by J. T. Edson
‘Yeeah!’ Dusty bellowed, giving the start of the battle cry which with its accompaniment of ‘Texas Light!’ had been so well known and hated by the Yankee soldiers in Arkansas.
‘Cam na cuimhne!’ Jeanie screeched, voice hoarse and cracked from its earlier efforts.
‘Cam na cuimhne!’ echoed Colin, the wild excitement of the chase stirring his Highland blood and adding a ringing turbulence to his utterance of the clan’s slogan.
Approached on two sides by the yelling, hated man-creatures, faced by that mysterious—therefore dangerous and to be avoided—strip of bare ground on the third, the manada was left with only one way to go. Wild-eyed, tails streaming in the breeze, the stallions still retained sufficient of their herding instincts to hold together as they plunged towards the ‘safety’ offered by the mouth of the draw.
Only the old manadero saw the danger. Swinging away just before it reached the entrance, the big stallion gave a spine-chilling scream and charged at the nearest of its pursuers. Head thrust forward to the full extent of its outstretched neck, eyes rolling, ears laid flat back and mouth open to display worn-down, age-yellowed teeth, mane bristling furiously and tail spiked straight to the rear, it made a frightening picture.
Certainly Dusty’s bayo-cebrunos gelding thought so, for it had been the animal selected by the black manadero to be attacked. While it was now a trained cow-horse, the bayo-cebrunos had begun its life in a wild mestena. During its formative years, it had experienced the domination of a master-stallion. No other creature, except possibly man, exercised such a complete despotic rule over its offspring. So the bayo-cebrunos, which would face the charge of a hostile longhorn bull without flinching, showed the greatest reluctance to going up against the manadero.
Throwing back its head, the little horse attempted to come to a stop and turn away all in one motion. Dusty felt its feet slipping from under it as it lost its balance. If he had been afork his own saddle, the small Texan might have averted the trouble. The ultra-light rig, combined with the noseband bosal instead of a bit did not allow him to exert the necessary control with his hands or legs.
Feeling the bayo-cebrunos going down and knowing that he could not prevent it, Dusty snatched his right boot from the brass stirrup ‘iron’. The horse was falling that way and he had no desire to be trapped beneath it. Swinging his leg forward and over the gelding’s neck, he kept his other foot in the stirrup to give him support. When the time came to remove it, he felt his boot cling in the grasp of the brass semi-circle.
A sudden jerk ripped Dusty’s foot free, but his equilibrium had been destroyed. Instead of landing running as he had planned, he stumbled and went down. Long experience at riding bucking horses had taught him how to fall, even unexpectedly, with the minimum of pain or chance of injuring himself. Ducking his head forward and twisting his torso, he landed on his left shoulder with his body curled into a ball. Rolling over and over on the grama grass, he knew that he was still far from out of danger.
Shattering the air with its fighting screams, the raging manadero charged at the bayo-cebrunos and ignored Dusty. It almost seemed that the stallion intended to inflict punishment on the fallen horse for its betrayal of their species to the hated human beings. Rearing high on its hind legs, the black flailed its fore feet ready to smash down its hooves upon the helpless little gelding’s body.
Knowing that there was only one way to deal with a kill-crazy manadero, Dusty prepared to do it—if he could. Ending his roll flat on his back, he sent his left hand flashing across to close on and draw the right side Colt. Even as the revolver’s seven-and-a-half inch barrel cleared leather, with his forefinger entering the trigger-guard and thumb easing back the hammer to full cock, he doubted if it possessed the power to halt the stallion in time to save his mount.
The 1860 Army Colt’s twenty-five grain powder charge and .44 caliber, 212-grain bullet might be effective man-stoppers, but they lacked the energy to fell the horse instantly unless striking a vital spot. Under the circumstances, Dusty lacked the time needed to take a careful aim and ensure he hit such a spot. To merely wound the manadero could easily bring its attention and rage on to him, but he had to take that chance. Flat on his back, lining his Colt above his raised knees, he squeezed the trigger and directed his bullet at the manadero’s ribs. Being hit there might turn the stallion and allow the struggling bayo-cebrunos to regain its feet and escape.
