Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  She didn’t move from her corner of the platform. “I’m Pamela Kinnerton,” she told him. “My friends call me Pam. You’re not the Stuart MacKail who writes for the San Francisco Sun, are you?”

  He looked sheepish. “I used to be. Lately I’ve been using Stringer as my byline. It’s a newspaper joke too boring to go into.”

  She dimpled up at him. “I know what a stringer is. I work for the Manchester Guardian on a roving assignment. I guess you could call me a stringer too.”

  “It would be less confusing if I just called you Pam,” he said. “Now that we have that all sorted out, how do you feel about that soda water?”

  She nodded, but asked, “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “It ought to be,” he said. “Unless folk out to murder newspaper ladies come in bunches.” Then he stopped, scowled, and went on, “Now that’s sort of odd when one considers odds. Have you ever noticed how, in real life, things seem to come in bunches no fiction writer would dare use in a novel?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But how often do lunatics try to throw girls off moving trains, in or out of adventure novels?”

  “Earlier this evening I met two well known people in a row,” he said soberly. “That was likely coincidence. Then, right after someone tried to murder this newspaperman, I caught another one trying to murder you. That’s stretching even bad luck out of shape entire. What’s the story you’re covering, Pam?”

  “I’m on my way to a place in Texas called Langtry. The Guardian wants a piece on some notorious old western badman who seems to have a romantic fixation on our own notorious Lillie Langtry. You’ve heard of her, of course?”

  “I have,” Stringer said. “We’d best pass on that soda water, after all. They may just be coming in bunches, unless that one I just tossed off was the same one who came after me earlier.”

  He could see how puzzled she was. So he told her, “I’m covering the same story, albeit from another angle. I doubt Miss Lillie Langtry could be anywhere near Texas right now. But something is up in Langtry right now, and I don’t think newspaper folks are welcome. Do you have a good place to fort up until we get there?”

  She nodded. “My compartment. I have some, ah, soda water there as well. I hadn’t planned on uncorking it this soon, and I don’t like drinking alone in any case. Just what do you mean by the term, forting up? Are you suggesting we lock ourselves in my compartment and dare them to come in after us?”

  Stringer smiled and started to say that wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. But since that would have been a mighty stupid thing to say, he said, “Well, you got the soda water and I got the gun. So between us we ought to be able to stand off anything but Apache with a battering ram. Lead on, MacDuff.”

  She led him on, to the forward section of the train. But as she ushered him into her tiny compartment, he learned he’d have to allow for her British sense of humor. Americans were just as dense getting English jokes they didn’t quite savvy because both sides made the mistake of assuming they were speaking the same lingo. As she waved him to a seat on her made-up bunk, the only seat in the place, she asked, “What was that about Apache, back there? I thought you Yanks had all your red Indians locked up these days.”

  He laughed. “They’re neither locked up nor causing much trouble. A few scattered bands still raid stock here and there, now and again. But Wounded Knee was the last big fight, and that was over ten years ago. A mess of the old fighting chiefs are still around, but the last time I interviewed Geronimo, at Fort Sill, he was selling postcards of himself at the wheel of a horseless carriage. He told me he’s saving up to buy one personal.”

  She’d rummaged a soda siphon, two tumblers, and a fifth of Glen Grant by now, and sat down beside him, saying with a wistful sigh, “It’s too bad your Wild West era is over now. Think of all the stories we never got to cover.”

  She handed him one tumbler and commenced to pour scotch into it for him as he said, “They wouldn’t have let you report the truth in any case, and at least one reporter was with Custer at the wrong time and place. Ah, don’t you mean to leave any space at all for the soda, Pam?”

  She shot a spit of siphon water in atop the heroic drink she’d served him and poured another for herself. “I still feel left out,” she said. “Do you think we’ll encounter many Mexican bandits, at least, where we’re going?”

  “I sure hope not,” he said.

  They clinked glasses, and he had to swallow his scotch almost neat, with no chaser, without letting on he was a sissy drinker compared to her. He could see it didn’t bother her at all, unless she was showing off too.

