Stringer and the Lost Tribe Read online

  The barkeep said, “If we’re talking about Mary-Jo Crocker, she was gathering wild onions or something on an open slope, up above the smelter. We thought about smelter fumes at the time. It didn’t work. Mr. Porter allowed some mercury fumes could have settled on the slopes above, and it was his notion to make sure no other kids played there anymore. But mercury poison is way too slow to account for that kid dying from just one bite. You can rub mercury all over you and even swallow some without it harming you. Not a good idea to keep at it, though. Like I said, it’s a slow poison.”

  Stringer agreed he’d heard as much and ordered another beer.

  The deputy, Jimbo, came in to order another for himself. He confided, “I’m on duty the minute the sun goes down. May not have this job much longer. They’re fixing to leave most of the town behind, supplies and all. The company figures freighting out such stuff as lumber and canned beans won’t pay. When was you fixing to haul out, MacKail?”

  “Anytime now. That agent, McCoy, seems to have settled your so-called Indian war. I don’t write for the society page, so pending wedding announcements are none of my beeswax, and how much serious news could I expect to gather in a ghost town?”

  Jimbo nodded sagely, inhaled some suds, and said, “I doubt more than a handful will be wintering over.”

  Stringer cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Why would even a handful risk a snow-in, Jimbo? I know at least two students of Indian lingo might be staying, further up in the hills. But won’t the rest of you be moving on down to San Diego and a new mining camp now?”

  Jimbo looked a mite bitterly at his beer as he said, “Those as still have jobs will. I, for one, wasn’t on the list that son of a bitching Porter just posted. Seems they don’t feel they’ll need as big a security force down close to San Diego. Old Clem Watson stuck up for me and the other deputies. But Porter said it wasn’t up to him. He’s full of shit. I know he never liked me.”

  Stringer didn’t answer. He knew Jimbo could be right or wrong, and it wasn’t his fight. He asked why, in that case, Jimbo and the others being left behind didn’t go on down to the Sacramento to look for work.

  Jimbo answered, “Beans. The rent here will be mighty affordable as well. Nobody hires this late in the fall. I figure to just hole up here and be a well-fed ghost in a ghost town until things pick up next spring.”

  Stringer allowed that made sense, sort of.

  Then Jimbo put his empty beer schooner down, hitched up his gunbelt, and said, “I can see by the sun outside that it’s time I made my rounds, lest somebody steal a keg of nails nobody wants anymore.”

  Stringer didn’t argue. He ordered another beer and moved down to the free lunch spread to put away some pickled pig’s feet and hard-boiled eggs to keep all that beer from sloshing about an empty stomach and making him talk silly.

  He knew it didn’t really matter if he got drunk now. But on the other hand there was no point to it with a lonely night on the trail coming on. He wasn’t looking forward to riding out in the dark alone. But the story, such as it was, seemed to be winding down, and he didn’t want to be in the way when and if old Nancy told her father she was fixing to marry his arch-rival. He still had no answer to those attempts on his life. But now that he’d put the mining operation out of business with his own sly moves, the mastermind was out of business as well, whatever his fool motives might have been.

  There was simply nothing left to fight for now, unless you counted arrowheads and Indian skulls.

  He put that notion aside as quickly as it arose. Dr. Gore was no doubt eccentric on the subject of lost Indian races, but Stringer knew he hadn’t done anything or found anything out that was apt to prove anything either way on the subject.

  The dumpy mine supervisor, Trevor, came in to bitch about the mine they wouldn’t let him supervise anymore, since it was all caved in. Stringer wasn’t about to tell Trevor who’d caved it in. He asked if Trevor was still working for the company. The bitter Welshman said, “I am. But it’s all wrong, you see. I was hauling a good tonnage from this mountain up here, and I see no need to start another pit from scratch, look you.”

  Stringer agreed life was tough and went back to take a leak. When he came back, Trevor had left and Tim McCoy had come in. The Indian agent said, “I was getting tired of listening to those two lovebirds coo. I was planning on riding back to the reserve. How do you feel about keeping me company on the trail?”

