On Dead Man's Range

by Lou Cameron

  She smiled wistfully and said, “You’re wrong. You men folk tend to tell us woman folk more tales of blood and slaughter than we really want to hear, and he was all man. I guess it was the most exciting time of his life, riding posse as he was just starting up as a young lawyer. Before that stupid feud down there was over, he’d ridden all over that dark and bloody ground for the law.”

  “More than his pard, Lawyer Addams? I’ve a reason for asking.”

  She suppressed a smile and said, “Well, we are talking about an older man who would have been sort of soft and pudgy, even ten years ago. I can’t tell you just when, where, or how often he rode for Sheriff Owens though.”

  Stringer smiled crookedly and said, “That’s all right. I can. Since the war with Spain I’ve met so many men as charged up San Juan Hill, it’s a wonder one hill could hold them all. Not putting any man down, I feel it’s safe to assume your late husband might have known Pleasant Valley better than his partner. I don’t think he was killed by a lunatic client. I think he was killed to make sure he could never mention something he might have noticed in his travels to the south. If it’s any comfort to you, I can almost assure you certain that the hired gun who murdered your man is dead and buzzard buried where he’ll never be missed.”

  She gasped and began to demand an explanation. Then Lawyer Addams came in and she told him instead, “Mister MacKail, here, just said my man was murdered!” And then she began to cry.

  Lawyer Addams waved Stringer into the room next door, and as soon as they were alone, he said, “That was uncalled for, MacKail. She’s just about gotten over that tragedy, and now look what you have gone and done! What are you talking about anyway?”

  Stringer said, “Murder. A gent who knew both the law and the disputed Pleasant Valley range. I think he was killed by the same rascals who tried to keep me from tripping over their secret plans more recent. They might have figured I was more educated than the folk they’ve been content to flimflam with spook lights and such. I don’t think it’s a big gang, and it’s been whittled down some. But the brains behind it all belongs to someone crazy-mean as well as slick.”

  Lawyer Addams said, “Well, let’s hear what you’ve found out, for God’s sake. If you have any charges to make, you ought to be going to the law with them, not upsetting poor Patty with wild talk!”

  Stringer sighed and said, “I would, if I could prove anything, or hell, if I knew anything for certain. But as I told a gent named Nolan, down in Globe, I’m a newspaper man, not a lawyer. So I’m allowed to give up when I get confused. Riding alone the past few days, I’ve had plenty of time to think. So all in all I think my best bet is the next train out. It’s no skin off my nose if the folk around here are dumb enough to let themselves get skinned. Is there another way out of here? I hate to say goodbye to weeping she-males.”

  Addams showed him to a side door leading out to the hall as he muttered, “I wish you’d at least tell me who you suspect of what, damn it. It’s easy for you to just give up and head back to Frisco. Patty and me have to stay here, and if there’s any danger to either of us—”

  But Stringer stepped out into the hallway, saying, “I wouldn’t be willing to drop it if I thought anyone here was likely to be gunned at this late date. I said I wasn’t a lawman, but I’m not that irresponsible. The mastermind is crazy-mean, but not crazy enough to have anyone gunned who doesn’t know what he’s out to pull off in, oh, two or three years.”

  “Do you know who this mysterious mastermind might be?” asked the pudgy lawyer.

  Stringer shook his head and said, “If I did, I’d have to tell the law. Then I’d get to print it in the Sun. I have plenty of suspects. Too many. I might work it out better once I get back to Frisco. I have a pal there who runs the big Western Union office on Market Street. Some night when it isn’t too busy we may do some hunting by wire.”

  “Do what?” asked Addams with a puzzled frown.

  Stringer explained, “My boss, Sam Barca, traced your old pal Commodore Perry Owens to Seligman without getting up from his desk. We got telephones at the Sun these days. I confess the rascals didn’t leave me much sign to read on any trail I rode aboard a pony. But sometimes paper trails are easier to read. I know, for openers, that Western Union has to have records of a mess of flimflam telegrams that seem to have been sent to confuse me more. I shudder to think what they had planned if they’d been able to lure me to yet another out-of-the-way place with fibs about folk who don’t live there no more. But it didn’t work, and it’s been nice talking to you, for I don’t mean to miss that train if I can help it.”

