Ole Devil and the Caplocks (17 page)

“And have that damned
Chink of yours shoot me as soon as I touch it?” Trellis countered,
his face’s expression ugly in its anger but his inborn caution
warning him that he might be approaching a trap.

“With an empty rifle?”
Turtle commented, darting a glance pregnant with meaning at the
other men around the table. He did not say, “He’s trying to avoid
fighting,” but they and the gambler knew it was implied.

“Like hell it’s empty!”
Trellis spat out, although he guessed that his host was equally
aware of the fact. “That thing fires more than one time without
reloading.”

“
The
nut-man’s right,” Ole Devil confirmed, seeing the advantage of
allowing his audience to appreciate the Browning’s potential. “But
to show that
I
don’t need any help, one of you gentleman can cover my man
and shoot him if he offers to turn the rifle this way.”

“
Maybe
one of ’em’d best throw down on me, too, Devil,” Di suggested,
still unaware of why the Texian was determined to force a showdown
with the gambler but willing to help. “Seeing’s that hombre’s so
all fired scared somebody’ll take advantage of
him.”

“I don’t think that even
Mister Trellis would go that far,” Turtle remarked, running a
coldly prohibitive gaze at his fellow influential citizens in case
any of them should be contemplating taking up Ole Devil’s
suggestion. “Will your man obey you, Captain Hardin?”

“He will,” the Texian
declared. “Tommy, take the prisoner and Di’s rifle across the room
and wait there until I call for you.”

“You heard Devil-san,” the
little Oriental told the captive, tossing down the knife he had
been carrying in his left hand and accepting the girl’s rifle. “Get
going and keep your mouth closed.”

Watching Tommy carrying
out the first part of the orders. Trellis became aware that other
eyes were being turned in his own direction. So he realized that he
must decide upon what action to take. Not that he had any real
choice. If he backed down, he would be finished in San Phillipe.
What was more, he had guessed that only a matter of the greatest
importance would bring Di Brindley to the town at that hour of the
night. That she was accompanied by a person of Ole Devil Hardin’s
prominence was further proof of the supposition. If he could
dispose of the young Texian, he would be in a better position to
satisfy his curiosity. Then, should his belief that the girl’s mule
train was transporting something of exceptional value be confirmed,
he could easily gather sufficient help to take whatever it might be
by force.

There was only one problem
to be solved.

Disposing of Ole Devil
Hardin!

Studying the situation,
the gambler felt that he had discovered a way to do it.

“All right,” Trellis
growled, thrusting back his chair and coming to his feet. “You’ve
asked for it. We’ll step outside and I’ll give you
satisfact—”

In spite of making his
suggestion, the gambler had no intention of carrying it out. Not
when he had decided that there was a much safer and more certain
way to deal with the matter than by facing Ole Devil in a fair
fight. Nor would any of the local citizens other than Turtle be
inclined to object about his methods. More likely the hotelkeeper’s
rivals at the table, all of whom had been losers in the poker game,
would be only too willing to oppose him. Especially when Trellis
had told them of his suspicions over the reason for the girl’s
arrival.

So, while still speaking,
the gambler grabbed for Turtle’s pistol. It had been placed barely
within reach when he was sitting down and with the barrel pointing
toward him. Having stood up had put him even farther from the
weapon, but not enough to be detrimental to his chances. The Texian
had not made any attempt to arm himself. Nor would he be expecting
that there would be any need for him to do so until after they had
left the building.

All in all, the scheme
appeared sound and certain to succeed.

Unfortunately for Trellis,
it was doomed to fail because of his ignorance.

To be fair to the gambler,
his error was understandable. While he had been in Texas long
enough to have heard of the Brindleys and their business, his only
knowledge of Ole Devil had come from Louisiana. Nor had his
information been complete.

Even before circumstances
had caused Ole Devil to leave the United States, he had developed a
very effective method of handling a pistol. While it was not one
which would have been permissible under the rigid rules of the
Clonmel Code, he had perfected it in the more demanding conditions
of his new home.

Alert for treachery, Ole
Devil was ready to counter it with deadly efficiency. Turning palm
out, his right hand flashed up to coil around the butt of his
Manton pistol. In a single motion, he slid the barrel from his belt
loop and turned it forward after the fashion gunfighters of a later
era would call the “high cavalry twist” draw.
^xlii
However, unlike the men who would use it in years to come,
the shape of his weapon did not permit him to fire one-handed. As
he could not cock the hammer with his right thumb, he had trained
himself to do it with the heel of his left hand.

Shock twisted at Trellis’s
face as he was raising the pistol with his left hand on the barrel
and the right reaching for the butt. He saw the Texian’s weapon was
swinging rapidly in his direction and having its hammer cocked at
the same time. Then it roared and something which felt like a hot
iron bored into the right side of his chest. Slammed backward,
agony depriving him of any further conscious thought, he struck the
wall and lost his hold on the pistol. Bouncing off, he crumpled and
fell.

“Well, gentlemen,” Ole
Devil said, raking the other participants in the game—apart from
Turtle—with coldly menacing eyes. “How do you see it?”

“
You did
the right thing,” the owner of the town’s general store declared
with only a momentary hesitation. Then, after the other players had
stated their concurrence and Turtle’s men were removing the
unconscious gambler, he went on, “Trellis had no call to doubt your
word. Captain.”

“That wasn’t why I called
him down and shot him,” Ole Devil warned and signaled for Tommy to
return with the prisoner. Replacing the pistol in its belt loop, he
took back the Browning rifle, continuing, “Most of you are
wondering what has brought us here. Trellis guessed that the Ewarts
might be moving something of value and had notions of taking it
from them. And he was guessing right. They’re transporting a
consignment for General Houston—and it is valuable.”

