The coroner’s jury met at sundown, same place and same members, save for Lawyer Addams, whose unexpected demise was the subject of the inquest.
Patty Stern was there with other curious onlookers, more than one of whom seemed to feel an inquest was a needless formality, and that they ought to just string up the killer of their old pal, Lawyer Addams, right on the spot.
Patty sat sort of stone-faced in a corner and avoided Stringer’s eye when he took his seat in front of the hard-eyed older men. Even the old judge who’d fallen asleep in his chair the last time was wide awake. The same coroner banged for silence with the butt of his six-gun and told Stringer, “We’re ready to hear your side now, and it had better be good.”
Stringer nodded, but said, “It was pure evil in the heart of one greedy man who, as a lawyer, got to meet lots of others who were willing to work cheap at being bad.”
The coroner said, “We already wired Globe about the one called Nolan, and we know he was a fake deputy with no visible means of support and over a hundred dollars in his wallet. Get to the infernal point.”
Stringer said, “I’m trying to. I said it was complicated. But to begin with, years ago a mess of contrary folk moved into the well named Pleasant Valley. As you know, they were too far from Globe and mayhaps too mean for Gila County to worry about. They were outside this county’s jurisdiction until a fine old sheriff who thought simple justice was more important than such petty details put an end to their outlaw notions of land ownership by showing both sides just how rough gun-law could get.”
“We know all that. It was years ago, damn it.”
“Hear me out. Sheriff Owens was just a good old boy out to clean up a mess. He may or may not have noticed what a fine range the Tewksbury clan and the Graham faction were fighting over. But he was a lawman, not a rancher, and in any case the valley lay outside his own home range. So he was only interested in stopping the bloodshed.”
An old timer down at the end of the table cackled, “That he done, although blood flowed like water by the time old Pear had things tamed.”
Stringer nodded and said, “He didn’t do it all alone. It would have been pure suicide. So, brave as he was, Owens had deputies backing his play. One was a young lawyer named Stern.”
A panel member said, “Addams rid with them a time or two as well.”
Stringer said, “Maybe not as often. But it doesn’t really matter which lawyer noticed first what less educated members of the posses might not have. Both warring factions were holding overlapping claims on good range by guts and guns instead of iron-bound legal papers. I don’t think young Stern ever planned to grab the spoils himself. He never tried, when he still had the chance. But he must have noticed, and no doubt brought it to his partner’s attention, that with both the Grahams and Tewksburys gone, all that land and the more important water rights lay fallow. There’s been a lot of talk about irrigation projects down along the Salt River. At some future date any man who holds the water rights to the sources of Cherry Creek will be, or would be, in a position to write his own ticket. We’re talking about an all-year stream in a land where water runs expensive.”
Another panel member said, “As I follow your drift, you claim the late Lawyer Addams was a water-hogging land-grabber. Before I’ll buy that you’ll have to show me why he didn’t just grab the durned old valley years ago, the minute it was empty.”
Stringer said, “He couldn’t. The claims were conflicting about the range. But each family settled there had at least filed a homestead claim. Land and water rights have to be abandoned seven years before they revert to public domain. Had Addams tried to file while the titles were still clouded, he’d have risked more publicity than he wanted even if he’d been able to get away with it. He meant to wait until the upper valley was free and clear to claim before he claimed it all, using dummy claimants, to grab every quarter section at once, of course.”
The coroner said, “We know how cattle barons get title to free government land and water. Your sense of timing is still way off, son. Tom Graham was murdered ten or twelve years ago, not seven, and if he wasn’t the last original claimant, I don’t see who was.”
Stringer chuckled dryly and said, “That’s because you haven’t been paying attention outside your own county line. It’s all too true that one has to consider the Graham claims to any part of the valley abandoned, from the date Tom Graham was murdered by a person or person’s unknown.”
Someone growled, “Unknown, hell. It was Johnny Rhodes and Big Ed Tewksbury. Pear Owens arrested the rascals for that killing.”
Stringer said, “I just paid a visit on Big Tewksbury down in Globe. He tells a different story. It’s just as likely the last of the Grahams was gunned when he came back, less than seven years after Owens ran him off, by someone who didn’t want him to prove his claim to all that water. But be that as it may, the same last Tewksbury told me his side had given up on the grass and water Addams wanted. Addams was a patient man. But it must have vexed him when, as one parcel of the valley after another reverted to public domain, new settlers started moving in to file on it.”
Someone asked, “Why didn’t he just file on it first?”
