Stringer in a Texas Shoot-Out

by Lou Cameron

  Silk tried, “Aw, Miss Susan, we only want to settle the hash of these few sissies.” However, she stamped her foot again and insisted, “I said no and I meant no, durn it! It just cost us a hundred dollars for a stained glass window and almost as much again just to bury one Lazy B rider! Until such time as my dear old daddy tells you that you have the right to declare war for him and me, I’ll thank you to leave such declarations to the folk as pay your wages and for such beans as you may manage to eat, hear?”

  Silk stared hard at Buckskin Jack and muttered, “What about these fancy dans? It’s them as keeps starting up with us honest working men, Miss Susan.”

  The sky to the southeast lit up chalky blue and nobody said more until the thunder that followed had rolled over. Once it had, Stringer forced a light laugh and said, “I hate to be a spoilsport, gents, but we’re pushing our luck with that dry lightning. I’m sure no man here would like to see this pretty lady drowned with her boots on!”

  That inspired at least a few grudging chuckles on both sides. He got a better grip on the gal’s arm and suggested they get going. She dug her heels in and insisted she couldn’t leave her boys in such a fix. Stringer asked, “How’s about it, Silk?” Her self-appointed war chief sighed and said, “Oh, get her to shelter afore that gully washer proves you right. We won’t go for our own guns unless and until they go for their guns.”

  “Jack?” Stringer asked. The little lawman muttered, “I don’t suspect it’s legal to shoot cowboys just for being so ugly. Though any time anyone here wants to test how tough me and my boys are…”

  “Let’s go,” Stringer told Susan, adding in a softer tone, “you know they’ll calm down faster with no ladies present.” Since she must have, he soon had her across the street to where, sure enough, one of the cow ponies tied there in the dark nickered at her as if glad to see her.

  She let Stringer untether the handsome roan for her, asking him where his own mount might be. When he allowed his own riding stock was not only in the livery but apparently locked away for the night, she laughed and said, “We’d look dumb riding double when there’s no need to. I seem to be sober again and, even if I wasn’t, my cousin’s house is just a short lope off.”

  He handed her the reins and tried to help her mount up. She ignored the stirrup he made for her with his interlocked hands, but told him she owed him for shoving her out of harm’s way just now. Then she proved she must have meant it by kissing him smack on the lips and swinging up into her saddle to ride off laughing, before he could come unstuck enough to kiss her back.

  He decided with a sheepish grin that it was just as well. Had she given him time, he’d have been able to assure her that .30-30 round hadn’t been meant for her. He wished there was some way to assure the asshole who kept firing that deer rifle at him that he didn’t have any idea what all this was all about.

  Then the sky got even noisier, and as the ground breeze kicked up to sweep dry dust toward the oncoming downpour, Stringer muttered, “I sure wish you’d hold the thought, Thunderbird. It has to be past midnight, and she never invited me to come on home to her cousin’s place with her, and where in blue blazes am I supposed to bed down in this dinky inhospitable town at this damned hour?”

  He knew he’d have to find some shelter soon, as the sky blazed blue indeed above him and the first hail came down, the size and softness of descending moth balls.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Madam Maggie, nee Margaret Ferguson, had told her towel girl, Bessie, to trim the ruby lamp out on the front porch for the night, but the lazy, or storm-shy little colored gal had left it burning just long enough to guide Stringer to her vestibule. He was dripping considerably as a result of having run the last hundred yards through shimmering silver veils of almost piss-warm rain off the summer-stewed Gulf of Mexico.

  When they told Madam Maggie the late caller was dressed like a cowboy and packing a six-gun, she had them lead Stringer into her denlike private office, but kicked the throw rug out of the way and indicated he was to sit on the hardwood chair near her rolltop desk as she told him, “You can stay until the storm lets up a mite, young sir. You can even join me in a sip of the Glen Spey, if you’re man enough, but if you want a poke, I fear you came too late in the evening. We just entertained a returning posse and a couple of cow outfits that rode in earlier, so my girls are just too saddle sore, right now.”

