Stringer and the Wild Bunch

by Lou Cameron

  “Might be stuck up there overnight,” he tried. “It can get cold up there after dark.”

  She said, “Oh,” and began to unfasten the roll and saddle bags from her own rig.

  “Damn it, Irish,” he said.

  “Damn me no damns,” she replied. “I rode all this way for a story, and you don’t have to worry about me. I can look after myself. Lord knows I’ve had to, growing up on North Beach.”

  “Look,” he said, “I can’t manhandle you and all this gear over the rocks ahead, and some of them get sort of ferocious. Worse yet, if you get stuck halfway, you’ll just have to stay stuck for quite a spell. We don’t have much light left to work with, and that means you could wind up spending the night, alone, stuck on a rock in a dark spooky canyon.”

  “I’ll shoot myself,” she said. “Get going. You’re right about it being close to sundown.”

  He swore, tethered her horse for her—since she didn’t seem to have the brains to do it herself—and took the lead. The climb wasn’t so bad at first. That gave a man time to think. As he did so, he chuckled and called back, “All right, you got me to tether your mount for you, Cleopatra. But from now on you’re on your own. Watch that slab of sandstone between us, it’s trying to be a rocking chair, and damn, there I went and did it again.”

  She laughed. “What’s the use of having womanly charms if a girl’s not allowed to enslave you brutes with them? How much farther do we have to go?”

  “We haven’t even started,” he said. “No fooling, Irish, this is no place for the fair sex. Why don’t you be a good girl and go back to the others? They’re a lot more likely to see real action than I am.”

  “I’ve been riding with them for two days, MacKail, and all I’ve seen them do so far is spit tobacco juice and stare down at the ground. Who do you think you’re fooling? From up top we’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the whole affair. Damn, I wish I had a camera. Maybe one of those motion picture ones Edison makes. I don’t think anyone’s ever made a motion picture of a real wild west gunfight. Do you?”

  He chuckled. “A lot of ‘em would no doubt go down in history different if they were recorded on film. Most of the famous shootouts, so far, have been written up by reporters who weren’t there and had to take the word of the winning side. I’ve seen some nickelodeon versions of our national Iliad, and having seen the real thing as well, I had to chuckle some.”

  She tried to follow him over a big boulder, swore like a man, and hoisted her skirts shockingly to rejoin him on the far side, gear and all. “What are you staring at?” she asked. “I told you I was packing a garter gun.”

  He chuckled. “I can’t wait till we get to some worse places I know of, up ahead. I hope you’re wearing underdrawers.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Are you afraid you’ll see something neither of us has ever seen before? Keep moving, damn it. I don’t like the looks of that sky above us.”

  He glanced up as he kept climbing. The sky was almost cloudless, but the few bits of fluff they could see from the canyon bottom were blushing as if they’d peeked up Kathy’s skirts as well. He told her, “Sunsets last a spell at this latitude and altitude. It won’t be really dark until after nine. Hand me those damned saddlebags. You’re never going to make it with that load, and it’s too late for you to turn back now.”

  She dimpled up at him as she passed the twin bags over a big rock to him.

  “I know,” he said. “Even when we know the fair sex is doing it to us, we just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Sometimes we don’t either,” she replied. “Help me over this rock, damn it.”

  He did. Her small delicate-looking hand was as strong as many a man’s as she clung to his and hooked a shapely leg and high-button shoe over the boulder. He couldn’t be sure, in this tricky light, but if she was wearing underdrawers, they had to be mighty short and dark. As they moved up a less awkward stretch, she asked, “Do you mind if I ask you something about yourself I’ve never been able to fathom, Stringer?”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “I’ve read your stuff. It’s good, even if you do work for the Sun. It’s literate too. You even use words like Iliad when you don’t think any cowboys are looking.”

  “So what?” he replied. “I took a degree in English Lit at Stanford, and my editor, Sam Barca, gives me hell when I spell dumb.”

  “But you talk like a cowhand,” she said. “How come?”

