The Floating Outfit 14 Read online

  Like all the Houston’s first floor rooms, number twelve offered more luxury than usual in Texas hotels. Facing the rear of the building, the room had a large, comfortable bed, dressing-table with drawers, washstand that sported a clean white towel, and a large wardrobe.

  In the center of the room stood the beautiful red-headed girl who had drawn his attention on Hood Street that afternoon. A warm, inviting smile added charm to her features as she came towards him with arms outstretched. Once more she pressed her mouth against his. Never averse to such treatment at the hands of a beautiful girl, Mark gave her an adequate reply.

  ‘They told me this was the safest place in Austin,’ he remarked on releasing her and moving her back to arms’ length.

  ‘The lock’s an ordinary lever and fitted for a master key,’ she replied. ‘I could have opened it with a bobby-pin.’

  ‘I just bet you could. Say, Belle honey, I thought you’d got too high-toned to speak to old friends back there on Hood Street.’

  ‘You put me in one hell of a spot, Mark,’ she answered in her attractive Southern drawl. ‘If that feller had stepped in a couple of seconds later I’d’ve already started getting you some help.’

  ‘Would that’ve been bad?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Not for you, maybe,’ the girl admitted. ‘But it would for me. Snodgrass thinks I’m a shy, unassuming lil Georgia gal with money to invest and he might’ve changed his mind if he heard me cussing like a trail hand hauling cows out of a mud-hole.’

  ‘So you’re working on Snodgrass,’ Mark said a touch coldly.

  ‘Nobody else but.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he can afford it and I figure he’s asked to be trimmed for a fair piece now.’

  ‘Damn it all, Belle!’ Mark began.

  ‘Don’t you go all high-toned on me, Mark Counter!’ she snapped back. ‘I’m a thief, but I’ve been one ever since you met me and never pretended to be anything else but one to you.’

  ‘A nice gal like you doesn't have to be one,’ he growled.

  ‘No,’ the girl agreed. ‘I could go back home and marry off to some rancher. Grow old before my time raising kids and watching him sweat out his guts to make a decent spread from a strip of beat-up range. See every red cent he makes go into the bank to pay off interest on a mortgage and then, just when it looks like he’s going to make it, have the bank foreclose and run him off.’

  ‘That’s what happened to your folks, huh?’ Mark said gently.

  ‘Sure. Pa struggled to keep the place going through the War. Sold cattle to the Army—only they paid him in Confederate money. Then after it ended—well, you saw what happened.’

  ‘I was luckier than most, pappy kept his money in gold not paper.’

  ‘So did my pa, what he had, put it into a real safe place too. A bank. Only the bank failed. The new feller who took it on sounded real helpful, lending us and our neighbors’ money to keep going. Only he stopped being helpful before we could pay him back.’

  ‘The law didn’t help?’

  ‘What law? Davis’ lousy State Police? It was them who ran us off our spread. I swore I’d make that banker sweat and did.’

  ‘His name’s not Snodgrass,’ Mark pointed out.

  ‘They’re so alike you’d think the same father spawned them,’ Belle snorted. ‘I’m no saint, Mark. And I’m not the James boys making out that I rob the rich to give to the poor. But I’ve never yet robbed a man who didn’t ask for it.’

  Coming to a halt with her heated tirade, the girl stared half-defiantly at the blond giant. Looking back, a smile played on Mark’s lips, but he felt a little sad too. Ever since their meeting the previous year he had felt a strong attraction for the beautiful lady outlaw, Belle Starr. vii A spirited, gay girl, she had a zest for life which set her apart from any other woman he had ever met. The only one who came close being Calamity Jane, and Mark regarded her in a very different manner. Where he thought of Calamity almost in the light of a tomboy sister, he regarded Belle as a woman—and what a woman.

  ‘It’s your life,’ he told the girl.

  ‘Thanks for not preaching at me,’ she replied. ‘There’s no sound so sweet to me as the screech of a banker when he’s been plucked. I tell you, Mark, there’s nothing I like better than making one screech.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Mark repeated.

  ‘In the way of business, I mean,’ Belle answered and looked pointedly across the room. ‘You never did finish teaching me to play poker.’

