Part One

The Bounty on Belle Starr’s Scalp

 

 

 

 

 

Curses crackled around Calamity Jane in a profane cloud as she stood, hands on hips, looking at the left front wheel of her wagon, which had sunk through the caved-in roof of a prairie-dog hole; then slowly raised her eyes to study the setting sun.

With all the west to pick from as digging ground, trust that blasted, fool critter to sink his tunnel right in the route her wagon was taking. Of course it might be claimed that the prairie dog had been on the range first and she ought to have avoided its hole, but Calamity had never been a girl to admit she might be in the wrong.

“Dad-blast your ornery, worthless hole-grubbing hide!” she spluttered. “The hosses’ll never haul it out and night’s near on here. I may as well make camp and cook up a meal, so keep out of sight, prairie-dog, or you’ll be that meal.”

Calamity Jane had reached the mature age of eighteen and already bore a name fast becoming famous. Soldiers in the Army’s string of forts claimed her acquaintance. Freighters boasted of having been the one who taught her to wield a blacksnake whip. More than one dancehall girl now knew to sing low when Calamity Jane swaggered into a saloon.

Her red hair had a natural curl to it, hung medium long, and carried a U.S. Cavalry kepi perched on it. The face framed by the hair was pretty, freckled and tanned. A merry face with lips made for laughter or kissing, but capable of turning loose a blistering flow of invective should she be riled. Her figure had matured early and now at eighteen the breasts rose round and full. They forced hard against the dark blue Cavalry shirt, its neck opened far enough to give a tantalizing glimpse of the opening of the valley between her breasts. The shirt, like her buckskin pants, seemed to have been bought a size too small and shrunk in the wash. The pants clung tight to her hips which swelled out and down to sturdy but shapely legs with Pawnee moccasins on the feet. Round Calamity’s neck hung a string of freshwater pearls, her sole concession to feminine jewelry. Her arms, exposed by the rolled up sleeves, looked more muscular than a lady of fashion might have liked—came to a point. Calamity had never laid claim to being a lady of fashion, or any other kind. Nor would a lady of fashion be likely to wear a gunbelt, with a .36 Navy Colt butt forward in a fast draw holster at her right side. Calamity wore such a rig and knew how to use it.

“I’ll light a fire afore I unhitch you, boys,” she told her two-horse team. “Maybe somebody’ll see the flames and come lend us a hand.”

Collecting wood and buffalo chips from the rawhide possum-belly under the wagon, Calamity built a fire. She took water from the butt on the side of the wagon, filled her coffeepot and set it to boil on the flames.

All in all, Calamity made an attractive picture as she prepared to make her camp. She attracted the attention of the rider who topped the rim behind her and halted his horse to drink in the scene below.

Sitting his seventeen-hand stallion lightly, no mean feat for a man who topped six foot three in his bare feet and had the muscular development of a Hercules, the man looked down at Calamity. He shoved back his costly white, low-crowned, wide-brimmed Stetson from his curly golden-blond hair. The blue eyes looked out of a strong, tanned, almost classically handsome face. Knotted and tight rolled at his throat, the scarlet silk bandana trailed long ends over the expensive tan shirt. He clearly bought the shirt, and all his clothing, made to his measure. Few stores could supply clothes to fit him off their pegs. His shoulders had a great spread to them, the arms showing their enormous biceps even though the shirt’s sleeves had been built generously. Tapering down to a lean waist, the body rested on long powerful legs clad in levis which hung outside his boots and had their cuffs turned back. His boots had the look of good workmanship and the gunbelt, with a matched brace of ivory handled 1860 Army Colts in the holsters, bore the marks of a master craftsman’s hands. Whoever tooled that belt knew just what a man needed in the interests of drawing his guns very fast.

The big man might look something of a dandy dresser, but he had an air of quiet self-reliance. He seemed to be at home on the range, although his home range would lie some distance to the south of Montana Territory.

A touch of the Kelly spurs on the heels of his fancy-stitched boots started his blood bay stallion moving. Before the horse had taken five steps Calamity heard its hooves and turned, hand hovering over the butt of her gun.

“Texan,” she mused, studying his hat, then the low horned, double girthed saddle between his knees. “Cowhand. A good ’un or I’ve never seen one.”

Despite her thoughts, Calamity did not relax until the Texan halted his horse before her and doffed his hat in a gallant gesture, then nodded to the wagon.

“Howdy, ma’am. You-all having trouble?”

“Naw,” she scoffed. “I just naturally like sitting here with the wheel all bogged down and the wagon stuck. ’Course I’m not in trouble.”

“That being so,” he replied calmly, his voice a deep, cultured southern drawl, “I’ll be on my way again. Adios.”

Calamity stared at him for a moment. Then a curse ripped from her lips as he started the horse moving, setting his hat on his head once more. Her hand turned palm out, closed on the butt of her Colt and brought it from the holster. Its hammer clicked back under her thumb.

“Hold it!” she snapped. “You come back here and lend me a hand to get the wagon out, or I’ll put lead into you.”

Turning, the blond Texan surveyed her gun with calm detachment. He twisted in his saddle to do so and made no attempt to turn the blood bay around.

“Say please,” he answered.

“Do you know who I am?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The name’s Canary! Martha Jane Canary. Which, if you’re so damned all-fired un-eddicated, spells Calamity Jane—and means I’m Wild Bill Hickok’s gal.”

If Calamity expected her words, or fear of the famous Wild Bill Hickok’s name to bring the Texan to a condition of servile obedience, she was to be disappointed. Tapping his Stetson to the correct “jack-deuce” angle over his off eye with the forefinger of his right hand, the Texan answered:

“Which same’s as good a reason as any I know not to help you. I never took to Wild Bill in any size, shape or form.”

Once more he started the horse moving and Calamity’s temper popped right over the boiling point.

“Hold it, damn you!” she howled and fired a shot, the bullet hissing by the big Texan’s head.

This time she got a reaction, although not the one she wanted. Barely had she fired when the Texan turned—only he held an Army Colt in his left hand.

Calamity had not been watching his left hand. She knew that most men only carried two guns to have twelve shots handy instead of six. The Army Colt might be one of the finest percussion-fired revolvers ever made, but it still took time to reload with combustible cartridges or powder flask and ball. Only a few men could handle the left side gun worth a damn. It was in keeping with her lousy luck that she should tie in with a jasper who not only could, but just had showed remarkable skill when using his good left hand.

Flame spurted from the Texan’s Colt and dirt erupted between Calamity’s feet causing her to take a hurried, if involuntary, step to the rear.

“Leather it!” snapped the Texan, cocking his gun on the recoil, “or I’ll blow it out of your hand.”

He could likely do it too. Calamity had not failed to notice the smooth ease with which he threw lead at the end of a very fast draw. It struck between her feet, but she was willing to bet the bullet went within an inch or two of where the big feller aimed it to go.

“Wild Bill’s not going to like this,” Calamity warned, twirling her Navy Colt on the trigger-finger, twisting it around and thrusting it back into the holster. Her attitude was one of “that showed him how to handle a gun.”

“Which same, looking at your wagon, you won’t be headed anywhere to snitch to him about me,” the Texan replied.

The gun in his hand spun in a flashing arc, pin-wheeled up into the air and slapped its barrel into his palm, curled around his hand like a trained pig on a barrel, rose into the air once more, was caught and went back into the holster.

Calamity stared, her eyes bulging like organ-stops. Having seen a number of prominent gentlemen of the gun-fighting fraternity, she felt she could speak with some authority on the new and honorable art of pistol juggling—which was not a show-off stunt, but a method of strengthening the wrists and improving the ability to handle the weapon. One thing Calamity knew for sure. The display she had just seen equaled the best it had ever been her privilege to witness.

“What do I have to do afore you help?” she asked.

“Like I said, say please.”

“Wouldn’t want me to say pretty-please, would you?”

“Adios,” drawled the Texan and started the blood bay moving.

“All right, blast you!” Calamity wailed. “Please, damn you, please!”

“Now that’s a heap better,” grinned the Texan, swinging his horse towards her. “World’d be a happier place happen we all asked each other polite.”

“I hope Wild Bill asks you polite when he blows your ears off for what you done to me!” Calamity howled.

“That’d be the only way he could do it, gal,” the Texan told her as he dismounted and looked around him. “There’s nothing handy we could use as a lever?”

“Which same I saw hours back, you danged knob head!” gasped the infuriated Calamity. “What’re you fixing in to do about it?”

“Think first,” answered the Texan calmly. “What’d Wild Bill do?”

“He’d lay hold of that wheel and heft the whole blasted wagon up!”

“Would, huh? Have you any more logs under the possum belly?”

Reaching into the rawhide carrier, Calamity hauled out two thick logs.

“These do?” she asked, having decided sarcasm would get her nowhere.

“Why sure. Get set to slide them in under the wheel.”

“How?” she snorted. “Or are you kin to that prairie-dog and aim to dig the wheel out with your paws? Some pesky varmint stole my shovel back in Hays.”

“Wasn’t Wild Bill there to watch it?” asked the man.

Only with an effort did Calamity prevent herself throwing the logs at the Texan. She had considerable knowledge of men, far more than a girl her age in conventional circles would have gained in a lifetime, but that Texan sure licked the bejeesus out of the others when it came to riling a girl and getting her pot boiling mad.

After waiting for some comment for a couple of seconds, the big Texan walked to the wagon. For a moment he stood looking at it, then turned his back to the trapped wheel, bent his legs slightly and gripped the spokes.

“Quit trying, feller,” Calamity said. “Not even Wild Bill could lift that wagon.”

The handsome blond giant did not reply. Standing with his back to the sunken wheel, he took a firmer grip and slowly put on the pressure in an attempt to raise it.

For almost thirty seconds nothing happened, except that the Texan’s face showed the strain, twisted into determined lines and became soaked with sweat. Calamity opened her mouth to make some comment about the foolishness of a lesser mortal attempting something which would have been beyond the power of even the mighty Wild Bill Hickok.

Her words never came. Before her eyes the wagon began to rise, lifting a fraction of an inch at a time, but going steadily upwards. Calamity stopped thinking about Wild Bill Hickok and grabbed a log ready to thrust it under the wheel.

“Just a lil mite higher, friend!” Calamity breathed, kneeling by his side and lowering the log into the hole. The wheel rose a couple of inches higher. “Easy now! Can you hold it?”

With his breath hissing through his teeth and every muscle and fiber of his giant frame concentrated on the effort, the Texan made no attempt to reply. But he braced himself firmer and held the wagon. He looked like he might be posing for a painting of some legendary classic hero performing a superhuman feat, like Hercules carrying out one of his labors, or Atlas limbering up to heft the world on his shoulders once more. Calamity did not have a classical education, in fact beyond being able to read slowly and write a painful, childish scrawl, her schooling had been remarkably poor. To her the big Texan sure looked a heap of man.

Not that she wasted much time in staring. Calamity was an extremely practical young woman, if hot-tempered and hotheaded, she knew there would be limits to the giant Texan’s strength and that she must get the supporting log under the wheel before the wagon’s weight proved too much for him.

“Lower away, friend!” she said, satisfied the log under the wheel would hold.

Slowly the Texan bent his legs, letting the weight settle down gradually, not dropping it as most men would have, not that most men could have performed the task of lifting the wagon’s weight. Calamity watched it sink, biting her lip in anxiety. If the log did not hold she would be to blame, not the Texan, and she could imagine the Texan’s blistering comments if she failed in her side of the business after he had succeeded so well in his.

The log held, and Calamity breathed a sigh of relief. Springing to the heads of her horses, she looked at the big Texan. He had moved away from the wagon, turned to face it and now stood with his head hanging, chest heaving as he sucked air into his lungs.

“Giddap!” she yelled, pulling on the horses’ head stalls.

“Come on, you no-good, slab-sided, spavined, wored-out worthless apologies for crowbait! Pull.”

Throwing their weights into the harness, the two horses pulled. The wagon rolled forward, stuck for a moment as its wheel hit the rim of the hole, lurched, rose up on the rim and forward. Calamity grinned broadly. She aimed to show—

“Hold it! Throw back on those horses, you fool female!” An angry bellow left the Texan’s lips, and without meaning to, Calamity obeyed the order and stopped her team. Hot and angry words bubbled inside her. She did not take to any man, even if she maybe owed him thanks for helping her out of a tricky spot, talking that way to her.

“What’s eating you?” she asked, deciding to start the horses moving again and to hell with him, but not doing it until she had asked the question.

“Leave us not drop the back wheel into the hole,” the Texan answered dryly. “Where in hell did you learn to handle a wagon—from Wild Bill?”

“You wait, mister. You just wait!” Calamity said, but she said it under her breath for she was writhing with shame at having forgotten something the rawest cook’s louse in a freighting outfit would have remembered. Being Calamity, she blamed the Texan’s attitude for causing her to forget the important detail of ensuring the rear wheel did not follow its leader into the hole, miss the log and bog the wagon down again.

Stamping her feet down angrily, Calamity stormed towards the wagon and studied the hole. The Texan’s warning had come just in time. Another second and the wheel would have sunk down into the hole.

Taking the second log, Calamity packed it into the hole alongside the first. Grubbing some earth from the sides, she piled it over the logs, then stood up.

“That do it?” she asked.

“Reckon it might. Give her a whirl.”

The Texan’s cool, relaxed attitude almost pushed Calamity to the bursting point. Turning on her heel, she threw herself at her horses’ heads and gripped the nearest reins. Common sense returned the moment she touched the reins. Instead of giving the word and making the horses jerk, she eased them forward inch by inch. The wagon advanced steadily, its wheel rolling on to the logs, with Calamity Jane holding her breath, leaning to one side so she could watch it roll on to the logs.

“Keep it going easy, gal,” the Texan said, also watching the wheel.

At the edge of the hole, the wheel stuck for an instant, then lifted and passed over on to solid ground. Calamity was clear of the stoppage which had delayed her. Bringing the team to a halt, she walked towards the big stranger.

“Thanks, feller,” she said.

“Think nothing of it,” he replied. “That coffee smells good.”

“Tastes the same way. Set and rest up a spell while I unhitch my team. Then I’ll cook us up a mess of vittles.”

“Never could stand by and watch a lady work. So I’ll just tend to my horse while you’re unhitching and cooking.”

While she worked, Calamity threw interested glances at her rescuer, trying to decide who he might be. One prominent Texas name fitted his appearance and strength, way other Tejanos boasted about it, only that one wore his guns butt forwards for a cross-draw, or so she heard tell. This big feller’s matched Army Colts were real fine weapons, with the deep blue sheen of the Hartford factory’s Best Citizens’ Finish; they rode in contoured holsters which hung just right, but those holsters had never been designed for cross-draw work.

After tending to his horse, the Texan walked back to the fire and laid his saddle carefully on its side. No cowhand worth his salt ever chanced damaging his rig by resting it on its skirts. Without a saddle he could do no cattle work. He set down his saddle so the butt of the Winchester Model 1866 rifle in the boot remained on top and ready for a hurried withdrawal should one be necessary.

With this done, the Texan walked across and started to help Calamity unhitch her horses. Her first inclination was to tell him she didn’t need his help even though she could use it. Only she knew if she did he was likely to take her at her word and leave her to it.

“Going to say something?” he asked.

“Sure,” she replied, then to hide her confusion. “I told you my name.”

“Yep.”

“Yep!”

