The Floating Outfit 21

by J. T. Edson

  Throwing aside the gun, Gruber whirled on his heel and fled in panic. Not until the terrified man reached his office did he halt. Entering only long enough to grab his saddle, he left again. At the civic pound, he collected his horse, saddled it in record time and took off to the north as fast as the horse could carry him.

  After the marshal’s flight, the Texan rose to his feet. Holding his smoking Colt ready for use, he glanced in the direction Gruber took, then swung his eyes towards the still shape on the ground. One look told the Texan that he did not need concern himself with Latter, the killer’s days of selling a gun were over. Setting the Colt’s hammer down on a safety notch between two of the cylinder’s chambers, he slid the weapon back into leather and turned to Morley.

  “Thanks for the warning, Clint,” he said. “How’ll it put you in the town?”

  “Gruber won’t be back, or I’ll be surprised,” replied Morley. “And even if he should come, I aim to see that he doesn’t keep a badge in Bainesville. He planned to burn you down.”

  “Could be,” admitted the Texan and, having experienced Kansas ideas of justice where his kind were concerned, continued, “Do you reckon the folks hereabouts will want me to stay for a hearing over the killing?”

  “Nobody who wants to stay my friend will—and I don’t shoe horses or fix things for folks who aren’t my friends.”

  “Don’t you go building yourself fuss on my account, Clint.”

  “You shot in self-defense, and not until after Latter forced the fight on you; which same’s no crime in my book,” Morley answered. “And nobody’ll make me tell it any other way.”

  “Gartree won’t like that,” the Texan pointed out.

  “I’ve been thinking for a fair piece now that somebody ought to go against him. Only politics’ve never been my game. Time comes when a man has to take a stand, happen he wants to be able to look himself in the face.”

  With that the blacksmith turned and walked to meet the first of the citizens attracted by the sound of the shooting as they came running from the town center. Leaving Morley to tell the new arrivals what happened, the Texan saddled his paint and made ready to ride. From what he saw, the Texan concluded that Morley listened to evidence as well as giving it.

  “They wanting to jail me?” asked the Texan, completing the saddling as Morley returned from the crowd.

  “Reckon I convinced them that’d lower the tone of the jail,” replied the blacksmith. “Fact being that Latter made it clear he was gunning for you. From what he said, he’d set his aim at becoming our town marshal and most folks feel a mite relieved to know they won’t have to argue about it with him. None of them’ll trouble you any.”

  “I’ll be riding on then,” the Texan said. “How much do I owe you?”

  After paying for the shoeing of his horse, the Texan shook hands with Morley. “Happen you’re ever down in the Rio Hondo country, call in at the ranch and see us, Clint. You’ll always find a welcome.”

  “The same goes for you any time you’re up this way. And don’t worry about Gartree objecting to your coming.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” answered the Texan, then his eyes went to where men carried away the killer’s body.

  “Gartree made a mistake sending him after you,” Morley commented.

  “It cost him nothing,” the Texan replied.

  “Reckon you’ve heard the last of this business?”

  “I’d better have,” said the Texan grimly. “Will you do something for me, Clint?”

  “If I can.”

  “Go see Gartree. Tell him I’m sorry about what happened to his son, but that it was none of my, or those pilgrims’, fault.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And tell him something else.”

  “What?”

  “You tell Gartree, and make sure he knows I mean every word I say, that happen he spreads lies about what came off today—or if he ever sends another hired gun after me—I’ll come back here and make him wish he’d never been born.”

  “I’ll do just that,” promised the blacksmith and, although he could guess at the answer, went on. “Who should I tell him sent the message, happen he wants to know.”

  A faint smile played on the small Texan’s lips as he swung afork the paint stallion. Not until mounted and ready to move off did he reply. His words verified Morley’s suspicions and cleared up a number of points. He said:

  “Tell him Dusty Fog.”

