by Lou Cameron
But Barca wailed, “Hold on! You say you were in a gunfight and you don’t call that news? Give me the damned details, you damned idjet!”
But Stringer said, “Aw, Sam, you know I don’t do Wild West features on my fool self. It’s tough enough to get folk to talk to me when they don’t have me down as a gunslinger. I’ll write Holt up if and when I find out there’s more to his story than a surly disposition. I have no idea why he started up with me. What kind of a story is that?”
Barca said, “Pass that name by me again and let me work on it from this end. Are you sure he wasn’t a Frisco tough who might have followed you to Tulsa?”
Stringer said, “His name was Jack Holt. The law here has him down as a Texas pest and he was already in Tulsa when I got here. Let me worry about him, for now. Like I said, he may have been just ornery by nature.”
Barca agreed, grudgingly, and hung up without saying adios. As Stringer hung up at his end both the desk clerk and telephone operator were staring at him owl-eyed. He smiled, handed the gal another silver dollar, and said, “You see, it wasn’t all that hard to make such a long-distance call, after all.”
The breed gal called Irene said, “It was thrilling. You must be about the most thrilling guest we’ve had here for some time!”
The clerk nodded and said, “John Wesley Hardin stayed here one night, but that was before our time.”
Stringer assured them he hardly enjoyed the rep of the late John Wesley Hardin and rolled back over the desk to give them back some room. As he headed back outside, a burly gent in a checked suit with a press pass in the band of his brown derby bulled in the other way to dash over to the desk and ask if there was any way he could make a long-distance call to El Paso.
Irene said, “I don’t know. There might be. Now that I’m sort of getting the hang of long-distance. This surely is becoming a more interesting job since folks struck oil under Tulsa.”
Stringer didn’t linger to listen. He knew what the rival newspaper man had to tell his own editor and, what the hell, as long as the Sun had scooped the whole country, he could afford to be a live-and-let-live gent about it.
CHAPTER FIVE
By sundown Stringer had found a safer saloon to gossip in, enjoyed a decent supper, and taken down enough shorthand notes to justify another long-distance call to his boss. This time Sam Barca switched the call to the out-of-town news desk so he wouldn’t have to write it down himself. Aware of the awesome bills they were running up with Alexander Bell, Stringer reported tersely that two oil rig hands and an innocent bystander had been killed, nobody else had been seriously singed, and that while Sinclair Oil no longer had anyone called Tiger Twain on its payroll it was doing its best to put out the fire and cap the runaway well. The editor at the far end asked how soon Stringer figured they’d be able to manage that and was told, “Not soon. The oil and gas isn’t gushing out a regular bore-hole. Twain busted the shale like a pane of glass and the stuff is boiling up through a city lot of cracks and more serious fissures.
The crater at the top is fifty or more feet across. Nobody can get close enough to measure it exactly. An oil man I just talked to says there’s just no way to put out the pillar of fire and that they’ll just have to let her burn until all the gas escapes. That could take from any minute to a year or so from now. It depends on how much there was down there before they messed up and turned an oil well into a man-made volcano.”
The editor agreed he’d never try to drill an oil well from the top using nitroglycerine, and they hung up. Then Stringer frowned down at the pretty breed operator and muttered, “Oh, Lord, I forgot to mention the Creek tribal council. But that’s all right. I don’t know who gets to sue whom about all that oil money going up in smoke, yet.”
He cradled the desk phone and asked her, “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about Creek oil leases, right?”
She scowled and snapped, “I’m part Comanche if you don’t mind! First you call me a Mex and now you’re trying to call me a durned old Creek!”
He smiled down at her soothingly and said, “I meant no harm, Miss Irene. I just need answers to some questions only a Creek might be able to answer. But lest I make any more mistakes about your family tree, ain’t we sort of off the reservation if we’re Comanche?”
She shrugged and said, “Nobody related to me ever lived on the BIA blanket. My dear mother was related to Chief Puma but she was living white when my dear old dad married up with her, down Texas way. As to what I’m doing here in what’s left of the Indian Nation, I got tired of answering questions about my complexion ever’ time I applied for a job.”
