The Floating Outfit 12

by J. T. Edson

  Having met Doolin on two occasions, not connected with the outlaw’s professional life, Mark liked the man. It did not fit in with Mark’s ideas of Doolin’s character that the outlaw would allow Cattle Annie and Little Britches to do the dirty and risky work of hold-up while he and the other men stayed hidden. In fact it seemed highly unlikely that Doolin would waste time robbing chance-passing strangers. Finally, apart from their friendship, Doolin would not risk antagonizing a man as dangerous as Mark Counter; a man with capable, tough and good friends to back him, or take the vengeance trail should Mark be shot in a robbery.

  He allowed the rope to tighten, for Cattle Annie held the carbine like she knew how to use it. Remembering Doolin boasting about the girl’s sighting eye, Mark knew better than to object.

  “Now ease your hands round in front of you,” Annie ordered and Mark obeyed.

  Showing skill in the handling, Little Britches sent two coils of rope flipping out to settle around his arms and draw tight. Now Mark remained very still. Given a chance and a few minutes to work up to it, he might have snapped the three strands of hard-plaited Manila rope around him, but not in time to stop the girl in front planting lead into him.

  “Cover him, Britches!” Annie ordered, leaning her carbine against a bush. “And keep that rope tight.”

  Stepping forward, Annie lugged a pair of old Bean Giant handcuffs from her hip pocket. Mark tensed himself, but felt something hard and round gouge into his back. Something about right for the size of the business end of a Navy Colt. Doolin allowed Britches to be fair with a carbine and handy with a light caliber Colt. Even if she could not shoot like Dusty Fog, the girl would be highly unlikely to miss at that range, and Mark had heard her cock the Colt as she approached.

  Had there been men along Mark could have acted in a different manner. A man could not kick a girl in the guts, then jump her to get a weapon, which he might have chanced

  with a man. He knew Doolin would soon put an end to such foolishness. Which worried Mark. Where was Doolin?

  The handcuffs clicked on to his wrists. They looked like an old pair, probably stolen from some sheriff’s office. He hoped the girls had a key, although it did not worry him a great deal if they had not.

  “Don’t tickle,” he warned as Annie bent to unlash the support thongs on the bottom of his holsters.

  Yet Mark felt puzzled. He could not see why the girls would take the trouble to handcuff him if robbery was their plan. Nor would they waste time in taking off his gunbelt.

  Slinging Mark’s gunbelt around her shoulders, Annie stepped back. Britches removed the rope with the easy speed of a cowhand and stood grinning at the other girl.

  “It worked, Annie,” she said. “Just like we planned it.”

  “Sure,” Annie replied, turning to walk towards Mark’s horse.

  “Watch him, gal!” Mark ordered. “He doesn’t take to strangers handling him.”

  To prove its master’s words the big stallion swung its head towards the girl, snorting a warning. Annie showed she knew something about horses. Talking quietly and steadily, she walked towards the horse. Out shot her hand to haul the rifle from the saddleboot, then she sprang clear and avoided a vicious chop from the stallion’s jaws.

  “What now?” Mark asked, puzzled at the girls’ actions.

  “You’re coming with us,” Britches replied, stepping around him, having holstered her Colt while she coiled the rope.

  “Why?” Mark asked.

  “Why’d you think?” Annie answered.

  Mark did not reply in words, but his smile brought an angry flush to Annie’s face and caused Britches to giggle.

  “Not for that!” Annie snorted.

  “You wouldn’t need to hawg-tie me if it was,” grinned Mark. “Why then?”

  “We know you, Mark Counter. Your pappy’s coming up trail right now.”

  “So?”

  “So we figure he’ll pay a thousand dollars to get you

  back,” Britches explained and Annie frowned at her for stealing the thunder.

  It took Mark almost thirty seconds to get what Britches meant.

  “How long’s Bill Doolin gone in for kidnapping?’ he asked.

  “Shucks, this isn’t Bill’s idea,” Britches replied. “It’s mine—well, mine and Annie’s.”

  Her amendment came as she saw a frown crease Annie’s brow.

