Running Irons

by J. T. Edson

  “Sure puzzling,” he mused, turning to leave the clearing and return to his horses. “From all I’ve heard, this looks like Gooch’s work. He never takes chances and wouldn’t give those boys chance to surrender or make a fight. But why would Gooch free half the calves and take the others. And why would he leave the two bodies when they’d fetch a damned sight more bounty than three calves would bring him?”

  A possible answer occurred to Danny as he reached the horses. He stood on Bench J, not Forked C land, so it was not the range Gooch had been hired to protect and the bounty hunter did not work for the love of his labor. Of course, it might not be Gooch who killed the cowhands, although everything pointed in that direction. Most men, especially ranchers and honest cowhands, hated a cow thief, but few would go to the extreme of shooting down two in cold blood. No, it appeared the thing Governor Howard and Captain Murat feared had happened. Tired of merely earning his pay, Gooch left the Forked C range to hunt bounty on other property.

  Just as Danny swung into the sabino’s saddle, a distant movement caught the corner of his eye. Turning in the saddle, he looked across the range to where a trio of riders topped a rim and swung their horses in the direction of the circling turkey-vultures.

  Taking out his off-side Colt, Danny thumbed three shots into the air. Instantly the trio brought their mounts to a halt, looking in his direction. Sweeping off his hat, Danny waved it over his head and the three men put their spurs to the horses, galloping toward him. Three shots fired into the air had long been accepted as a signal for help, one which would only rarely be overlooked or ignored. The three men might be as interested, as Danny had been, in the circling vultures, but his signal took priority over the sight.

  Danny studied the men as they approached. Two of them were cowhands; a leathery man of middle-age, plainly dressed and with a low-hanging Dance Brothers revolver at his side; the second looked around Danny’s age, a freckle-faced, red-haired young man, cheery, wearing a flashy bandana and red shirt and belting an Army Colt in a cheap imitation of a contoured, fast-draw holster. From the two cowhands, Danny turned to study the third rider. He sat a good horse with easy grace. Although his clothes looked little different from the other two, there was something about him, an air of authority and command, which said “boss” to range-wise eyes. A Remington Beals Army revolver hung butt forward at his left side and looked like he could use it. Not that the man bore any of the signs of a swaggering, bullying gunslinger, but merely gave the impression of being mighty competent.

  “You got trouble, friend?” asked the third member of the trio.

  “Not me,” Danny answered. “But those two fellers down there—man, have they got trouble?”

  “Two?” put in the youngest rider. “Reckon it’s Sammy and Pike, Buck?”

  “Best way to find out’s to go look,” replied the third man. “Name’s Buck Jerome, friend, this’s my range. These gents are my foreman, Ed Lyle and Tommy Fayne, he rides for me.”

  “Howdy. I’m Danny Forgrave. Best go down there and take a look though.”

  Accompanying the men down the slope. Danny studied their reactions as they looked at the tragic scene in the clearing. He could read little from the two older men’s faces, but guessed the scene hit them hard. On the other hand, Tommy Fayne showed shock, his face paled under the tan and his lips drew into tight lines.

  “It’s Sammy and Pike!” he said in a strangled voice. “That damned murdering skunk Gooch killed them.”

  “Easy, boy,” Jerome said, laying a hand on Tommy’s sleeve. “We don’t know for sure it was him who did this.”

  “Who else but a stinking murdering bounty hunter’d gun down two kids like Sammy and Pike without giving them a chance?” Tommy answered hotly. “They weren’t neither of ’em good with a gun, and you know it, Buck.”

  “Hosses are tied, Buck, that’s why they never come back,” Lyle said quietly. “Happen this feller hadn’t found them, they might have laid here for days.”

  “Might at that,” admitted the rancher and turned to Danny. “No offense, but how did you come to find them? You know how it is when you find something like this, questions have to be asked.”

  “Sure,” Danny agreed. “I was headed for those buzzards when I put up a herd of pronghorns and they went down into this hollow. Only they came bursting out like the devil after a yearling. Got me curious to find out what spooked them. I figured it might be either bear, cougar or wolves and that I might be able to pick up a few dollars on its hide. So I came down and found this.”

