by Lou Cameron
He couldn’t just walk up to the mine adit and twist a door bell. But there was always the chance that no one else knew the way to the back door. Opal had been the only member of the Wild Bunch he’d ever told about that hole farther up. He nodded, eased back up over the rise, and made tracks. Once he judged he was out of line with the adit, he moved back over the ridge and made for the hole he and Opal had admired. Nobody had spotted him by the time he flopped facedown in the grass with his head staring straight down the murky shaft. He sniffed and detected wood smoke and…perfume? Somewhere below, a high-pitched voice that jibed with violet stink-pretty was bitching about something. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. That meant she wasn’t directly under him. A male voice answered, even more distorted. That meant he was not as deep in the mine as the gal, and when she bitched again, she seemed farther away. So Stringer lay the Winchester in the grass and started easing down the sinkhole to see who she was and what she was bitching about. Old Tanya had smelled more like onions than violets, and he’d have seen her dapple-gray out front if she’d made it to a posse holed up in a mine for some reason.
Getting down safely was easier to consider than to manage. But Stringer made it most of the way before he dislodged a fist-sized rock with his boot and sent it crashing down on the rocks below.
He froze, clinging to the walls like a bat, wondering just how a man in such a ridiculous position could draw a sidearm if he had to in a hurry. But as it turned out, he didn’t have to, yet.
A female voice called out, “What was that?” and some gent, bless him, replied, “A falling rock, of course. You saw them rats around the remains of old Banger and Will, remember?”
She sort of sobbed she’d never forget, and Stringer was glad he’d left the bodies between the rock pile and the entrance. If they knew who the dead men were, they had to be Wild Bunch. It was still up for grabs what even gals who rode with bandits were doing in this hole in the ground.
Stringer lowered himself the rest of the way as quietly as he could. But when a rock crunched under him as he eased down off the rock pile at the bottom of the cave-in, that same sharp-eared shemale called out, “Listen! There’s somebody back there, I tell you.”
But this time it was another gal who told her, “Sure it is. Which one of them rat-eaten cadavers do you figure just got up, boogy-boogy-boogy?”
“Somebody ought to go back yonder and make sure we’re alone in here,” the first gal protested.
The male who’d spoken before laughed. “You just do that, Shirl. My ears is still ringing from the scream you gave when you went back there to take a squat and seen them two dead boys. I warned you not to go deep in this mine. It’s old and half rotted and filled with rats. Big ones, judging from all the noise they’re making. It’s the front end of this hidey-hole we got to worry about. How are we doing out front, Tom?”
“So far so good,” a more distant voice called back.
Hunkered as he was against the blackness of the mine, Stringer could make them out, sort of, against the daylight from the adit and the glow of the small fire they’d built on the ashes of the last one.
There were two men and four women. The outlaw whores and one man were easy pickings around the fire. The one posted near the exit was the problem, cuss his cautious hide.
Then one of the gals, bless her, called out, “These spuds look done, Tom,” and the lookout turned to walk back and join them at the fire. Stringer recognized him by the orange glow as the trader, Tom, who’d brought corn liquor and doubtless other items of luxury to the canyon camp. It was now more obvious what they were doing here. Kid Curry hadn’t made enough on that last train robbery to buy undivided loyalty.
Stringer rose, .45 in hand, to move up the shaft toward the fire. He didn’t make enough noise for even the sharp-eared gal to detect. But since he and Tom were facing one another from opposing sides of the fire, Stringer could only get so close before the trader spotted him looming against the darkness like a ghost. So then old Tom acted dumb as hell.
Stringer fired as the older man slapped leather. The noise was deafening in the confined space, and all four gals screamed even before they could have noticed old Tom lay dead on his back like that. “Freeze!” Stringer yelled, and then, as all five of them did, he moved through his own reeking gun smoke to cover the now terrified survivors.
He saw that the remaining male with the painted bawds was the young wrangler from Kid Curry’s camp. He nodded pleasantly. “I owe you, boy, and I was brought up to be polite to ladies. So just unbuckle your gun rig and we may be able to work something out.”