“And now you’re wanting to know mine?”

“Me! Huh!” snorted Calamity, tossing her head back in an entirely feminine manner which brought no reaction from the man. “All right then, I want to know.”

“Name’s Counter, my pards call me Mark.”

Calamity cut down her whistle of surprise. Mark Counter. That figured, happen a half-smart lil range gal came to think about it.

Although his father ran a big spread down in the Texas Big Bend country, and Mark himself had a fair-sized fortune left him by an eccentric maiden aunt in her will, he still rode as a hand for Ole Devil Hardin’s O.D. Connected ranch. More than that, he belonged to the elite of the ranch crew, the floating outfit, and was the sidekick and right bower ⁱ of the spread’s segundo, the Rio Hondo gun wizard Dusty Fog. When debating to herself who Mark might be, Calamity had thought of Dusty Fog—only if Dusty Fog was bigger and stronger than Mark, it would make him a tolerable big and strong man.

During the War Between the States, Mark rode as a second lieutenant in old Bushrod Sheldon’s regiment where his ideas of uniform were much copied by the bloods of the Confederate Cavalry. Now Mark’s taste in clothes dictated cowhand fashions in the range country, for he was an acknowledged master of the trade. His strength and ability in a roughhouse brawl were spoken of with awe by all who saw him in action. Having just seen an example of that strength, Calamity reckoned for once the Texans were not exaggerating even a little mite as they talked of this particular son of the Lone Star State. Men said Mark could handle his guns well. The few who knew claimed him to be second only to the man they called the fastest gun in Texas, Dusty Fog himself, in both speed and accurate placing of his shots.

“Glad to know you,” she said, not wishing him to guess that she felt impressed by being in the presence of a man Wild Bill Hickok studiously avoided meeting when the O.D. Connected brought a trail herd into Hays.

Actually Wild Bill had left town on a buffalo hunt the day before the O.D. Connected herd arrived—he said. Calamity had taken his word for it, content to bask in Hickok’s reflected glory. Only now she came to think about it, there had been no buffalo herds seen around Hays at that time. Even the professional hunters had commented on the lack of the shaggy critters on the range.

No matter that she was hotheaded, Calamity could cook up a meal fit to set a man’s mouth to watering. One of the few things the nuns at the St. Louis convent—where Calamity’s mother left her children before disappearing into the unknown—had managed to teach the girl was how to cook.

They ate their meal without much talk. Then, after cleaning up the dishes, Calamity walked to where her guest stood. She reckoned it was high time they had a showdown and learned who was boss around the campfire.

“You sure cook good, Calamity,” he said, grinning down at her. “Don’t tell me Wild Bill taught you?”

“I’m Wild Bill’s gal,” she replied and whipped the flat of her hand across his cheek with all her strength.

It was a good slap, Calamity admitted to herself, maybe even a little harder than she ought—

Mark’s hands shot out, clamping on her shoulders and jerking her forward. He bent his head and his lips crushed down on hers. With a muffled gasp, Calamity tried to twist her head away. Her hard little fists beat at his shoulders, but Mark ignored them. Twisting his body, he took her knee on his thigh as it drove up. Then he released her, shoving her backwards. For a moment Calamity stood gasping for breath. Then she came forward with another slap and a repetition of the fiction that she was Wild Bill’s girl.

Again Mark caught her, hauled her to him and crushed a kiss on her lips. She struggled, though not as hard as before. On being released, she staggered a pace or so to the rear and stood gasping for breath.

“I’m Wild Bill’s gal!” she said, her breasts heaving, and she lashed out another slap, only it did not have the power of the first two.

On the fourth, fifth and sixth kisses and slaps Calamity’s struggles grew weaker. The slaps became more feeble and on the sixth time she found herself starting to kiss back.

“I—I’m st—still W—Wild Bill’s g—gal!” she gasped after the seventh kiss, staggering on wobbly legs and landed a slap which barely touched his cheek.

Once more Mark scooped her into his arms. This time her lips sought his, hungrily answering the kiss. Her tongue crept through his lips. Her arms, no longer flailing, crept around him. Clinging to Mark, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his back, Calamity threw all she had into her kiss.

~*~

The night was dark. The stars shone brightly in the heavens. Only the range noises broke the silence; the stamping of Mark’s big stallion as it heard the distant scream of a cougar; the thrashing as one of Calamity’s team horses rolled in the grass; the squeaking of insects.

Under the wagon a large black mound separated into two smaller black mounds. A masculine voice spoke from the larger of the mounds.

“What do you think of Wild Bill Hickok now?” it asked.

A feminine voice, dreamy, satisfied and contented came from the smaller.

“Wild Bill Hickok,” it said. “Who is Wild Bill Hickok?”

~*~

The sun crept up and peeped over the horizon. A cold gray light of dawn began to creep out into the blackness of the night sky.

Beneath Calamity’s wagon, Mark Counter opened his eyes and lifted his head from the pillow he always carried in his bedroll. Beside him, the girl stirred sleepily, her bare arm around his equally bare shoulders. Putting up his hand, Mark felt at the oval lump on the right side of his neck. Well, the bandana would hide it and he reckoned he was big enough to handle any adverse comments on his honorable wounds.

Two arms closed around his neck and a hot little mouth crushed against his, worked across his cheek and to his ear.

“Mark!” Calamity breathed into his ear.

“It’s time we was up and on our way,” he replied.

“Please—pretty please.”

Like the man said, a feller’s sins always bounced right back on to his fool head happen he stayed around long enough after committing them; and Mark had taken a firm stand on the subject of politeness bringing its own reward when he first met Calamity.

Half an hour later Mark sat drawing on his boots and at his side, smiling contentedly, Calamity buttoned her shirt after tucking it into her pants.

“Yes sir,” she sighed, rising to make the fire. “World’s sure a happier place happen we all ask each other polite.”

There had been a time, back the first time it happened, when Calamity would have expected the man to marry her and spend the rest of his days in a haze of devotion to her.

Only he had not. The feller had been a handsome young freighter and Calamity a naive sixteen-year-old girl fresh out in the harsh, cruel world. When she woke the morning after it happened, she found him gone and felt that her heart would break. It did not. Fact being Calamity had discovered her heart could stand plenty of jolting around without showing any signs of fracture. From the first time, she built up the belief that no man was so much better than the rest that he was worth busting a gut over when he pulled up his stakes and left. There would be another feller come along, so she went her own way, enjoying life to the full in good times and bad. Only she no longer grew starry-eyed when a man showed appreciation of her feminine charms.

Sure, last night had been swell, but that did not make her a potential Mrs. Mark Counter. Likely they would part in Elkhorn City and never meet again. Although she had never heard the word, would not have understood it if she did, or know how to phrase it, Calamity figured their destinies lay in different directions. While last night had been an enjoyable experience, and one she would not soon forget, nothing serious could come of it.

So Calamity cooked breakfast, while Mark used some of the contents of her water butt for his wash and shave. They ate their food with a good appetite and prepared to move on. After saddling his blood bay, Mark helped Calamity to hitch up her team to the wagon. When all was done Mark mounted his horse and Calamity swung up on to the box of her wagon, taking up the blacksnake whip.

“Giddap!” Calamity yelled, swinging her whip and making it pop like a gunshot in the morning air.

The two horses put their shoulders to the harness and moved forward, starting the wagon rolling. Side by side Calamity and Mark headed across the range, following the faint wheel ruts which marked the way to their respective business affairs in Elkhorn City.

“How come Cap’n Fog’s not along with you, Mark?” she asked.

“Had some business to attend to in town and couldn’t leave. Then he got this telegraph wire from a feller up in Elkhorn wanting to pay off some money he owed Ole Devil. Sent me along to collect it.”

“I’d sure admire to have met Cap’n Fog. How come he took his herd to Newton, not Hays, this year?”

“Saved two days driving, brought in the first drive of the year. Happen the railroad keeps pointing the way it is, we’ll likely be delivering to somewheres around Fort Dodge next summer. You figure Wild Bill scared us off?”

“Like I said last night. Who’s Wild Bill?” she grinned. “Sure would like to see Cap’n Fog though. Is all I hear about him true?”

“Such as?”

“How he stands taller’n you, is stronger, faster with his guns.”

“Would you believe me if I told you Dusty Fog stands only about five foot at most?”

“Nope—Hey, you’re not jobbing me. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Mark nodded his head. When he said Dusty Fog stood only five foot six, he told the simple truth—but to Mark’s way of thinking, and to many others with whom he came in contact, Dusty Fog could not be measured in mere feet and inches, he stood the tallest of them all.

“I allus heard—!” Calamity began.

“Sure,” Mark interrupted. “I’ve heard it too.”

For a time they travelled on discussing Dusty Fog, the Ysabel Kid and the other well-known members of the O.D. Connected. Then Calamity swung the conversation to an item of news which had been the main topic in Newton during Mark’s visit.

“Did you hear anything new about the bank hold-up that Belle Starr’s gang pulled in Newton?” she asked.

“Belle Starr’s gang!” Mark snorted. “Just ’cause some old biddy who had been swigging corn-toddy reckoned she saw a woman holding the gang’s horses, everybody’s howling about Belle Starr.”

“You reckon it wasn’t her then?”

“No more her than Big and Lil Harpe and they’ve been dead for over a hundred years.”

“They put a tolerable sized bounty on her head though,” Calamity replied. “It happened near on a month back, remember. Sheriff’s posse run down the four fellers who pulled the raid, plumb shot them to doll-rags and killed ’em all. Which same came out to be plumb foolish ’cause they hadn’t the money with ’em, not so much as a red cent, and they was all past telling where it’d gone.”

“Yes,” Mark agreed. “And now every durned fool in the west allows Belle Starr knows where the money’s hid out and are looking for her to make her tell.”

“Kind of like to meet her myself,” remarked Calamity.

“Never took you for a bounty hunter, Calam,” Mark answered, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

“And I ain’t one. But they do say she’s a real tough gal. I’d like to see just how tough she is.”

“From Missouri, huh?”

“Huh?” Calamity replied, putting a world of puzzlement into the grunt.

“You’ve got to be shown.”

“I’ve never met the gal who could lick me at riding, drinking, shooting or going at it tooth ’n’ claw,” Calamity stated, trying to sound modest. “And I don’t reckon I ever will.”

Calamity did meet a woman who was more than her match, but the meeting was not to come for three years. ⁱⁱ

“Not interested in getting your hands on the reward the bank has offered for the recovery of the money?” asked Mark.

“Naw. Anyways, I go with you, I don’t reckon Belle Starr was tied in with that raid. Hell, I know the sheriff in Newton, he couldn’t catch water in his hat if he stood under a waterfall. He wouldn’t have picked those boys up so easy had Belle Starr been running them.”

“What brings you up this way?” Mark asked.

“Load of freight for a spread half a day past Elkhorn. Owner had it shipped into Hays from the east and I caught the contract to deliver it. What’s this Elkhorn City like? I’ve never been this way afore.”

“Nor me. But they do say it’s thriving, growing big and fast, what with gold-miners, ranchers and all.”

“Are you fixing to be there for long?” she inquired.

“Day, couple of days at most, depends on how soon I get to see that feller for Ole Devil.”

“I’ll maybe see you on my way back then,” she suggested. “We can have us a whing-ding and tree the town a mite.”

The town known as Elkhorn City was, as Mark claimed, growing big and fast. It sported no less than four thriving saloons, including the Crystal Palace, a place which would not have disgraced the best part of Trail Street, Hays City, or the better part of any railhead trail-end town. One good, and a couple of indifferent hotels catered for the needs of transient visitors. Various shops which usually found combination in a general store in smaller, less prosperous towns, graced Beidler Street—called after John X. Beidler, leader of the vigilantes who wiped out the Plummer gang which once terrorized the Bannack area. Wells Fargo maintained a large office, stage-route and telegraph service, testifying to the importance of the city. Further amenities showed high standard. A stout building housed the county offices, sheriff’s department, town marshal’s premises and a substantial jail. In addition the town had the usual run of livery barns, undertaker’s shop and stable, bathhouse and all the rest of the things which made life worth living on the range.

Bringing his horse to a halt before the open double doors of a large building inscribed POP LARKIN’S LIVERY BARN. USE IT, I’M TOO OLD TO START WORKING, Mark looked at Calamity, winked and raised his hat. She waved a hand, keeping her team going forward.

“Don’t you forget now!” she called. “You got a date when I come back.”

Swinging from the saddle, Mark watched Calamity’s wagon roll on along the street, then turned and led the blood bay towards the open doors. He did not know if he would be in town when Calamity returned, but felt tempted to stay over. Something told him a night on the town with Calamity Jane would be worth having and be a highly entertaining experience, more so since he missed most of the fun at Newton by coming north to handle the chore for Dusty Fog.

Inside the barn it was cool, light and clean looking. There were a couple of empty stalls at the end of the line across the room and Mark walked towards them, his horse following on his heels.

A man had just finished tending to his horse in a stall down the other end of the line. Turning slowly, he looked Mark over, starting at his gunbelt, dropping his eyes to the high-heeled, fancy stitched boots, then roaming them up to the top of Mark’s head. Mark noticed the way the man looked, like a rancher studying a prime bull and wondering if it would bring any profit to him should he buy it.

For his part, Mark gave the man a quick, all-embracing glance and did not like what he saw. The man stood around six foot, had a lean, rangy build and a gaunt face stuck on a neck with a prominent Adam’s apple. The face’s expression seemed to be one of arrogant contempt, and hinted that he must be able to handle any objections to his attitude should they be made. His clothes told a story to eyes which knew the west. Sure he wore a Stetson hat, bandana, calfskin vest shirt, and levis with their cuffs turned back, like a cowhand. He wore a gunbelt with a brace of walnut handled Army Colts in fast-draw holsters, but so did many cowhands. On his feet were Sioux moccasins. That was what made him different. No cowhand ever wore moccasins, they would be of no use to him in his work.

For a long moment the man studied Mark, then, in the manner of a rancher who had decided a prime bull would not bring him any profit, he turned away. Slinging the saddle over his shoulder with his right hand, the man took up the double-barreled, ten gauge shotgun which leant against the wall of the stall. Gripping it with his left hand closed on the small of the butt, forefinger laying alongside the trigger-guard, the man walked out and kicked the stall gate closed behind him.

Without appearing to, Mark watched the man walk out of the barn. Caution paid when a proddy hardcase like that feller prowled around holding a scattergun in his hand. The man did not look back, but walked out into the street and started across its wheel-rutted width.

“Ain’t sorry to see him leave.”

The words came from a door at the side of the building. Turning, Mark saw a leathery old-timer stumping towards him.

“You know him?” the old-timer went on.

“Nope. Should I?”

“Not less’n you got a wanted poster on ye some place. And you ain’t, or likely one of you’d be dead by now. That there was Jubal Framant, mister.”

“Is, huh?”

Once more Mark turned to look after the hardcase. He stood on the far side of the street, talking with a big, burly man who wore a marshal’s shield on his vest and carried a heavy old Colt Dragoon hung low at his right side. Mark did not look down on a man who carried one of the old four pound, one ounce thumb-busting Colt giants. The Ysabel Kid toted one and could handle it with some precision when needed.

“Yes, sir. That’s Framant,” the old-timer went on, following Mark’s gaze. “Wonder what brings him to Elkhorn?”

“There’s only one thing takes him any place,” Mark replied.

