Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  As he’d hoped, the mysterious brunette stopped dead in her tracks and turned to regard him with a curious scowl. He nodded at her and said, “I’ve been searching for you some, Miss Willow Watt. You have a good fifty head of mighty hungry beef critters bawling like stuck pigs over by the railroad. Didn’t anyone ever tell you cows eat grass, or at least hay, whilst they’re waiting about for someone to eat them?”

  She swore in Spanish, no doubt hoping both gents present were as Anglo as they looked, and told him to mind his own damned business.

  Stringer turned away from her with a disgusted snort and tore a telegram blank from the pad on the counter to compose his own update to Sam Barca. It didn’t take long because there wasn’t much to tell that was fit to print. The gal still told him before he could finish, “I know my poor cows haven’t been fed since before sunrise. But what am I to do about it?”

  Stringer finished his last line before he answered, dryly, “Feeding „era would be a good way to start.” Then he handed the penciled message over to the clerk, explaining he wanted it sent collect.

  He got no argument from Western Union. The owner of the starving stock snapped, “Very funny and a lot you know! I was assured there’d be some front money waiting for us here when we drove the cows in from Lookout Crags, talking about two days and as many nights on the trail. I’ve just wired the cuss we made the deal with, and the minute the money gets here from Sacramento I mean to feed them cows before I order noon dinner for me and the boys!”

  Stringer glanced at the Regulator Brand clock above the counter before he pointed out, “We’re both a mite late for lunch, as they’ve commenced calling noon dinner where folk smoke tailor-mades these days. I hope you won’t take this as needlessly nosy, but might you by any chance be hoping to sell some beef to Mister Charles Tarington out of Sacramento?”

  She frowned up at him, more thoughtful than irate, to answer, „„I do believe they have a contract drover named Tarington in charge of the drive. They told me I’d find a money order waiting for me here in care of Western Union. Tarington and his hands were to simply pick up the Circle Six beef as they passed on through, and how come I’m telling all this to a perfect stranger?”

  Stringer smiled down at her to reply, “Oh, I’m not so perfect. I have a few faults. If you’d like to call me Stuart MacKail, I ride for the San Francisco Sun and I’m paid to be nosy.”

  “You’re a newspaper reporter?” She brightened.

  “I just said I wasn’t perfect. I reckon you’d best let me buy you some lunch, ma’am. It might be of as much interest to both our hides as our bellies if we were to compare us some notes on this business venture you may have been a mite hasty about.”

  She looked mighty interested, but said, “I can’t leave here until they reply to the wire I just sent them. Call it lunch and call me a country girl all you like, but it’s just plain wrong to stuff your own face whilst neglecting your stock.”

  He nodded soberly and said, “I was reared to take care of my pony before I washed up to be served myself. We still got a heap of notes to compare, Miss Willow, and right now I’m too hungry to talk standing up. So what say I get an old Mex I know to fork some hay over the rails to your critters and that way we can coffee and cake ourselves with a clear conscience.”

  She started to nod but held back with, “Hold on, I hardly know you and fifty-three head of mighty hungry cows figure to bust a five-dollar bill beyond repair, ah, Stuart.”

  He said, “I doubt old Diego will demand that much and even if he does, I can charge it to expenses when I hand in the story. For you are not the first one to assure me there’s more to this story than meets the eye.”

  She agreed to tag along, allowing she was as curious and confused by his words as she was worried about her current financial embarrassment. Outside, he asked where her own mount might be and when she allowed she’d left her pony in the hotel stable, of course, he felt obliged to walk her over to the Acorn Corral and cattle pens, leading the roan like a good sport.

  As they walked the short distance she told him some outfit calling itself Great Basin Beef Incorporated seemed to be behind all the odd movements of cows he and his paper were interested in. Chuck Tarington just worked for them, making him sound almost as sensible as the men around the Sacramento Stockyards had allowed he seemed. Willow Watt had already noticed the cows she was out to sell the outfit seemed hell-bent for perdition once Tarington picked them up and added „em to the main herd. But Stringer had to agree she made more business sense when she observed, “I don’t raise beef critters to sell as pets. Once they’re converted to cash and off my hands I’ve nothing to say about their final fate, be it filet mignon or fertilizer.”

