Stringer and the Hangman's Rodeo Page 2

  Another guard snorted in disgust, then protested, “Hell, it was U.S. Marshal Joe LeFors that arrested Horn, and, if you want to know why, it was because LeFors heard it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “You mean someone saw Tom Horn kill Willie Nickell?”

  “Sure I do. Tom Horn himself. Joe LeFors never would have arrested him if he hadn’t outright confessed to the killing while they was drinking together. I reckon old Tom lost track of who he was drinking with at the time. It was only when he sobered some that old Tom commenced to come up with mysterious pards who could alibi him, if only they would. You ain’t the first reporter he’s pulled the same yarn on. How come you’re looking at us so mean? It wasn’t our notion to green you so, old son.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  *

  The summer night was brightly lit, even if it was still young. Someone in Cheyenne had gotten a real buy on Edison bulbs. Stringer put the pathetic protests of poor old Tom Horn aside as he followed the jam-packed Main Street toward the fair grounds. He smiled thinly as he regarded the whopping wonder of modern electrical science they’d strung high across the street ahead. For while all those winking dots of white light were no doubt meant to spell out “POWDER RIVER AND LET HER BUCK!” some prankster with a tolerable aim had shot out some of the bulbs forming the B, to turn it into an F. But none of the gals promenading at this hour let on they noticed.

  Stringer noticed most of the gals were dressed like the modern Gibson Girl, even if the fair was supposed to be the Cheyenne of at least a generation ago. Some of the men made up for it by wearing outfits the late James Butler Hickock would have found a mite old-fashioned the day he died in ‘76. Stringer figured about half the men he passed had some notion which end of a horse was which. It took practice to walk natural in high heels and spurs. It was safe to assume that even when a man managed to walk cow, he still had to be a banker or at least a well-paid clerk when he came swaggering down the walk in beaded white buckskins or white angora chaps. For no working hand could afford the regular dry cleaning, and the smell of mothballs coming from a passing forty-niner was an even more obvious give-away.

  But as Stringer got closer to the fair grounds the crowd began to thin and give way to the real thing. For they were only putting on the shows by daylight. So anyone working or hanging about after dark tended to take the cattle industry a mite more serious.

  You didn’t need a ticket to pass through the unguarded gate after dark. The bleachers and most of the tanbark patch the size of a football field were barely visible by moonlight, of course, but down at the chute-end Stringer saw that, sure enough, a modest crowd was assembled under a string of overhead bulbs. Most of them seemed to be just perched on rails, but something was going on in one of the chutes. So Stringer sauntered closer to see what was up.

  As he drew closer to the light a voice he sincerely hoped was not as familiar as it sounded called out, “Hey, ain’t you good old Stu MacKail from Calaveras County?” Without waiting for an answer, it added, “There goes your prize money, boys. For with two California riders in the contest the rest of you is doomed.”

  Stringer was close enough now to see there was just no way of avoiding the fact it was old Swede Larson, off the Tumbled T Bar X just down the other side of Angels Camp. The big blond moose was one of those jovial bully boys a man just never knew whether he was supposed to laugh at or to punch. In his time, Stringer had done both on a Saturday night with Swede Larson. So far, they were about even. Swede had cold-cocked Stringer that one time and the next time Stringer had kicked the shit out of him. He could only hope the muscular moron wasn’t looking for a rematch. Old Swede fought southpaw and seemed to be a sucker for a right cross. But chopping down anything that big was still a tedious chore.

  As Stringer joined the group he ignored the hand Swede Larson held out to him. Letting a left-handed cold-cocker grab your own right fist could be a big mistake. But if Larson was insulted he failed to show it. He settled for corking Stringer’s shoulder, hard, and bellowing, “I want you all to howdy my old pard, Stu MacKail, from back home. Now that he’s here, you boys who’ve entered the saddle bronc events might as well go on home. For I have seen this boy ride and, like the song says, there was never a pony that couldn’t be rode and there was never a rider that couldn’t be throwed. But they wasn’t aware of this rider when they writ a dumb thing like that.”

