by Lou Cameron
Stringer asked, “Don’t most hired guns like to pack a private detective’s permit, Marshal?” To which the old timer replied with a nod, “They do. But not even a Nevada judge is apt to issue one to a wanted outlaw. It appears to me you just decked a gent who goes by the name of Walker because he’s wanted for more than one stickup under the name of Jones. It usually works the other way around, but it stands to reason some folk have to start out Jones. Unless my memory’s starting to go, there’s some bounty money on this cuss, Mister MacKail.”
Stringer said, “You can call me Stringer, the way the rest of my friends do, seeing it was you who saved me from the brute, if you follow my drift, Marshal.”
The old timer did. He grinned up at Stringer to reply. “Well, Lord knows, my old woman and me could use the money. Are you sure you don’t want in, ah, Stringer?”
The newspaper man shrugged and said, “Not if it means I have to bother with depositions and hanging around for the trial. If he’s already wanted, you don’t need me as a witness to an altercation that was no more than a street brawl, do you?”
The telegraph clerk protested, “Hold on. Who gets to pay for all that busted glass if we’re talking about just letting it go as an unpunished scuffle?”
The marshal got back up, saying, “The town will buy you a new front door if you’ll just behave yourself. If you don’t, it won’t. As for punishment, this jasper on the floor only gets to hang once. But that ought to be enough, even if he did bust your door in attempting to escape, as anyone can plainly see.”
Then the old-timer turned to Stringer to say, “You’d best just finish your business here and be on your way, old son, seeing you took no important part in my arrest, as I recall.”
So Stringer told the clerk to send his wire to the San Francisco Sun, night rates, collect, and then they all shook on it and parted friendly.
Outside, a curious cuss with his hat crushed Colorado asked Stringer what was going on in there. Stringer shrugged and said, “Marshal’s got a wanted outlaw under arrest, or he will have, once the rascal wakes up.”
Another nighttime rubbernecker laughed and said, “Old Windy can sure get testy when they refuses to come quiet. They call him Windy because he likes to go on about the old days when the Murphys and McSweens were shooting it out up in Lincoln County. Says he rode with Pat Garrett when the law had had enough of the murderous rascals. That might or might not be so. But, you got to hand it to old Windy when it comes to keeping things peaceable down this way. I seen him nail a Luna horse thief on the run at a hundred and fifty yards one time. You’re a stranger in these parts, ain’t you, young feller?”
To which Stringer could only reply, “Sort of. It seems someone in these parts knows me better than I know him. Or maybe them.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Columbus was tiny by small town standards and went to bed with the chickens as a rule. But thanks to the unruly strangers who’d flocked in from far and wide to view the impending gun battle, the one main street was still running wide open as midnight approached. So Stringer stepped around a wooden Indian to pick up some tobacco when he saw the chance. The pretty young gal behind the counter was proud to sell him a half-dozen small bags of Bull Durham at only twice what they’d have cost him in San Francisco, and told him the cigarette papers came separate and cost extra in New Mexico Territory. He doubted that they’d treat him so mean in Santa Fe. But he’d covered the Alaska Gold Rush, so he didn’t argue. When she told him she had front row tickets to the battle, at only five dollars apiece, he did feel obliged to remark that he’d heard the promoters of the event were charging a buck a shot. She shrugged and replied that she just worked there. He said he had a press pass. She didn’t argue. She didn’t know what a press pass was, she said, since her usual occupation was chambermaiding at the one hotel near the railroad stop. When he asked what were the odds on hiring a room at said hotel, she just laughed, sort of dirty, and allowed he could use the bedroll she’d spread on the flat roof above them for two bits an hour until she needed it herself, later.
It wasn’t too clear whether she meant he’d have to get up when she closed up shop, or whether he’d wind up paying extra by the hour. She wasn’t bad-looking. But he figured even if he was willing to pay for such pleasures, he could hardly afford to pay for the carnal company of a gal who considered her bedroll worth so much money empty. So he paid for the tobacco and papers before she could charge him extra for her smile, and ducked out to roll the first decent smoke he’d had for hours.
