Stringer and the Hanging Judge

by Lou Cameron

  As the younger hawk-faced Gomez nodded and rode off, the obvious leader turned back to regard Belle and Stringer with a puzzled smile. “This is most confusing. I know what to do with Tejanos. Kill them. I know what to do with Los Rurales. Kill them. But can a Tejano who kills Rurales be all bad? For why were those spawn of El Diablo chasing the two of you just now, eh?”

  “I reckon you’re just right about their father, General,” Stringer said.

  The obvious bandito blinked. “Who said I am a general?” he asked Stringer. “Are you trying to be funny, gringo?”

  Stringer shook his head, pasted a sincere smile across his numb lips, and said, “I’m sorry if I got your rank wrong, señor. Since you obviously fight for the freedom of your people, I thought it obvious you had to be an officer of high rank.”

  “You did, eh? What makes you so smart about matters in this country, gringo? Who are you? What are you and this bonita doing here?” the confused and sullen Mex demanded in a no-nonsense tone.

  “I am called MacKail,” Stringer explained, as sincerely as he could manage. “This señorita is my secretary. We were sent down here by my newspaper, the San Francisco Sun, to cover your grand revolution against the tyrant, Diaz.”

  The Mexican laughed uncertainly. “You were, were you? This is the first time I heard we had a revolution going on down here. I am called Francisco Villa. Is not my real name. Since they hanged my father and I stabbed my first official, I have not thought it wise to use the name of my poor relatives who have less courage. You have heard of me and my band of banditos, of course?”

  “Of course,” Stringer said. “You were just the man I wanted to interview for my newspaper. But nobody in Los Estados Unidos thinks of you as a mere bandito. They told us you were a patriot who only robs the rich to help the poor, right?”

  “That is the most astounding idea I ever heard,” Villa said. “But go on, tell me what else they say about me in the gringo newspapers.”

  Stringer sighed. “Alas, that’s what they sent us down here to find out. You probably know the Diaz government keeps trying to say you’re nothing but a loco outlaw, of course?”

  “Of course,” agreed Villa, sticking out his chest a little. “They always tell lies about me and my brave muchachos. Is that for why those Rurales were chasing you just now? Did you say I was a patriot?”

  Stringer nodded soberly, as Belle seemed to have trouble looking at them, for some reason. “I think they had orders to prevent us making it back across the border,” he told Villa. “El Presidente Diaz is afraid his yanqui friends may find out he’s not as popular with the decent people of Mexico as he claims. You must have seen they were trying to keep us from getting back to tell the truth about your revolution, right?”

  Villa nodded. “Si. I may not know how to read and write, but I got smart eyes. You say this señorita is working for you. Is this all she is to you?”

  Stringer shook his head. “No. She is my mujer as well. Do you take me for a mariposa, General?”

  Villa laughed. “I saw you nail those Rurales just now. But it was worth asking. I have never married a gringa, so far. Now I think we had better ride. Those Rurales may be back with Federales, and while they can’t fight so good, sometimes they bring field artillery.”

  “I’m sure the two of us can make it to the border from here, General,” Stringer said.

  But Villa shook his head. “I don’t. You two will ride with us to a safe pueblo, not too far from here.”

  Belle shot Stringer a stricken look. “General,” he said, “my mujer is most anxious to get safely home.”

  But Villa answered, stubbornly, “You are coming home with me, for now.” Then he took off his big sombrero, held it across his chest, and told Belle with what they could only hope might be a sincere smile, “Do not fear, my pretty little dove. I, the famous General Villa, will make sure nobody will harm an auburn hair of your lovely head while you are a guest of La Revolución!”

  It took his “guests” some time to decide whether Villa meant his words or whether he was enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with them. The folklore of his Chihuahua mestizo class contained elements of Uto-Aztec tribal tradition and the Spanish Inquisition. It didn’t comfort them at all to discover the safe pueblo Villa had in mind lay almost due south, or that his notion of nearby involved an all-day march. The only bright spot, as the desperately cheerful Stringer pointed out to the terrified girl during a trail break, was that the band moved slowly, even for barefoot infantry, because most of Villa’s followers were on foot and the hourly trail breaks were much longer than any disciplined forces would demand.

