Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  As they topped the last rise between higher sawteeth, north and south, Stringer reined in to stare soberly down the far side. He told Rosalinda, “It was way before our time, but that pretty little blue lake, down yonder where the grass grows so green and the trees stand so broody in the sunlight, was where they made camp to sweat out the snowfall.”

  As he walked his mount forward some more he reflected silently on how the snow just hadn’t stopped falling, and falling some more, until the covered wagons and the leanto huts they’d thrown up against some of „em had been buried clean out of sight by the time the rescue party from the west had finally punched over the pass with food and warm blankets, a mite late.

  It could have been worse, of course. For if those strong or desperate boys from the stranded party had failed to push on over for help during a lull in the storms, they’d have all wound up dead instead of just the forty-odd men, women and children who perished. The forty-seven still alive in the end had never talked much about how they might have lasted after all those others had starved to death. Men who’d been with the rescue party only mentioned frozen bodies with missing parts when they were pretty drunk, so the full details had been blurred a mite over the years. As a man who dealt more with fact than fancy Stringer knew the rumors of murder and cannibalism could be based on more or less than had really happened. Folk ate one another unusually often in the Great Basin he could only make out as gray haze from up here. Some said it had something to do with trying to live on rabbit meat too long. There was nothing in rabbit meat that inspired cannibalism, directly, but doctors boning up on the new science of sick feelings inspired by diet seemed to hold there was something missing in rabbit meat. Digger Indians seemed to make up for the lack of whatever by chewing on all sorts of desert roots and bulbs as well as rabbits. White men who hated vegetables and did without when they couldn’t get bread or biscuits seemed to do fine on rabbit meat alone until they found themselves really stuck for dessert, usually in cold weather, and suddenly commenced to cut up and devour any companions handy. Cannibal Packer, still doing time over in Colorado for eating the only five Democrats west of Silverton, had been on a diet of jack rabbit and Jack Daniel’s just before they’d all been snowed in together.

  But Stringer had plenty of beans and tomato preserves riding behind his rump and gents who had beef to eat hardly ever et anyone else, no matter how mean they might treat „em in other ways. So Rabbit Hunger was about the last thing he had to worry about once he caught up with the Tarington outfit and that hell-bound herd.

  To begin with, he had to catch up with them. So he told Rosalinda the trail ahead was dammit downhill and they’d spent enough time smelling the flowers and, when that failed to inspire her, he showed her why he kept his spurs tied down and ready to dig in. He was pleasantly surprised to see how good she could move downslope, once he’d explained the situation to her.

  You could ride the average cow pony a full hour without a trail break, if that was about as far as one meant to go. Unlike the more spirited, or stupid, thoroughbred, the western jughead knew how to take care of itself, running free or with a pesky human disputing the simple facts of life, as they looked to a pony. One of the facts of pony life was that one went along with the humans about as long as they could hurt you more than they wanted you to hurt yourself. Since even a pony felt nothing hurt worse than dying, you could run a thoroughbred to death, but a cow pony just quit on you once the going got too tough. So Stringer ran Rosalita half the time and walked her half the time, making good time both ways with the trail ahead sloping ever downward until, well past that isolated mountain tarn, now called Donner Lake on the more detailed survey maps, they busted through a cool jungle of second growth scrub to spy woodsmoke rising from a low-pitched sod roof further down.

  As they rode into the dooryard, a skinny young gal wearing a flour sacking shift and a ten gauge shotgun came out of the cabin to call out, “You just keep going, cowboy. We’re out of coffee, I got no cake, and we don’t screw strangers here, neither!”

  He smiled fondly down at her, saying, “Perish the thought, ma’am. Anyone can see you’re a lady of quality.” To which she replied with no change of expression, “Bullshit. What do you want here? Your pals cut our fence out back and drove all them damned old cows across the barley we’d just drilled in.”

  He said, “If you planted a fall crop this late or a spring crop this early you’re not about to see much of either in any case. Might we have been talking about the Tarington outfit, bound for Wagon Springs with all that beef, if one can take their word on anything?”

  She answered grudgingly, “They never said. They just cut our wire and druv across our barley like thieves in the night. My man, Silas, heard „em cutting across our land, of course. But by the time he had his pants on they’d done it and when he run after „em to demand an accounting they called him a pesky nester and threatened his very life. So he’s down to Truckee right this minute, swearing out a bill of damages!”