  Six – Travelers on the South-Bound Trail

  Dusty Fog. The name meant much to people on the Western shores of the Mississippi and most of all to citizens of the Lone Star State. While dwellers in Austin County might claim Bad Bill Longley as the fastest hand with a gun ever to breathe Texas air, or Panhandle citizens lay the same claim on Clay Allison, a point disputed hotly by John Wesley Hardin’s supporters in the Mount Calm district, and the devotees of many another local hero, those same swift-handed heroes admitted, if only to themselves, that Dusty Fog stood at the head of their particular claim to fame.

  Yet there was more, much more, than just a lightning fast draw and deadly accurate aim to account for the general acceptance of Dusty Fog as Texas’ favorite son.

  While speaking to Morley, the casual reference to ‘my company’ had been the truth. At seventeen Dusty Fog assumed Command of Company “C”, Texas Light Cavalry, and led it to such purpose that—while fighting on the less-publicized Arkansas battle-front—he built a name as a military raider equal to those other Dixie masters, Turner Ashby and John Singleton Mosby. i

  At the end of the War, Dusty returned to Texas; although no less a man than General Ulysses S. Grant offered him a place in the Union Army with his C.S.A. rank and seniority. Instead of falling into a slew of self-pity over the South’s defeat, Dusty forgot the past and became fully involved in rebuilding the mighty OD Connected ranch. At nineteen, he found himself riding into war-torn Mexico on a mission and with the future peace of the United States in his young hands. ii

  Bringing the mission to a successful conclusion did not lead to a life of leisure and peace. Since that time, Dusty Fog’s name had gone forth as a top hand with cattle, segundo of the biggest, most efficient and profitable ranch in Texas, trail boss second to none, the town-taming lawman of the finest kind. Men told tales of his uncanny bare-handed techniques of fighting, which rendered bigger and stronger opponents helpless before him; for this added yet another claim to Dusty Fog’s fame.

  Such then was the identity and history of the small, insignificant man who had just concluded a hectic visit to Bainesville, Kansas, and provided the town with conversational material for months to come.

  Holding his big paint to a steady four-mile-an-hour walk, Dusty headed in a southerly direction. Business had taken him to Eastern Kansas at the conclusion of a successful trail drive and his way home took him through the rolling land which rarely saw Texas cowhands, it being off the line taken by the northbound herds. Fear of Gartree’s vengeance did not cause Dusty to ride. Down in the Indian Nations, at Duke Bent’s hospitable establishment, two loyal friends waited for him to join them. Loyal they might be, but he knew that the Ysabel Kid and Mark Counter would wax sarcastic and suggest slanderous reason for his tardiness should he arrive later than his proposed date.

  There was another reason for Dusty allowing his paint to stride out and make the most of his capacity for swift, continuous travel. Somewhere ahead of him, the wagon carrying the people his intervention saved from young Gartree rolled south. While Dusty did not wish to be thanked for what he had done in Bainesville, he felt it might be pleasant to see the little blonde girl again.

  The trail Dusty followed wound along the line of what, until only a few years previously, had been a buffalo migration route. One could trust the great, shaggy beasts to know the easiest line of march, although the direction they took did not often follow a straight line. As he rode, Dusty thought of the scene as the great herds moved across the range. It must have been much like a tr
ail herd, except that no men rode along to keep the animals pointed in the right direction. Nor had any trail herd ever been of such numbers as the mass of buffalo which carved the trail. Yet now they were gone forever, shot for meat, for their tongues, hides and even for sport. Not even the bones remained, having been gathered up and sold. Born in an age which ignored animal preservation, Dusty still felt compassion and a little sorrow as he thought of the slaughter of the buffalo. Yet as a cattleman, he knew that the great buffalo herds could not be allowed to roam at will. Their vast numbers offered too much competition with the cattle and an enormous herd could spread over the land, smashing down all before it by weight of numbers. Slaughter seemed to be the only answer as Dusty knew. The knowledge did not make him feel any better.

  At the top of each ridge, Dusty scanned the trail ahead in the hope of seeing the wagon. While he was disappointed in that, he found that other people used the south-bound trail.