  “I was raised as a cowhand. How else would you expect me to talk, with your Irish brogue?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she almost snapped. “I don’t have a brogue, and I’ll have you know I speak the King’s English with proper grammar as well!”

  He helped her over another rock as he chuckled. “All right, you talk good English with a touch of the blarney. My point is that it doesn’t show, in writing. Nobody writes the way they talk or talks the way they write, unless they’re mighty filled with themselves. Mark Twain speaks English high-toned as any American ought to, and writes dialogue more rustic than anyone I grew up with in the Mother Lode country. Old Jack London talks like a guttersnipe, which is only fair when you consider where he grew up, and uses such fancy words in his writing, it’s a wonder he can spell ‘em. You can’t judge a book by its cover, or the author by his grammar. I’ve yet to meet your kinsman, Conan Doyle, but they say he talks more Irish than old Sherlock Holmes.”

  She grunted her way over a rock he didn’t think she needed to be helped over before she said, “Sure and we’re not after being related to thim Doyles with their lace-curtain ways. I think I follows your drift, now that I study on it.”

  He laughed. “You got your brogue down pat, but you’re not too convincing talking cow. What have you got in these fool saddlebags? They weigh a ton.”

  “That’s no doubt why I charmed you into carrying them for me,” she said. “I didn’t know how long we’d be on the trail. So don’t be nosy about my feminine secrets. If you’re very good, I may share some Bushmills I brought along for snakebite. I thought you said this damned canyon leads somewhere. How much higher can these damned old Rockies go?”

  “Hell, we’re well below timberline,” he said. “Wait right here a spell, with that gun out, just in case. I want to see if someone shoots my head off when I stick it up over the rimrock.”

  She didn’t argue. He left all but the Winchester with her and struggled up the last fifty yards, cursing and churning dust and gravel with his boots. When he hooked his elbow and the rifle over the last of the rock, he saw that he could see for miles and that they had the flat top to themselves after all. By the time he had Kathy and their gear topside, the sun was really fixing to go down behind the purple ridges to their west.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” she said, clapping her hands.

  Stringer stared morosely at what he might have considered the beautiful sunset at other times. Then he gathered up his own load and growled, “Come on, if you’re coming.”

  She stopped, gathered up her saddlebags, and draped them over her shoulder to hang down front and back as she skipped after him across the thin soil and slick rock in her high-buttons. “Roaming in the gloaming sounds better if one’s not afraid of heights,” she said. “How high are we right now, anyway?”

  “Above sea level? Couple of miles, I reckon. But don’t worry, you’ll stop short by the time you fall two or three hundred feet.”

  She told him to remind her not to fall off the mesa, and asked where they were going when he headed inland through the scattered soap weed.

  “I’m reminding you not to fall,” he said. “The edge of this tabletop is jagged as hell. We have to work around some other clefts and canyons. I have to allow it’s a lot easier in the daytime, though.”

  “Do you call this daylight?” she asked. ‘That sun’s nearly down now.”

  He told her she ought to try it up here by moonlight. Then he said, “Keep it down to a roar. I’d like to let Kid Curry guess we’re up here, and I have to poke a
bout some for his particular canyon.”

  So they didn’t speak for a time. Stringer was a mite turned around, not having been up here before with the low rays of the setting sun painting everything orange and purple. The moonlight he’d worked with last time had cast all the shadows the opposite way. But then he found the box canyon he’d climbed out of, closer than he’d expected, and dropped to his hands and knees to crawl the last few yards.

  The infernal girl crawled right beside him. So they both got to look over and down. “My God,” Kathy gasped, “you say you scaled those cliffs in the dark?”

  “Not all of ‘em,” he said. “Just the one I had to climb. Now hush and let me see if I can figure out what’s down there now.”

  It was hard to do that, for while the top of the mesa was still sunlit, the depths of the box canyon were shaded deep purple, and rocks were surprisingly hard to tell from anything more important in such tricky light. There were a lot of rocks of all sizes and shapes scattered across the canyon floor, most along the bases of the cliffs, of course, but some out in the middle. There were no fires going down there now.

