Stringer in a Texas Shoot-Out

by Lou Cameron

  He’d never suspected a motherly old lady running the only general store and post office for miles was worried about where her next meal was coming from. As it developed, she and her husband had to be even more prosperous than he’d assumed, so he told Susan, “In my travels I’ve noticed rich folk seem to fib one of two ways. They either bust a gut trying to look richer than they really are, or they cry poor and try to convince everyone they do business with that they’ll dry up and blow away if they don’t get a break.”

  She didn’t seem to follow his drift. She said she’d been brought up to just be herself. He said, “Your dad’s just prosperous, not disgustingly rich, no offense. Old Hank Huntington, as runs the Southern Pacific, must have gone into hock building his fool self a marble palace in California with paintings like the Blue Boy hanging on his walls. Reaching the other way, they say old John D. of Standard Oil once refused to pay for a Thanksgiving banquet because he counted all the drumstick bones in the garbage afterwards, and found they’d short changed him on the number of turkeys he’d ordered.”

  She laughed and said, “I doubt Clem Thornway’s that rich, yet. Aside from siding with the newcomers he acts natural and … Damn! I just now got hit by a raindrop, or a mighty dirty bird just flew over!”

  As he spied the odd dry puffs the first drops of a desert rain send up from a dusty road, he reined in just beyond and groped for his own slicker. There was no sensible way to offer a lady a polite hand with her own rain gear when she sat astride a pony six or eight feet away, so he didn’t, but he was naturally staring south at her and as he caught a distant flash of yellow he told her, quietly, “Don’t look back, but the hairs on the back of my neck were telling us true. Great minds run in the same channels, and someone a mile or more back just hauled out his or her own rain slicker. Can’t make it out now. Whoever put it on must have noticed how bright it was by watching us and either hunkered down or gave up the notion entirely. I know I’d chance getting wet before I’d chance riding into an ambush in the chaparral if I was tailing someone in dicey weather.”

  She said that sounded like a swell notion and asked why he didn’t ride on, flashing bright as a wet canary, so’s she could pick the sneak off. He grimaced and said, “I’ve got a better, or at least a drier, way in mind. He, she, or it can surely count to two and we’re almost there. So why don’t we just ride on in, playing dumb, and see who rides in after us? Does the place still offer any sort of shelter to fort up in?”

  She spurred her pony forward with the hem of her yellow oilcloth hiding her little, booted ankles, saying, “Heavens, I doubt anything heavy as the kitchen range has been salvaged this early. Buckskin Jack only shot the poor old cuss a few days ago.”

  As they rode into the dooryard a few minutes later, it was easy to see at least a few neighbors had been by with crowbars and buckboards to salvage the dead man’s unguarded estate.

  The adobe walls and sod roof of the old hermit’s house were still there, albeit the front door and window sashes had been carted away to leave the place gaping at them like a jack-o’-lantern with its candle out as they approached. Behind the house, the more valuable gears and sheet metal blades of the windmill were missing, but the wood frame tower still loomed against the glowery gray sky, with a wooden pressure tank for the house halfway up and a bigger tank for the old man’s missing livestock likely out back. They couldn’t say for sure as they dismounted whether the poles of the corral had been hauled off or not, yet. It didn’t seem important. The rain was starting to come down seriously now, and as Susan strode into the house, Stringer led their two mounts on to the cluster of more humble outbuildings sheltering the dooryard from the north winds of winter. The big sliding door that should have covered the gaping maw of the adobe stable was now missing. As they approached the somehow ominous patch of blackness in the tricky light, his gun hand absently found its way to the grips of his six-gun, via a pocket slit he’d long since removed the inner pocket from. A man only had to get caught in a slicker once, with no easy way to get out his gun, to learn the value of such a simple alteration in his rain gear.

