Dancer and Ashley stood together at the foot of the stairs, chatting away, She was doing most of the talking.
Piney paused for a moment at the top of the landing to catch his breath. Mallory turned his head to glance downstairs, Ashley and Dancer’s words inaudible to him. He watched his daughter. She displayed the most spark and verve she had shown all evening, while the handsome Dancer seemed to be feeling no pain.
Piney moved on, carrying Mallory into his suite of rooms.
“That’s something you don’t see much any more, not since the war,” the hotel manager said to the night clerk as they stood at the front desk in the hotel lobby watching the goings-on at the staircase to the second floor. It was slack time in the hotel, quiet.
The clerk turned. “What might that be?”
“A distinguished gentleman like Mr. Mallory. Exquisite manners, the real gentry.” The manager beamed as though basking in the glow shed by that luminary.
“He’s got a good-looking daughter,” the night clerk noted approvingly.
The manager’s frown made the clerk defensive. “What’re you giving me that look for? All I said was that Mallory has a good-looking daughter. Well, he does. She’s a stylish piece of goods.”
Following a brief internal struggle, the manager decided the remark was nothing to take offense at, though he had noticed that the night clerk tended to be a bit flip at times, a bit fresh. It was why he was working the desk at night instead of in the daytime.
Still, the manager resolved to let it pass. “Charming girl,” he agreed.
“Looks like she might be something of a handful, though,” the night clerk ventured.
“Eh? Why do you say that?”
“Dyll the waiter said she put away quite a bit of wine tonight. Quite,” the night clerk emphasized, making quick hand movements to pantomime someone tossing back a glass of wine.
“Tell Dyll he shouldn’t go around discussing the guests,” the manager said, sniffing. “Never mind. I’ll tell him myself.”
TWENTY-ONE
It was easy to follow the Free Company’s trail; even a blind man could have found it. Their track was like a gigantic scar ripped across the countryside.
The marauders moved en masse down Wild Horse Canyon in a column that Sam estimated had about 150 or more mounted men, twenty wagons and other wheeled vehicles, and a trailing body of foot soldiers and camp followers that could have numbered somewhere around 250 people. Whatever their plans, they were making no attempt to conceal their presence.
Sam and Otto followed.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Sam ventured after a while on the trail.
“I don’t mind. Ask away,” Otto said.
“Ordinarily I keep to myself, minding my own business, but I can’t help wondering what’s the shaven skull all about? Scared of being scalped by Indians?”
“That’s a good one! Lice—that’s what I’m scared of, head lice. The barracks are full of them. It’s better to go bald than be picking the blasted little critters out of your hair all the time, night and day. They itch something fierce, too.”
“You’ve got a mustache. Don’t they get into that?”
“They do, but I’ve got to have it. Without a mustache, my head looks like a giant thumb.”
Sam cut the other a quick side glance, looking to see if Otto was pulling his leg. The trooper seemed serious enough, though. “Oh. Just wondering.”
“Now you know,” Otto said.
On they rode.
“Cross! Johnny Cross!”
It was nighttime at the Cross ranch, about ten o’clock, a late hour in the countryside where most folks rose with the sun and went to bed not long after nightfall.
But Johnny Cross was no ordinary citizen. He kept odd hours and numbered many a strange breed of cat among his acquaintances. Two of them were in the front room of the ranch house with him. Vic Vargas was somewhere outside, but it wasn’t he who was doing the shouting.
Coot sat by the stone fireplace, where a low fire burned, fine-tuning the action on one of his rifles. “Got me a feeling I’ll be needing it before too long,” he had said earlier.
Luke sat on the other side of the fireplace. His left pant leg was rolled up past the knee, and his wooden leg was off. It tended to chafe and discomfort him. He was kneading the stump below the knee, trying to relieve the tension knotted there.
Johnny sat on a chair at a long table, cleaning the guns he’d used earlier in the fracas. They lay on a square of cloth spread on the tabletop. Some stiff metal-bristle brushes, gauze cotton patches, ramrods, and other instruments lay near at hand. The scent of gun-cleaning oil was in the air.
