Stringer and the Lost Tribe

by Lou Cameron

  Nancy frowned. “Then you mean to simply abandon the whole town, just as I’ve gotten to know some Yana?”

  Porter grimaced. “Quicksilver was never much of a town to begin with, ma’am. You and your father are welcome to as much of it as we leave behind. It’s going to take us a few days, maybe more than a week, to salvage such gear and supplies as we can afford to haul out. Then you and the Indians will have the valley all to yourselves, assuming you and your father want to be so foolish. I don’t care how friendly the Indians you met might have been. Some others certainly can’t be. I think we must be talking about two different bands, for the ones that hit us last night were hostile indeed.”

  Stringer said, “Watson just told me outside help is on its way. They ought to be here before you have to leave Miss Gore and her party behind in the valley.”

  Porter shook his head. “Not now. Once the company authorized us to abandon the site, I felt it my duty to wire both the county and the War Department that the show was over. I don’t know about you, but I pay taxes. What sense would it make to have a bunch of soldier boys guarding a ghost town?”

  He chuckled bitterly and added, “I guess this time you can say the Indians won. But there’s just as much cinnabar down by San Diego, and most of the boys will enjoy the climate a lot more down yonder.”

  Stringer asked how the moody mine supervisor, Trevor, seemed to be taking the news.

  Porter laughed louder and said, “About as one might expect. Old Trevor rates a bonus everytime he exceeds the expected tonnage, and he does that a lot. I swear he has as much gopher as Welsh blood. Right now he’s sore at me because I draw the same salary whether we’re digging or not. But he’ll get over it once we shift the operation south. The company’s bought a really rich lode down yonder, and the local Mexicans are less disgusting to associate with than the Diggers around here.”

  Watson called back to him, and Porter spurred forward to consult with the nominal leader of the party about something.

  Nancy made a wry face. “I’m glad you broke that up,” she said to Stringer. “He’s awfully fresh.”

  “Oh? Did he make a pass at you, honey?”

  “Not yet. But a girl can tell when a man’s building up to one. He was going on and on about how sweet and willing the Mexican ladies of San Diego act, and he was allowing that my kind of Gibson Girl, as he called me, could learn a thing or two from our more natural sisters in sin. What did he mean by that? You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  Stringer shook his head. “You asked me not to. He was just discussing a favorite subject. There seems to be a lot of that going on this morning. You’ve been in Quicksilver a spell, honey. Have you heard any gossip about old Watson’s young wife?”

  “I didn’t even know he had a wife. I don’t think the working-class women in town like me well enough to share such gossip with me. You’d best stop calling me ‘honey’ in public, lest they gossip about me.”

  He nodded. “All right, Miss Nancy. What about in private? Or are you trying to say we won’t be meeting in private anymore?”

  She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that. You know I want to. But I don’t see how we can in town.

  I’ve enough to explain to Father when he gets back as it is. Can’t you think of some place we could meet discreetly?”

  He smiled. “I’d better. Watson says he means to gun any rascal he catches with his woman, acting discreet or not.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They were all back in Quicksilver by noon. This was just as well. For Dr. Gore and his two assistants rode in around one, looking trail-weary and disgusted. As he joined his daughter and Stringer at the table in front of their tents, Gore growled, “I swear, I don’t know why we had a revolution and wrote a Constitution just to put drooling idiots in charge. Nobody at the county seat seems to know what anthropology is, let alone give a fig about it. They told me it was up to the town council here to give us permission or not to excavate. They seemed to think I was funny, damn their rustic brain and hayseed grins.”

  “That’s all right, Father,” Nancy said soothingly. “We don’t have to dig for dead Yana anymore. You’ll never guess what I’ve been up to while you were away.”

  Stringer was glad Gore didn’t ask for too many details about his daughter’s adventures in the hills as she filled him in on her visit to the Yana, leaving out the naughty parts.

