It was now mid-afternoon, but not as hot, for the sun had been ambushed by some unseasonable summer clouds—thunderheads, from the way they growled as well as looked. He was glad he had the rain slicker in his gladstone as he trudged toward the railroad tracks with it in his left hand. He spotted the water tower before he spotted anything that looked like a Majestic Hotel, and when he did see the once-gilt letters across the false front, he had to laugh. For while the frame structure was two stories high, sort of, it was too rinky-dink to qualify as noble, and to hell with Her Majesty.
Once inside, though, he was pleasantly surprised by the smell of the small dark lobby. Someone had used a lot of lemon oil on the woodwork, and there was a big cut-glass bowl of fresh-cut red roses on the check-in counter, stinking pretty as anything.
The severely handsome woman behind the counter didn’t seem to admire him half as much, though. He figured her for about forty, depending on how life had treated her. Her dark brown hair was bunned up so tight atop her skull he figured it had to be smoothing at least a few wrinkles from her priss-lipped face. She’d have still been sort of pretty if the hotel business hadn’t no doubt given her just cause to regard guests dressed as cowboys with considerable dismay.
He said, “I know I’m not wearing a proper tie, and I agree this gladstone don’t look loaded with treasure, ma’am. So before you tell me all your rooms are chock full of less uncouth gents, I’d best show you my credentials and lay some money on you in advance.”
Her expression didn’t change until she’d had time to admire his press pass and a portrait Andrew Jackson. Then her face got almost human as she asked, “How long will you be staying with us, Mr. MacKail? I notice you spell that M-A-C, rather than M-C.”
He said, “I’m not sure how long I’ll have to stay here in Holbrook, ma’am. You just tell me when I’ve used up that twenty and I’ll give you some more. My name’s always been spelled that way because that’s the way it was spelled in the old country, which was Lochaber, County Inverness.”
She actually managed a frosty smile as she took down his key and said, “I’ll show you to your room, then. My name is MacLean, Margaret MacLean, County Argyll, by the way.”
That didn’t surprise Stringer. Nobody else ever seemed to worry about whether it was Mac or Mc. She was a long way from a wee lassie as he followed her up the narrow stairs to the top floor. But she sure hour-glassed nicely under that starched white blouse and chocolate brown skirt that buttoned down the side in the new and somewhat shocking fashion, even if you couldn’t see anything.
She led him into a small but clean room with a mighty slanting ceiling. He’d noticed out front that the building was only built square in front. He’d given up trying to figure out false fronts. They never fooled anyone, and had to be more expensive than honest carpentry. He put down his gladstone and said the quarters suited him just fine.
She said, “Well, I’d best get downstairs and wait for the 2:47. I know nobody ever gets off that train, but you never know.”
He nodded and said he could see a lady in the hotel business would have to be up on her railroad timetables. She smiled sort of wistfully and said, “That’s not where I learned about railroad matters. I used to be a Harvey Girl. But what am I saying? You can’t be old enough to remember the Harvey Girls.”
He suspected she was hoping that wasn’t true. So he said, “Sure I remember the Harvey Girls along the Santa Fe, Miss Margaret. They served coffee and grub all along the right of way until the Pullman dining cars got invented.” Then, as he counted in his head and saw how the years added up, he gallantly added, “I hope you won’t get sore. But if you was ever a Harvey Girl, you sure must have signed on for the last season, younger than they should have hired you. For you look more like a Gibson Girl than any Harvey Girl.”
She looked flustered and told him he was just an old fibber, adding, “My friends call me Madge. I kill when I hear Maggie. I have to go now. Make yourself at home, and don’t you go flattering my wallpaper, even if you are a Lochaber man!”
He didn’t see fit to argue that he considered himself a Mother Lode rider, to the extent he worried about such notions. When she left, he proceeded to get comfortable, and found himself wondering why some folk worried so about their old countries. Perhaps, having grown up on a spread where all the neighbors had been either Scotch or Mexican, and knowing he was Americano, he’d just naturally assumed that all Americans were his kind of folk. He hadn’t really noticed, until he’d gone off to Cuba with the Rough Riders as a young and green war correspondent, how many odd kinds of white folk and even colored folk called themselves Americans.
When he got down to his socks, jeans, and undershirt, Stringer sat on the narrow but comfortable brass-bound bed to roll a smoke and try to get back to serious matters. He didn’t care what kind of a name Owens was, even if it did sound Welsh. He hadn’t come all this way to study the old sheriff’s family tree. The story, if there was a story, lay in how he’d been crooked out of office—and just as important, why?
