The Floating Outfit 46

by J. T. Edson

  Neither Mavis nor McKie thought to argue with the Ysabel Kid on this, in view of his capable handling of the situation so far. They followed him and Mavis became probably the first woman ever to see the winding smuggler trails through the thick bush of the banks of the Rio Grande. She wondered how many men could remember the many turns and twists but the Ysabel Kid never even hesitated.

  At last, he drew up his horse in the bush at the side of a large, well-marked trail. Although she could never have told how they came to be there, she recognized this piece of trail as being just above the main ford to Mexico. She wondered why they waited, then heard the rumble of many hooves. Shortly after that, the Kid pointed, and she saw men coming into view. They were mostly cowhands; but she recognized the fat shape of her uncle at the head of the party, flanked by Jacobs, Russel and another of his men.

  The Kid wanted the men alongside before he made a move.

  He sat still, with his rifle across his saddle. Unfortunately, he hadn’t told Mavis this and, before he could stop her she’d ridden out, calling: “Hello, Uncle Philo!”

  Philo Handle’s hand went down. For a fat man he moved real fast and the bullet tore Mavis’s hat from her head. Before he could draw a fresh line on the girl the flat bark of a rifle shattered the air. Philo Handle slammed backwards from his saddle, his gun falling into the dirt.

  “It’s a trap!” Jacobs yelled, snatching at his gun.

  Sam Walton, the man who’d been suspicious in Wet Slim, brought out his gun and smashed it down on to Jacobs’ head, knocking him from his horse. At the same moment, Russel was covered by another of the party.

  “Hold it, all of you!” the Kid roared from the bush. “I’m coming out.”

  Walton grinned at the Indian-dark youngster and jerked a thumb towards Jacobs and Russel. “Real trigger-happy bunch, ain’t they?”

  “Sure. Man’d say they wanted Miz Handle dead, not rescued.”

  The other men gathered round—the younger hands looking in awe at a man who was no older than themselves, but who was a legend in his own lifetime. Now he wore his usual clothing; they guessed at his identity and most all of them guessed right.

  Mavis slid from her horse and went to bend over her uncle. He lay in the trail, blood pumping from the wound. Slowly, his eyes went to her and he gasped: “Your father’s luck rubbed off on you, girl.”

  “Don’t talk, Uncle Philo!” Mavis replied. “We’ll get a doctor for you.”

  “Do you think it would be any use?” Handle croaked back at her. “I know I’m done for, and it probably is as well, It was a good idea.”

  The girl straightened up. She heard a gasping rattle and blood gushed from her uncle’s lips. When she looked down again, it was all over. The Ysabel Kid was right; her uncle would never trouble her again. She felt her legs shaking and a hand caught her arm. She looked round at the Ysabel Kid. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Then she gasped: “Take me home.”

  The Kid told McKie to ride with the girl, and several of the hands agreed to go along. Then, after they’d gone, Walton looked at Jacob and Russel, who were huddled together under the guns of the rest of the party. The ranch-foreman grunted as he watched their scared faces.

  “What we going to do with them, Lon?” he asked.

  “Leave it to you. But Russel set her up for Peraro to kidnap—knowing that, when the boys here tried to rescue her, she’d be killed.”

  “He did that?” Walton growled; and through the crowd went a savage rumble—for, in the West, not even horse-stealing was as severely dealt with as harming or endangering a good woman.

  “Sure,” the Kid replied. He explained the way Peraro worked and what he’d found out.

  At the end of the recital, Walton looked around the crowd, then back at the Ysabel Kid. Next, he asked a question that was on the mind of every man in this crowd: “What’ll we do with this bunch?”

  The Kid swung into the saddle of his white again after getting down to talk to the men. He looked back, his face innocent and his voice gentle. “Why Sam, didn’t your mother never tell you nothing at all?”

  He turned the horse and rode back towards Wet Slim, while the cowhands formed a circle round the two scared men. Two ropes were unstrapped from saddle horns and put to the appropriate use.

