Stringer and the Wild Bunch

by Lou Cameron

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She just got out of prison and she has to be someplace. Old Sam Barca’s been after me to do a feature on her. But nobody seems to know for sure where she is these days. They say she’d changed her appearance as well as her manners since being sent up for robbing the Globe stage back in ‘98. She just got out early for good behavior, no doubt feeling older and wiser. Old Joe Booth, the good-looking owlhoot who tempted her down the primrose path, is still in prison and likely to stay there. It was far from the first such stunt he’d pulled.”

  Kathy made a wry face. “I recall the case and the pictures published of her at the time. I don’t know why you men consider bandit queens so glamorous. To me she just looked dumb and pathetic in that man’s attire they posed her in with all those no-doubt empty guns.”

  “Well,” Stringer said, “I have to allow Belle Starr was ugly as sin. But judging from her pictures, old Pearl Hart wasn’t too bad-looking. Bitty round face, sort of plain with no makeup and all. But anyone could see she had a cute little shape under those oversized cowboy duds. Anyway, the last Sam heard, she was on the lecture circuit with Frank James, Cole Younger, and other older and wiser reformed outlaws, lecturing on the evils of demon rum and wild wild women, or in old Pearl’s case, likely wild wild men. She was brought up honest enough in Canada. Eloped with a gent named Hart, and when he couldn’t support her in the Arizona mining country, she left him to take up with men with more money and maybe less sense. Sam Barca thinks she’d make a good feature, now that she’s said to be more refined. I don’t mean to call her any bandit queen when I catch up with her. It wouldn’t be fair to call a poor young gal who went wrong a dumb thing like that. Lord knows how Sam will edit it, of course, and maybe she’d like to be called a bandit queen. It might sell more tickets to her temperance lectures.”

  Kathy sipped some more and asked, “What makes you think she could be in Grand Junction, darling?”

  “If I knew she was,” Stringer answered, “I’d have to get off there, Pullman berth or not. But like I said, it’s just a lead. She’s been touring this part of the country of late, and Barca says there’s a theatrical booking agent in Grand Junction who might know where she’s appeared so far, and more important, where she may be going next. I dunno, though. This train only stops there a few moments to take on boiler water. I doubt there’s time, and like you said, she may be stale news now. They don’t run stages out of Globe anymore.”

  Kathy looked thoughtfully down at her glass and mused half to herself, “They hardly run stagecoaches anywhere now. Wouldn’t that make Pearl Hart the last stagecoach robber who ever lived?”

  Stringer shrugged. “Unless someone else robs another, soon. I got to thinking about those new horseless carriages as I was leading a horse to water this morning. At first glance those odd contraptions make little sense. They can’t go lots of places a pony could get you. But on the other hand, when you don’t have anyplace to go, you don’t have to oat and water ‘em at least twice a day. You can let the fool machine just sit for a month or more and then just climb aboard and ride off with it. That’d be mighty handy for say a city cuss who only takes his wife and kids for a buggy ride on weekends, right?”

  She frowned across the table at him. “What in the world could horseless carriages have to do with stagecoach holdups, dear?”

  “Putting coaches out of business, of course,” he said. “The only coaches still in service are working the back roads between rail lines. Mark my words—in just a few years they’ll have motor coaches going too fast for road gents to rob, easy, that is.”

  Kathy said, “Hmm, as I said, that makes her the last of the old-time road agents, and I see a woman’s angle as well. Just what does this amazing woman look like, honey?”

  “I haven’t seen any recent pictures of her. She’d be thirty or so now, with a handsome figure and let’s hope more in the way of eyebrows. They say she’s either darkened her hair or let it grow natural to look more like the rest of you Gibson Girls.”

  Kathy had that hunting look in her eyes now. But she was trying to hide it as she finished her drink. “I’ll just tighten my story up and maybe wire it from Grand Junction. Why don’t you give me the name of that booking agent, and even if we don’t have time to see him, we might be able to wire him for the information when we stop at Salt Lake, see?”

  He frowned thoughtfully, then brightened. “Lord love you if you don’t think circles around us poor brutes. Your notion works. If he’s in the city directory at Grand Junction, we can compose as long a message to him as we want, riding on to Salt Lake, and if he answers us by night letters, we can have him send to us in Frisco—”

  “You’re willing to share the feature with me, then?” she cut in.

  “Sure,” Stringer said. “You’d share fair and square with me, wouldn’t you?”

  She said she sure would. So he wrote the booking agent’s name on the edge of her manuscript as she hauled it out, but told her, “All I have is the name. If I can’t find him listed in the directory at the depot when we stop—”

  “Leave it to me,” she said. “If he does any business at all, they’ll know him at the Western Union, and I have to go there in any case.”

  So he agreed, picked up their empty glasses, and headed back to the bar for refills. He found the sultry gal in the maroon outfit standing there to get her own glass refilled. As he waited for his own order, she sort of purred, “I couldn’t help overhearing some of the conversation you’ve been having with that sweet young thing. I take it you’re both newspaper writers?”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, albeit for rival papers.”

  She blinked at him incredulously. “You don’t look that stupid. I hope you have some good reason for giving a rival reporter a tip like that. I know she’s pretty, and I couldn’t help hearing those remarks about berths later, but are you sure you can trust anyone that far?”

  He smiled at her. “About as far as I could throw this club car, one-handed. But we’ll see how things work out, once we get to Grand Junction. Will you still be here, ma’am?”

  She said she wouldn’t miss it for the world. So he took his order back to the table to find Kathy busy as all get out with her reworking of the Kid Curry feature. He could see she didn’t want to talk right now. It might have seemed impolite for him to start up with the gal at the next table, so he found a magazine in a rack across the way and read about the Irish Question for a spell. The British government sure seemed more confused about the Irish Question than any Irish folk he’d met so far.

