by J. T. Edson
‘Cut it, Dude!’ Dusty roared, catching the other’s arm and spinning him round.
Dude snarled and swung a punch which had enough power to rip the top of Dusty’s head off, had it landed. The punch ripped through empty air as Dusty ducked under it. The force of the blow put Dude off balance and Dusty’s right slammed into his stomach. Dude doubled over and the other fist smashed up on to his chin. Dude looked like he was trying to go two ways at once. His feet shot from under him and he landed flat on his back in the mud.
Red Tolliver stood scowling at Mark, fists clenched and lifted. Then slowly he relaxed and a grin came to his face. ‘All right, Mark. I ain’t fighting you, ’cause I never fights nobody bigger’n me. That’s ’cause I’m a noble, true-blue Texan. And ’cause I’m scared of getting licked.’
The tension was broken then and the men were all grinning again. Billy Jack ambled over and looked at Dude, who lay with the rain dripping on his face.
‘Ain’t nothing like rain for cooling a feller’s temper,’ he said mournfully, ‘and ole Dude, he sure looks cooled.’
Dude sat up, shaking his head and holding his jaw, then managed to get up. ‘Where at’s the mule?’ he growled. ‘Salt, I telled you to keep them knobheads out of the camp.’
‘What mule?’ Salt growled as he washed off the plates and refilled them with stew.
‘The one that kicked me.’ Dude backed off hurriedly as Little Jackie carried the plate to him. ‘You keep clear of me, boy. I don’t want no more spilled down me.’
‘If you feels that bad about it, pour one on me,’ Jackie answered. ‘It ain’t wuth much more than that, anyways.’
The tension was eased around the fire now. Dusty went to Dude and listened to Salt talking to the hand.
‘I sure wish it was steak.’
‘Way my jaw feels, I don’t,’ Dude replied, then went on hopefully: ‘You ain’t got a steak have you?’
‘Cook you an ole boot was you to ask real nice.’
‘Mean you ain’t been doing that all along?’ Dude turned his back and faced Dusty, before the irate cook could think up an answer. ‘Sorry if I hurt your hand, Cap’n. I don’t know what you did to me, but you sure did it right.’
‘That’s all right. Don’t you forget your fish again—that was what started all this,’ Dusty answered.
The rest of the hands gathered around the fire and began to swap tall tales about the wettest time they had ever run across. They were still at it when the Kid returned with news that the weather appeared to be clearing.
The following morning the Kid’s prophecy was proved correct. The sun came out and the crew were given a day to dry out their wet clothing before moving on once more.
The day they crossed the line into the Indian Nations, Kiowa came back with word that they were still being dogged by a man who was riding a horse and leading two more. The Kid had found sign that the man was still on their trail, but that he was keeping his distance. Dusty refused to allow his scouts to take time out to hunt the man down; he didn’t want them too far away as they were now coming into Indian country. However, he told the Kid to take his string and make a circle to warn any other drives that might be within three days trail of them to be on the lookout for the watcher.
Mark and Dusty discussed the watcher as they rode at the point.
‘Further we get from Texas, the better I like the idea of him being a Kliddoe man,’ Mark drawled as he scanned the range ahead.
‘Sure. Had he been a rustler spy, we’d have known before now. They wouldn’t want us this far. It’d be like Kliddoe to have a few men in Texas to dog the first herds and point him to them.’
‘Happen you should let Lon and Kiowa go after him.’
Dusty thought this over for a time, then heard a disturbance from back along the line. He didn’t take time to answer Mark, but turned his horse and headed back fast.
Thora was waiting, the black steer roped and snapped. ‘He started to gore a muley,’ she snapped, ‘reckon he’ll make us a dandy stew, or a couple of steaks.’
Dusty laughed as he watched her lead the steer back to the chuck wagon. Thora was acting like a seasoned trail drive hand now. She left the steer in Salt’s care and headed along the line to take her place in the swing.
The herd was bedded down soon after, even though there was more than half a day left for them to travel in. Dusty was satisfied that the herd was ahead of any other. He wanted to give the hands time to mend any damaged gear and rest the remuda and herd.