  The Ysabel Kid joined up with Mark Counter, Waco and Red Blaze in Bennet City. He’d spent a pleasant week at the Handle ranch, helping to get Mavis’ affairs there straightened out. The girl was selling the ranch and going back East again; there were too many unpleasant memories for her to want to stay.

  The four young men rode out of Bennet together, headed on their way towards Tensonville and the last member of the bunch. The Kid rode his white by Mark’s side. He chuckled as he looked at the tall, handsome man.

  “Wall, it looks like I lost out. How about you?”

  “Me?” Mark replied. “I had a time, Lon. A real time.”

  “How about the bet?”

  “Reckon I lost it, too.”

  Four – The Major

  Mark Counter walked into the town of Casa Grande. He was carrying his saddle and bed-roll slung over his shoulder, and letting his limping blood-bay stallion follow him. The usual dandified appearance Mark presented was absent this time—after two wet and miserable nights sleeping out in the open. His expensive white JB Stetson hat with the silver-concha-decorated band was splashed with mud; although like a good Stetson, it still held its shape. His face was unshaven, the almost classically handsome features marred by a two-day stubble. His clothes gave little indication of their ex-: pensive cut, and his high-heeled, fancy stitched boots were well smothered in mud. Only the brown, hand-tooled Joe Gaylin gunbelt around his waist—with the matched brace of ivory-handled Colt Cavalry Peacemakers, tied low—was clean. A man kept his gun clean at all times in the West. If he was a careful man, he did; and Mark Counter was very careful.

  Mark wasn’t in a very amiable mood; never being one to relish the pleasures of outdoor life, he had just been forced to spend two nights sleeping out on the rain-drenched range. If his horse hadn’t picked up a stone bruise, he could have spent each night in comfort.

  Casa Grande was changed since the last time he came through it. Word was that a railroad branch line was coming this way; so folks from the East, ever eager to get in on any boom, rushed west to buy up land and build a town. So Casa Grande spread out to twice its old size and more. Yet it was strangely quiet for a boom-town; the street, at this early afternoon time, should have been filled with wild crowds pushing, shoving, headed to and from the various saloons. The scene here was one of peace—the sort of peace only a real good lawman could bring to a wild wide open township.

  The Casa Grande Hotel was the first place he saw; yet even that was changed from the last time he’d seen it. Then it was a drab-looking, none-too-clean place owned by an old drunk. Now, it was painted up on the outside and clean curtains were at every window. They were encouraging signs. Mark walked slowly towards the building, deciding to sleep there. If the inside was as clean as the outside, it must have changed hands—for the last owner was said never to have any trouble evicting undesirable guests. The bed-bugs would pick the undesirable up and throw him out of the window.

  A man came from the fence-walled side of the corral and through the gate, leading a team of the sorriest, sore-backed, harness-galled mules it had ever been Mark’s privilege to witness. The man leading the mules was tall, not quite up to Mark’s three inch over the six foot level. His shoulders were as broad as Mark’s but without that graceful tapering to the hips of the handsome young Texas giant. In dress, he might have been anything; the check shirt was tucked into Levis, which in turn were rammed, hit or miss, into heavy boots. The whip in his hand, taken together with the sorry mules, gave the true clue to his business. He was a muleskinner and this was his team.

  Mark frowned as he looked the animals over; they were in no shape to be worked, but the big black-haired and dark-chinned man did not look like the sort to
let that bother him. However, it was nothing to do with Mark, and the code of the West did not allow for chance interference in another man’s actions. Not unless the interferer aimed to back his play with either fists, or a smoking .45. Not that Mark was afraid to back any play he made with either. His reputation as a fighting man was high—and it would have been far higher, if his capacity for such was not always dimmed by his riding under the shadow of the Rio Hondo gun-wizard, Dusty Fog. But there was the bet to think of and, unless the man actually ill-treated the mules in front of Mark, there was nothing the Texan could do about it.

  “Blue, Big Blue!” a woman’s voice snapped out. “You’re not using that team.”

  The woman stepped into view as she spoke, the words being backed by a double click as she worked the lever of the Winchester rifle in her hands. The muleskinner half-turned and looked along the barrel of the rifle as it lined full on him. His hard face twisted into an ugly snarl, while his hand hefted that coiled whip as if he aimed to use it on the woman.

