Running Irons

by J. T. Edson

  “Reckon you can handle it, Danny?” asked Murat. “You can go in any way you want. I won’t hold you back.”

  “I reckon I can,” Danny agreed.

  At that moment the office door opened to admit Calamity and Sid.

  “We’ve took the bodies down to the undertaker, Cap’n,” said the Ranger. “I reckoned you might like to have a jaw with Calamity, so she left her wagon at Smith’s store to be unloaded and come back with me.”

  “Take a seat, Calamity,” Murat said, rising. “Could I offer you a drink?”

  “Just a teensie-weensie lil three fingers,” she answered, accepting the chair Danny drew up for her. “Wouldn’t say no to one of them fancy cigars, neither.”

  With any other woman, the request might have appeared as an affectation. Yet somehow the sight of Calamity seated with a foot raised on the desk, puffing appreciatively at one of Murat’s thin, crooked black cigars, looked entirely natural.

  “I’d like to thank you officially for helping Danny get the Comancheros,” Murat told the girl.

  “Shuckens, he helped me more than I helped him. Anyways, to pay me back he promised to show me the sights of Austin City.”

  “You done seen me, gal,” Sid remarked. “Ain’t no other sights worth seeing.”

  “Leave us not forget Calamity’s a visitor to Texas, Sid,” Murat growled. “Don’t make her retch. Anyways, when was this sightseeing to be done?”

  “Starting tonight.”

  “Only he’ll be riding out this evening.”

  Calamity’s eyes went to Danny, then back and met Murat’s. “Must be something real urgent, Cap’n.”

  “Urgent enough,” agreed Murat, studying the girl and remembering all the stories he had heard about her. Maybe some of them were a mite lengthened, but from the way she handled her end of the Comanchero business, she had sand to burn and did not spook when the going became rough. Slowly Murat swung his eyes to Danny and read mutual thoughts on the subject of Calamity in the young Ranger’s mind. Murat almost gave in, then shook his head. “No. It just couldn’t be done.”

  “If I knew what the hell you meant, I’d agree,” Calamity answered.

  “I don’t see why it couldn’t,” Danny put in. “Calamity’s got two weeks at least to hang around Austin afore her boss gets here.”

  “Just what are you pair——” Calamity began.

  “It’d be too dangerous, Danny.”

  “That gal eats danger, Cap’n.”

  “Hey! What the blue-blistering hell——”

  “She might not care for the idea.”

  “Why not put it to her, Cap’n?” asked Sid, enjoying watching the expressions on Calamity’s face while the conversation went on.

  “Hold it! Hold IT!” she suddenly yelled, pounding a hand on the table top. “Just dig in your tiny Texas feet and let a half-smart lil Northern gal catch up with you.”

  “Huh—Oh, hi there, Calam,” Danny drawled. “Plumb forgot you was here.”

  The girl replied in a hide blistering flow of invective which drew admiring grins from the listening men. Throughout the flow Sid listened spell-bound and at its conclusion could barely hold down his applause for a mighty fine demonstration of the ancient and honorable art of cussing.

  “How about it, Sid?” asked Murat. “Will she do?”

  “Don’t know what for, Cap’n, but it sounds like you want me to say ‘yes,’ so being good, loyal and wanting an advance on next month’s pay, I’ll say it. Yes, I reckon she’ll do right well.”

  “And me,” Danny agreed.

  Clapping a hand to her forehead, Calamity gave a groan. “My mammy never gave me much advice, but she always told me to stay clear of Texas and Texans. When I first met Mark Counter I figgered she was right. But getting to know you three’s changed my mind.”

  “Has, huh?” asked Danny sympathetically.

  “It sure as hell has!” Calamity yelped. “Now I know she was right.”

  “To get serious, Calam,” Murat put in, “how’d you like to help us?”

  “How’d you mean, help you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “We’ve something on that needs a woman’s gentle touch.”

  “It’s nothing to do with some gals getting strangled, is it?”

