by Lou Cameron
Stringer started to ask a dumb question. Then he remembered all the reading he’d been doing of late and said, “The Millers were neighbors of the Nickell clan, and not on such good terms with them, right?”
Casey grimaced. “You might say that. Less than six months before Willie Nickell was murdered in the summer of ‘01, James Miller and Kell Nickell had ‘em a free-for-all that brung the neighbors from near and far. It ended with Miller putting his Bowie knife in Kell Nickell and leaving him for dead in the snow. Kell Nickell survived and refused to press charges, intimating he’d handle the son of a bitch his own way once he was up and about again.”
“Where does Tom Horn fit in?” Stringer asked.
“You tell me,” Casey replied. “Tom Horn was known in these parts as a man whose gun hand could be rented by the hour, at a higher price than either of them trash whites could have afforded. Everyone was braced for them to have it out again. To tell the truth my money was on Nickell. I had Miller down as a man with a yellow streak. It ain’t right to pull a knife in a fist fight. But the next thing we knew, Kell’s little boy, Willie, was shot in the back as he was opening their gate one morning, about three quarters of a mile from the house. The murderous son of a bitch who shot him did so from the cover of an outcrop up the slope a good ways, then lit out like the dirty dog he was. The Millers was foiled up and sobbing that they’d just loved that boy and hadn’t even gone outside to feed the chickens that morning. There was no way to blame one with the others all swearing alibis. Kell Nickell didn’t swear at all. We’ve been waiting ever since to see who makes the next move. If I was you, I wouldn’t go anywheres near the scene of the tragedy.”
“I thank you for your words of warning,” Stringer said dryly. “Would it be too much to ask if you had any notion why Tom Horn was the one the law finally decided on?”
“Well, I’m just a cowhand, not a politician. But if I was a politician, I might have noticed that Tom Horn ain’t registered to vote in this county and that both the Nickell and Miller clans got a lot of friends and relations who are,” Casey opined.
Stringer nodded grimly. “I follow your drift. Horn was not only an outsider but a sort of mysterious stranger who no doubt made a lot of locals nervous as well.”
Casey grinned. “I’d hate to be a cattle thief with old Tom Horn running loose. And he was an awful pain in the ass to everyone when he was drunk.”
Stringer didn’t answer. “Why don’t you just let her go at that, Mister MacKail?” Casey asked. “The death of that boy seems to have shocked the Nickells and Millers to their senses and Tom Horn is no great loss to anyone, right?”
“Wrong,” Stringer said. “If he’s innocent he has as much right to live as any other useless son of a bitch, damnit.”
Stringer found the smithy closed and shuttered. There’d have been no sense leaving his gear in the smith’s tack room if he hadn’t expected them to lock the damned door. But it was really starting to get nippy now. Stringer banged on the front door for a spell and when that didn’t work he headed around to the side.
He met the gal called Cherokee coming around the corner the other way, with a wool shawl around her bare shoulders. “I was coming to fetch you,” she said. “I told you that you’d find it noisy in that saloon.”
He said, “You did and I owe you, ma’am. How come you’re taking such an interest?”
Cherokee laughed bitterly. “Maybe you remind me of the son I never had. Maybe I just don’t like noise. Come on. My place is just across the tracks. The town’s too small to say if I live on the right side of the tracks or the wrong. Suffice it to say I have no close or nosy neighbors.”
He hesitated. Then he shrugged and said, “Anything has to beat sleeping on the dew-wet grass without a blanket. But how much is all this hospitality apt to cost me, ma’am?”
She swore under her breath and told him, “I’m not a landlady, either. If you must know, I have my own good reasons for keeping the gunplay in these parts down to a roar. If that gunslick who was looking for you has any friends within miles…”
“Lead on.” He cut in, adding, “I hate to wake up with straw in my hair when it might be safer somewhere else.”
They circled the smithy and corrals out back and crossed a single line of railroad track. Stringer had ridden across the same coming in and had found it curious the first time. So he asked her, “Would you know where this spur line runs to, ma’am?”
