by J. T. Edson
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Colonel Charles Goodnight believed that cattle could be driven to the railroad in Kansas and sold for high prices to supply people in the East with beef.
Not everybody approved of Goodnight’s idea. The owners of hide and tallow factories could buy all the cattle they wanted at between one and four dollars. If he should succeed, their vast profits would be brought to an end.
Austin Viridian went to Fort Worth with the intention of preventing Goodnight’s ideas from being circulated. Soon after his arrival, he came upon a small, blond cowhand who was talking of driving herds to Kansas. Viridian had two hard cases with him when he went to silence the cowhand.
The hide and tallow man was about to make a serious mistake—his ‘victim’s’ name was Dusty Fog!
THE FLOATING OUTFIT 6: SET TEXAS BACK ON HER FEET
By J. T. Edson
First published by Transworld Publishers in 1973
Copyright © 1973, 2016 by J. T. Edson
First Smashwords Edition: December 2016
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.
Author’s Note
At the request of the J. T. Edson Appreciation Society and Fan Club, I am putting the histories of Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid in the form of appendices to the book. This will allow the old hands to avoid repetition, but enable new readers to learn details of the floating outfit’s qualifications and careers.
Chapter One – This Could Ruin Us!
“NEW AND MORE LUCRATIVE MARKETS FOR CATTLE!”
The headline of the Fort Worth Herald was in big, bold black letters which testified to the importance placed upon the story by the editor.
Raising his eyes from the newspaper, Austin Viridian shoved back his white ‘planter’s’ hat to show the receding line of his close-cropped brown hair. Then he swept his gaze around the other occupants of the Pilar Hide & Tallow Company’s office.
Tall, broad-shouldered and in his late thirties, Viridian could hardly be considered handsome. He had coarse, irregular features that were reddened and puffy from much good living. Their surly lines gave more than a hint of an ill-tempered nature. Although he still retained a good physical development, there was a bulging to his waistline that grew more pronounced with the passing of each month. Well-dressed in a black broadcloth coat, brocade-fronted vest, white shirt with a black cravat knotted in the manner of a bow-tie, yellowish-brown Nankeen trousers, Hersome gaiter boots and a black leather gun belt with an ivory-handled Remington New Model Police revolver in the cross draw holster on its left side—he looked like a hard, tough, ruthless self—made man.
Viridian was all of that. While his wife’s money had bought him a partnership in the Pilar Hide & Tallow Company, it had been his specialized knowledge that had made the factory one of the most efficient of its kind in Texas. He had designed the huge building, to which the office was an annex, with all its fixtures and fittings to facilitate the rapid killing of large numbers of cattle and the disposal of the unwanted portions of the carcasses.
Being one of the partners, Viridian had no real reason to work as a slaughter-man in the factory. The prices paid by the Company for the cattle were so low that their profit margin precluded the need for him to participate in such an activity. He did so when the mood took him because he enjoyed performing the task and derived considerable pleasure from watching a large and powerful creature tumbling dead as a result of his expert wielding of the poleaxe. It was his frequently-made boast that he could down a longhorn—be it a calf, young steer, grown cow or prime bull, the factory made no distinction—more neatly and with less fuss than any man on the Company’s payroll.
Slowly Viridian looked around the table, studying the woman and four men who were sharing it with him. The table, half a dozen chairs, a roll-top desk and a small safe were the office’s sole furnishings as it was used only for the general administration of the factory. All business transactions were carried out in the back room of Bernard Schweitzer’s general store in the town of Pilar. Normally such a meeting would have been held there, or at one of the partners’ homes, but Viridian had been working at the factory. The others had considered that the story in the newspaper, which had been brought from Fort Worth by Viridian’s wife and Giuseppe Profaci, was of such importance that they had come to the office rather than delay by sending word for him to join them.
Marlene Viridian was a tall, beautiful brunette with a statuesque build that her gray travelling costume—somewhat disheveled as a result of the speed with which she had returned from Fort Worth—emphasized in a most satisfactory manner. There was a haughty, imperious look about her that suggested she could be strong-willed and arrogant. She had long since lost any romantic notions that she might have harbored towards her husband, replacing them with the feeling that she had married beneath herself. Anyway, in the first place their marriage had been contracted for business reasons rather than out of love and she still controlled most of the family’s money. She was one of the owners and as such insisted on being present at all of the partners’ meetings.
To Marlene’s right sat the senior partner. Although the richest of the four, Schweitzer invariably dressed in a shabby old suit of sober black and only rarely wore a collar and tie. He was in his late fifties, plump, practically bald and wore steel-rimmed spectacles which made him look far more benevolent than was his nature. He was a shrewd businessman, with many useful contacts who helped the Company sell its hides and tallow.
Next to Schweitzer, Giuseppe Profaci slumped in his chair. Despite his well cut, if travel-stained, brown suit, he could not be mistaken for other than what he was. Broad-shouldered, of medium height, he looked Italian. Good living had laid a layer of fat on his bulky frame, but under it were hard muscles. A skilled builder, he had erected the factory and the Colonial-style mansions in which the partners lived.
