The Floating Outfit 21

by J. T. Edson

  “No,” answered Morley. “We’re too far East to see enough of you to form any opinions. But they have to go on living here after you’ve left; and things seem to go all unlucky for people Baines Gartree doesn’t like.”

  “Do you reckon he’ll make fuss for you because you’ve helped me leave town?” asked the Texan. “I’d not get too far without the shoe being fixed.”

  “I reckon not,” stated Morley with quiet conviction. “Got a few good friends hereabouts, they represent a whole solid chunk of votes. Nope, I don’t think Baines Gartree’ll chance making fuss for me.”

  By that time, the two men had left Cresset Street and passed between the buildings of the poorer side of town. The blacksmith’s forge stood at the rear of the houses, clear of them. While approaching, the Texan studied the pay-out of Morley’s business premises. Under a large, open-fronted building, a fire glowed redly in the furnace. Two black workers made horseshoe nails with speed and precision on the anvil. Everything about the place showed a neat orderliness which impressed the Texan. A man could safely leave his horse—more than a means of transport, being a necessity of life to a Texan—in the care of the Bainesville blacksmith; or the appearance of his place lied badly.

  For his part, Morley studied the Texan and the big paint stallion with equal interest. The horse appeared .to be in first-class condition, its coat, rich deer-red splashed with white, glowed in health; head carried proudly high, with bright eyes and clean, flaring nostrils. There was a man’s mount, the kind of animal anybody would be proud to own. Not that just anybody could handle such a spirited beast. Being a shrewd judge of a horse’s nature, Morley knew instinctively that the paint needed Arm, capable handling.

  Morley’s eyes went to the small Texan, realizing the other must be a better than fair horseman to handle the paint with such confidence. Under the strict code of the range country Morley could not ask the obvious question. Instead he glanced back in the hope of seeing what brand the paint carried, but was on the wrong side to read what might be a clue to his companion’s identity.

  “If you’ll get him off-saddled and ready, we’ll make a start,” Morley suggested as they arrived at the front of the forge. “You’ll be wanting a new shoe for him, I reckon.”

  “Sure,” the Texan agreed. “But make it of ‘old stuff’ will you, please?”

  Once again Morley directed a glance at the Texan and a broad grin came to his lips. The blacksmith usually asked a new customer what kind of materials he required to be used in shoeing his horse, and based his judgment on the answer. Even without being asked, the Texan gave the correct answer. The mention of “old stuff” came out too naturally to be a chance-learned term slipped in to impress the blacksmith with nonexistent knowledge. Morley felt sure that the Texan would never try to impress anybody, and used the term knowing full well what it meant.

  Horseshoes were made from either new bar iron, or old shoes molded afresh and turned into shape. While new iron produced a satisfactory shoe in skilled hands, the hammering and heating necessary to refashion “old stuff” tempered it afresh and gave it an added toughness.

  Knowing that the Texan understood the extra lasting qualities given by shoes made of “old stuff,” Morley respected him all the more and prepared to give him the best possible workmanship.

  Laying aside his hammer, the taller of the Negro strikers walked towards his boss and nodded to where the Texan turned to start removing the paint’s saddle.

  “I sure hopes that Texas gennel-man’s a-going to be around while we works on his hoss, Mr. Clint.”

  “You scared of it, Bill?” grinned Morley.

  “No, sah. It’s only that I has to take my honey-chile to a dance tonight and I sure don’t look my best with hoss-shoes sticking in my face.”

  Seeing that his striker’s view on the paint’s nature coincided with his own, Morley laughed and assured the man that the horse’s owner intended to stick around during the shoeing. Morley did not regard his striker’s caution as cowardice, but merely an extension of his own belief that the paint would not take kindly to having strangers handle it.

  “Go get some heat under that fire, Bill,” Morley ordered. “Ez, pick out a mould. We’ve got a hoss to shoe.”

  “Something telled me you-all aimed to say that, boss,” the second striker replied, rolling his eyes as he studied the big paint. “Ah can’t start my vacation right now, can I?”