  A couple of the other hands nodded pleasantly enough. Some others just looked through him, and a pretty gal perched atop a rail in split leather skirts and a white Texas hat just sniffed down at him as if he needed a bath.

  The object of her scorn laughed lightly and said, “You’ve got things wrong more ways than one, Swede. In the first place, it’s just not my fault my folk named me after the losing side in the history of their old country. Stuart is bad enough. Stu sounds like hobo grub. So my real pals call me Stringer.”

  “How come, Stu?” Larson asked.

  “Cause that’s what I do for a living and that takes us to the second place. I’m not here to ride against you boys. I’m covering the big show as a stringer or field reporter for the San Francisco Sun,” Stringer said.

  One of the strangers in the crowd snorted, “Shoot, we might have knowed a dumb Swede couldn’t tell a pencil pusher from a cowhand.”

  “0h, yeah, now I recall,” Larson growled. “They told me, back home, that you’d run off to college to learn about big words. I reckon honest cow punching just wasn’t good enough for you high and mighty MacKails, huh?”

  “Leave my clan out of it,” Stringer said flatly, “unless you’ve improved your guard a mite. I didn’t come here to rawhide or be rawhided, Swede. So let’s talk about more interesting events. What are those boys doing back there in the chutes? I can’t make it out in this light.”

  Larson didn’t answer. He was probably trying to make up his mind about Stringer’s vicious right cross. A somewhat kinder sounding hand explained, “Old Stardust busted through a partition and the wranglers are trying to put him back to bed without busting him up or vice versa.”

  Another with a Texas drawl volunteered, “My money is on the bronc.” So Stringer moved closer, put a boot up on a rail, and hoisted his head and shoulders up in line with the leather-clad rump of the snippy young gal facing the other way. She paid no mind to him, so he studied what seemed to be going on in the inky shadows on the far side. Four or maybe five husky hands were wrestling with a black brute big enough to haul a beer wagon, and Stringer could see the man from Texas had a point. Old Stardust wasn’t fighting them as much as he was pretending to be an immovable object. But as one of them made the mistake of moving between the big stud’s shoulder and the rails, Stardust suddenly shifted his considerable weight to bust the man’s backbone like a twig—and might have if the wrangler hadn’t been smart enough to roll through, instead of against, the rails. “Hold him, boys!” the wrangler shouted. “He’s loose on my side and premeditating murder again!”

  “Yeah, that one’s a man killer all right,” Stringer remarked to the girl, but she didn’t answer. So he climbed back down and tried to see if anyone else would answer his observations. “I’d sure hate to see a friend of mine draw a ride like that critter seems to be offering. Have they told you who gets to ride old Stardust, Swede?”

  Larson shook his head and replied, “They ain’t got to the saddle bronc drawings yet. The event don’t start until day-after-tomorrow. They put on lots of silly stuff first. They have to hold this big parade with covered wagons, wild Indians, and a mess of flags. Then Miss Rimfire Rowena, here, gets to ride all over creation shooting at balls.”

  There was a muffled round of laughter before the girl perched atop the rail sniffed and protested, “I shoot Christmas tree balls from the saddle, hanging or throwed.”

  “She’s Montana’s answer to Annie Oakley,” said the Texas hat. But a taller, leaner and less friendly sounding rider opined, “She’s younger and prettier than Annie Oakley, but she misses a
lot more often if you ask me.”

  Rimfire Rowena snapped, “Nobody’s asking you, Lash Borden, and even if they were, you’d still be full of it. I guess I know who Miss Annie Oakley refused to compete against that time at the Omaha State Fair and, besides, she cheats. Anyone can bust glass balls and balloons with birdshot rounds from a big old dragoon conversion. I aim bullets, fair and square. So it stands to pure reason a gal has to miss now and again.”

  Stringer felt sorry for the pretty little thing, even if she was sort of snippy, so he said, “Let’s get back to the saddle bronc riding. That would be what you’re here for, right, Swede? Lord knows you never could rope worth a hang.”

  Larson smiled back, just as friendly, and said, “I guess I could show you a thing or two about roping, if you hadn’t run off to a girlish job and let your hands go soft. But seeing as you want to know, I am here for the bucking and I’m here to win.”

