From Hide and Horn (A Floating Outfit Book Number 5) (26 page)

‘
Not close enough,’ de Martin objected
weakly. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be laying here.’

‘
Why’ve you told us all this?’ Dusty
asked.

‘
Why am I betraying my
employer, you mean?’ de Martin sighed. ‘It’s simple enough. I’ve
the greatest admiration for
you, Dusty. You’ve licked me all the way
along the line. And I’d hate like hell to die without figuring
you’ll take care of the man who caused me to be killed.’

‘
John Chisum’s coming, Colonel
Charlie!’ the Ysabel Kid announced, entering the Yellow Stripe
saloon where Goodnight sat with his trail hands waiting to start
the evening’s festivities.

It was the second day after the drive’s
arrival at Fort Sumner. The Army’s cattle buyer had expressed his
complete satisfaction with the three thousand, three hundred and
twenty-eight steers which had survived the journey from Young
County. In addition to purchasing the whole herd at the promised
eight cents a pound on the hoof, Colonel Hunter had agreed that
Goodnight had fulfilled the contract made on the rancher’s last
visit. Buffalo had not been sold, the crew refused to part with
him.

Dusty and Dawn had stayed with de Martin
until he died. During the hour or so he had lingered, the man
cleared up everything which puzzled them; including how he
simulated such grief at Barbe’s death. While burying his face
against his dead wife’s body, he had rubbed sand into his eyes and
achieved the desired effect. He had also signed a statement that
implicated Hayden as his employer.

After de Martin’s death, the remainder of the
trip had gone by without incident. Receiving payment for the herd,
Goodnight had paid out to his crew more money than most of them had
ever seen. It would be a long time before the town of Fort Sumner
forgot the celebrations that followed.

Coming to his feet, the rancher looked at
Dusty and Mark. All around the room, the trail hands moved towards
their leaders with hands loosening revolvers in holsters.

‘
Let’s go see him!’ Austin Hoffman
suggested.

‘
Hold it!’ Goodnight barked, halting
the concerted movement towards the bat-wing doors. ‘John Chisum
saved my life, way back. So if he hands over the Mineral Wells
cattle, we take them and call it quits.’

That’s good enough for us, Colonel Charlie!’
Ahlen stated and the others of the various ranches concerned
rumbled their agreement. ‘We’ll play it any way you say.’

Needing beef urgently to feed the reservation
Apaches, Colonel Hunter had split up and dispatched the herd to
various agencies as soon as he had completed the purchase. So there
was nothing in the Army’s big holding corrals to warn John Chisum
that he had been beaten to Fort Sumner. Tall, thickset, bald, with
coldly calculating eyes which belied the jovial aspect of his face,
he dressed like a saddle-tramp and wore no gun. Swinging open the
gate of the nearest corral, he rode aside and allowed his men to
drive the herd in.

That’s got
’em here!’ declared Chisum’s
tough-looking segundo, watching two of the hands close the gate on
the drag of the herd. ‘I wonder if that second bunch got through
the
Kweharehnuh
?’

‘
I sure hope so,’ Chisum
answered with such sincerity that
he might have been telling the truth.
‘Fact being, I hope ole Charlie Goodnight makes it—’

‘
He has!’ the man ejaculated, pointing
with a thumb.

Turning, Chisum stared to where Goodnight,
Dusty, the floating outfit and Ahlen were walking from between two
of the houses that stood about fifty yards from the corral. Not all
the floating outfit, Chisum noticed, for the Ysabel Kid was absent.
If Chisum felt any concern, either by the Kid’s absence or
Goodnight’s presence, he gave no sign of it as he rode to meet the
approaching party. Behind him, the hard-faced, well-armed trail
hands followed like buffalo-wolves on the heels of their pack
leader.

‘
That’s not Targue, the segundo he had
in Graham,’ Dusty remarked to Goodnight. ‘Nor any of that bunch he
had along.’

‘
They’re the same kind though,’ the
bearded rancher replied.

‘
Howdy, Charlie,’ Chisum greeted. ‘Well
I swan if I ever expected to see you here. How’d you lick
us?’

