by Lou Cameron
He gave her a quick recap of his recent adventures, leaving out the parts involving poor Annie and the mysterious Miss Tillie in Tucson. When he’d brought her up to date the petite blonde said, soberly, “They think you know something, or someone, and they don’t want some secret printed in the Sun or any other papers. I read some of the stories you filed from Alaska a few years back. I thought your well-worded warning about salted mines was past due. How do you like the idea that someone’s trying to keep you from exposing another such flimflam, here in Tombstone?”
He shook his head. “That occurred to me before I knew they were selling stock and running special trains in here for potential investors. Any decent reporter would consider such salting and, like I just said, none of the rest of you have drawn half as much fire as me.”
She insisted, “But you’re more expert than the rest of us on the subject, having already exposed such dirty doings up in Alaska more than once. I admired your piece on the crooked rodeo judges up in Cheyenne that time, too. There were other reporters in the stands then, but you were the only one with enough cowboy in your walk to spot angles the more citified boys failed to see, staring right at ‘em, correct?”
He replied modestly, “It wasn’t my fault I was raised more rustic and might have known a mite more about riding and roping. I’m not a mining engineer and, even if I was, I’d have a time salting a mine in full view of the reporters and at least some canny investors who’ll surely be there once the Lucky Cuss has been pumped dry.”
She asked, “What if they salted it in advance, before it was flooded?”
“How? The mine was in the hands of honest owners who’d have never allowed it to fill with ground water if they’d thought there was any silver ore left. Even if they hadn’t been all that honest and let’s say been out to unload a worthless mine on other suckers, they’d have done so then and there. They’d have never waited till the shaft was too full of water to show the suckers anything. In the end, they sold the property, as almost worthless property, to the present owners. Said syndicate seems to be going to considerable expense to pump the mess out and see what’s at the bottom. Whether they’re sincere mining men or not, I don’t see how they could have salted the bowels of the earth under hundreds of feet of water. A man in a diving suit can’t work that deep and, if a diver could, I can’t see how any of the usual salting tricks would work underwater.”
“They usually load a big shotgun with grains of precious metal instead of lead and just blast away at the rock, right?” the blonde asked.
“That only works for gold,” Stringer corrected her. “Anyone who accepted grains of chopped-up silverware as a silver strike would have to be sort of dumb about silver mining. Gold and some native copper shows up as specks of pure metal in the rock. But silver ore is almost always a chloride or sulphide that looks more like inky salt. You have to know what you’re doing if and when you’re prospecting for silver or, for that matter, trying to salt a vein with it. They use a big vet’s hypodermic—it has to be a glass one—to inject silver mixed with acid into the cracks. The acid reacts with the natural rock and the final results are thin veins of silver salts.”
“Even I can follow that,” she said, tossing her damp blond locks. “What if, just as the mine was shutting down, some slicker with an eye to the future sneaked down to the face with a horse-doctor’s needle and—”
“It won’t work,” Stringer cut in, explaining, “Even if someone thought that far ahead, he couldn’t have driven the acid all that deep into the rock and by now that water, under considerable pressure near the bottom, would have leached his handiwork out of the cracks. Water under pressure is a pretty good solvent on its own. That’s how a lot of ore veins get under a mountain to begin with. The crooks after me have to be worried about some other business they’ve been up to.”
She didn’t look too convinced, but she said, “All right. There must be a lot of crooked ways to get rich in a town that’s just starting to come back to life. How are we going to set about catching them?”
“We are not going to do anything,” he told her with a sigh. “Before I found out you were a gal I had a half-baked plan to have a fellow male spell me off and on at a door crack in hopes they might try again at my room down the hall, but—”
“I have a gun,” she cut in, adding, “A girl traveling alone just never knows when she might need one. It’s a Harrington and Richardson .32 revolver. I wasn’t sleepy, anyhow. If we took turns on watch, the single bed I booked over there ought to be enough for the both of us.”