  They shook, and Stringer went downstairs alone, gladstone in hand and rifle in the other. It was, in fact, too early to stand on the station platform in the glaring sunlight. So he had some pie at the beanery across from the depot and washed it down with buttermilk to settle his butterflies.

  Then he checked the time, nodded, and drifted over to wait on the platform alone. He put his bag down, started to lean the Army rifle on it, then decided to hold it cradled casually across one elbow as he paced up and down the sun-baked planks.

  He’d just turned at one end of the platform when he saw the somberly dressed Ed Nolan from Globe down at the other end, headed his way with a curious smile. Nolan’s frock coat was open, which was reasonable in this heat, but he was wearing a buscadero gun rig under it. So before the son of a bitch was within easy pistol range, Stringer swung the muzzle of the Krag up and put a .30-30 rifle round in his chest.

  As Nolan’s hat flew straight up and Nolan flew straight back to crash, sprawling, on the planks, Stringer cranked another round in the Krag’s chamber and approached the downed gun slick warily. Then he hunkered down by Nolan and said conversationally, “I figured you might ride up ahead of me. You had a good four or five hours lead. After we talked at the livery in Globe, I took the trouble to wire Saint John’s, and guess what—nobody, by any name whatever, ever wired anybody anything about me, or Warner, or Coleman. On the other hand, the Western Union clerk in Globe said a man answering to your description wired Holbrook regular. They wouldn’t let me read your messages, of course. But they would have been in code in any case, right?”

  The dying Nolan didn’t answer. He was blowing little red bubbles as he stared up at Stringer in hurt wonder. Stringer told him, “The reason I didn’t screw around with a professional killer just now was that I knew your intent the moment I saw you’d dropped your deputy act. Anyone can say he’s a deputy. But it starts to wear thin when you stretch it across two counties after lying outright to a gent as smart as me.”

  Then he saw that Nolan wasn’t staring up at him, but at something behind him, with a sort of hopeful expression. So Stringer spun on one heel, fired the rifle up at Lawyer Addams, and rose to his feet without it, drawing his .38 as the fat bastard went down, too, squealing like a stuck pig, which was only to be expected when one considered where he’d been stuck by a .30-30.

  Both men he’d downed were dead by the time the town law got there at the head of a considerable pack. Stringer holstered his revolver and kept his hands polite as he called out, “Hold your fire, Nate. It’s over.”

  Nate said, “The hell you say! Who’s this gent in the black suit, and how come you shot Lawyer Addams?”

  Stringer said, “I had to shoot Nolan, there, because he was sent to gun me. I had to shoot Addams because Nolan was no doubt his last hired gun. I know that derringer in his pudgy hand looks sissy, but Lincoln was shot in the back of the head with the same kind of pistol, and I didn’t want to see what it felt like.”

  Nate said, “You can forget about that next train, Stringer. No offense, but I fear you’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”

  Stringer nodded and said, “That’s all right. Explaining it all to the coroner saves me having to orate about it out here in this hot sun. The tale is sort of complicated.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  *

  The coroner’s jury met at sundown,
same place and same members, save for Lawyer Addams, whose unexpected demise was the subject of the inquest.

  Patty Stern was there with other curious onlookers, more than one of whom seemed to feel an inquest was a needless formality, and that they ought to just string up the killer of their old pal, Lawyer Addams, right on the spot.

  Patty sat sort of stone-faced in a corner and avoided Stringer’s eye when he took his seat in front of the hard-eyed older men. Even the old judge who’d fallen asleep in his chair the last time was wide awake. The same coroner banged for silence with the butt of his six-gun and told Stringer, “We’re ready to hear your side now, and it had better be good.”

  Stringer nodded, but said, “It was pure evil in the heart of one greedy man who, as a lawyer, got to meet lots of others who were willing to work cheap at being bad.”

