Stringer and the Deadly Flood (9 page)

She thought it was such a grand notion that by the time he put out the last of his smoke she was ready to haul him down and wrap her sweet limbs around him
again.
He didn't mind. Few men would have. The rain drumming on the canvas above them seemed to inspire them both to a new tempo. But she finally got where she wanted to go and went limp under him while he caught up with her. She protested that she was sleepy and that he'd taken advantage of her weak nature, so he stopped, saying, “I'd best spread some tarps to take advantage of all this free water.”

Being a woman, she hugged him tighter and insisted they had all the water they needed in the kegs lashed to the chassis outside. So he lay still and just held her, as he knew she wanted to be held, until her soft breathing told him she was asleep. Then he gently rolled off the narrow mattress, covered her with a quilt and, seeing they might not have to worry about water after all, climbed up in the top bunk to stretch out and close his eyes.

CHAPTER
SIX

The next thing Stringer knew it was morning. Some desert quail were bitching about it outside, and he seemed to be alone in Juanita's gypsy cart. So he swung down to the floor planks, wiped the sleep gum out of his eyes, and hauled on his boots, jeans, and .38 rig to see what was going on out there.

The rain had stopped. But the sky above was overcast, and the air felt more like spring in greener country than the way it usually felt out here.

He walked around the cart to find Juanita, naked as a jaybird, hunkered on her bare heels over the greasewood fire she was kindling. She looked more like a naked Spanish lady than the Digger Indian she seemed to be play-acting this morning. He chuckled and told her so. She shrugged and asked, “Who is there to peek out here who has not seen me, and more, in this costume? For why did you put your pants on, querido? Are you ashamed to let me see what feels so good in the dark?”

He said, “I'd look mighty dumb in just my boots, and I'm not about to walk through sticker brush barefooted. I'm going to backtrack us a ways as soon as I water and nose-bag the mules.”

She shook her head and said, “I watered and fed them at dawn, you most sleepy but handsome
perezoso.
Don't go too far. I mean to feed you as soon as I can get this wet wood to behave.”

He nodded and strode back the way they'd come the previous day. He knew she'd get the greasewood to burn. That was why they called it greasewood. The stuff wasn't good for much else. It grew slow, twisty, and impregnated with waxy resin. The rain they'd just had would make all the brush he could see for miles sprout perhaps a fraction of an inch. Each greasewood clump was surrounded by a few feet of bare soil. The tough, thirsty bushes hoarded all the water that fell anywhere near them by poisoning the surrounding soil with a toxin given off by their roots. It made for
easy
passage between the prickly stuff, and it was here that he scouted for sign.

There wasn't much now, thanks to that heavy rain. But here and there he could just make out a puddle that might have formed in a soft spot a wagon wheel or hoof had dug into. The puddles were almost gone now, despite the overcast sky and unusually moist air. He spotted a big one, formed naturally where wind had scoured the dust on the lee side of a brush clump. He hunkered down and drew a line in the damp dirt with his finger. The water in the puddle didn't seem interested in running south. He tried a tiny ditch to the north. The water filled it as fast as he could move his finger through the dirt. He nodded and muttered aloud, “All right, Herb. You were right. I doubt we could be below sea level, therefore we have to be north of an almost dead-flat divide. So, no water on this side has any outlet to the sea.”

He straightened up, wiping the damp grit from his finger on his jeans, and headed back to rejoin Juanita as he stared due north at what seemed to be dead-flat desolation. There were no signs of erosion, however. Rainwater soaked into the thirsty silt too fast to run enough to matter in any direction. He found Juanita frying bacon in a cast-iron spider. He hunkered down beside her and announced, “I dunno. If they hadn't shot old Herb, I'd feel more sure he was just a worrywart. If they're running a mite north of such north-south drainage as there is, north-bound irrigation water ought to just soak in before it can cause any damage. Maybe I'd better have a look at his other charts and see if I can make heads or tails of his fuss with the water company.”

She told him he wasn't going anywhere without a proper breakfast. So he stayed put, wondering idly just how long it was apt to take before she got down to the serious nagging that tended to dry the dew from the rose and remind a man of all the thorns that went with such delights. But when she suggested sex al fresco for dessert he decided she hadn't meant to sound so bossy after all.

They were just starting to climax together when a gentle rain swept across the desert floor to inspire them to try again and left them laughing, feeling clean but a mite chilled. So they got dressed, broke camp, and continued to move north through alternate spells of soft rain and bright but not too hot sunshine. Even the mules seemed to enjoy such unusually decent desert weather. So they made good time until Stringer, scouting out ahead, reined in and raised his free hand to halt Juanita and her cart. As he rode back to her he said, “I want to have another peek at that barometer. It looks as if we've come to a sort of fossil beach.”

She
climbed down and moved forward to see what he was talking about while he dismounted and climbed up into the back of her cart.

The needle on Herb Lockwood's barometer read 29.98, or a tad below or above mean sea level, depending on the weather. He climbed back out and walked over to join Juanita. He found her holding a bitty prehistoric conch shell to her ear. She smiled at him and cried, “I hear it. I can hear the sea, inside, just like they say!”

He stared curiously around, replying, “Any sea that ever made a sound around here is long gone, indeed.” Certainly there was no actual beach to be seen cutting east and west across their path. The desert winds and rains had long since done away with any traces of wave action and the knee-high, slate-gray greasewood had marched right out into what must have been a very shallow sea in its time. The old waterline was there to be seen only because of the sun-bleached seashells spread out across the bare silt. Stringer was no expert on the topic, but most of the shells seemed to be those of saltwater mussels. The conch shell Juanita had found just didn't go with fresh water. So, all right, there'd been a time when anyone standing here would have been staring across open blue water to the north horizon, with the vast inland sea cradled between the bare brown mountains, east and west, perhaps thirty to fifty miles apart. He started to turn back to Juanita. Then he spotted a chalky conch shell bigger than the one she'd found, and he bent to pick it up for her.

