by Lou Cameron
Stringer told the polite old gent to sit down and name his poison, but added, “I’ve got just about all the survival stories we could possibly use, sir.”
The older man sat across from him to reply. “They told me you were the one who was writing everything down, señor. I have no important tale of my own to tell. Through the grace of God most of my family and I we outraced the crest of that flood. But my eldest daughter did not make it out with myself and the others. I thought, since you have been talking to so many others who made it to safety…”
Stringer cut in. “This may be a wild guess. But would your name be Herrerra, and are we talking about a young lady called Maria?”
The older man’s face lit up and he gasped, “Si! Oh, si, si, but do not toy with a father’s hopes, señor!’’
Stringer reassured him. “She’s alive and well. I thought I saw a family resemblance.”
Herrerra pleaded, “Never mind…please, sir, where, oh where is our little Maria?”
“At the Hotel Imperial,” Stringer said. “She made it here with me and some friends of mine. We booked her in just down the hall from my room. Come on, I’d better go with you.”
He didn’t say why he offered to accompany the now-impatient father as he stuffed the notes in a hip pocket and rose, adjusting his gunbelt. Maria’s father was packing a .45 Walker Conversion, and while Stringer had warned Cactus Jack to behave himself the erstwhile hired gun hadn’t been reformed all that long. But Hispanic fathers could leap to conclusions about whether a gringo was behaving himself or not.
When they got to the Hotel Imperial, a rambling two-story structure of timber and ‘dobe, Stringer led Maria’s father up to her room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Then old Herrerra tried the latch and, finding it unlocked, opened the door on Maria’s empty room.
Stringer didn’t think this might be the time to knock on other doors up here along the dark hallway looking for Maria. So he led the now-reworried father back down to the desk to ask if Miss Herrerra might have checked out.
The desk clerk recalled no such incident, but added that since he’d been mighty busy with new arrivals pestering him for rooms he just didn’t have to hire, the lady might have just gone out for supper or a stroll.
Stringer turned to Herrerra and said, “There you go. Why don’t you just find a seat down here in the lobby and sooner or later Miss Maria ought to turn up.”
The older man shook his head gravely. “I must get the good news to the rest of my family. Maria’s poor mother has not stopped weeping since last we saw our daughter. We are down near the south end of town, staying with, our friends, the Garcias. Maria knows them, of course. Would you be so kind as to tell her where her family is the moment you see her?”
Stringer agreed and heaved a silent sigh of relief as the girl’s father left. Then he went back up the stairs, two at a time, to dash down to Cactus Jack Donovan’s door and knock on it hard as he called out, “Whether you have company or not, we got to talk, Jack!”
On the far side, a bedspring groaned and Stringer heard spurred boots coming to the door. Cactus Jack opened it to stare out at Stringer sort of owl-eyed, with fire water on his breath. Stringer pushed his way inside and saw to his relief the bed was now unoccupied. He quickly told the gunslick, “Maria’s father is in town, looking for her. She’s not in her room.”
Cactus Jack almost sobbed as he told Stringer his sad tale. “She’s mad at me. She said she liked me but that she admired some other son of a bitch better and didn’t want me kissing her. But you know how gals always say no when they mean yes, so I kissed her anyway and then she slapped me and run out crying. You say old Herrerra’s in town, pard? Well, then, point me at him so’s I can tell him I mean to marry up with his daughter. You was right about it being better to talk to a Mex gal’s daddy first.”
Stringer shook his head and said, “You’re too drunk to go courting, Jack. Whether Maria really loves another or not, her old man’s not likely to want a gringo son-in-law with rot-gut on his breath. Why don’t you just lie down and sleep it off? Now that things are starting to settle down again you’ll have plenty of time to court the little gal of your dreams the right way.”
Cactus Jack swayed uncertainly, then said, “I got to go out and track down that other son of a bitch she said she admires more than me. I’ll bet he’s a sissy Mex who smears perfumed bear grease in his hair.”
