Ranch War

by J. T. Edson

  When she appeared in the passage, Calamity’s wearing apparel drew almost as much comment from the men as had their first sight of her inside the room. Ignoring them, she went to where the big man stood talking to Philpotter.

  “Do you get this sort of thing happening regular?” the girl inquired, looking at the clerk.

  “This sort of thing?” Philpotter repeated.

  “Fellers trying to bust into a gal’s room from the door and the window,” Calamity elaborated.

  “There was another of them at the window?” asked the big man.

  “Yep,” agreed Calamity. “It was him I was trying to get a shot at just afore you bust in.”

  “Did you hit him?” the man wanted to know.

  “Missed,” answered the girl. “He lit out through the alley back of here.”

  “Would you know him again?” the man inquired.

  “Nope,” Calamity admitted. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. He sure won’t smell like a rose, way I got rid of him.” She turned her attention to Philpotter again. “How’s about it, friend. Do you get this sort of thing coming off regular?”

  “Certainly not!” the clerk yelped indignantly. “It’s the first time such a thing has happened here.”

  “That figures!” the girl declared, slapping the palms of her hands against her thighs in an exasperated manner. “Now you know why folks call me ‘Calamity.’”

  Chapter 3 A POOR, DEFENSELESS GAL LIKE ME

  AT NINE O’CLOCK ON THE MORNING AFTER HER ARRIVAL, Calamity Jane walked down the stairs to the entrance hall of the Railroad House Hotel. Philpotter was no longer at the desk and his tall, lean, sour-faced replacement almost mirrored his first reaction at the sight of the girl. Apart from not earning the parfleche and carbine, she was dressed as she had been on her arrival the previous night.

  “Howdy,” Calamity greeted amiably as she reached the desk. “Where-at’s Counselor Talbot’s office?”

  “On Leicester Street,” the clerk replied. “You turn right, go by the newspaper office and take the street alongside the stock-pens toward the railroad depot.”

  “Thanks,” Calamity said, and decided to give the man some good news. “I’ll likely be picking up my gear and pulling out after I’ve seen him.”

  “Which room would that be?” the clerk inquired frostily, but he looked a mite relieved to hear the information.

  “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen!—Oh! So you’re the one—”

  “If there’s two of us, I’ve never seen the other,” Calamity answered. “What’d your pard tell you about last night?”

  “My par——?” the clerk began. “You mean Mr. Philpotter. He told me about the robbery, but I thought he was joking about the way you dre——About how you were——I mean about your clo——”

  “Let’s just leave it that he told you and save some spluttering,” Calamity suggested, dropping the room key on the desk’s top. “I don’t suppose that deputy’s been back to say he caught them two polecats?”

  “No,” the clerk replied, throwing a glance toward the open front doors.

  “I wasn’t expecting he would have,” Calamity admitted. “See you around, feller. Don’t let them two come back and wide-loop the desk from under you.”

  Taking out a white handkerchief as the girl turned, the clerk shook it violently and mopped his brow. Calamity walked away from the desk, deciding that she would have been surprised if the deputy town marshal who had arrived to investigate the shooting had managed to locate and arrest the intruders.

  On his arrival, the deputy had performed his duties efficiently enough; but there had been little he could do. After learning the cause of the commotion, he had requested the onlookers not directly concerned with the incident to return to their rooms. When all but Calamity, the big man in the nightcap—he had proved to be the senior cattle-buyer for a major Eastern meat-packing combine—and Philpotter had disappeared, the deputy had suggested that they should conclude their talk in the girl’s room. There he had listened to her story. Although acting as nervous as a hen with a chicken-hawk circling its brood, Philpotter had laughed along with the important guest and the peace officer when Calamity described her use of the chamber-pot as a weapon. The clerk had even joined in the complimentary remarks made on the subject of the girl’s courage and initiative. Those qualities, unfortunately, could not do anything further.

