The Floating Outfit 11

by J. T. Edson

  ‘Happen you stop to think about it, Jim, it’s tolerable strange nobody ever come this way with wagons before. Folks from the back country moving down to Hammerlock to buy supplies the cavalry shipping provisions to the outlying forts. Nobody ever tried to use this gap. You thought of what’d happen if the train was stopped in here and couldn’t get no further on?’

  ‘You’re way out of my sight now, Kid. I just don’t follow you at all.’

  The Kid swung down from his saddle and reached for the blanket roll which hung strapped to the cantle. For this journey he did not carry his full roll, having left the suggans and his warbag with the Raines’ wagons. Wrapped in the tarp was the one blanket he deemed necessary for comfort, a package of jerky, his powder flask, bag of ready molded .44 balls for his Dragoon and a box of flat-nosed .44 Winchester rimfire bullets for his rifle. He lifted out the powder flask, one of the old kind made of cowhorn scraped so thin the level of the powder could be seen through it and with a measure fitted to the top, giving him the correct forty grain load for his old Dragoon at every turn of the lever. Checking the level of the powder the Kid turned to Lourde.

  ‘Reckon you could spare some loose powder, Jim?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll let you have some combustible cartridges if you like.’

  The Kid grinned broadly. ‘Not for me. I pour her in raw and put a round ball on top happen I want to shoot something.’

  With that he took a handkerchief from his levis pocket, opened it, spread it on the ground and tipped some of his powder into the center, then returned the horn to his bedroll which went behind the cantle again.

  ‘Just pour a pit of powder on here, Jim,’ he said.

  Taking out his powder flask, Lourde poured some of its contents on to the small pile in the center of the handkerchief. The Kid gathered and knotted the four corners of the handkerchief, then set it on a small protuberance of the rock. Mounting their horses, without the Kid explaining his actions, they rode back to the corner. Rounding it, the Kid dismounted and drew his rifle.

  Watching the Kid line his rifle, Lourde wondered how he hoped to shatter the rock with such a small amount of powder. Before Lourde could raise the question, the Winchester cracked, throwing back echoes which merged with the deeper boom as the powder, struck by the bullet, exploded. Instantly there came a dull rumbling and to Lourde’s amazed eyes it seemed that the walls of the gap began to move as shale started sliding down to block the trail.

  For minutes it seemed like a nightmare. The echoes of the shot and explosion clashed with the rumbling of moving rock, slamming back and forwards along the gap. Only by an effort did Lourde manage to control his spooked horse, but the Kid’s white stallion stood like a statue even when a large rock crashed down and narrowly missed it.

  The two men stood looking back to where the explosion took place. The big rock was no longer in sight, being buried by the shale which came sliding down from the slopes above. The Kid nodded, for he’d expected nothing less. Turning he jumped over the rock which almost crushed him in its fall, walked forward and vaulted afork his old Thunder horse.

  ‘What’d have happened had she blown when the wagons were in here, Jim?’

  Lourde was not an imaginative man but he could almost picture the scene. The wagons halted with no way of moving the fall of rock ahead of them, not in the time they needed to reach their new home and make the necessary improvements on the land. There was more to it than just that, Lourde saw as he rode back through the gap. With no way to turn the wagons they each would have to be eased out backwards, no easy task for the rear wheels had no steering play. Days it would take, weeks more likely and all that time without water or food other than which could be hauled in.

  There was still more to the picture, Lourde saw as they rode back towards the entrance to the gap. The rock which came down so near him did not fall alone. Other pieces were dislodged by the explosion, they lay scattered along the trial. Any wagon which found itself struck by such a rock would have been damaged beyond any repair and helped delay the retreat still further.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ drawled the Kid. ‘We won’t be using this gap now.’

  They were riding through the entrance and on to the open range once more and Lourde turned in his saddle to look at the narrow opening.

  ‘I wonder if—’ he began. ‘Naw. He couldn’t have known about it.’

  ‘Who?’ asked the Kid, although he could have guessed.

  ‘Gantry. He was so all-fired set on having us come up this way?’

