Stringer and the Hangman's Rodeo

  STRINGER

  AND THE

  HANGMAN’S

  RODEO

  STRINGER SERIES #4

  LOU CAMERON

  STRINGER AND THE HANGMAN’S RODEO

  Copyright © 1988 by Lou Cameron.

  First ebook edition copyright 2012 AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-146-0

  Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9064-8

  Cover photo © iStockPhoto/dmathies

  STRINGER AND THE HANGMAN’S RODEO

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  MORE EBOOKS BY LOU CAMERON

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  *

  Stringer was finding it hard to decide what a gent should wear to dinner in Cheyenne these days, since these days included the new Cheyenne Frontier Days and Rodeo he’d been sent to cover by the San Francisco Sun.

  As he stared down from the window of his hired room on the top floor of the Drover’s Palace, the tall sandy-haired newspaperman and erstwhile cowhand decided it made the most sense and the most comfort to go along with the majority. For out front, even though the downtown street was paved and at least half a dozen horseless carriages were parked along the cement curbing, he could see a canvas-covered prairie schooner racing a red river cart down the center of the street. Most of the old boys shouting encouragement from either walk were dressed more wild and woolly than they might have been back when William F. Cody was shooting buffalo more regular on the rolling prairie just outside of town.

  As he hauled on the faded denim outfit that still worked best for him in cattle country Stringer reflected on the fact that he and Cheyenne were about the same age. The Union Pacific had laid out the Wyoming township about the time Stringer was born on a hardscrabble spread in the Mother Lode country a mite further west.

  Since then they’d both watched thirty-odd years of history go by, and, while some of it had been almost as wild as old Ned Buntline liked to tell it in his wild west magazines, Stringer was more inclined to look forward into the dawning twentieth century than he was to dwell on the past. Had it been up to him, he’d be further east right now, covering features like the new moving pictures they were starting to make in Jersey State, or those Ohio brothers who were said to be working on a flying machine. But it wasn’t up to him. His feature editor, Sam Barca, kept sending him to cover rodeos and such because he felt a writer who’d grown up sort of cow and ducked a few rounds in the Spanish American War might notice wild west details a more city-bred reporter might miss. Stringer didn’t know what he was supposed to look for. These newfangled rodeo rules, as far as he understood them, didn’t make much sense. Back when he’d been learning to stay aboard a bronc, the only rule had been to keep the infernal brute from throwing you. Nobody had said word one about making it any tougher than it already was. And nobody working on a real spread would have been allowed to try that with a beef critter, as they did now. The whole point had been to raise beef as fat as possible, not to worry the fool cows skinny.

  Stringer grumped into his spurred Justins and put on the beat-up Roughrider hat he’d brought home from Cuba as he considered the gun rig spread across the bed covers for a time. Half the old boys whooping things up downstairs seemed to be packing guns this afternoon, whatever the Cheyenne ordinances might read on less boisterous occasions. But it seemed a mite dramatic to wear a sidearm to dinner smack in the middle of a good-sized and fairly civilized community.

  On the other hand, there was no call to act like a spoilsport and, what the hell, Butch and Sundance had last been seen less than a thousand miles from Cheyenne. So Stringer grinned sheepishly and wrapped the rig around his lean denim-clad hips, adjusting his S&W double-action .38 to ride more comfortably against his right thigh. Then he adjusted the black silk bandana he was wearing in place of a necktie and locked up to go downstairs.

  The hotel dining room was just off the lobby. But before he could get there a desk clerk called him over to say there was a message for him. As Stringer waited for the clerk to hand him a slip of paper, a shingle, or whatever, the clerk explained, “One of the guards at the Cheyenne Jail left word for you—informal—Mister MacKail. He said, if you had the time, old Tom Horn had asked if you’d be good enough to drop by and hear his sad story.”

