Stringer Read online

  Stringer asked, “You’d recall, of course, if anyone came here recently to poke about in old county records?”

  She said, “Folk do that all the time. That’s why we’re here. Nobody in recent memory has seen fit to look up old stagecoach robberies. It’s generally land titles, birth certificates, and such that they ask to see.”

  “You let them look in the files on their own?”

  “I don’t. It ain’t proper. But the old fool I work for is so lazy he sometimes lets folks mess up my files when I’m not looking.”

  Stringer turned to the deputy and said, “There you go. Just as they did at the library. That old gray cuss poked about until he became part of the scenery and then just helped himself to some papers. Since other crime records of ‘53 are missing as well, he might have just balled ‘em all up and slithered out as this lady or her boss was sharpening a pencil or something.”

  The old file clerk sniffed and said, “Not while I was in here. I told you I don’t let anyone at my files but me!”

  The deputy sighed and said, “I’ll have to follow up on this with the clerk, dammit. He’d have no doubt filed a complaint with us, of course, if he saw anything. But that’s part of this fool job. Where will you be if we want to talk to you some more, Sherlock Holmes?”

  Stringer said, “I’ll be mostly at the M Bar K while I’m here at all. I’ve got enough to write the feature my paper wants. But I mean to stick around a few days and see how the story on poor Helen Marsh comes out.”

  The deputy nodded, but said, “You’ll have some serious riding ahead of you if you mean to make the M Bar K this side of sunset, won’t you?”

  Stringer said, “It’s going on three. My uncle’s spread is over twenty miles off. So it’s been nice talking to you.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  *

  The bay Spanish barb Stringer hired was frisky, the saddle was made by Muller Brothers for hard use, and Stringer wasn’t worried about jumping fences in broad daylight. So he made better time than a stranger might have across his old home range. The tawny slopes, wooded ridges, and chaparral-choked draws were mostly as he remembered them. But as he forded Manzanita Creek he saw some untidy son of a bitch was hydraulicking for low-grade color upstream. The water he’d fished for trout as a boy was running an ugly shade of coffee-and-cream. The once-rock bottom was now slimy mud. Stringer grimaced and rode on. Muck seemed to be the price mankind paid for progress. The range he’d found so pretty growing up in had been even prettier, according to the local Miwok, before white boys had been allowed to grow up on it. They blamed the earlier Mexicans for clearing most of the cattle range and bringing in the wild mustard that painted the meadowland so pretty in the spring. The Mexicans accused the Anglo stockmen of bringing in cheat grass and tumbleweed. Maybe someday that would be considered native and natural, too.

  He busted through some chaparral that was in no need of help from anyone and then he spied a canyon oak posted, YOU ARE ON MY RANGE. GET OFF IT BEFORE I SPOT YOU. D.C. MACKAIL. He spurred the barb on, muttering, “You do move nice, for a livery nag. I do believe we’ve made it in time for supper.”

  His mount didn’t argue. Sensing human habitation and hence at least oats if not a rest, it loped eagerly uphill to the home spread of the M Bar K sprawled along the far slope of the oak-covered ridge, facing south.

  Stringer rode between the old bunkhouse and smithy toward the rear of the main house. Ahead, he saw his Uncle Don rocking on the back porch. The older MacKail didn’t have a rocking chair under him; Uncle Don could make any chair rock once he had a boot heel braced against a post.

  As Stringer reined in and dismounted his uncle just kept rocking. But a skinny little woman almost as old and much prettier popped open the screen door and flew out, waving her apron and yelling fit to bust until her husband growled, “Simmer down, Ida. It’s only Ewen’s boy, Stuart, not the Miwok on the warpath.”

  Crazyauntida wasn’t actually a lunatic. She was just high-strung, and the family had never decided whether Ida MacKail had been born with no sense of humor at all or whether she liked to get back at Uncle Don by taking his dry wit at face value. Her hearing seemed sort of strange at times as well. She said, “Oh, dear, I hope not too many Indians have been following you, Stuart. I’ve already started supper and I fear there just won’t be that much to serve.” Then she turned to her husband and chided, “Well, aren’t you going to make the poor boy feel at home, Donald?”

