by Lou Cameron
“I finally got through to Hayes,” Tate replied. “They still have some bugs to work out of that Bell System. Hayes says the real Winfield Scott Rutherford is dead. Shot in a card game by a trash white called Billy Gower, about six weeks ago.”
Stringer shrugged. “Well, it was worth a try. That gent in the red silk shirt might not have wanted to use his real name for some reason.”
“He was Billy Gower,” Tate explained. “Hayes recalled that same shirt, that tie-down holster, and the other ways I described the man you shot to ‘em.”
“He must have kept and cherished the I.D. as well as the wallet he got off the real Rutherford,” Stringer suggested.
“That’s the way me and Hayes sees it,” Tate said. “Gower had good reason to carry false I.D. Under his right handle, he was wanted for everything but spreading typhoid, and he might have done that if he’d knowed how. He was a vicious son of a bitch. Too trigger-happy to ride with a regular gang. He went in for lonesome robbing and killing. I don’t think he was out to rob you last night. Since he was asking for you by name before he found out how unwise that could be, I’d say someone sent him after you. His record includes hired assassination as a sort of sideline.”
Stringer got out the makings and began to roll a smoke. “The possibility had already crossed my mind. Do you think the C.P.A. would hire such a wild man, Jim?” he asked.
“Not hardly,” Tate replied. “Even Tom Horn had a range detective’s license afore he got too wild and they had to throw him to the wolves. What if he was a pal of Horn, hisself? Old Tom would drink with anybody and…”
“I can’t see Tom Horn sending anyone to gun me,” Stringer cut in, explaining, “I never would have shown any interest in his sort of stale story if he hadn’t sent for me himself, and asked me to go over it all again. It seems a lot more likely someone else wants to let sleeping dogs lie so Horn can hang. I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they’re worried about, though. I was just out to the murder scene, and to tell the truth I didn’t see a thing that could prove Tom Horn did or didn’t do it.”
He lit his smoke and asked, “What happens next about the late Billy Gower? Has your local coroner come back yet?”
The old deputy looked uncomfortable as he said, “No. Doc Marvin ain’t due back for a few days. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Jesus, I can’t hang around here that long!” Stringer swore.
Tate said, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He hesitated, then continued, “Like I said, the late Billy Gower was wanted lots of places and he had…uh…considerable bounty money posted on his otherwise useless hide.”
The penny dropped. Stringer grinned. “That’s mighty interesting, Jim. Ain’t it a good thing the law got him when he made the mistake of passing through Iron Mountain?”
The old and no doubt underpaid deputy grinned like a mean little kid. “I was sort of hoping we could come to a meeting of the minds on that bounty money,” he said. “I’ve been setting here trying to figure just how I should word my claim. You’re the writer. Suppose you tell me?”
“It’s always best to keep things short and simple, Jim,” Stringer said. “If you were to simply say Billy Gower was spotted in your jurisdiction acting suspicious, and that he wound up dead as you were fixing to question him, and that you’d sure like that money posted on him, now …”
“Ain’t that sort of fibbing?” the old deputy cut in.
“Well, it’s sure a sin to write a lie,” the younger man said. “I’m not sure it’s wrong to leave out pesky details. It’s the usual custom for the man who downs a dead-or-alive to put himself in for the reward. And since everyone ought to be delighted to hear the rascal’s dead…”
Old Jim said, “Say no more. That’s about the way I’d read it if I got such a terse cheerful message. I reckon I know how to word it. But are you sure you don’t want a cut, son?”
Stringer looked innocent and asked, “How could I claim part of the bounty, Jim? I’m not connected to your department and it was your department brought that rascal to justice at last, wasn’t it?”
“I wish you could stick around longer, Stringer. I’m really getting mighty fond of you,” old Jim chuckled.
“Then I’m free to leave?”
“I got no call to keep you here. The law don’t need no witness when a knowed killer gets shot down pure and simple. But I hope you don’t mean to ride for Cheyenne right now.”
“Sure I do. I did what I came up here to do and a little more. I was hoping to stumble over something that might help poor Tom Horn. But I never did, and meanwhile, I can still cover at least the closing ceremonies of that rodeo.”