He nodded understandingly and said, “I won’t ask you any more, then. You sure run that switchboard good. Did that other newspaper man get through to his own editor, earlier?”
She grinned up at him roguishly and confided, “No. I just wasn’t able to complete his long-distance call for him. He never bet me any money that I could and he wasn’t even a guest at this hotel.”
Stringer laughed and said, “He must not have been out in the field as long as I have.” To which she replied with an admiring nod, “Anyone can see you’re a man who’s been all over and dealt with all sorts of quality folk. It was a lot of fun talking to those other gals in bigger cities. Do you reckon a gal like me could get a job in San Francisco?”
He shrugged and said, “Well, they do have a couple of Frisco operators who talk Chinese. I can’t say how blonde they may or may not be. You’d do better taking it up with the telephone company. I’ve never asked them for a job.”
She said she meant to. She sounded like she might have just glimpsed new horizons. Stringer was glad for her. He didn’t want to get her hopes up higher than they already seemed to be. So he refrained from mentioning that Indians were treated with more respect on the coast, where they were apt to run into fewer whites holding grudges from the recent past. The coast tribes had been about wiped out before they could be much of a bother to anyone. So naturally they were remembered fondly.
He asked Irene if any other hotel guests had made any recent long-distance calls. She shook her head and said no. That meant old Bubbles was either ignorant of modern communication or hadn’t come home yet. There was no decent way to ask one gal if another gal was up in her room, or his, right now. So he decided to smoke out front a spell and see if Bubbles came back or, failing that, try his luck upstairs if Bubbles didn’t show by darkness. He knew few unescorted she-males would be out after dark in a town like this unless it was mighty important.
He found a rocking chair on the hotel porch and sat down to build a cigarette. He’d just sealed the straw-colored paper with his tongue when he was joined on the porch by Chris Madsen, Bill Tilghman’s deputy. The husky Dane said, “Finding you here saves me climbing the stairs. Bill sent me to have a word with you. I was hoping to find you here at the hotel.”
Stringer repressed a grimace as he pictured the federal man banging on his door while he was banging Bubbles. He lit the smoke he’d just rolled and said, “You found me enjoying the cool shades of evening. What can I do for you, Chris?”
Madsen said, “Heard you was in the Pronghorn when that shoot-out commenced, earlier today.”
Stringer frowned and replied, “I was there, drinking and jawing near the door. If there was a shoot-out, I’m glad I left when I did. I did hear a discussion of piano-roll music taking place in the back of the joint. I can’t say what anyone back that way looked like, though.”
Madsen said, “I can tell you what one of „em looked like. We got him on ice at the morgue. He was an Indian agent who liked ragtime. That makes his killing federal. Now all we got to find out is who the other cuss was. For some reason none of the gents back near the piano seem to be able to recall a thing about the son of a bitch who shot him. The Indian agent wasn’t armed, by the way.”
Stringer nodded and asked, “Might the dead man have answered to the name Manson?” To which the lawman answered with a frown, “Of course not, I’m M
adsen, damn it.”
Stringer laughed and said, “Hell, I know that, Chris. I was just talking to an Indian agent with the similar name of Manson, only he was Scotch, not Danish, see?”
Chris Madsen shrugged and said, “I don’t know what nationality the agent shot in the Pronghorn was. His name was Davis. He was gunned down like a dog and we mean to hang his killer high, if and when we catch him. That can be tough when a wanted man gets away clean without a single lead to follow up on.”
Stringer nodded, then brightened and said, “He was a Texan. Does that help?”
The older lawman nodded soberly and said, “It does, a heap. It lets off a mess of Indians who might have had it in for an Indian agent. It eliminates a heap of surly drunks from other parts of the country off as well. But how do you know the killer was a Texan if you say you wasn’t there, MacKail?”
