A Horse Called Mogollon (Floating Outfit Book 3) (8 page)

Ignoring the departure of their
leader, the stallions entered and ran along the sheer-sided draw
towards the gate of the
caracol.
Urging them on, Jeanie watched
anxiously.

Always the actual entry into the
enclosure was a tricky, chancy business. Let the mustangs receive
just one hint of their danger and no power on earth could force
them inside. However, the young stallions did not hesitate. Going
by the disguised gate, they penetrated the forward section of the
pen.

As soon as all the
manada
had entered
the
caracol,
the last of the
mesteneros
who could be spared to take part in the
corrida
made his appearance.
He had been hidden behind the gate, ready to turn back any of the
mustangs that tried to escape before it had been closed. Sliding
their horses to a halt, Felix and Carlos helped the
mestenero
to swing the gate
shut. Having watched the successful conclusion of their efforts,
Jeanie twisted on her saddle and looked back along the
draw.

‘
Is
Dusty all right?’ the girl inquired as Colin joined her.

‘
Aye,
lassie,’ Colin replied, ‘but I had to shoot yon
manadero.’

‘
It
happens,’ Jeanie said philosophically, and dismounted. Seeing the
concern on her fiancé’s face, she continued, ‘Don’t feel bad about
it, Colin. It was a quicker end than he’d’ve got had he escaped.
He’d likely’ve been kicked to death, or crippled up bad, trying to
get in on another
manada.
Or he’d get so all-fired old ’n’ slow that the wolves or
coyotes’d eat him alive.’

‘
That’s
true enough,’ Colin admitted. ‘There’s no pity for the old in the
wild, lassie.’

‘
We got
the others, anyways,’ Jeanie enthused. ‘You’ve seen how often we
have to shoot a
manadero?’

‘
I
have,’ Colin said soberly.

It was one of the points he would have
to keep constantly in mind when he started his hunt for the horse
called Mogollon.

Gripping a
sack of potatoes by its neck and
bottom in front of him, Mark Counter raised it from the floor.
Libby watched him with admiration as he carried it towards the
front door of Hoffer’s general store. Despite having taken part in
a most satisfying session of love-making, which had left them
little time to sleep, he toted his hundredweight burden with no
more apparent effort than if it had been a five pound bag of
sugar.

Libby felt no regrets at her
decision of the previous night. In the morning, after the deputy
had gone from his guard duty outside the de
Brioudes
’
room, Libby had dressed and returned to her own quarters. Ben
Thompson had joined the blonde and Mark while they ate breakfast in
the dining-room. Making no reference to how he had discovered them
the previous night, Thompson had told them what had happened
following his departure from their presence. There had been little
that they did not already know. On finding the passkey in the
alley, Thompson’s party had drawn the conclusions predicted by
Libby. They had searched the surrounding area without locating any
trace of the man responsible for the ‘attack’ on the
Vicomtesse.
Although neither
Mark nor Libby commented on the matter, Thompson’s last piece of
news had not surprised them.

Before they had finished their
breakfasts, the
Vicomte
had arrived. Stiffly, in a manner coldly polite, he had
apologized for the inconvenience his wife’s ‘mistake’ had caused to
Mark. The
Vicomtesse
had not accompanied him to breakfast, de Brioude had
explained, because she had not yet recovered from her
fright.

Taken all in all, Mark had felt
relieved by Beatrice
’s absence. Not through any sense of guilt, but because
Libby had threatened to hand-scalp the foreign woman the next time
they met. While Mark had doubted if Libby would have deliberately
started a brawl in public, a chance wrong comment from the
Vicomtesse
might easily have
provoked an unpleasant incident.

With the meal over, Libby and
Mark had collected their belongings from the rooms. Picking up her
wagon, they had brought it to Hoffer
’s store. None of the
mesteneros
had made an appearance, so Mark
started the loading.

As Mark was stepping out of the
door carrying the sack of potatoes, he saw a big, thickset,
crop-haired United States Cavalry sergeant standing in the
center of the
sidewalk between him and the Schell family’s wagon. At the same
moment, Mark became aware that an equally hefty Yankee soldier was
lounging just a mite too casually at either side of the entrance to
the building.

‘
Mind
moving aside, friend?’ Mark inquired, making a reasonable request
as the sergeant blocked his access to the rear end of the
wagon.

‘
Walk
’round me, beef-head,’ was the cold, uncompromising
reply.

Instantly Mark sensed danger.
Having completed his packing quicker than Libby, he had gone
downstairs to wait in the hotel
’s reception hall. While there, he had seen that
same hard-faced sergeant in the dining-room with the
Vicomtesse
de Brioude. At the
time, Mark had sensed by their behavior that he was the subject of
their conversation. The sergeant had scowled Mark’s way and made as
if to rise, but Beatrice had restrained him.

Being curious, Mark had taken
the opportunity to question the desk clerk about the soldier. He
had learned that Sergeant Heaps was the second-in-command of the de
Brioudes
’
escort. Darting a worried glance at the dining-room’s door, the
clerk had also intimated that he thought the couple had made a bad
choice. According to him, the non-com had a reputation for being a
bully and a troublemaker.

Studying the sullen, brutal
face, Mark concluded that Heaps
’s reputation might be justified. He also wondered
if the
Vicomtesse
had encouraged the sergeant to pick a fight as a means of
taking her revenge. That seemed likely. After the failure of her
first attempt to repay him for spurning her advances, a woman as
vindictive as she had proved to be would hardly forget the matter
so easily. If Mark had called the play correctly, he knew that
there would be no evading the issue. Satisfied that trouble could
not be avoided, he continued to advance without giving a hint of
his suspicions.

