Stringer and the Wild Bunch

by Lou Cameron

  Stringer found himself typing the story he meant to hand in in his head. It was easy. All he needed was the final result. He’d use that as his lead-in and then tell his readers what had led up to it. He decided not to go into his own capture and his person-to-person interview with the late or recently captured and soon to be late Kid Curry. He’d get the names of the poor saps killed or captured with him from the posse, once they got around to doing either, damn them.

  Stringer rose and moseyed over to the rim of the mesa to see if he could spot Kathy. Waving at pretty gals had to be more fun than staring down at rocks with gunslicks hiding behind them. The cliff he stood atop shaded the ground below well out across the scrubby infertile landscape. If she wanted shade at this time of the day, she could hunker down most anywheres.

  Then he spotted her, sidesaddle, heading south alone.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, then he sighed and said aloud, “Yep, the man who said perfidity’s name was Woman must have met up with a gal like Kathy Doyle in his time.”

  He watched morosely as the pretty rival reporter topped a distant rise and vanished over it without even waving adios. He hunkered down and began to roll a smoke as he stared into the hole in the wall she’d chosen, musing aloud, “All right. You could likely beat me to the nearest telegraph office by at least a few minutes if I started after you this instant. Once you had the clerk’s admiration, it would be first-come, first-served, and so there’s just no way my story could beat yours to Frisco. But how in thunder are you planning to end it, you treacherous little thing?”

  He lit his smoke and ambled back over to the canyon rim to see how they were doing. They weren’t doing a thing different.

  He lay back down, next to his Winchester, and mulled over all the pillow talk they’d enjoyed the night before during the interludes when they hadn’t been enjoying one another.

  “More fool me,” he said aloud. “That’ll teach me to tell a rival the odds are on capture. If she words it right, she just might get away with skipping the last details. She’s got the robbery, likely knows better than me just how much was taken, and thanks to me, knows where the train robbers went and that the law caught up with ‘em there.”

  He scowled down into the canyon and said, louder, “Damn you, Curry, if you go and give up now, I’ve been scooped by that sneaky gal again!”

  He didn’t want that to happen. So he grimaced, picked up the Winchester, and levered a round in the chamber to see what he could do about the pickle Kathy had left him in.

  He bounced a round off the rock White Hat was hunkered behind. From his vantage point he could hit farther over the rocks, at least. Down below, a couple of the gents he wasn’t aiming at looked up. The deputy in charge waved his hat as if he thought Stringer was doing something important and needed encouragement. He didn’t see that his modest efforts with one more gun were making that much difference. But he must have worried the boys with Kid Curry some, for now they all seemed to be shooting up at him.

  He rolled away from the rim as hot lead chewed up the rock for a spell. When he eased forward again, he chose a vantage point a little closer. He could tell at a glance that the posse riders had taken advantage of his distraction, for several of them had worked closer to the train robbers. Stringer decided one at least was too close when someone shot his hat off. But when the lawman crouched lower, ran his fingers through his hair and studied them, Stringer could see they hadn’t split his skull enough to matter.

  During a lull in the ragged fire, the deputy down there called out for Kid Curry to give it up, adding, “We got the water and ammo to last as long as it takes, Curry.”

  Kid Curry’s reply was a snarl and a blaze of rapid fire from behind his own rock. Stringer gazed down to see what they might have done with poor little Opal’s body. He spotted burned-out fires and wind-blown trash the length of the canyon, but nothing that had been alive down there the last time he’d inspected it by daylight.

  Nothing but the horses, that was. The posse had naturally left their own mounts safe outside the canyon. But the mounts the owlhoots had come in with were still tethered near them, albeit off to one side and so far unharmed. Nobody in the posse had seen fit to shoot at a likely innocent horse, and of course, Kid Curry’s bunch didn’t want them hurt.

  Stringer liked horses. On the other hand, he’d liked poor little Opal even more, and if those desperate bastards made any attempt at a bust-out, they’d have a hell of a time getting far on foot, even if one or more of ‘em made it. Stringer hesitated, snubbed out his smoke, and then, not wanting to cause needless suffering, took careful aim and killed the nearest horse with a spine shot.

