Johnny Cato hobbled down the passage towards the Governor’s study, moving awkwardly on the crutches, swinging his plaster-clad lower left leg out in front of him.
The doors opened before he reached them and Kate Dukes smiled as she stepped forward.
“Can I help Johnny?” she asked, touching his arm.
He shook his head. “I’m fine, Kate.” He stumbled and his shoulder slammed into the door jamb and he smothered a curse. “Well—I’m startin’ to get the hang of it.”
She looked a little concerned as he moved on into the room and tall, cadaverous Governor Dukes stood up from behind his desk and came to meet him, right hand out-thrust. Cato balanced awkwardly and gripped briefly with the Governor. Kate brought a straight-backed chair and helped the small Enforcer ease down into it carefully. He arranged his crutches and smiled when Kate brought him a cushion on which to rest his injured leg.
“And how are you feeling in general, John?” Dukes asked, standing before Cato, preparing a cigar with a gold cutter and piercer.
“On the mend, Governor. Wound in the side’s okay now. Leg’ll be in plaster for another couple of weeks, so Doc Boles tells me, and I’ll have to use a stick for a spell, but I’ll be good as new again in a month.”
Dukes nodded and Kate held a vesta flame to his cigar tip. He nodded his thanks to her, puffed, and stared at Cato through the smoke.
“You bein’ out of commission for all that time kind of leaves me short-handed, John.” He added a mite harshly, “Especially with Yancey gone off on some kind of wild goose chase.”
Cato moved a little uncomfortably, aware that Kate was hanging on his reply, too. He shrugged.
“Well, not exactly a wild goose chase, Governor. How much did he explain in his wire?”
Cato knew exactly how much—or rather, how little—Yancey had put into that telegraph message from Amarillo, but he wasn’t going to let on.
It was Kate who answered, and there was a note of query in her voice.
“He said merely that a woman had given him a lead to the gang who had stolen an Army payroll in Montana and that he was going to pursue it ... Why is he concerned about an Army payroll robbery that took place so far from Texas, John?”
Cato scratched at his ear, not looking at either of them. “Well, Yancey felt it was part of our job as Enforcers to investigate. The robbery happened in Montana, but the gang was here in Texas. He figured he should look into it.”
Dukes frowned. “Ye-eah,” he said slowly, reluctantly. “It does come within the scope of the Enforcers’ duties, I guess, but only a brief investigation should be made and then the findings turned over to the Army itself or, at best, the Rangers. Yancey shouldn’t’ve gone off for so long, John, especially with you laid-up.”
“It was a pretty good lead, Governor,” Cato said a shade awkwardly. “Too good to pass up.”
Kate was staring steadily at him. She seemed a little puzzled.
“Well, where was he headed?” Dukes demanded. “We’ve had no further word from him.”
“They were makin’ for Albany,” Cato replied. “Two of the gang were s’posed to be there.”
“‘They’?” queried Kate just a mite sharply.
Cato sighed, nodded. “Yancey and Texas—the woman. Her name’s Emily Svendborg.”
Kate was stiff now. “I’ve never heard of her ... I think you’d better tell us the whole story, John. I have a distinct feeling that you’re dodging the issue somehow and not telling us all.”
“Yes, John. I think we’d better have all the details,” the Governor agreed. “And I want to be able to track Yancey down. There’s a—situation—building up down on the Gulf Coast that might need looking into. If we’re not careful it could get out of hand and become an nternational incident that will take a deal of settling ...”
Cato squirmed. Damn Yancey for leaving this part to him! It was going to be hard to convince Dukes—and Kate—that Yancey hadn’t gone chasing off on this self-imposed chore because of Emily Svendborg. It was going to be hard, because that was exactly what he had done.
The difficult part would be to convince them that it was compassion for the woman’s plight that had motivated him. He knew things weren’t all that good between Yancey and Kate lately. Something like this—innocent though it was—might make matters worse ...
“Well, first of all, it was Yancey who nailed the Magowans in Amarillo, just as they were robbin’ the bank, and this gal, Texas, shot down a hombre who was apparently in the process of drawing a bead on Yancey’s back …”
“What is she?” Kate broke in. “Some kind of Belle Starr?”
Cato shook his head. “No, Kate. Hear me out. She’d never shot a man before, but Yancey wouldn’t be alive now only for her.”
