The Floating Outfit 10

by J. T. Edson

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Copyright

  One – Bring Back a Trail Boss

  Two – The Immortal Words of Colonel Sam

  Three – On Choosing Hands

  Four – Choosing Match

  Five – Mr. Toon Learns a Lesson

  Six – Point Them Out

  Seven – Trail Count

  Eight – Mr. Allison Meets Captain Fog

  Nine – Stampede

  Ten – Loncey Dalton Ysabel Rides Scout

  Eleven – Colonel Kliddoe Meets Kin

  Twelve – Captain Fog Shows More Talent

  Thirteen – Mr. Odham Has A Plan

  Fourteen – Shag Moxel’s Indiscretion

  Fifteen – Mark Counter Throws a Barrel

  Sixteen – A Trail Boss

  About J.T. Edson

  Since Thad Toon had put the ‘Indian sign’ on Ben Holland’s spread, no cowhand would ride with the Rocking H’s trail drive. Just to make sure, a rough-cut gang of killers had been hired to keep it that way. Then Dusty Fog and the Floating Outfit rode into Granite City, and Dusty decided to take up the dare … and teach the Double T what Texas trail-bossing was all about!

  For Dorothy, who has put up with me for years.

  One – Bring Back a Trail Boss

  ‘Bring back a trail boss.’

  The words beat a tattoo in Thora Holland’s brain, beat it in rhythm to the hooves of the chuck wagon’s team as she sat on the hard, uncomfortable seat.

  A trail boss was the thing the Rocking H wanted, just one man.

  But not any man would do.

  A trail boss was a man amongst men; only a trail boss could cope with the many problems of trailing three thousand head of half-wild Texas longhorns north to the shipping pens at Dodge City. To do that he had to be tough, aggressive, intelligent and quick to deal with any emergency.

  On any drive he needed all those qualifications; he needed them even more so on this drive. This Rocking H herd would have to be taken all the long miles north, up through the Texas Panhandle, over the North Brazos, the Red, the Cimarron, the Canadian and other smaller rivers. It would have trouble with these as the season was early and the winter snows would still be raising the river level. These problems were enough, but there were others, not the least of which was Jethro Kliddoe and his bunch of reb-hating Kansas border ruffians.

  Thora shivered at the thought of Kliddoe; the name struck a chill into her. Kliddoe and his men would be something more than the ordinary hazard for the trail boss to handle.

  The trail boss was needed to handle the drive; but where could an Eastern woman find such a man? Thora thought of all she had heard about the duties of a trail boss and the creed by which he was judged. Ben Holland, her husband, had told her of it often. How a trail boss left Texas with a herd, fed beef to the hands all the way north, lost a few head on the trail and still reached the shipping pens with more than he started out.

  Ben Holland knew this creed well enough. Before his accident his name as a trail boss was assured. Then bushwhack lead left him a cripple in a wheelchair. With Ben on his feet there would have been none of this worry about getting a crew to go north with the trail herd.

  It had been in Dodge that Ben was shot. The ambush had been well laid, but the bushwhacker showed caution. The charge from his ten-gauge shotgun crippled instead of killed.

  That was some trip, Ben’s last drive north the previous spring. In Dodge he ran afoul of a pious assistant deputy called Wyatt Earp. Earp was about to pistol-whip a drunken young Texas cowhand, but Ben intervened. There was no trouble. Earp declined to fight a sober man of his own size; but he made muttered threats.

  After Ben was shot Bat Masterson investigated, but found nothing to help him in his search. He was a friend of both Earp and Ben Holland and checked on Earp’s whereabouts to prove one thing or the other. Earp had left Dodge the morning after the clash. There was nothing to connect him with the attempted murder.

  Masterson tried to find who did the shooting. Ben was well liked by folks in Dodge and had no enemies. Only one significant point came out of the business. After his return to Dodge, while Ben was being taken back to Texas in the wagon, Earp passed word that Rocking H must not use the Dodge City pens again.

  That was just one more problem the trail boss must handle if he took the herd to Dodge. Just one more trial in the arduous task ahead of the Rocking H trail boss.