  She shifted her heavy bore weapon thoughtfully as she added with an even uglier scowl, “He ought to be back any time, now. But if you got any notion I’m a helpless young thing you can have your wicked way with, you got another think coming.”

  Stringer assured her he was engaged to one of the Flo-radora Girls and asked just when their barley might have been stampeded as he consulted the mental map he hoped he had right in his head. Most thought the California-Nevada line ran along the divide of the High Sierra. Mountains loomed more complicated than draftsmen liked to bother with when a T square pressed to map paper worked so much more neatly. So even though they were both on the far side of Donner Pass they were still in Placer County, California. So her Silas had gone down to the railroad town of Truckee, where the railroad met the headwaters of the mostly Nevada Truckee River, to file his fool complaint by wire, clean over in Auburn!

  It wouldn’t have been polite, or even wise to tell a lady her man was a fool while she was holding a ten gauge. So he waited until she’d established Saturday night as the time the herd had passed through before he opined, “Well, your Silas wouldn’t have been able to wire anyone on the sabbath and even if he got through to the county seat today, I fear his cause is lost.”

  As she shifted the muzzle of that scattergun thoughtfully he quickly added, “Not me. Them. Please keep it in mind that I’m smack on a public right of way and haven’t even looked at your cut fence. I only meant the outfit who treated your barley so thoughtless must be in another state right now. We can’t be twenty miles from the Nevada line, downhill all the way, and if they cut through here the night before last…”

  “Silas says he means to make „em pay if he has to track „em all the way to Carson City!” she cut in, and, since she was waving that shotgun as if her foolish words meant squat, he just ticked the brim of his hat to her, allowed she ought to be proud of her Silas, and rode on before that damned ten gauge went off by accident.

  He felt sorry for the hard-scrabble fools, of course. He knew nobody else was going to feel sorry enough for them to do them any good. Placer County had taken its own sweet time following up on that shoot-out with Bad News Bradford and Nevada was apt to care even less about a California nester dumb enough to string fence across the grain of a mountain valley used since before the Gold Rush as a natural right-of-way. Wagons of the Donner Party itself had likely rolled upslope through the future fenceline old Silas was bitching about. So Stringer could almost hear any lawyers defending such a dumb action pointing out how many similar cases had been fought, and lost, over fences strung where anyone could see cows were meant to go.

  Like mineral and water rights, the laws regarding where one might or might not get to string a fence were a heap more complicated than a heap of folk strung fences. So sore as old Silas no doubt thought he had the right to feel, Stringer knew Tarington and his riders had let him off about as politely as such snags to progress usually went. Tarington no doubt held, and no doubt knew most cow country juries
held, that stringing barbed wire where stock and stockmen had hitherto moved freely was as open an invitation to a fight as calling a man a son of a bitch to his face in front of witnesses. But all was well as ended well and he didn’t have to worry about the poor nester’s dumb fence, ugly wife, or other mistakes.

  He knew the Tarington outfit couldn’t be as far out ahead of him as he’d figured, if they’d only passed through these parts night before last. So he spurred Rosalinda into an easy but mile-eating downhill lope, telling her, “Vama-nos, Muchacha! At this rate we ought to catch up way sooner than we figured!”

  Both the railroad tracks and wagon trace followed the high-water contour line down the valley and nobody with a lick of consideration for his cows or fellow man drove a herd of any size along a public right-of-way where it could be avoided. But Stringer hadn’t ridden a full hour before he spotted sign where the valley passed through a choke point. It wasn’t too tough. A nearsighted Gibson Girl could have safely bet her virtue that one hell of a heap of cows had passed this way.

  Even a medium-sized market herd created at least temporary devastation to any country it moved across. How one felt about this depended a heap on whether one owned the cows or the land in question and this had always accounted for a good part of the wildness of the so-called Wild West.

  To begin with, cows were good-sized critters getting around on good-sized hooves hard enough to leave dents in bridge planking and holes in anything softer. On the move or just lazing about, they ate bushels of grass a day, adding up to public or private grass mowed close to the scalp by the time cows in any numbers had passed on. Having eaten the grass, cows efficiently converted the same to cowshit and a herd on its way to market left an awesome amount of steaming cow pats in its wake.

