Stringer in a Texas Shoot-Out

by Lou Cameron

  Stringer raised an eyebrow and lit the smoke he’d just finished rolling as he quietly asked, “You mean your less well known water witch had a rep for hard-driving business methods?”

  The little lawman nodded grimly and said, “He did. It’s hard to say just what he might have done to anyone refusing to pay for a tube well his Mex crew had driven down so hard and deep. Most of the time they hit water, sooner or later. They say, or said, Wet Willy never gave up and just kept driving more pipe down until or unless the customer refused to pay for another length of steel pipe. Only a few ever have, seeing they knew they were going to have to pay for all that infernal pipe in any case. To date, nobody’s ever outright refused. As Wet Willy, the broody old gent has yet to gun anyone more important than a greaser, but he’s pistol whipped many a cowhand who’s jarred his elbow at the bar and … Well, if that doesn’t sound like Curly Bill Brocius in a maybe calmer phase of life, who else does it sound like to you, MacKail?”

  Stringer thoughtfully blew a smoke ring and decided, “Like any number of crabby old gents I’ve met up with in my time. On the other hand, they say Curly Bill’s real last name was Graham, and Wallace is as Scotch a name as Graham when you study on it. What does this moody old water witch look like?”

  “Fifty or sixty, but still husky and tanned from spending lots of time out on the range and controlling his boozing when he does get to town. Black curly hair, going a mite gray, now. The gals down at Madam Maggie’s seem to like him. I can’t say, myself, whether that means he screws good or pays good. I suspect it has to be the latter. But don’t they say Curly Bill was a lady’s man in his salad days?”

  Stringer nodded and replied, “A lady who knew him then said he could be sort of broody about his popularity with younger gals, no matter what the reason. Assuming there’s some truth behind her note of purple passion, I heard before I got here that you’d run Curly Bill out of town. I’d like to hear your version, Buckskin Jack.”

  The little lawman poured more rye for both of them, despite the shake of Stringer’s head, as he sighed and said, “I didn’t. After I got the note informing me Wet Willy was Curly Bill, I treated the information the same way. I’m good. I’m not dumb enough to get sued for false arrest by possibly innocent parties. I just told you I sent inquiries to both the Rangers and the dim-witted sheriff down in Van Horn. The next thing I heard, Wet Willy Wallace had lit out for parts unknown with a well half sunk and his crew bewildered and unpaid. I think it must have been them who decided I’d run their boss out. In point of fact, he just took off the moment he heard from Lord knows who that I’d been asking questions about him.”

  Stringer thoughtfully let some smoke out, nodded half to himself and said, “As a newspaperman I’ve long known how a jar of olives dropped on one side of the market can turn into a wagon load of watermelons by the time the news gets to the other. Yet, there has to be some reason someone keeps tipping you off on outlaws and they in turn behave so intense for innocent men. Have you given any thought as to what might have attracted so many owlhoot riders to this one little wide spot in the trail?”

  Buckskin Bob finished swallowing, nodded a mite owlishly as his small body had to deal with all that hundred proof, and declared he had, explaining, “You just spelled out the main attraction Comanche Woe has to riders of the owlhoot trail, MacKail.”

  Stringer blinked and asked, “Did I? No offense, but unless I’ve missed something, there’s nothing much here in Comanche Woe once you get here. I mean, sure, it must have been a fair place to get liquored up and laid a few years back, when they were still driving really big market herds over the pass to the Pecos, but, since the rails were punched through the Apache Hills…”

  “That’s my point,” the tiny tamer of the tiny town cut in. “You just said yourself there was nothing much here to attract any attention from the outside world. The nearest county seat is over a day’s ride south, and the nearest Ranger station is at least as far east. Young Henry Starr must have heard about it more recent, but old-timers such as Mysterious Dave and Curly Bill would have always known Comanche Woe was little more than a reliable watering place on a cattle trail that never lasted long enough to get as famous as the Goodnight or Santa Fe, see?”

