by Lou Cameron
Binnie cut in to say softly, “But their menfolk never came back. Those poor desperate women and children could do nothing but wait, and hope in vain, until they just died, one by one, to dry up and go on waiting all those years and years!”
Florida didn’t look any more cheerful as she nodded and said, “Sometimes I wish they’d never been found out there. It’s been so confusing and caused so much trouble and … Who was the man in more modern duds, if things happened as you say?”
Stringer said, “Someone more modern, of course. Those borax haulers who reported their find were the first ones honest enough to report what they found. They weren’t the first ones who found anything out yonder.”
“Then who?” asked Florida.
“It’s too early to say,” Stringer replied sheepishly, “But I suspect I’m getting warmer. Before there was a borax road or this town here, nobody would have had cause to ride anywhere near that old dried-up wagon and the dried-up Lowendorfs. Once there was any sort of traffic between the railroad to the south and the borax beds to the north, though, it was inevitable that some curious cuss would drift far enough off the beaten path to spot all that sun-silvered wood. There must have been at least two of ’em. As they poked about amidst the mummies and other dried debris, they came upon the old rifle and, more importantly, a strongbox. They shot the lock off, just to see what was inside. When they saw it was filled with money, they decided to keep the whole box, and that’s how come the busted lock, but not the box, was found out there.”
Binnie said she could see it all, now. But Florida asked how come the one discoverer had wound up so dead and dry as well. He shook his head wearily and explained, “His sidekick shot him, of course. He was probably admiring the contents of the strong box as his pard fooled with the old carbine. It’s possible the gun went off by accident, after all those years. Both the cap and powder had been kept mighty dry by the unusual climate out this way.”
Binnie shook her head and said, “I’ll bet it was pure greed. Don’t forget the killer posed his victim in the wagon, with the murder weapon in his hands, no doubt hoping everyone would read things as they did, if ever anyone out yonder was found dead!”
Florida didn’t argue about that, but protested, “I’ve seen all those dried-up folk. They all seem to have been dead about as long, if you ask me!”
He hadn’t asked her, but he explained, “A body mummifies within a very short time, if it’s not to rot. Both the original victims and the late one tucked in with them must have died during the big dry of summer and baked pretty solid before even the first good dew-fall of winter. I doubt the killer cared. But his backshot pard dried out as much within a few days and then, since that’s about all a mummy can do, he matched the other ones close enough when they all got found a few years later.”
This time it was Florida who put it together a mite closer, asking in a worried tone, “Then doesn’t that mean we’re talking about a much more recent crime, with one or more criminals still around, not old-timers after all?”
He nodded grimly and told them both, “That’s the way I see it. The one who backshot his or her co-discoverer could be most anyone around here but me. I know I didn’t do it. But after that the identity of the killer is up for grabs, and he, she, or it seems to be after me as well.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As they strode in step across Main Street, Binnie asked in a miffed tone if Stringer suspected her of starting her own small business with ill-gotten gains, adding, “There’s an ominous ring to that he, she, or it you keep mentioning.”
He smiled thinly and told her, “Someone’s been acting ominous. But you got to duck a few rounds in my company out by the Conestoga, and you’ve had to drop on me more than once since then.”
She shifted her heavy wooden box-camera to another hand as she observed, “I should have brought my nine-shooter along today. I’d feel a mite safer, knowing just about anyone in town could be out to perforate us both!”
They ducked into the slot between the general store and saloon as he assured her it hardly seemed likely anyone so sneaky would throw down on them in the center of town in broad daylight.
They crossed the back space to the adobe the mummies were locked away in. He tried the first key on the ring and, when that didn’t work, tried another. It turned in the lock. But just as he cracked the door open, something exploded, and stung, like a firecracker going off against his right hip. He went straight up and landed with his back to the door, facing the source of the unusual disturbance.
