J. Edson - Ranch War

“If eight’s all she’s got, I don’t reckon she’ll be back,” the Kid decided. “Which, I could stand a night’s sleep.”

“Then let’s chance it,” Trinian suggested. “We’ll leave here at sunup and should be in well before they couldn’ve got word to the others at the sawmill and back.”

At about eight o’clock the next morning, refreshed by several hours of uninterrupted sleep, the Kid, Trinian and one of the younger hands, a tall, freckled-faced redhead called Staff, rode through Hollick City toward the sheriff’s house. Approaching the building, the Kid for one felt sure that something had gone wrong. Several armed townsmen stood around and Swede hurried toward the newcomers.

“Kid!” the man said worriedly. “It’s trouble. We found Harry in the stable with a bust head, and Calamity’s missing.”

“How come?” growled the Kid, and Swede wondered how he had ever thought the Texan looked young or innocent.

“She went down to the stable to see to the hosses just after sunup,” the man explained. “We never saw nor heard nothing, and just now Millie asked me to go down and tell her breakfast was waiting. That’s when I found Harry and Calam’s hat.”

“I’ve sent for hosses,” the Wells Fargo agent went on, coming forward. “We was all set to go after her.”

“Not you,” the Kid answered, silently cursing himself for remaining at the ranch. “They see so many coming, they’ll kill Calam for sure. This’s a chore for one man. Me.”

“Three of us’d be small enough to keep hid,” Trinian objected. “And I know the range better’n you. I can take you straight to the sawmill.”

“Who’s the other?” asked the Kid.

“Staff. He’s a good hand with a gun and no heavy-boot comes to quiet moving.”

“This’s not your fight,” the Kid pointed out.

“The hell it’s not!” Trinian replied. “You saw Corey-Mae in action last night. Do you reckon I dast go back there and tell her what’s happened, unless I’d helped you get that gal back safe and well?”

“Likely you dasn’t,” admitted the Kid.

“And anyways,” Trinian went on. “I don’t know what Calamity plans to do with the ranch, but I’d say our chances are a whole heap better with her than if Florence Eastfield comes to own it.”

Chapter 14 YOU’D BETTER HOPE THIS WORKS

CALAMITY COULD, AND DID, BITTERLY CURSE HERSELF for getting captured so easily. Seated on the saddle of a strange horse, covered to the waist by an empty grain sack which let in no light, her arms pinioned and feet fastened to the stirrup irons, she had muttered savage invective against her captors and her own stupidity. Yet, she told herself, as the horse and its companions on either side of her came to a halt, it was always easy to be wise after some damned fool thing had happened.

With the Kid seen on his way the previous evening, Calamity had helped Mrs. Leckenby to feed the men who had gathered to protect the sheriff. All sensible precautions had been taken, including a guard being placed in the stable. Sent to collect him, two of the men had carried Lawyer Endicott from the Clipper Saloon. He had been too far gone in a drunken stupor for Calamity to hope to discuss business with him. At first the girl had been a mite alarmed by the Kid’s failure to return. Mrs. Leckenby had guessed what was happening and insisted that Calamity go to bed. Being more tired than she cared to admit, the girl had obeyed.

Exhausted and in a safe bed, Calamity did not wake until seven o’clock. Slipping out of bed, she had donned shirt, pants and moccasins, then strapped on her gunbelt with Colt and whip, before going across to the stable to tend to the horses. Putting on her weapons had gained her nothing. As she had walked through the stable’s door, the grain sack had descended over her head and shoulders. Before she could struggle or raise the alarm, a hand had clapped over her mouth and a rope secured her arms from outside the sack. One of her assailants had disarmed her, then she had been swung on to a man’s shoulder and carried away.

Taken a short distance that way, she had been placed on a horse and lashed afork it. Then her captors, she had guessed at there being only two of them, had led her mount after their own. They had splashed through the Middle Loup River and gone on another couple of miles before coming to a halt.

The man to her right loosened the rope about the sack, but did not remove her bonds completely. Instead he jerked the sack out from under them. Half-blinded by the sudden flood of light, Calamity was unable to do anything before the rope tightened again. Shaking her head to remove the dizziness she felt, Calamity got her eyes focusing again. Vandor sat to her left, a grin of sardonic amusement on his lips. To her right, Poole, the third of the trio who had backed Olaf on their first meeting, had a swollen top lip and a bruise under his left eye. Going by the way Poole glared at her, Calamity concluded that she had in some way been responsible for his injuries.

“What the hell fool game’re you playing at?” Calamity demanded, looking at Vandor and seeing he carried her gunbelt across his saddle.

“Miss Eastfield wants you,” Vandor answered and looked her over from head to toe. “You sure don’t have any papers on you.”

“Could allus make good ’n’ certain,” Poole suggested.

“We’ll push on!” Vandor ordered. “Flo’s got something in mind for her. Say, gal, we heard that Texas gun-slick of your’n rid out of town. Where’d he go?”

No matter how they had managed to enter the barn, or even if somebody in town had been helping them, the men did not have a reliable source of information. So it would do no harm if they thought that the Kid was no longer a factor in the game.

“Back south, the stinking-son-of-a-bitch!” Calamity spat out. “Took my money and’s soon’s the going got rough, he run out on me.”

“You should’ve tried paying him a bonus,” Poole said maliciously. “Same sort the boss gives Van he——”

The words ended as Vandor jumped his horse forward to face the other man. Anger twisted the handsome face and Vandor’s right hand raised above the Smith & Wesson’s butt.

“What did you say, Poole?”

“Hey! Easy there, Van! I was only fooling.”

“Then don’t!” Vandor warned, turning his horse and setting it moving. When Poole, leading Calamity, came alongside, he went on, “You watch your mouth, Poole. Else you’re likely to get some more of what Flo gave you for missing the sheriff.”

“I didn’t miss him!” Poole protested. “That feller back in Hollick telled us Leckenby was bad hit. His hoss carried him clear——”

“You was supposed to kill him,” Vandor pointed out. “He came back to town alive and Olaf got killed.”

“That was you ’n’ Torp’s doing, not mine!” Poole protested. “Anyways, why’re you so all-fired worried about that crazy bastard? He was better off dead.”

“I know it. You know it,” Vandor said dryly. “But don’t you ever let Flo hear you say it. Olaf was her brother and the best logger around until he had a tree drop the wrong way.”

“That’s how he got the scar and like he was, huh?” Calamity put in. “Poor son-of-a-bitch.”

“That’s how,” Vandor agreed, looking at the girl. “I don’t know what Flo’s got in mind for you. But, was I you, I’d be scared.”

“Could be I don’t scare easy,” Calamity answered, hoping that the icy cold sensation which ran along her spine would not make its effects noticeable.

“Maybe you ain’t got enough good sense to be scared,” Vandor sniffed. “But I’ll tell you one thing, gal. If you’re not dead by nightfall, it’ll be because you’re praying that you should be.”