  Regretfully Calamity had been forced to admit that she could not describe either intruder with any degree of certainty. The best she could manage was to state that the man at the window had been heavily built, probably tall and not wearing a hat. The other had been tallish, slim, with black hair, clad in cowhand clothes, carrying a knife and toting an Army Colt with Tiffany grips in what was known as a “half-breed” or “swivel” holster. His companion had called him what sounded like “Houghton” which hinted that he was of Anglo-Saxon birth.

  The cattle-buyer and Philpotter had been able to add little more. They confirmed the girl’s description of the physical appearance of the man in the passage. While both had noticed that he sported a drooping black mustache, neither could say what kind of features he had.

  Borrowing a lantern from the desk clerk, the deputy had led the way outside and to the rear of the building. Finding the hat, they had examined it but it did not prove to be informative. It was a Stetson such as could be purchased from any general store west of the Mississippi River. Being stepped on by its bulky owner had squashed out any features that might have served as pointers to its place of origin.

  The ladder had proved to have been stolen from alongside one of the buildings to the rear of the hotel. It had offered no clue to the person who had stolen it and the lantern’s light had not been strong enough to illuminate the faint trace of blood where the splinter had spiked into the man’s palm.

  So there had been nothing to give the deputy a start in his search. Even the name Calamity had heard spoken did not help. Like all such towns, Mulrooney had a large, ever-changing, transient population. Many of the visitors did not even stay in town, but bedded down on the open range. A fair proportion of the floating population used whatever name came handiest. So the best the deputy could offer was that he would check through the marshal’s reward posters and see if he could find a mention of a man called “Houghton” who matched the slimmer intruder’s description. He did not offer much hope of success. Hotel sneak-thieves rarely rated the offer of a reward for their capture.

  Being aware of the difficulties facing trail-end town peace officers, Calamity and the cattle-buyer had been satisfied with the deputy’s offer. Philpotter had raised no objections, even if he thought them. It had always been his policy to pay lip-service to the desires of influential clients. If any of them had wondered why the intruders had selected Calamity’s room as the start of their depredations, the point was not raised. Calamity put it down to no more than a lucky, or real unlucky—depending upon how one regarded it—coincidence.

  Pausing at the door of the hotel, Calamity turned her head to look first right and then left. Having visited Mulrooney twice, she knew something of its geography but needed to get her bearings. While doing so, her left arm pressed against the side of the buckskin jacket and she felt the bulk of the envelope that she carried in the inside pocket. According to the lawyer in Topeka, Counselor Talbot would require to see proof of her identity. So she was taking along the necessary papers for his examination.

  Just as she was starting to turn to the right, Calamity noticed a man standing across the street and studying her with obvious interest. Tall, lean, sharp-featured, he wore range clothes but had the appearance of a trail-end town loafer, the kind that hung around accepting the hospitality of the visitors and avoiding doing any work. That he looked at her intently came as no surprise to Calamity. Men had been doing it for so long that it had ceased to be a novelty or an embarrassment.

  Ignoring the man, for she knew his kind too well to want any truck with them, Calamity strolled off
along the sidewalk. She debated to herself whether to call at the Fair Lady Saloon before visiting the lawyer, but decided against it. Maybe after she had heard Counselor Talbot’s news she would need advice. If so, Freddie Woods would be only too willing to give it.

  Continuing along the street, Calamity paused to look at the display of firearms in the window of a gunsmith’s store. While doing so, she became aware that the loafer was still opposite. Watching his reflection in the store’s window, she saw him come to a halt, turn and stare along an alley. She stood for a moment before he looked over his shoulder in her direction. Then he swung his head around and resumed his scrutiny of the gap between the buildings.

  “Now what’s he following me for?” Calamity thought. “He looks too all-fired sweet ’n’ noble to be figuring on interfering with a poor, defenseless gal like me. Especially in Mulrooney, in daylight, and with me packing a gun. Maybe it’s just that he ain’t never seed a gal’s fills her pants as well’s I do.”

