Stringer on the Mojave

by Lou Cameron

  As if to prove great minds ran along the same channels, Fred Remington accepted his lemonade with a nod of thanks and announced to all assembled, “Let’s hope we’re not cutting it too fine by motoring back to Barstow so late in the day.” Then he asked Stringer, “You’re coming back with us, aren’t you?”

  Stringer said, “Don’t tempt me. It takes a heap longer by pony. But I put down a handsome deposit on said pony, and I just can’t see holding it in my lap in a motor car.”

  He sipped some of his own lemonade, found it pleasantly cold but a mite too sweet, and added, “I’m not sure I’m finished here, in any case. It depends on what Doc Owens tells us after he’s examined the bodies.”

  Big Ben Winslow grumbled, “He won’t mess my mummies up too bad, will he? Maybe I should have stayed to make sure he don’t bust ’em all apart.”

  Stringer soothed, “What they wind up looking like isn’t near as important as who they were, Ben. I told you, and I thought you understood, that the better the story turned out, the better you and your town would be known to the outside world.”

  Winslow shrugged and said he hoped Stringer knew what he was talking about. Fred Remington said, “Me, too. You’re welcome to the few pencil sketches I made back there. They turned out more gruesome than artistic or even edifying. Frankly, I think you and Sam Barca would do better running the story with photographs.”

  He turned to Grace to ask, “Might your historical society have any tintypes of the Lowendorfs in life, Miss? Before and after shots might punch MacKail’s feature up.”

  She grimaced at the mental picture and said, “I’m sure they would. Unfortunately, if we had old photographs or even more details about the unfortunate brothers and their families, we would still be in the dark about just who those dead people really were. As I said, it was a time when a lot of German immigrants were arriving.”

  Stringer objected. “Not many rich ones going the other way. The mummified man with the carbine was wearing blue jeans, just starting to be worn on the west coast, then. Men wouldn’t be on their way to California if they’d just been there to buy some pants.”

  She nodded and said, „The fact not one red cent was found with them makes me suspect someone cleaned them out, and that shot-up lock you found adds up to more than pocket change. We know the brothers headed home with enough money to plan on buying good bottom land in Pennsylvania. No other missing party I have notes on fits half as well. But what of the brother we seem to be missing, to say nothing of their draft animals?”

  Stringer didn’t answer. He was trying not to cuss as Hamp Dugan came around the corner with Jenny Lee in tow. The little gal Skeeter Norris so longed for, with good reason, Stringer knew, was dressed more sedately in her own travel duster and a straw boater with artificial cherries growing on it. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she looked as if she knew she deserved a good spanking. Neither Big Ben, nor his wife seemed surprised to see her. Ben Winslow nodded and told her, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way we hoped they might, honey. But given the choice of keeping poor old Skeeter locked up like a wild beast, or sending you back to Barstow. .. Well, these folk will be heading back to Barstow any time, now, and I’m sure they’d be proud to offer you a ride.”

  Jenny didn’t look at Stringer. He didn’t want to look at her in front of two more refined ladies. So, whether she thought he was behaving as a cad or just sensible, he got to his feet and said something about seeing how the doc was coming along with those mummies. Nobody followed as he strode off in the bright sunlight. Nobody else seemed to feel that foolish.

  He hadn’t gone far when he met Doc Owens and his own crew, coming the other way. As they met, the old spade beard smiled smugly and said, “The gent was shot in the back, right between the shoulder blades. Didn’t notice the bitty hole and larger but faded stain until we turned him over. No signs of injury to the women and children. The baby was a boy. All but the baby had beans and rice some time before they died. Food doesn’t digest well when you’re dehydrated. It was a mistake to eat that much without the wherewithal to wash it down.”

  Frowning like hell, Stringer turned to walk back to the Winslow house with Owens and his crew, muttering, thoughtfully, “I can’t picture the way things must have happened, way back when. Who could have fed the women and children and then shot the man in the back? Had he been eating beans and rice, by the way?”

  Owens hesitated, then he had to admit, “We didn’t look. When you discover a man’s been shot dead with a .50 calibre rifle ball you don’t consider that he might have starved to death.”