  Stringer said he had no hard feelings either, and explained who he was and what he wanted as the somewhat older but still pretty bleach blonde poured them malt liquor, neat, in rather ominous quantities. He decided she was well on the other side of forty, though she kept herself in pretty good shape, considering the business she was in. Her upswept almost white hair looked as stiff as if she starched it. Maybe she did. She had so much face paint on that her own mother might have had a time recognizing her at any distance. That could have been deliberate on her part as well, once you studied on it. However, since he felt no call to kiss such a gilded lily, it hardly seemed worth studying.

  She held out his drink to him. He rose to take it, and since she seemed to think they ought to clink he did, muttering, “Slainte!” without choosing his toast with care. So, he was suprised as she seemed to be when she let out a delighted gasp and answered, “Slainte bar, agus ciamar e that thu, Oganach na Alban?”

  He managed to answer, “Tha mi gu math,” with a sheepish grin. Then he quickly added, “Having said that much we’d best quit whilst we’re ahead, ma’am, for, no offense, your own Gaelic sounds as second or third generation as my own.”

  She laughed and allowed her people had been over the water since the ill-advised rising of 1745 but couldn’t help bragging, “We claim descent from Piper Ferguson of the Appin Regiment, who saved himself from drowning with the air in his bagpipes when an English cannon blew him off the bridge over the Isla, since he’d never learned to swim, you ken.”

  Stringer chuckled and replied, “Learning to play the pioh-mhor worth mention wouldn’t leave an old boy much time for swimming lessons.” Then he raised his glass and added, “An ol mi seo?” with an impish smile. She fluttered her lashes, told him to go on and drink for land’s sake, and he managed not to sob out loud as the dram of lava seared its way down his throat. The roar he heard when it hit bottom was just as likely a thunderclap outside, but he still got to tingle all over and the hard-boiled old bawd seemed to want him to down a whole five or six ounces of the lethal amber liquid.

  Whether it was the malt liquor, or the mutual misfortune of their several-times-great grandparents, Madam Maggie seemed a heap more friendly now, as she lounged on her maroon plush chaise in her not too carefully arranged robe of lace-trimmed black silk. As a history buff with a few years of college under his belt, Stringer knew there’d been a darker side to the Celtic Clan System than romantic writers like Sir Walter Scott let on, or understood. After she’d jawed on and on about Bonnie Prince Charlie a spell, he screwed up the courage to say, “Och a chaileag ghorach, na creid sin.”

  She naturally stopped in the middle of a grand highland charge to scowl at him over the brim of her glass and demand, “Who are you calling, even though it was sweet of you, a foolish girl, and why shouldn’t I believe the grand old tales of the Lost Cause?”

  He said, “Nobody can deny we lost. Had Charles Edward Stuart and half the legend been half so grand we might have won. In point of fact, the sissy little shrimp had no more Scotch blood in him than fat King George and he admitted being a foreigner.”

  She protested, “Men can be short and still be tough. I met Billy the Kid when I was starting out in this business further up the Pecos and he was man enough where it counted.”

  Stringer lowered his glass, still half-filled, lest she pour more in it for him, and replied, “They say Darling Charlie liked the ladies, too. Lord knows, he didn’t like to fight. He retreated at Derby when his officers and men all wanted to press on to London Town, and then at Culloden he just plain turned tail and ran, with some of the clans still sp
oiling to charge the redcoats again.”

  She didn’t seem to want to hear that. She was commencing to remind him of a little girl smeared with Momma’s makeup who’d just been told Santa Claus was a dirty old man. So, he said, “Enough about the dead and buried gunfighters of the old country. My paper sent me to cover the blood and thunder in these parts, and to tell the truth, I find it ten times more mysterious. I mean, I know what the rising of ’45 was about, but I’ll be switched with snakes if I can see one good thing to fight about in these parts, can you?”

  She shrugged a bare shoulder that had somehow spilled over the top of her loosely fastened gown and confided, “Oh, it’s not all that bleak, given a few drops of water now and again. We’re handy to two markets up here near the Divide, and anyone selling anything from ladies’ notions to notions about ladies stands to make out better as the population grows.”

  “Then who stands to profit by decreasing said population with gunfire?” he demanded.