A lamp on the table shed a cone of light on the business at hand.
“Come out, Johnny!” the voice in the night rang out, coming from somewhere in the darkness surrounding the ranch house.
“Now who in tarnation do you suppose that is?” Coot wondered aloud.
“Beats me,” Johnny said, shrugging. “This must be my week for getting called out.”
“The last time that happened, I missed lunch,” Luke said, sounding sore about it.
Johnny grinned. “Good thing you already ate dinner tonight.”
“He et enough for two dinners,” Coot complained.
“I’d have had three, if it wasn’t your cooking,” Luke returned.
“I didn’t hear no complaints while you was shoveling that grub down your maw,” Coot grumbled.
“I was hungry. Hungry enough to eat even that slop,” Luke said cheerfully. “Besides, it ain’t polite to talk with your mouth full.”
“When did that ever stop you?” Coot asked. “I don’t know what you got to be so all-fired hungry about anyways. You ain’t hardly done a lick of work around here since you come back home from gallivanting in town.”
“Some gallivanting! I damn near got myself killed trying to eat a nice peaceful lunch.”
Coot groaned. “You ain’t gonna tell us about it again, is you, Luke? You already boasted your big brags about it so much it’s coming out of my ears.”
Once more the call came out of the night. “Johnny Cross! Come out! We need to talk!”
“Persistent cuss,” Coot remarked.
“Whoever it is, he ain’t from the Free Company. They don’t bother to announce themselves when they go night riding,” Johnny said. “A shot in the dark’s more their style.”
“Maybe he’ll go away if you don’t answer,” Luke said hopefully. “Then we can go back to our drinking.”
“I don’t see you slacking off none. Quit hogging that bottle and pass it to me,” Coot said.
“Get it yourself. You got two good legs.”
“See if I don’t,” Coot said, rising.
“Cross, this is Sam Heller. Sam Heller! Come on out. I want to talk to you! It’s important!”
“Well, what do you know, Johnny. Your pet Yankee’s back in town,” Coot said, not sounding particularly pleased.
“Thought he sounded familiar,” Luke said.
“Then why didn’t you say so?” Coot demanded.
“Because I wasn’t sure, you cantankerous old mossback.”
Johnny pushed back his chair and stood up. He was barefoot and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. A six-gun was stuck in the top of his pants over his right hip. He didn’t feel right without a loaded gun close to hand especially now that trouble hunters were abroad in Wild Horse Canyon, not to mention poking around the ranch.
He turned a knob at the base of the lamp, dimming the light in the room already thick with shadows. He padded to a front window, standing to one side so as not to outline himself. “That you, Sam?” he called out into the night.
“Yup!”
“What about it, Vic?” Johnny asked loudly.
“It’s Sam,” Vic Vargas replied. He was taking his turn at sentry duty.
Between Terrible Terry in town and the canyon dustup, Johnny wasn’t taking any chances on being caught unawares. He and
the others were taking turns pulling guard duty outside, keeping an eye on things so nobody could sneak up on them.
The situation must be under control or Vic would have started shooting by now, Johnny thought. It’d take a mighty soft-walking hombre to sneak up on Vargas and get the drop on him. From what Johnny had seen of Sam in action, he might well have been such an hombre, but the Yankee gunman had apparently approached openly, without subterfuge.
“Sam’s alone,” Vic Vargas went on. “But four other fellows are down in the hollow on the road to the Trail. He’s also got one of the dangedest contraptions you ever seen.”
“Huh!” Johnny said, thinking it over.
“I ain’t funning,” Vargas said. “You want to see this. It’s something to see!”
Johnny would have gone out anyway, but his interest was piqued. “I’ll be right out.”
He sat down on a chair and pulled his boots on. No way he was walking around barefoot outside—rattlesnakes! The land was full of them. They weren’t as active by night as they were by day, but they were active enough. Johnny and friends had mostly cleaned out the ones who made their dens around the ranch house, but they could never tell for sure.
