Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  When he got to the hotel, he noticed his kit bag in the dust at the foot of the wooden steps. One Thumb Brown was seated on the top step. The Double W rider called Sunny Jim was lounging in the open doorway, one casual hand on the grips of the holstered six-gun he’d strapped on over his shotgun chaps. The black silk shirt and matching ten-gallon hat he wore hinted at how pleased Sunny Jim seemed to be about himself. It was just as well he had himself as an open admirer. His smirky face was sort of ugly.

  Stringer approached to conversational range, stopped to stare morosely down at his possibles, and asked what they might be doing in the street. “I don’t want you staying here no more, MacKail,” the hotel owner and pulque dispenser said. “I reckon you know why.”

  Stringer could think of several reasons. It would have been rude to mention Ramona’s name in her absence, so he just said, “It’s a free country, and your hotel. I found the bedsprings sort of noisy, anyhow. But it’s the usual custom to hand a guest’s baggage across the counter, and by the way, I think you owe me three dollars. I paid you five in advance, not knowing how long I’d be here. I only spent a buck’s worth in your jingle bed, but I’ll allow we’ve at least started a second day of your gracious hospitality, and I’ve always been a sport. So why don’t you just give me my change, pick up my possibles and hand ‘em to me like I was a white man, and we’ll say no more about it.”

  One Thumb Brown shook his head. “Not hardly. I don’t give rebates when guests check out early. As for your damned bag, you’re lucky to get it at all. So pick it up and git. We don’t cotton to your kind in Langtry, MacKail.”

  From the doorway, behind him, Sunny Jim added, “We don’t even want your kind in Texas. There’s an eastbound combo stopping here just before noon. Be on it, MacKail.”

  Stringer ignored him. “How come this cowhand seems to be working for you, innkeeper?” he asked One Thumb Brown, “Cows are about the only kind of customers you weren’t entertaining out back last night.”

  Brown didn’t answer. Sunny Jim stepped clear of the doorway, dropping into a gunfighting crouch on the porch. “I ain’t working for old One Thumb. I’m his pal, and you ain’t. So do you mean to take our advice and choo-choo out of here alive, or would you rather I showed you how our graveyard for nosy strangers got started?”

  Stringer was pleased to hear this nonsense wasn’t about poor little Ramona, after all. But he wasn’t smiling as he told them both, “I hardly ever board an eastbound when I may be heading out to the west coast. I stress the may part because, until just now, I was planning on catching the next westbound express.”

  “All right,” Sunny Jim said, grudgingly. “I reckon we’ll let you stay in Langtry that long, only take your nosy ass out of sight till then.”

  “Sure, go on back to the Jersey Lily and play with them Mex kids if you like,” One Thumb Brown chimed in.

  “I don’t think you boys have been paying any attention,” Stringer said. “I won’t be boarding that westbound, or any other train, until I figure out what’s going on around here.”

  Sunny Jim sighed. “You’d best get outten our line of fire, One Thumb.”

  Brown rose, his eyes riveted on Stringer’s gun hand as he crabbed off to one side, “Take it easy, now,” he muttered. “Nobody said nothing about fire!”

  Stringer told Sunny Jim, “He’s worried about you burning his hotel down with that fake silk shirt. They’ve been known to blaze like hell when set alight by muzzle blast. You’d best come out a mite so we don’t damage any property.”

  Sunny Jim did, starting to draw as he hit the bottom step. And then he froze, grinning sickly, as he found himself staring down the muzzle of Stringer’s S&W .38.

  Sunny Jim’s gun hand flew off its roost like a spooked dove, even before One Thumb Brown sobbed, “No! Don’t do it! Can’t you take a little funning, MacKail?”

  Stringer smiled thinly. “Sure I can. Your hired gun, here, is a bundle of laughs. Let’s have some real fun.” He holstered his six-gun again, adding, “Come on, Sunny Jim. Show us how funny you are. You got a gun, I got a gun, all God’s chillen got guns. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to play with me no more?”

  Sunny Jim gulped hard. “I’m only good with a gun, Mr. MacKail,” he pleaded. “This lying son of a bitch never told me you was magical!”