‘
Could be we passed you on the trail
one dark night,’ Goodnight answered.

‘
You’re joshing me!’ Chisum chuckled.
‘It’s good to see you and right pleasing that you’d come to say
“Howdy” to ole Uncle John after a long drive.’

‘
That’s not all we’re here for,’
Goodnight warned. ‘We’ve come to take the Mineral Wells cattle off
your hands.’

‘
To—’
Chisum began, conscious of a stirring among the
twenty hardcases—selected for
gun-skill rather than cattle-savvy—at his back. ‘Now I know you’re
joshing, Charlie. Even if I’d got them steers along, you’ve got no
right to ’em.’

‘
This’s
Swede Ahten, segundo of the Double Two,’ Goodnight introduced. ‘He
and I’ve got power-of-attorney notes to take possession of all
Bench P, D4S, Lazy F, Flying H and Double Two cattle wherever we
find them.’

‘
That’s not funny,
Charlie
—’ Chisum began mildly.

‘
It’s strange how different folks see
things,’ Dusty put in, noticing the increased signs of hostility
among Chisum’s hands and indicating the building from between which
his party had appeared. ‘The Ysabel Kid and those fellers there
thought it was.’

Muffled, startled exclamations
and curses broke from the Chisum hands as they looked in the
required direction. The Ysabel Kid and other men carrying repeating
rifles had appeared on the roofs of the buildings. More cowhands,
also toting shoulder-arms, came from between the houses and formed
into an efficient fighting line that covered the Long Rail’s riders
more than adequately. With
sickening certainty the hardcases knew they were
licked. At their first hostile move, the rifles by and on the
buildings would pour a devastating hail of fire upon them. Although
his men showed their alarm, Chisum retained his jovial poise. Yet
he remained alert for a chance to escape from the trap in which he
found himself.

‘
You did say that you
drove our stock here for us, Mr. Chisum,’
Ahlen drawled, after
giving time for the realization of their position to sink into the
Long Rail riders’ heads. ‘Now didn’t you?’

‘
We’re allowed to pay you five dollars
a head for doing it,’ Goodnight went on.

‘
Five dollars?’ Chisum
yelp
ed, aware that each steer would bring upwards of sixty
dollars at eight cents a pound on the hoof. ‘I’ll—’

‘
Look at it this way, Mr. Chisum,’
Dusty interrupted. ‘The Army’s buyer knows none of the Mineral
Wells ranchers have sold you any of their cattle. So Colonel
Hunter’s going to be mighty suspicious when he finds more than a
hundred head from each of those spreads in your herd.’

‘
Five dollars ain’t much, Charlie,’
Chisum groaned, knowing that at least three-quarters of his herd
belonged to the ranches Goodnight had named.

‘
It licks getting hung as a cow thief,’
Ahlen stated bluntly.

‘
And it’ll give you enough
money to pay off your loyal
hands,’ Dusty drawled.

At that moment Chisum almost reached bursting
point and lost all control of his carefully-held temper. Dusty’s
words had smashed the bald rancher’s last hope of goading the Long
Rail crew into fighting. Faced with the threat of losing their pay,
they might have taken a chance of going against the rifles. Without
that inducement, they would be only willing to let things ride.
Rage seethed and boiled inside Chisum, but he struggled to fight it
down.

‘
I sure admired to’ve brought your
cattle for you, Swede,’ Chisum gritted in a feeble attempt to sound
his usual jovial self.

‘
Figured you would be, when you saw it
our way,’ Goodnight said. ‘Colonel Hunter’s on his way here. So
I’ll pay off your boys and let them go get a hard-earned drink or
three. My crew’ve quenched their thirsts and they’ll tend to things
from now on.’

‘
One thing, you Long Rail gents,’ Dusty
put in. ‘The town marshal’s appointed Mark, the Kid and me as
deputies. We don’t mind what fun you have as long as you keep it as
fun. Understand?’

‘
Just in case you don’t know us,’ Mark
went on. ‘I’m Mark Counter and this’s Dusty Fog.’

‘
We’ll mind what you say, Cap’n Fog,’
Chisum’s segundo promised.