  As it went down, spooking its tethered companions into a milling mass, a voice Stringer recognized as that of Kid Curry called out, “That’s inhuman, you son of a bitch!”

  So Stringer nodded, drew another careful bead, and put yet another pony in the dust. That and the screaming from all the owlhoots, now, inspired the remaining mounts to bust loose and tear off down the canyon. Stringer noted with approval that not one old cowhand in the posse was dumb enough to move until they’d run past him.

  It took a spell to get sort of quiet again. Then the deputy called out, “I hope you see where that leaves you, old son. Why don’t you just toss your guns out, and I can promise you a fair trial?”

  Kid Curry fired in the direction of the older lawman’s voice. “Try that for fair,” he yelled, “you pony-murdering son of a Siwash whore and a wolverine! For I’ve rid high and I’ve rid low and I’ve never met such dirty fighters before in all my born days!”

  The deputy called back, cheerfully, “Unlike your folk, mine was white, and married lawsome as well, you sweet-natured credit to the Indian Nation.”

  It worked. Kid Curry popped up from behind his rock to pump round after round in the deputy’s general direction. The only reason he wasn’t blown to shreds, in turn, was that he ducked back down before even Stringer could come unstuck. But as the men below him proceeded to chip away at his boulder with their own wild fire, Curry was moving to another one for shelter, and nobody but Stringer had as fine a view of his lizard crawl from one rock to the other.

  Stringer fired almost without thinking. It was only when Curry yipped like a kicked dog and scrambled out of sight again that Stringer nodded grimly down through the drifting smoke to mutter, “That was for Opal, and it’s not enough.”

  Then he had to move back to safety as they all started bouncing lead along the rimrock at once.

  By the time they’d noticed he wasn’t there anymore, or had to stop to reload, Stringer was peering down from another vantage point, with his hat set aside in hopes they might take his head against the bright sky as just another fool rock. The kitchen-match reek of gun smoke floated up to him, but nobody down in the canyon was firing anymore. They might have wanted to breathe.

  Stringer couldn’t make out any targets from his new position. They were hugging rock pretty tight down there. After a time he heard a less familiar voice call out, “Hey, Curry, are you all right?”

  There was another lull. Then Kid Curry called back, “No. I’m hit. Could one of you boys get over here with some water?”

  The one who’d asked, and now no doubt wished he hadn’t, called back, “Not hardly. It’s too far across open ground. Can you hold out until dark?”

  “I reckon I’ll have to,” Curry replied. “I ain’t bleeding too bad, but Jesus H. Christ, my mouth tastes dry.”

  Stringer was not, of course, the only enemy of the wounded outlaw with ears. But it still took him a few minutes to decide why the burly deputy had started a fire on the safe side of a big rock. Once he did, Stringer grinned down and muttered, “Oh, now that’s just plain dirty.”

  It took the boxed owlhoots a lot longer. But within, say, half an hour, even Stringer could smell the ham they were frying and the coffee they were brewing. Once the whole canyon was reeking with the tempting odors, and Kid Curry had yelled some awful things about hi
s mother again, the posse leader called back, “We’d be proud to share this with you boys, if only you’d toss them guns out first.”

  “Curry?” a plaintive voice called out.

  “You go ahead and give up if you have to,” their leader called back. “I’d just as soon die here than on the gallows like poor old Jack Ketchum. Why don’t you go on down and coffee up with the sons of bitches so they can tear your fool head off with the rope?”

  The hungry train robber didn’t throw his gun out. He rose just high enough to aim it down the canyon as he sobbed, “You no-good torturing fiends!”

  Then Stringer and a couple of posse riders peppered his rock and he dropped back down. “Hey, Curry,” he yelled. “They’re closing in on us as well as torturing us.”

  “I see the one with the red bandana,” Curry called back. “Hold your fire until you see him better. We got to make our ammo last. Do you reckon you could at least toss me a bandolier without exposing yourself?”