Kate fell silent, but there was still tension showing in the set of her slim body.
Cato continued with the story, playing up Emily’s unprepossessing appearance for Kate’s benefit, but he saw by the way she kept looking at him that he hadn’t fooled her any.
“She’s a woman with a lot of spunk,” Cato told the Governor, “but no experience in manhunting. Yancey owed her his life. He couldn’t let her go off alone after those killers. She’d have been dead in no time.”
“So he used the payroll robbery a thousand miles away as an excuse to accompany her,” Kate said flatly.
Dukes gave his daughter a sharp look, frowned slightly. Then he turned his gaze back to the Enforcer.
“Not what you might call an ‘official’ assignment, any way you stretch it, is it, John?”
“It seemed ‘official’ enough to Yancey, Governor. If you’d seen that gal ...”
“I’d’ve liked to!” Kate cut in.
“ ... you’d have seen what she’d suffered in her eyes and face. Hell, Governor, she must’ve been like the walkin’ dead when she crawled out of that river!”
Dukes frowned. “I realize that, John, and believe me, I feel mighty sorry for the woman, but I can’t condone Yancey’s running off like that. I mean, he’s done it a few times, lately, when I think about it, operated independently, and while that’s a good thing up to a point, this one has put me in an awkward position. I need my best man down on the Gulf right now and he’s off helping some woman on a personal vengeance hunt! Not good enough, John.”
Cato’s face hardened. “Then Yancey’s the one you should tell it to, Governor.”
“I damn well would if I could locate him!” snapped Dukes. “You’re not holding out on me, John? I need to contact him.”
Cato shook his head. “All I know is they were goin’ to Albany.”
Dukes looked at Kate who was pale now. “Better send a wire off to Albany, see if he can be found. Tell him to report in immediately, get on the next train to Austin.”
Cato started to get up and Kate helped him. Dukes went back and sat down behind his desk, tapping his fingers on the edge. He acknowledged Cato’s farewell with a curt nod and Kate helped the Enforcer over to the door. She closed it after her and put out a hand to his forearm as he made to move off.
“This—Texas, woman, Johnny ...” she said hesitantly. “You’re playing her down, aren’t you? For my benefit?”
He smiled crookedly. “She looked just the way I said, Kate. I will admit that underneath all that dirt, I suspect there was a fine-lookin’ woman, though. But that’s not why Yancey went along with her. You know him better than that.”
Her teeth tugged at her lower lip. “Yes. I suppose so. It’s just that, lately, we don’t seem—as—close as before.” She sighed. “He’s been out on assignment after assignment, then, when he returns, we seem only to see each other briefly before I have to go off somewhere on some official function with Dad and ... well, as I said, we’re not as close as we used to be.”
He squeezed her arm. “You’re still the one he cares for most, Kate. Never stops talkin’ about you. Near drives me loco at times.”
She brightened. “Really, Johnny?”
“Gospel.”
She smiled suddenly and her lips swiftly brushed his cheek. “Well, I’d better get that wire off to Albany ...”
“Sure. See you at supper.”
Cato watched her hurry away down the passage, set his crutches comfortably and then turned to stomp off the other way.
He figured it couldn’t do any harm to tell Kate a small lie like that about Yancey.
For the truth was that Yancey had confessed only a couple of weeks ago that he felt himself growing away from Kate Dukes now ...
The girl was very quiet on the first day out of Albany, after they had slowed their racing mounts to a walk and swung around to the south on the way to Coleman.
Yancey said nothing, allowing her to have her own thoughts. He had no idea what might be going through her head. She had disappeared for a spell after they had cleared town, calling to him to ride on and that she would catch up. He suspected that she might have been sick amongst the sand hills, for she was very pale and hollow-eyed when she came riding back. But she volunteered nothing.
Quite likely, the reaction of the shoot-out had caught up with her. He knew she was not quite as tough as she wanted to be: but he also knew she was determined not to let it show ...
He started, hand dropping to gun butt as her Smith and Wesson suddenly began cracking. Then he relaxed, seeing her shooting at a cactus, the bullets punching into the broad, fleshy leaves with ‘squishy’ sounds. Two leaves dropped off.