Swinging towards Mark, the
red-haired private at the left side of the door thrust forward his
right leg. Acting as if he had seen nothing, Mark suddenly swung up
and hurled the sack at Heaps. Already moving forward to the attack,
the sergeant took the heavy weight full in the chest. Its impact
knocked him across the sidewalk until a collision with the body of
Libby
’s wagon
ended his involuntary retreat.

Instead of being thrown off
balance by the redhead
’s leg, Mark caught his weight on his forward foot
and remained erect. Swinging his other leg around, he pivoted and
flung a backhand blow at the center of his assailant’s face. Pain
blasted through the redhead as hard knuckles crushed his nose.
Yelping in torment, the soldier went spinning and teetering
helplessly away from what the trio had originally regarded as an
easy victim.

Like Sergeant Heaps and
‘Red’ Going, Dip
Noris had taken Mark for a wealthy young dandy who would be
unlikely to put up a strenuous resistance while they earned the
‘Countess’s’ monetary gratitude. So Noris shared with his
companions a sense of over-confidence and it brought him just as
much grief. Mark was what he appeared, but with one major
discrepancy. Instead of being soft and weak from easy living, he
possessed a muscular development superior to any of his attackers
and had been well-trained in all aspects of rough-house
self-defense.

Catching hold of
Mark
’s left
shoulder, Noris prepared to jerk him around and drive a punch into
his face. Maybe the beef-head had been fortunate against Red and
Heaps, but Noris figured that his luck had about run out. Mark had
other, definite ideas on the subject. Moving to the rear instead of
trying to draw away from the clutching fingers, the blond giant
propelled his right elbow behind him. It rammed with considerable
force into Noris’s
solar plexus,
causing him to gasp, remove his hand and retreat
hurriedly. Nor had Mark finished with him. Turning around, the
Texan hurled out his left fist. Bunched knuckles rammed into
Noris’s chest before the pain of the first attack could fold him
over. After appearing to be running backwards, the soldier sat down
hard on the unyielding planks of the sidewalk.

Heaps allowed the sack to tumble
unheeded to his feet. Sucking in a deep breath, he sprang over it.
Advancing fast, he enfolded Mark
’s torso and biceps with his arms from the
rear. Locking on a grip that no man had ever managed to break, the
sergeant let out a bellow to his two assistants.

‘
Going!
Noris! Get the hell here and help me!’

Before he had reached the fifth
word of his demand, Heaps began to get an uneasy feeling that he
really did need help. Under that
excellently tailored shirt’s sleeves
bulged mounds of bicep muscles in excess of his own. Keeping his
head held back to avoid being butted with the base of Mark’s skull,
he clung on grimly and a timbre of urgency crept into the remainder
of his speech.

Taking his hands from his
throbbing nose, Red Going stared for a moment at the blood on his
palms. Then he turned his eyes to the man who had dealt him the
injury. What he saw filled him with delight, for it offered the
opportunity of returning the Texan
’s blow without too much danger. Trapped
from behind in Heaps’s vice-like bear-hug, the efficiency of which
Going had seen demonstrated many times, the blond giant faced
towards the wall of the store. So the burly redhead decided that he
could safely approach and launch his attack.

‘
Hold
him, Heaps!’ Going bawled. ‘I’m coming!’

Shouting out his intentions
proved to be an error in tactics, although the heavy thumping of
his boots on the sidewalk would have warned Mark of the danger.
Hearing Going approaching, Mark exerted all his strength in a way
neither the redhead nor the sergeant expected. Mark knew that he
could not break the non-com
’s hold quickly enough to be of use, so did not
try. Instead, he gave a surging twist that turned him towards his
second attacker.

Driving down with his feet, Mark
took three long strides to meet Going and dragged the amazed Heaps
after him. An experienced
barroom brawler, Going could sense what was coming
next even though he reacted too slowly to avert it. Balancing on
his right leg, Mark lashed up his left foot in a wicked kick.
Unable to stop his forward impetus, Going took the toe of the
riding boot in his groin. The pain caused to the redhead’s nose
paled into nothing alongside the white-hot, nauseating agony which
now blazed through him. Screaming and clutching at the stricken
area, Going spun on his
heels. Then he stumbled away, dropping to his
knees and pitching face forward into the vomit which burst from his
mouth.

Being a loyal
subordinate
—or, at least, aware of his fate if he stayed out of the
fight—Noris prepared to return to the fray. To reach the
combatants, he had to pass in front of the open door of the store.
Although he saw Libby at it, he ignored her. Clenching his fists,
he advanced along the sidewalk and watched Going rendered
hors de
combat,

On hearing the commotion, Libby
had come to investigate. While she did not know what had started
the fight, she could see enough to tell her that Mark might be
needing some help. With that in mind, she hitched up her skirt and
injected a bare, shapely leg between Noris
’s feet. Doing so might have been a
repetition of the trick Going had tried on the blond giant, but
there was one major difference. Mark had suspected that the attempt
would be made and was ready for it. Libby’s intervention took Noris
completely unawares. Catching his rear foot against the woman’s
calf, the soldier went stumbling helplessly by Mark and Heaps to
end his progress by falling over Going’s recumbent body.

Taken with his earlier
anxieties, the sight of his second helper blundering off
uncontrollably caused Heaps to slacken his grip a little. Surging
apart his elbows, Mark forced Heaps
’s arms to slip up to his shoulders.
Catching the sergeant’s right wrist with his left hand so that his
arm also pinned the other’s left forearm against the chest of the
tan-colored shirt, Mark continued with his escape. Bowing his torso
forward and forcing Heaps to duplicate the movement, Mark bent his
knees and twisted to the left. By ducking his head forward and
straightening his legs, he catapulted the sergeant over the upper
part of his back. With Heaps in full flight, and feeling the
blue-clad arms release their hold, Mark set him free.