  Satisfied that, no matter what his intentions might be, the loafer posed no threat to her, Calamity walked on. She went by the newspaper office and turned down the street that flanked the stock-pens. Keeping to the sidewalk, she looked across the street at the pens and the longhorn steers they held awaiting shipment East. She thought admiringly of the grit and tenacity required to drive the half-wild animals all the way from Texas and remembered that the bell-hop had mentioned one particular outfit was coming. She hoped that her business would not take her out of town before the OD Connected trail drive arrived.

  For some reason, all the work being done around the pens took place on the opposite side to where Calamity walked. The buildings flanking the sidewalk also appeared to be deserted. Looking ahead, she could see another street running at right angles to the one she followed. That would be Leicester Street and somewhere along it she would find Counselor Talbot’s office.

  Two men stepped from an alley at the end of the building which Calamity was approaching. They looked in her direction, but she formed the impression that their attention was centered on something, or somebody, behind her. At first glance, they appeared to be an ordinary enough pair of trail-end town visitors, but not the kind one would expect to see together. One of them, by his dress, hailed from north of Kansas and the other clearly came from very far south of the State. Leaving the north-country man, the second of the pair crossed to hook his rump on the hitching mil in front of the next building.

  Their behavior struck the girl as just a mite peculiar. While not vain, she knew that she had a good figure and dressed in a manner to show it off. Yet, after their first glance, neither man turned his eyes toward Calamity. In fact they seemed to be avoiding meeting her gaze just a mite too carefully.

  Partly because one saw so few of his kind in Kansas, Calamity gave the seated man a close scrutiny before looking at his companion who leaned against the building’s wall. Tall, slender yet wiry, he had a clean-shaven Latin face that a thin, cruel mouth prevented from being handsome. The hat he wore was no Stetson. Its pointed crown, silver concha-decorated band and wide, circular brim had their origin south of the Rio Grande. So did the waist-long black jacket with silver filigree patterning, white, frilly-fronted shirt, string bow-tie, tight-legged, wide-bottomed trousers and high-heeled boots with large-rowelled spurs attached to them. As might be expected from such a man, he carried a fighting knife sheathed on the left side of his gunbelt. The position in which he sat prevented Calamity from seeing either his gun or its holster.

  From the Mexican, Calamity turned her gaze to his white companion. She had walked closer and began to notice some disturbingly significant details about him.

  Taller and heavier than the Mexican, the second man also lacked the other’s finery. Nothing about his wolfskin coat, tartan shirt, dark trousers tucked into flat-heeled boots or gunbelt was new. The same did not apply to his hat; that was brand-new. Although he had a fast-draw holster tied down on his right thigh, it did not hold a gun. Instead, an Army Colt was thrust into his waistband, its butt pointed to the front for a cross-hand draw. The reason for the empty holster and gun’s position probably stemmed from the fact that he had a dirty piece of rag wrapped around his right hand. Surly-featured and unshaven, his eyes had a redrimmed, bloodshot appearance that could have been the result of drinking hard the previous night—or having the contents of a chamber-pot thrown into his face.

  Taken with the state of the man’s eyes, the brand-new hat and the bandaged hand suggested certain unpleasant possibilities to Calamity. A feller who slid hurriedly down a ladder, especially one in the process of breaking, might easily tear open his palm on a splinter. That jasper from her window had left his hat behind and would need to replace it if he hoped to avoid drawing attention to himself.

  Of course the facts might amount to no more than a coincidence; but Calamity felt disinclined to take bets on it.

  As if wanting to sweep any lingering doubts from the girl’s mind, the Mexican stood up and faced her. Calamity’s eyes dropped swiftly to his right thigh. Before raising them again, she schooled her features into lines of indifference and hid her concern. The Colt at his side had the distinctively shaped Tiffany grips and the end of its barrel protruded from the open toe of the holster.