  The coroner said, “We already wired Globe about the one called Nolan, and we know he was a fake deputy with no visible means of support and over a hundred dollars in his wallet. Get to the infernal point.”

  Stringer said, “I’m trying to. I said it was complicated. But to begin with, years ago a mess of contrary folk moved into the well named Pleasant Valley. As you know, they were too far from Globe and mayhaps too mean for Gila County to worry about. They were outside this county’s jurisdiction until a fine old sheriff who thought simple justice was more important than such petty details put an end to their outlaw notions of land ownership by showing both sides just how rough gun-law could get.”

  “We know all that. It was years ago, damn it.”

  “Hear me out. Sheriff Owens was just a good old boy out to clean up a mess. He may or may not have noticed what a fine range the Tewksbury clan and the Graham faction were fighting over. But he was a lawman, not a rancher, and in any case the valley lay outside his own home range. So he was only interested in stopping the bloodshed.”

  An old timer down at the end of the table cackled, “That he done, although blood flowed like water by the time old Pear had things tamed.”

  Stringer nodded and said, “He didn’t do it all alone. It would have been pure suicide. So, brave as he was, Owens had deputies backing his play. One was a young lawyer named Stern.”

  A panel member said, “Addams rid with them a time or two as well.”

  Stringer said, “Maybe not as often. But it doesn’t really matter which lawyer noticed first what less educated members of the posses might not have. Both warring factions were holding overlapping claims on good range by guts and guns instead of iron-bound legal papers. I don’t think young Stern ever planned to grab the spoils himself. He never tried, when he still had the chance. But he must have noticed, and no doubt brought it to his partner’s attention, that with both the Grahams and Tewksburys gone, all that land and the more important water rights lay fallow. There’s been a lot of talk about irrigation projects down along the Salt River. At some future date any man who holds the water rights to the sources of Cherry Creek will be, or would be, in a position to write his own ticket. We’re talking about an all-year stream in a land where water runs expensive.”

  Another panel member said, “As I follow your drift, you claim the late Lawyer Addams was a water-hogging land-grabber. Before I’ll buy that you’ll have to show me why he didn’t just grab the durned old valley years ago, the minute it was empty.”

  Stringer said, “He couldn’t. The claims were conflicting about the range. But each family settled there had at least filed a homestead claim. Land and water rights have to be abandoned seven years before they revert to public domain. Had Addams tried to file while the titles were still clouded, he’d have risked more publicity than he wanted even if he’d been able to get away with it. He meant to wait until the upper valley was free and clear to claim before he claimed it all, using dummy claimants, to grab every quarter section at once, of course.”

  The coroner said, “We know how cattle barons get title to free government land and water. Your sense of timing is still way off, son. Tom Graham was murdered ten or twelve years ago, not seven, and if he wasn’t the last original claimant, I don’t see who was.”

  Stringer chuckled dryly and said, “That’s because you haven’t been paying attention outside your own county line. It’s all too true that one has to consider the Graham claims to any part of the valley abandoned, from the date Tom Graham was murdered by a person or person’s unknown.”

  Someone growled, “Unknown, hell. It was Johnny Rhodes and Big Ed Tewksbury. Pear Owens arrested the rascals for that killing.”

  Stringer said, “I just paid a visit on Big Tewksbury down in Globe. He tells a different story. It’s just as likely the last of the Grahams was gunned when he came back, less than seven years after Owens ran him off, by someone who didn’t want him to prove his claim to all that water. But be that as it may, the same last Tewksbury told me his side had given up on the grass and water Addams wanted. Addams was a patient man. But it must have vexed him when, as one parcel of the valley after another reverted to public domain, new settlers started moving in to file on it.”

  Someone asked, “Why didn’t he just file on it first?”

