by Lou Cameron
Murdstone laughed sort of satanic and replied, “Hell, old son, I told the boys you were fixing to drive my Panard all the way up to Summit Lodge, atop Pikes Peak, and more than one man here has as much as told me I was full of shit.”
Stringer chuckled wryly and said, “That sounds fair, T.S. I don’t recall bragging that outrageously about my ability to ride any tin buckboard half so high up any hill at all!”
Hammond wasn’t the only gent there who smiled at the florid-faced Murdstone mighty knowingly. The gambling man led Stringer by one arm to the corner bar, ordering them both forty-rod boilermakers as he almost hissed at Stringer, “Damn it, you can’t let me down at this late date! I thought we had us a deal, MacKail!”
Stringer shrugged and said, “We did. You wrote out that military pass for me and to my surprise the troopers took you serious as you seem to take yourself. But if you’ll think back, I only agreed to adjust your damn-fool carburetor and spark for you. I never agreed to be your fool jockey, if that’s what you call a kid who races motor cars. I’m here on my own serious business, T.S. Can’t you drive your own damn Panard up the peak, seeing how fast you like to drive it everywhere else?”
He meant that as reasonable as he thought it sounded. But the dumpy Murdstone still stared up at him about the way Caesar must have stared that time at old Brutus, groaning, “I’m afraid of heights. Even if I wasn’t, that infernal Dutch Ritter has a driver for his own blue Buick that can’t weigh a hundred and twenty pounds while I, as you may have noticed, just happen to be a man of parts.”
Stringer had to laugh as the barkeep served their heroic drinks. Forty-rod whiskey wasn’t a brand, it was decent liquor, safe to drink at over a hundred proof and hence apt to drop you on your ass before you could walk forty rods after putting down, or dropping, the shotglass. At the altitude of Cripple Creek most men could get mighty smashed on ale or porter. But Stringer had one sneaky advantage over most mortal drinkers. Hailing from a truculent highland clan, no matter how far removed from the auld glens, he’d been taught to sip the pure malt creature from childhood, or at least on family occasions, when the wee ones were neither left out nor allowed to fall down just because they were unconscious. So he knew that if Murdstone was trying to get him drunk enough to go along with such foolishness, Murdstone was wasting his jingle, as well as putting himself in danger of falling down faster.
It was good stuff, though, and Stringer said so as he sipped it, neat, ignoring the stunned expression on the fat boy’s florid face.
So that would have been that, had not they been joined about then by an even fatter old fart Stringer recalled on their second intro as the one they called Dutch Ritter. Ritter was a mining magnate and let everyone know how rich he was, right off. He favored them both with the same knowing grin and asked, “What’s the matter, T.S., has your jockey turned into a chicken on you?”
Stringer cocked an eyebrow as he carefully put his glass back on the bar, softly saying, “It’s not a matter of white feathers sticking out of anyone, Mister Ritter. I’d be proud to race your Buick up the mountain, if I was twelve years old and had nothing better to do. But you see, I don’t work for Mister Murdstone, here, or come to study on it, you, either. My own boss sent me here to cover the big mining strike, if only I could find one going on.”
Ritter shrugged and said, “Oh, all my mines have been struck by the W.F.M. They’ve been out even longer at Bert Carlton’s shafts down the trolly way at Independence. But you said your paper sent you here to cover important stories, MacKail. We’re always having labor trouble up here in these hills. But how many races up Pikes Peak have you ever covered?”
Stringer scowled and said, “Touche. But you boys sure take it mighty calm when the union shuts you down.”
Ritter snorted in disbelief and demanded, “Who said anything about anyone being shut down? As a matter of fact some of us, myself included, are making money on the union’s latest blunder. Before my regular crew walked off the job I was stuck with the three dollar a day minimum our association agreed to the last time. Two thirds of the nonunion crew I have working for me now, are content with $2.50 a shift, for few of the scum have ever held such fine jobs.”
