“Got all you need, Calamity?” the captain asked as the girl joined him and Danny at their table.
“Just about all,” she replied. “Got me this outfit, three fancy saloon gal frocks, shoes, stockings and some fancy female do-dads you pair don’t know the name of, or ought to be ashamed of yourselves if you do. Ain’t but one thing more I’d like along with me.”
“And what’s that?” asked Danny.
“One of those forty-one caliber Remington belly guns.”
Such an item would not arouse suspicion, or be out of place in a saloon-girl’s possession. Many a girl working in a saloon or dancehall carried a Remington Double Derringer, or some other such small, easily concealed firearm, in her reticule, or strapped to her garter.
“There’s one in my office and some shells for it,” Murat told the girl. “I can let you have it as soon as we’ve bought your stage ticket to Caspar. You’ll go on tomorrow’s stage and be there in three days.”
“I’ll pull out now,” Danny drawled. “That should see me in town a day ahead of Calamity.”
“Reckon it should,” agreed Murat. “Break up that cow stealing, Danny.”
“Yes, sir, Captain,” replied Danny soberly. “I aim to do just that.”
Chapter 6 LOOKS LIKE I GOT HERE TOO LATE
A PAIR OF SPIRALING TURKEY VULTURES CAUGHT Danny Fog’s eye and caused him to bring his big sabino to a halt. The sight of those black-plumed scavengers hovering in the sky never struck a western man as being a beautiful sight. When turkey vultures gathered, they followed death and a corpse, or something near to it, lay below them. Human or animal, it made no never mind to a hungry turkey vulture. Gliding down from the skies, the birds tore flesh from bones and leaving only a picked skeleton behind when they departed.
Two days had passed since Danny rode out of Austin and at almost noon, he figured he must be on the eastern ranges of Caspar County, most likely crossing Buck Jerome’s Bench J.
“Might be nothing, hoss,” he said, patting the sabino’s neck and glancing at the dun cutting horse borrowed from Sid Watchhorn to aid his disguise and which now followed the sabino without fighting the rope connecting to Danny’s saddle. “I reckon we’d best take us a look though.”
Such an action would be in keeping with the character he must play while in Caspar just as much as when he rode in his official capacity of Texas Ranger. Any man seeing circling buzzards—as the non-zoologically-minded Western folk called Cathartes Aura, the American turkey vulture—would investigate. The attraction might be either an injured man or animal, or some critter died of a highly infectious disease. In which cases the knowledge could be usefuclass="underline" in the first to save a life; in the second, one might prevent a spread of the infection by prompt action.
From the look of things, the birds circled over a large cottonwood that spread its branches over the range maybe a mile from where Danny sat his horse. A touch of his heels against the sabino’s flanks started the horse moving and the dun followed it without any fuss. As yet Danny could see nothing of the dead or dying creature which caused the turkey vultures to gather in the sky.
Danny had covered about half a mile when a bunch of pronghorn antelope burst out of a hollow ahead of him. Stopping the sabino, he watched the animals speed away, covering the range at a pace only a very good horse could hope to equal. While Danny loved hunting, and lived in an age when game-preservation had never been heard of, he made no attempt to draw his rifle and cut down any of the fleeing antelope. He carried food in his bedroll and would likely be on some ranch’s payroll before it ran out. So there did not appear to be any point in killing a pronghorn and he had never seen any sense in shooting some creature just to see it fall.
Led by a buck that carried a pair of horns which would have gladdened any trophy-hunter’s heart, the herd held bunched together and went bounding through the bushes at Danny’s right, disappearing into a basin. Just as Danny started the sabino moving again, he saw the pronghorns bursting wildly through the bushes, scattering in panic as they raced out of the basin once more.
“Now what in hell did that?” he mused and drew his rifle.
Four possible answers sprang to mind: a bunch of wolves denning up among the bushes; a mountain lion that had been cut off from timber country by the coming of daylight and took what cover it could find: a grizzly or black bear hunting berries, but willing to augment its diet by the flesh of a succulent pronghorn; or the presence of hidden men. Predators all, any one of them would cause such panic among the pronghorns should the fast-moving animals come unexpectedly upon it in the bushes when already fleeing from danger.
Danny nudged his sabino’s ribs and started the horse moving forward. On reaching the edge of the bushes, he halted the horse and slid from the saddle. Not even as steady an animal as the big sabino would face the sudden appearance of one of the predators in thick bush and Danny could think of a number of more pleasant ways to die than under the teeth and claws of a startled grizzly after being pitched from the back of a bear-spooked horse. Of course, there might not be a bear in the bushes, but it cost nothing to take precautions.
Leaving the horses standing, the sabino’s trailing before it in a manner which it had been trained to regard as holding it still as effectively as if being tied, Danny went into the bushes with some caution. He saw nothing to disturb him or explain the panic among the pronghorns. A flock of scarlet-plumed red cardinal birds lifted from among the bushes at his approach, but nothing dangerous or menacing made its appearance. Ahead of him the bushes opened into a clearing at the bottom of the basin. Danny came to a halt and studied the scene before him with worried, calculating eyes.
“Looks like I got here too late,” he thought.
Two bodies lay alongside a dead fire’s ashes. Cowhands, Danny concluded from their dress; and of the kind he had ridden from Austin to hunt down if the pair of running irons meant anything. Cautiously he studied the clearing, noting the pair of cow horses which stood tied to the bushes at the far side, then taking in the scene around the fire once more. Moving closer, he looked down at the bodies. One had been shot in the back and must have died without even knowing what hit him. Nor would the second have been given much better chance to defend himself by all appearances. Kneeling by the body, Danny examined the holster and doubted if anything remotely like a fast draw could be made from it. The revolver still lay in the holster, its owner having died before he could draw it.
Cold anger filled Danny as he looked down at the two bodies. Neither cowhand looked to be much gone out of his teens and, ignoring the distortion pain had put on the features, appeared to be normal, pleasant youngsters. These were no hardened criminals, or he missed his guess; only a couple of foolhardy youngsters who acted without thinking. They deserved better than to be shot down like dogs.
Danny was no dreamy-eyed moralist or bigoted intellectual regarding every criminal as a misunderstood victim of society to be molly-coddled and pampered as a warning that crime did not pay. In most cases a man became a criminal because of a disinclination to work and had no intention of changing his ways. As a peace officer and a sensible, thinking man, Danny approved of stiff punishment, up to and including hanging, for habitual criminals. While any form of punishment would be most unlikely to change such a man’s ways, it served to deter others from following the criminal’s footsteps.