Tate said, “Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. They’re sure fixing to. It’s fixing to rain fire and salt outside.”
“I sure hope so. If it starts raining this side of high noon they’ll have to cancel today’s contests down at the Cheyenne fair grounds. I’ve got a sidekick trying to fill in for me. But to tell the truth he’s not as cow as me,” Stringer laughed, “and I’d rather do it myself.”
As he rose from the table the old deputy insisted, “You’re more likely to wind up drowned if you ride out afore the wind makes up her mind, Stringer. That’s a good day’s ride, dry, and I’ll bet you ten bucks we’re in for a real gully-washer afore sundown.”
Stringer said, “No bet. I noticed the sky earlier. It’s more like a five-hour ride aboard a good mount, and it’ll be cooler riding if it rains.”
The old deputy followed him to the door, insisting he’d never make it across some prairie draws he knew of without a ferry boat. But Stringer knew he was secretly glad. So they shook and parted friendly. Then Stringer got the same argument when he picked his mount up again at the smithy.
As Stringer broke out his big yellow slicker and strapped it where a throw rope might have gone if he’d had one the smith said, “I’d wait them rain clouds out if I was you. They’re boiling so that we could just get a sudden, if not mighty awesome summer storm. Can’t you find some place to sort of bed down until that sky makes up her mind?”
“I might,” Stringer said, “but a smart man quits while he’s ahead.”
He saw no need to explain as he forked himself aboard the roan and rode off. But he knew a man could get in more trouble indoors than out, messing with the wrong woman, and if Cherokee was who she’d begun to add up to, he could only hope she’d never tell anyone about the way she’d yielded to her natural lonesome longings the night before.
The roan was nervous about the way the sky was growling down at them as they headed south. Stringer took advantage of this by running him down the long slopes of the rolling prairie, and a horse could still walk upslope faster than any man could. They couldn’t see the sun. But well before it could have been directly overhead, a big wet thunderbird turd splashed down on Stringer’s hat brim. He reached for his slicker with a sigh, muttering, “Someone sure means to water the grass good today.”
His shoulders were already wet by the time he had the stiff linseed-scented slicker on. He’d chosen it with such events in mind. It covered his bedroll and some of the roan’s rump as well as his own, right down to the stirrups. The rest of his mount got to shiver in the pelting rain. “You’ll feel warmer if you move faster,” he told the animal, spurring it to a steady lope. The grass all around turned wet welcome-mat brown and the dark sky kept getting darker when lighting wasn’t flashing and spooking the roan.
They made good time for close to an hour. But Stringer knew he had to rest his mount at least a few minutes out of every hour and he reined in when they came to a low draw, out of the worst of the wind. But as they tried to rest down there, in fetlock-deep running water with a lot more of the same coming straight down, lightning struck atop a rise too close for comfort and Stringer almost got to ride back to Iron Mountain unplanned.
He patted the roan’s wet neck with a d
ripping palm and told it, “You’re right. There has to be a better way. Unless we’re lost entire, I recall a soddy we passed coming up this way. It was mayhaps half a mile off the wagon trace, to the east. Let’s see if it’s still there.”
The roan didn’t argue. They still had a time finding shelter with the storm waving silvery veils between them and anything at all distant. But just as Stringer was sure they were headed the wrong way he spied the low dark mass of the homestead he’d noticed before on a brighter occasion. As they rode in he noticed great minds seemed to run in the same channels. A line of ponies were tethered under the overhang of a pole and sod-roofed open shed. Stringer put his own mount in with the others and sloshed his way across the ankle-deep dooryard to the main house. As he got there the door opened and an old gent in bib overalls said, “I thought I heard more hoofbeats out here in this deluge. Come on in, son. My old woman ain’t had this much fun since the Seventh Cav dropped by in Seventy-seven.”
Stringer followed the old nester inside, peeling off his slicker to keep from dripping all over the dirt floor. Five other soggy-looking riders were seated around a plank table in the crowded soddy. A sweet old motherly woman by the cook-stove told Stringer to set himself right down. So he did. The interior of her thick-walled little house smelled like coffee, mud, apple pie, and horse shit, all mixed together warm and homey.
