by Lou Cameron
“Sure you do,” the deputy called back. “Whether a judge and jury decides to hang you more formal ain’t for us to say. But hell, your trial will surely take longer than you boys have behind them fool rocks.”
“Look, I ain’t wanted for anything worse than robbery,” the desperado replied in a worried whine. “Do you reckon there’s a chance I’ll get off with Life at Hard?”
“Quien sabe?” the deputy informed him. “You might even be out in twenty years. I wouldn’t like that either. But you have my word I mean to stomp all you piss ants dead if you make us wait till dark, whether you get any of us as we charge in or not.” There was a moment of silence. Then they heard another voice call out, softer, “How about it, Curry? Anyone can see how hopeless this is getting.”
From behind his own rock Kid Curry called back, “You boys do as you’ve a mind to. I mean to end it here.”
There was a longer silence as the others consulted and no doubt argued about it some. Then the one who’d been signaling cried out, almost sobbing, “Hold your fire. We’re coming out.”
The posse did as a considerable hardware collection got lobbed their way over the rocks. Then the pathetic remains of the Wild Bunch—or this chapter of it, at least—rose with hands in the air to move down the slope into the waiting arms of the posse.
Then another shot rang out and everybody froze. But since they saw Kid Curry had gunned neither a posse rider nor one of his surrendering sidekicks, they moved down some more.
“What was that all about, Curry?” the posse leader called out. When nobody answered, he decided, “One of you rascals had best go see if he’s still with us.”
The train robber closest to Kid Curry’s final hideout shook his head. “Not this child. He’s been feeling poorly, and his temper can be uncertain even when he feels good.”
The posse leader cocked his gun. “Do as I say. I’m appointing you because me and mine are even more uncertain about the son of a bitch.”
The man he’d picked moaned, “Oh, Lord, why does it always have to be me?” Then he turned to move back up with his hands still high. “Don’t do it, Boss,” he called out. “I’m coming in neighborly and unarmed, against my will, see?”
Then he got to the place where Kid Curry lay, gasped in either dismay or sheer relief, and called out, “He’s dead! He just now blowed his own brains out!”
So Stringer, having farthest to walk, was about the last one there as Kid Curry’s friends and foes alike gathered round to pay him their last respects.
The run-to-earth young killer lay sprawled on the scree like a discarded rag dolly, his sixgun still gripped in his gun-smoke-grimed right fist. His face could have been said to be wearing an expression of sweet repose if it hadn’t been so blackened with smoke and if there’d been more left to his skull. There were gobbets of blood and brains spattered all over the dry rocks.
The deputy caught Stringer’s eye. “Well, thanks to you,” he said, “that’s the end of the dangerous rascal, and I sure wish he’d done the world that favor sooner.”
One of the dead man’s erstwhile comrades gulped and muttered, “Whoever would have thought he’d do a thing like that? I mind him sneering like anything when we got word Harry Tracy had killed himself, and he always said Johnny Ringo was a sissy Jew boy for doing the same, down Arizona way.”
Stringer shrugged. “Well, empathy was never his strong point, you know.” When even the deputy didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word, Stringer explained, “Empathy is the ability to picture yourself in another person’s boots.”
“Hell, I can do that,” the deputy said, “even if I can’t spell it.”
Stringer nodded. “Most of us can, to some extent. I suspect that’s what separates the halfway decent from the total bad. That poor mad dog at our feet never tried to understand even his fellow outlaws. He just lived from day to day, and when the time came for him to find himself in Harry Tracy’s or Johnny Ringo’s boots, he just forgot what he’d said about ‘em and did what he felt like doing.”
“I hope someone has an old tarp they won’t need after we wrap this mess up to tote to town,” the deputy said. “I never heard before that Johnny Ringo was Jewish. Do you reckon he was?”