  Stringer cocked an eyebrow and observed, “That old Hall carbine he was found with fired balls of that calibre. Rifle balls had to be bigger around to pack the same weight in those days. He wasn’t wearing an old-timey cartridge pouch. The chamber of his Hall was empty and the spare ammo was packed away with other supplies.”

  Owens shrugged and asked what that was supposed to signify. So Stringer said, “Try her this way. The brother we found wasn’t packing any ammo, or fixing to shoot anything. The other one was the only one armed.”

  Owens whistled softly and asked, “You’re saying the one brother shot the other, put the murder weapon in his dead hands, and lit out with the team and family funds?”

  Stringer started to say yes. Then he decided, “That does sound more complicated than Cain and Abel, as soon as you study on it. What if the women and children had already gone under, if only to the point of blacking out? Wouldn’t that account for them reposing so calmly as the last survivors argued about the best way to get themselves and their money out of that fix. Doc?”

  Owens said he didn’t know, adding, “If so, the one left behind with a bullet in his back was dumb as hell. If things had gotten to that desperate a state, both men should have forged on for the river with the draft animals. What could there have been to argue about?”

  They were almost back to the Winslow veranda, now. Stringer said, “Say neither was thinking too clearly. Heat and thirst can do funny things to one’s brain. Say they argued more like heatstroked lunatics than loving brothers, or even men of common sense.”

  Owens sighed and said, “You forget I tidy up after a lot of killings in a county distinguished for mighty sunny weather.”

  Then they’d rejoined the others and Owens, as if he’d thought it all up himself, proceeded to inform one and all. “We’ve got it about figured. They saw they didn’t have enough water and turned back. They didn’t turn back soon enough. They ran out entirely, two or three days travel north of the river. They were no doubt skimping on water for themselves, trying to keep their draft animals going. That was another mistake. As they dried out their brains their thinking got even fuzzier. Near the end, the women and children gave out first. Riding quiet in the shade of the wagon cover the tykes would have just slipped away before anyone noticed. By the time even the women were in bad enough shape for the men to notice, the men were barely conscious and no doubt mighty confused.”

  Owens took a misshapen half-inch ball from a pocket and held it up, adding, “One or the other was for unhitching the team and making a last dash for water. The other was likely weeping and wailing over the women and children and refusing to leave them. Some of them, at least, might still have been alive. The smarter but more desperate one couldn’t afford to stay there any longer. He shot his brother, left him sitting guard over the women and children with the murder weapon, and lit out for the Mojave with the team, mayhaps both their pistols, and for certain the money from the family strongbox.”

  The girl from the historical society said, “How awful. But why did either of them have to shoot any locks open?”

  Doc Owens blinked and glanced at Stringer as if expecting him to say something. So Stringer said, “They didn’t have much paper money in those days, and metal coins are heavy enough in any quantity. The load could have been even heavier in a big tin box. It’s harder to guess why he shot the lock off instead of just opening it with a key. Ma
ybe the key had been lost, or hidden by the more stubborn one.”

  He reached absently for the makings as he added with a grim little smile, “I mean to ask him, once I catch up with him.”

  That woke everyone up. The old cuss from the coroner’s department asked, “Are you charging anyone alive, today, with the offense of fratricide, forty or fifty years ago?”

  Stringer smiled thinly and said, “More likely forty than fifty, and Miss Grace, here, isn’t certain we’re talking about the Lowendorf brothers.” But the girl who kept notes on such matters answered, firmly, “They’ll have to do until someone who fits better comes along! It’s no wonder nobody back in Lancaster County ever heard from the one member of the party who survived! Think how guilty he must have felt, once he came back to his senses!”

  “With the family fortune and a fresh start,” Frederic Remington added with a thoughtful nod. Then he said, “Forget your livery deposit and ride back with us, MacKail. Tracing the one who made it, be it Horst or Ludwig, figures to be filing cabinet tracking, from here on. You’re certainly not going to find any fresh tracks on the desert, at this late date, and it’s obvious the old-timer with so much on his conscience knows you’re out here, looking to cut his trail Indian style.”