Stringer introduced himself. The burly gent sitting next to him said he was Deputy U.S. Marshal Jacobs and that the other four had been riding with him until they almost wound up at the bottom of the sea outside.
Stringer asked if they were working under the well-known Joe LeFors.
Jacobs growled, “That’ll be the day. Last I heard of LeFors he was over in the Hole In The Wall Country with his fancy railroad car. A lot he knows about catching the Wild Bunch.”
Another federal rider said, “There ain’t no such thing as no hole in no wall. Butch and Sundance only hide out in rough country nobody else is using between jobs. They’d be crazy if they was camped anywhere near their usual haunts with LeFors and all them others chasing ‘em aboard a special train.”
The sweet old woman at the stove commenced pouring coffee and her husband began to spread the tin cups on the table for their rain-chilled guests. Deputy Jacobs said, “Lord bless you and keep you folk. You’re still gonna have to let us pay you afore we ride out for Iron Mountain, though.”
The old nester told them not to talk dirty in front of his wife. “I just rode down from Iron Mountain. What are you boys interested in, that shoot-out last night?” Stringer asked.
Jacobs frowned at him and asked what he was talking about. “They got an owlhoot called Billy Gower last night,” Stringer said. “Had a mess of rewards posted on him, I hear.”
Jacobs grimaced and said, “I’ve heard of that puddle of scum. I’m pleased to hear they got him. But he was never wanted on any federal charges. We’re after bigger fish.”
One of his sidekicks chimed in, “Etta Place, the Sundance Kid’s play-pretty.”
Stringer sipped some coffee. It felt better than it tasted going down. Then he said, “Last I heard of Sundance, he’d been seen back East. They say he hailed from New Jersey to begin with. Didn’t he make the mistake of having his fool self photographed in a New York studio, along with that school marm he ran off with?”
Jacobs said, “I doubts even Joe LeFors bought that ruse. I can’t say whether Etta Place started out as a schoolmarm or a cow town…uh…remember the ladies present, gents.”
He sipped at his own tin cup before he went on explaining. “A lot of old boys thought it was sort of dumb for Butch and Sundance to pose for studio photographs, considering how well known they’ve recently become. The New York P.D. even scouted up the ticket agency where they bought steamship tickets for South America, and if there’s one thing Mister Robert Leroy Parker alias Butch Cassidy ain’t, it’s dumb enough to do a dumb thing like that.”
Another deputy explained, “They bought them steamship tickets under their right names, Parker and Longabaugh, not Butch and Sundance.”
Stringer opined, “Well, either way, they were long gone for South America by the time anyone noticed, right?”
Jacobs shook his head. “You mean if they ever left the country at all,” he said. “The one thing Joe LeFors and me agree upon is that neither of them rascals speak Spanish and that trains are still being stopped since, professional as ever.”
The old man started dealing out tin plates of apple pie. Stringer dug into his. It was warm, but sort of tasteless. He said it was the best apple pie he’d ever had. He turned to Deputy Jacobs after swallowing a second mouthful. “I can see why you’d suspect those slippery train robbers of doubling back after laying a false scent clear out of these United States. But how come you think they could be hiding out in Iron Mountain of all places? You could pitch horseshoes with the stakes set at the city limits, either way. There can’t be more than a few dozen folk, living there regular, and I was just allowed to observe that they don’t welcome strangers with open arms up there,” Stringer said.
“I know the place,” Jacobs replied. “You’re right. We don’t expect to find Butch or Sundance there. But we got a tip that Etta Place could be laying low in Iron Mountain.”
Stringer laughed, louder than he felt like laughing, and asked, “Doing what? There’s a general store with an attached saloon and, oh, yeah, a blacksmith. The rest of the town consists of bitty cabins. I’m sure someone would have mentioned it to me if a lady bandit had robbed a chicken coop in recent memory.”