  It was a true saying, Thora thought, that it never rained but it poured. With all this against them, they get trouble nearer at hand. Ben’s crew had made an early round up, and had collected their trail herd; they had only completed road branding it the day before. Then their neighbor, Thad Toon of the Double T, an old enemy of the Rocking H, made his move. Toon had begun his roundup after Ben’s crew started theirs and was trying to catch up on their lead. He knew that by fair means he could not get his herd on the trail first, so he made his move. Hiring a fast-gun killer, he had set up camp in the town of Granite and passed word that any man hiring to Rocking H would be buying grief.

  With Ben off his feet, and without a leader, it had worked. No man had offered to hire.

  That was the sort of problem Ben could have handled easily, had he been on his feet. Now it lay to Thora to do the best she could. It had taken much argument and pleading before Ben would allow her to go into Granite and try to hire men. At last Ben had given in; and so she was sat here this cold morning by the side of Salt Ballew, the cook, headed for Granite.

  She made a pretty picture sitting on the hard seat of the Rocking H chuck wagon. A tall, mature woman with golden blonde hair hanging from under the brim of her Stetson hat. Not even the heavy coat she wore could hide the rich, fullness of her body, the gentle swell of her breasts, the slimness of her waist and the strong, firm curves of her hips and legs.

  Turning she looked at the man by her side. He was as typical a product of the Texas range as she obviously wasn’t. Salt Ballew was six-foot-odd of oak brown sinew and whang leather. His range clothes were clean, well worn and around his waist was a gunbelt supporting his old Dance Bros. percussion revolver.

  Salt was handling the team with the same relaxed competence that showed in everything he did. He was as much at ease, and as capable whether he was cooking up a meal out in the open in a half gale, driving a two-mule team, or sitting round the fire in the cook shack and spinning tall tales about the Mexican War. He looked what he was, an old-time range cook, master of his trade, hard, tough, ornery and respected by the crew for it.

  ‘Will we get the men, Salt?’ she asked.

  ‘Men’s there, Miz Thora,’ he replied, his lazy drawl a contrast from her Eastern accents. ‘Want work, and raring to go. But they wants a leader, which same we can’t give them. Sort of men we wants won’t just foller any man.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Sort of men we wants won’t foller no woman. We needs the best happen we have to face Earp and his friends.’

  Thora thought this over for a moment. ‘A lawman can’t stop us from taking the herd into Dodge, just for a grudge, can he?’

  ‘Law don’t come into it. There ain’t much law for Texas men north of the Indian Nations. Anyways, Earp ain’t the law. He’s just one of the extra hands they takes on while the trail driving season’s on. But he surely wants to make hisself a name as a lawman. There’s plenty of ripe pickings for a man who can. So he’s making this play against the Rocking H. If we don’t take the herd, he’s made his play. The Rocking H has a name and the man who can scare off Ben Holland’s somebody. If we go up we’ve called his bluff and he’ll have to show down.’

  Thora h
ad long since learned to listen when Salt Ballew gave out his wisdom, for it was mostly right. He had experience in the West and she had need of that experience now.

  ‘How about Thad Toon?’ she inquired, she had only met him once.

  ‘Thad ain’t bad. Jest a mite ornery ’n’ none too bright. He ain’t been over fond of Ben since we built up our herd with all that unbranded stock, after the war. Ben even offered to throw in with Thad to cut out all the range, but Thad got mean and wouldn’t. Ole Thad’s been waiting all this time to get evens.’

  ‘With Ben in the wheelchair he should stop us,’ Thora agreed, bitterly. ‘I’m going to see the sheriff—’

  ‘Thad don’t want to stop us going. Jest wants to get off afore we do.’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘Surely is. First off gets the pick of the grazing all the way north. Gets the best prices in Dodge. There’s a lot to being first herd into Dodge.’

  Thora knew something of the loyalty of the cowhands to the brand, and knew that every ranch crew wanted their own spread to have the best possible record and reputation in matters concerning the cattle business. However, the Rocking H couldn’t spare the men and the trail-drive crew would be strangers who did not have that same loyalty.

