Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd

By Lou Cameron

When freight trains conquered the West, the big, dusty drives of beef on the hoof became just a colorful piece of cowboy nostalgia. So when a cattle baron called C. J. Tarington aims to punch a thousand plus head through the unforgiving heat and sage of the Great Basin, some say he's a mite simple—or crazy—or both. Stringer thinks it's something else. And sure enough, a pack of bloodthirsty varmints is robbing trains all along the cattle trail. Out in the heart of this cowboy country, Stringer finds trigger-happy herders, lead-slinging bandits, hateful lawmen, and deceitful ladies. Meanwhile, the corpses are starting to out-stink the cow pies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Nov 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781620641668

Lou Cameron

Lou Cameron (1924–2010) was a prolific American novelist with over three hundred titles to his credit, from adventure, science fiction, crime, and war to movie novelizations, Westerns, and more. In addition to the Stringer Western series, he created the Longarm character, writing under the name Tabor Evans, as well as the Renegade series, writing as Ramsay Thorne. Cameron won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Novel in 1976, and he was also an accomplished comic book illustrator.

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CAMERON

CHAPTER ONE

Butcher Town had been overlooked when the Committees of Vigilance had tidied up the more famous parts of the Frisco Waterfront, so Stringer might have shown up dressed more stockyard than social, even if he hadn’t been warned to bring his gun along.

On this particular occasion, he had his double-action S&W .38 tucked into the waistband of his jeans with his faded denim jacket buttoned over the grips. For while he had a valid pistol permit in his billfold with his other credentials, the Frisco P.D. had surely gotten sarcastic of late and it was a pain to be called Buffalo Bill and required to explain your past, present and future plans for every cigar store Indian on a copper badge’s beat.

The hack he’d hired at the foot of Rincon Hill let him off a good quarter-mile from One Thumb Thurber’s place, of course. Stringer had assured the driver on that point. Aside from the maze of railroad tracks to cross, one had to pass between pen after pen of bawling stock, jam-packed so dense they gave off considerable heat as well as stench as they waited to turn into bully beef for the Quartermaster Corps at Fort Mason. Teddy Roosevelt’s determination to make good citizens out of the infernal Filipinos, dead or alive, had sure been good for the local economy. Some of that beef stock had been shipped from as far east as Texas if he was any judge of brands and ear marks. Hardly anyone else branded their stock so big or sliced their ears so ferocious. Mex ranchers sharing the same stretch of border favored brands and earmarks as easy to read at a distance for much the same reasons.

But Stringer hadn’t come all the way down to Butcher Town to verify such old news as the raiding back and forth across the Rio Grande or the fact that armies traveled on their stomachs. One Thumb Thurber’s note hadn’t said much more than that it was a tip worth mucho dinero and to pack along a gun as well. But the old-timer had sold Stringer good leads in the past. The old-timer liked to say he’d lost that right thumb working in a Frisco slaughterhouse. Stringer was more inclined to go along with the legend concerning a shoot-out with some outraged rancheros, back when the old-timer had been a young cow thief. But no matter how he’d wound up one-thumbed and reasonably honest, old Thurber had a natural nose for stockyard skullduggery that had blended well in the past with Stringer’s nose for news.

Now semiretired and working mostly as an organizer for the meat cutter’s union, One Thumb Thurber lived in a rather grandly grotesque way aboard the beached hull of a dismasted coastal schooner, surrounded by knee-deep brine when the tide was in and acres of mighty stinky mud when it was out. To get aboard one followed a cinder path part of the way and a narrow, rickety pier the rest. As Stringer approached he saw others had arrived ahead of him. A heap of others. There were gents in plain clothes and blue uniforms all over the old schooner, as if they were searching for something. Stringer didn’t have any notion as to what it might be. He didn’t see old One Thumb anywhere on deck. He knew that if he turned around and walked away he’d only get to find out what was going on, if anything was going on, by the purchase of, say, the San Francisco Examiner. Since he worked for the San Francisco Sun, he didn’t want to find out anything that way, so he strode on out to see what there might be to see.

