Trigger Fast (9 page)

After four songs, all well put over and with Weems showing he could lend a hand at carrying a melody even if he did not know the words of the tune, Bent called for liquid refreshment. This gave the Kid a chance to talk to Weems and to try to learn more about Sir James Keller.

‘What sort of feller’s your boss, friend?’ he asked.

‘Sir James?’ replied Weems. ‘A gentleman and a sportsman. My family has served his for the past six generations.’

‘Why’d he come out here?’

‘I never asked.’

The Kid grinned, warming to Weems. If anybody had questioned him about some of Dusty, or Ole Devil’s business he would have made the same reply, in much the same tone. Clearly Weems felt the same loyalty to his boss as a cowhand did to the outfit for which he rode. However the Kid hoped to try and learn if Keller knew what went on around and about his spread.

‘Maybe he reckons to make a fortune out here,’ drawled Wes Hardin.

‘We already have a fortune,’ sniffed Weems, just a trifle pompously. ‘The master felt we might have a better chance of development out here. After all there is so little scope left in England these days. The whole country’s going to the dogs. Why shortly before we sailed a junior footman at Lord Granderville’s, in my presence, addressed the butler without calling him mister.’ To Weems this clearly amounted to the depths of decadence, a sign of the general rottenness of the times. To the listening men it sounded incomprehensible. If a Texan called a man mister after being introduced it meant he did not like the man and wanted no part of him.

Bent took up the questioning and Weems, with the mellowing influence of a couple of beers, talked of the life he led in England. He might have been discussing the habits of creatures from another planet as he described the strict social distinctions between servants. It now became clear to Bent why a between-stairs maid did not consider herself good enough to share a room with so important a person as a housekeeper. The term brought grins to Texas faces. In their world a house did not mean a home and housekeeper sounded like a fancy title for the madam of a brothel. Weems broke into a delighted chuckle as the Kid mentioned this, trying to picture the puritanical Miss Trumble in such a capacity. He talked on but there was no snobbish feeling in his words. To him it stood as a way of life, one with a code as rigid as that which ruled the lives of cowhands in their loyalty to their brand.

During the talking, even though absorbed by Weems’ descriptive powers, the Kid stayed alert. He saw the stocky man who entered the bar room and stood just inside looking around with watchful eyes. For an instant he looked at the Kid, then his eyes passed on, but the Kid had noticed just a hint of recognition in them. The Kid studied the newcomer, noted his dandy but travel-stained clothes, the low hanging Tranter revolver from the butt of which a right hand never strayed. The man looked like a tough hired killer, one of the better class than the pair he’d run across on Double K, or the group he helped chase from Lasalle’s, but one of their breed.

Possibly the man might be a guide come to take Weems and his party to the ranch. His next actions proved this to be wrong. The man did not cross to the bar and ask for information about the Weems’ party. He sat with his back to the wall and close to the door, and ordered a drink from a passing waiter. Which same meant if he came from the Double K it was not to meet Weems, but to follow the Kid.

‘Let’s have another song,’ suggested Bent, getting in another round of beers. ‘Give us the
Rosemary-Jo Lament
, Lon.’

‘Why sure,’ agreed the Kid. ‘Soon’s I’ve been out back.’

Shoving away from the bar, the Kid headed across the room and out of the door. He gave no sign of knowing the man might be after him, but sensed eyes on him as he left the building. Two horses which had not been there when he entered, stood at the hitching rail. That meant he guessed right, the man was the same who followed him north.

For some moments after the Kid’s departure Dune sat at the table and waited. Then he emptied his glass in one swallow, rose and walked through the doors into the night.

The night lay under the tight of a waning moon, but he could see well enough for his purpose. He glanced at the two horses, they had brought him from the Double K although he did not travel at speed. He might have caught up with the Kid on the range but did not fancy taking such a chance. He had ridden steadily, keeping reserve energy for a hurried departure. Clearly the Kid had friends in the bar-room and they were not going to take kindly finding him murdered.

