The Floating Outfit 11

by J. T. Edson

  ‘Ain’t they hell!’ he whooped. ‘We haven’t but worked halfway through this bunch yet.’

  ‘Yah!’ Dusty jeered, knowing that their light attitude would reassure the travelers. ‘I haven’t seen any fighting on your side yet.’

  Ignoring Red’s spluttered and furious reply Dusty turned back to study the new arrivals. They looked to be about thirty or forty in number and rode fast. He could see even at that distance they were all young braves, hot and eager to show the others how fighting the white-eye brother should be done.

  ‘Way they’re coming their medicine was good and they’ve hit some place,’ the Kid remarked. ‘So they’ll come right in now and the others’ll follow.’

  The Kid’s eyes took in the attacking braves, went to the leader. He stiffened and his face took on the cold slit-eyed look of a Comanche dog soldier. By his side Louise also watched the new attack. She saw the leader, a squat, half-naked brave riding a good paint horse and waving a war lance. Her eyes went to the thing which was stuck on the end of the lance, something roughly oval in shape and with long black hair streaming out behind it. Then Louise screamed and by her side the Kid’s rifle spat out fast shots, his hand a blur as it worked the lever.

  From the entire front of the wagons came a ragged volley. The young brave was thrown from his horse, torn almost to doll rags by the hail of lead which came down on him. The lance fell from his hand to the ground. The white woman’s head impaled on the point bounced free and rolled under the hooves of the horses which charged after the dead leader’s mount.

  ‘Pour it on!’ Dusty roared. ‘Get reloaded.’

  His carbine spat fast as did the Kid’s rifle and the Colonel’s Henry. It was a dangerous situation now. The volley had almost all been directed at the young brave with the hideous war trophy. Now the men of the train were allowing their wives to reload as the braves hurled themselves into the attack.

  Pale with fear, fighting down the hysteria and sickness which welled up in her, Louise caught Dusty’s arm. Her face turned towards him and her voice became a croak:

  ‘Dusty, did you see—’

  Dusty pushed her arm from his, thrust the carbine into her hands and snapped, ‘Load the rifles.’

  His matched Colts were in his hands, the right lifting and lining then crashing out a shot which tumbled a racing brave from his horse.

  The newcomers had taken coups; the white woman’s head proved that; their medicine was done up real good for them by their war gods. So they forced home the attack with more determination than had the first party.

  Dusty’s left hand Colt bellowed into the face of a brave who was in the act of lining his war bow down. The brave jerked, the arrow snapped down away from his bowstring and fell, beating its user to the ground by a matter of seconds. Then Dusty saw something out of the corner of his eye and looked at the Simons wagon.

  A young brave was racing his pony in line with the wagons. He’d fired a shot from his carbine and was reloading it Apache style. First he poured a shot of powder down the barrel, allowed the powder flask to swing back by its thong, slipped a round soft lead ball into the barrel. Lifting the gun he slammed the butt down on to the withers of his pony, doing it hard enough to seat the powder and ball at the bottom of the barrel. He was slipping on a percussion cap when a hand showed from under the Simons wagon. The hand held a Navy Colt with a twelve-inch barrel. It was a white hand, not belonging to one of the Chinese employees. The long barreled Colt kicked once and the young brave went sideways from his horse, not even having slipped the percussion cap on the nipple of his gun.

  The hand disappeared even as Dusty watched, it came into view a second after to spit again and tumble another brave at a range that would have taxed the revolver shooting skill of many a man.

  Dusty was so interested in the long barreled Navy Colt, although more in the shooting skill than the novelty of it, for he’d seen such weapons before. He heard a yell and twisted around to see an Apache hurling from his horse over the barricade and full at him. Dusty went backwards in a dive, the Apache sailed over his head to land with cat-like agility. Raines saw this. His rifle was empty, just handed to Louise for reloading. He did not even try to draw the revolver from his holster. His right hand caught the hilt of the Haiman saber, brought it up and across in a slash which laid the Apache’s belly wide open and sent him stumbling to his knees and then down on to his face, his intestines spilling from the wound.

