Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  Stringer put his uncle’s letter away in a side pocket, muttering, “I reckon I’ll get word to him by wire, after I get my ass over to Sacramento. I’d be a fool to tell anyone to sell or not to sell before I found out if this Tarington jasper is good for the money.”

  “Or crazy,” Barca said with a smile, to which Stringer could only reply, “Oh, I know he’s loco en la cabeza. Nobody but a total lunatic would even consider herding cows through the hell of the Nevada Desert in High Summer. All my uncle wants to know is whether his checks are apt to bounce or not. Once you pay for a cow, it’s on your own plate whether you ever get it to market or not.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Since Stringer was paid by the word instead of by the hour he’d long since learned not to ride or run in avoidable circles after a story. So he ignored the growls in his guts for the next hour or so as he filled a few pages of his notebook with odds and ends from the newspaper morgue just off the press room. Then he strode on to the oyster bar in the nearby Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street to enjoy a late lunch as he pondered the best way to Sacramento.

  The state capital lay seventy miles northeast by Crow. Failing passage aboard a crow, the trains ran faster but further around with more than a couple of transfers to worry about whilst the Sacramento Steamer got you there more directly at more modest speed. So a lot depended on just when one boarded train or riverboat, with neither leaving every hour on the hour.

  When he asked at the information desk of the cavernous ferry building he was told there was a third way he hadn’t considered as yet. He shook his head, told the helpful cuss with the odd sense of humor he wasn’t about to ride all the way around San Francisco Bay when there were ferry boats steaming across to the Oakland Depot every damned few minutes, and decided to let the matter hang fire until he knew for certain he was going somewhere.

  His boarding house was another modest walk from the office, chosen with that in mind. Rincon Hill, just “South of the Slot” or below Market Street to out-of-towners, was a once-fashionable neighborhood that still got its share of fresh breezes, save for when the damned wind blew up from the coffee roasters, slaughterhouses or mud flats to the east.

  Stringer’s hired digs up under the mansart roof faced the other way and he was hardly ever there during the stinky summer months in any case, thanks to Sam Barca’s enthusiasm for rugged outdoor yarns, turned in by the most rugged outdoor sort in the Sun’s stable. So midafternoon was hardly the time anyone with a lick of sense should have been expecting Stringer home. He thought about that a heap as he climbed the steep stairs, slow and silent once he reached the second story landing. For the door to his room was ajar and spilling sunlight down the stairwell, even though he’d locked it on his way out that morning and even though it wasn’t Wednesday, the usual time they fussed and dusted in his digs whether he wanted them to or not.

  Stringer swore at himself for being dressed so sissy with his .38 packed away on the wrong side of that damned door as, nonetheless, he kept easing on up the stairs. He didn’t call out. There was always the chance the little orphan gal who doubled as a scullery and chambermaid was up yonder, honest, though confused as to the date. There was even the off chance he’d find that infernal artist’s model abusing his stationery again. That was her door he’d just passed. He had no idea what they paid her to pose naked over at Russian Hill for the night classes. He’d long since noticed she didn’t seem able to afford her own stamps, stationery, or clothing, come to study on the way she roamed the halls in a sheer silk kimono or less.

  Whether it was the model, the maid, or someone else entirely, Stringer thought it best to surprise the intruder. So he did, and she sure let out a holler when he burst in on her, saw at a glance she was nobody he’d ever invited to go through the drawers of his desk by the window, and dashed over to grab her and toss her headfirst at the bed against the far wall under the sloped ceiling. As he dove on top of her he soothed, “Aw, simmer down, Blondie, it was over this way or out the window and we’re on the top floor.”

  She sobbed and struggled under him as he patted her down for concealed weapons. She gasped, “Remove your vile hand from my virtue, sir!” as he made sure she wore only bloused underdrawers where some wicked ladies just loved to pack derringers and then, since she hadn’t tucked a holster in the vicinity of either firm breast or inside of either garter, Stringer rolled off her to spring to his feet again, yank open a wardrobe, and haul his own S&W from the holster hanging under his Stetson and denim jacket. But he was holding it politely down his right leg as he turned back to her, kicked the door solidly shut with a heel, and told her, politely but firmly, “Make it sound true and I just might let you go, ma’am. I confess I got a train or boat to catch and, as you must have just noticed, I don’t keep anything all that valuable up here in this artistic garret.”