  None the less they were pretty far south for another running gunfight to the border by the time they straggled into the little out-of-the-way and probably unmapped pueblo in the barren foothills of the Burro ranges. Villa had told them, along the way, he was married to the alcalde’s daughter. He made a point of always marrying the alcalde’s daughter, unless she was too ugly to bear, and so it came as no surprise that they were greeted with open arms by the mostly pure-Indian villagers. When Villa not only announced another victory over the hated Rurales but proclaimed a formal war to the death between his “Army” and El Presidente Diaz, the villagers said the least they could do for him would be to proclaim a fiesta.

  As the sun began to set, a modest amount of hell broke loose, with every guitar on hand and a captured Army bugle rendering “La Cucaracha,” off key, and six-guns blasting in lieu of fireworks. Stringer and the still scared but mighty hungry Belle found a corner table in the only cantina and stuffed themselves with tamales, frijoles, and pulque, in hopes nobody would ask them to dance, fight, or both. By this time they’d lost track of Villa. When Stringer quietly asked a fat waitress how come, she laughed, winked lewdly, and confided El Generale Grande was honeymooning with his local wife and no doubt a couple of sisters-in-law.

  When she left them alone again, Belle smiled thinly. “I suppose I should feel jealous, but I don’t. How soon do you think it will be safe to make a break for it, pard?”

  “There has to be a better way,” Stringer said. “Our mounts are tired, wherever the hell those peones took them, and to tell the truth, I could use a good night’s sleep as well.”

  “That part sounds like fun,” she said. “But dammit, we’ve been gone so long I’ll bet everyone back home has given us up for dead by now.”

  “I know. That could make things sort of interesting when I get you back to Langtry. I can’t see Bronco and Sunny Jim working on their own. They were sent to make sure, after at least one of your honest riders made it back to report us ambushed and missing in action.”

  “Won’t the rascal behind it all make a grab for my water rights if everyone takes me for dead?”

  “I sure hope so,” he said. “We’re never going to find out who’s behind all this murderous nonsense before he crawls out from under his wet rock.”

  A barefoot bandit staggered over from the crowd watching a hat dance in the middle of the dirt floor, sat down at their table uninvited, and slammed a jug down between them. “Viva Villa! Viva La Revolutión!” he half bellowed and half belched, just before he fell sideways off his stool to just lie there, smiling up at the low rafters.

  Belle smiled. “I think you’ve started something,” she told Stringer.

  Stringer sighed. “I doubt it. Lord knows this country could use a good revolution. But old Diaz started as a mestizo bandit himself. So he fights by the same rules. He’s been boss man down here as long as I can remember, and nobody’s ever been able to budge him from the catbird seat, so far.”

  “So far’ can’t last forever,” Belle objected. “The old devil’s not as young as he used to was. Don’t he have to die sooner or later?”

  Stringer nodded. “He does, and sometimes I almost see why Washington—or Wall Street, at least—tends to favor his brutal rule down here. At least he rules. Once he’s gone, all bets are off. There must be dozens of gents like Villa, all sort of hoping to be
El Presidente when they grow up. Old Juarez was a great admirer of Abe Lincoln. When Juarez wrote the book on democracy down here, he may have put in too much of that stuff about growing up poor in log cabins. He should have stressed the fact that Lincoln learned to read and got himself a law degree before he ran for President. Old boys like Villa seem to feel starting out poor and ignorant is the main qualification.”

  Belle wiped her plate clean with a tortilla. “Damn it, pard,” she protested, “I didn’t come down here to argue Mex politics. I came down after my missing beef, and having writ them cows off, I have to get back and guard my water.”

  “I wasn’t planning on retiring for life down here either,” he said. “But first things first. We need some rest, fresh mounts, and permission from Villa might not hurt.”

  “With him shacked up for the night, who’s to stop us if we sort of borrowed some fresh ponies?”

