by Lou Cameron
STRINGER
ON THE
ASSASSINS’
TRAIL
STRINGER SERIES #3
LOU CAMERON
STRINGER ON THE ASSASSINS’ TRAIL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
COPYRIGHT © 1987 BY LOU CAMERON.
FIRST EBOOK EDITION 2012 BY AUDIOGO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-144-6
Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9062-4
Cover photo © iStockPhoto/jeannehatch
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
MORE EBOOKS BY LOU CAMERON
STRINGER
ON THE
ASSASSINS’
TRAIL
CHAPTER
ONE
*
Stringer wasn’t expecting anything as interesting as trouble when he got off the train at Granger, Wyoming. The place, little more than a railroad junction, was populated by less than two hundred people who had little to do but spit and whittle most of the time. But as the tall, lean feature writer for the San Francisco Sun strode for the shade of the only saloon in evidence, he could see from the parked vehicles and tethered ponies along the main street that people had come in from miles around to gaze upon the thundering wonder of the new century, President Theodore Roosevelt in the flesh, whose own train was due to arrive that afternoon.
Stringer thought it would have made more sense for old Teddy to stop a few miles east at Green River if he had anything important to say. But the reporter had given up on trying to make sense of the mercurial movements and windy public orations of a gent who couldn’t seem to kiss a baby without shouting “Bully” in its ear and likely scaring it half to death.
The real mystery, to Stringer, was what he was supposed to do in Granger for his own overexcited editor, Sam Barca, since Old Sam knew how his ace stringer felt about politicians in general and old T.R. in particular. He’d gotten in a lot of trouble down in Cuba during the recent Spanish-American War when he’d reported the Rough Riders charge up San Juan Hill the way it had happened instead of the way Remington had painted it.
When he’d gotten the wire from his boss, sidetracking him from his plans to cover the more serious Frontier Days Rodeo in Cheyenne, Stringer had been tempted to stay aboard the Union Pacific and file a feature on T.R. from memory. T.R. always made the same speech, no matter how new and interesting he seemed to find it. But Stringer was a professional, and there was enough fake news being run in both The Sun and its rival papers since the outbreak of hostilities in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, Stringer was thirsty, and the Presidential special wasn’t due to arrive for over an hour. So he parted the batwings of the saloon and bellied up to the crowded bar. Nobody paid him much mind. As an experienced traveler in a still unsettled West he’d learned to dress cow in the field. The battered gray Rough Rider hat he’d brought back from Cuba shaded his alert hazel eyes and stubborn jaw. His faded denim jacket and matching pants left his exact monthly income up for grabs and of course anyone who wasn’t a sissy still wore at least one gun on his hip in towns like Granger. Stringer took care not to pack his double action .38 neither low enough to be taken for a gunslick looking for trouble, or high enough to look as if he didn’t know how to use it at all.
Once the Gibson Girl behind the bar had served Stringer a schooner of beer almost as mouth watering as she looked, he felt a lot better about Granger. He would have felt a mite more relaxed if he hadn’t peered into the mirror on the wall behind the barmaid. A familiar member of the fourth estate, dressed more like a tinhorn gambler than the reporter Stringer knew he was, was seated at a corner table with a quartet of rougher-looking gents who seemed to be angry at him for some reason. Stringer couldn’t tell, from where he stood, whether the game they were playing might be stud or draw. But anyone dumb enough to play any variety of card game with Jack London was begging to be skinned.
Stringer knew it was none of his business. Jack London was a fellow Californian as well as a rival newspaperman. But otherwise they had as much in common as oil and water.
The less truthful and hence more famous London wore the face of an Irish altar boy gone wrong, and insisted on smiling all the time, even though his teeth were in dire need of dental care. It was safe to assume he’d been crooking his fellow cardplayers. He cheerfully stole plots from fellow writers, and any man introduced a wife or daughter to the cheerful rogue at his own peril. On the other hand, Stringer didn’t have a wife or daughter old Jack had seduced, and the odds were sort of grim, even for a sissy-dressed gent that dangerous.
Stringer sighed and began to drift that way, beer schooner in his left hand. He wouldn’t have, had it only been two against one. Jack London was a hard-cased product of the Oakland mud flats, where he’d both lived and pirated oysters as a tough young shanty mutt. Stringer suspected old Jack dressed so dumb in hopes people would pick on him. He gloried in proving anyone wrong about anything. But there were times even a born devil’s advocate bit off more than he could chew, and this seemed to be one of them.
As he got within earshot, Stringer heard London say, in a tone of sweet reason, “It’s not as if I haven’t delighted in your company, gents. But, as I said, I have to be over by the depot when President Roosevelt arrives, so…”
“So shut up and deal!” cut in the morose bearded tough across the table, adding, “Women and Chinamen may not know the rules of civilized card playing. But you don’t look like either one of them. So you have to know how impolite it is to leave the table when you’re that far ahead.”
A younger but no softer looking cowhand at London’s right chimed in, “That’s for sure. You’ve won the pot seven times in a row. How come you’re so lucky, stranger?”
