The Floating Outfit 10

by J. T. Edson

  Tarbrush woke up as the prisoner was pushed in. He yawned and sat up, scratching himself, looking at the white man who was dumped in. Kliddoe scowled and waited until Salt had gone back to his wagon, then growled: ‘Let me loose!’

  Tarbrush scowled. ‘Why’d I let you all loose for?’

  ‘Because I’m a Kliddoe, and we fought in the War to set you black folks free.’

  Tarbrush rolled his eyes. ‘You did now, did you? I’se been wanting to meet one of you. I never asked to be set free and, from what my ole pappy telled me, I’d have been better if I wasn’t free. He telled me how them folks what had him treated him. He didn’t have to ride no nighthawk for his food.’

  Kliddoe had an idea that the freeing of slaves hadn’t met with this Negro’s approval. ‘You get me loose, you black—!’

  The words ended as Tarbrush folded a useful-looking fist and warned, ‘You stop all this here fussing, white boy. Cap’n Fog wouldn’t want you to let loose. You jest get shet and let me sleep in peace or I’ll beat you most ugly.’

  Kliddoe closed his mouth and sat in sullen, glowering silence as the Negro went back to sleep. The wagon lurched forward, Kliddoe twisted round to look out. He wasn’t so tightly fastened that he couldn’t get loose; then he could get out over the back of the wagon and escape. The chuck wagon pulled in behind the other, instead of travelling front. On the box, sat Salt Ballew, his carbine across his knees and a desire to commit mayhem in his heart.

  Thora and Dusty watched the Kid eating. For a time both were silent. Then she turned a pale face to his. ‘Dusty.’ Her voice was tremulous. ‘It’s true about my being related to Jethro Kliddoe. I should have told you earlier but I hoped that we might get by without seeing him. I recognized Blount back in Granite and knew why he had come. He meant to blackmail me into taking him along. Then he could let Kliddoe know just where we are.’

  ‘I figgered you knew him.’

  ‘What will the men say about my being related to Kliddoe?’

  ‘What should they say?’ Dusty answered. ‘They hired to drive for the Rocking H, not your kin. Besides—’ Dusty stopped, his face flushed red and his shoulders shook as he started to laugh. It was some seconds before he could stop enough to speak, ‘I’m kin of your’n too. That makes me—’

  Then the Kid saw what Dusty was getting at and whooped in delight. ‘That means you’re kin to ole Yellerdawg, Dusty. Just wait ’til I tell Mark about that.’

  Thora’s mouth dropped open and she turned a startled face to meet Dusty’s laughing gaze. Under the kin system of the Deep South, Kliddoe, through his relationship with her, was kin to Dusty Fog.

  ‘We’d best tell the hands who we’ve got for kin tonight,’ Dusty suggested. ‘Likely, they’ll all quit on us in disgust.’

  The Ysabel Kid finished his meal and rose. He went to the big white and vaulted into the saddle. The woman watched him go; she had come to know him pretty well by that time. There was no change of expression on his face, but she knew he was going to do something which pleased him.

  Riding his Comanche relay and the big white, the Ysabel Kid covered miles faster than any one horse could have.

  There was no trouble in following the two Kliddoe men’s tracks, not to a trailer of the standard of the Ysabel Kid. The men had not tried to hide their trail, and it would have taken better than them to fool him.

  The tracks curved away from the direction that smoke rose in, but the Kid took a chance and headed straight for the smoke. His guess paid off, for he came on the tracks of the two horses again on a gentle slope. The opposite side of the slope was where the smoke originated.

  The Kid left his horses standing out of chance view and, rifle in hand, moved forward. He travelled across the ground like a scalp-hunting Indian, flitting from cover to cover, alert for anything that came his way. Although he watched for Kliddoe sentries, there were none out; and he wondered if he had guessed wrong.

  Topping the rim cautiously, he knew that he guessed right. From his place on the boulder and tree-covered rim, he looked down on Jethro Kliddoe’s camp. For a time, the Kid examined the land to see if he had missed any sentries. Then he decided that Kliddoe wouldn’t bother with such things, not until his scouts brought news that the herd was near.