  Having consumed a polite amount of what tasted sort of like iodine to his California tastebuds, Stringer said, “We’d best worry less about wild Indians than present possible company. Is that door locked?”

  She assured him it was. He put his drink aside to take off his hat and gun rig, then placed the loaded S&W, raw, on the sort of end table built into the corner at his end of the bunk. “I doubt anyone would be dumb enough to try busting through that door at us,” he said. “Do you have any hardware of your own, Pam?”

  She blinked at him incredulously. “Do you mean firearms? Good Lord, what would I be doing with a gun of my own?”

  He sipped some more scotch, noting it tasted smoother now. “I thought we’d just met a rascal trying to kill you. Never mind. We can likely pick up a lady’s .32 for you at Langtry. You do know how to shoot, don’t you?”

  She gulped. “I’ve been to a few grouse shoots in my time. I’ve never fired a pistol, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I can show you which end the bullets come out of, and that’s good enough at close range.”

  “You’re mad,” she decided, chasing the thought down with a healthy gulp.

  “No I’m not,” he said. “You are. That rascal I had to pull off you just now wouldn’t have been able to get half as forward with you if you’d had even a garter derringer to call your own.”

  She didn’t answer. That gave him time to reconsider. “Now that’s kind of odd, when you study on it. The one who tried to nail me used a gun. The one after you didn’t. Most of my kith and kin know I pack a .38, some of the time, at least. A man out to murder even a gal would have to know for certain she wasn’t armed. Lots of our uncouth Gibson Girls do pack some protection in our rougher neighborhoods. Add it up and tell me if you see what I see, Pam.”

  She finished her drink and began to pour another. “You’re right. It adds up to someone who knows more about us than we know about him or them. But for God’s sake, Stuart, what could they be trying to hide from us?”

  “If we knew that,” he said, “it would be too late for them to hide it. Do you always drink that much that fast, Pam?”

  She looked away and murmured, “Not as a rule. If we’re going to be working together, beginning with this, ah, fort-up, as you put it so politely, we may as well get the sexual tension between us out of the way. I’m trying to get drunk first. I fear I’m just too proper to simply make love to even a handsome stranger cold sober.”

  Stringer stared slack-jawed at her while she demolished yet more scotch. Then he shook his head to clear it. “Hold on. It can’t be ten o’clock yet, and to tell the truth such, ah, forward behavior hadn’t occurred to me yet.”

  She started to pour another, sounding a mite blurry as she told him, “It will, before morning. This berth isn’t wide enough for us to sleep without touching, and sooner or later we have to get some sleep, right?”

  He grabbed her wrist as she raised the tumbler to her lips, spilling some of it in her lap. “Wrong. Whether we want to make love or just go on living, this is no damned time for either of us to get drunk.”

  “Oh, damn,” she said. “I’ve spilt malt liquor all over my skirt, and it’s sure to leave a stain.” And then, as he said he was sorry, she stood up, calmly unbuttoned one side of her skirt, and stepped out of it. She hung it on
a door hook and giggled as she squirted soda water on it with her siphon, saying, “There. That ought to dry clean by morning. What do you think, Stuart?”

  He stared soberly at her as she turned around. “I think I’d feel less need for self-control if you’d thought to wear any underwear under that skirt.”

  She looked down, and giggled again. “Oh, dear, I seem to be stark down there, save for my silk stockings and shoes, I mean. What do you think we ought to do about that, dear?”

  He set his tumbler by his gun and got to his feet. “I think switching off the light may be a good beginning. Every now and again this train stops for water, and I just hate to get laughed at by railyard crews.”

  As the compartment was plunged into darkness, his first step back toward her warned him he’d had more scotch than he’d considered, unless they were rounding a turn. He laughed and made it back to the berth in the dark without diving on her headfirst. She laughed, too, when his exploring hands grabbed her instead of the firmer cushioning he’d expected. She lay atop the bedding without a stitch on above her garters. She asked how come he still had his own clothes on. He shucked out of them fast, and as he rolled aboard, her thighs were spread in welcome. So they got right at it. Or, at least, he did. He hadn’t had enough to drink to keep him from climaxing soon, in anyone that delicious.

