by J. T. Edson
‘How about it, John,’ asked Goodnight, ‘do you have any of this young lady’s cattle with your herd?’
‘Brother Pitzer’s brought eleven hundred head at least, Charlie,’ Chisum answered, looking his most guileless. ‘You know I’ve not had time to look ’em over yet. Could be that maybe a couple or so of her’n’s strayed in if the boys drove the herd across her land.’
‘A couple or so!’ the girl spat out. ‘They run off a bunch of over a hundred that we’d gathered and were holding. Damn it! I saw them do it!’
Studying the girl’s face, Goodnight doubted if the righteous indignation on it could be assumed to give strength to a lie. So he gave his attention once more to the other rancher. Goodnight knew that the incompetence of Chisum’s younger brother had caused the loss of a large herd on its way to Young County. On receiving the news, Chisum had stated his intention of rectifying the situation. He ordered Pitzer to return and gather sufficient of his Long Rail or unbranded stock to replace the lost cattle. Despite the vast numbers of longhorns roaming the unfenced Texas ranges, Goodnight had been surprised when Pitzer returned so quickly. If the girl was telling the truth—and there seemed to be no reason why she should lie—the rapidity with which Chisum’s brother had collected the replacement herd was explained.
One thing Goodnight knew for sure: the girl’s allegation had to be investigated and prompt action taken if it be true. Too much was at stake for Goodnight to be involved, even indirectly, in the theft of cattle.
‘It’s easy enough settled, John,’ Goodnight said. ‘You’ll have the herd cut and the young lady can point out any of her brand that she sees. We’ll need help to do it.’
‘Some of my boys’re down to the Demon Rum saloon,’ Chisum answered reluctantly, although only a man who knew him real well would have noticed the change in his voice.
Goodnight was such a man, so he said, ‘We’ll go and fetch them.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ the girl announced.
‘To a saloon?’ asked Goodnight.
‘I’d go to a saloon, a hawg-ranch, or any other damned place to get those steers back!’ the girl assured him hotly. ‘We’d gathered them to sell to a buyer and need the money they’ll bring real bad.’
‘Come with us then,’ Goodnight offered. ‘You say that you saw the men who took the steers?’
‘I sure as hell did. It was up in the Wallace Valley three days back. My hoss’d gone lame and I was headed for the house to get another when they come.’
‘You’d know the men if you saw them again then?’
‘I sure will, Colonel Charlie.’
‘How come they let you see ’em?’ asked Chisum. ‘Cow thieves ain’t often so all-fired obliging.’
‘I got hid up among the black chaparral in a draw afore they saw me,’ the girl explained, directing her words mainly in Goodnight’s direction. ‘Couldn’t see who they was when I heard them coming, ’cepting we don’t hire that many men, and a-foot I sure didn’t figure to stand in plain sight to find out.’
Which proved to the listening men that the girl, young as she was, knew how to act when alone on the range. Goodnight could see no reason for her to be lying about the theft, yet felt puzzled by at least one thing and sought to have the problem solved.
‘How did you know who owned the cattle and who I am?’
‘Feller back along the street told me who you was and pointed you out when I asked him about the herd. Which same’s why I come here afore going to see the sheriff. My pappy’s told me plenty about you, Colonel Charlie.’
‘Do I know him?’
‘You likely do, Colonel. He’s Darby Sutherland. My name’s Dawn.’
‘Darby Sutherland, huh!’ Goodnight grunted. ‘I know him.’
‘Why didn’t your pappy come instead of sending you, gal?’ Chisum inquired.
Clearly Dawn Sutherland’s friendly feelings and trust did not extend to Chisum. She lost the smile and expression of pleasure which had crept to her face at Goodnight’s words. Drawing her lips into tight, unsociable lines, she answered the taller rancher’s question.
‘’Cause he got stove up when a hoss threw him and isn’t back on his feet yet. I’d’ve gone straight to see Sheriff Carlin, only I figured that Colonel Charlie’d do right by me.’
‘And I will,’ Goodnight promised. ‘Let’s go and get your men, John.’
‘Sure,’ Chisum agreed, beaming in his most winning manner at Dawn. ‘I’m’s keen as you are to get this straightened out.’
