CHAPTER SIX

When Stringer returned to the Jersey Lily with his jacket on, he found Roy Bean, Junior had beaten him back, assuming he’d ever left. “Well?” he asked, joining the youth on the porch.

“I got them over to the far bank,” the kid said. “It wasn’t easy. Gordo and some of the others wanted to make a stand of it. But their elders made ‘em listen, seeing I was speaking for El Patron. They must not know how sick Dad is. Lord knows how I’ll ever control ‘em once he’s gone.”

“Showing them some loyalty, just now, might have been a good beginning,” Stringer said. “I just had a look-see at your new competition. I saw more of a gal called Rosalita than I likely should have, seeing I’ll be sleeping alone later.”

Young Bean snickered. “I know the puta you mean. If you have two bits to spare, talk to her pimp, Garcia, and you won’t have to sleep alone. You’ll wake up with the clap. But some must think it’s worth it, seeing how many old boys Rosalita has clapped up so far.”

Stringer made a wry face. “I reckon I’ll pass on such a romantic notion, for now. How’s your father coming along?”

“I was just fixing to take a look,” young Bean said. “Zulema got some chicken soup down him tonight, at least. She says he ain’t as fever-browed either.”

Stringer followed the youth inside. The lamps in the front had been trimmed, seeing nobody seemed to be dropping by after all. But a globe lamp was lit in the sickroom, and as they entered, old Roy Bean was propped up in bed, looking something like a weary Santa Claus who was glad to be home after all that sleigh driving. He opened one watery eye to say “Howdy, son” in a lucid voice. Then he spotted Stringer and demanded, “Who might this stranger be, and how come you let him back to my quarters with a damned gun on his hip?”

“He’s on our side, Dad,” his son soothed. “Name’s MacKail.”

The old man raised an eyebrow. “Scotchman, huh? We’ll see about that.” Then he asked Stringer, “Comair e tha thu?”

Stringer replied, more politely, “Tha mi ga math, agus sibh?`’

Old Bean chuckled. “He’s Scotch. Damned if I got all of it. Never got much past saying howdy in the Gaelic. Which side was your clan on in the ‘45, MacKail?”

“The right side, of course,” Stringer said. “Didn’t Clan MacBean fight under Lochiel when the Macintosh was afraid to come out against the Sasunnach that last time?”

The old man shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. I left home afore they could pound all that old country stuff into me right. Wasn’t you here earlier, along with Miss Langtry?”

Stringer nodded. “I fear you were a mite confused at the time, Your Honor. It wasn’t Lillie Langtry you were talking to.”

The old man sighed wistfully. “I surely must have been out of my fool head. It was so real, I could have sworn she was setting right beside me on this very bed.” Then he quickly added, “With all her duds on, you understand. Miss Langtry ain’t no bawd. She’s a lady of quality. Let me show you the fine set of shooting irons she sent me one time. Where’s my damned guns, Junior?”

“We’ve put them away, Dad,” his son said gently. “I know you didn’t know it was Zulema and Sam you was throwing down on. But it scared them, anyways.”

“Scaring never hurt nobody,” Roy Bean said. “Builds character. I ain’t too sick to know what I’m aiming at now, boy. Get ‘em out again so’s I can show this highland laddie what Miss Langtry bestowed upon us.”

As his son ducked out of the room with a resigned sigh, the old man told Stringer, “They’re heirlooms, you know. Someday, after I’m gone, my grandchildren will still get to admire ‘em.”

Stringer stepped closer and placed a palm on the old man’s brow. “Take it easy or you might not live to see your grandchildren, Your Honor. You do seem a mite better now, but it’s not smart to take chances with galloping pneumonia.”

“Is that what I’m down with?” the sick old man asked. “I’ll be switched. I thought I was getting over that beating they gave me in San Antone. You should have seen us, MacKail. There must have been a corporal’s squad of the bastards, and I was still holding my own till some son of a bitch got me from behind.”

“Your kids told me someone jumped you good in San Antone,” Stringer said. “I want you to think before you answer and, well, try to stick to the bare facts. In your opinion, were you attacked because someone wanted your life or just your money?”

Roy Bean frowned. “Hard to say. I’d spent most of the cash I had on me by that time, and since you demand the truth, I can’t swear I was cold sober. On the other hand, if they’d been out to kill me entire, how come I ain’t dead?”

It was a good question. “Someone tried to kill me on my way to here, and I’m still alive,” Stringer said. “Maybe you were left for dead in that alley. Not many men your age could be expected to survive such a beating.”

Bean sat up straighter. “That’s true. I’m tough as hell. But why in thunder would somebody want you dead and me dead when the two of us just met this minute?”