It was a pure fact of nature that most cowtowns tended to be run by Republicans, as merchants and bankers tended to be, and that just the same, most such communities were content with a Democrat county sheriff to police the surrounding countryside, which was almost always solid Democrat country, here in the southwest. Both parties knew that made good sense. The notorious gun fight at the OK Corral, which had really taken place in a vacant lot across the street, until editors like Sam Barca had thought that less interesting, never would have happened had the voters of Tombstone not elected two separate and surly cliques of rival parties to police the infernal town at the same time.
That confusion had been settled back about the time this fool town was being born. They’d had the sense to put in a sheriff who spoke the same politics as the cowhands he stopped from shooting up the business establishments owned mostly by Damn-Yankee Republicans, Mormons, and other natural targets of the Texican yahoo. Owens had done a good job for a long time. So something about Navajo County had changed, a lot, if even the local Democrats had voted him out.
Stringer started to light his Bull Durham. A big fat crystal globe crashed down from the sky to the hitherto dry sill of the one open window and spattered all over him, snuffing his match.
He said, “Aw, hell,” and rose to close the window as it began to rain fire and salt outside. He was facing the water tower across the way as he did so. So he saw the dark figure atop it, training a rifle his way, and ducked just in time.
As Stringer hit the rug a big buffalo round—from the sound of it—smashed through one pane to shower him with powdered glass and let the rain come in even more. Stringer cursed, rolled to the chair he’d draped his gun rig over, and crawled back to the window to return the compliment.
He reached up to slide the window open again, braced for a mighty hard slap on the wrist. When nothing like that happened, he risked his head above the sill as far as his cheekbones, as one had to in order to find a target at times like these. But he saw no target now. It was even hard to make out the water tower, with the desert cloudburst waving silvery veils of downpour back and forth. When he did get a clear view, during a shift of the wind, he saw nobody up there.
The door opened behind him. Stringer almost shot poor old Madge before he saw who’d circled behind him. He snapped, “Get down, damn it!” and when, instead, she came closer, demanding to know what on earth he was doing to her very own property, he kicked her ankles out from under her with a fortunately bootless foot.
She sure yelled a lot, for a gal who couldn’t be that hurt, as she landed almost on top of him. Her head was still above the level of the windowsill. He grabbed her hair bun with his free hand and shoved her face to the floor as she proceeded to beat her rug with her fists and yell rape, murder, or both.
He shook her to shut her up and hissed, “I ain’t out to rape you, no offense. We’re under fire from that tower across the way. Or we was, until just recent. Lay still while I figure out who may or may not be shooting at us.”
She propped herself up on one elbow, staring about in wonder at the glass and raindrops on her rug as she moaned, “Oh, Lord, my grandmother often warned us about Lochaber men. You haven’t been under my roof a full hour and you’ve wrecked the place!”
He smiled reassuringly at her. It was easier to smile at her now that her soft brown hair was hanging down like that and she’d somehow lost the two top buttons of her blouse. He said, “I never done it. But I’ll clean it up and even pay for a new pane. Our more important chore at the moment is to stay alive long enough to worry about housekeeping chores. Did anyone come in off that last train?”
She said, “No. We’re all alone here. There are no other guests. But surely help is on the way by now, if you heard gun shots.”
He said, “I heard one. Did you?”
She gave a little moan and answered, “No. Not that I noticed above that storm outside and— Oh, Stuart, what will we ever do to save ourselves?”
He said, “Nothing. We don’t have to do anything, whether he’s gone or taking one hell of a shower bath right now. He missed his one good chance as I was sitting near an open window like a fool. I’m a lot harder to hit once I know someone’s shooting at me. He likely knows that, too, by now. His best chance to get away will be during this gully washer, with nobody else out of doors.”
She asked, “What if they decide that makes this a good time to move in on us... and who on earth are they?”
He said, “If I knew the answer to either of your questions, I’d know what’s going on. They’re not after us. I told you they were shooting at me. They wouldn’t have even known which window to shoot at if I hadn’t been too addled by the heat to think straight after I’d been told someone wanted me out of town or dead.”
She glanced up through the wet glass and said, “Well, it’s going to cool off a lot before we see the sun again. The wind is from the east, and in these parts that means the thunderbird is serious. By the time this storm lets up it may be too late for anyone decent to be out and about. The streets of Holbrook are mighty quiet after dark when the herd’s not in town.”
As if to show how noisy the streets of Holbrook could get, a thunderbolt sizzled down, close enough to shake the whole hotel, and she clutched at him to bury her face against his undershirt, gasping, “Oh, Stuart, I’m so scared! Do something!”