The first thing he saw was that he might have been just a mite hasty. For as he rolled over the rail to the sun-silvered and somewhat canted deck, a very large and not too bright-looking copper charged with upraised billy, yelling, Jasus, Mary and Joseph! He’s got a gun under that jacket!

Then he knocked Stringer’s already battered Roughrider hat galley west with a vicious swing of his club. The only thing that kept Stringer’s head from going with it was his own ability to duck one split second faster. As the club swung back to wipe his face off with a backhand swipe, Stringer dropped flat on his back to hook one booted toe behind his burly attacker’s ankle and kick him just under the knee with the other Justin.

It worked. The big but clumsy copper wound up flat on his own ass, more puzzled than hurt by Stringer’s tricky footwork. Knowing in advance how things were supposed to work out, Stringer was back on his own feet long before the gent he’d downed could do much more than stare up at him morosely to demand, How did you do that and where would you like us to send your remains, you sneaky gaboon?

Before things could get any sillier a detective sergeant who knew Stringer of old came over to growl, That’s enough, Kelly. I wish you’d be after letting me decide just who we might or might not be utterly destroying around here. This gent would be MacKail from the Sun and we’ll be telling you when we want him and his darling paper out of business.

Stringer saw his hat had wound up in the schooner’s scuppers and headed over to pick it up. The detective sergeant followed, asking mildly how the newspapers had heard of the murder so soon and all. Stringer bent over, picked up his old Stetson, and put it back on deliberately before he replied, I cannot tell a lie. I was on my way here to see One Thumb Thurber about some news item he wanted to sell us. You say there’s been a murder around here?

The detective sergeant nodded soberly and said, „Thurber, himself, in his quarters there, under the stern deck. The crew from the coroner’s office are in there, now, trying to figure how and when. Out here on these mud flats, a gent can lay dead quite a while before anyone’s apt to be noticing."

Stringer grimaced and said, I didn’t bring the note he sent me. But it was postmarked day before yesterday. Doesn’t that narrow it down a mite?

The lawman nodded and replied, It does, and for that we’ll no doubt be thanking you unless the forensic lads can cut it even closer. You didn’t say what it was the poor dear man wanted to discuss with you, MacKail.

Stringer answered, honestly, Your guess is as good as mine. One Thumb didn’t sell us news tips because he was a public-spirited old fart. He was after drinking money and he drank good stuff. He did say the tip this time was worth three figures.

The detective sergeant whistled softly. Then someone else called out to him, by name, and Stringer was glad. For he’d been trying to recall the gent’s name all this time and, right, it had been been Grogan the last time they’d chewed the fat about that homicide on Russian Hill. As they both seemed to be walking aft toward the dead man’s quarters under the stern deck, he asked Grogan whether or not they’d ever caught the bozo who’d killed that young gal who’d lived alone up yonder. Grogan grimaced and replied, Not yet. They’re still working on Jack The Ripper for the same reasons. Despite what you may have read about that English fairy, Sherlock Holmes, in real life we do better with witnesses than bellybutton lint and them newfangled fingerprint powders. When you kill someone in the privacy of his or her quarters, and leave the premises discreetly afterwards, it’s one dreadful advantage you have over the pitiful powers of law and order.

By this time they’d joined the older gent from the coroner’s office in the hatchway leading under the stern deck. So Grogan asked, What have you got for us, Doc? Only to be told, in an even more morose tone, Not much, this side of a full autopsy downtown. The hermit living on this hulk alone could have been poisoned, hit over the head with the proverbial blunt instrument, or, hell, died from natural causes. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, you know.

