From Hide and Horn (A Floating Outfit Book Number 5) (25 page)

‘
The idea never entered my head,’ de
Martin protested. ‘I knew I could trust my sister and Jacko both to
behave in a proper manner.’

‘
Dawn acted as she thought
was for the best,’ Dusty replied, seeing the rest of the crew
gathering around. ‘When she arrived, she found your sister dressed
kind of skimpy and had got that shift, or whatever it is, tangled
up on a branch. Dawn allows that she tore it getting it loose,
which riled Barbe and
made her jump her.’

‘
My sister wouldn’t do such a thing!’
de Martin insisted and Jacko rumbled agreement.

‘
What do you reckon happened then?’
Dusty inquired, knowing the trail crew was hanging on to every word
he and the photographer said.

‘
I don’t want to say
anything prejudicial to Dawn before her
trial—if she is given
one—’

‘
She’s going to be,’ Jacko put in
grimly. ‘You can count on that.’

‘
Go on, Edmond,’ Dusty requested as if
the cowhand had not spoken.

‘
All right, Dusty. You asked me to.
From the start Dawn was jealous of my sister. You’ve all seen how
she snubbed and ignored Barbe. Until Barbe came, Dawn was queen of
the camp. Only Barbe ended all that. With such a beautiful woman
around, the men stopped taking notice of Dawn and she hated Barbe
for it. Then she may have blamed my sister for her brother’s death.
So when she heard Jacko and I talking, she saw a chance to take her
revenge. She lied to Jacko to send him away, went to where my
sister was alone, unprotected, vulnerable, and attacked
her.’

‘
Your sister put up a hell of a fight
for a lady,’ Dusty commented.

‘
Fear and desperation must have lent
her strength,’ de Martin answered. ‘She fought back with such fury
that Dawn was afraid of being beaten, so pulled the gun and shot
her.’

‘
And that’s how you reckon it
happened?’ Dusty asked.

‘
There’s
no other way—’

‘
Unless Dawn told the
truth. She hung her gunbelt over the
bush—’

‘
Doubtless thinking that she could
easily thrash Barbe without needing it,’ de Martin
countered.

‘
The holster was on the side of the
bush away from the clearing,’ Dusty pointed out. ‘Dawn’d’ve had
trouble getting to it in a hurry. And she allows that somebody else
shot Barbe, then threw the gun over the bushes and she picked it
up.’

‘
Is that likely?’ de Martin demanded,
directing his words to the assembled men. ‘Who else but Dawn had
reason to want my sister dead?’

‘
Nobody!’
Jacko stated and
there was a general rumble of agreement.

‘
Can you prove any of what you have
told us, Dusty?’ de Martin went on.

‘
There was no sign on the ground, but
the sand’d been churned up in the fussing,’ Dusty replied. ‘There
was some sand on the gun.’

‘
Gathered when she dropped it and
collapsed,’ de Martin suggested.

‘
Seems like you’re tolerable set on
making out Dawn didn’t do it, Cap’n Fog,’ Jacko growled. ‘I don’t
mind there being all this talk when Burle Willock shot Vern
Sutherland.’

‘
Perhaps Dusty doesn’t think my
sister’s death should be treated in the same manner as the killing
of Dawn’s brother,’ de Martin went on.

Angry murmurs rose from the
assembled men, deep and menaci
ng as the first rolling thunderclaps heralding the
coming of a storm. Then Dusty spoke and his words brought silence
in their wake.

‘
When you talk about your “sister”,
Edmond, don’t you really mean your wife?’

Although the small Texan’s
comment clear
ly shocked de Martin, he recovered fast. After a brief
flicker of shock and surprise, the photographer’s face took on a
puzzled expression.

‘
I
don’t
—’ he began.

‘
It’s no good, de
Martin!’
Dusty interrupted. ‘I saw the photograph in that book.
Remember?’

‘
Yes. But I
explained
—’

‘
That’s how I know,’ Dusty stated. ‘If
you and Barbe had been brother and sister, you’d not have bothered.
But if you were man and wife, you’d not want me thinking so. I
didn’t cotton on to it at the time, or until today in
fact.’