  “There, by that rock that looks sort of like a sea lion,” Kathy murmured. “Isn’t that a white sombrero?”

  “More like a Stetson,” he said. “But after that you got it right. He’s covering the mouth of the canyon from behind that boulder.”

  He stared up the other way, where they’d had the horses during his earlier visit. He counted four or five forms that seemed too dark for boulders and shaped about right for horses. When one of them moved, his eyes suddenly focused better. “I didn’t think Kid Curry was a man who inspired loyalty,” he said. “There can’t be more than a half dozen or so of ‘em left. Curry’s so considerate that he’s posted one by the entrance in a sort of Arapaho stakeout while the boss and the others get to fort up with their backs to the back wall beyond the canyon creek.”

  “Oh, I see them now,” Kathy said. “Isn’t it surprising how much easier it is to see a man behind a boulder when you’re way up here like this?”

  “No. That’s why I came up here. I wish we had a Bell telephone line to that posse outside. That old boy near the entrance would likely run back all the way to the others if he saw a determined rush coming his way. Once the posse riders made it up to the middle of the canyon where she widens out, they could just hunker down and lay siege until even Kid Curry has to figure out it’s hopeless.”

  “Even I can see the fix they’re in,” she said, “and my paper refused to let me cover the war in Cuba. Just what do you want me to tell the posse, Stringer?”

  “Forget it. You’d never make it all the way back to ‘em before dark. I’ve got enough to worry about without having to picture you in that other canyon with a busted leg or worse.”

  She moved back, groped for her saddlebags, and opened one to produce a lady’s purse. Then she opened that and got out a bitty makeup mirror, saying, “I told you I’ve been listening to those other boys spit and mutter. One of them said something about being in the Signal Corps during the war, and naturally I know Morse.”

  He stared blankly at her, then at the setting sun on the far side of the posse. “Thunderation! It might work!”

  She replied demurely that there was only one way to find out. As she got to her feet, he followed her close to the edge of the mesa. When they looked down and out a piece, they could see the posse spread out along the nearest rise, dismounted, a lot better than anyone at ground level could have.

  As Kathy raised her mirror, he said, “First let’s see whether we’re wasting our time or not. Signal that if anyone’s picking up your gleaming dots and dashes he should fire his gun, once.”

  Kathy held the mirror higher to catch the half-sunk sun with it and experimented until she was bouncing orange light off the nearby edge of the rimrock. “I think I’ve got the sun in their eyes now,” she said. “Let’s see if I’m right.”

  She didn’t have a shutter for her improvised heliograph, but by simply tilting it so the beam shot somewhere else, she was able to send dots and dashes, assuming she had the angle figured in the first place and that anyone was looking up this way in the second.

  When one of the posse riders suddenly fired straight up, she laughed at the orange-and-purple smoke cloud above the posse. “You were saying, sir?”

  Stringer grinned. “One guard only, posted just inside. Five or six others forted on the back slope, boxed. Say I’m fixing to do something about that one guard, but not to count on it. They can’t answer. So what happens now is up to them.”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish the message as he legged it back to the edge of the canyon, flopped down on his belly, and propped the Winchester over the edge and down. He could barely see that sealion-shaped rock, and could only guess if anyone was still behind it. He fired anyway, three times, and then someone down there was yelling, and judging by the sounds of crunching gravel, running pretty good as well. Then a rifle round spanged grit in his face as it hit just below him. He rolled back, spitting and cussing.

  Kathy Doyle came over to him about the same time. “What was that all about? Those posse men are charging like infantry right now and—”

  “Down!” he snapped as another rifle round hummed harmlessly over them from somewhere down below. She didn’t take orders worth spit, and called him a brute when he swept her high-buttons out from under her with his boot and sat her on her bustle, if she’d been wearing a bustle.

  “We can’t see them in the dark half as well as they can see us against the gloaming sky,” he said. “Don’t you ever do as you’re told, Irish?”