If Dawn’s expression was anything to go by, Chisum had failed by a good country mile to win her over. Swinging from her saddle, she walked at Goodnight’s side with the bayo-tigre following her on loosely held reins. As he accompanied them along the street, Chisum tried to make light conversation but failed. While his face and voice remained placid and friendly, his eyes took on a wolf-cautious, almost menacing glint.
Judging by the noise rising from inside, the Demon Rum saloon was doing remarkably good business considering that the day had advanced only a little beyond noon. Its band played in blaring opposition to laughter, shouts and a continuous hum of conversation. Outside, horses lined the hitching rails and stood hip-shot awaiting their owners’ return. Dawn secured her bayo-tigre gelding in the only place available, next to a big, shapely bloodbay stallion. Beyond it were two equally good animals, a paint as fine as the girl had ever seen and a magnificent white that looked as wild as a free-running mustang despite the low-horned, double-girthed saddle on its back. The saddles attracted no interest, being well made but of the normal Texas fashion and carrying the absent owners’ bedrolls strapped to the cantles.
Under different circumstances the girl would have spent time admiring the fine-looking horses and Goodnight might have found at least one of them of considerable interest had he noticed it. Wanting to regain possession of her father’s cattle, Dawn contented herself with a swift glance while knotting her reins to the hitching rail. Then she joined the ranchers on the porch. For a moment she wavered before the entrance. Since her earliest days, she had been taught that a ‘good’ woman did not enter saloons. Only for a moment, though. Then her purpose in coming to Graham over-rode her prejudices. Setting her face grimly, she followed the ranchers through the batwing doors.
Once inside the barroom, Dawn found herself wishing that she had left the visit to Goodnight. Slowly the talk died down as every eye turned to the new arrivals. Dawn could sense the cold hostility of the garishly dressed women present and knew that they resented her invasion of their domain. However, in the company of two prominent members of the ranching community, she had little to fear from the saloon’s female employees.
Naturally the appearance of a girl dressed as Dawn was could be calculated to attract attention. While the women drew their own conclusions about what had brought her into the saloon, the cowhands speculated on why Colonel Charlie had allowed Dawn to accompany him inside. Being a gentleman in the strictest sense of the word, he would not bring a young woman into a saloon as a joke or merely to let her see what the inside of one looked like.
Seated at the left of the room, two men watched the arrival and guessed at what it meant. The taller of the pair wore all black clothing, from his Stetson hat, through bandana, shirt, levis pants and down to his boots. Even his gunbelt was of black leather, carrying a walnut-handled Dragoon Colt butt forward in the holster on its right side and an ivory-hilted James Black bowie knife sheathed at the left. Such an armament did not go well with his apparent youth and Indian-dark, almost babyishly innocent handsome features. Yet a closer examination of his eyes, red-hazel in color and with a reckless, alien wildness glinting in them, would have led one to believe that the weapons were anything but an affectation.
Compared with his somberly dressed and somehow dangerous-looking companion, the other man hardly rated a second glance; on the surface. He would be at most five foot six in height, his dusty blond hair a contrast with the raven-black locks of the dark youngster. G
ood, regular features, but not eye-catching in any way, held strength and inner power if one cared to look. While the black Stetson, hanging from the back of his chair, scarlet bandana, grey shirt, levis pants and handmade boots were expensive, he contrived to make them look like somebody’s cast-offs. They tended to hide the well-developed muscular physique under them. A matched brace of bone-handled 1860 Army Colts rode butt forward in carefully designed cross-draw holsters. They were good guns, carried at the correct position and angle to permit rapid use, yet they failed to add to their wearer’s stature.
‘That’s the gal we saw back on the Wallace, ain’t it, Dusty?’ asked the dark young man, shoving back his chair as if to rise.
‘Sure looks like her,’ the small blond answered. ‘Stay put a-whiles, Lon. I want to hear what’s up first.’
Coming to a halt in the center of the room, Goodnight looked around but failed to locate Pitzer Chisum. Nor did he know any of the men who had helped deliver the suspect herd.
‘Get some of your crew over here, John,’ Goodnight commanded.
