by Lou Cameron
Winslow shook his head and said, “I never rode out to where these folk were found. It’s a good ride out, hot and dusty both ways.”
But Hamp said, “I rid out there with the boys. The wagon busted through the caliche aimed due south. That’s not saying they might not have circled any old way, if they was lost and running low on water.
“There was no sign of their team,” Hamp opined with a studious frown as he shifted his cud. “You could see where the crust had been busted long ago and then sort of healed over with the help of the half dozen times it’s likely rained out since then. We tried to follow the tracks of the team but they faded out as the ground got firmer to the south.”
Winslow wrinkled his nose impatiently and said, “Coming or going, with or without a heavy load, they still died long before that borax wagon trace, or this water stop, were here. If they’d had a sensible wagon trace to follow, or my bore wells to refill their water bags from, they never would have died and dried out so pathetic to begin with.”
Stringer agreed that seemed obvious and asked if anything aside from the bodies had been hauled into town. He was almost sorry he’d asked when Hamp hauled a heavy crate filled with dust colored bric-a-brac from under the planks, saying, “We brung in every fool thing but the wagon itself. As anyone can see, howsomeever, they wasn’t packing much of value, or even interest.”
Ben Winslow nodded and said, “We made an inventory and I told the infernal historical society they’d be welcome to a copy. Like Hamp says, they were only packing along the bare needs of any desert travelers, from picks and shovels to a baby bottle for that dried-out tyke. They never starved to death. You wouldn’t want to eat it, now, but there’s a whole keg of flour, set hard as cement, back under there, somewheres.”
Hamp said, “Beans, too, and some cracked corn they’d likely brung along for their team, be it oxen or mules. There was only one water bag left in the wagon bed, though. We figure the man who led the team on in hopes of finding more water took most of the water bags with him to refill.”
Stringer grimaced at the grim picture, added his moonlit ride out from Barstow, and decided, “There was no way a man leading thirsty brutes on foot could have made it, back in those days.”
Winslow nodded soberly and agreed, “Damned A. Barstow wasn’t there, then, let alone in this town. He might have found water at the Mojave, if he was searching for it in the wet season. But, hell, if the river had been running and they’d had any notion where it ran, they’d have never wound up so far out to the northeast, the poor greenhorns.”
Stringer agreed but said, “I’d like to take a look at the actual site where these mummies were found.” Winslow shrugged and said, “None of the boys are about to ride that far out, until this side of, say, three or four, when it commences to cool down again. Let’s go back to my tap room and wet our whistles before it gets too hot to drink.”
Stringer saw no reason to argue about that. With a last glance at the lined-up mummies he followed the town law and town boss back out into the now ferocious sunlight. As the three of them trudged back across the dusty yard Winslow asked in a deceptively casual tone, “Now that you’ve seen our natural wonders, can you tell me how come the infernal state professors want to jump our claim, MacKail?”
Stringer shrugged and replied, “Hard to say. They could really be out to study those mummies seriously or they could just be acting officious. Either way, it’s a good thing for you that you’ve decided to go along with me and the Sun on the story.”
As Hamp scampered ahead to open the back door for them, Ben Winslow frowned dubiously and said, “I didn’t know I had. How come it’s so good for me if you blab about all my business in the big city newspapers, MacKail?”
Stringer said, “It’s good for you more ways than one. How many tickets would P.T. Barnum have sold to see Jumbo if he’d kept his ownership of the big elephant a secret? It didn’t hurt his claim to own the elephant, either, once he’d been listed in all the big city papers as the discoverer and sole proprietor of the same.”
Winslow brightened and exclaimed, “By gum, they do say possession is nine points of the law and it ain’t as if I had a deed to any of them dead prune-faces. But what if some long lost kin was to read your story and come forward to claim my damn mummies, MacKail?”
They stepped into the dark but no longer cool interior as Stringer said soberly, “They’d beat you in court, if they could prove anything. On the other hand, you and your boys making an open disclosure of your find makes your find more interesting to the general public and sort of pulls the fangs of any do-gooder mummy-lovers to steal your thunder.”