  “I have a glossary of the basic words and phrases,” she was telling him. “And wait till you see the artifacts we brought back. The Yana are not extinct at all. I think we can get them to work with us. But of course we have to stop digging up their dead, so—”

  “Nonsense!” Gore cut in with a scowl. “The bones and artifacts we’ve excavated so far have to be pre-Gold Rush, if not pre-Columbian. What could a band of miserable modern Diggers know about a lost race that couldn’t even be their ancestors?”

  “A heap, Doc,” Stringer said. “We brought back a basket of the same sort of stuff you’ve been grubbing out the hard way. If you treat ’em decent, some alive and well Yana may sit still for some hat sizing and maybe even plaster casting. We, ah, took the liberty of assuring them you’d quit digging up their relations. They never asked for any back, so I reckon you get to keep such skulls as you already have. They might come in handy to check against the livelier heads you want to measure.”

  Gore shook his head, his features set like those of a little kid who just wasn’t ready to go to bed yet, damn it. “You have to be mistaken,” he insisted. “My whole thesis would be wrong if a superior race of Neolithics turned out to be common Digger Indians.”

  “The Yana would likely agree they were superior,” Stringer replied. “Most Indian nations do. If you’d examine the stuff we brought back instead of arguing about it, you’d see the Yana, ancient or still around, are a cut above your so-called Diggers. They’ve been living better, here on the west slopes of the Sierra, so they’ve had more time to spend on their stone working and basket weaving. I’d hardly call a lady who can weave a basket watertight enough to cook in a miserable anything.”

  Nancy nodded and rose from the table, pleading with her father to at least come look at the fine basket of modern artifacts.

  Then young Johnny Conner and the Shasta breed, Uncle Jake, came back from tending to the spent ponies. “Where’s that old Paiute woman?” Uncle Jake asked. “The cook fire has gone out, and there’s no coffee.”

  Nancy and Stringer exchanged glances.

  Nancy said, “The coffee is here on the table, of course. Granny Bear wasn’t here when we arrived an hour or so ago. I assumed she went into town to buy more supplies. But, now that you mention it, she should have come back by now. Wherever could she have gone?”

  Johnny Conner said, “No ponies seem to be missing. So I don’t see how she could have gone far.”

  “I do,” Uncle Jake said. “Paiute enjoy walking more than the rest of us, even when they’re not old, fat, and female. She’s been complaining about the way things have been going around here. I think she’s superstitious about those skulls in that one tent and decided to go home across the mountains before the snow moons came.”

  Stringer rose silently to his feet. He hoped he was wrong. So he just said something about asking about the old gal at the general store. Then he strode off fast before anyone could offer to tag along.

  But it wasn’t the old Paiute woman they had in a shed behind the town lockup, bedded down in cracked ice from the saloon’s ice-making machine. The naked brown remains lay twisted awkwardly in the small crate they’d stuffed with cracked ice and dead gal. The body was more familiar to Stringer than the shot-open face at first. He had to look twice before he was sure it was his old traveling companion, the gal who’d called herself Lola and claimed to be kin to Joe Malliwah. He felt compelled to take off his hat, even though she’d done him dirty in the end. For she was still a woman and, in her time, a mighty sweet little lay.

  Clem Watson, who’d led him back to view the rema
ins along with his deputy, Jimbo, cleared his throat and said, “That’s mighty respectful of you, considering she was just a wild Indian, if you want my opinion.”

  Stringer hadn’t asked for it. But he said, “You’re entitled. She wasn’t dressed so wild last time we met. She told me she was a reservation gal and spoke English better than most. I was in fear, as I told you, that you’d nailed the Gores’ Indian cook in the dark. I’m glad you didn’t. But this one leaves me even more perplexed.”

  “Try it this way,” Jimbo said. “Say she was sort of two-faced. She told white folk one thing and acted another way when she took her duds off with her Indian pals. A Digger spy would sure account for their knowing just where to hit last night, as well as having a naked gal along.”

