by J. T. Edson
After throwing an angry glance at Babsy, Ginger released her hold of the Buffalo engine’s towing handle and grabbed their speaking trumpet. She began to screech encouragement to the Buffalo girls, telling them to show that fat blonde foreigner and those worn out old hags what a good saloon’s girls could manage.
Ignoring the sporadic bursts of shooting which wafted to their ears, the girls dragged their engines from the fire-house down on Main Street and brought them to a halt facing the shattered windows of the Buffalo Saloon. Inside the battle still raged in all its fury and from the sound of breaking furniture Buffalo Kate would have little left for her customers to sit upon when she next opened.
Quickly the girls followed the pattern they had often seen used by the town’s volunteer firemen. In the slack days, while waiting for trade to come to Mulrooney, watching the fire crews in training had formed a welcome break from the dull, customerless hours in the Fair Lady and Freddie’s girls knew the drill very well. However, the engines had been designed for simplicity in operation so that poorly trained and unhandy crews would be able to handle them in an emergency, so the Buffalo girls had little difficulty in preparing their outfit for operation. A buxom, strong girl uncoiled each hose and headed towards the windows with the self-appointed engine commanders at their sides and screeching demands that the other members of the crew got water coming. Girls grabbed the pump handles on either side of the engines and others caught up the buckets, forming a chain to the filled water barrels on the edge of the sidewalk, ready to refill the engines’ tanks.
‘Go to it, girls!’ Sarah yelled. ‘Pump!’
A big, burly man reeled through the batwing doors of the saloon, his shirt tom off and his mouth bleeding. From all appearances he looked too wild to care who he attacked as long as he attacked somebody, so Sarah took no chances. Folding her right hand, she swung it to crash against the man’s thrust-out jaw and sent him backwards into the saloon where he fell on to his back and lost all further interest in the proceedings.
Down went the pump handle at one side and up rose the other side, to be thrust downwards again by eager arms. The two girls holding the hoses felt a stirring, swelling pulsation as water was forced through the canvas and held at the closed nozzles just waiting to burst out when the taps opened.
‘Now!’ Sarah roared.
Turning on the nozzle taps, the two girls released their jets of water. The hose could throw a jet one hundred and fifty feet into the air when given the full power of the pumps behind them. Even with the slightly less than full force the girls managed, the water flew out at a tolerable rate and when it landed packed a considerable amount of power. The twin jets sprang forward through the windows and swept among the fighting crowd, felling men like ninepins, knocking breath and aggressive desires out of fighting bodies.
The effort at stopping the brawl would not be made without sacrifices. Sweat poured down faces, washing away make-up; hair came down and straggled untidily; suspender straps popped and runs developed in stockings or, freed of their restraint, the stockings slid down; shoes were lost, dresses splashed and soaked in water; yet the girls ignored all those minor inconveniences in their efforts to end the fight.
Babsy and Ginger were yelling themselves hoarse as they urged their girls to better efforts and pointed out promising targets to the hose-handlers. Of course, it was only coincidence when Babsy screeched:
‘There, that ginger-haired bloke!’
Obligingly the Fair Lady’s hose-handier swung her nozzle in the required direction and swept a red-headed buffalo hunter from his feet just as he was about to fell a cowhand from behind and using a leg-less chair.
‘Get that fat blond jasper!’ Ginger yelled after scanning the crowd to pick a likely target and again the color of the hair was mere coincidence.
Flicking an annoyed glance at Ginger, Babsy directed the jet to where Banker Courtland and Mr. Sherill were settling an ancient difference of opinion in a most satisfactory and enjoyable manner. Sherill held the post as Fire Chief and it struck Babsy as being apt that he should learn how effective his fire engines’ hoses could be.
Roaring with rage, a man tried to climb out of the window but Babsy’s hose-handler washed him back inside like a log caught in a flashflood. Then Babsy saw a cowhand coming through the batwing doors and directed the hose at him. In doing so, completely by accident? she managed to have Ginger drenched in the side-spray from the jet. Even if that was an accident, the same could not be said for Ginger’s action in grabbing a bucket full of water from one of her girls and heaving its contents over a second man who tried to get out of the door, but included Babsy very generously in its wash.