  She sat up on the bed, rubbing the wrist he’d grabbed the hardest as she protested, “You can’t leave town right now! Don’t you want to help me expose the villains who murdered my father, the late Hermes Thurber?”

  Stringer managed not to laugh. It wasn’t easy. He’d already noticed the pretty burglaress aboard his bed was wearing a well-tailored suit of tan pongee and real silk stockings. Her ash blond hair, no longer as neatly pinned atop her fine-boned skull, looked natural. There was no law saying an old Butcher Town tough like One Thumb couldn’t have sired such a classic beauty, but it hardly seemed too likely. He regarded her with a cocked eyebrow as he decided, “I knew his real names was Hermes. I reckon everyone has to start out with some fool name. Neither the copper badges nor me had anything down about him having a family, though, Miss…ah?”

  “Echo, Echo LaFarge nee Thurber,” she replied demurely as, again, he managed not to laugh. He stayed where he was, between her and the only door, as he nodded soberly and said, “Well, Miss Echo, we can both see you failed to find anything on the case in the vicinity of my Grasshopper typewriter for the simple reason I still have my few notes pressed dear to my heart, here in my sissy jacket. If you could be at all related to old, ah, Hermes, you’d still make more sense jawing with the Frisco P.D. about him. I’m only a newspaperman with a passing interest in the case. There’s a Sergeant Grogan in charge of it. He’d know better than me if they’ve found out anything since last I spoke with „em. I’m sorry to say that as of the last time I did, things were still up in the air with not one solid lead as to the who, why or even when of it all.”

  She sat up straighter to point primly at an odd object on the rag rug between them, saying, “I just came from Police Headquarters.”

  He failed to see what in thunder that could have to do with the fact that the tiny creation upside down on the rug seemed at closer inspection a woman’s hat of the more insane summer variety. But as he moved over to pick it up for her she continued, “They told me you were on your way to see my father when he was murdered by some villain or villains unknown.”

  She didn’t get to answer and he didn’t get to straighten up before the door burst open to admit two big waterfront types with big blazing six-guns!

  As the small room filled rapidly with gunsmoke, Stringer fired more sensibly from where he’d hunkered on the rug with a silly hat in one fist and a double-action .38 in the other. His return fire blew or chased the wilder shootists out the door and down the stairs as Stringer sprang to his feet and chased after them, with full intent to nail at least one of the sons of bitches as both thundered on down the narrow stairwell. Only the infernal gal who posed bare-ass at the art school on Russian Hill was out on the second story landing, bare-assed as well as in his line of fire. He yelled at her to get dammit back inside and that, of course, inspired her to turn her bare tits and other shocking sights his way, demanding some explanation of all this racket and he could damn well damn himself. So, in the end, the sons of bitches got away, though one of the beat coppers responding to the sounds of gunshots noted a chain of blood droplets leading out to where some fresh horse apples near a cast i
ron hitching post indicated the way they’d likely lit out from there.

  The copper badges who patrolled Rincon Hill naturally knew who Stringer was and he’d decided to take Echo Thurber at her own word until he knew her better. So after they’d taken down a lot of notes Stringer couldn’t build anything on either, they decided the armed intruders had been burglars who hadn’t expected anyone to be home at that hour and Stringer let it go at that, in order to question Echo in his room more privately. He left the door obviously ajar as he did so, lest the landlady as well as the gal on the second landing think mean things about him and his female guest. The first thing he told her was, “I think you’re full of it. But I can’t go to Sacramento and swear out arrest warrants here in Frisco at the same time. I hope you noticed how freely your pals lobbed lead about this bitty room as they were trying to save you or at least shut you up.”

  She was on her own feet closer to the window now. She ran a dainty finger thoughtfully over a bullet hole freshly drilled into his desk as she asked in a hurt voice whether he smoked opium or just et it. She said, “They damned near killed us both, in case you weren’t looking!”