Stringer explained, “I told you I left when I heard trouble brewing. I never heard poor Davis say anything. But I did hear the man who was asking him not to feed another coin to the player piano mention that he was an unreconstructed rebel from Texas. That still leaves anything from a tall cow hand to a short oil field worker for you to worry about, of course.”
Chris Madsen decided, “Most of the oil company roughnecks learned the trade further east than Texas. The western oil business is fairly new and the outfits try to hire experienced drillers. That Jack Holt you shot it out with in the depot was an old boy from Texas, wasn’t he?”
Stringer nodded but said, “Let’s not go clutching at straws, Chris. There must be a heap of Texas folk who don’t even know me and the one in the Pronghorn was after another man entire!”
The old man-hunter pondered on this in silence for a spell before he pointed out, “They sent Holt after you, by name, lest you put something in the papers they didn’t want the rest of us reading. You just said you’d paid a call on the local Indian agency and that other Texan just shot an Indian agent! Don’t that strike you as kind of sinister?”
Stringer shook his head and said, „The head agent I talked to had a name that sounds a lot like your own and all of us are still alive. You trip over a heap of such coincidences in my game, Chris. After a while you learn not to take them all that serious. I never met any Indian agent named Davis. So he couldn’t have told me any secrets worth a man’s life.”
Madsen asked, “What if they were out to shut him up before he could tell you anything?” So Stringer said, “That’s reaching for it, Chris. If the man who shot Davis was working with Jack Holt, or the same employer, how come nobody went after me! I was near the window, in plain view, right?”
Madsen nodded and said, “Sure you was, armed and dangerous after you’d just proved the same with another gunslick. Say someone keeping an eye on you figured you was after something Davis knew. Say they knew you hadn’t talked to the Indian agent they was worried about. Say they sent another hired gun into the Pronghorn after you, scared shitless, and he saw Davis was in the back, maybe to meet you in secret, and, him being unarmed and helpless, the killer went after safer game? I just don’t buy a man shooting another down in cold blood over piano music, do you?”
Stringer blew a thoughtful smoke ring and observed, “Oh, I don’t know. Kid Curry once bragged to me, personal, about his gunning another owlhoot just for spilling coffee on him, and they say Cockeyed Jack McCall shot James Butler Hickock in the back for no other reason than the pure hell of it. This world is full of crazy-mean bastards and they do seem to grow up a mite meaner out our way. I’d keep a more open mind on the Davis killing if I were you, Chris.”
Madsen asked, “Then are you saying there can’t be no connection at all betwixt the attempt on you and the success on Davis?”
Stringer shook his head and explained, “I’m saying I don’t know. What tribal desk was Davis holding down before he was murdered this afternoon?”
Chris Madsen took a notebook from his shirt pocket, scanned it, and said, “Osage. Does that mean much to you?” To which Stringer could only reply, “Not yet. But it’s worth keeping in mind. I seem to be on friendly terms with a member of the Osage tribal council. I might see what he has to say about any fuss they’ve been having with their oil leases or whatever.”
Then he glanced up at the darkening sky, which was really fixing to glow red tonight, with that big fire still blazing just outside of town. He rose, saying, “It’s getting sort of late to go calling on any breed of Indian. I reckon I’ll go up, do some writing, and turn in, if it’s all the same with the law in these parts.”
Chris Madsen nodded and said, “I wish you’d do that. We got enough checkers spread out on the board as it is. Can I tell the boss you’re out of the game for the night?”
Stringer said he sure could, unless the hotel caught fire. So they shook on it and Stringer went back inside.
Irene at the switch board shot him a friendly smile and looked as if she wanted him to come over and jaw some more about the outside world she found so thrilling. But he just tipped his hat brim at her and went on up to his room.
He found the door unlocked. He drew his S&W and ducked in fast, sliding his back to one side along the wall as he threw down on the only strange figure in sight. Then he noticed it was Bubbles and that she looked more tempting than strange as she reclined on his bed covers like Cleopatra reading a magazine, albeit he’d always pictured Cleopatra with just a few more clothes on.