“I don’t know,” Stringer said. “I was hoping you might. Can you think of anything someone might not want you saying to a newspaperman, Your Honor?”

Bean grinned crookedly. “I doubt your paper would print the words I have for them sneaky shitheads as ganged up on me so yaller dog disgusting. But if you mean afore they done us both so mean, the answer would have to be no. I could tell you tales of a few years back that would curl your hair and likely get me hung. But there’s been no trouble here in Langtry since, say, the turn of the century. Me and my pals took care of all the bad hombres in these parts in the last century.”

Bean’s son came back in with the nicely tooled bus-cadero rig with an ivory handled ‘74 in each holster. “There you go,” the old man said. “Put the rig on and show us how nice she hangs, son.”

“It don’t hang good on me, Dad,” the younger Bean said. “I got some growing to do before I can keep this belt around my hips, buckled as tight as she’ll go.”

The old man held out a hand for the rig. “Well, you got as good a belt as I could have ‘em make for you, and sooner or later them guns will be yours to pack.”

He drew one of the guns from its holster, twirled it showboat by the trigger guard, and handed it butt first to Stringer. “Feel the balance. Ain’t it lovely? Lord knows how a fine-toned English lady could know so much about guns. But she must have. Colt never made a better-balanced pistol than the good old ‘74 Peacemaker.”

Stringer took the six-gun and held it up to the light to admire. He agreed it had nice balance. It did. It cost a lot less than Colt’s newer double-action. That was doubtless why Colt still made them, to be sold cheap. It was a good solid firearm for the general use of a man who wasn’t in much of a hurry. Few real gunfighters had packed the famous Peacemaker since both Billy the Kid and Jesse James had convinced a heap of unfortunates, over twenty years back, what an edge double-action had in a quick-draw contest.

He handed the handsome antique back to the old man, who of course made him examine its twin. “Pay no mind to that notch on the grips, son,” old Bean said. “I nicked her pounding on the table with her at a trial out front one time. Nobody but a total asshole would carve a notch for every man he gunned, like some say in them adventure books. You boys help me up and let’s go out back and shoot some tin cans, hear?”

His son grabbed his shoulders as he struggled to rise. “Damn it, Dad, it’s pure dark outside, even if you was well enough.”

“He’s right, Your Honor,” Stringer said. “You just now said you didn’t admire assholes. So how come you want to act like one?”

The old man subsided, albeit reluctantly. “Well, I do still feel a mite tuckered. But I ain’t really sick enough to just lie here and let things go to hell in a hack.”

“Yes you are,” Stringer said flatly. “Nothing’s going to hell or even purgatory right now. It’s getting late enough to be past your bedtime, even if you were fit as a fiddle.”

The sick old man sighed. “I may just doze at least till sunrise. It feels like I’ve been lying here, stove up, for a month of Sundays. I got the books to go over, bills to pay, and someone might need a marriage license or something.”

“Nobody’s fixing to marry up, and there ain’t no pending cases on your court docket, Dad,” his son said. “I’ve been taking care of the books for you. That order we sent for came in just today, and we’ve got it all put away, so—”

“Hold on,” the old man cut in, demanding, “How did you manage my signing for them supplies if I was in dreamland with Miss Langtry, like this other young rascal says?”

“They let me sign for the shipment, Dad,” his son said. “I told our supplier I was running the business while you was sick, and they allowed it was all right, seeing our credit has ever been good from El Paso to San Antone.”

The old man yawned. “Wonders sure never cease in these parts. But I always figured some good might come of teaching you kids to read and write.”

They were both too smart to answer. So after a time the old man looked asleep. His son moved to trim the lamp as Stringer eased out. But as the youth followed Stringer to the door, they both heard the old man mutter, “Hey, Junior?”

“I’m here, Dad. What can I do for you?” his son said.

The old man didn’t answer at first, then said, “I just wanted to say I sure love you little bastards. All four of you. But while a man with sons worries, a man with daughters prays. You look after Laura and Zulema, son. Pretty young gals have a hard enough row to hoe when they’re all-white. Don’t let nobody mess with my girls whilst I’m laid up back here.”

“I won’t, Dad,” the youth said. “Don’t you worry.”

“Shit,” Bean muttered, “it’s boys a father worries about,” and then he began to snore.

They eased on out, in silence, until they were back on the porch. Then Bean Junior heaved a vast sigh of relief. “Thank God you’re smart as me,” he told Stringer. “You know what he’d have done, or tried to, had you mentioned One Thumb Brown opening his own saloon, don’t you?”