Framant’s name was not unfamiliar to Mark. The man was a bounty hunter, said to be as mean as a stick-teased rattlesnake. Roaming the range country like a buzzard circling in the sky, Framant hunted down men for a price on their heads. Rumor had it that Framant had killed fourteen men and claimed the bounty their scalps bore.

A man like Framant usually came to a town for the purpose of finding some wanted outlaw. When he found his man he would kill, for Framant never took in a living prisoner.

“Who’s the feller with him?” Mark asked.

“Joel Stocker, town marshal. Real nice feller,” replied the old man and turned his attention to the blood bay stallion. “R over C. I never saw that brand afore.”

“Nope?”

“Know every danged brand within five hundred miles.”

“Maybe the R over C’s five hundred and one miles away.”

A cackle left the old-timer’s lips. “Must’ve moved South Texas north a helluva ways if that’s how close the R over C is.”

“It’s Rance Counter’s spread.”

“Tall feller, that Rance Counter, so they say. Likely sire tolerable tall sons.”

“I’m the little one of the family.”

“Mark Counter, huh? Pleased to know you. Pop Larkin’s the name. I keep this place, leastways, it don’t keep me.”

“You look right poorly done by,” Mark drawled, following his horse into the stall. “Wonder what Framant wants here?”

“I asked you first, and it ain’t what he wants, it’s who.”

Mark turned to his horse and started to remove the saddle. A shadow fell across the doorway and feet crossed the barn to halt behind Mark at the gate of the stall.

“Howdy, mister,” a gentle voice drawled.

For a big man Joel Stocker moved light on his feet, Mark thought, turning to look at the marshal as he leaned a shoulder against the stall’s gatepost and chewed in meditative manner on a plug of tobacco. There was a deceptive lethargy about the marshal which might have fooled some folks, but not Mark Counter.

“Howdy,” Mark replied, continuing the off saddling.

“New around here?”

“Only just now rolled in.”

“With Calamity Jane?”

“Sure.”

“She’s Wild Bill Hickok’s gal, way I heard it.”

“Has Wild Bill heard it?” Mark drawled.

“Don’t reckon it’d scare you none happen he had,” Stocker replied in his sleepy voice. “It’d worry me some, though. I’m a duly appointed officer of the law and duty-bound to keep the peace. Which same I don’t want no bulls locking horns in my town.”

“Reckon Calam and me’s just passing acquaintances. We met on the trail in and I’ll likely see her tomorrow—if I’m still here then.”

“Might not be, huh?”

“Not if I see Tom Gamble.”

The look of watchful suspicion left Stocker’s face. Straightening up, he held out a big hand and raised his eyes a couple of inches to meet Mark’s, something he rarely needed to do with any man.

“Sorry, friend,” Stocker said. “Reckon Framant being in town’s got me spooked up a mite. Are you Cap’n Fog?”

“Mark Counter.”

“Cheez! If Cap’n Fog’s got more heft than you, he’s a tolerable tall gent.”

Mark let the remark pass. He felt no resentment at the words and it had been many years since he last felt surprised that anybody should mistake him for Dusty Fog, or persist in thinking of Dusty as a tall man. Maybe what caused the confusion was Mark looking like the kind of man one expected somebody of Dusty Fog’s reputation to be. Mark did not know if this was true, and was not worried.

“Do you always look your visitors over like this?” he asked.

“Find it saves fuss to know who-all’s in town,” Stocker replied. “And I’m a man who likes to save fuss. There’s some less welcome here than others.”

“Like that bounty hunting Jubal Framant, heh, Joel?” asked the old-timer. “Are ye running him out of town?”

“Nope. I ain’t saying I’m not doing it ’cause he scares me, even if he do. But he’s got his rights under the Constitution—and knows ’em. I can’t run a man out of town just ’cause I don’t like his line of work.”

While the men talked, Mark tended to his horse. He removed the saddle and bridle, then hung a hay-net on the hook over the manger. Larkin ambled off to return carrying a bucket of clean water and another full of grain. Showing sound horse-savvy, he did not enter the stall, but handed the buckets over the gate.

“Got me a burro in the back if you’d like to leave your saddle,” he said.

“Thanks, I’ll do that. Thought you didn’t have one when I saw Framant tote his rig out of here.”

“There’s them who I’d let use me burro, and them I wouldn’t,” grunted the old man. “Tote her this way.”

Following the old man, Mark entered the storeroom at the rear of the stable and hung his saddle on the inverted V-shaped wooden rack known as a burro. If possible a cowhand would rather leave his saddle on a burro than lie it on its side, especially when among people which brought the danger of some heavy-footed yahoo stomping on the laid-aside rig.

Mark took his bedroll from behind the cantle and the rifle from the saddleboot. Not that he mistrusted the owner of the barn, but his change of clothing, spare ammunition and toilet articles lay in his warbag within the bedroll; and a man did not leave a loaded rifle in a saddleboot where kids might get at it.

After paying for the stabling and keep of his stallion, Mark joined Marshal Stocker at the door of the barn.

“Which’s the best hotel in town?” he asked.

“Ryan’s Bella Union down there, right next to the Crystal Palace. Say, Tom bust a leg riding a bad one. Sent word down that somebody from the O.D. Connected’d be along and for them to ride out and see him.”

“How far out is it?”

“Two, three hours’ steady ride. Could make it by nightfall.”

Mark grinned. “I’ll leave it until morning. What’s the Crystal Palace like? Speaking as a duly appointed officer of the law, that is.”

“Fair place, well-run, got some purty gals in there, and you’ll walk out with any money you don’t spend, or lose trying to lick the blackjack game.”

“My mammy told me never to buck the dealer’s percentage at any game, especially blackjack.”

“It’s not the game you buck in there, it’s the dealer.”

“What makes him so special?” Mark inquired.

“Being a her,” grinned Stocker. “And a mighty purty lil her, too. Was I not a married man, which I ain’t, I’d sure admire to stake a few myself on beating her game.”

“As good as that, huh?” drawled Mark, ignoring the left-handed statement made by the marshal.

“Better. Not the kind you’d expect to find working a table even in a decent saloon like the Palace.”

“They never are. See you, Marshal.”

“I’ll be around,” Stocker answered and slouched away, looking like he was about to fall asleep on his feet.

Mark booked a room at the Bella Union hotel and a boy in a fancy bellhop’s uniform shot forward to grab his bedroll. The boy escorted Mark up to his room, frank hero-worship plain on his face as he lugged the heavy bedroll.

On seeing his room, Mark decided it would be worth the money. The bed had a comforting thickness and would lick using the world for a mattress and sky for a roof. For the rest of the furnishing, the room had a table and two chairs, a clothes-closet with a key in its door; a wash-stand that had a large pitcher of water on top and a couple of clean white towels hanging on its rail.

Tossing the boy a coin, Mark told him to find a shoeshine man if the town had one. The youngster replied that he doubled in shoe cleaning and said he would be back as soon as he got rid of his dad-blasted, consarned monkey-suit the boss made him wear.

Mark took a bath in the hotel’s private bath-house, had his hair trimmed, a barber’s shave, changed his clothes, ate a good meal and then rested in his room until after dark. From the noise outside, he judged the town had woken up and begun to howl, so he rose from his bed, doused the light, put on his hat and gunbelt, then headed from the hotel, making for the Crystal Palace.

~*~

The girl caught Mark’s eye as soon as he entered the saloon. Not because she had blonde hair that curled its ends under neatly and framed a truly beautiful face, for there were three other blondes almost as beautiful among the female workers of the saloon. Nor was it because she wore a daring and revealing costume. Compared with the others she looked demure and modest, for she did not wear the glistening, knee-long red, green, yellow, blue or other shade of dresses which clad the others, cut low on the bosom and leaving, apart from the supporting straps, the shoulders and arms bare. Her white blouse had full-length sleeves, a frilly front and buttoned up to the neck. Although it tried, the blouse could not hide the rich fullness of her breasts or the slim waist, any more than the shoe-length plain black skirt concealed the fact that under it lay richly curving hips and shapely legs. Her attitude did not draw attention to her. Unlike the other girls she did not pass among the customers, laughing, joking and making herself pleasant. Standing at the busy blackjack table, she looked calmly detached, smiling at one of the players and yet not offering him any come-on encouragement.

Yet, of all the girls in the room, she took Mark’s eye the moment he entered. Any way a man looked at her, she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, five foot seven of undiluted voluptuous femininity trying to hide itself under those plain clothes.

For a moment Mark thought of crossing to the table and trying his luck—with the cards, not the dealer. He decided to take a drink first. If the liquor should be in keeping with the rest of the furnishings and equipment of the room, it would satisfy even the most discriminating taste.

At the bar Mark ordered a whisky, ignoring the invitation flashed in his direction by one of the girls. The drink proved to be mellow, of good standard and in keeping with the look of the saloon. From all appearances, the owners had put plenty of money into the furnishing, equipping and stocking of the place. Mark hoped the town stayed booming long enough for them to show a profit. From the look of the crowd inside, they would likely make it.

A long board, nailed to the wall opposite to the main batwing doors, attracted Mark’s attention, so he strolled over to examine it more closely. Reward posters were thumbtacked to the board and the central sheet caught his eye.

 

WANTED

$5,000 REWARD

ALIVE ONLY

BELLE STARR

 

There followed a drawing of a beautiful woman with shoulder length black hair framing her face, a Stetson hat perched on the back of her head, and a tight rolled bandana knotted at her throat. Beneath this followed a brief description. Mark wondered how accurate the drawing and description were, for he doubted if Belle Starr had ever been captured to be measured or sketched and nobody was likely to do it while she stayed free.

Under Belle Starr’s name on the poster, and over the drawing, somebody had scrawled the words, “The Toughest Gal in the West” in a sprawling hand. Mark grinned as he read the comment, wondering what Calamity Jane would say when, or if, she read it.

As he turned away from the board, Mark became aware of somebody watching him. His instincts told him at least two sets of eyes, one on either side, studied him with more than casual interest.

To Mark’s right, seated alone and ignored even by the girls paid to entertain the guests, Jubal Framant, the bounty hunter, dropped his eyes towards his whisky glass as Mark glanced in his direction. The watcher at the left appeared to be one of a quartet of scrubby-jawed, gun-hung hardcases who wore cowhand clothes but who, in Mark’s considered opinion, had never worked cattle—at least not for their legal owner. On seeing Mark turn towards them, the four men resumed their drinking and talking.

Wondering a little at their interest, and not attributing it to admiration of his upstanding, manly figure, Mark walked on. He had not failed to notice that Framant had the ten gauge lying on the table before him and wondered if the man always carried the gun with him.

Putting aside thoughts of Framant’s habits, Mark headed for the blackjack table. Before he reached it, Mark saw the blonde signal and a man wearing a dealer’s eye-shield, white shirt, black open vest and black pants, crossed the room to take over her seat. Giving the players a dazzling smile, the blonde crossed the room towards where a door led out to the alley between the saloon and the hotel, and a flight of stairs rose to the upper part of the building.

Mark watched her go, then he saw the four hardcases also watching. As the blonde approached the side door, one of the quartet thrust himself up, but sank back into his chair as she walked by the door and up the stairs.

Interest in the blackjack game waned and the swarm of players faded away to leave only a handful of devotees around the table. Mark himself lost his desire to sit in on the game, and strolled over to the chuck-a-luck table where he won three dollars, took them and lost them at faro. Approaching the poker game at one of the high-stake tables, he studied the play for a time. For all he could see the game, like the others, was run fairly and the house relied only on the percentage to show them a profit.

Sitting in on the poker game, Mark played until nine o’clock. He held his own even though the company consisted of talented players, for Mark was no mean hand at the art of poker.

The blonde came into sight at exactly nine o’clock and walked down the stairs. Shoving the pile of chips to the cashier of the game, Mark told the other players he was finished. A man wearing the dress of a professional gambler gave a grin, for he had seen the direction Mark looked before making the decision.

“How can the simplicity and crudity of blackjack appeal to a man of refinement when he could have the pleasure of our company, the fascination of mathematical studies and the employment of the art of bluffing while playing poker?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Mark replied to the gambler’s flow of rhetoric. “If you gents looked like that blackjack dealer, I’d stay on.”

“Philistine,” sighed the gambler. “Meaning no disrespect, sir. My dear mother always told me never to make unfavorable comments about a man as big as you, and I believe her words. But you’ll never get rich playing blackjack.”

“Who wants to get rich?”

“The poor people do,” the gambler replied. “Good luck with Miss Marigold Tremayne, sir. In every way.”

“I might even need it,” Mark replied, picking up the money the cashier passed to him. “My apologies for leaving, gents.”

Crossing the room, Mark halted at a vacant place by the blackjack table and looked down at the familiar layout with the legend “Blackjack Pays 3 to 2. Dealer Must Stand On 16 and Draw to 17”; followed by a list of bonuses which could be won by holding various combinations of cards which added up to no more than twenty-one; and finally came the warning, “All Ties Stand Off,” meaning that if the dealer and the player held the same score on their cards the bet did not count.

“What’s your limit, ma’am?” he asked, buying a stack of chips and thrusting his wallet back into the pocket built on the inside of his shirt.

“Twenty-five cents to twenty-five dollars, sir,” she replied. “This-all’s a friendly little game.”

Her voice held a gentle Southern drawl which conjured up a hint of blooming magnolias, mint juleps on the lawn of some plantation mansion and colored folks singing their plaintive songs.

“You-all from the South?” Mark asked.

“From Memphis. And you?”

“Texas, ma’am. Or may I call you Miss Tremayne?”

“Feel free,” she said, flipping the cards out to the seven men fortunate enough to get seats. “Make your bets, gentlemen.”

A couple of saloon men moved in to take seats on either side of Marigold, acting as her lookouts and pay-off hands. Not only would the seven men be playing, but the kibitzers and onlookers could join in, betting on the players’ hands although having no say in the way the hands were played.

Watching the girl’s hands flip out the cards, Mark could see no hint that she might be trying to manipulate matters in her favor. Her fingers were innocent of rings which might have tiny mirrors attached, through which she could see the value of each card as she dealt, or a spike with which to mark the cards during play. A black satin vanity bag stood on the table by her right hand, it looked a trifle larger than a lady usually carried and its jaws were open.

For a time Mark played, winning a couple of dollars, losing a couple. A plump, attractive brunette came to his side and slipped an arm around his neck, leaning on to him.

“Let me bring you some luck, handsome,” she suggested.

Then she straightened up and Mark opened his mouth to say something. An icy voice, still retaining its Southern drawl, but losing all visions of magnolia, mint juleps and singing, cracked from across the table.

“Hand it back, Lily!”

The brunette took a pace away from the table, eyes flashing angrily. She looked straight at Marigold and spat out:

“What’s eating you, sister?”

“The gentleman’s wallet, Lily,” Marigold answered, coming around the table and standing facing the saloon girl. “Just hand it back, and stay away from my game in the future.”

“Yeah?” Lily sneered, bristling like an alley cat and curving her fingers so the nails stuck out like claws. “You go to hell, you Sou—”

Without giving the slightest warning of what she meant to do, Marigold folded her right hand into a fist and lashed it around, driving the knuckles upwards underneath Lily’s jaw. Lily’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click that ended her speech abruptly. She might have considered herself fortunate that her tongue had not been between her teeth when the blow landed, but Lily was in no condition to consider anything other than stars and flashing lights around her head.