  Like most everything else connected with the western beef industry, the way one felt about cowshit had a lot to do with whether the net results were profit or loss. To the owners and punchers of said cows the shit was simply a by-product of the conversion of grass and water to more useful beef. On the high and dry Great Plains and, to a lesser extent in sagebrush country, many nesters welcomed the use of a fallow forty acres as a bedding ground, demanding no fee, because after a herd had spent a few short hours that close to the kitchen stove there’d be a year’s supply of fair fuel, free for the taking, as soon as it dried in the sun enough to burn.

  But most folk, even folk who kept stock themselves, found torn-up sod and acres of fly-covered cowshit a bother. So Stringer wasn’t surprised to see the herd headed down the valley ahead of him had been punched off the wagon trace as soon as possible to follow the lower lay of the land where lush mountain grass followed, or had followed the trickle down the rocky wash along the center line of the descent to the Nevada Desert.

  There were few tracks left by cloven hooves and most of the turds on the wagon trace were horse apples by the time Stringer spied a redwood water tower above the trees ahead. Riding on in to the jerkwater settlement of Truckee, between the headwaters of the Tahoe and Truckee, of course, Stringer was attracted by a hitching post in front of a false front general store with a spanking new Coca Cola sign above the door. He reined in, dismounted, and tethered Rosalinda out front to stride inside for some whistle wetting and gossip.

  The nice old lady in charge of the general store cum local post office knew more about Coca Cola than cows. As she took his nickel she warned him before uncapping the bottle for him that Coca Cola had lost a lot of its zip since that pesky paternalistic President Roosevelt had made them take the cocaine out. He said he’d try the sissy version anyway, and she popped the cap, saying, “I declare, I don’t consider it honest to call it Coca Cola now that it’s only kola nuts and sugar water, do you?”

  He allowed it still tasted all right after an afternoon in the saddle and added, “Anyone can see the sun outside will be down before I can make the next settlement. Might there be anyone here in Truckee as takes in boarders by the night, ma’am?”

  She shook her head and said, “Not „til we all recover, some. I can see you’re a nice young gent, despite your tie-down spurs and buscadero gunbelt. But some others went through the other night with no manners at all, swaggering, swearing, and passing uncalled-for remarks at even ugly young women.”

  He nodded, knowingly, and said, “I’m not with the Tarington outfit, albeit I brushed with „em over on the far side of the pass last Thursday evening. I was told by a nester lady up the road that they busted through her place over the weekend. They must have bed the herd down somewhere between here and there, allowing most of the crew to ride on into the nearest settlement and misbehave themselves as you just said, right?”

  The old lady primly replied, “I don’t call cussing on the sabbath misbehaving, young sir. If you ask me, those wicked young men are bound to wind up in you-know-where!”

  He swallowed the last of the few ounces in a needlessly heavy bottle and said, “It’s been generally agreed that herd is bound for pure perdition, at any rate. That nester lady told me her man had come down here to complain to the sheriffs department about that outfit. Assuming she was telling the truth I’m surprised I never met him on the wagon trace, homeward bound. It wasn’t as far as I expected.”

  The old lady started to shrug his words off as none of her never mind. Then she brightened and said, “Oh, dear, might we be talking about Nelly Green, a trashy young snip who dwells beside the road in a cabin with a sod roof?”

  He said, “I might have described her more charitable, ma’am. But that sounds close enough. She said her man’s name is Silas.”

  The old lady cackled, “I knew it. You assume too much when you assume Nelly Green would know the truth if she woke up in bed with it. As to Suing Silas Green, he was right there where you’re standing, in need of a bath, a shave, and some bitters for his hangover, in that order. He said he prefered my husband wait on him. So you know what he really wanted to buy.”

  Stringer said he wasn’t sure. The old lady looked away and said, “Never mind. Ladies tending shop neither sell such things nor mention „em to men they ain’t married to. Suffice it to say there’s a halfbreed washerwoman on the wrong side of the tracks who seems to understand Suing Silas better than his hatchet-faced, skinny wife seems to.”