  Stringer frowned thoughtfully, dredged up the name from the many a good newspaper man had to remember, and muttered, “I fear I’ve heard it, if we’re talking about that sordid killing a spell back. Isn’t Tom Horn the morose individual who gunned down a young sheepherder somewhere around here?”

  The room clerk nodded and didn’t seem much more interested as he replied, “Yep. Willie Nickell was the boy’s name, and you’re right about it being sordid. We don’t book rooms to sheepherders here. But just the same, Tom Horn had no call to throw down on a fourteen-year-old boy, even if he’d been armed, which Willie Nickell was not. That’s why they got Tom Horn over to the jail, waiting to swing for it. It wouldn’t do to hang a man during the current festivities, with tourists in town and all.”

  Stringer thanked the clerk for the information and went on in to enjoy his dinner. But while the steak and potatoes were all right, and the coffee was really good, Stringer didn’t enjoy himself enough to order dessert. One part of him kept saying there was no point depressing himself further about the banalities of a solved and settled case that hadn’t looked too interesting when he’d first read of it in a rival paper many moons ago. But another part of him kept saying a man about to die was surely good for a more interesting interview than a man about to get bucked off a horse. So after rolling a smoke at the table and then picking up most of his change, Stringer headed for the jail house, near the railroad depot.

  He was starting to feel sorry, however, even before they let him in to see the doomed gunslick. The sun was going down, and as if to make the gloom more depressing, they not only made him take off his gun rig out front but patted him down for other weapons. When he protested, one of the guards explained, not unkindly, that it wouldn’t be the first time old Tom had tried to slicker the law, and that it was a simple fact he rode with a good-sized gang.

  As another guard led Stringer down along a dark, dank corridor he was asked if he meant to cover the hanging of their prisoner as well. When Stringer replied, “Not if I can help it,” the lawman answered in an injured tone, “You newspaper gents won’t want to miss it. We’re building a new patent gallows that hangs twentieth century scientifical. They may think they’re the bee’s knees back in New York State with their new electrical chair. But I guess we keeps up to date in Wyoming.”

  Interested despite himself, Stringer asked for further details and was assured their wondrous new gallows worked on the principles of a flush toilet. The guard sounded as if he could hardly wait to see it work. “The hangman pulls this here chain, as if he was taking a crap, and the rest is all automatical, run by hydraulic whatever. Soon as the water runs from one tank into another, the trap is sprung and…”

  “Jesus,” Stringer cut in, “you mean the condemned man gets to stand there, listening to them sort of flush his life away?”

  “Yep,” the guard said. “Takes about a minute and a half. But of course the rascal don’t know just when the trap under him is fixing to spring. It’s supposed to be sort of a surprise, see?”

  “I see how it could give a man about to hang more than enough time to contemplate the error of his
ways. And you say it’s supposed to be more civilized than the old-fashioned way?”

  The guard insisted Wyoming had to move with the times and they stopped by a solid door of oak sheathed with sheet iron. He unlocked it, saying, “There you go. I’ll be back in, say, ten minutes to see if old Tom has kilt you.” And then Stringer was inside and the door was closed, and bolted behind him.

  But as his eyes adjusted to the dismal light Stringer saw he’d been locked in with a skinny middle-aged gent who looked more forlorn than ferocious.

  The soon-to-be late Tom Horn had never been taught to cry, and since he had nothing to smile about he just sat woodenly on his cot, nervously braiding a handsome black and white rope of horsehair. His own hairline was receding and his John L. Sullivan moustache drooped as if he’d just been licked. Neither man said anything for a time. Then Horn moved his rump and his coils of rope to make room on the only seat in the cell, saying, “I’ve read your stuff in the papers, if I’m correct in taking you for the Mister Stuart MacKail who signs his work as Stringer.”

  Stringer got out the makings for a smoke, then sat down beside the older man. “That byline is a sort of inside newspaper joke,” he said. “Care for some tobacco, Mister Horn?”