  “It’ll be a lot better than riding alone. We’re not about to make it in one night’s ride, and I’ll be splitting off near the railroad. But by then we’ll have told all the jokes we know and gotten sick of one another anyway. You’d best stuff your gut down at the far end before we go, Tim. I ain’t up to cooking before I digest the pickled pig’s feet I just had, and that can take a spell, you know.”

  McCoy agreed. They both moved down to demolish the free eats as the barkeep shot them a dirty look. Stringer had eaten all the pig’s feet he ever wanted to, and he was peeling a boiled egg when somewhere outside they heard the dulcet tones of rapid gunfire.

  As their eyes met, McCoy said flatly, “That was a shoot-out.” Stringer didn’t argue. They both got rid of their beer steins and dashed out of the saloon as one, staring about in the tricky early-evening light. They saw people running one way and, without having to discuss it, lit out after the crowd, which was heading toward one frame house up the hill.

  They joined the crowd gathered about the front gate just as Jimbo came out on the porch, spotted them, and called out, “I reckon this would be your case, Mr. McCoy, seeing as you’re the ranking federal man here. I don’t seem to be working for nobody no more.”

  Stringer and the Indian agent bulled their way through to join Jimbo in the doorway. He led them inside, where the first thing they saw was old Clem Watson, spread out dead as a cow pat with a six-gun in one hand and his glazed eyes staring up at the pressed tin ceiling.

  “This is Porter’s house,” Jimbo said. “It get’s worse in the other room.”

  They followed the deputy into the bedroom, where it became more obvious why Jimbo had said he didn’t work for anybody anymore.

  The site manager, Porter, lay sprawled by the foot of the bed, naked save for the gun he still had in his hand. He’d been shot thrice at close enough range to frizzle the hair on his bare chest.

  Watson’s wife lay across the bed, without a stitch on and just as dead as the man she’d been in bed with.

  Jimbo shifted his chaw and said, “It reads sort of easy to me. But I’d best just see how you boys read it. I don’t seem to be a lawman no more, with both the gents I worked for in no position to pay my wages.”

  McCoy stepped closer to the bed, brushed some hair away from the cheating wife’s wildly staring eyes, and said, “Nice-looking gal. You say she was Watson’s woman, Jimbo?”

  Jimbo nodded.

  Stringer said, “She messed around as often as she could get away with it, as I know for a fact. It looks as if this time she didn’t get away with it.”

  McCoy glanced at the open doorway thoughtfully and said, “That’s for sure. She took a round right above the eyebrow. It looks as if the old man suspected she was having an affair with Porter at suppertime and burst in on them to ask how come she was in another man’s bed instead of at the kitchen stove where she belonged.”

  Jimbo volunteered, “Watson might have told her he’d be on duty later this evening. I know he talked about that to me a spell back. But then he said he was feeling tired and that I could no doubt handle anything that might come up. He didn’t mention anything like this coming up, of course.”

  McCoy nodded. “It must have been a surprise to him as well. Let’s say he suspected but wasn’t sure. Let’s say he came home early to find her gone and came over here to see if he was right or, hell, maybe just to talk to his boss about something.”

  “Either way works as well,” Jimbo said. “The main point is that he caught his woman with another man and did just what any of us would hav
e done. Only old Porter managed to get to his own gun and nail him as well, see?”

  Stringer didn’t answer. He stepped into the living room and hunkered down by old Clem’s corpse. He couldn’t find any bullet holes until he turned the old man over. Then he saw the poor old gent had taken one between the shoulder blades, where his snuff-colored coat had been powder-burned.

  As the other two joined Stringer, McCoy opined, “Right. The husband caught them in the act and shot them both. But as he turned to run, the dying lover-boy got off just one shot, and that was just enough.”

  Stringer got to his feet and asked Jimbo who that left in charge now.

  Jimbo started to say nobody. Then he brightened and said, “I guess old Taffy Trevor would be the ranking company man in these parts now. It ain’t for me to say. We’d best wire company headquarters and find out.”

