Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

by Lou Cameron

  “I know about Joe Lefors and his traveling show,” cut in Stringer with a barely repressed expression of distaste. He said, “The Wild Bunch doesn’t seem all that impressed with lawmen trailing them in railroad cars. But let’s say, just for the argument, that what’s left of the Wild Bunch has moved out here for some fool reason. I just said I’d done a feature on them a spell back. So, in all modesty, I seem to know more about their methods than Lefors. I had coffee and tense words with „em in one of their canyon hideouts, which has to be closer than Joe Lefors has ever gotten.”

  The railroad dick brightened and said, “Say, I suspect I read that story you writ about the capture of Kid Curry, now that I study back on it. You must be the one as signs his stuff Stringer, right?”

  Stringer nodded and said, “Kid Curry wasn’t captured. He was cornered in a box canyon and didn’t want to be captured.”

  The railroad dick nodded and said, “I remember now, the more fool me. But what difference do it make if it was him, Butch, Sundance or any other rogue as led the Wild Bunch up by Soda Springs last night?”

  Stringer said, “The Wild Bunch works about the same no matter who might be in command at a given time. So tell me just how they stopped that train and I’ll give you an educated guess as to whether it was the Wild Bunch or some less notorious sons of bitches.”

  The older man sighed and replied, “Hell, I wasn’t there. I just found out about it when I come on duty this morning. According to the boys on the scene, our own and the sheriff’s department of Placer County, the holdup itself wasn’t all that complicated. It was the getaway, and what they got away with, that has everyone sort of confused.”

  As Stringer sealed the gummed seam of his cigarette paper with the tip of his tongue, the railroad dick elaborated, “They passed on plenty of paper money aboard as well, never even robbed one passenger of one watch, yet they drug two young gals off, weeping and wailing, to vanish into thin air, or at least bright moonlight above timber line. It’s true tracking’s tough on the bare granite they grows above Soda Springs. But they only had a few hours of darkness to work with and the posse was out scouting for „em before dawn, to no avail.”

  Stringer lit his smoke before he asked, “How do you know they rode east into higher country after the robbery? What was there to stop them from riding downhill, into tall timber and way more places to hole up?”

  The railroad dick shook his head and said, “They stopped the train just east of Soda Springs. We figured they boarded there as it was stopped for boiler water. Had they come back through town, mounted or afoot, with two screaming women on their hands…”

  “I get the picture,” Stringer cut in. Then, as he really tried to picture such an unusual way to make a getaway, he thoughtfully blew a smoke ring and asked whether by any chance one of those apparently abducted female passengers could have been a statuesque ash blonde with fake cherries on her straw summer hat.

  The railroad dick started to shrug the question off, shot Stringer a startled look instead, and replied, “I’ll be switched if there wasn’t some mention of blonde hair! Might you know the lady them rascals abducted, mister?”

  Stringer smiled sheepishly and said, “Not as well as I thought. She sure keeps surprising me. But you may want to take this down. So if you’re packing paper and pencil…”

  The railroad dick was. So, as he followed in shorthand Stringer told him, “We came up from Frisco on the Sacramento Steamer yesterday evening. She said her name was Echo Thurber. I doubt that very much, but at least it’s one name she answers to. She ditched me on the dock. Since I last saw her headed for the depot with the expressed intent of catching an eastbound night train, she works swell as at least one of the gals those owlhoots lit out with. Here’s where it gets sort of murky. Are you with me so far?”

  The railroad dick allowed he was all ears and fascinated as hell. So Stringer continued, “She had me about convinced she was on the run from toughs involved in a killing I won’t confuse you with. She lied to me a lot about other things. Her leaving the scene of that railroad robbery in the company of the robbers works two ways. One way makes less sense. If the crooks were out to get her, they sure got her, only it would have made more sense to just gun her as they’ve tried to gun me more than once. I don’t see how the other gal could tie in at all. So how do you like the two gals being in cahoots with the train robbers all along?”

  “You mean as advance scouts and then pathetical victims to slow down any gents aboard with thoughts of going for broke as the crooks made their escape?” asked the railroad dick. Stringer replied in simple honesty, “I don’t know. Like I said, it works both ways, yet I have to admit both ways drag loose strings after „em, as soon as you study on either.”

