Stringer and the Deadly Flood (10 page)

He buried the sweet, harmless little gal on the fossil shore of the ghost sea, wrapped in a tarp with the pretty shell she'd admired clasped in her dead hands. Stringer wasn't much on religion. But as he smoothed the last soft silt over her he took off his hat to murmur,
“Vaya con Dios, querida.
I sure hope that there's a heaven and that they'll take you in. You have my word that if there's a hell I mean to send the sons of bitches who started this there.”

Then, seeing there was more to be done, he got to work. He knew both Juanita's mule and the two the killers had been riding could get by on their own once he unsaddled, unbridled, and got them started with bellies full of water and oats. He didn't give a damn about the two dead company men, but he buried them as well, lest the buzzards disturb Juanita's final resting place or, worse yet, lead anyone else to the dirty sons of bitches.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

By the time he'd tidied up around the forlorn little gypsy cart he'd cooled down a mite and the desert had heated up a heap. The sky was still cloudy, but as the noonday sun lashed down through gaps in the overcast it served to remind him just how hot and dry it could get in these parts and that there was only so much water a mule could carry along with its rider and his gear. So before he mounted up to ride he spread all of Lockwood's doodled charts flat on the ground in the skimpy shade of the cart to consider his options.

He had his story. Or such a story as there was, at any rate. Of course, the smartest move would be a beeline back to El Centro and the first train out. He could report the murder of Juanita to the law and let them worry about it. But he knew they'd take as much action about the death of a doubtless illegal immigrant as they had about the shooting of Herbert Lockwood in front of witnesses. Nobody was allowed to duel in public in Frisco or even Dodge these days, but the west was as wild as ever in some of its more primitive parts.

He knew he was thinking more primitive than smart as he made his decision and rolled up the charts again. He was a newspaperman, not a professional killer. But somebody had to bring the sons of bitches to justice, and he was likely the only man in these parts with a fast draw and a steady aim who wasn't on the payroll of the railroad and the water lords. So he forked himself aboard his mount and beelined for the work camp of the water outfit, loaded for bear and mad as hell.

He had his own pocket compass and there was nothing in his way but a heap of empty miles. How many miles depended on just how accurate Lockwood's spidery scribbles panned out. The engineer had left the forward diggings some days ago. By this time, even at pick and shovel speed, the more innocent laborers of the outfit should be farther west. But since how far west was up for grabs, Stringer made for a
spot
on the map where Lockwood had told him to Remember the Alamo. Stringer had only a fuzzy notion of what the ill-fated Lockwood must have had in mind. Since he'd been fired, about the time he'd shown his notations to somebody, that somebody might still be found in or about the work camp. Perhaps the rascal would tell him, when they met, why he'd fired Lockwood and, when that hadn't shut the poor cuss up, had him murdered.

There was no doubt in Stringer's mind now that the so-called shoot-out with a notorious gunslick had been murder, whether the victim had known he was being murdered or not. The average man, even an outdoors man with some experience at shooting cans off fence posts, had as much chance against a hired gun as a pussy cat against a bulldog. Nobody hired guns unless they were good. As Stringer had just had to prove, there was a lot more to gunfighting than just standing there pretending you were Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. Having covered that story, Stringer knew it had been more complicated than old Wyatt now boasted at that classic shoot-out years ago.

Unless he was lucky as hell, the winner always had some edge in a fight. The thing that distinguished the true gunslick from his average victim was that from the beginning he could see who had the edge and knew exactly when and how to act on it. A lot of nonsense had been written by recent pulp and nickelodian “experts” about some so-called “Code of the West.” And men who'd never heard a shot fired in anger were prone to enshrine homicidal lunatics like Clay Allison or nasty little back-shooters like Billy the Kid, even as they scoffed at braver men than they'd ever be who'd used common sense when the odds were against them.