The hands settled down around the cook-fire, making the most of their brief rest from the trail driving. Men lounged around, talking. None of them took much notice of the approaching buggy, nor of the man who rode by the side of it.
‘Hello, the wagon!’ the man yelled.
‘Come ahead, friend.’ Dusty gave the customary permission to ride up, without which no stranger would come into camp.
The buggy was driven by a thin, tired-looking and work-worn woman of indeterminate age. She had the look of a very poor squatter—the sort who ran maybe a hundred head of stock and tried to eke out a living with the calf-crop.
The man was big, well dressed and powerful looking. He sat a big roan horse and looked arrogantly around. His right hand thrust back the lapel of his coat to show the marshal’s star on his vest.
‘The name’s Garde, Town Marshal of Timbal. Who’s herd is this?’
‘Rocking H,’ Dusty, as trail boss, replied. ‘Miz Holland here’s spread, I’m the trail boss.’
Garde had known that without telling; known it as soon as he rode into the camp. He wondered why so small and insignificant a man could be holding down so important a position as trail boss. He looked round the camp, but he was no cattleman and cowhands were just cowhands to him. To a man who knew Texans in general, and cowhands in particular, the men at the fire would have told much. To Garde, they looked like any other such group, and he had never found much trouble in handling cowhands in his town.
‘This here’s Mrs. Crump,’ he growled, waving a hand to the woman. ‘She had all her stock run off, sixty head. Went a couple of nights back and, you being the only trail herd in the country, I reckon they might have got mixed in with your’n.’
‘So?’ Dusty’s tones were soft and silky.
‘I want to cut your herd,’ Garde spoke to Thora not Dusty.
‘Certainly.’
‘No, ma’am!’ Dusty spoke softly.
‘What do you mean, Dusty?’ Thora turned to her trail boss, but she felt nervous. That word, ‘ma’am’ was there. She knew she had blundered badly somewhere.
‘The herd doesn’t get cut.’
Thora knew that tone, too. It was hard, flat and it meant Dusty would brook no interference with his orders. She didn’t know that every Texan regarded having his herd cut as an insult, and that any attempt was liable to end with gunplay. She also didn’t know that Garde of Timbal wasn’t highly thought of by Texans. The man was one of the kind of lawmen who never gave the cowhand a break. In his town, just to be a cowhand was likely to end a man in jail with a broken head.
The trail hands looked on, waiting for the outcome of this matter. Not one of them expected Dusty to allow any man to cut his herd. Much less when it was a loud-talking Yankee who boasted that he jailed Texans one-handed.
‘The lady said I could,’ Garde pointed out, but he now knew who this small man was. He also knew that cutting the herd would be far harder than sneaking up behind a booze-blind cowhand to buffalo him with a pistol barrel.
‘And I say you can’t,’ Dusty replied, his voice, to Garde’s ears, still soft and drawling. Dusty turned his attention to the woman. ‘We haven’t seen your stock, ma’am. There’s only our brand here.’
There. Garde had it laid out before him as plain as he could ask. He could now call the play in one of two ways; either he took Dusty’s word, or he didn’t. It was as easy as that.
Except that, if he didn’t take Dusty’s word, it meant he was calling the T
exan a liar.
‘There ain’t another trail drive around.’ Garde spat the words out, wishing he had brought a posse with him. ‘Not ahead there ain’t.’
None of the crew had noticed the silent arrival of the Ysabel Kid. He had returned shortly after Garde and been standing in the shade of the wagon, listening to all that was said.
‘That means the herd’ll still he round,’ Garde answered. ‘There war three men took them, and three ain’t going to risk crossing the Injun Nations with sixty head.’
‘Said there warn’t a drive ahead, mister,’ the Kid corrected. ‘I never mentioned behind. There’s one back there, three days’ drive behind us. I done talked to their scout, real nice feller called Smiler—mostly ’cause he never does.’
The Kid’s words were mocking and got more so as he went on, savoring the shock he was going to give this loud-mouthed Yankee John law.
‘Hoss he war riding carried a real cute brand. I read it to be C.A.’
