The Floating Outift 36

by J. T. Edson

  No matter how amiable and pleasant O’Day had tried to be, Giselle had refused to have anything to do with him. She had lost some of the fear which had tinted her expression when being addressed by him the previous night, but made it plain that she wanted only to be left alone. After a succession of direct snubs and monosyllabic answers, O’Day had accepted defeat and concentrated his attention on Emma and the Texans. Dusty had noticed several times that Giselle was willing to observe O’Day, even if she refused to speak to him. Stealing surreptitious looks at the man, the brunette’s face had shown mingled emotions. Interest, curiosity, alarm and disbelief played on her features, which would be swiftly turned aside if the object of her scrutiny looked at her.

  Having sound reasons for wanting to arrive unnoticed in Hell and knowing that—as a result of precautions against accidental discovery taken by Lampart—the town came to life at night, Dusty had had no intention of making his entrance before dawn. Nor had he wished to let O’Day go in to spread the news of their coming. To prevent arousing the man’s suspicions when he discovered how close to town they had halted, the small Texan had produced a valid and acceptable excuse for delaying their appearance until daylight.

  ‘In which case, having as great an antipathy towards being shot as I felt regarding my being hung, I will bow to you gentlemen’s superior wisdom,’ O’Day declared cheerfully. Swinging down from his saddle, he went on, ‘If the ladies can bear the proximity of my presence for another night, I will be honored to spend it in their company.’

  ‘I can never resist anybody who calls me a lady,’ Emma smiled. Teel free to stay on with us, Break.’

  ‘When you’ve off-saddled, Emma, you and Mrs. Lampart might’s well go to the other side of the spring and pick the best bedding spots out,’ Dusty suggested. ‘We’ll tend to the horses.’

  Obtaining the added security offered by ‘Scotch hobbling’, as opposed to using the conventional leather cuffs and linking swivel-chain of double hobbles, was a time-consuming business. There was some need for haste as the sun, dipping below the rim of the western slope, threw dark shadows over the spring. Removing their saddles and leaving behind the ropes from the horns, Emma and Giselle carried out Dusty’s instructions. They hauled their rigs' around to the western edge of the water hole, out of earshot of the men.

  Making a large loop with Giselle’s rope, Waco draped it around the cavalry horse’s neck and tied a bowline knot behind the near shoulder. Then he took the longer end of the rope over and made a half hitch about the right hind leg just above the ankle joint. Carrying the end of the rope forward and up, he secured it to the loop in such a manner that the trapped limb was raised and its hoof suspended about four inches above the ground. Held in that manner, the horse could neither stray far, nor move at speed. In addition, as O’Day had commented, removing the Scotch hobble was not easy—especially when attempted in darkness and with the need to avoid making any undue noise.

  While Dusty did not believe that Giselle would try to escape again, he had no intention of presenting her with the opportunity. If he had been able to hear the conversation taking place between the two women, he would have felt less certain about the brunette’s acceptance of the situation.

  ‘Do you have your push-knife on you, Emma?’ Giselle inquired with what she hoped sounded like casual interest, setting down her saddle.

  ‘No!’ the blonde answered and frowned at the brunette. ‘If I did, I wouldn’t let you have it.’

  ‘I only wanted to—’

  ‘I know what you want to do with it and the answer’s still “no”. Hell, Ed won’t let the folks do anything about us leaving them the way we did.’

  ‘He’s not your “Ed Caxton”,’ Giselle spat out. ‘He’s Dusty Fog!’

  ‘Hold your voice down, damn you, or you’ll be muttering through bloody gums!’ the blonde hissed furiously. ‘If O’Day hears—’

  ‘All right, don’t get mean!’ the brunette whined, knowing that Emma’s temper could be explosive on occasion.

  ‘Anyways, seeing that he is Dusty Fog, you should be even more sure that he’ll look after you. A feller like “Ed Caxton” might have said the hell with you and let the folks do what they want. Dusty won’t.’

  ‘It’s not what the people will do that bothers me. Or having to do the trick. We both know you can handle Simmy’s part easily enough as long as the box hasn’t been damaged.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ Emma demanded.

  ‘Who does that feller O’Day put you in mind of?’