Stringer looked at him with disgust. Still, he tried to calm the mean drunk. “She might not have anyone else in mind at all. Come morning, you just take a good bath, find yourself a clean shirt, and rub some stink-pretty in your own curly locks before you go making a sap of yourself, Jack.” He took the drunken man’s arm, turning him around and heading him back to bed.
The wiry and normally agile gunslick started to argue, then stumbled on over to the bed and took a belly-flop across it, suddenly out like a light.
Stringer stared soberly down at him and muttered, “You and old Samson have a lot in common, you murderous cuss. Strong men approach you at their own peril. But you’re just mush in the hands of a pretty young gal.”
He tried to put Maria Herrerra and her uncouth swain out of his mind as he went back down and headed for the telegraph office, recomposing his news feature mentally. Then he block-lettered half a dozen pages, feeling mighty wistful about the old Remington he’d left up in Frisco. If they ever got a so-called “portable” typewriter down to less than thirty pounds he meant to be the first in line to buy one.
The new telegraph clerk who’d just come on whistled at the length of the message. “At a nickel a word this is sure going to cost your paper, Mister MacKail. You’d save a heap if we sent in at night-letter rates.”
Stringer said, “I know. But I get hell from my boss every time I do that. The pressroom is open around the clock, and while I can’t call this a scoop at least it’s pretty good as a follow-up.”
The clerk agreed to get it right out, since the wire traffic was subsiding now that the whole outside world had a handle on the disaster. His cheery observation failed to cheer Stringer worth mention. As he paused to roll a sunset smoke he told himself sternly not to feel so smug about the love-sick Cactus Jack. For who but a total Samson would have trusted that infernal Kathy Doyle, again, after she’d already proven herself a career woman who put her own career first no matter how often a man made her come, or leastways got her to say she did. Right now he didn’t buy a word she’d ever said.
As he lit up, he heard a train whistle and ambled over to the nearby tracks to watch a troop train roll in. He’d already wired Sam Barca that the National Guard had been called out. All they were doing at the moment was climbing down out of the boxcars and lining up in their blue shirts and khaki britches, nickel-plated bayonets fixed on their bolt-action Krags, for God’s sake. Stringer made a wry grimace. One could always tell peacetime military by how spiffy they looked. Not like that time in Cuba. Those poor soldier boys hadn’t charged the Dons with nickel-plated bayonets, goddamn it. It made the still-young Stringer feel old as he pulled down the brim of his old Rough Rider hat and headed back to the hotel.
He checked in her room, but Maria Herrerra hadn’t returned yet, and he wasn’t about to look for her in Donovan’s room. It had been a long day, he’d done the best he could by his feature editor. So he headed for his own hired room to call it a day.
That was where he found Maria Herrerra. He almost drew on her as he stepped into the dark room to see her sitting upright on his own bed. She sobbed, “Oh, where have you been all this time! I have been so worried! Your friend tried for to rape me and I had nobody else to turn to!”
Stringer shut the door, sat down beside her, and hauled off his bandana to dab away her tears as he consoled her. “I don’t think old Jack meant to scare you that much. He’s just sort of crude. But never you mind. I’ve got good news for you, honey. I just talked to your father. He and your mother and the others made it after all. They’re staying at the Garcia’
s place. Your father told me you knew where that was.”
She clapped her small hands together gleefully and replied, “Es verdad! It is just a short walk from here, and they are all alive? Oh, I must go to them, my pronto!”
Stringer agreed and helped her to her feet. “I’d best escort you over,” he offered. “The streets outside are crowded with all sorts, including tin soldiers and, no offense, but you’re still showing more leg than the average Gibson Girl.”
She didn’t argue. She just sprang up to go with him, one of her arms linked through his left one. They made it down the dark stairs without incident. But, as they reached the lobby, Cactus Jack Donovan rose ominously from where he’d been half dozing under a potted paper palm to growl, “I knew it! Stand aside, Miss Maria. Me and this back-stabbing Romeo have serious things to settle!”
Stringer shoved Maria to one side and then smiled as sincerely as he could at Cactus Jack. “You got it all wrong, pard. I was just now taking the lady home to her family.”
Cactus Jack growled. “After the two of you spending all this time up in your room, you rat? I’ll pard you, if you’ll just be good enough to fill your fist, you two-faced, lying sweetheart-stealer!”