The young and clean-cut but bleary-eyed mule skinner was hauling back on the eighteen-inch handle of his twenty-foot whip of braided rawhide for another crack at Stringer. Before Stringer could ask why, Binnie had shoved the door inwards, shoved the bemused Stringer inside, and proceeded to slam it, even as that whip’s popper hit the wood with another explosive report.
Binnie bolted the door on the inside as she shouted through it, “Wally, have you gone entirely out of your head?”
Stringer muttered, “Of course,” and reached for his six-gun to talk his own brand of sense into the poor kid. He had a pretty fair notion what that two-faced Tessie had told the not too bright mule skinner. She’d tried to get Big Ben in trouble with her fibbing as well.
It all became academic when Stringer noticed how empty his holster seemed to be. He marveled, “Damn! He popped my .38 out of its holster with his first crack!”
Binnie said, “I know. That’s why I shoved you inside so sudden. I’ve seen the boys fight with those big whips. Drunk or sober they can take an eye out at twenty-odd feet. But he can’t crack that fool whip long out there, without someone coming to our rescue.”
As if to prove her a liar they heard another voice shouting, outside, “Stand aside and let me at him, Wally. He messed with my truelove, too!”
Binnie frowned uncertainly, “Could that be Skeeter Norris?” Then a pistol round slammed through the door in a confusion of splinters, and he shoved her further along the adobe wall, muttering, “It sure is. Stay clear of the windows as well.”
As if he’d heard, Skeeter proceeded to shoot out the nearest window, a pane at a time. The busted glass tinkling down didn’t frighten them as much as the notion of either one of those likkered-up morons coming through one or more windows personally. Stringer moved over to the mysterious mummy in modem jeans to snatch up the old Hall carbine, drop to one knee, and roll that one keg out to grope for some ancient but, he hoped, still usable ammunition.
Remington had shown them how to tilt the action up en masse to load the chamber. Stringer wished now he’d paid more attention. He could see how twisting a single screw allowed one to take the whole action out of the frame. Any way was better than no way with two armed maniacs trying to get at you at once. But as he desperately worked to get powder, cap, and ball in place, they heard other voices outside, a lot of them, and then, after some sounds of protests and pistol-whipping, Hamp Dugan called in at them, “Anybody hurt on your side, MacKail?’`
Stringer got to his feet, calling back, “We’re all right, no thanks to those rustic Romeos. What’s going on out there now?”
Hamp chuckled and called back, “They’re going to the town lock-up to sober some. Are you going to want to press charges?”
Stringer looked at Binnie. She just shrugged. He threw the bolt to let Hamp in, saying, “I reckon not, provided you hold ’em until they’re sober and I can have a quiet word with both of ’em.”
Hamp allowed that sounded Christian and asked, as he stared about at the glass and splinters scattered about, whatever might have occasioned them to revisit such a gloomy place.
Stringer pointed at the male mummy to say, “We wanted to take a picture of that gent.” Then he nodded at Binnie and she took one, aiming at his crotch by the sunlight through the open doorway. Hamp said, “That’s enough, without the permission of the owner.”
Stringer explained, “It’s all right. We got permission from Mrs. Winslow.” But Hamp sh
ook his head and said, “The boss didn’t like it much when she told him, just now. Lucky for you, he sent me to tell you to leave his mummies alone. I got to tell Wally and Skeeter to leave you alone, instead.”
As the three of them stepped outside again Hamp added, “Big Ben wants a word with the both of you afore them jaspers from the county coroner get back out here. He’s waiting at his house. Let’s go.”
Stringer stared about at the trampled dust all around. The party was breaking up. Wally and Skeeter had obviously been led off and the merely curious had already started drifting into the rear of the nearby saloon. Stringer said, “I dropped my six-gun somewhere around here.” But Hamp just chuckled, not unkindly, and told him, “Never do that, if you value your hardware. It was an S&W .38, right?”
Stringer said it had been. Hamp said he’d keep an eye out for it but not to count on any of the boys owning up to where they might or might not have come by such a sidearm.