  All the time Danny spoke, he felt the other three’s eyes on him taking in every detail of his dress and appearance. Not that he had any need to fear detection on that score. Before leaving Austin, Danny dressed for the part he aimed to play. He retained his hat, boots, gunbelt and saddle, but the rest of his clothing no longer bore the mark of a good tailor. Instead he wore a cheap, gaudy bandana, a blue flannel shirt and faded, washed-out jeans. Not was there anything out of the ordinary in the arrangement. Many young cowhands bought the best they could manage in saddlery, hats and gunbelts, but took what they could afford for the rest of their clothing.

  After studying Danny, Jerome and Lyle exchanged glances. Both had reached the same conclusion—and just the one Danny wanted folks to make about him. Although this soft-spoken youngster wore two guns and looked proficient in their use, he had none of the ear-marks of a proddy trigger-fast-and-up-from-Texas kid. A good cowhand, most likely, and probably one with a yen to see new ranges around him.

  “If Gooch shot the boys, why’d he leave ’em here?” asked Lyle, voicing one of the problems which had been worrying Danny.

  “He knew I wouldn’t pay him,” Jerome answered.

  “Then why’d he bother shooting?” growled the foreman. “Gooch didn’t give a damn whether the cow thieves stole us blind as long as he got his bounty.”

  “He maybe aimed to take the boys back to the Forked C and claim he downed them on Crither’s range,” guessed Jerome. “Cut for sign, Ed, see what you can learn while we start loading the boys. We’ll have to take them into town and report this to Farley Simmonds.”

  “If he handles this as well as he done the rest of the stealing, we’ll sure see some action,” sniffed Lyle and went to obey his boss’s orders.

  None of the men expected the task of loading the bodies to be pleasant and they were not wrong. While Lyle examined the ground, Danny, Jerome and Tommy wrapped the bodies in their slickers and loaded them, stiff with rigor mortis across the two horses’ saddles. By the time the task was completed, Lyle had made his examination and came to his boss to report.

  “Was another one here,” he remarked, coming up with the same conclusions that Danny had earlier. “Smallish, not too heavy-built feller I’d say. Took out pronto when the shooting started, with somebody after him, both riding fast. Then the small feller come back later, cut free some calves and led the others off.”

  “That’d be the ones they’d branded he took,” Jerome guessed.

  “Maybe that other feller led Gooch so far he couldn’t find his way back to here,” Tommy put in.

  “Could be,” admitted the rancher. “Only I can’t think of anybody round here as fits that description, smallish and light built. Can hardly believe that Sammy and Pike were stealing from me, neither. Why Sammy was fixing to get his-self married to one of Ella Watson’s gals real soon.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said bitterly. “Sammy and Pike were my pards. They’d never steal from anybody, boss. Maybe they was trying to stop the cow thieves.”

  “Maybe,” grunted Jerome. “Where’d they go last night, boy?”

  “Into town. Sammy wanted to see his gal and Pike went along for the ride. I was fixing to go with them, only one of my mounts was needing tending.”

  Danny listened to the conversation without asking any questions or making any comments. Above all else, he must not show too much knowledge of Caspar County affairs. A chance-passing drifter would be unlikely to know mu
ch about the situation and showing that he was acquainted with the affairs of the county would cause suspicion. So he kept quiet and listened, which had always been a good way to learn things one wanted to know.

  “Let’s go into town,” the rancher suggested. “You’d best come along with us, Danny, the sheriff’ll want to see you.”

  “Sure,” Danny agreed. “I was headed that way when I came on this lot.”

  “I’d best take the running irons with me, Boss,” Lyle remarked.

  “Do that Ed,” answered Jerome. “Only don’t let on that Sammy and Pike were using them. I know their folks and they were good kids.”

  The words increased Danny’s growing liking for Jerome. Some men would have started ranting about ingrates, or damning the cowhands as stinking, untrustworthy cow thieves and not giving a damn who knew that the youngsters had gone bad. From Jerome, Danny turned his attention to the younger of the hired men. Clearly Tommy was badly shaken by the death of his two friends. But did he possess any guilty knowledge of how they came to die? Maybe the youngster had an idea of the identity of the third cow thief. Or perhaps he was merely thinking that, but for a stroke of luck, it might be him lying by the fire.