  Some unseen helper threw the loose ammo belt like a dead snake, and it landed almost close enough to the boulder Kid Curry was hunkered behind. But almost wasn’t good enough when Stringer blew it back out of reach with his second try. Kid Curry called out to his followers, “Get that son of a bitch up there on the rimrocks before he pisses on my damned old hat!”

  Another voice called back, “We’ve been trying to. He keeps moving about and only shows a mighty small portion of himself when he shoots back.”

  “Who’s up there, Charlie Siringo?” Curry called up. “I know Joe Lefors don’t shoot that good, and somebody mighty good at tracking has to be the author of our woes.”

  “I don’t call myself an author,” Stringer called back, cheerfully enough. “Writer is good enough for a man who works at it more regular.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Kid Curry called back, “I might have known it was you, Stringer. We should have killed you, or just left you on that damned old train.”

  “I won’t give you any argument about that,” Stringer yelled. “What did you boys do with the body of the gal who fell down the cliff the other night?”

  Kid Curry snorted in disgust. “We buried her, of course. What did you expect us to do, stuff her?”

  “I’d be obliged if you’d tell me where, Curry.”

  “I know you would. That’s why I don’t aim to tell you.”

  Stringer resisted the impulse to fire at the taunting voice. It made more sense to fire at targets one could see, and the gruff old deputy down below was even taunting Stringer now with the smell of all that cooking.

  Stringer moved back to the bedroll, rummaged out a can of tomatoes, and found it helped some. Then he had a nastier idea and took a can of Arbuckle Tom the trader had been traveling with. Arbuckle was made in Frisco and widely admired in cow camps as a brand of coffee it was just about impossible to make wrong if you had any fire and water at all to work with.

  He didn’t. “I got something for you old boys,” he called out. “I sure hope you can reach it.” Then he threw the can.

  It landed just his side of their rock screen, as he’d aimed it to. The can burst open on the rocks to scatter ground coffee in every direction. Even one of the closer-in posse riders sort of sobbed when he saw all that good stuff going to waste. Kid Curry went sort of crazy. “Now that was just about as nasty as nasty can get!” he yelled, and rose high enough for Stringer to draw a bead on him with the Winchester. As he fired and the already wounded outlaw leader dropped out of sight again, the whole posse cheered. But Stringer wasn’t so sure, and sure enough, when one of his followers called out to him, the surly Kid Curry called back, “Just a graze, but no shit, this is starting to add up. Can’t you at least try to toss me my damned old canteen?”

  Stringer was ready when someone tried. The canteen landed closer to Curry’s rock than the ammo belt had. But as he saw a booted foot reach out to see if it could hook the canteen’s strap, Stringer fired and blew the canteen apart. Then he swore at himself for not thinking fast enough to aim at Curry’s foot.

  But the boxed owlhoots found the results of his shooting painful enough, judging from their cussing and wild gunfire. The posse was cheering and jeering as they watched the contents of the shot-up canteen paint a chocolate-brown streak down the slope toward them. When things calmed down some, the deputy in charge called out, cheerfully, “Don’t let that upset you, boys. There’s plenty of water, running, down this way. Throw away your hardware and you can drink till you bust, for all I care.”

  Stringer chuckled dryly at the picture, recalling the nasty little rill farther down the canyon. It was no doubt running clearer now that all the whores and hangers-on had lit out. But it would take a spell indeed before it was fit for human consumption.

  But a pony could probably use it, and that thought reen-forced the guilt he was beginning to feel about a chore he’d been sort of putting off since sunrise.