“Sure,” she said. “Cheyenne, going south. I think the other way takes you to the North Platte. Why?”
“I never noticed any such tracks, riding all that way this afternoon.”
“That’s because the wagon trace beelines straight across the rises between here and the county seat. I guess railroads have to run along one level. That takes some doing in such bumpy country. Is there any point to all this railroad talk?”
“Well, I would have needed that roan once I got here, anyway. It just shoots a couple of suspicions I was chewing on all to hell. I reckon old Winfield Scott Rutherford got up here the smart way. That would account for his not having a mount tied up anywheres around here.”
She pointed to a dark mass looming in the moonlight ahead of them and said, “That’s my cabin. Was that the gunslick’s name?”
“We’re still working on that,” he replied. “The point is that he could have heard which way I was headed, from a lot of folk, long after I left Cheyenne, and still beat me here by an hour if he came up by train.”
They got to her door. He noticed she paused to unlock it even though there couldn’t be more than a few dozen folk living in the whole settlement when the herds were not in town. She wasn’t wired for Edison bulbs out here in the middle of nowhere, of course. So the table lamp she lit cast a moody light. He was too polite to say her lamp chimney needed cleaning. She adjusted the wick knob to burn a mite brighter, then said, “That’s better. Let’s see if I get this straight. You suspected someone down at the county seat of telling that other idiot where you were going?”
“Somebody had to, and it wasn’t me. But as I look back on it, I told all sorts of folk I meant to ride up this way for a look-see, by the time I’d hired a mount and all. I liked it better when I had it down to just two or three. Now I’m back where I started with a whole world of mysterious strangers to worry about.”
She told him to sit himself down and went someplace mysterious for a spell. He chose the leather chesterfield against one plank wall. It wasn’t as comfortable as it looked until he found a spot where the horsehair padding was still in place over the springs. The rest of her front room was furnished with the same slapdash care. Nothing looked new and nothing matched. The place smelled clean and he could see she dusted now and again. So she was either poor, didn’t give a hang, or she’d moved into a small town suddenly with no great desire to stay for good. Her fancy duds were professionally fitted to her curves, as he recalled, and it cost money to get one’s hair dyed, even though right now old Cherokee could use a touch-up. She’d likely found both her seamstress and that beauty shop in a somewhat more advanced part of the world.
She came back into her parlor bearing a japanned tin tray of coffee and cake. She placed it before the chesterfield on a soap box she’d converted to a coffee table and sat down beside him. The cake was marble, store-bought, and a mite stale. But she made good coffee and he was hungry enough to eat anything, once he dunked it soft enough to bite into.
Stringer was country raised and hence inclined to eat and get it over with. But since working his way through Stanford and seeing more of the world, he’d learned less rustic folk liked to jaw about life as they chewed. Whatever Cherokee might be, rustic was not the word for her. So he thought it only polite to bring her up to date on who he was and why he was in Iron Mountain.
She poured them both more coffee as she said, “I arrived well after that Nickell boy was murdered so I wouldn’t know Tom Horn or Joe LeFors if I woke up in bed with them.” She smiled wryly. “That sounds like f
un, or disgusting, depending on what they look like.”
He grinned and said, “I can’t speak for Joe LeFors. But old Tom could be mistaken for a distinguished middle-aged man if he didn’t look sort of stupid as well.”
“I like ‘em young and athletic,” she said, smiling big at Stringer. “But let’s stick to the less romantic trouble you’ve been messing with. Like I said, I wasn’t here when that boy was bushwhacked, but I’ve been here long enough to know the smell of the aftermath. You’re asking for trouble with at least three factions, uh…Stringer?”
“Stringer’s close enough. Who might you want to name as the rascal who keeps trying to scare me off the case?”
“I hardly think that last try for you in the saloon tonight was meant as just a threat. As to the who of it, I’ll give you your choice between the C.P.A., the Millers, or the Nickells.”
