Troubled range

by Edson, John Thomas

  "Boy, I sure put my brand on you. Right under your right—Hey! That's not on the right side! Mark Counter, what've you been doing?"

  "Would you believe me happen I told you I cut myself shaving?"

  "Nope," she snorted.

  "Now what do you reckon I've been doing, Calam?" he went on.

  "I just wouldn't want to guess."

  There did not seem to be any point in standing talking. So Mark did the next best thing. He scooped Calamity into his arms and kissed her. While it had nothing to do with the subject under discussion, it sure ended Calamity's curiosity faster than a whole heap of lip-flapping would have.

  "Let's hooraw the town tonight, Mark," Calamity suggested when he released her and went on innocently. "That's a swell looking saloon next door."

  "There's a couple of other nice places—"

  "Sure," Calamity interrupted, "but they don't have blackjack games."

  "Blackjack?" Mark asked, sounding nonchalant and innocent.

  "Blackjack!" Calamity repeated. "They do tell me the dealer totes a real mean picnic basket."

  Standing back from Mark, Calamity put her hands on her hips and grinned, her even white teeth flashing. He grinned back. There was something infectious about Calamity Jane's zest for living. Maybe she did not conform to the rigid conventions imposed on women of her day, but she enjoyed every minute of her life.

  Then Mark remembered how Belle Starr smiled when she invited him to bring Calamity to the saloon that night. They were two of a kind, those girls. A man couldn't judge them by the same moral standards which affected other women. Each girl lived her life the way she felt it ought to be lived, and stuck to certain rigid codes. The main difference between Belle and Calamity was in the way their lives had gone. Calamity stayed on the right side of the law, Belle strayed over its line and went against it.

  "How'd you get to know?" Mark asked.

  "You know how folks talk," Calamity grinned.

  "Old Pop Larkin!" Mark snorted. "Darned old goat, never knew a livery barn owner who wouldn't talk the hind-leg off a hoss. How did you get in here?"

  "Bet my door key'll open every room on the floor," Calamity answered. "Did she do that?"

  "She's a Southern lady," Mark replied, spreading his bandana to hide his honourable wounds.

  "Does that mean yes or no?" grinned Calamity. "Go wash up, then we'll head for the Crystal Palace and play us some blackjack."

  Mark's hopes of keeping Calamity and Belle apart did not seem very great. They sank to zero as he and Calamity prepared to go down to the hotel dining-room and have a meal before visiting the Crystal Palace.

  Even as he stepped into the passage with Calamity at his side, Mark saw the door to Belle's room open. It appeared that Belle had been waiting for his appearance, for she walked towards him. They met at the head of the stairs and

  Belle directed a dazzling smile at Calamity.

  "Why, Mark," she said, in her Marigold voice, "You-all never said the Ysabel Kid was in town."

  While the light in the passage was poor, it was not that poor. Mark knew it; Belle knew it; and, if the way Mark felt the girl's body stiffen and bristle at his side was any indication, Calamity knew it too.

  "Miss Tremayne," Mark said, for he had not let Calamity into the secret of Belle's true identity. "Allow me to present Miss Martha Jane Canary. Miss Canary, this is Miss Marigold Tremayne."

  Belle showed well-simulated shock and embarrassment at her "mistake". Her hand fluttered to her mouth and her eye took on an expression of horror as she looked Calamity up and down.

  "Landsakes!" Belle gasped. "How could I have made such a mistake? Why I hear the Ysabel Kid is good looking."

  Hearing the sudden intake of breath at his side, Mark prepared to grab Calamity before she jumped Belle. He did not know Calamity very well. The girl might lack some formal education, but she had a quick set of wits sharpened by her contacts with men and women of all kinds.

  "That's real swell blonde hair you have, honey," she replied. "Why do you dye the roots black?"

  "Perhaps you'd like to try to see if they are black?" Belle replied.

  "Any time. Right—right nice of you to invite me and Mark to join you for supper, Miss Tremayne. We'll accept."

  The change in Calamity's speech came due to a man and woman emerging from one of the rooms. Before either girl could say another word, Mark gripped them by an arm each and hustled them down the stairs.