  Mounting their horses, the men rode out of the clearing, Lyle and Tommy leading the dead cowhands’ animals, each toting its stiff bundle. None of them spoke until they came out on to open land. Then the sight of the whirling vultures recalled what brought them together.

  “How about those buzzards?” asked Danny.

  “They’re on our way to Caspar, we’d best check,” Jerome answered. “Ed, go scout around and see if you can track down that third jasper. I’ll lead Sammy’s hoss in for you.”

  “Yo!” replied the foreman and gave Danny a calculating glance. “I’ll look around real good.”

  Much as he would have liked to accompany Lyle, Danny restrained himself. He guessed that the foreman intended to check on his tracks also, making sure that he was what he pretended to be. Not that Danny blamed Lyle. Under similar circumstances he would have done the same; and Lyle could learn little enough by back-tracking Danny for a few miles.

  While riding toward the cottonwood, Danny started to get an uneasy feeling that he could guess what they would find. So he did not feel unduly surprised when, from over two hundred yards distance, he saw a body lying beneath the spreading branches of the cottonwood.

  “Another,” Jerome breathed. “Who the hell this time?”

  A few seconds later Tommy supplied the answer. “It’s Bat Gooch. I recognize that hoss of his there.”

  At thirty yards Jerome halted the party. “Hold the hosses here, Tommy. I don’t reckon Farley Simmonds’ll make much of it, but we’ll not muss up the sign in case he wants to come out.”

  Leaving their horses, Danny and Jerome walked toward the bounty hunter’s body. Both kept their eyes on the ground, studying the sign and reading much the same conclusions from what they saw.

  “Can you read sign, Danny?” asked the rancher.

  “My pappy was a hunting man. Taught me to know whether a foot pointed forward or back.”

  “Huh huh. Way I see it is that the feller Gooch was chasing got swept off his hoss by a branch. Fell just here and Gooch left his hoss to come over to him. Only the other feller wasn’t hurt bad and started to throw lead. How d’you see it?”

  “Just about the same,” replied Danny.

  However, although he did not intend to mention it, Danny saw more; a whole heap more than the rancher’s description of what happened. First thing to strike Danny was the fact that Gooch’s gun lay in its holster. No man who knew sic ’em about gun fighting would approach a potentially dangerous enemy without taking the elementary precaution of drawing his gun. Certainly a man like Gooch would not fail to take so basic a piece of self-preservation. The second significant fact to Danny’s mind being the powder burning and blackening around the two bullet wounds in the body. Whoever shot Gooch had been close, real close. As the shooter appeared to have been lying on the ground, Gooch must have been bending; no, that would have put him too high to catch the burning effect of the other’s weapon’s muzzle blast. Which meant either the other had been allowed to rise, or that Gooch knelt by his killer’s side.

  Only Gooch would never have allowed the other to rise, or knelt by the fallen cow thief’s side, without holding his gun and being sure he could shoot at the first wrong move. Gooch knew gun-fighting and had more sense than take such chances with any man under such circumstances.

  And there, Danny figured, he had touched the answer to Gooch’s apparent folly. On approaching the fallen cow thief, Gooch would have not only held his gun but would most likely to have sent a bullet into the other just to make good and sure there was no danger to his bounty hunting hide—unless he saw something to make him figure he would not need such precautions.

  Something that told him the shape on the ground be a woman, not a man.

  Maybe Captain Murat’s information about the identity of the brains behind the Caspar County cow stealing had been correct after all!

  Chapter 7 THE LAWMEN OF CASPAR COUNTY

  CASPAR CITY LOOKED LITTLE DIFFERENT, NOR HAD any greater right to such a grandiloquent four letters after its name, than a hundred other such towns that existed on the Texas plains for the purpose of supplying the cowhands’ needs for fun and the basic necessities of life. It consisted of at most forty wooden, adobe, or a mixture of both, buildings scattered haphazardly along half a mile of wheel-rutted, hoof-churned dirt going by the title of Main Street. However, Caspar bore the supreme mark of solidarity and permanency which so many other towns lacked; a Wells Fargo stage station and telegraph office stood proudly on Main Street between the adobe county sheriff’s office building and Ella Watson’s Cattle Queen saloon.