  Uncle Don said, “Don’t have to. He knows he’s a MacKail and that MacKail bones is buried in this ground. Us MacKails has never been ones for mush, God damn it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t cuss, so, Donald,” she said, sighing.

  Stringer braced himself, and sure enough his uncle roared, “God and goddess damn it, Ida, if you insist on calling a man by the name he was sprinkled, it’s spelled D-O-M-H-N-U-L-L-A-I-C-H and I’ll thank you to pronounce it correct or not at all!”

  She smiled sweetly and replied, “I’ve always pronounced your name as it’s spelled, Donald.”

  Uncle Don groaned, pointed at his nephew, and said, “This time I got witnesses. Tell this fool woman how your grandkin pronounced my full first name, laddy buck!”

  Stringer sighed and said, “Not having the Gaelic, the closest I could manage would be something like Dove Nelly.”

  Both his elders looked triumphant. Crazyauntida said, “You see? It’s just as I’ve always said it, Donald.”

  His uncle sighed and told Stringer, “It’s no use. She’s deaf as a post or stubborn as only a woman or an army mule can get. Supper will be at six sharp, as usual. So you got time to chore and crap afore I say grace.”

  Crazyauntida covered her face with her apron and ran screaming into the house. Uncle Don chuckled and confided, “Ida and the late Queen Victoria never took a crap between ‘em. You may think I’m funning. But I been married to that woman a quarter century and I ain’t never caught her crapping yet. What do you mean to do with that lathered pony, laddy buck? I know that in the big city you just put a nickel in a slot and your mount gets tended automatic. But out here we still do things old-fashioned.”

  Stringer nodded and led the barb off to the nearby stable as he tried to feel full grown. That wasn’t easy, around Uncle Don, who felt perfectly free to refer to sixty-year-old men as fool kids.

  Stringer watered the barb, put it in a stall, and got saddle and bridle off before he spilled some oats in the feed box. He rubbed the brute’s back dry with some handy sacking, shut the stall, and headed for a side door, where a morose-looking old Mex was staring at him suspiciously. Stringer nodded and told the wrangler, “It’s me, Stuart MacKail, Verdugo.”

  Gimp Verdugo said, “I know who you are. Watched you ride in, from the bunkhouse window. Tending the riding stock is still my job. I hope you watered that horse before you oated him, at least.”-

  Stringer said, “I never water a horse before I feed him. I like to watch ‘em bloat.”

  Verdugo had a sense of humor like Crazyauntida. He went on in to see if the barb was dying. Stringer snorted and strode over to the bunkhouse.

  Inside, he found Pronto and two other hands hanging from the length of pipe some long-ago hand had braced between two rafters, their boots clearing the plank floor by a foot or so. Stringer had hardly spent as much time in the saddle, lately; but he leaped up, grabbed the bar, and let his spine go limp until, sure enough, he felt something pop.

  The four of them hung in silence for a time. Then Pronto observed, “The Chinaman’s making chili tonight. He sure cooks Mex for a Chinee cook. But it ain’t bad and we got plenty if you’re hungry.”

  Stringer said, “I am, and chili sounds good. But I’m invited for supper at the boss house.”

  Pronto said, “Well, there’s a lot to be said for your aunt’s apple pie, and her coffee ain’t killed nobody, yet. How long are you planning on staying?”

  “Ain’t sure. Thought I’d ride over to El Dorado, after sundown, an
d take in the scene of that old stickup.”

  “You on the prod and in need of some backing, or just out to get laid?”

  “Neither. The trouble I’m interested in took place fifty years ago.”

  The hand hanging on the other side of Pronto said, “They got trouble most every payday night, over at Miss Gina’s. But it’s safe enough on a week night, like tonight.”

  He dropped to the floor, braced his spine with his hands, and added, “Oh, sweet Jesus, I’m going to have to git me a kidney belt afore I’m thirty at the rate your uncle’s working us, no offense.”

  Pronto dropped to the floor, so Stringer did the same. It made his feet sting and he couldn’t tell if it had done his back any good. He knew they’d ride to town with him, later, if he asked. But asking men who’d ridden all day for their pay to ride some more just for the hell of it would be asking too much. So he said he’d see them later and headed back to the main house.