“I did,” Stringer said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

The hotel was dark upstairs and down by the time Stringer got back to it. But somewhere in the night, mostly likely out back where the pulque was, someone was wanging hell out of a Spanish guitar, albeit the tune was an old Confederate marching song. Stringer groped his way up the dark stairs, found his own door and this time found the maid had locked it right. He unlocked it with his own key and stepped inside, hauling off his jacket with a yawn. It wasn’t all that late, or might not have been back in Frisco. But Langtry was a sleepy little wide spot in the road when the sun was shining, and it had been down now, for three or four hours.

As he undressed in the dark, he felt more bored than sleepy. For all the fuss Sam Barca had made about mysterious doings in Langtry, he and the younger Bean had talked themselves tired without coming up with much. Young Bean was sure the buzzards would move in to contest the running of the town, once the old man finished dying. But that didn’t strike Stringer as a mystery. It was a simple fact of life that buzzards always moved in when a man with any wealth worth mention passed away. Old Roy Bean didn’t have what Stringer considered a fortune worth fighting over. On the other hand, the less worldly gents in these parts might not share his notions of real wealth. They’d never gotten to interview some of the rich old boys Stringer had.

As he finished stripping to the buff, Stringer could just make out the vague outline of the big brass bedstead. He was tempted to test the springs with a belly flop, but decided to act grown-up and just get in. As he did so, he was glad he hadn’t landed with a running dive. There seemed to be a naked lady under the covers. From her soft breathing, she was sound asleep. But that could soon be fixed. As he took her in his arms, he chuckled and told her, “I don’t know why you came back, Pam. But we can talk about that later.”

Then he realized it couldn’t be Pam Kinnerton, for she was built shorter and softer. “What the hell?” he muttered.

She snuggled closer and murmured, “Forgive me. I did not mean for to fall asleep, but you were out so long, I could not stay awake.”

He gulped. “I didn’t know you were waiting up for me... Ramona?”

She yawned. “Si. Who else were you expecting for your money, you bad boy?”

He had to think before he said, “I was wondering to what I owed this honor. Did you really think that was why I left two bits for you, querida?”

“Si,” she answered simply, “what else would a man offer a woman a full day’s wages for? I confess I did not wish to accept it at first. But the other girls told me not to be such a goose. They said that in addition to being muy toro, you were working for El Patron, so—”

“Hold it,” he cut in, even as his free hand went on behaving with a mind of it’s own. His body didn’t want him to, but his conscience made him tell her, “I don’t work for Judge Bean. He may not be anyone’s patron much longer, in any case. As for the quarter I flipped you...”

“It was not just the dinero,” she cut in, reaching down between them to fondle him as fondly. “You are most toro, and it has been over a year since Los Rurales executed my husband, south of the border.”

So Stringer did what most normal men would have done about a lady in such distress, and as he entered her, Ramona gasped with pleasure and marveled, “Oh, you are muy toro indeed! Would you think me bold if I allowed myself to become passionate?”

He told her he wouldn’t mind at all, and he didn’t when she commenced to go loco en la cabeza under him, albeit it wasn’t her head she was moving so madly.

But after he’d gone crazy, himself, for what seemed too short a trip to heaven and back, Ramona sobbed, “Oh, have I satisfied you, and do you despise me, now?”

He answered no to both questions, and meant it. For any fool could tell she hadn’t been getting any lately. Professionals might move that good in bed with a man, of course. But had she been a professional, he’d have never caught her cleaning this room for him earlier, at two bits a day.

As he paused for his second wind but still held on to her, the pretty little mestiza giggled. “You wish for more?” she asked. “Oh, this is so romanticò.”

He nuzzled her neck just under the ear. “Si, pero un momento, por favor,” he said. “You don’t have to leave soon, do you?”

She draped a bare thigh over his side, either to cool her privates or heat his up some more. “I do not have to be up and about before Señor Brown wakes up, and he went to bed, drunk, with that horrid Rosalita.”

“He must have been drunk indeed,” Stringer said. “While we’re on the subject, has your boss, ah ...?”

“Pero no!” she gasped. “Neither of us would be that estupido. Do you take me for a fool who would sweep and mop all day for a man I was this nice to? Señor Brown knows better than to give his help such a hold over him, anyway.”

“Do tell? What does that make Rosalita?” he asked.

“A puta,” she told him simply. “She could not make a bed properly if she wanted to. Besides, as I said, he was drunk. Your people do not understand the way our pulque can sneak up on one, eh?”

“I do,” he said. “It’s got more of a kick than you’d expect warm spit to have, just tasting it the first time. But let’s not worry about your boss and that dancing gal if they’re not worried about us. How come your man got executed like that?”