  Stringer dryly answered, “The Santa Fe was never a cattle trail, but your point’s well taken. Wanted men searching for a place they might not feel so wanted in could have settled in these parts indefinitely if it hadn’t been for that secret admirer with the purple paper and ink. I don’t suppose you kept any envelopes that might have been postmarked?”

  Buckskin Jack replied, “I kept everything, if only I could find it, cuss that cleaning woman. There weren’t any postmarks or anything else on the envelopes, though. Whoever wrote us about those rascals hiding out in these parts just shoved the envelopes in the mailbox out front. I don’t think he, or she, wants anyone to even guess at any return address.”

  Stringer glanced at the Regulator brand clock on the far wall as he nodded and said, “That seems obvious. I reckon I have all I need for my feature now.”

  That inspired Buckskin Jack to ask him, suspiciously, just what his fool features had to do with the bullshit going on around here all of a sudden. Stringer remembered most gents didn’t savvy newspaper jargon and soothed, “I mean to put what you’ve just told me into an article for our Sunday supplement, along with a file photo of Mysterious Dave and one of you, if you’d like to see your picture in the papers. I fear Mysterious Dave lost his fight with you too many days ago to run it as a hot scoop and, since neither Henry Starr nor Curly Bill saw fit to stand and fight it out with the now famous Buckskin Jack…”

  The little squirt said, “Aw, shit!” and tried not be preen as he asked if Stringer had really heard he was famous. Stringer tried not to let what he was thinking show as he nodded soberly and said, “My boss, Sam Barca, would fame the shit out of windy old Wyatt Earp if only he’d shut up or at least stick to one story.” Then he snubbed out his loosely packed smoke and retched for his whisky tumbler instead as he added, warningly, “It’s up to you, of course, just how wild and woolly you’d like to be known, Buckskin Jack. Some lawmen just love to be written up as latter-day Hickoks, whilst Pat Garrett has expressed some reservations, and old Bill Tilghman swears he’ll sue me for defamation of character if ever I write him up as the fastest draw left in the west.”

  Buckskin Jack asked who Stringer considered best of all such lawmen and Stringer never hesitated as he flatly stated, “Present company excluded because I’m so polite, there’s no question in my mind that’s U.S. Deputy William Tilghman of Perry, Oklahoma. I’d rate Charlie Siringo among the top ten, along with Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas, Dave Cook of the Denver P.D., and, of course, Martin Duggan of Leadville, but old Bill Tilghman…”

  “Hold on, I never heard of any of those lawmen!” Buckskin Jack protested.

  Stringer nodded and said, “That’s likely because they’ve all stuck to doing their jobs, staying alive and not killing too many old boys who didn’t have a killing coming. Tilghman’s taken in everyone from the deadly Bill Doolin to the comical Cattle Annie and Little Britches without even bruising them enough to show. In my book, that takes more doing than blowing away your own deputy, like Hickok did that time.”

  “Are you saying I gunned Mysterious Dave dirty?” Buckskin Jack asked as ominously as such a little squirt could manage.

  Stringer shook his head and soothed, “Nope. When I say the good ones don’t shoot unless they have a good reason I’m not saying there’s never a reason. Had I treated Chuck Woods a lick less lethal tonight, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d put Sheriff Owens over in Arizona on my list of decent lawmen, and the time he had to face four hardcased killers at once, he killed three and crippled the fourth.”

  Buckskin Jack looked somewhat mollified. Stringer looked at the damned clock again and said, “The point I’m trying to make about fame and a long career as a gunslick is that they seldom go together. Tom Smit
h was given the grandest funeral Abilene had ever seen just after he cleaned up the town so famously, and Wild Bill Hickok might have lasted longer had he gone on answering to James.”

  Buckskin Jack stuck out his bony little chest and announced he’d never felt he’d been treated with near enough respect around here. When he added something about running for county sheriff against the worthless incumbent one of these days, Stringer said he’d make sure his paper got his handle right and rose to his feet, adding, “In the meantime, it’s getting late and I still haven’t booked a place to bed down in your fair city. I don’t suppose you could direct me to your best hotel?”