‘C.A.!’ Garde’s tones were husky as he breathed the letters out, ‘C.A., but that’s—’
‘Yeah,’ the Kid interrupted, being highly pleased with the effect of his words. ‘The old Washita curly wolf, Mr. Clayton Allison—complete with Brother Jack ’n’ Brother Ben.’
The marshal of Timbal looked round the circle of tanned, unfriendly faces, reading pleasure at his dilemma in every one. It was one thing to ride into an unknown trail camp and try to look big. It was another matter entirely heading up and asking Mr. Clayton Allison, even without Brother Jack and Brother Ben, if he could cut the C.A. herd.
The old woman had been looking at the men around the fire. For the first time she spoke: ‘Them three ain’t here. I reckon we’d best go and see the other herd.’
Garde lost what little bluster he had left, all in one go. The name Clay Allison meant something to him and to every other Yankee lawman. Allison was a rich cattleman whose business in life was the running of his ranch in the Washita country. His hobby was the hunting out—and either treeing, or killing —of Yankee lawmen. If there was one place in the West where no Yankee had best go and flash his fancy law-badge, Clay Allison’s trail camp was that place.
‘Sorry, Mrs. Crump, but they’re thirty mile off, right out of my bailiwick.’ Dusty looked the man over in some disgust, and stepped from where he had lounged against the side of the wagon.
‘You’d likely not have come here, had we been Allisons,’ he snapped, turning away. ‘Mark, get the herd moving again. Keep them going until night.’
‘Sure.’ Mark and every other man there had been expecting the order. With a herd behind, the Rocking H must be kept moving.
Garde scowled as he watched the men going into action. He wanted to make something of the stealing of the cattle and saw his chance going. His only reason for coming out here was to make a name for himself. The local election for the post of sheriff was approaching, and he needed the publicity to help him get the post.
Dusty watched the hands preparing to move out, then turned his attention back to the woman.
‘Tell you what I’ll do, ma’am. I’ll head back to Clay’s camp and we’ll talk to him. If the men have brought the cattle to him, he’ll give you them back again. Clay Allison never stole a thing in his life.’
Mrs. Crump stared at the young Texan; she was a nester and never thought any cowhand would offer to help her. However, she could see no chance of getting help from Garde, and agreed to let Dusty handle the matter for her.
It was dark when Dusty rode alongside the woman’s buggy towards the flickering light of the C.A. fire. He called the usual greeting and the tall, well-dressed, handsome man with the black moustache and trim beard called for him to come and take something.
Dusty rode in, he helped the woman down and they came into the light of the fire. The small Texan looked round at the tanned, grim-faced group; he noted the two lean, handsome young men who were Clay Allison’s brothers flanking Clay. His eyes went on taking in the lean, dark Indian scout and Allison’s segundo, Smiler. The other men were all hard, tough-looking hands with the look of first-rate cattle-hands about them. That figured, for Clay Allison only took on the best.
There had been much written and told of Clay Allison’s wild drinking and his whisky-primed fun and games. Yet no man ever saw him drink when working his cattle; him or any of that tough, rough and handy crew who rode with him and would have died for him.
Allison looked Dusty over, noting the gunbelt which had been made by his own maker. He ignored the soft whisper that run round the men about the fire. Even as Dusty accepted the proffered coffee cup from the cook, and introduced himself, the men were telling each other who he was.
‘Trail boss for the Rocking H?’ Allison remarked. ‘Thought I heard a buggy with you. How far behind are you?’
‘Three days. But we aren’t behind, we’re ahead.’
‘The hell you say!’ Jack Allison growled, ‘I thought we were the first up trail.’
‘Could still be,’ a medium-sized stocky man put in. ‘Hold him here and see how far they’d get without their trail boss.’
‘That’s real smart, Smith,’ Clay scoffed. ‘You just up and try it. This here’s Cap’n Fog all right, happen you reckon it isn’t.’ He ignored the man again and turned back to Dusty. ‘Mind you, Cap’n, saw you one time in the war.’