She sighed. “As an example, Los Rurales said. They were searching for rebels. When they found no rebels, they took ten of the young men from our village for to shoot instead. I did not see the end of it. After they excite themselves by killing men, Los Rurales always rape all the women. Sometimes they kill them too. I did not wish for to be killed or even raped by a man who’d just shot my husband. So I ran away. For a time I just wandered, crying a little, and then I fell in with others running from Los Rurales or, worse yet, the vicious bandits they were after. One of the men had been up here to El Norte before. He said your people could be most rude, but that they seldom shot anyone for no reason. So we started north, and here I am.”

Stringer whistled softly, then kissed her gently. “I’d say that sure made me happy if I didn’t savvy how sad it must have made you all. El Presidente Diaz will have a lot to answer for, once the devil catches up with him. I’m glad I’m not the devil. I’d be sore put to figure out a punishment that fit half the crimes of that old ogre.”

“Diaz is never going to die,” she said. “It is well known among my people he is a brujo only a silver bullet can ever kill. He has been dictator of Mejico since long before I was born, and no doubt he will be dictator long after I am gone. Is it true you Anglos get to kill your presidentes every four years?”

He laughed. “Close enough. Lord knows what Teddy Roosevelt will ever do with his hands once his term is up. We don’t exactly shoot the bastards, Ramona. We just vote ‘em out when we’ve had enough of ‘em.”

“We used to be able to vote in Mejico,” she said. “That is, my grandfather did, one time, when Juarez was El Presidente. But then, one day, Juarez was dead, and when anyone asked for why Diaz was El Presidente, they got shot against a wall.”

He agreed politics could get rough in Mexico, or Mejico, to hear her tell it. Then they made love some more, and this time it was better.

Ramona wasn’t a bedroom athlete, and the old-fashioned way seemed to suit her fine. But she was still what most men hope to wind up in bed with and have to settle for crazy positions once they find they haven’t. She was simply a natural woman, perhaps a mite too dumb to worry about the cold gray dawn before it got there, and so, since she just plain liked it, she just plain did it. Hard work when she was on her feet had left her in fine shape to respond to a man too. Stringer tended as a rule to chase more sophisticated bed partners, since he liked intelligent pillow talk between times. But a man couldn’t hope to have everything. He was lucky her English was a mite better than his Spanish. Trying to carry on a conversation with a sweet little illiterate while coping with Spanish verb endings at the same time could be a chore.

So he was only half listening, say an hour later, when she still pattered on about events south of the border that neither of them could do a thing about, when suddenly he perked up and told her, “Hold it. Run that part about cockroaches past me some more, querida.”

She kissed his bare shoulder. “Silly. I was not speaking of real insects. Las Cucarachas is what this rebel band I was speaking of call themselves. A federate general who thought he was so smart once boasted he would stamp out all the mestizo rebels in the desert to the south as if they were mere insects. They killed him in an ambush instead, and now they like for to tease the government by asking them to send more big brave sol-dados to step on Las Cucarachas, see?”

“I think so,” he said. ‘“Yankee Doodle’ started out as a British drinking song poking fun at the Continental militia. What was that part about those cockroaches raiding along both sides of the border? I thought they were mad at Diaz.”

“Si, they would love for to get their hands on the old brujo. But some of the rebel leaders feel that since Los Estados Unidos is so friendly to Diaz, and since you people are so rich in any case—”

“Gotcha,” he cut in, adding with a sigh, “It’s surprising what some gents consider only right for a noble cause. But Las Cucarachas are asking for more trouble than the whole Mexican army and rural police combined have ever given ‘em, if they mess with Uncle Sam.”

“What can your Tio Sam do about it if they hit and run here and there along the border, eh?” she asked. “Nobody said a word about staying up here for to fight a gringo army, or even the Texas Rangers. No doubt they will simply cross the border some place it is not well-guarded, take what they can get in a quick foray into your country, and be back in my country long before anyone can do anything about it. The desert and dry hills just to the south are easy for to hide in, and Las Cucarachas know it better than any yanqui, see?”

He started to object, saw her point, and whistled softly. “Jesus, that would be something old Sam Barca would get more than one tip on. Word that something’s about to pop always gets out, even when nobody can say for sure what’s popping, and sure, there’s not a thing between here and Mexico but a shallow stream and some wetback-infested willows!”

She snuggled closer. “Kiss me some more. I like for to be kissed, and do not worry about Las Cucarachas, my toro. I will speak up for you when they come.”

“When?” he asked. “Don’t you mean if?”

It didn’t cheer him much to hear her answer: “Quien sabe? They may hit here, they may hit there. All I know is that this is a favorite border crossing because there is no real law here.”