  Mark enjoyed his supper. His worries that the girls might start a brawl in the dining-room died away. Neither Calamity nor Belle cared greatly for public opinion, but they did know any brawl started in the hotel would be ended quickly. So they contented themselves in firing barbed, biting, catty comments at each other. On the face of it, honours appeared about equal when Mark took their arms and walked them to the saloon.

  Interested eyes watched them enter the saloon and cross to the bar. None of the people in the saloon failed to notice that Belle—or as they thought of her, Marigold Tremayne— did not follow her usual procedure of going upstairs to remove her hat. Also they all knew that Marigold Tremayne never accepted drinks, or went near the bar. An eagerly expectant air ran through the room, following the whispered information that the other gal was Calamity Jane.

  "What'll it be, ladies?" Mark asked, resigned to the fact that there would be a clash and that he could not stop it.

  "Whisky for me," Calamity replied.

  "I'll have a brandy, Mark," Belle went on.

  "Brandy?" Calamity gasped. "French hawg-wash!"

  "A lady doesn't drink whisky," Belle replied; and getting no reaction of her emphasis of the word lady, tried another attack. "It's fattening. Of course, darling, with a figure like yours, what have you to lose?"

  "You're so right," Calamity purred back. "At my age you can eat and drink what you like. But not when you get as old as you are."

  Once more Calamity had come back with a cat-clawing answer that evened the score with Belle. Angrily Belle's fingers drummed on the bar top while she sought for a suitable comment. Calamity grinned at her, enjoying the duel of words and not wanting it to end for a spell.

  Twisting her whisky glass between her fingers, Calamity turned her back to the bar and leaned her elbows on its mahogany top. She looked around the room and her eyes came to rest on the board with the wanted posters. Crossing the room, Calamity came to a halt and studied the centre poster, cocking her head to one side and looking at the addition to the official wording.

  "The toughest gal in the west!" she read in explosive, snorting words. "Now that's not right at all."

  Watched by everybody in the room, Calamity dug a stump of pencil from her pants' pocket. She leaned a hand on the small table somebody had placed before the board and reached out to write "2nd" between the first two words of the message.

  "That's better," she said.

  At the bar Belle clenched her hands into fists and started to move. Mark's hand caught her arm and held her.

  "Easy, Belle," he whispered. "Calam doesn't know who you are. At least, I haven't told her. And Framant's sat over there watching."

  For a moment Mark thought Belle would show enough sense to at least wait until Calamity came back to the bar, then find some other excuse to start a fight. Maybe she would have, for Belle had put time and money into setting herself up in Elkhorn ready to pluck dollar-sign marked feathers from the local banker's tail, except for Calamity's next action.

  "Let's just pretty old Belle up a mite while I'm at it," Calamity went on and began to pencil in a moustache on the picture's top lip.

  Calamity did not notice Belle had crossed the room to her side. Mark knew she had, for his shin hurt where she kicked him and caused him to release her arm. With a shrug, he leaned on the bar. Things had gone too far now, he could not stop the inevitable.

  All eyes went to the table, watching Belle reach out and take the pencil from Calamity's fingers. Everybody, with the exception of Mark, wondered what their lady blackja
ck dealer meant to do and why.

  Placing her hip against Calamity's, Belle thrust hard and sent the red-head staggering a few paces. Then, as Calamity caught her balance and stopped, Belle put down her vanity bag and leaned over to score out Calamity's addition to the poster.

  "I've never met the lady," Belle remarked, ignoring the interest her action aroused among the people in the room. "But I'm sure the statement was correct."

  At his table, Framant leaned forward, studying Belle with cold eyes.

  Unbuckling her gunbelt, Calamity put it down on the table by Belle's bag. She dipped her shoulder and charged Belle, sending her sprawling. Belle caught the wall and prevented .herself falling, but her hat slid back and she brushed it from her head. By this time Calamity had picked up the pencil which Belle dropped and turned to the poster once more.