  It took that magazine and another before someone yelled out, “Grand Junction, next stop!”

  Kathy hastily scooped up her homework to shove in her carpet bag, saying, “I’ll go forward and ask how much time we’ll have here.”

  When he offered to go along and at least tote her bag, she was off and running before he could get up. He settled back with a sigh, rolled a smoke, and then, as he’d expected, they were moving again.

  The sultry gal at the next table observed, “From that smug expression you’re wearing, now one might assume you wanted to ditch that young lady back there.”

  “I never ditch ladies, ma’am,” he said. “But to tell the truth, I sort of figured she might ditch herself.”

  “Why? She wasn’t bad-looking, and you have booked a double berth, haven’t you?”

  “The evening’s still young. Since you’ve been such a good sport, despite your curious nature, I’ll tell you what’s going on. But wouldn’t you like me to fetch us both more drinks first?”

  She said she liked both suggestions. When he rejoined her at her table with their refills, he explained, “Miss Kathy Doyle, as you surmised, is a mighty sneaky little thing. Earlier today she beat me to town in order to scoop me on the capture of some train robbers. She sent all but the ending, which she didn’t know. Then, when I showed up so’s she could ask me how it had all turned out, she sent a shorter coded message, telling her own editor to use one of
the two endings she’d submitted earlier. I’d already told her I figured the bandits would be taken alive. So when I told her they had, she wired home just before she let me put my own story on the wire, see?”

  The older but not bad-looking brunette shook her head. “No, I don’t. How could you be so nice to her just now, knowing she’d beaten you like that?”

  “Easy,” he said. “She didn’t. Our stories will hit the stands about the same time. She was fibbing about her own paper’s night edition. Her story, for the Examiner, will say the train robbers, including the notorious Kid Curry, were taken alive. My story will say, more truthfully, that Kid Curry refused to surrender and committed suicide.”

  The gal in maroon gaped at him, then laughed as she got the whole picture. “You outfoxed a real vixen, who’s going to have a time explaining that news item! But what was all that nonsense about bandit queens supposed to accomplish?”

  “Letting her hang herself higher. Had she dealt halfway honest just now, I’d have relented and let her wire in the right version at Salt Lake, seeing as I’d still go to press a little ahead of her paper. But as you just saw, there’s not an ethical bone in her otherwise handsome figure. The name I gave her was real enough. I talked with that booking agent a few days ago and he told me he had no idea where I might find Miss Hart. He’ll tell Kathy the same thing. But a night in Grand Junction sniffing red herrings won’t hurt her, and whether you believe it or not, there’s a limit to my good humor. I wasn’t looking forward to kissing that treacherous little gal. all the way to Frisco.” She was beaming at him in open admiration now.

  “By the way,” he said, “my handle is Stuart MacKail, and I’d rather be called Stringer, Miss…?”

  “Hart, Pearl Hart,” she replied demurely.

  He raised a doubting eyebrow, having met other strangers in the night who’d tried to have fun at his expense. Then he slowly nodded. “You look better now that you’ve lost some of that baby fat and put some eyebrows on. I can see why you found our conversation so amusing. Do I have to look for you some more or do you feel up to granting me that interview my editor wants? I promise I’ll try to make you look good in my wild west feature.”

  The notorious Pearl Hart smiled sort of dreamy-eyed at him. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk between here and Frisco. I’ve got a private compartment up forward, and to make no bones about it, I just got out of prison and you’re about the best-looking young stud I’ve run into since they let me out!”

  So in the end Stringer wound up with two grand scoops as well as the pocket money he’d picked up here and there along the owlhoot trail. Pearl Hart kissed him good-bye and said she’d never forget him as she went on to lecture against sin. Sam Barca even insisted on buying him a drink after hours and agreed that if Kathy Doyle never spoke to Stringer again, he was likely ahead.

  It wasn’t so late when he finally got to his rooming house on Rincon Hill. But he sure wanted to lie down awhile. As he slowly climbed the stairs in the gloom, he saw that, sure enough, the gal on the second landing had left her door ajar again. She was reclining on her big brass bedstead as usual, wearing no more than usual for a nude model. As she spotted him she blew tailormade cigarette smoke at him and called out, teasingly, “Where have you been all this time, Cowboy? You look as if a good meal and a bad woman would kill you.”

  He stared dully down at her curvacious naked body. “You’re right,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t ever wind up between the sheets with anyone who just got out of prison. No offense, but you don’t look nearly strong enough.”

  YOU CAN FIND ALL OF LOU CAMERON’S STRINGER SERIES AVAILABLE AS EBOOKS:

  STRINGER (#1)

  STRINGER ON DEAD MAN’S RANGE (#2)

  STRINGER ON THE ASSASSIN’S TRAIL (#3)

  STRINGER AND THE HANGMAN’S RODEO (#4)

  STRINGER AND THE WILD BUNCH (#5)

  STRINGER AND THE HANGING JUDGE (#6)

  STRINGER IN TOMBSTONE (#7)

  STRINGER AND THE DEADLY FLOOD (#8)

  STRINGER AND THE LOST TRIBE (#9)

  STRINGER AND THE OIL WELL INDIANS (#10)

  STRINGER AND THE BORDER WAR (#11)

  STRINGER ON THE MOJAVE (#12)

  STRINGER ON PIKES PEAK (#13)

  STRINGER AND THE HELL-BOUND HERD (#14)

  STRINGER IN A TEXAS SHOOTOUT (#15)