CHAPTER SEVEN

Laura Bean didn’t think much of Ramona’s warning as she fed Stringer a breakfast of ham on tortilla, and beer, out on the porch of the Jersey Lily. As she sat on the steps beside him, Laura explained, “Border raiders have better places for to strike than here. For one thing, there is no banco here, and hardly enough dinero in the whole settlement to make it worth the risk. Even if there was, Las Cucarachas need the goodwill of the simple people lest they be betrayed to Los Rurales, and there is no better border crossing for a pobrecito in trouble than down that way, just across the tracks.”

He asked how come, and she said, “The Rio Brazo —or Rio Grande, as you people insist on calling it— oxbows close to the rail line here at Langtry. Anyone wading across east or west finds himself still in the open, with at least a few desert miles to run before he gets to the tracks; and when he gets to the tracks, crossing open ground, no passing train is about to stop. So my mother’s people do not consider crossing far from here.”

He nodded, washed down some ham and tortilla with cold beer, and said, “I was wondering why that shanty-town was there, seeing how some of the local Texans feel about it. It makes more sense to put up with rude manners than it might to chase a speeding freight across a cactus flat. From here, once they get their bearings, recent immigrants can hop a freight going most anywhere, with all trains stopping here for water. But how come the state of Texas hasn’t figured that out by now?”

Laura shrugged. “Papacito and his Ranger friends hold the federal immigration laws to be a damnyankee notion. Cheap labor is the grease that keeps the wheels of commerce turning in the southwest.”

Stringer nodded. “And with your papacito the only law in these parts, you might say Langtry serves as a handy safety valve for the state of Chihuahua too. But how do he and the Rangers feel about Texas cows migrating the other way?”

“Oh, that is against the law, of course,” she said. “My brother Roy says it is only because everyone knows Papacito is not well that we’ve had that spate of stock thieving. The last time we had such trouble, Papacito was able to ride, and unlike even some of the Rangers, he knows Chihuahua as well as most who live there. He used to run a cantina in Chihuahua, and during the War Between the States, he and some friends hid out there between raids on the damnyankees.”

Stringer washed down the last of his breakfast. “I doubt I’d lead a border raid around here, even if your dad was layed up serious. How’s he doing this morning, by the way?”

She told him the judge had been able to get down a good breakfast, and that while still weak, he seemed to have shaken off the fever. She said, “It’s funny, when he was raging with fever, we could hardly keep him in bed. Now that he’s feeling better, he just wants to sleep.”

“That’s not funny,” Stringer said. “It’s a good sign. Neither that beating nor galloping pneumonia could have made a man his age feel like chopping cord wood. What are the rest of you kids up to this morning? You seem to be minding the store on your lonesome.”

She told him little Zulema was out back in the stable, tending the ponies, while young Roy and Sam had caught a dawn local to the county seat, to deal with some buzzards.

When he asked her what she meant, she said, “We’ve had a time holding things together with Papacito sick. Some old skinflinty banker keeps pestering us about some money we don’t know about, and just the other day Roy had to run off a survey team he and Sam caught laying out city lots on our land, without even asking.”

Stringer finished the last of his beer and set the bottle aside, “Buzzards may be too polite a term. I’ve a fair head for figures and I know a little law, Laura. I reckon I’ve time to go over the books for you, if you want me to, before I leave.”

She shook her head. “Papacito has always kept most of his dealings, and even laws he can’t find in the one lawbook he owns, sort of private, in his own head. Roy and Sam took a shoebox of scribble-scrabbles they gathered over to the county seat. Roy says if some lawyer he knows can’t help us, it might be time to gather the clan together. That’s what Papacito likes to call getting all the old boys who might owe him together. None of them seem to be named Bean, though. Sometimes Papacito talks sort of odd.”

“I follow his drift,” Stringer said. “How big a bunch do your brothers figure they might need, or more important, how big a gathering do they think they can count on?”

“We don’t know. Uncle Will Slade was last seen headed for Fort Stockton on Ranger business. Not too many of the old-timers Papacito used to ride with are left, and them left are getting on in years as well. But Roy figures we can count on say a dozen, including sons of the forty-or-so Papacito used to have backing his play.” Then, being careful not to look at him, Laura asked, “When were you planning on leaving, seeing you said something about leaving, Mr. MacKail?”