‘
Why today?’ de Martin asked in a
brittle voice.

‘
You put your love-bites where they
shouldn’t’ve been seen,’ Dusty explained. ‘Only you didn’t count on
her getting herself stripped to the waist.’

‘
Dawn could have bitten her in the
fight!’ de Martin spat out.

‘
And did. Only the other bites’d been
done a heap earlier,’ Dusty replied. ‘Anyways, there’s an easy
enough way to prove what I’ve said. Go find that book with the
photographs in it, Solly.’

One of the older, more mature
Mineral Wells hands, Solly Sodak was all too aware of the danger in
the situation.
Wanting to help avert trouble, he nodded and moved to
obey.

‘
Here, Solly,’ de Martin said, reaching
into the off side pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ll give you the
key.’

While speaking, the photographer
grasped something in the pocket and twisted up the side of the
jacket to point it in Dusty’s direction. Thrusting himself aside,
the small Texan missed death by inches. Flame spurted from the
front of de Martin’s pocket and a bullet fanned hot breath by
Dusty’s cheek in passing. Across flashed Dusty’s left hand, moving
as soon as he began to step away from the danger. The right side
Army Colt left its contoured holster and bellowed on the heels of
the crack that sounded from de Martin’s pocket. Shock and disbelief
twisted at the photographer’s face as lead plo
wed into his chest. He reeled
under the impact, bringing his hand into sight holding a smoking
Remington Double Derringer. Fortunately for him, he dropped the
weapon as he tumbled backwards.

‘
H-how—how did
you
—?’
de Martin gasped as Dusty came towards him.

‘
I’ve known that you were carrying that
stingy gun ever since you started doing it the morning after Heenan
died,’ the small Texan replied.

‘
What the hell’s going on?’ croaked
Jacko, staring from Dusty to de Martin and back.

‘
You mind how we’ve been expecting that
Hayden feller to make fuss for us since the drive started?’ Dusty
asked and nodded in the photographer’s direction. ‘This’s who he
sent to do it. Him and his wife.’ Then Dusty turned his eyes to
where Rowdy, Dawn and Narth were running from the bed-wagon. ‘See
what you can do for him, Rowdy.’

~*~

Night had come and de Martin lay
on the comfortable bed in his wagon. Looking at the men and girl
gathered by him
he read their thoughts, which gave added confirmation to
his belief that death was close to him. Rowdy had done everything
possible, but knew it to be only a matter of time before the end
came. So the cook had raised no objections when de Martin asked to
see Dawn, Dusty and Jacko.

‘
You’re a smart bastard, Dusty Fog,’ de
Martin said admiringly. ‘Nobody else suspected me.’

‘
I’d been starting to after you sent
Heenan to stompede the herd that night,’ Dawn objected.

Irritation showed on the dying man’s face and
he spoke indignantly. ‘I don’t mind you thinking I’m a no-good
murdering son-of-a-bitch, Dawn. But I’d hate for you to think I’d
be stupid enough to make a fool play like that.’

‘
You’re saying that Heenan acted on his
own, huh?’ the girl asked.

‘
With a little prompting from my dear,
stupid wife.’ de Martin agreed. ‘I’m sorry, Jacko. But I knew her
far better than you ever could.’

‘
Damn you!’ Jacko spat out. ‘You killed
her!’

‘
Yes. She was so scared of Dawn that
she was about to tell what she’d been sent to do. I had to shut her
mouth, so did it in a way that might let me earn my fee for
wrecking the trail drive.’

‘
By getting us fighting among
ourselves, same’s you’ve been trying all along,’ Dusty
guessed.

‘
It was a technique I developed in the
last year of the War to create dissent among various Southern
outfits, and have used to some success in the East since then. So I
thought that it would work with no trouble, especially when I
learned that several different ranches were involved. I felt that
the inter-outfit rivalry could easily be fanned into open conflict.
What I didn’t take into consideration was the high quality of
leadership Colonel Goodnight and you showed, Dusty. That was a
smart move at the start, having Mark take charge of Barbe. Yours, I
presume?’

