Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  “We just meant to make ‘em tell us about the stock we’ve been missing, Judge. I’m missing over fifty head as of this morning, and other spreads have been raided as well.”

  Old Bean snorted in disgust. “Shoot, a real outfit could lose fifty head to horn fly and never miss ‘em. But even saying someone stole your damn old long-horn scrubs, what makes you think my tame Mexicans have ‘em? Anyone with a lick of sense can see them refugees down by the river is farm folk, not riding folk. How many head of mighty sissy stock do you reckon a Mex on foot could herd all the way to Chihuahua?”

  The girl turned her head to look for them as she said, “Well, Sunny Jim said he tracked some Double W stock over this way. I don’t see him right now, but—”

  “But Sunny Jim is a cowhand, not a Gypsy with no crystal ball,” the old man cut in. “How in thunder can anyone identify stock by its damned tracks? Did he say the Double W brands cows on their hooves?”

  There was a murmur of sheepish laughter. “I was just down by the river,” Stringer called out. “I didn’t see one hoof mark or cow chip, branded or not, Your Honor.”

  Roy Bean nodded. “Of course you didn’t. Nobody but a damned fool would drive stolen stock through an Anglo town and wade ‘em into Mexico at an oxbow, even if they had horses to ride, which they don’t. It’s small wonder all of you are losing stock to somebody slicker. A ten-year-old kid on a burro could no doubt outsmart the bunch of you.”

  There was a grudging mutter of sudden common sense from the remaining riders as the old man’s words sank in. “All right,” Belle Rogers said. “Maybe Sunny Jim was wrong about them wetbacks. I’m still missing fifty head. So I’m open to suggestions instead of remarks about my brains, damn it.”

  Stringer moved closer to the porch, digging out a silver cartwheel as he announced to all who might be listening, “I asked the innocent Mexicans where they thought thieves might try to cross the river. Not saying they’re right, for the cows could be most anywhere with a full day’s start, they said Anglo thieves would cross where Rurales aren’t stationed close, and beeline ‘em to some ranch that’s not too deep in Mexican range.”

  “There you go,” Roy Bean said. “Stringer, here, ain’t even a West Texas rider, and he’s still got more cow savvy than the rest of you all. I can narrow her down better without even stirring off this porch. Nobody would try too far downstream, because the banks get ever steeper that way for a stretch. There’s a Rurale post upstream, half a day’s ride. I’d try to cut the sign of that missing beef somewheres between the oxbow and Rurale post. If your missing cows is in Mexico to begin with, they’ll be on their way to the Serranias del Burro about now. I’d write ‘em off as lost. We’re talking mighty rough country, filled with even rougher folk. Ain’t no towns in them burro mountains, just bustled-up jaggedy rock and pear. I wouldn’t ride through that stretch of Chihuahua with a company of Rangers. The whole Mexican army is afraid to get near the Serranias del Burro.”

  Belle Rogers nodded grimly. “Do I cut sign of my missing beef, I mean to follow ‘em into hell.”

  To which Roy Bean replied, “That’s what I just said, child.”

  Belle glanced up at the desert sky. “We haven’t time to argue about it. If we don’t cut the trail of that missing beef before sundown, the rascals will gain another twelve hours on us.” Then she swung her palomino around with her quirt twirling above her head as she shouted, “Vamanos, muchachos!” and even though they were all Anglos, they seemed to be riding off after her, due west.

  Roy Bean half rose from behind his improvised judge’s bench, banging on the crate with a six-gun. “Come back here,” he shouted. “This court is dammit still in session, and you all don’t know the facts of life in Chihuahua!”

  Then, as Belle and her riders rounded the far corner of his Jersey Lily to vanish from his view, Bean sank back down with a curse, coughed, and glared at Stringer. “What are you still here for? You can owe me the dollar. Go after that fool girl and bring her back. I hereby appoints you an officer of this court. So what are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t have a horse,” Stringer said. “If I did, I doubt she’d listen, and she’s got plenty of backing. In any case, that’s not the story I came all this way to cover, Your Honor. The theft of fifty cows would hardly qualify as front-page news, you know.”

  The old man grunted as he tried to get up again, swore under his breath, and said, “I know. But the massacre that bunch of fool kids is riding into might. I’d go after ‘em myself if I could get my damn legs to work. But somehow, today, they don’t.”