  ‘Can’t the law help,’ she asked, ‘with that gunman in town threatening any man who takes on for us?’

  Salt sent a spurt of tobacco at a small rock before replying ‘Ain’t much the town marshal can do. Anyways, the men’d hire, happen we had a trail boss. It’d take more than a hired gun to stop hands going up trail.’

  Thora sat back. She hardly noticed they were almost into the town of Granite. There was so much she didn’t know about the cattle business and so much she was going to have to know if she was to get that herd to market. That was work for a man and a highly skilled man at that—not for a young woman who’d only been in the West for three years.

  Thora was aware of her limitations. She had never been west until meeting Ben in Chicago. They married after a short courtship and he had brought her to his ranch in Texas. At the ranch she was accepted as the boss’s wife. The hands treated her with respect, yet they didn’t accept her as one of them. She was a Yankee knowing nothing of cattle business.

  That hadn’t mattered with Ben on his feet, where all she needed to do was run the house. Now she was to take her husband’s place and learn the cattle business under the most difficult of conditions.

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ a voice, a soft, pleasing Texas drawl came from her side of the wagon.

  Thora and Salt both looked at the speaker, but they saw him with different eyes.

  Thora saw a small, insignificant man riding a big paint horse. She noted a black, low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat on dusty blonde hair. The face was handsome, young looking and friendly. Around his neck was a long, tight-rolled blue bandana, the ends falling over his faded blue shirt almost to the waistband of his levis. The cuffs of his levis were turned back and hung outside his high-heeled riding-boots with their big spurs. She hardly noted the gunbelt and doubted if he could use the guns in the holsters.

  Salt was looking at the same man, but he was looking with range wise eyes that knew cowhands. He saw a face that was young, yet old in wisdom, cool grey eyes that looked right through a man, a mouth that had grin quirks at the corners, yet was firm. The jaw below showed strength of character.

  The cook’s eyes went to the hat—it was an expensive JB Stetson; that hat had cost plenty. Next he looked at the boots and the double-girthed Texas saddle; they were expensive and the maker of them.

  Salt’s eyes went to the gunbelt and a whistle of surprise came from his lips. That gunbelt had been made by the same man who made the saddle and boots, a man famous for his leatherwork. But that buscadero gunbelt told a man things. Ole Joe Gaylin of El Paso had made the belt. He would sell his hoots and saddles to anyone who had his prices, but they were high. His gunbelts were something again. Joe Gaylin wouldn’t sell them to just anyone, he chose the men who wore his gun-belts. To wear a Joe Gaylin gunbelt a man had to be somebody. That belt, with the matched bone-handled Colt 1860 Army revolvers, butt-forward for a cross-draw, had been made by Joe Gaylin.

  The horse told Salt more about the small man. It was seventeen hands of paint stallion, not the horse for a beginner to try out on. A man had to be better than average happen he wanted to stay on top of that horse, and not end picking its shoes out of his teeth.

  So where Thora saw a quiet, insignificant young man riding a big paint horse Salt saw a top hand whose twin, bone-handled guns, rope and Winchester ’66 carbine had all seen expert use.

  ‘I hear you’re hiring a trail crew, ma’am,’ the small man went on.

  ‘We are!’ Thora managed to hide her disappointment that this small man should be the first to offer his services. He didn’t look the sort who could face hired killers.

  ‘There are three of us,’ the small man indicated the others.

  Salt and Thora turned and looked. They had been so interested in this small man that they hadn’t heard the other two riding on the other side. Thora nodded in approval; these were the sort of men she wanted.

  Both were tall, one six foot, the other three inches more than that. The latter took Thora’s eyes right away, he would catch the eye in any company. Thora thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. His hat was a costly, low-crowned, wide-brimmed, white JB Stetson, set back on his curly, golden blonde hair. His clothes were expensive and he was a cowhand fashion plate from the silver concha decorated hatband, through his multi-hued silk bandana, expensive doeskin shirt, new levis and fancy-stitched boots. Around his slim waist was a hand-carved gunbelt with a matched brace of Colt 1860 revolvers, the butts flaring to his hands.

