by Lou Cameron
“Yes sir,” Stringer said, “I’ve heard the song about the Alice blue gown. She’s a right handsome young lady.”
“A boy would have been less bother, and no more set in his ways. But she’s a good girl, and she lets me have my way, when it’s a matter of state. Leave it to Alice and me, young man. By this time next year buffalo robes will be passé, and even if they’re not, I’ll see they have trouble crossing state lines!”
He sounded like he meant it, so after a decent interval, Stringer dropped back to where old Fran was still pouting on her own pony. She brightened a mite when she saw him, and asked what that had all been about, at the head of the column.
“I think I just saved the buffalo from extinction,” he said. “Now it’s time to worry about you. I don’t want to have to explain all those furs to a nature lover. When we get back near the cabin, we’ll drop out, gather together your personals and fur bales, and catch up with everyone later, at Yellowstone Station. I don’t think anyone will notice in the confusion. But we’d best wrap your furs in sheeting anyway.”
She thought that was a swell notion. So later, as the party reforded the creek out front, they simply dropped back. Nobody asked why, if they noticed.
As she shut the cabin door behind them and proceeded to remove her calico over her head, Stringer started to say they didn’t have enough time. But then he noticed how blond she was all over, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to ride after the others without pausing to admire Old Faithful.
Making love to anything that pretty was even nicer by broad day, and some of the positions she came up with would have been inspiring in the dark. They ate some beans, smoked a few puffs, and then, having gotten their second wind, made love some more.
But all good things had to come to an end. So he finally got her to get off him so they could both wash up and get dressed. He told her to pack her personals while he took care of loading the furs aboard the spare ponies. He started to go out, his gun rig and hat still where he’d left them on a bedpost, but told himself that the best way to avoid bad habits was to never start ’em. So he put on his hat, strapped on his gun, and went back to see about the furs. He noticed someone had gotten rid of the bodies in the corral, but when he swung the shed door open, a live outlaw let go the bale of fur in his arms and went for his own sidearm.
Stringer beat him to the draw, just, and blew him backward against the bales, snapping, “Don’t!” as he saw the man was still alive on his knees, making clumsy motions with his gun hand.
The shabby owl hoot whined, “Don’t hit me again. I give. Could you open that door again, pard? It’s dark as hell in here all of a sudden.”
“Never mind how good you can see me,” Stringer said. “If you don’t want me gunning you again, tell me who sent you back to lay for me. I thought I knew, but—”
“Nobody sent nobody,” the wounded man whined, drooping to his hands as well as knees at Stringer’s feet. “I figured long as everyone had left, I’d see if there was anything worth ah, salvaging. I didn’t hear you riding in.”
“That’s because we rid in some time ago,” Stringer said.
The man he’d shot didn’t answer. He fell face forward and just lay there, quiet. Stringer didn’t check to make sure he was dead. It would have been sort of shitty to leave a dying man behind, if one knew for sure he was still alive. Stringer knew he was dying, because he’d seen where the bullet hit.
Fran was anxiously calling out the loophole at him. He moved to the door and called back, “I just shot a rat. Be with you in a minute. Don’t come out here. Dead rats look disgusting.”
Then he got to work. A few minutes later they were on their way. She kept after him to stop and go into the bushes with her just about every time they passed some bushes. But he didn’t want to miss that train a second time, so he wouldn’t even let her stop when they passed Old Faithful, halfway there. It wasn’t spouting anyway.
They reached the railroad just outside the park line late that afternoon, and just in time. Nobody paid any attention as they put all the ponies in the town livery. When he told Fran he could make it to the train with her furs in no more than two trips, she looked away and murmured, “Stuart, I don’t know if I want to get aboard that train with the rest of you. I don’t know anyone where it’s going. I’m used to it around here. Of course, if you wanted me to go all the way to Frisco with you—”
He cut in to assure her she was making a lot of sense and that he wasn’t going to the coast but to a rodeo in Cheyenne. Then he gave her a brotherly peck and got away before she could change her mind. As he mounted the platform, the whistle sounded, then the presidential special was off and running as if it were after Spaniards atop San Juan Hill.
Stringer ran along the platform, caught up with the open doorway of the baggage car and tossed his gear in. He had a mite more trouble getting himself aboard. But a Secret Service man posted in that car to keep an eye on more important baggage gave him a hand up and asked Stringer what was so funny.
As they stood there in the doorway together, watching telegraph poles whip past outside, Stringer replied, “It just occurred to me that I’d have never been able to get a certain lady and her own stuff aboard in any case. I like to leave ’em with a clear conscience, don’t you?”
The federal agent said he hadn’t much experience in such affairs. “I’m more glad about you making the train because we may need more testimony from you once we get back down to the main line at Granger,” he added. “We just got word by wire that the local law there has that Ashton gent you told us about on ice. We’ll take him off their hands on federal charges once we arrive.”
Stringer nodded. “I’m sure my old pal Nate will be relieved. But I don’t know what help I’ll be now that the cuss has been arrested. He seems to know me a lot better than I ever knew him. I can’t say I ever laid eyes on him before he started sending hired guns after me.”