  Stringer moved quickly up on the porch, calling out to Bean’s daughters as he grabbed the fat old man’s shoulders. “Take it easy, Your Honor,” he soothed. “You’re just begging for a relapse, getting out of bed so soon.” As Laura and Zulema joined them, he said, “We have to get your father back to bed, poco tiempo, before he catches another chill.”

  “I ain’t chilled, dammit,” Bean protested. “It’s hot as hell this afternoon for so early in the year.”

  “You’re sweating like a pig, no offense,” Stringer told him, “but a lot of the heat seems to be coming from inside you. Laura, balance him on the far side, and I’ll manage most of the hoisting.”

  They got Bean to his bare feet between them and started to walk him inside on his fat old rubbery legs, with him bitching about it all the way. He demanded his guns and a jug of cactus-juice cough medicine some ungrateful child had hidden from him as they got him back in bed, frock coat and all, under two wool blankets and a quilt. Zulema had brought his guns in after them. When he roared even louder for medicinal alcohol, Laura shot Stringer a worried look. Stringer hesitated, then nodded.

  “Sipping tequila sedate might cut the phlegm in your throat, if you don’t overdo it,” Stringer told the old man. “But in return for your jug, we want your word you’ll behave yourself. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and stay the hell in bed until you’re all the way well again, you stubborn old cuss?”

  Bean laughed, coughed, and said, “My wobbly knees will be the judge of when I’m well or not. They just now told me I could be pushing my old ass beyond the call of duty. But somebody has to get a grip on things around here, son. Since I’ve been sick, it seems everyone’s gone brainless at once.”

  Laura came back in with the jug of tequila. She said something about Zulema scouting up a clean glass to go with it. But the old man grabbed the jug, pulled the corncob stopper with his teeth, and spat it out to inhale a heroic swig from the earthenware neck. Stringer was about to take it from him, lest he drown himself, when Bean lowered the jug to his lap, holding it like a baby. “Oh, Lord,” he wheezed, “I’m starting to feel human again. This is good stuff. You never see a Mex dying of pneumonia. It was doubtless the sissy food and drink I was forced to consume in San Antone that nigh to done me in. Bugs can’t get a toehold on a man filt with red peppers and cactus liquor. You’d best have both afore you chase after Belle Rogers, boy. Never drink water south of the border unless you’re fortified inside with hot stuff. The country’s hell on our kind, even if we don’t get sick.”

  As the old man took another pull on the jug, Stringer said, “That’s enough for now, Your Honor. I want you to stay sober enough to talk, now that you’re able to make sense at last.”

  Roy Bean hugged his jug tighter to his fat belly but didn’t raise it to his bearded face, for now. “I’ve been talking sense to you, son. You’re the one who’s standing there like a big-ass bird instead of riding after poor Little Belle. I told her grandfather, my old guerrilla comrade Jake Hanson, I’d look after the gal for him. Swore it to him as he lay dying say a dozen years ago. But now she’s on her way to be executed by Mex bandits or raped by Mex police, and I can’t even find me a deputy to save her!”

  Stringer frowned. “How come she’s Belle Rogers if her next of kin were named Hanson, Your Honor?”

  “Rogers is her married name,” Bean explained. “Was her married name, I mea
n. Her man was kilt in the war with Spain. He was a good old boy, but never left her much, aside from a medal and a fancy letter from the War Department. Her father was old Jake Hanson’s son. Had a serious drinking problem afore it kilt him, even earlier than old Jake hisself. So as Jake lay dying, he willed his considerable herd and water rights to his granddaughter, Belle. I know, because I was the one as notarized his last will and testament. She being still a minor at the time, albeit old enough to ride and cuss, I helt her a ward of my court and made sure nobody messed with her property till she married up with young Johnny Rogers and I could hand ‘em the deed. That should have been the end of it. Only we had that war with Spain and, fool that he was, Johnny left a young wife, a herd of two thousand cows, and the best desert spring for many a mile to go traipsing off with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. I always figured that girl married beneath her. She’s always been stubborn as hell. Now she’s off to get murdered in Mexico over a measly fifty head, and you say you aim to write my story, Stringer? What kind of a newspaperman are you? My story’s about over, and in any case, it’s been told, more than once. I’ve always got a kick out of joshing greenhorn reporters.”

