Stringer

by Lou Cameron

  Uncle Don said, “Well, if you want to go on looking for the son of a bitch, me and the boys will be proud to back your play.”

  Stringer laughed and said, “I’m not even sure how to spell his name. There’s three official spellings and, by any name, he’d have to be dead or old as hell by now, if Love guessed wrong. I’m only after any new stuff I can dig up on the old case, so I can spice up yet another feature on the legend. In a pinch, I can fake it, with the little anyone really knows, and who’s going to prove me wrong?”

  Kate brought another round of beers. She knew nobody ever ordered a second helping of her grandfather’s cooking. Uncle Don inhaled some suds before he said, “That’s enough about a fool Mex who may not have ever been there in the first place. Don’t you think it’s more important to figure out why that rascal tried to gun you this afternoon, laddy buck?”

  Stringer shrugged and said, “I ran out of ideas before he’d had time to go stiff, Uncle Don. I never saw him before. I don’t recall leaving any local gal in a family way when I went off to college. Are you at feud with anyone, this summer?”

  Uncle Don laughed easily and said, “Not hardly. It’s been long established that nobody messes with M Bar K beef or water rights if they know what’s good for ‘em. I treat my neighbors Golden Rule and besides, if they was after me, why would they go for you? I didn’t know you was in the county, myself, until someone told your Aunt Ida to upset hell outten her. She sent me in to fetch you home, by the way. I know what others may think of her cooking, but you’ll have to admit she makes a fair apple pie.”

  Stringer said he had to stay in town for now but promised he’d drop by the M Bar K as soon as the hearing was over. He added, “I was planning on using your spread as my base of operations in any case. You say the only hotel in El Dorado is a whorehouse?”

  Uncle Don nodded and said, “Run by a sassy Eye-talian gal calt Miss Gina. They got a mess of Eye-talians working the hard-rock mine near an old sheep ranch for that sassy young William Randolph Hearst. They calls it the Sheep Ranch Mine. The Hearsts ain’t never had no shame. One of ‘em even married a Campbell. You know what them Campbells did to our clan at Culloden, don’t you?”

  Stringer quickly agreed anyone named Campbell would eat shit, lest he have to listen yet again to the tale of a showdown that had taken place in 1746 and nowheres near the Mother Lode. He said, “I wish the stage line was still running. Do you imagine there’d be any records left, maybe in the attic of that old station?”

  Pronto, who was young enough to know more than Uncle Don about such matters, said, “Ain’t no attic. Just a big old ‘dobe barn. Miss Gina uses the downstairs where they used to keep the horses as the place to drink and gamble. The rooms upstairs, where stage passengers used to rest up, is where the whores serve a man three ways for two dollars, now.”

  Uncle Don looked sternly at Pronto and said, “Shame on you, and don’t you never come back to the bunkhouse with the clap while I’m still running the M Bar K!” He turned to his nephew and added, “That goes for you, too. You stay the hell away from that old stage stop. None of them sassy gals could be old enough to recall screwing anyone involved in that old stage robbery, anyways.”

  He belched, took out his scratched-up railroad watch, and opined, “It’s getting late and if I don’t get home to your Aunt Ida soon, I’ll likely have to wrap her in wet sheets and sit on her till she figures out I ain’t the ghost of her long-lost man.”

  He got to his feet, punched Stringer on the shoulder hard enough to make a lesser man think he was under attack, and announced, “Vamanos, muchachos. We got some night riding to do. Don’t you dare pay David, laddy buck. I got me an account, here. When you finish in town, your Aunt Ida will have a light in our window for you whether you want it or not. We’ll both be sore as hell if you don’t help me put away some of her apple pie afore you have to go back to Frisco.”

  Stringer said he was looking forward to it, and then his uncle charged out with his riders in tow. Uncle Don never walked when he could run and they did have a good twenty-odd miles to ride, assuming Uncle Don stuck to the roads. Uncle Don was a free thinker when it came to riding, and never rode around anything he could get his pony to jump, even in the dark.