The Secret Service man shrugged. “No matter. If he’s the same habitual receiver of stolen goods we suspect he is, his goose is cooked, federal. Before he went into the buffalo-hide trade, it seems he distributed funny money back east.”
“I never said he struck me as an honest man,” Stringer said. “The point is that the law has him at last, right?”
“It does,” the federal lawman said, “and it was sort of a near thing, despite your tip. Ashton must have been afraid you’d tell on him. The boys in Granger picked him up at the railroad depot with a carpet bag full of money, as if he meant to go somewhere in a hurry. They say he was too mad to spit. You’ll never guess why they caught him so easy at the depot.”
Stringer said he gave up, and the Secret Service man told him, with a chuckle, “Old Ashton must have considered the need for a quicker getaway. Just a few weeks ago he bought himself a speedy new Buick motor car. No mounted law posse could have hoped to catch him had he run off that way. But it seems just a few days ago some other crook stole his fancy yellow roadrunner. Ain’t that a bitch?”
CHAPTER
TEN
*
When the train rolled into Granger that evening, old T.R. felt obliged to make his usual platform speech, and since most of the town felt obliged to listen to it again, Stringer had the street almost to himself as he legged it for the Western Union office with the feature he’d written, longhand, in the library car of the presidential special.
He was only mildly surprised to see Jack London wasn’t racing him to the wire service. Since he’d gone semistraight, and sold most of his stuff as pure fiction instead of news these days, old Jack probably saw little need to get off that senator’s wife and back on the job.
But as Stringer got to the Western Union’s entrance, one of the Secret Service crew was moving the same way with a sheet of paper in his own hand. Stringer waved the pages he was packing. “You’d best go first,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to send, and you have a train to catch.”
“I’m not going on with the presidential party,” the federal age
nt replied. “I’m stuck here until some federal marshals come out here from the east to pick up that Abraham Ashton we’re holding in the town lockup. Ashton’s not wanted out on the west coast, but they sure want to talk to him back east.
As they entered together, Stringer suggested, “Let’s flip for it. I’m stuck here until I can catch a train to Cheyenne later tonight.”
So they did, and Stringer won. The Secret Service agent was a sport about it. He lit a smoke and leaned against the same counter, as the Western Union clerk put Stringer’s dispatch to his feature editor on the wire.
This naturally gave them time to talk. But the casual conversation didn’t teach Stringer anything he didn’t already know. The prisoner had refused to say anything but that he was innocent and that they ought to be looking for the thief who’d stolen his horseless carriage instead of picking on him. Stringer opined that between now and his trial he’d likely give them a few names to go with his own.
The federal lawman shrugged and asked what else was new. “Few of them want to do the time alone,” he explained. “On the other hand, this rascal has so much hard time coming that it may not be so easy to bargain with him. After all, a one-year reduction per name may not mean much when a man’s facing a hundred years and a day.”
“Can’t you tell him he’s saving himself a hanging if he can’t see fit to cooperate with the prosecution?” Stringer asked.
“That would be a fib. We’ve got him on a wondrously long list of charges, and he’ll never live long enough to serve the time for half of ’em. But we just don’t have him on murder-one, and he knows it.”
Stringer grimaced. “Aw, hell, you know he gave the orders, and that said orders resulted in a lot of messy gunplay.”
The Secret Service man nodded. “But what we know and what can be proven in court,” he said, “don’t always add up. He knows that too.”
Stringer began to roll his own smoke. “I heard a member of the gang refer to someone called Abe as their boss one time. Is that any help?”
The other man shook his head. “Save yourself a trip back east for nothing. A lot of men are called Abe. His lawyer would be sure to mention that. But what the hell, we’ve got the ringleader. Without his slick leadership, the criminal band he put together will no doubt end up arrested on all sorts of other dumb charges sooner or later. Nobody expects them to reform, you know.”
“I know at least some of them are mighty vicious,” Stringer said, “and that other innocent folk stand to get hurt as they scatter to raise general hell. But since there’s nothing I can do about it, and I have a late-night train to catch, I reckon I’ll just go see if a certain gal is really named Opal. It’s been nice talking to you.”
They shook on it and parted friendly. Stringer stood on the walk outside for a minute, undecided. No matter what old Opal’s real name was, that eastbound for Cheyenne would roll in before she got off duty, and that moose head over her bar was ugly as sin.
He decided to mosey over to the lockup and see if they’d let him interview the prisoner. To date he’d never laid eyes on the son of a bitch who’d been trying to have him killed. Whether Ashton felt like giving an interview or not, Stringer figured he’d might as well try as he killed some time.
He paused to get his bearings where the plank walk ended at the entrance of a service alley. The Granger lockup had to be around the comer beyond. He was naturally staring straight ahead as he crossed the cinder alleyway in the tricky light of gloaming, so he was more chagrined than surprised when he stepped in horse shit.
He paused where the walk resumed to scrape the instep of his right boot clean on the edge of the planking, idly wondering why the sticky mess smelled more like violets than horse. Then he took the smoke he’d just rolled from between his lips to sniff at it suspiciously. But no, he hadn’t built it with that sissy tobacco the jailbreakers had given him by mistake that time. He remembered he’d thrown those makings away a long ways from here, as soon as he’d been able to pick up some Bull Durham.