  And Stringer said, “I told you. He wanted to grab it all at once. Had anyone as important as Addams showed interest in just one part of the valley, other locals, smarter than the half-baked greenhorns moving in from the south, might have wondered why, and he’d already had one law partner murdered to keep the news from getting out. I agree it was complicated and sneaky. But I’d not have had to gun him this afternoon if he hadn’t been a complicated and sneaky cuss. A more honest and sensible man would have done it as you say, and been content to share with others. But Addams was a natural hog. He drove the settlers out as fast as they moved in. But, of course, each time he did he was stuck with the fact that each new claim had its proving time to run before he could grab it as public land. I know of at least one little gal in Globe who still holds lawful title to the springs at the head of the valley. I sort of hope she’s the gal I hope she might be. But to get back to Addams, he was getting as confused as the folk he was trying to flimflam by the time I showed up. I know I said I was here to do a story on old Sheriff Owens. I was. But being a double-dealing compulsive liar, Addams figured I had to be up to something else. He knew Owens was now far away in another county. He figured I was just playing dumb instead of working for a dumb boss. He figured, as I was a reporter known to do exposes on crooked doings, I’d come here to dig up some secret I wasn’t letting on about. He knew, as a lawyer, that nobody in the county was up to anything all that crooked but himself. So he put two and two together, came up with five or six, and tried to run me or gun me before I could say bad things about him in my paper. When I licked his hired gun, Blue Streak Bendix, he knew I took my job serious. So he had Blue Streak murdered and forgot about running me. I was marked for death, lest I tell the world he was trying to become a water baron by behaving so ornery to anyone who even looked serious at the water rights to the south.”

  The old judge frowned at him and said, “Hold on now, son. As I recall, you was defended in this very room by the law firm of Stern and Addams. You got off too.”

  Stringer nodded and said, “I reckon we’d best call it Stern and Stern, now. He murdered one Stern, but the other one still works there, and now, likely owns the whole shebang. He had to act the part of my lawyer when I went to him for help. I told you he was sneaky. He had to do a good job for me because Miss Patty got to do all the paper work, and she wasn’t in on anything crooked with him. Throwing me to the wolves wouldn’t have worked in any case. No offense, but had you bound me over to your grand jury, my boss would have sent other lawyers, and Addams knew for sure I wasn’t guilty.”

  An old panel member who hadn’t spoken until now sighed and said, “We was smart enough to see you couldn’t have killed Blue Streak that time. Get to the good parts, damn it.”

  Stringer said, “There’s not much more to it. Whoever first said honesty was the best policy knew what he
was talking about. I never would have stumbled into the tangled web a natural cheat had woven if they’d simply left me alone. But they wouldn’t. So I kept floundering around, and they kept trying to kill me or slicker me, until Addams had his hired gun, Nolan, scout me up down in Globe. I don’t know what his original orders were, but when he questioned me and discovered how dumb I really was, they must have changed plans. The whole scheme was to keep Pleasant Valley quiet and pleasant, not littered with corpses, until Addams could make a quick grab for all of it at once. Instead of laying for me on the trail as I rode back, Nolan rode on ahead to report in for further duties. He may have been their top gun. I know he was cooler than some of the earlier ones I met. Anyway, I think they meant to let me get away, secure in the belief I had, indeed, just been a nosy stranger who hadn’t been so smart after all. As I parted company with Addams I let it slip, deliberate, that I had a few irons left in the fire after all, including the fact that their flimflam with telegrams never sent had been a dumb notion.”

  “What first put you on to that?” asked the coroner.

  The weary Stringer replied, “I knew right off it had to be a lie, unless it was dumb as hell. Whether the real Sol Barth had been the mastermind or not, he’d have never signed his own name to a wire showing guilty knowledge. I couldn’t see anyone else using the name of a well-known big shot in a tiny town. I wasn’t too surprised to learn, easy enough, no such wire had ever been sent. Knowing Nolan had approached me with one lie, it was easy enough to ask a few gents in Globe if they had a deputy there named Ed Nolan. When I saw him here in Holbrook this afternoon, I knew there was just no way he could have followed me from Globe. I was watching for that, as well as making good time. So I shot him.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the coroner asked, “Just like that? With no real proof?”