They moved back into the tap room. Half the crowd had drifted out to fall down somewhere cooler. Tin roofs were simply never meant for the Mojave this close to high noon. But the Steamer beer on ice below the bar helped a mite as the man who owned even the ice asked Stringer how in hell publicity would keep long lost relatives from pestering him about his mummified property.
Stringer took a sip from the bottle, enjoying the feel of the cold wet glass in his hot hand, as he explained, “I just told you there’s no way to prevent bona fide kin from claiming the whole tent show on you. But the odds are against anyone coming forward at this late date, and a public statement that you’d just love to find out who those dead folk were gives you the very excuse you need to exhibit them to public view, for a modest fee to cover your own expenses, of course.”
Winslow smiled thinly and said, “Keep talking. I admire a man who can grasp a business opportunity when he sees it staring him in the face. What do we say after we announce we’re only charging two bits a head to view the wonders of the desert, if only in the hope of identificating them afore proper Christian or perhaps Mormon burial, of course?”
Stringer grinned back and said, “You’re never going to get a quarter a peek. You can view Lulu The Crocodile Girl or The Hoochy-Kootchy Dancer for a dime. But they do say dimes add up.”
He took another sip and added, “You’re going to have to set up a short-line coach service from Barstow and offer more in the way of a freak show than you have out back, so far. For that’s one hell of a hot and dusty ride, just to look over half a dozen dead folk. I’d spring for more light, glass cases and some extra local wonders. You can order all the two-headed snakes and prong-horned jack rabbits you want from the supply houses in Chicago.”
Winslow nodded and said, “I follow your drift and I’m good at starting new enterprisings. I started this damned town from no more than a bore well. But what’s in all of this for you, MacKail?”
Stringer chuckled fondly and replied, “Maybe a Sunday feature with my byline. I’d rather help you make a buck on the story than fight you and your whole town for it. I’ve found a lot of good old boys sort of suspicious of outsiders until they found out I was willing to spell their names right and give their side of the tale. So how about it, Ben? Are we on the same side, now?”
Ben Winslow smiled boyishly, stuck out his hand, and said, “We are. But I don’t like you well enough to sleep with you. So we’re going to have to fix you up for La Siesta and then we’ll run you out to the death scene late this afternoon, hear?”
CHAPTER FOUR
The trail town and last water stop out along the borax wagon trace had an estimated population of a hundred and fifty. Like the saloon, the business establishments along the wagon trace, where it became “Main Street” on its way through Esperanza, had been built for cheap flash by Ben Winslow with false fronts and whitewashed siding over balloon framing. They’d have closed for business during the hotter hours of the desert day in any case. So it hardly mattered that their interiors reflected the temperature outside at any given time. The housing the locals had to survive La Siesta in, back from the wide dusty main street, had of course been built the lower and more sensible way with thick adobe and Cahuilla labor. Neither ’dobe soil nor Indian sweat cost much, and it didn’t much matter what a house looked like on the Mojave as long as it t
ook its time cooling off at night or heating up by day.
Ben Winslow had told Miss Tessie, the bleach blonde who pumped a player piano so well, to put Stringer to bed for a spell in a cool safe place. So she’d led him out back beyond the so-called museum to an even lower-slung ’dobe with a low picket fence and a pathetic little garden out front. Someone had planted spring bulbs earlier. Whether they’d ever flowered or not, they’d gone to dry straw by now and it wasn’t even high summer yet.
He’d noticed Miss Tessie was mighty spectacular from the front, and that her face wasn’t bad, either. But it wasn’t until they were inside the cool dark ’dobe and she murmured, “Well, this is it,” in a soft sullen tone, that he noticed how upset she seemed. He left it for her to tell him what was eating her, if she wanted to. The ’dobe was a two roomer, with a combined kitchen and parlor in the front and a bedroom in the back on the north side illuminated by windows that seemed little more than rifle slits, even though the local Cahuilla Indians were harmless desert food gatherers that most whites called “Diggers”.