  The Texas hat laughed and said, “Not if you draw Stardust you ain’t, Swede. The boy who gets to ride that moonfishing sidewinder can kiss his entry fee adios. His doctor bills might well take the rest of his money as well.”

  Stringer knew a little about the way such riding was judged. “Oh, I don’t know. Since the judges give extra points on the way the critter bucks, it seems to me that the rider who draws that big bad bucker ought to wind up with the highest score, if only he can stay aboard until the horn blows.”

  The Texas hat laughed and said, “You’re more than welcome to old Stardust, then. I, for one, like to get off alive, and Stardust don’t stop bucking just because he hears the timing horn and feels his bucking cinch fall free. He crippled a rider in Globe last summer, long after they blowed the horn and the side rider uncinched him.”

  Another hand opined he was sort of hoping for a more civilized mount as well. Then the one called Lash grinned wolfishly at Stringer and said, “I don’t see how you boys can offer Stardust to this pencil pusher, boys. He talks a good ride. But I’ve met many a professor playing piano in a house of ill repute who can talk about our trade, with his sissy rump safe on a piano stool.”

  It got mighty quiet all of a sudden, save for the tugging and cussing on the far side of the rails. Stringer smiled back at Lash politely enough, then gave him his mind. “Every man is entitled to an honest opinion. Since I won’t be riding in your rodeo, pard, I won’t get the chance to prove you right or wrong.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lash countered. “It seems to me it might quiet old Stardust’s nerves a mite if he was to get some of his wild oats out of his system afore the official contest.”

  Then, before anyone could figure out what he meant, Lash moved over to the rails, boosted himself up, and called down to the sweating wranglers on the far side, “Hey, boys, we got us a real rider out here who’s just dying to give that brute some fun. What say we let him and old Stardust show us their stuff?”

  The head wrangler, wrestling with the big stud’s head, called back, “May as well. I’ll be damned if I can figure how to get him back in his stall, and this is a bucking shoot.”

  Rimfire Rowena protested, “Stop it, all of you! Are you trying to get this poor dude killed?”

  “Yeah, that’s the idea,” Larson said, winking. “Somebody get a saddle and we’re all set. The critter’s already wearing a hackamore.”

  There was a jovial roar of agreement and at least another half-dozen hands climbed over the rails to help get the man-killer set to fly. The one with the Texas hat sidled up to Stringer and told him gently, “It ain’t too late for you to start walking, old son. I don’t know what makes Lash so mean, and this just ain’t funny.”

  The girl seemed to be on his side, too, as she dropped down from the rails and confided, “I fear it’s partly my fault. You know how silly some boys act in front of girls.”

  Stringer smiled down at her. It was easy, now that he had a better look at her face. Despite her rough garb and tough talk it was a pretty little cameo-face, framed by soft black hair as well as her ten-gallon hat. “Well,” Stringer said, smiling, “I’d walk a picket fence for you if there was one about. But since I don’t see any picket fence I’ll just have to show off with that stud, won’t I?”

  She protested, “You don’t have to prove anything to me, you big goof. If I say I’m sorry I called you a dude, will you do me a favor and run like hell?”

  He laughed, moved around her, and climbed up the rails to call out, “How are you boys coming down there? I haven’t got all night.”

  They’d been coming better than he hoped. Twelve men good and true were simply too many for even a brute like Stardust to fight off. So the next thing Stringer knew he was lowering himself into the saddle as the bronc tried to bust his kneecaps against the rails on either side. Swede Larson handed him the hackamore line and growled, “Rodeo rules, unless you aim to let Calaveras County down. It’s a point against you if you let your rein hand touch the horn, and if you grab it you’re disqualified total.”

  Stringer growled back, “I know the damn rules. Open the damn chute before he busts my damn legs.”

  But another helpful bastard insisted, “No hanging on with your spurs. Keep your stirrups clear and fanning at all times. You can whup with your hat if you like but if your free hand touches any part of his hide or saddle it’s a point against you.”