Following Lily up as the brunette shot back and landed with a thud on her rump, Marigold bent down. She gripped Lily’s ankles and lifted upwards, standing the tubby girl on her brunette head. Jiggling Lily, causing her skirt hem to slide down and expose a pair of shapely, black stocking-clad legs to view, Marigold shook the wallet from the bosom of Lily’s frock. Thrusting Lily’s legs away from her so the brunette landed on the floor once more, Marigold bent and picked the wallet up.

“I apologize for this, sir,” she said, returning the wallet to Mark. “The owner and the floor manager don’t allow the girls to li—steal wallets from the customers. Lily only started here this afternoon and doesn’t know the ropes yet.”

“I felt it go,” Mark admitted. “But I reckon I might have had a mite more trouble getting it back than you did.”

“The feminine touch can work wonders,” smiled Marigold, her voice returning to how it sounded before speaking to Lily. “Shall we continue the game?”

The game resumed to admiring grins and congratulations. Mark watched the girl called Marigold Tremayne with more interest for he guessed she was not all she first appeared to be. Behind them, the floor manager helped a whimpering, jaw-nursing Lily to her feet and warned her that any further pocket picking would see her looking for another saloon where her talents would be more appreciated. She limped away, rubbing her rump and glaring over her shoulder at Marigold.

After returning his wallet, Marigold gave no sign that Mark was any more important to her than the other players. She laughed at his comments, but no more than at the other men’s remarks around the table. Her attitude set the players at ease and even the losers did not seem to care about their losses.

At half past ten Marigold folded the cards and slid them into their box. She smiled at the players and waved aside their objections to the game ending.

“Why, gentlemen,” she said in a voice that would charm a bird out of a tree. “You wouldn’t want a lady to miss her beauty sleep, now would you?”

From the way they looked at her, if she asked them every man at the table would have stood guard around her hotel room to make sure nobody disturbed her rest and would have counted the task an honor to perform.

Leaving the men to cash in the chips and fold up the game, Marigold swept across the room and upstairs. Mark took his money and walked across the floor to the bar. He noticed that Framant still sat alone and was watching Marigold ascend the stairs. Thinking of Framant caused Mark to look for the four hardcases, but they had left their table and did not appear to be in the big room.

Just as Mark ordered a drink, he saw one of the men reflected in the bar mirror. The man stood on the sidewalk before the main batwing doors, watching the inside of the saloon. He seemed to be looking for something and Mark wondered what, or who, that something might be.

Mark did not overlook the possibility that the man and his pards had decided that he, Mark, might be a profitable target for a robbery. If they felt that way, Mark reckoned they would be welcome to every red cent, or whatever else they got.

For almost fifteen minutes nothing happened. The man remained outside, never looking in Mark’s direction. Mark noticed this; he also became aware that the man’s eyes never left the right side of the room. Suddenly the man stiffened like a bird dog catching quail scent. Turning, he walked off to the right, disappearing from the reflection in the mirror.

Looking in the direction which appeared to have interested the man, Mark saw Marigold coming down the stairs. She wore a wide brimmed, fancy looking hat, had a shawl draped around her shoulders and carried the vanity bag hanging from her arm.

Then Mark remembered the way the hardcases reacted when Marigold crossed the room towards the stairs earlier in the evening. Finishing his drink, Mark strolled across the room and out of the main doors. He glanced back to see Marigold wave a hand to the patrons of the saloon, then open the side door and pass through it into the alley beyond.

A muffled gasp, a startled exclamation, a thud and an angry, pain-filled yelp came to Mark’s ears as he approached the alley which separated the saloon from the hotel. Swinging around the corner, Mark saw two of the hardcases gripping Marigold by the arms and trying to drag her towards the rear of the building. The third man hopped on one leg, nursing his other shin and mouthing curses.

That accounted for three of the quartet. The fourth man ought to be—

Mark sidestepped fast, twisting his body and ducking his head forward. He heard the hiss as something whistled down behind him. Not expecting to miss with his gun butt’s blow, the fourth man lost his balance and stumbled forward with a startled curse. He found himself headed straight for the big Texan’s back. Mark drove his elbow behind him, feeling it ram into the man’s middle. To the man on the receiving end of the elbow it felt as if he had been kicked in the belly by a mule. Letting out a croak of agony, he staggered back a few steps holding his stomach and gasping.

The third man saw Mark avoid the blow, deal with their lookout and head in his direction; releasing his injured shin, but still bending forward; he hurled himself at Mark, ramming his head into the big Texan’s stomach. Mark grunted, went back a couple of steps under the impact, then he bent, locking his arms around the man’s body from above. Straightening up, Mark hoisted the man into the air and landed him, with legs kicking futilely, on a broad shoulder. For a moment Mark held the man, then bent his knees, straightened them and pitched the man over to smash into the hotel wall from where he collapsed in a limp pile on the ground.

A hand caught Mark’s shoulder from behind and dragged him around. The fourth man had not been so badly hurt as Mark imagined for he completed the turn and smashed a fist against the side of Mark’s jaw, sending him sprawling into the wall of the saloon. While the man threw a good punch, he lacked science, which was a bad deficiency when dealing with a fighter of Mark’s capabilities.

Hitting the wall with his shoulders, Mark braced himself. He wondered why Marigold was so quiet. By all rules of feminine conduct she ought to be screeching her head off, screaming for help. Yet she had not made a sound, apart from that gasp and the hissing of her breath as she struggled with the two men holding her arms.

However, Mark did not have time to give much thought to Marigold’s silence. His braced legs held him erect and he thrust himself forward to meet the attack of the fourth man.

Throwing up his right hand, Mark deflected the man’s wild, unscientific blow over his shoulder. Almost in the same movement, Mark launched his left fist viciously into the same spot where his elbow hit earlier in the fight. The man let out a squawk of agony, folded over and presented his jaw to Mark’s right hand blow, which ripped up at it like iron-filings to a magnet. Lifted erect by Mark’s right hand, the man stood open and asking for a left cross to finish him completely.

Mark did not have time to throw the blow, although it would not be necessary for the man was already going down. The sound of footsteps coming at his back caught his ears. He took it to mean one of the men holding Marigold had left her to his pard and moved in to the attack.

This was only partly true. One of the men had released Marigold, swung in Mark’s direction and dropped his hand to his gun butt. The girl’s foot came up, rested against his rump and thrust hard. Taken by surprise, both by the push and the strength Marigold showed, the man staggered towards Mark, his gun falling from his hand.

Turning fast, Mark shot out his right hand, catching the staggering man at the side of his jaw and propelling him head first into the side door of the saloon. From the limp way the man collapsed, Mark knew he had no more worries in that direction and could concentrate on dealing with the last member of the quartet.

Swinging around, Mark prepared to move forward but saw that Marigold had the situation well in hand.

After shoving the man towards Mark, Marigold turned her attentions to the other hardcase who still stood holding her right arm. Before the man knew what to expect, Marigold launched a kick against the man’s shins. He yelped in pain and relaxed his hold on her enough to allow Marigold freedom to make her next move. Twisting around towards the man, she drove her right knee up to where it would do most good, or harm depending upon which end of the knee one was at.

The man’s pain-filled curses died off in a yell of sheer torment. Clutching at the point where the knee struck him, he folded over like a closing jack-knife. Marigold had not finished with him. The vanity bag still swung from her arm, but she slid it free, gripped the top in both hands, pivoted and brought it around, then up like a baseball batsman driving for a home run. Mark heard the solid, far too solid, thud of the bag’s collision with the man’s face. The hardcase spun around and piled up over the legs of the man Mark had thrown against the wall.

Light flooded into the alley as the saloon’s door flew open. The floor manager and a couple of burly bouncers burst out skidding to a stop and staring at the sight before them.

“What the—!” began the manager.

Marigold leaned against the saloon’s wall, her hat awry and her shawl lying at her feet. Bending, she took up the shawl, then waved a hand to the groaning quartet.

“It’s all right, Mr. Cahill,” she said. “These—er—gentlemen—must have been drinking and became a little too impulsive.”

“Do you want for me to send for Joel Stocker and have ’em jailed?”

“No. I don’t think that will be necessary. They’ve learned their lesson. Take them around the back, douse them with water and send them on their way.”

“Sure,” the manager agreed, nodding to the bouncers. “Do you want one of the boys to walk you to the hotel?”

“I’m going that way myself,” Mark said, stepping forward. “May I have the honor of escorting you, ma’am?”

“Why thank you, sir,” she replied, dropping a graceful curtsy. “I gratefully accept your kind offer.”

After setting her hat right, Marigold offered Mark her arm and they walked together to the hotel. On learning his name, Marigold gave Mark a long, appraising glance, then suggested they have supper together.

After the meal Mark and Marigold went upstairs to the bedroom floor. Mark’s room lay to the left of the stairs, but Marigold made no attempt to loosen her hold on his arm and steered him to the right.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to come to my room for a few moments, would you, Mr. Counter?” Marigold asked, then her hand fluttered to her lips and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “My, doesn’t that sound forward of me? I realize I should never invite you unchaperoned to my room—But you are a Southern gentleman, aren’t you?”

“Why sure, ma’am,” Mark replied. “Darned if I’m not.”

Marigold took a key from her vanity bag and passed it to Mark. Unlocking the door, he followed her into the room, crossing to the table and turning up the lamp’s wick to give better light. The room looked much like Mark’s along the hall, except that it had three chairs at the table and a sidepiece as well as a closet.

A click came to Mark’s ears. Turning, he saw Marigold had closed the door and twisted the key in the lock. Feeling his eyes on her, Marigold swung towards him. The demure expression and wide-eyed innocence stayed on her face, but not in her eyes.

“It blows open unless I keep it locked,” she said, coming towards the table. “Now, what can I do to entertain you?”

Mark had a few ideas, but kept them to himself. Although puzzled at Marigold’s actions, he decided to go along with her for a time. It could be the old badger game—where an irate “husband” or “fiancé” dashed in to demand money or satisfaction for the alienation of his woman’s affections—but Mark doubted if Marigold would be involved in such a game. Or if she was involved, Mark gave her credit for being too intelligent to believe he would make a profitable victim.

Crossing to the window, Marigold looked out, then she drew the curtains and turned to walk to the sidepiece. After rummaging in the top drawer, Marigold took out a deck of cards. Mark had been watching her and something told him she had picked the deck out of several in the drawer.

“I know,” she said, crossing the room towards where he sat at the table and tossing her vanity bag on to the bed. “Teach me to play poker.”

“Here it comes!” Mark thought.

Without removing either hat or shawl, Marigold sat facing him across the table. She opened the card box, tipped out the cards, shoved the jokers back into the box and tossed it aside. Without offering the deck to be shuffled or cut, she began to deal. This puzzled Mark for he knew she had enough card-savvy not to forget two such basic, but important, details. However, he kept his mouth shut and waited to see what would happen next.

Five cards landed on the table before him and Marigold set down the remainder of the deck in the center of the table.

Mark took up his cards, watching her pick her own hand up. Fanning out his cards between his fingers, Mark blinked at what he saw. Ace, king, queen, jack, ten—all hearts.

Studying the cards, Mark felt even more puzzled. Three obvious conclusions leapt to mind: first, she had made a mistake and dealt him the hand from the cold deck intended for herself; second, that the deal was fair enough and the straight flush came out, as it might be expected to do once in 649,740 hands; third, she deliberately dealt him the hand for some purpose of her own, although he could not imagine what the purpose might be.

Whatever the answer, Mark held an unbeatable hand as the jokers, which were sometimes played as wild cards—and made it possible to have four of a kind and a joker which beat a straight flush—were in the box and out of the game.

“What stakes?” he asked, watching her face, but failing to read anything on it.

Marigold looked horrified at the suggestion.

“Land-sakes a-mercy!” she gasped. “You surely don’t think a lady would play cards for money with a gentleman—alone in her room?”

“I apologize, ma’am.”

“I think you could call me Marigold, if I may be permitted to address you as Mark.”

“Reckon we have known each other long enough for that,” Mark agreed. “What now, Marigold?”

Studying her cards for a moment, Marigold removed her hat and dropped it on the third chair.

“Just for fun, I’ll open with my hat,” she said and lifted her eyes to his face, an open challenge in them. “It’s not like playing for money—now is it?”

“Nope,” remarked Mark, taking his Stetson from where it hung on the back of the chair. “I’ll see the hat, and raise you my bandana.”

“Are we playing table stakes?” she asked, looking coyly at him.

“It’s the only way. Your bet.”

“Hum! My shawl to cover the bandana.”

Lifting her right leg on to the chair which held the stakes, Marigold drew up her skirt. The leg was strong, had shape to it under the black stockings. Mark was willing to concede that it was as good a leg as he had seen—well since early that morning. Marigold undipped suspender fasteners and slid the stocking down, removed it and the shoes, then repeated the process with her left leg.

“My shoes and stockings to raise,” she went on. “A gentleman would have looked the other way.”

“I was always taught never to look away from the table when playing poker,” Mark replied, hooking off his boots. I’ll see that bet and raise.”

The raising and re-raising went on for a few more rounds and at last Marigold stared wide-eyed at the chair which held the stakes.

“Why I do declare! I just haven’t another thing to raise with. Unless I can go to the closet and—”

“Huh huh! When you play table stakes, you just play for what you bring to the table with you. That’s the rules, according to Hoyle.”

“Is it though? But if neither of us have anything with which to bet, what do we do?”

Mark grinned. “Turn the cards and have us a showdown.”

Flipping over his cards, Mark exposed them before the girl’s gaze. She stared down at them with complete innocence in her expression.

“Heavens to Betsy,” she said, turning over her own cards, “You have just the same hand as I have.”

“Sure looks that way,” he agreed and reached out to turn the lamp’s wick down so its flame guttered away and was gone.

“You know, Mark,” Marigold said, her chair scraping back. “There are actually men who would take advantage of an unprotected, defenseless girl at a time like this.”

“The dirty dogs,” he replied. “No Southern gentleman would do such a thing.”

He sensed rather than saw her, felt her hand close on his, pulling at it gently but insistently.

The night outside was dark and still. The bright stars did not show through the curtains at the windows and the room lay pitch black.

“What’s the swelling on your neck?” Marigold’s voice asked.

“Something bit me,” Mark replied.

Silence for a moment, then Marigold said gently, “You mean like this?”

~*~

Laying down the razor he had collected during the night, Mark Counter washed his face. He looked in the mirror above the washstand and touched the oval-shaped lump on the left side of his neck, comparing it with its mate at the right. Luckily they were about level in height and his bandana would cover them. His honorable wounds might attract some attention, but he reckoned he stood big enough to handle it.

“Mark,” Marigold said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking as sedate and demure as ever, as she fastened the top button on her blouse. “What are we going to do today?”

Which same Mark had also been wondering about. He had his business to attend to and, despite the time being almost nine o’clock, hoped to have it done by four or five in the afternoon. By that time Calamity Jane would be back in town and Mark couldn’t see her taking kindly to Marigold’s competition.

“I have to go out to the Gamble spread,” he said.

She gave him a long, worried look, then smiled and brightened up a little.

“May I come along? We could hire a buggy and take a picnic basket with us.”

“That’d be great,” Mark replied. “I’ll go hire a buggy from Pop Larkin right after breakfast, and you get the basket from the kitchen.”

