by Lou Cameron
Stringer looked pained. “I was still learning to rope and say da-da, if I was around at all. But I recall the legends, and you’re right—the peacetime Army can surely cover a heap of ground riding in circles after nobody much. I’d best get up there before the soldiers get too lost to interview.”
As he rose, Barca said, “Grab the S.P. line north and get off at Los Molinos. The wagon trace along Mill Creek ought to carry you on up to the scene of the massacres.”
“That’s where Joe Malliwah said to get off. He’ll be waiting with some ponies. After that it gets a mite more complicated. Joe says all the trouble is on the far side of Mount Lassen, in the hills we’ve never bothered about before.”
Adding that he had a few errands to tend to before he caught the night train, Stringer left before his boss could ask just what he had in mind. For Barca had often forbidden him to ever go near the Presidio again. Old Sam just didn’t find the military notions of old Teddy Roosevelt as amusing as he did. But Stringer wasn’t out to write about chrome-plated bayonets or whitewashed battleships right now, and what Sam didn’t know couldn’t make him have another raving fit. So Stringer hailed a motor taxi out front and told the driver to haul him around Russian Hill and out to the old Presidio.
West Coast Army headquarters was an open post, so the poor MP’s posted at the main gate had to wave them through. Stringer had never figured out why there had to be a round-the-clock guard at a gate the general public was allowed to pass through at will. Mayhaps they’d run out of rocks for the soldiers to paint white. As he got out in front of the officers’ club, a father and son were cutting across the parade ground with some fish they’d caught, likely near Fort Point, the brick blockhouse guarding the south entrance of the Golden Gate against any enemy craft smaller than a river gunboat. They’d erected Fort Point during the Civil War, nobody could say exactly why, and thanking God for small favors, it had never been fired upon by the local fishing fleet. Its breakwater was a swell place to fish, though.
He saw they’d been polishing the brass cannon in front of the officers’ club again. It was an antique muzzle-loader that had been cast in Spain and taken as a war trophy when Mexico gave up the bay area without a fight. It was sort of pretty, though, with all those baroque curlicues shining in the sunset’s orange glow.
Inside, the enlisted barkeep shot a thoughtful look at Stringer’s civilian suit and old Army Stetson. To save the confused barkeep from asking, Stringer said, as he bellied up to the bar, “I’m not a member, but I feel sure my old pal Colonel Lowe must be. Do you reckon I could have a boilermaker while I wait for him to show up?”
The soldier behind the bar still looked confused. Regulations were one thing, and a civilian on drinking terms with a bird colonel was another. So he said, “I can serve you the beer part, sir. Each officer’s private stock is stored secure and, well, private.”
Stringer allowed that was a sensible way to keep hard liquor on an Army post and said beer would be fine. When he’d been served a handsome schooner of suds and asked how much he owed for the same he was told there was no charge. He was pleased to learn the taxpayers only had to spring for chasers. But as he was saying so a voice growled in his ear from behind, “You know damned well that all the expenses of this club are paid for from the members’ own pockets, MacKail.”
So Stringer turned to smile at the lean and hungry-looking gent with red hair on his head and silver eagles on his shoulders, saying, “Evening, Colonel Lowe. I was hoping to find you here, after such a hard day’s work at GHQ.”
The somewhat older but well-preserved officer grimaced and replied, “I’m not supposed to grant interviews to you anymore, MacKail. What ever possessed you to write that the Krag is a lousy rifle? Ordnance was upset as hell to see that in your damned old paper.”
Stringer shrugged. “I never asked them to send all the way to Sweden for such a dismal weapon, Colonel. But that’s not why I’m here right now. I’m covering that Indian trouble up near Mount Lassen, and I thought you boys might let me tag along.”
Lowe ordered his private bourbon out of its locker, and as the barkeep placed a tumbler in front of him, the gruff but decent enough officer said, “Better break out another glass for this pest, too. I’m about to ruin his evening for him, so he could use a shot.”
