Apparently they didn’t. Stringer might have made even better time if he hadn’t had to scout so many grand ambush sites before passing them on his way back to Holbrook.
The sun caught him outside of town when it rose again. He rode in anyway. It was just starting to get good and hot by the time he reined in at the livery, dismounted with a weary sight, and led the brutes inside.
The livery man looked surprised, and said, “I was beginning to fear we’d never see you or them ponies again.”
Stringer said, “I was worried about that a time or two. But here we are.”
Stringer was free to leave with just his gladstone and the rifle. He knew he could get a decent price for a Krag on Mission Street, back in Frisco. If it hadn’t been so hot he might have been tempted to pay a call on old Madge first. But as in the case of that sneaky gal in Globe, there were all-too-rare times a man got a chance to quit while he was ahead, so there was no sense of tempting fate.
The Bucket of Blood Saloon was closer anyway. The beer was still warm, but had tepid canteen water beat. As he’d hoped, a couple of the early customers knew more about the comings and goings of the Santa Fe than he had before he talked to them.
Stringer was about to leave when Nate, the town law, came in for a cool-off. He joined Stringer at the bar and asked if the long ride to Globe and back had been worth it.
Stringer didn’t kiss and tell. So he said, “It was more hot and tedious than educational. Am I square with the law here?”
Nate said, “Sure, unless you kilt someone else since that last coroner’s jury cleared you. Why? You planned on going someplace else?”
Stringer nodded and said, “I have to. I don’t live around here. I’m hoping to catch the westbound that passes through here just after noonday. First I have to go settle accounts with Lawyer Addams. I don’t think I owe him any money, but I only skip out on bills when I have to.”
Nate said that sounded honest enough. Then Stringer asked him, “Could you rightly say how that gal, Patty Stern, got to be a widow woman? I don’t want to ask her personal when I go over to their office.”
Nate nodded and said, “That could upset her. They say it was a good marriage. He was only killed a year or so back. A lunatic client shot him, right in his office. As we put it together from the notes Lawyer Stern had been taking down as they talked alone up there, the client was an old geezer who was having trouble with a young wife. His vexation was sort of disjointed, and the lawyer had crossed things out and made him start over a time or two. This must have upset him, for he shot Stern considerable and lit out to find another lawyer or whatever. By the time anyone in the street who’d heard the gunfire could connect it to the wild-eyed rascal mounting up out front, he was long gone.”
Nate inhaled some of his own suds before he added, “It’s a good thing lawyer Addams was in court and Stern’s young wife was at the beauty shop that afternoon. The lunatic might have gunned them too. He was a mean old son of a bitch.”
Stringer asked, “Did anyone who saw him say what he might have looked like?”
Nate said, “They did. He was a grizzled geezer dressed shabby and wearing a beard. Why do you ask, at this late date?”
Stringer said, “I thought I might have seen him one time. What do you know about a merchant called Sol Barth, over to Saint John’s?”
Nate grimaced and said, “Nothing good. He was said to be an ugly cuss who married a pretty young Mex gal and got upset as hell when anyone calt her a greaser. I’m speaking of events before my time though. Old Barth ain’t in Saint John’s these days, even though the odor of his gun smoke lingers on. Say, you ain’t suggesting Sol Barth had something to do with the gunning of Patty Stern’s man, are you?”
Stringer shook his head and said, “No. Someone else is trying to gun me. It’s been nice talking to you, Nate. But I want to settle up at the law office before that train pulls in.”
A few minutes later he was saying much the same to the young blonde herself. She looked like the heat was getting her down, but she managed a wan smile as she told him Lawyer Addams would be back any minute, but that she was sure neither Stringer nor the San Francisco Sun owed them any money now.
He sat down anyway, resisting the desire to ask her permit to smoke, and said, “As long as I got time before my train gets here, I may as well go on being nosy. I don’t want to stir up hurtful memories, Patty, but could I ask a few questions about your late husband?”