  “No,” answered Murat, sounding a mite startled. “Why should it be?”

  “No reason at all, ’cepting that the last time a lawman said something like that to me, I near on wound up getting choked by a murdering skunk. Enjoyed it so much that I figured I’d like a second go.”

  “Happen they get on to you, if you take the chore, you’ll likely get your wanting,” Murat stated and explained his idea to Calamity.

  When Murat finished speaking, Calamity looked him over with interested eyes. It appeared that the situation was not as dangerous as she first imagined. No sir, it was even worse. With a rope waiting on their capture, cow thieves tended to be a mite rough should they find a spy in their midst. If she went in to Caspar, she would not have the cover of police escort as she had, until the final night—when, to be fair, she ought not to have gone out—in New Orleans. However, Calamity reckoned she might be able to take good care of herself, especially against another woman; after all no gal had ever licked her yet.

  “You’ll not be able to go into the saloon dressed like that, Calam,” Danny pointed out.

  “Now me, I’d swear every saloon gal dressed this way,” she sniffed.

  “We can easy fix the clothes,” Murat went on.

  “Yeah,” groaned the girl. “I figured you might. I can’t stay on for long though. Dobe Killem wants me back with the outfit when he pulls out of here.”

  “If you haven’t got us the proof we need in nine or ten days, you likely won’t get it at all,” Murat replied. “How about it, Calam?”

  “You just hired yourself a gal,” she answered, holding out her hand. “When do we start, Danny?”

  “Now slow down a mite, gal,” Murat ordered. “It’s not as easy as all that.”

  “Happen I’d thought it would be, I’d never have taken on,” Calamity told him calmly.

  Despite her eagerness to try the novel experience of working as a saloon-girl and undercover agent for the Texas Rangers, Calamity knew nothing must be left to chance. She found Murat’s preparations remarkably, and comfortingly from her point of view, thorough. Knowing that certain and painful death awaited Calamity if she should be detected as a spy, Murat intended that she should take as few chances as possible. While Danny Fog would also be working in Caspar County, he could not be on hand all the time to protect Calamity. Mostly the girl would have to stand on her own two feet and rely on her brains, courage and ability.

  Collecting a trio of horses from the remuda, Calamity, Danny and Murat rode into Austin. During the trip, Murat gave Danny and Calamity instructions. Danny was to take the name Daniel Forgrave, a cowhand who had worked on three different ranches well clear of the Caspar area. Making sure Danny could remember the names of the outfits and their bosses, Murat turned his attention to Calamity. After some discussion they settled on the name Martha Connelly for her and once more Murat gave a list of places where she had worked.

  “Remember those four, whatever you do,” Murat warned.

  “What if somebody knows them?” she countered.

  “That’s always a chance, Calam,” admitted the Ranger captain. “You can always pull out. Fact being, you’d be wise if you did.”

  “Never was wise,” she grinned. “You reckon it’s a good thing to use the Golden Slipper here in town, they could right easy telegraph here and ask about me.”

  “You’ll be all right, even if they do,” Murat promised.

  While Calamity trusted Murat’s judgment, she figured out one detail that a man would be unlikely to think about. She expected to be taken to some dress shop and fitted with clothing suitable for her pose as a saloon-girl and saw danger in the idea. Then she discovered that Murat had been aware of the problem of dress and knew the
answer to it.

  Instead of visiting a dress shop, Calamity found herself taken in the rear of the Golden Slipper, one of Austin’s better class saloons. Clearly Murat knew his way around the place, for he led his party upstairs to the office of the owner, a big, buxom, jovial woman who greeted him as a friend and lent a sympathetic, understanding ear to the problems facing the Ranger captain.

  “Nothing easier, Jules,” she stated after hearing what Murat required. “You boys go downstairs and have a drink on the house while I fix up Calamity with all she’ll need.”

