Stringer

by Lou Cameron

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t know the one and original Frivolous Sal. She told me her husband was killed in a fall a few years back. True?”

  The sheriff nodded and said, “Hard liquor and hard riding don’t mix. His pony balked at a fence and, as long as he was down there, stomped on his head. He was all right, for a dago. The more decent Eye-talians among us want nothing to do with her, though. Aside from the usual reasons, she runs a mighty rough joint and I ain’t talking about sensible shootings, like the one tonight.”

  Stringer said, “I figured Buck Brown was acting sensible, for a teenager. By the way, will I be called when the coroner has a chat with the boy about his man-sized .44?”

  The sheriff said, “I don’t see how we can have a hearing to determine the cause of a death until we find us a dead man, do you?”

  “I know that druggist is a busy man, Sheriff. But at the same time I can tell you for sure that gent Buck shot was dead as a turd in a milk bucket.”

  “Yeah, I’ve warned the kid about pointing his dad’s old .44 at anything he didn’t mean to blow a considerable hole in. But you know how kids are.”

  “Lucky for me, this evening. How come Jeff Brown let his boy ride about with his side arm? Doesn’t he have any fence staples to drive these days?”

  The sheriff looked surprised, then said, “Oh, that’s right. You must have been in Cuba that time when Jeff died.”

  “Fionna Brown’s husband is dead? How did it happen, Sheriff?”

  “Caught a chill, driving stock to higher ground during a winter rain. His boy, his hands, and even his wife got as soaked and cold, saving the herd. But only Jeff got sick enough to die. The doc said it just happens that way at times.”

  Uncle Don joined them to demand they have some coffee and cake lest his Ida fall down and have a fit. The sheriff shook his head and said he had to get back to San Andreas before his own woman wound up thrashing to the floor. So a few minutes later Stringer was stuck with having to finish the rest of the cake as his aunt and uncle pestered him about where he’d been all night. Fortunately, it was easier to fib with his mouth full of coffee and cake. Uncle Don chased Crazyauntida to bed by cussing and told Stringer he knew where the guest room was, God damn it, as he rose to follow his woman back to bed.

  Stringer put his cup and saucer in the sink, picked up the oil lamp and found his way to the guest room. The sheets were turned down and scented with too much lavender. She used too much sugar in her cooking, too. But Crazyauntida meant well.

  As he slid between the sheets he realized what a hard day he’d had, in every way. But as he lay there willing himself to sleep he found his mind dwelling on old Fionna MacSorley Brown, of all people. He wondered why. He’d gotten over his schoolboy hankerings for an older lady long ago, he hoped. Fionna had been—let’s see—eighteen or twenty when he’d been a thirteen-year-old who’d just discovered why boys and girls were built different and noticed how different indeed Fionna MacSorley was built. She wasn’t an older girl next door. That might have killed him. It was bad as it was to see her at a Sunday-go-to-meeting-on-the-green or a barn dance now and again.

  She’d made it worse on her younger admirer by being nice to him, not knowing what he did to her at night in his own bed, and trying like hell to quit. In the bittersweet days of his growing up she’d been his picture of just what he meant to marry when he got to shave and such. He could still see her sweet smile and the way her soft brown hair framed her cameo features.

  About the time he’d been contemplating suicide over her posting the banns with old Jeff Brown his Uncle Don had sort of saved the day by mentioning, one Saint Andrews Day, that the MacSorleys had belonged to the same clan as the MacKails the time they’d all given Cromwell such a licking in the Great Glen. It had been easier to renounce Fionna forever once he’d figured out it would be sort of incest, however distant, to take her away from Jeff Brown. The Browns were Clan MacMillan, so it was all right for Fionna to marry up with him.

  A young and heartbroken MacKail had been noble at their wedding, until she’d spoiled it all by kissing him and making him want to cry. Now older and hopefully wiser he could still recall how lovely she’d looked in her wedding gown, and to think she’d grown up herding cows in a wet slicker instead of dwelling forever young and pretty in that rose-covered cottage her secret love had meant to build her as soon as he grew up and got a job.