“Come on then,” she said eagerly, jumping to her feet and holding out her hand. “Let’s go.”

“Slow down there, gal,” he grinned. “Let me at least put my shirt on first. We don’t want folks to think anything has been going on in here, now do we?”

On his way to the livery barn, Mark saw the town marshal ambling towards him along the sidewalk. Much to Mark’s surprise, Stocker did not speak, or even appear to notice him.

“She must be some gal,” Mark said.

“Huh?” Stocker grunted, halting, then he grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Mark, I was thinking.”

“Yeah, and when a feller’s thinking that thoughtful, there’s usually a right purty lil gal at the end of it.”

“For you danged Texas rebs, maybe, but not for us serious minded Montanans.”

“That being the case, how do you come to keep on having any little Montanans?” Mark asked.

“We know there’s a time and place for everything,” Stocker replied. “Right now I’m thinking about a killing.”

“Anybody I know?”

“You had a nodding acquaintance with him last night—or should I say a throwing-at-a-wall acquaintance with him?”

“That went right by me without me drawing bead on it.”

“He was one of the four yahoos you ’n’ Miss Tremayne tangled with in the alley last night,” Stocker explained and, before Mark could ask the question which rose to his lips, carried on. “Why sure, I saw it all. Was just fixing to butt in and help the lady when you arrived. Saw you could take ’em and didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

“Why bless your good lil Yankee heart,” grinned Mark, then he became serious. “Who killed him?”

“Framant.”

“Fair fight?”

“Looks that way,” Stocker admitted. “It happened down in the Black Cat Cafe where that feller was having breakfast. Framant come in and told him he wanted to see him outside. The feller got up and went for his gun, started first. Framant didn’t even use his shotgun, drew his Colt and put one through the feller’s head.”

“I’ll buy it,” Mark drawled. “Who was the feller?”

“Don’t know what name he was using in town. Framant had a wanted dodger on him under the name of Wicker. Stands to collect seven hundred dollars on him.”

“Reckon he’s the reason Framant came here?”

“Maybe,” Stocker grunted, looking sleepily towards the hotel. “Had three pards with him in the Crystal Palace when I looked in last night.”

“I never saw you,” Mark drawled.

“You was too busy a-drinking, gambling and carousing. Saw Framant sat near to them four, but he didn’t make a move.”

“Like you said, there was four of them. Maybe he didn’t like the odds.”

“Could be,” Stocker admitted. “Went around looking for

Wicker’s three pards, but they’ve left town. Feller down to the livery barn on Clark Street says they pulled out right after the shooting. Wonder what they wanted from Miss Tremayne?”

“Likely figured she’d be carrying her cut of the game and figured to relieve her of it,” Mark suggested.

“Yep! Well, I got me an office to run. You fixing to ride out to Tom Gamble’s place today?”

“Soon as I hire a buggy. I’m taking Marigold along and we aim to have a picnic on the way back.”

Stocker studied Mark with admiration. No other man in town, and plenty had tried, even got to the stage where they could call the Crystal Palace’s lady blackjack dealer by her first name.

“How’d you do it?” he asked.

“Us rebs have to stick together in the hostile north,” Mark replied. “And now, sir, you-all causing me to keep a lady waiting.”

“See you,” grunted Stocker and ambled away whistling.

A grin flickered across Mark’s face for he recognized Stocker’s tune to be “Dixie”.

That slow-moving, sleepy-looking marshal had a far quicker set of wits than a man would think just by looking at him. Mark knew Stocker had something on his mind. Something to do with the shooting that morning. Maybe Stocker was wondering, as Mark wondered, why a man holding a shotgun, and in the right, should take time out to draw a revolver.

On his return with the buggy, Mark found Marigold standing before the hotel. A picnic basket covered by a clean check cloth lay on the sidewalk at her feet. In her right hand she held her vanity bag, but in her left—

“I thought you might like this along,” Marigold said, tossing his Winchester to him. “Don’t look so surprised. I asked the hall clerk for your key, told him you had forgotten something. The closet seemed the most likely place for you to have left your rifle.”

“And I’ve got the key in my pocket,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she replied in a tone which hinted the subject was closed.

Jumping down, Mark helped Marigold into the buggy, went to the other side and swung in beside her.

“I’ll take the reins, if you wish,” she said.

This had long been the accepted western convention. The woman handled the team and left the man free to use his weapons in an emergency. Marigold appeared to be fully capable of handling the spirited horse Pop Larkin had guaranteed to be the best buggy-hauling critter in Montana and one which would eat the trip to Tom Gamble’s ranch.

For the first couple of miles Mark and Marigold talked of this and that, and the girl showed a surprisingly wide range of knowledge. She clearly had done a good bit of travelling around the west. Somehow or other the conversation turned to the hold-up in Newton.

“Way I heard it,” Mark said. “Those fellers hadn’t much of an idea how to handle the job. They hit the bank at evening, when there was only one teller in it. Then they only took thirty thousand, although there was nearly three times that in the vault.”

“Maybe they didn’t have time to get more,” Marigold replied.

“That’s what the teller said. Allows their lookout yelled that somebody was coming and they took off like the devil after a yearling. Only when he got outside there wasn’t anybody in sight and he had to go and yell for help.”

“That sounds like the gang spooked, or bad management.”

“I bet you could have handled it better.”

Just why he said it, Mark would never know. It may have been a clumsily worded compliment, meant to show his appreciation of her ability. Or it could have been a blind flash of intuition. Certainly he meant little enough by the words.

A low hiss left Marigold’s lips. Her right hand dipped into the vanity bag, came out again with something in it. Mark felt that something boring into his side.

“How long have you known?” she asked; her voice sounding as it did when she saw the girl steal Mark’s wallet.

“Known what?” Mark replied, looking down.

“That I’m Belle Starr.”

For a long moment Mark did not reply. He looked down at the gun boring into his side. At first glance it looked like a Navy Colt. Marigold—or Belle Starr—held it like she knew which end the bullet left from. She held the hammer back under her thumb and her forefinger curled around the trigger.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “But come to think of it, that explains a couple of things which have been bothering me since we met.”

“Such as?”

“Like why the four hardcases were watching you last night. Why you didn’t scream for help when they jumped you in the alley. If you had, and they’d been caught, they might have told Joel Stocker who you are. And like why you wanted me around last night, so they couldn’t slip in on you while you slept.”

“That wasn’t the only reason, Mark,” she answered. “But it was one of them and I don’t think you’ve cause to complain.”

“I’m not complaining. What’re they after? Do they reckon you know where the money from the Newton bank job is?”

“They reckon I know,” she agreed.

“And do you?” Mark asked innocently.

The gun bored a little harder.

“I do not!” she snorted. “Land-sakes, Mark, do you think I’d be working with a fool bunch of green hands like that lot must have been? I wasn’t even near Newton when the hit happened.”

“Where were you?”

“On the way here from my folks’ place down in the Indian Nations.”

“Why here?” he went on.

“Elkhorn’s growing,” she replied. “The banker here is a fat, bulging-eyed pillar of the church with more money than it’s decent for anybody but a Southern gentleman to have. So I figure to relieve him of some of it—but not with a gun. His kind fall easy, get them in the right conditions. Only he’s gone east on vacation and so I’m getting things set up ready.”

“You’ve done it real well,” he smiled. “Maybe just a little mite over-done, but just right for the audience. Put the gun away.”

“Why?”

“You aren’t going to use it, Marigold—or can I call you Belle?”

“Feel free, if you’re so sure I won’t use the gun.”

“You won’t use it for two reasons. One, you know I wouldn’t turn you in.”

“And the other?” she asked; not moving the gun, but keeping the buggy rolling across the range.

“Those three yahoos from last night are following us.”

“Soskin’s bunch?” she breathed and looked back.

Mark’s left hand stabbed down, closing over the cylinder of her revolver. He dropped his thumb so it lay between the hammer and the percussion cap. The move was done only just in time. On feeling her revolver grabbed, Belle’s finger closed on the trigger and she released the hammer. Instead of it striking the percussion cap and firing the chamber’s contents, the hammer landed harmlessly on Mark’s thumbnail.

A sudden twist plucked the gun from Belle’s hand. She clenched her fists and glared at Mark, then dropped her eyes to the gun.

“Oh, Mark!” she gasped, reaching out to draw the hammer back to the half-cock position. “I’m sorry.”

“My fault,” he replied, changing his hold and placing the hammer down after turning the cylinder so the striker rested between two of the percussion caps.

For the first time Mark saw the revolver was not a Navy Colt. It appeared to be one of the copies produced by various little companies during the Civil War, when the relaxing of patent restrictions gave them a chance to sneak in and grab a quick profit. The gun looked better made than many of the copies and its cylinder had only five chambers, instead of the Navy Colt’s six.

“A Manhattan, isn’t it?” he asked, offering the weapon butt forward to the girl.

“Yes. I like its balance,” she replied. “Is Soskin and his bunch on our trail, or were you only bluffing?”

“Take a peek and see.”

She obeyed, and saw.

“They’re following.”

“Would a Southern gentleman lie to a lady?” Mark grinned. “Who are they?”

“Two-bit long riders,” she answered. “Must have seen me down in the Nations some time and recognized me. Soskin, he’s the one who jumped you first, he runs the bunch. Wicker was the one you splattered against the wall. Varney’s the one I used my knee on. And Carter—hey, there are only three of them after us.”

“Framant killed Wicker this morning.”

A shudder ran through Belle’s frame and she moved closer to Mark at the mention of the bounty hunter’s name. Ordinary men did not scare Belle Starr, but she knew Framant would kill her without thinking twice about it; shoot her in the back, if he thought he could get away with it, rather than take a chance.

“Does he know who you are?”

“No. That wanted poster in the saloon is flattering, but nothing like me,” she replied. “What about those three?”

“What about them?” Mark countered.

“Mark,” she said quietly. “I had nothing to do with that holdup in Newton. I give you my word on that.”

“And I believe you, gal,” he replied, bending to take up the rifle. “Let’s show them we know they’re there. Stop the buggy.”

Without argument, she obeyed, nursing the Manhattan on her lap as she brought the buggy to a halt. Mark stood up in the buggy and turned to face the men. His action caused them to bring their horses to a halt and show some consternation at finding their presence discovered. Taking off his hat with his left hand, holding the rifle in his right, Mark gave the men a wave ‘round.

In the sign language of the range country to take off the hat and wave it from left to right around the head when looking at approaching riders meant keep away, you are not wanted. If the warning should be ignored, the next move came from Mark’s rifle in the shape of a flat-nosed .44 bullet powered by twenty-eight grains of powder.

The three men clearly understood the sign. One of them reached down towards the butt of his rifle.

“Get set, gal!” Mark warned.

“I’m set,” she replied calmly. “Anyways, they won’t make a fight of it.”

If Belle did not know the men, she judged their characters correctly. Before the man reached his rifle, one of the others stopped him. They sat their horses for a moment, pointing and talking, then turned and rode away.

“You called the play right,” Mark drawled, not relaxing his hold of the rifle’s foregrip and small of the butt; he had put his hat on his head after giving the wave ‘round, so as to be ready for action.

“Sure. I know their kind. Especially that bunch. Cheap, nasty and not brave. They saw me at my folks’ place and know how far they can push me. And they’ll reckon that wherever you are Captain Fog and the Ysabel Kid won’t be far away. So I don’t reckon they’ll fix to tangle with us.”

Mark guessed he could take Belle’s summing up of the situation as being accurate. She had been raised in the Indian Nations, Oklahoma Territory, a haunt of badly wanted outlaws of all kinds. Growing up among such men, Belle had learned to know them. Some were lions, afraid of nothing, honest within their code and lights. Others, like the trio following them, were coyotes, sneaky, treacherous, deadly if they had the other side at a disadvantage. Thinking that Mark’s very able friends Dusty Fog and the Ysabel Kid might be around, those three would not risk an attack which might end in Mark’s death.

This belief that where Mark Counter was, his two amigos were sure to be, saved Mark and Belle from trouble, just as in a future meeting it would again save their lives. ⁱⁱⁱ

“Told you so,” Belle remarked calmly.

“You told me,” Mark agreed. “Let’s get on our way.”

She looked at him, her face troubled.

“Are you sure you still want me to go with you?”

“Why not. You’re still the girl I brought out with me—’Sides which, you all-carrying the picnic basket.”

A merry smile took the place of the troubled look. The old Marigold Tremayne tone came into her voice once more.

“Shall we go, sir?”

“It’d be my pleasure, ma’am,” Mark replied, taking his seat and putting down the rifle.

“Then we will.”

While watching Belle put the Manhattan into her vanity bag, a thought struck Mark.

“Say, weren’t you scared of busting your gun when you hit that feller with your bag last night?”

“Nope,” she replied and held out the bag. “Look.”

The inside of the bag, apart from a few inches at the top which could be drawn together and fastened, was lined with leather. More, a holster had been built into the bag so she would always find her Manhattan’s butt pointing towards the bag’s mouth and protected against getting the other items in the bag entangled with its mechanism.

“I wondered why that bag didn’t show the gun,” he said admiringly. “That’s a neat bit of work.”

“My pappy made it. Let’s go.”

Although Mark kept a watch on their back-trail, he saw no sign of the three men following. It seemed that they had either given up the chase, or waited for a chance to hit at the buggy on their return to town.

Mark collected the money from Gamble. The rancher and his wife insisted he and Belle stayed for lunch and Mark had been amused at how thoroughly Marigold Tremayne replaced Belle Starr in the presence of the Gambles. She charmed Mrs. Gamble, even though the rancher’s wife did not look the kind of woman to treat a saloon worker as a friend, or have the cowhands of the ranch hanging around to try to win a smile from her.

Not until they were on their return trip was any mention of the previous night’s episode made.

Mark reached up a hand to adjust his bandana and Belle glanced at him, a merry twinkle in her eyes.

“Who bit you?” she asked.

“You did,” Mark grinned.

“I mean first.”

“Calamity Jane.”

A smile flickered across Belle’s lips as she studied his face, then died off again and a frown creased her brow.

“You’re funning me,” she said, then shook her head. “No, you’re not. Did Calamity Jane do that to you?”

“Why sure. She’s quite a gal,” Mark answered. “Came through yesterday and she’ll likely be back tonight.”

“Will she?” Belle sniffed.

There Belle let the matter drop. Her attitude showed that she did not intend to discuss the matter of Calamity Jane further. Yet Mark’s instincts warned him he had better try to keep Calamity Jane and Belle Starr well separated that night.

Belle continued to talk about various things and drive the buggy. Both she and Mark kept alert for signs of the three men, but saw none. Either the trio had decided to call the game off when they saw Belle’s escort, or they were lying low and waiting until conditions favored them. Whatever the reason, Belle and Mark saw no sign of the men and reached Elkhorn without any incident.

In town Mark saw something. Calamity Jane’s wagon stood behind Larkin’s livery barn and her team horses in Larkin’s corral. Hoping he would not come across Calamity in the street and while escorting Belle, Mark headed for the hotel.

“I’ll expect to see you tonight,” Belle told Mark as they stood in the passage of the hotel’s upper floor. “You can bring a friend, if you like.”

Reading the challenge in Belle’s voice, Mark groaned silently. From the way Belle looked, and what he had seen of Calamity Jane, Mark guessed one thing. Happen they got together, it wouldn’t be bulls locking horns that Marshal Joel Stocker had to worry about.