  There was nobody lurking in the stinky darkness of the old stable. There wasn’t much of anything else, either. The neighborhood nesters had stripped out the stalls, troughs and even a couple of load-bearing pillar posts Stringer would have felt better about seeing there. He told the ponies, “This’ll never do if it rains hard enough for you two oat burners to really need a roof over your heads. Said roof coming down on the same could leave Miss Susan and me with a long walk back to town. Let’s see if there’s room for you in the main house.”

  There was. Susan laughed when he came into the front parlor leading two sopping wet ponies, but she naturally agreed it made more sense on second thought than right off. There was no furniture in there now, of course, and she said she’d tried to start a warm-up in the adobe fireplace but that there didn’t seem to be any dry kindling on the infernal premises.

  First things coming first, he led the two ponies on back to a smaller chamber that would have been a bedroom, perhaps, if there’d been a bed in it. The salvagers had at least left the window framing after someone, most likely kids, had busted out the glass back here. So, he tethered the reins there and unsaddled both ponies, giving them hasty rubdowns with damp saddle blankets and hoping for the best, it being a summer rain and them being out of it before they could get really soaked. He told them he’d fetch them some water if the damned neighbors had left any containers about, and went back to join Susan in the front. She’d peeled out of her sticky slicker and hung it on a wall peg too cheap to pull out. He found another for his own and told her, “Aside from the obvious chill in the air, I came out here to do some snooping and it’s already getting too dark to see straight. Why don’t you post yourself and your Dragoon near yon front window whilst I see if I can scout up some tinder for the fire and at least a bucket for our ponies?”

  She seemed willing but asked if he thought they ought to have a fire in here if he suspected someone else might be out there. He told her, “That’s the point. As things now stand, all concerned could wind up floundering about and bumping noses in the dark. As many an old Indian fighter can still tell you, since it was the wise ones who got to be old, a night fire draws moths and other pests from all directions. Do you want me to draw diagrams on the blackboard for you? I don’t seem to have any chalk on me.”

  She brightened and said, “Oh, I see! And if nobody steps into our trap at all, it’ll be warmer and drier in here after the fire dies down to assure us nobody followed us, after all!”

  He didn’t answer. He tried another back room. It was really coming down outside now, and so dark he had to strike a match to see what was back here. There wasn’t much. Susan had been wrong about looters not having gotten around to the old hermit’s stove, yet. The hard-scrabble salvagers had, however, at least left the deal shelves and shelf paper. Exploring further, he discovered why the kitchen seemed so dark, even with the back door and one small back window pried out and carted away. Some silly son of a bitch, perhaps the same one who’d made a death trap out of the stable, had yanked out a vital upright to collapse a back tool shed against the rear wall of the house. Most of the roof still hung together, at an angle never intended, as it blocked out all light and most of the rain beating on the other side of its new slant. A jackstraw tangle of busted up lumber, glass shards and such occupied most of the narrow gap between the back door and wrecked roof. He spied a rusty old washtub and a couple of tool handles amid the debris as well. He hauled out the washtub, overturned it to spill the grit, and took it back to Susan filled with splitery wood and crumpled shelf paper, saying, “This ought to burn pretty good. Have you seen anything out front?”

  She said, “It’s too black out now. Listen to that wind.” He headed for the fireplace in the even darker parlor and came close to spraining an ankle as he stepped into a low spot in the dirt floor indeed. He swore despite himself and added, “Sorry, Miss Susan, but you’d
think even Mysterious Dave would have wanted his floor more dead on the level.”

  She said she’d noticed that sudden dip when one could still see it and added, “One of our ponies must have made it before. You can see that bigger storm we had last night blew heaps of rain in here through the wide open windows and doorway, so the floor’s naturally softer than usual right now.”

  He muttered something about that English newspaperman, Kipling, and then, eating the apple a bite at a time, laid as good a fire as he could manage on the dead man’s hearth. But even as the first faint flames were licking up the shelf paper, he had her and their rain slickers on the way to the back room he’d put the ponies in earlier. He explained that the back way out of the kitchen had been blocked by that falling shed roof but added, “We can see anyone crossing the backyard from the chaparral further out and, as you can see from here, we have a nice line on anyone coming in that doorway.”

