Stringer on Pikes Peak

by Lou Cameron

  She sounded disgusted as she told him, “You don’t have to tell a union lass about the way the rich can. tempt once-honest workers of this wicked world from the socialist path to salvation. I could tell you tales of men turning fink after years in the pits as well as the movement. But I’m only a messenger, you see. If you want to hear our side, you must come with me up the mountainside a bit, look you.”

  He was about to tell her what he thought of that suggestion when one of those newfangled electrical search lights flashed on in both their faces and a superior-sounding but rather sissy voice called out, “Well, well, what have we here?”

  Another voice on the far side of the blinding dazzle answered, in a more reasonable, tone, “I’ve seen both this cowhand and the, ah, lady he’s with afore, Lieutenant. Neither one describes at all like that list of Reds we got from the Pinks, if you ask me.”

  The sneery voice replied, “Nobody’s asking you, Sergeant. I’ll be the judge of what’s going on, here.” Then he asked Stringer, “What’s going on, here, cowboy?”

  Stringer couldn’t have sounded as sneery if he tried, but he didn’t worry about sounding respectful as he answered, “I’m no more a cowhand than you are a soldier, if the truth would be known. I ride for the San Francisco Sun and you may as well know I can write mighty sarcastically about officious weekend warriors acting dumb. So don’t act dumb with me and I won’t act dumb with you. You want to see my press credentials and permit to be up here, covering all your daring deeds?”

  “You’d better have something to show us, Mister,” growled the shavetail in an even icier tone, adding, “You’d better have something good to show us, unless you and your, ah, lady friend enjoy bread and water, and not all that much of either, „til the provost martial decides just how daring we’re to treat such important folk.”

  So Stringer got out both his personal credentials and the pass issued in the name of the Colorado National Guard, no matter who’d signed the fool thing. He handed it to the sergeant, who passed it on to the shavetail. As the puffed-up young squirt shifted the beam to read the papers in his hand, Stringer could see them all a heap better. He reminded himself never to draw on anyone shining a search light in his face. For there must have been ten of the rascals all told. Then he had the papers back and the beam in his face again as the shavetail said, grudgingly, “All right, you don’t seem to be a union tough after all. So what were you and this, ah, lady, doing so far from any respectable address at this hour?”

  Stringer said, “We had to send a wire home for money. Prices up this way sure are outrageous. You can ask at Western Union if you want.”

  The beam swung from Stringer to sweep up and down the pretty but slightly shabby and disheveled young brunette. The officer murmured something to his sergeant, who not only murmured back but snickered, nastily. The shavetail flicked off his light, to save his batteries, most likely, since he wasn’t any more polite as he told Stringer, “She frankly doesn’t look that expensive, to me. But let’s not argue about it. The two of you have let’s say five minutes to get off my street. Are we likely to have any argument about that, ah, MacKail?”

  Stringer answered, “Not hardly. Our hotel can’t be three full minutes from here and we already noticed the Nickelodean’s closed for the night. But do you mind telling us what time in the cold gray dawn this curfew’s supposed to lift, Lieutenant?”

  The part-time officer answered, “I’d stay off the street well after sunrise, if I was a stranger in town and had anything half as pretty to keep me company. The sergeant, here, will see the two of you back to your hotel. Don’t let me see either of you until I’m off duty, hear?”

  Stringer didn’t argue and, since rank had its privileges no matter what the rank, the sergeant naturally detailed two troopers to escort Stringer and the girl they’d accepted as his girl back to the Palace. Neither had their Krags aimed impolite and any enlisted man had to be more sensible than a reservist who couldn’t even make First John. So Stringer asked casually how come the Guard was cracking down so hard when, as far as he could see, nothing much seemed to be happening.

  One out of two men always seemed talkative. So the trooper who was, in this case, told them, “The time to crack down on anarchist bomb throwers is before they throw any infernal bombs, not after. The Pinks have agents working undercover as usual and they just sent word that some famous anarchist bomber is fixing to blow something or someone up here in Cripple Creek.”

