by Lou Cameron
He lit his smoke and stared soberly into the dying embers of the fire, more confused about the next few days than the coming night. Nothing about this assignment made sense, unless his pretty little goatherd had left something out. How had Sam Barca or anyone else heard about the shooting of Mysterious Dave if there were no proper communications betwixt the site of the shoot-out and the outside world?
The easy answer was bullshit. There was always a heap of that being served, as any newspaperman knew all too well. Yet the lady he’d just had supper with, and had no cause to doubt, confirmed the fact that Buckskin Jack had shot Mysterious Dave and bragged about it by smoke signal, or whatever. Stringer knew how often a four-flusher could send word to a man to leave town, knowing he’d already planned on leaving, or had left entirely, but a body spread out on a saloon floor for the whole town to admire was hard to make up out of whole cloth. Stringer was absently smoking and silently singing “Farther Along” when he heard the sleepy Mex gal’s goat dog softly bark at something or someone just outside his range of vision. He tossed more wood on the coals to shed some light on the subject and rolled away from the fire to his feet, gun in hand, for a look-see.
But all he saw in the end was that Negro had backed the bellwether closer to the other livestock. Stringer knew, and so did the goatherding hound, that none of the other loose goats would stray far from that one nervous nanny, or rather her reassuring bell. He holstered his gun and moved around to the far side of the burro and two ponies to get at his packsaddle. He returned with some pigging string, and since the bellwether nanny had her twitchy tail to him as she pawed sand and fussed back at the dog, Stringer found it a snap to grab her by one horn and snake the pigging string under her bell collar before she could come unstuck. Negro seemed to be barking his full approval as the hitherto despised human of the gringo persuasion tethered the bellwether to a mesquite. Her cussing and clanging seemed to bring the other goats browsing all about closer in, as if they were curious. He patted the old nanny’s black rump and soothed, “Simmer down and stuff your fool face with yummy stickerbush,” before he turned away to head back to Ynez and the fire, softly but thoughtfully singing:
“Farther along, we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why,
Cheer up, my brother, walk in the sunshine, You’ll understand it, all bye and bye and bye.”
The dog followed him, wagging its tail and whining as if trying to sing along. Stringer didn’t have to ask why. When he hunkered down again by the fire, he opened a can of bully beef and fed Negro out of one of their dirty tin plates. The mesquite sticks he’d tossed on the fire were half-burnt by now. He kicked sand over the fire to bank it. He’d assumed Ynez to be asleep but she propped herself up on one elbow in the sudden darkness to ask how come he’d put their fire out. He replied, “I haven’t. We can pole the embers back to life an hour before breakfast or any time sooner if we get really cold under my blanket and tarp. But it’s just plain dumb for everyone in camp to sleep with the fire burning bright. Aside from sneaking out of control, a fire late at night tends to attract all sorts of pests, and we’re not that far off the trail.”
She protested, “Negro will bark if anyone comes near.”
He smiled thinly and replied, “I noticed. I still got the drop on you, didn’t I?”
She insisted, “Is not the same, you creep as well as an Indio in the chaparral and I am already muy frio!”
He chuckled and replied, “Henry Starr is an Indian and Curly Bill must be pretty good if he’s still around after all these years, however, I wouldn’t want you to freeze to death and, what the hell, that is my bedroll you rolled into.”
He still expected at least lip service to the public morals of the day. Gibson Girls who invited a gent to spend the night with ’em were supposed to, at least mention they didn’t do such things with any old cuss they’d just met. As he shucked his jacket, boots, and gun belt to roll under the covers with Ynez, he discovered why she’d been bitching so much about the cold. She didn’t have a stitch on and, as she hugged him to her goose-bumped naked body, she asked right out if he was in the habit of making love to muchachas with his shirt and jeans on.
He didn’t want her to think he hadn’t been brought up neat in Calaveras County, so he got rid of everything but his socks before he rolled aboard her outwardly chilled but inwardly seething little self to discover it seemed to be everyone for his or her self, and if he didn’t want to get bucked out of her love saddle, it was up to him to ride her up, down and sideways as best a man could.