And Stringer said, “I told you. He wanted to grab it all at once. Had anyone as important as Addams showed interest in just one part of the valley, other locals, smarter than the half-baked greenhorns moving in from the south, might have wondered why, and he’d already had one law partner murdered to keep the news from getting out. I agree it was complicated and sneaky. But I’d not have had to gun him this afternoon if he hadn’t been a complicated and sneaky cuss. A more honest and sensible man would have done it as you say, and been content to share with others. But Addams was a natural hog. He drove the settlers out as fast as they moved in. But, of course, each time he did he was stuck with the fact that each new claim had its proving time to run before he could grab it as public land. I know of at least one little gal in Globe who still holds lawful title to the springs at the head of the valley. I sort of hope she’s the gal I hope she might be. But to get back to Addams, he was getting as confused as the folk he was trying to flimflam by the time I showed up. I know I said I was here to do a story on old Sheriff Owens. I was. But being a double-dealing compulsive liar, Addams figured I had to be up to something else. He knew Owens was now far away in another county. He figured I was just playing dumb instead of working for a dumb boss. He figured, as I was a reporter known to do exposes on crooked doings, I’d come here to dig up some secret I wasn’t letting on about. He knew, as a lawyer, that nobody in the county was up to anything all that crooked but himself. So he put two and two together, came up with five or six, and tried to run me or gun me before I could say bad things about him in my paper. When I licked his hired gun, Blue Streak Bendix, he knew I took my job serious. So he had Blue Streak murdered and forgot about running me. I was marked for death, lest I tell the world he was trying to become a water baron by behaving so ornery to anyone who even looked serious at the water rights to the south.”
The old judge frowned at him and said, “Hold on now, son. As I recall, you was defended in this very room by the law firm of Stern and Addams. You got off too.”
Stringer nodded and said, “I reckon we’d best call it Stern and Stern, now. He murdered one Stern, but the other one still works there, and now, likely owns the whole shebang. He had to act the part of my lawyer when I went to him for help. I told you he was sneaky. He had to do a good job for me because Miss Patty got to do all the paper work, and she wasn’t in on anything crooked with him. Throwing me to the wolves wouldn’t have worked in any case. No offense, but had you bound me over to your grand jury, my boss would have sent other lawyers, and Addams knew for sure I wasn’t guilty.”
An old panel member who hadn’t spoken until now sighed and said, “We was smart enough to see you couldn’t have killed Blue Streak that time. Get to the good parts, damn it.”
Stringer said, “There’s not much more to it. Whoever first said honesty was the best policy knew what he was talking about. I never would have stumbled into the tangled web a natural cheat had woven if they’d simply left me alone. But they wouldn’t. So I kept floundering around, and they kept trying to kill me or slicker me, until Addams had his hired gun, Nolan, scout me up down in Globe. I don’t know what his original orders were, but when he questioned me and discovered how dumb I really was, they must have changed plans. The whole scheme was to keep Pleasant Valley quiet and pleasant, not littered with corpses, until Addams could make a quick grab for all of it at once. Instead of laying for me on the trail as I rode back, Nolan rode on ahead to report in for further duties. He may have been their top gun. I know he was cooler than some of the earlier ones I met. Anyway, I think they meant to let me get away, secure in the belief I had, indeed, just been a nosy stranger who hadn’t been so smart after all. As I parted company with Addams I let it slip, deliberate, that I had a few irons left in the fire after all, including the fact that their flimflam with telegrams never sent had been a dumb notion.”
“What first put you on to that?” asked the coroner.
The weary Stringer replied, “I knew right off it had to be a lie, unless it was dumb as hell. Whether the real Sol Barth had been the mastermind or not, he’d have never signed his own name to a wire showing guilty knowledge. I couldn’t see anyone else using the name of a well-known big shot in a tiny town. I wasn’t too surprised to learn, easy enough, no such wire had ever been sent. Knowing Nolan had approached me with one lie, it was easy enough to ask a few gents in Globe if they had a deputy there named Ed Nolan. When I saw him here in Holbrook this afternoon, I knew there was just no way he could have followed me from Globe. I was watching for that, as well as making good time. So I shot him.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the coroner asked, “Just like that? With no real proof?”
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “A man can wind up dead, asking a professional killer to confess, when he’s coming at one with an innocent smile and a tie-down holster. I’ll allow that could be taken as a mite hasty on my part. But I knew for sure I’d been right when Lawyer Addams moved in to shoot me in the back. The record will note his gun was already in his hand when I shot him. He’d have hardly come at me that way if he’d been a lawyer who’d just seen a known client win a fight with a stranger. So it’s safe to assume Nolan was no stranger to Addams and that his actions were those of an outraged employer who’d just lost his last good gun slick.”