The kid did as he was told. As he tossed his gun rig far away, like something disgusting, he almost sobbed, “Don’t kill us, MacKail. None of these gals are packing guns, and I never took no actual part in that train robbery.”
Stringer nodded. “That’s what I just said. How many other camp followers have lit out by now?”
“Just about everyone who could,” one of the whores said. “Kid Curry’s acting crazy. I’ve never pulled a hold-up in my life, and even I can see that box canyon he’s forted up in is a death trap!”
Stringer nodded again. “He’s no doubt hoping the law won’t find him there. But I admire your common sense, ma’am. Did I hear mention pf spuds just now?”
The nearest whore hastily raked a couple of potatoes from the hot coals with a stick. “They’re all yours,” she said, “if you want ‘em. I’ve somehow lost my appetite all of a sudden.”
Stringer left them where they were, to cool for now, and told them all, “I think I see what you folk were planning. It was sort of dumb. When you’re not wanted serious by the law, it’s best not to meet up with a posse after dark. Do any of you have wanted paper posted on you, direct?”
Even the kid shook his head. “There you go,” Stringer said. “No posse chasing train robbers is likely to waste much time on a mess of whores and their pimp. I’m sorry I have to put it that way, but that’s what you look like and that’s what you’ll let ‘em take you for if you’ve a lick of sense. Cut this sneaky act and ride direct for civilization by broad day while there’s still some left. You’re not half as likely to get shot by mistake as if you bump into anyone in the dark. I haven’t time to make up stories for you. You can no doubt make up your own as you ride. I want you to start now. Ladies first.”
As they all got to their feet, Stringer herded them out the adit. Then he told the young wrangler, “Leave Tom’s mount here and get out of here pronto with the gals and the other ponies. I haven’t time to waste on moral lectures either. So let’s just hope you learned a good lesson, son. Since I don’t know your name, I won’t be able to tell the law how silly you’ve been acting. But keep it up and sooner or later you won’t be so young and pretty, and someone like me is sure to blow you away. I want you to study on a parting comment I have to offer, between now and the next gun you pick up. I just got the drop on you, easy, and I’m not even a paid-up peace officer.”
The young wrangler said he followed Stringer’s drift. So the tall newspaperman waited until the five of them had mounted up and ridden on. Then he ducked back inside, got the crooked outlaw trader’s money belt, the spuds, and rode on himself, aboard the dead man’s fine chestnut gelding. He’d figured old Tom would be riding the best pony in the lot. Stringer only remembered the way he’d come north, more or less, with the train robbers. So he was looking for that white-water stream, hoping it would be easier to ride up than down, when a long ragged line of other riders broke cover from the spruce ahead. He could see why they weren’t worried about him. There had to be close to fifty of them. He became less worried when he spotted sunlight glinting off vest badges and noticed at least one of the posse riders was, for land’s sake, riding sidesaddle.
He reined in and raised his hands politely before anyone could yell at him to do so. His lonesome as well as reasonable attitude seemed to mollify them some. Nobody shot at him as they closed in to circle him, although a couple made surly r
emarks about ropes and oak trees they’d passed just recently.
Before too many could agree to the notion, Stringer called out, “I was on that train, not robbing it. My handle is Stuart MacKail and I’m a stringer for the San Francisco Sun. I can prove it if you boys won’t shoot me for reaching for my wallet.”
The thick-set individual sporting a county badge on his greasy leather vest said, “You can tell your tale to the judge, stranger. We ain’t got time to waste, and now you’ll be riding with us cuffed to the horn as we check out an old mine one of the cowhands from around here just recalled.”
“They’re not there,” Stringer said. “I know where they are, or at least the hard core of the gang. But I’m not sure I want to tell you, if you’re going to act dumb. Kid Curry is mad at me. I’m not going anywheres near him, handcuffed.”
