Trigger Fast (12 page)

Morg lit the lamp and stared at the girl in a distracted manner. Not until then did he feel the trickle of blood running down his face where one of the last shots threw splinters into him. Freda saw it and nothing could have shaken her out of the hysteria quicker.

‘Morg!’ she gasped, getting to her feet. ‘You’re hurt!’

‘Not him,’ Mark put in. ‘You can’t hurt a feller from Montana by hitting him on the head.’

The girl threw Mark a cold look and eased Morg into a chair. She saw the wound to be more messy than dangerous and prepared to care for it. Lasalle watched all this and a slightly puzzled look came to his face. Mark grinned and suggested they took a look outside.

Freda froze as she reached a hand to Morg’s head. ‘That explosion!’ she gasped. ‘What caused it?’

‘Dynamite,’ Mark asnwered flatly. ‘Come on, George. Let’s make sure they’ve left clean. Where’s that old Bugle dog?’

Having shown commendable good sense and headed for the girl’s bedroom when the shooting started, Bugle now came out, wagging his tail. He followed the two men to the door of the house. He stood outside and his head swung to one side, his back hair rose and he growled.

‘Back in, pronto!’ Mark snapped. ‘Freda, douse the lights.’

Once more the room plunged into darkness and Bugle headed for the safety of his mistress’s bedroom.

‘Get the guns loaded!’ Mark growled. We might need them.’ The horses came nearer and Lasalle’s house lay silent. Mark felt puzzled at the turn of events. He thought that after the mauling they took Double K would stay well clear. They might be sending a small group of determined men in, hoping the house suspected nothing, although Mark could not think how the group managed to get in the direction from which they came so soon after departing the other way.

‘Yeeah!’

Loud in the night it rang. The old battle yell of the Confederate Cavalry. Mark realized that Dusty would send one of his friends to the Wedge to collect help and reinforcements. The explosion must have brought them on the run but they knew better than ride up unannounced to a house which had just been under attack.

‘Hey Mark!’ yelled Dusty’s voice. ‘Answer up,
amigo
!’

‘Come ahead and quit that fool yelling!’ Mark called back. What for you all waking folks up in the middle of the night?’ He holstered his guns and threw a look across the room to where Freda and Morg were much closer than needed for first-aid or reloading weapons. ‘You can put the lamp on again. Unless you’d rather stay in the dark.’

Freda and Morg gave startled and guilty exclamations, moving apart hurriedly and trying to look unconcerned as Lasalle lit the lamp.

‘You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself, Mark Counter,’ Freda gasped. ‘Why don’t you go out and meet Dusty?’

‘Why sure,’ agreed Mark. ‘Reckon you pair would like to be alone.’

The nearest thing Freda could lay hands on that wouldn’t be too dangerous was the discarded deck of cards. She grabbed them up and hurled them at Mark. He side stepped, grinned, winked at the blushing Morg, then stepped out to greet his friends.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘YOU all right,
amigo
?’ Dusty asked, swinging down from the borrowed horse and walking towards Mark.

Why sure. They didn’t get any of us.’

‘What happened?’ asked Johnny Raybold, showing his relief at finding Mark safe and unharmed.

‘They hit us foot, hoss and artillery,’ Mark replied, hearing the others as they came from the house behind him.

‘Get any of ‘em, Mark?’ Rusty Willis inquired.

‘Not less’n these folks can shoot,’ scoffed Johnny. ‘He couldn’t hit the side of a barn if he was in it.’

Mark ignored the comments from his good friends. He stepped forward to greet Stone Hart and then introduced him to Lasalle, Freda and Morg. They were all invited in, but Johnny and Rusty turned their horses and headed across the stream to make a sweep across the range and make certain the Double K pack had headed home.

‘I reckon there were getting on for twenty or more of them,’ Mark said, as the men gathered around the Lasalle’s dining-room table and Freda, with Morg’s help, went to the kitchen to make coffee. ‘They came down on us loaded for bear.’

‘That’s a mean bear, needing dynamite to move it,’ Dusty answered quietly.

‘That’s the part of it I don’t like,’ growled Stone. ‘Dusty, they’ve gone too far now. We’ll have to paint for war.’

‘Likely. Comes daylight Mark and I’ll head down trail and get Clay to come up here. Then we’ll clear this whole section out. It’ll be open season on anybody wearing a gun and riding for Double K.’

Lasalle looked at the faces around the table. Tanned faces which showed little of their thoughts. Not one of them looked like the sort of man to back down once they set their mind to a thing.

‘Why did they hit us tonight?’ he asked.