  “Sure,” Annie agreed. “Bill and the boys went out to pull off a raid and left us at a hide-out. Only we come into Guthrie, saw you, learned who you was and where you was headed. Came out here, laid in wait and caught you. Ole Bill doesn’t know sic ’em about this.”

  That figured, happen a man came to think about it. Bill Doolin must be far away for the girls to be trying such foolishness. Mark knew Doolin would put an end to the farce quickly enough should he return. So Mark reckoned he might as well go along with the girls. His father’s herd would not be close enough for them to deliver the ransom message for several days and by that time anything could have happened to set Mark free.

  “On your hoss, big boy,” Annie ordered. “And no tricks, or they’ll be calling you Limpy.”

  While Mark swung afork his horse, Annie threw a bullet into his rifle’s chamber. Britches hurried off to return with a pair of wiry ponies. She mounted one, jerking the carbine from its saddleboot, after strapping on her rope to the horn. Annie booted her carbine and retained Mark’s rifle in her hands to help keep the big Texan under control.

  “Get going, and don’t try a trick,” Britches ordered.

  “Nary a trick, ma’am,” replied Mark, now thoroughly enjoying the unusual experience of being kidnapped by a pair of pretty little girls. “Where’d you want for me to go?”

  “Turn right into the trees,” Annie replied. “We’ll point you from there.”

  They rode for a time in silence, Mark in the lead and the two girls like the twin points of the letter V behind him. However as they left the wooded land behind them and wound through the rolling Indian Nations land, Britches could restrain herself no longer.

  “Boy!” she said, bringing her pony alongside Mark’s stallion. “Won’t this shake ole Bill down to his toes. And Red Buck and the rest. We’ll make a thousand on our first chore.”

  “Sure,” Annie agreed delightedly. “And they wouldn’t take us with ’em this time in case the going got rough. I bet they take us along in future.”

  Mark considered this highly likely, or that Doolin would throw them out on their rumps for pulling such a fool trick. He could imagine Doolin’s comments when the outlaw heard the two girls had been stupid enough to think of kidnapping Mark Counter and asking for a ransom from his father, Big Rance Counter. Mark also thought that the girls might find Doolin’s reaction far from the one they hoped to receive.

  For a pair of bold, daring kidnappers, the girls made a bad mistake. They took trouble to hide their tracks and stuck to country over which the following of sign would be a slow, difficult proceeding. Yet they made no attempt to blindfold him and prevent him seeing where they took him.

  After covering some five miles from the trail, the girls pointed Mark down into a wide, winding valley. The slopes rose fairly steep, with a scattering of rocks, trees and bushes covering them, but the bottom lay open and offered good grazing.

  Turning a bend in the valley brought them into sight of a small log cabin. A snug retreat well hidden from prying eyes. To one side of it lay a spring which widened into a deep pool and trickled off in a stream which ran through the edges of a couple of pole corrals. Although the corrals had no horses in them, they had been in recent use. All in all the place looked ideal for gentlemen following Mr. William Doolin’s self-effacing business.

  “Get yourself down, big boy,” Annie ordered as they reached the corrals. “Watch him, Britches, while I tend to the hosses.”

  “You-all reckon you can handle that big blood bay of mine, Annie-gal?” asked Mark, swinging from his saddle.

  Annie bit her lip, eyeing t
he stallion doubtfully. This was a snag she and Britches had not foreseen when they rode into

  Guthrie meaning to find somebody to rob as proof for Doolin of their capabilities. Of course, they had not thought of kidnapping anybody, either. The idea came to them after they left town meaning to merely hold Mark up and empty his wallet. Then Annie had her brilliant idea, to pull off a more impressive, and better paying job. Now she found a problem, for her love of horses would not allow her to neglect the big stallion. Yet she could see no way out of the predicament.

  “Happen I give my word will you unlock one cuff and let me tend to him?” Mark suggested.

  For a moment Annie did not reply. She looked Mark over from head to foot, then glanced at Britches, seeking advice.

  “You’ll give us your solemn word not to try anything and let us fasten you soon as you’re done?” Britches asked.