The coroner asked if he was finished. Stringer nodded and said he couldn’t think of anything important he wanted to add to his testimony.
The coroner stared morosely at him and said, “I don’t know, son. Your story sounds convincing, but it’s still just your say-so against gents in no position to call you a big fibber. Can’t you produce any material evidence at all to back any part of your complicated reading of a dead man’s mind?”
Stringer couldn’t. So he didn’t answer.
Then Patty Stern stood up in the corner to call out, “I may be able to.” They all stared in her in wonder as she came forward with a sheaf of carbon papers in her hands.
She placed them on the table before the coroner and explained, “I got these from the office files when I heard about this hearing. I frankly didn’t know what they might mean until just now. I dug them out because they were the only papers I’d ever been asked to file that, to me, made little sense. I remember asking my late husband’s partner why we kept getting these carbons from the federal land office, since none of the names seemed to be clients or even anyone I knew. He acted a bit vague about it and said he’d explain later. But he never did. They didn’t seem important, so I didn’t argue. I just put them away as he asked. Now that I’ve heard Stuart MacKail’s testimony, I think I see why a law firm in Navajo County was keeping tabs on homestead claims in Gila County.”
The coroner started leafing through the carbons, passing some on to his jurors. As the rustic but smart old gents examined the evidence, there were low growls directed at the memory of the late Lawyer Addams. The coroner nodded, banged for silence, and said, “This stuff’s material enough, I reckon. I find that if that fat, dead son of a bitch hadn’t been mighty interested in the water rights of Pleasant Valley, he’d have had no call to request copies of every claim filed down that way, dating way the hell back. So I further find that young McKail, here, was acting in self-defense, and it’s too bad he didn’t gut-shoot both the sneaky rascals!”
There was a general murmur of agreement and mention of the saloon next door. Stringer got to his feet, too, but didn’t join the mad stampede for the Bucket of Blood. He waited quietly until Patty Stern joined him, her eyes glowing up at him sort of friendly as she said, “Oh, Stuart, how can I ever thank you?”
He said, “You were the one who saved my hash, so I get to thank you harder. Can I walk you home?”
She said, “You’d better. My knees feel a little weak. I didn’t fully realize the burden I’d been carrying all this time, until you lifted it from me today.”
As he helped her down the stairs he asked if she meant old Addams had been more than fatherly to her since her husband had left him the whole business.
She said, “Oh, not at all. I thought he was very kind, until you exposed him for what he was. Do you think he’d have had me murdered, too, if he thought I knew anything?”
Stringer said, “Yep. He may have kept you on as his filing gal so he could keep an eye on you and make sure you stayed as dumb as he wanted. But now the firm is all yours, and you can surely hire an honest young lawyer to argue in court for you until Arizona gets less stuffy.”
She said, “That’s not what I meant, although I guess I owe you for that too. You see, until you told me my husband had been the victim of a premeditated murder, I couldn’t help feeling I was at least partly responsible for his death.”
He took her arm to steady her as they walked the plank sidewalk, and told her, “That was dumb. You had nothing to do with it, did you?”
She said, “I know it wasn’t rational. But we all thought it was the work of a lunatic, and I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been at the reception desk instead of having my hair done that awful afternoon—”
“You’ve have been murdered too,” he cut in, adding, “Addams didn’t like you that much.”
She said, “I know. I just said you’d lifted a terrible burden of guilt from my shoulders. I can face what happened calmly now. I loved him. But he’s gone, through no fault of my own, and life must go on.”
At the next corner she indicated a turn up a side street that was more a glorified lane. As they moved up it, arm in arm, she asked what his plans were, now that he’d solved the mystery of the haunted range.
He said, “For openers I have to get it down on paper. I’m sure they’ll give me two columns at space rates for a wild west yarn as wild as this one turned out.”
She reined him in by the garden gate of a little poplar-shaded cottage, and said with a sigh, “I’m afraid this is where I live. I guess you’re sort of anxious to get back to San Francisco now, huh?”
He said, “That’s where my typewriter lives. Even if I had one here in Holbrook, I somehow doubt I’d get much typing done at that Majestic Hotel.”
She nodded and said, “I told you that old Harvey Girl runs a disorderly place. But finding you a typewriter would be no bother. There are three of them at the office, and thanks to you they’re all mine now.”
He said, “That’s a mighty neighborly offer. But while I can type up my feature just as good in one place as another, can you give me one good reason why I might want to do it here instead of back in Frisco?”
She stared up at him sort of dreamy-eyed in the moonlight as she slowly opened her gate and said, “You’d better come on in with me so we can discuss the matter in more depth.”