  Stringer stayed put until Kate came back to clear the table, asking if he’d have coffee or more beer on the house. He said he was well sated and asked her if she knew of a good hotel in town, explaining that staying overnight in San Andreas would be a new experience for him. The pretty Mexican gal shrugged and said, “I’ve never stayed in a hotel, anywhere. I’d invite you to bed down with us, but we only have one bed and my hombre might not understand when he gets off the night shift at the lumber mill.”

  Stringer laughed, picked up his library book, and left. Outside, the night was warm and the air smelled better than what he was now used to breathing in Frisco. But, for a county seat, San Andreas sure got quiet early. He strolled back toward the depot, figuring anything they had like a hotel would be down that way. A gal in a white blouse and side-button skirt was coming the other way, under a perky little straw boater perched atop her upswept brunet hair. It was Helen Marsh from the library. She recognized him at the same time and said, “Oh, I’m so glad I ran into you, Mr. MacKail. I heard what happened right after you left.”

  He held up the book and said, “I didn’t lose it or get it shot.” Then he remembered his gladstone and muttered, “Damn. Sorry, ma’am. I think I left my possibles under a blue table. It’s what I get for not toting it in myself.”

  She said, “Oh, dear, do you think you’ve lost it?”

  He smiled and said, “No. It’ll keep. I know the waitress of old and she’s honest as the day is long. I’m glad I ran into you, too.”

  She said, “I got to thinking about your quest after you left. I remembered some old loose papers we had in the historical file and, well, I took something interesting home with me, if you’d like to see it.”

  He said he sure would, so she took his free arm and they went on up the street as she explained she’d just been to a meeting of the local literary whatever. He didn’t ask if she lived alone. He’d find out soon enough if she had a Crazyauntida, too.

  She didn’t. She led him through a picket gate with a rose arbor over it and into a small frame cottage painted some color too dark to make out in the moonlight. There were no streetlamps this far from the center of town.

  Inside, she sat him on a leather chesterfield and said it was all right to smoke before she vanished into the darkness beyond the circle of light from the one Tiffany lamp she’d switched on. The cottage was wired for electricity. She lived sort of high on the hog for a librarian.

  He’d just built a smoke and lit it when Helen came back with a tea tray and placed it before him on a bitty teakwood table, carved Chinee. He’d have expected a librarian to serve tea. She’d fetched marble cake and a folded slip of paper as well. The paper looked as if someone had spilled tea on it more than once.

  Helen sat beside him and handed him the old public notice to read as she poured. It was dated 1853 and read:

  While it affords some amusement to our citizens to read the various accounts of the capture and decapitation of the notorious Joaquin Murrieta, be advised that a few weeks ago a party of Native Californios and Mexicans from Sonora were hunting mustangs in the Tulare Valley when they were attacked by a party of Americans for no reason they could determine. Three of the mustang hunters escaped with their lives and now insist they are the only survivors of the so-called attack on Murrieta’s camp. All three vaqueros are well known by Hispanic and American citizens alike to be honest, upright youths. They insist their comrades killed by Captain Love’s posse were as innocent. Furthermore, many victims of the Murrieta gang have now had time to view the preserved head brought back to Sacramento by Captain Love and, while some say they are uncertain, more than one has declared the remains spurious. Ergo it seems highly unlikely Joaquin Murrieta was killed as stated. Ergo be warned he is s
till at large!

  Stringer put both the paper and his smoke aside as Helen handed him a slab of marble cake, asking if she’d been any help. He nodded and said, “I was wondering why the posse didn’t find either a strongbox or a wounded Mexican in that camp. Tule Lake was way too far for them to have ridden after stopping the El Dorado stage, anyhow.”

  She asked what he thought had happened to the real Murrieta, in that case. He washed some cake down with tea and told her, “Whatever became of him, if he ever really existed, it was a long time ago.”

  “That notice says some people who knew what the real outlaw looked like said they’d killed the wrong Mexican. Doesn’t that mean he had to be real?”

  “Not really. It only proves that someone who got held up by a Mexican assumed he’d been held up by old Sulky Jack. Like I said, it’s too late to worry about, now. I’ve got enough to fake a column or two on the rascal. Before I go back to Frisco I’ll ride over the ground and see if I can add some scenery, at least, to the part about his last robbery. This sure is nice cake.”