He went outside, Coot following. Luke would be along once he’d strapped on his wooden leg, Johnny reckoned.
The front of the ranch house looked out on a broad dirt yard—the dooryard, where nothing grew. It was ringed by various outbuildings—stable barn with tack room, toolshed, and corral.
The moon was up, an amber half moon hanging midway between the eastern horizon and the zenith. The night air was cool and pleasant. Moonlight shone down into the dooryard, picking out the forms of Sam Heller and his horse. Sam stood beside Dusty, holding the reins.
Sam’s mule’s leg was worn on his right-hand side. It seemed kind of clumsy to Johnny, who was a fast-draw artist with a regulation-sized Colt six-gun in a hip holster, but Sam could get that mule’s leg into action pretty damn fast. Its cut-down size was more practical for wielding the piece in close quarters in towns—saloons, alleys, and such.
Off to one side in dark shadows under the eaves of the stable barn stood Vic, holding a leveled rifle pointed in Sam’s general direction.
“It’s all right, Vic,” Johnny said.
Vic lowered the rifle. “I’ll stick. He’s got one of the biggest damn guns I ever saw down in the hollow with the others.”
“They’re Army from Fort Pardee,” Sam said.
“That ain’t exactly a recommendation in these parts,” Johnny said.
“Don’t I know it! You and the good folks of Hangtree might change your tune when you hear the news.”
“What news?”
“Fort Pardee’s a tad below fighting strength right now. The four men with me are the only effectives alive right now,” Sam said grimly.
“You lost me,” Johnny said, frankly mystified. “What’s it all about?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute, but I figured it might be wiser for my four friends to keep their distance until you know what’s what.”
“What’s all this about some contraption, some big gun?” Johnny craned his neck to see down into the hollow. It was dark where the moonlight did not reach, making it difficult for him to discern what it was exactly that was down there. “What’ve you got?”
“A howitzer,” Sam said.
“Say again?” Johnny queried.
“A howitzer. It’s a kind of cannon.”
“I know what a howitzer is. That’s what you’ve got down there? I can’t hardly make it out from here. A howitzer, eh? What’re you doing with it?”
“That’s part of the story.”
“This I’ve got to see,” Johnny said, starting forward.
“Careful, Johnny.” That was Coot speaking, standing in the yard near the house.
“It’s all right, Coot. I trust him,” Johnny said. “Mostly.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, his tone neutral, giving away nothing. He hitched Dusty’s reins to a top rail of the corral fence.
Johnny walked to the opposite end of the yard, Sam falling into step beside him. Johnny looked south where a dirt road extended from the ranch house to the Hangtree Trail, meeting it at right angles somewhere in the middle distance.
In a dip in the dirt road a hundred yards away were four men, a wheeled cannon—howitzer, Johnny silently corrected himself—and what looked like a freight wagon.
Three of the men were on horseback, and a fourth sat up high in the driver’s seat of the wagon. The howitzer was mounted on a wheeled carriage hitched to a six-horse team, horses yoked two-by-two. The wagon was hitched to a separate team of horses similarly yoked.
“Whatever it’s all about, you sure don’t do things by halves,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “Come on in and tell me about it. Your friends can stay down there while you tell me about it.”
“All right,” Sam said. “A fair hearing, that’s all I ask.”
“I doubt it, knowing you. One thing’s certain though, whatever it is, it’s a sure bet that I’ll wind up getting shot at sooner or later. Probably sooner.”
“Maybe so,” Sam said.
Johnny laughed. “Well at least you don’t deny it! Come on in.”
“Let me tell the others first, so they don’t get worried.”
“Go ahead. It’s your deal.”
Sam walked partway down the slope toward the men in the hollow. “I’m going in for a parley, so sit tight till I come back.”
“See if you can wrangle us some coffee,” one called back.
“To hell with that. See if you can wangle us a drink,” another said.
“I’m not making any promises, but I’ll see what I can do,” Sam said.
He and Johnny started back toward the ranch house.
Vic called out, “I’ll stay out here for a while and keep an eye on things, Johnny.”
