by Lou Cameron
When he got there, Stringer found the town boss pacing the veranda, illuminated only by lamplight from inside. Big Ben said he was sorry to hear about the way someone had tried to blow Stringer up and added, “You’d best bed down over here „til the boys from the county get back. Then I’ll be expecting you to leave with ’em. I’ve been trying to go along with you and the San Francisco Sun, MacKail, but to tell the truth, I just can’t afford all the death and destruction occasioned by your visit to our fair city.”
Stringer smiled sheepishly and protested, “I don’t recall my starting any of it, Ben.” But he didn’t push it any further for the moment. Telling the man who owned the town he’d leave when he got damned good and ready could be foolish as well as rude and, for all he knew, he and Doc Owens might even figure something out together. The old Doc had county records at his disposal, if he’d thought to go through them, and it was growing obvious that neither of the Lowendorf brothers could have wound up out here in Esperanza. The town hadn’t been here all that long and Ben Winslow would have surely noticed an older gent acting as rich and powerful as himself.
The town boss cut into Stringer’s chain of thoughts by announcing, “The lady of the house has already turned in for the night. So let me show you to a guest room.”
Stringer let him. The narrow bed against one wall had been made up recent with fresh lavender-scented bedding. All four walls were foot-thick ’dobe and the Spanish grille over the one small window precluded easy delivery of another dynamite bomb. But on the other hand the slit windows of that other ’dobe had been impossible to open bottle-glass.
As if he’d read Stringer’s mind, Big Ben said, “We got us an armed Cahuilla stablehand and his brighter watchdog sleeping just across the back yard. You’ll find your pisspot under the bunk if you need it. Our day maid will waken you with hot towels and such afore breakfast. We rise early around here. I got to get my own ass back to bed and I’ll see you come sunrise, Lord willing and we don’t get bombed or thunderstruck no more around here.”
They shook on it, and as soon as he found himself alone Stringer shoved his dusty gladstone under the bed with the chamber pot. He shucked everything but his jeans, and made sure the solid oaken door barred on the inside before he trimmed the lamp, peeled out of the jeans, and got under the covers in his birthday suit to see if he could catch some much-needed shut-eye.
He would have found it easier to drop off if the pretty but shrill Florida Winslow hadn’t been carrying on somewhere in another part of the house, in shrieks just loud enough to keep him awake but not loud enough for him to savvy. He knew it was considered impolite, but who was watching as he eased out of bed and flattened one ear to the thinner but dammit not that thin door. It didn’t help much. Big Ben was arguing back in a lower but less hysterical and therefore easier to follow voice. The lady of the house seemed to be under the impression she was a banshee and so she could have been carrying on like that about most anything.
But when Stringer understood her husband to be saying, “Damn it, the man had to bed down somewhere and I just plain don’t want my town known as a dangerous place to visit!” He moved back to the bed, feeling awkward and out of place.
After a while, the muffled sounds of strife faded away. Or he fell asleep. It wasn’t all that clear when someone jerked him awake by knocking on the door by the dawn’s early light. Stringer stumbled over to it, gun in hand, and threw it open before he remembered what Winslow had said about the Indian maid, or that he didn’t have a stitch on at the moment. But the moon-faced Cahuilla gal just handed him the tray with wet and dry towels, shallow basin and soap, as if she was used to sleepy-eyed naked white men staring at her. So he thanked her just as calmly and, once she’d left, bathed himself awake and got dressed pronto. For there was a goose bump nip to the morning air after that unexpected storm. It was going to take a day or more for the thin air and blazing desert sun to get things baking properly again. So, meanwhile, the weather figured to be pleasant for a change.
Breakfast was served on the veranda, by the same Indian maid. Neither Ben nor Florida Winslow looked as if they’d spent half the night arguing about an awkward guest. Stringer still felt awkward as he broke bread with them. He felt obliged to tell Florida he was sorry for putting her to so much trouble. She looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she assured him he was welcome as the day was long. He wasn’t sure how long a day they were fixing to have, but breakfast seemed to take at least a million years.