  “I know,” Stringer said. “I’ve read the conflicting accounts in our morgue, Your Honor. But my features editor didn’t send me here to do a rehash of your romance with Miss Lillie Langtry or discuss how many men you might have hung in your time. Someone tipped us that there was trouble, real trouble, brewing here for you and yours in Langtry.”

  Bean raised the jug to sneak a slug before Stringer could move to stop him. Then he wheezed and said, “You’re barking up the wrong tree, boy. I’ve been in trouble all my life, but I’ve never had much trouble coping with it, until recent. There ain’t a lick of trouble around here that I couldn’t handle if only I was a few years younger. Dame Nature may be getting the drop on me at last. But there’s never been no human trouble I couldn’t handle one way or the other. You see, I ain’t just tough. I’m slick as hell. I reckon that’s how come I’ve outlived most of my enemies as well as friends.” He stared off into space. “I miss my old friends most,” he added in a softer tone. “There was a time I could have ordered that sassy Belle Rogers to behave herself and made it stick. There was a time I had close to forty deputies to do my bidding and— Where are my two boys right now?”

  Stringer sat on the edge of the bed to make sure the old man stayed in it as he soothed, “Your boys went over to the county seat to see a lawyer, remember? You had us all worried for a spell, out of your head, with no sensible records to be found about the place, no offense. Roy, Junior fears that gents he calls buzzards might, ah, take advantage of your family if you, well, weren’t here to stand up for their rights.”

  The old man snorted in disgust. “I never should have taught them kids to read and write. A half-ass education leads to mighty half-ass notions. Ain’t you never heard of the Texas Rangers or Texas Democrat Party, dammit?”

  Stringer said he had, but added, “I know you have friends, Your Honor, but without a scrap of paper between them to even prove American citizenship, your kids could have a time in court against a business or political rival with a brace of slick lawyers.”

  “Bullshit,” old Bean said flatly. “My sweet babies all has Texas Rangers, a separate one each, as his or her godfather. Would you like to tell four old Rangers their godchillen was wetback bastards?”

  Stringer had to chuckle as he pictured that event. But he still said, “Assuming your heirs have less to worry about than might meet the eye, the target could be your position here, Your Honor.”

  Old Bean shrugged. “I don’t care who the party makes J.P. of these parts after I’m gone. I can tell you true he’ll never be no Black Republican in West Texas. We had us a government of damnyankee carpetbaggers during the Reconstruction, and West Texas will never put up with anything like that again! When the party appointed me, the day we saw the last of them carpetbagging bastards appointed by Washington, they told me it would be for life, as long as we kept voting the right way and didn’t mess up too bad. Over the years a few old boys have tried to take this job away from me. As you see, I still got it. Your mysterious plotters could come in yonder door this minute and shoot me dead in this here bed, and they still wouldn’t get my job. The Rangers and state party committee admire me so much they’d appoint someone just like me to carry on the same damn way. The asshole who tipped your paper off that me and mine was in some sort of trouble sure didn’t know much about West Texas politics. Did you really think one man could ride herd here, all this time, without no backing in high places?”

  Stringer nodded soberly. “I follow your drift. But if you and your Jersey Lily can’t be the intended target, who or what could be?”

  The wily old man cocked an eyebrow at Stringer. “How come there has to be any target? This country’s always been a mite wild. There’s always some damn trouble going on, be it Mex border raiders, Anglo cow thieves, or whatever. Some dude passing through may have picked up some rumors only a dude would take all that serious, and then felt duty bound to bitch about it to you newspaper gents, see?”

  Stringer thought, then shook his head. “That would work if someone hadn’t tried to stop me and at least one other reporter from getting here to follow up on such leads.”