  As he moved for the front door, McCoy said, “You’d best wire the county seat while you’re at it. As a federal agent I have power to make arrests on federal property. But Lassen county might not have this township down as federal, as the BIA thinks it is, and in any event, I’m more used to dealing with cases involving Indians.”

  Jimbo agreed.

  Stringer said, “Hold on. Don’t you boys feel somebody ought to guard the scene of the crime and make sure it looks the same when someone from the sheriff’s department gets here?”

  Jimbo said that made sense, too. So, opening the door, he called two company men in and told them, “I want you boys to keep an eye on things here. Don’t ask me when, if ever, you’ll get a plugged nickel for the chore. Just do it for old time’s sake and I’ll put in a good word for you with the company. Look around all you want, but don’t touch nothing, and don’t let nobody else in before I get back to you, hear?”

  One of them started to bitch, but Jimbo said, “Now, Roy, we both know the dead bastard in the other room dropped you from the payroll just this morning. Do right by his remains and headquarters just might feel he was hasty in saying your services were a needless expense.”

  That did it. As Stringer and McCoy followed Jimbo out into the gathering dusk, Stringer asked where the other regular town deputies might be right now.

  Jimbo shrugged and said, “Gathering nuts for winter, most likely. Once the company store shuts down, a sack of flour or a can of beans could get hard to come by in this valley.”

  As the fired deputy continued on toward the remains of the telegraph shed, McCoy said, “I’d best move our ponies from in front of the saloon to the town corral, seing as we’re stuck here overnight at least. You coming, MacKail?”

  “I’ll meet you later at the saloon. Right now I want to gather some bulbs while there’s still some twilight left to pick by.”

  They both asked him how come. So he explained. “That child who died from swallowing poison puzzles me. The Indians say no death camas should be growing in this valley, and I’ve never met up with any plants in these parts that give off prussic acid.”

  Neither of them had either, so the three of them split up and Stringer headed upslope at an angle. As he passed the last miner’s shack and started to wade through ankle-deep bunch grass he saw no bulb sprouts at all at first. Crocker had told him the child had found some farther up. Stringer could still make out individual blades and pebbles, looking straight down. But more distant features were starting to blur as darkness closed in. A pale blob ahead materialized into the heap of spent cinnabar he’d been told about. They’d sure shoved a heap of the stuff up here, a hundred odd yards above the smaller pile just outside the ruins of the smelter. A mess of wheelbarrow tracks showed how they’d managed. The slope was chewed bare and eroded some by the runoff from the mercury tailings. Some of the grass still there looked sick as hell. Mine tailings tended to leak all sorts of toxic shit when it rained. The low-temperature smelting might not have even gotten all the mercury compounds out of the shattered rock.

  He didn’t see bulb one on the downward slope, so he circled around to the high side, and while the grass looked a lot healthier here, he didn’t spot anything a kid might have felt like picking at first. Then, just as he was about to turn away, Stringer spied what a greenhorn might have taken for onion shoots, and, as he bent over to pull the bulb, a rifle ball plucked at the tail of his denim jacket. So he just kept going down until he lay flat behind the pile of tailings with his own gun out.

  Nothing happened for a million years. Then a familiar voice called out, “MacKail! Above and behind you!”

  The warning had been shouted by Lem Crocker.

  Stringer had no idea who the dark figure skylit farther up the slope might be, but the rascal was aiming a rifle his way. They both fired at the same time.

  The rifleman was either a poor shot or perhaps couldn’t make his target out against the rock pile in such tricky light. Stringer did better despite its being long range for a handgun. His man threw his rifle end-over-end at the purple sky and fell backwards to just lie there, spreadeagled in the grass.

  As Stringer rose and eased up the slope toward him, smoking .38 trained on the still figure, Lem Crocker came running from Stringer’s right, a miner’s spade in hand. He shouted, “I heard that first shot and hunkered down just in time to see he was circling round behind you, Mr. MacKail. Who was he?”

  “I don’t know the who or why of it yet, but I owe you, Crocker,” Stringer replied.

  As the two of them moved on upslope, Crocker said, “I was just on my way down from the burial ground. You was right about them grave markers, and Mary-Jo’s momma will be ever so glad to hear them Indians was just funning.”