  Throwing a fast shot into a brave who tried to follow the first Dusty did not have time to thank the Colonel for his help. He caught the Kid’s accusing look and then gave his full attention to the fight. Luckily Louise did not see the full horror of the Colonel’s saber stroke and thought her father had only used the point. She forced the bullets into the loading slot of Dusty’s carbine with fingers which trembled but did their work.

  Under his wagon Red handled his revolver while the girl slipped a copper tube of bullets into the butt magazine of the Spencer. The braves were sweeping along the flanks now, shooting as they rode and wheeled their horses, probing for a weak spot, then turning their horses to charge against it. Sometimes the attacking brave was shot down well clear. Other times he was inside the train before he could be dealt with.

  Mark and the mild looking man fired when they saw a target. The man was a very good shot, his rifle work brought more than one brave crashing to the ground. There was a yell from one side of Mark and he turned. Three braves had forced their way into the circle, leaping the barricade between the two Considine wagons. One of Miss Considine’s drivers went down under an Apache, knife in his chest. Bull Gantry shot the second but the third was behind him, bringing up his carbine. Mark started to bring around his Colt but he saw Miss Considine, down the line, turn. The woman held a Remington Beals Navy revolver in her right hand. She brought it up and fired fast. The Apache spun around, dropped his carbine then fell. Mark could see the shot was one which called for accurate sighting as the Apache was partially concealed behind Gantry. The third brave was cut down by the big bull-whacker’s rifle even as he was about to send an arrow into the women and children who were grouped behind a protective barricade in the center.

  Mark’s attention was brought back to the fight and he was able to give no thought to Miss Considine’s good shooting. It was good shooting, the woman handled her gun like a master and there’d been no flurry or mistake making in the way she sighted then shot down the Apache, killing him instantly.

  Red Blaze heard the girl gasp, following the rattlesnake buzz of a ricochet. Turning his head he saw she was bleeding from a gash which ripped her dress sleeve and laid a bloody furrow bare to view.

  ‘Keep shooting!’ he growled to the young man. ‘I’ll do what I can!’

  One glance told Red the wound was more painful and messy than dangerous but it had been a very close thing. He told the girl to slip back from under the wagon and run to where the doctor was already in business attending to the wounded. He watched the woman go, holding her arm as she wended her way through the churned up dust of the milling livestock which were being kept under control by a party of women told off for the job.

  Then Red was shooting once more. He saw a pair of braves close in, one holding a Springfield carbine, the other a bow with an arrow already on the string. He took the bow toter as being the most dangerous and shot accordingly. The brave’s face turned into a red mask as the .44 ball hit him and he went backwards, his arrow sailing into the air. The second brave threw his Springfield to his shoulder, sighting down on Red. The young man at Red’s side brought his revolver up and pressed the trigger, letting the hammer fall on a percussion cap. The Apache gave a scream and came down off his horse, hit under the chin by the .36 bullet and with the top of his skull gone as the bullet came out.

  ‘Keep shooting!’ Red growled, seeing the young man’s pale face and hearing his gasp as he looked at the bloody shape in the hoof-churned earth outside the train.

  It was one thing to pour rifle fire int
o a racing bunch at a distance and not know for sure if your rifle was doing the killing. It was another thing again to throw a shot into a man close up and know your bullet and your bullet alone was responsible for doing the taking of a fellow human being’s life. It was a hard and bitter lesson but the young man must learn it if he was going to live in the hard frontier land which was Arizona in the late 1860s.

  The Apaches drew back again. It was a bloody repulse which cost them many lives and the train only a few. The people in the circle were lucky although lucky was perhaps not the best word. They’d followed Dusty’s orders and made good strong barricades from behind which they could shoot in safety for the Apache bullets and arrows would not go through.

  Quickly Dusty reloaded his Army Colts. Louise turned towards him, her face ashy and pale and her hands shaking.

  ‘Did you s-s-see that—that—’

  Laying down his Colts on the table Dusty caught the girl by her shoulders and shook her hard. ‘Stop it, Louise!’ he snapped. ‘We can’t do her any good and being hysterical’s not going to help you stop the same thing happening to you and every woman on the train.’

