The Floating Outfit 17 Read online

  ‘I allus thought Injuns took scalps when they’d counted coup on the white-eye brother,’ the black dressed Texan explained, oozing what seemed to some of his audience to be all the innocence of a new born baby. ‘’Course, this hombre being only half an Indian, likely the feller’d only have been half scalped.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that!’ the sycophant asserted, his antipathy towards over familiar cowhands who were rarely respectful of his dignity returning. ‘But those men who wanted to ly—to take the law into their own hands, if they really did, might have been wanting to avenge a friend.’

  ‘Mister,’ Dusty said, straightening up as he saw Pete was beginning to regain consciousness. ‘They really meant to lynch this gent.’

  ‘A—As I said,’ the sycophant replied, his tone losing some of its truculence because he wondered how he had regarded the blond haired cowhand as being small. ‘They might have thought they were avenging a friend as the law wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Hombre,’ the Kid almost purred, except that he no longer looked or sounded innocent. ‘I don’t know how much doings you’ve had with paid guns like them, but I’ve knowed their kind since back when. One thing I learned real early about them. They wouldn’t even try to avenge their own mother was you to rape her, ’less you hadn’t paid ’em to do it first.’

  ‘I’ll go along with the Kid on that,’ the peace officer declared. ‘And now, gentlemen, I’d be pleased if you’d clear my office and leave me get on with my work.’

  ‘Are you telling us to leave?’ the banker demanded, and the rest of the civic dignitaries rumbled their indignation at such a lack of respect from a public servant whose salary they helped to pay.

  ‘Only the rest of them, Mr. Humboldt,’ the sheriff corrected calmly. ‘I’d like you to stay in your capacity as justice of the peace—Oh, by the way, I should have done so sooner. Allow me to present Captain Dusty Fog.’

  ‘Captain Dusty Fog?’ the banker echoed, staring in the direction indicated by the peace officer as if unwilling to believe the evidence of his eyes and ears. ‘The Captain Dusty Fog, General Hardin’s nephew?’

  ‘The Captain Dusty Fog,’ Dickson confirmed, with barely discernible malicious delight as he studied the effect of the introduction. ‘General Hardin’s nephew.’

  ‘G—Good afternoon, Captain Fog!’ Humboldt greeted, offering his right hand to be shaken and feeling the strength with which it was grasped. ‘I trust you left the General in good health?’

  ‘Well enough,’ Dusty admitted.

  ‘Would you care to come to my office?’ the banker asked. ‘Or perhaps you would rather we went to my house so you can rest after your journey before talking.’

  ‘Neither, just yet,’ the small Texan refused, with an icy politeness which was far different from the tone he had used while addressing the sycophant. ‘Seeing as how my hand and I got mixed up in this, I’d rather find out what’s going on before I do anything else.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Captain Fog,’ Humboldt assented immediately, then looked at his fellow town dwellers. ‘I think we can leave matters in Sheriff Dickson’s hands, gentlemen.’

  ‘How’s Pete, Mort?’ the peace officer inquired, barely able to conceal his amusement over the way in which the rest of the County Commissioners left the office without offering any protests, and considering he could return to first name terms with the rancher,

  ‘Nicked and likely none too steady on his pins,’ Mort replied, watching the big dog struggle on to its feet and stand swaying. ‘But he’s been hurt a heap worse in his time and come through. Gracias, Cap’n Fog.’

  ‘Es nada, amigo,’ Dusty replied, then smiled and went on in English. ‘I hope your teeth didn’t hurt my hat.’

  ‘I tried not to bite too hard on it,’ the rancher replied, also smiling, as he glanced at the object in question which was lying where it had fallen after striking and preventing him from dashing into the office to try and avenge the shooting of Pete. Realizing now that he had been intended to behave in such a manner, providing an excuse to kill him, he went on, ‘Shall I fetch it for you?’

  ‘Nope,’ Dusty refused and looked at his black clad companion. ‘My man here can do it while you give your dog a drink.’

  ‘Get some water from the pump in back and use a wash basin, Mort,’ Dickson authorized.

  ‘I’ll ’tend to him for you,’ the Kid offered, guessing Dusty did not want their close association emphasized for some reason and this was for the benefit of Humboldt, as the peace officer and the rancher were already aware he was more than an ordinary hired hand.