Jacobs coughed up some apple pie. “Miss Etta ain’t exactly a lady bandit. She’s more the lady love of the Sundance Kid. With the gang scattered and laying low, she could be getting money by mail from her outlaw lover. We’ll ask her, when we catch her.”
Stringer swallowed some pie that suddenly tasted even drier in his mouth and washed it down with coffee that refused to taste wet. “Well, I was only in town a short spell,” he said, “but it’s a mighty short town and I’d say I must have at least nodded to everyone there by now. What does this Etta Place look like, Deputy?”
“Pretty and sort of refined,” Jacobs said, “considering the company she keeps. It’s easy to see how that story about her being a wayward schoolmarm or a runaway society gal got started. Her exact age is up for grabs, since Etta Place is hardly the name she’d have on any birth certificate. But she looks to be in her middle twenties, with a fine figure and brown hair.”
“How dark a head of hair are we talking about?” asked Stringer.
Jacobs said, “Oh, just a regular brown, neither amazingly light or dark. Why do you ask?”
“I thought I might have had something for you. But it don’t work. The only gal I spotted up yonder that fits at all was cheap, flashy, and had jet black hair. I suspect she’s a breed. They call her Cherokee.”
“Do tell? What was she doing while anyone was looking?”
Stringer shot a wary look at the old lady by the stove, winked at Jacobs, then confided, “About what you’d expect a flashy sass like that to be doing in a cow town.”
Jacobs lowered his voice. “You mean, selling charms to the local boys?” he asked.
Stringer’s code forebade him to kiss and tell unless it was in a good cause. Since he owed the gal, he grinned sort of dirty and said, “I can’t speak for all the local boys. But I got some, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Jacobs grimaced in distaste and muttered, “Keep your fool voice down. Are you sure that…breed was called Cherokee?”
Stringer shrugged and said, “That’s what she said I could call her, why?”
Jacobs sighed, “That’s the handle our informant gave us. Black hair, you say, and acting that common?” He turned to one of his men to ask, “What do you think, Bob?”
The other lawman shook his head and said, “Might look like Etta Place. Can’t see the real one acting like so. Sundance would skin her and any man he caught with her alive. He ain’t as goo
d-natured as Butch.”
Jacobs turned back to Stringer, stared at him for a long unwinking moment, then said, “I don’t recall your face on any wanted posters. But just the same, would you mind showing us some I.D., friend?”
Stringer gladly hauled out his press credentials. Jacobs scanned them and handed them back, saying, “I think I’ve read your stuff in the papers, Mister MacKail. So far, I’ve never caught you in a serious mistake. What were you doing up in Iron Mountain to begin with?”
Stringer explained his interest in Tom Horn’s case. Jacobs looked pained and said, “I wish they’d just hang that fool and shut him up for good. Men who live by dealing death ought to be man enough to face death when it’s dealt to them.”
“Do you think he’s really guilty as charged?”
“Quien sabe? If Joe LeFors framed him, it was in a good cause. Like I said, Tom Horn’s a born killer who should have been hung years ago.”
Stringer sipped more coffee. It tasted wetter now. Then he asked, “What would you call Deputy Marshal LeFors, if he’s sending an innocent man to the gallows?”
Jacobs growled, “Don’t try to put words in my mouth, newspaper man. I’d be willing to say it to Joe’s face that I don’t like him. He ain’t an easy man to like. But I’ve never caught him in an outright lie and he did swear under oath that Tom Horn confessed that killing to him.”
“Tom Horn swears he didn’t. That he was too drunk at the time to string words together sensible. Yet the confession Joe LeFors read to the court was not only coherent but worded in correct English Tom Horn can’t even manage sober.”
Jacobs shrugged. “Mebbe old Joe saw fit to punctuate more proper. Mebbe Horn was confessing some other killing he’d had a hand in. Mebbe, like Horn says, LeFors just figured it was time to arrest a known killer one damn way or another. Who cares?”
“Nobody but me and Tom Horn, I fear,” Stringer sighed.
Jacobs said, “There you go. Look on the bright side. It ain’t you they’s fixing to hang. That storm outside sounds like it’s letting up a mite. Finish your coffee and you can ride back to Cheyenne with us.”