‘
Uncle Charlie’s, but I’d likely’ve
done the same.’

‘
I don’t doubt it. The
scheme nearly worked better than you
expected. My dear wife had the morals
of an alley cat. She was falling in love with Mark, or as near love
as her cash-box mind could conceive. Her simple little brain got
the notion that marriage to a rich rancher’s son might be
preferable to that
with a professional trouble-maker. Fortunately I knew how to handle
her. She yearned to have her love handed out roughly—I’m sorry,
Dawn. This is hardly for your ears.’

‘
I’ll live through it,’ the girl
answered, blushing a little.

‘
Let us say that I
persuaded her to remain as she was,’ de Martin said. ‘So she met
Mark with the reason I had taught her and I hovered in the
background. If she had failed me, or offered to betray me, I’d have
killed them both and been the tragic brother who found his sister
being raped, then shot her by mistake along with her attacker. Mark
had a narrow escape
that night.’

‘
So did you,’ Dusty told him. The Kid
was watching you watching them. I’ll give you one thing though. At
that time we figured the way you wanted us to and hadn’t got round
to suspecting you.’

‘
I’m good at my work,’ de
Martin stated. ‘And who’d
suspect a man involved in a business like
photography? Anyway, I set Barbe to work on the younger hands. She
worked on Vern and Burle and in the end caused the fatal fight.
Only you stopped the trouble, Dusty—’

‘
And Heenan killed Burle so we’d not
learn he gave Burle the whiskey.’

‘
As soon as he saw Burle show signs of
surrendering,’ de Martin agreed. ‘I’d arranged for that when I
supplied Heenan with the whiskey. You smoothed off the trouble I
hoped to start over the crossing of the Staked Plains. Lord, how I
had to work to keep Barbe from breaking down during the rains and
across the desert. I had promised her we’d have our business done
before we needed to cross. You spoiled that. I was willing to
settle for tricking Austin into something that would stampede the
herd, but you stopped him.’

‘
He’d refused before I cut in,’ Dusty
corrected.

‘
Be that as it may, the
idea failed. So Heenan decided to act
on his own. If I’d have been
stupid enough to plan that try, I’d certainly not have let you find
me in the wagon. Barbe wanted convincing about the crossing and I
was doing it when you came back. I hoped to do something on the
desert, but Barbe wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I think Dawn
saw one hysterical outburst—’

‘
Sure,’ the girl confirmed.

‘
Anyway,’ de Martin continued. ‘We
crossed and on reaching the Pecos I put another scheme into action.
I sent Barbe off into the bushes with instructions on what to do.
Then I asked Jacko to collect her. The idea was that I should see
Austin and express worries about having seen Jacko sneaking off in
the direction Barbe had gone to bathe. Naturally Austin would have
investigated, to find Barbe struggling to “protect her honor” from
Jacko, having enticed him into a position where she could do
so.’

‘
Only I went, not Jacko,’ Dawn
said.

‘
Seeing Jacko coming after
me handed me a hell of a shock,’ de Martin replied. ‘When he told
me why, I wondered if you’d
become suspicious. So I followed and
watched the fight. I must say that I was pleased at the thrashing
you gave Barbe. I also saw a way of getting rid of her. She was
getting a little too unstable for our kind of work. When she looked
like blabbing, I picked up your gun from its holster and shot her.
Then I tossed the gun near you, waited until you had picked it up,
slipped away and joined on to the rear of the men coming from
camp.’

‘
She was your wife!’ Dawn
gasped.

‘
Not a very satisfactory
one,’ de Martin answered. ‘I saw a way to get rid of her
w
ithout the risk of a legal comeback and to finish my work.
With Barbe dead, I knew I could stir up bad feelings. Jacko and
some of Willock’s friends, pointed the right way, would demand that
“justice” was done. There would be others just as determined that
they must protect Dawn.’

‘
You came close to doing it,’ Dusty
said.