  ‘Gracias, Cuchilo,’ Mort replied. ‘Go with him, you fool critter and, happen you bite off his leg, stop at the knee.’

  ‘Happen you bite me,’ the Kid warned, looking at the dog while retrieving Dusty’s hat. ‘I’m going to sic my ole Thunder hoss on you and he’s a heap bigger’n you.’

  ‘Shall we sit down and talk this out, gentlemen?’ the small Texan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Dickson agreed and, being human, could not resist throwing a pointed glance at the banker. ‘I reckon it could do with a thorough airing.’

  At that moment, the scheme upon which Brenton Humboldt was basing his hopes for the future prosperity of Holbrock as well as his own hung in the balance. Basically a fair minded man, he realized he had been allowing his personal feelings towards the young rancher to cloud his judgment. Recollecting remarks which had been made to the sycophantic Commissioner, he suspected the big Texan representing General Jackson Baines ‘Ole Devil’ Hardin had at least some idea of his behavior earlier. To be fair to him, however, he felt he should do something to make amends even without such an inducement.

  ‘I think, Sheriff Dickson,’ the banker said quietly. ‘In view of what has passed between Mr. Lewis and myself, I have no right to act in the capacity you require and will leave.’

  ‘I’d sooner you stayed, sir,’ Mort declared, before the peace officer could speak. ‘Fact being, I’d be right obliged if you would.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ Humboldt accepted, for once feeling humbled. ‘And I thank you for asking me.’

  ‘Hell’s fires, Dusty!’ the Kid ejaculated, some minutes later, after Dickson had told them of the discoveries at the Chass ranch. ‘This could be why we’re here.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ the banker asked.

  ‘Take it’s somebody, like whoever hires those yahoos’ who started yelling hang-rope, wanted to get both ranches,’ the black dressed Texan suggested. ‘He’s got at least one jasper, Salar, who’s got the know-how to rig the sign so’s it’d point to Mort here having done the killings.’

  That’s a possibility,’ Humboldt admitted. ‘But, if it is the case, Mr. Lewis would be able to establish his innocence.’

  ‘So long as he stayed alive to give the sheriff time to do it,’ the Kid added. ‘Which those hombres weren’t figuring on letting happen.’

  ‘Jumping you and running out gave them the chance to do it,’ Mort admitted.

  ‘We hadn’t been giving you much of a reason to expect a fair hearing,’ replied the banker, to whom the comment was directed. ‘But I still don’t understand what your man meant, Captain Fog. Surely you’ve come to see me about the proposition I made to the General.’

  ‘I was coming after we’d delivered a herd to Fort Sumner,’ Dusty replied. ‘But Lon was let know we’d be needed hereabouts before that was done.’

  ‘Let know?’ Dickson queried, looking at the black dressed Texan.

  ‘I can’t tell you how, ’cause I don’t know nothing about it myself, ’cepting it works,’ the Kid answered, lounging back on the chair he had been given and completely at his ease. ‘But I was let know that something was doing down this way and we was needed here.’

  ‘And I figured it was important enough to send the herd on and head right over,’ Dusty supplemented. ‘Which, happen you’re right, Lon, I was right.’

  ‘You’re way out beyond my sight, Dusty,’ Dickson declared,
having come to first name terms with the small Texan on the ride to Holbrock, and the banker showed a similar lack of comprehension without speaking.

  ‘Mort’s grandson of Chief Wolf Runner,’ the Kid supplied, receiving a nod from his amigo. ‘Which, should he have got killed and that way in particular, your town’d’ve been hip deep and crawling with Kweharehnuh Comanch’ bucks looking for evens.’

  ‘But how could they have known about it?’ Humboldt inquired, showing none of the skepticism which would have greeted the information at another time.

  ‘The same way their medicine man knowed somebody was out to do meanness to Mort,’ the black dressed Texan replied. ‘And got word to me, hoping Dusty and me could get here to stop it.’

  ‘You can believe Lon that such things are possible, Mr. Humboldt,’ the small Texan declared. ‘At least, I’ve got enough faith in him to have come straight away.’

  ‘Will they still come?’ the banker asked worriedly, satisfied he was hearing the truth.

  ‘That depends,’ the Kid drawled, once again having received a signal from Dusty to do the talking. ‘Should they figure Mort’s still not out of the deep and piney woods, they’ll be up and riding.’

