by Lou Cameron
STRINGER
Lou Cameron
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1987 by Lou Cameron
First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-140-8
Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9058-7
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
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
STRINGER
CHAPTER
ONE
*
It was a cold, gray Monday morning beyond the call of duty. A dank summer fog had rolled in overnight and settled down to stay a spell. MacKail could barely make out the classic cast-iron facade of the San Francisco Sun as he made his way across Montgomery Street to see if he’d be eating next month.
He had to dodge a big beer dray that should have sounded a foghorn if it was in such an all-fired hurry. When he made it alive he found all the lamps lit inside. It looked as if they were working on the night edition and running late.
The tall, tanned freelance field stringer eased through the crowded confusion to the frosted glass box they kept Sam Barca wrapped in lest he bite lesser mortals. MacKail grabbed a handy bentwood chair and dragged it in after him; the crusty old feature editor of the Sun had never offered a caller a seat in living memory.
As MacKail sat down anyway, Sam Barca glanced up from whatever he’d been working on among the confusion of the desk between them. An overhead Edison bulb illuminated Barca’s bald dome more than it needed to be and masked his features in the harsh shadow of his green eye-shade. MacKail didn’t mind. He already knew old Sam was ugly as sin. The feature editor didn’t say good morning. He said, flatly, “We can’t run the piece you wrote—in fun, no doubt—about those Manila-bound troops over at the Presidio. Whatever could have possessed you to hand in a feature like that again, dammit? I thought the recent war with Spain had established the simple fact that your views on military matters conflict with the editorial policies of this newspaper.”
MacKail reached for his makings and commenced to build a smoke as he protested, mildly, “I wasn’t out to poke fun, Sam. I got the angle about the awkward action of the Krag service rifle off an older and now wiser sergeant who’s recovering from the effects in the base hospital. He was lucky. He got the Filipino with the cold steel on his otherwise useless Krag before the rascal could get in too many licks with his bolo knife.”
Barca snapped, “That’s another thing I’d make you rewrite if I had any intention of running such a feature. Where do you get off writing up the Filipino fanatics who are attacking our brave boys as if you thought they were dedicated fighting men?”
MacKail poured a careful line of Bull Durham the length of his folded tan paper as he replied, simply, “That’s what they have to be, Sam. I know you won’t let me cover this war. But word gets back, and Aguinaldo and his so-called rebels have been holding us to a standoff ever since we took their islands from Spain. Would you rather have me write our troops can’t seem to lick a mess of sissies?”
Barca sighed and said, “I used to report things as they were, when I was young and still thought the world was run on the level. I learned as a cub reporter that when the Sioux beat us it was a massacre and that when we beat the Sioux it was a battle. I want you to stay the hell away from the Presidio. That goes for Fort Mason and Fort Baker while I’m at it. You’re not a bad newspaper man, son, if only you could spell and had more common sense. Why don’t you take us up on our standing offer? You’d make more money at the rewrite desk, and wouldn’t be able to get in as much trouble.”
MacKail carefully sealed the tightly rolled smoke with his tongue before he said, “I’d go loco en la cabeza sitting at a desk all day, Sam. I know no stringer can hope to pull down the wages of a halfway good-looking staff steno. But I enjoy working out in the field too much to even consider the notion.”
He lit his smoke and added, “If you don’t want me covering our gallant troops, this war, what say I do a piece on our current water-main scandal?”
Barca shook his head and said, “We’re trying to put out a newspaper, not another vigilance committee. So I’ll tell you what I’ll give you a column and a half at space rates for, Mr. Stringer MacKail. Didn’t you grow up in the Mother Lode country?”
MacKail nodded and said, “I had to. I was born there. My grandfather was a forty-niner who found grass easier to find than gold. So he took to raising beef up in Calaveras County. I sure hope you don’t have one of those ‘Wild West’ features in mind, Sam. It’s still wild enough up there. But if I hadn’t found the cattle industry a lot more tedious than thrilling I’d have never worked my way through Stanford riding summers for the Rocking X. I hear from home, now and again, and they say nothing’s happened up that way since I left.”
