The Floating Outfit 25

by J. T. Edson

  ‘I hope not, boy,’ Dusty replied with feeling. ‘I surely hope not. Go find Frank Derringer and send him up here.’

  Neither of the saloon checks proved more than Dusty already knew in one case and guessed in the other, that both Freddie and Kate ran straight games and relied solely on the house’s percentage to give them their profit.

  A party of townsmen arrived to lend Kate’s workers a hand in setting up the saloon ready for opening in the evening. Although Kate did not learn the fact until much later, it had been Freddie who suggested that the men lent a hand at making their new fellow-citizen welcome.

  One word from Freddie would have blasted Buffalo Kate’s chances of success, but the word did not come out. Freddie knew she had a serious rival in business and aimed to try to lick the more experienced woman on their mutual ground without taking advantage of her civic position or social popularity.

  Although Freddie had brought in one of the best known and most popular acts which played the Southern States, she would have been willing to close for the Saturday night and let Buffalo Kate’s opening go unchallenged. However, on Freddie’s return from the meeting with the trail bosses—after making satisfactory arrangements for the Sunday entertainment—she met Buffalo Kate. Words were exchanged and as a result Freddie determined to open and teach Kate a lesson.

  ‘Let the battle commence!’ she said as she entered the Fair Lady.

  Although Kate drew in some trade, the bulk went to Freddie despite the novelty of the blonde’s opening night. The drawing power of Freddie’s star act pulled in Texans like iron filings to a magnet. At just over midnight, with the saloon closed, Buffalo Kate checked her takings and looked at her head bartender.

  ‘That gal’s going to make things tough,’ she said in an admiring tone. ‘Yes sir, Wally, we’ve a fight on our hands here. If she wants war, by cracky, she’s going to get it.’

  The bartender nodded his agreement. One thing he figured out, that limey gal might be good, but he sure couldn’t see her licking his boss.

  To off-set boredom and the accompanying chance for the devil to find work that idle hands might do, Dusty and Freddie, with the agreement and support of the local preacher, had arranged a series of contests for the various cowhands and outfits in and around town. Several unbroken horses were obtained to try out riding skill; a course complete with a number of jumps laid out for horse races; a range rigged to allow the running of shooting matches. For a day the cowhands would be entertaining the local citizens and everybody looked forward to this pleasant change. The cowhands felt pleased with a chance to show off their skills and the townsfolk anticipated seeing some of the things they read of cowhands doing in the course of their range work.

  With the exception of Mark, who volunteered to run the office, Dusty had all his deputies on hand to keep an eye on the way things went. They were told to mingle with the crowd, watch out for illicit liquor selling and any attempts at gambling. In one way the idea was excellent; yet it also gave an indirect cause to the saloon feud being resumed when for a time it seemed that the affair might fade and be forgotten.

  Having heard much of Freddie’s work in establishing and handling the town, Buffalo Kate was a good enough sport to admit the English girl had something and so greeted her affably enough when they met. For her part Freddie was willing to be friends and introduced Kate to the leading civic dignitaries.

  The dove of peace let out a sigh of content and glided down to land, then—

  ‘Hello there, handsome!’

  Turning, Waco looked at the speaker by his side. She was a small, shapely and very pretty red-headed girl. From her clothes Waco figured her to be a saloon worker but had an uneasy feeling that he could not remember seeing her at either the Fair Lady or the Wooden Spoon. Which same meant she must come from the Buffalo.

  ‘Say, you’re cute,’ the girl went on. ‘You must be the handsome young one the girls told me about. My name’s Ginger.’

  ‘And mine’s Babsy,’ hissed a voice from Waco’s other side.

  ‘So what?’ Ginger asked, eyeing Babsy up and down in contempt.

  ‘So Waco’s my boyfriend, that’s what!’

  Although he had never sat on a keg of gunpowder with a burning fuse running to it, Waco discovered how one would feel while doing so. The two pretty little girls, alike in height and shape, glared at each other like a pair of cats on a back-alley fence.

  You foreigners haven’t any right to come over here grabbing our men!’Ginger spat out.