He shot a wistful glance at the narrow brass bedstead against the far wall and said, “Thanks, but no thanks. A man who’d hide behind a woman’s kimono would eat stuff I’d rather not mention in front of a lady.”
She flared her nostrils at him, demanding, “Are you one of those he-brutes who consider us the frailer sex?”
He was forced to reply, honestly, “Whether I’m a brute or not, you are a heap more petite than me or your average hired gun, ma’am. I didn’t plan it that way any more than you did. I’ve never read where the Lord asked Adam’s advice on the use of that rib Adam lost under general anesthetic, either. So go fuss at the Lord or, if you’d just as soon have it Professor Darwin’s way, go fuss at Mother Nature. Us poor men never asked to be stuck with the chore of shifting heavy furniture, you know.”
She said, “Pooh, I could lick both my brothers and I’m pretty good with a gun, too.”
“I’ll take your word on that,” he said. “You write hard-boiled enough for any man, too. But at the risk of insulting you I still don’t want you mixed up in any gunplay. So I’d best skin the cat some other way.”
“Damm it,” she protested, “you said you’d share a scoop with me if I helped you!”
“I know I did. I will, providing you let me handle things my own pigheaded he-male way.” When she agreed that sounded fair, he continued, “I’d like to leave my possibles and some notes I made in here with you. Then I mean to find safer quarters for the night. Don’t ask me where. If you don’t know, you can’t say, no matter who asks. When I leave I want you to bolt your door behind me and stay put till I get back here after sunrise. Do just as I say and I’ll be proud to take you up to the Lucky Cuss with me as soon as they get her pumped out.”
“I’m holding you to that, MacKail. But what if you don’t come back?”
“Start without me,” he suggested. “If the rascals seemed likely to know where I mean to fort up for the night, I wouldn’t be heading that way. But you never know. So far, the sneaky cusses have been outsmarting me pretty good. If you wind up writing my obit try to remember I spell it S-T-U-A-R-T, not S-T-E-W-A-R-T. I just hate Stew, don’t you?”
Even though the moon shone bright the Turkey Creek wagon trace was sort of graveyard gloomy after dark. The fact that they’d found Johnny Ringo dead around here, propped up against the base of a tree with a bullet in his brain and a six-gun in his lifeless hand, didn’t help to cheer things up; nor did an owl, who may have known something Stringer didn’t know, hooting a mournsome howdy as he passed. Some said poor Ringo had been bushwhacked up this way by Buckskin Frank Leslie, while others were as sure the morose gunslick had taken his own life. Either way, old Ringo was said to ride this very trail at night aboard a pallid ghost pony that glowed in the dark just like Ringo did.
Stringer hoped gents in the habit of throwing dynamite were more afraid of ghosts than he was. Since he’d ridden out of town discreet, and anyone who wanted to scout old Dutch Steinmuller’s place had already done so, he hoped, there’d be no sensible reason for anyone to think of searching there again for anything or anybody. Stringer wasn’t about to bed down on a dead man’s bunk, but if he stretched out on those bales of newsprint and covered up with his rain slicker, he ought to be able to catch forty winks safely enough.
Knowing the way helped him get there quicker this time. But as he rounded the last bend he spied light through a window of the old man’s ‘dobe and reined i
n, muttering, “Shit.”
Then he rode back and off the trail a piece to tether Blue Ribbon in a copse of mesquite so he could move in afoot, sidearm already drawn. As he eased closer he could make out two ponies tethered in front. That put their riders inside and not on guard. They’d have had the ponies safer in the back corral if they were worried about unexpected visitors. They read as a pair of cowhands riding in who’d stopped to explore the empty ‘dobe. By now the neighborhood kids no doubt had old Dutchy Steinmuller acting as a local haunt as well.