Barca grimaced and said, “I don’t need a feature about cowboys at the moment. It so happens this is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Joaquin Murrieta, the Robin Hood of Old California.”
MacKail blew a thoughtful smoke ring and asked, “So what?”
Barca said, “Dammit, isn’t it true the last robbery Murrieta and his gang pulled off before Captain Love’s posse tracked them down was near the El Dorado stage stop in Calaveras County?”
MacKail smiled thinly and said, “Don’t ask me. I used to think there was a tooth fairy, too. There’s not much more to the tales they tell about old Sulky Jack.”
Barca blinked and demanded, “Who the hell is Sulky Jack and how did he get into this discussion about Joaquin Murrieta?”
MacKail explained, “That’s how Joaquin Murrieta translates, rough, from the Spanish. In the old days, whenever a posse asked a native Californio just who might or might not have stopped a stage or run off stock, he was apt to answer, ‘Don’t look at me. Maybe it was Sulky Jack.’ I’ll allow there was many a sulky bandit wearing many a big sombrero back in the gold rush days. But Joaquin Murrieta was likely just a catchall handle, like Johnny Reb.”
Barca scowled and growled, “The hell you say. If Captain Love didn’t kill the one and original Joaquin Murrieta near Tule Lake, whose head is still floating in that glass jar you have to pay a nickel to look at?”
MacKail shrugged as he replied, “Beats me. I paid my nickel years ago and I’d say said jar contains the pickled features of a pleasant-looking gent who could have passed for Spanish in life. Folk back home always figured Captain Love so admired the reward put out on old Sulky Jack, in case he was anyone in particular, that he just lopped off the head of some handy vaquero. No Anglo could say just what Murrieta looked like. There was some discussion about this point at the time. But Captain Love was mean as hell and I guess it was safer to pay him off than risk his going into the business of robbing stages his fool self. I don’t see much sense in rehashing such a tedious tale at this late date, Sam.”
Barca rummaged among his papers as he insisted, “I do. Like I said, it’s the anniversary of whatever the hell happened and I want to run some Old West nostalgia on Murrieta.”
He handed a sheet of typed copy across the desk, adding, “I dug this much out of the morgue for you. Run over the ground and dig up some local color. Pad it out to a column or so and don’t let the mere truth come between you and a good story.”
MacKail folded the morgue sheet away to read later, got to his feet, and said, “I’ll try. Lord knows I could use the money and it’ll be nice to visit my old stomping grounds again. But I’ll be
mighty surprised if anyone I know in Calaveras County knows more than me about Joaquin Murrieta. Growing up, we were told more about that famous frog-jumping contest, and I can tell you for sure Mark Twain made that local color up as pure fiction.”
Barca smiled despite himself and said, “Feel free to follow his example. Just make sure you come back with a story to go with that head in the famous glass jar.”
CHAPTER
TWO
*
With the fog still thick he made better time walking back to his boardinghouse on Rincon Hill to change and pack. A telltale mop bucket on the first landing told him his landlady was still avoiding him. He assumed it was because he showed up so seldom for the meals she served. He didn’t know whether she felt insulted or feared he’d demand a rebate on the board he paid for and hardly ever ate.
The gal on the second landing wasn’t avoiding him or anyone else. As usual she’d left her door open as she reclined just inside, in her working costume, smoking a violet-scented tailor-made in an ivory cigarette holder. He knew she worked as a model at that art school on Russian Hill. He wondered if she owned any clothes at all. He nodded politely to the naked lady on the brass bedstead and kept going. A man who messed with the gals in his own boardinghouse had to be as dumb as a gent who messed with the gals at his own office.