Stringer reached for his makings. “It’s not written on stone by the Lord,” he explained, “but I was figuring on catching that late-afternoon westbound express, unless I tripped over a new lead worth wasting another day on.” She turned back to him, looking hurt. “I don’t mean coming here and meeting you all was a waste of time, honey,” he quickly added. “I got a lot of local color to add to the piece I’ll be doing on your father and this little town of his, sooner or later. It’s just that my editor expected more of a story than there seems to be here. So while I admire Langtry immense, I can’t see staying here forever.”

She told him to do whatever he had a mind to, picked up his empty bottle, and flounced inside, slamming the screen door harder than usual. He finished rolling his smoke, lit it, and got up to mosey back to the hotel. He knew he’d have hurt the sweet little thing more if he’d told her the likely publication date of the piece he’d be doing on her father. He hoped it might still be a spell. He knew Sam Barca would only run it as an obit, once the old man was gone. Judge Roy Bean had used up his space rates as a living legend. Unless he did something new, like dying, nobody was about to run another rehash of his two-thirds bullshit years as the benevolent bully of a tiny town. Hanging around any longer, waiting for the old man to die or get better, would have made Stringer a buzzard, as he saw it. He’d just type up the obit when he got back to his Remington Grasshopper, and save it until they got the last important date by news service wire. Stringer didn’t want to be here as an eyewitness.

He could see, just about as clearly, what came next if the old man got better for a while. The pretyped obit would still work as well a few years on. Up and about, the old judge would just go on coping with the changing times as best he could in his peasant-cunning way. Stringer sincerely hoped the slicker rogues of the new century wouldn’t screw Bean’s kids out of every nickel the old man might leave them. But he was a newspaperman, not a Don Quixote, even if he’d had the time to hang about Langtry that long. The old man’s boys were tough, and his girls were pretty. All but Zulema were almost full-grown. They could make it if they had to. It wasn’t his fault they’d likely have to.

When he got to the hotel, he noticed his kit bag in the dust at the foot of the wooden steps. One Thumb Brown was seated on the top step. The Double W rider called Sunny Jim was lounging in the open doorway, one casual hand on the grips of the holstered six-gun he’d strapped on over his shotgun chaps. The black silk shirt and matching ten-gallon hat he wore hinted at how pleased Sunny Jim seemed to be about himself. It was just as well he had himself as an open admirer. His smirky face was sort of ugly.

Stringer approached to conversational range, stopped to stare morosely down at his possibles, and asked what they might be doing in the street. “I don’t want you staying here no more, MacKail,” the hotel owner and pulque dispenser said. “I reckon you know why.”

Stringer could think of several reasons. It would have been rude to mention Ramona’s name in her absence, so he just said, “It’s a free country, and your hotel. I found the bedsprings sort of noisy, anyhow. But it’s the usual custom to hand a guest’s baggage across the counter, and by the way, I think you owe me three dollars. I paid you five in advance, not knowing how long I’d be here. I only spent a buck’s worth in your jingle bed, but I’ll allow we’ve at least started a second day of your gracious hospitality, and I’ve always been a sport. So why don’t you just give me my change, pick up my possibles and hand ‘em to me like I was a white man, and we’ll say no more about it.”

One Thumb Brown shook his head. “Not hardly. I don’t give rebates when guests check out early. As for your damned bag, you’re lucky to get it at all. So pick it up and git. We don’t cotton to your kind in Langtry, MacKail.”

From the doorway, behind him, Sunny Jim added, “We don’t even want your kind in Texas. There’s an eastbound combo stopping here just before noon. Be on it, MacKail.”

Stringer ignored him. “How come this cowhand seems to be working for you, innkeeper?” he asked One Thumb Brown, “Cows are about the only kind of customers you weren’t entertaining out back last night.”

Brown didn’t answer. Sunny Jim stepped clear of the doorway, dropping into a gunfighting crouch on the porch. “I ain’t working for old One Thumb. I’m his pal, and you ain’t. So do you mean to take our advice and choo-choo out of here alive, or would you rather I showed you how our graveyard for nosy strangers got started?”