Jack London kept on smiling with his rotten teeth, but his voice wasn’t friendly at all as he asked, quietly, “Are you even hinting that I’ve been cheating at cards, Sonny?”
Stringer was afraid he knew how the cowhand meant to answer that question. So before it could go any further, he moved in to catch London’s eye and say, “Well, for land’s sake, what are you doing here in Granger, Doc? Last I heard of you, they said you was down near Denver in a T. B. ward.”
London looked as confused as the others, until he caught on and replied, “Howdy, Sundance. I thought the Pinkertons would have had you by now. What are you doing in these parts? There’s only one bank in town, and it ain’t much.”
Stringer managed to keep a straight face, though it wasn’t easy. “I’d just as soon not discuss business matters in front of strangers,” he said, “even friendly ones. But as matter of fact, you might be interested in a deal me and Butch have in mind. Is there somewhere around here we can talk more private?”
This time nobody seemed to object as London rose from the table, pockets bulging. “Sure, me and old Kate have hired a room just down the way. You here with old Etta, Sundance?”
“Not hardly,” Stringer replied. “Let’s go.”
As they left, someone behind them muttered, “No! There ain’t no amount of money worth a showdown with Doc Holliday and the Sundance Kid, you damn fool!”
But as Stringer and London ducked outside they heard another tough growl. “Bullshit. That couldn’t be Doc Holliday. He’s been dead a good ten years or more!”
Out on the plank walk London laughed boyishly. “There are times I fear we put too much in the papers,” he said. “But it worked. Aren’t you Stu Ma
cKail of the Sun when you’re not the Sundance Kid, pard?”
His rescuer replied, “My friends call me Stuart, or better yet, Stringer. Stu sounds like something disgusting to eat.”
“I’d better go on calling you Stu until I know whether I want to be your friend or not. Why did you sue my paper for plagiarism that time, Stu?”
“Because you stole a story I’d written first, of course. I don’t think our bluff is going to work long enough to matter. We’d better take cover, sudden. This place ought to hold us for now.”
London didn’t argue as they slipped into the cavernous maw of a large frame shed facing the railroad tracks at the foot of the dusty main street. The last time Stringer had passed through Granger it had been a feed-and-grain warehouse. Now, as the sign above the entrance indicated, it was being run by an outfit claiming to deal in hides and tallow. There was nobody on duty. That saved explanations as the two of them worked their way back through piles of buffalo robes piled almost to the rafters. If any of them had been cleaned, let alone tanned, one couldn’t tell from the rank odor they were giving off, and it was worse against the back wall.
But the two of them climbed up atop a mountain of green robes anyway, to hide out and cover the unguarded open entrance at the same time. London bounced experimentally on the springy buffalo robes. “We both figure to stink like dead buffalo for the foreseeable future. Where do you suppose they got all these robes, anyhow? This isn’t buffalo country and never was.”
“They must have shipped them in from the high plains on the far side of South Pass,” Stringer replied. “Never mind about dead buffalo, London. By now those rustics you skinned at cards will have figured out the dumb stunt we pulled and—”
“Speak for yourself,” London cut in, adding, “It was your idea to intimate we were a couple of wild desperadoes back there. Why on earth did you say I was Doc Holliday, for God’s sake? Everyone knows the poor old crazy bastard is dead!”
“I had to come up with something they might buy fast,” Stringer explained, “and people keep saying Jesse James is still running loose, don’t they? You fit the description of the late Doc Holliday. You’re a crazy bastard who dresses like an undertaker and wins at cards beyond all common sense. You may be a mite chubbier, but you’re still sort of pasty faced and inclined to smile too much in tense surroundings. You’ll note I only had to call you Doc, not Holliday, and let them add it up.”
Jack London chuckled fondly. “Don’t tell me how to lie slick by letting the other sucker feel he’s being smart, Stu. I’ve been on my own since childhood. It might have been more fun dealing with those saddle tramps more Irish. But you did get me out of it, and for that I thank you. Are we both here to cover that whistle-stop speech of Terrible Teddy this afternoon?”
“Yep,” Stringer said, “and it won’t be all that long now. I figure the boys we flimflammed should have hunted us some and cooled down by the time we have to mosey over to the tracks and join the crowd. I doubt anyone will want to throw down on us in the middle of a crowd being addressed by the President of these United States. But it might be a good idea to leave town on that same train before the crowd thins out. Our press passes ought to wrangle us aboard. We can get off down the line when they stop to jerk water at Evanston, right?”
London shook his head. “Wrong. Terrible Teddy’s train is a special. He’s bound for the Yellowstone Park. He’s stopping here because he never misses a chance to make a speech, and meanwhile they have to switch engines as well as tracks for the mountain spur north.”
Stringer frowned and reached in his shirt pocket for the makings. “Shit,” he muttered, “I’m on my way to Cheyenne, not the Yellowstone Park. But wait a second, I think they have to change trains entire at Kemmerer. I did a feature on the Yellowstone Park a while back, and we had to take a station wagon over a pass to get to the other line.”