  The railroad dick decided, “I’m putting both notions on the wire as soon as we stop to jerk water at Colfax. If the gals were in on it, they could have rid back through town quiet as church mice and that would surely account for lots of sign that just wasn’t there when the boys rid up through Donner Pass after the sons of bitches. You say this gal took up with you down by the Frisco Bay with her line of bullshit, Pard?”

  Stringer stared soberly out the window at the passing ponderosa as he muttered, half to himself, “In my own quarters on Rincon Hill, as a matter of fact. Unless we’re talking about some other ash blonde with cherries on her hat, I’m commencing to guess smarter about a news lead an old coot called One Thumb Thurber was trying to sell me. I thought it had something to do with cows instead of a train robbery. But I’ll be damned if I can see how else his killer and that two-faced blonde could be herding cows and sticking up trains at the same damned time!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was barely lunchtime when Stringer got off at Dutch Flat, once a brawling gold camp on the upper Yuba and still a mountain market town worth visiting, as long as one didn’t overdo it. Dutch Flat offered the basic services to the surrounding country folk without advertising itself as either the Sodom or Gomorrah of the High Sierra. They’d been cities of the plain in any case, according to the Good Book, and Dutch Flat was way the hell up in the hills, a couple of days’ drive from Donner Pass, albeit neither Dutch Flat nor any other settlement had been that close the grim winter the Donner Party got stranded up yonder by an early snow.

  At the somewhat lower altitude of Dutch Flat, the August air was just about right for breathing and beer bubbled just like champagne, so he ordered some with his fried eggs over chili at the diner across from the railroad stop. It wasn’t Steamer Brand, but most mountain beers were famous among cross country travelers through no fault of their own. The secret was the air in the tap room, no matter what ran out the tap. There was a sort of pricey Denver brew that tended to let beer drinkers down when they shipped it all the way back east, not because it was spoiled that much by the train ride, but because it just didn’t have the same zip at sea level. Chili con carne tasted better in high, dry air as well. He was still working on why this should be so, when he ordered a slab of high altitude lemon meringue for dessert and asked the pretty Miwok gal who served him whether anyone in town kept Spanish riding mules for sale or hire.

  She allowed she doubted that but the Acorn Corral on the far side of the tracks might be able to fix him up with a pony almost as tough. As he paid off, leaving her a dime extra for her trouble, she confided that they were holding a church social that night at Saint Paul’s Lutheran. He started to tell her it seemed unlikely he’d still be in town. Then he noticed how pretty she was and how little he really knew about the future when you got right down to it. So he said, “We’ll talk about it some more if I’m still here at suppertime, ma’am. I’m waiting on the Tarington outfit, bound for Donner Pass by way of these parts. You’d know, of course, if any good-sized herd had beaten me through Dutch Flat, right?”

  She dimpled her sweet moon face at him to assure him no such herd had passed through, adding, “It sounds sort of odd, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’ll find Placer County cows
in modest amounts, over by the Acorn Corral as a matter of fact. But everyone around here ships their beef by rail these days and…Over the Donner, to the east, in August, you said?”

  He agreed it sounded odd to him, too, and ducked out before she could tell him he was too loco to take her to any church social. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, yet. But a man had to think ahead when he figured to be stuck in a tiny town for Lord only knew how long.

  The Acorn Corral was about where the pretty Miwok gal and an ugly little white boy he asked along the way had allowed it ought to be. As he crossed the tracks toward the pole corral full of horseflesh, he heard cattle bawling on the far side, hidden somewhere in a haze of stirred-up dust. As he approached the corral an older gent wearing a dusty black charro outfit and black sombrero dropped lightly down from the rail he’d been perched upon to stare soberly at Stringer and say, “I reproach you for the manner in which you starve your poor cows, señor! I had my own muchachos water them, at least, but if you expect us to feed them along with our ponies…”

  “Un momento, por favor,” Stringer cut in with injured innocence. “We can’t be talking about any stock I’d be responsible for. I just got off the train, afoot. That’s what I came over here to talk to you about.”