  “Oh? Again?” she murmured.

  He stopped in midstroke to ask her, almost as coldly, “Do you think it would help if I had some chloroform handy, ma’am?”

  She wrapped her arms and legs around him reassuringly. “Go ahead and satisfy yourself again, dear,” she told him. “I don’t mind.”

  He muttered something it would have been rude to say to a lady right out loud, and climbed off both her and the berth to grope for the shirt he’d left somewhere on the infernal floor. She asked in a lost little girl voice what he was looking for, and he growled, “My makings. I’m not tired enough to sleep. So I mean to smoke awhile. You go on and do anything you’ve a mind to.”

  He found his makings and sat at the foot end of the berth to roll as best he could in the dark. Now that his eyes were used to it, it wasn’t total darkness. There just wasn’t enough moonlight through the grimy window to keep from spilling half the Bull Durham on his bare sweaty thighs before he had it rolled and sealed. He struck a match to light up. That was when he noticed she was staring up at him with tears running down both cheeks. He shook the light out, took a drag on his smoke, and told her, “There’s no need to blubber up about it. I’m sorry if I treated you too rough, and what the hell, it’s over.”

  “I don’t like being frigid, damn it,” she sobbed. “It cost me the only man I ever loved, and it certainly hasn’t been much fun since he walked out on me!”

  Stringer took another drag before he asked her, in a softer tone, “Why do you do it, then? I didn’t exactly twist your arm, you know. I may strike you as an uncouth type, dressed cow and all, but I would have behaved if I’d thought you didn’t want it.”

  “Oh, nobody understands me,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t want it. I just can’t seem, to enjoy it. I’ve always envied normal women so much. It’s not that I’m a prude, you see.”

  He couldn’t help grinning in the dark. “I sort of noticed that.”

  “All right, have it your way,” she said. “I wasn’t that drunk, and I did set out to seduce you, partly because of the pragmatic reasons I gave and partly because, well, I thought you might be able to… you know.”

  He sighed. “Thanks. Do you always tell your, ah, gentlemen friends how swell you find ‘em in bed, Pam?”

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “This is the twentieth century, after all, and it’s time to put all that Victorian hypocrisy behind us, don’t you agree?”

  “Not hardly,” he said. “Queen Victoria and Prince Albert might not have made it though their honeymoon if she’d told him she didn’t like it all that much at first, and he’d told her he’d had better in his student-prince days. Men and women were never designed by nature to tell one another the truth in bed, Pam. I wasn’t there. But had I been, and had the Lord asked my advice on the blueprints of old Adam and Eve, I don’t think folk today would be built the exact same way.”

  She asked what he was talking about. He snuffed out the smoke, rejoined her in a reclining position, and took the matter in hand, warning her, “Don’t offer comments on my efforts,” he explained. “Just enjoy the train ride with me a spell. Even hot-natured gals know better than to just fall down and take it cold.”

  He kissed her and held her closer as he fondled her more gently than he might have been able to manage while hot. But since he’d cooled down some and she’d never been hot to begin with, he was able to tease her until she began to respond with her own sensual movements, murmuring, “Oh, my, that does feel interesting.”

  “Castrating comments like that can cool interest almost as good as if you squirted a man, personal, with that soda-water siphon,” he said.

  “Aren’t I supposed to say I don’t mind what you’re doing to me at all, dear?” she asked.

  So he did it harder and said, “No. You’re supposed to tell a man you like it, or that he’s driving you loco en la cabeza, not that he’s for God’s sake interesting!”

  She sighed. “Kiss me again and do that faster, then. For I don’t mind admitting I kind of like it.”

  He kissed her, but warned, “Never say you kind of like anything. I’m not getting as much as you are out of this petting, and a man deserves some recognition for his honest efforts.”