  For the first time, following the direction of the girl’s gaze, Mark noticed a boxed deck of cards lying on the bed’s covers. Crossing the room, he sat on one side of the bed. After unbuckling his gunbelt and placing it on the dressing-table, he took up the cards. Thumbing open the box, he slid out the pasteboards and then raised his eyes to Belle’s smiling face as she sat at the other side.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he said. ‘I never did at that. The first thing we have to do is shuffle the deck.’

  ‘Is it?’ asked the girl innocently.

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘But it might take all night for us to—finish the game.’

  ‘Darned if I’d’ve thought of that,’ Mark grinned. ‘Only according to Hoyle—’

  ‘A feller I know says that Hoyle never played poker in his whole life,’ Belle objected. ‘Anyway, what right’s some limey got to tell us red-blooded Americans how we should play cards?’

  ‘You’ve convinced me,’ Mark grinned and dealt out two hands.

  ‘I’ll open with a pair of shoes,’ Belle remarked, without picking up her cards.

  Half an hour later, after an instructive period of betting and raising, the lesson had ended. Darkness once more filled the room.

  ‘Why’d you rescue that lobby-lizzie on Hood Street?’ asked Belle’s voice. ‘You could’ve got hurt and then I’d never have learned how to play poker.’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Mark replied.

  ‘She looked like she’d’ve liked nothing better than walk off on your arm.’

  ‘I was a mite disappointed when she didn’t,’ grinned Mark.

  ‘What’d she got that I haven’t?’ demanded Belle.

  ‘Nothing.’ admitted Mark. ‘And a whole heap less of it.’

  ‘Flattery will get you a long way, young man,’ purred the lady outlaw. ‘As long as you don’t spend all night talking about it.’

  ‘I always figured to be a man of action, not words,’ Mark told her.

  ‘Then act,’ Belle replied.

  Four – A Lady Outlaw in Distress

  Mark stirred in the bed as he heard a pounding on his door. While the room remained dark, he could see daylight through a small gap in the curtains. Sitting up, he called, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘You’re expecting maybe Robert E. Lee?’ Tule Bragg’s rasping voice answered. ‘Rise up, boy and let a tired ole man inside.’ Which, in view of how Mark had spent the night, could prove a might embarrassing. Then he realized that he had the room to himself. Reaching out his left hand, he touched only the sheets and he made out the empty shape of the pillow, sunk-in by a head’s pressure, at his side. Swinging his feet to the ground, Mark sat up and reached for his pants, looked around and found no trace of his visitor of the previous night.

  ‘She sure moves soft and easy,’ he mused, drawing on the pants, ‘in more ways than one.’

  Suddenly he remembered that he did not mention the two men to Belle. Yet he wondered if their business might be connected with her. On the first time he met Belle, a bounty hunter called Framant had been after her. When Framant came on Mark in the Elkhorn livery barn, he looked the Texan over in the same way that Burbage had; calculatingly, trying to see if his face struck a note from a wanted poster. Hunting wanted men for the price on their heads had been the way Framant made his living. Burbage too, or Mark missed his guess.

  Deciding that he would give Belle a warning at the earliest opportunity, Mark walked across to the door and unlocked it
. He knew something of the girl’s skill at opening locked doors and felt no surprise to find it secured as it had been before they finished their game of poker.

  Bragg leaned against the door-jamb, unshaven and yet showing no sign of having missed a night’s sleep.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he greeted laconically, although the time was no more than half past nine in the morning.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Mark growled inhospitably, allowing the foreman to enter.

  ‘Could’ve been worse. I come out a lil mite ahead.’

  ‘Which means you’ve won a bundle and won’t stop bragging about it all week.’

  ‘You boys at the OD Connected sure live well, happen this’s the time of day you get up,’ drawled Bragg, crossing the room and pulling open the curtains. ‘And I never got to boasting about my winnings. Say though, talking about that, there was this time down in Amarillo back in ’58 …’

  ‘There I sat, two lil deuces showing and nothing in the hole,’ Mark interrupted. ‘And him with two pairs kings riding high.’

  ‘Have I told you about it afore?’ inquired Bragg in a surprised tone.

