Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  By this time they’d made it to Western Union again. As he picked up a pencil and got to work she asked him with a puzzled frown, “I thought you said something about that morgue shutting down soon, too.” So he shot a guilty glance at the clerk, who didn’t seem interested in them as he took something down at his desk in the back, and muttered, “I lied. Newspaper offices stay open round the clock and the morgue’s a heap of filing cabinets most anyone working night or day can get into, if you ask „em nice. I just wanted to get us both out from under old Jethro so’s we could agree on some sort of united front.”

  She looked worried by those words. So he wrote some more down on paper for the night shift at the Sun before he soothed, “I don’t mean either of us should lie to the law about that shoot-out this afternoon. Whether Bradford has a record or not, I’m still in the clear as long as you back me with the truth.”

  The clerk was rising from his seat in the back as Willow murmured mournfully, “I don’t know how long I can manage here in town without any visible means of support, Stuart! I confess if you hadn’t been so nice about lunch I’d be even hungrier right now with even my saddle and bedroll on its way to some pawn shop down in the county seat…”

  He cut her short by growling, “Later.” He waved the wire he’d just written to the telegraph clerk, saying, “I’d like this sent day rates, late as the hour may be. There’ll be someone to sign for this wire at the address indicated, no matter when it gets there, but how soon might that be?”

  The clerk told him cheerfully, “Less’n an hour if we’re talking a downtown address with someone on the premises when our boy shows up on his bike. How soon you’ll get your reply is up to them, of course.”

  As he took Stringer’s message he nodded soberly at Willow to add, “No answer for you from Sacramento yet, Mrs. Watt.” Then he read Stringer’s signature again, blinked, and said, “Hold on, if you’d be Mister MacKail, might you be the gent Jethro Durler just wired the county about this very afternoon?” When Stringer warily allowed he might be, the Western Union man handed him the message he’d just taken down from the county seat, saying, “I’d surely be obliged if you’d take this up the street to old Jethro, if you’re heading that way, I mean.”

  Stringer said they might be and asked how important the message might be, it being sealed in a fool yellow envelope by the son of a bitch. He was braced for some argument. But the small town communications expert told them both, as if they were all old friends, “There were papers out on that Bradford cuss. He must not have been expecting to stay in town long enough for a checkup at the county seat. They called him Bad News Bradford down in the big valley where he was more famous. Jethro will no doubt be pleased to learn nobody has to worry about him no more. They say it’s never been proved in court, but he was rumored to have planted at least a dozen men and was wanted for certain for beating his last wife to death.”

  Stringer agreed the man who’d tried to backshoot him sounded like a swell egg and nudged Willow to add, “Come on. I’ll buy you some supper whilst we await the reply from my paper.”

  She said, “Oh, Stuart, I couldn’t take advantage of you like that a second time.” He was saved from having to answer such a dumb remark by the telegraph clerk, who’d naturally been scanning the message to the night crew at the Sun and chimed in with, “Do you still want your pals to dig up all they might have on Wesley Bradford now seeing the county just found him listed as Bad News in their own files?”

  Stringer nodded and said, “I do. I knew when first we met that he was some sort of hired gun. I’m still interested in who might have hired him and we may have something in our newspaper morgue the county might not on his known associates, attorneys of record and so on.”

  The clerk said he followed Stringer’s drift. Willow at least followed him back outside, but started up again about the price of coffee at the Yuba Hotel. So he growled, “For Pete’s sake, if I’d asked you to go to that church social with me later this evening, you’d expect me to turn up with bay rum in my hair and flowers in my hands, wouldn’t you?”

  She dimpled up at him and said, “That’s different. A gent who comes courting is one thing. A gent paying the way of a poor old widow who can’t support herself is another thing entirely!”

  He chuckled dryly and said, “You ain’t a poor old widow. You’re a rich young widow if only we can get your beef herd sold off at a fair price. Let’s worry about who’s taking advantage of whom later, after we find out where old Jethro is, and what they’re serving for dessert this evening. You were wrong about that cake, earlier today. I could barely get the second slab down.”