As she reloaded, he said, “Not bad. If you aimed to cut the leaves off.”
“I did,” she assured him. “But I missed what I was aiming at with the first three shots. I tried to draw faster, but I couldn’t get the gun into line quickly enough. I guess I’d’ve been dead if that cactus could’ve shot back at me.”
Yancey nodded soberly. “Likely. You were way too slow going up against Kid Ringo.”
“All right. I admit that. And I thank you for intervening and saving my neck. I was angry at first, because I wanted to be the one to kill him, but I realized that he would have killed me before I could have pulled the trigger.”
“Concentrate on placing your shots where you want them to go,” Yancey told her. “There won’t be another situation, I guess, where you’ve got to try and beat one of them to the draw. You just keep practicing hitting what you aim at. You’ll walk away from any shoot-outs that way.”
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I know that makes sense, but I want to be able to draw fast, too. After all, you won’t be able to be with me all the time. You work for the Governor. He might recall you. We might lose the trail. I may have to search for years before I track them all down. I’m prepared to do that. You can’t possibly be with me till then, so I want to be able to draw fast and shoot straight.”
It made sense, Yancey had to admit that.
He asked for her holster at the campsite that night and examined it closely. He had the girl buckle the rig on again, and put the gun in leather. Yancey experimented with the holster tilted slightly forward, and also the best position on the belt. He decided that it was in a better position more to the front, with the gun slanted across her body, butt right on waist level, barrel angled down and slightly out to the left.
He had a saddle-stitching needle, linen thread and a cake of beeswax that he always carried for emergency repairs to his own saddle gear when travelling for long periods in the wilderness. He had lost a killer once because his cinch strap stitching had burst and he had had no means of repairing it. Ever since, he had carried needle and thread and an awl.
Yancey stitched her holster to the belt in the new position and added a narrow strip of rawhide thong so that she could slip it over the hammer spur and help hold the gun firmly now that it was at more of a horizontal angle.
The girl buckled it on and tried getting the gun out. She fumbled it the first couple of times because she was still unconsciously reaching for the butt higher up. Then she settled down and after a half-hour’s practice, she was drawing the Smith and Wesson smoothly out of leather, time after time. She tried it with her arms folded, slipping the rawhide loop off the hammer-spur with a brief movement of her thumb before whipping the gun out, in blurring speed.
“Try crouching when you draw. Not before you start, once the gun’s clear,” Yancey advised. “Plant your boots wider, give yourself a firmer stand and throw that left arm out from your side; it’ll help counterbalance the swing as you bring the gun across your body and into line.”
She did better, and practiced every day on the ride down to Coleman.
She practiced shooting, too, and with the two-handed hold, standing firmly on the ground, she could consistently hit fist sized rocks at thirty paces, the double-action gun roaring in prolonged thunder as she worked the well-oiled and tuned trigger mechanism.
Fast-drawing and shooting was still not good and it would be some time before she was able to master these techniques.
“Don’t worry about it,” Yancey told her. “You’re good at both things singly. They’ll come together all of a sudden and then I’d as soon you were on my side than agin me.”
She smiled faintly, pleased ...
Coleman was smaller than Albany and not so wild. For one thing there was a Ranger Station there and, although it was only manned by two men, it was enough to keep law and order on the streets. The Rangers’ duties included checking the brands and bills-of-sales of the herds passing through on the way north and they also checked the stock for disease. This part of their job was carried over to the local ranches, too, and so Yancey figured, if anyone knew about new settlers or men moving into the district, then the Rangers would.
He didn’t know either man, but both had heard of him.
The sergeant, name of Rawlins, handed back Yancey’s buckskin folder and nodded.
“Had no word you might be comin’, Bannerman, or we’d have cleared out the spare cabin.”
Yancey shook his head. “Never mind that. Mrs. Svendborg and me are interested in a couple of hard cases who might’ve showed up here. Likely you’ve heard of ’em: Laramie Kane and Buck Gentry?”
“I know Kane,” the trooper said. His name was Wallis, a gnarled, leather-faced man anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. He looked at the girl and Yancey with gimlet eyes. “Seen him shoot a woman up in Red Cloud, Montana, durin’ a fracas with the local law. I was a deputy but had been scalp-creased and was lyin’ in the street ten feet from my gun. If I’d moved, he’d’ve put a bullet through my head. Blood on my face made him think I was finished. He’s ornery as they come.”