  Stringer nodded. He had to, even though he knew he and Joe Malliwah hadn’t invited the pretty little horse thief to help them stage a fake Indian attack. The Yana women he’d seen up in the hills hadn’t been too modestly dressed, but none of them had run around stark naked, and Lola hadn’t even been wearing Yana moccasins when she’d been cut down. He took a quick look at the one bare sole he could see packed in ice. She’d died barefoot, but with little or no dirt ground in. That read two ways: either she’d been stripped after she’d been shot, or she’d been shot indoors, perhaps getting ready for bed, then hauled up the slope to be found later. With all the wild shooting that had been going on, who’d have noticed?

  He wasn’t ready to confide in anyone before he figured out who might be behind such sneakery. It seemed obvious enough that old Lola, having set him up to be murdered in the hills, had pussyfooted into town to be paid off by the mastermind—and that said mastermind had paid her off this way to silence her forever.

  He said he’s seen enough, and Jimbo shut the ice chest. As they circled around to the side door of the saloon, Watson wanted to know more about the dead Indian girl. Stringer made up some bullshit about meeting her down near the railroad stop. It was true, up to a point, and seemed to satisfy both lawmen.

  Jimbo even opined that the girl might have followed him and been the one who stole his pony. Stringer saw no reason to argue as they went into the saloon to wash the green taste of death from their tongues. As they bellied up to the bar, the barkeep told Watson a stranger had just been looking for him. When the old man asked who, and about what, the barkeep said, “He ought to be back any minute. He just took his pony to the town corral for some water and oats. I told him this would be as good a place to run into you as any.”

  Halfway down their first beer schooners, as if to prove the barkeep’s good faith, a tall drink of water dressed all in black, save for a big white ten-gallon hat, parted the batwings to ask if the town law had come in yet.

  Watson gulped and put a thoughtful hand to his gun grips as he allowed he was the law, and what about it? For the stranger had a commanding stance, a keen stare, and a .45 on each hip.

  But he was smiling, however grimly, as he strode toward them as if he owned the place, and Stringer saw that despite his height he was younger than he looked at first.

  The young stranger held out a hand instead of a gun. “Howdy. My handle is Tim McCoy, and I ride for the BIA. It’s my understanding you’ve been having Indian problems up here. So they sent me to straighten ’em out.”

  Watson shook hands with the self-possessed youth. “You mean alone? No offense, we can see you’ll be mighty tall when you grow up, Tim. But how good are you at ducking arrows?”

  McCoy said soberly, “Good enough. I’m sort of a trouble-shooter for the BIA. I seem to have a way with Indians. In my time I’ve dealt with Horse-Utes, Navajo, and Apache. It’s all in knowing how to talk to them, man to man.”

  Stringer asked if he’d ever talked to Yana. The young Indian agent looked pained and said, “Not hardly. The Yana are extinct.”

  Stringer chuckled. “I’d sure like to get some money down on that, if you’re a betting man, Tim.”

  McCoy didn’t even seem to be a man who laughed easily. He shook his head. “I never bet on Indian matters. One of the reasons I get along so well with them is that I’m willing to learn. Most Indians hate know-it-alls.”

  Stringer decided he liked the young cuss, stiff-necked as he seemed. “Well, I’m sure getting saddle sore,” he said. “But if you give me time to tell some other folks their cook wasn’t shot in the head last night after all, I’d be proud to introduce you to some gents who sure seem to think they’re Yana.”

  Watson said, “Hold on now. You can’t take this young boy out into them hills, Stringer. We just this morning saved you and Miss Gore from them savages, damn it.”

  But before Stringer could argue, the solemn young Indian agent said, “Sure he can, if he’s willing. I was sent up here to talk to Indians, and I don’t see any here.”

  As Stringer drained the last of his beer McCoy added stiffly, “It’s just as well, too. I don’t allow any Indians of mine to drink. I find white drunks hard enough to get along with.”

  Jimbo asked when and how the local Diggers had become McCoy’s personal property.

  Stringer said, “We’re still working on that.” Then he led McCoy outside, saying, “Your own pony won’t be up to much mountain climbing after packing you in. We can borrow fresh ones where we’re going, unless you’d rather walk.”