It felt swell, once he’d gotten over his first terror. It was easy to see why she’d neglected to worry about her poor dog or the stock it was guarding, and there was a lot to be said for rutting with a selfish little love sponge shaped like a beautiful girl.
Knowing he didn’t have to worry about delicate feelings she just didn’t seem to have, he was able to indulge himself in her as if she was no more then the imaginary lover of a wet daydream. When she begged for more, sobbing that she hadn’t been getting any lately, Stringer felt no call to confess he’d woke up the past few mornings with grand but lonesome erections. He simply took advantage of the opportunities this presented for both of them to indulge their frustrated fancies in some mighty fantastic positions the little mestiza spitfire must have been saving up for such an opportunity.
They naturally wound up atop the tarp, with her on top in the moonlight and to hell with how chilly the night breeze blew across their love-slicked hides.
They finally got some sleep, warm as toast, and she woke him up for breakfast with an oral “crime against nature” that could have gotten them locked up for some time in many a state east or west. When he got it in her right some more by the dawn’s early light, she said it was a shame they couldn’t get locked together like this, the way dogs and some people, she’d heard, could get hung up for days.
When he assured her that dogs only got hung up an hour or so to begin with and that people never did, no matter what she’d heard, she sounded disappointed.
Yet, later, after she and Negro had relieved him of the last of his bully beef and it came time to part, the pretty little primitive did so in such a matter-of-fact way that Stringer felt a mite used and abused, even though he’d often said he wished gals could just say adios with a handshake, like a pal you’d been, say, shooting pool with, when the time for parting came.
By the time he’d gathered his own gear and gotten around to saddling up his own stock the sounds of her bellwether were already getting hard to make out above the morning breezes through the chaparral. He heard one last ghostly bark from old Negro and then it was as if he had the trail to Comanche Woe all to himself again.
He mounted up to see if he did, muttering, “Buckskin Jack may not be the only cuss meeting up with haunts in these parts of late. Once you study on it, a beautiful gal coming out of nowhere, screwing a man half-blind and then moving on like thistledown, without a cobweb of recrimination, has to be even more rare than one or a dozen old gunfighters riding out of the not-too-distant past.”
Then he gave the chestnut’s lead line a good yank and spurred the scrub into a mile-chewing trot. Whether old Ynez had been a wet dream or not, Sam Barca wasn’t paying him for that sort of Wild West yarn, wild as she might have acted. He had to get on up to Comanche Woe and cover wild notions that didn’t sound like half as much fun.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stringer was glad he wasn’t betting money on just where the divide might be betwixt the drainage into the Rio Grande or Pecos in these parts. He knew he’d ridden over the pass, somewhere back there, when he spied an eastward-bearing wash and noticed they seemed to be moving more downhill than up, now. Save for that, the range all about looked much the same, with chaparral close in and the higher crests of the Delawares and Apaches shimmering in the distance, northwest and southeast. He let his hired ponies rest a spell as he dismounted to stretch his legs and consult his survey map again. Unless he’d somehow
wound up on some other old cattle trail, and he doubted that, the trail town couldn’t be more than three to five miles down said trail. On wide-open range he should have spied some rooftops, or at least some smoke by now. But on reflection, the semiarid range was a mite bumpy and mighty brushy, so what the hell.
He rolled a smoke, lit it, and remounted to ride on, muttering about old cowtown gunslicks and old cowtowns acting mighty shifty in West Texas this summer. Then he spied sun-silvered telegraph poles a half-mile or so ahead, running the wrong way, or at least not the way he’d have expected, and told his mount, “So much for asking a doubtless illiterate about such matters. She told us Van Horn, down along the railroad, was the county seat. The more mountainous route I first considered must have occurred to Western Union as well.”
He spotted a deer, or longhorn, flashing away from him at least a quarter mile closer. When he spotted yet another range cow, for certain, he nodded and muttered, “We’re getting there. Given plenty of browse, cows seldom drift more than a few miles from water and they did say something about springs around Comanche Woe.”