  “I never said nothing about nobody gunning nobody,” One Thumb hastily blurted, “and I sure hope you can see I ain’t armed, MacKail.”

  Stringer nodded grimly. “That’s how come I might let this dumb cowboy live, for now. You were the one with the notion to run me out of town. You were the one who recruited this poor dumb bastard to do the fighting for you because you’re just too shit-eating yaller dog to do your own fighting. Are you paying any attention to this, Sunny Jim?”

  “I sure am,” the scared-skinny showboater answered, “and you do have a way of putting things so anyone can understand you. Can I go now? I got a heap of chores waiting on me out to the spread.”

  “Just so you don’t duck inside,” Stringer said. “Walk around to wherever you left your pony by the cheery daylight of this grand spring day. Then don’t come back to town until they tell you I’m not using it anymore.”

  Sunny Jim lit out, chaps flapping, not looking back. One Thumb Brown reached in his pants with one hand as he picked up the kit bag with the other, saying, “You do have a persuasive way of putting things. Here’s your damn possibles and all your money back. Does that leave us square?”

  Stringer took the five dollars and the strap of his kit bag in his left hand, leaving his gun hand still free. “Almost,” he said. “I’d still like to know who’s behind my sudden popularity around here.”

  Brown wouldn’t meet Stringer’s eyes. “It ain’t you, personal,” he muttered. “The boys just didn’t take kindly to a stranger getting in so thick with that crazy old Bean and his half-breed brood. The greasers around here have been spoiled intolerable by a Mex-loving judge, and his uppity Roy, Junior and the boys was sort of hoping, once the old man finished dying—”

  “Old Roy was sitting up this morning.” Stringer cut in. “You might tell your gutless friends, for me, that either way, Roy Junior has at least one Texas Ranger he calls Uncle. So even if you ran me out of town, messing with the Beans could add up to a lot of noise.” He started to turn away, then paused. “I don’t run so good.” he told the hotel keeper. “The next time you mess with me, innkeeper, do yourself a favor and arm yourself with something more serious than Sunny Jim.”

  Then, having had his say, Stringer turned to head back up the dusty street to the Jersey Lily. As he strode up the center of it, the kit bag flung over one shoulder by its strap, the small settlement seemed mighty quiet, considering it was usually open for business at this hour. A lace curtain moved in a window as he passed. But although the blacksmith shop was gaping wide open, with a fire glowing in its forge, neither the smith nor the old boys who usually loafed around to watch him work seemed to be on the premises. Mayhaps they’d all gone back to the outhouse at the same time, Stringer thought with a wolfish smile.

  When he got back to the Jersey Lily, he found Laura and her kid sister Zulema hauling empty packing crates out on the porch. As he joined them, Laura said, “I thought you said you were leaving.”

  “I thought I was,” he replied. “You gals look like you could use some help.”

  Laura shook her head. “This crate’s the last of them, for now. We usually have less trouble getting rid of them. Our friends from shanty town salvage crates and kegs as fast as we can empty them. But even the Mexican household help seems to be missing this morning. They must be having a wedding or a funeral or something going on down by the river.”

  “No they don’t,” little Zulema said. “I asked Tia Maria where she was off to when I saw her leaving with her bundle earlier. She` said I was too young to understand. Do you understand, Señor MacKail?”

  “They’re scared,” Stringer said. “How’s your father feeling this m
orning, Miss Zulema?”

  The girl brightened. “Perking up some. He’s read the morning papers and keeps pestering me to fetch him a cigar.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Laura said. “He can have some tequila for his coughing, but not one durned old cigar until he coughs up the last of them oysters, hear?”

  Zulema pouted her lower lip. “I told him that my ownself. Just because I’m little don’t make me stupid, does it?”

  Stringer headed off the dispute between big and little sister by telling Laura, “I just got evicted from my hotel. I’d be sort of obliged if you’d let me leave this kitbag with you until I find another place to bunk.”

  “You have a place to bunk,” Laura said, “if you don’t mind the smell of ponies. Zulema, break out a tarp and some blankets and show our guest to the hayloft over the stable, hear?”

