Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  “Not hardly,” the Ranger said. “Old Roy don’t have the power to put nobody away as long as we want them cow thieves put away, if ever we catch ‘em. I just come by to ask old Roy if he’d heard anything new. Hardly anything can go on in this county without old Roy hearing about it. This is the only place for a two days ride that serves cold beer, and the judge knows just about every rider, honest or not, in these parts.”

  The familiar voice had apparently gotten through to the barely semiconscious old man on the bed. “Is that you, Will Slade?” he croaked. “Miss Langtry, I’d like you to meet my old pard, Will. This is Miss Langtry, Will. Ain’t she pretty as I told you all she was?”

  The old Ranger proved he was as quick with his wits as he likely had to be on the draw by nodding at Pam. “She surely is, Your Honor. Them pictures out front don’t half do her justice.”

  Bean smiled weakly in his delirium. “Help me up, folks,” he murmured. “I promised Miss Langtry a real hoedown with fireworks if only she’d come out here, and now that she has, I means to keep my word.”

  He must have meant it. It took Stringer and Will Slade between them to hold the old man down. He still might have made it had not the boy, Sam, dashed out and returned with a length of new clotheslines. Will Slade took it with a grunt of thanks and proceeded to tie old Bean to the bed, muttering, “I’m not sure this cotton rope would hold him if he was his old self.” Then he told Bean, “Lie still, you old fool. The state of Texas ain’t got time to give you a military funeral with them cow thieves still at large. I’ll let you know when we has time for you to die. Right now we want you to lie still, damn it!”

  “What about the hoedown for this pretty lady?” the judge croaked.

  Pam patted his cheek. “I won’t leave until you’re up and about again, Roy,” she assured him. “I’m looking forward to dancing with you, see?”

  Her British accent must have convinced him for he relaxed a mite. “Hear that, Will? Miss Langtry’s come all the way from London town just to dance with me. Ain’t that something?”

  The old Ranger smiled at Pam in an admiring way as he told his old friend, “You always said she would some day, Your Honor. Now we wants you to get some sleep so’s you can get better. You just behave yourself until it’s time for you to get up proper, for you have the word of a Ranger that if you go and die on us afore the hoedown, I mean to dance with the pretty lady my ownself.”

  “I’ll bust you alongside the head if you mess with my one true love,” Bean growled. But the efforts of his recent struggles had taken their toll, and for a moment they all thought he might be dead as he went all limp and slack-jawed. Then he started to snore.

  “I figured he was too tough to let it lick him,” Will Slade said. “We’d best leave him to the kids for now. Voices over a man tend to disturb his sleep, even when he’s just sleeping natural, hear?”

  Nobody saw fit to argue with the Ranger’s common sense. As all but little Zulema Bean filed out, Pam noticed the older girl, Laura, was tear-cheeked despite her impassive little brown face. Pam moved past the two men to take the girl in her arms. “I’ll meet the two of you out front,” she said softly. “This is girl talk.”

  Stringer and the older man exchanged glances and kept going with no comment. When they got out to the porch, to find the other old coot had abandoned his—or rather the judge’s—rocker, Slade said, “You go on and sit, Stringer. I likes to stretch my legs, out of the saddle. What do you reckon them gals are talking about—us?”

  Stringer ignored the seat as he reached for his makings. “He-brutes in general, most likely. Old Bean doesn’t seem to mind who might be listening when he mean-mouths the mother of his children.”

  As Stringer started to build a smoke, Slade said, “I’ve sort of noticed that. I’m sure he means no harm, but he’s one of them old boys who don’t seem to consider anyone who ain’t white a sort of unfeeling critter. He ain’t mean to his kids when he knows what he’s saying. I reckon he considers ‘em almost human, seeing they wound up at least half white.”

  Stringer sealed his cigarette paper with a lick. “It was still a shitty thing to say about anyone’s mother, with them listening. What’s the story on that Mex gal he had them with, Will?”

  The Ranger shrugged. “Hard to say. Some say he was married lawsome with one pretty señorita who died having the last kid. Others seem just as sure old Roy had ‘em more casual, by more than one old gal.”

  “What does Bean say?” Stringer asked.