He’d barely gotten used to the happy thought that he’d surely find the town before another sunset found him out here on open range when he noticed he and the cows skulking all about him didn’t have the range as much to themselves as they’d first thought. A good-sized party of riders were following the telegraph line in from his right. He knew they had to be on a service road or wagon trace that joined the trail he was on. He wasn’t sure he wanted to meet up with that many total strangers in the middle of nowheres much. He saw that at the rate both he and that posse or whatever were moving, they figured to meet up, anyways. He considered reining in. He considered how that would look to them, knowing they had to be eyeing him as thoughtfully as he was eyeing them. The one pony he’d ridden all the damned way had to be too jaded by now for a running gunfight, and as the distance between himself and those dozen-odd mysterious riders closed, Stringer detected no hostile gestures on the part of any of them. He kept going and, sure enough, they got to the main trail just a minute or more ahead of him and, as if he didn’t have enough on his mind, reined in to see what he meant to try next.
He left his .38 where it was and just rode in to join them as if he’d been hunting high and low for the strange sons of bitches. As he got closer, he saw by their deep tans and high-crowned hats they were Texas cowmen of the Anglo persuasion, save for two near the head of the column. One looked like a Mex despite his Texas ten gallon, the other had on a purely Mex sombrero he could have ripped from the head of a rurale, complete to the black braid on gray felt. Both Hispanic types had their hands tied behind them. The reins of the ponies they were riding were in the helpful roping hands of more Anglo riders. As Stringer came within earshot, a Texan sporting a red handlebar moustache and a Winchester called out, “Howdy, little darling. I can see by your pretty features that you ain’t no greaser, but that hat says you don’t work around here, neither. So, suppose you start by stating your name and outfit with neither bull nor hesitation.”
Stringer nodded and said, “That sounds fair. I’d answer to Stuart, or Stringer, MacKail of Calaveras County in the Mother Lode Range, and I ride for the San Francisco Sun as a seeker after the truth, sweetheart. So, now it’s your turn to tell me who the fuck you are and why the fuck you have Roy Bean Junior of Val Verde County, Texas, tied up so chickenshit.”
The half-Mex youth under the ten-gallon Stetson grinned sheepishly and called out, “Howdy, Stringer. I was afraid you might not want to know me in such rough company. This other boy these assholes have tied up would be a cousin of mine on my momma’s side, Lefty Chavez.”
As Stringer nodded, the leader of the big band swung his saddle gun to cover Stringer as he roughly growled, “You know these hoss thieves and you admit it, you poor, unfortunate bastard?”
Stringer said, “My newspaper, a mighty big newspaper, not only knows my whereabouts but instructed me to spell your name right, Marshal Blair. So before this gets even sillier…”
“Bite your fucking tongue!” their leader almost wailed as most of the others laughed like hell. So Stringer believed the redheaded cuss when he was told, loudly and firmly, “I’d allow to being the Dowager Empress of China, crosswise cunt and all, afore I’d be took for Buckskin Jack Blair, the fastest faggot of the far west! I’ll have you know I’m Rusty Reynolds, the ramrod of the Rocking T, and your name will be Mudd if you mess with me and my boys.”
Stringer said he hardly ever played with matches, either. Reynolds nodded, somewhat mollified, and said, “Bueno. If you want to put the way we deal with hoss thieves in your newspaper, feel free to tag along until we come to Catclaw Wash, where the trees grow high enough to hang greasers right.”
Stringer shook his head and said, “You don’t want to do that. I know this one old boy, here. He’s the oldest son of Judge Roy Bean, who just finished dying down the Pecos a ways. You don’t have to take my word young Roy’s no thief. A couple of his godfathers happen to be paid-up Texas Rangers and, no offense, I don’t even see county badges on any of you boys.”
That remark evoked an unkind collective giggle from everyone in the group but the two accused horse thieves. Rusty Reynolds proclaimed, “This here Vigilance Committee don’t need nothing but a stout old tree to deal with crooked greasers in accord with Anglo-Saxon Common Law! Whether this one young cuss is half-white or not is a heap less important than that paint pony we caught him riding.”