Dropping her speaking trumpet, Babsy swung towards Ginger and the little red-head let the bucket fall. Before they reached each other, a hand caught each girl by the scruff of her neck.
‘Start anything and I’ll crack your heads together!’ Big Sarah warned.
Being sensible girls, even if a mite hot-tempered, and having a marked aversion to getting their heads cracked together, Babsy and Ginger decided to postpone hostilities until a later and more convenient moment Confining themselves to nothing more than poking their tongues out at each other, the two girls went back to controlling their hose-handler’s fire and picking off likely targets in the crowd.
By the time the water barrels were empty and the pumps sucking the last drops out of the engine’s tanks, all resistance ended in the saloon. Limp, soaking and winded men no longer felt any desire to fight, but Sarah found her troubles had not ended.
The exhausted girls leaned on the hitching rails or sagged against pump handles. All but Babsy and Ginger. Although soaked to the skin and hoarse from giving encouragement to their friends, neither had been through so great an exertion as the pump crews or bucket lines.
‘I bet Freddie Woods started that so she wouldn’t get licked!’ Ginger said.
‘Miss Freddie doesn’t need help to lick a fat bladder like Buffalo Kate!’ Babsy croaked back. ‘Buffalo’s a good name for her, she looks like one.’
‘Don’t you talk about Kate like that!’
‘Or what’ll you do?’
Instantly both groups of girls tensed, forgetting their tiredness and remembering their feud. Sarah knew she must act fast or wind up with another riot on her hands, one she might not stop so easily. However, Sarah was a woman and understood the working of a female mind.
‘You girls sure look a sight,’ she said. ‘Won’t the townswomen laugh when they arrive?’
Every girl stopped in her tracks, staring at the bedraggled condition of the opposing group, then the girls around her. Not one of them wished to have anybody, much less the good ladies of the town, see them in that state. Forgetting their disagreements, deserting the pumps and leaving shoes behind them, the Fair Lady girls dashed back to the shelter of their saloon and the Buffalo contingent fled to the rear of the building to use the back door and get out of sight.
With a grin, Sarah leaned on the hitching rail and watched the soaking men limp out of the saloon. Most of them carried some sign of being involved in the fight and she figured Dusty would be able to round them up in the morning. Then she wondered where Dusty and the others might be for she could not remember hearing any shooting for several minutes.
Chapter Thirteen
The Wisdom of Buying a Sharps
Dusty and his deputies raced along the street after leaving Big Sarah. In passing the bank they wasted no time stopping to peer through the windows. The safe had been built, literally, into the rear office where Courtland sat in his glory during business hours, and could not be seen from Main Street. On taking over his duties as marshal, Dusty had commented on the inadvisability of such an arrangement However, Courtland claimed his safe could stand up to the attentions of any thief and that it would take a fair charge of explosive to force its doors—and a fair charge of explosive made enough noise to attract attention, especially at night when the only chance of forcing the door would be p
resented. Anyway, removing the safe and placing it in the front office could only be done by almost destroying and then rebuilding the bank, so Courtland felt reluctant to make the effort and Dusty, thinking on the same lines as the banker where the noise of safe-blowing was concerned, did not press the demand. Now it seemed that somebody had taken advantage of the weakness in the bank’s defenses and picked a real good night to make the effort. If the two girls had not collapsed at that time, most likely the crowd would have been making so much noise that the muffled boom of the explosion could not be heard by anybody in the saloon.
Fanning out and drawing their guns, Dusty’s party split into two groups, Mark, Derringer and Waco going down the right of the bank while Dusty and the Kid went along the left, making for the rear of the building.
‘It’s the law!’ a voice yelled and a tall, dark shape loomed up in the darkness at the rear of the building.