He patted her back to comfort her, saying, “Steady, now. I don’t think anyone yellow enough to snipe from such uncertain range is likely to move in on an armed enemy, on the alert and forted up. But it might be a good notion to be fort up better. They have this room figured. Are the doors downstairs locked?”
She said, “My back door’s bolted good. I don’t cotton to tramps stealing grub from my kitchen pantry while I’m minding the front. The door you came in by is shut, I hope, but of course it’s not locked. I have enough trouble getting anyone to stay here as it is.”
He said, “Bueno. Here’s what we’ll do. First we check out of this room and into one that covers the stairwell better. Then I’ll go down and bar the front door. Coming in, front or back, they’ll have to make some noise, and should they be dumb enough to come at us up that narrow stairway, it’ll be my turn to make some noise, see?”
She did. She started to rise. He hauled her back down and said, “Crawling only takes a little longer, and it can be a lot better for your health. You go first and let me cover your rear.”
She did, laughing like hell, as if he’d said something funny.
As her well padded but shapely rump swung out of sight around the doorjamb, Stringer gathered the things he’d shucked out of and followed. It seemed safe to stand up in the hallway. So he did. He saw she was still on her hands and knees as she moved into the other room at the head of the stairs. He tossed his things in after her and moved down the stairs in his stocking feet, gun in hand. It only took him a few seconds to bar the heavy front door on the inside. Some of its weight was thick glass. It looked harder to bust than the front window beside the door. Either way, anyone that serious about busting in would have to make considerable noise.
Having done what he could down below, Stringer glanced out through the door glass to see the street out front was doing its damnedest to look like a river. The muddy water was ankle deep and trying to figure some place to go as the heavy rain kept frothing it deeper. He smiled crookedly, said, “Drown, you sons of bitches!” and went back upstairs to see how old Madge was making out.
He stopped in the doorway to stare down at the somewhat bigger bedstead in the somewhat bigger room, somewhat confused. For his landlady lay under the sheets, her hair now completely unbound and draped becomingly down on her bare shoulders, while her Gibson Girl blouse and skirt lay on the rug near his own carelessly tossed duds, as if she’d shucked in a hurry. He saw no underwear. She was likely still wearing it.
He said, “Well, this is sure an odd time to be taking a siesta.”
She smiled invitingly up at him and said, “Get under these covers with me. It’s gotten so cool and clammy everywhere else that you’re just asking for a chill in that undershirt, you poor boy.”
He considered his shirt and jacket on the floor between them. Then he wondered why anyone would want to consider a stupid move like that. He chuckled and said, “I admire your sense of timing. Has it occurred to you we’re supposed to be under siege right now?”
She said, “Pooh, there’s room for your six-gun as well as the two of us in this bed, and in any case, they’d have come by now if they really meant to come, right?”
He said he guessed so, and left the door ajar as he moved over to join her. He still had his jeans, socks, and undershirt on as he slid under the covers with her. He found her waiting clad in nothing but her high-button shoes and black silk stockings. Not sure just how else one might get in bed with a naked lady, he put his six-gun on the bed table and took her in his arms. He could tell it was the proper move with such an unusual landlady when she swarmed all over him at once, kissing and scratching as she tore at his pants to get them out of the way. He helped her. Most men would have by this time, even if he was still surprised if not as confused about her notions of forting up against the rest of the world. Then they let the rest of the world worry about its own damn self for a long sweet time as the raindrops drummed on the slanting roof above the bed and the bed made considerable noise of its own beneath their tightly entwined and grinding flesh.
When they finally had to stop to catch their second winds, she moaned, “Oh, that was heavensome, darling. But don’t take it out. Please don’t take it out. It’s been so long since I’ve had anything that deep in my poor old worn-out frame.”
He didn’t doubt a gal would have to be sort of hard up to make the first move so direct. He knew she wanted him to call her a liar about her poor old worn-out frame, so he moved in it teasingly as he said, “Come on, Madge. You’re built like a teenager and you know it.” Which, in fact, was the simple truth. For though her face still looked a mite old for him, even after all that kissing, time’s cruel teeth hadn’t gotten at her firm and satin-smooth body enough to notice yet.
She wrapped her long, still shapely legs around his waist, locking her high-button kid shoes atop his naked tailbone, and hugged him tighter everywhere as she moaned, “Oh, Jesus, when I think of the teenage years I wasted, I could cry. I came out here to work for Harvey as a virgin, Stuart. I was almost twenty-five when a no-good tin-horn gambler I’ll always remember with gratitude done me wrong.”