  The town law saved them the chore of tracking him down by being in the street near the hotel, jawing with some other gents, as Stringer and the young widow approached. When Stringer handed him the wire from the county seat Jethro tore it open, scanned it, and said, “Well, I never,” without telling anyone else what the message might be. So Stringer said he and Willow would be in the dining room for a spell if anyone needed them and led the brunette on up the steps before she could say anying dumb about the high cost of living in Dutch Flat.

  Inside, as they were being seated by the snooty old head waiter with the monkey suit and drinker’s nose, Willow asked Stringer how come the town law seemed to be playing his cards so close to his vest, adding, “It seems to me he’d have told us we’re not likely to be needed in court, after all. He must know how concerned we both are.”

  Stringer said, “He might not want one or more of those other gents to know what was in that wire. We don’t know who they are, after all.”

  She said, “Pooh, I’ll bet he means to claim any bounty money on that man you shot!” To which he replied, sincerely, “I sure hope so. At best a coroner’s hearing knocks the stuffings out of seventy-two hours and he’d have to cut me in, at least, if I didn’t wind up with all the bounty on the rascal after getting all the credit from the coroner.”

  She waited until a lesser breed of waiter had taken their order for menudo, as a mighty hearty soup was misnamed in the Spanish the two of them had grown up on. In fancier Spanish, menudo meant trifle or small change. As made by a California cook it included just about all the hot pepper and hearty innards they could boil down halfway liquid. Willow said a bowl of menudo and mayhaps a couple of tortillas was a meal in itself. But he told the waiter they were both hungry and to bring „em steak and potatoes after the soup course.

  As the waiter crawfished away Willow insisted, “You must be out to die broke, no matter how well they pay you on that paper. Didn’t you read the prices on the menu just now?”

  He said, “I don’t allow every lady I meet up with to take such cruel advantage of me, Miss Willow. This isn’t going to be much fun at all if you keep calling me a sucker. Hasn’t anyone ever bought you a decent meal just for being so pretty?”

  She looked away and murmured, “You’d be surprised how many gents have come courting since my husband rode off a bluff two spring roundups ago. I’ve been more disgusted than surprised by the demands made later for gallantries great and small.”

  The waiter spread their peasant soup on the fancy linen for them. Stringer waited until they were alone again to tell her, “Some men cheat at cards, too. Would it ease your mind if I put all the cards on the table betwixt us, Miss Willow?”

  She regarded him dubiously but allowed he might as well get down to brass tacks. So he told her, “I think you’re a swell-looking gal and I’d be lying like a rug if I said you’d have to twist my arm to have your wicked way with me. At the same time, I was raised to treat a lady decent and not to aim at fish in barrels, even if I thought a high-toned little gal like you could be had for no more than common courtesy. So why don’t you just let me treat you courteous and do me the courtesy of assuming I know better than to leap at ladies like a randy billy goat the split second they let down their guards an inch in my uncouth vicinity?”

  He expected her to smile, at least. So when she commenced to w
eep in her soup he muttered, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, would you rather I told you I thought you were ugly?” Then she managed a weak little smile and told him it was just the pepper in the spicy Mex soup that was making her nose and eyes run a mite. So he said, “Look on the bright side. You just can’t catch cold within two nights of inhaling a whole bowl of menudo.”

  So she nodded but sort of whispered, “It’s the coming night I’m sort of worried about, Stuart. Did you mean what you just said about not taking too much for granted from, well, a lady in distress?”

  He said, “I have a room and bath upstairs. Bought and paid for in advance. Before you throw the rest of that hot soup across the table at me, I have a new bedroll I’m kind of anxious to try out, back in the tack room. But let’s worry about all that later, after we finish here and see what the morgue of my paper has to say about Great Basin Beef Incorporated.”