‘Sure,’ Chisum answered. ‘They ain’t all on hand, mind.’
‘We’ll make do with them you can raise and my boys,’ Goodnight told him.
‘Targue!’ Chisum called. ‘Come on up here. Bring Keck, Venner and Alden with you. That’s all of ’em who’re here, Charlie.’
‘Looks like we called it right, Dusty,’ commented the dark youngster as four men rose from a table and made for Goodnight’s party. ‘What’ll we do?’
‘Amble over quiet-like and listen to what’s being said,’ his companion replied, showing no surprise at being asked for advice.
‘Where’s Pitzer?’ Chisum asked his tall, lanky, hard-looking segundo.
‘Him and most of the boys went down to Sadie’s place,’ Targue answered. ‘They hea—’
‘Them’s the three who took my cattle!’ Dawn ejaculated, pointing at Targue’s companions.
Chapter Six
I’m A Man And I’m Saying You’re A Liar!
Dressed in ordinary cowhand clothes, the trio indicated by Dawn had a hard and truculent air about them that did not entirely spring from their trail-dirty or unshaven condition. Army Colts hung from each’s belt and none of them moved his right hand too far from the gun’s butt. Tallest of the three, Keck wore a wolf-skin jacket. Venner was of middle-height, a lean man with a sharp face and eyes that never stayed still. Although the shortest by a couple of inches, Alden held the advantage in weight. His surly, unintelligent features always held a scowl and he seemed perpetually on the lookout for somebody to attack.
‘What’s she yapping about?’ demanded Keck.
‘Allows you boys took off with a bunch of her folks’s cattle,’ Chisum replied, his face still bland and mild.
‘And they did!’ Dawn snapped.
‘You saw them up this close?’ Chisum asked.
Even the band had stopped playing and all sounds ended as the crowd listened to what they sensed might be the prelude to a dramatic situation. Even with conditions as they were in Texas, the theft of cattle was no light matter. So the customers and staff alike waited to see what developed.
‘Not from real close,’ Dawn admitted. ‘I was hid up in a draw maybe a hundred yards off when they rode in and took our cattle.’
‘She’s loco, Uncle John,’ Keck announced. ‘We never took no damned herd.’
‘They did so take it!’ Dawn yelled, excitement and anger making her rashly disregard the danger that the words might place her in. ‘He’s a liar!’
‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you wasn’t a woman!’ Keck snarled, face cold and ugly with menace.
‘I’m a man and I’m saying you’re a liar!’ put in a quiet, drawling voice from the right of the party.
Slowly, exuding menace at every move, Targue and the other three Long Rail men turned to discover who dared intervene in such a manner. With fingers spread and hands poised ready to swoop on to their Colts’ butts, they looked at the tall, dark youngster and his small, insignificant companion.
‘Which of you said that?’ Keck growled.
‘Me,’ the dark youngster answered mildly. His eyes and bearing did not match the voice. Standing in a relaxed slouch, he managed to convey an air of latent, deadly readiness. All too casually his right hand trailed palm-out close to the worn walnut grips of the heavy Dragoon Colt.
‘Lon’s right, though,’ the small Texan went on. ‘You are a liar.’
And suddenly he was small no more. In some way he seemed to have taken on size and heft, apparently growing in seconds to become a big man fully as dangerous as his dark-faced companion.
Throwing a glance at Chisum, Targue caught an almost imperceptible shake of the bald head. It conveyed a message to him, a warning of danger that he read and accepted. So, instead of continuing to stand in a threatening manner at Alden’s side, he let his hand drop and edged away from the trio. Having failed to catch the rancher’s signal, Keck and the other two tensed ready to take the appropriate action they felt would be expected of them.
Customers and employees around the room prepared to make hurried dives for cover. In frontier Texas, the word ‘liar’ was never spoken lightly or as a joke. Its use, especially under the current circumstances, counted as a deadly insult and called for an answer from one of Colonel Colt’s highly prized products.
‘That’s a hard way of putting things, young fellers,’ Chisum commented in a placating tone. ‘There’s some men who don’t take kind to being called a liar.’