  Half an hour later Calamity entered the barroom, only she looked a whole heap different from the girl who came to town with Danny. Gone were the men’s clothing, gunbelt and bull-whip, replaced by a small, dainty and impractical hat, a dress with black and white candy-striped bodice and mauve skirt, some cheap, flashy jewellery and a reticule, such as a saloon-girl would wear when travelling. None of the items were new, but had been selected from clothing left behind by girls who departed into the respectability of married life.

  Calamity had figured suspicion might come her way should she show up in Caspar with every item of clothing damned near brand new. However, Murat appeared to have foreseen the danger and countered it by arranging for her to loan a wardrobe suited to the part she was going to play.

  “Got all you need, Calamity?” the captain asked as the girl joined him and Danny at their table.

  “Just about all,” she replied. “Got me this outfit, three fancy saloon gal frocks, shoes, stockings and some fancy female do-dads you pair don’t know the name of, or ought to be ashamed of yourselves if you do. Ain’t but one thing more I’d like along with me.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Danny.

  “One of those forty-one caliber Remington belly guns.”

  Such an item would not arouse suspicion, or be out of place in a saloon-girl’s possession. Many a girl working in a saloon or dancehall carried a Remington Double Derringer, or some other such small, easily concealed firearm, in her reticule, or strapped to her garter.

  “There’s one in my office and some shells for it,” Murat told the girl. “I can let you have it as soon as we’ve bought your stage ticket to Caspar. You’ll go on tomorrow’s stage and be there in three days.”

  “I’ll pull out now,” Danny drawled. “That should see me in town a day ahead of Calamity.”

  “Reckon it should,” agreed Murat. “Break up that cow stealing, Danny.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain,” replied Danny soberly. “I aim to do just that.”

  Chapter 6 LOOKS LIKE I GOT HERE TOO LATE

  A PAIR OF SPIRALING TURKEY VULTURES CAUGHT Danny Fog’s eye and caused him to bring his big sabino to a halt. The sight of those black-plumed scavengers hovering in the sky never struck a western man as being a beautiful sight. When turkey vultures gathered, they followed death and a corpse, or something near to it, lay below them. Human or animal, it made no never mind to a hungry turkey vulture. Gliding down from the skies, the birds tore flesh from bones and leaving only a picked skeleton behind when they departed.

  Two days had passed since Danny rode out of Austin and at almost noon, he figured he must be on the eastern ranges of Caspar County, most likely crossing Buck Jerome’s Bench J.

  “Might be nothing, hoss,” he said, patting the sabino’s neck and glancing at the dun cutting horse borrowed from Sid Watchhorn to aid his disguise and which now followed the sabino without fighting the rope connecting to Danny’s saddle. “I reckon we’d best take us a look though.”

  Such an action would be in keeping with the character he must play while in Caspar just as much as when he rode in his official capacity of Texas Ranger. Any man seeing circling buzzards—as the non-zoologically-minded Western folk called Cathartes Aura, the American turkey vulture—would investigate. The attraction might be either an injured man or animal, or some critter died of a highly infectious disease. In which cases the knowledge could be useful: in the first to save a life; in the second, one might prevent a spread of the infection by prompt action.

  From the look of things, the birds circled over a large cottonwood that spread its branches over the range maybe a mile from where Danny sat his horse. A touch of his heels against the sabino’s flanks started the horse moving and the dun followed it without any fuss. As yet Danny could see nothing of the dead or dying creature which caused the turkey vultures to gather in the sky.

  Danny had covered about half a mile when a bunch of pronghorn antelope burst out of a hollow ahead of him. Stopping the sabino, he watched the animals speed away, covering the range at a pace only a very good horse could hope to equal. While Danny loved hunting, and lived in an age when game-preservation had never been heard of, he made no attempt to draw his rifle and cut down any of the fleeing antelope. He carried food in his bedroll and would likely be on some ranch’s payroll before it ran out. So there did not appear to be any point in killing a pronghorn and he had never seen any sense in shooting some creature just to see it fall.