As Stringer began to build a smoke with Bull Durham and straw paper, London said, “They have the tracks connected now. But the switching at Kemmerer still makes it a good place to get off. That fat-ass black Republican wouldn’t be going up to the park if he couldn’t ride in plutocratic comfort all the way. Are you going to light that primitive-savage smoke in here? I thought we were letting them guess where we were, for now.”
Stringer struck a light with his horny thumbnail and lit up before he replied. “We could toast marshmallows back here amid these stinky green robes for all anyone might notice. I thought you just said you didn’t approve of plutocratic comforts, or does that only apply to other folk?”
London didn’t answer as he got out an expensive Havana perfecto and lit it with a perfumed wax match. This didn’t surprise Stringer as much as it might some of London’s readers. Although the erstwhile slumgullion was a self-proclaimed Marxist who’d even marched on Washington with Coxey’s Army back in ’93 and been arrested for walking on the grass in front of the White House, Stringer suspected London didn’t know what radical cause he really stood for. Like that other socialist writer, G. B. Shaw, London lived mighty high on the hog for a gent who said such dreadful things about capitalism. When he wasn’t preaching about the virtues of the working classes, he tended to take swipes at all the other red leaders. At the moment he was best known for a Utopian fantasy about a future where the Vanderbilts and Morgans got what was coming to ’em, and for his Darwinian tales of Alaska in which the hero got ahead by just taking everything away from the villains, fair and square. It was likely hard for a writer to stick with one set of principles when he stole most of his plots from earlier best-sellers, Stringer mused. London had gone on record that his notions of sharing wealth included the right to use any good story he could sell, and to hell with capitalistic copyright laws.
The expensive cigar did emit fumes Stringer could smell despite the rank reek of the buffalo robes they lay atop. But it had been a spell now, and so far nobody had even seen fit to glance in the open doorway of their hidey-hole.
Stringer got to his pocket watch, nodded, and put it away. “We’d best study on working our way back to civilization,” he said. “The streets might not be safe yet. But that train won’t be arriving in more than say a quarter hour. They don’t seem to be hunting for us serious, and I for one can’t make out the depot or anything else important from up here. Why don’t we try a cautious stroll at least as far as the entrance overhang of this stinkhole?”
London agreed. So they slid down the back of the pile and made their way forward. They were nearly to the doorway when Stringer sensed they might have made too hasty a move. But the old geezer who’d just stepped inside from the street looked more like a warehouseman who’d been off drinking than a tough who’d just lost at cards.
“Howdy,” Stringer said, nodding.
The older man stared suspiciously at both of them and asked what they were doing there. London laughed. “It’s not as bad as it looks, pop. I couldn’t get my young pal here to take down his pants, no matter how I begged and pleaded.”
The old man didn’t laugh. Stringer didn’t blame him. “Pay no mind to this idjet,” he said. “We’re bidding against each other. It was his notion to follow me here for a gander at all these fine buffalo robes you seem to have in stock. What are you asking for say a gross, considering we’re talking about mighty raw material, no offense?”
The older man frowned. “You’re asking the wrong gent. I only work here. Mr. Ashton, the boss, is the man you want to see about hides, tallow, and such.” He shifted his tobacco cud, spat, and added, “He ain’t here, as any fool can see. But I can tell you most of the stuff we has on hand right now has been spoken for. Tannery, back east. Don’t ask me where. All I can tell you boys is that you’re wasting your time here.”
Stringer wanted to step outside into the dangerous sunlight even less than he wanted to buy a stinky green buffalo robe. So, to stall for time, he asked what time the boss might be expected back.
The lax if not drunken watchman shrugged and gave Stringer another straw to gra
sp as he answered, “Can’t rightly say. He never said where he was going. You might say Mr. Ashton comes and goes, as a boss is allowed to, see?”
Stringer nodded. “Well, in that case I may as well wait a spell and see if he turns up.” He turned to London. “You may as well head on out, you cheap cuss, for you know I just love to outbid you.”
The two of them were shaping up to make a good team, Stringer thought. London clamped down on his cigar stubbornly. “The hell you say, MacKail,” he announced. “I’m not budging until the man who owns all these robes gets back. You know damn well my tannery wants ’em as much as yours might. Good buffalo robes are getting mighty hard to come by these days, and I’m not talking about buying by the gross. We’re not a shoestring outfit, like you work for. We buy by the ton, and there has to be at least a dozen tons for sale here.”
The old watchman spat again. “I sure wish you boys paid more attention to your elders. I just told you Mr. Ashton ain’t likely to sell either of you one robe or a bucket of tallow.”
Stringer shrugged. “I’d rather hear it from the boss himself, no offense,” he said.
“If he’s not leaving, I’m not leaving,” London added.
The older man looked uncertain. Stringer, to keep the conversation going, said, “There’s something else I mean to ask your boss when he gets back. How come he has all these robes piled here in Granger if he means to ship them east to be tanned as lap robes?”
The older man scowled. “He has to pile ’em some damn wheres between shipments, don’t he?”
“Back when there were still enough buffalo robes to send east more regular, Dodge City was where they shipped the useful parts of the south herd east from,” Stringer said, “and most of the robes from the north herd were shipped east from Cheyenne, which is on this same railroad line.”
The old man shrugged. “So what?” he asked.