  Stringer chuckled wistfully in the dark and told himself he’d gotten off lucky. Old Fionna had grown into a tough old rancher gal who yelled at her big lout of a boy just for shooting it out in houses of ill repute. By now she’d be, hell, at least thirty-five or more and likely worn older-looking by hard living. But, damn, she’d been good looking and, worse yet, nice.

  He fluffed up his pillow and rolled over to get some shut-eye, trying to put Fionna out of his fool head and sincerely hoping he wouldn’t meet up with her before he could head back for Frisco. For whether she was lovely as ever, or sun-baked to an old mountain prune, it was just as likely to hurt like hell.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  *

  They found no dead bodies in Manzanita Creek. They found so much other stuff an enterprising member of the sheriff’s large work force loaded his spring-bed wagon full to cart into town and sell as scrap metal. By noon the sheriff gave up and told everyone to knock off.

  Stringer had of course been working his assigned stretch of the muddy creek with Pronto and two other hands Uncle Don said he could spare for such foolishness. Uncle Don usually pitched in for a brushfire or lost child, but he’d said from the very beginning that if there was anything worth finding in Manzanita Creek some Chinee would have found it long ago. He was too proud to admit his game leg acted up when he got it damp and chilled.

  As Stringer and the other M Bar K riders topped a rise well clear of the dragging operation they spied three distant riders headed their way, sudden. The one in the lead was a gal on a paint pony, riding bareback, astride, with her calico skirts hiked up to expose her bare knees. When she spotted the M Bar K riders she headed their way, her long blond hair trailing straight out like a comet’s tail. Stringer reined in and thoughtfully drew his .38. He didn’t have to tell Pronto and the others to do the same, as anyone could see the two raggedy gents following her could hardly be proper company for a young lady to keep.

  As they spotted the odds their intended prey was making for they seemed to lose interest in her knees. They reined in, spun their mounts about, and headed the other way at considerable speed. Pronto said, “Hot damn, let’s ride ‘em down!”

  But Stringer said, “Let ‘em be till we know for sure what this is all about. I admire a man who can take a hint and for all we know the gal is a horse thief.”

  She wasn’t. She slid her paint to a stop near them and gasped, “Thank God I ran into you caballeros! I am called Dorotea Elena Marta Maria Montez y Sepulveda, but my friends call me Dotty. I know I am on M Bar K range and I apologize. As you just saw, I was fleeing a fate worse than death.”

  Stringer wasn’t sure any fate had death beat, but he didn’t say so as he studied the little gal on the paint. Despite her warm blond hair her pretty face looked mighty Spanish. Californio families this far north had seldom mixed with Indians in the old days, a Miwok maiden with a proper dowry being mighty hard to find. He said, “Thunderation, you must be that pesky baby sister of old Pete Montez! I went to school with your big brother. Met up with him again in Cuba, just before, ah, he got hurt.”

  She nodded soberly and said, “At least it is said he died a hero, no?”

  Stringer didn’t argue. If a cavalry scout riding into an ambush couldn’t be called a hero he certainly couldn’t be called a sissy. He told Dotty, “You sure have grown some since the last I saw you. I know it’s improper to ask a lady her age, so—”

  “I am eighteen,” she cut in, as if that was something to brag about.

  So Stringer said, “You sure are. What were you doing so far from h
ome when them brutes commenced chasing you? Don’t tell us why they were chasing you. It’s sort of obvious, no offense.”

  She looked away and murmured, “I was searching for stray stock to the north when they came out of nowhere and got fresh.”

  Stringer shot a glance at Pronto, who nodded as he told the girl, “We’re good at hunting stray stock. My granddad in his wisdom chose a mighty bumpy range.”

  She fluttered her lashes and could barely get out, “The stray for which I search is not a cow. I don’t know how to put it, but, well, it is a goat. A young billy who knows more about gates than we ever taught him.”

  They all had to laugh. But Stringer nodded and said, “Goats have to browse, too, as long as my uncle doesn’t see ‘em. How ‘bout it, muchachos? You want to help this little lady get her stock back?”