  The prisoner shook his head and answered, “You go on ‘n roll. I gave up smoking a spell back. What I’d really like right now is some raw bacon. You ever chaw raw bacon, Mister MacKail?”

  “I don’t even chaw tobacco. I never can find a place to spit.”

  “I know. That’s how come I chaws bacon to steady my nerves. You get to swallow all you have to and it don’t make you sick.”

  Stringer had serious reservations about that. But he just put together a smoke as he asked, “What was it you wanted to see me about, Mister Horn? I’m sure you’re innocent, but, no offense, you had your say in court and they did find you guilty.”

  Horn just shrugged. “I never gunned that kid. Honest. But that ain’t why I wanted to tell my tale to a newspaper man. You see, all during the trial, I kept waiting for my pals to come forward and alibi me. But they never did and I’ve been sitting here ever since, wondering why. I hate to say it about old pards, Mister MacKail, but the closer I get to them gallows the more it looks to me that I been throwed to the wolves.”

  Stringer licked his cigarette paper to seal it before he asked just who they were talking about.

  “I ain’t ready to say,” Horn answered, “not just yet. I always thought they was my friends. Mayhaps they still is. But would you let a friend hang if a word from you could get him off, Mister MacKail?”

  Stringer struck a match and lit the twisted end of his smoke. “Well, not hardly,” he said. “Are you suggesting these mysterious friends of yours could be letting you take the fall for killing Willie Nickell because they’re covering for the real killer?”

  Tom Horn shook his head. “I fail to see how they’d know more about it than I do,” he said. “None of us was anywhere near the Iron Mountain range when that boy was murdered. We was all…ah…tending other chores for the C.P.A. at the time.”

  Stringer tried to hurry the laconic older man up by running a few yards with the ball himself. “Let’s see if I remember the case we’re jawing about. The C.P.A. would be the Cattleman’s Protective Association, and you and these mysterious pals of yours would be hired guns for the same, right?”

  Tom Horn grimaced and said, “I’d rather you called me a range detective, Mister MacKail. Hired gun sounds a mite harsh.”

  “Harsh is as harsh does,” Stringer shrugged. “We’re not going to get anyplace if we bullshit one another, Mister Horn. I may as well tell you right out that I have it on good authority that you, Tom Horn, have been known to leave an occasional enemy of your employers dead as a cow turd on the lone prairie. By the way, where did you ever come up with that notion of leaving a rock under their heads as a sort of pillow—or is that meant to be your calling card?”

  Tom Horn sighed sheepishly. “I only done that a time or two as a sort of joke. I can’t rightly say why it seemed all that humorous at the time.”

  Stringer grimaced. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said flatly, “but isn’t it a fact that they found young Willie Nickell in not-so-sweet repose with a big flat rock under his head? And isn’t it just as true that you’d had words with his father on the subject of sheep, not long before the kid was shot down like a dog in the cold gray dawn?”

  “I can see you read up on the subject,” Horn replied. “That was just the way them other reporters writ it. But I thought you was a fair reporter, Mister MacKail. I only sent for you, as soon as I heard you was in town, because I read some of the stories about the War when we was all down Cuba-way, and you was about the only one there who told things the way they was happening.”

  Stringer felt a shade of satisfaction at the too-obvious compliment, then shrugged it off fast. “President Roosevelt has assured me he’s forgiven me for writing the truth about San Juan Hill,” he said. “But let’s get back to more recent foolishness. Are you trying to tell me lies were printed about you and that young sheepherder?”

  Horn nodded. “Not outright mean lies. But you know how dumb greenhorns write about the way things really is in cow country, Mister MacKail. To begin with, I’ve never denied I knew that’s boy’s father, old Kell Nickell. But not to have words with him. Coffee and cake was more like it, on the occasions I stopped by. I ain’t asking you to buy that because you like me. I want you to stop and ask yourself why a range detective for the C.P.A. would have anything to fuss about with him and his fool kid.”