  The camp was at the bottom of the valley, a line of small tents along a small stream. There was a large Sibley standing away from the rest, which would be Kliddoe’s residence whilst here. The horses were picketed away from the camp, and a skilled man would have no trouble in getting by the Kliddoe sentries to let them loose. If the worst came to the worst, a stampede of the horses would set Kliddoe and his men afoot long enough to allow Rocking H and C.A. to get by safely.

  From all the Kid could see, there appeared to be about thirty or so men in the valley. Mostly, they had the look of poor farmers, not the usual type Kliddoe trailed with. Only five of the men around the main fire were of the hulking, dirty and untidy kind of scum Kliddoe used for his work. They would be all who were left after Shangai Pierce and his men hit the Kliddoe gang the previous year.

  The other men would be new recruits and there were few repeating rifles evident amongst them. The Texans all, with the exception of Salt, had either a Winchester, Henry or Spencer, that would give them a big edge if it came to war.

  The Kid studied everything about the camp with disapproval. It would appear on the face of things that Kliddoe was slighting his ability as a scout. The ‘Colonel’ should have been keeping his men out on guard, alert and watchful for the arrival of the Ysabel Kid. The failure to take these precautions was open invitation for Loncey Dalton Ysabel to do something about it.

  Of course, Kliddoe’s logic was easy to follow and to his Yankee mind quite right. He figured he had the Texans outnumbered and they didn’t know the location of his camp, or where he would strike from.

  It was good, sound reasoning, but it was only half-right.

  The Texans were outnumbered, but they knew where he could be found. Or would, happen a dark young man called Loncey Dalton Ysabel could ride his Comanche relay back and tell the news to his trail boss.

  The flap of the Sibley lifted and the great man himself, Colonel Jethro Kliddoe, stepped out. He stood at the door, a fine figure in his Union Army uniform, complete with shiny close-top holster and the saber at the other side. He stepped forward to walk amongst the men and he was never to know how near to death he walked.

  Up on the rim, a rifle came up and cold, red-hazel eyes fondly aligned the sights on the trim blue uniform. A finger closed lovingly on the hair-trigger as the sights made a perfect picture over Kliddoe’s heart.

  Prudence held the finger. The Ysabel Kid knew he could shoot, kill Kliddoe and be long gone before pursuit could be organized. He also knew more would be lost than gained by dropping Kliddoe now. The men down in the valley would regard a murdered Kliddoe as a martyr, slain by the brutal unreconstructed rebels, and would paint for war. Besides there was an old, creased letter in the Kid’s warbag to be fetched out and read to Jethro Kliddoe and his men before the great, noble and loyal Yankee hero died.

  The letter was in the Kid’s mind as he backed from the rim. It had been all of ten years since it came into his hands. For all that time he carried and treasured it, but had never got near enough to Kliddoe to return it to the correct owner. That letter was going to come a big surprise to a lot of folks; and Jethro Kliddoe wouldn’t be the most surprised by it.

  Eleven – Colonel Kliddoe Meets Kin

  ‘Boys.’ Thora looked round the circle of tanned faces she now knew better than the men at the Rocking H. There was a hint of nervousness in her voice as she prepared to tell them her secret. ‘I haven’t played square with you. When you took on, I told you we would have trouble with Kliddoe. I didn’t say that I was related to Jethro Kliddoe.’

  If she expected the. words to cause any great sensation amongst the men she was disappointed. Not one face changed expression or showed any great amazement at her words.

 
Red Tolliver was whittling a stick with the quiet concentration of a man doing a useless but enjoyable task. He tossed the stick into the fire and looked up. ‘Ma’am, I’ve got me a cousin who votes Republican, but I don’t boast about it.’

  ‘Should think not,’ Billy Jack agreed. ‘You’d likely turn a man offen his food, talking about things like that.’

  ‘I got me an uncle who drinks sasparilly,’ Dude confessed, hanging his head in shame.

  ‘Some place back to home I’ve got me a kinsman who goes to church,’ a tall, lean hand from the Big Bend country admitted sadly.

  ‘What the boys are trying to say, Thora,’ Dusty finished for the men, ‘is they don’t give a damn who your kin might be. I’m your kin, too, but they don’t hold that against you.’

  ‘’Cepting when he turns us out for night-herd,’ Dude remarked.

  The Ysabel Kid looked up from eating. ‘Question now being what we does about said Colonel Kliddoe.’

  ‘Not knowing what you found out today, if anything,’ Dusty replied, ‘there but three things we can do. Turn back to Texas, try to get round without him finding us, or pay.’

