Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  “Have you checked with the banks here in Fallon?” Stringer asked.

  Lefors grunted, “Por nada. No strangers in town have deposited money of any kind in any amount since last harvest time. I figure at least one pony with funny shoes, one share of that mighty heavy payload, and at least one son of a bitch with a mighty guilty conscience still has to be right here in Fallon, and you must have noticed by now what a tiny town this is!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There was one public bath and a modest hotel, at least. So Stringer got part way caught up on clean and rested before he walked over to Western Union around 4 P.M. to see if Sam Barca back by the Bay had anything new on his mind.

  Sam did. Stringer had to read the long wire twice to absorb the gist of it. Then he went looking for Deputy Marshal Lefors instead of anyone connected with the now even duller-sounding cattle drive to Wagon Springs.

  He ran into Lord Baltimore first. The full blood wasn’t supposed to be served rye whisky or even lager, but Lord Baltimore was chasing one down with the other in that same saloon when Stringer joined him at yet another table.

  The Indian stared owlishly at Stringer and sadly announced, “Hear me, 1 am getting old, old. I don’t know what this world is coming to. Even my own people ride around in horseless carriages these days and some son of a bitch just robbed a train aboard a flying horse!”

  Stringer soothed, “Your boss told me earlier about the slick way those train riders have been hiding their own tracks under those of cows. Might he be anywhere around here, Chief?”

  The Indian shrugged and said, “Upstairs getting laid, maybe. The white girls here won’t service Chinamen, either. They must think their mothers had been introduced to their fathers. What did you want to see Joe about? Do you know who’s been robbing all those trains?”

  Stringer said, “Nope. But I know who hasn’t been. Both my boss and me having been building castles in the air out of unrelated facts. I doubt you’d understand, no offense.”

  But the older Indian scowled at Stringer and snapped, “Try me. Do you take me for a fool because your ass is paler than mine? Hear me, I can read and write! Hear me, I am as much a lawman as Joe Lefors and more of a lawman than you if you know anything at all about those train robbers!”

  Stringer nodded and said, “I just said no offense and I wasn’t commenting on anyone’s complexion. I said my boss and me both made more of a mystery out of disconnected facts than we needed to and we were both there to see what might or might not connect to what, see?”

  Lord Baltimore shook his head, stared thoughtfully at his half-empty shot glass, and said, “No. Were you drinking somewhere else before you came in here?”

  Stringer chuckled and said, “I just came from the telegraph office. The police back in Frisco just arrested one of their own for the killing of a Butcher Town tough called One Thumb Thurber. It looked like a slicker killing than it really was because the killer was a crooked copper badge called Edward Kelly. He reported a mysterious delivery boy had discovered Thurber clubbed to death aboard an old schooner mired in the mud flats of Frisco Bay. Are you with me so far?”

  Lord Baltimore finished the rye in the shot glass and grunted, “No, but keep going.” So Stringer explained, “A Detective Sergeant Grogan got to wondering about that mysterious delivery boy when they just couldn’t locate him. Once Grogan got to wondering if he’d ever been there at all, it didn’t take him long to find out Roundsman Kelly had been shaking down the sharper businessmen of Butcher Town, or that One Thumb Thurber had been shaking Kelly down in turn.”

  The Indian waved over an ugly white gal in a waitress outfit as Stringer continued, “Kelly must not have wanted to share the wealth with old Thurber. They say Kelly was keeping a gal young enough to be his daughter on the side and if she was the same Miss Echo I still recall so fondly from the Sacramento Steamer, poor old Kelly must have found her an expensive proposition, too.”

  “The rogue copper badge had a lady confederate working with him, then?” asked Lord Baltimore.

  Stringer nodded and said, “Kelly had a gang of Butcher Town toughs at his beck and call, too. One of „em was another rogue copper badge called Wesley Bradford.”

  Lord Baltimore nodded and said, “We know about your shoot-out in Dutch Flat with Bad News Bradford. Tell me about the gal called Echo. She sounds like more fun.”