“I know him, too,” Rawlins allowed. “And Gentry. They’re wanted all over the north. Didn’t know they’d moved down this way.”
“There was an Army payroll robbery in Montana,” Yancey explained. “Got too hot up there so the whole bunch hightailed it south. There were three others; Denver, Kid Ringo and Boots Stacey, but they’re all dead now.”
The sergeant whistled softly, but the old trooper merely arched his eyebrows and there was a little more respect in the way he looked at Yancey now.
“Mrs. Svendborg killed Denver and Stacey,” Yancey added, and this time both Rangers were shocked. “They killed her husband and baby. She has a personal stake in this and we want all the leads we can get, so I’d be obliged if you fellers could think mighty carefully about this.”
Texas described the men in minute detail, especially their faces which she had seen very close-up.
“It’s for sure they’ll be using other names,” Yancey added. The sergeant shook his head slowly. “No, I’d swear they ain’t anywheres around here, ma’am. Wal an’ me’ve not long come back from a round of the spreads an’ there was no one like that on hand. I’d know Kane for sure if I saw him, no matter what name he was using. Gentry might slip past me, but likely I’d nail him, too, if I was suspicious.”
“How about you?” Yancey asked Wallis.
The Ranger shook his head. “Sorry to say I ain’t seen hide nor hair of ’em either. I’d sure as hell like to. I’ve never forgot the way Kane gunned down that woman just to get at the sheriff in Red Cloud.” He shook his head again, regretfully. “Wish I could help, ma’am.”
The girl looked at Yancey, her mouth tight, face concerned. “But Ringo distinctly said ‘Coleman’!”
“Yeah, I’d go along with that. But I’d also go along with what these gents say.”
“Well, I aim to look for myself!” Texas said stubbornly. Rawlins scratched at his gray-streaked hair. “Lot of ridin’ involved, ma’am.”
“D’you think I care?” she asked, and he flushed slightly at her tone.
“Mebbe he didn’t mean the town,” Wallis said suddenly and they all looked at him. “Ringo. Maybe if he said ‘Coleman’, he didn’t mean this here town. He could’ve meant someone named Coleman ...”
“You mean, the name Kane’s using now?” the girl said swiftly, willing to snatch at straws in the wind. “Yes! That’s a possibility, Bannerman!”
“Hold up, hold up,” Yancey said. “Let’s think about this. We asked where Kane was. Ringo said ‘Coleman’.”
“But he was dying! Scared! He could hardly speak at all! He might just have been trying to tell us that Coleman is the name Kane is using now!” she said eagerly. “It makes sense!”
“Maybe. But it made sense before, too, when we thought he meant the town. It’s only a few days’ ride south of Albany ...” He turned to Rawlins. “Been any saloons change hands? Or ranches lately?”
Rawlins looked uncertain. “Have to check around at the Land Office. But even if there has, there still ain’t any strangers in town that resemble Kane and Gentry.”
Texas’s face fell.
“If he was telling us the name Kane is using, it might not have had anything to do with this town,” Yancey pointed out. “He could be anywhere in Texas. Or even Mexico, under that name.”
The girl’s mouth pulled into a hard line.
“I’ll still find him!”
“Look, there’s one way I can find out fairly quickly if anyone named Coleman’s bought into a ranch or any kind of business,” Yancey said and Texas frowned at him, mouth open a little as she waited expectantly. Yancey sighed. “I didn’t want to contact Austin again in case Dukes sends me a re-call, but the Enforcers have quite a lot of—facilities not available to the local law. Or Rangers, either. I could wire Cato and he could check up for me. We should have a reply in a few days.”
“Do it, please!” the girl said. “I’ll hate waiting, but it might be worth it. Meantime, I’ll check the territory myself.”
The Rangers looked sharply at Yancey and he shrugged: that’s the way the girl was, he was telling them, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“And if you get a negative reply?” Rawlins asked.
Yancey looked steadily at Texas.
“Then we’ll be at a dead-end, I guess.”
“You might be,” she said grimly and looked around at all three of them challengingly.
They said nothing. Clearly all three of them were unused to such iron stubbornness in a mere slip of a girl like Emily Svendborg.