The Floating Outfit 13

by J. T. Edson

  ‘Marry,’ Mark explained.

  ‘Oh!’ grunted Hollenheimer and darted a glance at Betty.

  To his surprise, the professor saw a merry twinkle in the girl’s eyes and no sign of embarrassment on her face. However he did not feel they should continue discussing the seamy conduct of the Waw’ai band in the company of a young lady of good breeding. While Hollenheimer sought for a change of subject, Dusty supplied it.

  ‘Do you reckon that Sidewinder will keep the peace after the other chiefs make it, Lon?’

  ‘There’s no reason why he should,’ answered the Kid. ‘Where all you white folks go wrong is that you will think an Indian acts your way. You think that a chief speaks for all the people.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘Most times they do, but there’s nothing to force any man into doing something if he doesn’t want to. He’ll go along if he figures the chief’s right, if he doesn’t, he’s free to do as he wants.’

  ‘So I’ve found amongst most tribes,’ confirmed Hollenheimer.

  ‘If Sidewinder wants to come in, he’ll do it,’ the Kid went on. ‘If not—’

  ‘The U.S. Army will fetch him in,’ Ole Devil interrupted.

  ‘They’ll try to sir,’ corrected the Kid. ‘Only if they go after him and miss out, they’ve made his medicine stronger and that’ll sway folks who aren’t sure about making peace.’

  ‘It’s as bad as that?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Worse,’ the Kid replied. ‘Take it this way, Betty gal. The Comanche are top men among the Texas Indians. If they make peace, the Kiowa, Kaddo, Waco and Wichita chiefs’ll figure there’s no hope for them to go on fighting and they’ll come in. If the Comanche don’t make peace, then the other tribes won’t.’

  The conversation continued for a time on more general lines. At last Hollenheimer asked to be excused.

  ‘Reckon I’ll take a walk down to the corral,’ the Kid drawled.

  ‘I’ll come along with you,’ Betty remarked, rising from her chair. ‘I want to look in on that dun mare in the barn. She ought to foal tonight.’

  ‘I’m for bed,’ Dusty stated.

  ‘And me,’ drawled Mark, stretching to his full height. ‘give that cross-grained white goat a kiss for me, Lon.’

  ‘I hope that you meant Lon’s Thunder horse, Mark Counter,’ said Betty in a threatening manner.

  ‘He didn’t, Betty gal,’ grinned the Kid. ‘You hand him his needings.’

  ‘I would,’ the girl assured him. ‘But Dusty needs him to tote the heavy weights in the morning.’

  ‘He never misses going to see that hoss afore he beds down,’ Mark said as the library door closed. ‘I reckon Lon thinks it’s not safe to have Thunder down in the corral instead of standing outside the house door.’

  ‘He certainly knows Indians,’ Hollenheimer remarked.

  ‘There are times when Lon is an Indian,’ Dusty drawled. ‘Or so near that it doesn’t matter.’

  Chapter Two – Danger in the Darkness

  On leaving the library, Betty and the Kid found a small smiling man of obvious Oriental birth approaching them. Small he might be, but, like Dusty, he gave the impression of great strength. Dressed in a neat white tunic and trousers with sandals on his feet, the man might be young or old, one could not tell by looking at him. He was Tommy Okasi, Ole Devil’s personal servant, Popular Conception among the ranch hands called Tommy Okasi Chinese; a point he hotly denied, claiming to come from some place called Nippon.

  Brought from Japan by Commander Perry’s expedition, Tommy took service with Ole Devil Hardin when they met in New Orleans. The little man gave his master loyalty and yet was not servile in any way. Many a newcomer among the cowhands, used to the meek Chinese of the frontier towns, learned quickly and painfully that it did not pay to try the same kind of games with Ole Devil’s servant. Tommy Okasi possessed a very thorough knowledge of certain fighting arts little known outside the country of his birth and which gave him a considerable advantage over bigger stronger men.

  ‘Is Devil-san ready for going to bed?’Tommy asked.

  ‘He is,’ Betty stated definitely. ‘Tell him I said so.’

  After Ole Devil, Tommy gave his loyalty to Betty and Dusty. They alone of the Fog, Hardin and Blaze clan received tuition in the ancient Japanese fighting arts of ju-jitsu and karate from the little man and he accepted orders only from them in his master’s absence.