  Stringer smiled grimly as he replied, “I know. That’s why I mean to keep tracking him Indian style, dumb and dated as it may sound. For it seems to be driving the old rascal wild. So, there has to be something out this way he’s afraid I’ll stumble over.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The two overcrowded motor cars pulled out for the south not much before noon. As Stringer and Big Ben Winslow waved them off, the owner of the nearby saloon, as well as just about everything else in town, said, “I’m glad that’s over without much damage to my poor mummies. We just got time for a couple of cold ones afore it’s time to crawl into the shade with the snakes and lizards for a spell.”

  Stringer was looking forward to a flop in that adobe out back, if only for the novelty of catching some shut-eye in that bed alone. But the notion of some iced Steamer beer sounded grand, too, so he followed Winslow into the no longer cool but still cavernous depths, asking where they got all that ice in the middle of the Mojave.

  As they bellied to the bar Winslow explained, “I got me an ice machine, over by the first well we sunk. I’ll show you around the plant later, if you like. The one-lung naptha engine that runs the Perkins patent compressor didn’t set us back too much. But betwixt all the piping and insulation the layout beat the shit out of a thousand dollar bill!”

  As Stringer whistled softly, the barkeep slid two cold wet bottles across the mock-mahogany at them, as if he knew his boss was a creature of habit. As he did so he murmured to Winslow, “Stranger lurking alone ahint table number three, Boss.” And so, Winslow casually turned to regard the novelty. Then he shouted, “No!” and stiff-armed Stringer one way as he threw himself the other.

  Stringer rolled along the edge of the bar on his ribs in some confusion, drawing his six-gun along the way more by reflex than with any clear notion what was going on. Then two guns roared in the gloom, a bullet slammed into the bar between him and its owner, and Stringer had a better notion what was going on.

  Winslow was down to his right with one knee on the floor and his own gun trained on an ominous dark blur looming amid a haze of gunsmoke back by the silent player piano. Whether Winslow had hit him or not was moot. Before he could fire again, Stringer contributed a round of his own and the rascal still got off another shot before he pitched forward to crash down on a table and then bounce off it to land faceup on the sawdust.

  Since that left Stringer the only one on his feet, he moved in fast to kick the mysterious gunslick’s Harrington & Richardson double-action .44 into a far corner before he hunkered down to feel the man’s throat, saying, “Howdy. Where did we hit you?”

  The stranger, a morose-looking individual of around forty, with a two-week stubble that matched his dusty black shirt, blew big red bubbles up at him and stared through the tin roof above them. As Big Ben Winslow joined them there among the thinning fumes, the bubbles stopped welling up. Stringer glanced up to say, “He’s gone. I sure wish that crew from the county coroner hadn’t just left.”

  Winslow sighed and said, “Amen. Do you have any idea who he might have been, MacKail?”

  Stringer shook his head and replied, “I can’t even say for certain which one of us he was after. But if he was after me, I sure thank you.”

  Before Winslow could answer, Hamp Dugan dashed in, gun in hand and pale of face. He took in the scene in the corner and came to join them with a relieved look. By this time, Stringer was going through the dead man’s pockets. Hamp said, “He said his name was Manson. I talked to him earlier this morning when he first rode in.”

  Stringer took a wallet from one pants pocket as he glanced at the swarthy face again and muttered, “He picked a dumb alias for such a Latin-looking cuss. The Mansons were a sept of Clan Gunn, way up at Caithness, on the north tip of Scotland. The folk up yonder are more Norse than Celtic and run to more size and bluer eyes than this old boy.”

  He opened the wallet, drew out an Arizona Territory bounty hunter’s license, and added, “There you go, hired gun who answered to the name of Mansfield when he applied to some Arizona J.P. for his permit.”

  Hamp Dugan nodded and said, “He told me he’d heard we’d run short on town deputies and that he was in the market for a job. I told him he’d have to talk to the man who owned the town and, cuss me for a fool, suggested he wait in here and ask when you come by for your siesta drink, Boss.”