  ‘Not more’n twenty-thirty times, I’d say,’ Mark replied and scowled as the foreman began to sniff the air. ‘Now what’s wrong?’

  Wrinkling his nose in an expression of disgust, Bragg crossed the room. He drew apart the curtains, unfastened and raised the bottom part of the window.

  ‘Figure to clear the air a mite,’ he explained. ‘Way this room smells, the cleaning gal might get the wrong idea, or the right one; and I’m damned if I know which’d be worse.’

  ‘To each his own,’ drawled Mark tolerantly. ‘You like gambling and I don’t.’

  ‘Neither did I when I was your age,’ grunted Bragg. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘We’ll get a shave in the barber shop downstairs and then have some breakfast,’ Mark suggested as he dressed.

  ‘Damned if I’d pay the sort of prices they ask for a room and let ’em make me shave afore I eat,’ the foreman drawled. ‘Anyways, in a fancy place like this, I thought they’d make you have a shave afore they let you into the barber shop.’

  All through his shave and while eating breakfast, Mark tried to decide what he should do about Belle Starr’s presence in town. To some people the answer would have been clear, warn the banker. Mark did not see it that way. All too well he remembered the conditions during Reconstruction when ‘liberal’ bigots sought to smash down those who dared oppose their lofty ideals and carpetbagger scum used official positions to loot and rob. Many an otherwise honest Texan had been driven into a life of crime at that time. Maybe Mark would have been under different circumstances. There were personal loyalties involved too. A man like Mark Counter did not easily turn his back on a friend.

  Refusing Bragg’s offer to go along and help with his father’s business, Mark walked the streets of the city and tried to solve his problem. From the comments made by the young man at the Bighorn the previous night, Snodgrass might deserve plucking. Reaching a decision, Mark turned his steps towards the office of a prominent lawyer. As the lawyer was also his uncle, Mark gained admission with no difficulty. After talking over different subjects, Mark brought up the subject of Snodgrass’ character. Always a forthright man, his uncle left him in no doubt that the young man’s views had been correct. The lawyer refrained from asking any questions as to Mark’s reason for making the inquiry and the meeting ended as amiably as it had begun.

  By the time Mark reached the street, he decided to let things ride. When he suggested she forget the whole deal, during the previous night, Belle insisted that other people were too deeply involved for her to back out and leave them. One thing Mark felt sure of. With Belle planning and organizing things there would be no violence involved. He also felt willing to bet that she’d arranged things to ensure no innocent person would suffer through the robbery.

  Having made his decision, Mark gave thought to his horse. He knew that Belle rented a room on his floor at the hotel, although on the other side of the passage, but did not intend to go to see her. While intending to remain impassive in the affair, he also felt that any further contact between them must come in some other town. So he went to the livery bam where he left his huge blood-bay stallion on arrival in Austin. Everything necessary for the horse’s wellbeing was attended to by the time Mark arrived and he knew the rest would do it good. On checking, he found one of the blood bay’s shoes needed replacing and went to attend to the matter.

  With his horse reshod, Mark returned to the hotel. He found a message from Bragg warning that the business would take longer than expected, but no word from Ole Devil. Dining alone in the hotel, he felt bored and decided he would head for San Garcia after seeing Sailor Sam. Maybe Dusty did not need help, but anything beat hanging around Austin unless he had his friends with him.

  Like most men who often spent long periods with little sleep, Mark had developed the habit of grabbing some when the opportunity arose. Going to his room, he removed hat, boots and gunbelt, lay on the bed and drifted almost immediately to a deep sleep.

  Night had fallen when Mark woke. Sitting on the bed, he looked around the room and then came to his feet. Crossing the room, he opened the door with the intention of looking for one of the hotel staff to ask for water. Then he heard voices on the stairs.

  ’It’s room seven, gentlemen,’ came the fruity tones of the night clerk. ‘I can’t say that I approve—’

  Mark drew the door until it was nearly closed at the words. Standing in the darkness, he peered through the slit and listened to a conversation he knew to be private. Number seven room across and along the passage was rented by Belle Starr, under the name ‘Magnolia Beauregard’.

  ‘You’re not paid to approve or disapprove,’ said a hard, clipped New England accent. ‘That letter I showed you said for you to give us every cooperation.’

