The Floating Outfit 21

by J. T. Edson

  “Huh?” gulped Gruber, never the quickest of thinkers, making use of his favorite term when puzzled.

  “Get the Coopers and Bulmer over here,” explained the doctor savagely. “They helped get him into this state, so they can help tote him home. I might—only might—be able to save his leg if I hurry.”

  “Perhaps I could help,” suggested the elder of the travelers, walking slowly towards the doctor.

  “You,” sneered Gruber, then shut his mouth as the doctor directed a cold scowl in his direction.

  “Are you a doctor,” asked the local medical man.

  “I have some knowledge of medical matters.”

  “Then come and take a look.”

  Walking up, the bearded man knelt by the doctor’s side and looked at the long tear in Gartree’s flesh. Already the doctor had applied a tourniquet in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but the full horror of the wound showed plainly.

  “Is there anything you can do,” asked Gruber.

  “That depends,” answered the old man.

  “On what,” the doctor inquired. “You’re not one of those faith healers, are you, mister?”

  “We don’t want any of that kind of rubbish here if you are,” Gruber spat out. “This’s a decent, church-going town and—”

  For all the notice taken, the marshal might not have been speaking.

  “I do not know what you mean by ‘faith-healer’,” the old man replied. “While I could mend this wound, I lack the equipment.”

  “If I’ve anything at my place—” the doctor began, wondering if he did the right thing.

  “It is doubtful. Your wor—country is not far advanced medically.”

  “Mister,” snapped the doctor. “I don’t know where you come from, or how far advanced you figure you are. But you couldn’t fix that leg so he’ll walk on it without at best a bad limp.”

  “If I had—” the old man started.

  “If you’d wings, you could fly out of here!” snarled Gruber. “And I—”

  “Dry off!” ordered the doctor. “Just how would you start fixing the wound, stranger?”

  “You have not the apparatus necessary,” the old man answered sadly. “There is nothing I can do for so serious an injury.”

  “Reckon your old country’s not much further advanced than our’s then,” the doctor commented. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll get him home and do what I can.” His eyes turned to where Gartree’s friends managed to stand up. “Come over here and lend a hand with him.”

  While the trio felt that they ought to make a move of some kind against the Texan, each one realized that he might possibly be able to copper any bets they made. True the ease with which he handled them in the first place stemmed from their failing to appreciate his real potential. Now they knew and the knowledge left them uneasy. No longer did the Texan look small and insignificant and they welcomed the doctor’s order as an excuse to avoid further tangling with the Texan.

  Trying to appear reluctant, the three young men advanced and lifted Gartree. Profane warning of what would happen should they cause further damage to the injured limb crackled about the trio’s ears as the doctor supervised them. With Gartree lifted and started along the street towards his home, the doctor paused and looked at the old stranger. Then, with a shrug, the doctor turned and walked away. When he came to think back on the incident, the doctor found himself wondering at why he felt such faith in the old man. For a moment he almost believed that the stranger possessed the means to heal young Gartree’s limb; even though he knew this to be an impossibility. There had been an air about the bearded old man, something the doctor could not define or explain. “Of course,” the doctor frequently mused when remembering the incident, “nothing on this earth could have repaired the damage Gartree’s folly caused.”

  “What’ll I tell Baines Gartree?” moaned Gruber, half to himself, as he watched the removal of the injured man.

  “Why not tell him the truth,” asked the Texan.

  “The truth?”

  “That his son tried to molest a girl in the street and got hurt trying to shoot me in the back.”

  “He hadn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me that he was pulling that gun to swat flies,” drawled the Texan sardonically. “Or that he wasn’t laying hands on the young lady there against her will!”

  “Shucks, young Gavin wouldn’t’ve hurt her,” objected the marshal. “He was only funning her along.”

