J. Edson - Ranch War

J.T. Edson

Ranch War

For John F. Green

without whose fishing-tackle shop

I would be a whole lot richer

Chapter 1 AIN’T YOU CALAMITY JANE?

THE NIGHT CLERK OF THE SELECT, EXPENSIVE RAIL-ROAD House Hotel stared with disapproval at the prospective client approaching his reception desk. Despite the law-abiding conditions which made Mulrooney almost unique among the Kansas railroad and trail-end towns,* unescorted females rarely made an appearance in search of a room. Still less when the time had gone ten o’clock. And the few who did come belonged to the best class of visitor. Herbert L. Philpotter studied the girl and decided that she had definitely come to the wrong establishment if she wanted accommodation for the night.

Five foot seven in height, the girl had a pretty, tanned, slightly freckled face that expressed a cheery zest for living and disregard for the conventions. Perched at a jaunty angle on her mop of shortish, curly red hair was a battered U.S. Cavalry kepi. That and her fringed buckskin jacket were not too far beyond the social pale, if not generally worn by ladies. What lay under the jacket, exposed by its open front, caused Philpotter serious misgivings. She had on a man’s tartan shirt, open at the neck and down to one button lower than might be deemed decorous, especially when the garment in question appeared either to have been bought a size too small, or to have shrunk after washing. It emphasized the rich, full swell of her bosom and slender waist in a way that hinted she wore little beneath it. Inside the tightly stretched material of her Levi’s pants, well-formed buttocks and hips curved down attractively to hint at the shapely quality of her legs. Her low-heeled, calf-high boots were sturdy, practical, but unfeminine.

Instead of the small grip with which most female guests arrived, the girl carried a fair-sized parfleche bag of buffalo hide in her left hand. The parasol much favored by ladies of fashion was replaced in her right fist by a Winchester Model 1866 carbine. Nor did her armament end there. Around her waist, slanting down to the right thigh, was a gun-belt. An ivory-handled Colt Navy revolver hung butt forward in a carefully designed holster at the right of the belt and the handle of a coiled, long-lashed bull whip was thrust into a loop at the left.

“Howdy,” the girl greeted, setting down her bag and placing the carbine by the open register on the desk’s top. “Do you have a room for me?”

“I—Er—That is——” Philpotter spluttered, wondering how to frame a refusal which would not provoke a rowdy protest from its recipient.

“Either you have, or you ain’t,” the girl stated cheerfully. “Only I was told to come here. The name’s Canary. Martha Jane Canary.”

“Can——” Philpotter started to repeat the name. “ You are Miss Canary?”

“If I’m not, somebody sure played a dirty trick on my mammy,” the girl replied, then went on, thinking of her last meeting with her mother,* “and on me, comes to that. Thing being, that fancy law-wrangler, Grosvenor, back to Topeka told me’s there’d be a room waiting here for me.”

“Oh yes, Miss—Canary,” Philpotter gulped. There had been a telegraph message from the prominent Topeka lawyer asking that she be accommodated. “We have a room reserved for you.”

“Now that’s a relief.” Miss Canary smiled, guessing at the cause of the prissy, chubby clerk’s perturbation. The Railroad House was not her usual kind of accommodation. “Happen I’d found out he was joshing me, I’d’ve headed back to the big city ’n’ asked him real polite-like why he’d done it.”

“There won’t be any need for that, I’m sure,” Philpotter replied hurriedly, turning the open book around and indicating a pen. “If you’ll fill in the register, Miss Canary, I’ll have you shown to your room.” He raised his voice, “Boy!”

Usually the bell-hop would have required more than one shout before making an appearance. Not that night. He came scuttling from where he had been peering through the door leading to the rear section of the ground floor. Dressed in a brass-buttoned suit and pill-box hat no less jauntily angled than Miss Canary’s kepi, he displayed none of the clerk’s concern over her style of clothing. Ogling her from head to toe with frank interest and approbation, he skidded to a halt at the desk.

“Take Miss Canary’s bag and—firearm—to Room Fourteen,” Philpotter ordered, placing a key by the carbine. “You don’t mind being at the rear, Miss Canary?”

“Front or back’s all one to me, ’s long’s I get a bed,” the girl answered.

Bending to pick up the girl’s parfleche, the bell-hop lowered his eyes along the front of her shirt. His gaze halted at the gunbelt, taking in the bull-whip it supported. Jolting erect as if stung by a bee, he stared at her with increased admiration.

“Ain’t you Calamity Jane?” the boy gasped.

“I’d have to say ‘yes’ to that,” Miss Canary admitted.

Shock twisted at Philpotter’s pompous features and he gobbled, “Bu-Bu-But you said——”

“That I’m Martha Jane Canary,” grinned the girl. “I am. Hell, mister, you don’t reckon that the preacher said, ‘I christen this-here beautiful lil gal who’s wetting all down the front of my best shirt Calamity Jane.’ Now do you?”

“Er—No!” Philpotter answered, popping out the word like the cork from a champagne bottle. “I suppose not.”

“And ‘Martha’s’ one helluva name to tie on to a sweet-looking, lovable lil gal like me, ain’t it?”

“Er—Yes, I suppose it is,” the clerk croaked. Wanting time to think out the latest development, he continued, “But why do they call you Calamity Jane?”

“Now that’s something I’ve never figured out myself,” the girl replied, raising her eyes piously to the roof. “There’s not a more loving-natured, better-tempered gal from here to there and back the long way. I sure don’t know why folks call me ‘Calamity.’”

Which was far from being the truth. In fact, Miss Martha Jane Canary might honestly claim that she had earned the sobriquet on a number of occasions. Not because she was clumsy, incompetent or accident-prone. It was just that trouble came her way like a homing-pigeon finding its loft.

Early in her life, Calamity’s father had headed West to find a fortune. When neither he nor it returned, Charlotte Canary had left her children in the care of a St. Louis convent and gone to look for him. There had been too much of her mother’s reckless spirit in Martha Jane for her to accept convent discipline. Always a tomboy, she had run away on her sixteenth birthday and hidden in a freight-wagon going West. A variety of circumstances had combined to prevent her ignominious return to the convent. By the end of the journey, Dobe Killem’s drivers had accepted her as a lucky mascot and protégé. From them she had received a practical, if unorthodox education.

While a mite shy on book-learning, she knew how to handle, care for and maintain a six-horse freight-wagon. She also possessed a reasonable ability in the use of firearms and knew how to live when on the rolling plains of the West. In her hands, the long-lashed bull-whip became a means of inducement for recalcitrant horses; or a deadly weapon. Specially plaited for her by Dobe Killem, the whip had a slightly more slender, but no shorter lash than those used by his male drivers. She was very expert in its use.

The nickname had come into being through her penchant for becoming involved in a variety of trouble. Going into saloons with the other drivers had often brought her into conflict with the female employees. Jealous of her intrusion, more than one saloon girl had tried to evict Calamity. Leading a more healthy life than her opponents, Calamity had only once—during her last meeting with Charlotte Canary—met defeat at another woman’s hands. She had been held to a draw when she tangled with Belle Starr in Elkhorn, Montana, after which she had smuggled the lady outlaw out of town in her wagon to avoid Belle’s arrest by the local marshal.*