  Led by a buck that carried a pair of horns which would have gladdened any trophy-hunter’s heart, the herd held bunched together and went bounding through the bushes at Danny’s right, disappearing into a basin. Just as Danny started the sabino moving again, he saw the pronghorns bursting wildly through the bushes, scattering in panic as they raced out of the basin once more.

  “Now what in hell did that?” he mused and drew his rifle.

  Four possible answers sprang to mind: a bunch of wolves denning up among the bushes; a mountain lion that had been cut off from timber country by the coming of daylight and took what cover it could find: a grizzly or black bear hunting berries, but willing to augment its diet by the flesh of a succulent pronghorn; or the presence of hidden men. Predators all, any one of them would cause such panic among the pronghorns should the fast-moving animals come unexpectedly upon it in the bushes when already fleeing from danger.

  Danny nudged his sabino’s ribs and started the horse moving forward. On reaching the edge of the bushes, he halted the horse and slid from the saddle. Not even as steady an animal as the big sabino would face the sudden appearance of one of the predators in thick bush and Danny could think of a number of more pleasant ways to die than under the teeth and claws of a startled grizzly after being pitched from the back of a bear-spooked horse. Of course, there might not be a bear in the bushes, but it cost nothing to take precautions.

  Leaving the horses standing, the sabino’s trailing before it in a manner which it had been trained to regard as holding it still as effectively as if being tied, Danny went into the bushes with some caution. He saw nothing to disturb him or explain the panic among the pronghorns. A flock of scarlet-plumed red cardinal birds lifted from among the bushes at his approach, but nothing dangerous or menacing made its appearance. Ahead of him the bushes opened into a clearing at the bottom of the basin. Danny came to a halt and studied the scene before him with worried, calculating eyes.

  “Looks like I got here too late,” he thought.

  Two bodies lay alongside a dead fire’s ashes. Cowhands, Danny concluded from their dress; and of the kind he had ridden from Austin to hunt down if the pair of running irons meant anything. Cautiously he studied the clearing, noting the pair of cow horses which stood tied to the bushes at the far side, then taking in the scene around the fire once more. Moving closer, he looked down at the bodies. One had been shot in the back and must have died without even knowing what hit him. Nor would the second have been given much better chance to defend himself by all appearances. Kneeling by the body, Danny examined the holster and doubted if anything remotely like a fast draw could be made from it. The revolver still lay in the holster, its owner having died before he could draw it.

  Cold anger filled Danny as he looked down at the two bodies. Neither cowhand looked to be much gone out of his teens and, ignoring the distortion pain had put on the features, appeared to be normal, pleasant youngsters. These were no hardened criminals, or he missed his
guess; only a couple of foolhardy youngsters who acted without thinking. They deserved better than to be shot down like dogs.

  Danny was no dreamy-eyed moralist or bigoted intellectual regarding every criminal as a misunderstood victim of society to be molly-coddled and pampered as a warning that crime did not pay. In most cases a man became a criminal because of a disinclination to work and had no intention of changing his ways. As a peace officer and a sensible, thinking man, Danny approved of stiff punishment, up to and including hanging, for habitual criminals. While any form of punishment would be most unlikely to change such a man’s ways, it served to deter others from following the criminal’s footsteps.

  For all his thoughts on the subject, Danny hated to think of the way the two young men died. He promised himself that their killer would pay for the deed.

  Throwing aside his feelings, Danny forced himself to think as a lawman and to learn all he could about the happenings of the previous night. Carefully, he studied the ground around him, using the knowledge handed on by that master trailer, the Ysabel Kid. From what he saw, there had been three cow thieves present, all occupied with their illegal business when death struck. The third member of the trio made good his escape, or at least got clear of the fire, for Danny found signs of somebody, possibly the killer, racing a horse across the clearing in the direction taken by the fleeing cow thief.

  At that point of the proceedings Danny began to feel puzzled. His examination of the tracks told him that one rider had returned, set free some of the calves and led off three more. Yet the same person did not free the dead men’s horses, nor even go near the bodies.