  Stringer hesitated. Then Zulema had him by one hand and seemed to be hauling him inside. As she bustled behind a counter, Stringer asked what kind of money they were talking about.

  “Don’t talk like a stuck-up Anglo,” the young gal said. “You ain’t a customer.”

  Stringer smiled softly down at her, one part of him touched while yet another asked him what on earth he thought he was out to prove. He’d been sent here to get a story, not to take on the troubles of a clan that had apparently worn out its welcome in the town Roy Bean had founded. He wasn’t even sure who might be in the right or in the wrong. Even if he had been, he was hardly a lawman. He was likely, at best, a stubborn fool who just hated to look as if he was running, even when he’d been planning to leave in the first damned place.

  The girl rose with a bulky bundle of bedding, and pointed with her little chin at the burlap drapes. “We can go out that way, through the back.”

  He agreed but insisted on taking the tarp and blankets from her. As she led the way, they passed the open door of old Roy Bean’s bedroom. The old-timer was propped up on his pillows, his eyes closed. Stringer didn’t know whether he was dead, asleep, or just resting his eyes.

  He decided it would be wrong to disturb the poor old cuss in any case. Bean couldn’t tell him much he didn’t already know, and what he did know would no doubt add to the worries of a sick old man.

  Out back, there was more to the Jersey Lily than expected. A string of smaller outbuildings faced the back of the main structure across a pole corral. A re-muda of nine ponies eyed Stringer and the girl warily as they passed. None of them were blue-ribbon stock, but all nine looked young and frisky, with a couple showing Spanish Barb bloodlines.

  As if she’d read his mind, Zulema said, “They’ve sure been getting fat and spoiled since Papacito gave up riding them too often. Us kids take ‘em out for a run now and again, when we’re not busy with other chores. But to tell the truth, we just have too big a remuda for the four of us, and not one cow to chase.”

  Stringer started to ask why they didn’t sell off some of them. But he didn’t. “Your father has a good eye for horseflesh,” he said. “I see he’s built a plank awning above yonder watertrough as well.”

  “Roy, Junior and Sam did that,” Zulema said. “Papacito has always admired horse and woman-flesh more than he’s felt up to pampering either. That shade makes it safer to leave ‘em out here most of the time. So you won’t be bothered all that much by flies above the stalls, see?”

  He did, once they’d climbed the ladder to the hayloft. As the girl spread his bedding on the sweet-scented alfalfa hay, he felt sort of wistful about old Pam and Ramona. For this would have made as nice a love nest as that more sordid hotel room. But, of course, he could hardly invite Ramona up here, even if he knew how to get in touch with the chambermaid without getting her fired or worse.

  He tossed his possibles on the hay beside the bedding, and let Zulema lead him back through the Jersey Lily. As they passed the old man’s open door a second time, Roy Bean called out to them. They turned back to find the old-timer sitting up in his nightshirt with his bare feet on the floor.

  He nodded at Stringer. “I thought that was you before,” he said. “What’s going on around here, dammit? The girls say my boys went to the county seat to see a lawyer. Only they can’t, or won’t tell me why. I don’t need no damned lawyer. I got the statute book of the state of Texas right here. Or at least I did. A man can’t find nothing when he has two damned house-proud she-males picking up after him all the damned time.”

  “I wasn’t here when your sons decided to seek some legal advice, Your Honor.” Stringer said. “But since we’re on the subject, I reckon it’s because you don’t go in for keeping records all that much. So, with you laid up—”

  “I ain’t laid up no more,” Bean cut in. “And I don’t need to scribble-scrabble everything down. My business ain’t complicated. I buy cheap and sell dear, like any other businessman.”

  “That well may be, Your Honor. But your kids may not be as smart as you. The boys were confused when they saw somebody surveying yet another building lot on your land, someone else’s land, or whatever. You don’t seem to have deed-one to any land on your premises. It’s no business of mine, but sooner or later you might want to tell your kids, at least, what might or might not be coming to them should, ah, something happen to you.”

