by Lou Cameron
Stringer sealed the tightly rolled Bull Durham with his tongue before he assured her, “When you blow away a hat with a man’s head in it that first time, you are out to hurt someone. That first round would have been aimed at your pretty head instead of mine, if I hadn’t been the intended target. It’s the same bunch I’ve been having trouble with before I got here, only they seem to be running low on help.”
He struck a light on the weathered side of the wagon box and got his smoke going. Thoughtfully, he blew a smoke ring and added, “Calico was a professional gunslick. He was even working as one for the town. After Kid killed Calico, they sent for the one who called himself Manson. He killed Kid and might have killed me if the barkeep at the saloon hadn’t spotted him as a strange drinker of uncertain disposition.”
He took another drag, offered the smoke to her, and when she shook her head he added, “Losing Manson left the treacherous old cuss shorthanded. He could come after me personally or he could send in a second-stringer. I can’t see Horst, Ludwig or whoever out there this evening. To begin with, Big Ben Winslow can’t recall anyone who fits the description in or about the town, and Big Ben ought to know, since he owns it.”
She frowned thoughtfully and objected, “I’ve seen a few old-timers around Esperanza who might fit that description, Stuart.”
He shook his head and said, “Plain old-timers don’t count. The one I’m worried about has to be fairly rich and powerful as well as mean.” He rapped the wagon box they were leaning against with his knuckles and added, “He lifted a family fortune out of this very wagon, years ago, and from the looks of things, he hung on to a good part of it, or more likely invested it wisely.”
He took a thoughtful drag on his smoke and mused half to himself, “If he’d started a new life at any distance, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. He’s feared from the beginning I’d stumble over something and expose him for the rat he must have been, out here on the desert so long ago. Those three children might or might not have been his. But at least one of those grown women must have been his wife, and he left her and his own brother out here to dry up and blow away, for all he cared!”
She nodded soberly but suggested, “He might have been half-crazed with thirst. He might have just thought, once the damage had been done, there was nothing he could do but try and forget his dead kith and kin.”
Stringer grimaced and said, “Savage tribesmen do better than that by their own dead. I’d understand if the one survivor lit out for distant parts to start all over. But he’s still somewhere close. He’s been close to the scene of his crime since before you or I was born, yet, in all those years he never thought to ride out here and bury them properly.”
She suggested, “Maybe he was afraid of what he might find out here. Maybe he managed to just forget what happened until those borax haulers stumbled over this site.”
Stringer shrugged and muttered, “He should have just kept his head down, then. A smart villain who’d never been tempted to return to the scene of a crime in forty years or more should have known better than to wake sleeping dogs.”
He snubbed out the last of the Bull Durham on the sole of his boot and crawled the few yards to where his Stetson had been hung on a branch by that last rifle shot. As he rejoined Binnie he explained, “It’ll really be snake time soon. Let’s find out who’s best at waiting games.”
He stuck the hat up again, let it stay there a thoughtful spell, then called out, “I see the rascal, Binnie. He’s not as far out as we figured and if yon circle to your right a mite you’ll have a clean shot at the sneak!”
Nothing happened. Binnie looked relieved and said, “He’s gone!” But Stringer amended that to, “Gone or even smarter than we are. I just hate hide and seek with guns in tricky light. I remember one time down Cuba way, the Dons were fiends for sniping and impossible to locate because they used smokeless powder. They had some colored troopers from the Tenth Cav pinned down, along with your humble servant. It was just about this time of evening. Neither side had fired for a spell. I told this one white second john he was maybe acting premature, but you know how second johns are. That’s why I reckon we’d best wait-out sundown.”
She glanced at the orange sky to their west and said, “We’re sure to get back to town well after dark if we start now. What happened to that officer in Cuba?”
He shrugged and said, “Oh, he took a round in one ear and out the other. Neat shooting, at that range and in that light. I doubt we’re up against anyone that good. That first shot only ticked my hat brim and missed my fool skull by inches.”