  “Weren’t they running sheep?”

  “Well, sure they was, on their own land. The Nickells wasn’t herding sheep serious on any open range the C.P.A. would give a damn about. Old Kell Nickell stayed put on his quarter-section homestead claim. His sheep was fenced in. Didn’t it say right out in them papers you read that the dead boy was found by their open gate?”

  Stringer raised an eyebrow, blew a thoughtful smoke ring, and decided for himself. “All right. Let’s say the victim was a homesteader who kept sheep, instead of a sheepherder on range someone else might have thought the Lord meant for cows. How do you explain that stone pillow under his head—if you didn’t put her there?”

  Tom Horn wiped his face with a big raw-boned hand and sniffed. “I can’t explain it. I can’t even say it was there. It wasn’t mentioned in the papers when they first found the boy dead. It was later, after I’d been arrested for a killing I had no hand in, that some sassy reporters commenced to say such a memento was my trademark. You just read the minutes of my trial if you think I left Willie Nickell dead with a fool rock under his head. And if you can find me that rock, presented as evidence in court, I’ll be proud to eat it for you—without no cream or sugar!”

  Stringer took another long drag on his smoke before speaking his mind. “It’s a mite late to go over evidence that might or might not have been used against you in court,” he finally said. “What the prosecution presented, the judge and jury bought. I’m no lawyer, Horn, but if you aim to get off on appeal, you’d better get cracking with some new evidence to argue about.”

  “What if I could prove I was riding with some other gents, in other parts, doing other things at the time?” Horn asked.

  “That ought to do her,” Stringer replied, flicking an ash, “assuming it doesn’t get you all locked up for another crime. Are you saying that’s why these mysterious pals of yours refuse to come forward for you?”

  Horn nodded weakly. “I reckon it has to be. We never done nothing more serious than a little cutting and burning. Would you let a pard hang for a crime he never done, if all they could give you was, say, a year at hard?”

  Stringer whistled softly and said, “Oh, boy. If you’re telling half the truth, I feel for you. But I’d sure have to like you a lot more than I do right now before I’d spend a year or more in prison for you.”

  Tom Horn scowled down at the cement floor and growled, “Some gents just
don’t seem to savvy friendship, then. For we ain’t just talking a spell in jail with time-off for decent manners. The State of Wyoming means to hang me high, for a killing I had no hand in. You got to get my old pards to come forward, see?”

  “Not hardly,” Stringer replied, “if you won’t even tell me who the hell they are.”

  “I can’t peach on pards,” Horn said. “That’s against the code. But what if you was to print something in your paper for ‘em to read?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t handle classified ads for the Sun.”

  “I mean a warning to ‘em, from me, right on the front page, see? I want you to put it in the papers that if they mean to let me down I just might have some mean things to say about them all, naming names, when that hangman asks if I got any last words.”

  Stringer thought about that as he finished a last few puffs of Bull Durham. Then he dropped the butt on the floor, ground it out with his boot, and got to his feet. “I can’t promise anything. But I will ask my editor if we can run your message, Mister Horn.”

  The older man got to his feet as he said, “Call me Tom, seeing we was in Cuba together.” But Stringer just felt sort of shitty as the two of them shook on it to part friendly. For Stringer knew that even if he made such a suggestion to old Sam Barca by wire, his crusty boss would answer with a roar that would hardly require the services of Western Union. The San Francisco Sun printed news. There was no news in a convicted murderer saying he was innocent. Now there might have really been something had old Tom Horn wanted to make a full confession, clearing up those loose ends that always seemed to be left over.

  Out front, as they gave Stringer his gun rig back, one of the guards asked, “What did he want to tell you? That same old bull about his old night-riding pards ganging up with the law to do him dirty?”

  Stringer strapped his gun back on, then he nodded. “That was about the size of it. We never got into why you boys arrested him in the first place.”