  ‘I tell him,’ Tommy said and entered the gun-decorated room.

  While Betty spoke with Tommy Okasi, the Kid walked across the hall and took his gunbelt from where it hung by the front door. There would be little chance of his needing either the Dragoon or bowie knife on the safe home range of the OD Connected, but he knew that if the need arose there would be no time to start thinking of running back to the house and collecting them.

  Expecting a pedigree mare to foal that night, Betty wore a tartan shirt, levis pants and moccasins instead of the dress she usually adopted when entertaining guests. She walked towards the door, seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the Kid strapping on his gunbelt. Most of her life had been spent on the Texas range and, knowing most of the top names of the fast-draw fraternity, she could understand and heartily approve of his actions.

  ‘I hope everything goes off smoothly, Lon,’ she remarked as they left the house and crossed the porch.

  ‘And me—I think.’

  ‘Aren’t you sure it will?’

  ‘Grandpappy Long Walker wants peace,’ the Kid said. ‘And he’ll keep his word once he makes it, as long as the white folks do the same and play square with him.’

  ‘The Comanche will be given a decent piece of land—’ Betty began.

  ‘Which was once a little bit of what they owned before the white men came,’ the Kid interrupted. ‘Comancheria used to cover from the Rio Grande, along the Pecos up into Colorado and Kansas, right over to beyond Fort Sill.’

  ‘And you took most of that from the weaker, less warlike tribes,’ Betty pointed out. ‘You’ve told me so yourself.’

  A faint grin came to the Kid’s face, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness of the night. ‘Never could stand a gal who remembered all the fool things I told her. You’re right, the Nemenuh took what they wanted and now the white man are doing it back to us. Only it’ll be hard for a Comanche to stay inside the boundary of a reservation.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Betty sighed.

  ‘When I was a button, the Pehnane roamed headwaters of the Central Texas rivers and the Cross Timbers country from the Pecos to Fort Phantom Hill. If the hunting was poor one place, we just upped-stakes and moved to another. If we pull off this treaty, the Pehnane, Kweharehnuh, Detsanawyehka, Yam parikuh, Tanima and Waw’ai bands will all be held on the one reservation. In a few years at most all the game’ll be gone, the hoss herds’ll eat the grass down to bare roots. There’ll be no war or raiding for the young men. Nothing of the old ways’ll be left.’

  ‘You liked the old ways?’ It was, more of a statement than a question.

  ‘They were fine—’

  ‘For the Comanche,’ Betty put in. ‘But not so good for the folks who lived near to them.’

  ‘Likely not,’ admitted the Kid. ‘We raided for hosses and loot—I was too young to do it—and they did the same back on us, but there was never any real bad fuss between the different Comanche bands.’

  ‘Didn’t you have feuds?’

  ‘Some. Mostly though they’d be between pure Comanches and prisoners adopted into the tribe. You’d fight with somebody, but never steal from them.’

  ‘Weren’t there any thieves among the Comanche?’

  ‘Not for long. Happen a man was caught stealing from another Nemenuh, they’d cut off his right hand. If he did it again, they’d chop off the left. You might see a feller with one hand, but never one who’d lost them both.’

  ‘That sounds pretty rough justice,’ Betty said.

  ‘It worked and sure discouraged thieves,’ drawled the Kid. ‘Wh
ich same they had to be discouraged, there’s no way you can lock up a tipi. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a white settlement. I’d be rising twelve at the time and I wondered how the hell they managed to move such big, wood houses.

  While talking, they walked side by side towards the big corrals which stood some distance from the house. Betty glanced at the tall young man and gave a little sigh. Often before she had heard the Kid speak of his early life among the Pehnane, but not in that wistful manner. Clearly he felt regret at the end of what must have been a marvelously free way of life.

  Betty could sympathize with the Kid in his present position. All too well he knew what reservation life would be like. Instead of hunting buffalo, deer or elk for their food, the Comanche would be dependent on supplies from the agent in charge of their reservation. All too often such men thought only of their own profit and sold most of the Indians’ rations. The limited range available would not support the Comanches’ huge horse herds and to the Nemenuh horses were a sign of wealth or social standing.