  Buckskin Jack laughed and said, “Hell, nobody’s ever even thought of putting up a hotel this far from the rest of creation. You might try Madam Maggie’s, down to the east end of town. Can’t say what she’d charge a man for a whole night in one of her beds, with or without company.”

  Stringer started to tell the tiny town tamer not to talk so silly. Then he reflected on the simple fact that those revealing notes had been written in a woman’s handwriting, and that only the lady who’d written the same might have one thing to add to what he already knew. So, he said he’d give Madam Maggie a try, adding, “The things I do for the little Sam Barca’s willing to pay me!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Robert Burns had been on the money regarding the best laid plans of mice and men. The first thing diverting Stringer from the primrose path to Madam Maggie’s was the dimly-lit but distinctive emblem of a Western Union branch above a doorway catty-corner from the general store cum post office, which was shut down for the night. First things coming first, Stringer cut across to wire old Sam before the telegraph office shut down as well. Comanche Woe didn’t seem like a busy boomtown while the sun was shining, and it had to be after ten by now.

  As he strode inside, the big calendar clock at one end of the counter told him he’d only missed the time by a quarter hour. When he told the old geezer behind the counter he wanted to send a night letter to the San Francisco Sun, collect, he was told, “Heard there was a newspaperman in town. You must want to report the shooting of that suspected cow thief by our Buckskin Jack, right?”

  Stringer reached thoughtfully for the pad of yellow telegram blanks as he replied, “I hadn’t heard of your town marshal getting into another gunfight since the one he had with Mysterious Dave.”

  The Western Union clerk stared at him sort of thunderstruck to demand, “Where the hell could you have been just an hour or so ago, then? I heard the gunplay as downed Chuck Woods in here, with that durned door shut.”

  Stringer cocked a brow to cautiously ask, “Who told you the town law pulled the trigger that time?”

  To which the clerk replied, “Got it from the horse’s mouth, or a deputy horse, if you’d like to pick nits. The marshal sent one of his deputies, Slim Sanford, to wire the county coroner down in Van Horn about the death by misadventure. That’s what they call it when an asshole who ought to know better slaps leather on as hardcased a hairpin as Buckskin Jack. You’re sure you never even heard the gunshots? I’d have bet money they were heard by everyone in town!”

  Stringer dryly answered, “I did hear a single shot this side of sundown, now that I study on it. It likely echoed up and down the dale a mite. You say it was fired by the town law, in the official version?”

  The clerk nodded brightly and replied, “Might have been one of old Jack’s deputies. It ain’t as if they hand out prizes when you gun a cuss with no bounty posted on him. You just have to notify the county coroner he’s dead, lest he wind up voting in the next election, see?”

  Stringer did. There’d probably been few times and places in this land of opportunity where one man could shoot another down and simply stroll away as if nothing had happened. It was still comforting to hear he wouldn’t even have to sign a deposition, and it wasn’t as if anyone with a lick of sense wanted to be given the “credit” for killing a man who might have any number of friends and relations. Of course, it made it awkward to word his night letter the way one assumed Buckskin Jack wanted it worded, without lying outright to old Sam Barca at the far end of the wire.

  By the time he’d finished and been assured his update would be delivered shortly after Barca sat at his desk in the morning, the plans of mice and men were getting even more fucked up outside. When he went out on the plank walk to determine what all the commotion was about, he saw Rusty Reynolds and his informal posse comitatus had just made it back to town, empty-handed and cussing considerable about all the riding they’d just done to no avail. One of the riders kept yelling about getting laid down to Madam Maggie’s before he even took a leak, lest he waste this fine piss hard-on, and from the jolly response some others made to his suggestion, Stringer felt he’d best rethink his own visit to the only such establishment in town.

  He knew he was thinking smart when Rusty Reynolds spotted him there and rode over to rein in and say, “We got to stop meeting like this. My wife is getting suspicious. Another flirt just up the way tells me some son of a bitch just gunned old Chuck Woods off the lazy B. Might you know anything about that, MacKail?”

  Stringer chose his words carefully as he replied, “As the town law just reported it to the county, Buckskin Jack, or maybe someone helping him uphold the law, was forced to gun your pal when he went for his own gun with murderous intent.”

