Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

The old man didn’t answer at first, then said, “I just wanted to say I sure love you little bastards. All four of you. But while a man with sons worries, a man with daughters prays. You look after Laura and Zulema, son. Pretty young gals have a hard enough row to hoe when they’re all-white. Don’t let nobody mess with my girls whilst I’m laid up back here.”

  “I won’t, Dad,” the youth said. “Don’t you worry.”

  “Shit,” Bean muttered, “it’s boys a father worries about,” and then he began to snore.

  They eased on out, in silence, until they were back on the porch. Then Bean Junior heaved a vast sigh of relief. “Thank God you’re smart as me,” he told Stringer. “You know what he’d have done, or tried to, had you mentioned One Thumb Brown opening his own saloon, don’t you?”

  “I did,” Stringer said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

  The hotel was dark upstairs and down by the time Stringer got back to it. But somewhere in the night, mostly likely out back where the pulque was, someone was wanging hell out of a Spanish guitar, albeit the tune was an old Confederate marching song. Stringer groped his way up the dark stairs, found his own door and this time found the maid had locked it right. He unlocked it with his own key and stepped inside, hauling off his jacket with a yawn. It wasn’t all that late, or might not have been back in Frisco. But Langtry was a sleepy little wide spot in the road when the sun was shining, and it had been down now, for three or four hours.

  As he undressed in the dark, he felt more bored than sleepy. For all the fuss Sam Barca had made about mysterious doings in Langtry, he and the younger Bean had talked themselves tired without coming up with much. Young Bean was sure the buzzards would move in to contest the running of the town, once the old man finished dying. But that didn’t strike Stringer as a mystery. It was a simple fact of life that buzzards always moved in when a man with any wealth worth mention passed away. Old Roy Bean didn’t have what Stringer considered a fortune worth fighting over. On the other hand, the less worldly gents in these parts might not share his notions of real wealth. They’d never gotten to interview some of the rich old boys Stringer had.

  As he finished stripping to the buff, Stringer could just make out the vague outline of the big brass bedstead. He was tempted to test the springs with a belly flop, but decided to act grown-up and just get in. As he did so, he was glad he hadn’t landed with a running dive. There seemed to be a naked lady under the covers. From her soft breathing, she was sound asleep. But that could soon be fixed. As he took her in his arms, he chuckled and told her, “I don’t know why you came back, Pam. But we can talk about that later.”

  Then he realized it couldn’t be Pam Kinnerton, for she was built shorter and softer. “What the hell?” he muttered.

  She snuggled closer and murmured, “Forgive me. I did not mean for to fall asleep, but you were out so long, I could not stay awake.”

  He gulped. “I didn’t know you were waiting up for me… Ramona?”

  She yawned. “Si. Who else were you expecting for your money, you bad boy?”

  He had to think before he said, “I was wondering to what I owed this honor. Did you really think that was why I left two bits for you, querida?”

  “Si,” she answered simply, “what else would a man offer a woman a full day’s wages for? I confess I did not wish to accept it at first. But the other girls told me not to be such a goose. They said that in addition to being muy toro, you were working for El Patron, so—”

  “Hold it,” he cut in, even as his free hand went on behaving with a mind of it’s own. His body didn’t want him to, but his conscience made him tell her, “I don’t work for Judge Bean. He may not be anyone’s patron much longer, in any case. As for the quarter I flipped you…”

  “It was not just the dinero,” she cut in, reaching down between them to fondle him as fondly. “You are most toro, and it has been over a year since Los Rurales executed my husband, south of the border.”

  So Stringer did what most normal men would have done about a lady in such distress, and as he entered her, Ramona gasped with pleasure and marveled, “Oh, you are muy toro indeed! Would you think me bold if I allowed myself to become passionate?”

  He told her he wouldn’t mind at all, and he didn’t when she commenced to go loco en la cabeza under him, albeit it wasn’t her head she was moving so madly.

  But after he’d gone crazy, himself, for what seemed too short a trip to heaven and back, Ramona sobbed, “Oh, have I satisfied you, and do you despise me, now?”