“His real name was Jacob Rhinegold,” Stringer said. “After that your guess is as good as mine, and since all three of the murderous rascals were nice enough to kill themselves, who cares?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stringer parted company with the joyous posse and their sad-faced prisoners when, near the railroad line, someone said a fork in the trail led to the nearest jerkwater but that they were fixing to take their prisoners and what was left of Kid Curry on to the county seat. Stringer wasn’t sorry to see the last of them. He didn’t like to fib, and more than one old boy had asked if he had any notion who’d winged Kid Curry and encouraged him to end the standoff so early in the day. Since more than one of the younger and dumber riders were sure they’d gotten off at least a few rounds at the rascal, Stringer felt his reputation might still be safe.
It was late afternoon when he parted company with some pines as well, to spy a water tower and some sun-silvered frame structures ahead. He rode into town and tied up near the Western Union sign he’d spotted. He wasn’t too surprised to note the sidesaddle on another mount hitched in front of the telegraph office. As he was going up the steps, Kathy Doyle came out the door, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Stringer nodded at her and said, “What kept you? You had at least two hours lead on us.”
“I got lost in the woods for a time,” she said, “and then, of course, I had to take a bath at my hotel just up the street. I took the liberty of checking us in as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. How did it go out there, darling?”
He smiled at her incredulously. “They gave up. How come you had to leave so early?”
She met his eyes boldly as ever as she replied, demurely, “To tell the truth I had, ah, feminine hygiene to attend to, and you’d just told me how it was sure to turn out.”
“Me and my big mouth. You’ve already wired your own scoop in, of course?”
“How could I?” she answered innocently. “I had to wait for you here so we could share the story, remember?”
He chuckled fondly down at her. “You’re really something. You were just now wiring home for money, right?”
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I just alerted the city desk to stand by for front-page news I hoped to hand in by later this evening. Surely you don’t think I’d betray your trust after all we’ve, ah, been to one another, dear?”
“The thought might have crossed my mind. How do you reckon to prove you didn’t just scoop me again, Kathy?”
She dimpled up at him. “Easy. I haven’t even written my version of recent events. There was no way I could until I was sure how things turned out. I’m not allowed to guess about such details, you know.” She saw he was still unconvinced, and added, “Look, why don’t you go in and wire your feature now? When you’re done, you’ll find me at the Drover’s Rest near the depot, room 203, working on my own.”
He frowned at her uncertainly. “How come?” he asked. “Why are you so anxious to let me scoop you?”
She fluttered her lashes. “I’ll tell you just what I want you to do to me when we’re alone at the hotel. If you must know, our evening edition is going to press right now out on the coast. There’s no way they can run anything I send before the morning edition. That gives me plenty of time, and if you’d like to fill me in some more, at the hotel, I might pay you back with a French lesson.”
“Well, I see I may have misjudged you after all, and filling you in is sure fun,” he said. “I hope you understand I can still make the Sun’s last edition if I get cracking. We go to press later than the Examiner. That’s likely how we scoop you so often.”
She shrugged fatalistically. “That’s not my fault. I only work for the Examiner. I don’t run it. At least we’ll both be on the front page tomorrow morning.”<
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He nodded. “Room 203. Got it,” he said, and moved past her to enter the telegraph office’.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, following. “I meant to wire my landlady I’d be coming back to Frisco soon. Would you mind, terribly, if I dropped her a teeny-weeny warning to have my quarters ready for me, or us, if you’re headed that way, dear?”
“Go ahead,” he said. “I have to compose one mighty long wire in any case.”