‘Way I see it, they had to make a grandstand play. They’d hit Gibbs and left him with his hide peeled by a blacksnake whip,’ Dusty answered. ‘Which same Pop Jones had called it quits. That left you. If you stayed on the other two might take heart and stand fast. You had to be brought down.’

‘But not with dynamite, Dusty,’ Stone Hart objected. ‘That’s going a mite strong even for a bunch of hard-cases with the local law behind them.’

‘Maybe,’ Dusty drawled. ‘I’ll feel happier when I’ve got Clay Allison here so we can make us some talk to the owner of the Double K.’

‘Something struck me about this Keller,’ Lasalle put in. ‘None of the Double K crowd even refer to him. When they say boss they always mean Mallick.’

‘Maybe haven’t seen enough of Keller to call him boss,’ Mark answered.

‘Or maybe he’s not the real boss of this she-bang,’ Stone suggested. ‘It could be that Mallick’s behind all this for his own benefit. Nobody’s seen Keller from all accounts.’

They were words of wisdom, although none of the others knew it. However before the subject could be followed further Rusty Willis returned with word that Johnny had taken off after the Double K men and would not be back for a couple of hours. Rusty had taken time out to circle the house on his return.

‘Looks like you got at least four, maybe more,’ he said, then looked at Lasalle. ‘Was I you, I’d keep my gal inside comes morning.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s not a sight for her to see. Out where the dynamite went off,’ was the simple reply. ‘I’d say at least two of them were there, but it’s kinda hard to tell for sure.’

‘Two’s right,’ Lasalle said, his voice showing strain and a shudder running through his body. ‘One of them was wounded. I hit—’

‘Drop it!’ Mark snapped, gripping the man’s shoulder in a hold which made him wince and brought an end to his words. ‘You didn’t ask them to come here in the night, or to try and dynamite your home. And it damned sure wasn’t your fault they came to die.’

‘Mark’s right at that, friend,’ agreed Stone Hart. ‘You stopped a man killing you, your daughter, Mark and that young feller in the kitchen. To do that you shot a man who was trying to throw dynamite at your place. It was his choosing, not you’rn.’

Dusty thrust back his chair and came to his feet. He went to the kitchen door, opened it, closed it again, without Morg and Freda knowing for they were in each other’s arms and kissing. Dusty knocked on the door, turning to wink at the others. Then he opened it and walked in. Now Freda busied herself at the stove and Morg seemed fully occupied with cutting bread for her.

We’ll be staying here for the night, Freda,’ he said. ‘Stone and the boys don’t have their bedrolls along.’

‘I’ll fix it,’ she replied, face just a trifle flushed.

An hour later Freda went to her room and climbed into bed. She heard the men settling down in the dining-room and wondered if she would sleep again, so great was the feeling surging inside her as she thought of Morg Summers. She doubted if sleep would ever come to her again.

Yells and whoops woke Freda. For a moment she lay on her bed, blinking in daylight which flooded her room. Then she gasped for she saw the sun hung higher in the sky than usually was the case when she rose. Rolling from her bed she sat on the edge, rubbing her eyes. Then she went to the window and peered out. She stared at the sight before her, wondering what had gone wrong for it seemed that Johnny Raybold and Rusty Willis were attacking Dusty Fog.

Freda had undressed and wore her night-gown now; she could not remember doing it the previous night, but appeared to have done so. Grabbing up her robe she quickly climbed into it. She saw Rusty grab Dusty from behind, locking hands around his waist from behind. Johnny had landed on the ground, but was getting up and charging into the attack.

The girl could not think what started the fight. She wondered why none of the others stopped it. With bare feet slapping on the floor, Freda darted from her room and through the kitchen. She tore open the door and went out. To her amazement her father and the other men sat around watching the fight and clearly enjoying it.

Even as the girl appeared Dusty bent forward, reached between his legs to grab one of Rusty’s. Then he straightened and Rusty let out a yell and fell backwards with Dusty sitting down hard on him.

‘Eeyow whooof!’ Rusty bellowed, the air rammed from his lungs in the cry.

By this time Johnny was on his feet and charging forward.

Dusty left the recumbent Rusty’s body in a rolling dive forward. His hand clamped on Johnny’s ankle in passing and heaved. Johnny gave a wail and lost his balance. He lit down on his hands, breaking his fall with the skill of a horseman taking a toss from a bad one.

Dusty retained his grip on the ankle and grabbed Johnny’s free leg. He bent the legs upwards, crossing the ankles and sitting on them. Johnny’s mouth opened and he let out a howl.

‘Yowee!’ he yelled. ‘Yipes, uncle, Dusty. Uncle!’