  ‘Pay?’ Lil Jackie howled, disappointed that his hero should even consider such a thing.

  ‘Sure, boy,’ the Kid replied. ‘Pay—with Colt coinage and Winchester bank drafts.’ He turned his attention to Thora and went on: ‘There’s one thing I reckon you’d best know now, Miz Thora. Happen we meet up with Kliddoe, and I get half a chance, he’s going to get hurt real bad. I had a pard in Mosby’s regiment. Kliddoe caught him. He warn’t but sixteen. Apaches couldn’t have done wuss to a man than Kliddoe’s bunch did to that boy.’

  Thora watched the dark, emotionless face, then she replied, ‘I probably hate Kliddoe even more than you, or any other man here. It was through Kliddoe that my father was disgraced and killed himself.’

  ‘How d’you mean, Miz Thora?’ the Kid asked.

  ‘My father was Colonel Langley Bosanquet. You may have heard of him?’ she looked around the fire at the men.

  There was silence for a time, then Dusty nodded. ‘The Quaker Wagons Massacre. We heard about it. Kliddoe wiped out five wagons of Quakers, allowed he thought they were some of our people.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mark agreed. ‘We heard, too. Ole Bushrod Sheldon was still yelling about it when I last saw him. Swore it showed what sort of folk the Yankees were. Never laid blame on your father, always swore it was Kliddoe who did it.’

  ‘The court-martial didn’t.’ Thora’s tones were bitter. ‘My father was the senior officer and it was made out that Kliddoe was under his command. He swore on oath that father gave him orders to attack the wagons. My father’s orders were for him to attack the Confederate troops wherever he found them. Kliddoe was a good friend of the Custer crowd and the Boy General stands by his friends. They had to lay the blame on someone, and my father didn’t have many influential friends. So they broke him and dismissed him from the service. It broke his heart; he shot himself three days later.’

  ‘Don’t reckon Yankees would have listened to much again Kliddoe in the war,’ Billy Jack remarked.

  ‘No more than a reb would have listened to the truth about Quantrill.’

  ‘Like to say that not all the south thought of Quantrill as a hero,’ Dusty interrupted. ‘Uncle Devil, my pappy and Colonel Mosby, always knew him for what he was. They led the group that outlawed him after Lawrence.’

  Thora accepted this, then went on: ‘I want to see Kliddoe face to face and ask him if he lied about the orders. I want to prove what kind of a man Kliddoe really is.’

  ‘Ma’am.’ The Kid spoke gently, yet his voice had the ring of truth. ‘Happen we’re real lucky and Dusty comes up with something you’re going to get your proof.’

  Before Thora could question this statement, Dusty had moved into the center of the group. ‘All right, Lon. Tell it.’

  The Kid told it, with the aid of a bowie knife-drawn map in the soil. He told of all he had seen in his trip and finally sat back waiting to hear what Dusty made of things.

  ‘Thirty of them, we were expecting fifty,’ Dusty mused.

  ‘That’s a tolerable handful, even for us Texans,’ Thora remarked.

  ‘Sure.’ Dusty turned to Mark. ‘How many hands you allow you’ll need to keep the herd moving? Counting Hobie and Lil Jackie?’

  ‘Ten, twelve. In this brush we can’t do it with less. With that few they’ll have to move fast or we’ll lose stock in this scrub country.’

  ‘Sure, but we can’t stop, not with C.A. three days behind us.’

  ‘We’ll handle it. You can’t get round Kliddoe; he’ll miss them two scouts and get more out. He can ride faster than we can move the herd,’ Mark drawled. ‘Go right ahead, we’ll handle the herd for you.’

  Dusty had known Mark would say that. Now all that remained was to select his men and explain what he wanted. It was a good plan, if it could be worked.

  If it didn’t work, there would be stirring times round Kliddoe’s camp real soon.

  ‘I’m taking Kiowa, Billy Jack, Dude, Basin, Red and Frank. With Lon and me that should be enough. The rest of you, keep the herd moving. Ole Tarbrush’s going to miss sleep again; he’ll handle the remuda. Lil Jackie and Hobie’ll ride the drag. This is how we play it.’