With this thought in mind Dune led the two horses to the side of the main building and left them. Then he walked around behind the building, making for the long, three-hole men’s back-house which lay some distance away.

To discourage his guests from staying inside too long, to the discomfort of other guests, Bent had three-quarter length doors on each compartment of the backhouse. This left part of the top and bottom open and tended to make the occupants take only such time as was necessary.

Only one compartment of the backhouse appeared to be in use. Dune saw this and could tell that it held the Ysabel Kid, for a gunbelt hung over the top of the door, a white handled bowie knife strapped to it.

Dune looked around him carefully as he drew his Tranter revolver. Apart from a small bush some twenty feet away he could see nothing and even the bush was nothing to disturb him. He did not aim to match up with the Kid in a fair fight and he had a good chance of avoiding the need to.

Taking aim Dune threw his first bullet into the door. He knew that the bullets would make light work of smashing through the planks at that range. Twice more he aimed and fired, taking only enough time to re-aim and place the bullets a few inches apart, so they would fan across the interior and catch the Kid as he sat on the hole.

No sound came from the compartment. Nothing at all. Dune realized this as he triggered off his third shot. Realized it and the implication behind the silence. Even had his first bullet struck and killed the Kid there should have been some noise, if only his death throes.

‘Finished?’ asked a voice from his left.

Dune swung around, trying to turn the Tranter. The Kid’s black-dressed shape loomed up from behind the bush Dune had dismissed as being too small to hide even a child. His gunbelt might hang over the backhouse door and show the hilt of the bowie knife as bait for a trap — but the old Dragoon was in his hand.

With a snarled curse Dune tried to line his gun. The Tranter never saw the day when its butt lent itself to fast instinctive alignment and Dune had time for nothing else. He fired, the bullet missed the Kid although it came close enough to stir his shirt sleeve. With a roar like a cannon the old Dragoon boomed out a reply, flame stabbing towards Dune.

The Kid shot the only way he dare. For an instant kill. His round, soft lead .44 ball caught Dune just over the left eyebrow at the front and burst in a shower of bone splinters and brains out at the back of the head. Such was the striking power of the old gun that Dune went over backwards, thrown from his feet. The Tranter fell from a lifeless hand even before his body hit the ground.

Shouts sounded from the main building. Windows of the upper floor rooms opened and people looked out. Then Bent and Wes Hardin, both holding weapons, burst into sight, racing towards the Kid. Other occupants of the bar-room came next including some of the staff carrying lanterns.

‘What happened?’ Bent asked the Kid who stood strapping on his gunbelt once more.

‘Take a look. That hombre sure messed up your backhouse door.’

Taking a lantern from a waiter, Wes Hardin came forward and let the light play on the door. His eyes took in the three holes. From their height and position he could guess at what would have happened had the Kid been sitting inside.

‘Who was he, Lon?’ asked Bent, for he handled law enforcement in that section of the Indian Nations.

‘Never saw him afore, until he walked into your place tonight. Any of these folks know him?’

Bent allowed the onlookers to move forward, but none of them could say who the dead man might be. Dune’s face, apart from the hole over his eye, was not marked even though the back of his head proved to be a hideous mess when exposed to view.

The two horses did not help either, one came from a south Texas ranch, by its brand; the other from a spread which specialized in the breeding and selling of saddle stock.

‘Nothing in his pockets to identify him,’ Bent stated, making a check. ‘Sure you don’t know him, Lon?’

‘Nope.’

Bent threw a look at the Kid, knowing the sound of his voice. When that note crept into the Kid’s voice it was no use asking him questions. So Bent shrugged and turned to order his men to remove the body.

The Kid found Weems at his side. They watched men carrying away the body headed for the stables where it could be left until morning when it would be buried.

‘You killed him,’ said the valet, his face looking ashen pale.

Tapping the door by the line of bullet holes, the Kid nodded. ‘I reckon I did. He wasn’t in this much of a hurry to get in and even if he had been there’s two more empty holes.’