She looked more surprised than hurt as she nodded and said, “It doesn’t hurt as much now as it did then. He was murdered by a client right in the next, room, and—”
“I know about that,” he cut in. Then he said, “Lawyer Addams mentioned riding posse under Sheriff Owens a time or two. Your man would have had to be younger at the time, unless you admire distinguished older gents, right?”
She nodded and said, “My man was only seven or eight years older than me, and as a matter of fact, he did some riding for the law in his younger days as well. Before we were married though. Why do you ask?”
He said, “Just trying to separate the sheep from the goats. I don’t suppose he ever told you whether he’d ridden under Sheriff Owens during the troubles down Pleasant Valley way?”
She smiled wistfully and said, “You’re wrong. You men folk tend to tell us woman folk more tales of blood and slaughter than we really want to hear, and he was all man. I guess it was the most exciting time of his life, riding posse as he was just starting up as a young lawyer. Before that stupid feud down there was over, he’d ridden all over that dark and bloody ground for the law.”
“More than his pard, Lawyer Addams? I’ve a reason for asking.”
She suppressed a smile and said, “Well, we are talking about an older man who would have been sort of soft and pudgy, even ten years ago. I can’t tell you just when, where, or how often he rode for Sheriff Owens though.”
Stringer smiled crookedly and said, “That’s all right. I can. Since the war with Spain I’ve met so many men as charged up San Juan Hill, it’s a wonder one hill could hold them all. Not putting any man down, I feel it’s safe to assume your late husband might have known Pleasant Valley better than his partner. I don’t think he was killed by a lunatic client. I think he was killed to make sure he could never mention something he might have noticed in his travels to the south. If it’s any comfort to you, I can almost assure you certain that the hired gun who murdered your man is dead and buzzard buried where he’ll never be missed.”
She gasped and began to demand an explanation. Then Lawyer Addams came in and she told him instead, “Mister MacKail, here, just said my man was murdered!” And then she began to cry.
Lawyer Addams waved Stringer into the room next door, and as soon as they were alone, he said, “That was uncalled for, MacKail. She’s just about gotten over that tragedy, and now look what you have gone and done! What are you talking about anyway?”
Stringer said, “Murder. A gent who knew both the law and the disputed Pleasant Valley range. I think he was killed by the same rascals who tried to keep me from tripping over their secret plans more recent. They might have figured I was more educated than the folk they’ve been content to flimflam with spook lights and such. I don’t think it’s a big gang, and it’s been whittled down some. But the brains behind it all belongs to someone crazy-mean as well as slick.”
Lawyer Addams said, “Well, let’s hear what you’ve found out, for God’s sake. If you have any charges to make, you ought to be going to the law with them, not upsetting poor Patty with wild talk!”
Stringer sighed and said, “I would, if I could prove anything, or hell, if I knew anything for certain. But as I told a gent named Nolan, down in Globe, I’m a newspaper man, not a lawyer. So I’m allowed to give up when I get confused. Riding alone the past few days, I’ve had plenty of time to think. So all in all I think my best bet is the next train out. It’s no skin off my nose if the folk around here are dumb enough to let themselves get skinned. Is there another way out of here? I hate to say good-bye to weeping she-males.”
Addams showed him to a side door leading out to the hall as he muttered, “I wish you’d at least tell me who you suspect of what, damn it. It’s easy for you to just give up and head back to Frisco. Patty and me have to stay here, and if there’s any danger to either of us—”
But Stringer stepped out into the hallway, saying, “I wouldn’t be willing to drop it if I thought anyone here was likely to be gunned at this late date. I said I wasn’t a lawman, but I’m not that irresponsible. The mastermind is crazy-mean, but not crazy enough to have anyone gunned who doesn’t know what he’s out to pull off in, oh, two or three years.”
“Do you know who this mysterious mastermind might be?” asked the pudgy lawyer.