  “Not since I’ve been able to lick my old man. I want to see what’s going on down there, damn it!”

  He sat up and grabbed her as she started to rise. “Later. Once we’ve only got stars outlining our fool heads. I doubt either side can do much serious shooting down in that gloomy hole in the ground right now.”

  As if to make a liar out of him, the sound of rapid fire rose from the depths of the canyon. But when she struggled to get in on it, he shook her and insisted, “That’s too much shooting for anyone to be aiming serious. You’ll just catch a frustrated train robber’s shot with your pretty face if you offer him any sensible target to shoot at right now.” Then, because it was such a pretty face and because she kept struggling with him, Stringer kissed her and got a better grip on her at the same time.

  Kathy kissed back, with as much enthusiasm as she showed about stealing stories from poor helpless male reporters. Then they had to come up for air, and she stared curiously at him in the soft sunset light. “Why did you do that?” she asked conversationally. “I didn’t ride all this way to make love to a rival, damn it.”

  “I told you we’d share the story,” he said. “There’s enough news here for both our papers, and for once the papers will get it right. What happened at the O.K. Corral still depends on whether you study old clippings from the Nugget or the Epitaph. Neither paper had a reporter on the scene when whatever happened happened. This has to be a bigger fight than the one at the O.K. Corral, which never happened there, by the way. Stick with me, baby, and your byline may go down in history.”

  “All right. But let go of me. They don’t seem to be shooting down there anymore. Do you think it could already be over?”

  He grimaced at the sunset, or its afterglow, now that the sun was really gone for good. “Not hardly,” he told her. “What we just heard was the posse charging in and fanning out. I’ll let you peek once it’s darker. Meanwhile, take my word that Kid Curry and his boys are forted against the back walls of the box and that the posse riders have formed a siege line to keep ‘em boxed. They’ll have taken cover hither and yon at close but fairly safe rifle range, say one or two hundred yards.”

  “Why isn’t anyone shooting, then?” she asked.

  “It’s dumb to shoot at targets you can’t see. So this is where it gets tedious for a spell. Even when it’s light again, it’ll likely be a standoff un
til such time as Curry and his pals get desperate enough to go for broke or sensible enough to give up.”

  She wrinkled her pert nose. “Heavens, how long do you think we’ll be stuck up here, then?”

  “Depends on Curry’s canteens and nerves. Overnight at least. That’s why I brought my bedroll along.”

  “Oh,” she said, and dug in her saddlebags some more as she added, “I like to think ahead too. I’d better get you drunk if I have to share a bedroll with you. That’s all you’re going to get from me, you know.”

  He said it was early yet. But he took the Bushmills with a nod of thanks, had a sip, and wheezed, “Smoooth.” Then he put the fire out with canteen water.

  She called him a sissy and took hers neat, muttering, “I might have known a Scotchman would ruin good whiskey with water.”

  He laughed. “Bite your tongue. The only time Cromwell was really skunked was when Highlanders from Lochaber and Irish troops from Ulster ganged up on him at Inverlochy.”

  He rolled over to the gear he’d dropped and began to unroll Tom the trader’s bedding. “Highland and Irish rebels make a good team,” he added, “if only you folk would get your Gaelic right. But those old stories were doubtless reported sloppy as well. I wonder if years from now anyone will know what really happened here, no matter how careful we report it. My rewrite editor is a pure fool for adding details that sound newsworthy, and if I leave anything out, he never asks me. He just makes one up to fit the blank space.”

  He spread the bedroll out on the firm surface. “Oh, Lord, I might have known such a fancy cuss would have lavender-scented sheets rolled up to go camping. They feel clean, at least. We won’t get too stunk up with lavender if we keep our duds on, I reckon.”

  She moved over with her bottle to recline beside him on the softer but not that soft padding. “Anything has to be an improvement over those onions you’ve been eating,” she said. “Where did you eat all those onions, anyway?”

  He muttered he’d found some growing wild as he considered how old Tanya must have made out. He asked the gal with him at the moment if she knew of any other posses out after the train robbers.