  ‘Look at it this way, gal,’ the Kid went on, ‘She was dead when they got her, which same’s why they did what they did. She was lucky—they might have took her alive.’

  The girl looked from one Texan to the other. Then her eyes went to her father who stood away from the others and watching the Apaches. She opened her mouth.

  ‘No you don’t, Louise,’ Dusty said before she could speak. ‘You don’t wish you’d stayed home, not just through this. Or if you do I reckon me and the boys have wasted a lot of time and friendship on somebody who wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’ Louise gasped. ‘You’ll never make a poker player, gal,’ grinned Dusty. ‘Not unless you learn to hold that face in better. You didn’t even mean it to yourself. Now load those guns ready. We’re a long ways from out of the woods.’

  Louise turned back to the table and carried on loading the rifles. She knew that Dusty was right. This was a testing ground. A woman who came to live on the frontier must be prepared to accept whatever life brought. The fate of the white woman whose head lay out there might be the fate of every woman on the train if they allowed panic to run away with them. Her eyes went to where the Kid now stood by her father.

  ‘Right lively for tame Injuns, Colonel,’ he drawled. Then he stiffened and stood more erect to peer away into the distance, ‘You got them field glasses handy, sir?’

  ‘In the box on the table,’ replied Raines. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in using such things?’

  The Kid grinned but would not be drawn into defending his previous scoffing at the use of such artificial aids to long distance viewing. In fact the way he focused the field glasses showed he was not entirely unfamiliar with their use. He stood erect, scanning something out on the range with the glasses and looking very excited. It would only have shown to somebody who knew the Kid but Colonel Raines was one who could tell the difference in the laconic casual way the Kid now stood and his normal posture. Handing the glasses to Raines the Kid turned and went towards Dusty. Raines lifted the glasses and trained them across the range. He could see nothing unusual in the line of braves who sat their horses and waited to attack again. Beyond them were a bunch of women who loaded dead warriors on to horses. That could hardly have interested the Kid, for it was normal Apache behavior, they always tried to take their dead with them when they went from a fight. Time after time a brave risked death to swoop down and carry off a dead or wounded companion during the attack on the train. There was nothing much more to make the Kid show much interest, only a very old Indian who sat his horse on a knoll, holding a rifle over his head and looking up at the skies.

  ‘We’ve got us some luck, Dusty,’ the Kid drawled. ‘The leader of this bunch’s out there making his medicine. The old man chief himself trying to find out how come his war gods done stopped looking with favour on their fair-haired boy. If we can drop him we’ll break the attack and they’ll head home real fast.’

  ‘Reckon we could do it?’

  ‘He’s almost five hundred yards out and won’t come in any closer. He don’t need to. His name’s made as a fighting man, he don’t need to take the risks, that gets left to the young braves just making their names.’

  ‘Five hundred yards,’ mused Dusty. ‘Not even you could make a hit at that range with a .44 rimfire.’

  ‘I know,’ agreed the Kid, a calculating gleam in his eyes. ‘I figured two or three of us could get afork our hosses and make a rush, chance fighting through to a range where I can hit him.’ Dusty smiled, a grim cold smile. ‘I’ve already passed the bet on that one. You’d be buzzard bait before you got twenty yards out and I don’t want to wish that even on to a buzzard. Besides, happen the ole chief sees you coming he’ll know you’re after him. It’s no go, Lon.’

  ‘It’ll hold down the attack.’

  ‘No!’ barked Dusty. ‘It’d be certain death for whoever went out there. The only way is for us—hold things here for a few moments, Lon. Colonel, if he tries to leave the circle shoot him through the leg. Do it easy, I want him fit for work when I get him back to the OD Connected.’

  Dusty went around the circle, using his time to check on ammunition, powder and other supplies and on the numbers dead or wounded. He was satisfied with the results of his planning and the few casualties. Coming to a halt by Mark’s side he looked at the mild man.

  ‘I’d like to borrow that Sharps rifle, Thad.’