Although Dusty did not know it, help was already coming. Seeing the small Texan’s perilous predicament, Colin acted with speed, decision and purpose. Twisting his right hand palm outwards, he swept the big old Dragoon from its holster. Back reared the hammer beneath his thumb and he thrust the sixty-five ounce revolver to arm’s length. Looking along its round barrel almost as if sighting a shotgun, the Scot tightened his forefinger on the trigger.
Two seconds after Colin’s hand had closed on the ivory butt, flame spurted from a percussion cap. In the uppermost chamber of the cylinder, forty grains of best du Pont powder turned into gases, which drove a conical .44, 219-grain soft lead bullet along the barrel’s rifling grooves. Until improvements in steel made possible the use of the mighty .44 Magnum cartridge, no handgun would exceed the power of the 1848 Colt Dragoon revolver when loaded to its maximum capacity.
Hurling through the air at a velocity of nine hundred feet-per-second, Colin’s bullet struck the side of the stallion’s throat an instant after Dusty’s lead found its rib cage. Plowing through flesh and muscles, the Dragoon’s load broke the manadero’s neck and crumpled it almost immediately to the ground.
Seeing its assailant falling towards it, the bayo-cebrunos screamed in terror. With legs waving wildly, it rolled on to its back. Keeping turning, it avoided being struck by the stallion’s collapsing body. Then it lurched to its feet and went plunging off in the direction from which it had come.
‘Catch my saddle!’ Dusty yelled, sitting up and making the usual request given by a man who had been thrown and saw his horse bolting. xiii
‘No time the now, laddie,’ Colin replied, holstering his Dragoon and grinning at the small Texan as his bayo-lobo carried him by. ‘There’s work to be done—and money to be earned.’
‘Blasted foreigner!’ Dusty bellowed in simulated anger after the Scot’s departing back. ‘I always heard you jaspers from Scotland were mean.’
As Dusty and Colin knew, the loss of the gelding would only be temporary. In fact the long, split-ended reins trailing about its fore legs had already begun to slow its flight. Trained to stand still when the reins dangled free, a precaution against the rider having to dismount and leave the horse in a location which offered no means of tying it up, the bayo-cebrunos did not go far before it came to a halt. Snorting and tossing its head, it made no further attempt to run away.
After watching his companions follow the remainder of the manada into the draw, Dusty walked towards his horse. He caught it without difficulty and, after calming it down, examined it. Finding it lathered, shivering a little, but otherwise unharmed, he took its reins and led it along the valley to rejoin the rest of the mustanging party.
Ignoring the departure of their leader, the stallions entered and ran along the sheer-sided draw towards the gate of the caracol. Urging them on, Jeanie watched anxiously.
Always the actual entry into the enclosure was a tricky, chancy business. Let the mustangs receive just one hint of their danger and no power on earth could force them inside. However, the young stallions did not hesitate. Going by the disguised gate, they penetrated the forward section of the pen.
As soon as all the manada had entered the caracol, the last of the mesteneros who could be spared to take part in the corrida made his appearance. He had been hidden behind the gate, ready to turn back any of the mustangs that tried to escape before it had been closed. Sliding their horses to a halt, Felix and Carlos helped the mestenero to swing the gate shut. Having watched the successful conclusion of their efforts, Jeanie twisted on her saddle and looked back along the dra
w.
‘Is Dusty all right?’ the girl inquired as Colin joined her.
‘Aye, lassie,’ Colin replied, ‘but I had to shoot yon manadero.’
‘It happens,’ Jeanie said philosophically, and dismounted. Seeing the concern on her fiancé’s face, she continued, ‘Don’t feel bad about it, Colin. It was a quicker end than he’d’ve got had he escaped. He’d likely’ve been kicked to death, or crippled up bad, trying to get in on another manada. Or he’d get so all-fired old ’n’ slow that the wolves or coyotes’d eat him alive.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Colin admitted. ‘There’s no pity for the old in the wild, lassie.’
‘We got the others, anyways,’ Jeanie enthused. ‘You’ve seen how often we have to shoot a manadero?’