  “As solemn as they come, and they don’t come solemner,” Mark replied, hoping the amusement he felt did not show.

  The two girls drew away and went into a huddle, talking and throwing looks in his direction. Mark watched them, leaning against the corral rail and awaiting their decision.

  “Don’t you try nothing,” Annie warned, taking the handcuffs key from her pants pockets.

  “Ma’am!” Mark answered, drawing himself up indignantly, “if you’re doubting a Southern gentleman’s word—”

  “Shuckens, no!” Britches put in. “We wouldn’t do that.”

  Clearly the two girls accepted that he would keep his word, for Annie unlocked the handcuffs without taking any precautions such as handing either Mark’s gunbelt which hung around her shoulders, or her own revolver, to Britches. If Mark had wished, he could have drawn the nearest of his Colts and disarmed the girls. He did not. After all, a man should ought to keep his solemn given Word to a pair of gallant lady outlaws.

  After attending to his horse, Mark carried his saddle to the lean-to behind the house and hung it alongside the girls’ on the burro. Then, as solemnly as Lee offering his sword to Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse, he held out his right arm and allowed Annie to secure it.

  “March to the house,” Annie ordered.

  Grinning, Mark marched. His horse stood in one corral, the girls’ mounts in the other. Annie brought her carbine and Mark’s rifle along and Britches carried her carbine under her arm.

  The door opened into the main room of the cabin, with a stove and cooking range to one side, a rough table and maybe half a dozen chairs as the sole furnishings. A wall split the cabin in two parts, the rear being given over to a couple of bedrooms.

  Britches saw the way Mark looked around him and her cheeks flushed a little.

  “This’s just a lay-off place,” she said. “You should oughta see our main hide-out, it’s got rugs on the floor, even a pianny. Ain’t that so, Annie?”

  “It sure enough is,” Annie agreed. “Make yourself to home, mister. We’ll fix you a meal, then you can write us a note to deliver to your pappy, telling him what we aim to do to you happen he don’t pay up.”

  She hung Mark’s gunbelt on a peg by the door, and put the rifle and carbine on the racks which lined the walls. A happy smile came to Cattle Annie’s face. It sure would be great to show Bill and the boys that they could handle their share of the business.

  ~*~

  For almost an hour Fatso Kinnear had been cursing the man who laid him low after rough-handling him. While it never was much to look at, his fat face had an ashy greenish shade which made it even more repulsive.

  His partner did not say much, though less from a spirit of Christian forgiving of his enemies than because his swollen jaw did not make for easy talking. So he stood scratching his long, shaggy hair and thinking on much the same lines as Kinnear spoke.

  The two bounty hunters stood in the cheap livery stable which doubled as a place to leave their horses and a hotel room for themselves. True Guthrie was a fair sized city with several hotels and rooming houses, but every one appeared to be booked up solid when the two bounty hunters arrived asking for a place to sleep while in town. On hearing of their problem, the owner of the livery barn generously offered to allow them to sleep in an empty stall mostly used for penning his pigs.

  “How about the smell?” Rushton had asked when presented with the magnanimous offer.

  “Don’t worry,” the owner replied. “The pigs won’t mind it.”

  Rushton still did not know how to take the remark.

  “I’ll kill that big blond feller, see if I don’t!” Kinnear snarled, showing a remarkable lack in inventive powers as he had made the threat at least six times. “You see if I don’t.”

  At that moment the third member of their evil organization entered the barn and slouched towards the two men. He came silently, for he wore Indian moccasins. Nor did the Indian motif end there. His fringed buckskins smelled like a Kiowa lodge and had been greased and smoke blackened to a pitch where they could be located when down-wind—and upwind too, happen a man had a delicate nose. His face bore the high cheekbones, the slightly hooked nose and slit-eyed look of an Indian, yet had a sickly pallor. Sunset Charlie Mallalieu’s mother had been an Osage Indian who even the Osages regarded as being beyond the pale; his father, a white of French birth, although he always celebrated a festival called Yom Kippur. The half-breed inherited the worst characteristics of both races and none of their good points.