  Salt studied the dandy rig of the cowhand, noted the width of the shoulders, the slim waist. The fancy dress of the big man might have turned Salt off, but that too was a Gaylin gunbelt. The man rode a blood bay stallion as big as the paint, rode it easily, being a light rider in spite of his size.

  To Salt it all read clear; here was another top hand.

  The third man was lean and lithe, but he looked as tough as whipcord. He appeared to be about sixteen years old, his face young, almost babyishly young. Yet the red hazel eyes were not young, they were old, cold and dangerous. Salt saw more than just a young, black-dressed boy on a magnificent white stallion.

  The young man wore all black, from his hat to his boots. Even his gunbelt was black, only the butt forward, walnut grips of the old Dragoon Colt at his right side and the ivory hilt of the bowie knife at his left relieved the blackness.

  Salt felt uneasy as he looked this young man over. He wore a cowhand’s rig all right, but Salt felt that he had learned the cattle business along the Rio Grande on dark nights.

  The old Dragoon Colt told a man things, happen he knew what to look for. In the year of 1870, Colt’s 1860 Army revolver had been on the market for long enough and enough of them had been produced to have seen most of the old four-pound Dragoon guns put aside as out of date. For a man to be wearing one these days usually meant that he was behind the times and was looked down on for it. Somehow, Salt got the idea that this didn’t apply to the black-dressed boy. In a tight fix it would be to the hilt of the bowie knife his hand would fly to first, the revolver second.

  They were a pair to draw to, those riders—top hands both, and fighting men from soda to hock, Salt thought. Yet strangely the third man, the small, insignificant Texas man at the other side, wasn’t out of place in such company.

  ‘I think we could use you,’ Thora replied, having decided that, if these three took on, others might be willing to join. ‘Have you ever been to Dodge City?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ the tallest of the trio replied. ‘Hays once, Newton once.’

  ‘Happen we’re lucky,’ the black-dressed boy went on. ‘We’ll find where she lies.’

  Salt craned his neck, trying to discover what brands the horses wore, particularly the
big paint, but couldn’t see it. He had a vague, uneasy feeling that he could name these three young men. If his guess was right the Rocking H were having more luck than they could rightly expect.

  The cook glanced ahead to where three men had left one of the saloons and were looking towards the wagon. In a few minutes, he thought, a man would know just how good his guessing was.

  Thora caught Salt’s eye and looked ahead; she felt a sudden panic as she watched the three men stepping from the sidewalk and moving out until they blocked the trail. Two of them, she knew; the man at the right, big, well-dressed, wide-shouldered, hand resting on the butt of his Colt, was Thad Toon, owner of the TT.

  The man at the left of the trail was shorter, stocky and hard looking. That was Joel Hendley, Toon’s foreman, a tough man and handy with his old Navy Colt.

  It was the rider in the center of the trail who caught and held Thora’s attention. He was a tall man, dressed in the style Wild Bill Hickok affected in town. His hat was a low-crowned JB Stetson, his black coat, frilly-bosomed shirt and tight-legged white trousers were all well tailored, his store shoes shining. Around his waist was a silk sash and a pearl-handled Remington revolver was thrust into it. It was the face that held her eyes. A face that was cold, expressionless with eyes as hard and unfeeling as a snake.

  Thora had seen gunfighters before, she knew without being told that this was the killer who had been hired to prevent men taking on to drive for Rocking H. She looked at the three young men; they were lounging in their saddles, looking over the Double T riders without any knowledge of their danger. She could not let them be shot down by this hired killer.

  Toon stood silent for a few moments, then looked Thora and Salt over. Finally, he spoke to the three young Texas cowhands.

  ‘That’s the Rocking H wagon you’re riding with,’ he said softly.

  ‘Now me, I thought it was the President’s carriage. Was all set to take off my hat and cheer,’ the dark boy on the white horse replied.