As he shut and barred the door behind him, holstering his gun at the same time, his rival reporter smiled uncertainly up at him and said, “I was afraid you’d be mad at me, about what happened at the Western Union today, I mean.”
He got rid of his hat and began to shuck the rest of his gear as he assured her, “You do have a swell way of making up for rude behavior. I wasn’t sore to begin with. You beat me to the wire fair and square.”
She tossed her magazine aside and lay back to unpin her blond hair as she dimpled up at him and said, “Goody. I know we did agree to share the news, here, and I did wire your paper the lead with details to follow, once I’d filed my own scoop. I do have a duty to my own paper, you know. Did you finally get your own story off, dear?”
He said, “Yep, I was wondering why the news desk seemed a mite confused, at first.”
Then he sat down beside her to shuck his Justins and jeans as she asked, without real interest, “Oh? Did they wire you back more questions, then?”
He told her that was close enough and took her in his arms to get down to details they were both interested in at the moment. But as he was entering her she murmured, “Wait, there’s an interesting angle I came up with earlier today.” Then, as he paused, in a really ridiculous position, she sighed and said, “For God’s sake, do it! Nothing else on earth seems half as important right now!”
So he did it, and he felt sure she was right until they’d climaxed, twice, and lay side by side in sated languor with the red glow from the window glowing on their damp naked flesh. Then he cuddled her closer and murmured, “You were saying…?”
She giggled, snuggled closer, and replied, demurely, “You took the words right out of my mouth, bless you. I stepped into a beauty parlor this afternoon. You should smell the gunk they use on Indian girls to give them a fashionable curl. My waves are natural, thank you very much, but you’d be surprised how much gossip one can pick up at such an establishment while having one’s nails done.”
He said, “No, I wouldn’t. Small town barber shops work the same way. What did you find out, aside from the fact that some Indians admire the Gibson Girl look, I mean?”
She confided, “It’s not Indian girls some awful woman called Madam Pearl has been importing. They said something about a Belle Starr as well. But wasn’t she the outlaw queen who was hot a few years ago?”
He said, “Yep, over near Fort Smith. She’d be proud to hear herself described as an outlaw queen. She had a daughter by the name of Pearl, too. I understand she’s all grown up and running a house of ill repute in Fort Smith these days. H
er daddy was Cole Younger, so that makes the results pure white and not qualified to squat in the Cherokee Strip like her late mamma.”
Bubbles began to toy absently with him as she thought and decided, “Oh, I’ve heard about the Cherokee Strip. It’s that long skinny thing sticking out the west end of this territory, right?”
He sighed and said, “That’s the Oklahoma Panhandle. They just tossed it in as land unclaimed by either Texas or Colorado when they declared it all Oklahoma Territory and let the white sooners move in. As a part of the old Indian Nation, the Cherokee Strip ran along the Arkansas border to the east. Belle Starr and Cole Younger were only a few of the pests who hid out there, safe from the Cherokee Police as long as they sold moonshine cheap and confined their robberies to other parts. Federal Judge Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas, finally cleaned up the Cherokee Strip by sending in U.S. Federal deputies and stringing up any white or reasonably white outlaws they brought back to him. I don’t see what any of that could have to do with current troubles in Tulsa and I hope you notice that the long skinny thing sticking out of this particular state I’m in is getting suffer by the stroke.”
She laughed and said she noticed it wasn’t all that skinny any more as she rolled atop him to impale herself on his newly inspired panhandle. So they didn’t get to talk sense for another sweet while. But as she climaxed and fell down across him limply, he said, “You forgot to tell me what the other gals say Pearl Starr might be doing here in Tulsa, if it’s her they’re fussing about. With all the new hands in town for this oil boom, there ought to be more than enough customers to go around.”
Bubbles remained atop him, throbbing pleasantly, as she yawned and said, “Oh, they never accused her and her girls of whoring for white boys. They seem out to marry up with Indians, lawsome and proper. Doesn’t that sound odd, dear?”