As his orders were being carried out, Lowe turned back to Stringer. “A short colonel named Roosevelt let you tag along at a place called San Juan Hill, as I recall, and it was really dirty of you to cable that famous charge as it really happened. But, praise the Lord, you won’t get to do that to me. So bottoms up.”
Stringer clinked with the colonel, threw back the bourbon, and chased it down with some beer before he insisted, “President Roosevelt isn’t sore at me about that anymore. We got to know one another up in Yellowstone more recently, as we were both chasing buffalo poachers. I have to allow old Teddy’s a pretty good hunter, and he said he admired reporters who told the truth—as long as he could get elected, anyway.”
Colonel Lowe nodded grudgingly. “I read what you wrote about those poachers being dumb enough to shoot pet buffalo while the President was making a personal inspection of the park. Your story was pretty good. But the reason you can’t tag along up north after the Army is that we’re not going. We have it on the authority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs that the Yana are an extinct tribe.”
Stringer laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard the Army and the BIA agree on anything. Of course, since you’re both paid to think wrong-headed about the vanishing red man, it figures you’d have to come up with the same mistakes now and again. I just got a letter from a paid-up Yana who’d no doubt be surprised to learn he was extinct. My boss just got it on the wire that some whites up north are bitching about Indian attacks and calling on the Army for help. I sure am starting to feel confused this evening.”
The colonel refilled both their glasses as he explained, “Some few Indians listed as Lord-knows-what on the BIA rolls may or may not claim some Yana blood. Meanwhile the BIA assures us none of their agents have reported any trouble on any of the reservations up in that corner of the state. We can’t mount an expedition against wild Indians every time some infernal Digger begging at the back door upsets some white housewife by letting his old dong hang out.”
Stringer asked how come. The colonel sighed. “Because of reporters like you, for openers. Do you recall the so-called Modoc War up that way a few years back?”
Stringer admitted it had been before his time. Lowe said, “I wish I could say the same. I’d just graduated from the Point, and guess where they sent me to fight Indians?”
He indicated a red and blue ribbon on his chest as he went on. “Calling Modoc Diggers would be to flatter them. Lava lizards would be a better description. They were crawling about the lava flats up near the Oregon line, Lord knows why, when their leader, the one we called Captain Jack, took it in his head to dust up some whites who were crowding him and his little band.”
Stringer said that sounded fair. The colonel shrugged. “Maybe it was. I wasn’t there. I just got to ride with the Army column sent to put down such an awesome uprising.”
He bolted more bourbon and repressed a shudder. “I mean, there wasn’t a full cavalry troop to the whole damned tribe, and we were chasing what amounted to a small street gang over lava flats they knew like the heads of their own dicks. They fought on foot, if that was what you wanted to call mean kids popping out of lava tubes like rabbits to make faces and peg shots at us at inconvenient times. Captain Jack and his young toughs were a matter for dismounted policemen with billy clubs to deal with. But no, we were expected to make gallant cavalry charges at big war bands. So that’s what we did, even though it was hell on our mounts. Horses were just never made to gallop across a jumble of clinkers and busted beer bottles. It was a real pain in the ass, and they say the hills around Mount Lassen are volcanic too.”
Stringer nodded, sipped some more beer, and observed, “But you nailed
Captain Jack in the end, didn’t you?”
Colonel Lowe nodded. “We did, and in the end he was hanged as the common criminal he was. We could have caught Billy the Kid or Jesse James that way, given enough time and military manpower. But the U.S. Army is not a damned sheriff’s posse. It looks a lot less foolish fighting real wars with real enemy armies. So we’ve wired Lassen County mat it’s up to their own sheriff to deal with mere handfuls of unruly Digger kids.”
“What did their sheriff have to say about your helpful suggestion?”
“He claims it’s not his fight,” the Army man replied. “He agrees with the BIA that if the Yana aren’t a long-dead tribe, any left over haven’t been bothering anyone who ever voted for him.”
Stringer frowned down at his glass and mused, half to himself, “Joe Malliwah wrote that the mining outfit is new in the area and operating in a remote valley no whites have ever settled near before. So, in other words, it stacks up as a private fight betwixt the company police and some leftover Indians nobody cares all that much about.”