‘And you didn’t know him?’

‘Nope. He could have mistaken me for somebody else. Say, I’m headed down trail in the morning. Happen you feel like it I’ll show you to Double K.’

Weems gave the matter some thought. This soft-talking, innocent looking young man had just killed a. fellow human being. True the other man appeared to have given good cause for the action, but in England people did not treat killing so lightly. However Weems had his duty to his master. He must get the two wagon loads of furniture and property to the house as soon as possible. He decided to take a chance. Like his master, Weems had been escorted from Kansas by cavalrymen from Fort Dodge, their colonel being a friend of Sir James. However Weems’s escort were ordered to return at Bent’s Ford where a guide from the ranch would be waiting. The guide had not arrived and Weems wished for no more delay. Who knew what a position Sir James might find himself in, alone, without the services of a good valet in the raw, primitive west?’

‘I’ll be pleased to have you along,’ he said.

‘We’ll pull out at sun-up then,’ replied the Kid. ‘Now I’d best get back inside, likely Duke Brent’ll want to see me some more about that hombre I had to kill.’

oooOooo

1. Told in THE HALF-BREED

2. Told in A TOWN CALLED YELLOWDOG

CHAPTER NINE

DUSTY FOG turned in his saddle and looked back along the trail to Barlock. What he saw satisfied him and he slid the Winchester carbine back into its saddle-boot.

‘They’re not following us,’ he remarked.

Rusty Willis scoffed at the thought. ‘Course not. They know I’m along.’

‘You don’t smell that bad yet,’ grunted Mark. ‘How you feeling, Morg?’

The young cowhand from the north country managed a wry grin and tried to ease his aching body on the buckboard seat. He didn’t want the men, all well known members of his trade, to think him a whiner.

‘Like one time a hoss throwed me off then walked over me. T’aint nothing but half a dozen or so broken ribs, all us Montana boys are tough.’

This brought howls of derision from the others. Freda watched them and smiled, wondering if cowhands ever grew up so old as to take life seriously. She also gave a sideways look at Morg Summers; he seemed capable and honest, not bad looking either if it came to a point.

‘Say Freda, gal,’ Mark went on. ‘Morg here’s looking for a riding chore and you’re looking for a hand or so. Must be fate in it somewhere.’

‘I’d have to be able to call him something more than just Morg,’ she replied.

‘Why?’ grinned Mark, watching the flush which crept to the girl’s cheeks. ‘All right. This’s Morgan Summers, from Montana, ‘though why he’d boast about that I sure don’t know. Morg, get acquainted with Freda Lasalle; my pard Dusty Fog; and this pair are from the Wedge, but don’t hold it again ‘em. They answer to Rusty Willis and Doc Leroy and if you can’t sort out which’s which you north country hands are even less smart than I allow you are.’

‘Rusty Willis’s the best looking one,’ Rusty prompted.

‘Howdy Rusty,’ Morg replied, looking at Doc. ‘I’d recognize you from your pard’s description.’

All in all Morg allowed he had made the right impression on the others. He wanted to make a good impression on them all — especially the girl who sat so close besides him and handled the ribbons of the buckboard so competently.

‘I think we can manage to hire you,’ Freda stated, wondering if her father would agree, then she looked towards Mark in a coldly accusing manner. ‘What started the trouble in town?’

Leaving Mark to explain, or to keep the girl occupied, for his explanation in the first place bore little resemblance to the truth, Dusty turned his attention to the two Wedge hands. He had not seen them in a couple of years, but they looked little different. Doc still looked as studious and frail as ever, and most likely could still handle his gun with the old speed and skill. Rusty clung to his old Dance Brothers revolver, a Confederate .44 calibre copy of the Dragoon Colt and he did not look any less reliable for that.

Where at’s the herd?’ Dusty asked.

‘Down trail a piece,’ replied Doc. ‘Rusty and me cut on ahead to Barlock to pick up some makings. You look like you’ve found some fuss up here, Dusty.’