  ‘You could go and tell them you’re safe, Mr. Lewis,’ Humboldt suggested. ‘And stay with them until we have heard from that young Army officer.’

  ‘There’s some real smart brains behind this game, ’though they’re short on Injun savvy,’ the Kid warned, before either the rancher or the sheriff could speak. ‘Happen we let Mort go, or figuring we might, they’ll likely have this town so careful watched he’d be hard pushed to get through. Or, should he, they’d follow and, was they to kill him on the way, the pot’d come to a boil quicker’n a weasel-chased jack rabbit heading for home.’

  ‘Then we could send somebody else,’ the banker suggested. ‘One of your deputies, sheriff.’

  ‘They’re both out and about ’round the county,’ Dickson replied, opening the left side drawer of his desk. ‘But Rube from the livery bam would go and with your medi—Hell’s fires. It’s gone!’

  ‘What has?’ Dusty asked, surprised by the vehemence of the reaction from the normally composed and impassive peace officer.

  ‘Mort’s medicine pouch was in here!’ the sheriff explained, indicating the drawer. ‘But it’s not there anymore!’

  ‘But you locked up before you left,’ Humboldt reminded, thinking uncomfortably about the key he had in his possession.

  ‘How many keys are there?’ Dusty asked, remembering the front and rear entrances of the jailhouse had been locked on their arrival.

  ‘My two deputies have one each,’ Dickson answered, but was not allowed to go on.

  ‘I have one for the front door,’ the banker admitted, reaching into his trousers’ right side pocket.

  ‘Whoever took the medicine pouch didn’t come through the front door,’ the sheriff claimed. ‘I thought the lock at the back was stiff when I turned it. So, especially as the door to the cells was open when I know I’d left it shut, I’m guessing the lock was picked. You called it right, Kid. There are some mighty smart brains behind this business.’

  ‘So it seems!’ Humboldt breathed. Then, sucking in a deep breath, he went on, ‘Is there any other way you can have a message sent to Wolf Runner, Mr. Lewis?’

  ‘Sure there is,’ the Kid declared, as the rancher was about to reply. ‘I’ll take it to him.’

  ‘Will it be safe for him to go?’ the banker inquired and he was not guided merely by the desire to give an impression of being concerned over the welfare of somebody he had begun to suspect was closer to Captain Fog than he and the other County Commissioners had been led to assume.

  ‘Safe or not, she’s got to be done,’ the Kid asserted soberly. ‘Which, took all ’round, I reckon I’m the best one to have a stab at doing it.’

  Thirteen

  My Lodge Oath is to Kill Him

  Letting out a sharp snort and making a tossing movement with its shapely head, the magnificent white stallion—its body patched with a black powder, a product developed during days of border smuggling, to make it look like a ‘skewbald’ 30 —caused the Ysabel Kid to wake from the nap he had been taking on the lightweight, almost skeletal, Comanche warrior’s saddle he had borrowed from the hostler at the livery bam in Holbrock.

  Training as a boy, which had been improved by having spent the majority of his eventful young life in situations of a precarious nature, had conditioned the Kid to come from deep sleep to total wakefulness without even a brief interim period of dull witted somnolence. The moment his eyes opened, he set about discovering what had disturbed the stallion. A glance informed him that his mount was looking towards a clump of flowering dogwood bushes about fifty yards to his right.

  Instantly, knowing whatever danger might be threatening would originate from the direction indicated by the stallion, the Kid slipped sideways to the left of the saddle. By doing so, he was partially concealed behind Thunder. Even as his feet touched the ground, he was slipping the Winchester Model of 1866 rifle—which he had been carrying across the crook of his left arm, despite having been dozing—out of the Pehnane medicine pouch which was covering it.

  ‘You did that real well, Cuchilo,’ called a feminine voice, speaking Comanche in the fashion of the Pahuraix band, and with a somewhat mocking timbre. ‘But only a Quick Stinger would fall asleep while riding in the daytime.’

  ‘Come out, sister,’ the Kid replied, with the accent of a Pehnane, returning the rifle to its extemporized boot and stepping from behind the stallion. ‘I knew there was no danger. My horse told me you were only a naivi of the Par-Kee-Na-Um.’ 31

  Even as the young Texan was speaking and watching the bushes being stirred by something other than the gentle breeze which had carried the warning scent to the big stallion, he was puzzled. From the sound of the voice, he had felt sure he was being addressed by a female Comanche who was still young enough to be classed as a naivi, maiden, rather than a hervi, mature woman. Yet her words were far less deferential than he would have expected to be uttered by a person of that category to a name-warrior of his standing.