Stringer was pleased to hear this nonsense wasn’t about poor little Ramona, after all. But he wasn’t smiling as he told them both, “I hardly ever board an east-bound when I may be heading out to the west coast. I stress the may part because, until just now, I was planning on catching the next westbound express.”

“All right,” Sunny Jim said, grudgingly. “I reckon we’ll let you stay in Langtry that long, only take your nosy ass out of sight till then.”

“Sure, go on back to the Jersey Lily and play with them Mex kids if you like,” One Thumb Brown chimed in.

“I don’t think you boys have been paying any attention,” Stringer said. “I won’t be boarding that westbound, or any other train, until I figure out what’s going on around here.”

Sunny Jim sighed. “You’d best get outten our line of fire, One Thumb.”

Brown rose, his eyes riveted on Stringer’s gun hand as he crabbed off to one side, “Take it easy, now,” he muttered. “Nobody said nothing about fire!”

Stringer told Sunny Jim, “He’s worried about you burning his hotel down with that fake silk shirt. They’ve been known to blaze like hell when set alight by muzzle blast. You’d best come out a mite so we don’t damage any property.”

Sunny Jim did, starting to draw as he hit the bottom step. And then he froze, grinning sickly, as he found himself staring down the muzzle of Stringer’s S&W .38.

Sunny Jim’s gun hand flew off its roost like a spooked dove, even before One Thumb Brown sobbed, “No! Don’t do it! Can’t you take a little funning, MacKail?”

Stringer smiled thinly. “Sure I can. Your hired gun, here, is a bundle of laughs. Let’s have some real fun.” He holstered his six-gun again, adding, “Come on, Sunny Jim. Show us how funny you are. You got a gun, I got a gun, all God’s chillen got guns. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to play with me no more?”

Sunny Jim gulped hard. “I’m only good with a gun, Mr. MacKail,” he pleaded. “This lying son of a bitch never told me you was magical!”

“I never said nothing about nobody gunning nobody,” One Thumb hastily blurted, “and I sure hope you can see I ain’t armed, MacKail.”

Stringer nodded grimly. “That’s how come I might let this dumb cowboy live, for now. You were the one with the notion to run me out of town. You were the one who recruited this poor dumb bastard to do the fighting for you because you’re just too shit-eating yaller dog to do your own fighting. Are you paying any attention to this, Sunny Jim?”

“I sure am,” the scared-skinny showboater answered, “and you do have a way of putting things so anyone can understand you. Can I go now? I got a heap of chores waiting on me out to the spread.”

“Just so you don’t duck inside,” Stringer said. “Walk around to wherever you left your pony by the cheery daylight of this grand spring day. Then don’t come back to town until they tell you I’m not using it anymore.”

Sunny Jim lit out, chaps flapping, not looking back. One Thumb Brown reached in his pants with one hand as he picked up the kit bag with the other, saying, “You do have a persuasive way of putting things. Here’s your damn possibles and all your money back. Does that leave us square?”

Stringer took the five dollars and the strap of his kit bag in his left hand, leaving his gun hand still free. “Almost,” he said. “I’d still like to know who’s behind my sudden popularity around here.”

Brown wouldn’t meet Stringer’s eyes. “It ain’t you, personal,” he muttered. “The boys just didn’t take kindly to a stranger getting in so thick with that crazy old Bean and his half-breed brood. The greasers around here have been spoiled intolerable by a Mex-loving judge, and his uppity Roy, Junior and the boys was sort of hoping, once the old man finished dying—”

“Old Roy was sitting up this morning.” Stringer cut in. “You might tell your gutless friends, for me, that either way, Roy Junior has at least one Texas Ranger he calls Uncle. So even if you ran me out of town, messing with the Beans could add up to a lot of noise.” He started to turn away, then paused. “I don’t run so good.” he told the hotel keeper. “The next time you mess with me, innkeeper, do yourself a favor and arm yourself with something more serious than Sunny Jim.”

