Goodnight's Dream (A Floating Outfit Western Book 4) (9 page)

‘
We’ll make do with them you can raise
and my boys,’ Goodnight told him.

‘
Targue!’ Chisum called. ‘Come on up
here. Bring Keck, Venner and Alden with you. That’s all of ’em
who’re here, Charlie.’

‘
Looks like we called it right, Dusty,’
commented the dark youngster as four men rose from a table and made
for Goodnight’s party. ‘What’ll we do?’

‘
Amble over quiet-like and listen to
what’s being said,’ his companion replied, showing no surprise at
being asked for advice.

‘
Where’s Pitzer?’ Chisum
asked his tall, lanky, hard-looking
segundo.

‘
Him and most of the boys went down to
Sadie’s place,’ Targue answered. ‘They hea—’

‘
Them’s the three who took my cattle!’
Dawn ejaculated, pointing at Targue’s companions.

Dressed in
ordinary cowhand clothes, the
trio indicated by Dawn had a hard and truculent air about them that
did not entirely spring from their trail-dirty or unshaven
condition. Army Colts hung from each’s belt and none of them moved
his right hand too far from the gun’s butt. Tallest of the three,
Keck wore a wolf-skin jacket. Venner was of middle-height, a lean
man with a sharp face and eyes that never stayed still. Although
the shortest by a couple of inches, Alden held the advantage in
weight. His surly, unintelligent features always held a scowl and
he seemed perpetually on the lookout for somebody to
attack.

‘
What’s she yapping about?’ demanded
Keck.

‘
Allows you boys took off with a bunch
of her folks’s cattle,’ Chisum replied, his face still bland and
mild.

‘
And they did!’ Dawn
snapped.

‘
You saw them up this close?’ Chisum
asked.

Even the band had stopped playing and all
sounds ended as the crowd listened to what they sensed might be the
prelude to a dramatic situation. Even with conditions as they were
in Texas, the theft of cattle was no light matter. So the customers
and staff alike waited to see what developed.

‘
Not from real close,’ Dawn admitted.
‘I was hid up in a draw maybe a hundred yards off when they rode in
and took our cattle.’

‘
She’s
loco,
Uncle John,’ Keck
announced. ‘We never took no damned herd.’

‘
They did so take it!’ Dawn yelled,
excitement and anger making her rashly disregard the danger that
the words might place her in. ‘He’s a liar!’

‘
You wouldn’t be saying that if you
wasn’t a woman!’ Keck snarled, face cold and ugly with
menace.

‘
I’m a man and I’m saying you’re a
liar!’ put in a quiet, drawling voice from the right of the
party.

Slowly, exuding menace at every move, Targue
and the other three Long Rail men turned to discover who dared
intervene in such a manner. With fingers spread and hands poised
ready to swoop on to their Colts’ butts, they looked at the tall,
dark youngster and his small, insignificant companion.

‘
Which of you said that?’ Keck
growled.

‘
Me,’ the dark youngster answered
mildly. His eyes and bearing did not match the voice. Standing in a
relaxed slouch, he managed to convey an air of latent, deadly
readiness. All too casually his right hand trailed palm-out close
to the worn walnut grips of the heavy Dragoon Colt.

‘
Lon’s right, though,’ the small Texan
went on. ‘You are a liar.’

And suddenly he was small no
more. In some way he seemed to have taken on size and heft,
apparently growing in seconds to become a
big
man fully as dangerous as his dark-faced
companion.

Throwing a glance at Chisum, Targue caught an
almost imperceptible shake of the bald head. It conveyed a message
to him, a warning of danger that he read and accepted. So, instead
of continuing to stand in a threatening manner at Alden’s side, he
let his hand drop and edged away from the trio. Having failed to
catch the rancher’s signal, Keck and the other two tensed ready to
take the appropriate action they felt would be expected of
them.

Customers and employees around
the room prepared to make hurried dives for cover. In frontier
Texas, the word ‘liar’
was never spoken lightly or as a joke. Its use,
especially under the current circumstances, counted as a deadly
insult and called for an answer from one of Colonel Colt’s highly
prized products.

