telling her, “I like it black and my heritage is native son. My grandfather was a forty-niner who found more grass than gold in the California hills. So he took to raising beef for the boys who panned for color and, in the end, I suspect he got more gold out of them there hills than they did. My elders used to jaw about the old country a lot, of course. My Uncle Don once accused a Mexican horse thief of being a Campbell. But, I dunno, most of the kids I grew up with in Calaveras County spoke plain American, Spanish, or Miwok. There’s not much of a demand for fluency in Miwok, these days, either.”

  She sniffed primly and poured a cup for herself, lacing it with lots of cream and sugar, as she decided, “Maybe it’s because both my parents left Inverness later. They sure missed the Highlands, to hear them talk when I was little. I mean to go there, one day. I’ve only seen pictures, but it looks so pretty.”

  He sipped some of his coffee. It was a little weak, but he had no reason to stay up late, anyway. He said, “I talked to a California Irishman one time. Ireland’s not all that far from Scotland, you know. Anyhow, he told me he’d saved up some money to go back and visit the town his people had been driven from and all by the Protestants and potatoes. He said once he got there he couldn’t wait to get back. It was cold and clammy in high summer and the food was just awful.”

  He reached for a piece of marble cake, tasted it, and added, “This is swell. Even if it wasn’t, it has to have oatmeal beat. That’s all you get to eat in Scotland, save for maybe mutton or smoked herring, if you’re rich. Sentiment’s all right, up to a point, I reckon. But if our ancestors had found things all that grand in the old countries, they’d have never bothered to take this one away from the Indians.”

  She stared off into the distance as she allowed he might be right, from a purely practical sense. But then, sighing she said, “It’s so dull and tedious here in Tombstone. Have you ever read The Fair Maid of Perth, by Sir Walter Scott? Life may have been hard in the old days of the Highland clans, but you have to admit things were more romantic, then.”

  He washed down some cake with black coffee before he told her, “I doubt
it. Old Walter Scott was a lowlander, writing long after the Battle of the North Inch, in the comfort of his snug and dry study. He never had to traipse around barefoot in wet heather with soggy and likely stinky kilts over his goose bumps. As for that battle in that book, Scott got the facts all wrong. That fight was between two different clans entire.”

  He brightened, adding, “You know what? Those early Victorian novels about the deadly doings of the Highland clans were a heap like what’s been happening here more recent. A lot of folk who were there are still alive, and they’re already making up a mess of myths about recently dead or still living gunslicks. My fool feature editor wants me to write up a whopper about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral because a gunfight in a vacant lot sounds sort of silly. I’m tempted just to cite old Wyatt’s official version and let it go at that. Lord knows we could both use the money.”

  She didn’t seem interested in anything that had ever taken place in Tombstone. She’d put her cup and saucer down to just lean back in the swing, languorously, as she murmured, sort of teasingly, “Och, pugga mi agus pugga mi gu math.”

  He put down his own cup, took her in his arms, and kissed her as good as he knew how. She struggled at first, then kissed him back the same way. But when they came up for air she giggled, red-faced, and said, “I thought you said you didn’t have the Gaelic.”

  He went on holding her, but his voice was stern as he replied, “I told you a gal could get in trouble with me, that way. If you didn’t want me to kiss you, why did you ask me to?”

  She fluttered her lashes and answered in a small confused tone, “I was just having fun with you. I mean, I didn’t think you’d understand and, even if you did, you should have understood I was just making fun of you.”

  He said, “I’d rather you had fun with me than of me,” and kissed her some more. He felt pretty sure they were both having fun.

  But she twisted her lips from his and pleaded, weakly, “Oh, don’t. Please don’t. You’re making me feel so wicked and…” Then she sighed. “My late mother warned me about you Lochaber men.” Then she kissed him instead of waiting to be kissed. But when he unpinned her hair she gasped, “I beg your pardon, sir! Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  He let go of her and said, soberly, “You’re right. I’d best go back to the Cosmopolitan and see if they ever found me a new mattress.”

  She blinked at him in the soft light. “I give up. Don’t they usually provide proper hotel beds in a hotel?”

  “Sure. Only this afternoon someone blew the one I had all to feather fluff with dynamite. I wasn’t in it, of course. So they may have just been funning. If worse comes to worst I can always find me another place to bunk. So could I have Fred Steinmuller’s address, now?”

  She sat up straighter, her unpinned auburn hair spilling down to the porch swing seat as he’d suspected it might. “I’ll get it, if you simply can’t stand my company another minute,” she sulked.

  He smiled knowingly at her and replied, “You know all too well how much I enjoy your company and mayhaps vice versa. But there’s no sense getting all worked up over nothing, so—”

  “Are you calling me a nothing?” she cut in, eyes blazing out of focus without her specs to guide them.

  He said, soothingly, “Of course you ain’t a nothing. You’re a high-toned lady librarian and I don’t even have a library card.”

  Eyebrow raised, she demanded, “Oh? And I suppose that means you think I’m just a silly little bookworm whose only experience with lovemaking comes from reading about it?”

  He chuckled wearily. “Hold your fire. I surrender unconditional. I never meant to imply you kissed like a book, Miss Annie.”