  The man did not reply as he opened the closed box. Inside, fitted into grips so that it would be held safe and without humping, lay a Sharps buffalo rifle. It was .45 in caliber and using the Berdan style bullet. Along the barrel was fastened a black tube, a telescope, making the new type of rifle the most accurate long-range weapon in the world.

  For all that Dusty knew the Kid, good shot that he was, could hardly be expected to make a hit at five hundred yards with the first shot of a rifle he’d never handled before. The Kid was used to the open type sights and the telescope would take some mastering. It would need to be a one shot hit for at the first miss the Apache chief would take himself somewhere out of sight and make sure he did not give a second chance.

  ‘We need the rifle now, Thad,’ Dusty said quietly. ‘But more than that we need a man who can hit at five hundred yards with it.’

  ‘Thad?’ Mark put in. Then the light dawned. ‘You’re Thad Baylor, aren’t you, friend?’

  The man called Cauldon looked from one to the other. By his side his wife was pale, her eyes on her husband’s face.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And you never admitted to it?’

  ‘The sort of work I did in the war wasn’t what a man wants to boast about,’ the man replied. ‘Yours wasn’t the only assignment I handled, Captain Fog.’

  Dusty remembered the sort of work Thad Baylor did in the War. In more modern times he would have been known as a special duty sniper, sent to pick off vital targets. Dusty remembered one time he and Baylor worked together. A Union spy was making for the Union territory with vital information. He was almost six hundred yards away and would soon be in an area where no Confederate troop could go. Thad Baylor was using a captured Berdan Sharp’s rifle, a weapon not as accurate as the one in the box. For all that Thad Baylor slid from his horse and sighted. His one shot tumbled the spy from his horse, dead without even knowing what hit him. That was the kind of duty Thad Baylor’s rifle skill brought him in the War.

  ‘We need that rifle right now, Thad,’ Dusty put in. ‘And I need a man who can make the best use of it.’

  ‘What do you want doing?’

  ‘There’s the old man chief of this bunch sitting out there at five hundred yards he’s beyond the range our Winchesters can hit at. If we can drop him the rest won’t stay on.’

  Baylor watched Dusty’s face all the time. His voice was low and bitter. ‘I never wanted to kill. I’m a
gunsmith, and a good one. But in the war all I did was kill men. So I changed my name, even after the war the local law kept coming to me. A bad man killed two women and hid out in a barn. Fetch Thad Baylor. He’ll down him. A hold-up man’s hid out behind a tree and shooting down the posse. Got get Thad Baylor to pull him out of it like a coon off a log. So I changed my name and came west with Colonel Raines. Only you recognized me, Captain.’

  ‘This’s urgent, Thad, it’s got to be done,’ Dusty answered.

  ‘It always has. Eight times in the war it was urgent. Three times since the Appomattox it was urgent. Eleven men died without knowing what hit them. They were dead as cold pork within seconds of my lining my sights on them.’

  ‘And how many folks lived because those eleven died?’ Dusty snapped. ‘That spy you downed. You saved three Confederate regiments at least by killing them. I’ve seen a hold-up man or two myself and killed them. I’ve seen posse-men, men with wives and kids, killed by some owlhoot hiding behind a tree. If I could have killed the owlhoots the way you did, I would have. I’d have done it to save other men’s lives.’

  ‘We all did things we didn’t like in the war, amigo,’ Mark put in. ‘This’s different. Kill that old man chief and they’ll pull out. Let him live and they’ll keep hitting us, taking a few more lives each time. You’re the only man who can stop it, Thad.’

  Baylor’s wife listened to every word. She knew how her husband felt, knew how he hated the killing the war forced upon him. Yet her eyes went to a woman who was weeping as she stood by her wagon, her husband dead at her feet. Slowly Mrs. Baylor went to the box and took out the rifle. She turned to her husband holding the long gun out.

  There was a cold look on Baylor’s face as he removed the glasses. They were plain glass for his eyes were just as keen as ever and he only wore them as a disguise. Nobody who remembered Thad Baylor, would take a man who wore glasses all the time for him, the finest shot in the Army of Confederacy.