  He answered no to both questions, and meant it. For any fool could tell she hadn’t been getting any lately. Professionals might move that good in bed with a man, of course. But had she been a professional, he’d have never caught her cleaning this room for him earlier, at two bits a day.

  As he paused for his second wind but still held on to her, the pretty little mestiza giggled. “You wish for more?” she asked. “Oh, this is so romanticò.”

  He nuzzled her neck just under the ear. “Si, pero un momento, por favor,” he said. “You don’t have to leave soon, do you?”

  She draped a bare thigh over his side, either to cool her privates or heat his up some more. “I do not have to be up and about before Señor Brown wakes up, and he went to bed, drunk, with that horrid Rosalita.”

  “He must have been drunk indeed,” Stringer said. “While we’re on the subject, has your boss, ah …?”

  “Pero no!” she gasped. “Neither of us would be that estupido. Do you take me for a fool who would sweep and mop all day for a man I was this nice to? Señor Brown knows better than to give his help such a hold over him, anyway.”

  “Do tell? What does that make Rosalita?” he asked.

  “A puta,” she told him simply. “She could not make a bed properly if she wanted to. Besides, as I said, he was drunk. Your people do not understand the way our pulque can sneak up on one, eh?”

  “I do,” he said. “It’s got more of a kick than you’d expect warm spit to have, just tasting it the first time. But let’s not worry about your boss and that dancing gal if they’re not worried about us. How come your man got executed like that?”

  She sighed. “As an example, Los Rurales said. They were searching for rebels. When they found no rebels, they took ten of the young men from our village for to shoot instead. I did not see the end of it. After they excite themselves by killing men, Los Rurales always rape all the women. Sometimes they kill them too. I did not wish for to be killed or even raped by a man who’d just shot my husband. So I ran away. For a time I just wandered, crying a little, and then I fell in with others running from Los Rurales or, worse yet, the vicious bandits they were after. One of the men had been up here to El Norte before. He said your people could be most rude, but that they seldom shot anyone for no reason. So we started north, and here I am.”

  Stringer whistled softly, then kissed her gently. “I’d say that sure made me happy if I didn’t savvy how sad it must have made you all. El Presidente Diaz will have a lot to answer for, once the devil catches up with him. I’m glad I’m not the devil. I’d be sore put to figure out a punishment that fit half the crimes of that old ogre.”

  “Diaz is never going to die,” she said. “It is well known among my people he is a brujo only a silver bullet can ever kill. He has been dictator of Mejico since long before I was born, and no doubt he will be dictator long after I am gone. Is it true you Anglos get to kill your presidentes every four years?”

  He laughed. “Close enough. Lord knows what Teddy Roosevelt will ever do with his hands once his term is up. We don’t exactly shoot the bastards, Ramona. We just vote ‘em out when we’ve had enough of ‘em.”

  “We used to be able to vote in Mejico,” she said. “That is, my grandfather did, one time, when Juarez was El Presidente. But then, one day, Juarez was dead, and when anyone asked for why Diaz was El Presidente, they got shot against a wall.”

  He agreed politics could get rough in Mexico, or Mejico, to hear
her tell it. Then they made love some more, and this time it was better.

  Ramona wasn’t a bedroom athlete, and the old-fashioned way seemed to suit her fine. But she was still what most men hope to wind up in bed with and have to settle for crazy positions once they find they haven’t. She was simply a natural woman, perhaps a mite too dumb to worry about the cold gray dawn before it got there, and so, since she just plain liked it, she just plain did it. Hard work when she was on her feet had left her in fine shape to respond to a man too. Stringer tended as a rule to chase more sophisticated bed partners, since he liked intelligent pillow talk between times. But a man couldn’t hope to have everything. He was lucky her English was a mite better than his Spanish. Trying to carry on a conversation with a sweet little illiterate while coping with Spanish verb endings at the same time could be a chore.

  So he was only half listening, say an hour later, when she still pattered on about events south of the border that neither of them could do a thing about, when suddenly he perked up and told her, “Hold it. Run that part about cockroaches past me some more, querida.”