  Pronto said, “As long as she promises not to tell. If I was a goat, which I thank the Lord I’m not, I’d be in some thick chaparral, getting sick on manzanita fruit. Let’s fan out, boys. What color was your billy, ma’am?”

  She told him it was light brown and warned him not to confuse it with a deer fawn. Stringer stayed with her, lest those other rascals come back, as they rode off in all directions shaking out their throw-ropes.

  When they were alone he suggested moving along the ridge to the shade of a lone monstrous oak. As they reined in under it Dotty said, “This is a cork oak, a very old one. No doubt some Californio family owned this land before your uncle took it.”

  He frowned and said, “Uncle Don was left the home spread by my grandfather, who filed on it fair and square. If you mean to get picky, the original owners were no doubt Miwok. Land is hard to hold on to. My ancestors owned lots of land in Scotland one time. My more recent elders lost the Lazy K to the bank. If you can’t hold on to your land you lose it. Crying over land you don’t pay taxes on is as pointless as crying over other spilt milk.”

  She asked, “Don’t you feel just a little bitter, knowing your uncle wound up with this range that was rightfully yours?”

  He grimaced and replied, “Do I look Chinee? Chinee divide up land between sons until everyone has a fair sliver to starve on. It’s more sensible to keep land intact from eldest son to eldest son. Uncle Don staked my dad to the filing fee on the Lazy K and that way Clan MacKail wound up with twice as much as if we’d acted like hogs swilling from the same trough. Entailed estates is a good system as long as there’s other land to spread out to.”

  She said, “I know. Your people spread from sea to sea in less than three hundred years. But what have you to show for it, Stuart?”

  He said, “A Remington Grasshopper typewriter, and call me Stringer. For that’s what I am, and I don’t miss riding drag as much as one might expect. Some gents were born to raise beef, like my Uncle Don. Others prefer the bright lights of Frisco. I don’t have to wait for payday to ride into town and, if they won’t let me shoot at the streetlamps along Market Street, a man has to take the good with the bad.”

  She dimpled at the picture but asked, more soberly, “I guess you get to meet lots of girls in Ciudad de San Francisco, eh?”

  He said, “I seem to meet girls everywhere I go. I don’t have anyone serious waiting for me in town, if that’s what you mean.”

  Before she could say what she might mean they both flinched at the sound of a not-too-distant gunshot, followed by a yell of triumph.

  Dotty gasped, “Oh, no, not my poor billy!”

  Stringer put a thoughtful hand to his gun grips and told her, “Get ready to light out or duck, depending. Pronto doesn’t strike me as a gent who shoots just for the hell of it, and that’s the direction he rode into the chaparral.”

  A million tense years went by. Then Stringer had to laugh as Pronto hove in view, a dead deer across his saddle swells and a mighty lively young goat fighting the nose around its horns as Pronto led it out of the chaparral, proclaiming, “I was right on the money about manzanita fruit. This fool goat had gone native with some deer.”

  Stringer said, “That’s a nice plump doe you have there.”

  Pronto replied, “That’s why I shot it. Venison ought to be a nice change of pace for the Chink.”

  Since few California riders roped tie-down, Pronto was holding the coil of his dally rope free. He moved in to hand it to Dotty, saying, “I’ll want this two-bits-a-yard rope back once you’re done with it, ma’am. How was you figuring to lead your pet home if you caught it, by sheer strength of will?”

  She explained she’d lost both her pigging string and a ribbon bow, fleeing for her honor.

  Stringer said, “I’ll bring your rope back, Pronto. I figure I’d best see Miss Montez safely home.”

  Pronto said, dryly, “I figured you might want to. I’ll wait here for the others. I hope that new hand don’t get to eating manzanita afore lunch. Them fruit look like bitty crab apples and taste like crab apples, sort of. But they don’t set well on a white man’s innards.”

  As Stringer, the girl, and her goat moved off she asked him just what Pronto might have meant by that crack about white men. He told her, “Folk usually mean about what they say and it’s a simple fact of nature that Miwok eat manzanita, acorns, and other stuff it takes a Miwok stomach to digest.”