Stringer asked, without thinking all that hard, when mucking hard rock at wages like that had become such a fine job. Ritter looked innocent as well as smug when he replied, “Since the Lord provided in his wisdom that some men were meant to haul water and hew wood whilst others with the wherewithal to hire help didn’t have to. You don’t even have to advertise to get common laborers up here at such swell day wages. We do have to pay our blasters and such a mite more, but them as toil under the mountain for $2.50 a shift are making over twice the pay of a cowhand, and you can’t say cowhands don’t get hurt on the job as often.”
Stringer frowned thoughtfully and replied, “I don’t know which job is more dangerous, but faced with such a grim choice, I reckon I’d rather work cows. For openers you get your room and board as well as a dollar a day to start, off most cattle outfits. But I reckon some gents would rather muck gold ore for more money, so I take back my dumb question and agree you can likely get all the scabs you’ll need to break the strike this time as well.”
Murdstone clapped Stringer on the back and chortled, “There you go. I told you racing this infernal Dutchman up Pikes Peak was more important than any fool labor problems or even that mad scientist’s pet lightning. Do you reckon we ought to run both motor cars over to the cog railroad by flatcar or on their own expensive rubber tires, MacKail?”
Stringer was about to say neither proposition appealed to him when Dutch Ritter horned in to jeer, “Why don’t you just pay up like a sport, T.S.? You know you ain’t up to driving such a scary road yourself, even if your French machine could haul your big behind that high. As for this newspaper boy in a cowboy suit…”
“How much money are we talking about?” Stringer cut in, even as he stared down at his empty shot glass and refrained from asking it how in thunder it had gotten that way. Dutch Ritter told him, “T.S. and me have twenty grand riding on who brakes to a stop in front of the Summit Lodge in front of impartial witnesses. Did you have, say, a side bet in mind, MacKail?”
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “I did. I reckon you don’t know me well enough to take my marker, eh?” and he wasn’t surprised or even too insulted when Dutch Ritter replied, “All bets are cash in these parts, no offense. But feel free to bet as much as you like on your own or anyone else’s ass and I reckon I can cover it.”
Stringer started to reach for his wallet, saw he’d only get laughed at if he bragged on that sort of jingle to a herd of mining moguls, and growled, “I haven’t been paid for the last couple of stories I’ve filed from the field.
I’ve managed to stow away a few more hundred in my bank account. If I wired right now I might be able to scrape up a thousand, all told, if that’s not too rich for your blood.”
Dutch Ritter was too polite, or too cautious, to laugh right in Stringer’s face. He still sounded mighty smug as he replied, “I reckon I can manage that, High Roller. But just what might we be betting on, exactly?”
Stringer said, “I thought it was plain to see. High Rolling, of course. If I brake Mister Murdstone’s Panard to a safe stop in front of that lodge atop Pikes Peak, I win. If I fail, you win. What could be fairer than that?”
Dutch Ritter shook his head and answered, “A race. Any damned fool can get a motor car to the top of Pikes Peak, if he takes long enough, and for a thousand dollars it might be worth his while to push it all the way. Let’s say you get there ahead of my motor car and driver, or vice versa, even money, with winner take all?” He was holding out his fat palm as he asked, so Stringer shook on it and once he’d done so, Ritter turned away to head back to the game, announcing, “I think I just picked up a bonus for the kid who’ll be driving for me, boys. Anyone else want to get in on the horseless carriage race of the century?”
Stringer turned back to the barkeep and he
ld up two fingers as he muttered, “My turn, T.S. Then I got to run back to Western Union and gather in some sheaves. I sure hope you can stall ’til I can receive and cash some money orders in the cold gray.”
Murdstone nodded happily and said, “Don’t worry, old son, that cheap bastard’s not about to pass on a chance to cover all the bets he can sucker anyone to make. I may just raise the ante my own sweet self, you impetuous youth. To tell you the pure truth, the two of you had me worried there, for a mite. How much do you weigh, afore I get in any deeper with that cheap Dutch bastard and his even money wagers.”
Stringer shrugged and said, “I don’t climb on the scales all that often. Last time I had my fortune told, the machine assured me for the same penny that I weighed a tad over one-seventy-five, gun and all. Of course, it assured me I was about to run off to some island paradise with the most beautiful girl in the world and here I am in the middle of the continent and I’ve yet to meet Miss Ellen Terry or even that artist’s model as got Stanford White shot. What difference does it make, anyway?”