‘Man’d say you were right at that,’ Dusty agreed.

Then he told the story of their visit to Lasalle’s and what came out of it. He saw the change in his friends’ faces as he spoke of that wire across the narrows and Mallick’s threat that no trail herd would go through his land. They did not offer any comment until he finished then Rusty let out a low exclamation, obscene but to the point.

‘Clay Allison’s about two days behind us and to the south-west,’ he went on. ‘Johnny saw him on a swing around the herd. There’ll surely be all hell on when old Clay hears about that wire.’

Doc nodded his agreement and Dusty saw nothing to argue about in it. They all knew Clay Allison, a Texas rancher and one of the real fast guns in his own right. If he arrived and found his trail blocked he would have a real good answer, roaring guns.

A thought hit Doc Leroy and he reined in his horse, looking at Dusty.

‘If those yahoos from the Double K hit Lasalle’s they likely went for the other spreads at the same time.’

An angry grunt left Dusty’s lips. He should have thought of that in the first place. However he did not waste time in futile self-recrimination, or in discussing the chance of the Double K making visits.

He rode forward to the buckboard and interrupted Mark’s description of how he and Morg were saving the virtue of a beautiful saloongirl when the marshal’s bunch jumped them, with Morg protesting his innocence in the matter of rescuing beautiful saloongirls.

‘Reckon you can get this pair of invalids back to your place without us along, Freda?’ he asked.

‘I reckon I can. If lies were health Mark’s sure well enough. You’re not going back to Barlock, are you?’

‘Nope,’ Dusty answered. ‘So don’t get all hot and bothered. Doc’s just reminded me of something I should’ve thought of sooner.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘The same thing that bunch tried at your place might’ve been done to your neighbours, only more so.’

Freda gave a low gasp for she had not thought of the possibility either. She instantly became practical and helpful, pointing off across the range roughly in the direction of the Gibbs’ place, then how they would be able to find the Jones’ house.

‘Want me along, Dusty?’ Mark asked.

‘Not this time,
amigo
,’ replied Dusty. ‘Three of us should be enough and I’d like somebody on hand at Freda’s in case that bunch comes back.’

Although he would have much rather rode with Dusty, Mark knew his small pard called the game right. Not only would an extra pair of hands give strength to the Lasalle house if an attack came, but Mark himself needed to get off his horse and rest. That fight in town had taken plenty out of him, enough to make him more of a liability than an asset in the sort of conditions Dusty, Doc and Rusty might be running into.

Knowing hired gunmen, Mark guessed Tring would be smarting under the indignity of failure and in being fanned off the Lasalle place by a load of bird shot. He might easily gather his bunch and make for the Lasalle house to avenge himself and Mark wanted to be on hand when he came.

So Mark stayed with the buckboard while Dusty swung off at a tangent, riding with his two good friends of the Wedge. Mark grinned at the girl’s worried face and said, ‘Waal, there was ole Morg, with this beautiful blonde haired gal on his lap and all—’

‘You danged white-topped pirate!’ wailed Morg. ‘Whyn’t you tell the truth for once in your life?’

‘All right,’ grinned Mark. ‘She wasn’t beautiful. She was about two hundred pounds weight, had seven double chins—’

‘Let’s ignore him, Morg,’ suggested Freda, interrupting Mark’s flow of descriptive untruth. ‘You tell me what happened.’

Which brought her no nearer to knowing the truth for Morg reversed the story Mark told, putting Mark in his place in every detail.

‘That I can well believe,’ Freda remarked at the end. ‘Now — and I want to remind all and sundry that I am the sole cook at home — how about telling me what really happened.’

‘A wise man once told me never to argue with the cook,’ Mark drawled. ‘It all started when I saw Morg getting abused by that Jackieboy saloon bunch.’

This time Freda heard the true story. She felt grateful to Mark for having saved Morg Summers and almost wished she had not slapped Mark’s face back in town.