  ‘Is she up there now?’ asked a second Eastern voice as the night clerk appeared in Mark’s range of vision.

  ‘She hasn’t handed in her key if she’s gone out,’ replied the hotel man.

  The other two speakers came into sight. One of them Mark recognized as the dude who showed such an interest in the hotel register the previous night. At his side walked another obvious dude. Not quite so tall, but with a powerful build, he dressed in better taste than his companion. Much the same kind of gunbelt hung under the man’s city jacket, a pearl-handled Smith & Wesson No. 2 revolver in its cross draw holster. At .32 caliber, despite its manufacturers calling it an ‘Army’ revolver, the gun did not impress Mark. He had been reared in the Texas tradition that even .36 was a touch light in caliber when one’s life depended on it. Handsome but hard as nails was the way the man struck Mark, studying him through the crack in the doorway.

  Moving around cautiously, Mark watched the three men halt before the door marked ‘7’. Either the two dudes did not regard Belle as dangerous, or they lacked training in certain basic peace officer matters. Flanking the clerk as he knocked on the door, they would have been in the line of fire should the room’s occupant start throwing lead. That did not happen, nor did the door open. After a moment the second dude looked at the clerk.

  ‘Use your pass-key.’

  ‘It’s on your head if anything goes wrong,’ warned the clerk as he obeyed.

  Once again Mark marveled at men whom he imagined to be peace officers, acting in such a suicidal manner. Neither of them took the precaution of drawing a gun as they entered the room. Then they walked out again, alone.

  ‘She’s not there,’ Quigg growled.

  ‘Our guests occasionally take their keys with them when they leave,’ the clerk pointed out. ‘The cleaning staff have passkeys—’

  ‘I’ve got the bank covered,’ interrupted the other dude. ‘In case she comes back, I’ll wait in the hall. You’d best stay here, Quigg.’

  ‘Sure, Mr. Shafto. You want for me to wait in the passage?’

  ‘In her room, damnit! If you hang around in the hall,
somebody’ll see you and start yelling for the manager.’

  ‘I’m not sure that—’ began the clerk.

  ‘You don’t have to be sure of anything!’ Shafto barked. ‘I’ll handle any complaints. Go on in, Quigg.’

  Mark felt as if a cold hand touched him as he watched Quigg enter Belle’s room. While he did not know what kind of lawman Shafto might be, he felt that he could hazard a pretty fair guess. Certainly he was no Western-trained peace officer, that showed in the lack of precautions taken at the door to Belle’s room. In the early 1870s there was no national law enforcement office, it all being managed at State level. Even the U.S. Secret Service concerned itself only with forgers and counterfeiters. As Belle only operated in the West, she could not have fallen foul of Eastern lawmen; except for one kind. It could even be debated that the men involved had no official standing, if the point arose.

  After retiring from the command of the U.S. Secret Service at the end of the Civil War, Allan Pinkerton had organized his own private detective agency. Using the methods employed with varying success against the South’s efficient spy networks, Pinkerton worked for banks, railroads and other big business combines to stamp out the enormous crime wave which rose with the uneasy peace. Unless Mark missed badly in his guess, Shafto, Quigg and Burbage belonged to the Pinkerton Agency; the former pair being regular operatives and the latter hired for local knowledge.

  If the men had belonged to an official law enforcement agency, Mark would have been faced with the serious problem of his future actions. He felt no such responsibility where Pinkerton’s men were concerned. Like most Southerners, Mark disliked Allan Pinkerton and regarded his agency with suspicion. Not for another eighteen or more months would come the ‘bomb incident’, when Pinkerton agents threw either a bomb or a harmless ‘Grecian-fire’ flare into the home of Jesse James’ parents to kill the outlaw’s eight year old half-brother and blow his mother’s right arm off; but every man who served the Confederacy remembered ugly rumors of Southern prisoners-of-war being tortured by the Yankee Secret Service under the flimsy pretense of extracting information. So Mark felt no compunctions about helping Belle to avoid falling into Shafto’s clutches. From the little Mark saw of the man, he guessed any prisoner with information would be worked on to be induced to part with it.