  The other trooper, as if not to be left out, chimed in with, “Them red radicals with the Big Bad Bill are mighty mean, even for malcontented hard rock men. So far they’ve kilt more than one spy the Pinks sent in to fink on ’em. But they can’t kill everyone who comes to a secret meeting if they mean to hold any secret meetings at all. So we got a pretty good lead on „em and should Big Bad Bill show his ugly mutt at this altitude, we’ll have him right off!”

  The girl had obviously been trying, but she suddenly just had to blurt, “What charge do you mean to arrest Big Bill Heywood on, look you? Can even the federal government arrest an American citizen just for belonging to a labor union or even the socialist party?”

  Stringer wanted to kick her. But he could only crunch the small hand she’d hooked over his elbow as one of the tropper answered her, calmly enough, “You’ve been listening to union agitators on soap boxes, I see. I know the feeling. I used to think the red flaggers only wanted a fair deal for the working man until I read about the hard-working coppers they blowed up in that Hay market Riot back in Chicago-Town. They said then they was demonstrating for an eight hour day. But dang their hides, they got their eight hour day off the mine owners the last time they caused such a commotion. So what might Big Bad Bill and his radicals want this time, if it ain’t just trouble for the sake of trouble?”

  She might have answered, if Stringer hadn’t been twisting her thumb so hard. Between the pain and such common sense as she might have had, she managed to hold her tongue until they made it to the corner just this side of the hotel entrance and Stringer told the troopers, “We sure thank you for getting us home safe and sound through all those mad bombers, boys.”

  But it didn’t work. One of the troopers insisted, “The sarge told us to see you to your door, folks.”

  Stringer smiled sheepishly and said, “Bueno. We’ll just use the fire door around to the side then, if it’s all the same with you and your sarge.”

  The older of the two part-time guardsmen chuckled. So Stringer took the lead as, behind them, the less wordly one whispered to his comrade, who whispered back, just loud enough to redden Stringer’s ears, if not the mysterious girl’s, “Use your imagination, country boy. This is as fancy a hotel as they have up this way, and you must have heard what the sarge told the louie she was.”

  The greener guardsman said, “Oh!” and snickered. The girl caught her breath but managed not to whirl on either of them. Meanwhile Stringer had tried the metal-sheathed side door and heaved a silent sigh of relief when it didn’t turn out to be locked on the inside after all. Those new one-way panic bars a few of the better establishments in bigger towns had started to use were said to cost a bundle.

  He got the Welsh girl inside and shut the fire door as politely in their faces as he felt they deserved. It was pretty dark indoors after that. But they seemed to be in the bottom of a stairwell and as he got his bearings Stringer told her, “I’m on the second floor, praise the Lord, for I doubt I’d be able to pass you off as my mother or maiden aunt in either the lobby or the billiard room. Let’s go on up.” To which she replied with an outraged gasp, “Up where? To a hotel room with yourself and no chaperone? And what kind of a lass do you think I am, good sir?”

  He answered, simply, “I don’t know, yet. Would you rather take your chances with me or those troopers patroling outside, sis?”

  She sniffed and said, “I’m not your sister. I’d be Glynnis Rice, or Miss Rice, to you, if you don’t mind. As for taking chances with any man at all … Well, then, if
it’s prison or perdition I suppose I’ll have to choose perdition. For it’s both I’ve suffered for the cause in my time and, all things being equal, being raped while in prison does take more out of a lass than just getting it over with and getting on with the true struggle, you see.”

  He started to tell her the last thing he had in mind right now was a play for her fair white body, but as he led her up the dark stairs he reflected on the fact, as she no-doubt must have, that unless he meant to throw her to the wolves, he was stuck with her at least until they lifted that infernal curfew, hopefully around the time the mine whistles announced the morning shift, and meanwhile both of them were stuck with the simple fact that the bed upstairs was just about wide enough for two mighty good friends.

  He knew a true gent would offer to sleep on the sofa, if only there was a sofa, or the floor because there wasn’t, but she’d as much as accused him of being no such thing and, hell, it did seem a shame to be stuck with the name without the game. So he decided to leave it at Lady’s Choice and see what happened.

