by Lou Cameron
Stringer asked, “Could his name have been Judge Kenton?”
Rimfire Rowena replied, “As a matter of fact it was. Do you know him?”
“Yeah,” Stringer said, nodding. “My lawyer told me he was a decent gent, too. I hope he knows as much about judging riders as he does about common law. He was on the money with that suggestion about a medical fund. The promoters could be long gone by the time anyone gets around to suing for damages, and he was right when he said the city couldn’t just leave a busted-up rider or spectator to die of neglect.”
He turned to Bill Pickett, patting him friendly on the back. “Speak up if you need a few bucks extra to get in, Bill. Since I know better than to carry on so foolishly I generally have a few cents change in my jeans.”
The big black man looked touched. But he shook his head and said, “Not hardly, thanks just the same. I finished in the money down at Lyons, just before I come up here. I can handle the entry fee. But I might look you up later, if I wind up feeling silly on the tanbark. Like I said, these days it seems to take the prize money from one rodeo just to make her to the next one. I wish I could go on the stage, like Will Rogers. But all the colored men they hire seem to be white boys with burnt cork smeared all over their fool faces. I don’t know how to pluck a banjo anyhow.”
Smiling, Stringer assured Pickett he could no doubt rake in the money at more honest work, then moved on to see if anyone else had something interesting to spill about the coming events.
Nobody he could find on the darkening fair grounds could tell him much more than he already knew. The rider called Slash said he didn’t even want to talk to him. But when Stringer threatened to hit him some more, Slash grudgingly allowed he’d never heard of a Winfield Scott Rutherford or a Billy Gower and knew for a fact that neither was entered in any of the rodeo events past or future. Slash said he could read and that all the entrants were posted. And anyway, he was only interested in the saddle bronc event. So Stringer wished him luck and let him take leave with his face still intact.
Stringer found the bulletin board stuck to a shack between the chutes and the judges’ stand. Neither was occupied at this hour, of course. Stringer got out his note pad and copied down the names of all the entrants. It might be interesting to see if all of them were still meaning to ride, or what anyone who failed to appear after posting an entry fee might look like. Billy Gower had been established as a gent who didn’t always use his real name and he had been wearing a mighty fancy shirt when he died.
Having nosed about the fair grounds as much as he felt up to, Stringer legged it back to town to see what sweet old Pat Morrison might be feeling up to. It was a mite early for slap and tickle. But since the evening was shaping up so warm and dry, she might just enjoy going out to dine first.
The notion inspired him to walk a mite faster. In no time at all he’d reached Pat’s door and raised a fist to knock on it. But he never got to, because just then he heard a burst of loud laughter, male and female, coming from the far side.
As he lowered his fist Stringer swore at Pat and then had to laugh at himself. For while Pat had agreed to be his lawyer, she’d never sworn to be faithful about anything else, and he sure hadn’t felt bound by any such considerations in the company of Cherokee, Etta Place, or whoever that sweet-screwing little gal might have been.
Stringer started to walk away, telling himself it was a free country. Then he slid into the slot between Pat’s place and the next frame building over, even as he asked himself what in blue blazes he thought he was doing. Like most men, Stringer considered a Peeping Tom a contemptible idiot, unless it was him who was given the chance to peep. As he eased toward that side window he recalled from a happier occasion (with a certain bitterness he knew to be just dumb), he assured himself he had a right to make sure Pat wasn’t plotting against him with whomever. He’d just have a little listen, and if all they were up to was fornication, he’d just be a sport about it and head back to his hotel. He might even forgive her, if there was anything at all attractive in the hotel tap rooms at this hour.
But when he got to the window he saw Pat’s bedroom was too dark and too quiet for a gal who made love with her kind of enthusiasm. He shrugged and followed the slot toward the back alley. Pat’s back fence was low, and if they were in the kitchen he could at least get a look at the son of a bitch who’d aced him out.