As he rolled one in the deep shadows of the overhang out front, he morosely regarded the passing crowd, aware that anyone who’d sent one gunslick after him could just as easily have sent two. The folk moving up and down the street on foot, on ponies, and even aboard some horseless carriages, seemed more lost and restless than bent on bodily harm. He suspected that they, like him, were mostly looking for a more sensible way to kill time than Columbus had to offer at prices anyone could afford. He knew what he was doing in town. By now, some of the others should have had second thoughts. There was less than a fifty-fifty chance that anything was going to happen, and while New Mexico was mighty hot in the daytime, its nights got downright cold. Stringer had been raised on high and dry semiarid rangeland. So he’d learned to ignore goosebumps under his denim jacket after dark. But these parts stood over three thousand feet above sea level, and he knew the dry, thin air would be frosting his pumpkins by the time the sun came up to fry them all some more. Unlike the mixed crowd of Anglos, Mexicans, Indians and colored troopers, he did have a warm and cozy place to bunk, in fact, if Claudette would only let him keep the covers over them for a change. But as he lit his smoke he decided to study on that a bit. Someone was gunning for him. It hardly seemed fair to expose Claudette to danger, no matter how much she liked to expose herself. He had no call to get anyone else with the Pathe crew killed in the cross fire, either. They’d been a bother to him through no fault of their own, and they’d tried to treat him decent, even if they had used up all his Bull Durham and almost made him miss the show.
He knew that by now the hired gun he’d clobbered ought to be awake, and even willing to chat. Men locked up had nothing better to do. But the trouble with asking a hired gun who’d sent him was that even when they seemed willing to tell you, they tended to lie. He had nothing to offer a man being held for more serious misdeeds in other parts. Jones had no reason to deal from the top of the deck with the man who’d handed him over to the law. He was more likely to try and get someone else in trouble with a tall tale involving, say, William Randolph Hearst or some local big shot who’d be vexed as hell to be accused of attempted murder by a total stranger. Stringer could only hope that his luck might hold until he figured it out for himself.
A carload of Mexicans wearing gringo Stetsons drove by. The breeze of their passing sent a shiver up Stringer’s thinly-clad spine. They were in a Maxwell touring car that came with a canvas top, only they’d apparently lost it as they aimlessly toured the tiny town, disturbing such peace as there was with the choke set to make them sound as if they were running on Chinese firecrackers instead of naphtha. Stringer had read that most such engines now ran on gasoline, a sort of glorified lamp oil less explosive than naphtha. But there was no mistaking that dry cleaner’s stink in the white smoke they were trailing up and down the street. If they weren’t careful, some drunken cowhand was sure to answer in kind. Those brass head lamps made a tempting moving target.
But nobody was shooting at him, just yet, so Stringer slowly headed back to the rail siding, as he considered his options. He didn’t really care for any of them all that much.
That Jones had been sent after him was obvious. Jones had told him, not Pathe News, to get out of town. But before that it seemed just as obvious someone had gone out of the way to see the French film makers never got to this town in the first place. Had he not been with them, they might well be stuck out on the desert at this very moment. As he strode on, he revi
ewed everything that had happened since he’d joined the French outfit along the way. Leaving aside the fun he’d had, next to getting here by passenger coach, it seemed obvious that they’d have wound up in San Diego if he hadn’t been along. That part could have been just a dumb mistake. But he couldn’t see how leaving even a load of railroad ballast up a spur the railroad wasn’t using could have been anything but deliberate. The Pathe crew would still be stuck there if, again, they hadn’t had someone along who knew how to get ‘em unstuck. So it was possible someone wanted him out of the way less for personal reasons than to have a better chance at…doing what, to those poor furriners?
LaRoche and his crew had made it to Columbus in time to film the big shoot-out. But if someone wanted the only one who could keep them out of trouble out of town, someone was still planning to give them some trouble. That had to be it. It made a heap more sense than chasing one reporter away from an event that was sure to be covered by all the other papers and wire services. Somebody was anxious to make sure, not that the battle was covered, but that it wouldn’t be captured on film! No two eyewitnesses ever recorded events exactly the same way. The finer points could always be argued later. But a motion picture of an event could be run over and over, or even stopped in midmotion to study one important frame. Slickers relied on one split second to deal a card dirty or stuff a rabbit in a hat while everyone was looking the other way. He, she, or it would play hell doing that with one or more cameras cranking to record the whole show. But what in thunder could anyone be out to hide? The whole notion of a battle staged as public entertainment was just plain loco to begin with. Neither side could be out to hide the fact they were dumb as hell, could they?
