“It’s a right nice-looking place,” the girl answered. “I bet I could get nine, ten thousand dollars for it.”
“You could,” Trinian agreed coldly.
“So I’ll sell it to you. If you can meet my price.”
Trinian jerked his head around to look at his wife, but Corey-Mae’s eyes never left Calamity’s unsmiling face.
“How much?” Trinian inquired warily.
“There’s some’d say five thousand one hundred and fifty simoleons’d be a fair price,” Calamity answered.
“Five thous——!” Trinian barked.
“That’s what it cost pappy,” Calamity pointed out, looking as sober and unfeeling as a hanging-judge about to pass a sentence of death. “He started out with one hundred and fifty dollars ’n’ won the spread on a five-thousand-dollar call in a poker game. So there’s some’d say that’d be a fair price.”
“But you don’t see it that way?” Corey-Mae said quietly.
“I don’t,” Calamity admitted.
“Then how do you see it?” Trinian demanded.
“Like I said, pappy started out with a hundred and fifty lil iron men,” the girl replied and a grin started to twist at the corners of her mouth. “So you give me that and split the rest between the sheriff ’n’ Staff’s mother, seeing’s it was through me they got shot up.”
Silence followed the girl’s words. Corey-Mae looked triumphantly at her husband and Trinian stared blankly, with mouth dropping open, at the red-haired girl in the armchair.
“Who’s going to buy me that new shirt I got promised?” asked the Kid.
“Hell, yes!” Calamity ejaculated. “I forgot that. Cash, the price’s gone up. I want a new shirt for Lon on top of it.”
“But—But——” Trinian gobbled, hardly able to believe that he had heard correctly.
“It’s my only offer,” Calamity declared. “And, happen you’ve any feeling for the good folks of Hollick County, you’ll take me up on it.”
“I don’t follow you,” Trinian said.
“If you don’t buy the place,” Calamity explained, “I’ll settle on it myself.”
“Which means you’d have fire, flood, storms, drought, Injun raids and every other kind of misery ’n’ torment come a-running here,” the Kid elaborated.
“How you talk, Lon Ysabel,” Miss Martha Jane Canary snorted indignantly. “Why you’ll have folks believing I deserve to be called ‘Calamity.’”
About the Author
J.T. EDSON brings to life the fierce and often bloody struggles of the untamed West. His colorful characters are linked by the binding power of the spirit of adventure—and hard work—that eventually won the West. J.T. Edson has proven to be one of the finest craftsmen of Western storytelling of our time.
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Books by J.T. Edson
RANCH WAR
THE BIG HUNT
THE ROAD TO RATCHET CREEK
RUNNING IRONS
WACO’S BADGE
TEXAS KILLERS
COLD DECK, HOT LEAD
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
RANCH WAR. Copyright © 1970 by J. T. Edson.
* The reasons for Mulrooney’s law-abiding conditions are told in The Trouble Busters and The Making of a Lawman.
† Nemenuh: the People, the Comanches’ name for themselves.
* Dusty Fog’s and Mark Counter’s stories are told in the author’s floating outfit books.
† Told in The Ysabel Kid.
*The first occasion is told in Quiet Town.
* Told in The Small Texan and The Town Tamers.
* How the romance between Belle Starr and Mark Counter ended is told in Guns in the Night.
* Told in Trouble Trail.
* How the tribute originated is told in .44 Calibre Man.
* Told in the “Better than Calamity” episode of The Wildcats.
* Told in the “The Bounty On Belle Starr’s Scalp” episode of Troubled Range.
† Belle Boyd’s story is told in The Colt and the Sabre, The Rebel Spy, The Bloody Border and The Hooded Riders.
‡ Told in The Bad Bunch.
§ Told in Calamity Spells Trouble.
* Told in The Bull Whip Breed.
† Told in The Cow Thieves.
* Told in Comanche.