  Roy Bean shrugged. “I built this here Jersey Lily sort of informal, just off the railroad’s right-of-way strip. I never thought I’d need a normal title to a patch of open desert until I noticed others crowding in on me. Then I naturally filed a homestead claim. Proved it, too, years ago. Nobody can claim my Jersey Lily. I forget where I put the deed, but it’s on file somewhere. Land office, I reckon.”

  Stringer nodded. “Roy, Junior might have saved him and Sam a trip if you’d told them that before you got too sick to. I take it you filed the usual quarter-section claim?”

  Old Bean shook his white head. “Hell, no, I claimed a whole section, seeing you’re allowed to when the land is pure desert. I reckon there must be close to a third of the original claim left. Maybe half. I’d have to walk the corners to be sure.”

  Stringer frowned. “Hold it. Are you saying you’ve sold off some of your proven claim, and that you don’t have any of this on paper?”

  The old man looked annoyed. “Hell,” he protested, “the old boys I sold lots to have their damned old deeds. I said it’s all filed proper at the land office. I had to sell lots here and about, mostly across the street, to get some other businesses going in my town. Maybe I sold a few more acres now and again when things was slow and I had bills to pay. We had us a hell of a business depression when the price of beef went bust back in’87, you know. Lots of the old boys who first settled these parts went under all the way and had to sell out total. But one way or the other, I’ve always managed to hang on to the Jersey Lily.”

  Stringer whistled softly. “Your oldest boy was right. You need a lawyer. No offense, Your Honor, but for even a rural J.P., you do have a casual attitude toward proper legal records.” By this time Zulema had wandered off to help her elder sister out front, so Stringer felt safe to ask, softly, “Speaking of records, do your heirs have any papers proving they may be legitimate, or, for that matter, U.S. citizens?”

  The old man scowled up at him. “What kind of a fool question is that to ask a man about his own dear offspring? Of course I married up with their mama legal. I always marry Mex gals legal. As the only J.P. for miles, I am empowered by the state of Texas to perform all the wedding ceremonies I want.”

  “Ohboy, does Texas allow bigamy?” asked Stringer with a weary smile.

  “Hell, no, do I look like a Mormon? I never yet married one gal without divorcing the one I might have married earlier. As a judge, I get to handle all such matters in these parts.”

  Stringer sighed. “Like I said, your oldest boy went to see a lawyer, and what the hell you’re still alive. So I don’t feel up to arguing West Texas law with a man of your experience of the same.” It would have been rude to say what he really thought of the mess the old man had made of thi
ngs, even if Roy Bean had been able to understand him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Later in the afternoon Stringer moseyed down to the tracks to see if the Bean brothers got off that local from the county seat. They didn’t. Stringer wasn’t surprised. No lawyer worth his salt would have managed to get a handle on the total confusion in one mere working day. Stringer had spent the last few hours going through the rats nest of papers on hand at the Jersey Lily, with the two girls finding more every time they recalled a cigar box on a shelf or a cheese box in a closet. Between them they’d found bills dating back as far as 1886, paid or unpaid, as far as anyone could tell, along with court judgments recorded in pencil on odds and ends of handy paper—from the backs of used envelopes to brown butcher’s wrapping. Stringer was mildly surprised to come across a more formal albeit grimy letter from the county board of supervisors, confirming Bean’s appointment as justice of the peace. There was nothing saying he had the power to try anyone for a serious felony.

  But in the same cigar box reposed a handwritten finding by “The First District Court of Langtry” sentencing one Hiram Miles to death by hanging the next time he dared to show his cow-stealing face in these parts again. There was no legal record, but Stringer saw no need to doubt Laura when she told him about her father’s Solomonlike wisdom in his judgment of a case involving an Irish railroad worker and the death of a Chinese track worker. Judge Bean had found, after a consideration of all the evidence, that while the Irishman had most certainly shot the Chinaman, more than once, there wasn’t one word covering such rare events in the legal statutes of the state of Texas. Ergo, since there was nothing saying it was wrong to murder Chinamen in Texas, the defendant was found not guilty of homicide but sternly warned not to ever gun a white man in His Honor’s jurisdiction.