  Billy Jack lounged against the side of the bed wagon and watched the small rider who held the attention of every man here. He remembered other similar scenes in the war: a bald-faced youngster in Captain’s uniform standing in the center of a group of attentive men, planning some fresh attack against the Union forces. Captain Dusty hadn’t changed much since the days when he led the Texas Light Cavalry in raids that rivaled the best of John Singleton Mosby and Turner Ashby.

  Thora sat back and watched the scene; it was one she never forgot. Often, on the long drive north, she wondered why these men, all bigger and many far stronger than Dusty, followed him and accepted his orders. Now she knew, knew from her own knowledge of great leaders. She had met Grant Sheridan and even Lincoln; all had that same air Dusty possessed—the air of a born leader. It was that which had made Dusty a Cavalry Captain at seventeen. It was that which made him a trail boss.

  ‘I would like to go along with you, Dusty,’ her voice sounded unnaturally loud to her.

  ‘It’ll be no place for a woman,’ Red Tolliver pointed out.

  ‘Somebody told me the same thing about this drive. But I’ve managed so far and haven’t been too much of a nuisance.’

  ‘You surely ain’t!’ Basin Jones agreed.

  ‘You’ve made a hand, Thora,’ Dude whooped.

  ‘Then I claim the right as a hand.’ Thora stood in the light of the fire, head thrown back and meeting the eyes of the men. ‘I claim it as much as the Ysabel Kid can claim it.’

  ‘I backs the claim,’ Billy Jack was on his feet, standing erect, hands hanging by the butts of the matched Colts. In the firelight, he was transformed. The miserable, hangdog look had left him for once, showing what he really was—a bone-tough Texas fighting man. ‘Likewise I passes my word Miz Thora’ll be safe.’

  ‘All we asks is that you stops back until we’ve got them hawg-tied.’ Duke spoke softly. ‘Then you can do most anything you likes with them.’

  Thora saw the pride in every face as they met her eyes. Never had she seen the hands of Rocking H look at her with so much respect. She smiled round the faces. The attacking party’s worries at having her along were not that she would spoil things, but that she might get hurt.

  ‘Right, talk’s over,’ Dusty snapped. ‘Get the gear I want set up, Billy Jack. Use some of the boys to help you. Red, get out to the remuda and collect a couple of horses. I want to pull out in less than an hour. Lon, I’ll let you take care of Cousin Cawther. Look after him real good.’

  Fifty minutes later the raiding party were mounted and ready for war. Dusty paused as the others rode out, held his hand out to Mark. ‘I’d like you along, amigo. Reckon the next drive we handle you’d best be the
trail boss, you’re missing all the fun.’

  ‘Sure.’ Mark crushed his pard’s hand. ‘You just take care of the boss lady. And Lon.’

  ~*~

  The sun was just rising, flooding Kliddoe’s camp with light when the great man himself stepped from his Sibley to look around the camp. The first of the trail drives might be within striking range that day, so he was already dressed in his uniform. He turned his attention to the picket line and saw his nephew’s palomino wasn’t there.

  ‘Cawther not back yet?’ he asked one of the men.

  ‘Nope. Thought he’d be in last night, but him and Blount never showed.’

  The news didn’t worry Kliddoe unduly; his two scouts might be making sure the herd didn’t swing off at the last minute.

  Looking round the camp, Kliddoe wondered how these new men would react to their task. The old crew had either gone under, or scattered, last year after the disastrous attempt to head-tax the herd of Shangai Pierce. The new men were of different stock from the savage crowd who had ridden with him in the war. Only five of these old hands remained; they were separate from the rest, for they couldn’t get on with the new men.

  Most of the new men had fought in the war, but they had fought in more conventional groups than his Raiders. They were poor squatters and only took on with him to make a stake for moving west. They might not like the idea of taking tax from the Rocking H herd, if they knew of his relationship with the owner. That was one of his worries; a couple of the men had served in Langley Bosanquet’s regiment in the War and they might or might not recognize Thora. However, they all firmly believed he was appointed by the Governor of Kansas Territory to take head-tax on the northbound Texas herds, and so would believe they were acting in the right. Suddenly a man jumped to his feet and pointed up the rim. The others all leapt up, grabbing for weapons.

  Kliddoe spun round, following the gaze of the man. On top of the rim, sat three men on horses. The center one was Cawther Kliddoe, his arm in a sling. The other two were young Texas cowhands.