Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  “I surely feel more relaxed and, somehow, safer,” she said. “I knew you was strong when you hauled me off that dying pony, but I didn’t know you was that strong until just now. Do you reckon we could do it one more time, if I promise to be a good little gal and take my nap afterward?”

  He said that sounded reasonable, and she was good to him indeed, now that they’d gotten over the first awkwardness and their flesh had learned to mesh to the same beat. The unexpected lovemaking, on top of all the other surprises she’d been subjected to of late, just knocked the stuffings out of poor Belle. She’d no sooner got her skirts back down before she was sound asleep in his arms. He felt sort of tuckered too. But he had to stay awake. So the rest of the night dragged on for what felt like a million years.

  He didn’t recall dozing off. He knew he must have, and cursed himself for a fool when he suddenly became aware how light it had become all of a sudden. He was mildly surprised to see the girl still sleeping in his arms had auburn hair, now that it had come unbound to spread across the sand. He’d taken her for brunette with her hair pinned up under that Spanish hat. But he didn’t think he’d snapped to full alertness just to admire Belle. He drew his .38 with his free hand. The movement awoke Belle from her own light sleep.

  “Keep still,” he whispered as her eyes opened. “I think I heard something just now.”

  They both stiffened when, as if to prove him right, a voice called out in English, “Hey, Miss Belle? You in there in all that prickle pear?”

  She started to sit up, murmuring, “They’ve come back for us!”

  But he shook her to shush her. “Maybe,” he whispered. “Did you recognize that voice?”

  It called again, “Come on out, Miss Belle. We know you’re around here somewhere, and we spotted Rurales just a short spell back, see?”

  She frowned up at Stringer. “That’s nobody on my payroll. Maybe a Ranger sent to rescue us?”

  Stringer shook his head. “If Rangers made a habit of invading Mexico, that plot to vanish you down here would have made less sense. I can’t be sure. But I suspect I know that voice. I had words with it one time.”

  It called out again. “Bronco North!” she gasped. “I was there when you two was talking surly. He only sounds like that when he feels tense, I reckon. But that’s all right, it stands to reason the Double W would back my boys if they mounted a rescue party, right?”

  He reached for his hat and put it on. “We’ll see,” he murmured. “Give me to the count of one hundred and then, next time he calls, call back to him.”

  Before she could demand an explanation, Stringer had rolled to his feet and started walking, backward. Belle caught on, nodded, and reached for her own gun as Stringer backed out of sight among the walls of cactus. He was counting, too, as he stepped mostly in his own boot prints, searching for a side fork in the maze.

  He found one, took a deep breath, and leaped as far through thin air as he could before landing off to the side of the all-too-clear trail he and Belle had left through the maze. It was closer to the count of a hundred fifty before Bronco called out again and Belle called back, “Over here. I’m losted in this infernal pear.”

  Bronco’s voice was nearer, now, as it replied, “We’ve picked up your hoofprints, honey. Who’s in there with you?”

  Stringer swore under his breath. Then Belle, bless her, called back, “One of the boys, I reckon. I’ve lost his trail back here. He must have been hit and just staggered on. I haven’t been able to get no answer, no matter how I yell.”

  “Just stay put,” Bronco called back. “We’ll find our way to you directly.” Then his voice got harder to follow as he seemed to be jawing with somebody else.

  Stringer waited, gun in hand, until he heard another voice sort of jeering, “Here pussy pussy. Where the hell’s she at, Bronco?” to which the man in the lead replied, low and more serious, “Cut that pussy pussy shit out, Sunny Jim. We could spook her, and Lord knows she’s already deep enough in this green shit.”

  They were close enough for Stringer to follow their conversation clearly now. He could even hear the crunch of their boots as Sunny Jim muttered, “Do we have to gun her right off? I’ve always wanted me a slice of that proud ass of her’n.” Bronco replied, “We ain’t got time, damn it. It’s broad-ass day, and Los Rurales could be along any damn minute.” Then he said, “Hold it, there’s a fork ahead and— Right, she followed that gent’s boot heels to the right. Wonder who he was.”