Flame spurted from the dark shape and Frank Derringer gave a pain-filled curse as lead sliced along his neck, giving him a nasty graze and the best piece of good luck a professional gambling man could have asked for. An inch to the left and Derringer would have been lying on the ground, blood pumping from a hole in the tender part of his favorite throat.
Mark and Waco fired on the run, their two guns roaring out at almost the same instant. Caught by the two .44 caliber bullets, the shape went backwards, its gun sending a shot into the ground as it fell from a lifeless hand. Three of them in the alley made too large a target for either Mark or Waco to take a chance on anything other than shooting to kill.
‘You all right, Frank?’ Waco asked. ‘I’m not worried, only there’s some things you haven’t taught me yet.’
‘Thanks for the concern, boy,’ Derringer answered, touching his neck with a delicate finger tip. ‘It’s only a nick.’
Feet thudded and voices spat out curses behind the building. Always eager to get into action, and not yet having learned wisdom and caution, Waco sprang forward. Before he reached the comer, a big hand clamped on his shoulder and jerked him back. Mark accomplished the feat without releasing his Colt, for his left arm was still in the sling although fast recovering from its wound.
‘Try thinking, boy,’ he growled in the youngster’s ear. ‘They know we’re at this end and are watching for us.’
Subsequent events proved that Mark called the situation one hundred percent correctly. Three men who had burst out of the bank, all holding short-barreled guns of cheap and fairly reliable manufacture and known as Suicide Specials, gave their full attention to the left side of the building and ignored the right. Which showed a lamentable lack of foresight on their part, but they were city men and regarded all westerners as dumb, half-witted yokel hicks.
‘Law here!’ Dusty snapped as he and the Kid came into sight at the other end of the building. ‘Drop the guns.’
Having heard the shooting at the other end, Dusty and the Kid figured that the men from the building might be concentrating in that direction. Their figuring proved correct, but the three men whirled around fast at Dusty’s challenge and when they turned, they—in the western phrase—turned shooting. In that they made a damned bad mistake for they were city men more used to knuckle-duster or knife than to handling firearms; and city father never sired a criminal son who could match a Texas cowhand in the skilled and fast handling of a gun.
Dusty’s Colts bellowed and once again his ambidextrous skill showed to its best advantage as the right hand revolver tumbled one of the trio over backwards while the left side gun planted lead into the second man’s shoulder. With lead singing around his ears from fast-triggered but poorly-aimed shots fired by the trio, the Kid fired hip-high and by instinctive alignment. Instinctive or taken from a bench rest the Kid reckoned to be able to call his shots with better than fair accuracy at such a moment. He showed his skill by sending a flat-nosed .44 Henry bullet into the remaining member of the trio’s chest and spinning the man over like he had been struck by a charging buffalo.
Silence dropped after the flurry of shots, only the noise of the saloon brawl in the background breaking it. Mark called for permission to come out of the alley, taking an elementary precaution. Way he saw it, the less chances a lawman took at such a moment, the better his expectancy of living long enough to retire and spend his old age ‘hard-wintering’ v around the general store’s stove.
‘D—don’t shoot!’ croaked one of the wounded men. ‘I’m d—’
‘Shut it!’ growled the Kid, his voice Comanche-mean.
Even more than Derringer, the three Texans noticed how the Kid stood. He looked like a blue-tick hound hitting hot cougar scent, or trying to catch some faint sound of a long-travelling pack baying.
‘What’s up, Lon?’ asked Waco.
‘There’s another one out that ways,’ the Kid replied, pointing unerringly off into the darkness.
‘Go get him!’ Dusty ordered.
‘Su—Damn it, he’s took to a hoss.’
Luck favored the Texas lawmen that night; or maybe it was old Ka-dih, the Great Spirit of the Comanche favoring his quarter-blood follower. Whatever the reason, the Kid had left his big white stallion in the livery barn’s open corral that night instead of using a stall indoors.
Twice the Kid’s piercing whistle rang through the night. In the corral, the seventeen hand horse threw back its head, snorted and started running for the fence. It took off and sailed over that six foot high man-made barrier like a frog hopping over a hickory twig, lighting down and racing through the night to answer its master’s summons.