Studying Profaci, Viridian wondered if he suspected what had been going on in his absence. He had a voluptuous, passionate wife, Gianna, who was about half his age. While he and Marlene had been on the business trip to Fort Worth, Viridian had spent much time—including two whole nights—in Gianna’s company. There was no suggestion on Profaci’s face that he knew of the betrayal, only worry as he scowled at the newspaper.
Dressed in the kind of clothing that had been popular among rich French-Creoles in New Orleans before the War Between the States—gray top hat, matching frock coat, frilly bosomed white silk shirt, flowing cravat with a diamond stickpin, fancy vest, tight-legged white trousers and black gaiter boots—Pierre de Froissart was also about medium height; well-built, gray-haired but still handsome and distinguished-looking. Although he displayed no sign of being armed, Viridian knew that the black walking-cane leaning against his chair concealed the blade of a serviceable sword. There was also a pearl-handled Remington Double Derringer in each enlarged pocket of his vest. He was skilled in the use of the weapons.
From the Creole, Viridian lifted his gaze to the remaining man. W
hile grudgingly conceding that Harlow Dolman had proved very useful to the Company on several occasions, Viridian resented his presence. He was not a partner and the burly man objected to him learning too much about their affairs. There were personal reasons for the antipathy. When speaking to Viridian, Dolman always adopted a tone which implied that he was addressing a social inferior. Also, he was always over-attentive to Marlene. Viridian was wondering what had brought Dolman from Fort Worth. Obviously, from his appearance, he had travelled down in the company of Marlene and Profaci. The burly man could not think what his reason had been, the Italian’s presence had ruled out the obvious one.
Matching Viridian’s height, Dolman was more slender and very handsome. Nothing in his appearance, as he lounged with an elbow resting insolently on the back of Marlene’s chair, hinted that he was a member of the State Police; an organization brought into being by the Davis Reconstruction Administration to replace the disbanded Texas Rangers. He wore a black U.S. Army officer’s Burnside campaign hat, with its brim down and bearing no insignia. The waist-long brown leather jacket, dark gray shirt, the dark blue bandana knotted around his throat, skin-tight gray riding breeches and brown Hessian boots were of civilian cut and manufacture. They set off his athletic figure to its best advantage, augmenting his curly black hair and good-looking features.
About Dolan’s waist the Western-style gun belt carried a rosewood handled Colt 1861 Navy Belt Pistol—a revolver despite its name—in a split-fronted, spring-retention holster known as a ‘clamshell’. The drop of the holster was connected to the belt by a metal swivel stud and the tip hung free instead of being tied to his right thigh. All of the Colt’s trigger guard was exposed, by having the leather of the holster’s front section cut down below its level.
That had been done for a purpose. When Dolman’s right hand closed around the rosewood butt, its forefinger passed through the trigger guard and stabbed a flat switch on the inside of the rig. That caused the outer portion to hinge back and liberated the revolver.
Although Viridian did not accept the captain’s claim to have invented the ‘clamshell’ holster, he acknowledged—if only to himself—that Dolman was reasonably competent in its use. However, the burly man considered that he was just as good—maybe even better—with his more conventional gun-rig. The time might come, Viridian realized, when he would need to put his theory to the test. Almost everything about Dolman set his teeth on edge.
Dolman looked like a wealthy, smart, even dandified young man. There was, however, a suggestion of hardness and an undercurrent of real cruelty on his face, causing him to exude an aura of reckless disdain that attracted some women and antagonized many men.
Viridian was one of the men who found Dolman an anathema and he suspected that his wife was more than platonically attracted by the captain. That increased his feeling of hatred. While there was no love lost between him and Marlene, and he would be pleased to get rid of her, he intended that it would be he who selected the manner of the separation.
Taking his thoughts from Dolman and his wife, Viridian waited for somebody to comment upon the item in the newspaper.
The story commenced by mentioning that a herd of cattle had been driven by Colonel Charles Goodnight from Young County, Texas, to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. While there had been other trail drives, two details set Goodnight’s effort apart. First; the three thousand head, a much larger number than anybody had previously attempted to move as a single herd, were handled by less than twenty men. Second; they had been sold to the Army as food for the Apaches on the reservations, for—and this was the point which the hide and tallow men found most disturbing—eight cents a pound on the hoof.
‘Eight cents a pound, on the hoof!’ Schweitzer breathed, knowing that the expression meant as the animals stood and not after they had been butchered and dressed out. He did some rapid mental arithmetic. ‘Given an average weight of only eight hundred pounds each, that’s sixty-four dollars a head.’
‘And we’re only paying four dollars a head, tops, with calves thrown in free,’ de Froissart went on, with the accent of a well-bred Southron gentleman. ‘I don’t like the sound of it. What rancher’s going to accept our prices when they can get that kind of money from the Army?’
