Stringer and the Deadly Flood (12 page)

“I'm not. I used to ride top hand. Then I found out some outfits will pay more for a man who's good with a gun as well,” Stringer informed him.

The hired gun called Gus broke in, addressing his boss. “You don't want this one, Blacky. He's a fresh-mouthed saddle tramp and no more.”

Stringer smiled pleasantly at him, asking none too politely, “Is that how come I backed you down so easy, you tin-horn nothing-much?”

As Gus half rose from his chair, Burke growled. “Not in here if you boys want to have it out.”

“How about it, Gus,” Stringer taunted. “You want to have it out again? You sort of let me down the last time.”

Gus sat back down, muttering about damned fools. Burke smiled as if pleased. “As a matter of fact, MacEwen, we're missing a couple of security men. I don't suppose you met up with an Anglo called Wordsworth and a Pima called Chino in your travels?”

Stringer made a sincere effort to look as if he was really thinking hard about that before he shrugged and replied, “I just can't say I have. You sent 'em to El Centro?”

“After you, as a matter of fact.” Burke smiled again. “They should have been back by now.”

Stringer insisted, in all honesty, that he'd met no such gents in town.

Gus growled, “They were after you, that gal, and them same papers Lockwood rode off with. How do we know they didn't catch up with you, and lose?”

Stringer snorted in disgust. “Oh, sure. After I shot it out with two men, to prevent you ever seeing those papers again, I just naturally felt it my duty to bring the papers to the boss man here. You must read a lot of mystery stories, Gus. Why don't you explain my mysterious motives to me? You must be stupid if you think anyone would shoot it out with two company dicks and then ride in to ask the same company for a job.”

Burke chuckled at the picture, but asked Stringer shrewdly, “What did possess you to bring me those papers after you refused to let Gus, here, have them?”

Stringer tried to keep his voice light as he shrugged and answered Burke. “I didn't know what he wanted. After I'd crawfished your pet ape away and, like I said,
sweet-talked
the little lady instead of trying to scare her, Lockwood's Mexican gal-friend showed me them. She didn't know why they were important to you, anymore than I did. I just helped myself when we parted friendly.”

Burke said, “I see. What did you make out of them? Surely you must have looked them over before you decided to be so generous.”

Stringer nodded. “I saw right off they were charts with spiderwebs penciled on 'em. If they'd looked like treasure maps, I'd have hung on to 'em. If they'd looked like evidence of anything sneaky, they'd have cost you more just now. I don't mind saying I'm still curious about what all the fuss is about. How come a mess of survey maps you could likely pick up cheap enough were all that valuable to you?”

Burke's face was innocence itself as he answered Stringer, “They were company property. Lockwood had no right to keep them when I had to fire him for drinking on the job. Some of these so-called spider lines show work we've done or mean to do. Without them we'd have had to run more survey work, and that's expensive.” He rolled up the maps, indicating that was the end of any more explanation. “Now, we pay our security men five dollars a day. Gus, here, will see to your company badge and register you with Arizona Territory as a licensed private detective. You'll be working under him.”

Gus started to object again, but Burke shot him a warning look. “If you don't like it, shoot it out with him. I just said good help is hard to find. If you're afraid to fight him, he may be just the sort of help I'm looking for.”

When Gus didn't answer, the camp boss turned back to Stringer and asked more mildly, “How about it, MacEwen? Are you willing to take orders from Gus if he's willing to let by-gones be by-gones?”

Stringer said, “Sure. I never fight anyone who doesn't want to fight with me, ah, boss. Is it too much to ask who else I might have to fight around here? Five dollars a day sounds like you're expecting serious fighting.”

Burke said flatly, “We pay top wages for top guns. You'll find out who you may or may not be fighting when the time comes.”

So that was how the outfit that had tried to have Stringer killed, more than once, wound up putting him on its payroll.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Gus sullenly led Stringer to the nearby paymaster's tent and left him in the care of fussy little coot who asked so many fool questions that Stringer feared they suspected him until he decided the priss was likely just in love with his own overly neat penmanship. Stringer was hard put to come up with details he'd be able to recall as to his last dozen mailing addresses and previous employers. He'd chosen Donald MacEwen as a handy alias because he'd talked to some friendly member of the Frisco P.D. about the common mistakes folk made when picking a new name. The disadvantages of “Smith” and “Jones” were obvious. The all-time smartest alias was a hard-to-spell ethnic name from a different background than one's own, since few expected an Irishman to come up with a German name, a German to use an Armenian name, and so forth. But Stringer had taken the less complicated route of adopting the first name of a favorite uncle, and MacEwen of course meant “Son of Ewen” which he was. The same helpful detective had explained that the more foolproof total switch could lead to foolish slips before a new name settled in. Stringer knew that should someone call out his uncle's or his father's name unexpected he'd be likely to turn and respond in a normal fashion instead of just walking on as if he didn't know his own fool name. Besides, most folks thought any name with a Mac was Irish, and there were more Irish cowhands and railroad workers than one had time to brood about.

The paymaster rummaged about in a drawer in vain for a spare badge and said he'd have to get one for Stringer from Yuma, along with some proper I.D. “Anyway,” he added with a sniff, “nobody will challenge your authority in camp. Most of our workers are illiterate Mexicans. Just don't get into fights off the reservation until we can get you fixed up with proper I.D. I need your John Hancock on this card for the paybook. Next payday will be a week and a half away.”