The colonel nodded. “It is. And it will be until things heat up enough to worry the outside world. You’ve no idea how many requests we get to charge at scattered handfuls of reservation strays. We’re keeping an eye on some more ominous Paiute at the moment. Their leader, one Shoshone Mike, could even give us some trouble in the future, at the rate he’s been stirring things up over in the Great Basin. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if we had another serious Indian uprising in the brand-new twentieth century?”
Stringer grimaced. “It sure would. I thought we were supposed to just watch Indians and Wild West outlaws at the nickelodeon, now that things have got so modern. I reckon some old-timers ain’t caught up with modern times yet. Kid Curry told me just before he died that he went to see The Great Train Robbery before he held up his last train. He spoke English, too. I wonder how long it’s going to take Indians to savvy folk ain’t supposed to act so un-modern anymore.”
He drained the last of his beer schooner, put it down empty with a nod of thanks to all concerned, and said, “I’d best get up yonder to cover them Indian troubles before someone beats me there with a moving picture camera. I’d be fibbing if I said I wasn’t glad the Army wasn’t interested.”
“Oh, we’re interested,” Lowe said. “We’re just not ready to move unless and until things get out of hand up there.”
Stringer nodded. “Well, I’d best go home and pack, then. I owe Joe Malliwah, and he’s expecting me to keep things from getting as out of hand as they’ve already got.”
CHAPTER TWO
There was no sense getting off a train in the dark with nobody waiting for him. So after Stringer had put on his field outfit of blue denim and checked the timetables at the Mission Street depot he wired Joe Malliwah when to expect him in Los Molinos. Then he walked to the ferry building at the foot of Market Street, toting his possibles in a battered gladstone, to board the Oakland ferry. Twentieth century or not, there was just no other way to catch the main line up to Los Molinos unless one enjoyed a heap of tedious and expensive transferring.
At this hour the tap room off the top deck of the ferry was almost empty, and some of the night owls weren’t dressed much more fancy than he was. He was still feeling that last slug of bourbon he’d had out at the Presidio, so as he dropped his gladstone by the brass rail he put a spurred Justin up on the same and told the barkeep he’d try one of them new Coca-Cola drinks with ice, if they had it.
The barkeep didn’t mind. He got the same nickel whether the drink he served was serious or not. But a burly gent just down the bar, who could have used a bath more than another slug of sloe gin, growled, “It has always been my considered opinion that a drugstore cowboy who drinks sodee water ain’t man enough to piss standing up.”
The barkeep warned, “Now, Turk, the gent ain’t bothering you. So why would you want to bother him?”
The tough-looking Turk seemed to ponder the question before he replied thoughtfully, “I would say it was because it’s the end of the week and my Indian blood is up. I boarded this fool ferry in quest of a nice friendly fight, and, damn it, I’ve rid it across the bay twice and nobody seems willing to fight me.”
He grinned at Stringer, exposing a serious need of dentistry as well as soap as he asked hopefully, “How about it, cowboy? Would you be kind enough to fight with me if I let you take the first swing?”
Stringer smiled back. Turk was too drunk to read the cougar coldness in Stringer’s normally friendly amber eyes as he told the bully, “I’d rather spend the rest of the night aboard a train than in a drunk tank, if it’s all the same with you.”
Turk shook his head stubbornly and insisted, “It ain’t all the same with me. My Indian blood is up, and you’re the only cuss in sight that looks as if he might be able to go one round with me.”
Stringer sighed, picked up his gladstone, and carried his Coca-Cola out to the open promenade deck in his free hand, pretending not to hear as the ferocious drunk hurled unkind remarks about his mother at him.
It wasn’t easy. Stringer’s mother had died when he was still a kid. He was still mighty fond of her. But, as in the case of the gal on the second landing, there were temptations one just had to try to ignore in a world where temptation and troubles one couldn’t avoid seemed so handy.