  He shook his head. “Just about any of Villa’s lieutenants, to say nothing of the owners of said ponies. We don’t know what orders he gave Gomez and the others about us. It’s safe to say he didn’t mention standing the two of us against any wall. Let’s see if we can keep it that way.”

  He left Belle finishing every lick of her grub at the table as he went to hunt down the owner of the cantina and ask if they had any rooms for hire. The old mestizo told Stringer he knew better than to charge a guest of El Generale for anything, and called the same fat waitress over to show their honored guests to the best room in the house.

  Stringer and Belle were glad it was the best room, once the chica had led them up the back stairs and left them with the candle stub she’d used to show them the way. The corner room was reasonably clean, the adobe walls had been whitewashed, and if the windows had no glass, they at least had jalousied blinds to keep owls and bats out after dark. But save for a disturbingly realistic crucifix on one wall, the furniture consisted of a corn-husk mattress and a couple of blankets on the floor.

  Stringer placed the candlestick on a windowsill above the so-called bed and moved to bar the door, which at least was stoutly made, with an oaken bar that looked thick enough to stand up to a battering ram. He slid it in place, muttering, “At least we’ve nothing to worry about tonight.” Then he turned to see that Belle had already slipped out of everything but her riding boots. She was seated, naked, on the bedding as she tried to get them off. Stringer grinned down at her. “Well, howdy, stranger. Long time no see.”

  “Don’t you dare jump on me afore I can get these damned boots off,” she replied. “I fear my feet must have swole from all that heat today.”

  He slipped out of his own duds and put his gun rig next to her’s near the head of the mattress. “Hand me up a hoof and I’ll see what I can do for you,” he said.

  Belle raised one shapely leg, seated with her arms bracing her upper body in a way that made it hard for Stringer to concentrate on her stuck boot. She must have noticed the effect her own charms were having on him as he stood over her in the soft candlelight, for she suddenly fell back across the bedding with a hungry sigh. “Oh, the hell with my boots. The swelling’s sure to go down once I hold my feet above me for a spell.”

  So he dropped down to let her hold her feet above the both of them for a spell indeed. As she hooked her bare knees over his elbows, she grinned up at him roguishly. “I suspected, last night amidst the cactus, it would be more fun this way. You sure have a nicely muscled-up body for a pencil pusher, pard.”

  He said she seemed soft and shapely for a cowboy, for that matter. Then they kissed and didn’t have much to say for quite a delightful time.

  But later, as he shared a smoke with her, Belle sighed and said, “That sure was swell, pard. But about what you might have heard me moaning and groaning as I was coming just now—”

  He put the smoke to her lips as he let his own out, saying in a soothing tone, “We all say things like that when we’re excited, honey.”

  She took a drag. “I ain’t been in practice of late. I have to admit I’d sort of forgot how good it feels with a good-looking gent who knows what he’s doing. But about-that mushy stuff just now, I likes you a heap, MacKail. May haps if we kept at it a spell I could really fall for you all the way. But I got so much on my plate already to worry about, that I just don’t reckon I got time for mush.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t you have waited for the cold gray dawn to tell me it’s over? We still have to spend a whole damned night up here together, and I just hate to sleep in my damned jeans.”

  “Hell, I never said I didn’t like to screw you,” she said. “I just want it understood that I don’t want you taking nothing else for granted. I don’t want to settle down entire with any one man yet. It took me a hell of a time to get over the one man I gave my all to traipsing off to Cuba like a damn fool.”

  Stringer chuckled fondly. “I know the difference between good clean fun and getting hurt, honey. Would it make you feel more secure to know I’ll be off for the west coast about as soon as I can manage?”

  She nestled closer. “I’m sure glad to hear that. It makes a gal feel she’s safe to let go with a gent. Have you got your second wind yet, pard?”

  He laughed. “Almost. Just let me finish this smoke.”

  But she insisted, “Just lie still and finish it, if you like. Talking so honest with my duds off and the room lit has made me horny as hell. So what say I gets on top?”