Nevertheless, Stringer kept his gun out and his booted feet as quiet as he could until he was just outside the open side window. He was glad he had when he heard a slap, followed by a shemale sob of pain. Then a man’s voice growled, “You can do better than that, señorita. Tell me what you was truly after, here, afore I really hit you good!”
A girl’s voice, flavored with chili pepper, protested, “In the name of Jesus, Maria y Jose, I have told you all I know! My own poor papacito was a friend of the poor viejo who used to live in this casita. I was only searching for mementos of my family that might have been left here.”
Stringer cautiously moved close enough to see inside. He saw the Mex gal was younger and prettier than he pictured her. The Anglo gent standing over her as she sat bound to an old chair was even uglier than expected.
Stringer didn’t need the sketch Homer Davenport had drawn for him to decide the cuss was the same one who’d been glaring at his back aboard that coast train. The bushy-browed brute was glaring pretty good at his shemale victim as he growled, “Let’s see if I got this straight. You claim you’re the granddaughter of old Pedro Morales, the charcoal burner who died a few weeks ago, up in these hills. You say you was only on your way to his charcoal camp to salvage rosary beads and such he might have been buried with when you spied this place by the light of the moon and decided you might as well rob it too, right?”
She shook her head frantically, protesting, “I am no thief! You can see for yourself there is nothing of value here. I only wished for to, how you say, look around?”
The husky bastard, who’d obviously caught her at whatever she’d been doing, cast a weary eye about the dusty interior of the tiny ‘dobe and decided, “Well, you could be telling me true. You ain’t the first who’s prospected this abandoned claim, you know, and if there was one thin dime to be found out here, me and the boys would have found it.”
Then he drew his .45 and, as her sloe eyes widened in pure horror, he told her, amiably enough, “It’s too bad you’re such a nosy little thing. You’re sort of pretty. But I’m not supposed to be in these parts, official…so it’s been nice talking to you.”
Stringer and the girl both had to assume he meant it when he began to cock the single-action hammer. It was considered pure murder to gun a man without calling him, and pure suicide to do so when his gun was out and cocked, so Stringer aimed at the son of a bitch’s gun hand as he fired first.
His risky showboat shot worked. The beetle-browed gunslick’s pistol flew one way as it went off harmlessly and he flew another, howling like a gut-shot coyote as he hit the front door and just kept going in a cloud of splinters while Stringer yelled after him to stay put and explain his unseemly manners.
The cuss didn’t even stop for his pony. As Stringer heard him crashing across the stony creekbed and up the far slope through the moonlit chaparral he decided that since first things should come first, chasing a wounded grizzly through bushes might not be it. He tore around to the gaping doorway, ran inside, and doused the lamp as the startled Mex gal gasped, “Oh, you just saved my life, señor!’’
He said, “Not yet,” as he moved over to her, holstered his .38, and got out his pocket knife to cut her free. Then he hauled her out front, put her aboard one of the ponies, mounted the other, and hung on to her reins to lead her back to where he’d left Blue Ribbon. As he helped her down he said, “Now I’ve saved your life. Which one of these ponies was yours to begin with, Miss…ah…?”
“Concepción Morales,” she replied, adding, “My pony is the pinto you were just riding. I would have told you, pero—”
“Never mind,” he snapped, “Get on him, now, and hold my old Blue Ribbon steady whilst I see if there’s any calling cards in that rascal’s saddlebags. You could save us some time if you could say you already knew him, querida.”
“I never saw him before,” she explained tossing her head in the moonlight. “He came in on me as I was rummaging through those old newspapers, just a few moments ago.”
Stringer swore softly. “It’s tough to search saddlebags for clues when there ain’t no saddle bags. This looks like a livery nag. We’ll just let him go, and it might be more interesting, come morning, to see just where it goes home to and what they recall about bushy eyebrows. Now we’d best get you out of here before he comes back for his horse, with pals.”
As he mounted beside her, Concepción dimpled at him and said, “I am sure we saw the last of that one. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
He said, “I’d rather hear where you live. We can tell stories after I get you home safe.”