  She laughed dryly, told him he was ever so romantic, and added that she might not mind if he joined her, as long as she seemed to be, for God’s sake, climaxing. But he just kept petting her. “You women are all alike,” he said. “You think you own us, and then as soon as you’ve satisfied your own lust, you just turn over and go to sleep, leaving us feeling used and abused.”

  That made her really laugh, and since the laughter served to distract her even more from whatever in thunder was ailing her, she moaned, “Ooh, stop teasing and do it right to me, damn it!”

  But he knew what he was doing, though it felt sort of dumb to be breaking in such an experienced woman of the world. He kissed her hard and brought her to full orgasm before he mounted her again to satisfy himself.

  It seemed to satisfy the hell out of her as well. So they went gloriously insane for a spell, in time with the clicking of the wheels below, and when at last all good things had come to an end, she yawned like a contented kitten indeed and marveled, “That was lovely, darling. But I’m not sure whether I’ve just lost my virginity or fallen in love with you.”

  “Neither seems all that logical,” he said. “But you sure were right about it being a fine notion to bust any awkwardness betwixt us before we have to get off this train. We’re going to have to stay tight as ticks and watch each other’s backs once we get to Langtry.”

  She hugged him tighter with her thighs and said she didn’t think she’d mind that at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They were the only passengers getting off when the train took time to jerk boiler water at Langtry the next day. The desert sun was high and hurt Pam’s eyes. She asked what smelled so odd, and he said, “West Texas. To one bowl of dust add one cup of dry cornmeal, one cactus pad, one branch of mesquite, one cow chip, a pinch of red pepper, stir and bake.”

  She smiled. “You forgot the horse shit. Where do we go from here, dear?”

  It was a good question. They were standing on a sun-baked strip of gravel that served as the local depot, surrounded by their baggage. She carried a lot more on assignment than he did. The sun had cleared the one main street leading away from the tracks at right angles. There wasn’t much of a town to begin with. Stringer had seen photos of the notorious Jersey Lily, and so that had to be it, not far away from the water tower and little more impressive than the other frame shacks or false-front business establishments laid out unsurveyed and sort of helter-skelter.<
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  “I hope there’s someplace I can bathe, at least,” Pam said. “I did the best I could in the ladies’ washroom aboard the train this morning, but you know how primitive they are.”

  “Nope,” Stringer replied. “I hardly ever use the ladies’ room, on or off a train. But I doubt you’ve seen primitive yet. Yonder raw lumber box with all the signs on its peaked roof is likely the only general store, saloon, and come to think of it, courthouse in these parts. My notes say old Bean takes a dim view of competition. That closer crackerbox is bigger and claims to be a hotel, as near as I can read that rough-and-ready lettering from here. If you’ll tote my kit bag, I’ll see if I can tote your possibles that far.”

  She didn’t argue about that, but as they trudged away from the tracks and toward the hotel, she complained again about the glare. “You should have a hat on,” he said. “That’s what hats are for, if they’re fashionsome or not. Do you always travel bare-headed?”

  “That brute you saved me from cost me the only hat I had with me,” she explained. “Maybe I can buy a new one at the judge’s store.”

  He didn’t know, so he didn’t comment. He clumped in ahead of her to find two old coots sitting in the dinky lobby, blowing smoke up at the already well-smoked tin ceiling. There was a sleigh bell suspended from a string up there, like a silvery spider that needed polishing. Stringer pretended not to notice as he announced, “If any of you gents work here, this lady and me need adjoining rooms, with baths, if possible.”

  “Adjoining rooms is possible,” one of the old geezers replied. “With baths ain’t, unless you take the honeymoon suite.”

  Stringer glanced at Pam, who looked away, trying not to blush. He nodded. “We’re not exactly honeymooners, but we’ll take the honeymoon suite if you’ll take our word it’s lawful.”

  The old coot rose painfully to his feet, saying, “Dollar a day with no grub. You can eat over to the Jersey Lily if you get that hungry. Step over to the desk with me and I’ll sell you the key.”