Then, having had his say, Stringer turned to head back up the dusty street to the Jersey Lily. As he strode up the center of it, the kit bag flung over one shoulder by its strap, the small settlement seemed mighty quiet, considering it was usually open for business at this hour. A lace curtain moved in a window as he passed. But although the blacksmith shop was gaping wide open, with a fire glowing in its forge, neither the smith nor the old boys who usually loafed around to watch him work seemed to be on the premises. Mayhaps they’d all gone back to the outhouse at the same time, Stringer thought with a wolfish smile.

When he got back to the Jersey Lily, he found Laura and her kid sister Zulema hauling empty packing crates out on the porch. As he joined them, Laura said, “I thought you said you were leaving.”

“I thought I was,” he replied. “You gals look like you could use some help.”

Laura shook her head. “This crate’s the last of them, for now. We usually have less trouble getting rid of them. Our friends from shanty town salvage crates and kegs as fast as we can empty them. But even the Mexican household help seems to be missing this morning. They must be having a wedding or a funeral or something going on down by the river.”

“No they don’t,” little Zulema said. “I asked Tia Maria where she was off to when I saw her leaving with her bundle earlier. She` said I was too young to understand. Do you understand, Señor MacKail?”

“They’re scared,” Stringer said. “How’s your father feeling this morning, Miss Zulema?”

The girl brightened. “Perking up some. He’s read the morning papers and keeps pestering me to fetch him a cigar.”

“Don’t you dare,” Laura said. “He can have some tequila for his coughing, but not one durned old cigar until he coughs up the last of them oysters, hear?”

Zulema pouted her lower lip. “I told him that my ownself. Just because I’m little don’t make me stupid, does it?”

Stringer headed off the dispute between big and little sister by telling Laura, “I just got evicted from my hotel. I’d be sort of obliged if you’d let me leave this kitbag with you until I find another place to bunk.”

“You have a place to bunk,” Laura said, “if you don’t mind the smell of ponies. Zulema, break out a tarp and some blankets and show our guest to the hayloft over the stable, hear?”

Stringer hesitated. Then Zulema had him by one hand and seemed to be hauling him inside. As she bustled behind a counter, Stringer asked what kind of money they were talking about.

“Don’t talk like a stuck-up Anglo,” the young gal said. “You ain’t a customer.”

Stringer smiled softly down at her, one part of him touched while yet another asked him what on earth he thought he was out to prove. He’d been sent here to get a story, not to take on the troubles of a clan that had apparently worn out its welcome in the town Roy Bean had founded. He wasn’t even sure who might be in the right or in the wrong. Even if he had been, he was hardly a lawman. He was likely, at best, a stubborn fool who just hated to look as if he was running, even when he’d been planning to leave in the first damned place.

The girl rose with a bulky bundle of bedding, and pointed with her little chin at the burlap drapes. “We can go out that way, through the back.”

He agreed but insisted on taking the tarp and blankets from her. As she led the way, they passed the open door of old Roy Bean’s bedroom. The old-timer was propped up on his pillows, his eyes closed. Stringer didn’t know whether he was dead, asleep, or just resting his eyes.

He decided it would be wrong to disturb the poor old cuss in any case. Bean couldn’t tell him much he didn’t already know, and what he did know would no doubt add to the worries of a sick old man.

Out back, there was more to the Jersey Lily than expected. A string of smaller outbuildings faced the back of the main structure across a pole corral. A re-muda of nine ponies eyed Stringer and the girl warily as they passed. None of them were blue-ribbon stock, but all nine looked young and frisky, with a couple showing Spanish Barb bloodlines.

As if she’d read his mind, Zulema said, “They’ve sure been getting fat and spoiled since Papacito gave up riding them too often. Us kids take ‘em out for a run now and again, when we’re not busy with other chores. But to tell the truth, we just have too big a remuda for the four of us, and not one cow to chase.”

Stringer started to ask why they didn’t sell off some of them. But he didn’t. “Your father has a good eye for horseflesh,” he said. “I see he’s built a plank awning above yonder watertrough as well.”

“Roy, Junior and Sam did that,” Zulema said. “Papacito has always admired horse and woman-flesh more than he’s felt up to pampering either. That shade makes it safer to leave ‘em out here most of the time. So you won’t be bothered all that much by flies above the stalls, see?”

