by Lou Cameron
The once distinguished-looking older man made funny croaking noises as he stared wildly about from his perch. He saw Rimfire Rowena coming across the seats at a more ladylike pace to the left of Stringer. The surly-faced Slash was coming faster to Stringer’s right. Judge Kenton gave a strangled cry, and as Stringer bawled, “No! Don’t try that!” the trapped official rolled over the guard rail and dropped out of sight.
Stringer turned to run down the seats a lot faster than he’d been climbing them, with Slash and Rimfire Rowena following his lead. By the time they made it outside via an exit gate at ground level, other rodeo riders had made it to where Judge Kenton lay sprawled on his back, staring up at the gloaming sky with a sort of relaxed little smile on his dead lips.
Stringer hunkered down to feel the old man’s ribcage and make sure. Then he nodded and said, “Whether he intended suicide or figured on landing at a run from that high up, the results were the same. I wish he hadn’t gotten so excited. When he wasn’t being Mister Martin I sort of liked the old son of a bitch.”
When Bat Masterson caught up later that evening at the Drover’s Palace, Stringer remembered they’d agreed to share all coverage. So he herded Bat into the tap room and they toted a bottle of bourbon and a pitcher of beer to a corner table. Since Stringer was paying, Bat said he’d be proud to carry the shot glasses and beer schooners.
They sat down. Setting the glasses down, Masterson said, “I sent a mess of wires right after word reached me about that swan-dive out to the fair grounds. The promoters who put that rodeo together have been doing the same in other parts for some time now, and they seem no worse than most—and better than some—when it comes to crooking folk.”
Stringer poured for both of them and said, “All but one of them. They hired a professional accountant to act as their money handler this spring as their shows got bigger and the bookkeeping got above their rustic heads. His name was Wes Keller, and the reason he was available was that he’d been fired, more than once, for letting his former employer’s money sort of evaporate. The rodeo promoters didn’t know this, of course. Keller was so slick at evaporating money that it was easier to just fire him, leaving him with no outright criminal record.”
Stringer inhaled half the contents of his shot glass, washed it down with a slug of suds, and continued, “Keller’s bookkeeping for the rodeo promoters was even slicker. He kept careful and honest track of all the ticket sales and concession fees. The boys putting on the shows got every red cent coming to them after expenses, and since he was careful and tight with expense vouchers, the gents he was working for were delighted with the profits he could show ‘em in the honest books he kept on that subject.”
Masterson frowned thoughtfully and said, “I thought you just said he was a crook.”
Stringer nodded. “I said he was a slick one. Way too slick to crook the gents he worked with regular. He recorded the entry fees and prize money in another set of books. Two of ‘em—one, the way they should have read, in the unlikely event his employers ever wanted to cast a passing glance over them. The figures he kept secretly in a bottom drawer—we just now went over ‘em—they read a lot more sneaky. He recorded the entry fees just as they were collected. He was smart enough to see that riders following the rodeo circuit had a fair grasp on the going rates for attempting suicide on horseback. As we all know, all that money was supposed to be divided fair and awarded in total to the winners of each event.”
Bat Masterson nodded in both grim and sudden understanding as he growled, “How much of the prize money was he skimming?”
“Better than half,” Stringer said.
“Aw, come on, nobody could be that dumb,” Masterson said.
Stringer insisted. “There was little reason for anyone to be all that smart. The promoters, being no more dishonest than anyone else who’s ever paid a cowhand what the poor cuss is willing to work for, had no call to worry about the entry fees. They’d written that off as prize money and none of them were about to enter their own rodeo. Keller saw to it that they were getting their cut of every cotton candy cone. They had no need to distrust him. So they never did.”
Masterson poured the next round as he pointed out, “The riders surely had a vested interest in their own money, didn’t they?”