  Four riders held their horses to a steady walk about half a mile ahead of him. Halting his paint, Dusty studied the quartet and decided that three of them looked decidedly familiar. Recognizing the Cooper brothers and Lanny, Dusty disliked the implication their presence brought to mind. Nor did he require the second-sight of a Comanche witch-woman to guess at the identity of the fourth rider. Seeing the tip of the holster under Gartree’s coat, Dusty needed little mental effort to decide what took the politician out of town and sent him along the trail to the south.

  “I might be doing them an injustice, old horse,” he told the paint, after forming his conclusions, “but I sure as hell doubt it.”

  With that in mind, he turned the paint’s head and left the trail at a forty-five degrees angle. The big stallion had the legs of any of the quartet’s mounts. Even the horse Gartree rode, fine beast though it might be, could not out-pace Dusty’s paint; especially when carrying the politician who did not ride light in his saddle. So, while he did not doubt that he could overtake the men, Dusty did not intend to do it by passing them on the trail and presenting them with a chance to shoot him in the back.

  There might be some simple, innocent reason for Gartree taking a trip, but Dusty doubted it. Even should it be so, he knew that a man like Gartree would not pass up the opportunity to extract vengeance for the crippling of his son. Not wanting to tangle in another gunfight, for he never took killing lightly, Dusty intended to swing around any possible trouble. He also wished to catch up with the wagon, for he believed that the four men intended to do just that with the intention of avenging young Gartree.

  Once off the trail, Dusty gave the paint its signal to change from a walk to trot. Underfoot the grass grew short and springy, offering a more gentle surface than the hard-packed earth of the trail. The course he took swung him away from Gartree’s party and into country which he figured would serve to keep him hidden from their sight.

  During the War, on missions inside Federal-held territory, Dusty had learned the art of unseen movement through hostile country. Peace had never been so complete for him that he lost the knack gained during the wild days when he led Company ‘C’ in raids which became classic studies of light cavalry tactics. Of course, the situation Dusty found himself involved in on the trail out of Bainesville could not be compared with the War. The men he sought to avoid did not expect trouble, had no suspicion of his presence and consequently were not on the alert.

  The paint stallion strode out, covering the ground at a steady six-miles-an-hour trot; a better pace than the four men on the trail made. Although keeping to a line roughly parallel to the trail, Dusty sometimes had to make a detour to avoid a natural hazard over which he could not ride in safety. A master horseman, Dusty knew exactly what risks he could take, when he could ride without chancing injury to his mount, or when he must walk.

  During the remainder of the afternoon, Dusty rode steadily south. On the occasions when he took up a hidden position and studied the trail, he hoped for a sight of the wagon. However, with over a two hour start, the travelers had built up a good lead and he saw nothing of them. Nor, if it came to a point, did he see any sign of the quartet of riders after the first hour or so. Traveling faster than Gartree’s bunch and keeping moving, Dusty soon found himself beyond any chance of them seeing him. However, he did not return to the trail, but kept off it and out of the view of any chance-passing travelers. He had no desire to meet people journeying to Bainesville, for such could be almost guaranteed to want to stop and talk. Nor would they restrict their conversation to him. Wishing to keep his presence unsuspected, Dusty did not want some chance-met stranger carrying word back to Gartree that a small Texan on a big paint stallion rode ahead.

  Shortly before night came, Dusty saw that he would be compelled to return to the trail. Curving down, the gash torn originally by the buffalo entered an area of thickly wooded country. He knew that the travelers could not be far ahead and figured to join them wherever they decided to camp for the night. After a careful study of his back-trail, even though he doubted that Gartree’s crowd would be close enough to see him, Dusty rode in cover as much as possible and slipped cautiously back on to the trail just inside the woods. Fresh horse-droppings on the track ahead of him told him that he was not far behind the travelers.

