Stringer in Tombstone

by Lou Cameron

  Stringer dropped his burned-down smoke to the floor and ground it out with a bootheel as the pool room suddenly commenced to look more crowded. One of the three foppishly dressed but seriously armed newcomers stared soberly at Stringer as he asked Skagway Sam, “Are you having any trouble with this cowboy, boss? Miss Fran said you might.”

  Skagway Sam straightened up, lay his cue on the green felt, and smiled knowingly at Stringer as he almost purred, “I ain’t sure, yet. The more he keeps jawing the more I suspicion he could be out to put me ahint the eight ball. Is that what you was getting at, old son?”

  Stringer smiled back. “Gee,” he said, “I thought Miss Faro Fran was up at the mine. I can see why she might not want to be on record as an interested spectator, though. You know, Sam, if you put on your own frock coat the four of you would look a lot like the Earps and Doc Holliday must have looked to poor young Billy Clanton that time. He was dressed more cow, like me.”

  Skagway Sam didn’t seem to find this at all amusing. He said, “You was leading up to something afore you noticed my boys, here. You’d have gone to the law with it if you was only out to accuse them L.A. city slickers and nobody else, right?”

  “Yep. Shall I go on with my story, gents?” Stringer asked, scanning the room.

  Skagway Sam growled, “You’d better. I’d like to hear just how much you really know.”

  Stringer frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s see, where were we? Oh, right, they didn’t want the old Mex charcoal burner to gossip about all the smokeless fuel he’d sold before they’d bought the fancy new gas pump, so he died on the Turkey Creek wagon trace one morning. It wouldn’t have taken much skill, or courage, to kill one old unarmed man. But they must have done him in too late. He had an old pal, Dutchy Steinmuller, and they no doubt exchanged comments on the weather and anything else they found interesting, every time the one old man passed the other old man’s ‘dobe. The old Mex would have been a simple soul. Dutchy Steinmuller was an old newspaperman who still had a nose for news.

  “Once he found out his old pal was selling one hell of a heap of charcoal at the Lucky Cuss, Steinmuller surely snooped a mite. He found out they’d pumped the shaft dry, not long before his old pal died so mysterious. So he reported it to the outside world the only way he knew how. Not knowing whether he could trust the one paper in town, he sent his story to all the big news syndicates. They didn’t find his story nearly half as interesting as he did. Why should any editor in, say, Chicago or even L.A. find it interesting that someone was pumping out an old mine? That’s what mine pumps are made for, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never worked in no damn mine,” Skagway Sam remarked in distaste.

  Stringer agreed grimly, “That’s for certain. Tinhorns like you and your late pard, Soapy Smith, go in for less sweaty ways to get rich quick. The out-of-town promoters had no trouble hiring men to do the hard work. Some of ‘em, like Lawyer Lumford and old Murdoch Fraser, were just honest dupes. They’d have wanted as few known crooks as possible connected with their enterprise. That’s why the brains of your own particular outfit, Miss Faro Fran, got so upset when she caught you getting close enough to the mine-stock promoters to cadge some stock off them. She wanted it cash and carry with no connections on paper between you and them. She’d made a deal with them to handle rough stuff that didn’t tie in too close with the Lucky Cuss, right?”

  Skagway Sam’s voice was tabby-cat gentle as he asked, “What rough stuff might we be talking about, old son?”

  Stringer shot a knowing albeit somewhat worried smile at the four armed men who had him boxed against the rear wall of the pool hall as he said, “The kind you’re best at, of course. None of the confidence men or even their company guards wanted to be anywhere near that old charcoal burner when he was found dead. So you made sure he’d be found dead at a time anyone he’d ever sold a lick of charcoal to had an alibi. That even fooled old Dutch Steinmuller. He couldn’t figure out what was going on. He only knew something was up. Then he discovered the mine shaft he’d kept reporting as pumped dry was suddenly filled with water again. That was the magic missing word: again. He sent a hasty wire. Strapped for eating money after all he’d wasted on postage to no avail, he tried to save a nickel by leaving out one vital word. It came over the wire as an urgent message that the Tombstone Lode was flooded, period. Nobody paid attention. I’d have never heard about it at all had not some wire-service relay operator, trying to make sense out of a meaningless message, took it upon himself to try to make it make some sense. Somebody spotted Dutchy sending the wire and asked some innocent-sounding questions, or mayhaps the old man just gossiped to the wrong barkeep, or mayhaps none of you knew about that and he just wound up with that rifle ball in him when one of you caught him snooping about the Lucky Cuss for further details. I don’t reckon any judge or jury will worry about the motive, once at least one of you is charged with shooting the poor old cuss, do you?”