It was probably true that James Butler Hickock had declined an invitation to a main street one-on-one with James Wesley Hardin that time. Who but a suicidal maniac would want to step outside into who-knew-what when he was forted up so good in a saloon with his back to the wall and two guns between him and the door. The wise-asses neglected to add that Hardin never chose to come in through that barroom door, for all his claims about wanting to have it out with Wild Bill. They just didn't know how the real thing was. A shoot-out was not a game between kids with cap pistols. Nobody who'd ever lived through such a gut-churning spell of sheer terror felt any need to offer anyone a sporting chance the next time he found his fool self betting his own life on the outcome.

Poor old Pat Garrett had good reason to turn morose and bitter in his declining
years.
Penny dreadful writers who'd never been west of the Big Muddy had used Garrett's own truthful account of his Lincoln County adventures to pillory the poor old lawman for nailing the notorious young killer a lot more fair and square than the Kid had done when he shot the previous sheriff from ambush. Garrett and the Kid had met face to face, in Pete Maxwell's dark bedroom, and the only edge either had was that the Kid had spoken first and had given his location away when he asked Garrett who the hell he was. Garrett had openly admitted doing what anyone else with a lick of common sense would have done. He'd fired his six-gun instead of his mouth. The Kid had still managed to draw his own gun on the way down with a bullet in his heart. It was stupid to consider the notion that the Kid would have given old Pat “a fair chance” had their positions been reversed, and Lockwood had been stupid if he'd really expected a fair chance from Cactus Jack. Stringer hadn't been there, of course. But he could picture a dozen ways it might have happened. He knew a lot of gunslicks who enjoyed a rep for shoot-outs didn't exactly announce their intentions ahead of time. It was just as easy, and a lot safer, to simply engage a man in conversation out in the street, out of earshot of any witness, and then simply draw and drill him without warning. With the dead man in no position to dispute the killer's own version, it was easy enough to make the argument leading to the resultant “fair fight.” Stringer made a mental note to hold any friendly discussion about the weather when and if he met up with Cactus Jack. For while he was madder about the way they'd treated poor little Juanita back there, he knew the death of Lockwood was tied in with hers. The same mastermind had to have given the orders. Neither Cactus Jack nor those two he'd just had to plant would have wandered about killing total strangers just for the hell of it.

The day on the desert wore on. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere as he walked, trotted, and rested his mule hour after hour. The jagged crests of the Sierra Chocolate to the east seemed to recede as fast as he approached them. Juanita's gypsy cart had slowly shrunk to a tiny dot and then winked out of sight behind him. But the flat expanse of greasewood all around looked just the same. If the Colorado Desert didn't kill a man, it sure tended to bore him to death. The Mojave had Joshua trees to ride past and the Sonora had all sorts of interesting cactus. The Colorado was just tedious and hence perhaps more dangerous. Ominous tales were still told of wagon parties who'd taken “short cuts” off the known and occasionally traveled trails. Every now and again some prospector came across an old sun-bleached wagonload of
mummified
'49ers, or even an earlier prospector, dried-up burro and all. The almost uniformly level greasewood shimmered like a sea, from slate-blue to black, making anything less than a mile away hard to make out. And there were an awful lot of miles out here.

Hence, when Stringer first spotted an unusual dot ahead of him he had to ride almost another hour before he made it out as a sunflower windmill, its new galvanized blades turning lazily in the tricky light of the overcast sunset. He resisted the impulse to spur his mule to a quicker pace. On the desert, it was always better to get there than to get there sudden. As the windmill grew with maddening slowness, he could make out the new tin roofing of the house and barn beside it. His mule smelled water and began to press forward. Stringer wasn't about to ride out of the desert at full gallop and likely scare some poor nester spitless. So he reined in, fired a shot up at the overcast sky, and rode in at a more polite trot.

As he reached the cleared door yard of the spread he found a man, a woman, three kids, and a couple of Mex or Indian hands lined up out front for his inspection and, judging from the casual rifle cradled in the nester's elbow-crook, vice versa.