Then, at last, Big Ben pushed back from the table to haul out a claro cigar and announce he had some morning chores to tend. Florida didn’t argue when Stringer said he wanted to use that telephone at the general store as well. She just nodded at him, sweetly told her husband to mind what she’d been saying, and got up to go back inside, giving them both the excuse to pop up from the table as well.
Stringer rolled a morning smoke as he strode in step with his cigar-puffing host. As they covered the short walk back to the center of Esperanza, Stringer glanced at the bright but sunless gray sky to opine, “We could be in for more rain. Do you reckon anyone will start out from Barstow in a motor car before the sun’s back out for certain?”
Winslow opined, “Sun or, more likely, the moon. Nobody with a lick of sense risks crossing dry wash one with the thunder bird flapping about up yonder.”
They could see how many borax rigs were parked along the main street, now. Big Ben pointed ahead with his chin and said, “There you go. The mule skinners know better than to bog down out on the playas when they can wait for things to dry out here in Esperanza with all the comforts of home.”
Stringer didn’t answer. It wouldn’t have been polite to comment on another gent’s lucky streak. Winslow said, “Esperanza means hope or ambition, you know. It was my Florida’s notion to give our town the name. I’ll allow it still don’t look like much, but give us just a few more years to get more settlers out here, and watch our smoke!”
Stringer said, “Well, my feature on the mummy mystery ought to attract some interest to your real estate venture and, as long as I’m stuck here, I may as well take notes on the other possible advantages of settling in the great wide open spaces. You won’t mind if I poke about, asking questions, will you?”
Big Ben smiled crookedly and replied, “Who in thunder’s going to stop you, even if I told you different?”
They both chuckled. Then, as they made their way through a gap to the broad wagon trace cum main street, a bleary-eyed mule skinner barred their way, coiled lash in one hand and a brown glass bottle in the other, to blurt, “Hey, where can a man get laid in this one horse wide spot in the road?”
Big Ben looked disgusted, but politely offered directions to the one house of ill repute on the far side of town. As he and Stringer moved on, he confided in an oddly prim tone, “If it was up to me alone I wouldn’t abide that sort of shit. I doubt I’ll put any more bargals in my saloon, now that neither Tessie nor that Jenny worked out. Women just cause too much trouble for the fleeting and expensive pleasure they can offer us poor brutes.”
Stringer chuckled and said, “The position can get ridiculous, too. Who’s that English philosopher we seem to be quoting?”
Big Ben shrugged and replied, “He was right, whoever he might have been. I swear there are times I savvy why priests don’t fool with women. For it’s tough as hell to get anything really important done with gals about to complexicate a man’s thinking.”
Stringer said that while total celibacy didn’t sound like much fun, he followed the older man’s drift, adding, “Back at my boarding house on Rincon Hill there’s an artist’s model, who’s been flirting with me bareass, through an artfully open door, ever since she moved in. I’ll allow I’ve had a hell of a time getting started on my typewriter after passing by her distracting doorway on the second-story landing. But if I owned the boarding house, I could make her behave, Ben. Who says you have to abide flirty females in your town, if you don’t want to?”
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nbsp; Winslow looked sheepish and said, “My old woman and some of her more sedate-acting friends, for openers. The mule skinners passing through make all the gals in town edgy. Florida says that since boys will be boys, and mule skinners more so, it makes sense for us to provide them with a safer outlet for their boyish notions. That’s what proper gals call whores, safer outlets, ain’t that a bitch?”
Stringer smiled understandingly. He’d been around enough to understand the pragmatic mindset of the outwardly prim and proper matrons of the Edwardian upper crust. He told the man married up with one, “She may have a point. I recall a cow town where they elected a Calvinist minister mayor and ran all the whores and saloonkeepers on up the line. They had to bring ’em back when the drovers passing through brought their own liquor and commenced to rope and rape librarians and such.”
Big Ben looked unconvinced. He said, “I’ll be in my office in the back of the saloon if you or anyone else needs me. I got to go over the books better. Every time I get a bank statement I seem to have less on tap than I figured.”