  She dimpled and said, “Thank you, I made it myself. But don’t you mean San Francisco, Mr. MacKail? I’ve heard no native Californio ever calls it Frisco!”

  He shrugged and said, “I do. So does Jack London, and he was born inside the city limits. I reckon some folk like to pick nits. It’s like ‘Scotch’ and ‘Scottish.’ A good way to show off how much you know, whether you know or not.”

  She brightened and said, “Oh, I know about that. No true Scot would ever say ‘Scotch,’ right?”

  He smiled and said, “Wrong. My grandfather had the Gaelic and he said ‘Scotch,’ when he was speaking English. ‘Scotch,’ ‘Scots,’ and ‘Scottish’ are interchangeable English words. If you want to get technical, we called ourselves ‘Albanach.’ ‘Alban’ was the Gaelic for ‘Scotland.’”

  Then he caught himself and said, “Don’t get me started. I was raised on that stuff and once my elders got warmed up it tended to put me to sleep. I’m a native son, and we’re bad enough at living in the past.”

  She dimpled some more and said, “You forget I work in a county library. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, ah, Stringer?”

  He told her to shoot and she said, “I can’t help noticing that, for a professional journalist, you, ah, talk sort of rural. Surely you don’t write that way, do you?”

  He laughed and said, “I’d have a time selling it to old Sam Barca if I did. He gives me enough trouble about my spelling. I doubt many writers have ever spoken as they wrote, Miss Helen. Consider how grim it would be to listen to Edgar Allan Poe if he carried on like that over tea and cake.”

  She clapped her hands with delight and said, “Oh, that’s something we’ve never considered at our literary teas! Naturally, not even a polished gent would pay as much attention to proper grammar in his normal conversation as he would when putting something down on paper.”

  He nodded and said, “I doubt the gent who wrote that public notice used ‘Ergo’ a lot at the supper table. The only gents in real life who talk as if they were paying attention to punctuation are lawyers, or other such windbags.”

  She pouted her lower lip and said, “I’m not sure that was very nice of you. I’ll have you know my late husband was a lawyer.”

  He said, “Sorry. I reckon some lawyers are decent. No offense, but you hardly look old enough to be a widow woman, Miss Helen.”

  She said, “I’m not sure I feel old enough, either. I was just getting used to the joys of married life when my James was taken from me. They said it was overwork. He simply dropped dead one morn on his way to the office. There was no warning he was ill. We’d just made…never mind. Suffice it to say he seemed perfectly healthy when he stepped out that very door and, well, dropped dead.”

  Stringer said he sure was sorry and, having finished the cake and never liking tea all that much in the first place, said, “That sure was fine, ma’am. But I still have to find a place to stay, here in town, so—”

  “Why don’t you stay here, then?” she cut in, meeting his eyes with her own in a way that could be taken for brazen if she hadn’t looked so ladylike everywhere else. He hesitated and said, “I’d admire that, Miss Helen, if you’re sure I wouldn’t be putting you out. No offense, but I didn’t take this place large enough to have many spare bedrooms.”

  The smoke signals in her amber eyes were getting easier to read now, but when she said, simply, “There’s only one bedroom,” he had to say, “Well, I don’t mind sleeping on this chesterfield.”

  When she said, “I don’t want you sleeping on the chesterfield,” he figured he’d look sissy asking, in that case, where in thunder she did expect him to bed down. So he took her in his arms and hauled her in to show her he liked her that much, too.

  Helen kissed back warmly, French. But when they came up for air she pulled away and said, “Not out here with the lamp lit and the shades only halfway drawn. Why don’t you just go on in and pull the covers down while I put these things away?”

  He was in no mood to argue, now. He just nodded, rose, and found his way to the bedroom. It smelled like sandalwood. He was glad. The gal on the second landing had put him off violets of late.

  He sat on the bed to pull his boots off in the dark. Helen must have washed dishes fast as well as silent, for she joined him there and beat him between the sheets, easy.