Murdstone explained, “Ritter’s machine is spanking new and they say them new Buicks are speedy to start off with. But his motor car by itself ain’t what’s kept the betting on my machine so modest. They tell me Dutch has stung members of the sporting set before with his big blue Buick and little bitty driver. I fear I got into this over my head before I found out the little squirt who’ll be driving up the Pikes Peak wagon trace in place of the big bastard is a well-known prize driver from the other side of The Pond!”
Stringer smiled thinly and replied, “There’s no such thing as a well-known motor car racer, T.S.. I’d have heard if there was. My paper covers all the sporting events as well as all the gold mine strikes. Horseless carriages have been racing horses, locomotives and even each others since the late 1880s, but the results have been too spotty for anyone to get famous at it. Can you rig it so’s we don’t have to race Ritter’s driver of international renown this side of, let’s say noon, tomorrow?”
Murdstone nodded, thoughtfully, and said, “I reckon. Most of the boys would as rather board the cog train after noon than afore it. For even in summer it takes the sun a spell to heat things comfortable atop Pikes Peak. But are you sure you can drive my Panard all the way up there in half a day?” To which Stringer could only reply, “I’m going to have to, unless I aim to lose a heap more dinero than I can afford to.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Stringer got back to Western Union, he saw the young blonde behind the counter had been replaced by an old bald bird of his own gender. He didn’t ask how come. Anyone could see the street lighting and electric trolly cars out front were working just fine up this way. He’d asked Murdstone not to agree to an early start to their unusual sporting event with the speed of even electrical communications in mind. As he handed his two messages across the counter he told the clerk, “I know that at even a nickel a word there’s no way either my banker or paymaster is apt to get even one money order back to me this side of Ten or Eleven A.M. But just in case I get lucky, how early can you boys cash either one?”
The clerk didn’t answer until he’d scanned both of Stringer’s urgent demands for dinero. Then he whistled and said, “We’re talking real money here. No way we could do her outside banking hours. For we don’t keep but a hundred or so at a time in our own office safe.”
Stringer nodded but said, “I didn’t ask you to cash a money order before one arrives. I asked how soon you could, once it did.”
The clerk looked pained and replied, “Look, I only work here, and at night, at that. It’ll be up to the day shift to run you over to our bank with a voucher and to tell the truth I’m not sure just how early they’ll let you have the money once you get there.”
“Don’t banks open at nine up here in the hills?” asked Stringer, only to be told, “The banks do. I can’t speak for their vaults. Thanks to Butch and Sundance, banking’s got mighty up-to-date in Colorado of late. They got one of them new time locks over to the bank we keep our own funds in. Unless it’s the time of day the branch manager says the vault should be open for customers, neither Sundance nor the Spanish Inquisition could force a teller to open it, see?”
Stringer growled, “I know how time locks work. I don’t keep my own money in a coffee can, no matter how beat-up this hat may look. Are you trying to tell me I won’t be able to cash a money order as late as ten or eleven in the morning because of a late-rising bank vault?”
The Western Union clerk shrugged and answered, “Hell, I’m not trying to tell you nothing. I just don’t want you yelling at us if you can’t get that much money in such an all-fired hurry. Do you want me to send these wires for you or not?”
Stringer told him to go ahead, paid at this end lest he piss off anyone at the other, and went back outside to amble back to his hotel. He paused in the doorway, bemused, as a corporal’s squad of guardsmen marched a couple of shabby civilians past at bayonet point. He knew the feeling. He patted the breast pocket of his jacket to make sure he was still packing that military pass. Then he hauled the makings from the shirt pocket across the way and proceeded to build himself a smoke as he let his eyes adjust to the even less certain light. By now the sky above was as dark as it seemed likely to get, while the newfangled and doubtless well-meant electrified street lighting even small towns went in for these days, took some getting used to.