  Skagway Sam didn’t answer just yet. One of his gunslicks growled, “He knows too much and we’ll never get a crack at him any better than this one, boss.”

  Skagway Sam smiled crookedly across the pool table at Stringer as he purred, “Nobody will be coming down off the slopes this side of three, Pecos. I’d sort of like to know just how much he really knows. How much do you really know, old son?”

  Stringer said, “The law will have to sort out some of the details. But I reckon I have the general outline drawn to my satisfaction.”

  Skagway Sam chuckled, suggesting, “Draw it more to my own satisfaction, MacKail. All this time, I been thinking we was pals. If we ain’t pals, who in blue blazes has been gunning for both of us since first we met?”

  Stringer shook his head. “Nice try. I surely would have let that border Mex badman gun you in the Tucson yards had I known then what I know now. But I didn’t. So when Jesus Garcia tried to pay you back for killing old Morales, who could have been kin for all I know, I acted the fool and only did what came natural. Lucky for me, Garcia was a wanted man. You sent a shemale confederate back in hopes of finding out what on earth could be going on. I thought I got into Miss Tillie sort of easy, but I reckon I owe you and Miss Faro Fran for a pleasant layover in Tucson. Once she’d sort of gotten to know me better, she wired on ahead that I was about as dumb and harmless as you hoped I might be.

  “Your boy, Knuckles, started up with me on his own. We can both agree he was simply a stupid bully boy, of no use to you or me. Our big dramatic scene out on the street that time gave you a no-lose grandstand play. Knuckles didn’t know he was on his own until even he could figure he was. Had he killed me in front of God and everybody, they’d have arrested him, you and the others would have just seemed surprised, and I’d have been out of your way. When Knuckles backed down once more it gave you the chance to declare your undying love for me. Then you sent Knuckles after me again, giving him one last chance to prove himself, and when that didn’t work, you got rid of him as useless. I’m still trying to figure out whether it was you or Faro Fran who decided to blow me up, more than once.”

  Skagway Sam smiled expansively and said, “Oh, that was my own notion, old son. Old Fran kept saying there was no sense killing you if you didn’t know nothing. I figured that sooner or later you’d find out something and, as we can all see, you sure went and did, you nosy cuss.”

  “That bushy-browed pal who wired a warning about me while you and Faro Fran were over in L.A. must have told you I was good, eh?”

  The burly tinhorn replied, “He warned us you was the best, and that you’d exposed salted-mine schemes before. By the way, we ain’t seen old Klondike since we sent him after you last night. Would you like to tell us anything about that, seeing these would seem to be your last words in any case?”

  Stringer said, “I’m not sure. Would this Klondike with the bushy eyebrows be the gent who’s so free with dynamite bombs?”

  Skagway Sam nodded jovially. “He sure would. You must have more damn lives than a cat. But I
reckon we’ve about run out of things to say, don’t you?”

  Stringer didn’t answer with words. At four-to-one odds there was only one sensible answer, so he drew and fired as he crabbed sideways with his back to the wall. His first shot took Skagway Sam in the groin, blowing off one ball and dropping him to the floor, bawling in pure agony. Even before he got there, Stringer had shot the one called Pecos in the mouth, snapping off his front teeth but curing his toothache, before it could start, by severing his brain stem. Then the space where Stringer had been sliding along the wall was pockmarked by hot lead, and powdered plaster drifted amid the gunsmoke. Meanwhile he’d taken a headfirst dive under the pool table, landed on one shoulder, and kept rolling to wind up at the feet of the two gunslicks on the far side.