  “Danged if I don’t think you’re scared too,” chuckled Morley.

  “I ain’t no more scared than you is, Mr. Clint,” objected Ez.

  “Don’t know why I hire a feller that scared,” countered the blacksmith. “I want one of our moulds.”

  The words told the strikers all they needed to know. It was Morley’s custom to keep two stocks of moulds—used horseshoes prepared ready to be redrawn—those made by other smiths and left during shoeing, and his own stock. He always used his own material, tempered to the best of his ability in the first place, when shoeing the horse of a man he admired.

  Working with smooth efficiency, the Texan stripped off his paint’s saddle. He handled the forty-five pound range rig and its attachments without any observable difficulty, carrying it to the inverted V-shaped burro erected for customers’ use. No man who knew anything about saddlery ever set down his rig on its skirts, and only laid it on its side when not in use if forced by necessity. Whenever possible a cowhand, depending more than most people on his saddle—without which he could not work and earn a living—preferred to rest it on a burro when not in use.

  With his saddle cared for, the Texan took his horse first to the water trough and allowed it to drink, then led it to where the blacksmith stood waiting. Morley, donning his heavy leather apron, managed for the first time to see the paint’s brand. Although he did not live in Texas, Morley knew who used the letters “O” and “D”, so close together that they touched edges, to identify his stock. It was a well-known, famous even, brand; one with which a man associated certain often-heard names. In fact, one name particularly came to mind when thinking of the OD Connected ranch in Texas; but that small, insignificant man could not be the person Morley thought of no matter how efficient he might act.

  Putting his thoughts aside, Morley advanced toward the horse. While he moved confidently, he kept a wary eye on the horse and knew it watched him with the same care. Left to himself, Morley would have stayed clear of the horse, or taken measures to secure it. With the Texan standing at the horse’s head, he figured he need have no fear. There were a number of ways in which the horse could be controlled during shoeing. It might be placed in a tight stall and prevented from turning on the smith; or a twitch, a two foot six inch long, one and a half inch diameter wooden pole with a leather running loop at one end, could be attached to the upper lip as an inducement to obey. With many men, Morley would have demanded one or the other while working on such a big, potentially dangerous animal. It said much for his faith in the small man that he prepared to start the shoeing while the other merely stood at the horse’s head. Reins gripped in strong hands, the Texan still relied more on his voice to control his mount.

  “Easy now, damn you to hell,” said the Texan gently, his tone belying the curse. “Just you stand easy and let the nice Yankee gentleman fix up your foot, you prick-eared, pig-eyed, roman-nosed, ewe-necked, roach-backed, cow-hocked, off-colored slob of perversity. You kick him and I’ll shoot you for hound-dawg meat comes us getting back home. See if I don’t.”

  Evidently the horse had become accustomed to its owner’s gentle-voiced slanders and accepted his mastership without question. Moving slowly, but without any hint of concern, Morley took up his position and raised the left rear leg for examination. The first thing to strike him was something not often seen on horses of the period. Like the rest of the animal, the hoof showed signs of care and attention—but something more too.

  “I had him cold-shod a couple of days out of Newton,” the Texan remarked, never relaxing his hold of the reins. �
�Aimed to get it changed while I was there, but things kept coming up.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” grinned Morley; having seen Texas cowhands in the town after their drives paid off, he felt he could guess at the kind of things which prevented the other from attending to a minor detail. Then something else struck him. “This’s a mighty good fit for a cold shoe.”

  “The man who did it for me learned how in the War. He handled all the shoeing for my company and did it real good. Had to. A man could get caught too easy if his horse went lame under him through losing a shoe. And, way I heard it, you Yankees didn’t feed even officers too well.”