  She let that pass until she’d dabbed at her eyes with a linen napkin. Then she asked, “Why should there be anything about a respectable cattle company in your rather grim-sounding newspaper morgue, Stuart?” So he told her, “It depends on just how respectable they are. It’s perfectly possible they simply never got your wires sent from here. Anything’s possible when money’s mixed up in it. If they’ve ever been sued by anyone down closer to the more usual beef market, it’ll be on record, somewhere. Finish your menudo so’s we can grub ourselves good and get back to the telegraph office. If the outfit you agreed to sell your beef to has bad habits known to one and all down by the Bay, I’ll be able to make you an educated guess as to why they’re having that bigger herd headed in such unusual directions.”

  She said she was already worried enough about them running off with her stock, no matter where they might be headed for. Then they jawed of other things through the rest of the meal and she was telling him more about widowhood over near Lookout Crags than he really wanted to know when someone yelled in, “Herd coming into town, under some control but not that much, if anyone in here has ponies out front to worry about!”

  Stringer and the girl exchanged glances. Then he told her, “Stay put. I’ll find out. Your troubles could be over, or just starting, and I’m the one packing a six-gun, right?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The gloaming light outside would have been tricky enough in its own right. The swirling wall of dazzling dust against the sunset to the west made it even less possible to make out detail as the outfit came up the south bank of the brawling Yuba, brawling and bawling itself, as the riders cussed and whipped rumps with their rope ends. Stringer knew it had to be the hell-bound herd of the Tarington drive. For who else could be pushing so many beef critters the wrong fool way? He could tell by the rumble in the evening air and the tingle in the soles of his boots that over a thousand head were coming at him, whether they wanted to or not. The herd wasn’t all that fabulous by the standards of the big drives up from Texas to the railheads of Kansas in the glory days of Dodge and such, but it was one hell of a herd to be pushing over the High Sierra into pure desert within sight of railroad tracks!

  He’d promised Willow he’d do the worrying about her much more modest handful of cows, so he legged it over by the tracks and got there ahead of anyone save for old Diego and his two young Mexican helpers. The cows penned behind them were milling and bawling as they caught the scents and sounds of all those other critters heading their way, cussing so. Diego asked Stringer what was going on. Stringer replied, “I’m sure one hell of a heap of cows are headed up the grade at us. We’ll soon enough find out what happens next.”

  What happened next was a trio of dusty riders looming against the dusty sunset at them. They seemed almost as confused as Stringer and the Mexicans, at first. Then the big, bearlike rider in the lead pointed at Willow’s penned cows with his braided quirt to call out,

  “That figures to be the package of beef we was expecting to pick up in these parts. If it’s branded Circle Six it goes on upslope to the bedding rounds with the rest of the herd, hear?”

  Then the burly boss spied Stringer and the three Mexicans in the haze and called out in a pleasant enough way, “Hey there, señores, might them cows ahint you belong to The Widow Watt of the Circle Six?”

  Stringer sounded just as pleasant, he hoped, as he called back, “They do, and they’re staying right where they are until the lady has been paid the agreed-on price.”

  All three riders bulled closer. Only the leader seemed anxious to plant his pony’s front hooves on Stringer’s toes as he growled in a lot less friendly tone, “I push cows, not no pens or pencils, sonny. The little lady can settle up with the company later. Right now my orders are to take her beef to Wagon Springs along with the rest my outfit’s bought, see?”

  Stringer stood his ground and growled back, “Get your damned horse out of my face unless you want me to back it off, myself, with hat or fist. Nobody’s bought shit until Miss Willow has mucho dinero in her hot little hands, amigo.”

  The born bully reined his pony back less than either of them felt right about as he let out a forced laugh and called out, “Well, now, what have we here, the late James Butler Hickok or some other species of total asshole? You are pushing your luck with the one and original Chuck Tarington of the San Joaquin and any other damned valley he wants to ride through. You have heard of me, of course?”

  Stringer nodded and replied, “I have. You sounded like a real asshole before you got here. Now that you’ve arrived I see nobody lied about you. I used to have conversations like this in the schoolyard after school, when no grownups were supervising. Wouldn’t you say we were both a mite grownup to be carrying on so childish?”