‘
That’s a hard way of
putting things, young fellers,’ Chisum commented in a placating
tone. ‘There’s some
men
who don’t take kind to being called a
liar.’

If Chisum intended to quieten down the
hostility, he took a mighty poor way of doing it. Emphasizing the
youth of the newcomers and pointing out the insult to the trio’s
manhood merely served to stiffen Keck, Venner and Alden to their
intentions. So they showed no sign of being placated. Before any of
them could speak, or make the opening move in what would be a
corpse-and-cartridge affair. Goodnight injected a warning.

‘
Afore you start objecting, maybe you’d
best know who’s calling you a liar.’

‘
And maybe we ain’t caring who they
are,’ Venner replied.

‘
Have it your way,’ Goodnight drawled
and pointed first to the small Texan, then at his companion. ‘Only
this here’s my nephew, Dusty Fog and I’d say this’s the Ysabel
Kid.’

Sucking in his breath sharply, Keck moved his
right hand from over the Colt’s butt but let the left remain
thumb-hooked on his waist-belt just under the right flap of his
jacket. At the same time his companions allowed their truculent,
menacing attitudes to sag away. Such postures might be useful in
scaring off a brace of young cowhands who hoped to impress a pretty
girl with their support of her claims, but would get them extra no
place directed at the two men named by Goodnight.

Take the small blond for
starters. There were few people in Texas who had not heard of Dusty
Fog. At seventeen, he had worn a captain’s collar bars and led
Company C of the Texas Light Cavalry on the highly successful raids
that caused the Yankee Army of Arkansas so much damage and trouble.
It had been Dusty Fog who helped Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy, to buy
a consignment of arms for the South with money looted from a Yankee
paymaster
^viii
and in her company had smashed a gang
of counterfeiters who planned to flood the Confederate States with
their products.
^ix
Although few people
knew of it, he had also foiled a plot by fanatical Union-supporters
to arm and send on the war-path the Indian tribes of Texas.
^x
With the War over, Dusty had returned
to his home in the Rio Hondo country. The crippling of his uncle,
Ole Devil Hardin, had put him into the post of
segundo
on the great OD Connected
ranch. Recently Dusty had been sent into Mexico on a mission of
vital national importance and brought it to a successful
conclusion.
^xi

Small of stature Dusty Fog might be, but he
already had a name for being lightning fast and very accurate in
the use of his matched Colts. There were other stories told, of his
uncanny skill at bare-hand fighting; how he knew methods to render
bigger, stronger men helpless. No trio of hardcases would willingly
go up against such a man; especially when he stood backed by the
Ysabel Kid.

Born in the village of
the
Pehnane
Comanche, the son of a wild Irish-Kentuckian horse-hunter
and a Creole-Comanche girl, the Kid had been raised as a
Nemenuh
by his grandfather,
Long Walker, was chief of the Dog Soldier lodge.
^xii
By his fifteenth birthday, the boy
had already earned his man-name among the
Pehnane.
They called him
Cuchilo,
the Knife, a tribute to his
skill in using one. When his father adopted a new family business
of smuggling across the Texas-Mexico border, the Kid had put his
Indian-training to good use and gained a reputation as real bad
medicine to cross. While not exceptionally fast with his old
Dragoon, he could perform adequately with it and he took seconds to
no man at wielding a knife or when tossing lead from a
rifle.

Down along the Rio Grande, as a smuggler and
while running shipments delivered through the blockading West Gulf
Squadron of the Yankee Navy into Mexico, the Kid built up a name
likely to give pause to anybody figuring to make trouble for him.
Nobody with a desire to stay alive and healthy voluntarily tangled
with the Ysabel Kid.

‘
Why’d you say he’s a liar, Kid?’ asked
Goodnight, when sure that the trio accepted his
introduction.

‘’
Cause he’s lying in his teeth when he
says him and his pards didn’t take off with the lady’s stock,’ the
dark youngster replied. ‘We saw ’em do it.’