  Morley realized that the Texan paid him a compliment by speaking in such a manner. Peace at the Appomattox Court House did not bring an end to the hatreds of the Civil War and a Texan only joked that way with a Union supporter if he respected the other. The way the Texan spoke of ‘my company’ struck Morley as significant, for he used the term as if he commanded the company. Yet he could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old during the final years of the War. Of course, family influence put very young men in command of companies, especially in the Army of the Confederate States. Maybe the Texan had been one of that class; his easy drawl carried the undertones of an educated man.

  Thinking of Texas-born Confederate cavalry leaders brought a name to Morley’s mind, but he could hardly credit his small customer with being the man he thought of. And yet—

  “A ‘good-enough’ doesn’t often fit this well, no matter how good the man who puts it on,” he remarked, wondering how he might satisfy his curiosity.

  Every trail drive carried a keg of horseshoes of assorted sizes in its bed-wagon, to be used as replacements during the long journey north. While they served their purpose, such shoes, called ‘good-enoughs’, rarely formed a really good fit.

  “I had a set made up for the paint before we left home and toted them along. It’s better than keep going into the barrel.”

  “Reckon it is,” Morley agreed. “You must’ve had a mighty obliging trail boss.”

  “There’s some who wouldn’t say so,” smiled the Texan.

  Applying the jaws of the pincers, Morley levered and drew off the old shoe with a smooth, deft pull. With his way to the hoof clear, he took up his sixteen inch long rasp and began the delicate business of leveling the bearing surface of the foot. He stopped talking, and quit trying to decide his customer’s identity, concentrating on his work. Carefully he rasped away such of the hoof’s horn as had grown since the last shoeing, ensuring that he maintained the comparative level of the heel and toe. While working, however, in the final stages he could not help mentioning something noticed earlier and which still interested him.

  “You haven’t had the horn or frog pared,” he said; wondering if it be an oversight, or if, by some miracle, he had at last found somebody who subscribed to one of his own pet theories.

  “And I don’t want them pared,” the Texan replied with the air of one prepared to take a firm stand on a hotly-debated and highly controversial point.

  “Don’t, huh?”

  “No. Way I see it, paring makes the horn brittle and ruins the frog. It’s near as bad as dumping the toe.”

  The Texan spoke defensively, conscious of committing what, in the early 1870s, amounted to blacksmithing heresy.

  While “dumping,” cutting down the front wall of the foot instead of rasping away the surplus from the bearing surface to shorten the toe, was a serious fault in every horseman’s eyes, most people swore by paring down the horny sole of the hoof and the frog. To do this, the smith cut away the thick, hard protective outer horn in the belief that it was detrimental to the elasticity of the foot. The exposed layer of soft horn soon became dry and brittle and the removal of the frog’s excess growth—done in the erroneous belief that the frog was a delicate organ to be protected from injury by preventing its contact with the ground—stopped it performing its natural function of absorbing the concussion caused by the foot striking the ground when in motion.

  “Packing the hoof with cow-dropping and clay soon cools it down after it’s been pared,” Morley commented.

  “And makes it more brittle,” argued the Texan. “Even after cooling, there comes a time when the foot gets so sore you have to turn the horse out to range graze on soft going until it settles again.”

  “Mind if I shake your hand when I’ve finished here?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the first I’ve met who goes along with me on this paring business. Most folks think the work’s not properly done unless the sole’s pared down until it’ll spring under the thumb. Just don’t listen to reason—except here in Bainesville.”

  “Why here?”

  “I’m the only smith in maybe a hundred and fifty miles. Folks’d rather have it done my way, than travel that far every time a horse throws a shoe.”

  With that, the blacksmith pulled away a couple of flakes of horn which had worn loose and tripped out a few ragged bits of the frog, but did no more trimming in that area. Satisfied that he had leveled the foot correctly, Morley lowered the horse’s leg and went over to where his strikers waited to make the shoe.

  Standing at his horse’s head, the Texan watched the next stage of the work; fascinated as always by the degree of skill such men showed when producing a shoe.