Stringer tried again. “Simmer down, for Pete’s sake. I’ve always been able to get my own gals. You scared this one and sent her running to my room, where I promise you she found me out on my own business. You’re scaring her even more with all this romantic nonsense. There’s nothing to fight about, you damned fool!”
Maria sort of whimpered, “Es verdad, Juan. This other man saved me in the desert. I shall always be his friend for saving me. But nothing more. I told you I was fond of a man of my own people. I swear there is nothing like that between this man here and me but my eternal gratitude.”
Cactus Jack flexed his fingers stiffly as he snapped, “Is gratitude what you call what you’ve been giving old Stringer all this time up in his room?”
Maria snapped, “Idioso! He just told you I was alone up there! I tell you he has never treated me with anything but the most gallant respect! Can you say the same, you pawing ape?”
Cactus Jack said, “I got nothing further to say to nobody right now.”
Stringer stiffened but said softly, “I don’t want to fight you. You’re drunk and there’s nothing to fight about, damn it!”
Maria crossed herself and pleaded, “Oh, no, somebody stop this, por favor!” But the desk clerk had ducked out of sight, and the three of them had the lobby to themselves.
Cactus Jack snarled, “I ain’t too drunk to deal with rats like you. So I’m counting to three and then I mean to draw. You just go on and do whatever you have the mind to, you bastard!”
He started counting as Stringer tried to wake up. For the situation struck him nightmarish as well as mighty dumb. He saw it was getting down to him or Cactus Jack now, whether the loco-in-love as well as reverted-to-type killer had saved his life that time or not.
Then, just as Stringer was tensing to draw, a shot rang out from the dark doorway behind Cactus Jack. The startled Stringer instinctively drew and put a round in the drunken brute’s chest before the bullet in his back could drop him with a knuckle-white grip on both his holstered six-guns. He already had one drawn as he hit the floor face first and just lay there. So Stringer quickly kicked it across the waxed floor as he trained his own smoking muzzle on the ominously dark front door.
Then Maria was running over to wrap both arms around her father as Herrerra stepped into the light, his own .45 still smoking. He nodded at Stringer and said, “Forgive me if I interfered in a fight you wished for to finish yourself, señor. Pero, the name of my daughter entered into the conversation and you did seem to be taking far too long for to draw.”
Stringer nodded, “That’s true. Now, Mister Herrerra, get Miss Maria out of here pronto and let me handle things here.”
The older Spanish-speaking gent nodded gravely and told Stringer they would always be in his debt. Then he led his daughter outside saying, “Come, my child, this is no place for those of our people to be when the gringo law arrives.”
Stringer expected it might not be such a comfortable place for him either, as the county deputy charged in. Stringer was sedately seated in the chair Cactus Jack had vacated, his own gun reloaded and put away. The deputy cautiously approached the body sprawled between them, rolled it over and grunted. “Always knew Cactus Jack would wind up like this sooner or later,” he commented. “Might you know the gent he pushed his luck too far with at last?”
“I cannot tell a lie,” Stringer confessed. “It was me. I’ve already explained, over at your courthouse, why I had to shoot it out with the gents he was working for. I thought it was over. I hope it is now.”
The deputy straightened up, putting his gun politely away. “I hope so too. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But I reckon we’d best go over and give ’em some sort of statement at least. Then I’d be proud to buy you a drink. How did he start it, this time?”
Stringer got to his feet. “Oh, you know how a gent with a chip on his shoulder and guns on his hips might say just about anything, as long as it’s ugly,” he explained. “I could say this was sort of an argument over a lady. But since the lady’s not here, I won’t.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Stringer found himself free to leave town before midnight, but since there wouldn’t be another train out before morning he enjoyed the novelty of a good night’s sleep between clean sheets, alone, and had a hearty breakfast in the morning.
By the time he was ready to board, the dinky but now overstuffed town of El Centro seemed to have more law and order than it really needed, with a National Guardsman stationed at all the halfway important intersections and a machine-gun set up behind sandbags in front of the bank.