‘
Like Lon says, Uncle Charlie,’ Dusty
went on. ‘We saw them. Didn’t think much about it, though, until we
saw the lady here come out of hiding.’

‘
You could’ve rid over and said
something right then, Cap’n Fog,’ Chisum put in. ‘It’d’ve saved all
this unpleasantness.’

‘
Have you been up the Wallace Valley
way, Mr. Chisum?’ Dusty asked without taking his attention from the
trio.

‘
Can’t say’s I have,’ the rancher
admitted.

‘
That figures,’ Dusty said coldly. ‘We
were on the wrong side of a deep canyon and no way to get across
it. So, time we’d rid around it the lady’s cattle were already
mixed in with your herd.’

‘
I never saw you around,’ Targue
commented.

‘
That’s ’cause we didn’t aim to let
you,’ the Kid replied. ‘They do say’s cow thieves’re a mite touchy
over letting folks look too close at their stock.’

‘
I can’t say’s how I take to being
called a cow thief!’ Targue growled, being made of sterner, more
dangerous stuff than the other three.

‘
Ease off there, Wally,’ counseled
Chisum mildly. ‘Likely the Kid didn’t mean it the way it
sounded.’

‘
Hell, Uncle John,’ Keck said, a light
of inspiration flickering on his face. ‘It’s all a mistake. We
thought them cattle was strays.’

‘
Strays!’
Dawn snorted. ‘They’re all branded plain enough to
see.’

‘
It’s easy enough settled,’ Chisum
stated, beaming at the girl like a martyr blessing the
stone-throwers. ‘Keck, go and find brother Pitzer. Then we’ll go to
the herd and cut out any of the lady’s stock that we
find.’

‘
Sure, Uncle John,’ Keck answered. ‘I
know where to find him.’

‘
It’ll not take the three of you to
fetch him,’ Dusty said as Venner and Alden also showed signs of
leaving.

For a moment it seemed that the pair would
protest, but Keck flicked a knowing nod their way and remarked, ‘It
won’t. I’ll go. You boys stay on and buy these gents a drink to
show there’s no hard feelings.’

‘
I’ll buy the drinks,’ Chisum offered.
‘If the young lady doesn’t mind us taking ’em in her company, that
is.’

‘
Go to it,’ Dawn answered. ‘All I want
to do’s get those steers back.’

‘
What brings you out this way, Cap’n
Fog?’ Chisum inquired, turning towards the bar as Keck walked
across the room. ‘Did Ole Devil send you?’

‘
Sure,’ Dusty replied and he had once
more shrunk to being the insignificant nobody he usually
appeared.

Crossing the room, Keck took
extra care to keep his right
hand in plain sight. However, his left hand inched
farther under the jacket until its fingers curled around the butt
of the Metropolitan Navy Pocket revolver in its carefully designed,
concealed holster. His every instinct gave warning of danger. In
John Chisum’s hometown, there would have been little to fear from
the girl’s accusation. Unfortunately, Graham did not lie in an area
where Chisum possessed influence over the local law. So Keck and
his companions stood a better than fair chance of winding up in
jail, if not suspended from a hangrope, for their actions on the
Wallace Valley.

A quick, surreptitious look over his shoulder
told Keck that Chisum and Targue had moved out of the possible line
of fire and he knew that his two companions were ready to back his
play. Telling Alden and Venner to buy the drinks had alerted them
to what he planned; they had used a similar method on another
occasion. At the door, Keck would turn and start throwing lead with
the Metropolitan. Even if he did not hit Dusty Fog or the Ysabel
Kid, his bullets ought to take them by surprise and give his pards
a chance to get into action.

With that thought in mind, just as he reached
the doors, Keck slipped the short-barreled revolver from beneath
his jacket. Cocking back the hammer, he started to turn. Just an
instant too late he heard the sound of somebody entering the
barroom.

‘
Uncle Devil sent us along to help
Uncle Charlie with this next drive he’s making,’ Dusty continued in
answer to Chisum’s question.