Once safe in his smaller digs under the sloping roof, he got out of his town duds and proceeded to make himself presentable for the Mother Lode. He put on a light-blue work shirt and slipped into a faded denim jacket and matching jeans. He sat on the bed and hauled on a pair of black Justins with gunmetal spurs shrunk to the heels forever with iron-hard rawhide. It wasn’t easy. Boots weren’t tight enough for serious riding when they came on easy.
Feeling more human, now, he got up and stood before the pier glass as he knotted a black sateen bandanna in place of a necktie. The face staring back at him from the glass looked more or less like what those folk who knew him well got. His wide-set eyes were a color best described as old gold, warm or cold, depending on how he felt about whom he was looking at. His close-cropped hair was sandy. He tried to shave often enough to keep the color of his beard a mystery. Most women figured his age about thirty and found him nice-looking or a little frightening, depending on what a lady might have on her conscience. Few men took him for a stranger to trifle with, either.
He put on the gray Rough Rider hat he’d brought back from Cuba and decided he looked cow enough for the friendlier parts of old Calaveras County. It could be asking for tedious discussion to strap on a sidearm this side of Stockton. So he packed his holstered Smith & Wesson double-action .38 and gun belt with his yellow rain slicker and other possibles. He decided to leave his old Remington Grasshopper where it was, by the window, since he meant to type up the feature from field notes, if he came back with field notes.
He sat on his battered gladstone bag to shut and lock it before he headed downstairs. As he passed the open door of the gal on the second landing she blew perfumed smoke at him and asked where the rodeo was.
He didn’t answer. She was a pretty little sass, and once a man got to jawing with a naked lady he was tempting fate. Nobody else made fun of him as he followed the Slot the few blocks to the ferry building and saw he’d timed it right. He made it aboard the Oakland Ferry just as they were closing the gates.
There wasn’t much of a view to be seen as the ferry moaned its way across the bay through the fog, so he found his way to the gent’s salon on the upper deck and bellied up to the bar. It wasn’t easy. A lot of other gents were using the fog as a good excuse to drink before noon. But a familiar husky figure under a chocolate derby made room for him, asking, “Aren’t you Stuart MacKail, from the Sun?”
MacKail sighed and said, “I used to be, champ. Stuart would have made a more sensible name if my clan had stayed in the old country. Over here, folk keep shortening it to Stu and that’s always reminded me of some awful cow-camp grub I’ve been served in my time. Of late my boss has taken to calling me Stringer MacKail. I know he means it insulting, but it sort of grows on one.”
Gentleman Jim Corbett signaled the barkeep and said, “Stringer MacKail it is, then. By whatever name, I owe you a drink. You were fair when I lost the title to Fitzsimmons a while back. You called the fight as it happened. Some of the things others wrote about me at the time hurt worse than old Bob’s left hook. Name your poison, son.”
MacKail ordered Steamer Beer and asked what Gentleman Jim was up to these days. The older and heavier—but no taller—man said, “I’m still making public appearances. I was on the bill with Frank James and Cole Younger last week. They’re still lecturing about the wages of sin and I still warn the youth of today how unwise it can be to lead with one’s right. Where are you going dressed like a cowboy, ah, Stringer?”
MacKail told him. Gentleman Jim laughed and said, “I feel for you but I just can’t reach you. As a native son, I grew up on that old chestnut, too. I was born the year they got Vasquez. He was real, and one mean Mex. I’ve always thought Murrieta was a Mexican fairy tale.”
MacKail inhaled his suds and didn’t argue. Gentleman Jim, who seemed to prefer rye, neat, observed, “Since last we met I’ve been following your career, kid. I liked some of the stuff you sent back from Cuba. Was that part about old Teddy Roosevelt true?”
MacKail grinned sheepishly and replied, “You just bought me a beer for calling a fight the way I saw it, champ. How on earth was I to know that particular lieutenant colonel was going to wind up president?”