  “Do you believe in fairies, too,” growled the Texan. Something in the small man’s tone warned Gruber not to continue along that line in the matter. Taken any further, it would be tantamount to calling the Texan a liar; and Gruber knew what the consequences would be. So he swiveled his eyes in the direction of the travelers, watching the elder man join the other two.

  “Damn it to hell!” he said pettishly. “If they hadn’t come—”

  “You’ve already said that,” interrupted the Texan coldly.

  “Us plain, church-going folks here in Bainesville don’t go for having Mormons or their like coming here and stirring up trouble.”

  A low rumble of talk welled up among the crowd; not yet hostile, but likely to turn that way if given the right kind of inducement. Despite his small size, the Texan had been around enough and seen sufficient of life to be aware of how many Kansans—especially in the smaller towns—regarded Mormons in particular and the lesser religious sects in general. If the town marshal continued unchecked with his current line of talk, he might stir up the citizens. By playing on their desire to defend the honor of their church against unbelievers, he could start something serious. With that in mind, the Texan decided to declare his feeling on the matter.

  “Understand one thing, all of you,” he said quietly, his grey eyes raking the crowd in deadly emphasis to his words. “These folks came in peaceable and made no fuss. They’ll leave the same way. Does anybody aim to try and stop them?”

  Although every man in the crowd knew that the Texan had thrown down the gauntlet, not one of them intended to take up the challenge. Seeing no acceptance, the Texan turned and walked towards the girl. The grim lines left his face as he drew near, being replaced by a smile which transformed him once more into the small, pleasant-featured nonentity whose appearance so fooled Gartree’s bunch.

  “I’d like to thank you for yelling the warning, ma’am,” he said. “I hadn’t expected that jasper to be able to take a hand so soon.”

  “It was obvious that you were not aware of the danger,” she replied. “And it is I who must thank you.”

  “Forget it, ma’am. Do you want anything here in town.”

  “No. I think not.”

  “If you want to buy supplies, nobody’ll stop you.”

  After directing a glance in the elder man’s direction, but not speaking, the girl shook her head. “We have all we need.”

  “We will continue our journey, there is nothing in this town that we seek,” the old man went on. “Unless I could render assistance to the wounded man. ”

  “Do you reckon you could do anything, sir?” the Texan asked. “If so, maybe I could talk the doctor into letting you try.”

  “Perhaps—” began the old man, then hesitated, looking at his two companions but not speaking.

  “Sure,” said the Texan, guessing at the cause of the other’s hesitation. “That must have been a real bad wound. I didn’t see it, but I’ve seen one caused in the same way.”

  “Perhaps my interference would cause complications,” admitted the old man. “Your wor—country is not—”

  Once again his words trailed off. He seemed uncertain of how to continue, like a guest waiting to make a complaint, but wishing to avoid offending his host.

  “It is best that we continue our journey,” the young man stated.

  “Yes,” agreed the elder. “We will leave this town and look for another, more suitable place.”

  “Which way’re you going, sir?” asked the Texan.

  “To the—sou
th.”

  “So am I. But I have to take my paint to the blacksmith’s shop and have a shoe fixed first. If you care to wait, I’ll ride along with you.”

  After directing a searching glance at the crowd and studying the marshal for a few seconds, the elder man shook his head. “No. It will be better for everybody if we leave now.”

  “If you’re travelling far, you’d maybe best let the blacksmith look over your own team,” the Texan suggested. “There’s no other town for maybe two hundred miles down to the south.”

  “We had them attended to at the last town,” the younger man answered. “We will be on our way.”

  The girl directed glances at her companions, without speaking to either. It almost seemed that she asked a question, yet not a word passed between the trio. At last she turned back to the Texan and smiled.

  “Perhaps you can—catch up, is that the expression I want?—with us on the trail.”

  “Likely I will, ma’am,” answered the Texan. “Allow me.”

  Stepping forward, he helped the girl up on to the wagon box, then stepped back and watched the two men mount. Although the girl smiled in the Texan’s direction and raised her hand, none of the trio spoke as the wagon moved away.