For a time after leaving the buckboard Dusty and the other two rode in silence. Beyond expressing their regrets at the death of Dusty’s brother neither Doc nor Rusty made any other reference to the happenings in Moondog. They were all good friends with past dangers shared, so did not need to go into words to show their true feelings. Dusty turned the talk to the wire and the other two growled their anger. All agreed on one thing. The fence must go. Rusty and Doc were all for war, although Doc, more given to thinking of causes and effects than his
amigo
saw how a wire cutting war might affect the inhabitants of the area.

‘I can’t see Clay Allison sitting back peaceable and talking, Dusty,’ drawled Rusty Willis, ‘even if Stone will.’

‘I’m going to talk to them both,’ Dusty answered. ‘I’ll ride down trail in the morning and meet up with Clay. He’ll stand firm maybe, if I explain things to him.’

What sort of things?’ Rusty asked.

‘Like what’ll happen to these folks up here happen a war starts over their land.’

‘That’d tangle their lines for sure,’ agreed Doc Leroy. ‘It’d be them who go to the wall if the trail herds were held up and grazed their land out, to say nothing of the fighting that’d be going on.’

Then Rusty saw it. He had seen an area blasted wide open by a range war between two big outfits. There were three smaller places around the scene of the war and at the end of it all lay empty and deserted, the owners either killed or run out by the opposing factions.

They rode across the range and struck a track made by wagon wheel ruts which, according to Freda’s directions, ought to lead to the Gibbs’ spread. After following the tracks for a couple of miles they topped a rim and looked down.

‘You were right, Doc,’ Dusty said quietly and grimly. ‘Double K didn’t just call on Lasalle.’

Neither Doc nor Rusty made any reply to this, Rusty growled a low, barely audible string of curses, but Doc said nothing. His long, slim fingers drummed on his saddle horn as his eyes took in the scene below.

The corral fence had been smashed down. The house’s front door hung on its lower hinges, the top having been smashed open. Not a single pane of glass remained unbroken at the windows. Nor did the destruction end with the corral and main house. The outbuilding doors had been burst in, their walls battered into gaping holes. Not a living thing showed about the place. Several dead chickens lay before the house and the body of a big bluetick hound sprawled stiff and still by the corral fence.

‘Let’s go!’ Dusty growled and started his horse forward.

Slowly they rode down the slope towards the house. Not one of them spoke as they studied the wreck of a well-kept spread and a neat, clean house.

‘Keep away!’ screamed a woman’s voice from the house. ‘Keep back or I’ll kill you!’

Hysteria filled the woman’s voice, but the three men did not stop. They rode slowly on and halted their horses by the corral. Dusty started to swing down from his saddle when Rusty’s voice, tense and warning, stopped him.

‘Dusty! The door! Turn slow and easy!’

Turning his head Dusty looked towards the broken door of the house. He found himself looking at the barrels of a ten gauge shotgun. Behind the shotgun, holding it waist high but aimed at them, stood a pretty, plump, red-haired woman. Slowly Dusty swung down from his saddle and took a step forward, hands well clear of his sides, eyes never leaving her face.

She would have been a happy woman, full of the joys of life, friendly and kind, most times. Now her face bore marks of the strain she was under and her eyes were red rimmed, swollen with tears. She came through the door, a smallish woman wearing an old gingham dress and with a face which told that she had been through living hell that day.

‘Keep back!’ she repeated. ‘Haven’t you done enough? My husband isn’t even conscious yet! He can’t do anything!’

‘Easy, ma’am,’ replied Dusty, watching her all the time and stepping closer. ‘We’re not from the Double K.’

He might never have spoken for all the effect his words had on her. It did not even appear that the woman heard his words. She brought up the shotgun a trifle and Doc bit down a warning shout just in time.

‘Watch her, Dusty!’ he warned in a voice which sounded nearer a whisper than a shout. ‘One wrong move and you’ll be picking buckshot out of your back teeth. She’s scared loco and’d do it without even knowing.’