A long-legged and sassy-faced rag dolly of French design reclined atop the neatly made single bed. Miss Tessie picked the oversized toy up and told him to make himself to home as she carried her dolly out into the other room. Stringer hauled off his jacket, hung his hat and gun-rig over a bedpost, but sat down otherwise fully dressed as he got out the makings to roll and smoke in the first decent shade he’d found in the last hour or so. Outside, it had reached a hundred by now. But it was dry heat, the air was thin because the Mojave lay two or more thousand feet above sea level, and the thick walls and low ceiling of rammed earth over log beams and brush took a lot of baking before it let the heat through. He knew that by the time the heavy construction soaked up an afternoon’s worth of heat, the sun and outside temperature would both be going down and the ’dobe would stay comfortably warm inside most of the night.
He’d just sealed his neatly rolled Bill Durham with his tongue when the busty blonde came back in, wearing nothing but her high buttoned shoes and black mesh stockings. Her natural hair color was about as black, he couldn’t help noticing. She walked around to the far side of the bed, hauled down the counterpane, and sat her bare rump on the fresh linen with her back to him as she bent to unbutton her shoes, softly muttering, “Do you have to smoke in here? There’s not much ventilation and the stink settles on everything.”
Stringer gulped and tucked the rolled smoke in with the tobacco pouch, unlit, to reply, “I wasn’t expecting to enjoy such a serious nap, ma’am.”
She sighed and replied, “Neither was I. But orders are orders and Big Ben told me to…” and then she was bawling like a baby with her bare back to him and a corner of the counterpane held up to her face. So Stringer put an awkward hand on one of her naked shoulders to comfort her, murmuring, “Let’s eat this apple a bite at a time, ma’am. I never asked your boss to worry this much about my creature comforts.”
She sobbed, “I’m not a whore, damn it. At least I never meant to work as no whore when I took the job this spring. They told me at the employment agency in San Bernadino that I’d be working here as a dancer. I thought that meant I was supposed to dance for the customers, not with the customers.”
He told her, soothingly, “Well, you don’t have to dance for or with me, if you don’t want to.”
But she insisted, “Big Ben will get sore if he finds out I didn’t do as he told me. Just let me get used to the notion. You’re a nice-looking young gent and I won’t mind, as long as you do it gentle to me.”
Stringer sighed wistfully and said, “That tears it. For if there’s one way better than a bucket of ice water to cool a man down, it’s a lady assuring him in a tone of sweet reason that she doesn’t really mind, as long as she doesn’t have to pay attention.”
Tessie chuckled softly despite herself and confided, “You must have been married one time, too.” Then she went back to taking off her shoes, adding, “I’ll try to respond to you, damn it. It’s not that I don’t think you’re nice, and sort of good-looking. I guess I just resent the way Big Ben takes it for granted that I don’t have any feelings, or any say in the matter.”
Stringer said he understood. He did. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take full advantage of his odd host’s crude hospitality. For while Tessie was mighty tempting in her own flashy way, he felt a certain distaste, as well as pity, for the poor passed-around playpretty.
But whether he did anything to her or not, he seemed to be stuck with her company as well as her bed, unless he aimed to spend the siesta frying his brains outside on the deserted streets. So he commenced to haul off his boots, for openers, as he told her, “Maybe we’d best just try for some shut-eye before it gets too hot to drop off. If we don’t say anything to your boss, one way or the other, it shouldn’t matter to him how well we got along.”
She hesitated, then murmured, “He’s sure to ask me what you told me. He told me, I mean he out and out ordered me, to get the truth out of you. But I’m not sure I know what he’s talking about, damn it.”
Stringer chuckled, shedding his shirt, and raised his rump from the bedding to slide out of his jeans as well, telling her, “Don’t fret about it. I do. He’s suffering small town suspicions and thinks anyone from a town that rates its own whole horse has to be out to city slicker him. So he wants you to pump me.”