  Still continuing to walk toward the pair, Calamity rapidly marshaled her facts. She did not like the answers she came up with. The assailant inside the hotel had worn ordinary range clothes and, according to the cattle-buyer, had sported a drooping black mustache. Clothes could be changed and a mustache shaved off. The Mexican’s hair was black and he might have removed the facial growth to prevent himself being recognized during his stay in Mulrooney.

  Which raised another interesting, maybe even vital point. Why had the two men remained in town and what brought them to stand on the sidewalk ahead of her? The attempted robbery at the hotel did not rate as such a serious crime that they needed to remove a witness who might be able to identify them. Nor had Calamity’s treatment of them been sufficiently drastic for the pair to risk arrest by hunting her up in search of revenge.

  And that thought brought up another. If the pair should be vindictive enough to be looking for evens, how did they know where to find her? How did they recognize her, come to that? Unless they had seen her entering the Railroad House, her clothes would not identify her. Female guests at that hotel did not dress in her style. Yet she felt sure that their presence on the deserted street had not come about by accident.

  One thing was plain to Calamity. She must not let the pair suspect that she had recognized them. Maybe if she could get up close enough, with them figuring that she did not know them, she could escape from the position they had her in.

  “You boys fixing on making a gal take to the street to get by?” Calamity asked, hoping that her voice did not sound as tensed-up as she felt.

  Instead of moving aside, the two men looked her over with cold eyes. Then the Mexican seemed to glance at something behind her, but Calamity figured that she had been around too long to fall for that old trick. Instead of looking to the rear for the non-existent danger, she continued to approach the pair and watched for any hostile move or gesture.

  “Is your name ‘Canary,’ gal?” demanded the big man.

  “Do I look like a canary?” Calamity countered, but the question had started a further train of thought leaping through her head.

  “It’s her for certain, Job,” the Mexican stated.

  “You’d know, Otón,” the big man growled. “Way you telled it, you saw her real good last night.”

  “I don’t get it,” Calamity began, right hand turning palm-outward and moving surreptitiously in the direction of her Navy Colt.

  The words chopped off as she heard the faint sound of a footstep behind her. Faint only because the person making it was stepping real careful and avoiding making undue noise, not because some distance separated him from the girl.

  Anger blazed up inside Calamity, driving the thoughts of how they knew her nam
e into oblivion. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours she had committed a serious error of tactics. Concentrating on the two yahoos blocking her path, she had clean forgotten that skinny-gutted loafer who had dogged her trail since she left the hotel. In fact, his presence behind her answered some of the problems which had troubled her. He must have been following, soft-footed as a cat, to point her out to the pair.

  Only he had made his presence known just a mite too soon. His pards were still about twelve feet away, beyond arms’ reach. Seeing the girl’s right hand approaching the ivory butt of the holstered Colt, the loafer lunged forward. He wrapped his arms about her upper torso from the rear, drawing her toward him. Instantly his companions let out curses and sprang forward.

  Calamity had learned how to handle such sneaky attacks, as she proceeded to demonstrate. Allowing her captor to pull her in his direction, she waited until she felt his body against her spine. Then she snapped back her head as hard as she could propel it. The base of Calamity’s skull rammed with considerable force into the center of the man’s face. Red fires of agony seemed to burst inside the man’s head at the savage impact. With a howl of pain, he released the girl and staggered backward. Blood gushed between his fingers as he clasped his hands to his face.

  Despite having removed one threat to her well-being, Calamity knew that she was a long, long way from being out of danger. Job and the Mexican came toward her, their expressions warning her that they had no harmless intent. Of the two, Otón moved the faster, drawing ahead of his companion.

  Having freed herself from the loafer’s restraining hands, Calamity once more reached for her gun. Tough she might be, and well able to hold up her own end in a hair-yanking, anything-goes, rough-house brawl with another girl; but her assailants were not girls. She figured that her best chance against the two men would be to get out the old Navy Colt and start burning powder. In addition to halting the Mexican, the sound of the shots would attract attention to her dangerous situation. The opportunity to do it was not granted to her.