“They did,” Stringer said, taking a big gulp of bourbon. “And you pointed out earlier that very few gents with a grasp of high finances ever take to the carefree riding and roping trade to begin with. Like I said, each entrant knew how much he’d personally put in the pot. He had no call to ask many others what they might or might not have paid, and if he had, he’d still have needed a pencil, paper, and more education than your average country boy to come up with the grand total. The entry fee depends on which event you want to enter. A man entering the saddle bronc event might not want to know what a sissy calf roper chipped in. We’re talking a mighty big show with all sorts of riders from all over the country. So all each rider was sure of, or really cared about, was whether or not he finished in the money or how much he was out if he lost.”
Masterson grimaced. “As a sportswriter of some experience, I have never been all that inspired by the athletic brain. But a fifty percent rake-off?”
“It was raw, but not that hard to get away with,” Stringer explained, “considering the size of the show. Naturally the boys entering such a swamping rodeo expected bigger prizes than usual, and since there were so many entry fees to skim, Keller was able to set aside prizes big enough to be impressive even if they were hardly what the winners really had coming. He figured the winners would be pleased as punch to wind up with more money than what they could make in a year poking cows, while the disgruntled losers cold hardly give a damn. He was likely right. Only now the more honest showmen will be working things out more decent with the boys, who’ll now all be moving on with what they really won, see?”
“Nope,” Masterson said. “All you’ve explained, so far, is how come Wes Keller wound up with a bullet in his ear. Where do Tom Horn and Judge Kenton fit in?”
“Put Tom Horn on the back of the stove for now. First, Wes Keller had to recruit at least one local official who could easily turn crooked. To keep the big show looking halfways honest, the promoters made it their custom to ask local city officials to sit in with them as impartial judges.”
“Kenton was a judge who could be bought,” Masterson agreed. “I told you I’d been asking about him by wire. But I was there with you this afternoon and you said he was calling the shots about the way you would have.” Then he reached under his frock coat, got out a rodeo program with pencil scrawls on its blank side, and added, “By the way, here’s the numbers that won after you jumped out of the box and run off to ask questions.”
Stringer put the coverage away with a nod of thanks and said, “The crooked treasurer didn’t ask Kenton to judge any event the wrong way. Too many experts on the subject would have been sure to notice. It was also the custom for the judges, not the promoters themselves, to award the cash prizes, blue-ribbon bows, and such. Keller didn’t want anyone to even hint that he and he alone was distributing the money entrusted to his care, see?”
“No.” Masterson was feeling dense. “What about all those other pillars of the community? Was they supposed to be blind?”
“Yep. Once Judge Kenton agreed to head the judging panel, guess who got to select ‘em?”
“Oh, I noticed he seemed to have the last word this afternoon. He picked easygoing members of the courthouse gang who’d go along with about anything he said, right?”
“Right. He made sure they were all townees, more honored than aware of what the hell they were doing at any rodeo. I doubt any of ‘em knew the contest rules any better than a little crank I met out there who smeared my jeans with cotton candy. They had no idea how much money might have been collected as entry fees and no call to question the wisdom of the good old boy who’d asked them all to sit in with him. Had things gone as planned, Judge Kenton would have given each winner
a sincere smile, a hearty handshake, and half the prize money he had coming.”
Bat Masterson whistled softly. “Yep, that’s so dirty it would almost have to work. Nobody halfway honest could think half that dirty. So what put you on to it, you dirty cuss?”
Stringer smiled thinly and said, “They did. Or maybe I should say it was someone’s guilty conscience. You see, no offense, it was hardly likely you or any other average newsman covering the show knew as much as yours truly about the finer points of rodeo riding.”
Masterson growled, “All right, so you’ve likely stepped in more cow shit than the rest of us in our time. But you just said a lot of old cowhands were there to observe any wrong moves.”