He reined in. “Howdy. I'd be, ah, Don MacEwen. I'm trying to get to that big water outfit's work camp in case they may still be hiring.”

The nester informed him, “I doubt you'll make it this side of sundown and change on that jaded mule. We're talking close to fifteen miles cut up with fencing and irrigation ditches. You and your mount are welcome to bed down in the barn for the night.”

His once-pretty but now sun-bleached wife chimed in. “We're the Coopers—Fred and Doris. Our kids, here, answer to Sarah, Betty, and Fred Junior. These other gents would be the Gomez brothers. You're just in time for supper. Iffen you like, you can wash up by our kitchen door after you see to your mule, Mister MacEwen.”

He thanked her politely and, dismounting, led the mule toward the barn. One of the Mex hands fell in beside him to help. As they unsaddled, watered, and fed the mule in the barn, Stringer had the chance to ask the helpful Mex how much he ought to offer for the unexpected hospitality.

The Mex replied sharply, “No, señor, no money. La Señora is most sensitive about dinero. I fear they have put their life savings into this new spread and, as you shall see, the food they have to share will be simple fare. If you wish to show your
gratitude,
just do not ask for second helpings.”

Stringer said he understood, and as they walked back to the house to run some water over their hands he pumped the hired hand for information about his hosts.

It seemed that the young family had sunk everything they owned into the purchase and improvement of this full section at the north end of a sort of skinny irrigation ditch, and whether they made it or not depended on the forty acres of cash crop they'd just drilled in. When Stringer asked about the windmill Gomez explained it didn't pump ground water since there was no ground water. The grade here was so flat, the loquacious Mexican told Stringer, that water had to be pumped from the feeder ditch to the fields and up to an attic tank that fed the tap they were using. Now Stringer understood why the wash water had felt so warm.

Dinner, as he had been warned, was meager and plain, boiled spuds, beans, a mighty skinny slice of raisin pie, and even thinner coffee. After dinner, while Mrs. Cooper and the two daughters did the dishes, Fred Cooper and his young son took Stringer for a stroll around the family estate. Most of it was still covered with greasewood which Big Fred said was a bitch to grub up. “However,” he added, “our neighbors to the south have a steam tractor. Come some cash I mean to hire it to plow these infernal roots right. You have to kill every root and then soak the soil deep, more'n once, afore anything else will grow in it.”

Stringer knew better than to ask why Cooper didn't want to ask a new neighbor for the free loan of his tractor. Instead, he inquired about the amount of water it took to farm such soil and, more casually, how much the Southern Pacific was charging an acre-foot for the same.

Cooper explained, “We didn't buy this section off the railroad. Got it at better terms off Imperial Land Management in Yuma. The water comes with, for the first year or more. They say once they have the whole irrigation scheme laid in and metered, our water ought to cost us less than a dollar an acre-foot. I reckon we can live with that.” Stringer knew the man already had a lot of worries, so he felt he had no call to ask what Cooper and the other suckers would do if the water lords who had them at their mercy decided to charge more.

By now they'd come to a ditch about four feet wide and filled almost to the top with still, scummy water. Cooper frowned. “Haven't had much wind, lately, so that water's far too high.” Then he turned to his son and said, “You'd best run down to the
gate
and spill some, Freddy.”

His young son, already bored with the men's conversation, was only too happy to oblige. He ran on ahead as Stringer and his father followed along the already weed-grown edge of the ditch. When they caught up with the boy, Stringer watched him crank the wheel of a wood and angle-iron floodgate, damming the water behind it. As brown ditch water ran out in a widespread fan, Stringer noticed it didn't seem bound for anywhere in particular. Seeing his visitor's interest, Cooper explained, “You can see how flat the grade is. They only ditched this far north. They told us that once our drainage runs down such grade as there is a spell, it'll dig its own channel. Meanwhile, it just sort of oozes off toward Salton's Sink. It soaks in long before it can get there, of course.”