Never had Freda felt so completely baffled by a turn of events. She stared at her father, then at Mark and Stone who calmly smoked cigarettes, finally at Morg who seemed to be enjoying the scene.

‘What happened?’ she gasped, watching Dusty rise after receiving Johnny’s surrender howl. ‘What happened?’

‘That?’ grinned Mark as the men got to their feet. ‘Why that’s just Johnny ‘n’ Rusty showing Dusty how it’s done.’

‘But — but — I thought—!’ began a very irate Freda. ‘Cowhands!’

With that final yell, realizing that no young lady should be seen dressed, or rather undressed, in such a manner, she turned and fled to the house.

Johnny grinned wryly as he took up his hat. Ever since Dusty demonstrated the arts of ju jitsu and karate to them in Quiet Town, Rusty and he had tried to disprove its effectiveness. Whenever their paths crossed with Dusty’s, the two Wedge hands banded together to show their friend they could lick him — only they never managed to do it.

‘Say, Dusty,’ Johnny drawled. ‘You dropped this paper. Is it anything important?’

He held out a scrap of paper and Dusty frowned. Then the light dawned and Dusty thrust a hand into his levis pocket. He drew out the torn papers taken from Mallick’s office on the previous day.

‘It might be at that,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside and see if we can sort it out.’

‘I’ll get the boys out to those two spreads first,’ Stone replied. ‘Then I’d best go down trail to the herd.’

Dusty left Stone to attend to the matter and entered the house. He went to the table and sat down, spreading the pieces of paper out before him. Turning them so they all faced the same side upwards he started to fit them together. He found little difficulty in getting the scraps in order and forming a completed whole. A map lay before him, complete in design and outline, but without a single name to say what it might be a map of. It showed land contours, water-courses, woods even, yet not a single letter to identify the range it covered. An oblong outline ran around the inner edge of the map but it meant nothing to him.

‘Where in hell is it a map of?’ he said, more to himself than to Lasalle who stood by the window.

‘Let me take a look, Captain.’

For a long moment Lasalle studied the map, frowning and cocking his head on one side.

‘I forgot about the pieces,’ Dusty drawled. ‘Picked them up in Mallick’s office yesterday, but things happened a mite fast and I didn’t get a chance to look at them earlier.’

Then Dusty tensed slightly. He took a long look at the map, then reached into his pants pocket. He shook his head, rose and crossed the room to where a box of Winchester bullets lay. Taking one out he returned to the table and bent over the map. He drew a line from the lower edge about six inch from the right side to about an inch from the top, then still using the bullet’s lead as a pencil, made a right angle turn and a line to the right edge.

‘Does it look any more familiar now?’ he asked.

Lasalle looked down at the map, he gave an explosive grunt of surprise as he saw the whole thing with the eye of a man who knew how to make a map.

‘It sure does!’ he breathed. ‘That’s the Lindon Land Grant. You didn’t quite get the lines right, Captain Fog, but I recognize the physical features of the map now. But the way this is drawn it makes the Grant appear to cover all our range and right up to the badlands.’

‘Yeah,’ Dusty said quietly. ‘That’s just how it looks.’

Just at that moment Stone Hart entered from sending off his relief forces to the Gibbs’ and Jones’ places. He came forward and looked down at the map, seeing its significance.

What do you make of it, Dusty?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know for sure. But it’d take a trained man to make a map like this, wouldn’t it?’

‘Sure,’ Stone agreed. ‘This’s been line-drawn from the original I’d say.’

At last Lasalle found himself in a position to offer advice on something beyond the ken of the two Texans. He spent his service career in the Confederate Army Engineers and knew considerable about making maps.

‘It was,’ he said. ‘The man who did it knew his work.’

‘A Government surveyor’d be able to do it I suppose?’ Dusty asked.

‘A well trained one would,’ Lasalle agreed.

‘What’re you thinking about, Dusty?’ Stone asked, seeing the interest Dusty showed, although most people could have noticed no change in the small Texan’s face or appearance.

‘Just a hunch, Stone. I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve met Clay.’

He refused to say any more and Stone knew the futility of trying to get more out of him. After breakfast he still knew no more about Dusty’s hunch but did not bother, he knew he would learn about it when Dusty had every detail worked out and not before.

‘I’ll head down to the herd and tell Waggles we’re staying a spell,’ Stone said. ‘Johnny’s gone ahead, should get them afore they head the cattle up.’

They had finished breakfast and were preparing to start out. This time Mark would be riding with Dusty and they left warning that neither Lasalle nor Morg were to move far from the house and that they keep all weapons loaded.