  Then Bronco stepped into Stringer’s line of view, with a shotgun held at port arms and a bandage around his hatless head. “Wonder no more and freeze,” Stringer said, “you son of a bitch!”

  He fired as Bronco spun his way instead. The shotgun went off with a roar, blasting a cactus pad above Stringer’s head to green hash as Bronco staggered backward, got hung up in more cactus pads, and just sort of stood there, knees buckled and eyes staring at nothing after Stringer put a second round into him.

  Then Stringer was in motion, chasing the gutless Sunny Jim through the maze by the sound of running boot heels in the gritty sand. As Stringer burst out of the pear, he spied Sunny Jim trying to untether one of the two ponies tied up there. Sunny Jim saw Stringer, too, whimpered, and caught a .38 slug with his left eye before he could train his own six-gun on his thoroughly pissed-off pursuer. As Sunny Jim’s hat fluttered down to land in the dust near his sprawled body, Stringer took time to make sure both ponies were securely tethered before he spun on one heel to dash back into the maze. “It’s over for now. Belle,” he called out. “Get your pretty ass out here before we have us more company!”

  She met him where he was kneeling at the feet of the still erect but very dead Bronco North. He picked up the shotgun and showed her the fistful of twelve-gauge rounds he’d found on the body. “This was meant for you. It still made a lot of noise, just blasting pear. Let’s get out of here, poco tiempo!”

  She followed at a run. Out in the open again she stared about in horror. “Oh, Lord, there’s my poor palomino, and four other ponies as dead…and is that Windy Bill across the way by that other pear?”

  “Stay here, with these live mounts,” Stringer said, “and don’t worry about that skirt if you have to light out sudden.”

  Then he ran out across the torn-up desert pavement to where Belle’s dead pony lay. He felt exposed as an earthworm caught at dawn by sunlight on a mighty wide walk. But he toughed it through until he’d uncinched Belle’s sidesaddle, hauled it off the dead palomino, and ran back toward her with the shotgun in one fist and her saddle in the other. Spotting the Winchester he or someone else had dropped, he tossed the shotgun away and scooped up the rifle instead. As he joined her by the living horseflesh, Belle protested, “I could have used that twelve-gauge, pard.”

  “Do we let either bandits or rurales get within shotgun range of us, it’ll hardly matter,” he told her. Then he handed her the Winchester, dropped the sidesaddle, and proceeded to uncinch the stock saddle of the bay one of the killers had come in on. As he replaced the sidesaddle for the lady, Belle asked how he knew the bay would be better for her than the pinto, since the pinto stood a hand shorter.

  “You had that palomino shot from under you because it’s instinctive to shoot at unusual targets first,” he said.

  “Don’t that mean your pinto figures to get shot at first?” she asked.

  “I just said that,” he replied. “There you go, your saddle’s cinched, so climb aboard and let’s get out of here!”

  They did. Belle knew better than to ask why he was risking a daylight run across bandit-and-Rurale-infested desert. But as she followed him a spell, she had to point out, “We’re heading east instead of north. How come?”

  “Someone could be expecting us to cross the Rio the same way we crossed her last night,” he said. “I know where I’m taking us. The border trends east-southeast between that other crossing and where we want to cross, closer to Langtry.”

  “I know, but not nearly this far south,”
she protested, “this side of the Pecos junction.”

  “It’s patrolled all along the south bank too,” he replied. “We dasn’t swing north until we’re a heap farther east, honey. You may not have noticed, but this damned desert is sort of open. A man on horseback can see for many an open mile, and between us we’ve fired many a gunshot in recent memory. Lord knows why Los Rurales haven’t already showed up. But count our blessings. They may be strung out along the border, over yonder, the lazy bastards. We’ll work our way just south of Langtry, hole up until it gets dark again, and see if we can make her up through that oxbow the wetbacks have been so lucky with.”

  “Oh, hell, I’m already hungry,” she said. “But you do make sense, even with your pants up. Why do you reckon it seems safer to cross there? You’d think if we knew about it, the Rurales would.”