  He nodded soberly and said, „I was taught as a boy not to feel too sentimental about any critter I might wind up eating. But at the same time I was told it’s dumb to treat livestock needlessly cruel. Can you come up with any sensible reason to herd beef a lick further than you have to in dry country, in August?”

  She said, “I asked the buyer who dropped by our spread a few days back about that. He said there’s no railroad anywhere near that dinky mining town out in the Nevada Desert and, like I just said, it’s no never mind of mine, once cow-one of mine’s been paid for.”

  Stringer pointed out she hadn’t been paid dime-one for cow-one, and added, “That’s something to study on indeed, once old Tarington gets here with the main herd.”

  Then they noticed old Diego noticing them from just inside the Acorn Corral, and as the old Mex came out to greet them, with a sweep of his sombrero neither Stringer nor anyone else in pants would have rated, he dryly asked if Stringer wanted to return Rosalinda so soon.

  Stringer laughed lightly, introduced Willow to the old gent and explained how come those cows next door were carrying on so awful. Old Diego sighed and said, “I would gladly feed them por nada if only the ladrone I am forced to buy my fodder from did not behave as if I was some species of gold-laying goose. As I told you before, señor, we have already watered the poor vacas, pero…”

  “Ten cents a day per head and they may be here as long as two or more days from now,” Stringer cut in. Willow murmured, “That’s too steep, Stuart. There’s summer-cured grass growing wild all about for the gathering.”

  He said, “Somebody still has to gather it, and that many cows eat a heap of hay per diem. How about it, viejo?”

  Old Diego held out his palm before Stringer could change his mind. Stringer slapped it and dug out the five dollars and change. Then he took the brunette to lunch. He took her to the dining room at the Yuba Hotel, for several good reasons, starting with the fact he didn’t want that pretty Miwok waitress sore at him until he got to know all the gals in town a mite better. But his main reason was that conversation seemed more relaxed across a table than side by side at a counter, and this was the first chance he’d had to converse with anyone who might really know enough to matter about that apparently hell-bound herd.

  The hotel dining room was rather fancy, what with fresh white linen, a jar of fresh-picked tarweed on every table and the menu warning extra coffee cost two cents a cup. But the coffee was real Arbuckle and the food wasn’t bad, either. When she allowed she’d like pickled pig’s feet and egg plums he allowed he’d try the same, even though he had no idea what in thunder an egg plum might be. He figured she knew the local grub better. One of the nice things about having a job that called for some traveling was that things tasted and smelled a mite different in each and every county of each and every state and territory. Eating the same grub every night would no doubt wear a man down as much as spending every night with the same cook, albeit it wasn’t wise to make such observations to the womenfolk, he’d found.

  In the end the meal turned out more surprising than anything old Willow had to say, albeit she was prettier than the egg plums, once they arrived with the more sensible looking pig’s feet. He thought at first he’d been served real plums. They sure looked like fresh-picked
fruit. Only Willow cut into one of hers, females eating delicately in mixed company, and that was when he discovered they were deviled eggs, somehow stuck back together and dyed with beet juice, with a clove stuck in each one’s fat end to look like a stem. She said she didn’t know of any other place they served such odd eggs, either, but they sure went swell with the pickled pig’s feet.

  But for all her sophistication about ordering a la carte from the Yuba menu, Willow didn’t know beans about the far slopes of the Sierra, although she said she’d heard the country over yonder was no place to drive a cow in High Summer, or any other time of the year if it could be avoided. She was worried about not having been paid off yet, and let it show. Other than that she didn’t seem to give a hoot about any profit or loss Great Basin Beef Incorporated figured to make and she asked him, in fact, what it mattered to him, adding, “You don’t have the stake in the drive that I do, Stuart.”

  He shook his head and said, “I can’t hand in a story with no point to it and, unlike my friendly rivals, Jack London and Richard Harding Davis, I can’t just make one up. My readers are sure to want to know why those poor cows were driven into the desert when I write about so many of them dropping dead out yonder. I’m sort of interested myself.”