But just before he stepped out into the alley he froze at the sound of footsteps on wet gravel. They didn’t sound like someone headed home the short way. They sounded like someone moving sneaky. So Stringer drew his .38 and waited to see what might happen next.
What happened next was that Friendly Frank Folsom, of all people, tried to pass Stringer’s slot with an even bigger pistol in his right hand. He didn’t get to. Stringer swung his own gun in an overhead arc and brought it down, hard, on the gunslick’s forearm, breaking both bones, before he pistol-whipped what was left of Friendly Frank to the ground.
All things considered, Friendly Frank took it like a man, if a man was supposed to say all those mean things about Stringer’s mother instead of outright weeping. As Friendly Frank tried to sit up, with his rump in a puddle, Stringer kicked him flat again, then bent down and took the other ivory-handled six-gun from its cussing owner. Then he sat on Friendly Frank’s chest, put his own gun to Folsom’s flustered face, and said, “If there is one thing I can’t abide, it’s a liar. You told me they hadn’t offered you enough and that you meant to back off, you sneaky son of a two-faced bitch.”
Friendly Frank groaned, “Jesus, you got one knee on my poor right arm and I fear it’s already busted!”
Stringer poked him between the eyebrows with cold steel. “Unless you want to be put out of your misery, forever, we’re going to hear some answers and they’d better be mighty convincing. I just caught you in one fib, Friendly Frank.”
The helpless hired gun gapsed, “You’re no-shit hurting me and I swear I wasn’t after you just now, Stringer.”
“That leaves only a lady then and whoever she seems fond of tonight. Which one did they send you to kill, and this time I really mean to find out just who they might be.”
Friendly Frank said, “You got it all wrong. I’m more a sort of persuader than a killer, see?”
“Persuade me. Who sent you to do what?” Stringer asked.
“I was hired by a gent named Martin,” Friendly Frank coughed out.
“Martin what?” Stringer pressed, waving his .38 too close for comfort.
The gunslick gasped. “Martin is his last name, not his first. I was told to just call him Mister Martin. He’s some sort of businessman here in Cheyenne. That’s all I really know about him, honest.”
Stringer said, “Sure. Your Mister Martin just put an ad in the help-wanted section, saying he needed a hired gun, right?”
Friendly Frank sighed. “I was sort of referred to him by another gent in the trade. You’d have to ask him how him and Mister Martin got to know each other. I was sort of called in as extra help, when they noticed I was in town.”
“All right,” Stringer said. “So where do I find this murderous old pal of yours, old pal of mine?”
“He was staying at the Drover’s Palace,” Friendly Frank blurted out fast now. “That’s how we knowed you was there. Since his face appears on more posters than mine, we figured it might be best if I was to be the one to run you off, see?”
“Not yet. How does this fellow guest of mine sign his own name, checking in?”
Friendly Frank explained, “He don’t use his right name. That could be a fatal mistake. He’s using the name of Winfield Scott Rutherford these days.”
Stringer swore and said, “I don’t think I’d better tell you how I know you got those last orders direct from your Mister Martin this evening. But what were they?”
“Persuading,” Friendly Frank said, “like I told you. Martin said I was to sort of lean on that lawyer gal, Patricia Morrison, and find out why you and her has gotten so thick. He said no
t to kill her or even rape her if I didn’t have to, but to make it clear she was in for both if she didn’t come clean about her business with you.”
“He sounds like a swell gent,” Stringer growled. “Just what did he want to know from my lawyer?”
“Ouch,” Friendly Frank moaned when Stringer poked him in the gut again. “Exactly what the two of you was up to, of course. Martin seemed anxious to know if you was really serious about Tom Horn and if you’d found any evidence that might get him off. He said you had a rep for digging up the damndest things to print in your newspaper and that sometimes you played innocent until you was ready to spill all sorts of beans.”
Stringer nodded grimly and asked, “What sort of beans do you reckon your Mister Martin might have that he don’t want spilt?”