“I’ll see you,” he promised.

“Make sure you do,” Belle purred. “I’d hate to have to come looking for you-all, Mark honey.”

Kissing him lightly on the cheek, Belle turned and walked towards her room. Mark watched her go and grinned as he went along the passage to his. Maybe Calamity would not find him. She might even have found herself another feller by this time.

Just as he unlocked the door, Mark heard a faint scuffling noise in his room. Almost without thinking about it, his right hand dipped and lifted his Colt from leather. Gripping the doorknob, Mark pushed hard. The door swung inwards and thudded into something which gave a startled gasp. Mark had been right, he did have an unexpected visitor inside.

Stepping into the room fast, Mark thrust the door closed behind him and lined his gun—on Calamity Jane.

The girl stood with her back to the wall, a look of amazement and fury on her face as she put a hand to her nose. However her eyes dropped to the barrel of the Colt lined on her and the anger left her face.

“Easy there, Mark!” she gasped. “I forgot what you come up here to collect.”

“Huh?”

“That money. I should have known better than fool around like this when you’re carrying it.”

Now Mark understood. Calamity put his reaction down to his expecting trouble, or at least being prepared for trouble, while carrying the money he collected from Gamble. He did not disillusion her, figuring the later she learned about Belle Starr the better for all concerned.

Even as he holstered his Colt, Mark found Calamity close to him, her arms around his neck and her mouth crushing against his. She moved back a shade after the kiss, cocked her head on one side and grinned at him.

“Boy, I sure put my brand on you. Right under your right—Hey! That’s not on the right side! Mark Counter, what’ve you been doing?”

“Would you believe me happen I told you I cut myself shaving?”

“Nope,” she snorted.

“Now what do you reckon I’ve been doing, Calam?” he went on.

“I just wouldn’t want to guess.”

There did not seem to be any point in standing talking. So Mark did the next best thing. He scooped Calamity into his arms and kissed her. While it had nothing to do with the subject under discussion, it sure ended Calamity’s curiosity faster than a whole heap of lip flapping would have.

“Let’s hooraw the town tonight, Mark,” Calamity suggested when he released her and went on innocently. “That’s a swell looking saloon next door.”

“There’s a couple of other nice places—”

“Sure,” Calamity interrupted, “but they don’t have blackjack games.”

“Blackjack?” Mark asked, sounding nonchalant and innocent.

“Blackjack!” Calamity repeated. “They do tell me the dealer totes a real mean picnic basket.”

Standing back from Mark, Calamity put her hands on her hips and grinned, her even white teeth flashing. He grinned back. There was something infectious about Calamity Jane’s zest for living. Maybe she did not conform to the rigid conventions imposed on women of her day, but she enjoyed every minute of her life.

Then Mark remembered how Belle Starr smiled when she invited him to bring Calamity to the saloon that night. They were two of a kind, those girls. A man couldn’t judge them by the same moral standards which affected other women. Each girl lived her life the way she felt it ought to be lived, and stuck to certain rigid codes. The main difference between Belle and Calamity was in the way their lives had gone. Calamity stayed on the right side of the law, Belle strayed over its line and went against it.

“How’d you get to know?” Mark asked.

“You know how folks talk,” Calamity grinned.

“Old Pop Larkin!” Mark snorted. “Darned old goat, never knew a livery barn owner who wouldn’t talk the hind-leg off a hoss. How did you get in here?”

“Bet my door key’ll open every room on the floor,” Calamity answered. “Did she do that?”

“She’s a Southern lady,” Mark replied, spreading his bandana to hide his honorable wounds.

“Does that mean yes or no?” grinned Calamity. “Go wash up, then we’ll head for the Crystal Palace and play us some blackjack.”

~*~

Mark’s hopes of keeping Calamity and Belle apart did not seem very great. They sank to zero as he and Calamity prepared to go down to the hotel dining room and have a meal before visiting the Crystal Palace.

Even as he stepped into the passage with Calamity at his side, Mark saw the door to Belle’s room open. It appeared that Belle had been waiting for his appearance, for she walked towards him. They met at the head of the stairs and

Belle directed a dazzling smile at Calamity.

“Why, Mark,” she said, in her Marigold voice, “You-all never said the Ysabel Kid was in town.”

While the light in the passage was poor, it was not that poor. Mark knew it; Belle knew it; and, if the way Mark felt the girl’s body stiffen and bristle at his side was any indication, Calamity knew it too.

“Miss Tremayne,” Mark said, for he had not let Calamity into the secret of Belle’s true identity. “Allow me to present Miss Martha Jane Canary. Miss Canary, this is Miss Marigold Tremayne.”

Belle showed well-simulated shock and embarrassment at her “mistake”. Her hand fluttered to her mouth and her eye took on an expression of horror as she looked Calamity up and down.

“Landsakes!” Belle gasped. “How could I have made such a mistake? Why I hear the Ysabel Kid is good looking.”

Hearing the sudden intake of breath at his side, Mark prepared to grab Calamity before she jumped Belle. He did not know Calamity very well. The girl might lack some formal education, but she had a quick set of wits sharpened by her contacts with men and women of all kinds.

“That’s real swell blonde hair you have, honey,” she replied. “Why do you dye the roots black?”

“Perhaps you’d like to try to see if they are black?” Belle replied.

“Any time. Right—right nice of you to invite me and Mark to join you for supper, Miss Tremayne. We’ll accept.”

The change in Calamity’s speech came due to a man and woman emerging from one of the rooms. Before either girl could say another word, Mark gripped them by an arm each and hustled them down the stairs.

Mark enjoyed his supper. His worries that the girls might start a brawl in the dining room died away. Neither Calamity nor Belle cared greatly for public opinion, but they did know any brawl started in the hotel would be ended quickly. So they contented themselves in firing barbed, biting, catty comments at each other. On the face of it, honors appeared about equal when Mark took their arms and walked them to the saloon.

Interested eyes watched them enter the saloon and cross to the bar. None of the people in the saloon failed to notice that Belle—or as they thought of her, Marigold Tremayne—did not follow her usual procedure of going upstairs to remove her hat. Also they all knew that Marigold Tremayne never accepted drinks, or went near the bar. An eagerly expectant air ran through the room, following the whispered information that the other gal was Calamity Jane.

“What’ll it be, ladies?” Mark asked, resigned to the fact that there would be a clash and that he could not stop it.

“Whisky for me,” Calamity replied.

“I’ll have a brandy, Mark,” Belle went on.

“Brandy?” Calamity gasped. “French hawg-wash!”

“A lady doesn’t drink whisky,” Belle replied; and getting no reaction of her emphasis of the word lady, tried another attack. “It’s fattening. Of course, darling, with a figure like yours, what have you to lose?”

“You’re so right,” Calamity purred back. “At my age you can eat and drink what you like. But not when you get as old as you are.”

Once more Calamity had come back with a cat-clawing answer that evened the score with Belle. Angrily Belle’s fingers drummed on the bar top while she sought for a suitable comment. Calamity grinned at her, enjoying the duel of words and not wanting it to end for a spell.

Twisting her whisky glass between her fingers, Calamity turned her back to the bar and leaned her elbows on its mahogany top. She looked around the room and her eyes came to rest on the board with the wanted posters. Crossing the room, Calamity came to a halt and studied the center poster, cocking her head to one side and looking at the addition to the official wording.

“The toughest gal in the west!” she read in explosive, snorting words. “Now that’s not right at all.”

Watched by everybody in the room, Calamity dug a stump of pencil from her pants’ pocket. She leaned a hand on the small table somebody had placed before the board and reached out to write “2nd” between the first two words of the message.

“That’s better,” she said.

At the bar Belle clenched her hands into fists and started to move. Mark’s hand caught her arm and held her.

“Easy, Belle,” he whispered. “Calam doesn’t know who you are. At least, I haven’t told her. And Framant’s sat over there watching.”

For a moment Mark thought Belle would show enough sense to at least wait until Calamity came back to the bar, then find some other excuse to start a fight. Maybe she would have, for Belle had put time and money into setting herself up in Elkhorn ready to pluck dollar-sign marked feathers from the local banker’s tail, except for Calamity’s next action.

“Let’s just pretty old Belle up a mite while I’m at it,” Calamity went on and began to pencil in a mustache on the picture’s top lip.

Calamity did not notice Belle had crossed the room to her side. Mark knew she had, for his shin hurt where she kicked him and caused him to release her arm. With a shrug, he leaned on the bar. Things had gone too far now, he could not stop the inevitable.

All eyes went to the table, watching Belle reach out and take the pencil from Calamity’s fingers. Everybody, with the exception of Mark, wondered what their lady blackjack dealer meant to do and why.

Placing her hip against Calamity’s, Belle thrust hard and sent the redhead staggering a few paces. Then, as Calamity caught her balance and stopped, Belle put down her vanity bag and leaned over to score out Calamity’s addition to the poster.

“I’ve never met the lady,” Belle remarked, ignoring the interest her action aroused among the people in the room. “But I’m sure the statement was correct.”

At his table, Framant leaned forward, studying Belle with cold eyes.

Unbuckling her gunbelt, Calamity put it down on the table by Belle’s bag. She dipped her shoulder and charged Belle, sending her sprawling. Belle caught the wall and prevented .herself falling, but her hat slid back and she brushed it from her head. By this time Calamity had picked up the pencil which Belle dropped and turned to the poster once more.

Belle sprang forward and Calamity twisted to face her, sitting on the table and raising her feet ready to thrust the blonde away. Only Belle did not come in range. Shooting out her hands, she grabbed for Calamity’s ankles and caught hold of the cuffs of her pants instead. Calamity let out a yell of anger and surprise as Belle threw her weight back and heaved. Although she tried to grab something, Calamity failed to find anything she might grip and prevent herself being dragged from the table. She landed on the floor with a thud, but Belle had not finished. Backing away, Belle dragged Calamity across the floor, the other girl bending her legs and thrusting, trying to force herself free and grabbing at chairs or table legs to avoid being hauled along.

To the tune of laughter and shouts of encouragement, Belle dragged Calamity across the floor. There was only one way out for Calamity, although not a way a more modest young woman would have cared to take. Unbuckling her waist-belt, she tried to slide out of her pants. Their tightness held her and she grabbed the leg of the faro table as she passed it. This proved firm enough, and the table heavy enough, to anchor her down. Belle grunted and threw her weight back to try to tear Calamity free. Too late she realized what Calamity had done. The pants started to slide and Calamity gave a heave which freed herself. She left her pants in Belle’s hands and lost her moccasins.

Taken by surprise, Belle staggered back, lost her footing, and sat down hard, still clinging to Calamity’s pants. Calamity, still wearing her kepi, made a pretty picture, her shirttail flapping around her shapely bare legs and giving glimpses of the new white, lace-frilled combination chemise and drawers she had bought that afternoon to prove to Mark Counter that she was a real lady at heart. They were the latest fashion among show people, short legged and daring, and Calamity had the sort of figure to set them off to their best advantage.

Coming to her feet, Calamity flung herself at Belle, landing on the blonde before she made her feet. Grabbing down. Calamity gripped Belle’s skirt and heaved at it with all her strength. Belle gave a yell, tried to twist herself free and in doing so threw the final pressure on the tortured cloth. With a ripping sound, the skirt tore from waist almost to hem. Rearing back, her trophy firmly gripped in both hands, Calamity tore the skirt away, rolling Belle right over and leaving her black stocking-clad legs, with frilly red garters, and black drawers as brief and attractive as Calamity’s own, exposed by the hem of her blouse.

Once more Calamity sprang into the attack, her hands closing on Belle’s blouse. Belle forced herself up, her own hands gripped Calamity’s shirt neck and her eyes met Calamity’s.

“Try it!” Belle hissed. “And I’ll peel you raw.” For once in her life Calamity Jane backed down from a challenge. Nothing she had seen about the blonde told her Belle would not carry out the threat of stripping Calamity naked, even if it meant losing every stitch of clothing she wore in the process. Modesty did not prevent Calamity from calling Belle’s bluff. She knew that if they did start to remove more clothing, the owners of the saloon would stop the fight. A hair-yanking brawl between two women was common enough for the owners to let one go on, it was regarded as being a bit of added entertainment for the customers. But there were limits to how far the owners dare let such a fight go.

So Calamity released her hold of Belle’s blouse, for she did not want what promised to be a good fight stopping. Not until she had handed that blonde hussy the licking of her life as a warning to stay away from Calamity Jane’s man.

While releasing Belle’s blouse, Calamity made up her mind how to handle the situation. She had been taught to fight by soldiers and freighters, men who showed her the value of a fist over hair yanking. In more than one saloon brawl this knowledge had given her a decided edge over the other girl.

“First one into her belly,” Calamity thought. “Then the next to her jaw.”

The first drove into the stomach. Up came the other hand and caught the down-dropping jaw—

And Calamity hit the floor on her rump, her head spinning. She had learned an important lesson. The other girl also knew how to use her fists.

Now it was Belle’s turn to become over-confident. She sprang forward and drew back her foot. Calamity showed that she had learned other lessons in the art of self-defense. Quickly she hooked her left foot behind Belle’s left ankle, placed her right foot on Belle’s left knee, pulled on the ankle and pushed on the knee. Caught with her other leg raised for the kick, Belle could not stop herself going over, but she broke the worst of her fall with her hands.

They came up and flung themselves at each other. For a time it might have been two men fighting. They used their fists, wrestling throws and holds, none of the usual tactics of a pair of fighting women. The watching crowd yelled their encouragement and already the house gamblers were taking bets on the results. Not that they had any clear indication of which girl would win for they seemed evenly matched.

“Howdy, Mark,” a sleepy voice said.

Turning from watching Belle drive Calamity back into the crowd with a battery of punches, Mark looked at the speaker.

“Howdy, Joel. What’re you fixing to do about this? Speaking as a duly appointed officer of the law that is.”

“Ain’t doing nothing,” Stocker replied, watching the crowd scatter as the two girls spun round and through them. “My job’s to keep the peace and I wouldn’t reckon anybody’s breaking it.” He paused and eyed Mark with that same sleepy gaze. “How do you figure in on this?”

“Could say I brought them together,” Mark admitted. “But, knowing Calamity, she’d’ve come in here and tangled with somebody, and B—Marigold’s the most likely one for her to pick from.”

“Huh huh,” Stocker grunted. “Figured it that way myself. Only I wouldn’t have expected Miss Marigold to be the one. Allus struck me as being a real lady.”

The “real lady” was at that moment swinging Calamity around by the hair and sent her sprawling across the room to hit the wall. Calamity seemed dazed by the impact and stood with legs apart, back braced against the wall.

“Best stop—!” Stocker began as Belle moved in towards Calamity.

His words stopped for Belle did not deliver a crippling kick at her helpless opponent. Instead she stopped and started to slap Calamity’s face, alternating hands and swinging the other girl’s head from side to side. The pain of the slaps revived Calamity and she thrust forward, her hands tangling into Belle’s hair. If Belle’s yell of pain was anything to go by, the grip Calamity had on her hurt.

The fight developed into a more female brawl with Calamity’s hair-yanking opening. Reeling backwards, the two girls spun across the room in a flailing tangle of arms and legs, pulling hair, swinging slaps and punches. One piece of feminine fighting was denied them. Calamity’s work did not tend to allow her to grow long nails, and Belle knew men objected to playing with a gambler who had long enough fingernails to make identifying nicks on the cards.