‘If they hit at you,’ Stone went on, after Dusty gave his grim warning, ‘get inside and fort up. Then make some smoke, burn rags or something, get smoke coming up from your chimney and we’ll come a-running.’

‘One thing, George,’ Dusty finished, turning his big paint stallion’s head from the ranch. ‘Try and stick that map together for me.’

‘Sure, Captain Fog,’ Lasalle promised. ‘If you reckon it’s important.’

‘I reckon that map’s the middle of all this fuss,’ Dusty replied quietly. ‘Let’s go, Mark. And don’t worry if you hear riders coming up from the south on towards dark, George. It’ll most likely be us.’

After his guests left, Lasalle went around his buildings with Morg at his side. They looked at the ragged hole left where the dynamite went off and Lasalle could not restrain a shudder, even though the other men had been up at the first hint of dawn to clear away the ghastly horror.

‘We’ll do like Captain Fog said, Morg,’ Lasalle stated. ‘Stay around the house and tidy things up today.’

‘Sure, boss. Say, can I have a talk to you — about Freda and me?’

‘I reckon you can,’ Lasalle replied. ‘Let’s go to the barn. I wonder how Pop Jones and Ralph Gibbs’ll find things today?’

At the Jones place a wagon stood before the door as Peaceful Gunn and his party rode up. The old man and the cowhand called Yance watched the trio of Wedge hands approach as they lifted chairs into the back of the canvas-topped wagon. ‘Howdy folks,’ greeted the man called Shaun, his tones showing his Irish birth. ‘Cap’n Fog sent us along to help you.’

‘Knowed I shouldn’t come here with this pair!’ Peaceful moaned, eyeing the Colt the cowhand held. ‘Nobody’d trust me with villainous looking
hombres
like them at my back.’

‘Sure and here’s me a descendant of kings of auld Ireland being spoke ag’in by this evil-doer,’ replied Shaun, in his breezy brogue. ‘Twas foolish to put all that gear into the wagon when we’ll only have to be moving it out again.’

Then the Jones family and their hand started to smile. These were the men promised to lend a hand with the defence of the house. Pop looked right sprightly for a man who had been on the verge of losing his home. He took out a worn old ten gauge and set percussion caps on the nipples ready for use.

‘Let’s us get this lot back into the house,’ he suggested.

With eager hands to help the work was soon done. At Peaceful’s suggestion they left the wagon standing outside, then Shaun turned on his Irish charm and got a very worried looking Ma Jones to smile.

‘You don’t sound like any Texan I ever heard,’ she said at last.

‘I’m the only Texas-Irishman in the world,’ Shaun replied. ‘Can’t you tell from me voice, a Texas drawl on top of a good Irish accent. Say, ma’am, you wouldn’t know how to make an Irish stew, would you?’

On being assured that Ma not only could, but would, make an Irish stew, Shaun gave his full attention to making plans for the defence of the house.

Five hard looking men rode towards the Jones place shortly after noon. In the lead came Preacher Tring, sitting his horse uneasily for the Kid’s birdshot onslaught had caught him in a most embarrassing position. This did not tend to make Tring feel any better disposed to life in general and the small ranch owners in particular.

He growled a low curse as he saw the wagon standing before the Jones’ house and without a team. Clearly Pop Jones thought the Double K were playing kid games when they said get out. Right soon Pop would get a lesson.

Then men put spurs to their horses and rode fast, coming down on the ranch and halting the mounts in a churned up dust loud before the house. Tring dropped his hand towards his hip, meaning to draw and pour a volley into the house.

‘Don’t pull it, mister!’ said a plaintive voice from the barn. ‘You’ll like to scare me off.’

All eyes turned to look in the direction of the speaker and all movement towards hardware ended. This might have been due to a desire to keep the nervous sounding man unafraid — or because all they could see plainly of him was the barrel of a Spencer rifle, its .52 calibre mouth yawning like a cave entrance at them.

‘Is it the visitors we have, Peaceful?’ a second voice inquired.

The wagon’s canopy had drawn back and a Winchester slanted at the Double K men, lined from the source of the Irish voice. Then a third man sauntered into view from the end of the house, also carrying a rifle, while a shotgun and a fourth rifle showed on either side of the open house door.

‘Who are you?’ Tring asked.

We work here,’ Shaun replied. Who are
you
?’

‘Tell that pair of ole—!’

A bullet fanned Tring’s hat from his head. The lever of Shaun’s rifle clicked and the Double K men tried to keep their horses under control without also giving the idea they could reach their weapons.

‘Just be keeping the civil tongue in your head, hombre!’ Shaun warned. ‘And if you’ve no further business here, let’s be missing you.’