Friendly Frank groaned, “I honest to God don’t know. Billy, I mean, Winfield Scott Rutherford knew him better than me. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’d sure like to,” Stringer smirked. “What time is it?”
Friendly Frank looked startled. “Around nine, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
“There’s a U.P. eastbound due in around nine-thirty. There won’t be another train passing through until closer to midnight. So we’d best get cracking if we’re to get you aboard that earlier one.”
“But I don’t have any call to board no eastbound train,” Friendly Frank protested.
“Sure you do,” Stringer said. “Let me help you up and get you to the depot. ‘Cause if you miss that train, or ever come back here, I’m going to have to kill you. See?”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
*
Considering how easy he was getting off, Friendly Frank sure bitched a lot about leaving town with a busted arm and no sidearms. When he asked what would happen if he met someone who might not like him before he could heal up and rearm, Stringer told him there was nothing—beast or man—could bring him worse disaster than showing his ugly face in Cheyenne for a spell.
After seeing the hired gun off at the depot, Stringer headed for the nearby Cheyenne Jail. He braced himself for another argument with that officious desk sergeant. But as luck would have it, a more easygoing cuss was on duty that night. When Stringer waved Judge Kenton’s papers at him he just shrugged and said to leave any weapons he had with him at the desk. He whistled softly when Stringer lay his .38 and two ivory-handled .45s side by side and said, “Remind me never to get in an argument with such a grim friend of the court.”
Then he whistled up a turnkey and locked Stringer tightly in with Tom Horn. The cell was almost pitch dark.
They were afraid to leave an oil lamp in there with him, according to Tom Horn. Stringer found that sort of cruel and unusual, even by Wyoming standards. So he ran an exploring hand along the wall near the door and, sure enough, fond an electric switch.
Tom Horn gasped and stared up in childlike wonder as the overhead Edison bulb flashed on, forty watts worth. “Well, I never,” he gasped. “I’ve been wondering what that glass jar was doing stuck up there in the ceiling all this time. How did you get it to light up like that, pard?”
Stringer replied, “Judas Priest, Edison invented the electric light back in the seventies. Are you trying to say you never heard?”
Tom Horn shrugged and said, “Sure I did. I ain’t ignorant. But to tell the truth I’ve spent more time out under the stars than in towns fancy enough to own electrical wonders. I’ve seen many an electrical light in my time, I reckon. Just never gave much thought to how they might work.”
Stringer showed him how the switch worked by flicking the light off and on a few times. Tom Horn nodded gravely. “I sure thank you for illuminating me, Stringer. It was awfully morose sitting night after night in the dark from sundown to sunrise. But, listen, I got more important things to tell you. My old pards know where they can lay hands on some dynamite and…”
“Don’t tell me, damnit,” Stringer cut in, adding, with a sigh, “I’m packing papers making me a sort of court official and I was never an outlaw to begin with.”
Horn declared, “Aw, I know I can trust you.”
“I hope that works both ways,” Stringer said. “I rode up to Iron Mountain on your behalf. I didn’t find out much. But someone tried to kill me just the same. Do you know a Billy Gower or a man named Martin who might be interested in your case?”
“I know lots of Martins,” Tom Horn said. “None that might have call to help or hurt me, though. I’ve heard tell of a Gower called Billy. Bad apple, if we’re discussing the same idjet.”
Stringer sat down beside Horn and rolled a smoke as he told the older man about his adventures up at Iron Mountain. When he got to the shoot-out with Gower, Horn cut in to opine, “That has to be the same idjet. Nobody with the brains of a gnat takes time to address a gent personal afore slapping leather on him. It may be safe to work yourself up to a fistfight. But when a man’s out for real blood he’s supposed to work hisself up afore he goes looking for his man. Gunfighting is a serious business. A man has no business even considering such an affair if he ain’t dead certain to begin with that he really wants to kill somebody.”
Stringer soothed, “Gower not doubt wasn’t in the trade as long as you, Tom. I’d say we can both agree he had a lot to learn.”