CHAPTER TEN
Binnie had been right about how late in the evening it was by the time they got to her back yard. Aside from having to do some circling lest they ride into an ambush on the wagon trace, the sun went down ruby red, and neither the moon nor stars came out at all. For that northwest wind over the distant mountains had brought a Pacific overcast along with it and the night was black as cuttlefish puke.
After all the time they’d spent pinned down together out on the desert it seemed only natural for him to duck inside with her. Her ’dobe was neatly if plainly furnished and kept. She told him to make himself to home as she put the pot on her coal range and lit some kindling in it. He knew it was going to take her some time to make coffee for them. He didn’t care. He had no place better to go.
As if she’d read his mind, Binnie sat down beside him on the leather davenport, saying, “I feel rain in the air and I don’t have any work at my forge this evening. If you mean to stay the night with me, we’re going to have to get a few cards faceup on the table.”
He gulped, tried not to grin dirty, and said, “We’d likely both be safer if we combined forces. That sneak with the rifle must have beat us back to town, unless we’re talking about some leftover wild Indians.”
She nodded, but when he tried to put an arm around her, Binnie pulled away and said, “Down boy, it’s early. To begin with, I unsaddled my mule out back, just now. Don’t you reckon you ought to make that barb of yours more comfortable?”
He started to say he’d meant to ride on to the town livery as soon as she’d said a proper Buenas noches to him. But, instead he told her, “I’ll see to both the brutes whilst you warm up, the stove, I mean.”
But as he shifted his weight to rise she said, “Wait. I said we had to get things betwixt us straight. A widow woman dwelling alone has her reputation to consider and, well, I ain’t sure I’m ready to get really serious with another man, just yet.”
He assured her he was a love ’em and leave ’em cad and that he’d be right back. She let him up, this time, but as he was on his way to the door she put a damper on it by telling him, “I’m glad we got that settled. I agree we ought to fort-up together for now, as long as we don’t go getting mushy about it.”
As he unsaddled his cordovan barb in the darkness of her lean-to, Stringer told it, “I don’t know why I’m doing this, old pard. The bed in my own sweet little ’dobe is way bigger and softer than that lumpy davenport in there. The only thing to be said for such a platonic proposition is that they may not be after her and they’re after me for certain.”
He poured more water in the trough, from a hanging olla, and slid the bars across the rear of the pony’s temporary stall as he added, in a low disgusted tone, “Whoever said virtue was its own reward must not have known how much fun things were the other way.”
As he stepped back outside, something plopped wetly on the brim of his old Stetson. If that hadn’t been owlshit it was starting to rain. Things like that happened, even on the Mojave. He’d made it almost to Binnie’s door when the night was rent by a horrendous thunderbolt, outlining his shadow in chalk white light against the weathered door. Then somebody threw a bucket of piss-warm water over him and he ducked inside, saying, “Suffering snakes, it’s coming down fire and salt out there!”
Then he noticed how dark it was inside. Binnie had trimmed her lamp, and the only light left was the flickering blue li
ght of burning coal in the range across the way. Binnie was seated on the chesterfield, wearing just her shirt. She’d hauled off her boots and jeans while he’d been out back with the stock.
He started to ask her to make up her fickle mind. Then he reconsidered all she’d said, as he peeled off his own wet jacket and hung it up with his hat and gun rig. As he sat down beside her he put a casual arm up on the leather sofaback behind them, and murmured, “As I understand things, should anyone ever ask, this never happened?”
She agreed that was about the size of it and didn’t resist, this time, when he hauled her in for a howdy kiss. So things that were never supposed to happen, officially, proceeded to happen then and there, and she said she admired the size of it a lot.
But after they’d just about busted her chesterfield and agreed it made sense to stop and get entirely undressed, she told him the coffee was about ready and, when he protested he didn’t need coffee at bedtime, Binnie laughed sort of dirty and asked him where he’d ever gotten the notion they were on their way to bed with sleep in mind.