  After checking that it had been heated enough, Morley removed the mould—an old horseshoe bent double and with half another wedged into the fold—which Bill had placed into the forge’s glowing flames. At the anvil, the strikers beat the mould into a single length, then, with Morley manipulating it in his shoeing tongs, turned it into the shape of a shoe the size of the one removed from the paint.

  A further heating came when the shoe was shaped and Morley carried the glowing iron forward. Taking up the paint’s hoof once more, he held the shoe in place just long enough to sear the bearing surface until it turned brown. The color enabled him to check the shoe’s fit and ensure that, being on the hind foot, it set back a little from the front of the toe so as to lessen the chance of injury should the horse over-reach—kick a foreleg with a hind—while galloping.

  With the fit of the shoe to his satisfaction—such being Morley’s skill that it needed only one minor adjustment in shape—he cooled it down and gave it a finishing polish with his file. On returning to the paint, he began to secure the shoe. Beginning at the toe, using sound, feel and experience, he drove in nail after nail.

  Each nail went home at an angle which brought its tip through the wall just high enough to give a secure hold. On emerging, the projecting point was gripped in the claw of the hammer and twisted off with a deft motion; a precaution taken to save the smith’s leg from being torn open should the horse kick him. By pressing the closed jaws of the pincers firmly upwards against the broken end of the nail, repeated blows on its head with the hammer caused a small portion of the shank to bend over. Known as a clench, the bent-over piece was flattened to the side of the wall as a further aid to holding on the shoe. After a quick rasping down of any small projections, Morley fitted the clips into place. Then he set down the hoof and looked at the Texan.

  “How’ll it do for you?” he asked.

  Although the Texan knew that the work would be satisfactory, he did what he knew Morley expected of him. Leaving the horse’s head, he walked back and bent to examine the shoe. Everything was just as he knew it would be; the clenches flat, broad, neither too high nor too low and no nail driven into the hole left by the previous shoeing.

  “I reckon it won’t come off as I’m walking out of the gate,” he remarked, with a grin that belied the comment.

  “Happen it does,” Morley answered. “I’ll put it on free and without you holding the horse.”

  Neither man had given any thought to the passage of time, nor to the events on Cresset Street which preceded the Texan’s visit to the forge. Even as Morley made what he knew to be a safe promise, he saw something which recalled his previous anxiety for
his customer’s welfare.

  Five – A Killer Stalks His Prey

  After leaving the house, Jason Latter did not rush off wildly to begin his assignment. Unlike his employer, Latter had not heard the citizen’s story of the incident and did not know where he might find his prey. However, he had seen enough of cowhands on a visit to town to be able to hazard a guess where his man went after the fracas on Cresset Street. Unless Latter missed his guess, he ought to find the Texan at the General Sheridan Saloon, the eating house or visiting the cathouse out back of town.

  While walking along Cresset Street, he saw no sign of a horse that might belong to a Texan standing before any of the business premises; but that did not worry him. Maybe the Texan had left town. Latter hoped not, being a man who hated extra effort in the pursuit of his work. Before he went to the trouble of visiting the livery barn, hiring a horse and riding out of Bainesville, Latter decided to exhaust the town’s possibilities first.

  Glancing at his pocket-watch, he made for the eating house first. Inside he looked around the almost empty room and knew he had drawn a blank. Heading next for the saloon, as being nearer the less trouble to reach than the cat-house, Latter shoved open the batwing doors and entered. Although he found a fair crowd present, grabbing a holiday and using it to discuss the incident witnessed earlier, the killer saw no sign of the man he sought.

  Crossing the room, Latter found a deserted portion of the bar. Leaning on the counter, he summoned service with a commanding jerk of his head. The bartender walked along to where Latter stood, collecting a bottle and glass in passing.

  “Where is he?” Latter demanded, after accepting the free drink due to him as a gentleman in the service of prominent citizen Baines Gartree.

  “Who?” countered the bartender.

  “Don’t fuss with me, happen you want to stay working in this town,” the killer warned. “You know who.”

  “You mean that Texan?”

  “Naw! Your old drinking-aunt.”