‘So how long will the Army keep paying those prices?’ Viridian sniffed. He disliked the elegant Creole almost as much as he disliked Dolman and for the same general reasons. He was also pleased to display his knowledge of business matters. ‘They’ll not need too many cattle to feed the Apaches and, anyway, it’ll only be the ranchers in the western countries who’ll take them. The rest will have to keep coming to the hide and tallow factories. There’s nowhere else for them to go.’
‘You should have finished reading the story,’ Marlene suggested with asperity. ‘I wouldn’t have come rushing back from Fort Worth if that’s all there was to it.’
‘Listen to this,’ de Froissart ejaculated, having already drawn that conclusion and continued reading. ‘“While the Army’s needs are limited, the trail drive to Fort Sumner has proven that it is possible to take herds of at least three thousand head for long distances and with much smaller crews than was previously believed necessary. Colonel Goodnight claims that the lesser number of men not only reduces the expense involved in making the drive, but allows the herd to be handled with greater ease and efficiency.”’
‘So they’ll be able to bring us bigger herds and save money on the crews’ wages,’ Viridian grunted. ‘I don’t see—’
‘You will,’ Dolman promised, eyeing the burly man in a mocking manner.
‘“For some time now,”’ de Froissart went on, ‘“Colonel Goodnight and other ranchers have been concerned over the serious depletion in breeding stock caused by the low prices paid at the hide and tallow factories. So they have been looking into the possibility of other, more lucrative markets. Having heard that beef is in short supply and commanding high prices in the East, Colonel Goodnight had contacted buyers in Chicago and New York. The replies have been most encouraging and it is his intention to make his next drive to the railroad in Kansas. Once there, the cattle will be purchased and shipped east on the trains.”’
‘I see what you mean, Marlene,’ Schweitzer stated solemnly. ‘This could ruin us!’
‘Huh!’ Viridian snorted, being unwilling to concede that his wife might have acted correctly in bringing the matter to their attention. ‘Who else will be fool enough to try taking herds all the way to Kansas?’
‘Pierre still hasn’t finished the story,’ Dolman pointed out, watching the red flush of anger creep into the woman’s cheeks and being delighted by the venomous glare which she directed at her husband.
An ambitious man, Dolman had no intention of remaining a peace officer; even a comparatively important one. Especially as he suspected that the days of Davis’s much hated, generally corrupt and inefficient State Police were numbered. To his way of thinking, there was no real, or—more importantly—profitable future in that organization. Nor would he be acceptable in whatever force replaced it. So, what he wanted—and was determined to attain —was control of a thriving, lucrative business.
The Pilar Hide & Tallow Company had struck him as being ideal for his needs. From what Marlene had told him, while making love, she would not be averse to him joining her in a bid to take over the Company.
‘“Colonel Goodnight will be attending the Ranch Owners’ convention to be held at the conclusion of the Tarrant County Fair at Fort Worth,”’ de Froissart continued. ‘“In addition to explaining his method of handling a large trail herd, he will be discussing the new markets for the cattle. He also hopes to be able to introduce some of the Eastern buyers to confirm his statements. Colonel Goodnight says that, if his plans are successful, the sale of cattle in Kansas will help set Texas back on her feet.”’
‘He’s right about that,’ Dolman commented, taking a malicious satisfaction from watching the anxiety shown by Schweitzer and de Froissart, the partners most capable
of appreciating the danger to their Company. ‘The men who make the drives and sell the herds in Kansas will bring back more money than they could make by selling to you. Perhaps not as high as sixty-four dollars a head, but more than the four dollars you’ve been paying. And it will only be steers they’ll need to take, not breeding stock.’
From the expressions on their faces, not only Schweitzer and de Froissart, but Viridian and Profaci were growing increasingly aware of the facts stated by the captain.
Left impoverished and disenfranchised as a result of supporting the Confederate States during the War, the people of Texas—with a few exceptions—were in dire straits. They had no industries or mineral resources capable of bringing in revenue and their sole assets were the herds of cattle which roamed and bred prolifically across the vast miles of open range.
While the cattle existed in enormous numbers, the only market for them in any quantity had been at the hide and tallow factories. As the supply far exceeded the demand, particularly since the end of the War, the price paid for the cattle was very low. So low, in fact, that ranchers were compelled to sell cows and bulls which would otherwise have been used for breeding purposes.
With only the hides and the tallow having any commercial value, the whole operation of the various factories was very wasteful. After the two saleable portions of the carcasses had been removed, the remains—including all of the meat—were thrown into the Brazos River (along which many of the factories were situated) or disposed of in a similar fashion.
‘If this story’s got around—’ Schweitzer began, looking at each of his partners in turn.
‘It has,’ Dolman warned. ‘Ranchers from all over Texas have been telegraphing to friends, or the Fort Worth hotels, asking for accommodation. While the County Fair’s offering horse-races, steer-roping and cutting horse contests, they’re not coming just for that.’