He had to admit, as he lazed on the lumpy leather to watch her rustle coffee and cake without a stitch to hide her slender but sinewy young body, that there was a lot to be said for her being used to working late at night, even when she wasn’t working over her anvil. For the beautiful blacksmith could pound as hard, and as skillfully, either way.
They wound up in her bedroom, and neither of them minded the crumbs they got in her bed by trying to put coffee cake in her at one end while he got all he could in the other. She spilled coffee on him, too, but he forgave her when she licked it off so teasingly. From time to time, the sky outside ripped open to light up the whole bedroom in electrical flickers. It sounded as if hail was coming down on the flat roof above them, along with the drumming rain. Binnie was inspired by a particularly noisy bang that tingled the ’dobe walls around them to cling to him limpetlike in protracted orgasm, sobbing, “Oh, Lord, a gal forgets what she’s been missing, even when she’s missing it!”
He wondered idly, even as he caught up with her in a heartpounding climax that delighted him to his toes, just who might be shitting whom. For he didn’t feel like bragging about either of the bargals he’d enjoyed since his arrival in Esperanza and even though Binnie admitted to being a widow woman, no one man could have ever broken her in so fine, bless her muscular hide.
As the storm and their first passion began to subside, as such awesome wonders of nature must, she lay with her cheek pressed to his naked chest, purring, “Your heart is beating just the way hooves clip-clop. Did you know that, dear?”
He yawned and said, “If you say so. Just let me get my second wind and I’ll be proud to clip-clop all over your sweet insides.”
She giggled, snuggled closer, with her free hand gently fooling with his whip handle, and then she stopped breathing to listen sharper, murmuring, “Damn, that’s not your heart I hear clip-clopping. It’s real hooves, a heap of hooves, coming closer.”
He cocked his head, had a good listen, and decided, “I’d say you were right, if it made any sense. Don’t you think it’s a mite early in the evening for a twenty mule borax rig to show up?”
She sat up with a weary sigh, saying, “It’s pushing midnight, thanks to you being such a slow starter. They no doubt ran their mules ahead of an unloaded rig when that thunderbuster caught them out on the trail from Barstow.”
She struck a match, lit her bedside lamp, and rose from said bed, cussing under her breath. Stringer asked how come as he admired the interesting contours of her firm lamp-lit flesh. She told him, “I have to get dressed and you have to get out of here poco tiempo, of course. Whether any of those brutes need to be reshod or not, and they likely do, I run the municipal corral for Big Ben. Those mule skinners will never drive on through the dark desert, now. The borax beds lie lower to the northeast and we just talked about wagon wheels digging in, out by that old wagon.”
As if to prove her point, there came a thunderous knock on the door in the next room and a male voice called in, “Borax outfit rolling in, Miss Binnie! You’re going to have to open your forge as well as the corral. The boys got caught good by that gully washer and you got plenty of repair work cut out for you!”
She called back, “Tell ’em I’ll be out there as soon as I get dressed, Mike.” But Mike, whoever he was, wanted to come in and dry off while he waited. She called back, “Run over to my forge and fire it up for me, if you want to get your jeans dried quickly.”
It worked. She grabbed fresh jeans and her leather apron from a pine wardrobe across the room and told him, “Stay here. I’ll toss your things in to you and leave it to you to get dressed and out of here, discreetly. Don’t take your pony out of my lean-to until you hear me hammering out front. But why do I go on like this? You’ve surely handled a situation like this before, judging from the way you just now handled me and mine!”
Then he was sitting there alone with his stuff on the floor all around before he could tell her he didn’t usually cut things so fine. As he wiped himself clean as he could with a corner of the top sheet he muttered, in an injured tone, “I wish I had me a dollar for every time I’ve passed on the gal on the second landing, back home. I can be discreet as hell when ladies around me don’t act so impulsive, cuss their hasty habits!”
