The Floating Outfit 61

by J. T. Edson

  Seeing the fear on Myra’s face, Anthea did not squeeze the trigger immediately. Instead she kept the gun lined, savoring her sister’s terror. A knock sounded at the room door, it opened and the number-one boy of the Chinese servants came in fast. If he felt surprised at the scene before him, he did not show it.

  “New feller take the girl away with him!” the Chinese said excitedly.

  Instantly Anthea’s gun wavered and sagged down. Having been in prison, she did not wish to repeat the sensation and knew Louise’s escape would mean just that unless stopped. Without a glance or word in Myra’s direction, Anthea dashed from the room.

  Myra lifted her hand, rubbed it across her throbbing mouth and looked down at the red smear of blood upon it. Slowly the fear ebbed away and rank anger took its place. Lurching to her feet, she crossed to the sidepiece and jerked open the top drawer. Inside was a Remington Double Derringer, serving the honorable and potentially useful purpose of house gun. Taking out the stubby handgun, Myra added a few of the bullets which shared the drawer with it to her armament. She dropped the bullets into the pocket of her skirt and followed her sister.

  Tearing along the passage, Anthea threw open the main doors and rushed outside. Already men streamed from the bunkhouse.

  “Get after them!” she screamed. “It’s all our necks if they escape.”

  Chapter Fourteen – How Do I Know I Can Trust You?

  WACO FOUND MICK waiting when he left the house. Apparently the young man held no animosity for his ducking, but grinned amiably. Ever the opportunist, Mick realized that Billy’s days as bunkhouse bully and top man of their set had ended, so he intended to ingratiate himself with the new leading light.

  “What’ve they done with her?” he asked.

  “Locked her up.”

  “What’re they aiming to do with her?”

  “Go ask them,” grunted Waco.

  “Not me. The old’n’s got a mean temper and the young’n’s not much better. Come on, I’ll show you where to put your gear.”

  “I’ll leave my hoss handy,” Waco remarked as they went to the corral. “The boss gal wants me to handle something for her later.”

  “Hoss looks to have been rid hard,” Mick commented.

  “It eats work.”

  While he hated to neglect the horse in such a manner, Waco knew that he must at that time. Having his mount saddled and ready might mean the difference between life and death for himself and Louise Ortega later that day.

  However, he did all he could to lessen the burden on the over-worked horse before heading to the bunkhouse with Mick.

  None of the men at the bunkhouse showed any great interest in Waco’s past life. One look at him warned the men who arrived with Myra that undue curiosity might not meet with the tall young Texan’s approval and they figured he could make his point to any objections he raised. Billy and the other youngster scowled, but neither offered to take up the issue again.

  Over a decent meal, Waco learned something of the work the men had been doing and, without being told, guessed at the reason behind the apparently senseless vent-brandings. He reckoned that, one way and another, he knew enough to end his visit and figured that the sooner he carried word of his findings to Dusty the better for the peace of the Backsight area. At which point Waco remembered the prisoner and knew he could not leave without her. Just as he decided to wait until after dark, he learned something which changed his mind. The rest of the hands, scattered in small groups vent-branding stock, would be returning by nightfall and if he aimed to make a move, he must do it quickly or have no chance at all. Given surprise, Waco reckoned he could handle the men present, but a larger number would be too much for him.

  “Where’s a man go, when he wants to go?” he asked.

  “Out back. That’s our’n in the open. The one in the hollow’s where the boss ladies go.”

  Rising, Waco slouched across the room and went out of the side door. He had not removed his gunbelt and the Winchester rode the boot of his saddle down by the corral, so he possessed the armament he required. Leaving the building, he circled around and made for the house. On his arrival, he slipped along the porch, reached the front door and tried it. Much to his relief, the door opened and he looked inside cautiously. The hall was deserted and Waco cat-footed across towards the stairs.

  “Hey, Joe,” said a voice. “Where you go?”