  Seeing that nothing more of note was likely to happen, the crowd began to disperse. Only rarely did anything exciting occur to break the even, uneventful flow of their lives and the happenings of that day would provide the citizens with conversation and speculation for months to come.

  The local blacksmith joined the Texan as his fellow citizens broke up to go about their interrupted affairs.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t at my place when you came in earlier, friend,” he said. “This’s my day for tending to the Wells Fargo stock.”

  “I needed a haircut and it gave me time to have one.”

  “If you’ll fetch your horse along now, I’ll tend to it.”

  “Why sure,” agreed the Texan, throwing a glance at the departing wagon.

  “They’re a strange bunch,” remarked the blacksmith. “But that was a pretty gal.”

  “It sure was,” the Texan replied, and went to collect his waiting paint.

  Three – Baines Gartree’s Hired Man

  “Your boy will never walk again.”

  Halting in the pacing he had been doing across the width of the well-furnished sitting-room, Baines Gartree stared at the doctor and let the words sink into his numbed head. Although the gravity on the doctor's face should have warned Gartree, the politician had fought off the thought and hoped for the best. Now he knew the truth.

  Big, fashionably dressed in Eastern style, slightly bald and wearing spectacles, Gartree carried himself with an air of pompous superiority. For once the air departed. His mouth normally tight and unsmiling—he invariably announced that, with the country in its present state, it was no time for levity; a profound statement which did him an enormous amount of good among the sober citizens of the Cyclone State—shrank to a mere slit; and a dull red color crept into his normally sallow cheeks.

  “You’re sure, doctor?” he gritted.

  “Well, I might not be one of those fancy big-city surgeons,” the doctor replied coldly; thinking that in all the time they had known each other, Gartree never once addressed him by name or even as ‘Doc’. “But I’ve seen enough gun-shot wounds to know a mite about them.”

  “And there’s nothing more can be done?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Nothing, not even if we sent Gavin back east?”

  “I try to keep up with the latest developments there. If there was anything anyplace that could help, I’d suggest it. That old feller with the wagon offered to do something. Maybe he could.”

  “Is he a qualified doctor?”

  “Didn’t say,” admitted the doctor.

  “Most likely he’s a faith-healer!” snorted Gartree. “One of those lousy ‘Pray-with-me-and-get-the-right-side-of-our-God-and-you’ll-be-cured’ bigots.”

  Eyeing Gartree, the doctor wondered what had happened to the stand the politician took in the State Legislature on the subject of religious tolerance; a campaign which earned him the votes of a large Jewish community. Being a man who believed in fair play at all times, not only when it offered political advantage, the doctor tried to set the record straight.

  “Feller never made any such claims to me. He could be a doctor of some kind.”

  “I don’t want a doctor of ‘some kind’ round my son!” Gartree spat out. “Especially when it was through his slut that my son got shot.”

  Although the doctor did not agree with Gartree’s version of how the young man came to be injured, he had to live in Bainesville and remembered what happened to other people who crossed the “liberal” politician. So he kept his opinions to himself. He still felt curious at his attitude in regard to the old man as a possibility in the recovery of young Gartree. While the doctor had no faith in the kind of medicine showman who travelled the West peddling “miraculous” cures to the unwary, nothing he saw about the strangers hinted that they belonged to that class of drifter. Giving a shrug, the doctor dismissed the thoughts. Certain as he had been earlier, nothing seen on closer examination led him to believe Gavin Gartree’s limb could be healed and made fit to use.

  “There’s no more I can do for the time being,” he said. “He’s sleeping and I’ve given him laudanum to help deaden the pain. If he recovers, send for me. If pot, I’ll be in this evening to see him.”

  “Can’t you stay here?” asked Gartree.

  “I’ve other patients to visit.”