  The Mexican’s voice and expression both got a lot nicer as he replied with a smile, “No man who speaks such good Spanish and ties down his spurs would be so stupid about carne de vaca when it sells by the pound instead of the head these days. Forgive me, señor. I am called Diego Ramos y Maldonado and I live but to serve you in any way I can.”

  Stringer told him a comfortable centerfire saddle and a durable desert mount would do him just fine and they forgot all about the bawling cows over in the loading pens for a spell as they dickered some about a scuffed saddle with a sound tree and a barrel-headed roan mare old Diego kept insisting on calling pure barb.

  Stringer laughed and said, “I’ll agree she’s at least half horse and I’ll even overlook her oversized hooves if you’ll stop treating me like I just got off the boat. That mare is more cayuse than anything else, but that’s all right, if we can settle on the right price. I’m less likely to need speed than endurance and she does look tough, in her own awkward way.”

  The Mexican sighed and said, “I feel sure she has some barb blood in her, along with Indian Pony, as you say. How far were you intending to ride, for how long?”

  Stringer told him and the Mexican made the sign of the cross and said, “I can sell you Rosalinda along with her bridle and saddle for fifty dollars. Allowing anyone to ride for hire, outside the state as well as in the desert is out of the question.”

  It seemed a fair price and Stringer knew old Echo would be paying it for him, in her own way. But he still beat Diego down to forty-five lest they lose all respect for one another, and paid off with a fifty dollar bill left over from his adventures aboard the Sacramento Steamer. As he lashed his gladstone to the saddle skirts and the older man made change in silver, a hungry steer let out a really agonized bellow and Stringer said, “You’re right. Somebody ought to have it out with the owner of those hungry cows. How many head are we talking about, and do you know who might be treating „em so thoughtless?”

  Diego said, “I make it about fifty head. Come. I can show you. I do not know who owns them. We have been trying for to find out. They were run in next door just before daybreak, while I was still at home having breakfast. The muchacho I have here on night duty was too shy for to speak with the Anglo hands, even if he spoke English. Perhaps the railroad dispatcher knows. They are on railroad property, after all.”

  As the two of them walked down the line, with Stringer leading the freshly-saddled and bridled Rosalinda, old Diego told him a familiar and somewhat tedious tale about Anglo railroaders and Californios. Stringer considered himself and anyone else born and raised in the Golden State a Californio, but some gents raised further east or in some other country entirely had difficulty including Indians and Hispanics left over from the olden times as “Real Americans”. So, as they stood by the cattle pens, tallying the fifty-odd head Diego had guessed at, Stringer said he’d scout up the local railroad dispatcher and point out how much worse cows handled, and smelled, if they died whilst waiting for a train.

  They shook on it and Stringer mounted up to ride over to the address the Mexican had given him. Rosalinda didn’t wait for him to settle his strange behind in her comfortable saddle before she did her best to make him uncomfortable. Her war dance up and down the dusty street attracted quite a crowd before it was over, with most of the men and boys shouting encouragement to the barrel-headed Rosalinda as she churned up a Frisco fog of road dust with her four big hooves and didn’t do a world of good for Stringer’s spine in the process. He finally got her ugly head cranked down to one side to where she was in as much danger of busting her own neck as his if she didn’t cut it out. So she decided to see if she could bite off the tip of his left boot, toes and all, and after he’d kicked her, hard, in the muzzle a few times, she must have decided it hurt less to behave her fool self. Stringer rode her up and down the street at full gallop to the cheers of the crowd assembled and reined in by the corral and Diego to announce, “She’ll do, viejo. But was that any way to treat a paying customer?”

  The Mexican grinned up at him like a mean little kid and told him, “You said you required a tough pony. Would you wish for to ride a mount with no spirit into the desert at this time of the year?”

  Stringer laughed, spun Rosalinda around on her haunches and loped her on up to the mustard-colored shack near the siding switches, as Diego had indicated. As he reined in again, a surly-looking fat man in seersucker overalls popped open the door as if he thought he worked in a cuckoo clock, growling, “You and that stray dog are on railroad property, mister.”