So why was he still smelling it?
Having cleaned his boot off, Stringer got rid of his own smoke so he could follow the stinky spoor with his curious nose. It led into the alley. He recalled how the same alley ran behind the town lockup around the next corner. He drew his .38 as he moved cautiously into the darkness, for the minty-violet smell was a mite stronger now. The last time someone had been smoking such stuff in this same alley, it had been in connection with a planned jailbreak, and this time they’d guessed right about who old Nate had locked up in the rear, facing this same alley!
Not wanting to be outlined against even dim light from the street behind him, Stringer moved close to the walls, his gun hand clear for action. It was black as a bitch ahead. He could make out the dim rays from the grilled window high on the back wall of the lockup. But that was all, until someone under it struck a match. Then he could see there were four of ’em on foot, and that the one with the match wasn’t lighting a smoke.
Stringer threw down on them and yelled, “Drop that bomb and grab some stars!” But they only obeyed him halfway.
The one holding the bundle of dynamite sticks let go of it as all four went for their own guns. So Stringer opened fire, and the alley echoed to the discharges of at least five six-guns while both sides did their best to hit something in the smoke-filled gloom.
Then the dynamite bomb went off.
The alley lit up as brightly, and about as long, as if a bolt of dry lightning had struck. Windows were rattled if not busted all over the tiny town, and the shock wave blew Stringer out one end of the alley like a bung from an imprudently filled beer keg.
He lay stunned and spread-eagled for a time, as his hat spun down from the sky like a falling maple leaf. Then, ears ringing and nostrils filled with the sickening reek of nitro fumes, he sat up to see if anything was busted serious.
He’d just determined that all his limbs were still attached and that he’d somehow hung onto his gun, when the Secret Service man he’d just been talking to, and old Nate, joined him with their own guns drawn to ask why he was sitting in the dust and what all that noise had been about.
“Some of Abe Ashton’s pals must have been worried about honor among thieves,” Stringer said, and another Secret Service agent reeled into view from around the corner.
“Anarchists!” he gasped. “They just rattled the municipal jail from its foundations to my fillings! We have to warn the president!”
“His train just left,” the less rattled federal agent replied. “They must have been out to assassinate someone else. Is our prisoner still breathing?”
“Just,” the other agent said. “The blast tossed him off his bunk but didn’t more than tilt his cell a mite. What the hell’s going on here, Mike?”
The less confused agent produced one of those newfangled electric flashlights from under his frock coat and switched it on. “We’d better find out,” he said, and moved deeper into the alley, sweeping his beam through the drifting clouds of smoke and dust.
Nate, the town law, helped Stringer to his feet. “If I was you,” he said, “I’d reload. That was you I heard throwing some of that lead just now, wasn’t it?”
Stringer congratulated Nate on his good ears as he commenced inserting fresh rounds into his spent wheel. “Had I not had such good taste in tobacco,” he added, “you boys inside might not have been in condition to give any advice right now. That dynamite went off a lot farther from your jailhouse window than they must have planned.”
The agent with the flashlight came back, sighing. “Jesus, what a fricasee. But I’d say that if we count the scattered boots and divide by half, we’ll have a rough estimate.”
“I counted four,” Stringer said, “before their present for their pal inside went off. I was led to inquire about their activities because one was smoking violets. You can’t smell his fancy tobacco now, but it was pretty strong before.”
The agent who’d been shaken up inside was starting to make sens
e again. “Hold on,” he said, “I remember something about such disgusting habits from our yellow sheets. Didn’t we get a report about mint-violet tobacco in connection with a post office stickup a while back, Mike?”
The senior Secret Service man hooked his flashlight back on his gun rig. “Yeah, and the postmaster general is going to be tickled pink to learn Sweet William Wilkes is never going to do a thing like that again. Sweet William was suspected as a hired killer as well. I suspect he just proved it, for that dynamite couldn’t have been intended as a going-away present for our prisoner. They were out to make sure he couldn’t name any of the outlaws working with him.”
Stringer holstered his gun and bent over to pick up his hat. “He may want to now,” he grunted, “if you boys point out how much loyalty his gang just showed to him.”
The one called Mike told him not to try and teach his grandmother how to suck eggs. Stringer asked if he was stuck with being a federal witness after all. Mike thought, then shrugged and said, “There’s no use hauling you all the way back east and putting you up until and during the trial at the taxpayer’s expense. We’ve got Abraham Ashton on enough solid charges to keep him locked up until say the year 2045, and we can call you as a witness then, if the son of a bitch is still alive.”
Nate said, “I’d best get my boys to clean up back here before the alley cats treat all that fresh garbage even worse. Meanwhile, I got a bottle of rye in my rolltop. You want to join us in a toast to the dear departed, MacKail?”
Stringer shook his head. “Not if I’m free to move on. I got a train to catch before midnight, and I thought I’d sort of settle my shook-up innards with some nice cold buttermilk.”