  ‘Foreigner!’ squealed Babsy, for to her insular British mind no matter where in the world she might be it was always the other folk who were the foreigners. ‘I’ll do some hair-grabbing, not man-grabbing!’

  ‘So grab away!’ Ginger challenged, clenching her fists.

  For once in his life Waco did not know what to do for the best. Neither girl gave him a second glance and a crowd gathered in a circle around them, grinning in eager anticipation. A hair-yanking brawl between a couple of pretty and real lively-looking little girls would add spice and make memorable the day’s entertainment; and those two looked like they would put up a humdinger of a battle.

  Only it did not come to a fight.

  A hand caught Babsy’s hand even as the little girl prepared to light down on Ginger with flying fists.

  ‘That’s enough, Babsy!’ Freddie snapped in a carrying voice. ‘I realize you were provoked, but one has to expect that sort of thing from their kind.’

  ‘Easy, Ginger!’ ordered Kate, glowering at Freddie and also raising her voice. ‘You don’t want to let that sort bother you.’

  The white dove of peace flapped wearily back into the sky; it figured it would not be needed around Mulrooney for a spell.

  Girls from both saloons mingled in the watching crowd and the situation had explosive overtones. One wrong move would see an unholy, scrapping tangle that could involve everybody around. Dusty saw that as he came through the crowd, shoving a path through despite of the fact that many taller men stood in his way.

  ‘Come on, Waco,’ Babsy said.

  ‘Let’s go see the horse races, handsome,’ Ginger put in.

  Dusty took the matter out of Waco’s hands.

  ‘Go relieve Mark at the jail, boy,’ he ordered. ‘Miss Freddie, would you and Babsy go start the horse races? And I’d like you and Ginger to help the judges on the finishing line and hand out the prizes to the winners, Miss Kate.’

  Once again the two women were handed a face-saver that prevented them taking the matter beyond the point of no return. Freddie and Kate led off their fuming employees and the crowd broke up.

  ‘Dang females!’ Waco snorted. ‘I’ll never understand women.’

  ‘Boy,’ Dusty replied. ‘They do say that’s a common complaint among men.’

  For the rest of the afternoon, while the cowhand sporting events went on, Dusty and his deputies kept on the move. Freddie and Kate’s girls glared at each other whenever they met and only by keeping constantly on the alert did Dusty’s deputies maintain peace. One thing worried Dusty at first; his female deputy might be expected to show partisanship to her friends of the Fair Lady. In this he did not need to worry for Freddie’s orders to Big Sarah had been definite and the big woman would not think of disobeying. So Sarah let her fellow-workers know that in the matter of inter-saloon rivalry she aimed to stay neutral and do her duty as an officer of the law. When the girls took a complaint to Freddie, she told them straight that Sarah’s actions met with her complete approval and there the matter ended.

  A tired and not entirely unhappy group of peace officers gathered in the jail that evening.

  ‘Man!’ said the Kid in a heart-felt manner. ‘I sure never want another day like that again.’

  ‘Or me,’ Big Sarah groaned, removing her shoes. ‘I thought we’d have some real bad trouble once or twice.’

  ‘It was rough on you having to go against your pards like that,’ Dusty remarked. ‘Thanks, Sarah.’

  ‘Don’
t thank me,’ she grinned. ‘It’s not over yet, cap’n. There’s going to be a tangle between Miss Freddie and that Buffalo Kate and when it comes, it’ll make the battle at Bearcat Annie’s in Quiet Town look like a Sunday-school picnic.’

  Recalling the famous battle in Bearcat Annie’s saloon; when three women deputies slugged it out with the saloonkeeper and her girls, allowing the male members of the law to slip into the saloon unnoticed; Dusty nodded his agreement. He, too, could see trouble ahead and figured that when it finally blew—man, it would blow like a Texas twister.

  Chapter Ten

  A Visitor From Brownton

  Dusty entered the office after what had become a regular morning visit to Freddie Woods’s rooms at the Fair Lady. It was Monday morning and as yet the two rival saloons had not opened for business. Just as Dusty came in through the rear door, Wally, Buffalo Kate’s head bartender, burst in at the front.

  ‘We got trouble, Cap’n Fog!’ he said. ‘Frenchie Lefarge just come into town with half-a-dozen gun hands at his back. He’s got a hate on Kate for selling out to him at Brownton.’