Stringer nodded and said, “I was the one with a college education as well. Worse yet, from their point of view, last fall I wrote a feature on the big Denver show, and it’s likely they’d read it. I didn’t catch any crooks at that other show. But I did publish some pungent observations on the unfairness of asking a rider to pay for the privilege of risking his own neck. So when they discovered I was here to cover this show, they paid me the compliment of assuming I was here to turn in an exposé on them, and they had a good thing going that they just didn’t want exposed. It was easy enough for a shady judge to look up shady characters. So they sent Friendly Frank to run me out of town, and when that didn’t work, they asked an even meaner gunslick to shut me up before I had anything to say.”
“What about Tom Horn?” asked Masterson.
“That comes later. I had no idea why someone had it in for me. Tom Horn contacted me on his own. After I’d heard his sad story I made the dumb but natural mistake of assuming someone wanted him hung so bad that they were willing to gun me to keep me from uncovering new evidence in his favor. I picked a lawyer at random and …”
“She was that good-looking gal who you didn’t want to talk to this afternoon, right?” Masterson cut in.
Stringer nodded and said, “She was innocent of anything but a sort of friendly view on lawyer-client relationships. But I suspect Judge Kenton must have known she had that other client called Martin Dobbs.”
Stringer sipped some more beer and went on. “When she brought me for help to a judge she had down as honest, old Kenton must have nigh shat in his pants. But he was a cool old cuss and then I, like a fool, told him what a fool I was. I don’t know how he kept from busting out laughing when I told him I suspected the hired gun—which he’d sent after me—was involved some way with old Tom Horn. But, thinking fast, he offered me all the help I could ask for in hopes of freeing an innocent man.”
“Do you think Tom Horn is innocent?” Masterson asked.
“Beats the shit out of me,” Stringer said, downing another slug of bourbon. “It works as well both ways. He could be lying. Joe LeFors could be lying. The point is that Judge Kenton didn’t give a shit either way. He’d sent old Friendly Frank to run me out of town and make me miss the rodeo and here I was offering to go! So he sent me off to Iron Mountain with his blessings, figuring I wouldn’t get back until he and Wes Keller had divided the spoils of their crooked scheme.”
Masterson nodded and said, “You sure acted foolish. But how come they still sent that rascal Billy Gower to pick a fight with you? Killing has gotten sort of serious lately, and they knew you couldn’t do them no damage way the hell up north.”
Stringer said, “It works both ways. With both masterminds dead we’ll never know for sure. But either Gower had been sent after me already, and meant to collect no matter where he nailed my hide, or Judge Kenton figured that no matter which of us won, I’d be stuck up in Iron Mountain for a good spell, waiting on a coroner’s jury to clear me.”
Masterson chuckled. “It’s a good thing Gower had all that bounty money posted on him. The law liked to keep good deals to itself when I was working down at Dodge that time. Judge Kenton must have felt like shitting his pants some more when you showed up to cover the prize events after all.”
Stringer smiled. “Judge Kenton took first place for calm and grace under pressure. They had no choice but to brazen it out and hope I was still too distracted by wild goose feathers to notice what was going on right under my nose.”
“In fact,” he added, giving a big sigh, “they almost got away with it. I was sitting there with so many things going through my fool head at once that I was barely paying attention to the rodeo. I knew Friendly Frank had likely fibbed to me about working for Mister Martin. Yet there was my lawyer-gal, sitting there with another client called Martin Dobbs. He was easy enough to dislike. But he just wouldn’t work as the mastermind. Then it hit me that old Pat made a habit of taking clients to one sweet old judge she had an in with, and that even an insurance man needed a special invite to sit like a swell in the judging stand, so, hell, I wasn’t that dumb.”
Masterson nodded and said, “Nobody said you were. I reckon that had I any reason to start wondering about that judge I’d have only had to ask a few more questions to put the puzzle together. I’ve always known that a liar who needs to come up with a phony name in a hurry tends to grab the name of someone he may know casual, not bothering to study on just where he’s heard it. I might not have been as quick to come up with their prize money swindle. But as they were so worried, any investigative reporter worth his snout would have rooted up the rest, once he’d scented buried scandal.” He picked up the bourbon bottle for another pour, then asked, “Where might you be off to next, Stringer, now that we’ve both wound up with such a fine scoop?”