Stringer was unable to verify the rumors about the hanging of at least three looters or a column of Mexican raiders turned back near Calexico, with heavy losses on both sides. He knew from his stint in Cuba as a war correspondent that there seemed to be a latrine orderly posted to every company who was not averse to pulling extra duty as a bullshit artist. So, since the emergency as well as the flood seemed to have passed its crest, he boarded the crowded westbound with his S&W .38 wrapped in its belt inside his battered gladstone.
A few hours later he got off to change trains in L.A., with his gun still in that position. He began to wonder if he might not have been hasty when two moose-like individuals fell in step with him on either side and told him someone wanted to talk to him, right now.
He didn’t think it prudent to ask what would happen if he told them to go to hell, so in silence they frogmarched him off the platform, through the waiting room, and into a part of the depot that wasn’t open to the general public. Then, as one of them moved ahead to open a door, the other nudged Stringer from behind and commanded him to enter. So he did as he was told, not seeing much alternative.
He was only mildly surprised to find himself facing old H.E. Huntington again. The railroad magnate was seated behind an acre of expensive desk in an oak-paneled office. Through an open archway to his own right, Stringer could see part of a less luxurious layout he took to be a drafting room. At least one draftsman wearing a green eyeshade was in there working a mile a minute at a slanted drafting table.
Stringer nodded down at Huntington. “Howdy, Hank. These apes of yours said you wanted to see me.”
Huntington looked as if he was trying to make up his mind whether he wanted to laugh like a hyena or froth at the mouth like a mad dog. In the end he settled for snarling, “You crazy son of a bitch! Who gave you the right to publish that whopper to the effect that the Southern Pacific was already hard at work to dam the rogue Colorado and put it back in its old course?”
Stringer explained, “The San Francisco Sun did the publishing. Us writers can only submit stories for publication. You’d be surprised how often they turn us poor working stiffs down. You see, the publisher can even fire the editor so…”
“
Never mind all that bullshit!” Huntington cut in. “I collect rare books as well as oil paintings and statuary. You were the one who wrote that obscene as well as total lie about our position regarding that damned flood! The Southern Pacific is a railroad, not a water company. We bear no guilt and we don’t owe a wooden nickel for the mistakes of others, damn it!”
Stringer nodded agreement. “I know. I put that in my report. Didn’t you read the part where I praised you and your engineers for being such swell gents? How often can it be said a big hard-fisted tycoon like you is willing to help the little fellow in such an unselfish way, Hank?”
As he hoped, the nephew of the once-feared and hated Creep Huntington didn’t seem to mind being called a big hard-fisted anything. But his voice seemed to soften more than his heart as he insisted, “You’re going to have to print a retraction. I told you I’d think about it, not that I’d do it, you damned troublemaker! My slide-rule boys tell me the job would take two or more years, if we were lucky, and nobody’s dared to name a figure as to how much it would cost us!”
Stringer shot a sardonic glance at the nearest hired tough before he shrugged. “Well, far be it from me to refuse to file a story even more exiting than the first one, Hank. I can see the headline now, OCTOPUS BACKS DOWN? That ought to be worth an extra edition, don’t you think?”
H.E. Huntington answered flatly. “You print it like that and I swear I’ll have your job, if I have to buy your paper outright to enjoy the pleasure of firing you myself!”
Stringer shrugged off these words. “It wouldn’t be much pleasure working for you in any case, Hank. But let’s say we do it your way, or at least try. Let’s say the Sun publishes a humble retraction, explaining that a dumb field stringer mistook you for a public-spirited gent in the heat of the moment and allowing it’s not your fault that all that grant land the S.P. sold to a lot of poor suckers is fixing to slide under the Salton Sea. Let’s even quote you to the effect that you’ve studied how you might have been able to help and that you just decided it was too big a job. Have you ever held a straw out to a drowning man and then snatched it back from him, Hank? We’re talking about hundreds of farm folk who figure to lose everything they own. Way more than the number of nesters your uncle screwed in Tulare County during the Mussel Slough incident. That was more than twenty years ago, and by now a whole generation of kids have been raised to spit when they hear the letters S or P.”