If Chisum intended to quieten down the hostility, he took a mighty poor way of doing it. Emphasizing the youth of the newcomers and pointing out the insult to the trio’s manhood merely served to stiffen Keck, Venner and Alden to their intentions. So they showed no sign of being placated. Before any of them could speak, or make the opening move in what would be a corpse-and-cartridge affair. Goodnight injected a warning.
‘Afore you start objecting, maybe you’d best know who’s calling you a liar.’
‘And maybe we ain’t caring who they are,’ Venner replied.
‘Have it your way,’ Goodnight drawled and pointed first to the small Texan, then at his companion. ‘Only this here’s my nephew, Dusty Fog and I’d say this’s the Ysabel Kid.’
Sucking in his breath sharply, Keck moved his right hand from over the Colt’s butt but let the left remain thumb-hooked on his waist-belt just under the right flap of his jacket. At the same time his companions allowed their truculent, menacing attitudes to sag away. Such postures might be useful in scaring off a brace of young cowhands who hoped to impress a pretty girl with their support of her claims, but would get them extra no place directed at the two men named by Goodnight.
Take the small blond for starters. There were few people in Texas who had not heard of Dusty Fog. At seventeen, he had worn a captain’s collar bars and led Company C of the Texas Light Cavalry on the highly successful raids that caused the Yankee Army of Arkansas so much damage and trouble. It had been Dusty Fog who helped Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy, to buy a consignment of arms for the South with money looted from a Yankee paymaster viii and in her company had smashed a gang of counterfeiters who planned to flood the Confederate States with their products. ix Although few people knew of it, he had also foiled a plot by fanatical Union-supporters to arm and send on the war-path the Indian tribes of Texas. x With the War over, Dusty had returned to his home in the Rio Hondo country. The crippling of his uncle, Ole Devil Hardin, had put him into the post of segundo on the great OD Connected ranch. Recently Dusty had been sent into Mexico on a mission of vital national importance and brought it to a successful conclusion. xi
Small of stature Dusty Fog might be, but he already had a name for being lightning fast and very accurate in the use of his matched Colts. There were other stories told, of his uncanny skill at bare-hand fighting; how he knew methods to render bigger, stronger men helpless. No trio of hardcases would willingly go up against such a man; especially wh
en he stood backed by the Ysabel Kid.
Born in the village of the Pehnane Comanche, the son of a wild Irish-Kentuckian horse-hunter and a Creole-Comanche girl, the Kid had been raised as a Nemenuh by his grandfather, Long Walker, was chief of the Dog Soldier lodge. xii By his fifteenth birthday, the boy had already earned his man-name among the Pehnane. They called him Cuchilo, the Knife, a tribute to his skill in using one. When his father adopted a new family business of smuggling across the Texas-Mexico border, the Kid had put his Indian-training to good use and gained a reputation as real bad medicine to cross. While not exceptionally fast with his old Dragoon, he could perform adequately with it and he took seconds to no man at wielding a knife or when tossing lead from a rifle.
Down along the Rio Grande, as a smuggler and while running shipments delivered through the blockading West Gulf Squadron of the Yankee Navy into Mexico, the Kid built up a name likely to give pause to anybody figuring to make trouble for him. Nobody with a desire to stay alive and healthy voluntarily tangled with the Ysabel Kid.
‘Why’d you say he’s a liar, Kid?’ asked Goodnight, when sure that the trio accepted his introduction.
‘’Cause he’s lying in his teeth when he says him and his pards didn’t take off with the lady’s stock,’ the dark youngster replied. ‘We saw ’em do it.’
‘Like Lon says, Uncle Charlie,’ Dusty went on. ‘We saw them. Didn’t think much about it, though, until we saw the lady here come out of hiding.’
‘You could’ve rid over and said something right then, Cap’n Fog,’ Chisum put in. ‘It’d’ve saved all this unpleasantness.’
‘Have you been up the Wallace Valley way, Mr. Chisum?’ Dusty asked without taking his attention from the trio.
‘Can’t say’s I have,’ the rancher admitted.
‘That figures,’ Dusty said coldly. ‘We were on the wrong side of a deep canyon and no way to get across it. So, time we’d rid around it the lady’s cattle were already mixed in with your herd.’