  “She was,” said Stringer, modestly. Then he sighed and said, “She may have liked me a little, or mayhaps she was just too smart to risk another killing after she’d figured out I not only didn’t know her sugar daddy was a bad apple on the force back in Frisco but had the killing of One Thumb Thurber tied in with Chuck Tarington’s hell-bound market drive!”

  By this time the waitress had joined them. Lord Baltimore told her to fetch them more red-eye, a pitcher of draft, and the glasses to go with, muttering, “Me and my big mouth. Had I just gone on playing Indian this cowboy wouldn’t be confusing me like this.”

  Then, as the gal turned away looking confused in her own right, the professional tracker turned back to Stringer, saying, “All right. Some rascal called Kelly killed a blackmailer called Thurber and then sent his boys and at least one girl after you …for what fool reason?”

  Stringer said, “Right now even Kelly must have decided it was sort of foolish. Thurber had sent me a message, likely hoping to shake down my paper for the drinking money Kelly wouldn’t give him. In all modesty, I have some rep as an investigative reporter and Kelly knew I drank fairly regular with other members of Frisco P.D. He sent Echo to see if I’d written anything mean about him. I caught her in my room and she decided she’d best make friends with me, pronto. The toughs standing lookout out front for her didn’t know she was that smart. So they busted in on us to help her escape and did such a poor job of it that I went for her dumb line.”

  The waitress came back with their fresh supplies. Stringer poured as he continued, “Somewhere along the line, as she was feeding me one, she must have seen I was in the dark about the killing her Edward Kelly had committed. So she simply lit out for home and him. They picked Kelly up at her place on Russian Hill, along with her. I made another dumb mistake when I heard some gal or gals had been taken off a train robbed later that same night. I figured it might be her only now I see it couldn’t have been.”

  Lord Baltimore nodded and said, “We took down the report about some gals appearing to be in cahoots with the train robbers that time. What can you tell us about them?”

  Stringer washed down some rye with beer, grimaced, and said, “Not a thing. I wasn’t there. Echo Kelly, as she likes to call herself when she’s not pretending to be someone else’s daughter, had lit out on me in Sacramento, long before that train was stopped in the higher country to the east. Had she bumped noses with Bad News Bradford on her way back to Frisco he’d have never followed me up into the hills to throw down on my back and lose. So, you see what I mean about castles in air?”

  The Indian grunted, “I already said I was sorry I’d asked. But hold on, you were shacked up with a good-looking gal in Dutch Flat, days after you shot it out with Bradford, so…”

  “Her name wasn’t Echo,” Stringer cut in dryly. “Joe Lefors said he’d been checking up on me. I see he’s as nosy as everyone says he is. So, all right, what can you tell me about Mrs. Willow Watt and anyone alive or dead in Butcher Town back home?”

  Lord Baltimore refilled his own shot glass and favored both Stringer and the rye with a wry grin, saying, “She was good-looking. None of the cows she sold Great Basin Beef Incorporated were stolen. She was a brunette. Hear me, the two bad girls who acted as lookouts aboard that one train were not brunettes. One was a redhead. The other had light brown hair, like that Jeanie in your dumb song.”

  Stringer smiled thinly and said, “Don’t look at me. I think Stephen Foster wrote about „Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair’ and he couldn’t have been in cahoots with any train robbers, either. Are we talking about, say, Miss Etta Place who’s been k
nown to act as an advance scout for Butch and Sundance?”

  The Indian shrugged and said, “Hear me, Joe doesn’t buy that story about Butch and Sundance leaving for South American with Etta Place. Neither do I. None of them speak Spanish and Etta Place was in a New York hospital with a mortified appendix a good six months after people started getting postcards from places like Vera Cruz. Joe thinks maybe one of them, or maybe just a pal, took one of those cruise ships south from New York to send a few postcards. I don’t think Butch and Sundance are behind this latest rash of train robberies, though.”

  Stringer asked, “How come? Do you agree with me that crooks like to run from the law across country they already know pretty well?”