So they each found space along the stand-up writing table inside the door, and sure enough, Kathy had scribbled a short message and asked the clerk behind the counter to send it before he could finish the first page, fast as he’d learned to block letter in the field. She rejoined him, gave him a friendly peck on the cheek, and murmured, “Hurry, I can hardly wait.” And then she was gone. It made it easier for him to write his story. He knew Sam Barca would dig plenty of. background material from the morgue to flesh out the feature, so he didn’t bother with dates and details of past misdeeds by the Wild Bunch. Everyone had lots of stuff on them on file. It was their own fault for acting so wild. Stringer concentrated on the last seventy-two hours or so of Kid Curry’s desperate life; the forty-eight hours it had taken the posse to track the train robbers down, skipping his own part in the process; and the overnight siege in the canyon, leaving his own marksmanship out of that as well. He consulted the field notes he’d taken, riding with the posse, to make sure he correctly spelled all their names and the names of the less notorious surviving train robbers. He played up the suicide, since that seemed such an example for the youth of these United States, and managed to get it all on five pages of night-letter forms. Then he took his feature to the clerk and said, “I know I wrote all this on night-letter paper. But I want it sent straight, collect, at day rates.”
The Western Union man scanned the neatly penciled message and whistled softly. “At a nickel a word, this is going to cost your paper a pretty penny. But I suppose you and that lady reporter who was just in here know what you’re doing.”
As he started to turn away Stringer asked, in a desperately casual tone, “Did she send as many pages as me just now?”
The clerk shook his head. “Not just now. Earlier. You have to ask her what she sent and about all the wires from Frisco she’s been getting all evening. I’m not allowed, even though I know you two are pals.”
Stringer nodded. “That’s all right. I’ve a pretty good idea what she sent earlier. Like you said, we’re pals.” Then he went out, led the chestnut to a nearby livery, and asked the young hostler on duty if he knew Tanya Dillinger from the S Bar Diamond.
“I know the lady to howdy,” the youth said. “She comes to town now and again, why?”
“This chestnut and all its gear belongs to her. How much will it cost me to board it here until she comes to town again?”
“We ask two bits a day,” the young hostler replied. “But I don’t know when we’ll see her, next.”
Stringer added in his head, dug out a five-dollar silver note, and handed it over. “This ought to last as long as it takes even a placid woman to get weary with her four walls. When next you see her ride by, give her a yell. She might not know she owns this pony. I’d best leave her a note in a saddlebag explaining the situation.”
The youth allowed that few women could stay away from the shops in town more than two weeks at a time in decent riding weather. Stringer kept his message neither cold nor mushy. He wanted the big blonde to remember him as he’d always remember her, as a pal.
Then, having shed his excess baggage in a sensible way, Stringer went to the Drover’s Rest to see how his other old pal was doing. He found her up in 203, editing yellow Western Union paper on her dressing table. She was sitting at it naked, save for her silk stockings and high-buttons. As she leaped up to greet him with an enthusiastic kiss, he said, “I’m glad you’re half dressed. There’s a westbound flyer stopping here for water in less than an hour. If you’re heading back out to the coast with me, you’d best put a mite more on, though.”
She moved over to the bed and flopped down the same way that gal on the second landing liked to pose for him. “I’m looking forward to riding all the way home with you,” she purred, “but if we have a whole hour to kill…”
He sighed. “You know damn well we’d surely miss that train, once we got started, for time flies and other chores just don’t seem to matter, once you’re in bed with someone pretty. Are you sure you’re not out to make me miss that train, Irish?”
She looked hurt. “Heaven forfend! I said I was looking forward to your riding with me all the way back to Frisco.”
“Bueno,” he said. “Get some duds on and we may have time for supper here, after we send your own version of that canyon fight.”
She agreed and got back up to start dressing as he sat down at her dressing table to read what she’d written so far. She asked what he thought of her writing, and he said she was good, which was fair, since she’d sure made up a lot of stuff. None of her colorful wild west crap could be checked out by anyone who might matter. At this late date few members of the actual posse would be able to say, for sure, who’d said what to whom, so dramatic, as they brandished their piratical weapons. That’s what she called sixguns—piratical weapons.
“I notice you’ve yet to finish this, Kathy,” he said. “You sort of left the end open for grabs.”