Slowly as a snail crossing a leaf, Dusty moved forward. He did not for an instant take his eyes from the woman’s face, trying to hold her attention on him. So far she had not pressed the shotgun’s trigger but one fast move could cause her forefinger to close and send the weapon’s deadly charge into him. Despite his earlier scoffing Dusty knew even a charge of birdshot at that range would be more than lethal and would blow a hole like a cannon’s bore in him. One quick move, one sudden sound even, might cause her to press the trigger.

It was as deadly and dangerous a situation as Dusty had ever been in. Perhaps the most dangerous. If this had been a man bad mean and set on killing, Dusty could have handled things differently. Only this was no man, but a terrified woman driven to the verge of madness, hysterical and not responsible for her actions.

Perhaps Doc Leroy knew the danger better than Rusty, than Dusty even. For a time, before circumstances sent him home to Texas and to become a cowhand working for Stone Hart’s Wedge, Doc read medicine in an eastern college. He did not complete the course but spent every spare minute when in town working with the local medicine man, learning all he could. On the trail he handled the doctoring chores which fell to the cook in most cases. He would take care of injuries, splint and care for broken limbs, diagnose various illnesses and produce their cures, Within the limitations of his medical supplies. He probably knew more about the extraction of bullets than most eastern doctors ever learned. On two occasions, when driven to it by the force of circumstances, he delivered babies. So Doc had knowledge of the effect of hysteria. He knew the full danger of Dusty going towards the woman and he felt more scared than he had ever been in his life.

Still moving slowly Dusty made his way towards the woman, edging to the right with the barrels of the gun following him like iron filings after a magnet. He knew his friends were now clear of the shotgun’s charge and there only remained the problem of getting the weapon away from her without taking its charge full in his belly. For the first time he looked down at the gun, seeing that the right side hammer only had been cocked back, the left lying safe and down.

An inch at a time, moving with the same slowness which covered all his moves since dismounting, Dusty’s right hand went up, gripped the brim of his Stetson and removed it. He was close to the woman, but not close enough to chance a straight grab, not while her finger rested on the trigger. However the gun aimed at him, his friends were in the clear. He had brought them into this mess and must get them out of it without injury if possible. That was the way Dusty Fog thought and acted.

‘Just take it easy, ma’am,’ he said, keeping his voice gentle and fighting to hold the tension out of it. His eyes were on her face once more. ‘Afore you can shoot you’ll have to cock back the hammers.’

The woman’s eyes dropped towards the breech of her shotgun. For an instant her finger relaxed on the trigger. Instantly Dusty slapped his hat around, knocking the shotgun’s barrels to the right while he made a fast side step to the left. For all that it was close, very close. The gun bellowed, he felt the hot muzzle blast and the hot rush of air and burnt powder stirred his shirt, but the lethal load, not yet spread on leaving the barrel, missed him.

Jumping forward Dusty grabbed the shotgun by its barrels and dragged forward at it. The woman gave a scream of terror, she tried to fumble back the second hammer but Dusty plucked the shotgun from her hands. She stood for a moment, staring at Dusty, while Doc and Rusty came out of their saddles and the mount Dusty borrowed from Lasalle took off for home on the run.

‘Catch my saddle, Rusty!’ Dusty yelled, giving the old range request for aid; for while the horse a cowhand rode mostly belonged to the ranch’s remuda it carried his most precious and vital item of personal property, his saddle.

The words seemed to shake the woman out of her paralysis. With a scream she flung herself at Dusty, coming all teeth and fingernails, a wild-cat ready to use primeval fighting equipment to defend her home and husband. Dusty did not dare take a chance. He caught her by the wrists, holding her as she struggled with almost super-human strength, feet lashing out and arms fighting against his grip. He saw Rusty take off after his departing horse and felt relieved. Nothing in the west caused so much anxiety as a riderless, saddled horse. Dusty knew Mark would be worried if his mount came back to Lasalle’s empty. He did not want his big
amigo
coming looking for him and leaving the Lasalle house with only a small guard.