  She said, “You’d better not! I guess I know who’s small-town and who isn’t, around here!” Then she kissed him again, harder than before, and when she added a French accent to her kissing it seemed only natural for him to fondle her more intimately as they set the swing to swaying on its chains. But, just as he was beginning to wonder how far one could go on a porch swing, assuming it was possible, she gasped, “Not out here, you fool!” So he picked her up in his arms and headed for the open door with her as she grinned up at him like a kid swiping apples to ask, “Do you still think I’m just a simple country girl?”

  As he carried her inside and paused to get his bearings, he told her, “I don’t know what you might be, save for being beautiful, but I can’t wait to find out!”

  She said, “Neither can I. It’s the doorway to the left of the fireplace, darling!”

  He carried her through it and, sure enough, found a big old four-poster to lower her down to. As he dropped atop her to kiss her some more she giggled and said, “Now you’re sorry you’re not wearing kilts, I’ll bet. Get out of those jeans this instant and get rid of your spurs and gun belt while you’re at it. I can manage this summer dress without your help.”

  She sure could, he saw, as she beat him at stripping, easily, and lay back naked and expectantly atop the counterpane in the spreading auburn mist of her long hair. There was just enough soft lamplight through her open bedroom doorway to create a vision of loveliness without having to worry about any warts or wrinkles she might have had. As he lowered his own nude body against hers it hardly seemed likely there was a single blemish on her soft creamy skin. As he entered her she gasped in mingled desire and surprise. Then with a contented sigh she said, “I knew I was waiting for a Highland laddy!” and proceeded to prove by her pelvic gyrations that she was either making that up, or that one hell of a lot of Scotsmen had passed through Tombstone in her time.

  He didn’t make any rude comments, later, when she felt it was time to sob about losing her fool head and that she’d just never, never—or hardly ever—did this sort of thing with any other man she’d barely met. That was the trouble with librarians. They read too many romantic novels, where hardly anyone got to screw just for pleasure. When she asked if he’d respect her in the morning he was sport enough to allow he surely would and that inspired her to get on top. She sure looked pretty up there, with her long auburn hair flying all over the place as her perky breasts bounced up and down. Then he rolled her over to finish right, with an elbow hooked under both of her knees, and she said it made her feel grand to be treated so romantic, even if this was all his fault.

  Nothing that good could last forever, or even as long as he wanted it to. So the time came for Stringer to roll a smoke and share it with her while their bodies dried and they fought for their second winds. She was a sport about smoking Bull Durham. But it got sort of tedious to hear her go on and on about the way he’d taken advantage of her weak nature. So he told her he loved her in the Gaelic, figuring that wouldn’t prey on his conscience as much when the time came to move on.

  That prompted her to cuddle closer, but, as if she’d read his mind, she sighed and said, “That’s easy enough to say, at times like these. But what happens when it’s time for you to go back to San Francisco, Stuart?”

  He shrugged. “At the rate I’m going, I’ll be stuck here indefinite. If I don’t watch my step, I may wind up here permanent. By the way, is that Boot Hill tale about Tombstone for real?”

  It worked. It got her off the subject of his leaving as she told him, “Of course not. Naturally there’s a potter’s field for dead paupers, but would you like to be the undertaker who had to tell someone like Old Man Clanton that his dear dead son, Billy, wasn’t good enough to be buried among gentlefolk?”

  “That’s what I thought. Who do you reckon put up those plaques, pointing out all sorts of local wonders that never was?”

  She yawned and snuggled closer. “The local chamber of commerce, of course. We were starting to get a lot of curious visitors before they shut down the rail spur. Some cross-country travelers just don’t seem to think they’ve crossed the country if they can’t say they saw the Grand Canyon or at least the O.K. Corral.”

  As he snuffed out their smoke he mused, half to himself, “Some folk sure are funny. The first
time I was through Cheyenne they were arguing a bond issue to pave the streets, put in electric lights, and raise the town to modern standards or more so. But the last time I was there, covering their big rodeo, they were holding covered-wagon races in the streets and all the drug store clerks in town were clanging spurs, spitting tobacco, and shooting up streetlamps.”

  She didn’t answer. She was asleep, which was only fair, when one considered all the exercise they’d just indulged in.

  He lay his head back and closed his own eyes. But sleep just wouldn’t come. It was one thing to doze off after a day well spent in a library, with nothing to worry about worse than folk bringing books in late. It was another thing entire to sleep the sleep of the just when someone seemed out to kill you, and you had no idea who it might be, or why.

  Miss Annie had been right about one thing. He’d have never been able to find old Fred Steinmuller’s place in the dark. Even as Stringer rode Blue Ribbon up the Turkey Creek Road in the crisp morning light he was beginning to think he’d been given the wrong directions. The gravel stream bed to his left as he rode along one rut of the wagon trace looked more like a dry wash than a creek, and if there were any turkeys about they were living on mesquite and cheat grass. He could see by bigger tree stumps up the slopes to either side that there’d been a time when these hills had been timbered with juniper and oak, both of which provided mast in the form of nuts and seeds. But the timber had been cut for mine props and no doubt many a turkey had wound up in a miner’s pot. Semi-arid hill country took a long time to recover, even when left alone by man. The opportunistic mesquite had made it back to high chaparral, and cheat grass would grow in pavement cracks if you didn’t watch out. But it would be many a year, even with the silver mines abandoned, before there’d be timber worth cutting in these parts again.

  The trail wound around a big clump of prickly pear, eight to ten feet high, and then, even before he could see where all the noise was coming from, a mule was bawling its fool head off at Stringer or, more likely, his pony.