She began to button her bodice. “I had to know how it ended up in that canyon before I could end it on paper, dear. What time did they finally surrender?”
“Hour or so after you lit out,” he said. “Make it anytime before noon and nobody will deny it. Want me to write a few lines about the last dramatic speeches?”
“I’d better do that, dear. You tend to write just a little tersely for my readers.”
He was too polite to point out a news item didn’t have to be filled with florid phrases when it was at all interesting, or true. When she’d finished dressing and asked where they’d have supper, Stringer said, “There’s a place near the depot that looks clean, at least. Don’t you want to take this story with you to turn in, honey?”
She twinkled. “Oh, how clumsy of me.” Then, as she took them from him to put in her purse, she smiled sort of dirty and added, “I see what you mean about lovemaking being distracting. Just thinking about us aboard that train almost made me forget my first draft.”
“How in thunder can you send in a first draft by wire,” Stringer asked as they left, “speaking of which—”
“I always go over my work a time or two,” she cut in. “I told you there’s no way for me to make the final edition today, darling. I thought I’d rework it on the train, before it gets late enough to ask the porter to make up our berth, of course, and maybe send it in from Salt Lake, Elko, maybe Reno. We’ll be stopping at all those places, won’t we?”
“Salt Lake before midnight,” he said. “After that you’ll look silly getting off and on in your nightgown.”
She laughed, asked him who said she’d planned on spending the coming night in any nightgown, and took his arm. So he took her to supper. He had plenty of spending money right now. Kathy waited until they were having more coffee with their desserts before she asked him, thoughtfully, if something was upsetting him.
Stringer smiled and looked around. “No, I like this place fine. I always wanted stuffed animal heads on my walls when I was little.”
“I thought you might be brooding about something,” she said. “You don’t seem quite as, well, eager as you did last night atop the mesa. Have you started to take me for granted, this soon?”
“Kathy,” he said, “if there’s one thing no man ought to do with you, taking you for granted has to be it. Finish your pie, or let me if you don’t want it. We still have to get our tickets and check your carpet bag.”
She shook her head and told him she always kept the bag on the floor between them with her.
“Let’s go see about those tickets, anyway,” he said. “I sure don’t w
ant to miss that train.”
They didn’t. Kathy was tapping a pretty foot on the station platform by the time the westbound came in, hissed steam all over them, and let them aboard.
Since she’d said something about reworking her story, and since they kept the liquor back there in any case, Stringer made sure of their berth with the conductor. Once their tickets had been punched, he led Kathy back there. He noticed she still made him tote her small but compactly packed bag.
By this time the locomotive had swallowed enough water and the train was moving again. They found a table near the exit to the rear platform and moved to the bar to order them some drinks. As he moved both ways, he couldn’t help noticing a sultry-looking gal in a maroon velvet outfit, seated alone at her own table and not too pleased about that, if he was reading her lonesome eyes at all correctly.
That was the trouble with women, he told himself, getting the drinks unspilled to the table Kathy was at. Women seemed to come into a man’s life like rain. They either left you parched or poured more than you could absorb at once, and of course, if you tried to juggle two at once, you were likely to wind up with none at all again.
He sat down facing Kathy with his back to the lonesome gal. It helped some. But her perfume sure smelled nice. He slid Kathy’s glass across to her, saying, “I see you haven’t started your rewrite yet.”
“I think you may be right about second drafts being a waste of time,” she said. “I’ll just add a paragraph about those bandits coming out with…their hands up?”
He nodded. “Yep. That’s usually required by the law.”
So she sipped her drink and said, “I can fill that in when we get to Salt Lake. When do you suppose they’ll want to make up the berths, darling?”
Stringer felt very aware of the mystery woman behind him as he mumbled, “Nine-thirty or so. I wonder if I’ll have time to check out that lead about Pearl Hart when we stop for water at Grand Junction.”
She perked up. “Could the notorious Pearl Hart be at Grand Junction, dear?”