  He nodded and said, “I noticed. From the way they burst in throwing lead at where I’d just been instead of where I’d just ducked, I’d say they were out on the landing long enough to range on my voice. I don’t think they cared where you were, so why are you still trying to cover for them, or are you covering for the mastermind behind the whole thing?”

  She looked sincerly puzzled as she demanded, “Covering for whom, about what, for land’s sake?” To which he replied, easily enough, “The bozo who sent you to go through my notes, of course. Spare me the bull about coming here this afternoon to enlist my help. I wasn’t expecting me home, myself, until my feature editor assigned me to another sad story clean out of town.”

  He took out his notebook, handed it to her, and peeled off his suit jacket as he told her, “Go ahead. Read it and weep whilst I get set to steam up to Sacramento. Thanks to all this nonsense, the train I’d considered will be long gone from Oakland by the time I can get across the bay.” Then he stepped over to the wardrobe, shucking his city vest and shirt as he added, “You can tell the Butcher Town big shots you’re working for that I’d sure like to make them famous but, as you can see, neither Detective Sergeant Grogan, nor me, have any notion why old One Thumb had to be scragged.”

  She sobbed, “That’s my father you’re talking about, damn you!” He replied, with a shrug of his bare shoulders, “Whatever. My boss tells me and I’m sure Grogan’s boss will soon tell him that the more literate folk of Frisco just don’t get too excited about butchering in Butcher Town. If the old gent had anything all that newsworthy to tell me, they got to him in plenty of time. How did you find out I knew the little I do about the case, by the way?”

  As he dropped his pants she looked away, pink-eared, to tell him, “I read your article in the Sun, of course. As you seem to have surmised, my father and me were never too close. He had this drinking problem and, needless to say, my mother left him years ago lest we simply starve. I’m a recent divorcee, myself, so I was staying with an old school chum down in San Mateo when your story appeared in the Sun and…”

  “I never signed it,” he cut in, hauling on his jeans. “I did that half column as a news item, not a feature. I never mentioned being on my way to see anyone when they turned up dead.”

  She nodded demurely and told him, “I said I’d been to the police before I came here, Mister MacKail. I admit that when I came up here and knocked, only to find you not in, I gave the knob a teeny weeny twist and, well, when I found your door unlocked I assumed you’d only stepped out a moment on some errand and, well…”

  He carried his riding boots over to the bed and sat down on it, muttering, “I knew it’d be a mistake to turn you over to the coppers. You’re good. Let’s not argue about how you got in or what you used to pick the lock on yonder desk drawer. When you leave here, you’d best get farther from Frisco than San Mateo. You’d know better than me how far your former pals would be apt to track you, of course.”

  As he grunted into his well-broken-in but still too-tight Justins she peered through the door slit as if concerned about more sudden company. But her voice remained poised as she laughed lightly and asked him who on earth would want to track her, to what purpose.

  He stomped his bootheels on the rag rug, making the spurs ring, as he muttered, “That’ll do. They soften some as you stride about in „em. I said you’d know best because I’ve no notion at all who might be after you as well as me. I just showed you, and them, I hope, how tough I might be to take out. No offense, but you seem to have gone into the burglary business without so much as a really long hat pin to defend yourself with.”

  “Against whom, for what reason?” she demanded, adding in a sort of conspiratorial schoolgirl tone, “Even if I was some sort of naughty girl, as you keep insisting, what would I have to fear from other naughty children?”

  He rose to haul on his denim jacket and Stetson, saying, “You might try busting into those new motion pictures, way down the coast in Holly woodland, if you think that’s far enough. You’re a good actress as well as mighty pretty, Miss Echo. I don’t see how anyone could be so dumb, blond or otherwise, but add it up. Those bush-league gun-slingers backing your play are sure to report back that while they got away, you didn’t.”

  He packed his gunrig in the battered gladstone bag from the bottom of the wardrobe but tucked his .38 in his pants again, as he dryly asked her, “Do you reckon they’ll give you time to explain, like they gave, uh, your dear old dad?”