  What happened, once he had her up in his room with the door locked and the shades drawn, involved her flopping face down across the bed and blubbering, “Oh, no, I can’t go through with it, even for the cause, you see!” To which he could only reply, with a weary sigh, “I see you’ve claimed the only soft place to lie down, or even sit, you communistic little pest.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Stringer would never know for certain how things might have gone with Glynnis if they hadn’t both been startled out of their wits in the middle of an otherwise tedious conversation by the not too discreet rapping of knuckles and the downright rude rattle of the damn fool trying to get in at them at this hour, for whatever reason.

  As the girl he’d smuggled up to his room stared pale and owl-eyed at him Stringer whispered, “Under the covers and let me do all the talking!” as he reached for the light switch near the locked door and called out, “Hold your damned horses out there. Let me get my damned breath and pants!” Then he switched off the overhead Edison bulb and proceeded to get rid of his hat, jacket and shirt as he added, “Who is it and what might you want, you unromantic cuss?”

  A softer voice answered, “Keep it down, MacKail. This is a business call. A private business call if only we can keep it that way.”

  Stringer was pretty sure he recognized the voice. He still left his gun rig in place around his hips, plausible or not, as he cracked the door open wide enough to see it was Dutch Ritter out there all by himself. So he cussed but didn’t really put up a real fight as the pushy mogul hissed, “Let me in! Things could get fucked up entirely if anyone told your backers about this little get-together, see?”

  Stringer growled warningly, “Watch your lingo. Ladies present.” Which inspired Ritter to let fly a nervous chuckle, tick his hat brim at the dark form in Stringer’s bed, and smirk, “I admire a man who stays in training for sporting events. Murdstone got me to agree to an afternoon race because he said you needed time to gather nuts for that modest side bet. It was only later, after he’d been at the forty-rod a spell, he got around to telling us all you were a professional driver as well as a great author and lover.”

  Stringer growled, “You don’t have to get personal to get out of covering my personal annoyance about your manners. But for the record be it known to one and all I didn’t back off when I found out you were the swell sport with the professional fixing to race me up that mountain. I only had the brains to adjust Murdstone’s gas and air feed to the altitude it was choking at. I reckon T.S. thought that made me some sort of mechanic. Do you still want out?”

  Ritter laughed slyly and replied, “I never said I wanted out. I’d like to sort of deal you in, if only you’d stop leaping to conclusions and give a body the chance to spread some cards on the table.”

  Stringer said, “I figured it was either that or the other. If you don’t want to call off the honest wager, don’t even hint at anything dishonest, Dutch. Aside from being a reporter, I’ve never liked tinhorns who cheat, even when I didn’t have a paper to expose them in.”

  Ritter gasped as if he’d been stung by a bee and demanded, “Now who ever said anything about cheating?” To which Stringer replied with a dry but not unkind chuckle, “I just stopped you before you could tell me how much you liked me, how sorry you felt that after all my labors I only had a thousand to bet and how easy it would be for me to bet with you instead of against you, on the side, at, ah, much better odds?”

  Ritter laughed, too innocently by half, and said, “Hell, old son, I know better than to try and fix a race with an infernal newspaper reporter. But, say someone was to make you such an offer, I don’t suppose you’d like to guess at what your price might be, every man having his price, as surely a newspaperman should know?”

  Stringer nodded soberly and said, “My price is a million dollars. It’s been that ever since I got caught swiping candy as a kid. After my dad finished our discussion in the woodshed he sat me down, gave me his kerchief to wipe my fool face, and told me never to sin no more for less than a million dollars. So I never have. It was fixed in my mind early that you feel mighty small getting caught for one fool penny less than real money.”

  Ritter didn’t laugh. He said, “You get your first million stealing those pennies, one at a time. You’re going to lose that thousand, too, Don Quixote. Take it from a man with fewer ideals and a heap more common sense!”