  “I can’t answer that,” he said. “I’ve never been a wetback, before now, I mean. Mayhaps there’s a gap between Rurale posts. I’ve never been a Rurale either.”

  They rode on a spell in silence, swinging south of any pear flats they passed to keep as much cover as possible between them and the border, whether patrolled or not. After a while Belle said, “I’ve been studying on the odd way them two Double W riders acted back there. Yesterday, before you sort of split Bronco’s scalp, him and Sunny Jim were leading us after Mex cow thieves, or so they said.”

  “It was just an act,” Stringer replied, “to get you and your more honest hands to consider searching along the border. They’d have no doubt found some other excuse to drop out, had not I given ‘em one. They knew there was no sign down across the tracks in shantytown. It was one of those ‘you ride thataway and we’ll ride this-away’ situations they aimed to set up, knowing you’d find a dotted line of dead stock that they or their confederates left for you, way upstream. How many riders does the Double W have on its payroll, all told?”

  “About two dozen,” she said. “Does that make any big difference?”

  “Yep. Bronco was their ramrod and Sunny Jim his segundo. I made it six or eight guns firing at us from ambush last night. So it’s safe to assume at least half the outfit may not be in on it.”

  “In on what?” she asked.

  “I’m still working on that. Your land and water, added to another good-sized spread, would make a tempting prize indeed. How well do you know the owners of the Double W, and more important, what claim could they have on your land and water rights if you say got lost in Mexico forever more?”

  She thought hard, before she replied. “That won’t work. You said last night in our love nest that Judge Bean explained the counterclaim my distant kin made long ago. That was thro wed out of court, thanks to Uncle Roy. I ain’t even distantly related to the owners of the Double W. Haven’t even seen ‘em for many a year. Bronco was managing the spread for ‘em. They live out in California now.”

  He asked how come, and she explained, “The older couple who started the Double W both died of the same fever a few years back. They left the spread to their only child, Mary-Ann Austin. I mean that was her maiden name. I never knew her all that well, but she acted decent when she was home from some fine finishing school back east. I was still a teenager, and you know how it is when a neighbor gal’s five or six years older and more used to boys.”

  He smiled. “She must have struck you as an old crone.”

  “More like a glamoursome lady of fashion to a kid in pigtails,” Belle said. “My grandfather could be a real pain about female notions, as he called ‘em. Anyway, Mary-Ann came home from finishing school just long enough to get the Double W running right under hired management. Then she married up with some gent, and the last we heard she was out on the west coast. I think her man is in the real estate business. They say there’s a real boom on city lots out yonder.”

  “There must be,” Stringer said. “Even old Wyatt Earp’s been at that game. Nobody ever thought much of him as a card shark. What might be the name of this Mary-Ann Austin’s husband? I might be able to check him out by wire.”

  Belle thought and shrugged. “I forget. I never paid much mind. You see, Mary-Ann’s personal life was less important to me than my own at the time. Her folk died just before my poor grandfather did. So I had all that fuss Judge Bean told you about. I was young, and confused as hell with all them slick lawyers out to do me dirty. I wouldn’t have paid much attention had old Mary-Ann eloped with a two-headed Comanche. The point is that I’ve yet to have cross words with the true owners of the Double W, about my water or anything else. That means Bronco must have been up to something sneaky on his own.”

  “Or someone even sneakier,” Stringer replied. “Tell me more about your long-lost eastern kin.”

  She shrugged. “Ain’t much to tell. They’re damnyankees. You see, years afore the War Between the States, Gramp worked in Penn State a spell. He married up with this old gal who died in childbirth, and for some reason her folk seemed to think it was his fault. Anyway, they kept the girl-child and riz her damnyankee too. They used to write back and forth until the war broke out. By then she was growed up enough to hate southerns too. So Gramp never heard from her no more. Meanwhile he’d remarried, to father my own poor father, who died young, right after my poor mama. I reckon Gramp thought I sort of made up for the little girl-child he’d never got to raise, even though she must have been a grown woman with kids of her own by the time I come along. We never heard spit about the kids my sort of half-aunt had back east until Gramp died. Then they suddenly got sentimentilated as all hell about their long-lost Texas grandfather and his considerable property, and you know the rest.”