  Horses needed a lot more water than humankind. A mustang running free could get by on one awesome swilling a day. But brutes being worked had to be watered three times as often, not because they were sissies, but because they sweat more and couldn’t carry anyone if they swilled a day’s ration all at once. The chestnut gelding he’d been riding had been resting all this time in a cool canyon, but by now it had to be mighty thirsty. Stringer knew better than to hope his pretty but sneaky rival, Kathy, had watered his mount in passing. But like someone reading a good book and needing to take a leak at the same time, he’d been putting the chore off a page at a time in hopes the saga of Kid Curry might be resolved any minute. For there was more to the chore than simply dropping over the rim and running down to spill canteen water in the chestnut’s nose bag. They only had about half a canteen between them now. It was enough to carry Stringer through the day, but hardly a healthy swallow for a thirsty pony.

  He stared down into the box canyon for a few more minutes to see that nothing important seemed to be going on. How long the train robbers could hold out depended on how much ammo, water, and guts they had up behind those rocks. Stringer knew he’d have to be mighty discouraged to surrender for a hanging if he was in their boots. So, like it or not, he just had to see to his mount.

  From the way the chestnut nickered to him as he was sliding down the last of the rocks choking the other canyon, Stringer knew he’d been right about the poor brute suffering from thirst. He untethered it, patted its muzzle, and soothed, “Come on. We’ll get you to that other canyon’s water soon enough.”

  It took longer than that, leading the pony along the base of the cliffs in the shade of the rimrock. It was fighting to bust free and go dowsing for water on its own by the time they got around a rocky bend to spy the posse ponies loafing in the same shade near the canyon mouth. The two young hands who’d been stuck with wrangling for the rest of the posse asked Stringer if he knew what was going on up the canyon. He told ‘em it was a Mexican standoff, so far.

  “Jesus,” one said, “once they last past noon, we’ll be baking like beans here, under the durned old sun ball!” Stringer led his own mount closer to the canyon mouth and risked a look-see up the canyon. “No you won’t;” he said. “The only ones likely to shoot at you are up at the far end, around more than one bend. Come noon you may be able to still find some shade a few yards up.”

  Then he led his pony in a ways. The meager canyon stream soaked into the gravel without escaping from the canyon, a point Kid Curry had no doubt noticed when he’d found the hideout. But by kicking some with his boot heel, Stringer was able to hollow out a little puddle pool where water still ran. The chestnut lowered its muzzle and proceeded to drink with so much pure pleasure, it might have gotten a hard-on if it hadn’t been a gelding. Stringer stood by, then hauled its head up and told it, “That’s enough, you fool sponge. I’m going to leave you out yonder with the other ponies now. Those kids look kind enough to prevent you dying of thirst, and I’m sorry I treated you so mean just now.”

  He led it out and left it i
n charge of the wranglers, saying, “I’m going up a ways for a look-see. My features editor might want some comments from the posse riders and a few lines about what this fight looked like from ground level.”

  He saw they didn’t know what he was talking about, albeit neither was impolite enough to say so, and headed back into and up the canyon.

  He couldn’t work his way too far before the situation began to get thoughtful. The posse riders hunkered behind rocks a hundred yards or more ahead of him had moved up that far under cover of darkness. Stringer leaned his Winchester against a rock out of Kid Curry’s rifle range and commenced to roll a smoke. Even if he managed to make it to the skirmish line, he could see from where he stood that the gang was screened a lot better from down here. He’d have never been able to put that round in Curry from anywhere down here. He wasn’t looking forward to climbing back up alone. Maybe, after he’d smoked on it, he’d talk some of the others into following him topside so they could all give the gang a good dusting. How anyone was to come and join him without exposing his back to owlhoot fire was the thing to study on the most. The advantage of a higher field of fire hardly balanced the disadvantage of risking a rifle round in the back.

  Stringer had barely gotten his Bull Durham going when they all saw a flash of white against the back wall of the canyon. Stringer thought, at first, it was that one with the white hat trying to make the posse waste ammo. If he was, he was waving his hat around too much for anyone to think it had a head attached to it. That was likely why nobody on Stringer’s side fired.

  Stringer realized it had to be a white kerchief when the burly deputy, much closer to it, called out, “All right, old son, we see your parley signal. What do you want?”

  “Terms,” the train robber waving the kerchief called back. “If I lay down my arms, do I have your word I won’t get strung up on the nearest tree?”