Grogan frowned and protested, The hell you say, Doc. What about them cuts about the face and knuckles? To which the forensic surgeon replied with a shrug and a ghoulish chuckle, Rats. Never die alone aboard a rat-infested hulk if you want to be discovered in a state of dignified repose. He shot Stringer a thoughtful look as well. Grogan introduced them to one another. The forensic surgeon shook politely enough but looked pained when Stringer asked who might have discovered One Thumb Thurber in any condition.

It was Grogan who explained, Delivery boy came out here this very morning with some stovewood for the dead man. It’s a good thing he did. I recall with some dismay the dead Chinee the rats had been at for close to a week before anyone noticed.

Stringer grimaced and said, My boss, Sam Barca, will surely want some details when I write this story up for the Sun, gents. Could I take a gander if I promised to spell everyone’s name right?

They smilingly agreed that sounded fair, and with the forensic man in the lead, went inside and aft along a narrow corridor to where poor old One Thumb Thurber still lay flat on his back near the cast iron stove of his small galley. The body was clad in gum boots, bib overalls and a flannel shirt. The stove was naturally cold and anything One Thumb had been frying in the skillet on the stove had been licked clean by the rats, no doubt before they’d started on the old man’s exposed flesh. He wasn’t really chewed up too badly, once you dismissed the raw marks as rat bites instead of wounds. As Stringer poked about, making mental notes, Grogan was muttering, half to himself, Let’s see, now. If he sent that note to you day before yesterday...

Where’s the stovewood? Stringer cut in, dragging a willow hamper clear of its corner to make sure as he added, I make that less’n four staves of cord wood and, say, a peck of kindling. Didn’t someone mention a delivery boy finding the body this morning?

Grogan nodded and replied, Sure. He ran ashore, all out of breath, to tell Kelly, the roundsman you had that little run-in with, before. He said he came aboard with stovewood for Thurber, there, and...Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and how would a dead man use up all that stovewood between then and now, and where’s that damned Kelly?

He dashed out ahead of them. So by the time Stringer and the forensic surgeon joined them out on deck, Grogan and Kelly had already established that the stove had indeed been as cold as One Thumb himself when the first paid-up peace officer had arrived on the scene and that, no, Kelly hadn’t thought to take down the addresses of either the domicile or workplace of the informative delivery boy, albeit he distinctly recalled the lad had given his name as John Brown.

Grogan swore under his breath and shot Stringer a questioning look. Stringer said, Could be. On the other hand, you said yourself that a killer who simply left the scene without a word to anyone had the best chance of getting away clean.

Kelly tried, Then maybe it was the suspense of waiting for others to find the body that he couldn’t abide and so…

But his superior cut in to demand, What are you blathering about now, Kelly? And it was Stringer, noting the big Irishman’s confusion, who replied, His point’s well taken. I don’t know why some of them return to the scene of the crime, but I’ve covered enough crime stories to know some do.

As the copper badge who’d tried to clobber him shot Stringer a grateful look, the newspaperman sporting the Roughrider hat got out his makings to continue, as he rolled himself a smoke, If I’d just killed someone I’m pretty sure I’d just keep going and never go back. But I’ll allow I’d likely sweat bullets up to the moment I knew they’d found my victim’s body and hadn’t connected me with it so far.

He drew a careful line of Bull Durham along the crease of his straw paper as he added, It works another way, if Thurber was killed to shut him up. I was on my way here to buy a hot news tip off the old rascal. Had it been me, and not some mysterious delivery boy who’d found the body, you peace officers wouldn’t know about it yet. I’d have surely poked about pretty good before I got around to reporting Thurber’s death and, no offense, I do have a certain rep as an investigative newspaperman.

Grogan growled, Gee, thanks! and even the forensic surgeon felt inspired to demand, All right, if you’re so damned smart, what have we missed?

Stringer had been brought up to be respectful to his elders, so instead of mentioning that absent stove wood everyone else had missed he simply replied, I could be playing mental chess when the name of the game is really checkers, Doc. But let’s see what we’ve got so far.