  Lord Baltimore said, “Harry Tracy rode in Colorado with the Wild Bunch, and died in Washington State full of bullets and spite, as Joe points out, when others say what you just said. I think it has to be another bunch for two reasons. They blow safes better than Butch or Sundance ever could, and they are smarter, smarter when they make their getaway.”

  Stringer cocked an eyebrow and demanded, “You mean you caught Butch and Sundance when they stopped the U.P. Flyer that time?” So the Indian cussed in his own guttural lingo and replied, “They got away by running, running like scared rabbits, long before we arrived to cut their trail. Hear me, they never took half as much money in all their holdups put together. So they were traveling light while they were traveling fast, and don’t be such a wiseass about our catching up with most of them over the last few years. Hear me, most of them are dead or in prison as you sit there grinning like a damned coyote. I don’t think the ones still left would be brave enough, or smart enough, to get away with that much gold and silver in strange country. I think the ones we’re really after know something about this country none of the rest of us know. Where is that damned white girl? She brought us plenty beer but only a few swallows of rye in this nearly empty bottle! Did she think both of us were green white cowboys?”

  Stringer glanced at the clock above the bar to suggest, “It’s going on suppertime. They may be changing shifts. I’ve had enough to drink before suppertime in any case.”

  Lord Baltimore told him to speak for himself and rose to stalk over to the bar for more “Tiswin” as he’d suddenly decided to call it. Stringer didn’t know what nation Lord Baltimore belonged to, but he did know tiswin was pure Apache for firewater. So he decided he’d as soon let the barkeep worry about whether a federal lawman who looked that much like Geronimo ought to be served more red-eye or not. Stringer had enough on his own plate unless Sam Barca went along with the notion that there wasn’t enough news left in the eastbound herd to justify the pain of following it deeper into hell.

  He was just about to tell Lord Baltimore he had to get on over to Tarington’s camp when Deputy Marshal Lefors came busting in through the batwings flushed of face and panting for air. He looked mighty relieved to see his head tracker there and came gasping over to announce, “They’re in town! Four of the gang at any rate. I just put it on the wire, but the Fucking Pacific says it can’t get the rest of our posse here by rail this side of sundown. So I want you to keep an eye on them outlaw ponies for me whilst I poke about some more for their riders, hear?”

  Stringer said he had to get his own pony over to the herd bound for Wagon Springs before they bounded off without him. Lefors shook his head stubbornly and insisted, “I’m deputizing you to help us keep anyone from bounding anywhere before the rest of my crew shows up and I get to search this town and everybody in it right!”

  When Stringer started to protest Lefors added, “I don’t like you, neither. But when you need help in a hurry it’s best to call on any devils you already know. They say you’re reasonably honest and know how to handle that pistol you’re packing. That’s more than can be said, for certain, for anyone else I know around here. So let’s go, boys. I’ll show you where them train robbers left their ponies and with any luck they won’t try to ride on this side of sunset.”

  Stringer asked what if they did. Lefors shrugged and said, “It’ll be the two of you against the four of them, of course. What are you bitching about? I’m the one who’ll have to answer for it, in triplicate, if they shoot their way through you.”

  The nondescript and uninvited saddles and bridles were draped on a rail. The ponies in question, a paint, a buckskin, and two bays, had been left in the care of a middle-aged colored lady whose man and two boys worked for the railroad and weren’t in town right now. She allowed she hadn’t cottoned much to the notion when those strange white boys had reined in out back, asked for her eldest boy, Rafe, and announced they were leaving their ponies in her care in any case when she allowed her boy was most likely over in the Salt Lake yards, and certainly not due home for at least a month.

  Not given much choice in the matter, the worried lady of the house had allowed they could run their four ponies with her mule and milk cow penned out back between the outhouse and the railroad yards. Stringer had to allow Joe Lefors had been poking about the yards sharp eyed, even though the sun had been a mite higher when he’d spied four cowponies over among the shacks of the colored shanty town and moseyed closer for a look-see.