  Stringer started to repeat that he damn well knew the way the game was supposed to be played. Just then Lash, who’d been watching for the worst time to do it, sprung the gate and let Stardust spring out of the chute like a hungry lion looking for some poor Christian to eat.

  There wasn’t one human target left out on the poorly lit tanbark. Everyone had naturally climbed higher than those man-killing hooves could reach. So Stardust proceeded to try to kill the man on his back and, to do that, he naturally had to first buck Stringer off.

  Stringer didn’t want to be bucked off. So their honest difference of opinion added up to one hell of a show. Stardust was content to aim himself at the overhead moon, shaking like a water spaniel and trying to turn himself inside out, until he saw that wouldn’t work. He crow-hopped toward the bleachers and would have amputated Stringer’s left leg with the rail in front of the empty seating if Stringer hadn’t aimed a boot tip at the moon just in time. Then Stardust bucked another way, swapping ends at the top of each astounding leap, and now most of the bunch were yelling encouragement to Stringer as they saw he was the real thing and then some.

  The Texas hat called out, “Time! You’ve been on him long enough, cowboy! Get off whilst you’re still ahead!”

  Stringer called back, “How?” as he rode the murderous bronc in a circle of attempted hand stands. He let go his hat and bent low to grope for the bucking cinch that should have been behind his thigh. There wasn’t any. Stardust was just murderous by nature, it appeared.

  As if to prove it, the big stud did something that was simply against the natural instincts of its species. He threw himself down on the tanbark like a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum on the rug and tried to roll over Stringer as if this had become an infernal wrestling match.

  Stringer might have wound up dead or worse if he hadn’t moved like spit on a hot stove to vacate the saddle and leap over the brute’s big belly, between the flailing hooves, to wind up on the off side, still holding the hackamore line. As the man-killer finished his roll and wound up like a big reclining hound dog at Stringer’s feet, Stringer punched him in the muzzle and followed up with a hold on the chin strap to keep the brute down. By that time the Texas hat and a couple of other decent cusses, including Rimfire Rowena, had dashed over to pile on and help. As Stringer cupped a palm over Stardust’s nostrils to calm him, if he meant to go on breathing at all, the girl unsaddled the big bronc, half sobbing, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

  Pushing his way in, one of the wranglers yelled up, “Let me get aholt that hack and it may be safe to let him up. He do hate saddles. But bareback again after all that bucking he may just be willing to behave
a mite better, now. You sure are a riding fool, Mister MacKail.”

  The Texas hat laughed and chimed in, “You would have finished in the money if you’d made that ride afore the judges just now. Are you sure you don’t want to enter the contest? It ain’t too late, you know, and a man who can stay aboard Stardust can surely ride anything else they have to offer here.”

  Stringer picked up the saddle and didn’t argue when the girl gathered up the saddle blanket. He saw the others had the bronc under control. So they all headed sedately back to the chutes. “I’m a newspaper man, not a rodeo rider,” Stringer explained, “that is, when I have anything to say about it. Besides, the entry fees are a mite rich for my blood. I might be willing to give it a fling if they let you boys get killed for free. Paying for the privilege has always struck me as sort of dumb, no offense.”

  By the time they rejoined everyone else at the chute end, the bronc he’d just ridden was acting tame enough to be led in with no further argument. Swede Larson seemed sincere as he slapped Stringer on the back and chortled, “I knew you wouldn’t let our home range down.” The one called Lash just shrugged and said, “You’d have lost points in a real contest. Any fool can stay on when he keeps his stirrups braced like that.”

  Stringer didn’t answer. He draped the saddle over a rail and turned to take the saddle blanket from the girl. As it slid from her grasp Rimfire Rowena said, “Ouch,” and then added, “Say, how come this big old burr was sticking to that saddle blanket? It’s no wonder Stardust went pure loco out there just now! I guess I’d buck, too, if I had something like this in my underthings!”

  Stringer stared hard at both Swede Larson and Lash Borden, trying to decide which one looked the most homicidal as well as stupid. Lash grinned like a mean little kid and asked, “Can’t you take a little joke, pard?” So Stringer unbuckled his gun rig, handed it to Rimfire Rowena, and said, “No,” before he swung.