But now that he suspected it was Pathe, not him, someone was really out to stop, Stringer started walking faster. For it was not only his duty to warn old LaRoche, he was also chilled to the bone. Besides, he’d told Claudette he might come back, and there was nothing like some sex to warm one’s bones.
He approached the private car on the siding from its front end, simply because that was the end he spotted first in the darkness of the yards. He was mildly surprised to see a slit of light between the thick curtain and sill of Claudette’s window. It was late and it was nice to see she’d left a light in her window for him after turning in. Then he froze in midstride with a puzzled frown and cocked his head to listen. He heard the same male voice repeat its requests and, again, the woman in there with him protested, “Oh, no, not in there! Your pee pee is just too big for my poor little poo poo, Mister Bennet!”
Stringer grimaced and started to turn away, muttering, “So much for leaving lights in windows. And to think I was too true-blue to take that tobacco shop gal up on her offer, faithful fool that I was.”
Just then he heard her moan, “Oh! Yessss! That’s just the way I like it!” and Stringer had to sneak closer, even though he knew he was playing the lovesick fool with a two-timing gal he’d never expected to marry up with, anyways.
But as he played Peeping Tom by standing on his toes with his eyes at the level of the narrow slit, Stringer found his teeth gritting harder than they had any right to, as he watched the fat ass of some fat dude he’d never seen before bouncing in the lamplight with Claudette’s mesh-stockinged legs wrapped lovingly around his thick waist. Only, on second glance, it wasn’t old Claudette or any other gal who’d ever betrayed him before. The strange fat boy was rutting ridiculously with a pneumatic dumb blonde who, despite her moans of passion, went right on chewing her gum with an expression of bored distaste.
So Stringer had to forgive Claudette, even as he tried to figure out why she’d lent her compartment to strangers with American accents.
Stringer moved along the side of the cars to the windows of the lit-up main salon. He peered in to see the same familiar interior, loaded buffet and all. Only the folk lounging about inside were unfamiliar to him. The gents came in all shapes and sizes. The three gals in there were all good lookers with mighty tempting figures. You could tell because none of ‘em had all that much on, and one was seated in an old gray gent’s lap, running her fingers through what was left of his hair as he slobbered at the straps of her thin chemise with his gums.
“Highjack?” pondered Stringer as he eased toward the rear platform with his gun out, peering around for some sign of the armed guards he expected to find. But there didn’t seem to be any. What kind of orgiasts would commandeer a private car, do Lord only knew what to its original passengers, and simply act as if they owned the whole shebang?
There was only one way to find out. Stringer mounted the platform, slid the rear door open, and stepped boldly in to fire a shot into the floor and yell, “Freeze, you bitches and sons thereof! Who the hell are you, and what have you done to the Pathe crew that’s supposed to be here?”
The men, naturally, froze. One of the gals waved her glass at him and observed, “He’s cute. Isn’t that hat adorable?”
The old man with the young gal in his lap swallowed hard and then got brave enough to tell Stringer, “You’re in the wrong pew if you work for Pathe, cowboy. This is the private car of the one and original Matt Bennet of Cosmopolitan Productions. You’ve seen our shorts, of course?”
A gal who wasn’t wearing any shorts under her short shift modestly added, “I’m one of the Bennet Beauties.”
Stringer tried to keep scowling. It wasn’t easy, “I never accused anyone here of working for Pathe,” he said. Then he stared about at the mahogany and brass fixtures less certainly as he insisted, less surely, “This sure looks like the same car.”
The fat man who’d been trying to cornhole the gum-chewing blonde in Claudette’s compartment came out wrapped in a big turkish towel, to demand, “What’s going on out here, dammit?”
Then he noticed Stringer, or rather the smoking six-gun in his hand. So he added, “All right, we’ll pass the hat for you. But I warn you, you’ll never get away with this, Jesse James.”
