J. Edson - Ranch War

Once again Calamity led all the horses, complaining bitterly about it, despite the suggestion that she should having come from her. Searching the buildings with careful gaze, they felt that they had one advantage over their arrival at Goff’s place. Now they knew what kind of horses Otón and Job rode. Maybe the bay could go unnoticed among the other animals in the corrals, but Otón’s sabino ought to be distinctive enough to be picked out. An examination of the corrals did not produce a reddish-roan horse with a white belly. However, it could be concealed in the barn.

“We’ll play it like that’s where they’ve got their hosses,” the Kid drawled. “Only we’ll make out we don’t suspect anything.”

“They’d’ve had to stop off here if that hoss’ shoe we found back on the trail come from Job’s bay,” Calamity replied. “Looks like the forge’s been used today.”

Because of their precautions, they reached the buildings without being fired on or challenged. Before they had left that morning, Goff had gone against his mother’s advice and told them enough about the crew of the way station to make them wary. So they had eaten a meal on the trail shortly after noon and pushed on another two hours to their present location. It was their intention to water the horses and ride on, unless Otón and Job were at the way station and disputed their passing.

“Take all the hosses, Calam,” the Kid ordered, dropping from his saddle. “I want to nose around a mite.”

“You’re starting to talk like a Comanche again,” the girl warned, but rode by the forge on her way to obey.

The Kid did not intend to do his “nosing around” in the station’s main building or barn, which they had already passed. Dropping from his saddle, he removed the stallion’s bridle and bit. Hanging them across the low-horned, double-girthed Texas saddle, he allowed the white to follow the other horses. Then he turned his attention to the forge. It had been constructed on spartan lines. Apart from the roof’s supports, three sides were open. The forth had a wall, but merely as backing for the furnace’s chimney.

Going through the open side nearest him, the Kid looked around. The forge showed the same lax, unkempt state as the rest of the station. Bits of iron, broken farm implements, a pick-handle that had lost its head and other oddments lay in a sizeable untidy heap, discarded or tossed aside to be used at some later date. A turning-hammer lay on the anvil, instead of among the other neglected-looking tools hanging on the wall. It was not a place to inspire confidence if one had a horse that needed shoeing. However, everything intimated that work had been done in it recently. Not in the last two or three hours, maybe, but certainly since sunup.

Hearing footsteps approaching from the other buildings, the Kid turned slowly. He made no gesture that could be construed as hostile, but was ready to take instant, effective action should the sounds be produced by the two men from Mulrooney.

Facing the new arrivals, the Kid saw that they were not Job and Otón. In fact three, not two, men came toward him. Thinking back to what Goff had told him, the Kid identified the trio.

The big, gaunt, dirty-looking cuss at the right of the group, showing off brawny biceps in a sleeveless undershirt, with grimy pants and heavy boots, would be Tully, the blacksmith. In the center, medium height, stocky, wearing range clothes, a scar half-hidden by whiskers on his right cheek, was the wrangler, Masters. Gangling, mournful, living up to his name “Misery,” the last of them combined wrangling and cooking. He must have put more than one traveler off his food.

That left the station agent to be accounted for. According to Deke Goff, Marty Spatz did as little manual work as he could manage. So the “duded-up, city-dressed bladder of rancid lard,” to quote the old-timer’s description, would most likely be in one of the buildings and watching what his hired help figured on doing.

Despite the fact that none of them wore a gun, they aimed to do something, or the Kid missed his guess. Their whole attitude hinted at that. Walking under the roof of the forge, Tully and Masters confronted the Kid. Acting just a mite too casual, Misery sauntered by the building. Darting a glance after the lean man, the Kid saw that he was making toward where Calamity stood watching the horses drinking.

“Want something?” Tully demanded.

“One of the hosses there throwed a shoe,” the Kid replied, wondering if he should warn the girl. “I was fixing to get it tended to after they’d watered.”

“Wasn’t fixing on tending to it yourself, was you?” Tully growled.

“Why?” countered the Kid. “Ain’t there a blacksmith here?”

Standing on slightly parted feet, the Kid looked very young and inexperienced. The changing out of his black shirt seemed to add to his youth. It was, however, an attitude that would have fooled nobody who knew him. Tully and Masters lacked that advantage. To them, the Kid was a bald-faced stripling who figured to be one real savage curly-wolf. He ought to be easy enough meat for what they had been sent to do. Not that they aimed to take chances. Having formed a different opinion at the sight of him passing from a distance, they had not worn their guns. That old Dragoon had seen some use and a bowie knife could be as deadly when slashed wildly by a scared kid, as it would be in the hands of a man skilled in its use.

“Folks’s want the blacksmith most times stop at the house and ask for him,” Tully stated, exuding a menace that ought to hold the Texan’s attention while Masters sidled past him. “Them’s don’t ain’t up to any good, way I see it. There’s a heap of valuable gear here, most of it light enough to be toted off on a hoss.”

“And that’s what you reckon I was fixing to do, huh?” the Kid inquired, with a mildness that would have screamed a warning to anybody aware of his ways.

Even as he spoke, a faint clatter from one side and slightly behind him reached his ears. He knew that the sound had originated from inside the building and not down by the stream. Nor did he need to turn to guess at its cause. Confident that his actions were unsuspected, Masters was picking up a weapon. Thinking of what he had seen on his arrival, the Kid decided that it would most likely be the pick-handle. Nothing else in the heap of rubbish would be light or handy enough to serve the stocky man’s purpose. However, the Indian-dark young Texan showed no hint of being aware of what went on behind his back.

“I ain’t saying you was, and I ain’t saying you wasn’t,” the blacksmith declared, devoting most of his attention to where Misery was drawing closer to the apparently unsuspecting girl. “Only, seeing’s how I wore blue in the War, I don’t cotton to Texas beef-heads coming here and making free with my property.”

“Maybe I’ve come to pick up that white stallion and red mare that’re on the way from Mulrooney,” the Kid suggested and saw surprise twist at Tully’s face, to be replaced by anger and a little alarm.

Gripping the thin end of the pick-handle in both hands, Masters crept toward the Kid. The wrangler could not hold down a hiss of surprise when he realized what the young Texan had said. Then he swung the handle around, like a baseball player wielding the bat, aiming to drive its splintered, swollen head between the shoulders of the gray shirt. Struck there with paralyzing force, the cowhand would be unable to resist the rest of what they had been ordered out to do.

Satisfied that his companions could chill the male visitor’s milk without requiring help from him, Misery ignored what was going on in the forge. To him had been assigned the more enjoyable, and maybe safer, task of subduing the girl. Which ought to be easy enough, no matter how she dressed. He could see the bottom of the Colt’s holster, which did not greatly alarm him, but the bull-whip was concealed by her buckskin jacket. She still continued to stand with her back to him, gazing across the river and oblivious of her peril.