  Of course, she didn’t have any spurred Justins to get off at such short notice. He couldn’t see much, but he noticed she just shucked her duds, let down her hair, and piled in naked as if they were old pals. He was feeling more awkward, no doubt because he hadn’t been out searching for her earlier, peering in windows along the main street to see where she was, so he could manage a chance meeting.

  But once he rolled in with her and took her naked charms in his own bare arms, it felt like he’d known her longer. The nice thing about widow women was that they still hugged like ladies but got down to business like well-broken-in bawds. When he started to warm her up with some polite foreplay Helen moaned and pleaded, “Just do it, darling! Can’t you see I’ve been gushing for you ever since you walked into my life this afternoon?”

  He found that surprising, but he didn’t doubt her, once he was in the saddle with a pillow under her rollicking rump and her nails were digging into his bare buttocks. He hadn’t had sex in some time; judging from the way she was acting, it had been even longer since she had. So they climaxed together quickly, and she didn’t stop. She gasped, “Oh, let me get on top!” So he let her. She’d mentioned before that she’d ridden horses a lot in her time. Likely English saddle, from the way she was posting as if she meant to ride all the way to Stockton, at least.

  But to Stringer’s surprise and mild chagrin, once she’d climaxed that way, too, she collapsed down atop him and sighed, “Oh, that was lovely, but I have to get up early, so…”

  He frowned and said, “I was fixing to come again,” as she rolled off and sprawled beside him like a rag doll missing some stuffing. She sighed and said, “Go ahead and satisfy yourself if you have to, dear. I don’t mind.”

  Now, as every man born of mortal woman knows, there is nothing that can discourage even a horny man more than a woman telling him it’s all right for him to go on and get it over with, if he just has to. So Stringer said it was jake with him if it was jake with her and, since he was wide awake as only a man with a raging erection can get, he sat up to get some makings from his shirt on the bedside chair. By the time he’d rolled and lit a smoke she was snoring softly on her side of the fool bed.

  He smoked some. Then he strode out to the other room and got the library book. He plumped up two pillows she had to spare and switched on the bedside lamp to at least read in bed, dammit.

  The book, which said most of the action had been up in El Dorado County, had been written in 1854 by John Rollin Ridge, a Cherokee Breed who sometimes called himself Yellow Bird. Stringer had picked it because the early date promised some firsthand knowledge
of old Sulky Jack. Ridge missed that point and spelled the name Murieta, which was better than the Murietta others used, at least.

  The book was entitled, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, Celebrated California Bandit, and proceeded to celebrate hell out of him.

  Perhaps because the author had Indian blood, himself, he’d decided Joaquin was a simple Mission Indian farm boy who never meant no harm and might have been content to go on cultivating corn, barefoot, had he just been let be. But it would seem he’d no sooner married up with the most high-toned Spanish gal who ever settled for a peon when a gang of Anglo desperadoes raped her to death and, whilst they were at it, hit poor Joaquin a few good licks with a bull whip.

  Stringer couldn’t blame any man for feeling upset at such goings-on. But Ridge was vague about who those mean gents were and just where and when they acted so uncivilized. Likely Murrieta found it wise to conceal his real name and address. Stringer found that easier to swallow than the way this simple Indian farm boy suddenly showed up to avenge his wife’s honor by robbing Wells Fargo, gussied up like a Spanish hidalgo aboard a white horse, and suddenly able to shoot and ride like hell. On the other hand, the pickled head they said was his had the features of a white Spaniard. So it was possible he’d fibbed about his past, if that was him in that jar.

  The more Stringer read of the obvious potboiler the less he was able to swallow. So he put it aside as a waste of time despite its early publication date. He wondered what had been in the books some other heavy reader had stolen ahead of him. He wondered why he wondered. Sam Barca was only offering space rates and it hardly seemed likely any book could tell him why that shabby stranger had been after him. He had enough on his plate without losing sleep over a fifty-year-old mystery about a man who might have never existed.

  He was about to switch off the lamp and try for some shut-eye when Helen suddenly sat bolt upright, looking a lot more naked in the light, to say, “Oh, there you are! Leave it on. I like to see what I’m doing, darling!”