  “I found-um something,” he said, hitching up his gunbelt, with its Beals Navy revolver at the right and Bowie knife at the left side.

  “Who?” asked Kinnear.

  “Those two gals who ride wit’ Doolin. I found out who they is from Injun feller. Him say they gals who ride with Doolin all right.”

  “Got mon’ on ’em?” mumbled Rushton.

  By this he did not ask if the girls carried money on their persons, but if any interested law-enforcement body had offered a reward for their capture dead or alive, preferably the first.

  “No. Them gals not impo’t’ enough,” Mallalieu replied.

  “Then why in hell are you coming bothering us?” demanded Kinnear; his stomach seemed to be trying to crawl up his throat as he caught a whiff of the half-breed’s stench.

  “Them leave town. I see-um go. Maybe-so they go to Doolin’s hide-out.”

  Instantly the other two sat up and took notice. Bill Doolin and his bunch carried big money on their heads. Higher than Kinnear and co. had ever made, for they tended to be coyotes rather than buffalo-wolves in their line. If their financial situation had been better they might have passed up going after the Doolin gang as far too risky. But, as Kinnear and Rushton were all too painfully aware, beggars could not be choosers.

  “Word has-um that Doolin and his boys away on raid,” Mallalieu went on. “Maybe them gals lead us to-um straggler.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Rushton. “They could at that. Let’s go see.”

  They took their horses and belongings, slipped out of town and Mallalieu pointed out the girls’ tracks. At first the half-breed found no difficulty in following the trail of the two horses. He led the way to where they left their horses among the trees and read the story left by their feet. It appeared that the girls had set up a hold-up on the trail, although none of the trio could think why, nor could they decide why the man the girls stopped should accompany them into the trees.

  “Looks like they met up with the feller to take him back to their hide-out,” Kinnear remarked.

  “Let’s take after him,” Rushton replied, speaking with difficulty.

  However, tracking the three horses became more difficult once they left the trees behind. Although Mallalieu could cling to the trail, it took good and careful sign-reading to do so, and good and careful sign-reading could not be done at a gallop. Their slow rate of progress did nothing to improve Kinnear’s and Rushton’s tempers, for it prevented them from getting close enough to even see their prospective victims. Had they done so their plan of action would have been simple yet effective; sneak up when
the three riders were bedded down for the night and pour a volley of rifle fire from the darkness into the sleeping camp.

  “No see-um tracks anymore,” Mallalieu announced.

  “Leave it until daylight then,” Kinnear answered. “We’ll camp here and move on at dawn.”

  The first light of dawn found them with a problem. Rushton’s jaw was so swollen that he could barely speak a coherent word. Yet he did not trust the other two enough to allow them to go on without him. They rode on and came to a wide valley with steep slopes covered with rocks, bushes and trees. Here Mallalieu drew his horse to a halt and cocked his head on one side, listening.

  “They close,” he said.

  Kinnear swung from his saddle and drew the rifle from the boot. He saw the other two had followed his lead and nodded his head.

  “Let’s move in and take a look,” he said.

  ~*~

  Give them their due, Cattle Annie and Little Britches might be no more than a couple of fool kids playing at being outlaws, but they sure could whomp up a mess of hog-jowls and mustard greens fit to set before a king.

  Mark ate well, despite the handicap of being handcuffed and having his ankles roped together in an effective hobble which would not permit him to walk at anything faster than a snail’s pace. In payment for his meal Mark entertained the girls with jokes and stories, keeping them laughing and making a favorable impression on them both. He noticed the way Britches studied his great spread of shoulders and slim waist with interest. And, although she tried to hide it, Annie was taking in his handsome features, noticing the virile, vital health of his giant physique. This did not surprise Mark, for he was used to attracting the interested looks of females.

  With the supper done, Mark suggested he helped Britches wash the dishes. He sensed rather than saw Annie watching them. The elder girl grunted her disapproval as Mark, seemingly by accident, bumped into Britches who began to giggle. When the dishes were done Annie told Britches to watch the big feller and walked from the cabin.