  Rusty Reynolds grimaced and replied, “Let’s not get sickening about it. Chuck was all right, but I never knew him well enough to call him a pal.” The posse leader scowled into the distance beyond Stringer for a spell before he added, “I must not have known him even as well as I thought if he slapped leather on the law. Jack Blair’s an ugly little pissant and I feel sure his mother must have pulled a plow, but he’s still the law and old Chuck should have knowed better. You want to come along with us to Maggie’s?”

  Stringer said he’d pass on the fine opportunity for now. As the rowdy riders rode on, he retraced his own steps back to the town livery where, at this hour, the old Mex he’d talked to before had been replaced by a somewhat younger and meaner-looking cuss who had more Indian in his veins and more Texas in his speech. When Stringer howdied him and said he’d like his ponies and possibles back now, the surly stable hand growled that he’d best come back in the morning, when old Gordo Garcia, the one Stringer and his pals had dealt with, would be there to determine just whom might own what.

  Stringer swore softly and asked why in the hell they had a night man on duty if the infernal establishment didn’t do business at night. The hatchet-faced night man just shrugged and replied, “Can’t leave the premises unguarded, night or day, lest some dishonest son of a bitch sneaks in to screw a pony or devour all our hay. You don’t want to head out this late at night in any case, cowboy. There’s a meager new moon rising and it feels like rain besides.”

  Stringer had, in fact, noticed a certain heaviness to the air despite the time and altitude. He still considered himself the best judge of when it might be opportune to ride out of town, and before the kith and kin of the late Chuck Woods found out who’d gunned him sounded better than after. Thanks to Buckskin Jack’s desire for glory, and thanks to the simple fact that bullshit was as easy and a lot safer to write on his way back to Frisco, there was simply no good reason to hang around Comanche Woe any more. Though when he tried betting the stubborn stable hand a silver dollar that he couldn’t just load up his two ponies and leave, the breed refused to play and added, “I ain’t feared of you big brave buckaroos with your big hats and jingle-jangle spurs. Do you force your way past me with that big gun, I’ll just have the law after you afore you can get a mile down the trail, hear?”

  Stringer laughed incredulously and said, “You got me wrong, pard. Since I see you never meant to be a cowboy when you grew up, after all, I’d best assure you I’ve as honest a job as your own. I’m MacKail of the Frisco Sun. Are you sure your boss never mentioned me in connection with that pinto scrub and chestnut barb from Sierra Blanca?�
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  The stable hand shook his head but said, “If them’s the two ponies you left with old Gordo, there was someone else asking about you, though.”

  Stringer cautiously asked who and when. The breed said, “About a quarter hour back, just as all them other cowhands rode in. Miss Susan Bancroft off the Lazy B came by, saying she’d heard you’d left some horseflesh here and that she wanted to talk to you real bad.”

  Stringer grimaced. The last person he wanted to talk to in a strange town after dark had to be a spoiled rancher’s daughter missing at least one paint pony and a hired hand shot by the rider of the same!

  He didn’t think he’d better say so, though, so he asked if the stable hand had any notion where the young lady might have gone afterwards. He hadn’t expected an answer. The breed surprised him more than he pleased him by replying, “Sure. She said to tell you, if and when you showed, she’d be over to the Parker Arms until midnight or so.”

  Stringer thanked the son of a bitch more than he deserved to be thanked and headed across the dark and just about deserted street, reaching absently for the makings as he softly sang:

  “Rubin, Rubin, I’ve been thinking, What a grand world this would be, If the gals could all go drinking, In saloons like you and me!”

  However, nice gals, or even gals it was safe to associate with, didn’t hang out in saloons worth mention and couldn’t get served, even then, without a male escort. Stringer didn’t want to meet any males who’d ridden recently with the late Chuck Woods, any more than he wanted to meet the dead rascal’s boss. So the smart thing to do, right now, would be to track down young Roy Bean Junior and see if the local Hispanics had room for one more, wherever the hell they might be.