  She said, “Oh, I thought—”

  He cut in, “I know what you thought. You thought wrong. Aside from being a decent cuss, old Pronto looks part Californio, too. Your brother, Pete, used to carry that same chip on his shoulder and, like I tried to tell him, when you carry a chip, some other fool is sure to knock it off for you.”

  She shrugged and said, “Easy for you to say. You were born an Anglo, not a member of a despised minority.”

  Stringer snorted and said, “I wasn’t born an Anglo, exactly. My name is Celtic and Celts used to get despised a lot by your Anglo despisers. Many came to America in chains, as bond servants. Uncle Don says they had it coming, for losing. Folk who don’t deserve to be despised don’t let others despise ‘em. Your big brother died in a U.S. Army uniform, fighting for these United States. Do you mean to shame the memory of Trooper Montez, as Americano a Rough Rider as any Dutchman named Teddy Roosevelt, by whimpering about ancient history like a kicked pup?”

  She gasped and said, “You sure have a way with words. I bet you never talked that way to Pete when he was alive and able to hit back!”

  He grinned and told her, “You lose. I did. That’s how we got to be friends, after we beat each other up a few times. He had a fair right cross and called me a confounded gringo every time he threw it. I called him a damned old greaser and found my left hook was the punch he had most trouble blocking. After a while it seemed safer to invite him home for supper and as you may recall I got to consume some of your mother’s fine cooking from time to time. How are you folk these days, by the way? I should have thought to ask sooner.”

  He was sorry he had when Dotty told him her father had been killed in a mining accident at Sheep Ranch and that the only man of the house was now her grandfather, who’d been sort of senile and silly as long as Stringer could remember.

  He asked how her ma was managing these days and Dotty said, “With difficulty. We sell some eggs. We have goats to milk. But without the modest pension Mr. Hearst sends us every month for what happened to Papacito, we would have to sell our land.”

  Stringer nodded and said, “It was Pulitzer who got us into that dumb war so he could sell more papers. Uncle Don always said the Hearsts take care of their own, good as they are at making enemies.” Then he changed the subject. She jawed on about the sort of things sophisticated ladies of eighteen were interested in and, the next thing they knew, they were there.

  The Montez spread lay in a hollow south of El Dorado, kept well cleared of chaparral by their goats and watered well enough by hand pump. The ranch house was low-slung with a red tile roof and thick adobe walls meant to hold out the summer sun and Miwok.

  As he dismounted to open the gate Stringer saw they had about eight or ten acres left insid
e the bob wire. He shut the gate after Dotty and her goat and followed afoot, leading his hired barb.

  Before they made it to the house a big old gal who looked more Mex than her kids tore out to meet them, cussing at Stringer till she saw he wasn’t a strange Anglo cowboy and then making up for it with a big bear hug, sobbing, “Ay, Stuarto, for why have you not returned to your own home before this?”

  He kissed her cheek and hugged her back as he said, “I would have come to the funeral if they hadn’t buried him in Cuba, Mamacita.”

  She said, “I know. It is true you were there, Stuarto?”

  He patted her plump back to comfort her as he assured her, “His whole troop was there, Mamacita. Pete had lots of friends to see him off, and his captain bawled when they played taps.”

  She said, “Oh, you have made me so happy. But come inside for to share our noonday repast, Stuarto. Where did you and Dorotea meet? I sent her after that wicked goat.”

  Dotty gave her mother an accounting in rapid-fire Spanish and added she’d be in as soon as she locked the fool goat up to teach it a lesson. Señora Montez dragged Stringer to the house, sobbing. “Once again we are in your debt. You may have forgotten the time you stood up for my eldest son against those schoolyard bullies, but we have not, nor shall we ever.”

  He muttered, “Aw, mush,” as she led him inside to get praised some more.

  The interior was darker than an Anglo ranch house would have been, since the original idea of the windows had been more as gun-loops. The walls were clay plastered. The floor was tile. A pot of menuda soup was simmering in the beehive fireplace in one corner, stirred by a boy of about nine. In another corner an old man wrapped in a shawl sat dozing and sort of drooling. Stringer asked young Tomas how he was. There wasn’t much point talking to Dotty’s grandfather.