‘I have,’ Colin said soberly.
It was one of the points he would have to keep constantly in mind when he started his hunt for the horse called Mogollon.
Chapter Five
Gripping a sack of potatoes by its neck and bottom in front of him, Mark Counter raised it from the floor. Libby watched him with admiration as he carried it towards the front door of Hoffer’s general store. Despite having taken part in a most satisfying session of love-making, which had left them little time to sleep, he toted his hundredweight burden with no more apparent effort than if it had been a five pound bag of sugar.
Libby felt no regrets at her decision of the previous night. In the morning, after the deputy had gone from his guard duty outside the de Brioudes’ room, Libby had dressed and returned to her own quarters. Ben Thompson had joined the blonde and Mark while they ate breakfast in the dining-room. Making no reference to how he had discovered them the previous night, Thompson had told them what had happened following his departure from their presence. There had been little that they did not already know. On finding the passkey in the alley, Thompson’s party had drawn the conclusions predicted by Libby. They had searched the surrounding area without locating any trace of the man responsible for the ‘attack’ on the Vicomtesse. Although neither Mark nor Libby commented on the matter, Thompson’s last piece of news had not surprised them.
Before they had finished their breakfasts, the Vicomte had arrived. Stiffly, in a manner coldly polite, he had apologized for the inconvenience his wife’s ‘mistake’ had caused to Mark. The Vicomtesse had not accompanied him to breakfast, de Brioude had explained, because she had not yet recovered from her fright.
Taken all in all, Mark had felt relieved by Beatrice’s absence. Not through any sense of guilt, but because Libby had threatened to hand-scalp the foreign woman the next time they met. While Mark had doubted if Libby would have deliberately started a brawl in public, a chance wrong comment from the Vicomtesse might easily have provoked an unpleasant incident.
With the meal over, Libby and Mark had collected their belongings from the rooms. Picking up her wagon, they had brought it to Hoffer’s store. None of the mesteneros had made an appearance, so Mark started the loading.
As Mark was stepping out of the door carrying the sack of potatoes, he saw a big, thickset, crop-haired United States Cavalry sergeant standing in the center of the sidewalk between him and the Schell family’s wagon. At the same moment, Mark became aware that an equally hefty Yankee soldier was lounging just a mite too casually at either side of the entrance to the building.
‘Mind moving aside, friend?’ Mark inquired, making a reasonable request as the sergeant blocked his access to the rear end of the wagon.
‘Walk ’round me, beef-head,’ was the cold, uncompromising reply.
Instantly Mark sensed danger. Having completed his packing quicker than Libby, he had gone downstairs to wait in the hotel’s reception hall. While there, he had seen that same hard-faced sergeant in the dining-room with the Vicomtesse de Brioude. At the time, Mark had sensed by their behavior that he was the subject of their conversation. The sergeant had scowled Mark’s way and made as if to rise, but Beatrice had restrained him.
Being curious, Mark had taken the opportunity to question the desk clerk about the soldier. He had learned that Sergeant Heaps was the second-in-command of the de Brioudes’ escort. Darting a worried glance at the dining-room’s door, the clerk had also intimated that he thought the couple had made a bad choice. According to him, the non-com had a reputation for being a bully and a troublemaker.
Studying the sullen, brutal face, Mark concluded that Heaps’s reputation might be justified. He also wondered if the Vicomtesse had encouraged the sergeant to pick a fight as a means of taking her revenge. That seemed likely. After the failure of her first attempt to repay him for spurning her advances, a woman as vindictive as she had proved to be would hardly forget the matter so easily. If Mark had called the play correctly, he knew that there would be no evading the issue. Satisfied that trouble could not be avoided, he continued to advance without giving a hint of his suspicions.
Swinging towards Mark, the red-haired private at the left side of the door thrust forward his right leg. Acting as if he had seen nothing, Mark suddenly swung up and hurled the sack at Heaps. Already moving forward to the attack, the sergeant took the heavy weight full in the chest. Its impact knocked him across the sidewalk until a collision with the body of Libby’s wagon ended his involuntary retreat.