  It was one of the two bays who’d dropped a ready-made shoe and had had to be reshod at some country herrero in the cattle country on the far slopes of the High Sierra. Lefors pointed out and both Lord Baltimore and Stringer agreed there were fewer old-timey Mex folk over this way. Stringer asked where Lefors wanted them to set up, that being more to the point right now. Stringer asked this as the three of them were standing knee-deep in weeds between the penned ponies in question and the kitchen door of the colored woman’s modest frame dwelling. She was watching them nervously from her back porch, shelling peas and dipping snuff. Lefors lowered his voice a tad to say, “There’s no better cover within pistol range of that corral than yonder coon quarters. She won’t be as apt to tip anyone off if you boys are in her kitchen with her, neither.”

  Stringer said, “I don’t much fancy staking out behind a woman’s skirts, Joe. Those clapboard walls won’t stop bullets for shit and we’d never forgive ourselves if we got the poor old gal killed.”

  Lefors shrugged and said, “Speak for yourself. It was her own grand notion to corral them outlaw ponies out back. I never asked her.”

  Stringer nodded girmly and replied, “I doubt those outlaws asked her, either. I wonder how they knew in advance that none of the men of the house were apt to be here.”

  Lefors said, “That’s one of the things I mean to check up on when I have time. I have two dozen deputies and three times that many guns bound this way and a signed but otherwise blank federal search warrant under this seersucker to back my play as well. Meanwhile I’d best scout up Chuck Tarington and make sure he doesn’t try to stray from my jurisdiction before I can enforce things a mite more strict in these damned parts!”

  Lord Baltimore drew a dotted line with his keen eyes from the corral to the east to the colored lady’s kitchen window before he grunted, “Hear me. I have a .44 carbine on my saddle and MacKail here has a .30-30 that shoots even farther, flatter. I think you should stay here long enough for one of us to run over to the livery and back, Joe.”

  Lefors thought, shook his head, and said, “Too close to sunset. I’m more worried about that herd pushing off to Lord knows where right after supper. I’ll send someone with your long guns when and if I get the chance. The odds on those outlaws opening up on the back wall of a house for no good reason are mighty slim and if the)’ come striding in across the yard to say adios…”

  “We know how to ambush trusting souls at sunset,” Lord Baltimore cut in. So Lefors said, “Bueno. Then I’d best get cracking. MacKail, what’s the handle of Tarington’s segundo if I don’t find him in camp across the yards?”

  Stringer said to ask for Ben or, failing that, the chuck wagon boss, Grits. Lefors nodded and said, “I will. Last time I asked where the big boss was, nobody knew. I’ll get back to you boys soon as
I can, or sooner, if I hear the dulcet sounds of shooting over this way.”

  He started to turn away. Stringer said, “Hold on, Joe. I tend to get curious when I hear gunplay, too. How serious are you about your suspicions of Chuck Tarington and his boys? I’ve been riding with „em two nights now, and if they were robbing trains instead of punching cows I sure need glasses!”

  Lefors said, “I’m not accusing Great Basin Beef Incorporated of taking an active part in any robberies. I’ll know whether to charge „em with aiding and abetting after I pat down them and everyone else in this one-horse town for all that missing specie. It’s the sheer tonnage of their loot that figures to do „em in in the end. Where have you done most of your riding the last couple of nights, in the dust and leave us not forget the darkness?”

  Stringer laughed incredulously and replied, “Mostly drag, left or right flank the rest of the time and up front on occasion because I’m more a nosy newspaperman than anything else. I pointed that out a time or two when the boss or his segundo commented on my casual attitude to herding. What of it?”

  Lefors said, “You couldn’t have been everywhere at every time. It would only take a few minutes to pass a few saddle bags of silver to someone on one side of the herd while you were eating dust on the other and…”

  “Back up; see if we can figure where your brains just spilled,” Stringer cut in with a derisive laugh. “To begin with, you just said yourself, you’re talking about more than loose change. So it would take more than a few minutes for strangers to ride in and ride out, whether I spotted „em in my casual drifting along or not. I told you both the boss and his segundo knew I couldn’t be counted on to stick tight where I was told I could ride if I had a mind to. They bitched about it a mite. They never acted as if it was the life and death matter it would have been if train robbers were making bank deposits with an outfit on the move!”