Gentleman Jim chuckled and said, “I wish I’d been there. The war was over before I could make up my mind whether I wanted to join up or not. Do you think our Teddy’s sore at you for having him and his Rough Riders charge up San Juan Hill, on foot, after those colored regulars had already taken the Spanish positions on the crest?”
MacKail shrugged and said, a little bitterly, “I doubt he read any of my dispatches from the front. They had Richard Harding Davis to assure them it was a Splendid Little War. I didn’t do much better when they sent me up to the Klondike for less time than it takes to tell about it. They didn’t like what I wrote about the gold rush, either. But what the hell, Jack London told it like it should have happened.”
He caught himself knocking a rival, gave himself a mental kick, and said, “Forget I said that, champ. London is a native son, like us, and it’s a dirty bird that shits in its own nest.”
Gentleman Jim nodded soberly and said, “I’ll drink to that and maybe someday old Jack will write something true.”
They changed the subject and enjoyed another round before their ferry pulled into Oakland. It was just as foggy on that side of the bay so MacKail lost track of Corbett on the ferry slip as he groped his way on toward the railroad depot.
He bought a round trip to the end of the line at San Andreas and an hour or so later the sun was shining again outside, as his train sped across the delta farmlands toward the Sierra Nevada to the east. By the time they’d made a few local stops the other passengers were starting to be dressed more like him. So he got off at San Andreas with his gun strapped on and riding his right hip.
But he soon learned how sissy the seat of Calaveras County had gotten since his last visit. A priss with a copper badge pinned to his vest soon stopped him to demand his reasons for moving about so sinister. MacKail pointed at the library across the way and said, “I’m not headed for the bank, Constable.”
The town law said, “I never asked where you was going. I asked if you had a permit for that dangerous weapon you’re in trouble for packing if you don’t.”
MacKail produced his press credentials and gun permit. The town law still looked unconvinced, but decided he wouldn’t arrest anyone this time. MacKail went across to the library, muttering to himself.
Inside, he found the brunette Gibson Girl on duty as pretty as the gal on the second landing, even if she was wearing glasses and a lot more duds. She must have felt lonely, despite another older man poking about in t
he back stacks, for she dimpled even prettier at MacKail and asked, how she could best serve him.
He didn’t think he ought to answer truthfully, so he told her he was looking for any books they might have on Joaquin Murrieta.
She looked as if he’d just invited her to dig postholes with him. She said, “I fear we have dozens, all different and no doubt just as unreliable. Would you like to start with the one Captain Love had ghostwritten shortly before he was killed in turn?”
MacKail shook his head and said, “That one has to be unreliable. Love was a windbag and a drunken brute. That’s how he wound up dead.”
The brunette smiled and said, “The heart of the cowboy who did the deed was pure. It’s never been proven he was the lover of Captain Love’s wife. He said at the hearing he just got tired of seeing a battered wife wandering about with a chronic black eye. They must have believed him, for they let him off on self-defense.”
MacKail nodded soberly and said, “That sounds reasonable. Love told everyone who’d listen what a dangerous cuss he was. I thought you said you didn’t think much of the books on Murrieta, ah, Miss…”
“Marsh, Helen Marsh. I had to read them to decide they weren’t worth reading, didn’t I? I guess I’ve been aboard a bronc or more in my tomboy days and, honestly, some of the things people write about the West as it is today are simply silly.”
He said, “I’ve noticed that. I’d still better pick up a few of the standard tomes on Murrieta, Miss Helen. How do I go about getting a library card?”
She looked uncertain and said, “That depends. Are you a resident of Calaveras County, Mr., ah…?”
“Just call me Stringer MacKail. I might be a resident. I was born on the Lazy K up near Murphys. My late father was Big Ewen MacKail. My Uncle Don is still alive and has the M Bar K over near Angels Camp. I rode summers for the Rocking X through Stanford but the last place I voted was in Frisco. So it’s for you to say.”