He sealed the straw paper with his tongue and said, Numero Uno, I can’t see a natural death being reported to the law so unnatural. Whether our mysterious John Brown was the killer or just aiding and abetting the same, he took a chance when he allowed Kelly to see his face, regardless of the tale he told.

The injured Kelly nodded gravely and growled, That’s the simple truth of the matter. I’ll know the scamp if ever I lay eyes on him again in this world or the next!

Grogan was starting to play mental chess by now as well, it would seem, for it was Grogan who pointed out, The killer or killers couldn’t have known you were on your way out here, MacKail. Stringer nodded even as Kelly asked why not. It was the older man from the coroner’s office who explained, If they hadn’t wanted the body found today they’d have never chanced telling you, Kelly. On the other hand, if they had some reason to get the word out, pronto, they couldn’t have known a newspaperman was on his way to interview the dead man.

Then, as Stringer was lighting up, the forensic surgeon shot him a look of dawning respect to add, By damn, you’ve got me pondering wheels within wheels, myself, now! If Thurber was killed to shut him up, they must have meant his death as a warning to others as well. Are you sure you’ve no idea what it was he meant to tell you, MacKail?

Stringer shook his head and answered, I’d be proud to tell you and all our readers as well if I had the least notion, Doc. One Thumb had that one thumb in a heap of Butcher Town pies. It might have been something his union didn’t want to get out. It might have been some skullduggery on the part of any one of the many meat packers and such his fellow union members work for here in Butcher Town.

He took a thoughtful drag on his smoke and added, I got a good tip from him on cow hides, about a year ago. Seems half-hides, always the same right halves, were arriving at the tannery down the tracks from this one slaughterhouse. One of the old boys working there had been a cowhand in his misspent youth. So he told One Thumb, One Thumb told me, and I hope you boys read the swell coverage I wrote on the trial that resulted once I told the brand inspectors.

The lawmen he was telling all this to must not have been cowhands in their own misspent youths. After they’d exchanged blank stares a spell Grogan bit the bullet and asked point blank what in thunder Stringer was talking about. Stringer said, When you skin a fresh killed beef you get a right side and a left side to each and every one. Nine out of ten critters are branded on their left side, making that half a hide less valuable, but still worth something, unless, of course, you’d just as soon nobody ever immortalized the brand of a stolen cow on even industrial belting or the lining of a Saratoga trunk. So when the boys at the tannery noticed no brands at all on any hides from that particular source...

I got it, Grogan cut in. We’re going back inside and then I want a man who knows as much as you about the beef industry to go through Thurber’s personal papers more than once. I’m beginning to see why someone might not have wanted him talking to a newspaperman who knows his way around a cow, cowboy!

Stringer never got back to the office that afternoon. But in the end, he was just as much in the dark as they came back out on deck near sundown, dusty and disgusted, for old One thumb had kept pasteboard boxes filled with everything from old streetcar transfers to French postcards he should have been ashamed of bringing home in the first place. But they failed to find one shred of evidence pointing to anyone else in Butcher Town, and that might have been that, had not that final autopsy report disclosed the cause of death to have been a blunt instrument.

Old One Thumb Thurber had been hit from behind, hard enough to drive bone splinters from the back of his skull halfway to the front.

CHAPTER TWO

Stringer had been born and raised in Calaveras County as Stuart MacKail. They still called him Stu up around Murphy s and Angels Camp, and there’d have been no sensible reason to call him Stringer if he hadn’t persisted so stubbornly in refusing that cushy staff position with his name written any way he fancied on the editorial masthead of the San Francisco Sun.

But there was much to be said for working as a stringer or freelancer paid by the word instead of the week. It offered a man at least the illusion that he was his own boss who didn’t have to fret about time clocks or, hell, show up at all if she was pretty and he was ahead on pocket-jingle, and he’d never cottoned to being called Stu to begin with. It reminded him too