  Before she could answer, a bolt of lightning sizzled and banged outside. She sizzled against him and gasped, “That was too durned close! It’s cold in here, too! Surely anyone out there in that big storm would have come on in by this time, Stuart!”

  He answered, more certainly, “Anyone friendly would have. If we’re talking about the rascal with that .30-30, the game could just be starting. But look on the bright side, you’re right about how nasty it’s got to get out yonder before any of it gets on us, Miss Susan.”

  He moved to the window, elbowing a pony’s head out of his way for a look-see out at the storm. He couldn’t see anything betwixt lightning flashes. When it flashed, he could see a silvery stream of rainwater running off the roof above them, just out of his damned reach. He’d naturally brought that washtub back here with them. He told her to keep a sharp eye out front, shrugged into his slicker again, and had one leg forked over the sill before she asked him what on earth he was up to. He said, “I promised these ponies some water before. Have to step out back a yard or more to get at any.”

  Being a born horsewoman, Susan Bancroft just said, “Oh, good,” for she naturally knew ponies had to drink more, more often, than almost any other critters her own species found at all useful. Just feeling wet didn’t count, when you were a pony who hadn’t been watered after packing human rumps a ways.

  Thanks to the handy stream off the roof, Stringer had the old rusty tub filled in no time and he’d have surely made it back inside without incident if lightning hadn’t flashed just then to illuminate the whole back garth pretty well. So, the son of a bitch up on the windmill tower put a .30-30 round through Stringer’s flashy yellow rain slicker during the short time he had to aim by, then it was dark again and Stringer was around the corner of the house, bellowing, “Stay clear of that damned window, Susan! The bastard’s got us ranged from up above us like cockroaches on his kitchen floor!”

  She yelled something he couldn’t make out. It sounded worried. The rifleman up in the windmill tower spattered damp adobe from the corner with another deer round. Stringer lobbed a pistol round up at the rifle flash and crawfished back around the corner as, sure enough, the prick chewed more clammy adobe away with hot lead. As Stringer could best locate him now, he’d climbed the ladder rungs to fort up in the water tank that had fed the kitchen, back in the days when there’d still been pipes in these parts. The tank was naturally empty now, or had been before the rascal had filled it with his own ominous self. Stringer muttered, “That sure was smart of us. I headed out to an open killing ground with a woman, and Madam Maggie had just told us not to act so dumb!”

  Somewhere in the night he heard Susan calling, “The fire’s about out, now, Stuart. You could likely make it safely back inside by way of that door now!”

  He called her a dreadful name and added, “Don’t make them guess where they have me pinned. Tell them outright where to expect me next, why don’t you?”

  She said, “Oh!” in a small, scared voice as he hunkered in the darkness getting rained on and shot at until suddenly things literally got brighter. Every hair on his body tingled, and his ears were left ringing as lightning flashed harder, or closer, than he could remember it ever having done before. “Jesus H. Christ!” he gasped, for he’d been in many a thunderstorm in his time. As he gaped up at the windmill tower, or where that windmill tower had just been, he decided that last bolt had been about as close as human flesh could get to that many volts without frying. Some of the creosoted wreckage across the yard was still smouldering, despite the pouring rain. Despite the reek of burning wood and wood tar, there was no mistaking that sickly sweet stench mixed in with it. Susan called out, “Hey, how could anyone be roasting a pig at a time like this?” He called back, “They’re not. Keep still. Mention was made of two gunmen, and so far, the Good Lord’s only seen fit to thunderbolt one of ’em for us.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The storm didn’t blow over until close to midnight, but as if to make up for it, the wind shift from the west swept the sky so clear it looked as if one could sweep stars out of the Milky Way with one’s hat, stretching just a mite. The moon hung crescent as the cutout on a shithouse door, but almost as brightly, thanks to the thin, dry air. So, making Susan stay in the now warmer and drier parlor, Stringer scouted the tangle of charred timbers out back and wasn’t too surprised to discover the mortal remains tangled up with the rest of the mess seemed to be those of that sneaky breed he and Susan had been bum steered by at the livery that time. Stringer was pretty sure the cuss had been a breed, leastways. A thunderbolt sure messed a cuss up, but parts of him hadn’t been fried as bad as others.