  ‘Nobody that I can remember. His face isn’t familiar.’

  ‘Not the face,’ Giselle corrected. ‘His voice.’

  ‘His voice—?’ the blonde repeated. ‘Yes, it does sound kind of familiar.’

  ‘He talks just like Mephisto used to,’ Giselle said, dropping her tone almost to a whisper and throwing a frightened glance in O’Day’s direction.

  ‘Mephisto!’ Emma gasped and, for a moment, she looked nearly as frightened as the little brunette. Then she mastered her emotions and gave a shrug. ‘Aw, go on. Mephisto’s been dead for years.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure!’ Giselle pointed out. ‘His body was never found and—’

  ‘Take a hold of yourself, you little fool!’ the blonde interrupted in a savage manner. ‘There were a dozen or more people saw him rush out of the hotel and jump into the East River—’

  ‘But his body wasn’t found!’ the brunette protested.

  ‘If it had’ve been, you and Simmy would most likely have wound up in jail,’ Emma said coldly. ‘That feller’s not Mephisto. After what you pair did, his face wouldn’t look like that.’

  ‘D ... Don’t ...!’

  ‘And don’t you come the harmless little angel with me. I know you, Giselle Lampart and know how much that’s worth. So O’Day talks a mite pompous, like Mephisto used to. I’ve heard plenty of fellers, actors, magicians, confidence tricksters and the like, who did. Hell! Look at his face. It’s not had vitriol thrown into it. Or do you think he looks like it might have?’

  ‘N ... No, it doesn’t,’ Giselle admitted with a shudder. ‘Emma, I didn’t thr—?’

  ‘I don’t care who threw it!’ the blonde snapped. ‘Mephisto’s dead. Only your guilty conscience makes you think O’Day is him. So forget any fool notions of running away again. We’ve too much at stake to have you hurt.’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ the brunette agreed and her fears appeared to flicker away. ‘And I’m the only one of us who can open the locks and safe doors.’

  ‘Don’t get smart, little half-sister,’ Emma warned. ‘If you double-cross me, I’ll show you that I can be as mean as Mephisto would be if he was still alive and caught up with you.’

  ‘D ... Don’t even think things like that, Emma!’ Giselle pleaded.

  Seeing the men approaching, the women allowed their conversation to lapse. Darkness had come down by the time Dusty, Waco and O’Day had spread their bedrolls and the women had made ready for the night.

  ‘I could drink a whole gallon of coffee,’ Emma remarked, looking at Dusty.

  ‘Why not light a fire and make some?’ asked a familiar voice, drifting from the blackness of the western slope.

  At the first word, the blonde let out a startled yelp, which mingled with Giselle’s squeal of alarm. Instinctively Dusty, Waco and O’Day reached for their guns. Only the Easterner completed his draw and even he did not fire. Coming on foot out of the gloomy shadows, the Kid grinned cheerfully at the various signs of alarm caused by his unheralded arrival.

  ‘You folks’re sure jumpy,’ the dark Texan commented, halting with his Winchester’s barrel resting on his right shoulder.

  ‘Blasted Injun!’ Waco snorted disgustedly, hiding his relief at seeing his amigo was unharmed. Letting the Colts sink back into their holsters, he went on, ‘I was like to blow windows in your fool head, thinking you was some other kind of varmint.’

  ‘Could you hit me, that is,’ countered the Kid. ‘Howdy, Miss Em
ma, Mrs. Lampart, friend. See this pair of buzzards didn’t manage to get you lost.’

  ‘Them Kweharehnuhs now, they’ve got right good sense,’ Waco declared. ‘They soon enough give you back to us.’

  That seemed obvious. The Kid might be afoot, but he was in possession of all of his weapons. His attitude of cheerful ease suggested that he had not escaped and was expecting to be pursued. Staring through the darkness, Emma sought for hints that he had arrived in time to overhear her conversation with Giselle. Nothing about his voice or attitude suggested that he might have.

  ‘Wolf Runner figured’s how you could use some food, seeing you didn’t cook any last night or this morning,’ the Kid drawled. ‘So he sent me over to fetch you some.’