Bounding afork the big white, the Kid headed it across the range, making after the escaping member of the gang. Dusty watched his Indian-dark young friend go, then gave his orders.
‘Mark, Frank, stay here. Waco, let’s go get the horses.’
It was an ideal arrangement. With his arm in a sling, Mark could not handle a hard-riding chase through the night and Derringer did not own a personal mount. So they stayed guarding the prisoner while Dusty and the youngster headed for the livery barn.
‘It sounds like they’re still having fun at the Buffalo, Mark,’ Derringer said as he collected the gang’s weapons.
‘Sounds that way,’ Mark agreed. ‘Watch ’em while I go in and light a lamp. We’ll corral ’em in the office while you go fetch the doctor.’
On lighting the lamp, Mark discovered that Courtland’s faith in the safe had not been misplaced, for the explosion did not appear to have opened the door. He wasted no time in idle thoughts, but ordered the wounded men who could to come inside while Derringer brought the other in. Then Derringer left to collect the doctor and hoped that his trip would not be wasted due to the doctor being at the Buffalo Saloon. Derringer kept to the rear of Main Street and so did not see the effective way Big Sarah quelled the riot. Finding the doctor at home, Derringer asked for help and the two men returned to the bank.
The Kid allowed his big white stallion to follow the sound of the departing rider. For two miles the stallion covered ground at a fast lope, closing the distance with the other man’s mount for there were few horses in the West to equal the Kid’s in a chase.
Out on the range, the moon’s light gave better visibility than in town and the Kid saw the other rider ahead of him, going down a slope towards the open floor of a valley bottom. The rider was a tall man wearing range clothes and sitting his horse with more skill than a town-bred criminal would be likely to learn.
For a moment the Kid figured maybe his senses, or the white’s ability to trail by sound, had gone back on him. That feller down there did not belong to a gang of city owlhoots. Of course he might be a chance traveler who heard the shooting back by town and figured to stay clear of flying lead.
Then the man answered the Kid’s doubts in an unmistakable manner. Just as he reached the foot of the slope, the man chanced to look back and saw the tall, black-dressed shape following him. Instantly the man bent forward, jerked out his rifle, twisted in the saddle as he raised it, and fired two
shots upwards. Turning forward again, the man urged his horse at a better speed across the quarter of a mile wide bottom of the valley. Out in the center of the valley rose a large rocky outcrop and the man had passed it when he turned and saw the Kid ignoring his warning. Once more the rifle began to spit flame.
Three shots whined by the Kid’s head and when the fourth sent his Stetson flying, he decided the time had come to show his disapproval. At a heel-touch the white stallion made better speed and the ‘yellow boy’ flowed to the Kid’s shoulder. Twice the Kid’s rifle cracked, but firing from the back of a running horse—especially when riding without a saddle or even blanket—had never been conducive to extreme accuracy. Instead of tumbling the man from his saddle, one bullet missed and the other ripped into his horse’s rump and brought the animal down.
‘Now I’ve got him!’ thought the Kid.
Only it seemed that old Ka-Dih reckoned he had done enough for Long Walker’s grandson that night. The rider had passed the outcrop where he might have taken cover and was within thirty yards of the valley’s other slope when his horse went down. To make things worse, some damned fool had built a dug-out home on the slope ahead of the man: a dugout being a temporary dwelling built by digging a rectangular pit into a convenient slope, erecting a wooden and sod framework and packing the excavated dirt around and on the roof of the frame, putting a door in the front wall but managing without the luxury of windows.
Before the Kid could zero in his rifle on him, the running man plunged through the open door and out of sight. Instantly the Kid forgot about shooting and headed his stallion for the cover of the outcrop. He was barely in time, for a bullet stirred his hair in passing as he reined his horse behind the outcrop. Dropping from the white’s back, the Kid moved to where he could see and shoot at the door of the dug-out, throwing a couple of shots across the two hundred odd yards. He had little hope of making a hit but reckoned he could show the man inside that he was still around.