‘The day we took the Yankee General, you brought the word where we could find him,’ Dusty agreed. ‘You didn’t have the beard then, but I’d know you any place. Reason I came back to your herd was that some damned cow-thieves ran off sixty head of stock and Garde from Timbal came to us. Reckons they’ll be taken north with a herd. He got to crying and took on like to wet us out. So I said I’d come back here and ask you if anybody’d come and asked to trail with you.’
‘That so?’ Clay flashed a look at the tough who had spoken before. ‘Now who’d you reckon’d be robbing them poor ole Injuns like that?’
‘Injuns?’ Dusty spat the word out. ‘You don’t reckon I’d leave my herd and come back here for Injuns. It was an old nester woman and they took every head she owned.’
Allison came to his feet, his mouth a hard, tight line in the light of the fire. ‘Is that right?’ He wasn’t speaking to Dusty, but to the tough who had suggested holding up the Rocking H herd. The man and two more were on their feet, hands driving down towards the butts of their guns.
Dusty dropped his coffee cup and started his draw the instant after Clay Allison’s move was made. The firelight glinted on the barrels of guns and the exploding powder rocked the silence of the night. Ahead of those of Allison and the other men, and before the falling cup hit the ground, Dusty’s matched guns roared throwing lead into Smith and the man on his right. Clay Allison’s gun roared out in echo to Dusty’s. The third man hunched forward, then dropped.
For an instant there was silence as the men all watched the small Texan who had shaded their boss. There was no move until the cook stepped forward to pick up the fallen cup, wash it and refill it.
Allison holstered his gun and told some of his men to get the three bodies moved out of the camp. Then he turned to Dusty. ‘I never could stand a liar.’
Dusty explained why he had come here and called the woman in from where he had left her. Clay Allison sat down again and told how Smith had brought the sixty head to his herd the previous day. Saying that they took the herd from the Indians, Smith offered to help work the C.A. herd to Dodge in exchange for safe conduct through the Indian Nations. There was nothing unusual in this arrangement; small ranchers often took on with larger drives on the same terms. Clay Allison was not even worried by the fact that the cattle had been stolen from Indians. He and most other western men regarded Indians as something to be killed off, and a man who robbed the Indians as something of a hero.
‘Trouble now being that the sixty head’s all mixed up with my own stock,’ he mused as the woman was seated by the fire. ‘I don’t want to lose a day by cutting herd. So, if it’s fair with
you, I’ll take the cattle north with me and sell them. Pay you for them now.’
The woman agreed to this eagerly; it solved her problem of getting the stock to Dodge.
Dusty finished his coffee and waited until Clay Allison had finished dealing with the woman and came back to sit by the fire.
‘Kliddoe’s ahead,’ Dusty remarked.
‘Heard about it. You aiming to do something?’
‘Happen.’ Allison grinned wolfishly. ‘If you need any help, send word back and we’ll come running.’
‘We’ll do that.’
‘You’ve been having luck, or Ben did. We heard about his trouble and allowed to stop over to Granite and talk some sense to Thad Toon. Then we heard he’d got a crew and come on. Thought we’d be ahead of you. What you reckon Earp’ll do when you hit Dodge?’
‘You know Earp.’
‘Sure, full of wind and bull-water. Say, did you hear the word Bat Masterson passed about me?’
‘I heard,’ Dusty agreed. ‘But I don’t reckon Bat sent it—not unless it came to you direct.’
‘You’ve got a whole heap more faith in him than I have. You know him real good?’
‘Met him a couple of times. Nice feller—fair with the cowhands. Waal, I allow it’s long gone time for me to head back to the herd.’
Ben Allison grinned and winked at his brothers. ‘Know something, Clay? Ole Smith had a real good idea, keeping Dusty here.’
‘What’d you have to say about that, Dusty?’ Allison asked.
Dusty smiled, then he threw the cup into the air, shouting. ‘Lon!’
The flat bark of a rifle echoed the shout, and from the darkness came a spark of light. At the peak of its flight, the cup spun off course and landed, neatly holed, at Allison’s feet.
Clay Allison roared with laughter at the startled faces. ‘That’s the Ysabel Kid out there, I reckon,’ he remarked. ‘Smiler said he’d talked with the Kid, but there warn’t no mention of working for a drive.’