As the three of them walked the modest distance back to the Winslow house, Stringer observed the sun was baking the back of his denim jacket pretty well and that the alkali dust they were stirring up with their boots seemed dry as ever, now. He asked how come Big Ben expected those folk from Barstow to arrive by motor car any time this side of midnight, now that things were heating up again. Hamp explained, “They called to say they was starting out. The sun won’t hurt ’em all that much if they show up by noon.”
Binnie asked Stringer if he might be driving back with the coroner’s crew, seeing he had things about figured out, here in Esperanza. He tried to keep his voice gentle as he told her, “I’m not ready to say, Miss Binnie. But I reckon all swell parties have to end, sooner or later.”
She looked away, murmuring, “I know. I was just asking. I wasn’t arguing.”
They got to the Winslow house. Neither Big Ben nor his wife was waiting for them on the veranda. Hamp led them on inside, where Big Ben sat imperiously in a leather chair by the unlit fireplace and his wife stood just to his right with one elbow resting on the mantle and a tense look on her pretty face, despite her relaxed pose. Standing just behind Stringer and Binnie, Hamp said, soberly, “I caught ’em taking pictures of old Tom. I told you from the first that this young cuss was too smart by half.”
Binnie gasped, turned to stare back at the town law and when she saw he had a gun out in each hand she gasped, “Stuart! He’s holding your own S&W on you!”
Stringer didn’t turn his gaze from the Winslows as he nodded at them and told Binnie, “I told you things were starting to fall in place. Even at a dollar an acre, a six by six mile township would run you close to twenty-two thousand dollars, and that’s before you even consider sinking wells and throwing up buildings for rent.”
Florida made a wry face and told her husband, “I warned you someone was sure to figure it out, if ever they suspected that one body could be that of your old pard, Tom Ferris, you fool! You’re the only man within miles with half as much money in the bank and not a mining claim to your name that might account for half of it!”
Big Ben didn’t look so big as he heaved a vast sigh and told her, wearily, “What’s done is done. The boys found Tom out there as dried-up as the rest of ’em. What was I to do, bury just him and put the others in glass cases?”
She snapped, “I told you right off to bury the bunch of ’em, in damp soil, and forget ’em. But, no, you had to be a show-off with his own museum and then, when even you could see what a swell mess you’d made of things, it was too late!”
Big Ben rose to his feet, muttering, “I said what was done was done. The question now is how to get rid of these two before them other nosey jaspers from the county show up.”
Stringer said, flatly, “It’s not going to work, Ben. You were slick enough to gun that shootist calling himself Manson when you thought it made more sense to go on conning me. But old Doc Owens has me down as a participant in not one but two shootings out here, and there’s no way you’re going to convince him I eloped with the village blacksmith here!”
Big Ben looked confused. Hamp Dugan assured him, “Don’t you worry, Ben. Me and Florida have a good story worked out.”
Winslow said, “I sure hope so. Say, ain’t that my personal pistol you’re holding, there, along with MacKail’s?”
His wife purred, mighty nasty, “It is, I gave it to him, you fool. Did you really think I’d let a weakling like you take me to prison with him? With all of you pests out of the way, the law will never prove anything, even if they suspect!”
Her coconspirator, Hamp, sounded less venomous but just as certain when he explained, “You and MacKail are about to shoot it out, Ben. It’ll be too bad Miss Binnie, here, got caught in the cross fire. But me and your passionate widow will survive to bear witness that MacKail accused you of beating up bargals and both of you went down in the resultant confusion.”
Big Ben’s jaw dropped and his face went frog-belly white before he recovered enough to stare wildly at his wife and marvel, “So it was Hamp, not Calico, like I thought, when I smelt another man’s tobacco and hair lotion where no other man’s had a right to be!”
She sneered, “A lot you know about where a man’s supposed to be, you money-grubbing bore.” Then she nodded at her truelove to add, “Get it over with, darling.”
Hamp might have. But Stringer had heard just about enough and so, turning as if to plead for his life, he whipped out the clumsy but lethal box-like action of that Hall carbine and fired it point black at Hamp Dugan!