She nodded and took the lead, straight uphill, saying, “Bueno. I was on my way to my grandfather’s when that lobo must have taken me for Capotita Colorado, no? Is not far. Only steep in a few places.”
He chuckled and told Little Red Riding Hood, in his lingo, to lead on. But after she’d done so a spell, it commenced to get steep indeed. He called out, “For Pete’s sake, neither of us are riding mountain goats. What did you say your late grandfather was, an eagle?”
She assured him cow ponies could make it, adding, “Before he was found dead, down below on the trail beside his burro, my poor grandfather gathered and prepared charcoal for to sell in Tombstone. His last camp, of course, had to be far enough from town for to find any robles left. Oh, forgive me, you call them oaks, no?”
He started to tell her he spoke Spanish, but decided not to, just yet. He still didn’t know who else they might be meeting up with, and it was surprising what some would say in front of a dumb gringo at times. They topped the crest and she led him on down the back slope. He didn’t ask why. He knew mesquite made better firewood as it was, and nothing else seemed to be growing around here. They crossed another dry creekbed and bulled up yet another steep slope, with the chaparral getting thicker, now. As they approached the next crest and Stringer spied a lightning-blasted oak outlined against the sky beyond, she turned in her saddle to announce, “We are almost there.”
He said, “In that case, you’d best ride in well ahead and explain my honorable intentions. No offense, Concepción, but this won’t be the first time I’ve escorted a Spanish-speaking lady home.”
She laughed. “My brothers are all down in Bisbee with our parents, tonight. The family moved down there when things got so slow in Tombstone. Pero our stubborn grandfather said he liked it better up here in the Dragoons and you know how some old men are, no?”
He replied, “Some old women, too, when you study on old-timers. But what was your grandfather living on, up here on his own? He couldn’t have sold much charcoal once the mines shut down, could he?”
She shook her head. “They say in Tombstone’s days of glory our whole family could not have provided enough charcoal for to run the mine pumps. They just burned mesquite, even green, and let the smoke blow about as it would. My grandfather sold clean-burning charcoal only to the housewives in town, for to cook and heat with. Oak charcoal burns with no smoke at all if one knows how to use it. Is true most of his Anglo customers moved away when the mines and a lot of other businesses shut down. Pero was still enough tidy Anglo women to buy all the charcoal one old man and his burro could deliver. That is for why I wish to search about his camp. He had little dinero in his pockets when they found him dead. He was a simple man with no need for expensive pleasures. We found it curioso that nobody up this way could tell us where the rewards of all his hard labor might be.”
By this ti
me they’d topped the rise. Stringer saw the sort of giant beaver lodge the old man had been burning charcoal in when he’d still been able to get around up here. There was a smaller but still impressive woodpile as well. The moonlight gleamed on an ax imbedded in a partly split oak log. Beyond the working parts of the camp stood a canvas tent, still taut despite the winds that must have blown across this ridge, since the old man had staked it securely, like the old hand at camping out he must have been. Concepción dismounted first to rummage inside the tent while Stringer tethered their two ponies to a pair of oak stumps as she’d apparently expected him to. Unlike that bossy little blonde from the Examiner, this gal didn’t seem to mind being a poor frail shemale.
As he strode over to the tent fly, Stringer called into the dark interior for any oats she might have noticed in there. She backed into view, hauling a dusty burlap sack she felt might be full of cracked corn, at least. When Stringer opened it, it was. He gazed about until he spotted an old cooking pot and packed it back to the ponies as well. He watered both from his canteen. Then he left each a pile of cracked corn to work on, telling them, “I know you’d like to go to bed with more supper. I would, too. But that’s life.”
As he rejoined Concepción by the tent he saw she’d spread some bedding on the sand out front, albeit still under the fly. She said, “I have some tortillas y frijoles as well as some pulque in my saddlebags. Why do you not build a fire as I make ready for to cook, eh?”