He grunted his boots on last, rose to strap on his gun, blew the lamp out, hat in hand, and rolled over the sill of the one narrow window to find himself in a narrow slit between Binnie’s quarters and a blank wet adobe wall. He had to figure out that last part by feel, for while the rain had let up, the night was still overcast and it was almost pitch dark in there. He eased toward the only light, slitting in at him from the main street. He savvied what Binnie meant about pussyfooting around out back before things simmered down. He wondered idly how often she’d warned other men to be discreet, and why it sort of vexed him to wonder about that. He knew he was being unfair. The gal had said right out and up front that she preferred to work and live like the boy her blacksmith father had wanted. He knew that had she been a young good-looking blacksmith of the usual persuasion she’d feel as free as any other man to love ’em and leave ’em. So why should it piss another such hairpin to wind up feeling just a mite loved and left?
He stood in the slit between buildings, rolling a smoke, as he stared on through the wider gap between Binnie’s forge and a larger frame business building. He had to laugh at himself as he considered how many times he’d had his way with a maid and felt sort of shitty, easing his way on down the road. Human nature was sure contrary. He knew that if Binnie tried to follow him back to Frisco he’d feel mighty chagrined. So what was she supposed to do, now that they’d had their friendly no strings fling, slash her wrists if he never came back for more?
He heard the ring of Binnie’s hammer and, taking that as his assurance the coast was clear, stepped out in the open to just stride on out to the main street as if he owned it. Big Ben was the one who likely held clear title to it. But what the hell, it was a public thoroughfare.
He swung left, away from Binnie’s open doorway, as he reached the wider and more brightly-lit roadway. There were no street lamps as such. But Esperanza was open for business and to hell with the clock, now that the borax haulers were in town with no place better to go before the desert dried out a mite.
He passed one of the big boxy wagons and its water wagon trailers, parked before the chili bean joint. The mules had been unhitched and led off somewhere. But as he glanced in, he saw all the counter seats occupied by soggy-looking mule skinners, warming their chilled innards with hot coffee and even hotter chili. He moved on. He knew the saloon would be not only filled but overcrowded. He knew it would be smart to at least show his face at the bar, while Binnie was established at her own place of business at a discreet distance. But, now that he’d gotten out of her bed, the events of the day past were sort of catching up with him. He knew that old spade beard from the county coroner’s office was likely to arri
ve at dawn, if at all. It depended on the condition that sudden savage storm had left the desert roads in. Either way, it was easier to get up after at least a few winks of sleep. So he cut around to duck into the adobe Big Ben had set aside for him.
It wasn’t there, exactly, as he drifted in to join the circle of townsfolk standing there with lanterns and torches. As he gaped in wonder at the jumble of damp adobe bricks and fallen timbers, Hamp Dugan spotted him and sort of bleated, “Jesus H. Christ! Is that really you, MacKail?”
Stringer moved closer, saying, “It was the last time I shaved in front of a mirror. What happened, here, Hamp?”
The town law replied, “We’re still working on that. It looks like the place got hit by lightning during that big storm. You just saved us digging you out from under all them mud pies by showing up alive! Where have you been all this time?”
Stringer shrugged and said, “Oh, here and yonder. It was too far to run when that storm whipped in so sudden. So I spent most of it hunkered under the only overhead handy.”
He stepped over the now knee-high remains of the outer wall to strike a match and bend over, saying, “I had my gladstone in here, somewheres. Oh, here she is.”
Then, when he bent over to grasp the carrying handle of his already battered but tough leather gladstone, he sniffed, sniffed again, and called out, “Hamp, you’d best come closer and see if you think I’m right about the way electricity’s supposed to smell.”
The older lawman joined him inside the low walls of the ruins with a puzzled smile. Then he frowned, bent to sniff deeper, and sort of whispered, “Jesus, you’re right. Once you’ve tasted nitro fumes you never forget ’em. This place wasn’t thunderbolted, it was dynamited, and ain’t you glad you was out at the time?”
Before he could be forced into any more white lies, Stringer crawfished off into the darkness, bee-lined back to Binnie’s, and got that livery mount out of her lean-to without being spotted. He knew he’d made the right move when one of Hamp Dugan’s deputies caught up with him in the tack room, as he was tossing his hired saddle over a saw horse, to inform him he was wanted over to Big Ben’s.