  Just as Gartree opened his mouth to damn the interests of the other patients, he realized that such would be out of character with the image he showed the public. He contented himself with scowling at the doctor for a moment, then nodded.

  “All right, Doctor. Thank you, I know you’ve done your best.”

  Clearly Gartree wanted the visit to end and the doctor had no desire to prolong it. Collecting his hat and bag from the small table by the room’s main door, the doctor left. After a couple of minutes’ pacing, Gartree appeared to reach a decision. Two other doors led into the sitting-room and he strode to the one on the left. Jerking open the door, he looked through it.

  “Come in!” he ordered.

  Looking like a puppy expecting a whipping for wetting on the carpet, Marshal Gruber slouched into the room. A second man followed, but he walked with an air of easy familiarity and equality which Gartree always found irritating and never more so than at that moment. Without showing the slightest interest in the scowl Gartree directed at him, the second man went to the table in the center of the room and helped himself to a cigar from the box and then poured out a drink from the cut glass decanter.

  “Why the hell didn’t you arrest the man who assaulted my boy, marshal?” Gartree snarled, taking out his objections to the second man’s actions upon the safer target offered by Gruber.

  Although he showed some discomfort at the question, Gruber failed to make any answer for some seconds. Once clear of the Texan’s presence, the marshal found himself unable to put an adequate reason to his failing to quell such a small, insignificant person. In the past Gruber had met with some success in handling local cowhands of far more imposing appearance than the Texan, and could not decide just how he came to fail.

  “I thought the other two would jump me,” he said lamely, making the only excuse which came to a slow-working mind.

  A low guffaw of disbelief sounded from the second man and Gartree scowled viciously at the marshal. Word had already reached Gartree, brought by a man eager to curry the politician’s favor, and he possessed a pretty fair idea of what happened on Cresset Street. Conveniently overlooking his son’s part in starting the affair, Gartree knew only that Gavin received a serious wound at the hands of a Texan. If anything, the Texan’s place of origin increased Gartree’s hatred. Like most of his kind, Gartree had a bigoted hatred of anybody who failed to blindly follow his beliefs; and knew th
at very few sons of the Lone Star State accepted or subscribed to his ideals. Gartree wanted revenge on the man responsible and already started to plan means of taking it.

  “What do you aim to do about the man, Gruber?” he demanded.

  “You don’t figure he can do anything, now do you?” sneered the other man.

  If Gruber resented the words, he managed to conceal his feelings. Unlike his predecessor—who Gartree caused to be discharged from office after the man handed a cheap young thief a beating for robbing an old woman—Gruber was no fighting man. The tall, lean man in the town suit, but wearing a low-hanging Adams Navy revolver in a fighting rig, could claim to being just that. In fact he drew good pay for his ability in the fighting line; his name was Jason Latter and his trade, professional killer.

  Ignoring Latter’s comment, Gartree faced the marshal and held the lawman’s eyes with his own. “I want that Texan arrested on a charge of attempted murder, Gruber.”

  “How about it, John Law?” grinned Latter. “You reckon you can take him?”

  Gruber did not reply, but ran his tongue tip across his lips.

  “If you need a deputy to help,” Gartree continued, “I reckon that Mr. Latter will go along.”

  “I’ll go, but not with him alongside me,” Latter put in. “That Texan won’t come in walking, and John Law there’d be as much use as an udder on a bull if it comes to a shoot-out.”

  “Marshal Gruber will deputize you,” Gartree insisted, wanting to try to keep an air of legality about the affair.

  “He don’t need,” sniffed the killer. “And when I take a badge, it won’t be as his, or anybody else’s, deputy. If you want that Texan, say the word and I’ll go get him for you.”

  “Well, I suppose that you can use your Constitutional rights and make a citizen’s arrest,” admitted Gartree. “If you feel you can’t take a badge, but must do your duty, that is the only way.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Latter. “That’s the only way. I’ll go along and take in that Texan. How’d you want him taken?”