He started moving in response to her contractions as he told her, “I feel sort of grateful to him, too, right now. He sure broke you in mighty fine.”
She said, “Don’t talk dirty. I wasn’t sure I liked it this much the first time, and I cried fit to bust when that mean old sheriff ran him out of town.”
Stringer didn’t know why gals liked to confess more than any man might want to hear at times like these, and like most men, he found such conversation more distasteful than romantic. Then she said, “Once I felt less shy about romance, I started to get really good at it.”
He didn’t answer. For she was good at it indeed, and though he knew he shouldn’t be enjoying himself this much in such rough company, he felt it all the way down to his socks when they came together again.
But as sanity returned, as it ever must, Stringer rolled off and said, “Somebody ought to check that front door again, and I can see you’re not as interested.”
She told him he had a lovely body as he rose and moved out of the room and down the stairs to where he could see the front door. It was as securely barred as ever, and the flood water out front was now lapping at the plank walks. He rejoined Madge to say, “If this rain keeps up, they’ll have to come at us in a canoe. I hope you don’t have a cellar to worry about.”
She said she didn’t, and added, “This used to be the Harvey House when the world and me was younger. I had it hauled over from the tracks in one piece, after Harvey went out of business.”
Then she started to cry.
Stringer put the .38 back on the table and climbed in to comfort her, asking her what was wrong as he held her now trembling body close, in a more brotherly way than before.
She sobbed, “Oh, Stuart, time flows so swiftly by, and we get so little of it as our share. It seems like yesterday I came out here as a wide-eyed innocent, and I still don’t feel like the legend of the past I guess I really am.”
He kissed her gently and lowered them both to the pillows again as he said, “Hell, you’re not as ancient as the Butterfield Stage the Santa Fe put out of business. Time changes faster than it really passes, Madge. I deal in legends, more than I want to, thanks to a boss who can’t get enough of what he calls the old west. Looking back, things that lasted not much longer than a mayfly seem like historic eras. But they weren’t. They were just emergency measures. To hear old timers tell it, everyone who ever rode a horse west of the Mississippi rode for the pony express in the few short months it was in business. Now that the Harvey Girl era has been over a spell, folk think of you old timers as a sort of permanent fixture of a past that never was. But we both know that short-lived restaurant chain was little more than a quick-buck slicker’s clever notion that was too good to last.”
She sighed and said, “It was grand, while it lasted. It was mean of the railroad to start running dining cars just as we was getting to be famous and admired. Mr. Harvey was a decent boss who paid us fair wages and looked after us as if we was his own. He’d fire a girl if she got in trouble, or even fat. He told us we had standards to meet, and we met ’em. We kept ourselves neat and slung good hash. Ask any old timer and they’ll tell you the food on the dining cars has never been as good as the food we served, cheaper.”
He said, “I told you we live in changing times. Let’s talk of more important matters an old timer in these parts might know more than me about. You said your first boyfriend was run off by the sheriff. Would that have been Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens?”
She sniffed and said, “Of course. We never had no other sheriff, until recent. I was mad as anything when he ran off my gambling man. But fair is fair, and I have to say old Pear kept the lid on things in these parts, once he got a lid on it, I mean. Holbrook was a mighty wild little town when I first saw it. Pear got the job because nobody else was tough enough to want it. Nobody expected him to live twenty-four hours, let alone the almost twenty years he lasted. You see, he was a sort of sissy-looking gent in his younger days. He wore his hair longer than General Custer, even after Custer cut his own more fashionable and got killed for his trouble. They say Pear had been an Indian fighter, too, before he took up the law as his career. He dressed cow, but sort of fancy, with a hat brim big enough to run a toy train on, and silver conchos stuck all over him. But nobody laughed at him as much after he stopped a showdown between some Texas hands and a bunch of Mex vaqueros by standing in the middle, alone, and telling one and all he’d gun the first son of a bitch who went for his guns. He talked that rough to everyone. When anyone said he was a son of a bitch, Pear pistol-whipped impartial, be it Tex, Mex, Mormon, or Gentile, until everyone admired him for his fairness. They say he was the first county official who ever kept proper books, too. Old Judge Wattron, who was either a J.P., the town marshal, or a druggist, depending on the time of day, stole everything that wasn’t nailed down before they voted him out.”
Stringer asked, “Was Owens accused of such dishonest habits before or during the last election?”