Stringer sipped some coffee as he considered her cheering words. Then he said, “Maybe. I can see why the cattle barons who hired Tom Horn might want to let that sleeping dog hang, whether he did it or not. They can’t afford the publicity since the range wars of the nineties almost persuaded Washington to close all the open range, and of course, if Tom’s got any back pay coming for services rendered…Nope, they’d hardly pay hired guns to stop me from helping Tom get free enough to bill ‘em.”
He drained the cup, then shook his head when she started to pour him another, saying, “No, thanks, ma’am. Not if I aim to sleep at all tonight. I can see why the Miller faction might be upset by my snooping about, if they really murdered Willie Nickell the way a lot of folk suspect. But why in thunder would the Nickell clan be worried about an investigative reporter looking into the death of one of their own?”
“That’s easy,” she said. “Tom Horn’s been convicted of the crime.”
He scowled at her and demanded, “Why would they want the law to hang the wrong man for spilling the blood of a kinsman? I mean, sure, they likely think Tom Horn did it. So they’d likely want to hang him themselves, with trimmings. But the only way anyone is about to get Tom Horn off is by exposing some other cuss as the real killer.
If I was Kell Nickell I’d be pleased as punch to see the man who really killed my boy arrested.”
She stared at him curiously and said, “MacKail’s a Scotch name, isn’t it?”
He asked just what that had to do with Wyoming feuds.
“I’ve read about the way your Scotch clans carried on over spilt blood,” she said. “It’s no wonder the English wound up running the place. You fighting fools didn’t know how to end a feud. Neither the Nickells nor the Millers came west to spend the next hundred years or so taking pot shots at one another. It’s hard enough to make a living raising stock on this poor range.”
Stringer said, “I was told how the feud flared up with a sudden fight that turned ugly. I agree it makes sense to end such a profitless feud. But surely if I was to manage to expose the real killer of Willie Nickell …”
“The Nickells would have to go after the Millers as a point of family honor,” she cut in. “The Millers, in turn, would feel honor-bound to deny the charge and defend their accused kinsman to the death. Both factions could field a lot of friends and relations. So it would mean an all-out war, and naturally, once the state guard was called in, both sides would likely be crushed and driven out of Wyoming.”
He pursed his lips and decided, “That’s how the Lincoln County War down New Mexico Way wound up, all right. But I don’t recall the Murphy Faction covering up for Billy the Kid after he took to gunning ‘em some.”
She said, “Maybe Murphy didn’t mind starting over in other parts after neither he nor the Kid’s side wound up owning anything after all that gunplay. Both the Nickells and the Millers got land and herds to hang on to. They no doubt hate one another as much or more than ever. But with both sides sobered by Mister Death’s sour breath, and a man with no kin on either side about to pay Mister Death’s grim bill …”
“That works, and it’s mean-spirited as hell,” he cut in. Then he asked, “Do you think Joseph Miller killed Willie Nickell, too?”
Cherokee shrugged her bare shoulders. “I wasn’t there. So I’m not saying. But he had the motive and a bad enough temper to knife a man in a fistfight. I understand a lot of people accused him of the deed at the time. But since then they’ve learned not to. Like I said, a nasty temper and the friends to back his play. You might say Deputy Marshal LeFors performed an important public service by arresting Tom Horn for the deed. That way both sides can say they’re satisfied and nobody has to get hurt.”
He growled, “Nobody but Tom Horn, you mean,” and she sighed.
“There’s an outside possibility he’s guilty,” she replied, “but it’s not as if we’re talking about Bo Peep, you know. That old hired gun has surely gotten away with many a murder in his time and if Willie Nickell wasn’t one of ‘em, tough. Are you ready to turn in, yet? I know I am.”
He repressed a yawn and said, “I did promise to meet the town law early in the morning. But let me help you with them cups and saucers first, Miss Cherokee.”
“You just make yourself at home whilst I put these things in the dry sink,” she said rising. “I got an Indian woman who comes around noon to tidy up for me.”