  Without wasting any time Dusty gave his orders, or order for he said only one word.

  ‘Shotguns!’

  Springing to the rack, Waco handed a double-barreled, ten-gauge shotgun to Frank Derringer, passed a second to Dusty and carried one for himself and another for the Kid. By that time the Kid had broken out a box of shells from the desk drawer and each man took a handful. Loading their guns as they went, the four lawmen headed towards where a buckboard and several horses stood before the Buffalo Saloon.

  In the saloon Buffalo Kate looked at the tall, slim, swarthily handsome Frenchie Lefarge, then glanced at the six gun-hung hard-cases who stood behind him. Even had any of her male staff been present, she doubted if they could handle those professional gun-hands.

  ‘You sold me your place in Brownton, Kate,’ Lefarge said.

  ‘And you’d been asking me to, even making veiled threats,’ she replied. ‘I might have got scared.’

  ‘Or you might have heard something,’ Lefarge purred. To keep us friendly, I will become your partner.’

  ‘You?’ Kate snorted. ‘You’d not last five minutes in this town, Lefarge. This’s a clean town and they don’t stand for crooked gamblers.’

  ‘You are being insulting, my Kate. Don’t make me angry. And as to this town, I have yet to see a lawman who would not look the other way for a price.’

  ‘Just turn around and start looking at one, hombre,’ said a soft-drawled Texas voice from the door.

  Lefarge had six men at his back. Half-a-dozen men who reckoned to be handy with their guns, yet not one of them made a move. Even as Dusty Fog stepped through the front door, three more men made their appearance at the left side, right hand and rear entrances to the bar-room. Every one of the quartet held a shotgun and the hard-cases recalled the old range saying, ‘There’s always a burying when buckshot’s used.’ None of the men were naive enough to believe the guns held anything other than a load of nine .32 caliber buckshot balls per barrel; and the hard-cases would be caught in a veritable hail of those deadly balls if any of them made a wrong move.

  ‘And who asked you to interfere?’ Lefarge growled, seeing his men did not intend to make any moves.

  ‘I heard you say every lawman has his bribe price, hombre,’ Dusty replied. ‘I’m telling you that you’re a liar.’

  ‘That’s a hard word!’

  ‘Which’s why I used it.’

  ‘I see. I see,’ Lefarge purred. ‘Now I am supposed to grab at a gun and be shot down, is that the idea?’

  ‘Not entirely, but it’ll do until I get a better one,’ Dusty replied.

  ‘You’re quite a brave little man behind those guns,’ Lefarge said in a loud voice which carried to the small crowd of people who gathered outside the saloon. ‘And so you should be, for you are a master with a gun. But any fool can pull a trigger. It takes a man to handle a dueling sword.’

  ‘Don’t do it, cap’n!’ Buffalo Kate warned.

  ‘And you are a man?’ asked Dusty, ignoring the warning and making for the trap opened by Lefarge.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  A mocking smile played on Lefarge’s lips. The old technique looked to be working as well as always. One could rely on these stupid cowhand gunfighters to leap at the bait without thinking of the consequences.

  ‘There would be a good way of proving it,’ he purred.

  ‘Sure would—if we had any of those dueling swords here,’ Dusty agreed.

  With the sudden lash, like the jaws of a steel bear trap clamping on their unsuspecting victim, Lefarge brought off his coup.

  ‘I have a pair in my buckboard. Now, unless you are afraid to back your words, I will send one of my men to collect them.’

  ‘Send him ahead, but no tricks,’ Dusty replied.

  ‘And if I kill you, what action will your friends take?’

  ‘None at all. You hear that, Lon, Waco, Frank?’

  ‘We heard,’ growled the Kid and the other two gave their agreement.

  All of which came as a shock to Lefarge. He never expected Dusty to accept the challenge once hearing that swords were readily available. In that case the small Texan would be finished in town, laughed out as a fool who boasted and feared to back his words. However, the end result would be the same if Dusty fought. He was going to die and the Brownton crowd had a way open for them to move in and take Mulrooney over as a going concern.