So departed Chisum’s last faint
hope of turning the tables on Goodnight. With money in their
pockets, his hold on the
hardcases disintegrated. Burning with frustrated
fury, he watched the men paid off and depart, then stood by while
Hunter and Goodnight carried out the formalities for the sale of
the herd.

‘
Where’s Hayden, Mr. Chisum?’ Dusty
asked as they gathered in the Golden Stripe saloon waiting for
Goodnight to bring the other rancher’s money. ‘You know, the feller
who paid you to pull that game on Uncle Charlie, and who you took
on to drive for at Throckmorton?’

‘
I don’t know,’ Chisum
replied. ‘As soon as I figured he was
working—’

‘
Maybe I believe in fairies and Father
Christmas, Mr. Chisum,’ Dusty cut in coldly. ‘But I’ve stopped
believing in a whole lot of other things.’

‘
We figured that nobody
could handle three thousand head in one herd,’ Chisum said, only
his eyes showing the hatred he
felt for the small, soft-spoken young
Texan. ‘Split the herd into his stuff and them I’d brought. I went
ahead, with Hayden following a mite to the north. Up between the
Clear Fork of the Brazos and the Pecos we only just managed to
sneak by a
big band of
Kweharehnuh.’

‘
And Hayden
didn’t
—’ Mark Counter suggested as he and the Kid listened to the
conversation.

‘
I couldn’t say.’

‘
Didn’t you try to find out, Mr.
Chisum?’ inquired the Kid.

‘
Hell no! Them danged
Injuns—sorry, Kid—them
Kweharehnuh
was thicker’n fleas on a hound-dawg. I’d got my
own men to think about and couldn’t risk lives sending to see what
might be happening to Hayden’s herd. I sure hope they come through
all right.’

‘
I just bet you do,’ drawled the
Kid.

The conversation lapsed and Chisum stood
moodily staring around the room. No pleasure filled him at the
scenes of celebration and merriment. Nor did his feeling of
frustration lessen when Goodnight came over with the balance of the
money for the herd. It made a pitifully small pile when compared
with the amount the bearded rancher had received and which Chisum
had fondly hoped would come his way.

Taking the money, Chisum stalked with what
dignity he could muster across the room. With his head full of
thoughts on how he might avoid a repetition of his misfortunes—the
simple way of not taking other people’s stock never occurred to
him—he failed to see the bat-wing doors open and three men enter to
block his path.

‘
So you made it, Chisum!’ said a cold,
angry voice.

Jolted from his considerations
of how he might use power-of-attor
ney notes to his own advantage,
^xxi
Chisum stared at the three figures
before him. Dirty, disheveled and hard-travelled they might be, but
Chisum recognized them. Hayden no longer looked dapper, with his
torn, filthy clothes and haggard face unshaven. Flanking him, big,
burly Targue and Scabee looked mean as all hell. A bloody bandage
encased the latter’s head and did little to make him appear any
pleasanter. While the two hardcases wore belt guns, their hands
were empty. Hayden held a Henry rifle before him and his forefinger
entered its trigger guard as he addressed the bald
rancher.

‘
Joe!’ Chisum yelled. ‘Joe
Hayden!
Thank the merciful Lord that you got through.’

‘
It’s no thanks to you that we did!’
Hayden snarled. ‘Why in hell didn’t you send back word to us about
those Indians?’

Silence fell on the room and
every eye turned towards the door. Slowly the customers and staff
inched into positions that would allow them to take
cover hurriedly in
case of gunplay. Chisum was sickeningly aware that he did not have
a man in the room who he might call ‘friend’. Not even Charles
Goodnight, for the rancher had made it clear when handing over the
money that he considered his debt paid in full. Maybe Chisum did
not wear a gun, but cowardice had never been one of his many vices.
So he showed no fear and prepared to play the game out to the
tricky end.

‘
I did send!’ Chisum declared in tones
of sincerity, well-simulated shock crossing his face. ‘You mean
that he didn’t get to you?’

‘
You know damned well “he”
didn’t!’ Targue spat out. ‘You let the
Kweharehnuh
jump us so’s you could push on
clear while we fought ’em.’