Stringer and the Deadly Flood (6 page)

Stringer nodded and introduced himself. “I'm Stringer MacKail of the
San Francisco Sun.
I came here to look up a gent called Lockwood. Irrigation engineer. I
don't
suppose you'd know where I could find him?”

The barkeep sighed and said, “You just missed him. Passed you in that hearse, outside. Been dead no more ‘n twelve hours. We like to plant ‘em pronto out here on the desert.”

Stringer accepted the beer but left it untasted for the moment. He whistled softly and replied, “Now that's what I call timing. What did the poor old gent die from?”

The informative barkeep nodded sagely. “Bullets. He wasn't all that old, leastways not from where I stand these days. No more than forty at the most.”

Stringer sipped some beer. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly up to Frisco Bay standards either. He tried to keep things casual as he quietly asked, “Does anybody know who murdered him, or why?”

The old-timer replied just as casually, “He wasn't murdered, unless you want to get picky. Lockwood and Cactus Jack Donovan got into an argument over cards, back yonder at the last table as a matter of fact. The shoot-out took place later, out front of course. We don't allow no fighting in here. I didn't see the shoot-out myself. But those who did told the law it seemed a fair enough fight. Cactus Jack rode out anyways. The sheriff had warned him more than once about his nasty disposition.”

Stringer sighed and inhaled some more suds. “That's that then. With the man I was sent to see shot and the man who shot him long gone as well, I don't see who on earth my paper might want me to look up here now.”

The barkeep thought on this a moment, then offered, “Well, there's that young gal Lockwood was shacked up with if she's still here in town. I wasn't at the funeral, so I just can't say.”

Finishing his beer, Stringer thanked him for the suggestion. “I'd best hear what the late Lockwood's play-pretty has to say, as long as I've already come so far on little more than a vague news tip.” He pushed back from the bar. “Would you by any chance know where I could find the lady?”

“I never said she was no lady,” the barkeep sniffed. “More like a Mex if you ask me. Don't recall her name. But she and Lockwood was camped in a sort of gypsy cart, red wheels, down to the north end of Main Street. You can't miss it. Just look for a red-wheeled cart in the shade of some half-dead cotton woods.”

Stringer paid, leaving his change on the mahogany with a nod of thanks, and
strode
back out into the blinding sunlight to see how well the old-timer's directions worked.

He could see the treetops down that way and he could also see the old-timer didn't know beans about botany. The trees the old barkeep had described as cottonwoods were really desert willows, which had little more business being this far from a seasonal stream than cottonwoods. But they drooped because they were willows, not because they were dying.

As he ambled along the shady side of the walkless street, a gent riding a dusty roan tore past him, oblivious to the dust he was churning up in the middle of the already dusty enough settlement. Stringer held his breath a good ten paces to let the dust settle back on the street instead of in his lungs, although there wasn't much he could do about the dust in his eyes but blink and bear it.

Stringer had almost forgotten the annoying cuss by the time he passed the last frame shack and its fenced-in garden to spy the gypsy cart parked on four red wheels under the dusty, drooping willow branches. A mule was grazing in a weed patch beyond on a long ground tether. Stringer's amber eyes focused thoughtfully, however, on the lathered pony tethered between him and the gypsy cart. It was the same dusty roan that had passed him just moments before, and Stringer swung around it to make out the source of all the noise coming from near the cart.

The heavy-set, dusty-suited gent who'd abused his horse seemed to be working himself up to abusing a woman now, though so far he was just at the cussing stage. She was a bitty Mex gal, standing her ground on bare feet in a frilly white blouse and a blue circle skirt that exposed a scandalous amount of shapely calf almost to her knees. Stringer had time to note that her face wasn't bad, either.

Neither she nor the burly Anglo fussing with her was aware of Stringer's approach until he was almost upon them. She was facing his way and saw him first but since he looked Anglo as well, she didn't look at all happy to see him.

The rider who'd loped his pony and a whole town dusty to get at her correctly read the way she was staring and turned to give Stringer a once-over. He growled, “Do you have any business here, cowboy?”

Stringer nodded and dropped his gladstone. “Friend of the family. This lady just now buried her
esposo,
if I got the address right. So I'll thank you to simmer down a mite or at least cuss at me instead of her.”

The
older and bigger man let his dusty frock coat fall open to expose the ivory grips of his cross-draw Colt. “That can be arranged, sonny. I ride for International Irrigation and I've reason to suspect an employee they had to fire rode off with some company papers. All I want from this greaser gal is a look-see inside her wagon. If the papers I'm after are there, I'll just take 'em off her hands. If they ain't, I'll just ride on. I'd say that was fair enough, wouldn't you?”

Stringer smiled thinly and said, “It ain't for me to say. It's up to this lady here. And don't call her a greaser again. I don't like it.”

The girl looked a lot prettier now that she saw she didn't have to shoot daggers from her big sloe eyes at Stringer after all.

“I do not know what this hombre wants,” she appealed to Stringer. “I have no papers such as he describes and I will not have my belongings pawed through by rude people I do not know.”

Stringer nodded at both of them and told the water company man, “You could both have a point. I'd say your best bet, Amigo, would be a court order. The Constitution gives this little lady the right to total privacy unless and until you can produce a search warrant stating exactly what you're looking for and what business it is of yours to look for the same.”

The company rider laughed incredulously. “Are you suffering sun stroke, cowboy? No Mexicans are mentioned in any American constitution.”

Stringer shrugged in reply. “In that case you're really out of luck. She wouldn't have to let you search her wagon even if you had a proper search warrant from a California court. Have you considered offering her something for her trouble, or even talking to her respectfully?”