He didn’t argue. As she headed to the kitchen he took off his gun rig, wadded his hat and jacket up like a sort of pillow, and experimented with stretching out on the battered chesterfield. The experiment didn’t work. Stringer was well over six feet long, even if he took his boots off, and the chesterfield stretched less than five feet between its padded arms. It was hard and lumpy, no matter where he tried to put his hip.
But he figured it still had the floor or the night prairie beat. He wondered if he was supposed to trim the lamp or if his hostess meant to come back and do it. It was dark on the far side of the archway leading back to the rest of the cabin and she was as likely to cuss him as to thank him if he left her floundering about in total darkness.
He saw he’d chosen correctly when she did come back in, shot him a startled look, then asked, “Are you really comfortable on that sofa?”
“No. But I’ve bunked worse places and it was kind of you to offer, ma’am.”
“Suit yourself,” she shrugged, and flounced out. He tried to roll over. His knees wouldn’t fit that way either. He told himself to just lay still and that he’d fall asleep, comfortable or not, if he was really tired. He closed his eyes. He could see the lamp light through his lids. He wondered why she hadn’t trimmed it or taken it with her. Women never seemed to do things the way a man expected them to. They weren’t exactly dumb or crazy. They just didn’t seem to see things the way men did. That was no doubt why they were always moving furniture around to no good purpose any man could fathom.
He couldn’t get comfortable. He was sorry now he’d had that strong coffee. Then he heard her softly speak his name and opened his eyes, now feeling wide awake. She was standing in the archway without a thing on, unless you wanted to count a black velvet garter as duds. As he stared up at her voluptuous nude form, trying to formulate something sensible to say, she asked softly, “Would you really rather spend the night on that lumpy sofa?”
So in no time at all they were in her big brass bedstead and she was saying adoringly, “I knew you were too long for that sofa, but I never dared hope you’d be this long. Let me slide this pillow out from under my hips. We don’t seem to need it after all, and I’m so glad, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer. He was coming and he liked that pillow where it was, just fine. She gasped in mingled passion and dismay as he went on hitting bottom with every stroke. Then she wedged her soft thighs up to hug his heaving ribs with a shapely knee tucked in both his armpits as she crooned, “Oh, that’s better. That’s heavenly, darling. Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry for mistaking me for a whore?”
He kissed her soft throat, ejaculated in her hard, and kept moving politely as he growled, “I don’t know what you a
re, but you do this too fine for a lady not to have her heart set on it.”
She moaned passionately, dug her nails into his buttocks, and climaxed with protracted pulsations, inspiring him to greater effort. Then she went stiff and cold in his arms, demanding hoarsely, “Just what did you mean by that?”
He stopped moving in her to stare down at her suddenly hard face. “Hell’s bells, what did you think I meant by all this motion, girl?” he asked. “I thought you were enjoying it as much as I was.”
“I’m not talking about that,” she snarled. “That feels just lovely. What was that remark about my not being what I say I am?”
He kissed her. Her lips were primmed like a pissed-off virgin’s. “Hell, Cherokee, I was just making conversation. Would you rather I called you a whore instead?”
“I want to know what you think I really am, damn you and your steel-trap eye for details and nose for news.”
He rolled off and fumbled for the shirt he’d draped over one brass bedpost as he told her, “If you ask me, you’re the one who snaps suspicious around here. You told me before that you’re a lady cardshark. The reason I suspected you of whoring is that I’ll be whipped with snakes if I can see how even a gal as pretty as you could make a dishonest living in a settlement this size, dealing dirty and screwing dirty combined.”
She sat up on one elbow and stared down hard at him. “All right. So I’m not in Cheyenne where all the action is right now. Are you saying I’m hiding out in this trail town, Stringer?”
He began to roll a smoke as he said, “I liked it better when you were calling me darling. If I confess such thoughts might have crossed my mind, will you stop shooting daggers at me with those big dark eyes?”