Stringer said he’d never been able to balance a bank account, either, and as they parted friendly, he strode into the general store to use the telephone line to Barstow Central.
It was just as tough to get through to his feature editor again, and once he had, Sam Barca cussed him for wasting so much time, adding, “Damn it, Stringer, it’s not as if you’re working on the identity of Jack The Ripper, down there. At best you may have uncovered a sordid case of fratricide. That’s only if you could prove who anyone was or how much money we could be talking about. Guesswork about what might have happened doesn’t make much of a feature, you know.”
Stringer said, “I’m not arguing with anyone on that, Sam. But I can’t leave until I sign a deposition on that last shootout with a more recent and less mysterious killer. So what the hey. I’m pretty sure that whoever busted open that strongbox got away with a pretty penny.” He brought Sam up to date on more recent events out at the discovery site, leaving out the way he’d wound up in bed with Binnie the blacksmith, and added, “I’ll let you know when a sixty or seventy-year-old gunslinger comes at me. Everyone out to stop me, so far, has been too young to be the survivor of the Lowendorf tragedy. So guess who must have hired ’em, for considerable money?”
Sam Barca had his own nose for news and hadn’t made it to the feature desk at The Sun by being slow. He said, “I like Lowendorf Tragedy as the title. But I fear you’re trying to cut the trail too far out from the old lunatic’s present whereabouts. If I were you, I’d check records down at the county seat in San Berdoo. There wouldn’t have been any Esperanza, or even a Barstow way back when.”
“Then why is he so worried about me poking about out here near that wagon?” asked Stringer. To which his boss could only reply, “Hell, he has to be crazy. Never mind about San Berdoo. I can get as much out of the county clerk as you can. Get what you can on that last hired gun and come on in. By the way, do you have any pictures to go with your copy?”
Stringer said, “I’ve got some pencil sketches of the mummies themselves, and, oh, yeah, I have some actual photographs of the old wagon, if they turn out right.”
Then he scowled and muttered, half to himself, “Jesus, I clean forgot about that! I’ll get back to you, Sam.”
He thanked the old gent who ran the store and strode out front at a hurried pace. But he slowed down a mite as he passed the beanery and considered just how he was supposed to approach Binnie’s forge.
But as it turned out, she’d hauled the sliding doors across the opening. It wasn’t that hot this morning, but she no doubt felt she had to sleep, sometime.
He hoped she was sleeping alone as he worked his way around to the back, looked around, and when he saw nothing moving in sight but all those damned mules corraled in the middle distance, he knocked on Binnie’s door.
A million years went by. He was about to turn away when the door opened a crack and he heard her say, “Oh, Lord, I was sort of planning on some shut-eye, but get in here before someone sees you in broad daylight, you amorous fool!”
He ducked inside and took her in his arms when he noticed how naked she was. But he told her, “I didn’t darken your door to get forward with you, honey. At least I didn’t mean to until just now. I forgot to take those photographic plates with me when I ducked out last night, and now my boss wants ’em.”
She snuggled closer, saying, “Well, he’ll just have to wait. Is that just a morning erection I feel against my tummy, or are you sincere in your affections?”
He laughed and slid his palms down her bare back to cup a naked buttock in each hand and hug her pelvis closer to his own. But she winced and said, “Ouch, take it easy with my poor fanny, you fiend. I got a nasty little burn last night, out front at the forge.”
He moved his offending hand to another part of her firm derriere as he asked her, “How’d you manage to do that, honey? Did you back into the fire?”
She began to bump and grind against him as she told him, “Not hardly. I suppose I was a mite chilled from that rain when I first started. Anyway, the seat of my jeans were cool enough. But one of those damned copper rivets holding on the hip pockets heated up somehow and, well, you’re an old cowhand, you must have been rivet-branded by Levi Strauss in your own time, right?”
He laughed, scooped her up, and told her as he carried her toward the bedroom, “Those copper rivets are an occupational hazard of the cattle industry. I’ll show you where I’ve been burnt by one, more than once, as soon as I get out of my own blue jeans, you poor little branded thing.”