  He didn’t say, at supper, that he meant to ride into El Dorado. He knew Uncle Don would ride with anybody, anytime, and he wanted the folk in El Dorado to accept him as a grown man, not a laddy buck.

  They did. Business was slow at the old stage stop cum house of ill repute. The few residents of El Dorado itself tended to be married miners with Italian names who worked nearby. No color had ever been found too close to El Dorado, despite its gilded name. The cluster of shops and adobe barn calling itself a wayside inn, midway between Angels Camp and Murphys, depended on business from the outlying agricultural districts. So the big main room downstairs was almost deserted as he entered. There were more fancy gals than paying customers and none of them were paying any attention to the listless whores. A card game was in progress at a corner table. A couple of cowboys who looked too young for such surroundings were bellied up to the bar. A few older and no doubt wiser hands were just sitting about as if waiting for something to happen. It was early yet, so they probably were. A couple of faces in what could hardly be called a crowd looked vaguely familiar. That was no surprise to a man who’d grown up in these parts. He didn’t recognize anyone he knew well enough to fight or drink with, however.

  He moved to the bar and asked the vapid barkeep if they served Steamer Beer. She said beer was beer and not to get so fancy. The suds she poured tasted reasonable, but they sure put it in a small stein, considering they were charging a nickel. The barkeep would have been too old for Stringer’s taste, but hardly old enough to recall stage robberies from the time this place had been more wholesome. He asked where her boss, Miss Gina, might be. She shrugged and said, “Beats me. She don’t screw, herself, if that could be your intent.”

  He assured her it wasn’t and said, “I’m a newspaperman, up here to do a story on the old days when this place was the stage stop. I thought she might know something about the way this town is now. Would you point her out to me when she shows up?”

  The drab behind the bar said, flatly, “I’ll point you out to her and let her decide whether she wants to talk to you. I guess I can tell you all there is to know about this widespot in the road. There ain’t much to tell. There’s only two streets, or one street laid out in a sort of ell, depending on how you want to look at it. Turn left as you step out the door and you’ll come to the post office. That’s the bitty frame shack most take for a tool shed. Beyond the post office is the general store and smithy. Don’t take the right turn down what’s left of the street. That’s where most of the miners live, and they like their daughters more than they like strangers. Most of ‘em are Eye-talians with a poor grasp of English and a vivid imagination. Cowboy got hell beat out of him the other night at that end of town. He was likely just looking for a place to pee, as he said. But when an Eye-talian father spotted him under his daughter’s window with his jeans unbuttoned…”

  Stringer laughed and assured her he got the picture. She said, “At least Eye-talians generally let you live. Mexicans are worse. Ain’t many left around here, since the Eye-talians moved in. But we got a few, and the few we have can act mean as hell.”

  He said, “I used to know some Californios named Montez around here. They branded Triangle Slash Triangle. Their eldest boy, Pete, was killed in Cuba as a Rough Rider. You know ‘em?”

  She wrinkled her nose and replied, “I don’t assortalate with greasers. Hardly any ever come in here and, when they do, we do our best to make ‘em feel diswelcome. Aside from being trouble-makers, everyone knows they don’t have money to spend.”

  He saw no reason to mention some of the rich old Californio families he could name, so he didn’t. He decided to finish the one beer and leave. The place was dull as well as unfriendly, and, now that he’d refreshed his memory of the scene of the old crime, he could knock off the dumb feature without further local color. The place couldn’t have looked like this in the old days in any case.

  He drained the stein and put it on the bar. Then he leaped to one side, slapping leather, as a gun went off behind him, close!

  As Stringer landed six feet away, facing the other way with his drawn Smith & Wesson and some confusion, he saw one man down with his face in a brass spittoon and a Harrington-Richardson .32 in the sawdust near one limp hand. Just beyond, his own Colt .44 down politely at his side, stood a wiry kid cowhand with buckteeth and straw-colored hair under a flat black Spanish hat. He nodded at Stringer and said, “He was fixing to gun you in the back. I don’t know why, do you, MacKail?”