  For a short time Dusty walked his paint along the trail which now wound and curved through flowering dogwood, white oak, paper birch and tulip trees. Scattered among the larger growth, sassafras shrub and other bushes grew thick enough to stop Dusty seeing what lay around the next bend.

  The scent of wood-smoke wafted back on the breeze, coming to Dusty’s nostrils even as his ears picked up the faint rattle of metal against metal. As yet he could see nothing, for the trail curved off around a bend. Dismounting, Dusty led his paint into the trees and clear of the trail. Earlier, during his final approach to the woods, he had found a stream and allowed the horse to drink its fill, so knew a short wait without attention would cause it little or no suffering.

  After loosening the saddle’s girth enough to allow the blood to gradually circulate in the paint’s back, Dusty fastened the reins to a tree. Patient training had taught the horse not to roll on the ground while saddled and Dusty did not need to worry on that score. With his horse’s immediate needs handled, Dusty drew the Winchester from its saddle-boot. Compact, light, handy, with a magazine capacity of thirteen rounds, the twenty-inch barreled carbine would be more suitable than his matched Army Colts should his suspicions of Gartree’s motives prove correct.

  While Dusty could not claim to be as expert as his good friend the Ysabel Kid in the art of silent movement through wooded country in darkness, he managed to move in the direction from which the wood-smoke originated without making too much noise. Placing his feet down carefully, feeling for anything that might snap under it, or turn and cause him to slip, while avoiding brushing against branches that could rustle in the still of the night, Dusty literally followed his nose until he saw the red glow of a fire among the trees ahead. Even as he caught his first glimpse of the fire, Dusty noticed a series of short, brilliant white flashes such as lightning might make in its path across the skies. Only the flickers came more regularly than those caused by storm-brought lightning and without the accompaniment of rain or roiling thunder. Also the flashes seemed to originate from down at ground level and close to where the fire glowed.

  While moving on through the trees, Dusty wondered what might be causing the intermittent white glowing, for he could not remember having seen its like before.

  The nearest to it in Dusty’s experience had come from the flare of magnesium powder when used by photographers to illuminate their subject when taking a picture. Yet even magnesium powder did not produce such regular, short or brilliant flashes.

  Still trying to reach a conclusion about the flashing, Dusty reached the edge of the trees and halted. Ahead of him lay a large clearing. Close to the banks of the stream which, higher up its course, served to water Dusty’s paint, the wagon stood. To one side of the wagon, kneeling by a f
ire, the girl dropped something into a steaming pan set on the flames. The elder man led the horses towards the stream, but Dusty could see no sign of the younger.

  It might have been an ordinary camp scene that Dusty looked upon, except for the inexplicable flashes of light which appeared to come from inside the wagon. Watching the flashes, which showed through the raised flap of the wagon’s canopy, Dusty felt even more puzzled. No kerosene-fed lamp ever attained such brightness and the flashes had an almost mechanical regularity which reminded him of heliograph messages flashing across country during the War.

  Standing hidden among the trees, Dusty was just about to make his presence known when the flashing stopped. He heard the sound of a wooden lid being closed and saw the girl turn from the fire. Leaving her cooking, she walked over to where the younger of the men jumped down from the rear of the wagon. On landing, the man allowed the covers to drop back into place, then turned to the girl. It almost seemed as if they held a conversation, yet neither said a word that Dusty could hear. The girl swung her head in the direction of the elder man and he left the horses to join his companions.

  Even then, although the trio gave the impression of discussing something, Dusty still could neither hear words nor see their lips move.

  For a moment Dusty wondered if he ought to call out a greeting, then go and give the travelers a warning of their danger. Not wishing to raise a false alarm, he decided to check on his suspicions before making an appearance at the camp. Turning, he faded back into the woods and left the trio still standing in that silent attitude of conversation.

  Deciding that the trail would be dark enough for him to chance using it rather than moving through the trees, Dusty walked slowly back from the clearing. One man on foot ought to avoid detection from a quartet riding horses. He figured he should be able to locate Gartree’s party early enough for him to hide and make his arrangements.