  Stringer didn’t answer. He knelt down by the man’s body and felt at the side of his throat to make sure he was dead, then struck a match.

  Crocker said, “Well, I never! It’s one of Taffy Trevor’s blasters. His name was Swensen, I think.”

  Stringer shook out the match before it burned his fingers and said, “I may recall him from the time he was getting hell from Trevor about dynamite. It’s hard to tell, with his face so clean right now.”

  “How come he was out to gun you?” Crocker asked.

  Stringer could only reply, “Beats the shit out of me. But, like I said, I owe you, Lem. I thought my troubles were about over. I reckon they ain’t.”

  Then he got back to his feet and said, “Come on, I have something else I want to show you.”

  He led the father of the child who’d died right after nibbling a mysterious bulb back down the slope. Then he pulled the bulb he’d been bending over for just in time and held it up to such light as there was, asking, “Does this look at all like the treat your daughter bit into, Lem?”

  Crocker took the bulb, sniffed it, and said, “Exactly like it, damn it to hell. It’s easy to see why the poor little thing took it for some sort of wild onion.”

  Stringer said, “It’s camas, not death camas. It tastes sweeter than wild onion, and it’s safe to eat, as it was meant to grow. I’d show you, but I’m not sure anything growing this close to mine tailings would be safe to eat.”

  Crocker stared soberly at the vast pile of chewed-up rock and asked, “You mean my Mary-Jo could have been pizened by this spent ore?”

  Stringer shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I’m not a chemist. Mercury’s a slow poison, and I’d have thought they boiled all of it out of the ore before they threw it away. Arsenic won’t work, either. It’s found in all sorts of rock, I know. But you have to swallow more than a taste of it, and it doesn’t burn your lips like prussic acid.”

  Crocker asked why, in that case, there couldn’t be some low-down prussic acid leaching out of the rock pile. Before Stringer could explain it wasn’t a mineral compound, other voices were calling out to them, and they turned to see Jimbo and a modest mob coming up the slope toward them, some packing torches.

  Jimbo called out, “What’s going on up there? Who’s been doing all that shooting, MacKail?”

  Stringer called back, “I feel responsible for one shot you may
have heard. The other two were fired by the loser, a dynamite hand called Swensen, or so they tell me.”

  The pudgy mine supervisor, Trevor, pressed forward from the others to demand, “You shot it out with one of my crew, you say? Whatever for, then?”

  “I’m still working on that. Crocker here is my witness that Swensen fired first, from ambush. He’ll keep as he is for now in this cold night air. We’d best all go on down to the saloon to sort things out in front of the only federal law for a day’s ride.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tim McCoy found the latest mystery a poser too. He said he wished a more experienced lawman from the county sheriff’s department would show up, damn it.

  Stringer said, “I doubt anyone from Susanville has even saddled up, yet. Some ain’t as prone to night riding as you and me might be, with gossip of Indians in the air. Jimbo just wired them about the shoot-out at Porter’s place as the sun was setting, and they might not know as much as we do about your powwow with the local band. So they might not even start for here before sunrise, and we’re talking almost a full day’s ride.”

  McCoy grumbled, “That’s what I just said. We have to keep all the evidence as it is until somebody with forensic training can get here.”

  Stringer pointed out, “The odds on a remote country sheriff having a detective squad are mightly slim, pard. On the other hand, you do have powers of arrest, and I’ve done some police blotter reporting in my time. What say you deputize me as your segundo and let’s get on with it before the others get away total?”

  The mining men crowded into the saloon gasped as one and began to stare thoughtfully at each other.

  Jimbo volunteered, “I just can’t say every man in town is here right now. But I don’t see anyone above the rank of straw boss missing.”

  Stringer nodded soberly. “I’m glad. Small potatoes don’t matter so much and may not know just what’s been going on in any case. As most of you know, a mighty sneaky mastermind never wanted me anywhere near this mining operation because he knew a heap more about mining than most of you. But he knew, or thought he knew, I’d covered other mining operations and might know more about the subject than your average newspaperman.”