She shrugged her bare shoulder against him and said, “No. Even the Republicans allowed old Pear was upright and true. They just said it was time for a change, and I reckon a lot of folk must’ve thought so too. I’d have voted for Pear, if women were allowed to vote. Women liked him. Not this way—he never messed with any of us. But we could see he was a gent of the old school, and he made it safe for us to go shopping, even when the herd was in town. Nobody ever got fresh with gals while old Pear was running things in this county.”
Stringer remembered another lady who didn’t seem to admire old Madge had told him much the same thing. He muttered, “Sam Barca could be on to something. A popular lawman gets rooked out of office, and when outsiders ask how come, they get shot at.”
She began to fondle him teasingly as she said, “I think the rain’s letting up. We’d better get this sweet thing up again before this hotel has to get back in business.”
He thought that was a grand notion. But just as she’d kissed her way down his bare belly far enough to really matter, they both heard someone pounding on the door downstairs. Madge said, “Damn. We’ll have to start from scratch, later tonight. For I know that knock of old.”
She tossed the covers aside and rolled over him, inspiringly, to start dressing with astounding speed. As Stringer sat up with gun in hand, she said, “It’s not them. It’s him. Nate Ryan, the town marshal. Nobody else knocks so bossy. I’d best go down and see what he wants.”
As she left, pinning her hair back up on the fly, Stringer swung his socks to the rug and began to haul his own duds on just in case. He was glad he had when, a few moments later, Madge reappeared in the doorway with the brass-badged Ryan. The town law said, “I’ll take the .38, now, and this time I really mean it, MacKail. I’m here to arrest you for the murder of Blue Streak Bendix.”
Stringer frowned and said, “I’m sorry he died. But murder is putting it a mite strong, Nate. I put that bullet in him in self-defense.”
Ryan said, “Not the one in his head that killed him. The doc said Bendix was sedated unconscious, flat on his back in bed, when you crept into the clinic and blew his brains out!”
Stringer whistled tunelessly and said, “I’m sorry about that too! I wanted to interview him some as soon as he was fit to give interviews. When did all this happen?”
The lawman said, “During the storm that just passed over, of course. Nobody downstairs heard the shot. What did you do, wait for a handy thunder clap?”
Stringer shook his head and said, “It wasn’t me. I was here at this hotel from the first raindrop to the last.”
“Can you prove it?” asked the lawman.
Stringer glanced at Madge, who was now managing to look as starchy as ever. She said, “He’s telling it true, Nate. I stand ready to swear under oath I never saw him leave the premises since he checked in, well before the storm.”
It wasn’t good enough. Nate Ryan shrugged and said, “With all that wind and thunderation, he could have snuck out and back in easy enough. The clinic’s just down the street, an easy dash for any man, and the doc says Blue Streak was shot twice, with a .38. So with all due respect to a lady’s hearing during a thunderstorm—”
“Oh, for heavens sake, we were in bed together at the time of the killing,” she cut in, red-faced but head held high.
The town law’s jaw dropped. He stared past her at the rumpled bed. Then he gulped and asked, “Would you be willing to swear to that under oath, ma’am?”
She sniffed and said, “If I have to. I don’t want to, but I’d rather be shamed than see an innocent man hanged.”
The brass badge looked uncertainly at Stringer and asked what he had to say about all this. Stringer said, “Nothing. Pay no mind to her. I’d confess to a crime I didn’t commit before I’d let a lady dishonor herself on my account.”
Nate Ryan let them wait a long tense time before he nodded and said, “I reckon I would too. So suffice it to say I see no need to doubt the word of another gent. If you was here at the time Blue Streak was murdered, I can’t hardly arrest you for it, can I?”
Stringer gravely held out his hand and they shook on it. Then Nate said, “Aw, mush. Now I got to go scout up any sign the real killer might have left.”
Stringer said, “Try around the water tower across the way,” and when Nate asked him why, he explained, “Someone pegged a shot at me from there, just as the storm started. He might or might not have left signs that all that rain couldn’t wash away. I don’t suspect he was shooting at me just because he took me for a fat old quail. Someone didn’t want me asking Blue Streak any questions. It seems likely that failing to get me, they had to shut Blue Streak up as best they knew how.”
Nate said, “That makes sense, to a point. But the dormer window in this room don’t face no water tower and—Never mind. I’d best go have a look anyway.”
As he turned to clomp downstairs alone, Madge turned to her younger guest to sob, “Did you really mean that, about me being a lady?”
He nodded soberly and said, “I did. I’ll allow I might have just thought you was a Harvey Girl, until you proved what a lady you really are, Miss Margaret MacLean.”