He walked back to the end of the ferry that was acting as the stern going this way across the inky waters of the bay. He put his gladstone down on a hardwood bench and stood by the rail to finish his Coca-Cola in private. He thought about the six-gun rig he’d packed along with his possibles in the nearby bag. He brushed the thought away. It might be fun to stroll back into the tap room wearing a double-action S&W .38 on his hip. But he’d get stared at enough, striding to the depot through downtown Oakland in just his faded riding outfit. One had to get a ways from big towns like San Francisco before folk considered a man wearing a gun rig properly dressed.
He finished the harmless drink and set the empty glass by his gladstone for now as he got out the makings for a smoke. He’d just finished sealing it with his tongue when something that was either a grizzly or a mighty strong man grabbed his shoulder to spin him around for a right cross.
Stringer’s head wasn’t there when Turk’s heroic right cleft the air where his face had just been. As the burly bully threw a left hook, Stringer blocked it with his right forearm and counter-punched with his own left. It landed with a satisfying crunch that finished Turk’s rotten front teeth for good, and, as the big brute staggered back to bounce off the inboard bulkhead, that should have been the end of it. But Turk bellowed, “Hot damn!” and came back for more, windmilling, since men that big and dumb seldom bothered to study even the basics of boxing.
Stringer stung him good a few more times. But the bigger man seemed too drunk, or too crazy, to let minor annoyances like a busted nose or blood all over his face slow him down. Stringer knew that the longer this kept up, the likelier Turk was to land one of those wild punches he kept throwing with little skill but pile-driver power. So he planted his heels and wound up to throw a punch of his own that he’d never have risked against a man who knew beans about boxing.
It landed. Turk never saw it coming. As Stringer’s fist made a red ruin of Turk’s face he staggered against the rail meant to be waist high to folk of average height and, catching it with his hip, went over the side, yelling one last uncalled-for remark about Stringer’s mother before he hit with a mighty splash and the cold black waters of San Francisco Bay closed over him.
Stringer stared soberly at the receding patch of foam where the bully had gone under until he couldn’t see it anymore. Then he muttered, “At least he could have tried,” before he picked up the glass and gladstone to return to the tap room. As he placed the empty glass on the bar and asked how close they were now to the other side, the barkeep said, “We’ll be there any minute. I was just about to send someone to warn you. That crazy drunk you were having trouble with said something about going out after
you. I can see, thank God, he couldn’t find you in the dark out there.”
Stringer smiled thinly. “Just my luck. I always manage to miss all the fun. Was he really part Indian, like he said?”
The barkeep picked up the glass to rinse it as he shrugged and said, “Lord knows. He’s sure a pest on this run. They say he used to be a bare-knuckles champ before liquor got to him. The cops on shore say they can’t arrest him for us unless he really causes serious trouble on board. If you want my opinion, I think they’re afraid of him. They say he busted up a paddy wagon bare-handed one time. I sure wish he’d fall overboard before he kills somebody.”
Stringer chuckled. “Just keep wishing, then. You know what they say about wishes coming true if you wish hard enough.”
Stringer got off at Los Molinos with his gun on his hip and goose bumps under his denim jacket. For it was well before dawn, and the autumn nights were cold in northern California. He’d just spent the good part of the night sitting up in the Oakland waiting room and then dozing fitfully aboard a passenger-freight combo that seemed to stop and start every few minutes in a series of heroic jolts. He was hungry, too.
Despite the hour the platform at Los Molinos was busy and fairly well lit by a string of Edison bulbs. Few passengers got on or off trains in the wee small hours, but a heap of freight did. Most of it was being unloaded this far up the line. He stood there a time with his gladstone, scanning about for any sign of Joe Malliwah. The only two people in sight who didn’t seem to be shifting crates and barrels looked Californio, or leftover Mex. An old man wearing a straw sombrero was tending a steam cart of what smelled like hot tamales. A pleasantly plump señorita with a serape thrown over her frilly cotton blouse and maroon fandango skirts was leaning against a pile of crates with a bored expression on her childlike face. Stringer felt sure he knew what she was selling. He drifted over to the tamale cart instead for breakfast.