  She drained her own glass, said, “Greas ort. It’s rude to make a lady drink alone, and as for the feud between the cattle clans and all the rest of us, you’re right, it’s simply stupid.”

  He didn’t want her clamming up on him just as she was commencing to say something he might be able to use, so he drained the last of the first dose and leaned forward to let her pour him another. He had no idea of what proof the stuff was, save that it had to be stronger than Susan Bancroft’s sloe gin, but now that he’d let some of it swish around down there a spell it was commencing to taste milder. Somehow, Madam Maggie had gotten a mite younger and softer-looking as they’d sat there sipping cozy with a late-night gully washer raging just outside the shuttered window.

  As he leaned back with his refill, he observed that stock raisers grazing their stock on marginal range had always acted a mite unreasonably toward those who uprooted blade one of grass. He added, “They forecast affairs like the Johnson County Range War in the Good Book. Stock herders like David just couldn’t abide those farming Philistines and vice versa.”

  He sipped experimentally, noted it seemed to go down a lot smoother now, and added, “Most of the time the farmers win, since they fill up the contested range in greater numbers. Is it safe to assume your own interests lie with the outsiders crowding in, ma’am?”

  She sighed and replied, “Me and my girls are also outsiders to the inbred cattle clans who took these hills away from the Indians and act as if they got it direct from the Lord the day after the Fall of Adam and Eve. Given our druthers, there’d be no conflict. Cowboys are more likely to be single, and whether they are or not, they tend to spend more freely on their creature comforts. On the other hand, a lady dealing in such comforts can do so with less discomfort, dealing with more shy and sober sod busters. You’re right about them coming in greater numbers, too. As of now, I’d say we service way more newly settled homesteaders than local ranch hands, for all the noise they make up in the cribs with the girls.”

  Stringer grimaced at the picture and said, “The pattern you just described is familiar all over the west since the enactment of the homestead law and the invention of bob wire. What I’m having some trouble with is the odd way someone’s conducting the struggle in these particular parts. Cattle barons of the old school are more likely to send away for professional gunhands. You’re right about the way most of ’em got their start in such rough country, and farm folk as a rule are naturally more inclined to consider the future.”

  She nodded and said, “You sell a beef calf a year or less after its momma drops it, but you plant pears for your heirs and, so far, nobody’s ever hung on to open range that long, once it’s been thrown open to settlement by the Land Bureau. Me and my girls are going to miss some of the more openhanded cowboys in these parts.”

  He finished his second drink without thinking, then tried to conceal that from her as he considered how late it was getting and how downright lovely she’d become in the last few minutes. He said, “If I’d been asked to bet my own money before I got here, I’d have bet more than one way, but none of the ways it seems to shape up so far.”

  She stared at him owlishly as she said, “Gee, you talk so smart, if only I knew what you were talking about. Wasn’t that Chuck Woods a cowhand, and don’t they say that hard-riding and hard-cussing Henry Starr off the Cherokee Reserve’s been seen in these parts as well?”

  Stringer nodded and said, “That’s what I mean. Whether they’re discussing the real Henry Starr, or some other dusky saddle tramp, the fact remains he and the late Chuck Woods would qualify as newcomers to Comanche Woe. So how might they fit in with the late Mysterious Dave Mather and the semi-reformed Curly Bill the town law just ran out to Lord knows where?”

  She said she didn’t know and added, “I can’t send such a sweet-talking Scotch boy out on a night like this. I reckon we might be able to put you up for the night if you’re not too disdainful of mo caithe beatha.”

  He favored her with a gallant if not sincere smile and assured her he felt her chosen way of life was her own personal business, adding, “I’ve never been paid for such sweet sinning but that’s not because I ever went out of my way to avoid such pleasures, ma’am.”

  She flustered and said, “Och mo mala, and I’m old enough to be your mother, you fresh, flirty thing.”

  It would have been impolite to assure her that seemed the simple truth. So, to change the subject, or get back to it, he said, “Since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed your tiny town tamer, Buckskin Jack, seems to side with the new majority of registered voters, which seems only natural, and that the cattle folk I’ve met seem to have a low opinion of him, which seems just as natural.”