  “They’re my team,” the man growled back and across the street. Mark Counter relaxed. He’d been ready to take a hand if the muleskinner used his whip on the woman, but there was no danger of that now. When the man started to talk, Mark knew there was no danger of him doing more than talk.

  “That’s right.” The woman’s rifle never wavered. “And so are all the other mules at your camp. I took this lot to care for them, and I don’t aim to have you abusing them anymore. Get down to your camp and pull out with another team. You can collect these when they’re better.”

  For a long moment the pair looked at each other. Then, snarling under his breath, the muleskinner let loose of the lead mule and turned to walk away. He stopped and looked back at the woman as she led the mules back to the corral, shook his fist after her and snarled: “One of these days I’ll be back to see you for this.”

  Mark watched the man walk away, then shrugged; it was nothing to him. He led the horse through the gate and followed the woman round the side of the hotel to where there were three corrals laid out. She turned the mules loose into one of them, then turned and gave her attention to him.

  For the first time, Mark really looked her over. She was tall, five-foot-eight at least, in her flat-heeled shoes. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, the deep blackness that shone almost blue. Her face, framed by the long hair, showed signs of real beauty, rich, full and mature. Her figure, in the tight-fitting gingham dress, was buxom and shapely; the dress clung to it in a way that showed she was wearing little more than the dress. He guessed her age was around forty; yet she was well-preserved in this harsh land which dealt roughly with beautiful women.

  Standing with her strong-looking hands on her hips, the rifle leaning on the corral side behind her, she asked: “Have you seen my husband?”

  “No, ma’am. Can’t say I know—”

  “He’s down at that Iris Pendleton’s place again, that’s where he is. Don’t you deny it. You men are all alike—a fat blonde strumpet comes to town and, right away, you all forget you’ve got wives and homes.”

  “Waal, ma’am, I’d—” Mark tried to get a word or two in but she was not even listening to him.

  “Don’t argue with me. I know her kind. I bet she got turned out of the last town she was in, and now she’s trying her games here. I’ll stop her, you see if I don’t.”

  “Likely ma’am. But, right now, I’m more interested in getting a change of clothes, a bath and a shave, then sleeping in a real comfortable bed again.”

  The woman stopped talking and looked him over. This unkempt saddle-tramp was speaking with the accent of a cultured southern gentleman. Her eyes bored through the mud and dirt and recognized the costly clothing of the young Texan. Then her gaze flickered to the horse and she snapped: “Have you ridden him?”

  “Not for two days, ma’am. He picked up a stone bruise a couple of days out and I walked since then.”

  She went out and talked soothingly to the big stallion, bent down to examine the injured leg. She straightened up and nodded. “Stone bruise. He’ll be all right with a few days’ rest, Have you carried that saddle for two days?”

  “Sure, didn’t want to put any more strain on the leg than was necessary. I could surely use that bath, ma’am.”

  “Come on in then—after you’ve put your horse in a stall. If you can’t afford it, I’ll find you work around town until the horse is better.”

  “I’m not near the blanket yet, ma’am, thank you. Reckon I can manage to stay on here for a spell.”

  With his horse in a loose stall and contentedly munching at the hay in a net on the wall, Mark turned his thoughts to his own comfort. He followed the woman into the hotel through the rear door. The inside was just as clean as the outside showed, the floor carpets swept and the ledges around the walls dusted. They went along a passage and into the entrance hall. This was deserted, the register open on the desk top. The hall was small. A set of stairs leading up to the first floor were at one side; the other opened on to a bar which was, strangely for a town like this, empty.

  Mark signed in the register, then followed the woman upstairs. She opened the door of a small room and allowed him to enter, carrying the saddle over his shoulder. He put it down on its side and looked round the room. The bed was clean, the sheets white and fresh-looking. A small table and chair were against one wall, a washstand at the other. He went to the open windows; they let on to a balcony, which looked down on the corrals. It was a neat and pleasant room, of a far better standard of cleanliness than was usual in a small-town hotel.

  “Get those clothes off. Leave them here and I’ll have them washed for you, Mr. Counter,” the woman ordered. “I’ll fix the bath for you right now.”

