Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron

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.”
    â€œIn 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?”
    â€œI 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