  Turning, Waco found a Chinese servant approaching him. Ever since meeting Tommy Okasi in the Rio Hondo, Waco had developed respect for the Oriental as a fighting man. While not knowing if all yellow-skinned men possessed Tommy’s knowledge of unarmed combat, Waco reckoned that the present would be a mighty bad time to start finding out.

  “Where’s the boss lady?” he asked, standing innocently relaxed.

  The Chinese servant saw nothing out of the ordinary in either the question or Waco’s attitude. Having seen the way the sisters acted with Donglar, the servant could imagine why Waco came to the house and headed for the stairs. Although the man spoke little English, he understood Waco’s question and knew how to make an answer. Suspecting nothing, he turned his pig-tailed head towards the dining room door.

  Down dipped Waco’s left hand, hooking the near-side Colt from leather and bouncing its barrel off the Chinaman’s head. Even as the man started to collapse, Waco caught him, supporting him and looking around for somewhere to conceal the unconscious form. Guessing that the door under the staircase opened into a broom closet, Waco hauled his burden to it. On opening the door, he found his guess correct and also that a piece of luck had come his way. In addition to cleaning materials, a coiled rope lay on the floor of the closet and with it Waco secured his victim. After using a piece of rag for a gag, Waco left the closet, closed its door behind him and went up the stairs without further interruption. With something like relief, he saw the key still in the door to Louise’s prison room.

  Louise Ortega sat on the bed, but she came to her feet, face showing apprehension and little fists clenched, as Waco entered.

  “Don’t make any fuss, ma’am!” he said urgently. “I’ve come to take you out of here.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Louise asked. “You helped capture me.”

  “I had to,” Waco answered. “But I work for Dusty Fog.” Seeing the disbelief which came to Louise’s face, Waco thought fast in an attempt to find a way of proving he spoke the truth. He knew much about Dusty, Mark and the Kid and sought for the thing most likely to convince the girl of his bona fides. Few people would be expected to know that the Kid called his white stallion Thunder, but that was not conclusive. Several stories of Mark Counter’s fantastic feats of strength—such as how he lifted the end of Calamity Jane’s wagon out of a gopher hole, ix or with his bare hands broke the neck of a longhorn bull x —came to mind, to be discarded as belonging to public knowledge. On her arrival in Backsight, Louise had so far forgotten her Southern lady’s upbringing, due to a variety of circumstances, that she tangled in a hair-yanking brawl with her husband’s sister; but many people knew of the incident.

  Then Waco recalled something, an incident the true facts of which were known to not more than half-a-dozen people, Louise included.

  “Mind the time when the Apaches jumped your train, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, wanting to believe him and wondering if he knew the right answer. “The Ysabel Kid ended it when he shot their chief—”

  “Only it was Thad Baylor who did the shooting from inside your wagon. Lon went with him and came out holding the rifle so nobody’d tie Thad in with it.”

  No longer did disbelief show on the girl’s face, for she knew Waco told her the truth. Only a real close friend of Dusty Fog would have access to the information he gave her. In the War Between the States, Thad Baylor served as a sharp-shooter, as the special duty snipers of the period were called. A skilled gunsmith, he hated killing, yet found himself forced to take man after man’s life. Even after the war Baylor found no respite, fo
r law enforcement officers called him in to deal with situations where accurate shooting was necessary. At last, tired of being required to bring death from long ranges, Baylor decided to move West and make a fresh start. Under the name of Cauldon, he joined the Raines’s wagon train as a gunsmith. During the Apache attack, the Kid saw a means of saving the train. An earlier failure caused the Indian leader to make fresh medicine and the Kid saw him at his prayers. If the chief died, the rest would go—but there was one small snag, he stood over five hundred yards away and beyond the range where the Kid’s Winchester could make a hit. So Dusty asked Baylor, or Cauldon, to help and, to preserve his secret, arranged things so it appeared that the Kid did the shooting. In their relief at seeing the end of the attack, none of the travelers wondered how the Kid managed to make a hit at such a long range while using an unfamiliar rifle.