  Belle sprang forward and Calamity twisted to face her, sitting on the table and raising her feet ready to thrust the blonde away. Only Belle did not come in range. Shooting out her hands, she grabbed for Calamity's ankles and caught hold of the cuffs of her pants instead. Calamity let out a yell of anger and surprise as Belle threw her weight back and heaved. Although she tried to grab something, Calamity failed to find anything she might grip and prevent herself being dragged from the table. She landed on the floor with a thud, but Belle had not finished. Backing away, Belle dragged Calamity across the floor, the other girl bending her legs and thrusting, trying to force herself free and grabbing at chairs or table legs to avoid being hauled along.

  To the tune of laughter and'shouts of encouragement, Belle dragged Calamity across the floor. There was only one way out for Calamity, although not a way a more modest young woman would have cared to take. Unbuckling her waist-belt, she tried to slide out of her pants. Their tightness held her and she grabbed the leg of the faro table as she passed it. This proved firm enough, and the table heavy enough, to anchor her down. Belle grunted and threw her weight back to try to tear Calamity free. Too late she realised what Calamity had done. The pants started to slide and Calamity gave a heave which freed herself. She left her pants in Belle's hands and lost her moccasins.

  Taken by surprise, Belle staggered back, lost her footing, and sat down hard, still clinging to Calamity's pants. Calamity, still wearing her kepi, made a pretty picture, her shirt tail flapping around her shapely bare legs and giving glimpses of the new white, lace-frilled combination chemise and drawers she had bought that afternoon to prove to Mark Counter that she was a real lady at heart. They were the latest fashion among show people, short legged and daring, and Calamity had the sort of figure to set them off to their best advantage.

  Coming to her feet, Calamity flung herself at Belle, landing on the blonde before she made her feet. Grabbing down. Calamity gripped Belle's skirt and heaved at it with all her strength. Belle gave a yell, tried to twist herself free and in doing so threw the final pressure on the tortured cloth. With

  a ripping sound, the skirt tore from waist almost to hem. Rearing back, her trophy firmly gripped in both hands, Calamity tore the skirt away, rolling Belle right over and leaving her black stocking-clad legs, with frilly red garters, and black drawers as brief and attractive as Calamity's own, exposed by the hem of her blouse.

  Once more Calamity sprang into the attack, her hands closing on Belle's blouse. Belle forced herself up, her own hands gripped Calamity's shirt neck and her eyes met Calamity's.

  "Try it!" Belle hissed. "And I'll peel you raw." For once in her life Calamity Jane backed down from a challenge. Nothing she had seen about the blonde told her Belle would not carry out the threat of stripping Calamity naked, even if it meant losing every stitch of clothing she wore in the process. Modesty did not prevent Calamity from calling Belle's bluff. She knew that if they did start to remove more clothing, the owners of the saloon would stop the fight. A hair-yanking brawl between two women was common enough for the owners to let one go on, it was regarded as being a bit of added entertainment for the customers. But there were limits to how far the owners dare let such a fight

  go.

  So Calamity released her hold of Belle's blouse, for she did not want what promised to be a good fight stopping. Not until she had handed that blonde hussy the licking of her life as a warning to stay away from Calamity Jane's man.

  While releasing Belle's blouse, Calamity made up her mind how to handle the situation. She had been taught to fight by soldiers and freighters, men who showed her the value of a fist over hair-yanking. In more than one saloon brawl this knowledge had given her a decided edge over the other girl.

  "First one into her belly," Calamity thought. "Then the next to her jaw."

  The first drove into the stomach. Up came the other hand and caught the down-dropping jaw—

  And Calamity hit the floor on her rump, her head spinning. She had learned an important lesson. The other girl also knew how to use her fists.

  Now it was Belle's turn to become over-confident. She sprang forward and drew back her foot. Calamity showed that she had learned other lessons in the art of self-defence. Quickly she hooked her left foot behind Belle's left ankle, placed her right foot on Belle's left knee, pulled on the ankle and pushed on the knee. Caught with her other leg raised for the kick, Belle could not stop herself going over, but she broke the worst of her fall with her hands.