  Stringer smiled down pleasantly, considering the greeting he’d received, and replied, “This must be the right address, then. I’m searching for the mule-headed asshole who acts as freight dispatcher here in Dutch Flat.”

  The dispatcher allowed he didn’t much cotton to being called a mule-headed asshole. So Stringer replied, “Don’t act like one and nobody ought to call you one. Do you want to behave like a halfway civilized gent or would you like me to get down off this roan and kick the shit out of you?”

  The dispatcher pointed out, “I’m not armed. Tell me what in the hell you want and I might just let you live, cowboy.”

  Stringer said, “I’m trying to be neighborly, Casey Jones. You’ve got an overheated and underfed heap of cows just down the line and if you’d just tell me where the fool owner might be I might save you and the railroad a mighty messy chore.”

  The dispatcher looked less annoyed with Stringer as he asked, “Do you mean to say you’re not with the Circle Six, after all?” To which Stringer replied with a smile of his own, “Nope, and I take back what I said about kicking the shit out of you, now that I see we’re both animal lovers. The poor brutes are branded with a six in a circle, now that I think back on „em. Like I said, I’m just out to be neighborly, so it’s your turn.”

  The dispatcher said, “Some fool hands I’ve never dealt with afore run them fifty-odd head in there this morning without asking. When I asked them what they thought they were doing, they said I had to take it up with their boss lady, a Miss Willow Watt, staying at the Yuba Hotel, only she ain’t there right now. I ask about things like that when cows are bawling in my pens, uninvited. I caught up with one of her riders on my way back. He was consuming boiled eggs and beer in the Eagle Saloon. When I asked him who was ever apt to give them hungry cows some fodder to consume he said his pockets were barely feeding him and that I should take it up with the boss lady. So I hope you savvy my surly attitude before, when I thought you was one of them silly bastards!”

  Stringer knew the older cuss was likely surly as he dared with everyone, but when a man wanted to make up it was dumb to deny him the chance. Stringer said he agreed it sounded like a mighty inconsiderate outfit an
d swung Rosalinda around to scout up the Eagle Saloon.

  He tethered his new pony out front and strode in to challenge any Circle Six riders present on the subject of caring for cows. But nobody there would own up to riding for such a dumb outfit and when Stringer repeated that part about boiled eggs, the redheaded barkeep looked disgusted and said, “Oh, that one. I just hate a man who pays a nickel for a beer and eats six bits worth of free lunch. He did say something about making it up to me, once some cowgal paid him off. I got the impression he was just a pick-up rider, hired by the day to herd some stock into the railyards hereabouts.”

  A customer dressed more like Stringer perked up to tell them both, “You made him right, Red. I was talking to him, afore I noticed he never bought a round when it was his turn. He allowed it was the first he’d rid for some gal named Waters or something and that he never meant to ride for her no more, even if he did get paid in the end.”

  Stringer asked if they could possibly be discussing a lady answering to Miss Willow Watt and the cowhand said, “Yeah, her, too. Widow woman trying to run her dead man’s spread over by Lookout Crags, as her part-time rider tells it. He said someone was supposed to meet her and her cows here, with dinero for the same. Only nobody did and the last her riders seen of her, she was weeping and wailing and sending telegraph wires to some cattle buyer who must have played her false. Ain’t that just like a woman?”

  Stringer allowed it sounded like some cattle buyers he’d dealt with in his time as well. He thought about that as he finished his short beer. Then he said he’d likely be back and went out to remount and ride back down to the Western Union sign he’d spotted earlier.

  He tethered the roan out front and strode into the semi-darkness of the rickety telegraph office. He saw a lean and hungry-looking young gal pacing up and down on his side of the counter in a split riding skirt of leather topped by an ivory cotton blouse and a Spanish hat atop her upswept brunette hair. Her features weren’t as Hispanic as her complexion and outfit, though. Stringer moved over to the counter and asked if there were any messages for him. When the bald clerk allowed he’d never heard of anyone called MacKail, Stringer said, “It’s an old Scotch name. So’s Watt, if you want to count lowlanders as Albanach gu brath.”