  Only the Texans, Louise and her father, and Cauldon knew the true story of what happened in the Raines’s wagon that day. If the tall young Texan knew the true facts, and clearly he did, he must be more than a mere employee on the O.D. Connected and trusted by Dusty Fog.

  “I believe you,” she said. “And I’m sorry—”

  “Shucks, ma’am,” grinned Waco. “Most folks start off by dang nigh scalping me bare-handed. You couldn’t know how things stood. I had to stop you, or that big gal’d’ve done it with a gun. Reckon she’s the Considine gal Dusty’s told me about?”

  “Yes. I knew she had broken out of prison, but thought she’d fled the country. Perhaps you’d better let me stay here—”

  “No, ma’am. Not with what she has in mind for you. Let’s get going. We’ll sneak out of here, grab a couple of hosses and make a run for either town or your place, whichever’s nearer.”

  “All right,” Louise breathed.

  Cautiously Waco eased open the room door and looked along the passage. He then led the girl out and down the stairs.

  “If we run into trouble,” he whispered. “Head for the corral and leave me handle it.”

  “There’s a side door through that room,” Louise replied, indicating one of the doors leading off the main hall. “Terry and I came over here to look around just after we were married.”

  “We’ll go out that way then. Sure hope there’s nobody in the room though.”

  Gun in hand ready for use, Waco eased the door open and stepped into the room to find it deserted. With the girl on his heels, he walked across to the side door and let himself out of the house. Although the bunkhouse stood to one side, none of its occupants witnessed the departure and Waco decided that their luck held good. He concluded that they had best not press their good fortune.

  “We’ll cut around the back of the house and come in from the other side to the corral,” he said and Louise followed without a word.

  Just as they reached the end of the house, trouble struck. One of the hired guns had been in the backhouse attending to his normal functions and he chose that minute to come out. For a moment he stood staring at Louise and Waco, then he jerked the gun from the holster of his belt, which he carried in his hand, at the same time opening his mouth and yelling.

  “Hey! What’re you doing with that gal?”

  “Eloping,” Waco answered as the man fired at him.

  The man shot from waist high, but his bullet came nowhere near Waco or the girl. Shooting by instinctive alignment could produce man-killing accuracy—but only at close range, and the gun hand stood a good fifty yards away. Up swung Waco’s Colt, for the man blocked their escape and might improve his aim. There had been a time when Waco would have replied in the same manner that his assailant employed, throwing lead from waist level; but not since joining Dusty Fog and learning from a master how to make the most of his revolvers. The extra split-second necessary to extend the hand shoulder high and take sight proved their worth. On the crack of Waco’s Colt, the hired gun jerked, spun around, dropped his revolver and fell sprawling into the backhouse.

  Fast though Waco moved, the mischief had been done. The man’s shout and shot, although they did not reach the sisters in the dining-room, alerted the rest of the ranch crew.

  “Damn the luck!” Waco spat out. “Run for it, ma’am!”

  Shouts sounded from the bunkhouse and feet thudded. Waco heard the door crash open. He threw two shots which kicked splinters from the wall and prevented the men from showing themselves. Whirling on his heels, the young Texan started after Louise. Ahead of the girl, the ranch’s Chinese cook burst into sight at the end of the house. Brandishing a meat cleaver, he rushed forward at Louise. Waco fired, driving a bullet into the cook’s chest and the man reeled backwards under the impact of the lead.

  Ignoring the fallen man, Louise ran by the end of the house and Waco caught up with her. There would be no chance of making for the corral, so Waco headed the girl in the direction of the rough, broken country behind the buildings. Once there, he figured that he could make things mighty interesting for anybody who came after him. With the girl present, he might be hampered but knew he had one advantage over his pursuers. Spread out among the bush-dotted, rock-covered draws and valleys behind the house, they would have to make sure before they shot whether it was a friend or enemy. As long as Waco kept the girl at his side, he need be hampered by no fear of putting lead into a friend. Knowing hired guns, and having formed a pretty fair estimation of the quality of the Whangdoodle’s crew, he reckoned he ought to be able to dissuade them. After that—well, much as he hated walking, Waco reckoned he could manage to hike overland to either Backsight or the Ortega place.