  “That might not be a bad idea, if your mysterious so-called Yana aren’t too far. Horses make some Indians nervous, if they don’t have any themselves. They’re more apt to trust a man on foot not to charge them.”

  Stringer sighed. “I know. My ass is about as sore as my feet right now. Let’s play it by ear after we bum us a heap of black coffee where we’re going.”

  As they walked the length of town, Stringer filled the Indian agent in on the situation to date and added, “Dr. Gore is no doubt fixing to ask you for a permit to dig up more Yana bones.”

  McCoy shook his ten-gallon hat. “Not the bones of my Indians.”

  Stringer liked him even more then, even if it was hard to take the pompous big kid as seriously as he seemed to feel he deserved. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Tim. But haven’t I seen your face in at least one nickelodeon film? You do present an image to remember, in that big white hat.”

  McCoy shrugged modestly and admitted, “I picked up a few bucks down in L.A. last summer as a two-bit player in a mighty silly moving picture about the old days out here. They signed me on just to translate for some so-called Apache they’d hired to attack a wagon train in Sioux county. The San Fernando Valley didn’t look much like the High Plains, and the Apache turned out to be Mexicans. They asked me to ride into view with news of the attack and said something about a screen test. I never hung about to find out what they meant. The BIA wanted me to lay down the law to some real Apache. I don’t see much future in those moving pictures anyhow. I’m sure it’s just a fad, like the new safety bikes and side-button skirts the gals are wearing right now.”

  Stringer nodded. “You’re likely right. But you ought to look into it, Tim. There could be more future for you as a moving-picture cowboy than as an Indian agent, at the rate we’re running out of Indians.”

  By this time they’d made it to the Gore camp. Granny Bear was still missing, but Uncle Jake had rebuilt the fire, and there was plenty of coffee.

  There was a new face there as well. Another young gent, trying to look older behind a ginger beard, was introduced by Nancy as Professor Nat Robbins, who’d just ridden in. Her father just kept glaring down at the table as if he was suffering an awesome case of bellyache.

  Once they’d all been introduced and were sitting down with tin cups poured by Uncle Jake, Robbins seemed to think it was a swell idea to go visit some wild Indians. “Nancy was just showing me her glossary of Yana words. I confess many of them are new to me, albeit they do seem to agree we’re saltu and have other loan words from the more familiar Sierra tribes.”

  “They’re Diggers. Just damned Diggers,” Dr. Gore spat out on the table. “They’re a degraded ba
nd of outcasts with a jargon of Shasta, Porno, and Maidu words.”

  Nancy insisted, “But, Father, I just told you they have a grammar more complex than Russian.”

  And their rival, Robbins, had to chime in with, “An archaic Siberian grammar, I’m sure, from the sound of it. Those artifacts you just showed me bespeak folk memories of the Siberian Neolithic too.”

  Gore growled, “I never showed you anything. It was Nancy’s idea to show you those relics she brought down from the hills. I tell you they were never made by any modern Indians. Her Digger friends just dug them up, the same as we have. Everyone knows a band of Diggers was gathering in this valley before the mining company moved in. Who’s to say they didn’t have such fine flint tools as they uncovered along with their roots and bulbs?”

  Tim McCoy, of all people, said, flatly sure of himself, “I don’t know anything about Siberia. I’ve never been there. I do know that no living Indian would touch anything buried with the dead. Not even strange dead. There are cliff dwellings over in the canyon country that are stuffed with pottery, tools, and old mummies. Not even an Apache will touch the stuff, and some pots brought out by our kind are mighty handsome.”

  Dr. Gore insisted, “That’s different. Apache may have a few faults, but they’re a proud warrior race. Diggers have no pride. They’ll take anything they can get their hands on. The miserable beggers could show me tons of fine artifacts and I’d still know they were just grave robbers.”

  Stringer muttered, “Takes one to know one, I reckon. We’re not going to settle the matter here.”

  McCoy said he was right and rose imperiously. Robbins rose as well, insisting he was going with them. Nancy wanted to. But they all told her no girls were allowed. Her father said that was the only sensible thing anyone had said for some time, damn it.