A low hiss of astonishment
burst from the girl as she listened, but could hardly believe her
ears. From the beginning, Ole Devil had insisted that they must
keep their business with Turtle a secret. Yet he was announcing it
openly to as mean and ornery a bunch of cutthroats as could be
found in —or outside—Texas.

“
That’s
why I forced a fight with him and he’s lucky to be alive, I wasn’t
trying merely to wound him,” the Texian elaborated, conscious of
Di’s restless movements and guessing what was causing them.
However, he gave his full attention to the men at Turtle’s table
while speaking so that his words carried to everybody in the room.
“The consignment is so important to General Houston and the future
of Texas that anybody with the idea of trying to take it from us
had better ask his helpers, ‘How many of you want to die?’ Because,
you have my word on it, that’s what any attempt will mean. I’ve got
Company ‘C of the Texas Light Cavalry, fifty strong and fighting
men from soda to hock,
^xliii
backing Ewart Brindley and his
Tejas
packers. That mule train is
going through, gentlemen, and I don’t give a damn how many I have
to kill to see it reaches General Houston intact.”

Studying the grim lines of
Ole Devil’s Mephistophelian features and the way in which he stood
holding the rifle, nobody doubted that he meant every word he
said.

“This here’s a no good,
stupid son-of-a-bitching notion, was you to ask me!” muttered one
of the five men who were squatting on their heels in a group under
the spreading branches of a big old white oak tree. “Riding all
this damned way to lay an ambush for somebody’s most likely won’t
come don’t strike me’s making real good sense.”

“
Nor me,
neither,” declared another member of the quintet, also holding down
the level of his voice and darting a glance at a figure which was
standing a short distance away. “I don’t see nobody’s knows sic ’em
about Texas being loco enough to go to San Phillipe looking for
help.”

“
That’s
for sure,” confirmed a third of the group, speaking no louder than
his companions. The mention of the town brought something else to
his attention and he went on, “What in hell’s keeping Dodd ’n’ the
others? They sure’s hell aren’t rushing back, are
they?”

Listening to the muted
rumble of agreement from the other four men, Madeline de Moreau
struggled to keep a check on her normally imperious and demanding
nature. Before her husband had been killed by Ole Devil Hardin, the
members of the band of renegades which they had gathered would not
have dared to display opposition to orders in such an open fashion.
Although she felt anger surging through her, she was aware of her
position at that moment, and was too wise to show it.

Madeline was sufficiently
intelligent to appreciate just how slender a hold she had over the
remnants of the band. Serving
Presidente
Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna for profit, as she and her husband had been, she was all too
aware of the type of men they had enlisted into their organization.
Every one of them had “gone to Texas” to evade the consequences of
criminal activities in the United States of America, and they were
only willing to accept the leadership of a more ruthless,
cold-blooded and dominant personality than their own. So she had
been fortunate in preventing them from scattering after the fight
at the cabin had left her a widow, and even more so in that they
had, albeit reluctantly, agreed to act upon the plans which she had
formulated for making another attempt to capture the consignment of
Caplock rifles. Certainly they did not consider her as the natural
successor to her late husband as head of the band. They had only
gone along with her suggestions out of greed and because nobody
else had been able to think up an alternative scheme.

About five foot eight
inches in height and in her early thirties, Madeline had a
full-bosomed, slender-waisted and curvaceous figure which was not
created by artificial aids. Despite the marks left by her fight
with Diamond-Hitch Brindley—in which she had been coming off a bad
second-best when it was brought to an end—she was a very beautiful
woman. A gray “planter’s” hat covered her brunette hair and her
black two-piece riding habit—spare clothing which had been in her
war bag on the cantle of her saddle—was supplemented by the warm
man’s cloak-coat that she had donned.

Despite her physical
attractions, there had always been a hard and superior air about
Madeline which—when they remembered how she and her husband had
earned a living before coming to Texas
^xliv
—repelled and annoyed the male members of the band. Nor,
feeling nothing but contempt for what she regarded as the hired
help, would she have had it any other way. As far as she was
concerned, even before her bereavement, they were nothing better
than dull-witted, uncouth animals. Although necessary for Randolph
and her purposes, they were expendable; to be used as long as there
was a need for their services and then discarded. Nor had her
thinking about them changed. Provided things went as she hoped, she
would soon be leaving their company permanently. The kind of life
she had been leading recently no longer had anything to offer, or
to hold her in it.

Regardless of her faults,
which were many, Madeline had loved Randolph Galsworthy
Buttolph
^xlv
deeply and sincerely. Distressed, grieving and enraged by his
death, she had sworn to be avenged upon the man who had killed him.
That had been her main reason for gathering together the men who
had fled from the cabin. Nor could she have hoped to achieve
anything with them, but others of the band—having been summoned by
a message left at one of their hideouts-arrived. Even with the
reinforcements, it had taken all her persuasive powers before they
would agree to carry on with the task which her husband had
started. Nor would she have succeeded without Dodd’s backing. He
had always been infatuated by her and had hopes of taking
Buttolph’s place in her affections as well as becoming the new
leader of the band.

Conceding that any direct
attack upon the well guarded consignment, or the mule train, was
out of the question, the woman had realized it would become even
more difficult to deal with them after they had come together at
Santa Cristobal Bay. However, Dodd’s explanation of how the pack
mules were handled had shown her a way in which she might be able
to attain her desire for profit and revenge. There had been added
inducement in the thought of how the shooting of Ewart Brindley
would affect his granddaughter, for whom she was nursing a hatred
which almost equaled her antipathy toward Ole Devil
Hardin.