  Tarington smiled wolfishy down and cast his glare on old Diego, to the left of Stringer and back a pace or more, to inquire in the tone of a self-assured cat addressing mice, “Are you greasers backing the play of this fool gringo or might he be all mine to keep and cherish.”

  Old Diego stared up in that sleepy-eyed way that warns those who know his breed that they might just be pushing things a mite far. The old man purred almost shyly, “Is not for me to say who the foolish gringo might be around here. The one my muchachos and I have to back just because that is the way things must be, shot it out with another bravo this afternoon, and won, as you can see.”

  Tarington looked around, saw a couple of his other riders had drifted in to see what was up, and announced, “Bueno, if that’s the way it has to be, I hope everyone here assembled can see it’s five to four in my favor, and that I’m only claiming my outfit’s bought and paid-for beef. So the choice betwixt peace and war is up to you dumb obstacles to my further progress and I just don’t give a shit whether you aim to stand aside or fill your fool fists, hear?”

  He might have meant it. Old Diego and at least one of the Mexican kids seemed willing to find out. Stringer said, “Hold it, gents. I hate to be a spoilsport but this just isn’t going to work. I doubt anyone here really wants to be the loser and there’s just no way the winners are going to get out of here for a tedious time.”

  Chuck Tarington growled, “Says who and who figures to stop us?” So Stringer snorted in disgust and said, “Aw, grow up. I’m stuck here in Placer County, indefinitely, just for gunning one cuss who was out to backshoot me in front of a witness. How soon do you reckon they’d tell anyone here they were free to ride on after a half-assed repeat of the fight at the O.K. Corral?”

  One of Tarington’s riders murmured, “He’s got a point, boss. We can’t push our stock more than twenty miles a day and it’s already getting dark.”

  The less reasonable-sounding Tarington told him to stuff a sock in it, but after a pregnant pause decided, “Later. We’d best circle the herd around to that big burned-out cove they told us about and get bedded serene before we come back for these Circle Six critters.”

  Then he asked Stringer, sweetly, “May we expect the pleasure of your company here, in the cool shades of evening, little darling?”

  Stringer shrugged and said, “You’ll
usually find me where I feel I might be needed.” To which Chuck Tarington flatly replied, “Don’t be here when I come back into town tonight. I mean that.”

  Then he spun his big bay and rode off into the gathering dusk as old Diego told Stringer, “If you mean to make a stand of it I’d better send for some more of our people, no?”

  Stringer soberly held out a hand to shake with the decent old Mex, but even as they shook he said, “It’s not your fight, viejo. My own kind elected Jethro Durler to keep the peace here in Dutch Flat. So I’d best go tell him what’s up and let him gather such backing as he feels he might need.”

  Diego shook his head and replied, “He won’t lift a finger to help you and la señora. Neither of you are from Dutch Flat and neither I nor any other member of my raza ever vote for him in any case.”

  Stringer smiled crookedly and insisted, “Come on, he’s still a paid-up peace officer and all those cows Willow brought to town are worth a pretty penny. Chuck Tarington’s not from Dutch Flat, either. So how come he rates a permit to commit grand larceny smack in the center of the township?”

  Diego said, simply, “He has a rep. Our Jethro is more a politico than a pistolero and to go up against a malo of Tarington’s caliber might give pause to a lawman twice as tough as anyone Jethro can call on, even if he had good reason, see?”

  Stringer nodded soberly and said, “I’m beginning to. Willow wasn’t whistling Dixie when she said she had no friends in these parts and I just got here. What else can you tell me about Tarington’s rep in these parts, viejo mio?”

  Old Diego turned to one of the kids working for him and murmured, “Luis, run over to my place and tell my mujer I could use my Henry repeater and her sister’s two muchachos over here, as soon as possible.” Then he turned back to Stringer and said, simply, “You and la señora have at least a few friends, here. As to Carlos Tarington, I do not think his mother could really like such villano estupido. But as I just said, few fight such pests without very good reason.”