  She asked why, noting demurely that both the newspapermen he’d just mentioned seemed to be as respected and perhaps just a mite more famous. To which he could only reply, “Thanks. Aside from being saddled with old-fashioned notions about ethics I’ve just never had the wild imagination some of my rivals seem to be blessed with. You take the time the colored Tenth Cav took San Juan Hill down Cuba way while a lieutenant colonel called Roosevelt was over at Field Headquarters, looking to find out where to billet his New York Volunteers…’

  “Heavens! Were you there when the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill?” she cut in.

  He nodded modestly but confided, “That’s what I mean about my lack of imagination. The white officers commanding the colored troops atop the hill they’d just taken, without much of a fuss, requested some backup lest the Spanish counterattack. So our Teddy was told he might as well move his Volunteers up there as well, and that was all there was to it, until Richard Harding Davis spiced things up just a tad. I mean, sure, I could see the home front was more interested in the doings of the colorful New York Volunteers, or Rough Riders, than they were of the colored regulars who hadn’t done all that much themselves, when you got right down to it. But it never occurred to me to file a report of a then-obscure lieutenant colonel leading a gallant cavalry charge when all I saw were reinforcements moving into position at a walk.”

  She dimpled, said, “Well, I swan,” and asked how on earth the New York Volunteers had even been named the Rough Riders. So he told her, “That was Teddy’s own grand notion. He wasn’t fibbing as bad as old Davis. He had spent some time out west in his salad days. Did some ranching back in the 1880s, as a matter of fact. So, when the war with Spain broke out Teddy picked up his big stick and demanded some active duty. He quit his cushy job with the Navy Department, to his credit as a big stick waver, and signed up with Colonel Leonard Wood’s posh New York Volunteer Cavalry, as second in command.”

  “But the Rough Riders…” she cut in with a puzzled frown.

  “I’m trying to tell you. Most of Wood’s original recruits were members of the New York Polo Club. They naturally wanted to be the officers and noncoms, of course, so Teddy sent for lots of good old boys he’d ridden with in his younger days out west. They, in turn, recruited other cowhands and such until they even had ruffians like Tom Horn tagging along, although old Tom came down with the Yellow Jack before the outfit got so famous on San Juan Hill. Nobody rightly knew what to call such a mixed bag of eastern and western riders until it was agreed they all rode rough, whatever they were, so…”

  She clapped her hands in delight and laughed, but then she frowned and said, “Wait a minute. If the outfit by any name was really commanded by a colonel called Wood…”

  “Teddy made enough noise for any dozen full colonels,” he cut in with a wry smile. “I only meant to illustrate my point about needing more than my limited imagination when I hand in my sad tale of The Hell-Bound Herd.”

  She asked if he didn’t think he was dubbing said herd sort of dramatic, explaining, “The Nevada Desert may not be Heaven, but Hell could still be describing it a mite strong, Stuart. I mind I could punch a cow or more through to that camp, alive and even edible, if the price was right.”

  He signalled their waiter with his eyes as he told her, “You just said the magic word. If price was no object, you could doubtless deliver a beef critter by baby buggy to the Grand High Lama of Tibet. What do you reckon we ought to have for dessert?”

  She said, “I doubt they’d use anything but dried apples in the apple pie at this altitude. What say we try the devil’s food cake, and how did the Grand High Lama of Tibet get into a discussion of the price of beef?”

  He told the waiter they’d like deviled cake on top of their deviled eggs before he told her, “Gold is where you find it, and beef is sold where the buyers are willing to pay more for it than it costs you to deliver it. I can see why you drove a modest herd as far as Dutch Flat. I could even see that beef outfit taking your cows from here down to the coast, where the Quartermaster Corps is paying top dollar. But driving „em further the hard way would sound dumb even if Tarington wasn’t headed this way from the yards so much closer to Fort Mason!”

  She said, “It seems obvious to me they have to be paying way more for beef in that desert mining town.” But he shook his head like a bull with a fly between its horns and said, “Nobody who has to pay out of his or her own pocket is about to outbid the U.S. Government. But try her this way. What if the bottom line involves paying nobody at all? I’m pretty sure I could lose half a herd and still show some profit if I stiffed enough innocents along the way. Back in the days of the long drives up the old Chisholm and other such trails the less ethical outfits were notorious for forgetting to pay off their hands at the railhead and, of course, a lot of the cows they drove that far had been acquired sort of casually.”