Both guns Dugan was holding went off as the half-inch ball slammed into his chest, propelled by seventy grams of black powder that set his shirt afire. But since Stringer was so close to him when all three weapons went off, neither Big Ben’s, nor his own gun was aimed at him. Big Ben naturally bounded forward to jump Stringer from behind before he could turn with no more than an empty cap and ball action in his hand. But then Binnie swung a roundhouse right, and what she lacked in boxing skills, she more than made up for with the sinewy strength of her hammer-arm. So Hamp and both Winslows lay sprawled on the floor in various positions as Stringer hunkered to pick up his trusty .38.
As he kicked both Big Ben’s gun and Hamp’s personal .45 under the sofa, he frowned down at the face-down form of Florida Winslow and asked Binnie, “When did you slug her?” To which Binnie the blacksmith answered, modestly, “I never. I only smacked Big Ben. Unless she fainted, she must have been hit by one of them wild rounds.”
Stringer holstered his .38 and moved over to where Florida lay. He dropped to one knee and turned her over. They could see at a glance she was dead. Aside from the way she was staring up at them so glassy-eyed, a wet crimson rose had blossomed on her print bodice, just above her heart.
Nearby, her husband moaned and tried to sit up. Binnie planted a dainty boot in his face and put him back down. Stringer told her, “Don’t do that any more, honey. We want him to be able to talk when the county law gets here. I’m sure the son of a bitch has a lot to tell us all.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
He did. Whether broken by the betrayal of his beautiful wife or still suffering the effects of getting punched and kicked by the beautiful but powerful Binnie, Big Ben made a full confession to Doc Owens, once the crusty old spade beard got there, covered with road dust and red of eye. Owens was so cheered by the anticipation of hanging such a sneaky son of a bitch that he offered Stringer a ride back to Barstow, if and when the damned sun ever went down again.
Stringer declined on the grounds he didn’t want to forfeit the deposit on his hired pony. It wouldn’t have been decent to admit he wanted to bid a proper adios to the village blacksmith.
But first things came first, so soon after the county lawmen left town with their handcuffed prisoner, and Esperanza began to come alive again in the cool light of gloaming, Stringer went into the general store to use the telephone.
The old couple who ran the place had heard part of what had been going on, but of course they were still mighty confused, and
worried, until Stringer explained, “Unless Big Ben beats a murder and grave-robbing conviction, and I don’t see how he can, his title to all land around here becomes null and void. You innocent folk are going to have to work things out with the land office and I’d get a good lawyer, if I was you. But it does seem to me you’ll all wind up owning your own land, cheap, since both the state and county want this country settled and you’re all in possession.”
They blessed him, which hardly seemed fair, since he hadn’t done anything but prove Big Ben had bought thirty-six square miles of the Mojave with ill-gotten gains. It took him as long as ever to make the long distance call to Sam Barca and for a moment it appeared he’d called too late in the evening. But as he’d hoped, they caught up with old Sam in the saloon across Montgomery and when they got him to the far end of the line he sounded as cheerful as usual, snapping, “If you called me back to the office on my own time without a damned good reason, you’re fired!”
Stringer soothered, “Sit down and pick up a pencil, Sam. I just put the scoop together and we’re talking headlines on page one, not a Sunday feature. How do you like it so far?”
Sam replied, “Start at the beginning.” So Stringer told him, “Once upon a time the Brothers Lowendorf headed out across the Mojave with their wives, kids, and honest earnings from a mercury strike down San Diego way. They didn’t make it. Time marched on, a heap, and then one day a couple of prospectors named Ben Winslow and Tom Ferris stumbled over the grim results of hauling a heavy wagon on light wheels. They found close to a hundred thousand in specie in a strongbox. That would have given each of ’em a small fortune if they’d split fair and square. But Winslow didn’t want a small fortune, so he shot his pard in the back with an antique weapon handy to the strongbox and kept it all.”