  ‘He’s surely generous and free-handed with his giving,’ Waco commented, staring from the Kid’s empty left hand to the rifle-filled right.

  ‘I’ve got it, and enough wood to make a fire, on a pack hoss up there,’ the Kid answered. ‘Left it on the hoss so I could sneak down quiet-like, ’case you wasn’t saying what a real nice young feller I be.’

  ‘Why’d we talk different about you than other folks?’ Waco wanted to know.

  ‘You’re just natural mean, boy. Why’n’t you ’n’ Ed help me tote it down?’

  ‘I’ll come, if you need me,’ O’Day offered.

  ‘Might be best if one of us stayed on here,’ Dusty replied, throwing a meaning nod towards Giselle.

  ‘I only asked hoping you’d say “no”,’ O’Day answered.

  ‘How’re things, Lon?’ Dusty inquired as they walked up the slope.

  ‘Easy enough,’ the Kid replied. ‘I thought they might get rough when that wolf-scout come to say Giselle’d lit out. Then the other brought word that the boy’d fetched her back.’

  ‘I'm damned if I know why I bothered,’ Waco injected.

  ‘Then tonight Wolf Runner was asking why you’d stopped instead of going on to bed down in Hell,’ the Kid continued. ‘I ’minded him that you’re only white folks ’n’ likely didn’t know for sure where the town’s at. Then it figured to him.’

  ‘And he let you-all come back seeing’s we’re this close,’ Dusty guessed.

  ‘Said I could come—’

  ‘Likely got tired of feeding you,’ Waco interrupted.

  ‘So’s I could tell you I’m fixing to go with him to the village, so’s I can say “howdy” to Ten Bears for Grandpappy Long Walker,’ the Kid concluded as if the youngster had never spoken. ‘And he allowed he’d be right honored to have me along.’

  ‘I thought you allus reckoned Comanches don’t tell lies?’ Waco remarked.

  ‘And they don’t,’ confirmed the Kid.

  ‘Then why don’t you say truthful that you had to threaten to bust both his legs and make him herd sheep afore he’d agree to be seen in your company?’ the youngster demanded. ‘That’s the only way you’d get me to agree to take you anyplace. And I wouldn’t be right honored about it.’

  ‘You know how to handle the blister end of a shovel, boy?’ Dusty growled, eyeing the blond menacingly.

  ‘I can’t right and truthful claim I do,’ Waco admitted proudly.

  ‘Keep flapping your lip and, comes us getting back to home, I’m going to improve your education on them lines,’ Dusty threatened. ‘You got something special, in mind, Lon?’

  ‘Why sure. I aim to find out just why they was so all-fired set on having Giselle come back.’

  ‘You don’t reckon it’s just to see her dance in that fancy lil costume and be sawn in half?’

  ‘There’s a mite more to it than that, I’d say. The braves aren’t saying much, but, what I can make out, the medicine woman, Pohawe, she’s been getting hoorawed bad over not knowing how Lampart’s tricks was pulled. That’s not good for her business.’

  ‘Could be she reckons she could work out how it’s done was she to see it done again,’ Waco suggested.

  ‘Or she’s maybe counting on the folks not being able to do it, with Lampart dead,’ Dusty went on. ‘If they can’t, their medicine’s gone sour and they can be treated like other palefaces.’

  ‘That could be,’ admitted the Kid. ‘Anyways, I’ll see what I can learn. Say, I’m right pleased you didn’t have that O’Day hombre come with us.’

  ‘I concluded you didn’t want him along,’ Dusty drawled.

  ‘You was right. What do you make of him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lon. He’s amiable enough to talk to. Way he tells it, he’s bad-wanted in a few places and figured to lay low in Hell for a spell. Says he bought all his gear new afore setting off, so he’d be less noticeable than in city duds. Which’s true enough. But I don’t know what it is, I’m uneasy having him around.’

  ‘Could be you’re jealous of him being so clean-shaven,’ Waco put in.

  ‘Huh?’ Dusty grunted, laying a hand on his stubble-coated face.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the youngster said, delighted at having noticed something that had slipped the small Texan’s notice. ‘He’s either shaved when we wasn’t looking, or got a face as bald’s a girl’s.’