Another Texan chimed in with, “That palomino with the blaze you’ll note the more Mexican one aboard was reported stolen about the same time.”
Stringer cocked a brow at young Bean to quietly demand, “Roy?”
To which the accused replied as quietly, “Me and Cousin Lefty was on our way to El Paso when this bunch jumped us along about noon. I can’t say whether anyone in these parts might be missing a paint and palomino or not. The ones we’re still setting come from the Jersey Lilly remuda, as anyone Mex or Anglo in Langtry would be proud to tell these old boys, if only they’d listen.”
None of their captors seemed to want to. Stringer still told Rusty, “Before you go lynching Roy Bean Junior you’d best consider just how many friends of his family there may be down Val Verde County way. I can tell you the late old judge had a good-sized remuda of many a color and neither a paint nor a palomino is all that rare in parts of this country where Spanish is still spoke.”
Reynolds shrugged and said, “These greasers have been saying that ever since we caught ’em on these ponies without no bill of sale for neither. I’ll allow we got other paints around here, including the one you’re riding, if you’ll allow the odds get odder as soon as you add up one paint and one palomino with a white blaze and stockings prancing side-by-side under strangers of the Mex persuasion just a couple of days after two such ponies vanished in the night and …”
“Hold on and let’s study that palomino a mite closer,” Stringer cut in. So Red said, “Shit, we been studying it since we caught this greaser riding it! Old Seth Bancroft, the rightful owner of both critters, has posted twice the bounty of his daughter’s pet palomino than he has on that cutting horse your pal, Junior, stole!”
Stringer nodded but said, “I’ll allow you had just cause to suspect these boys, not knowing either, if you’ll allow young Lefty Chavez, here, is a southpaw.”
Before Reynolds could answer Stringer added, “Don’t take the word of young Roy Bean for that. Regard the way he’s hung his braided rawhide riata from the bare swells of that Mexican dally saddle.”
The Texan already had. He shrugged and said, “So what? Nobody accused these boys of stealing saddles. Both ponies was stole outta a corral, bareback, in the dark of night. It stands to reason a left-handed roper using his own saddle would have his rope hanging from the left swells instead of the right, right?”
Stringer said, “Wrong, if we’re talking about a rider with a lick of sense trying to make his way in the world aboard just any old cow pon
y he might come across.”
Reynolds just set his jaw as if he didn’t follow Stringer’s drift, or didn’t want to. But the same cowhand who’d been swift to accuse Lefty of an unwise choice of mounts brightened and volunteered, “I see what he means, Rusty. Old boys birthed left-handed either learn to rope right-handed or, if they’re too backward to manage that, they got to break their own roping ponies in to chase critters bassackwards!”
Another hand added, grudgingly but fairly, “Miss Susan Bancroft is right-handed, normal as the rest of us. Trying to rope left-handed from her pet palomino would be asking for total confusion on the part of all involved.”
Stringer and even the two Hispanics looked more relaxed, seeing the boys seemed more sincere than really savage. However, Reynolds growled, “Jesus H. Christ, has anyone here accused this floppy-hatted chili chewer of cattle rustling? I just now said these no-goods had their own saddles on Seth Bancroft’s stock!”
One of the hands who’d spoken up for the accused said, “Oh.” So, Stringer said, “You could be right. It wouldn’t matter whether a southpaw roper rode off on a right-handed roper’s pony as long as he wasn’t obliged to rope anything.”
Then as Rusty fell for it by nodding and saying, “Damned A!” Stringer quickly added, “It seems easy enough to prove, one way or another. Why don’t we just ask Lefty, here, to rope us a cow left-handed from this disputed palomino?”
Rusty objected to untying Chavez and letting him have any sort of head start. Though, as Stringer had banked on, the gaggle of Anglo cowhands were curious about that exotic roping outfit and contemptuous of a mere Mexican’s ability to outride every one of them in broad-ass daylight. In the end, they all rode east a ways until they spied a chongo trying to hide from them in some stickerbush, and as one of the boys circled out to drive the brute into the open, another cut Lefty Chavez loose and warned, “Make sure you don’t head out of rifle range whether you can rope that critter or not.”