  The waiter was putting their desserts in front of them by now. So Willow waited until he’d poured more coffee as well before she nodded her thanks and asked Stringer, “Are you saying I’ve been slickered by a buyer who has no intent to ever pay me for those beef brutes we just bought all that hay for?”

  Stringer wasn’t rude enough to point out just who’d paid off old Diego. He smiled crookedly across at her and asked, “Have you seen any money yet?” To which she answered, firmly, “Perhaps not, but if they think they’re about to add my stock to that bigger herd without paying me in full…You go in and finish up here if you like. I got to round up some of my boys and post a round-the-clock guard on that stock, lest some slick son of a bitch run off to Hell with it, without paying dime-one for one head!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Stringer felt it wasn’t his place to issue orders to hands he’d never hired, or to stand about like a simp whilst the boss lady issued orders, so he stayed put to finish both desserts and ante up for their grub whilst she tore off to do whatever.

  Then, seeing he was so handy to the room clerk in the next-door lobby of the Yuba Hotel, Stringer moseyed in to hire himself a corner room with bath, or at least a sink and crapper, on the top floor. The indoor plumbing set him back six bits a night, even up here in the middle of nowheres much. The room clerk pointed out in an injured tone that the Yuba provided electricity as well as running water and, to prove it, switched on the overhead chandelier, consisting of a whitewashed wagon wheel studded with small blue electrical bulbs. He told Stringer the wheel had once graced a covered wagon of the one and original Donner Party. Stringer had been raised to be respectful of his elders, so he didn’t opine the old coot was full of shit. But as he’d once written in a feature for the Sun, there seemed to be an awesome amount of relics left over from such a finite number of covered wagons when you consider
ed most got through, got used in bits and pieces to repair other vehicles, or got burned as handy kindling by later arrivals over the many years folk had gone on arriving.

  Having assured himself a place to bed down here in town, Stringer considered bedding down more primitive when and if he fell in with that odd cattle drive. He un-tethered Rosalinda out front and led her around to the hotel stable, now that he had a hotel key to wave at the old breed in charge. Guests got to board their mounts free, of course, but Stringer still tipped the hostler a dime and helped him unsaddle and stall the roan. That seemed to put the local old-timer in a good mood. So Stringer asked which of the nearby business establishments was least apt to screw him on some trail gear and supplies. The hostler confided they overcharged everywhere in town but added that the general store up past the post office handled brands of better quality, at least. So that was where Stringer went.

  The young dishwater blonde behind the counter didn’t look or act like she had gypsy blood, until Stringer started asking her the prices on things he might need. He was tempted to tell her he thought she was asking too much for a bedroll even if she and her mother threw in their sweet bedroll services. But he didn’t. He knew she was only doing her job and, what the hell, he was still ahead on the wiles of womankind, thanks to his fun and games aboard the Sacramento Steamer. So he ordered Anchor Brand canvas and Hudson Bay blankets for his bedroll, knowing how cold nights could get on the desert and how wet it rained when it rained at all. Then he bought canned beans and tomato preserves to form the solid core of his roll, not aiming to be beholden to any chuck wagon crew the least bit surly. He knew any cattle outfit apt to refuse a stranger coffee was apt to peg shots at him as well. But he bought a coffee pot and had her grind him a sack of Miller Brother beans in any case. He had soap, socks, extra ammo and such in his gladstone at the hotel. But seeing he was flush with old Echo’s big bills, and seeing how long the range could get in the dry country to the east, he let her sell him a .30-30 deer carbine and a couple of boxes of hollow point. She said her daddy had said it was a good idea to carry along more common rounds for up-close meat shots, seeing as hollow point tore deer up so awesome at point blank range. But he said, “That’s all right. I tend to get sore at deer or any other critter mean enough to crowd me. What are you asking for throw rope, seeing I’ve a horn on my saddle and might be tagging along with cows a spell in any case?”