  Marie’s war-bag, in his bedroll, yielded a complete change of clothing for him. He selected a tan shirt, tailored for him and a pair of clean Levis. Then with his clean socks and underclothes under his arm, he went along to the bathroom. He was pleased to get out of the dirty gear and hand it round the door to the waiting woman. Then he sank into the luxury of a hot bath.

  It was some time before Mark returned to his room, clean and once more looking his normal self. His hat lay on a hook behind the door, cleaned of all the mud and marks of the past few days, but his boots were nowhere in sight. His gunbelt lay where he’d left it on the bed, and he was pleased to see that the woman had not touched it. Pulling on a pair of plain moccasins, Mark slung the gunbelt round his waist and left the room. The hall was deserted, but there was the sound of someone moving round in the bar. Mark walked into the room and looked round. The tables were set out and the chairs which had been on top of the tables were now round them. A man rose from behind the bar. Mark went across towards him, but was not looking at him; his full attention was being directed to the full-length painting on the wall behind the man.

  The painting was of the woman, when she’d been some-: what younger. She certainly was a beauty then, the years had dealt kindly with her. She stood with an old model Navy Colt in her right hand, wearing a Union Army Major’s coat and kepi. Below the bottom of the coat, she wore nothing but black stockings and high boots. The legs were curved, shapely and attractive. Beneath the picture was a well-shone brass plate on which was engraved: Major Pauline Cushman, Scout of the Cumberland.

  “Man—so that’s who she is!” he said.

  The man behind the bar nodded. He was a tall, darkly-handsome man, a town dandy and a lady-killer, Mark guessed. His clothes were expensively cut and he wore them well.

  “That is Pauline Cushman Fryer, friend. I’m her husband: Jere’s the name.”

  Mark took the proffered hand; it was the grip of a professional hand-shaker. Jere Fryer was a man with charm, and he knew it, he was the sort who would likely wind up as a political sheriff of some county. Yet he must have something, if a woman like Pauline Cushman had married him.

  “Name’s Mark Counter,” Mark introduced, then went on: “I’ve heard some of Pauline Cushman.
She was quite a gal.”

  “Way?” Fryer hid his pleasure at meeting so well-known a man, with an eloquent wave of his hand to the picture. “She still is. I married her right after the war. We were in the same theatrical troupe. Did you hear about how she was the Union’s top spy in the War?”

  Mark had heard of Pauline Cushman, but was not willing to concede that her efforts made any great difference to the running of the war; not as much as the spying of the Confederate ladies, Belle Boyd and Rose Greenhow, anyway. Yet the woman they called the Scout of the Cumberland made some little name for herself.

  Fryer poured out two drinks, without asking what Mark fancied, and set them up on the bar. “Did you hear how she fought and licked the Confederate spy, Belle Boyd, in the Elite Theatre?” he asked proudly, though both he and Mark knew this was distending the truth. Pauline did fight with a Confederate sympathizer in the Elite Theatre, Louisville. But the other woman was not Belle Boyd; and the fight ended in a draw, when the star of the show, enraged at losing the limelight, banged their heads together, putting both girls out. Fryer knew the true facts; but saying it was Belle Boyd made a better story.

  “Never did hear that one,” Mark replied; as a stout Confederate, he was not willing to concede that any Yankee could lick a reb at anything.

  Jere Fryer pushed out his chest proudly; it was plain to Mark that whatever suspicions Pauline Cushman nursed about her husband, the man was genuinely proud of her. “After the war we toured the country. Then, when we’d made enough, she bought this place. You may know what it was like before. Well, she turned everyone out and scrubbed it from top to bottom. Then we got it fitted up properly. That was before the town boomed wide open. When it did, Pauline said she wasn’t having any wild and wide-open stuff here. We couldn’t get a marshal and, after she started, we never did need one. She surely held this town down. Like the time two of the local ranchers looked like starting a range war here. She got them and made them shoot it out in the street here—and wouldn’t let any of their men join in. Price took lead, but he finished Johnson. Then Pauline laid Johnson out and patched Price up.”