  Susan wanted to go back there and look, once he returned to tell her what he’d found. He shook his head firmly and said, “You’d just feel as sick as I do right now and you still wouldn’t know for certain. The mystery here isn’t who’s been shooting at us—or maybe just me—it’s the why I’m having the most trouble with. Whether it was that old boy out back or someone else, I seemed to be drawing fire before I even got here. So, it couldn’t be to keep me from publishing anything I’ve found out since.”

  They’d naturally spent some time talking as they’d waited for the storm to let up. She was able to point out that unless he was holding out on her, he hadn’t found out much of anything since he’d first shown up in Comanche Woe.

  He growled, “That’s what I just said. This isn’t the first time someone’s been worried about me being smarter than I really could be. My editor’s observed I’ve often exposed some naughty nonsense because the parties suffering feelings of guilt were too dumb to just leave me alone.”

  He headed back to the kitchen, muttering something about fools in other parts who hadn’t had sense enough to let dead dogs lay. She followed, asking what they were up to now.

  He chuckled and told her, “You’re not going to dig up that floor out front. I’m going to. Someone left a rusty but serviceable turning spade back here. We might as well burn some more of this swell dry kindling, too, seeing we do seem to have the place all to ourselves right now.”

  She was sport enough to carry an armload of splintered planking to toss on the coals out front. Since she seemed mighty confounded by the spade he’d just salvaged he explained, “This could have been overlooked when the neighbors stripped the place. Or, it could have been tossed back yonder by the sneak who buried something under the dirt floor. Somebody buried something there, either way.”

  She started to ask a dumb question. Then, as he removed his jacket and began to dig between the gaping door and ruby glow of the fireplace she reflected on other dirt floors she’d swept in her time and decided, “You’re right. Not even a pony hoof ought to sink deep enough to matter in dirt that’s been lived on a while.”

  He’d already noticed how easy the dirt dug in this one place as he told her, “Kipling wrote how soldiers in India find loot buried under dirt floors. They pour a bucket or so of well water on it. Rainwater works just as good. The point is that said water soaks in faster where the dirt’s been dug up most recent. You
’d, ah, best stand over by the doorway, ma’am. I just hit something a mite squishy for a buried treasure chest.”

  Though in truth, once he’d uncovered some of the corpse buried just a few inches down, and poured some pony water over the dead face to clean it up a mite, there wasn’t any serious stink. From the waxy color of the dead man’s washed-down face, it appeared he’d only been down there a week at the most.

  When he said so and struck a match for her to see better by, Susan Bancroft edged forward to declare, “Oh, how awful! Is he really dead?”

  Stringer chuckled dryly and replied, “Why, no, he just thinks he’s a gopher. I asked you if you knew who he was, ma’am!”

  She answered, “Oh, he’s that water witch, Wet Willy, the one they say was Curly Bill.”

  Stringer grimaced and said, “I don’t know why that should surprise me. They said he and the old cuss who owned this spread had been pals. No matter who this one might have been, it seems obvious he never left these parts of his own free will, as they thought.”

  She repressed a shudder and said, “I’ll bet this is what they’ve been trying to keep you from finding out!”

  He shrugged and said, “Maybe. It would have been safer for them to just get out here ahead of me and tidy up, if they’d known where this body was buried.”

  He started to scoop dirt back over Wet Willy Wallace, Curly Bill, or whoever it was, as Susan blinked in surprise and asked why, adding, “The people who killed him must know where they buried him, for heaven’s sake!”