  She kissed his bare shoulder. “Silly. I was not speaking of real insects. Las Cucarachas is what this rebel band I was speaking of call themselves. A federate general who thought he was so smart once boasted he would stamp out all the mestizo rebels in the desert to the south as if they were mere insects. They killed him in an ambush instead, and now they like for to tease the government by asking them to send more big brave sol-dados to step on Las Cucarachas, see?”

  “I think so,” he said. ‘“Yankee Doodle’ started out as a British drinking song poking fun at the Continental militia. What was that part about those cockroaches raiding along both sides of the border? I thought they were mad at Diaz.”

  “Si, they would love for to get their hands on the old brujo. But some of the rebel leaders feel that since Los Estados Unidos is so friendly to Diaz, and since you people are so rich in any case—”

  “Gotcha,” he cut in, adding with a sigh, “It’s surprising what some gents consider only right for a noble cause. But Las Cucarachas are asking for more trouble than the whole Mexican army and rural police combined have ever given ‘em, if they mess with Uncle Sam.”

  “What can your Tio Sam do about it if they hit and run here and there along the border, eh?” she asked. “Nobody said a word about staying up here for to fight a gringo army, or even the Texas Rangers. No doubt they will simply cross the border some place it is not well-guarded, take what they can get in a quick foray into your country, and be back in my country long before anyone can do anything about it. The desert and dry hills just to the south are easy for to hide in, and Las Cucarachas know it better than any yanqui, see?”

  He started to object, saw her point, and whistled softly. “Jesus, that would be something old Sam Barca would get more than one tip on. Word that something’s about to pop always gets out, even when nobody can say for sure what’s popping, and sure, there’s not a thing between here and Mexico but a shallow stream and some wetback-infested willows!”

  She snuggled closer. “Kiss me some more. I like for to be kissed, and do not worry about Las Cucarachas, my toro. I will speak up for you when they come.”

  “When?” he asked. “Don’t you mean if?”

  It didn’t cheer him much to hear her answer: “Quien sabe? They may hit here, they may hit there. All I know is that this is a favorite border crossing because there is no real law here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Laura Bean didn’t think much of Ramona’s warning as she fed Stringer a breakfast of ham on tortilla, and beer, out on the porch of the Jersey Lily. As she sat on the steps beside him, Laura explained, “Border raiders have better places for to strike than here. For one thing, there is no banco here, and hardly enough dinero in the whole settlement to make it worth the risk. Even if there was, Las Cucarachas need the goodwill of the simple people lest they be betrayed to Los Rurales, and there is no better border crossing for a pobrecito in trouble than down that way, just across the tracks.”

  He asked how come, and she said, “The Rio Brazo —or Rio Grande, as you people insist on calling it— oxbows close to the rail line here at Langtry. Anyone wading across east or west finds himself still in the open, with at least a few desert miles to run before he gets to the tracks; and when he gets to the tracks, crossing open ground, no passing train is about to stop. So my mother’s people do not consider crossing far from here.”

  He nodded, washed down some ham and tortilla with cold beer, and said, “I was wondering why that shantytown was there, seeing how some of the local Texans feel about it. It makes more sense to put up with rude manners than it might to chase a speeding freight across a cactus flat. From here, once they get their bearings, recent immigrants can hop a freight going most anywhere, with all trains stopping here for water. But how come the state of Texas hasn’t figured that out by now?”

  Laura shrugged. “Papacito and his Ranger friends hold the federal immigration laws to be a damnyankee notion. Cheap labor is the grease that keeps the wheels of commerce turning in the southwest.”

  Stringer nodded. “And with your papacito the only law in these parts, you might say Langtry serves as a handy safety valve for the state of Chihuahua too. But how do he and the Rangers feel about Texas cows migrating the other way?”

  “Oh, that is against the law, of course,” she said. “My brother Roy says it is only because everyone knows Papacito is not well that we’ve had that spate of stock thieving. The last time we had such trouble, Papacito was able to ride, and unlike even some of the Rangers, he knows Chihuahua as well as most who live there. He used to run a cantina in Chihuahua, and during the War Between the States, he and some friends hid out there between raids on the damnyankees.”