“Okay, Vic.”
Johnny, Sam, and Coot went into the ranch house.
“Howdy, Sam.” Luke had finished strapping on his wooden leg. He and Sam had worked together in the past and got along pretty well.
“Howdy,” Sam said.
“Pull up a chair and take a load off,” Johnny said.
“I’ll stand if that’s all right with you. I’ve been in the saddle for so long that if I sit down I’m afraid I’ll stiffen up and be unable to stand.”
“Suit yourself. Coffee?” Johnny asked, indicating a battered coffeepot set out beside the hearth.
“I’d rather have some redeye,” Sam said.
“Who wouldn’t? Believe I’ll join you.” Johnny went to the cupboard filled with bottles of whiskey, mostly. He took out a fresh bottle, uncorked it, and handed it to Sam. “We don’t stand on ceremony here, help yourself.’
“Thanks.” Sam took a long pull of the whiskey. It put some color in his face, which was drawn and haggard with fatigue. “Much obliged.” He took another, longer drink.
After Sam had sufficiently refreshed himself by consuming a fair amount of the bottle, he went into his story, telling Johnny and company about the abandonment of the Hog Ranch, the massacre-by-poison at Fort Pardee, and the advent into Hangtree County by the Free Company.
“After we left the fort, we encountered three riders coming from the west, out of the Llano.
“They were hidden behind a ridge but showed themselves at the crest when we unsuspectingly drew abreast of their position. I could tell by their outline that they were not Comanches. Otto thought maybe they were strayed marauders who got lost on the plains. That being the case, they could have caught us out in the open and picked us off and they could have seen his Army uniform. If they were Free Company, we knew what to do,” Sam said grimly.
“The trio rode downslope to meet us. Turned out, they were friendlies—three civilian trackers who were working as scouts for Fort Pardee. I’d done some scouting for the Army and to my surprise, I recognized them. Friendly acquaintances, all three. An Indian and two white men. They’re the men in
the hollow.
“The Indian is named Tonk, short for Tonkawah. The Tonkawah were a tribe of Texas Indians who have been pretty well wiped out by the Comanches over the last half century. The last few survivors have a big hate on for Comanches, as well as being ace trackers and manhunters.
“The white scouts are Noel Maddox and Steve Dirkes. Maddox was born on Christmas Day, hence the name ‘Noel.’ Oddly enough, he and his folks pronounced the name so it rhymes with mole. He’s better known as Mad Dog Maddox, a veteran mountain man and trapper who’d been with Pathfinder Fremont and Kit Carson on one of their last expeditions into the wilderness before the war.
“Dirkes is ten years younger than Maddox but trail-wise and trouble-savvy. He scouted throughout the Southwest for the Army’s Surveying and Topographical Corps, mapping and exploring lands acquired from Mexico by war and treaty.
“They joined us in our mission.
“The marauders’ tracks told many a story for those of us who knew how to read sign. One of the most intriguing was the progress or rather lack of progress of the stolen howitzer and munitions wagon.
“The howitzer was heavy and so was its accompanying wagon filled with powder and shot. From the beginning of the trek from Fort Pardee, they traveled well behind the rest of the column, even behind the last of the horde of camp followers making the march on foot. I think it was not only because they were weighty and traveled slow but because of fears of an explosion in the munitions wagon.” Sam stopped speaking for a moment, thinking of the disastrous explosion at the Boneyard meet between the Hog Ranch gunrunners and Comanches. He knew such fears could take on a real threat.
“In any case, as the caravan wound its way farther and farther south, the howitzer and wagon steadily fell back more and more, eventually dropping out of sight several miles behind the rear of the column. As we represented Fort Pardee, we resolved to attack the laggard artillery transport should the opportunity present itself.
“Several hours passed and the transport crew lost sight of the column and vice versa. I assume the marauders and auxiliary irregulars got impatient. The Free Company and its trailing rabble horde wanted to get to their main camp so they could get to the all-important task of dividing up the loot. Then they could get on with such all-important matters as drinking, gambling, and wenching.
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