  ‘Tell you, Jim,’ replied the Kid with a grin. ‘I don’t aim to sit out here and think about it. Ole Dusty gets all riled up too quick for liking happen he’s kept waiting. I reckon his mammy spoiled him when he was a button, way he takes on.’

  With that the Kid started his big white stallion forward, heading across the range. With his Indian sense of direction to help him he aimed straight for a point where he would most likely find the wagon train or some sign of its passing.

  Camp had been made for the night when the Kid and Lourde arrived, and a good-sized crowd gathered at the Raines’ wagon to hear the news.

  ‘How about it, Lon?’ Dusty asked, seeing Raines and his daughter come out of the wagon and join the crowd.

  ‘Waal, to start with the gap’s there. Kind of narrow in places but there. Fact being there’s places where it gets so narrow the wagons’d scrape the paint off their sides getting through.’

  ‘But they could get through?’ asked Miss Considine from the front of the crowd.

  ‘Likely they could, ma’am,’ agreed the Kid, watching the woman and the bull-whackers who drove for her. ‘Only it’d take two or three days at least and no food or water for the stock through it.’

  Lourde watched the Kid and wondered what he was playing at. Knowing the way things stood at the gap Lourde could see no sense in building up hopes. However, he said nothing and allowed the Kid to play things the way he saw them.

  ‘We could carry water and food as we did in the desert country,’ Maisie Simons put in. ‘We can still use the gap?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ answered the Kid gently.

  ‘No?’ Miss Considine snorted. ‘What’s this all about, Mr. Lourde?’

  ‘The gap’s blocked by a rock fall,’ Lourde replied.

  ‘Which same’d take more’n a month to clear, happen we’d got enough men and the right gear, which we ain’t. Even without the chance of another fall while they clear the first,’ the Kid went on.

  All the time the Kid watched the faces of the crowd, reading the disappointment on most of them. He could read nothing on either Maisie or Miss Considine’s face and decided that if either could play poker he did not aim to tangle in a game with them.

  ‘We can’t go through then, Lon?’ asked Dusty.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘After seeing it I’m not sure we could have got through even without the rock fall,’ Lourde went on. ‘I thought you said you’d been through there, Gantry?’

  Gantry’s face showed a look of injured innocence, the sort of look a man might show if he tried to do a good deed and had it slapped back into his face.

  ‘Me? I said I’d heard about it from an army scout who’d been through. He allowed a wagon train could go through.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ drawled the Kid. ‘It wouldn’t get through now.’

  The crowd broke up. They were disappointed that the promised short cut did not present itself but there was nothing they could do about it. Lourde headed for his wagon while the Colonel’s servants brought food and coffee for the Kid. Louise sat beside Dusty and looked the Kid over.

  ‘I smell a rat,’ she said.

  ‘Where at’s Mark and Red?’ the Kid drawled, ignoring the girl’s suspicious looks. ‘Their hosses weren’t around.’

  ‘I sent them up ahead as scouts,’ Dusty replied. ‘They’ll be back soon. Now tell me about the gap.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s blocked,’ replied the Kid, innocent as a ne
wborn babe.

  ‘When did it get blocked?’ asked Dusty, knowing his dark friend real well. ‘Just recent?’

  ‘You might say that,’ agreed the Kid and told Dusty all that happened.

  Raines leaned forward the better to hear every word, his cigar sending up smoke into the air. He made no comment and at the end, while the Kid ate, Dusty turned to the Colonel.

  ‘What title do you hold your land under, Colonel?’

  ‘The usual. Payment of half the price as a deposit to be forfeit if I and the others don’t make good on the contract clauses about arrival and improvement of the land under a certain date. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘But there wouldn’t have been happen you were stuck in that gap for as long as Lon allows you would.’

  ‘Then you mean the agent and his sister are in on this scheme to stop us making the deadline?’ demanded Raines, throwing an angry look in the direction of the Considine wagons. He looked ready to rush down there and throw the woman and her drivers in irons for the rest of the trip.

  ‘I didn’t say so, although it’s possible,’ Dusty replied. ‘It could be some outside bunch trying to stop you and knowing suspicion would easily fall on Miss Considine. You know how high land speculation runs in the east, Colonel.’