The son of a bitch drawing a rifle bead on Stringer must not have expected him to duck like that. His .30-.30 round buzzed right through the air Stringer's back had just been filling. Stringer did a forward somersault as the rifle squibbed again, winding up prone in a clump of greasewood with his own gun drawn. He spit out curses and pungent twigs while he tried to figure out what in thunder was going on.

He lifted his hat on his six-gun barrel. But the unseen marksman didn't fall for that. So he tried sticking his bare head up a few feet and almost got it blown off. He ducked at the sight of the muzzle flash before the sound and the bullet could cover the quarter mile between them. The bastard was good, Stringer decided. This was going to take some study. He started by crawling toward the gypsy cart and his Winchester, grateful that the recent rain had made the ground less dusty and trying to think like a lizard as he slithered through the knee-high brush, being careful not to move any of it. He heard another shot. It sounded as if the cuss was lobbing rounds into his old position for luck. He'd left his hat atop a bush back there. The bastard might be good
but
he sure was stupid, Stringer thought—nobody with a lick of sense would have put a light gray hat back on at a time like this.

The rear of the cart, Dutch door and all, was exposed to the sneaky bastard who'd cut their trail. He'd have to get into the wagon from the driver's seat. Juanita's mule was tethered between the poles, and it showed him the white of one eye as he slithered out of the shrubbery toward the animal with a reassuring whisper. Fortunately, Juanita had tied it to a stout clump, so it had to just stay put, kicking its big hooves more in uncertainty than lethal intent as Stringer crawled under it. Nevertheless, Stringer took a couple of half-hearted kicks before he could get to the wagon and haul himself up over the dashboard to roll over Juanita's seat to the inside.

He scooped up his Winchester, levered a round in the chamber, and eased back to the rear door. He opened the bottom half just a crack and spotted two Spanish mules half a mile out. He had to stand and crack the top door before he could make out the two hats just visible above the slate-blue brush. His attackers were both hunkered smart from the point of view of anyone at ground level, but in the cart he was standing a good yard higher. One hat was Anglo, a peaked Arizona rider. The other was a more Mex sombrero. Even as he watched, both were moving in, spread about ten yards apart. He took a bead on the Anglo farthest away. Then he fired and levered his weapon to fire again as the one in the Mex hat made the mistake of rising to fire back at him. The other rifleman's bullet thunked into the doorjamb near Stringer's head. But from the way that sombrero went skyward, Stringer knew he'd aimed better. Heads seldom jerked that hard unless a gent had been spine-shot.

That left the Anglo he'd first fired at, who was hit or playing possom but in either case out of sight. So Stringer swung the door wide open and dropped out and down. The rifle round that whizzed over the cart told him the bastard was still in business out there.

Stringer started crawling again, with the Winchester cradled across his forearms. Had not it been for a similar incident down Cuba way one time, Stringer might have tried crawling in on the bastard's last known position. But he didn't. He'd learned as a war correspondent who hadn't expected to fight but then had to, that one-third to fifty percent casualties inspired most men to retreat, and the average bushwacker wasn't as brave as most men. So Stringer made for the mules he'd spotted tethered farther out.

It
worked. When the man he'd shot out from under the Arizona hat figured he'd crawled far enough with a .44-40 slug in his left shoulder and got up to make the last dash for his mule and other parts, Stringer rose between him and said mules to snap, “Freeze!” And, when that didn't work, he nailed the cuss again at closer range.

Stringer bulled through the brush to where he'd dropped his man, lest the son of a bitch have time to recover some spunk if he was still alive. But he wasn't. He was just spawled there with a kind of smile on his ugly face and what looked like blueberry jam all over the front of his black shirt.

Stringer shot him again to make sure. The muzzle blast set the black sateen to smouldering, but Stringer didn't care. He hunkered down to go through the dead man's pockets. He wound up with forty-three dollars and one of those mail-order private detective buzzers that went with company dicks. A wilted card assured anyone who might have cared that the rascal had been a water outfit security man called Wordsworth. Stringer got to his feet, putting the money away, and muttered, “I didn't think much of your namesake's poetry either.” Then he went looking for the Mex he'd downed.

As he approached the fossil beach once more he called out to Juanita, “It's over, honey. I got the rascals.” There was no answer. She'd likely started running when she'd heard that first rifleshot, he decided. He just hoped she hadn't run too far.

It took him some minutes to find the dead Mex and, when he did, the dead face staring up at him looked more Indian. He nodded and told the moon-faced cadaver, “I didn't think we'd left enough sign for your average white man to follow.”

There was no identification on the dead Indian. Stringer took charge of the twenty-dollar double eagle and silver quarter he'd found on that one and headed back to the cart, calling out to Juanita some more.

He finally found her not far from where he'd last seen her, lying on her back with the fossil seashell still in one hand. She looked as if she was sleeping, but he didn't try to wake her up. There was a little blue hole in her forehead and a thread of blood had run out her ear, soaking into the shiny black hair spread all around her pretty face like a perverse halo.

Stringer walked back to the cart and slammed his free fist into the side of it, hard. It didn't help. He dropped his rifle and clung to one of the red wheels, puking up the breakfast she'd just served him along with her sweet little self. Then he got control
of
himself again and rummaged in the tool box under the wagon bed to break out a short-handled spade.