  Since they were still peering across the table into the gunsmoke where he might have been, Stringer’s two shots raked up into their guts, and they went down as well.

  That left Stringer with exactly one round in the wheel. Skagway Sam was rolling all over the messy floor, bawling for his mother, a doctor, and at least a dozen saints. Stringer growled, “Aw, shut up,” and silenced him forever with his last shot.

  Then he sat up, ears ringing and belly filled with butterflies, and began to reload as Wes Rhodes dashed in, his own gun drawn, to gasp, “Stringer, did you make it?” Then the lawman peered deeper into the blue haze to add, “Jesus H. Christ, I see you did, you murderous bundle of bobcats! What in the hell do they feed growing boys in Calaveras County, anyways?”

  Stringer got to his feet—it wasn’t easy—and hung on to the pool table with one hand as he holstered his gun with the other and asked, “Did you hear Skagway Sam admit to enough guilty knowledge to justify my suicide attempt?”

  Rhodes pointed his chin at the small window opened a crack, above the six or eight bullet holes in the rear wall, as he replied, “I did. So did the two deputies with me. I got ‘em covering us out front and back, just in case you failed to wipe out the gang entire. What got into you just now, Stringer? We kept waiting and waiting for you to give the password to move in. The next thing we knowed all hell was busting loose in here! Didn’t your mother never warn you how dumb it was for one man to take on four in a stand-up shoot-out?”

  Deciding he might not puke, after all, Stringer let go of the table and told the lawman, “That’s why I wasn’t standing up near the end. The original plan, as you may recall, was for me to question Skagway Sam lonesome. I wasn’t expecting those others to butt in and, when they did, I hadn’t tricked their boss into admitting all that much.”

  “You still should have signaled to move in,” said Rhodes.

  “To what end?” Stringer asked. “You couldn’t have held them on anything. There’s no law against watching a gent shoot eight ball in a public pool hall. I was about to signal you when Skagway Sam figured he’d heard enough, as well. After that there just wasn’t time to do anything but what I had to.”

  Wes Rhodes grimaced down at the bodies sprawled across the blood-spattered floor. “You sure done it. I don’t hear the usual thundering herd coming this way. I reckon you must have just cleaned the plows of all the brave ones in the bunch and I know for a fact that most of the town, innocent or guilty, is up by the Lucky Cuss right now.”

  He hauled out his pocket watch, consulted it, and said, “The sheriff’s posse we sent for figures to get here from Bisbee sooner or later. I don’t see how they’ll ever make it before them other crooks blast the salted face and start passing out ore samples and worthless mining stock. I can rustle up half a dozen good men to back our play. With these four real killers out of the way, we ought to be able to nip the flimflam in the bud, right?”

  “Wrong,” said Stringer, soberly. “Such a move would be braver than smart for three reasons. To begin with, we don’t know how many in the bunch are real killers. At least one bushy-browed bastard with a crippled gun hand but Lord knows how much dynamite is still running loose, and the company guards up the slope are still an unknown quality. In the second place, it will be after banking hours when they blast, around three P.M.”

  Rhodes frowned, protesting, “Hell, Stringer, nobody’s likely to ask for a bank loan afore they buy any mining stock. Them poor unsuspecting dudes came here rich enough to invest in the mine if it looked like a good investment!”

  “Few if any rich folk carry more hard cash on them than they can afford to lose,” Stringer argued. “They carry checkbooks. That takes us to my third reason for giving the con men plenty of rope. It’ll be too late to cash one check here in Tombstone. Most of said checks figure to be drawn on California banks to begin with. I’m betting the crooks really running the operation will grab that same special train, checks and all, to cash ‘em in L.A. Then they mean to split up with their swag, long before their dupes here in Tombstone know they’ve been left holding the bag.”

  Rhodes whistled. “They sure must be dirty crooks— even for crooks, I mean.”

  “Confidence men are betrayers by profession,” Stringer declared. “The longer their dupes here stay in operation, the farther away the ringleaders mean to be with the money when it finally sinks in that they sold a soggy hole in the ground.”