  They slept late the next morning. Or at least they napped a lot between spates of recreational fornication and at least two experiments that could get a couple jailed in more than one state. Belle said she’d only come across a copy of the Kama Sutra after she’d been widowed, and that he was the first man of the world she’d met in any case. But they were sleeping soundly when Stringer snapped suddenly awake and sat up, gun in hand, with an ear cocked at the door. He heard the tapping again and rose to pad over to it as Belle yawned and sat up.

  He shushed her with a warning finger to his lips and turned back to the door. “Quien es?”

  “Gomez, señor,” their mysterious visitor replied. “El Generale sends his compliments and begs your forgiveness. But he shall not be able to grant you the interview you requested, after all.”

  “That’s too bad,” Stringer answered. “I was looking forward to it. Is anything wrong, ah, Lieutenant?”

  Gomez barely managed to stay polite as he replied, “That would be Major, por favor. El Generale just now heard of a Federale payroll shipment crossing the desert not too far from here. As we speak, his army of liberation has already commenced for to march. Forgive me, I mean no disrespect, but if I am to catch up, I must leave you now. El Generale says to make yourselves at home while he is off to the wars. Now I must leave.”

  Stringer told him to go with God, and meant it. He turned back to Belle, who’d of course followed the conversation and was already rising. The sunlight through the jalousie slats painted her nude curves with tiger stripes that emphasized her shapely figure. But as he took her in his naked arms, the .38 in his right hand resting on her sweet behind, she said, “Not now, pard. This is our chance to get away, dammit!”

  He moved her back to their rumpled bedding. “Good thinking. Bad timing. We want to let those bandits get well out of sight. Do you feel rested enough for some hard riding now?”

  “I do,” she said, “but on a horse for a change. I could use a hot tub and at least another cold meal first. Then we have to streak north like hell, afore someone steals my water.”

  “I could tell you a tale of a young bull and an old bull,” he said, “but it’s too long and you likely know it. The border’s too far, and the desert’s too hot for streaking. Our best bet will be a late afternoon start from here, a mostly overnight ride, and arrival in Langtry sometime tomorrow morning. So you’ll have plenty of time to bathe, and we may as well enjoy a good warm meal before we leave as well.”

  She relaxed in his arms a mite, but said with a frown, “Lord have mercy, they’ll figure us dead for ce
rtain after not seeing hide nor hair of us for more than seventy-two hours. But what the hell, seeing we ain’t ready to leave just yet, do we have time for mayhaps at least a quick one?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They did, and Stringer, at least, felt the effects of all that horizontal exercise before their long night ride was over. Otherwise it was uneventful. Belle kept urging him to press on faster, at first. He finally got her to see it made no sense to show up before daybreak on dead ponies.

  She fussed at him some more when sunrise caught them on open desert, apparently still out in the middle of nowhere. But as they topped a rise, Stringer pointed ahead with his chin. “Those trees on the horizon ahead look like cottonwood. You don’t see cottonwood growing where there’s no water. So the Rio Grande is the only logical answer.”

  She swore in a most unladylike way. “They’re quite a ways ahead, in any case. It figures to be eight or nine by the time we get to town, dammit.”

  He spurred his pinto to a faster trot. “Before I get to town, you mean. I’m going to hide you out in shantytown a spell whilst I scout ahead. The Mexicans in shantytown have no call to do you dirty. That’s more than the mastermind Bronco and Sunny Jim were working for can say.”

  She argued about that some as they slowly closed the distance between them and the border. Women could be like that, once they’d seen a man undignified, with his pants off. But in the end he convinced her his plan made sense. So once they’d forded the river and reined in among the trees that belonged to Tio Sam, Belle dismounted by the choza of a nice old Mex lady she called Tia, and Stringer said he’d get word to her the moment he saw it was safe for her to show her face in town again.

  When he got to the tracks, he spied the Bean boys, Roy and Sam, waiting for a train with their buckboard. “Howdy,” Roy, Junior said, “We heard you was dead.”

  “Didn’t you get ambushed along with Belle Rogers and her boys a few nights back, Mr. MacKail?” young Sam asked.