  Then he let himself out before Stringer could throw him out, so Stringer locked the door after him and, leaving the light out, moved over to the window and raised the shade, telling the girl in his bed, “That was too long a story to go into. Let’s just see if the coast is clear, now, and we’ll see about getting you back under your mushroom.”

  Then he swore again and muttered, “This just doesn’t seem to be my night!” Two National Guardsmen were jawing under a lamppost, right across the street. He told her so, adding, “If we can’t make a run for it soon we’d best not even try. I doubt even that military pass would get me through alone after midnight. Those part-time soldiers are really on the prod. Pinkerton’s tip-off seems to have them more worried than the mine owners. I just met some M.O.A. leaders downstairs and they’re all fixing to watch a motor car race instead of their fool mines.”

  She said, “That’s what my friends wanted to talk to you about. As there’s no way for me to take you to them, now, I’ll just have to do my best as spokeswoman for the working classes of the world, so pull that shade back down and get in bed with me, look you.”

  He followed her advice, figuring, even as he sat on the edge of the mattress to shuck his boots and gunbelt that she’d meant that more platonic than it had sounded. He’d already noticed she’d hauled off her high-buttons and that wispy summer dress, but he naturally figured she still had her shimmy and underdrawers on, as he hung his gun over a bed post where it would be handy, and explained, “I got to get these boots off because the spurs might play hell with the bedding.”

  But as he rolled under the quilts with her in just his jeans he discovered right off, the bed being that narrow, she hadn’t been wearing any shimmy or underdrawers under that raggedy one-piece dress. It sure felt awkward, wearing pants, with a stark naked little gal built so big where it mattered snuggled up against one’s bare chest, murmuring, “You’ll take it easy, at first, won’t you? I fear it’s been a while, and to tell the truth, I was only married a short while before my dear one was shot by the company men so long ago and far away.”

  Not knowing how to answer in words, he kissed her, and whether he was supposed to take it easy or not, she didn’t seem to give a damn about even the copper rivets trying to hold his jeans together as she ripped them off with her hot little hands and pressed her hot little body against the results, sobbing, even as he wondered whether he was entering her of his own free will or being swallowed alive, “Oh, do be gentle with me, good sir!”

  Which made him slow down a mite, until she dug her nails into his ba
re bounding buttocks and moaned, “Don’t tease me so! If you must have your way with me can’t you try to pleasure me at the same time, you cruel exploiter of the weaker half of humankind?”

  He didn’t answer. It wouldn’t have been too romantic if he’d let her know how inspired he was by such bullshit as he spread her slim but surprisingly muscular thighs as wide as they’d go, hooked over his elbows, and felt a lot more inspired by her firm young body than the mushy thinking she’d obviously been exposed to by way of any education at all. Once he’d brought her to full climax that way, and some other ways she seemed as delighted by, she began to respond in kind without uncalled-for remarks about who might be exploiting whom, with what, in what, and by the time they had to pause for a smoke and the repose that went with it, she confided it had felt just lovely and that she wouldn’t mind being exploited again, if he really wanted more. Stringer got the Bull Durham he’d rolled for them lit up and going good enough, considering he’d rolled it one handed in the dark, before he told her, “We’d better discuss less enjoyable labor conflict, first. You said you had something to tell me about the big strike up this way. So far, no offense, your union and the National Guard seem more excited about it than either the mine owners or the crews they still have working their mines for ’em and, in any case, why me and not, say, someone like Bert Carlton?”

  She asked him who Bert Carlton was. He blew smoke out his nose like a fly-bit bull and growled, “Jesus H. Christ, you’re out to shut down the Cripple Creek gold fields and you don’t know the name of the big shot fighting to keep ’em open? Carlton is the head of the M.O.A. and likely has as much to say about running the state troops as the state governor. I wish I could get someone to bet me Bert Carlton doesn’t know who Big Bill Heywood is, and I don’t run anything] So why does your union keep blowing holes in my rain slicker? What in thunder am I supposed to know that Bert Carlton and even that second lieutenant with the flashlight, bless him, doesn’t already know?”