  They came up and flung themselves at each other. For a time it might have been two men fighting. They used their fists, wrestling throws and holds, none of the usual tactics of a pair of fighting women. The watching crowd yelled their encouragement and already the house gamblers were taking bets on the results. Not that they had any clear indication of which girl would win for they seemed evenly matched.

  "Howdy, Mark," a sleepy voice said.

  Turning from watching Belle drive Calamity back into the crowd with a battery of punches, Mark looked at the speaker.

  "Howdy, Joel. What're you fixing to do about this? Speaking as a duly appointed officer of the law that is."

  "Ain't doing nothing," Stocker replied, watching the crowd scatter as the two girls spun round and through them. "My job's to keep the peace and I wouldn't reckon anybody's breaking it." He paused and eyed Mark with that same sleepy gaze. "How do you figure in on this?"

  "Could say I brought them together," Mark admitted. "But, knowing Calamity, she'd've come in here and tangled with somebody, and B—Marigold's the most likely one for her to pick from."

  "Huh huhi" Stocker grunted. "Figured it that way myself. Only I wouldn't have expected Miss Marigold to be the one. Alius struck me as being a real lady."

  The "real lady" was at that moment swinging Calamity around by the hair and sent her sprawling across the room to hit the wall. Calamity seemed dazed by the impact and stood with legs apart, back braced against the wall.

  "Best stop—!" Stocker began as Belle moved in towards Calamity.

  His words stopped for Belle did not deliver a crippling kick at her helpless opponent. Instead she stopped and

  started to slap Calamity's face, alternating hands and swinging the other girl's head from side to side. The pain of the slaps revived Calamity and she thrust forward, her hands tangling into Belle's hair. If Belle's yell of pain was anything to go by, the grip Calamity had on her hurt.

  The fight developed into a more female brawl with Calamity's hair-yanking opening. Reeling backwards, the two girls spun across the room in a flailing tangle of arms and legs, pulling hair, swinging slaps and punches. One piece of feminine fighting was denied them. Calamity's work did not tend to allow her to grow long nails, and Belle knew men objected to playing with a gambler who had long enough fingernails to make identifying nicks on the cards.

  Even without scratching, the two girls put on a tolerable example of the art of bar-room brawling. On their feet, or rolling over and over on the floor, they went at it'for almost fifteen minutes without a pause.

  Then Belle was flat on her back and Calamity dropped to kneel astride her with the intention of grabbing her
hair and bouncing her head on the floor. Belle knew as well as Calamity what the red-head intended to do. Bringing up her legs, Belle hooked them under Calamity's armpits from behind, almost as if she was trying to perform a full nelson with legs instead of arms. Calamity gave a yell as she went over backwards, but carried on rolling to land on her feet and dropped down. She landed on Belle's raised feet, felt them against her chest and knew what to expect even if she could not prevent it happening.

  Thrusting up with her feet, Belle sent Calamity flying backwards across the room to land on a table top. Calamity saw Belle coming at her and rolled back off the table, throwing it over. It landed on Belle's right foot, the edge thudding down on her toes. Belle squealed in pain. She was still hopping on her other foot when Calamity rounded the table.

  Calamity swung herself around, her fist coming in a circle which ended on the side of Belle's jaw. The crowd scattered as Belle went sprawling across the room, hit the bar and clung to it. Dazedly Belle watched Calamity come forward, a chair gripped in her hands ready to strike. The blonde sobbed for

  breath, she tried to force herself from the bar to avoid the blow.

  "We'd better stop Calam," Mark said to Stocker.

  "Ye—Dabnad it, look there."

  Instead of lifting the chair and crashing it on to Belle, Calamity threw it to one side. She staggered to the bar and Belle crouched ready to fight back.

  "H—hold it!" Calamity gasped.

  "H—had e—enough?" Belle replied in surprise.

  "No—no—Feel like a drink."

  "A—and me. Fred, whisky and brandy."

  "What do you make of that?" Stocker asked.

  "Those gals sure must be enjoying the fight. Belle could have finished Calamity against the wall there, and Calamity could sure have sung B—Marigold to sleep with that chair. There's been other times when they could have used a knee, or foot and didn't."