The company rider snorted in disgust. “As a matter of fact I've wasted all the time in talking I ever meant to. I was sent to search for them papers and so now I aim to do so. You'll both stand aside if you know what's good for you.”

He put his gun hand casually to his gun grips as a not too subtle hint of his sincerity. Then he found himself staring down the unwinking muzzle of Stringer's .38 as the younger gent he'd taken for a local cowhand with a gallant streak quietly asked, “Why don't you go ahead and tell me just what's good for me?”

The company rider gulped, let go his own gun as if it had just turned into a redhot poker, and asked, “Have you been mixing the one and original Coca Cola with
tequilla,
old son? Who said anything here about slapping leather?”

Stringer put his .38 back in its holster. “I'm sure sorry if I misjudged your intent. Where I come from a man doesn't talk growly and pat his gun grips unless he means it. I sure hope we've got that straight. You can see we're both back to scratch now. Go for that hog leg again and I won't be holding my fire. Your move, Amigo.”

The company rider kept his gun hand well clear of his far side as he stared thoughtfully at Stringer for a half dozen heart beats. Then he shrugged. “They don't pay me that much. I was told I might have a little trouble from a Mexican spitfire. Nobody mentioned a hired quick-draw artist. So I reckon I'll be leaving now. You wouldn't throw down on a friendly cuss like me as he was mounting up, would you?”

Stringer said, “Depends on how far you keep either hand from that Colt as you do so. Why don't you show me how polite you can ride off, Amigo?”

The company rider did. But as he rode out of easy pistol shot he turned in his saddle and called back, “Maybe next time, Mister Quick Draw!” Then he lit out at full gallop.

Stringer chuckled and said, “Most men hate to back down in front of a woman. I doubt he'll be back without some back-up, ma'am.”

Then he saw he was talking to himself. When he turned around, he saw the pretty little gal had climbed up into her cart to rest a shotgun barrel over the bottom wing of the double door built into the rear end under the arched roof. He laughed and told her, “Shucks, ma'am, I thought I was scaring him all by myself.”

She smiled back at him, hauling the gun barrel in, as she told him, “I think you made a believer of him the first time you displayed your lightning draw, señor. I am called Juanita Vasques, by the way. Were you a friend of poor Herberto?”

Stringer moved closer, saying, “Never met him. He sent a news tip to my paper, the
San Francisco Sun.
They sent me down here to talk to him. My name would be, ah, Stuarto MacKail, señora.''

She corrected him. “That would be señorita, por favor. I do not understand why everyone seems to think I was married to poor Herberto Lockwood. He was simply living with me in this
carreta.
Where is your own mount, Stuarto?”

He stared up at her, bemused, as he sorted out what she'd just said. “I don't have one. I just got here by train.”

“In that case you had better find a pony for to ride far and fast,” she advised
him
earnestly. “That malo will be back with others, if I know the people he works for. I shall hitch up my mule as you go over to the livery near the railroad stop for to hire a good Spanish riding mule, not a pony, for our escape, no?”

He smiled incredulously and said, “Hold on, Juanita. I only came to have a few words with you, not to join you in a war with that water outfit.”

She opened the bottom of the Dutch door to drop lightly to the ground beside him. “We shall have plenty of time for to talk, once we are a safe distance from here. You do not have to declare war on International Irrigation. They declare war on you if they feel you are in their way. And, just now, we both got in their way. You can come with me or you can catch the next train out. If you stay here, they will kill you, comprendo?”

“I do now,” Stringer assured her. “I'll be back with a mount directly. I've yet to get a good story by running away from it.”

CHAPTER
FIVE

The Spanish riding mule was bigger, stronger, and almost as fast as most cow ponies. The real advantage of any mule in dry country was that it got by on less than half the water a horse needed. So while vaqueros felt almost as dumb aboard a mule as a gringo buckaroo, they'd bred a pretty good mount with the size and gait of its usually Arab mamma and the toughness and stolid ways of its burro daddy. The sterile jenny Stringer picked up at the livery cost him thirty dollars and change, with a beat-up but serviceable bare-tree Mexican saddle and horsehair bridle thrown in for another ten. They'd flatly refused to hire him by the day once he'd mentioned he might be riding out on the desert. He knew Juanita had the shotgun aboard her gypsy cart. But as long as he was in downtown El Centro and meant to let the
Sun
pay these unforeseen travel expenses, if they would, he picked up a used Winchester and a couple of boxes of .44-.40 and some more .38 Longs at the hardware store next door.

He was halfway back to the willows when he met up with Juanita in her cart, coming toward him. As he wheeled his mule to fall in beside her, she called, “I put your bag in the back. I did not open it.”

“I never thought you would,” he assured her. Then he asked, “How come we're headed north? I thought Old Mexico was the other way.”

She seemed to repress a shudder as she replied, “I would rather take my chances with hired gringo guns than Los Indios in the desert to the south.”

He asked, “How many wild Indians do you still have down Mexico way?”

“Too many,” she replied. “Those hiding from the Federáles in the bleakest parts of the desert are most desperate. They do not attack because they hate your kind and mine. They attack anything that moves because if it moves they feel free to eat it or rob it.”

Stringer figured she knew what she was doing, and he followed her lead
without
more questions. When they had crossed the railroad tracks and began pushing through greasewood, she sighed and explained further. “Herberto and I came to El Centro for to be above the floodwaters when they swept in from the east. I do not know how far north we can go before we are lower than the Sea of Cortez. But we must go somewhere and Herberto said any ground higher than the beaches of long ago should be high enough.”