Instead of being thrown off balance by the redhead’s leg, Mark caught his weight on his forward foot and remained erect. Swinging his other leg around, he pivoted and flung a backhand blow at the center of his assailant’s face. Pain blasted through the redhead as hard knuckles crushed his nose. Yelping in torment, the soldier went spinning and teetering helplessly away from what the trio had originally regarded as an easy victim.
Like Sergeant Heaps and ‘Red’ Going, Dip Noris had taken Mark for a wealthy young dandy who would be unlikely to put up a strenuous resistance while they earned the ‘Countess’s’ monetary gratitude. So Noris shared with his companions a sense of over-confidence and it brought him just as much grief. Mark was what he appeared, but with one major discrepancy. Instead of being soft and weak from easy living, he possessed a muscular development superior to any of his attackers and had been well-trained in all aspects of rough-house self-defense.
Catching hold of Mark’s left shoulder, Noris prepared to jerk him around and drive a punch into his face. Maybe the beef-head had been fortunate against Red and Heaps, but Noris figured that his luck had about run out. Mark had other, definite ideas on the subject. Moving to the rear instead of trying to draw away from the clutching fingers, the blond giant propelled his right elbow behind him. It rammed with considerable force into Noris’s solar plexus, causing him to gasp, remove his hand and retreat hurriedly. Nor had Mark finished with him. Turning around, the Texan hurled out his left fist. Bunched knuckles rammed into Noris’s chest before the pain of the first attack could fold him over. After appearing to be running backwards, the soldier sat down hard on the unyielding planks of the sidewalk.
Heaps allowed the sack to tumble unheeded to his feet. Sucking in a deep breath, he sprang over it. Advancing fast, he enfolded Mark’s torso and biceps with his arms from the rear. Locking on a grip that no man had ever managed to break, the sergeant let out a bellow to his two assistants.
‘Going! Noris! Get the hell here and help me!’
Before he had reached the fifth word of his demand, Heaps began to get an uneasy feeling that he really did need help. Under that excellently tailored shirt’s sleeves bulged mounds of bicep muscles in excess of his own. Keeping his head held back to avoid being butted with the base of Mark’s skull, he clung on grimly and a timbre of urgency crept into the remainder of his speech.
Taking his hands from his throbbing nose, Red Going stared for a moment at the blood on his palms. Then he turned his eyes to the man who had dealt him the injury. What he saw filled him with delight, for it offered the opportunity of returning the Texan’s blow without too much danger. Trapped from behind in Heaps’s vice-like bear-hug, the efficiency of which Going had seen demonstrat
ed many times, the blond giant faced towards the wall of the store. So the burly redhead decided that he could safely approach and launch his attack.
‘Hold him, Heaps!’ Going bawled. ‘I’m coming!’
Shouting out his intentions proved to be an error in tactics, although the heavy thumping of his boots on the sidewalk would have warned Mark of the danger. Hearing Going approaching, Mark exerted all his strength in a way neither the redhead nor the sergeant expected. Mark knew that he could not break the non-com’s hold quickly enough to be of use, so did not try. Instead, he gave a surging twist that turned him towards his second attacker.
Driving down with his feet, Mark took three long strides to meet Going and dragged the amazed Heaps after him. An experienced barroom brawler, Going could sense what was coming next even though he reacted too slowly to avert it. Balancing on his right leg, Mark lashed up his left foot in a wicked kick. Unable to stop his forward impetus, Going took the toe of the riding boot in his groin. The pain caused to the redhead’s nose paled into nothing alongside the white-hot, nauseating agony which now blazed through him. Screaming and clutching at the stricken area, Going spun on his heels. Then he stumbled away, dropping to his knees and pitching face forward into the vomit which burst from his mouth.
Being a loyal subordinate—or, at least, aware of his fate if he stayed out of the fight—Noris prepared to return to the fray. To reach the combatants, he had to pass in front of the open door of the store. Although he saw Libby at it, he ignored her. Clenching his fists, he advanced along the sidewalk and watched Going rendered hors de combat,