  Yet the kid realized the futility of resistance. During the Civil War many new and improved ways of killing large numbers of human beings had been perfected—the Gatling gun, and light, quick-firing breach-loading artillery to name but two—against such weapons the Comanche, great horse fighters though they might be, could not hope to survive for long. So the Kid must advise his grandfather and the other chiefs to accept the white man’s offer. Betty prayed that Dusty, Mark and the other influential Texans attending the meeting could force a decent, honorable settlement with the Eastern politicians responsible for making the treaty.

  Suddenly, appearing to rise out of the very ground, two figures loomed before the Kid and Betty, bringing them out of their respective thought-trains with a jolt. While the ranch’s crew were no different from other cowhands in their love of playing practical jokes, neither Betty nor the Kid even began to think the appearance heralded the start of a piece of playful, harmless fooling. Steel glinted in the dull starlight and no cowhand would be stupid enough to play games holding knives in their hands.

  For once in his life the Kid’s inborn alertness, made more keen by his childhood training, almost failed him in the matter of detecting a hostile presence. Like Betty, he had been thinking of his people’s future; no matter that now folks regarded him as a Texan of Texans, he still thought of himself as a Pehnane Comanche. So the sudden appearance of the two men came as a surprise which slammed him out of his reverie. At another time, when less engrossed, he would have located the pair far sooner. A mixed stink of stale human sweat and rancid antelope grease came clearly to his nostrils, giving warning and recalling something told to him by his maternal grandfather during a boy-hood lesson on Comanche ways.

  Even as the thought clicked home, the Kid’s brain raced in its assessing of the situation. Realizing that his knife would not serve at such a moment, before he could deal with one attacker the other was sure to get him, the Kid reached for his old Dragoon Colt. His right hand twisted palm-outwards and curled around the familiar walnut grips, raising the four pound, one ounce weight from the carefully contoured holster. No other method of carrying a Dragoon Colt offered such ease of removal as the low cavalry draw rig such as the Kid used. It allowed the thumb to curl around the hammer and barrel come into line with the minimum of movement. At such moment every movement saved paid its dividend by keeping the one making the draw alive.

  While drawing with his right hand, he used the left to shove Betty aside. In doing so, the Kid hoped to bring both attackers down on him. Too late he saw that one of the men swung in the girl’s direction. At that late moment the Kid could not hope to change his point of aim. If it came to a point, he did not need to aim with the man so close. Removing his thumb from the hammer, having already pressed, the trigger as soon as the Colt left its holster and lined away from him, the Kid shot his attacker. Driven by the full force of forty grains of prime du Pont black powder, a round lead ball packed a punch unequalled in any handgun of the day. It not only halted the charging attacker, but flung him backwards and from his feet as it smashed into his chest.

  Staggering from the Kid’s push, Betty saw her danger. An Eastern miss under such conditions might have done no more than scream and swoon, but Betty Hardin had been born and raised in frontier-Texas. While not underestimating the danger, she prepared to meet it.

  The second man bore down on Betty. Seeing the way she dressed, he took her for a man and had sufficient respect for a Texas ride-plenty’s fighting prowess to figure that even such a small one could be deadly dangerous. So he left dealing with the Kid to his companion and made for the girl. Holding his knife Indian fashion, with the blade extending below the hand as opposed to the more efficient method of gripping it so the thumb and forefinger touched the quillons of the guard—he launched a savage downwards chop aimed at the side of the girl’s neck.

  Catching her balance and coming to a halt, Betty threw all her weight on to her left leg. Pivoting around, she drew up her knee towards her chest and tilted her torso under the arc of the knife slash, Taken off balance, her assailant could not halt his advance nor save himself. By swinging her raised leg in an outwards circle. Betty sent her foot driving forwards to land with sickening force in the pit of the man’s stomach. It was not the wild kick of a frightened girl, but one of the devastatingly effective karate techniques learned from Tommy Okasi.

  Breath gushed from the man’s lips as the kick landed and he doubled over, letting the knife fall from his hands as he clutched his stomach. As he staggered by Betty, winded and all but helpless, she turned and delivered a stamping kick to the back of his left leg, buckling it under him and bringing him crashing to the ground.