  She shrugged two bare shoulders as she pointed out both the late Chuck Woods and Mysterious Dave had at least dabbled in livestock. He shook his head stubbornly and stared at her four proud naked breasts as he stubbornly replied, “Curly Bill wasn’t. He was working as a water witch, as Wet Willy Wallace. I reckon I could witch water in mesquite country if I had to. Mesquite can’t drill deeper than say, sixty or seventy feet for ground water. The point is, though, that the established stockmen around here must have had their own water for years. So, Wet Willy, whoever he really was, had to be working mostly for the new homesteaders. See what I mean?”

  She shook her head and said, “Nope. I’m more worried about my own professional status than I am that of some long-gone well driller. I just don’t know what the madam is supposed to charge a nice young feller like you to drill her. I haven’t been paid to get laid since I saved up enough to own my own house and so, even though I like you a lot, I just can’t see letting you have me three ways for two dollars.”

  He said he couldn’t either, and as she rose, he refrained from asking her how come she shaved down there if she no longer had to concern herself about crabs. He said, “I wouldn’t want to beat you down on the price any more than I’d want to pay for it, drunk or sober, no offense.”

  She nodded and said, “I’ve always thought more highly of an independent thinker when it comes to the study of passion for fun and profit. I must be drunk, too, for bless my bones if I don’t feel horny as a housewife with a fat old husband, for the first time in months. Let’s go to bed, mo Gaidheal og!”

  He wasn’t even sure he could stand up and he knew he’d feel ashamed of himself in the cold gray dawn. However, it was the first opportunity he’d ever had to go to bed with a beautiful set of young Siamese twins, and he surely had to go to bed some damned place before he wound up waking up in some gutter filled with rainwater, or worse. The next thing he knew, he was sprawled in some dark bedroom, across a perfumed bed, with those pretty Siamese twins giggling as they rolled a rubber on for him, and when he asked where they’d hung his gun, or at least his jeans, they just laughed like hell and started out on top. It sure felt odd to lay there with a single numb erection up inside two young girls at once. As they bounced up and down on him, moaning in Apache, Gaelic, or whatever, he wondered how two such sweet litt
le gals had learned to screw so experienced. It came to him, after he’d come a time or two and sobered just a mite, that few mortals of female flesh could move as fine as a veteran whore on her night off with a real friend. So, even though he felt slightly mortified, now that it came to him just whom he was coming in, again, it would have been rude to complain about it, so he didn’t.

  ******

  Madam Maggie seemed, if anything, more awkward than Stringer when they woke up in each other’s arms atop the rumpled covers perfumed by rosewater and human rut. She moaned, “Och mo mala! Thank God we used a French envelope. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  He ran his dusty tongue around inside his fuzzy teeth and moaned back, “There are some achievements a man feels he just has to crow about and there are others he’d as soon not.” Then he sensed he might have been unkind and quickly added, “I was taught it was lowdown to kiss and tell before I had all that much to tell about, ma’am.”

  Then he sat up, swung his bare feet to the shag rug, and reached for the bottle on the bedside table to swish out his mouth. He went easy on that, though, having gotten in enough trouble with malt liquor to last him a spell. He handed her the smoky brown bottle and, the room being mighty murky to get dressed in, rose buff-bare to reach for the window blind. Before he could shed any light on the subject, the woman on the bed behind him sobbed, “Can’t we let the magic linger for just a little while, mo oganach?”

  He started to say he wasn’t that young a swain, for Pete’s sake. Then, as it sank in just how old a lady who’d once done whatever with Billy the Kid would have to be a quarter century later, he sat his bare butt back down on the bed and began to gather his duds off the floor by such light as there was. She sighed and said, “Thank you. But I guess there’s no hiding the reasons I feel better around men under a couple of coats of paint, in dim light, these days.”

  He half-turned on his tailbone to pat her bare thigh and assure her she’d felt swell to him that way as well. She took his hand in both of hers and moved it where it hadn’t really been headed as she moaned, “It seems such a short while ago I could drive men wild with desire in broad day, with everything I had hanging just natural. You would have been a bitty baby then, yet it feels like yesteryear. Where could all that time have gone?”