  No matter how much they might differ in some aspects of their respective ways of life, the Kid knew the various bands of the Nemenuh had one thing in common. Despite the prominence attained by a few medicine women, they ill lived in a society where men were dominant. In the scales of value established by the braves, a woman was regarded as being more useful than a food dog, yet less worthwhile than a pack mule and far below a good saddle horse or a repeating rifle.

  Having been raised in accordance with such standards, or so the fluency with which she employed the Comanche language suggested, the speaker should have been far more respectful in her greeting. However, over the years, the Kid had become acquainted with several young women capable of holding their own in what was still—even amongst white people—practically a ‘man’s world’. Between them, Betty Hardin, Belle ‘the Rebel Spy’ Boyd, Martha ‘Calamity Jane’ Canary and the lady outlaw, Belle Starr, had caused him to revise his earlier notions of masculine supremacy. 32 What was more, although he had never met one, he knew there were exceptions to the rule amongst the Nemenuh. Therefore, he was more interested than annoyed as he waited for his first sight of the speaker.

  Not more than five foot four inches in height, the girl who stepped from the bushes looked to be in her late teens. She had the coppery-bronze skin and, although the Pahuraix generally tended to be slender and taller than others of . their nation, the buxom build of a more typical Comanche. However, her hair and features gave indications that she had a proportion of white blood. Instead of being black, cropped to shoulder length and parted down the middle as was usual for one of her age and sex, the former was reddish brown and formed into two braids after the fashion of a warrior. While pretty, her face was broad and its brown eyes somewhat slanted, but the nose was snub rather than aquiline, making the whole more Caucasian than Indian in its lines.
r />   The girl wore an open necked, loose fitting, multi-colored cotton shirt hanging outside faded Levi’s trousers and had moccasins on her feet. In further defiance to Comanche feminine fashion, buckled around her waist over the shirt, a belt inscribed with medicine symbols carried a walnut handled Colt 1860 Army revolver with its barrel shortened by about half in an open topped high cavalry twist draw holster at the right side, and a J. Russell & Company ‘Green River’ hunting knife was in a sheath made from wapiti hide at the left. She moved with a light footed agility which implied she was very fit and had no flabby fat on her curvaceously firm fleshed body. A Winchester Model of 1866 carbine, its woodwork decorated with patterns made from brass tacks, dangled by its foregrip in her left hand.

  'Greetings, Cuchilo, may you always ride well,’ the girl said formally, her manner that of a name-warrior addressing a social equal rather than a member of the inferior sex speaking to one of the superior gender. ‘We’ve never met, although I saw you ride pukutsi at the Fort Sorrel treaty meeting. 33 My name is Annie Singing Bear, but my lodge brothers call me, “Is-A-Man”.’

  ‘Greetings, Is-A-Man, may you always ride well,’ the Kid responded just as conventionally. His memory having been jogged by the introduction, he realized why the girl was behaving in a manner so untypical for one of her sex and continued, ‘Your name is known to me, but you are far from the tipis of your people.’

  Although Annie Singing Bear was of mixed parentage, she had spent all her life amongst the Pahuraix Comanche. Unlike the Kid and Morton Lewis, before the peace treaty was signed at Fort Sorrel, she had had little contact with white people. Now, having accompanied the band to the reservation to which they had been assigned, she was putting to good use the English learned from her mother by acting as interpreter between her people and the officials at the Indian Agency.

  However, as a child, the girl had exhibited a proclivity towards masculine rather than feminine activities. Such a deviation from normal behavior was considered to have been ordained by Ka-Dih, the Great Spirit of the Nemenuh. Therefore, it had been accepted that she was expected to adopt the life-style—if not in a sexual sense—of a male. Accordingly, she had received the same education as would any tuinep’, boy up to adolescence. Judging from the stories the Kid had heard, she had acquired all the skills required to pass from being a tuivitsi to the honored state of tehnap. Respecting the beliefs of his maternal people, he had not hesitated before employing the ‘man-name’ she claimed to have been granted. He was certain her upbringing would not allow her to lie about such an important matter.