  One of the men left the saloon and returned with a long wooden box which he opened to expose a pair of fine-looking dueling swords. Lefarge offered Dusty first choice of weapons and the small Texan reached into the box to take out one of the swords. From the first moment Dusty realized that the sword felt all wrong. It did not balance correctly in his hand, the blade seeming to be too long and the hilt incorrectly shaped. The sword would be hell to anybody who had not used it regularly. That was an old professional duelist’s trick; having the swords built in such manner gave their regular handler a big edge over his opponent.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ asked Lefarge as Dusty laid down the sword again.

  ‘Sure. I don’t like that one.’

  ‘Edging out, little man?’ Lefarge sneered, removing his fancy vest and laying it on the jacket he had already taken off and placed on a table.

  ‘Nope. Lon, go ask Freddie to loan me one of her swords—if this hombre can wait a few minutes.’

  ‘As long as I get my fight I can wait,’ the Frenchman replied.

  Ten minutes later Freddie arrived with the Kid and carrying one of the swords from her rooms. She asked no questions, the scene told her all she wished to know, but handed the sword hilt first to Dusty and watched him remove the safety button from its tip.

  A puzzled frown crept over Lefarge’s face as he watched the casually easy manner Dusty handled the sword. It appeared that the Texan had some knowledge of fencing. Of course, that would not save him. What chance did a cowhand stand against a man who learned fencing under a New Orleans master?

  He learned the answer to that question soon enough. One glance told him that the small Texan knew more than a little about fencing and a couple of passes after the fight started warned Lefarge that he was matched against a man almost his equal with a sword.

  If it came to a point, Dusty had a slight advantage over Lefarge. Back in the Rio Hondo he could always practice with his cousins, all of whom had received fencing training. More than that; since his arrival in Mulrooney, Dusty had worked out with the swords each morning against Freddie, and the girl could handle a blade very well. Against this Lefarge had little chance of practicing, for there were few people he knew who could fence. So if anything Dusty was better trained, and in far better physical shape, than the duelist.

  Steel hissed and sang in the Buffalo Saloon. At first Dusty retreated before Lefarge’s attack and allowed the man to drive him across the room. Dusty fought a defensive action,
waiting until he got the measure of his man. Then, with his back almost touching the wall, Dusty changed his tactics. From defense he went into attack and Lefarge recoiled as if drawn back on a spring. Fear flickered on the man’s face as he fought desperately back. A parry began and too late Lefarge saw he had been tricked into trying to stop a feint. Before he could make up his mind what to do, he felt a shocking sensation in his left side and he stiffened on his toes, his sword clattering from his hand.

  Dusty withdrew his sword with a quick smooth jerk and the man collapsed at his feet. A momentary silence fell over the crowd who had entered the saloon to see the fight. Then eager chatter rose and every eye went to the small Texan who once more had proved himself to be the equal and better of a much larger man.

  ‘Best get a doctor for him,’ Dusty said, holding the bloody sword point down and turning towards the Kid.

  ‘The undertaker’d be more use,’ the Kid replied. ‘You got him through the heart, or I’m no knife-fighter.’

  And the Kid’s guess proved to be correct. When the town’s doctor arrived he found a corpse waiting for him.

  ‘You bunch come into town with him,’ Dusty said to the gunmen.

  ‘Sure,’ one of them replied.

  ‘Then take him back to Brownton for burying.’

  Watching the gunmen leave town with the still shape in the buckboard, Dusty wiped the blade of Freddie’s sword.

  ‘What happened, Dusty?’ Freddie asked, coming to the small Texan’s side.

  ‘His name was Lefarge, he was a tinhorn who used that sword on anybody who tried to call him down. Came to town to try and force Miss Kate into taking him on as a partner.’

  ‘And he was no friend of mine,’ Kate put in.

  ‘I never thought he was,’ Freddie replied.

  Once more the olive branch was waved. Freddie and Kate became almost friendly. In fact, the friendship lasted until nightfall.

  Mayor Grief was a worried man as he stood outside his office with Marshal Banks Fagan at his side. For the past few days Fagan had been growing restless, for the expected profits of his office had not made their appearance. However, Frenchie Lefarge ought to be able to get rid of Dusty Fog once and f—