Even without scratching, the two girls put on a tolerable example of the art of barroom brawling. On their feet, or rolling over and over on the floor, they went at it for almost fifteen minutes without a pause.

Then Belle was flat on her back and Calamity dropped to kneel astride her with the intention of grabbing her hair and bouncing her head on the floor. Belle knew as well as Calamity what the redhead intended to do. Bringing up her legs, Belle hooked them under Calamity’s armpits from behind, almost as if she was trying to perform a full nelson with legs instead of arms. Calamity gave a yell as she went over backwards, but carried on rolling to land on her feet and dropped down. She landed on Belle’s raised feet, felt them against her chest and knew what to expect even if she could not prevent it happening.

Thrusting up with her feet, Belle sent Calamity flying backwards across the room to land on a tabletop. Calamity saw Belle coming at her and rolled back off the table, throwing it over. It landed on Belle’s right foot, the edge thudding down on her toes. Belle squealed in pain. She was still hopping on her other foot when Calamity rounded the table.

Calamity swung herself around, her fist coming in a circle which ended on the side of Belle’s jaw. The crowd scattered as Belle went sprawling across the room, hit the bar and clung to it. Dazedly Belle watched Calamity come forward, a chair gripped in her hands ready to strike. The blonde sobbed for

breath, she tried to force herself from the bar to avoid the blow.

“We’d better stop Calam,” Mark said to Stocker.

“Ye—Dabnad it, look there.”

Instead of lifting the chair and crashing it on to Belle, Calamity threw it to one side. She staggered to the bar and Belle crouched ready to fight back.

“H—hold it!” Calamity gasped.

“H—had e—enough?” Belle replied in surprise.

“No—no—Feel like a drink.”

“A—and me. Fred, whisky and brandy.”

“What do you make of that?” Stocker asked.

“Those gals sure must be enjoying the fight. Belle could have finished Calamity against the wall there, and Calamity could sure have sung B—Marigold to sleep with that chair. There’s been other times when they could have used a knee, or foot and didn’t.”

He hoped Stocker had not noticed the slip he made in his words. Not by a flicker of emotion did Stocker’s sleepy face show he had noticed Mark say “Belle” instead of Marigold. However, Mark would have been surprised if he had seen anything on the marshal’s face even if he noticed the slip.

The girls finished their drinks. Watching them, the crowd grew expectant once more. Most of the onlookers had felt disappointed when they saw the fight come to such an indecisive end. Now they realized that the fight had not ended, but that the opponents were just taking a drink while regaining their strength for a resumption of hostilities.

From his place at the end of the bar, Mark watched the girls and felt puzzled. While he could understand Calamity grandstanding in such a manner, it surprised him that Belle would act in the same way.

“My turn,” Calamity said, slapping her empty glass on the counter. “Same again, Fred.”

“Here’s looking at you,” Belle replied, raising her glass. “Not that you’d be seeing much with that eye.”

“If it’s worse than yours, it’s bad,” Calamity grinned. “Whooee, that was a mean one you caught me with at the beginning. Say, where’d you learn to wrestle?”

“From an Indian. Have you finished?”

“Sure.”

Setting down her glass, Calamity lashed out her fist, driving it into the blonde’s jaw and spinning her in a circle to hit the bar. Belle swung her arm sideways, the heel of her hand driving into Calamity’s ribs and stopping her forward rush.

For thirty minutes by the bar-room clock the fight raged, from start, to when the two girls, tottering on legs which looked like heat-buckled candles, gave Stocker cause to think he might have to end the fight.

“I’ll have to stop ’em if they go any further, Mark,” the marshal said as Calamity staggered from a push and left her torn shirt in Belle’s hands.

“Looks that way,” Mark replied, for Belle had lost her blouse.

It could not go on. The girls were on their last reserves of strength. Where their slaps had sounded like whip-cracks on landing, they now barely made a sound and on reaching flesh seemed more in the nature of a gentle push.

Hooking a leg behind Calamity, more by accident than design, Belle tripped her. They were locked in each other’s arms and could do nothing to stop themselves falling. However, Calamity managed to twist herself so they both hit the floor. Their arms relaxed and they rolled apart, lying flat on their backs, breasts heaving, mouths hanging open.

“Get the doctor,” Mark said. “I’ll get the gals to their rooms.”

“Sure,” Stocker replied, “I’ll—Man, just look at that.”

Incredibly, in view of the grueling brawl they had just fought, Belle was trying to sit up. Beside her, Calamity rolled over and forced her hands against the floor. Belle did not look the elegant creature who dealt blackjack. Her once immaculate hair now resembled a tangled, dirty, blonde wool mop. The face was streaked with sweat and dirt, its left eye blackened and puffed almost shut, the nose bloody. Her most serious injury was a bite on the left hand, gained when the fight was at its height. She had lost one stocking but the garter remained, a splash of color against the white of her leg. The other stocking had little foot, no knee and hung in tatters. Calamity was just as badly bruised and battered, dirty and exhausted.

Sensing a climax approaching, the crowd fell silent. Quite a lot of money depended on the outcome of the fight.

Through the whirling mist that seemed to surround her, Calamity saw Belle sitting up. Drawing on her last ounce of strength, Calamity thrust herself forward, shooting her fist at Belle. Everything went black for Calamity the instant before her fist landed. Carried by the impetus of her body, the fist caught Belle at the side of the jaw and Belle flopped on to her back. Calamity’s limp form dropped on to Belle’s and they lay there without a move.

“What’d you call that, Mark?” Stocker asked.

“I’d say a stand-off. Go get the doc, I’ll tend to the girls.”

Excitement burst over the crowd, cheers and shouts of laughter ringing out. The floor manager called for drinks on the house and there was a rush to the bar. Mark did not join it. He crossed to where the saloon-girls, eight in all, stood in a group, knowing they were not included in the manager’s largesse.

“How’d you gals like to earn five dollars each?” he asked.

“All of us!” gasped the boss-girl, a big, beautiful black-haired woman, eyeing Mark with doubt and admiration.

“Not for that,” Mark replied. “I want you to tote Marigold and Calamity to their rooms at the hotel.”

“Sure we’ll do it,” grinned the boss-girl. “I’m not doing anything important after that though.”

“I wish I wasn’t,” drawled Mark and took out his wallet. “Take them in the back way.”

Four girls took Calamity by the arms and legs, raising her from the floor, while the other four lifted Belle. To admiring cheers the battered girls were carried out of the saloon’s rear door.

“Here, Mark,” Stocker said, coming over with a couple of glasses in his big hands. “I fetched you a drink along. Being a duly appointed officer of the law, I don’t get the give-away stuff.”

One sip at the contents of his glass told Mark that Stocker spoke the truth. Like most saloons, the Crystal Palace kept a stock of cheaper whisky to be used when the boss announced drinks on the house. The liquor in Mark’s glass tasted like best stock. It seemed that, like Mark, the owners of the Crystal Palace were not fooled by Stocker’s sleepy-acting

ways and knew how to show a good lawman their appreciation.

“Man, that came from a customer’s bottle,” Mark said, then noticed Stocker looking around the room. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing much. I was wondering where Framant has gone.”

Setting down his glass on the nearest table, Mark looked around the room. He had last seen the bounty hunter before the fight started and Framant was showing considerable interest in Belle’s actions.

Without a word to Stocker about his fears, Mark turned on his heel and headed across the room towards the main doors of the saloon.

~*~

There was considerable excitement at the hotel as Mark entered its reception hall. Although the girls had carried Belle and Calamity in through the rear door, they still had to bring their groaning burdens to the front and up the stairs. In doing so, they attracted attention, their chatter bringing residents from the dining- and sitting-rooms to see what was happening.

Shoving through the crowd, Mark found the desk clerk, a plump, pompous young man, blocking his path.

“May I ask just what is going on, Mr. Counter?” the clerk said as Mark started up the stairs. “This is not the sort—”

His words trailed off as Mark’s hands gripped him by the lapels of his coat, then lifted. The man’s feet left the floor and kicked futilely as Mark set him aside. Gurgling incoherently, the clerk turned and stared after Mark as he went up the stairs. It shook a man to be picked up as if he was a baby and set aside in so casual a manner.

“Just set the blonde down, you calico cats,” a voice said from the passage above. “I’ll tend to her.”

Three strides brought Mark to the head of the stairs and he turned the corner. It seemed he had not come a moment too soon.

“Hold it, Framant!” Mark snapped.

Standing with his shotgun in his left hand, Framant looked towards the big blond Texan. The saloon-girls had laid Belle down and fallen back, flattening themselves against the walls and stared in fear at the bounty hunter.

“Keep out of this, cow-nurse,” Framant replied. “I’m taking her down to Newton with me.”

“How long have you known who she was?” Mark replied, watching the hand which gripped the small of the shotgun’s butt, its forefinger on the trigger.

“Had me suspicions since I come in,” Framant growled.

“And left it until now to take her?”

“I don’t take chances,” Framant answered. “Now just get out of my way.”

Framant bent down, reaching for Belle’s arm.

“Leave her lie,” Mark said quietly.

“Yeah!” the bounty hunter replied, straightening again. “Why? ‘Cause you want to take her in?”

“Nope. But you hadn’t the guts to stack against her while she was on her feet and you’ll leave her now. Or take her through me.”

A grin twisted Framant’s lips as he studied the big Texan.

“That can be done easy enough.”

He made a gesture to lift the shotgun in his left hand. Mark watched the move—then remembered something. Another man had faced Framant that day, and he died with a revolver bullet, not a charge of buckshot in him.

Dipping his free hand, Framant closed his fingers around the butt of his revolver and started to lift it. Just like all the others, that big Texan had been watching his shotgun, not the revolver, and would shortly pay the penalty for crossing Jubal Framant.

Too late the bounty hunter saw his mistake.

Mark’s right hand dipped, the Army Colt flowed from the holster in a liquid smooth move. Cocking back the hammer as the gun lifted, Mark sent a bullet into Framant’s head; holding his gun waist high and using instinctive alignment for he did not have time to take aim in any other way.

Shock, amazement and terror warred among themselves for expression on Framant’s face an instant before Mark’s bullet struck between his eyes and wiped off all expression. In that last moment Framant knew he had met a man who saw through his trick and beat him.

A girl screamed. Another turned, hiding her face in her hands. Framant’s shotgun fell from his left hand, the revolver slipped from between the fingers of his right. Its barrel had barely cleared leather and it clattered to the floor, beating Framant’s lifeless body by a split second.

Feet pounded on the stairs behind Mark. Stocker appeared at the stair-head, travelling with a speed which belied his usual lethargic pose. Holstering the big Dragoon, Stocker looked down at Belle, then towards Framant.

“What happened?’

“Framant threw down on me,” Mark replied. “And I found out what he toted the shotgun for.”

Turning, Stocker ordered the people who started to flock upstairs back down again. The cold tone which replaced his sleepy voice warned the crowd that they had best do as he told them without argument.

“How’d you mean, Mark,” he said, after Mark had carried Belle into her room where she and Calamity now lay side by side on her bed. “You know why he toted the shotgun.”

“It was a plant. Kept the other feller watching his left hand, while his right fetched out the gun. It near on caught me, only I remembered that feller he shot this morning and wondered why in hell he’d chance drawing a revolver when he held the scatter.”

The local doctor arrived, having pushed his way through the crowd, showing a complete disregard for social standing as became the only medical man in almost five hundred miles. s

“I’d best see about moving Framant,” Stocker remarked, as the doctor went into Belle’s room.

“Sure,” Mark replied. “I’ll go pick up the gals’ belongings from the saloon. They’ll not be feeling like bothering, way they’re all tuckered out.”

“Go ahead. You leaving town in the morning?”

“Sure,” Mark agreed.

“Nothing personal, but I’ll not be sorry to see you go. Be pleased to have you back any time—but come alone.”

Mark grinned. Having served under Dusty Fog as a deputy marshal, he could appreciate Stocker’s point of view.

At the saloon, Mark gathered up Belle’s vanity bag and Calamity’s gunbelt. The owner of the saloon himself came over, grinning broadly.

“You sure brought our Miss Tremayne out, Mark,” he said.

That the man knew his name did not surprise Mark. A saloonkeeper always tried to keep in touch with important people who used his establishment, and without false modesty Mark admitted he was well enough known to warrant such interest.

“I’ve got their clothes bundled up back of the bar,” the man went on. “Reckon they might need them, although apart from Calamity’s pants and moccasins and Miss Marigold’s shoes, there’s not much they’ll be able to wear.”

“I’ll take them anyways,” Mark grinned. “What they don’t want I’ll have built into the suggan I had made after the battle in Bearcat Annie’s.” ^iv

“Was you—sure, that was while Cap’n Fog was town marshal in Quiet Town.”

The battle in Bearcat Annie’s saloon, where three female deputies fought it out with the saloon-keeper and her girls to allow Dusty Fog, Mark and the other male deputies a chance to enter the saloon and arrest a bunch of gunmen, had become a legend in the west. Mark had gathered the remnants of clothing and had them made into a suggan, a thick patchwork quilt, which he now carried in his bedroll.

Mark intended to have Calamity’s shirt and Belle’s blouse and skirt added to the other material, as a memento of the occasion.

For a time Mark stayed at the saloon, talking with the owner and a number of prominent businessmen of the town. The doctor arrived with word that neither girl had sustained any really serious injury, although Belle’s hand would always carry the mark of Calamity’s teeth.

“Reckon I’ve lost my blackjack dealer for a spell,” grinned the owner. “But, man, what a fight.”

Soon after Mark left the saloon, carrying the girls’ belongings with him. On his way to the hotel, Mark thought of Stacker’s apparent lack of interest in why Framant should be in the building. This did not fool Mark. If Stocker guessed the truth, and Mark reckoned he did, he was holding off until Belle had recovered from the brawl before seeing her.

How long Mark had been asleep, he did not know. Lying in bed in the darkness of his room, he waited for a repetition of the sound which woke him. Reaching out his right hand, he drew a Colt from where his gunbelt lay on the chair.

The door of his room inched open and he could see a shape, darker than the surrounding blackness, at it.

“Mark!” a voice whispered.

“Come ahead, Belle,” he replied, swinging from the bed and reaching for his levis.

Belle entered the room and closed the door behind her, standing still until Mark drew the curtains and lit the lamp. In its light, Mark studied Belle and a grin of admiration flickered to his lips. She wore a flimsy robe he had seen her in the previous night, but her hair and face still bore traces of the fight even though the doctor had tried to clean her up. The admiration came as a tribute to her courage, not her appearance. After that brawl, Belle could still get up and walk, if hobbling painfully.

“I’m in trouble, Mark,” she said, limping to the bed and flopping down to sit on it.

“You sure look that way,” he agreed.

“Framant saw me. I’m sure he knows who I am. And so does Joel Stocker.”

“Don’t worry about Framant,” Mark said gently. “He was waiting up here for you.”

Which explained itself to anybody who took a minute to think about it. The fact that Mark was still alive, and she still had her freedom, told Belle all she needed to know.

“Joel Stocker knows,” Belle went on. “He’s not as du—”

Her words stopped abruptly as the room door opened. Mark caught up his Colt ready to use, and Belle reached towards the second gun.

“I thought I’d find you here!” Calamity said from the doorway.