  Stringer said, “I’m commencing to understand him better, too. I reckon I could use a sack of Bull Durham while I’m here. How come they call him Suing Silas, ma’am?”

  She reached into the tobacco case on the shelf behind her as she confided, “He sues folk, every chance he gets. Lord knows he can’t make enough to feed a cat on such a tiny plot of stony ground, even if he wasn’t in mortal fear of honest toil, which both him and Nelly seem to be. You get cigarette papers stuck to every Bull Durham label. But most men buy extra papers in any case. The tobacco trust encourages fat cigarettes and rapid turnover by skimping on the paper, see?”

  Stringer nodded and said, “I have plenty of extra paper, ma’am. If anyone cut their fence, like Nelly Green says…”

  “What fence?” the old lady who seemed to know them better cut in. “I just told you they’re dwelling like pack rats in that old stage stop and living more by their wits than honest work. They’d know over at the railroad dispatch shed whether Suing Silas asked „em to wire the sheriff in Auburn about his mythical fence. There isn’t any regular telegraph office, but the railroad boys are pretty decent about the use of their own wire if it’s really important.”

  Stringer started to ask directions, then he reached in his jeans for some change, instead, saying, “I’d do better looking for a place to spread my bedroll before dark than I’d do by asking more dumb questions. I have heard of folk like Suing Silas Green before in my travels. I thought a field of fresh-drilled barley in August sounded sort of odd.”

  The old lady confirmed his sudden suspicion that the nester gal had only been backing the wild tale of a man she really didn’t understand and handed him two pennies in change. He spent one of them on a whip of licorice, then wen
t back out to feed half of that to his mount before riding on. He hadn’t ridden far before he spied a grassy clearing upslope on the far side of the tracks. He cut across to make camp while he could still see what he was doing. Sunsets came earlier and darker on the east slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

  He kept on about the same way until he rode into the twin towns of Wadsworth and Fernley a couple of sunsets later. The riding was getting more serious, this far east of the cloud-scraping mountains, and a rider got too dry to settle for Coca Cola, even with a kerchief tied across his face to keep out most of the alkali dust. So Stringer watered Rosalinda good, tethered her in the shade near a watering trough in case it hadn’t been good enough, and strode into the nearby „dobe-walled saloon to ask if they had Steamer Brand Beer and whether anyone, whether in Fernley or Wadsworth, north of the tracks, had any notion where Chuck Tarington and those goddamn California cows might be right now. The barkeep said, “Funny you should ask. That herd just come to town and the ramrod was asking if I knew some pest called String-something, and if so, whether he might be in town.”

  A beer and some conversation later, Stringer had established the Tarington outfit was camped a mile or more north of the twin towns on the east bank of the Truckee, or what was left of it after Reno and other such settlements had tapped it for ever-more tepid water supplies. Stringer knew Tarington wouldn’t follow the remains of the Truckee north to Pyramid Lake because it would have been a dumb place to punch a market herd even if Tarington hadn’t contracted to take it someplace else. The Paiute Agency up around Pyramid Lake wasn’t about to pay top dollar for beef, or low dollar, for that matter. There were plenty of fish in the lake and everyone knew Paiute preferred rabbit and roots when the pine nuts weren’t in season.

  Stringer wasn’t looking forward to it and he wasn’t sure Rosalinda was up to pushing on without a good night’s rest. But the more he studied on it, the surer he became that Tarington would want to move that herd out across the dry ground to the northeast any time now. The barkeep seemed to think the herd had just arrived that afternoon. He thought the slop they had on tap was Steamer Brand, too. Stringer put himself in the saddle of a trailboss out to cross sage and salt flats this time of the year and felt sure he’d want to drive „em by night and rest „em by day. The August sun figured to sweat pounds off critters doing nothing more strenuous then chewing cuds of cheat grass, but that still beat driving „em even hotter and sweatier through the ovenlike heat of a desert day. Nights were almost too cold on the same desert. It made more sense to move „em than to just let „em shiver. With or without enough moonlight for human eyes, four-legged critters could manage by starlight alone if the skies stayed clear, and if there was one thing you didn’t have to worry about out here in August, it had to be rain clouds. So when the barkeep asked Stringer if he was ready for another, the partway refreshed newspaperman answered wistfully that he had to be moving on.