  ‘Happens me, Red ’n’ Mark takes Gantry out there alone and talks some to him we’d come up with some smart answered questions,’ drawled the Kid.

  Dusty threw the Indian dark young man a cold stare. The Kid looked more innocent than a dozen choirboys headed for church but he was quite willing to do just what he suggested. He was capable of using a certain inventive spirit to augment the ancient tortures used by his Comanche forefathers to make Gantry squeal if not talk.

  ‘That’d do no good. Happen you’re wrong you’ve got trouble for damaging an innocent man. If it’s right there’ll still be no real proof and we’ve tipped our hands that we suspect Miss Considine. Sure there’re a lot of things pointing to it being her. Maybe there’s too much. Folks with as much at stake as there is behind this wouldn’t stop at throwing suspicion on somebody else. They haven’t stopped at murder and they wouldn’t have stopped at getting us stuck in that gap, so they aren’t stopping at a little thing like getting an innocent woman in bad. If it is an outside bunch they’d have ways of finding out who was on the train, of getting their men hired in the right place, to the Land Agent’s sister.’

  ‘The only other person in the train who isn’t known to us or to the others is Maisie,’ Louise put in coldly when Dusty stopped speaking.

  ‘I’ve thought about that too,’ answered Dusty. ‘Have you ever been in her wagon?’

  ‘I have,’ said Louise and the coldness was even more in evidence.

  ‘Does she have a gun?’

  ‘I’ve seen a Mississippi rifle and a shotgun, that’s all. She’s my friend and I trust her.’

  ‘Bad Bill Langley’s my cousin and I trust him,’ the Kid put in, ‘but there’s a tolerable lot of folks who don’t.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing at all,’ snorted Louise, wondering if the Kid was joking about the notorious Texas gunfighter being his cousin.

  ‘Pull your horns in, gal,’ warned the Kid. ‘I can’t help the sort of kin I’ve got. There’s some of them aren’t so all-fired keen on me since I started working cattle in daylight and paying duty on gear I take into Mexico.’

  ‘Let’s concern ourselves with the local barbarians, not the Ysabel family,’ suggested Louise, her good temper restored.

  ‘Look at it this way, Louise, gal,’ Dusty went on. ‘She’s your friend. But happen she was working for some outside bunch who’d it be better for her to make friends with?’

  Louise was forced to admit the truth of the words. She knew what Red said on the night outside Hammerlock and wished Dusty would allow her to ask Maisie if she’d been into town. Louise hated the suspicion which gnawed at her and wanted to clear Maisie as a friend or know her as an enemy.

  Before there could be any further discussion, Mark and Red returned from their scout. They took their double girthed saddles to the wagon and Red drew something from inside his saddleboot before he followed Mark towards the fire.

  ‘How’s the gap, Lon?’ asked Mark as he came up. ‘Say, Louise, how about some coffee for the hard workers?’

  ‘No good,’ drawled the Kid. ‘That’s to both questions. What’s up ahead?’

  ‘One steep grade that’ll take some hauling over about three days on,’ Mark replied. ‘Then beyond it rolling easy country as far as we could see, not going beyond the grade. Looks like there’s plenty of water, graze and easy driving.’

  ‘Sure, there’s nothing much to worry about at all,’ agreed Red.

  Something in the way Mark and Red spoke made Louise watch them more carefully. In the time since they’d come together the girl had grown to know these Texas men pretty well. There was a grim note under the promise of easy driving up to and beyond the one bad slope. Dusty also knew this, knew it better than did the girl. He waited for Mark or Red to carry on with their report.

  ‘We should make some good time for the three days to the slope,’ Mark went on. ‘Likely spend a day hauling up it, it’s that bad. Then we could look to easy running for the rest of the trip likely.

  ‘Except for?’ asked Dusty.

  ‘This!’

  Red lifted his left hand, bringing it and the thing he’d held concealed at his side up into view. Every eye went to the thing he held out into the light of the lamp which the old negress set on the folding table ready to serve supper.