Stringer said, “I’m not out to rob anyone. I’m out to rescue some kidnapped French folk. I left them here, alive and well, just long enough to go into town for some tobacco and
“You got lost.” Matt Bennet cut in with a laugh, adding, “That other motion picture crew is parked down the siding a few spaces, you idiot. We got here from Hollywoodland first, so the bunch from Pathe was lucky to find any siding left. Don’t take my word for it. Go see for yourself, chump.” Then he pointed at a spicy brunette with big tits and a bee-stung lower lip to say, “It’s your turn, now, Flora. I just thought up a swell pose I’d like to see you in.”
So she shrugged and followed him out of sight as Stringer sheepishly lowered his six-gun. The old cuss with the gal in his lap cackled and remarked, “Ain’t he something? Takes at least five women a day to steady his nerves enough to direct a day’s shooting. He’s pretty good at that with his pants on, though.”
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “I’ve seen his two reelers. They seem more innocent than his life off-camera. Are you folk here to film that comedy between Villa and Terrazas?”
The dirty old man cackled again and said, “Why, no, we just wanted some time on location with our prettier contract players. You’re right about it being a comedy, if it ever comes off. First, they told us the battle was to be tomorrow. Now, they say they can’t be sure. Pancho Villa seems to be sulking in his dressing room about something. We’re giving him just seventy-two hours to put up or shut up. You say you’re here with Pathe?”
Stringer replied, “Not exactly. I take it you arrived so far ahead of us attached to the train from L. A. we somehow missed?”
The old coot shrugged and told him, “So far, you haven’t missed much. Would you mind putting that dumb gun away?”
Stringer began to reload, instead, as he asked, “Who might this be who keeps changing the show bill on you? Have you made a deal with either Mex side?”
The old man shook his balding head to explain, “The army has the border closed until further notice. Things on thi
s side are being managed by Pickins Enterprises. You don’t know much if you haven’t heard of Tex Pickins. He promotes bare knuckle boxing, bull fights, rodeos, all sorts of blood sports west of the Big Muddy. Used to work with Buffalo Bill ‘til they had some sort of falling out over gate receipts.”
“In other words he’s a shady character.” Stringer nodded. It was not a question. But the old cameraman or whatever nodded and replied, “He’s been known to cut a few corners. But there’s no way he can cheat us if this battle he’s promoting is a fake. We made our own deal with the township of Columbus. If the battle comes off, we’ll film it. If it don’t, we won’t. Pickins tried to shake down our young boss for rights to film the show. But you have to get up early to slicker Matt Bennet.”
“I noticed he looks out for himself,” Stringer observed dryly, adding, “So it’s Pickins the promoter who keeps changing the time of the performance on you?”
“On us and everyone else.” The old coot replied, “If those greasers don’t get going, the crowd may start its own war with Mexico. Do you know they’re asking a dollar a beer here in Columbus right now?”
Stringer said he was glad he didn’t drink much and backed out to see if he could get some free wine while he found out who was trying to slicker whom around here. He quickly crunched down the siding feeling foolish, when he saw that he had, in fact, made a dumb mistake. The Pathe car was right where he’d left it. When he climbed aboard, he was just in time for a night cap with Claudette and a few other night owls. Old LaRoche had turned in already. He didn’t ask with whom. When he brought them up to date on the Hollywoodland outfit up the siding, with Claudette translating, one of the French cameramen opined that the mystery of their earlier misadventures had been solved. Matt Bennet was known to be one ruthless operator, as it came out in French. But when Stringer asked if their rival had ever been accused of more serious sins than sodomizing would-be actresses, they had to allow, after some argument back and forth, that, so far, Bennet had never been accused of hiring assassins. “Bribing those railroad workers to how you say sidetrack us sounds just like one of his droll practique jokes,” said Claudette, “He once paid a newspaper chain to rephrase show bills so that everyone came to see one of his comedies under the impression the drama of a rival would be playing on the same bill, rather than the theatres they had booked. Mais a species of thug hired to pick a serious fight with you, that could get someone sent to prison, non?”