  Smiling boyishly, Rhodes said, “It’s a good thing we’re on to them, then. So when do I get to arrest ‘em if you want me to give ‘em some slack?”

  Stringer said, “You don’t have to. Once they cross a state line with their loot it gets to be a federal case. I suggest you wire the U.S. marshal’s office in L.A. They’re not far from the Union Depot, and they’ll know what to do when that special rolls in a few days from now. The freshly stung witnesses they’ll need to convict the bastards will be aboard the same train, see?”

  Rhodes did. He was paid to be a smart lawman. But he still looked sort of wistful as he said, “Shit, you ain’t no fun at all, Stringer. Me and my boys was hoping to share some of the credit, at least.”

  Stringer grimaced down at the body of Skagway Sam. “You can have these four killers, if you want all the paperwork that goes with killing even a killer. We know Knuckles Ashton was wanted in other parts and he was the sissy of the bunch.”

  Rhodes studied silently for a time. He was fairly honest, as well as pragmatic. Then, as Stringer hoped, practical considerations about rewards and reps won out. “It’s sure lucky for you that once I heard Skagway Sam say all them mean things about himself I come in that front door just in time to save you, right?” he said, grinning wickedly.

  “That’s about the size of it. But you’d better cut your deputies in on it if you want to keep it a family matter,” Stringer declared, a matching grin on his face.

  “I would have, anyways. Both the boys are kissing kin. I’d best send one to scout up some help with all these cadavers afore they commence to stink. This afternoon figures to get hotter afore it gets cooler. What am I supposed to tell that posse from Bisbee when it shows up? They’re likely to feel mighty chagrined if I tell ‘em they rid all that way on a fool’s errand.”

  Stringer agreed, “They’ll have some work cut out for them when they ride in. I figure they ought to make it this side of sundown if I know anything about maps and ponies. They’ll get here somewhat tuckered from a half-day’s riding in this kind of weather. So we’d best rest and water ‘em in, say, the Crystal Palace as we hold a war conference with ‘em.”

  Rhodes said, “That ought to soothe ‘em, some. But the railroad dispatcher tells me that special is pulling out for parts west, just around sundown. Won’t that be cutting our war plans thin, whatever the hell they are?”

  “No. The timing should be just right. We won’t want the sheriff’s men moving in to arrest all the rascals around the Lucky Cuss until after that trainload of dudes and the ringleaders pulls out. Exposing the flimflam while the flimflammed suckers are still here could cause a lot of confusion and the crooks could get rid of the evidence amid all the tears and recriminations. They have to be nailed by federal marshals with the goods on ‘em, after crossing at
least one state line, unless you’d rather see a local county trial drag on for years. But if you and your own town lawmen feel really busy, you might want to make an arrest or two on purely local matters before the curtain goes up for the bigger show.”

  Asked what he meant by purely local matters, Stringer explained, “The hotshots running the mining-stock swindle were too slick to dirty their own hands with local blood. They hired Skagway Sam and Faro Fran to deal with any killing that was called for. I have reason to believe it was Faro Fran who really called the shots. As you can plainly see, old Skagway was little more than a mean bully boy. The gal struck me as a heap smarter. She reined him in when he got tough just for the hell of it. But that means she gave final approval when her boys really got around to someone she thought it wise to kill. So the murder of old Dutch Steinmuller, likely the mysterious death of Morales, the charcoal burner, and the murder of Miss Iona Fraser with a dynamite bomb meant for me can be attributed to Miss Faro Fran, directly.”

  Wes Rhodes growled, “Cochise County will be proud to contribute a rope to hang such a murdersome bitch. She and her whores ought to be up at the Lucky Cuss right now, too!”

  Shaking his head, Stringer said, “I thought you were paying attention out back. Skagway Sam’s backup told him they’d been sent by Faro Fran. Her whores may be up there by the mine, but she was down here, minding the store. By now she’ll be packing, unless she’s deaf. She can’t hope to hide out here in town. So what’ll you bet she and Klondike will want to board that sunset train with the others?”