  To Danny Fog’s way of thinking as he studied the town, those silvery telegraph wires contained a menace to his well-being in that they could be used to obtain information about him far more quickly than by using the mail services.

  The coming of Danny’s party, each man leading a horse bearing a stiff, unnatural, yet easily recognizable burden, brought people from the various business premises along Main Street. Questions were tossed at Jerome, but for the most he ignored them, saving his story to be told to Sheriff Farley Simmonds.

  Among others, some half-a-dozen women and a couple of men emerged from the batwing doors of the Cattle Queen, attracting Danny’s attention. At least one of the women caught his eye. Even without being told, he knew that black-haired, beautiful woman in the center of the group to be Ella Watson, female saloonkeeper and maybe the boss of the cow thieves plaguing Caspar County. No ordinary saloon-girl could afford such a stylish, fancy light blue gown; a garment more suited in cut and line to a high-class New Orleans bordello than in the saloon of a small Texas town. The dress did little to hide the fact that its wearer’s five-foot-seven figure would be something to see. Cut low in front, it showed off a rich, full bosom, clung tightly to a slender waist, then spread out to eye-catchingly curved hips, although concealing the legs from view. Her face, beautiful yet imperious, carried a look of authority which none of the others showed and set her aside as one above the herd.

  “That’s Ella Watson, runs the Cattle Queen,” Tommy confirmed, waving his hand to a small buxom, pretty and scared-faced blonde girl who stared in wide-eyed horror at the scene.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” Danny replied. “Soon as we’ve seen the great siezer, we’ll go get one.”

  “I can use it,” Tommy stated.

  The great siezer, the cowhand’s disrespectful name for the county sheriff, was not in his office; having gone along to the Bon Ton Café with his deputy for a meal, according to one of the gathering crowd of onlookers. Throwing a glance at his two hands—he had hired Danny on the way into town—Jerome gave instructions.

  “Go get that drink, but keep it to one or two at most. I’ll send word if Sheriff Farley wants you.”

  Leaving Jerome t
o take care of the bodies. Danny and Tommy fastened their horses to the sheriff’s office hitching rail and then walked back toward the sturdy wooden front of the saloon. The little blonde girl came running from among her fellow workers, making for Tommy.

  “What’s happened, Tommy?” she gasped. “Who—what——”

  “Easy, Mousey,” Tommy answered gently, taking the girl by the arms. “Sammy and Pike ran into trouble.”

  Danny studied the girl. Wide-eyed horror showed on her pretty, naïve face. She was a fluffy, shapely, if a mite buxom, little thing, wearing a short green dress, black stockings and high-heeled shoes. Maybe not too smart, she looked like she would be happy, merry and good company under normal conditions—and clearly Tommy regarded her as something extra special.

  “They were in last night,” the girl said.

  “Who with?” growled Tommy.

  “Sammy was with Dora, but he left with just Pike,” answered the girl, turning curious eyes in Danny’s direction.

  “Mousey, this’s Danny Forgrave,” Tommy introduced, taking the hint. “He’s come to ride for Bench J. Danny, meet Mousey, she’s my gal.”

  “Howdy, ma’am,” Danny greeted.

  “Call me ‘Mousey’,” she told him. “My real name’s Mildred, but I like Mousey better.”

  “Then Mousey it is,” Danny replied.

  At the same time as he spoke to the girl, Danny became aware that one of the men standing with Ella Watson studied him carefully. The man wore a low-crowned white Stetson shoved back on his head and a scar ran across his skull just over the right ear, the hair growing white along its line and in contrast to the blackness of the rest. Standing around six foot, the man wore a black cutaway jacket, frilly-bosomed shirt under a fancy vest, black string tie and tight-legged white trousers. Instead of a gunbelt, the man had a silk sash around his waist, a pearl-handled Remington 1861 Army revolver thrust into the left side so as to be available to the right hand. Cold, hard eyes in a fairly handsome, swarthy face, took in every detail of Danny’s dress, with due emphasis on the way he wore his guns. For a moment the man stared, then whispered something in Ella Watson’s ear, bringing her eyes to Danny.