He did, once they’d climbed the ladder to the hayloft. As the girl spread his bedding on the sweet-scented alfalfa hay, he felt sort of wistful about old Pam and Ramona. For this would have made as nice a love nest as that more sordid hotel room. But, of course, he could hardly invite Ramona up here, even if he knew how to get in touch with the chambermaid without getting her fired or worse.

He tossed his possibles on the hay beside the bedding, and let Zulema lead him back through the Jersey Lily. As they passed the old man’s open door a second time, Roy Bean called out to them. They turned back to find the old-timer sitting up in his nightshirt with his bare feet on the floor.

He nodded at Stringer. “I thought that was you before,” he said. “What’s going on around here, dammit? The girls say my boys went to the county seat to see a lawyer. Only they can’t, or won’t tell me why. I don’t need no damned lawyer. I got the statute book of the state of Texas right here. Or at least I did. A man can’t find nothing when he has two damned house-proud she-males picking up after him all the damned time.”

“I wasn’t here when your sons decided to seek some legal advice, Your Honor.” Stringer said. “But since we’re on the subject, I reckon it’s because you don’t go in for keeping records all that much. So, with you laid up—”

“I ain’t laid up no more,” Bean cut in. “And I don’t need to scribble-scrabble everything down. My business ain’t complicated. I buy cheap and sell dear, like any other businessman.”

“That well may be, Your Honor. But your kids may not be as smart as you. The boys were confused when they saw somebody surveying yet another building lot on your land, someone else’s land, or whatever. You don’t seem to have deed-one to any land on your premises. It’s no business of mine, but sooner or later you might want to tell your kids, at least, what might or might not be coming to them should, ah, something happen to you.”

Roy Bean shrugged. “I built this here Jersey Lily sort of informal, just off the railroad’s right-of-way strip. I never thought I’d need a normal title to a patch of open desert until I noticed others crowding in on me. Then I naturally filed a homestead claim. Proved it, too, years ago. Nobody can claim my Jersey Lily. I forget where I put the deed, but it’s on file somewhere. Land office, I reckon.”

Stringer nodded. “Roy, Junior might have saved him and Sam a trip if you’d told them that before you got too sick to. I take it you filed the usual quarter-section claim?”

Old Bean shook his white head. “Hell, no, I claimed a whole section, seeing you’re allowed to when the land is pure desert. I reckon there must be close to a third of the original claim left. Maybe half. I’d have to walk the corners to be sure.”

Stringer frowned. “Hold it. Are you saying you’ve sold off some of your proven claim, and that you don’t have any of this on paper?”

The old man looked annoyed. “Hell,” he protested, “the old boys I sold lots to have their damned old deeds. I said it’s all filed proper at the land office. I had to sell lots here and about, mostly across the street, to get some other businesses going in my town. Maybe I sold a few more acres now and again when things was slow and I had bills to pay. We had us a hell of a business depression when the price of beef went bust back in’87, you know. Lots of the old boys who first settled these parts went under all the way and had to sell out total. But one way or the other, I’ve always managed to hang on to the Jersey Lily.”

Stringer whistled softly. “Your oldest boy was right. You need a lawyer. No offense, Your Honor, but for even a rural J.P., you do have a casual attitude toward proper legal records.” By this time Zulema had wandered off to help her elder sister out front, so Stringer felt safe to ask, softly, “Speaking of records, do your heirs have any papers proving they may be legitimate, or, for that matter, U.S. citizens?”

The old man scowled up at him. “What kind of a fool question is that to ask a man about his own dear offspring? Of course I married up with their mama legal. I always marry Mex gals legal. As the only J.P. for miles, I am empowered by the state of Texas to perform all the wedding ceremonies I want.”

“Ohboy, does Texas allow bigamy?” asked Stringer with a weary smile.

“Hell, no, do I look like a Mormon? I never yet married one gal without divorcing the one I might have married earlier. As a judge, I get to handle all such matters in these parts.”

Stringer sighed. “Like I said, your oldest boy went to see a lawyer, and what the hell you’re still alive. So I don’t feel up to arguing West Texas law with a man of your experience of the same.” It would have been rude to say what he really thought of the mess the old man had made of things, even if Roy Bean had been able to understand him.