Stringer shook his head and said, “If I did, I’d have to tell the law. Then I’d get to print it in the Sun. I have plenty of suspects. Too many. I might work it out better once I get back to Frisco. I have a pal there who runs the big Western Union office on Market Street. Some night when it isn’t too busy we may do some hunting by wire.”
“Do what?” asked Addams with a puzzled frown.
Stringer explained, “My boss, Sam Barca, traced your old pal Commodore Perry Owens to Seligman without getting up from his desk. We got telephones at the Sun these days. I confess the rascals didn’t leave me much sign to read on any trail I rode aboard a pony. But sometimes paper trails are easier to read. I know, for openers, that Western Union has to have records of a mess of flimflam telegrams that seem to have been sent to confuse me more. I shudder to think what they had planned if they’d been able to lure me to yet another out-of-the-way place with fibs about folk who don’t live there no more. But it didn’t work, and it’s been nice talking to you, for I don’t mean to miss that train if I can help it.”
They shook, and Stringer went downstairs alone, gladstone in hand and rifle in the other. It was, in fact, too early to stand on the station platform in the glaring sunlight. So he had some pie at the beanery across from the depot and washed it down with buttermilk to settle his butterflies.
Then he checked the time, nodded, and drifted over to wait on the platform alone. He put his bag down, started to lean the Army rifle on it, then decided to hold it cradled casually across one elbow as he paced up and down the sun-baked planks.
He’d just turned at one end of the platform when he saw the somberly dressed Ed Nolan from Globe down at the other end, headed his way with a curious smile. Nolan’s frock coat was open, which was reasonable in this heat, but he was wearing a buscadero gun rig under it. So before the son of a bitch was within easy pistol range, Stringer swung the muzzle of the Krag up and put a .30-30 rifle round in his chest.
As Nolan’s hat flew straight up and Nolan flew straight back to crash, sprawling, on the planks, Stringer cranked another round in the Krag’s chamber and approached the downed gun slick warily. Then he hunkered down by Nolan and said conversationally, “I figured you might ride up ahead of me. You had a good four or five hours lead. After we talked at the livery in Globe, I took the trouble to wire Saint John’s, and guess what—nobody, by any name whatever, ever wired anybody anything about me, or Warner, or Coleman. On the other hand, the Western Union clerk in Globe said a man answering to your description wired Holbrook regular. They wouldn’t let me read your messages, of course. But they would have been in code in any case, right?”
The dying Nolan didn’t answer. He was blowing little red bubbles as he stared up at Stringer in hurt wonder. Stringer told him, “The reason I didn’t screw around with a professional killer just now was that I knew your intent the moment I saw you’d dropped your deputy act. Anyone can say he’s a deputy. But it starts to wear thin when you stretch it across two counties after lying outright to a gent as smart as me.”
Then he saw that Nolan wasn’t staring up at him, but at something behind him, with a sort of hopeful expression. So Stringer spun on one heel, fired the rifle up at Lawyer Addams, and rose to his feet without it, drawing his .38 as the fat bastard went down, too, squealing like a stuck pig, which was only to be expected when one considered where he’d been stuck by a .30-30.
Both men he’d downed were dead by the time the town law got there at the head of a considerable pack. Stringer holstered his revolver and kept his hands polite as he called out, “Hold your fire, Nate. It’s over.”
Nate said, “The hell you say! Who’s this gent in the black suit, and how come you shot Lawyer Addams?”
Stringer said, “I had to shoot Nolan, there, because he was sent to gun me. I had to shoot Addams because Nolan was no doubt his last hired gun. I know that derringer in his pudgy hand looks sissy, but Lincoln was shot in the back of the head with the same kind of pistol, and I didn’t want to see what it felt like.”
Nate said, “You can forget about that next train, Stringer. No offense, but I fear you’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”
Stringer nodded and said, “That’s all right. Explaining it all to the coroner saves me having to orate about it out here in this hot sun. The tale is sort of complicated.”