Stringer signed Donald MacEwen in as natural a manner as he could manage
and
that seemed to be that. Just then a lean and hungry-looking individual dressed in jeans, black shirt, charcoal Stetson and two Colt .45s in a buscadero tie-down rig ducked into the tent. He greeted Stringer curtly. “Gus told me to show you about and help you get settled in. I'd be Sean Donovan, better known as Cactus Jack.”

Stringer shook the hand the killer held out to him. He'd expected Cactus Jack to look more like the burly bully Gus. The almost civilized Cactus Jack shook firmly but without the unspoken challenge of the usual bully. His expression was neither warm nor nasty. Stringer sensed the notorious gunslick was simply a cold fish, so sure of himself that he didn't care whether anyone liked him or feared him. He just did what they'd told him to do. He'd have no doubt come in now with both guns blazing and with no more emotion if that had been what the boss ordered.

As they stepped outside together, Stringer said the mule he'd ridden in had to come before anything else. So they strode over to the saloon tent. Stringer was braced for the usual cowhand comments on mules, but Cactus Jack said nothing as he waited for Stringer to untether his mount. Then he led them both to the roped-in remuda and ordered their young Mexican wrangler to see to the critter and put Stringer's saddle and gear in the tack tent on the far side. When Stringer made as if to help, Cactus Jack stopped him impatiently. “Don't. The greaser's paid to wrangle. You and me are paid to keep order in camp. Come on, I'll show you around. There's not much about this job you'll find complexicated. Us and our guns just have to be handy when the damnfool ditchdiggers act up. Most of 'em are Border Mex. They don't get out of line often, but when they do we got to move in fast and bust as few heads as it takes to stop the fight. The boss can't get much work outten a Mex we bust up really hard, see?”

Stringer agreed it made sense to nip fights in the bud and, as they strolled along the service road between the railroad tracks and canal, he began to revise his first impression of total chaos.

The canal ran more or less in line with the tracks, two hundred feet, or “an easy tote” as Donovan put it, south of the rail line. The tent city naturally lay between, the tents staked a mite haphazardly for at least a quarter mile east and west. Most of the tents seemed to be army surplus, left over from the recent war with Spain. Cactus Jack explained that as work progressed toward the west the tents were repitched, sort of leap frog, since the one farthest east was always the one farthest from the work face. It was up to whoever used a tent as business or living quarters to decided when it was
time
to pull up the stakes. Some workers were willing to walk farther to work in the morning than others. Few of the tents were ever completely empty. Whenever they could, Mexican laborers preferred to have their dependents with them.

As some bare-assed little kids ran past them, Cactus Jack explained indulgently that it made sense to let the greasers drag their
mujeres
along. “I had to police an all-stag and mostly Irish railroad construction camp one time,” he explained. “When men can't screw, they drink and fight instead. This way's better, even if it does complexicate the supply problem. After a hard day's work in the sun our greasers just naturally roll over and go to sleep after tearing off a piece. The only thing wrong with having their mujeres along is that sometimes they fight over the same one, and when men fight over women they fight a lot meaner than your average drunk Irishman. You got to drop the one with the knife fast lest he cripple or kill half a dozen good shovel hands afore they can get outten his way.”

Stringer asked what the standing orders were if a couple of workers were going at it with knives. Cactus Jack said coolly, “You drop 'em both, of course. The trouble with an overexcited Mex with a knife is that he seldom knows when to stop. We had to gun one of their women a week or so ago. She was a sassy little thing with round heels and a welcome mat betwixt her thighs. She caused a dozen serious fights afore we figured out that she was causing 'em. Greasers are too romantic natured to just take advantage of such free and easy gals. Each and every one of 'em seems to think a gal he laid the first night has to be his one true love forever.”

Stringer frowned thoughtfully as they walked on and asked, more casually than he really felt, “How come you had to kill her? Couldn't you have just run her out of camp?”

Cactus Jack shrugged. “It was Gus as gunned her. He'd told her he would if she come back. We did run her out, more'n once. But she wouldn't stay run. So there was nothing else Gus could do. You can't let greasers defy you, you know.”

Stringer repressed a shudder, asking how the other Hispanics had taken such harsh treatment of the woman. Cactus Jack said, “Oh, all the mujeres and some of them men were glad to see the last of her. It's hard as hell to get any sleep with damned fools fighting over pussy next door.”

They came to where an irrigation ditch cut across their path to duck under the railroad tracks and run on to the north. It wasn't the one Stringer had followed out of
the
desert. He'd had to swing wide of that one when he'd seen the steam shovel off to his right. He didn't think much of the way this one slipped under the Southern Pacific's right of way. The twin tracks ran east and west along an embankment no higher than the shoulders of a man afoot. They'd just dumped crushed rock ahead as they'd crossed the soft, flat silt. The new culvert that the water now ran through was a jerry-rigged underpass constructed of railroad ties and a few bigger timbers to bear the weight of the trains rolling over it. Stringer knew wood didn't rot worth mention in the desert, but only because it rarely got wet.

“They ought to have a floodgate here. If those bottom ties stay wet all the time...” he started to point out.

“That's Blacky's business.” Cactus Jack impatiently cut in.

So Stringer just shrugged and said, “You're right. It's not on my plate if a train crunches down through rotten underpinnings. It's not that big a drop in any case.”

Cactus Jack agreed. “Right. We ain't working for the railroad. Our outfit is just out to ditch this fool desert, with a bonus for every extra mile ahead of the timetable set by Yuma. There's nothing in them tents across the way but mujeres and a yaller dog that snaps. You ready for a beer now?”

Stringer agreed that sounded like a grand notion. As they turned to saunter back the other way, Cactus Jack pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Gus says you was in El Centro a spell back. You heard about my visit no doubt?”