  Whirling around, the Kid found that he would not need his gun to protect Betty. He sprang forward, landing so as to ram his knee into the small of the second man’s back. Knowing something of the Kid’s nature when roused, Betty yelled a warning to him.

  ‘Take him alive, Lon!’

  Up rose the Kid’s right arm and drove downwards to smash the bottom of the Dragoon’s butt against the man’s skull. Instantly the other’s struggles ended and he went limp.

  In the house Dusty and Mark heard the sound of the shot. They stood in the hall with Hollenheimer and Ole Devil, having been on the point of going upstairs to their rooms. Without wasting a second, the two young men turned and ran towards the main door. Dusty arrived first, sliding one of his bone handled 1860 Army Colts from its holster in passing and jerking open the door. Drawing the ivory handled Army colt from the right holster of his belt, Mark followed Dusty out on to the porch and sprang across it on his friend’s heels.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Hollenheimer asked.

  ‘We’ll go take a look.’ Ole Devil replied and told Tommy Okasi to take him to the front door.

  ‘Some dogs you’ve got, gal,’ grunted the Kid, coming to his feet as Dusty and Mark burst out of the house.

  ‘Uncle Hondo took them over to Cousin Buck’s north range after that cougar that’s been living on Double B beef,’ Betty replied, leaping to the defense of her highly-prized quartet of blue tick big-game hounds.

  The shot brought men from the bunkhouse as well as the main building. One of the cowhands let out a yell and pointed towards the ranch house, making both Betty and the Kid forget about the blue ticks which would have prevented the attackers approaching undetected had they been in their usual place on the porch.

  What attracted the cowhands’ attention was the sight of an all-but naked figure darting along the porch towards the main doors. Knife in hand, the man on the porch made for where Tommy Okasi pushed Ole Devil’s wheelchair out of the door.

  Not only Betty and the Kid heard the cowhand’s warning. Dusty skidded into a turning halt. Facing the house, he went instantly into a gun-fighter’s crouch and lined his gun from waist high. Twice Dusty fired, cocking the Colt on its recoil and sending the lead by instinctive alignment. Even as Tommy Okasi sprang before Ole D
evil, ready to protect his master, Dusty heard the distinctive ‘whomp!’ of lead striking human flesh. The attacker reeled, struck the wall and slid down it to the porch’s floor.

  ‘Any more of them?’ Mark called, holding his Colt ready for use.

  ‘I don’t reckon so,’ the Kid answered.

  ‘Get a lamp over here!’ Dusty called. ‘Look around some, Lon, Billy Jack.’

  ‘Yo!’ came the cavalry-inspired answer from the cowhand named.

  Returning to the porch, Dusty looked at the man he had shot. Naked but for a brief breechclout, body glistening with the same kind of grease which gave the Kid a warning, a tallish, lean Indian lay dying at Dusty’s feet. Dying or not, Dusty took no chances and kicked away the razor-sharp Green River knife dropped by the man.

  ‘What the hell?’ mused the small Texan; for it had been several years since Indians made trouble on the OD Connected range.

  In the light of a lamp brought from the bunkhouse, Mark stood looking down at the other two attackers. Both were Indians in the same state of undress as the one on the porch. Before the blond giant could form any impressions, he saw that Betty’s assailant showed signs of recovery and so told one of the cowhands to fetch a rope from the bunkhouse.

  ‘What tribe is he from, Dusty?’ Hollenheimer asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Dusty replied. ‘Reckon I’d best go and see what’s doing, sir.’

  ‘It’d be best,’ Ole Devil agreed.

  By the time Dusty joined Mark and his cousin, the Kid had returned from making a quick scout of the area.

  ‘Nothing,’ the dark youngster reported. ‘I don’t reckon there’re any more of them around.’ He dropped to his knee by the groaning Indian and turned the man face upwards. ‘A Waw’ai!’ he growled. ‘It’s one of their games, rubbing the body with antelope grease when they go out on a scalp-lifting raid.’

  ‘But the nearest Waw’ai country’s—’ Mark began.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ interrupted the Kid, ‘It’s a good three hundred miles from here. But this bunch are Waw’ais, or I’ve never seen one.’