She stood for a moment, eyeing Belle with a mixture of anger and admiration. The last thing Calamity felt like doing was going visiting in her present state of health.

“Shut the door and keep your voice down, Calam,” Mark snapped. “Belle’s in trouble.”

“I’ll say she is,” Calamity replied, closing the door. “B—Belle?”

“Belle Starr, the mustached lady,” Belle grinned.

“You mean—you—I—you’re—”

“Whatever that means, I’m still Belle Starr.”

Crossing the room, Calamity flopped down beside Belle, staring at the other girl and holding the blanket draped around her shoulders.

“Belle Starr!” she said wonderingly, then held out a hand. “I’m sorry, Belle, I didn’t know about it when I went to the poster. Shucks, if I had, I’d’ve kept away and found some other way of starting the brawl so I could hand you your needings. Say, who won?”

Both girls looked at Mark expectantly, for neither could remember the details of the final stages of the fight and each felt sure she had been beaten.

“It was a stand-off,” he replied. “With both of you plumb tuckered out.”

“That’s a good way to be,” Belle said and took Calamity’s hand. “No hard feelings, Calam?”

“Not if you haven’t. Say, was you ever in Fort Baker? There’s a gal—”

“Let’s leave old home week until later,” Mark put in. “Belle’s got troubles enough without that.”

Possibly for the first time in her life Calamity looked contrite.

“Gee, I’m sorry, Belle. It’s all my fa—”

“Forget it, Calam. It’s as much my fault as yours. I didn’t have to let you needle me right then.”

“Framant won’t forget it,” Calamity pointed out.

“He’s no worry,” Belle replied. “I’m thinking about Joel Stocker. He knows I’m Belle Starr now, and Joel’s too good a lawman to overlook it. He might not like doing it, but he’d take me and send me back to Newton.”

Clapping a hand to her forehead, Calamity groaned. “And I’m the darned fool who caused it all. We’ll just have to pull out of town tonight.”

“Neither of you are in any shape to ride,” Mark pointed out. “Even if Belle had a hoss.”

“Which I haven’t.”

“You couldn’t handle my blood bay, the condition you’re in.” Mark went on, looking at Belle. “And even if you could, the saddle’s locked in Larkin’s office.”

“Will the marshal be coming after you tonight?” asked Calamity.

“Not if I know Joel. He’ll be around in the morning when I’ve had time to get around to talking and walking.”

“Then we’ve a chance,” Calamity grinned. “All we need is a feller with a strong back—which same we’ve got right here.”

On hearing Calamity’s plan, the other two agreed it might work. They wasted no time in preparing to put it into action.

“Calam, honey,” Mark grinned, putting on his shirt. “You pair know of more ways of making me lose sleep than anybody I know.”

~*~

Mark was just boosting a sick, sore and groaning Calamity on to the box of her wagon ready to leave town when Marshal Stocker strolled up. It was morning and the wagon stood ready to roll, Mark’s blood bay stallion waiting saddled for its master to mount.

“Morning, Miss Calamity, Mark,” he greeted. “See you’re fixing to leave.”

“Why sure,” Calamity grinned, settling down on the seat and reaching for the reins. “Say, have you-all seen that blonde gal around? I bet she’s still in bed after the whupping I handed her.”

A sleepy smile twisted Stocker’s lips as he looked at Calamity.

“Sure was a whupping,” he grinned. “She never laid a hand on you.”

“Then why’n’t you stop the crowd, somebody kicked hell out of me. You tell her she’ll know better’n tangle with Calamity Jane next time.”

“I’d do that. Only she’s up and gone.”

“Gone?” Calamity gasped. “How’d you mean, gone?”

“Must’ve left during the night. Took her trunk and belongings and gone. Are you travelling empty, Calamity?”

“Just some of my own stuff is all.”

Walking to the rear of the wagon, Stocker lifted the cover and looked inside. Apart from a fair sized oblong object covered with a buffalo hide, the wagon contained nothing. Turning back, Stocker stepped over a pile of buffalo chips and logs lying between the wagon and the corral fence. Calamity looked back at him.

“You don’t reckon I’d be hiding her in the back of my wagon after what happened last night, do you?” she asked.

“Nope, I reckon not,” Stocker answered. “I’ll drift along and see if I can find her around town. See you, Mark.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mark drawled. “You’ll be around.”

Throwing a warning glance at Calamity, Mark swung aboard his saddle and the blood bay walked forward. Calamity closed her mouth, took up the reins and started her wagon moving. For a few seconds Stocker stood watching them go, then he grinned, kicked the buffalo chips with his toe and slouched away.

Five minutes passed. Then three men came from a side alley where they had been watching the corral. Soskin, the leader of the trio of hardcases walked to the corral and looked around him. Behind him, Varney and Carter stood with puzzled expressions on their faces.

“Looks like Belle’s slipped out of town,” Varney growled.

“How?” Carter replied. “You saw Calamity, she could hardly stand. Reckon Belle’d be in any better shape?”

“She went all right,” Soskin put in, pointing down. “And that’s how, only Stocker was too dumb to see it.”

“What’re we going to do?” asked Carter.

“Trail the wagon from well back. Then when they make camp for the night move in on them.”

For three miles Mark and Calamity held an even pace, leaving the town behind them. They did not hurry, but Calamity repeatedly twisted around to look at their back trail. She noticed that Mark took no such precautions and grunted.

“What’s wrong, Calam?” he asked.

“Reckon the marshal won’t be following us?” she replied.

“He’ll not. His jurisdiction ends on the edge of town.”

“We sure put one over on him,” she chuckled.

“Reckon we did, huh?”

“Don’t you?”

“Nope.”

They were approaching a ford over a wide, though shallow river. Grinning at Mark, Calamity hauled back on the reins and slowed her team’s pace.

“Shall I stop here or the other side?” she asked. “I reckon I’ll go through—”

“You do and we’ll take up where we left off last night!” Belle’s voice yelled from under the wagon.

Laughing, Calamity brought the wagon to a halt, applied the brake and slowly climbed down from the box. Bending, she looked under the wagon to where Belle’s face showed from inside the possum belly; a sweat and dirt streaked face for the rawhide sheet had never been meant to carry passengers.

Unlike Calamity, Belle had not changed clothes, but wore a blanket over the outfit she had worn the previous night, or rather ended the fight in. She left the possum belly and groaned.

“Whooee!” Calamity grinned. “That’s a right fetching perfume you’re wearing, Belle gal.”

“Eau-de-buffalo chips they call it,” Belle replied. “The sooner I have a bath and change, the happier I’ll be.”

“Take the wagon across, Calamity,” Mark ordered. “Then I’ll ride circle while you both have a bath.”

“Yo!” Calamity replied. “Are you riding over, Belle?”

“Not me. I’m going straight in.”

That night Calamity and Belle looked much better as they sat around the campfire. They had bathed and combed out the tangles of their hair at the river, and Belle put on a black shirt, a pair of levis and dainty high-heeled riding boots collected from her trunk which Mark brought to the wagon from the hotel in the small hours of the morning.

“How about coming into Hays with me, Belle?” Calamity asked. “You’ll have to pick up a horse.”

“That’s not a bad id—”

“Just sit right where you are!” a voice interrupted, coming from the blackness beyond the fire. “We’ve got you under our guns.”

Sitting down, Mark could not have reached his guns quick enough to do anything other than get himself killed.

Calamity’s hip hurt from some part of the fight and she had removed her gunbelt, it lay just too far for her to reach it. Closer lay her blacksnake whip, but she knew better than make a move for it until the person on whom she meant to use it came into range. Belle had her vanity bag hanging from her wrist, but she doubted if she could get her Manhattan out fast enough to give the others a chance.

Soskin and his two men prowled forward into the firelight, their guns in their hands.

“Stay still, Counter,” Soskin ordered. “We want Belle.”

“You won’t get her,” Calamity replied, and started to rise.

“Stay down, Calamity!” growled Soskin. “I ain’t the sort to worry about shooting a woman, especially one who can handle a gun like you can.”

“Do it, Calam!” Belle snapped. “He means what he says.”

All the time the others spoke, Mark watched for a chance, but it did not come. While Soskin and his men would have made one of the big-name outlaws retch, they knew enough about the basic details of their trade to avoid giving chances to the people they covered. Faintly, yet distinctly, Mark heard the distant sound of hooves. Two riders at least and it sounded as if they were coming this way. As yet none of the others appeared to have heard the sound. Mark wondered who the approaching travelers might be. They came from the south, yet they might be friends of Soskin. Or they could be outlaws who would throw in with Soskin for a chance at the mythical loot of the Newton bank job. Even if they were just chance drifters, Mark did not care to have them horning in, for there would be no telling which way they would turn if they rode in and learned that Belle Starr was here.

“You know what we want, Belle?” Soskin asked.

“No.”

“Don’t play smart!” Varney snorted. “We want the money you stashed away after the Newton job.”

“All of it?”

“Naw,” Soskin answered. “We’ll play fair with you. Split it four ways.”

“And these two?” Belle went on.

“We’ll have to leave ’em so they can’t bother us any.”

“Sounds a good idea,” Belle said quietly, getting to her feet. “How about Captain Fog and the Ysabel Kid?”

A grin creased Soskin’s face. “We circled Elkhorn yesterday and never saw hide nor hair of them. Happen he is Mark Counter, he’s working alone.”

“You could be right at that,” Belle purred, then looked at Calamity. “Sorry about this, Calam, but I just never could stand playing the losing side.”

Sudden fury boiled up inside Calamity and she looked at Belle. They had been on the best of terms all day, laughing and joking, discussing the high points of the fight, talking over their lives. Now Belle was calmly going to side with the three men who planned to kill them.

“Why you cheap, lousy, double-dealing—!” Calamity began.

Watching Belle move towards Calamity, Mark tensed slightly. He saw the trio of hardcases were paying more attention to the girls than to him. Mark did not know what Belle’s game might be, but he guessed something more than a change of sides lay behind her words.

Stepping towards Calamity, Belle drew back her foot. “I owe you something from last night,” she said.

Just in time Calamity saw Belle’s good eye close in a wink. Then the foot lashed out at her body. Yet it did not come as fast as it might and Calamity had time to shoot up her hands, catch Belle’s ankle and twist.

“Get clear of her, Belle!” Soskin bellowed, suddenly seeing the danger.

He saw it a full five seconds too late. Calamity twisted Belle’s ankle and caused Belle to stagger. At the same moment Calamity released the ankle, rolled right over and grabbed up her whip.

“It’s a trick!” Varney yelled, his gun lining on the staggering Belle.

Several things all started to happen, shattering the group around the fire into sudden and violent action.

Mark flung himself to the left, landing on his side with his right hand Colt drawn and cocked. Varney’s revolver was already lining on Belle when Calamity brought her hand sweeping forward. The lash of the blacksnake whip curled out to wrap around Varney’s ankle. Still lying on her side, Calamity heaved back on the whip handle and Varney felt his foot jerk upwards. He fired a shot, but it went harmlessly into the air.

Snarling in a mixture of rage and fear, Carter threw down on Calamity; but Belle had her Manhattan out of her vanity bag’s holster. She regained her balance and fired a shot which caught Carter in the shoulder, spun him around and put him out of the fight.

Which left Soskin. Never the quickest of thinkers, the man stood hesitating and trying to decide who to throw lead at first. When dealing with a man like Mark Counter such a show of indecision could prove dangerous. Mark’s Colt roared while Soskin’s still wavered uncertainly. The gun was batted from Soskin’s hand for Mark had time to take careful aim and did not wish to shoot to kill.

For a moment Varney stood gun in hand, for he had not fallen when Calamity caught his ankle. The whip’s lash writhed away, curling behind Calamity as she prepared to strike again. At the same instant Varney found himself facing the barrel of Belle’s Manhattan and Mark’s Army Colt.

Out drove the whip’s lash again, this time with Calamity on her knees and able to get full power behind it. Varney howled as the lash curled around his wrist. He felt as if the bones had been crushed and the gun fell from his hand.

“Which just about ends that,” Calamity drawled, shaking free her whip. “Why in hell didn’t you wig-wag me, Belle gal, let me know what you aimed to do?”

“I reckoned you’d react better without,” Belle grinned. “And I was right.”

Then they heard the thunder of rapidly approaching hooves.

“Hey, Mark!” yelled a voice. “Any more of them around?”

“Hundreds,” Mark called back. “That’s why we stood out here all lit by the fire. Come on in and stop that yelling.”

Two men rode into the light of the fire. One was a tall, slim, almost babyishly innocent faced youngster dressed all in black, with a walnut handled Colt Dragoon at his right side, an ivory hiked bowie knife at the left. He sat on a huge white stallion with an easy, almost Indian grace, a Winchester rifle in his hands. The other was smaller, not more than five foot six, with dusty blond hair, a handsome, though not eye-catching face. Belted at his waist were a pair of white handled Army Colts, their butts turned for cross-draw. He rode a seventeen-hand paint stallion with two letters burned on its flank; an O and a D, the edge of the O touching the straight line of the D.

“Howdy, Dusty, Lon,” Mark greeted, “wasn’t expecting to see you up here.”

“We got through our business in Newton early,” Dusty Fog replied, swinging from his paint’s saddle. “So we reckoned we’d ride up and find out how you were doing.”

“Which same it looks like you’re doing all right,” the Kid went on, tossing a leg over the saddlehorn and dropping from his white stallion.

Calamity stared at the Rio Hondo gun wizard, Dusty Fog, for a long moment. It seemed Mark had told the truth when he claimed Dusty Fog was a small man. After knowing Dusty for only a few minutes, she never again thought of him as. being small.

“What started all this?” Dusty asked. “We saw the fire and rode over to ask if we could camp the night. Saw you were in a tight spot, but you handled it before we reached you.”

While Calamity patched up Carter’s arm, Mark told Dusty everything. The small Texan threw a look at Belle, then to where Calamity stood working on, and cursing, the groaning man. From the look of the girls, it had been some fight, yet they appeared to be friendly enough.

“So they wanted you to show them where the loot of the Newton bank job is hidden, Belle,” he said. “How’d they plan to get you there?”

“We brought Wicker’s hoss along. It’s with our’n out on the range,” Soskin replied.

“Go and find them, Lon,” Dusty said, then turned his attention to the three hardcases. “That would have taken some doing, collecting the money.”

“How d’you mean?” asked Soskin sullenly.

“The marshal in Newton isn’t as dumb as the sheriff,” Dusty explained. “He didn’t like some of the signs about the hold-up. So he watched the teller, caught him boarding the stage out of town, one that connected with the overland route to the south. The teller had a nice carpet-bag, with thirty thousand dollars inside.”

“What?” Soskin yelped.

“Sure. When the gang spooked, they dropped the bag with the money in it. So the clerk picked it up, hid it and then gave the alarm.”

“And the sheriff’s posse shot four men for nothing.” Belle said quietly.

“Sure,” Dusty agreed. “Then the story about a girl being with the gang came out. Maybe the sheriff was just trying to justify the killings, maybe he believed what he heard. Anyway he put out the dodger on you, Belle, and the story that you had hidden the loot got out.”

“Four men died,” Belle said quietly. “A bank teller takes a chance and grabs the loot they dropped, and they died.”

“Five counting Framant,” Calamity Jane put in.

“I wouldn’t say that, Calam,” Mark drawled. “What killed Framant was the bounty on Belle Starr’s scalp.”