  The old Ranger sighed. “He don’t. That is, he don’t stick to one story about any damn thing. Depending on his sobriety and mood of the moment, the judge is inclined to change his past to suit the occasion. I know that the first time we met he told me he smuggled cotton during the War Between the States. But when I pointed that out to him, the time he told me he’d rid with Confederate guerrillas, he assured me I was full of shit. To hear old Roy tell it, he’s been everywhere and done everything in his time. He didn’t have that stiff neck when I first knew him, years ago. But rather than allow old age might be creeping up on him, he insists he got stiff-necked by getting lynched one time. What they lynched him for changes like one of them funny lizards that can go green or orange, to match its background, see?”

  “I’m beginning to,” Stringer said. “You’re saying he’s a pure bullshit artist, right?”

  Will Slade shook his head. “Not pure. He’s kept the peace in these parts almost twenty years, and you can’t hardly do that with a gun, let alone bullshit.” Slade reached for his own makings. “Most of the time, of course, he’s kept the boys in line with good sound advice, dirty jokes, and rough but fair views of simple justice. But over the years there’s been times old Roy Bean had to crack down hard, and once you get him really riled, he can be one hard old hairpin indeed. I could tell you tales of bodies floating down the Rio Grande, mostly Mex and at least one Chinee, but sometimes Anglo. Only, to tell the truth, us Rangers have never wanted to nose into such local matters. As a mere J.P. the old boy’s never been granted hanging powers by the state or even the county. But it’s a funny thing. Over the years he’s advised one pest or another to leave Texas entire unless he sure admires hanging high. And you know what? Most of them git.”

  Stringer struck a light for both of them. “I’d like to pin it down better than that, Will,” he said. “Has he or has he not ever hung anybody you know of?”

  The old Ranger took a drag on his own smoke before he chuckled and replied, “That I know of? Not hardly. That would be illegal, and I’d have to arrest him, friend or no friend. On the other hand, I know of one case where a man Bean told to leave the county was found all full of holes in a dry wash, shortly after he’d told Bean to go to hell. You got to understand that a lot of old boys in these parts can’t read law books or even speak English. It takes a gent with their own simple views on crime and punishment to keep ‘em halfways decent.”

  Stringer cast a glance at the doorway, blowing smoke out his nose in mild annoyance as he wondered what was keeping old Pam. Then he decided, as long as he had the time, he might as well get a local lawman’s views on the mysterious trouble Sam Barca had heard about, all the way out on the coast.

  Will Slade mulled the matter over, under his Stetson, for a time, then said, “They’ve been talking trouble here in West Texas as long as I can remember. Sometimes it even happens. There was a two-or three-year stretch back in the ‘80s when men was going down like flies. But that’s neither here nor there. We got that cleaned up. As for right now, I know we’ve had a rash of cow thefts on this side of the border, and down Mexico way, Los Banditos are raising hell with old President Diaz and his just-as-murdersome rurales. Ain’t heard of any serious border raiding this year, though. Texas warned Mexico, last time it happened, how the Rangers feel about reining in and just waving adios to any son of a bitching Mex riding Texas horseflesh or driving Texas beef. The damnyankee cavalry might feel honorbound to respect a strip of muddy water. Us Rangers just r
ide on until we catch what we’re after.”

  “Everything you’ve come up with so far is old news to me, no offense,” Stringer remarked. “What’s the story if old Bean, inside, don’t make it?”

  “He has to make it,” Will Slade said flatly. “We can’t spare the manpower it would take to keep this part of Texas pure with old Roy Bean gone. That sign hanging above us ain’t all brag. He may not really be the law everywhere west of the Pecos, but he’s all the law there is for miles, and you don’t have to ride a mile afore you’re in Mexico, that way.”

  Stringer followed the old Ranger’s gaze to the not-too-distant wall of cottonwood and willow just south of the railroad line. “Aw, come on,” he said. “You can’t tell me one fat old man has been holding a whole Mexican revolution at bay, even with those two guns the real Lillie Langtry gave him.”

  “I takes them six-guns with a grain of salt as to just where he got ‘em,” Will Slade said. “But he does have ‘em, and a lot of old boys who still duck when they see a Ranger badge have ever been ready to back their old pal the judge against most anybody. You’d be surprised how much power one old-timer can have in his own little corner of a mighty empty country.”