By this time he was under the counterpane as well, so Tessie rolled her own nude body closer to his and reached down to take his privates firmly in hand, saying, “Oh, all right. But are you sure this is all you want me to do to you?”
He laughed wildly as she proceeded to pump him indeed and might have told her that wasn’t what he’d meant, if it hadn’t felt so good. Then, as he began to respond to her skilled hand and she in turn could feel the way he was rising to the occasion, she suddenly rolled atop him to spit herself on his erection with an excited gasp, sobbing, “Oh, Lordy, you’re mighty handsome, in every way, and it’s been months since I’ve done this with a man I wasn’t mad at!”
He believed her. So even as a part of him felt a wave of mild distaste as their bodies meshed wetly, he felt it only polite to roll her over on her back with a pillow under her rollicking rump so they could do it his way.
She liked it, his way, and the uncertainty of his own feelings, despite the certainty there was just no way to improve on this position, inspired him to take a long time getting all the way and that, in turn, inspired Tessie to go loco en la cabeza as he pounded on and on in mingled desire and distraction.
After she’d climaxed ahead of him, he began to wonder at his own delicate feelings, now that things were feeling so damned swell. But once he’d finished coming in and with her, gripped tightly by her dancer’s legs, with their lips pressed tightly together, and Tessie teasing his tonsils with her tongue, he began to have cold gray dawn thoughts, even though it was barely past noon.
As if she’d read his mind, the trailtown gal sobbed, “Aw, shit, now I’m all mixed up for certain. I don’t have to do this often and, like I said, I usually don’t want to do it at all. But I have to allow I’m pleased as punch at Big Ben, right now. I only wish I knew what he wanted me to ask you about, now that I have pumped you like you asked and vice versa.”
He chuckled fondly and, seeing the damage was done if she had anything else to give him, began to move in her some more, albeit only teasingly, for now, as he said, “I can see you’re just not cut out for bedroom espionage, honey. I’d best explain what’s going on, so’s you can assure Ben I’m not to pull anything sneaky on him.”
He started to bring her up to date on his delicate position with Big Ben and the boys. She knew about the mummies in the other ’dobe, of course, and tried her best to savvy Winslow’s confused and greedy interest in them. But she really liked to fornicate more than she liked to talk, and he had to admit she was a lot better at the one than the other. So they somehow wound up crossways on the bed, with her on top and the covers cast to who-cared-where. It
was getting warmer now, even inside the thick shell of ’dobe and rammed earth. Tessie’s big tits were starting to drip perfumed perspiration from each turgid nipple as she bounced atop him. Some strands of her now moist blond hair had fallen down to frame her pretty, flushed, but rather stupid face as she moaned, “Oh, Lordy, we got to get you out of here before they kill you, Sweety! Do you reckon your pony could carry us into Barstow, double, if we made a break for it right after sundown?”
He rolled her off, rose to get behind her and finish them both off, dog style, and as they fell face down side by side, panting for breath, he decided, “It’s too damned hot for my pony to carry either one of us, right now. But run that part by me again about them killing me, a mite slower, Tessie. I must be missing something here. I thought Ben and the other bullies of this town had calmed down some, about my riding in. I keep trying to tell you I’m no danger to anyone here. I hardly ever lie when the truth is in my favor. I told Ben Winslow and I’m telling you that I only mean to file the simple facts on that long-lost wagon party as I see ’em.”
He propped himself up on one elbow to punch a pillow back in shape as he added, “There’s nothing much to see or say. Even if I could say who in thunder the poor souls were, nobody this side of San Bernadino could be accused of harming one hair on one poor dried-out head. This whole patch of the Mojave was pure desert when they got lost in it, right?”
She shrugged her moist bare shoulders and replied, “If you say so. I have no notion at all why them dead folk are so important to Big Ben. But he’s been acting odd and, well, sort of mean, ever since they were found out there amid the Joshua trees.”