“Not no more,” Horn chuckled. “I heard about him when he tried to sign on with the C.P.A. one time. They knew his rep and just laughed at him. He bragged that he’d already killed his man and more. But range detective is a skilled craft. You can’t just ride about shooting tempting targets, just to be mean. I know they say mean things about the C.P.A. But the big cattlemen only want real cow thieves and such shot.”
Stringer struck a light for his Bull Durham and got it going before he said, “That’s the way I read her when I had a look at where Willie Nickell died, Tom. The killing never did any cattle baron a lick of good. Both the Nickells and Millers still own their fenced-in spreads and both clans still range some of their stock on public land. If killing that kid was meant to run anyone off their homesteads, it didn’t work worth a damn and we’re talking a couple of summers ago.”
“I know,” Horn said. “The boy’d been dead and buried almost two years afore they arrested me for it, and damnit, I was way the hell up north, persuading a fence-stringing pest of the error of his ways.”
Stringer blew a smoke ring. “Tom. Rehashing the facts everyone knows isn’t about to do you any good at this late date. I’ve done all I can for you, with the bare bones you gave me to work with. You have to give me the names of those other hired guns who were with you when Willie Nickell was bushwhacked.”
Horn shook his head and said, “No, I don’t. Like I said, they just got in touch with me. I knew they wouldn’t let a friend down. You was right about them not wanting to go to jail with me over some harmless fun with wire cutters and coal oil. But they have a plan to get me out, the easy way, see?”
Stringer looked real unhappy. “At the risk of aiding and abetting, I have to tell you what I think of such plans. Getting you to try a fool jailbreak could be a mighty slick way of shutting you up for good. We’ve already established that someone’s ready and willing to kill me lest I stumble over one morsel of evidence that might win you an appeal. It seems to me that if the gents who claim to be your pards were at all sincere, they’d be rooting for me instead of shooting at me.”
Horn insisted stubbornly, “I told you Billy Gower was never on the same payroll as me. Maybe it’s Joe LeFors who don’t want you proving what a big fibber he was in court.”
“I’ve considered that,” Stringer said sharply. “Deputy Marshal LeFors is hundreds of miles from here. But anything’s possible. Meanwhile, you’re still fixing to get killed and solve the problem for whomever, if you go messing with dynamite in a cell this size.”
Tom Horn reached under his mattress as he smirked and told Stringer, “That goes off outside, just enough to crumble the back wall of this brick box. Look what they smuggled in for me to use more
personal.”
Stringer repressed a shiver as the old, dumb, and deadly man produced a wickedly efficient 9mm automatic pistol. “I wish you hadn’t shown me that, Tom.”
“I had to,” Horn replied. “You’re more educated about modern notions than me. I’ve been fooling and fooling with the infernal machine and you got to show me how it works.”
Stringer gulped and said, “It looks like one of those new Luger automatics, Tom, American design and German manufacture.”
Horn said, “I know. It says so, on the side, here. I got the clip figured. You slide her in and out with this bitty steel button. This other doohickey seems to be the safety switch and I’ve tried with it on and off. What I can’t seem to work out is how in thunder you get a round in the damned chamber. Each time I hauls the clip out, it’s got the same nine rounds in it. I’ve tried to dry-fire her with the clip out, but I can’t get a peep outten the hammer, if it has a damned old hammer. They got all the innards hid inside. I sure wish they’d slipped a plain six-gun in to me.”
Stringer asked mildly, “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that someone might have wanted you out of your depth with a gun in your hand?”
“Hell,” Horn insisted, “them bullets are real enough and I’ve been assured this modernistic nine-shooter spits quicker and straighter than any gun I’m likely to go up against in these parts. It seems to me that if you pull back on these twin knobs above the trigger it ought to slide the action back and forth around in the chamber. But pull as I might, I can’t get ‘em to budge. Do you know what I’m doing wrong?”