“Well, my feature will have to be wired in a mite ahead of the rest of me, Bat. The Cheyenne district attorney has asked for sworn depositions and the county coroner would like our views on just how one crook wound up with a bullet in his head and another wound up with a busted neck. So I don’t see how Miss Rimfire Rowena or me would be leaving Cheyenne for at least a few more days.”
“And nights,” observed Bat Masterson as he raised his glass with a knowing grin and added, “I doubt you’ll suffer all that much, even if that dumb old fart in the lavender suit did opine she seemed mostly whipcord and whalebone.”
Stringer raised his own glass to reply, soberly, “You’re right. He surely was a dumb old fart.”
EPILOGUE
*
It was fun while it lasted, but neither Rimfire Rowena nor Stringer felt any call to remain in Cheyenne well into the fall, when the sad saga of Tom Horn was finally resolved.
So Stringer could only rely on the coverage of other reporters, who seemed to have had trouble agreeing on all of the details.
Whether Tom Horn’s pals busted him out with that dynamite, as some would have it, or whether the plot was exposed and old Tom simply got the drop on his guards and vacated the premises more sedately, all agree he busted out and didn’t get too far.
Cornered in a downtown alley a short distance from the Cheyenne Jail, the old Apache fighter forted up behind a horseless carriage he didn’t know how to start, with a gun he didn’t know how to use. For whether that German Luger had been smuggled in to him by pals who should have known better or, as some said, it’d been slipped to him by a corrupt guard who just didn’t care, the no-longer-young gunfighter hadn’t kept up with the times.
Years later the more adaptable Henry Starr would make the transition from old-style western outlaw to first of the modern gangsters by swapping his pony for a Model T Ford to hold up an Oklahoma bank in the summer of 1914.
But the barely literate Tom Horn was forced to surrender to his grinning enemies when he simply couldn’t get his newfangled weapon to back his desperate ploy.
So on a cold November morning the tough but not-too-bright Tom Horn died game on the up-to-date hydraulic gallows Wyoming was so proud of. All who witnessed the execution agreed that the wonders of modern science left much to be desired.
Tom Horn stood in hooded silence on the trap as they all got to listen to the protracted gurgle of water in the toilet-tank mechanism for quite a spell. Then, at last, it was over.<
br />
Stringer never believed, as some would have it, that Tom Horn had been hanged with that handsome show rope they’d allowed him to braid in his cell as he was sweating out his date with a much stouter, and uglier, length of hangman’s hemp.
As to whether Tom Horn deserved to die for the murder of young Willie Nickell, or whether—as many still feel— he was framed for local political reasons, there are still places in the cow country of Wyoming where it’s just not wise to say you know for certain, either way.
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF LOU CAMERON’S STRINGER SERIES AVAILABLE AS EBOOKS:
*
STRINGER (#1)
ON DEAD MAN’S RANGE (#2)
STRINGER ON THE ASSASSIN’S TRAIL (#3)
STRINGER AND THE HANGMAN’S RODEO (#4)
STRINGER AND THE WILD BUNCH (#5)
STRINGER AND THE HANGING JUDGE (#6)
IN TOMBSTONE (#7)
STRINGER AND THE DEADLY FLOOD (#8)
STRINGER AND THE LOST TRIBE (#9)
STRINGER AND THE OIL WELL INDIANS (#10)
STRINGER AND THE BORDER WAR (#11)
STRINGER ON THE MOJAVE (#12)
STRINGER ON PIKES PEAK (#13)
STRINGER AND THE HELL-BOUND HERD (#14)
STRINGER IN A TEXAS SHOOT-OUT (#15)