  Old Bean asked what he was jawing about, and listened quietly while Stringer filled him in on the attacks against both himself and Pamela Kinnerton. When he got to the surly manners of One Thumb Brown and Smiling Jim, old Bean stopped him. “I got Brown’s number. Soon as Will Slade or some other Ranger comes by, I mean to fine Brown considerable for operating a house of ill repute. I’ve a good mind to yank his innkeeper’s permit whilst I’m at it. As for him wanting you out of town before I got back on my feet, he no doubt anticipated this very conversation, figuring you as a pal of me and mine. Old One Thumb ain’t got brains to be a serious plotter. The damn fool should have known my own kids would tell me, soon enough, about that wide-open disgrace he’s opened ahind his hotel. The whole town knows about it. Why should my kids be ignorant? Like I said, you was sent here on a fool’s errand.”

  Stringer pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Assuming Brown’s just a greedy moron and that Sunny Jim is even dumber, that still doesn’t get around those attempts to stop at least one other reporter and me from coming here, Your Honor.”

  The old J.P. shrugged. “The gal could have tangled with a wandersome rapist more interested in her figure than any job she might have. You can’t say for sure he was fixing to toss her off that train. He might just as well been trying to drag her into the shithouse at the end of the car, right?”

  “That’s not the way it looked to either of us,” Stringer said. “But she did have a nice shape. So let’s say you’re right about her. That still leaves the one who tried to ventilate my spine, not make love to me.”

  Old Bean had another pull on his jug before he replied in a disgusted tone, “You mean he pegged a shot in your general direction as you was standing betwixt him and Pat Garrett. Have you any notion how many sore losers have tried to kill old Pat since he cleaned up the Lincoln County War, you egotisticated young cuss? What was the name of that cadaver they found in that boxcar, some time after Garrett swapped shots with him?”

  Stringer thought. “Jones. Morgan Jones, unless it was the brand of his hat.”

  The old man cackled with glee. “There you go. Pat Garrett arrested a cow thief called Bobtail Jones back around Pat’s last try for another hitch as sheriff. He lost the election anyways, but that didn’t do old Bobtail Jones much good. Who’s to say Bobtail didn’t have a kid brother named Morgan?”

  Stringer shrugged. “A hat maker works just as well. Jones is a sort of common name.”

  The old man grimaced. “Have it your own way. A gunslick by any color going after Garrett makes more sense than some mysterious rival of mine sending a hired gun after you. Ain’t it occurred to you yet that I’ve been flat on my back and out of my head since they car
ried me home from San Antone? Anybody who was out to do me dirty could have done it most any time, without all this infernal shilly-shally you keep stewing about.”

  Stringer sighed. “When you’re right you’re right, Your Honor. Sam Barca and I seem to have made up a chess game when the name of the game was just checkers. With you getting better, things will be getting back to as normal as West Texas ever gets, and don’t take this personal, I see no story here that our readers haven’t read a lot already.”

  The old man nodded. “Things is downright tame, next to the way they was back in the late ‘80s, with water wars and such the Rangers and me had to deal with.”

  Stringer raised an eyebrow. “Water wars? I don’t recall anything about water in our morgue clippings, sir.”

  “That’s likely because the papers has ever been more interested in more colorsome stuff, like shootouts. The west wasn’t won by wildmen, Stringer. They was just the noise as went with the real struggles over land, water, and important prizes like that. I mind the time Jake Hanson first staked out them springs for his B Bar Lazy Six, and how upset some other cow outfits was about it at the time. Old Jake had no trouble chasing off hired raiders. You should have seen and heard all the fancy lawyers appearing afore my court, disputing Jake’s claim with twisty words, when everyone knew he’d found the damned water first.” The old man enjoyed another pull on his jug and sounded sort of sleepy as he continued. “We was ready for ‘em, though, the time Jake died and left his holdings to a she-male minor. I had everything fixed watertight for little Belle afore they got here. So they just yelt, and I just pounded with my six-gun, and after fining ‘em all for contempt of court, I managed to get rid of the infernal buzzards.”

  Stringer smiled thinly. “There’s a lot to be said for small-town justice, when it enjoys the support of the community. Who tried to dispute a grandfather’s right to leave his estate to his logical heiress?”

  Roy Bean yawned. “I forgot. Had it writ down some damned where, but I don’t fret about settled cases. I think they said old Jake had once been married to some gal back east, and so Belle had distant kin who, being male instead of she-male, had a better claim on her grandfather’s spread. Like I said, it was settled. There’s no way in hell anyone but Belle could claim all that land, cows, and water, as long as she’s alive. So—”