  “No I wouldn’t,” Stringer said. “My old Uncle Don, back home in Calaveras County, can be dangerous as hell to mess with, and he doesn’t even have an honorary badge, let alone his own courthouse. But if old Bean goes, who do you reckon will take over?”

  Will Slade thought about that. “Somebody tough as hell. The judge has had a generation to build his power and get the Indian sign on any other local strongmen under forty.” Then the old Ranger repressed a shudder and added, “Let’s hope he makes it. For the more I study on it, the surer I get that the minute Roy Bean dies, all hell is fixing to bust loose in West Texas!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “That old brute is a monster,” Pam was saying as Stringer walked her back to the hotel. “Well,” he said, “I’ll go along with grotesque. Most folk in these parts seem to like him, and his kids are devoted to him.”

  “They love him,” she said. “Their mother must have loved him too. Even when she was alive she had to put up with her man’s moonstruck devotion to that Jersey tart, Lillie Langtry. I could tell you things about her, our current King Edward and half the House of Lords, but to poor little Laura Bean she’s been held up as an unattainable goal. The only woman her father could possibly respect.”

  Stringer nodded. “I was wondering what could be keeping you so long. Did you fill the kid in on all the rich lovers who’ve enjoyed Miss Langtry’s favors?”

  Pam grimaced. “Not all. There wasn’t time, even if I knew half the men our Lillie’s slept with.”

  “Hold it, Pam you’re not being fair to a lady you don’t know and I’ve never met. To know for certain just what went on with all those gents, you’d have to know ‘em as well as she might have, and what would that make you?”

  Pam laughed sheepishly. “Very rich, to begin with. They say she spends money as if in fear it will go out of style and… You’re right. I am being bitchy. But that poor little half-breed was so upset over the way her silly old father feels about a distant glamorous white woman, that—”

  “You tried to help by mean-mouthing her,” he cut in, adding, “I don’t suppose you thought to explain how harmless and sort of pathetic old Bean’s fixation is, eh?”

  “I’d hardly call it harmless,” she said. “I find it cruel.”

  He shrugged. “The Mex mother of those kids knew he was a crude sort of gringo when she chose to get mixed up with him. Hispanic gals can be possessive to the point of spitting and kicking, if they think their man is fooling around with another gal they can get at. But she likely knew pictures pasted to the wall don’t count. For all we know, the judge may well have started the whole thing as a means to soothing a hot-natured señorita. I notice his kids look clean, well-dressed, and well-fed, next to a heap of their border-Mex cousins.”

  She said, “Laura said he’s always looked after the three we met and an older brother well enough. But you certainly don’t know women as well as I thought you did, dear, if you think even an illiterate peasant girl would be cheered to find her man the distant admirer of a more glamorous woman!”

  “I never said he was out to cheer her up,” he replied. “He might have simply meant to calm her down. I may know my own gender a mite better than your own. I was exposed to the country manners of the good old boy at a tender age. Old boys like Bean just can’t allow true feelings to show. They have to pretend to be rough, tough, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing hombres, whether they feel up to all the effort or not. How would it look to the other compulsive toughs in these parts if a man who ruled ‘em with a big brag and little more had suddenly taken to sipping Moxie and allowing he was sissified enough to be content with one woman?”

  She started to tell him he was crazy. But Pam wasn’t a roving reporter because she was slow-witted. “Well,” she said, “I can see how hard it would be for a Mexican spitfire to claw at another woman who lived thousands of miles away, and I suppose nobody would expect a man who was openly in love with an unattainable goal to chase the sort of drabs his cowboy friends could get at. But there’s more to it than that, dear. You heard him slobbering love words at me when he took me for Lillie Langtry just now.”

  “Respectful, not slobbering,” Stringer insisted. “After telling the whole world for almost twenty years that you’re desperately in love with the picture of a gal who can’t be that young in the flesh anymore, a man has the right to talk a little dumb when he’s delirious. I’m sure that if the real Lillie Langtry ever showed up here, and he was up and about at the time, he’d put on one hell of a fiesta for her, like he said, and he might even kiss her hand, if she let him. But that’s all. If the fat old man was still horny enough to matter, he’d have a grown woman of his own instead of faded photographs. Getting gals along the border has never been too tough for a man of substance or even one with his own horse.”