The possed leader stared thoughtfully at him, then sighed. “Well, I hate to drag a man along a rock trail. But as you say you knows where Kid Curry might be right now, you’re just going to have to tell us, and it’s up to me to decide who wears handcuffs or not in these parts.”
Things might have turned out uglier, had not the lady riding with them moved up the line just then to dimple at Stringer sweetly. “It’s all right, I know this man,” she said. “Like me, he’s a member of the Fourth Estate.”
The posse leader sighed. “I don’t know what estate you live on, Miss Doyle, but I sure wish you’d go home. Like I keep telling you, this is a manhunt, not a picnic. You say you can vouch for this saddle tramp, ma’am?”
Kathy Doyle of the San Francisco Examiner, cuss her pretty hide and paper, sweetly replied, “Stringer and I have been professional rivals for some time. The last time we were on the same story, he scooped me, the mean thing. But that’s all right. I think I’m two scoops ahead of him.”
The burly deputy scowled. “Are we talking about newspapers or ice cream?” Then he turned to Stringer and growled, “All right. But if I don’t handcuff you, will you talk some` sense to this little lady, ah, Stringer?”
Stringer regarded Kathy Doyle more morosely than most men. were inclined to, before they’d noticed how willful she could get. The pesky reporter from the infernal Examiner looked more like a real Gibson Girl than most of the young gals trying to. Right now she had a bitty black derby perched atop her upswept auburn hair, and her English riding outfit looked out of place in, for God’s sake, Colorado. But despite her cameo features and slender build, there was a mighty stubborn set to her Celtic jaw. Stringer had seen her green Irish eyes blaze tiger ferocious one time, as he’d tried to stop her from beating up a longshoreman on the Barbary Coast back in Frisco.
“I can’t promise anything about this pretty sass, pard,” he told the deputy. “Bigger men than me have tried and failed. Meanwhile, if you boys want to get to Kid Curry before sundown, we’ve got some riding to do.”
So they rode. Now that Stringer had been wandering about these parts for some time, he had the grain of the land set better in his mind and was able to beeline for that canyon area. During a short trail break, one of the local cowhands protested that they were hunting snipe with night coming on. “There’s nothing out thataways but badlands and bad water,” he said. “Besides that, when that rascal was working with us as Tap Duncan, it was way the hell south of here. He’d have had no call to hunt strays up this way.”
“I won’t argue that,” Stringer replied. “He wasn’t hunting strays all the times he might have said he was. He was hunting for hideouts and, like you, he figured no local riders would know much about badlands no sensible cow would be interested in. I know where we are now, and I know where that canyon I told you all about is. If you boys want to turn back, I’ll be proud to turn back with you. I’m not about to go after the Wild Bunch alone. If I thought I could take ‘em solo, I wouldn’t have been running from ‘em when I run into you. Kid Curry owes me for a friend of mine.”
The burly leader growled, “The rascal owes lots of folk for lots of friends. I figure he’d have at least forty notches on his gun if growed men really went in for that notion. Let’s go. Our brutes can rest once we get there.”
They rode on, with Stringer in the lead, or trying to be. When Kathy Doyle fell in beside him again he sighed and told her, “I sure wish you’d hang back, Irish. It’s not even safe in the rear, but at least you’d have a chance if we ride into an ambush.”
“Pooh,” she said. “I’m wearing a .25 under my garter, and I’ll have you know I know how to use it.”
He shook his head wearily. “For God’s sake, leave it there. The law wants to hang Kid Curry, not tickle him to death. Are you sticking so close because you’re afraid I’ll scoop you on this story, Irish?”
“Won’t you, if you get the chance?” she replied.
“It would serve you right,” he said. “Girl reporters have unfair advantages even when they’re not as crazy as you. But look, I’ll share the story with you if you’ll hang back out of my way like a sport. I know lots of things about the Wild Bunch that you’ll never find out on your own, see?”
“I want to be in on the kill,” she said.