  A few scattered shots followed the running pair, but they had already built up a fair lead and none of the bullets came close enough to worry them. Behind them, they heard Anthea yelling orders to the crew. Then they reached the mouth of a winding valley and entered it. Once out of sight of the ranch, Waco looked around for some way to throw the pursuit from their track.

  “Agh!” Louise cried, her foot catching between two rocks. She fell forward and felt pain knife into her ankle.

  “Can you walk?” Waco asked, dropping to one knee by her and looking back.

  “I—I’ll try,” she replied, but on attempting to rise knew the awful truth. “I—I’ve sprained my ankle. Go without me.”

  “Like hell,” he answered. “Hook your arm around my neck and hang on.”

  Before the girl could raise the objections which rose inside her, Waco bent down and scooped her into his arms. She hung on to his neck and he started to walk fast, swinging through the bushes and along a draw which ran at an angle to the valley he first entered. After quick thought, he decided to keep moving and chance being seen. To hole up would be of no use. The men could pin him down, fetch rifles from the house, or just wait until the full crew arrived and then take him by sheer weight of numbers. Gritting his teeth at the thought, Waco kept moving.

  In that kind of deadly game, local knowledge could spell the difference between life and death. While Waco might be a stranger to the area, the same applied to all but one of his hunters. After Fernandez’s death and the departure of his employees, Billy had spent a fair amount of time around the ranch, hunting jack-rabbits over the area into which Louise and Waco fled. Using his memory of the lie of the land, Billy guessed at which direction the Texan would go, and saw a chance of taking revenge on the man who rough-handled him.

  “Come on,” he said to the cowhand Waco had dumped into the water-trough. “You and me’ll go off this way.”

  Fanned out in extended line, the ranch’s crew headed for the broken ground. They advanced with caution, guessing that any lack of it while dealing with the gun-handy Texan was likely to prove fatal. Anthea watched her men as they moved off to disappear into the rough country. Without a word or glance at her sister, she started after the men. Face still twisted in lines of hatred, Myra followed Anthea at a short distance behind and made no attempt to catch up.

  Keeping to cover as much as possible, Waco strode along with the girl in his arms. Once he froze as a mem
ber of the ranch crew appeared on a distant rim, but the man turned away without seeing them. Sliding down into the bottom of another draw, the Texan continued to move on. Waco concentrated his attention on keeping his sense of direction. In that kind of country, a man might easily become confused and wind up returning in the direction from which he came.

  Noises beyond the rim of the draw brought Waco to a halt. Close at hand grew a clump of mesquite; poor cover, but all available right then. Swiftly Waco moved behind the bushes, lowered the girl and sank down by her side. Almost as soon as they hid, the girl and Waco saw a pair of men top the rim and look back along the draw. So far the men, members of a party who returned while Waco was at the house, scanned the draw to the rear of the hidden pair, but it would only be seconds before their scrutiny reached the mesquite which offered such scanty cover. Although Waco drew his gun, he did not cock it in case the sound drew the searchers’ eyes to his position.

  Away to the right of where Waco hid, one of the searching pairs—the men decided, without discussion, to work in twos rather than go up against the Texan singly—heard a crashing in the bushes. Whirling, they brought up their guns and fired in the direction of the sound before either realized that their target was a whitetail deer buck that had been sleeping the day in cover and disturbed by their presence. Not far away, another pair saw the movement of the buck and joined in the bombardment and yet a third duo, nerves on edge, added their quota to the shooting.

  “Over there!” one of the pair above Waco yelled, turning and bounding away.

  Listening to the sounds of the men’s departure, Waco let out his breath in a low sigh of relief.

  “Do I look any older?” he asked the girl, standing up and helping her rise.