  Stringer washed down the last of his breakfast. “I doubt I’d lead a border raid around here, even if your dad was layed up serious. How’s he doing this morning, by the way?”

  She told him the judge had been able to get down a good breakfast, and that while still weak, he seemed to have shaken off the fever. She said, “It’s funny, when he was raging with fever, we could hardly keep him in bed. Now that he’s feeling better, he just wants to sleep.”

  “That’s not funny,” Stringer said. “It’s a good sign. Neither that beating nor galloping pneumonia could have made a man his age feel like chopping cord wood. What are the rest of you kids up to this morning? You seem to be minding the store on your lonesome.”

  She told him little Zulema was out back in the stable, tending the ponies, while young Roy and Sam had caught a dawn local to the county seat, to deal with some buzzards.

  When he asked her what she meant, she said, “We’ve had a time holding things together with Papacito sick. Some old skinflinty banker keeps pestering us about some money we don’t know about, and just the other day Roy had to run off a survey team he and Sam caught laying out city lots on our land, without even asking.”

  Stringer finished the last of his beer and set the bottle aside, “Buzzards may be too polite a term. I’ve a fair head for figures and I know a little law, Laura. I reckon I’ve time to go over the books for you, if you want me to, before I leave.”

  She shook her head. “Papacito has always kept most of his dealings, and even laws he can’t find in the one lawbook he owns, sort of private, in his own head. Roy and Sam took a shoebox of scribble-scrabbles they gathered over to the county seat. Roy says if some lawyer he knows can’t help us, it might be time to gather the clan together. That’s what Papacito likes to call getting all the old boys who might owe him together. None of them seem to be named Bean, though. Sometimes Papacito talks sort of odd.”

  “I follow his drift,” Stringer said. “How big a bunch do your brothers figure they might need, or more important, how big a gathering do they think they can count on?”

  “We don’t know. Uncle Will Slade was last seen headed for Fort Stockton on Ranger business. Not too many of the old-timers
Papacito used to ride with are left, and them left are getting on in years as well. But Roy figures we can count on say a dozen, including sons of the forty-or-so Papacito used to have backing his play.” Then, being careful not to look at him, Laura asked, “When were you planning on leaving, seeing you said something about leaving, Mr. MacKail?”

  Stringer reached for his makings. “It’s not written on stone by the Lord,” he explained, “but I was figuring on catching that late-afternoon westbound express, unless I tripped over a new lead worth wasting another day on.” She turned back to him, looking hurt. “I don’t mean coming here and meeting you all was a waste of time, honey,” he quickly added. “I got a lot of local color to add to the piece I’ll be doing on your father and this little town of his, sooner or later. It’s just that my editor expected more of a story than there seems to be here. So while I admire Langtry immense, I can’t see staying here forever.”

  She told him to do whatever he had a mind to, picked up his empty bottle, and flounced inside, slamming the screen door harder than usual. He finished rolling his smoke, lit it, and got up to mosey back to the hotel. He knew he’d have hurt the sweet little thing more if he’d told her the likely publication date of the piece he’d be doing on her father. He hoped it might still be a spell. He knew Sam Barca would only run it as an obit, once the old man was gone. Judge Roy Bean had used up his space rates as a living legend. Unless he did something new, like dying, nobody was about to run another rehash of his two-thirds bullshit years as the benevolent bully of a tiny town. Hanging around any longer, waiting for the old man to die or get better, would have made Stringer a buzzard, as he saw it. He’d just type up the obit when he got back to his Remington Grasshopper, and save it until they got the last important date by news service wire. Stringer didn’t want to be here as an eyewitness.

  He could see, just about as clearly, what came next if the old man got better for a while. The pretyped obit would still work as well a few years on. Up and about, the old judge would just go on coping with the changing times as best he could in his peasant-cunning way. Stringer sincerely hoped the slicker rogues of the new century wouldn’t screw Bean’s kids out of every nickel the old man might leave them. But he was a newspaperman, not a Don Quixote, even if he’d had the time to hang about Langtry that long. The old man’s boys were tough, and his girls were pretty. All but Zulema were almost full-grown. They could make it if they had to. It wasn’t his fault they’d likely have to.