  Winslow muttered, “It’s a good thing Paddy behind the bar noticed. For a minute, I thought he was after MacKail, here. Now we have to call the infernal county and tell them to send their infernal Doc Owens right back here! Ain’t that a bitch?”

  Hamp laughed dryly and replied, “He’s sure going to think so. They can’t be a quarter of the way into Barstow, yet. I can’t see ’em heading back under the afternoon sun, can you?”

  Winslow shrugged and said, “No, but we got to notify ’em we had another shooting out here. You and the boys find somewhere’s cooler to store this cuss whilst I get on the telly-phone next door.”

  Stringer had been meaning to ask about that in any case, so he holstered his reloaded gun and tagged along.

  The much vaunted telephone company of Esperanza consisted of a single deskset at one end of the counter in the general store. As Winslow used it, Stringer jawed with the old lady behind the counter and established that she and her husband ran the place in partnership with Winslow. Everyone else paid two bits to use the telephone. Stringer started to say the Bell System charged a nickel. Then he reflected that Big Ben no doubt thought the twenty cents he made on each call a modest enough profit for his enterprise. Stringing that wire, even as a single line, all the way to Barstow Bell Central, had no doubt cost the ambitious Winslow a pretty penny.

  When the man who owned the line hung up, he told Stringer, “I don’t think they enjoyed hearing from us. The old boy at the far end said that at the rate we’re going, the county will have to set up a deputy coroner out here, permanently.”

  He added, “They said they doubt they can get anyone out here until tomorrow and that, meanwhile, neither you nor me ought to leave town. Which one of us got him? Could you tell?”

  Stringer shrugged and said, “He was hit twice in the chest. You must have hulled him good with your first shot, judging from the wild way he was shooting at us. I doubt it matters, since the silly son of a bitch was attempting premeditated murder in front of witnesses. How do I go about using that telephone on my own?”

  “You just pick it up and talk to the gal at the other end. She’ll be working at the Barstow switchboard and you just have to tell her who in town you want her to connect you up with.”

  “I’d like to call my office up in Frisco. How do we work out the long distance charges, Ben?”

  Winslow blinked and answered,
“Lord have mercy, it beats me. What say I bill you or your paper after the Bell folk bill me?”

  Stringer said that sounded fair and moved down to the deskset. The operator in Barstow gave him a harder time about it than Winslow. He had to argue some with the officious snip before she finally connected him with a supervisor who knew how to make long distance connections.

  When he did get through, Sam Barca fussed at him because it was almost Sam’s lunch time and because he thought Stringer was taking way too long on such a mundane assignment. He calmed down some, as Stringer brought him up to date. He said, “It’ll read a heap better if you can establish they’re really all that’s left of the Lowendorf party. But how do you read all this bullshit with more recent backshooters?”

  Stringer sighed and said, “I’m still working on it. The one we just shot it out with in the saloon next door wasn’t nearly old enough or German-looking enough to be a leftover Lowendorf. He reads hired gun. I don’t know whether he was after me or Big Ben. The one called Calico was after me for sure, but he won’t work as a sixty to seventy-year-old Pennsylvania Dutchman, either.”

  Sam Barca replied, “We’ll want a sketch or photograph of that covered wagon to go with your feature and… Did you say they called that young gent who saved your bacon out there Kid?”

  “They did. What about him? He’s likely over in Los Angeles, trying to break into motion pictures, by now.”

  Sam Barca growled, “Don’t be too sure about that. The wire service carried something about a Billy Hargrave, A.K.A. The San Berdoo Kid, getting blown away in the Barstow freight yards just about any time that fits.”

  Stringer frowned, cupped the mouthpiece, and asked Winslow if the name, Hargrave, meant anything to him. Big Ben nodded, bleakly, and replied, “Don’t repeat it, but that was Kid’s last name. What about him?”

  Stringer batted it back and forth with Sam Barca a spell before he hung up, to say, “Kid was found dead, backshot, by the Union Pacific yard workers in the wee small hours. Nobody can say just when, or who did it. But Kid did put Calico on the ground and that like-minded gunslick you and me just shot it out with did ride in from Barstow this morning. So add it up.”