Stringer and the rest of his generation had, it was true, grown up with the wonders of Thomas Alva Edison, but while the first electrical light bulb had winked on about the time Stringer was getting good with his first set of crayons and coloring books, it had taken him and the young electrical industry about the same amount of time to grow up. Stringer had been shaving regular before there’d been enough wiring strung to make the purchase of an Edison bulb worthwhile, save as a novelty to astound the neighbors with. But now that even small towns had their own generating plants, with all the arcane details of transformers, fuseboxes and such about worked out, nighttimes were sure getting hard on the nerves.
It wasn’t as if he couldn’t see anything or anybody clean across the way, as he sealed his smoke with his tongue and considered whether he wanted to light it or not, out here in the open like an infernal clay pigeon. He could see, hell, way down the block, provided anyone that far off didn’t mind being seen. But thanks to the way the modern street lamps glared, each surrounded by its own halo of flying bugs, the shadows they cast were black as octopus ink and, while he wasn’t worried about any octopus gunning for him, he did have to consider that one two-gun cuss he’d last met just about here.
Late night walks had been a heap simpler, if not safer, up until mighty recently. Whilst the streets of towns this size had been step-in-shit-dark after sundown, things had evened out more fair and square. If you couldn’t see a cuss throwing down on you from more than ten yards off by lantern light, he couldn’t see you any better. Stringer thoughtfully struck a match, lit his smoke, and stepped into an inky strip of shadow cast by a parked bakery wagon as he realized it worked both ways.
But he still liked the old ways better, when and if he suspected someone might be sore at him about something. He considered crawfishing away from the well-lit business street and making his way back to the Palace via a less illuminated route. Then he decided to do nothing at all for now, as he heard a distant gun go off and a mighty officious voice call out, “Freeze or you’re dead, you fool Red!”
He nodded to himself and muttered, “Roundup Time in Cripple Creek. They didn’t mention any curfew hours on those martial law posters, but we’d still best get our civilian ass off the street before we wind up arguing with that asshole colonel again!”
Suiting actions to his mutterings, Stringer cut across the street, to hell with who might be laying for him on the far side, and picked up his pace a bit as he strode toward his hotel. He flinched and cussed like a mule skinner when he suddenly found himself walking in step with that same infernal little Welsh gal again. He ha
dn’t the least notion where she’d been lurking like one of the Little People before she’d popped out of nowhere in her misty mysterious way. So he was mostly cussing himself as a blind fool and she seemed to take the bad words in good grace, saying, “I took your message to our friends, look you. They can’t meet you at your hotel or, indeed, anywhere this close to the center of things and those dreadful Colorado troops. For we’ve been betrayed again, you see, and they’re arresting men, and women, too, just for standing up for their just desserts at the hands of those dreadful men who own the world all of us were born into.”
Stringer didn’t slow down, but tried to keep his tone friendly as he told her, “I don’t want to get picked up by the military, either. You’d better slip back under your mushroom if you d don’t want to wind up in the stockade, sis. You just missed seeing them grab a couple of your boys and …”
“I did see and they weren’t union men.” She cut in, adding with a disdainful sniff, “Those hirelings of the mine owners wouldn’t know Karl Marx from J.P. Morgan if they woke up in bed with either. They only have orders to grab anyone who’s not wearing a starched shirt and silk necktie, you see. As if working for a living was a crime, look you!”
He grimaced and said, “I’m not sure I share your sentiments about the ownership of property, but I follow your drift and, since I’m not really dressed for the opera, I mean to run the rest of the way if it’s all the same with you.”
She grabbed his elbow, warning, “Don’t you dare! There are riflemen staked out all about, just to see who might be running from their street patrols. You’re never going to make it all the way back to the Palace without being stopped, look you. You’d better come with me. The darker streets the W.M.F. controls are ever so much safer, you see!”
He asked her, dryly, “Safer for who? No offense, sis, but I’ve already had one rain slicker shot up down in Colorado Springs and you should have seen the two-gun bozo I met up here, earlier this very evening.” Then he reflected some on that and added, with a sigh, “Come to think of it, you likely have. Jack London warned me your union’s sort of radical and he used to write Marxist pamphlets, before he found out what villains who published for profit were willing to pay.”