  Stringer didn’t holster his own gun as he replied, “Not hardly. Do I know you?”

  The somewhat younger man said, “We’re kin, sort of. My mother’s maiden name was MacSorley and she says back in the old country her clan and your’n fit on the same side.”

  Stringer put his gun away but said, “You can’t be Fionna’s boy, Jerome. I haven’t been away long enough for you to have grown so considerable!”

  His remote clansman looked sheepish and said, “I used to be a Jerome. If it’s all the same to you, Mr. MacKail, my friends call me “Buck,’ these days.”

  “Then Buck it is and you can call me ‘Stringer.’ I know about such matters. How are your folk these days, Buck?”

  “Tolerable. Don’t you reckon we ought to figure out who I just shot?”

  Stringer told him to cover him while he knelt to haul the dead man out of the spittoon. He stared down soberly at the slime-covered face. Then he said, “I’m pretty sure this old rascal checked some books out of the San Andreas Library without a proper card, Buck. You heard about all the noise down that way, of course?”

  Buck said, “I did. That’s why I was about to come over and ask you about it when I saw that bastard on the floor pulling a whore pistol outten his pants. You say I just shot me the one as shot that library gal? Wahoo! Wait till I tell my pals about this!”

  Stringer said, “It’s more complicated than that. We think he was mostly in the habit of pointing targets out for braver sidekicks. They killed that librarian, who happened to be a mighty good friend of mine, to keep her from pointing him out. When he saw me come in, just now, he must have thought she had, before they killed her, and that I was hot on his tail. A guilty conscience sure can be a bitch. I’d say it was time we told the law about this, Buck. Is there a deputy sheriff posted here in El Dorado?”

  A sultry female voice told him, “No, but you can use my telephone, upstairs, if you like, Mr. MacKail.”

  He looked up to see a junoesque brunette with a hard, but not bad-looking face standing next to Buck. He said, “I can see by your outfit that you must work here, ma’am. How did you know who I was?”

  She said, “They sold me good ears along with this red velvet. I’m Gina Tancredi. I own this place. But I’ll forget what you said about me working in it if you’ll explain that dead man on my sawdust more fully. Who on earth is he?”

  From behind the bar, Miss Gina’s far less attractive barkeep offered, “I’ve seen him in here a few other times. Never caught a name to go with him. He drank gin in modest amounts and never went upstairs with a
ny of the girls.”

  Miss Gina sniffed and said, “I might have known he was a gin drinker. Get some of the boys to haul him out back, wet a tarp in the creek, and cover him for now. It’s cool and he ought to keep until we can get someone to fetch him.” She turned back to the survivors and said, “You two, come with me. We surely figure to give the party line something to talk about besides the usual hen gossip.”

  They followed her to a stairwell near the main entrance and she led them up to the second floor. Someone was burning incense but it didn’t help much. Miss Gina said, “I know. Old ‘dobe and human rut smells awfully ripe. Don’t neither of you get ideas about my own fair white body, though. Despite what you may have heard, I try to run this place as a wayside inn. Is it my fault if nobody stops here, much, save for cowboys and bawds?”

  Buck asked, “Don’t them fancy gals downstairs work for you, Miss Gina?” Stringer didn’t correct her when she said of course not. She probably wasn’t splitting with them on what they got upstairs, as long as their tricks paid fancy hotel prices for a tiny mud-walled crib and an old army cot.

  Miss Gina showed them into a much larger chamber at one end of the crib-lined corridor. The walls had to be adobe as well, but one couldn’t tell with all that red velvet hung up all around. She sure admired red velvet, though she seemed to leave more of her creamy chest than adobe exposed to public view.

  She had a French telephone set on the rosewood table next to a red plush sofa. As she cranked it for Central, Stringer wondered idly where she slept. He didn’t see another doorway. On the other hand, loose velvet hangings could hide a multitude of sins—and, in this case, probably did.

  When the operator put her through to the sheriff’s office in San Andreas she told them, “We’ve got a dead man on our hands and I want him out of here before morning.”

  Then she handed the phone to Stringer and said, “You’d better take over. I never shot the gin-drinking son of a bitch.”