So he did and she offered to kiss him everywhere he’d ever gotten burnt by hunkering too close to a camp fire in copper-riveted jeans. But he had a better idea and the subject didn’t come up again until they’d torn off a daylight quickie and she got up to fetch the exposed plates while he rolled them a smoke. When she brought them back and sat her bare love-moistened rump on the starched but rumpled sheet, she winced again and murmured, “Damn! That’s one hell of a place to burn a lady! Why do they put those damned rivets on blue jeans to begin with?”
He sealed the smoke, lit it, and leaned back with her, saying, “To keep ’em from tearing at the seams, of course. I did this feature on Levi Strauss one time. They told me the sort of folk who buy their work pants can be rough as hell on ’em. So when a Frisco tailor called Jake Davis came up with the notion of copper rivets… Jesus H. Christ! That’s it!”
She naturally asked what was wrong as he sat bolt upright in bed, snuffing out the smoke. He told her, “I have to get dressed and then I have to take a good clear picture of that one male mummy behind the saloon. It’s not there in the pencil sketches Fred Remington let me have. But that dead jasper with the old Hall carbine in his hands had copper rivets holding the crotch of his jeans together!”
She yawned and asked what that meant. He told her, “Levi might have made blue jeans just before the Civil War, but they never held ’em together with rivets until the 1880s. So that one body just won’t fit among the others, dressed so old-timey. He never went east or west with those women and children. His body was tossed in with ’em ten or twenty years after they were dead!”
Binnie the blacksmith insisted on tagging along. He had to let her. It was her camera. They didn’t find Big Ben Winslow at the saloon. Nobody could say where he was. So they trudged on over to the Winslow house, and by now it was starting to get dusty again, albeit not too hot as yet.
Florida Winslow raised one eyebrow but didn’t comment on the company Stringer was keeping as she came to her door. When he explained they had to get in to take some pictures of those mummies with Binnie’s box camera, Florida frowned thoughtfully and said, “Ben’s key ring ought to be over at the saloon if he hasn’t got it on him. You say he’s not there?”
Stringer nodded and said, “I asked about getting into your man’s so-called museum, ma’am. The barkeep opined Big Ben never brought it over, if it’s not hanging above his desk, t
here. As I recall, myself, the key he let us in with before was among a heap of others on a big old ringlike jailhouse turnkey’s pack.”
She sighed and said, “Wait here. I’ll see if he left it in his den among his guns and such.”
As soon as they were alone for the moment, Bin-nie nudged him and murmured, “How come she knows about us? Did you tell them?”
He assured her, “No, did you? Guilty looks as guilty acts and it only stands to reason I’d need a famous local photographer like you to snap at mummy crotches.”
She laughed despite herself and told him not to talk dirty. Florida Winslow came back, holding a big familiar key ring. She asked if it was the one he was looking for and when he told her he thought it might be, she hesitated before handing it over, saying, “I’m not sure Ben’s going to like this. You’re not going to move anything about over there, are you?”
He assured her he only needed one clear photograph and, since she seemed so curious, and had such a perfect right to be, he explained, “Esperanza is going to wind up really famous if my hunch is right about that one male mummy. We’ve all been running in circles, getting nowhere, by assuming all this time that the boys found the remains of one family, or even party, out there at the wagon box.”
She handed him the key ring, but still looked puzzled enough to inspire him to explain, “It’s a whole new kettle of fish if we assume both the long-lost Lowendorf brothers forged on with their draft brutes for water, leaving the women and children to guard their supplies, strong box, and the last of their water with that one old carbine. If either man packed a pistol, he took it on with him, see?”
Both women were staring at him blankly. He insisted, “Don’t either of you get it? Nobody in the original party did anyone else dirty. They were only lost and desperate. They did the only thing they could, and it didn’t work. The men forged on with no water at all, hoping to make it back to the river. The long healed-over trail they left may or may not mean they headed more or less in the right direction, wandering some on desert that hadn’t been too cut-up with roads or even trails, yet. Had they made it, there’d be no story. They’d have come back with water, hitched the team up again, and been on their way.”
