J. Edson - Ranch War

“You’ll have to wait supper a mite,” the old-timer remarked. “There was a message started coming through just after I’d gotten into the kitchen. I missed the call sign, but reckoned I’d best take it down case it was for me. What I got was ‘White stallion and red mare on their way to your ranch.’ There didn’t seem to be no signature.”

“Any notion where it’d come from and where it was going?” asked the Kid.

“It’d come up from Mulrooney, but might’ve been passed from beyond that. If it warn’t for here, which I doubt seeing’s this ain’t ranching country, it could be for any of the way stations between here ’n’ Hollick City, or out beyond that. We get messages telling folks to come ’n’ collect something, or something’s coming, going through all the time.”

“Sure,” agreed the Kid. “Only it could be about us. I don’t know if that Mexican recognized me. But if he did, he’d likely recall that I ride a white stallion.”

“Only we don’t have a red mare,” Calamity pointed out.

“I called ’n’ asked Mulrooney where that message’d been sent,” Goff put in. “It was for the Sappa ’n’ Beaver Creek way station.”

“What’s the fellers who run it like?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Kid. My mammy raised me proper that if I couldn’t say nothing nice about folks, not to talk about ’em. You got another question?”

“Not right now,” the Kid admitted, for the other’s reticence had told him all he needed to know.

“I’ll go finish supper, then,” Goff decided and ambled away.

“What do you reckon, Lon?” Calamity inquired as the old-timer went through a door leading to the rear of the building.

“There’s two ways of looking at it,” the Kid replied gravely. “Either it was to a rancher telling him two hosses he’s ordered’re coming. Or somebody from The Outfit’s passing word to Otón ’n’ Job. If it’s the first, it’s harmless. But if it’s the second, they know we’re after them. Or will when they hit that way station.”

“Yeah,” Calamity breathed.

“How well do you know Deke?”

“Well enough to trust him.”

“That’s good enough for me. Anyways, if it’d been for him to pass on, he’d not’ve mentioned it.”

“What do we do about it?” asked Calamity.

“Can’t do a thing today,” the Kid pointed out. “They won’t get the message until so late tonight, or early tomorrow, that they’d not be able to get back here afore day-break. So we’ll have us some supper, then grab some sleep.”

“Is that all we’ll do tonight?” the girl inquired innocently.

“Can’t think of anything else,” answered the Kid. “Except we’ll ride real careful from now on.”

“Know something?” Calamity sniffed. “I’m beginning to think Mark had a mishap and told me the truth about you.”

She turned and walked over to sit at one of the tables without elaborating on which aspect of Mark Counter’s information about the Kid she had meant. Joining her, the dark young Texan settled on a chair and they waited for their supper in silence.

“Dang it!” Deke announced as he served their meal. “I just thought. The boys done took all the bedding into Mulrooney to get it washed, ’cepting for one bed’s, seeing’s there warn’t no stage due tonight.”

“I can bunk down in the barn,” offered the Kid.

“Or we could ‘bundle,’ Lon,” Calamity suggested, eyeing him in a challenging manner. “There’s no harm in it.”

“No harm at all,” agreed Deke, “when it’s done proper.”

“Bundling” had come into being during the early days of the country’s colonization. The settlers soon discovered that the winter nights were long and bitterly cold. So they had been forced to revise their conventions for courting couples. When a young man had traveled many miles to visit his sweetheart, they wanted privacy. Sitting out on the porch did not offer an answer in winter. Nor could the thrifty settlers contemplate the expense of heating and illuminating a separate room for the couple’s use. So they had been allowed to “bundle,” share a bed, with a pine-board between them to preserve their virtue. That did away with the need for artificial heating, as they could lie side by side in the darkness and the bed’s clothes would keep them warm.

When the migration to the West had begun, the travelers found “bundling” answered their needs and it grew into a frontier institution.

“We’ll do that, then,” the Kid declared.

After supper, Calamity went into the room indicated by Goff. As he always did, even when at the OD Connected ranch-house, the Kid paid a final visit to the barn and checked on his horses. Returning to the station building, he found that Goff had already retired. When he entered the bedroom, he saw Calamity had started to undress. Her boots and socks lay by the foot of the bed. Draped across the seat of a chair were her jacket, shirt and undershirt. Looking across her shoulder, she allowed her trousers to slide down.

“What’re you doing?” the Kid asked, unbuckling his gunbelt and hanging it with Calamity’s on the hook behind the door.

“My mammy allus taught me not to sleep in my street clothes,” the girl replied. “You wouldn’t want me to go against her word, now would you?”

“That wouldn’t be right,” the Kid admitted, tossing his hat by her kepi on the small dressingtable. “’Fact my pappy allus used to tell me the same thing.”

Blowing out the lamp, the Kid undressed and joined Calamity in the bed. For a time they lay on their backs, then he felt the girl’s inner hand feeling at the blanket between them.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Danged if we haven’t forgotten to get a pine-board to put between us,” Calamity replied and turned on to her side. “What’re we going to do about it?”

With the first streak of dawn creeping in the eastern sky, Calamity watched the Kid don a breechclout of Comanche blue. Swinging her legs from the bed, she studied his lean, steel-wire muscled, hard frame. Giving a slight shiver, she grabbed her undershirt from the chair. Wriggling into it, she gathered in her shirt, drawers and trousers.

“You’d best put a shirt on,” Calamity remarked as the Kid went to the door clad only to his waist, including his gunbelt.

“I’m fixing to,” he replied and left the room.

On his return, he wore a light gray shirt and multi-colored bandana. Calamity had already completed dressing and eyed him with interest.

“Why the change?” she asked.

“Happen that feller, Otón, sees me now,” the Kid explained, “he could figure he was wrong and I’m not the Ysabel Kid. That happens, he’ll be a mite easier to handle.”

“What would you’ve done last night if there’d been anything between Mark ’n’ me?” Calamity said, picking up her carbine which she had brought, along with the Kid’s rifle, into the room the previous evening.

“Slept in the barn,” the Kid answered. “Fact being, if there was anything between you ’n’ old Mark, I’d’ve had no other choice.”

“You know something, Lon,” Calamity said seriously. “That’s just about the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.” Then a merry glint came to her eyes. “Hey though. I’ve showed you a gal can do one thing better’n any old food-dog or pack-mule.”

Chapter 7 THAT WHITE STALLION AND RED MARE

AT FIRST SIGHT, THE WAY STATION ON THE SOUTHERN bank of the river formed by the joining of the Beaver and Sappa Creeks looked much like the place in which Calamity and the Kid had spent the previous night. Going closer, they noticed that it lacked the tidiness and well-kept appearance of Deke Goff’s establishment. None of the staff, four in number according to Goff, were working outside the buildings. Smoke curled up from the chimney of the blacksmith’s forge between the main buildings, corrals and the river. The trail went through the station property and crossed a ford to continue its passage north.