  She gulped and insisted, “He was my father, damn you, and just what am I supposed to have blabbed to you about?”

  He chuckled and said, “I admire loyalty, even when it’s wasted on a wolverine. I know you haven’t told me anything the law or even my paper could use against your pals. If you had, I’d be able to turn you over to my pals and you’d be safe. As it is, you’re on your own and, what the heck, you might be able to convince „em you talked your way clear without telling me anything.” Then he took back his notebook, put it away under the shabbier but more pragmatic jacket, and said, “It’s been nice talking to you. But I have a steamer to catch and I’ve only paid for single occupancy up here. So we’d best get it on the road, now.”

  She protested, “Not so fast! Give a girl time to think, for Pete’s sake! Why are we on our way to Sacramento, of all places, Mister MacKail?”

  He started to say something stupid. Then he recalled a private stateroom on the Sacramento Steamer only cost two dollars extra, so he told her he’d tell her all about it once they got aboard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Stringer got Echo and his other baggage to the waterfront by hansom cab, apparently unobserved. The Sacramento Steamer wasn’t fixing to cast off for at least an hour and a half. But the purser didn’t care and Echo seemed even more anxious to see the stateroom Stringer booked just forward of the starboard paddle wheel. It was tiny, with clean-looking muslin sheets on the fold-down bunk. She brightened some when Stringer bet the Filipino cabin boy they couldn’t get sandwiches and iced beer this soon and, sure enough, lost another silver cartwheel.

  As Echo dug into the cold cuts on rye the Filipino placed on the small table in the center of the stateroom Stringer followed him outside, slipping him another tip as he confided, in Spanish, that he’d sure like to hear about it if La Señora’s husband came aboard to ask any dumb questions about her present whereabouts. The Filipino kid assured Stringer he was dead certain no gringa with eyes of blue and hair that light could be anywhere aboard the vessel. So they shook on it and Stringer ducked back in to lock and bolt the door before he hung his hat and jacket on a handy hook, put the .38 on a lamp table where it was handier to him than her, and told her, “Roberto seems to be on our side. He’ll tell anyone who asks, of course. But I’ve fixed it so’s he’ll tell us as well. How’s that liverwurst?”

  “Divin
e,” she replied, shoving the platter his way. “I hope you assured them we were a proper married couple, Mister MacKail?” To which he replied, truthfully enough, “Nobody asked. You’re right about how divine these cold cuts are and the beer they brew for steamers in this town is famous as far east as Cheyenne, where the U.P. club cars about run out of it.”

  As he washed down liverwurst on rye with such famous beer he saw there was still plenty of daylight left out on the water, and tried to figure how much moonlight they might get in betwixt here and Sacramento. As if to prove great minds ran in the same naughty channels Echo shyly asked him what time they might get off at the state capital and, again, just why he was so anxious to get there.

  He tried some ham and cheese as he added in his head. Then he told her, “Depends in part on whether the tide’s going in or out as we enter the channel to Salinas Bay. The currents running either way can add or subtract a couple of hours from the trip. But we ought to make it well this side of midnight no matter what.”

  She sipped her beer more delicately by far as she soberly asked him what happened then, adding, “You haven’t even told me what I’m doing aboard this silly steamboat, sir.”

  He smiled thinly and said, “You’d best call me Stuart, for now, seeing we’re supposed to be hitched up in here, Miss Echo.”

  She laughed and said plain old Echo would do, so that’s what he said he’d call her, whether it was her real name or not.

  Stringer waited for more hustle and bustle in the companionway outside before he made his next move. It must not have been the next move she’d been expecting if he was any judge of female eyelash flutters. She asked where on earth he thought he was going as he got back to his feet and picked up his gun. He draped his denim jacket loosely over gun and gunhand as he told her, “I’m not fixing to go ashore to roam the earth, just yet. But I surely mean to scout this steamer good before it shoves off. Nobody followed us aboard, directly. Our cabin boy would have noticed if anyone had asked which cabin we might be holed up in.”