It was not a room conducive to long, leisurely discussion, but a plain, functioning, workingman’s premises where business was dealt with speedily and without waste of time.
“Tell me about it,” Murat ordered as they took their seats. He took out the office bottle and poured two drinks, offered the young Ranger a cigar, and settled down to learn how Danny handled things on the hunt for the Comancheros.
A feeling of pride came to Danny as he took the drink. It had become a custom in Company “G” that Murat offered a Ranger who came in from a successful chore a drink before starting business. Usually it would have been the senior man making the report and collecting the drink, but this time—for the first time—Danny found himself receiving Murat’s unspoken approbation.
Quickly Danny told Murat all that happened from the time the Comancheros ambushed his party. By questions; knowing his men, Murat never expected to learn the one making the report’s share of the affair without probing; the captain found out how Danny handled things with his sergeant dead and more experienced colleague wounded. Nodding in approval, he listened to Danny tell how the trailing of the Comancheros came to its conclusion at the Jones place. The captain’s eyebrows lifted slightly as he learned the identity of the girl on the wagon. It figured, happen a man gave thought to the matter; few other women in the West could handle a six-horse Conestoga wagon.
“Four, and the two you downed when they hit you,” Murat said when Danny came to the end of his report. “That’s the whole damned bunch finished.”
“And it cost us Buck Lemming,” Danny replied. “He was married, got a family, too, Captain.”
“I know that,” answered Murat. “It’s the way the game goes, Danny.”
“If I’d been up front——”
“Call that right off, boy!” the captain snapped. “Buck rode up front because it was his place as sergeant to be there. Nobody’ll blame you for the ambush, and what you’ve done since sure don’t need any apologizing for. Well, we can scratch Choya’s name out of ‘Bible Two’.”
“Yes, sir. Anything more for me?”
“Yep. I want you to pull out for Caspar, today, if you can.”
“Something up?”
“Cow thieves.”
Danny looked at the commander of Company “G” and nodded. A Ranger never knew from one day to the next what new trouble he might find himself tangling in. Fresh off the trail of a band of murderous Comancheros, he found himself detailed to ride out the same night to deal with a bunch of cow thieves—even if his captain had not said it in so many words.
“Sounds a mite urgent just for cow thieves,” Danny remarked, knowing such business was mostly handled by the county authorities concerned and did not normally require the Statewide powers of the Rangers.
“It goes deeper than that,” answered Murat and settled down to explain the situation to Danny, including the possibility of far worse trouble than mere cow stealing developing out of the hiring of professional gun hands. Then Murat told Danny the most prime piece of information.
“A woman running it?” Danny growled. “That doesn’t sound possible.”
“Neither does seeing a gal handle the ribbons of a six-horse Conestoga—only we’ve both just seen that. Anyways, she has a perfect set-up to run it. A saloon where cowhands can come and go without attracting any attention; things even a saint* likes enough to make him think about grabbing a couple of unbranded strays, working on them with a running iron and selling them to pay for.”
“That figgers,” agreed Danny. “Most young cowhands’d take a few chances to get extra liquor, gambling or gals. Only a gal running things makes it just that much harder.”
“It sure does.”
Studying Danny, Murat wondered if the task might be beyond the inexperienced young man’s depth. Sure Danny had trailed and downed that bunch of Comancheros without calling for help, but that had been a straightforward piece of work. Tangling with the cow thieves and gathering evidence against their leaders, called for courage, brains—which Murat granted Danny possessed—and experience. It was the latter Danny fell short on. Yet he might be a good man for the job. At least he would be the right age for Ella Watson, or whoever controlled the stealing, to regard as a potential cow thief, and he knew enough about cowhand work to act the part without arousing suspicion.
But could Danny swing things up there in Caspar and prevent another range war blowing a further Texas county apart at the seams?
Then Murat remembered Danny’s relationship with Dusty Fog. Should Danny find himself in water over the willows up in Caspar County, a word would bring his famous brother riding to his aid. Nor would Dusty ride alone, but bring along his two good and efficient amigos Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid. While none of that illustrious trio had ever belonged to the Rangers, they could handle the trouble in Caspar County with ease.
While rolling a cigarette, Danny watched Murat and guessed at his captain’s thoughts. His knowledge did not annoy him as much as it might have done before taking the Comanchero gang. Now he had proved himself in his own eyes and one thing he knew for sure. Should he handle the Caspar chore, no matter how difficult the task or how it went, he did not aim to call on Brother Dusty for help. Danny reckoned that if he could not stand on his own two feet by now, he was of no use as a Ranger.
Only having a woman at the back of the business surely made it hellish hard to handle. Danny had decided on the same line of action as that thought out by Murat. Going into Caspar as a drifting cowhand, taking on at a ranch and then letting himself be drawn into the cow stealing, seemed like the quickest way to learn who stood behind the business. Catching the actual thieves would be easy enough that way; but, from what the captain said, they were only dupes. It was the brains behind the stealing Danny wanted. One did not kill a snake by cutting off its rattles, but by stamping on its head. Remove the dupes and the organizer would lie low for a time, then emerge and corrupt another bunch of fool young cowhands, turn them from honest, loyal hands to thieves.
“Reckon you can handle it, Danny?” asked Murat. “You can go in any way you want. I won’t hold you back.”
“I reckon I can,” Danny agreed.
At that moment the office door opened to admit Calamity and Sid.
“We’ve took the bodies down to the undertaker, Cap’n,” said the Ranger. “I reckoned you might like to have a jaw with Calamity, so she left her wagon at Smith’s store to be unloaded and come back with me.”
“Take a seat, Calamity,” Murat said, rising. “Could I offer you a drink?”
“Just a teensie-weensie lil three fingers,” she answered, accepting the chair Danny drew up for her. “Wouldn’t say no to one of them fancy cigars, neither.”
With any other woman, the request might have appeared as an affectation. Yet somehow the sight of Calamity seated with a foot raised on the desk, puffing appreciatively at one of Murat’s thin, crooked black cigars, looked entirely natural.
“I’d like to thank you officially for helping Danny get the Comancheros,” Murat told the girl.
“Shuckens, he helped me more than I helped him. Anyways, to pay me back he promised to show me the sights of Austin City.”
“You done seen me, gal,” Sid remarked. “Ain’t no other sights worth seeing.”