  “I didn’t know you had a horse,” she said. “It must have been that cowboy hat of yours. But I have to enjoy a nice long tub soak before we discuss how easy I may or may not be right now. How much time do you think we have before another train comes through, dear?”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “My timetable says the next eastbound jerks water here around five. Were you planning on going someplace, Pam?”

  She took his arm and hugged closer to him as she answered, “Of course, and the timing works out just about right. We’ll have most of the afternoon to see how well you did with that bell under our bed. Then, if we can get a private compartment aboard that eastbound—”

  “We can’t,” he cut in, and asked, “What about our story?”

  “We have it,” she said. “I certainly have mine, at any rate. Our Lillie should be ever so pleased when she reads my feature in the Guardian. So many people over the years have hinted there could be something to her notorious romance with a Wild West ruffian. I have to admit old Bean is still more attractive than His Majesty. Lillie’s admirers will no doubt be pleased to learn there’s at least one dirty old man she’s never slept with.”

  Stringer didn’t answer. They’d reached the hotel by this time, and their conversation was no business of the old boys spitting and whittling on the front steps, now that there was shade on that side. But when they got upstairs, Stringer told her, “I can’t grab the next train out, coach or Pullman. I was sent here to cover more important matters than a sick old man’s love life. I got shot at and you almost got murdered, just getting here, and I still haven’t found out what the story is.”

  He started to add he’d hardly want to catch an eastbound rather than a westbound when he did know what those two murder attempts had been meant to hide. The time to bid a gal adios was when you were fixing to part, not fixing to get in bed together.

  “Darling,” she said, “we’ve been here for hours, and there just isn’t anything going on. This little jerkwater hamlet is a
bout as interesting as a cow pat baking in the sun. And speaking of baking, I’m about to get in that tub. Care to join me?”

  He laughed. “It sounds like fun, but there’s barely room for your sweet hips, lonesome. You go ahead and I’ll just have a lie-down atop the covers whilst you soak all you like.”

  She pouted. “Then what? I didn’t mind a little body odor on the train last night, since I was just as stinky, but—”

  “I’ll take my own bath, a shorter one, after you. Save me some hot water.”

  She laughed, called him a goof, and stepped into the bath as he shucked his denim jacket, hat, and gun rig to flop down across the big brass bedstead. The springs were pleasantly bouncy. He enjoyed a chuckle as he recalled what he’d done to that telltale bell. Then, before he knew it, he was asleep. He hadn’t got much sleep the night before. But he hadn’t realized how tired he might be until, somewhere in the distance, the moan of a locomotive whistle woke him up.

  He yawned, sat up to stare at the open bathroom door as he wiped his sleep gummed eyes, and when he noticed nobody was there, dressed or undressed, muttered, “What the hell?” He rose to his feet to gaze about in wonder, softly calling “Pam?” but not surprised to receive no answer. For while his own kit bag was in the same corner he’d left it, Pam’s baggage, as well as Pam, was missing.

  He quickly strapped on his gun rig, snatched up his hat and stepped over to the door. It was, yeah, already unlocked. It was nice to know nobody after him had tried for him again as he lay slugabed behind an unlocked door.

  He was more than a little pissed as he tore down the stairs and out the front. He saw the cross-country combination that had paused just long enough to jerk water was already starting to move again, eastward. It was that five o’clock train he’d told the fool gal about, and if she hadn’t boarded it, where was she?

  The tracks were only a few yards away. But he saw he’d never catch a combo so anxious to leave him and West Texas behind. As he slowed back down to a walk, he saw a bunch of Mex kids loading a mule-drawn buckboard with crates the freight cars of the combo had obviously just dropped off for them. Since there wasn’t any depot, searching for a station master figured to be a bother. But he had to know for sure. It hardly seemed possible a gal and all her baggage could get kidnapped with him dozing, sober, in the same room. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have given odds that anyone would throw down on a man drinking with old Pat Garrett either.