  It was a long thin stick with feathers at one end, a bright steel barbed point at the other and bands of color painted in the middle. Louise stared at it for a long moment, sudden cold fear gripped her and she gasped:

  ‘It’s an Indian arrow!’

  Six – The Slope

  For a moment after Louise identified the object Red Blaze held out there was silence. Then the Kid laid down his plate and took the arrow from Red, turning it over between his fingers.

  ‘That’s only one part of it, gal. Like looking at the cartridge case for a specially made rifle and saying it was a bullet. Where’d you find this, Red?’

  ‘About ten mile ahead,’ replied Red. ‘Was luck I found it, I reckon. Laid on the ground under a mesquite bush.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Like I said, it was laying under this bush pointing towards the middle.’

  ‘How close was the point to the bush?’ asked the Kid, looking just a trifle relieved at the words.

  ‘Maybe four or five inches.’

  ‘It was only an arrow some Indian dropped,’ Louise objected. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Put, not dropped, gal,’ interrupted the Kid. ‘No Injun’s going to be careless enough to lose an arrow like this one. Look at the flights. They’re best picked and matched goose feathers. The shaft’s arrow weed, chosen specially for its straightness and the same thickness all through. These bands of color now, they’re the lodge and wickiup sign of the brave who owned the arrow. That head. It’s steel, good steel and sharpened up careful. This’s a war arrow gal, been laying out maybe two, maybe three, days, might even be more, there’s not much damp in the air to rust it. And it was put, not dropped under bush. How big a bush was it I mean compared with the others that were around, Red!’

  ‘Middle-sized,’ Red answered, for he knew something of Indians himself and knew the vital need for accurate information.

  ‘Which same means a middle-sized camp out there, maybe four or five mile from where the arrow was left. Arrow tip points to the bush which means head for the camp, happen you’re a bronco bad hat Apache and looking for more of your kind to join with. It’s a war arrow, so that means there’s war medicine being made. Gal, we’ve got us some Injun trouble likely.’

  ‘But if the arrow is calling the men to camp we should be all right,’ the girl replied.

  ‘Might be, mostly likely might not, knowing Apaches. Some old man chief’s c
alling for men and not so’s he can make talk. He aims to put on the paint, or as you Virginia dudes call it, prepare for war.’

  The situation was not so grim that Louise forgot to plan revenge on the Kid for his remark. She did not have time to speak for Raines was on his feet having tossed his cigar to one side.

  ‘Against us?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe, Colonel, maybe not,’ replied the Kid. ‘I’ve seen no Apache sign and I don’t reckon Mark or Red have, apart from this arrow. Like I say, some old man chief’s made his medicine and it come out war. He’s gathering in men to prove his medicine. Happen they have luck on smaller places they might hit at the train.’

  Dusty made his decision. ‘Louise, get around the train and tell the folks I want to see them all. Colonel, have your servants make up the fire in the center ready for the meeting. Ask Mandy there to throw the Kid some food together, he’s riding as soon as he speaks to the folks. Do you want Mark or Red along, Lon?’

  ‘Nope. I’ll ride alone and I’ll go Injun style, without saddle and take two of the Colonel’s blood hosses with me. I want something that’ll have the legs of any Apache war pony, happen I get lucky and find their camp.’

  Raines had a bunch of good horses, the nucleus of what he hoped would be a fine stock. He planned to run a horse ranch out by Backsight but knew the Kid’s need was greater than his own. There would be no need of the horses if the Apaches were to wipe out the train.

  ‘I’ll pull out come midnight,’ the Kid remarked when permission was granted. ‘Be back when I know something.’

  Dusty nodded. He left such matters to the Kid for there was no man who the small Texan would rather have ahead as his scout. If the Apaches were out in force the Kid would find them and get back word in time for the wagon’s defense to be organized properly.

  The people were gathering around the big fire in the center of the camp by the time Dusty and his friends finished eating. Then he went forward and stood in the center, a small man but every eye was on him. The brash young trouble-causers of the train were troublesome no longer. They’d seen what happened to a big man who crossed Dusty’s path and knew here stood their master. The other men remembered Dusty’s name from the War and knew he was their leader.