  “No I don’t,” Stringer said. “I don’t know their damned names.”

  She thought and said, “I think it’s Penderson. Something like that. You don’t suspicion that’s who could be behind the mean tricks Bronco North tried to play on me, do you?”

  He grimaced. “Lawyers cost more than hired guns. It would have to be a dirty bird that would crap in its own nest to begin with. Having set out to rob kin, the Penderson branch of your clan could be sore losers. I was sort of raised on tales of clan battles back in Lochaber, and it does seem relations can work up more hate for one another than more casual enemies. But like the old song says, ‘Farther along we’ll know more about it.’ We’d best get you back to the U.S. of A. safe and sound before we put any carts before any horses.”

  She agreed, and reached behind her for the water bag lashed to her saddle skirts. As she did so she gasped, “Oh, no!”

  He turned to stare the same way before he cursed and muttered, “Oh, yes. That’s a Rurale column sure as hell! Don’t bolt. They may not have spotted us. Just keep your pony walking till I say it’s time to raise some dust.”

  “How much time do you mean to give ‘em?” she asked. “Can’t you see they’re swinging this way?”

  He sighed. “You’re right. You take the lead, and don’t you worry about raising dust, honey. Head straight for the border, and to hell with ceremony. Those sons of bitches are coming at us at a lope now. Our only chance is to outrun ‘em!”

  She didn’t answer. It was hard to talk at a full gallop.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Their race for life across the sunlit desert degenerated all too soon to a running gunfight. For though the cow ponies under Belle and Stringer were fast, nobody rode faster horses than the gray-clad Mexican Rurales. If anybody had a faster horse, Los Rurales helped themselves to it.

  But at least the patrol chasing them began to spread out in a straggly line as some of the big-hatted bastards rode slower or faster than average. It was the ones out front Stringer was aiming at as he returned their fire. The Rurale in the lead plucked at the flapping tail of Stringer’s denim jacket with a pistol round. So Stringer reined in with a curse, just long enough to fire his Winchester from a steady platform, and emptied two saddles in a row.

  But the others kept coming. Los Rurales were chosen for toughness, not brains, and there were just too damned many of them
. Stringer swung his pinto around and galloped on after Belle as someone back there in the pack crowed like a rooster and ticked the brim of Stringer’s hat with a .45 slug. He called out to Belle, now well ahead of him, “Make for that pear to your right!” even as he saw she’d already spotted the cover. Stringer realized, sickly, that a barricade of squishy cactus pads wasn’t going to do them much real good. But they had to make a stand somewhere, even if it was obviously to be his last stand. They’d no doubt let Belle live until they’d all finished raping her in turn. Los Rurales weren’t picked for gentle manners either.

  He saw he was overtaking the girl easily, and dully wondered why until he fell in beside her. “Don’t slow down now, dammit!” he shouted, then saw what she’d spotted ahead. “Right,” he snapped. “But better the devil you don’t know than Los Rurales!”

  So they rode on, they had no choice, toward the ragged line of stolid-looking gents in white cotton, straw sombreros, and ammo belts across their chests, who seemed to be just standing there, regarding the whole scene with casual interest. Nobody said anything as the two young Americanos rode through their wide-spaced skirmish line. Then, as Stringer took the lead to steer Belle behind the wall of cactus they’d been aiming for in the first place, a chubby young Mex sitting a big white horse with other riders around him called out, “Hey, gringo. Over here.”

  Stringer exchanged worried looks with Belle. “We’d best do as the man says.”

  As they joined the mounted leader and his bodyguard, all their ponies flinched as one to the sound of ragged small-arms fire. As Stringer steadied his own mount, the hefty Mexican stood in his stirrups to gaze southwest across the cactus pads. “Bah, the cabrones are turning back,” he growled. “They only have the heart for shooting women and raping chickens. Gomez, take a few boys out for to salvage. We only spilled a few. But every little bit helps.”