“This isn’t a fox hunt,” he told her. “The lead riders are as likely to be killed as the rascals we’re hunting. Everybody riding with us will know who got killed, by the time it’s over. Act sensible and I promise we’ll both file good stories together. As I said, I picked up some background material while the gang was holding me.”
“Well, if you promise,” she said. “But what if they shoot you before you can tell me?”
He laughed. “Think of the scoop you’ll have then.”
She reined in, but called out after him, “Be careful, you big goof.”
He was. He reined in on a rise well out of rifle range from the canyon mouth. “That’s it,” he told the others. “It gets wider inside. The last time I looked, they had a lookout posted near the entrance. But the light’s starting to get tricky, and if we move in afoot, with the sun dazzle behind us as we work from cover to cover, we ought to have ‘em boxed by sundown.”
The posse leader asked what was to stop them from getting out the back way.
“I’ve told you,” Stringer said, “more than once—they’re boxed. It’s a box canyon, damn it.”
“You say you. got out of it, though,” another rider said.
“I had to,” Stringer replied. “But that’s a good point. I know how to get up on the rimrocks on foot. Just a handful of us could make sure nobody climbs out the back way. If I was to, say, drop a rock down the cliffs for their amusement, I don’t reckon any of ‘em would even try.”
The posse leader frowned thoughtfully. “We’d best all stick together until we know for sure they’re really in that canyon. You said yourself, on the trail, that some of ‘em, at least, have lit out in every direction.”
Stringer nodded. “I think we could be talking about just Kid Curry and a handful of his more serious followers. If they’ve lit out as well, all I can say is that I’m sorry and that I tried.”
“I’ll find out,” the posse leader said, and spurred his pony forward before Stringer could stop him.
When Kathy Doyle started to ride after him, Stringer caught her mount’s bridle and stopped her, saying, “Not if I have to turn you over my knee and give you that spanking you should have had a long time ago!”
The posse leader wasn’t as dumb as she was, after all. He reined in about three hundred yards from the canyon mouth and stood in his stirrups to bellow, “All right, boys, we know you’re in there. So what’s it going to be?”
A rifle round spanged dust too close to his mount’s hooves for any sensible man to stay there. So he rode back to the rest of them, shouting, “Hot damn, sorry, ma’am. I just proved one mean-hearted gent’s holed up in there, and that’s good enough for me. How many boys do you reckon it will take to secure the rocks up yonder, Stringer?”
Stringer patted the stock of his Winchester grimly. “I’ve been studying on that. Kid Curry’s onl
y chance now is a bust-out right through you boys. He might be dumb enough to try that, once he sees he has no way out. If he does, you’ll need all the firepower you can muster down here. I know the way, no horse can follow me, and if one rifle can’t stop men from climbing sheer cliffs, no rifles can. So I’d best get going, alone, before anyone in there decides he’s a human fly.”
Nobody argued. Stringer dropped down the far side of the rise to ride on, unseen from the canyon mouth the posse had covered.
He hadn’t ridden far when he noticed Kathy Doyle was riding with him. He didn’t have time to argue. He knew she’d never in this world be able to climb after him in that long riding skirt once it got steep enough, and it would serve her right for being such a pest.
CHAPTER TEN
As Stringer had noticed coming down off the mesa, the other canyon had likely been dismissed by Kid Curry to begin with because it was a bitch to explore. When he reined in just a few yards up it and began to dismount, Kathy Doyle joined him and asked how come. Stringer tethered his chestnut to a clump of sage with a little cheat grass growing close enough for the pony to mess with, if not enjoy.
“It’s a mighty tedious climb from here on up,” he told her. “But I’m hoping those owlhoots were too lazy to find out you can get to the top this way. You’d best go back to the others now. No telling how many snakes are denned among all those rocks ahead.”
It didn’t work. She dropped gracefully down from her side saddle. “Pooh, at this altitude?” she said. “You’ll not get rid of me that easy.” Stringer didn’t answer as he unlashed Tom the trader’s bedroll and canteens. Along with the Winchester, it made for an armful. Kathy asked if he was planning on homesteading atop the mesa.