  ‘I’ve known fellers who didn’t need to shave, even when full grown,’ the Kid announced. ‘Maybe you pair’ve been too busy to notice, but the folks in Hell’re still keeping to that no fires in the daytime ruling.’

  ‘We’d noticed,’ Dusty assured him. ‘Are the Kweharehnuh still letting folk in and out of town?’

  ‘Sure,’ the Kid confirmed. ‘Likely Ten Bears’s waiting to see whether he gets his ammunition afore he stops it. Anyways, I’ll learn all I can at the camp, then come in and let you know how things stand.’

  Chapter Ten – The Rest of the Money’s Hidden

  Walking along Hell’s main street, Emma Nene, Giselle Lampart, Dusty Fog and Break O’Day went by Doctor Connolly’s home and office building towards the front door of the Honest Man saloon. Largest building in the town, the saloon alone had two floors. On the upper’s verandah rail was nailed a large wooden sign bearing the name of the establishment, but no painting to illustrate the title as was common in such premises elsewhere.

  ‘How could an artist paint something that doesn’t exist?’ Emma countered when O’Day mentioned the discrepancy.

  It was noon and, apart from themselves, the street was deserted; which did not surprise the women or Dusty. In fact, they had been banking on finding such a condition.

  During their approach from the tree-lined top of the hollow in which the town had been erected, they had seen no sign of human life. For all appearances, the entire population might have been laid to rest in the large graveyard. A few horses were hitched outside the various adobe jacales which sprouted irregularly beyond the business premises flanking the main street and more occupied the livery barn’s corrals. The barn’s staff had not been present, so the newcomers had tended to their horses unaided and left the animals in previously untenanted stalls. Having been presented with ownership of the barn, for his part in removing the original proprietor, Dusty had the keys to its side rooms in his possession. Unlocking the office, he had allowed the others to leave their saddles and portable property until it could be more suitably cared for.

  After the Kid’s departure the night before, Dusty had told O’Day the story concocted by Emma and secured the man’s offer of assistance if it should be needed. So O’Day accompanied the women and the small Texan, while Waco went off to attend to another matter.

  To an unknowing observer, Hell would have looked like any other small, sun baked range country town. A mite more prosperous in its appointments than most, maybe, but with nothing to hint at its true nature and purpose. Most of the conventional business and social amenities could be located; with the notable exceptions of a bank, jail or stagecoach depot. There was neither school nor church, but other small towns also lacked them.

  Facing the Honest Man stood the lengthy, well-appointed ‘Youseman’s Funeral Parlor’; which probably had a sobering effect upon revelers who were all too aware that captur
e by the law would mean death on a hangman’s rope. Beyond the saloon and on the same side was Giselle’s home which also combined with the mayor’s office and what had passed for a bank.

  On stepping through the batwing doors into the large barroom, Dusty, the women and O’Day found that they could no longer remain unobserved. Although the majority of the room was unoccupied, the stairs and balcony empty of people, six men and a big, buxom, garishly dressed woman sat around what had been Emma’s private table. Startled exclamations burst from them as they looked towards the main entrance. An angry hiss broke from the blonde, for the red-haired, good-looking brothel-keeper Rosie Wilson was sitting in her chair at the head of the table.

  Dusty recognized four of the men. Tall, gaunt, miserable of features, Doctor Connolly might have been the undertaker and the big, burly, jovial-looking Emmet ‘Happy’ Youseman, in his check suit and diamond stick-in, the town’s surgeon. Fat, pompous as when he had attended board meetings in the East, the hotel’s owner, Emanuel Goldberg, turned red and spluttered incoherently. His partner in many a crooked deal, now acting as jeweler and pawnbroker, Sylvester Crouch, muttered something to the nearer of the two strangers.

  Although Dusty did not know the pair, he could guess at what they were. Tall, lean and wearing low-tied guns, they had a matching wolf-cautious alertness. One had black hair and a walrus moustache that did nothing to conceal a hard, cruel mouth. The other was going bald, needed a shave and had a patch over his left eye. Dressed cowhand fashion, they neither of them struck Dusty as having any legitimate connections with ranching.