Running Irons (10 page)

“The other girls laugh at me when I talk about it,” Mousey said wistfully. “But I know Tommy will marry me as soon as we’ve saved enough money to buy in on a little place of our own.”

On entering the dining room, Calamity began to see the reason for Mousey’s almost pathetic eagerness to be friends. All the other half-dozen girls seated around the table appeared to be either older, or at least more suited to the life of a saloon-girl. Brassy, hard-faced, none of them would be the sort of friend an innocent kid like Mousey wanted and most likely her attempts at making friends met with constant rebuffs.

More than any of the others, one girl took Calamity’s attention. There was trouble, or Calamity had never seen it. The girl was a blonde, slightly taller and heavier than Calamity, shapely, beautiful; and knowing it she had an air of arrogant truculence about her.

For the rest, they looked like the kind of girls one expected to find in a saloon. Maybe a mite younger and better-looking than one figured on in
a small town such as Caspar, but run-of-the-mill. Even the buxom brunette who sat at the head of the table and smoked a cigarette, she would be one of the boss girls and, while looking tough and capable, did not strike Calamity as being out of the ordinary.

“How do you feel, Dora?” Mousey asked sympathetically, going to the blonde.

“Great, how else?”

“But I thought——” the little blonde gasped.

“God! You’re dumb!” the bigger girl spat out.

“She’s not alone in that,” snapped the buxom brunette. “If your brains were gunpowder and went off they wouldn’t stir your hair.”

An angry glint came into Dora’s eyes, but she knew better than give lip to Maisie. So she turned her spleen on somebody else. Her eyes went to Calamity who still stood at the door, taking in the red-head’s travel-stained clothing and lack of make-up.

“Who’re you?” she asked.

“This’s Marty Connelly,” Mousey introduced, sounding puzzled. Dora did not act like a girl grieving for a dead lover. If it had been Tommy who—here Mousey stopped herself with a shudder—well, she wouldn’t act like Dora did at such a time.

Smarting under Maisie’s rebuke, Dora watched Calamity walk toward the table and decided to establish her superiority over the newcomer. Which
only went to prove that she had no right to call anybody else dumb.

“Is the boss hiring tramps now?” she sniffed and a couple of her particular friends giggled.

Calamity looked Dora up and down with cold eyes. While she had refrained from handing Phyl her needings upstairs, Calamity figured there must come a time when meekness stopped; and that time had arrived right then. If she allowed Dora to push her around, her subsequent social position would be under the blonde; which Calamity reckoned might be mighty undesirable.

“Looking at you,” Calamity said calmly, “I’d say the boss started hiring
old
tramps some time back.”

“My my!” Dora purred, twisting around in her chair. “Aren’t you cute?”

With that the blonde hurled forward and lashed around her right hand in a savage slap calculated to knock its receiver halfway across the room and reduce her to wailing submission. Only to achieve its object the slap had to land on the other girl first.

Throwing up her left hand, Calamity deflected the slap before it reached her. Before Dora recovered balance or realized just how wrong things were going, Calamity drove a clenched fist into the blonde’s belly. The blow took Dora completely unawares, sinking in deep and driving waves of agony through her. Croaking with pain, Dora
folded over and caught Calamity’s other fist as it whipped up. Dora came erect, a trickle of blood running from her cut lip, and caught a roundhouse smash from Calamity’s right hand. The fist crashed into the blonde’s cheek just under her eye and sent her sprawling backward to land with a thud on her butt by the table.

“All right, you alley-cats!” Maisie yelled, throwing back her chair and coming to her feet. “Simmer down. If you want to fight, save it until tonight and do it in the bar for the paying customers.”

“I’ll take her any time!” Calamity hissed, crouching with crooked fingers as she had seen so many belligerent girls stand at such a moment.

“How about you, Dora?” asked Maisie, knowing the entertainment value of a good hair-yanking brawl between two of the girls.

Dora did not answer, but sat on the floor trying to nurse her swelling, pain-filled eye, soothe her puffing-up lip and hold her aching, nausea-filled stomach, sobbing loudly all the time. Never a popular girl, Dora received little sympathy from her fellow-workers.

Looking down at the blonde, one of the other girls gave a laugh and said, “I don’t think Dora feels like tangling with Marty.”

Walking to Dora’s side, Maisie bent down and pulled the blonde’s hand from the eye, looking at the discoloration forming.

“Whooee!” said Maisie with a grin. “That’ll be a beauty soon. Anyways, it’ll keep you out of the way for a few days. Which’s a good thing, the way you’re acting. You’d queer the boss’s game going on like you are when you’re supposed to have lost your own true love. Now shut your yap, or I’ll turn Marty loose on you again.”

Knowing that Maisie meant every word she said, Dora stifled her sobs. She dragged herself to her feet and limped slowly from the room. Looking around the table, Calamity did not figure she would have trouble with any of the other girls.

Now all she had to do was start learning the proof of the saloonkeeper’s part in the Caspar County cow stealing.

A
LTHOUGH
C
ALAMITY WONDERED HOW
E
LLA
Watson would take the news of her actions, no complaints came down from the boss’s office. Over the meal Calamity became acquainted with the other girls. She let it be known that she left Austin at the town marshal’s request, but none of the other girls pressed her too deeply about her past. Having seen how Calamity handled Dora, a tough girl in her own right, the rest figured that the redhead might resent too close questioning and had a real convincing argument for anybody who tried. One thing Calamity made sure the others knew, how Mousey stood with her. Always a generous and good-hearted girl, Calamity had decided to
take Mousey under her wing and intended to give the friendship the little blonde craved but found missing among the other saloon workers.

After eating, Calamity waited until Mousey dressed and then they left the Cattle Queen. While walking along Main Street toward the Chinese laundry’s bath-house, Calamity listened to Mousey’s chatter and kept her eyes peeled for some sign of Danny Fog, but saw nothing of him. However, Mousey, telling of the discovery of Gooch and the cowhands’ bodies, let Calamity know that Danny had arrived and appeared to be well involved in the business which brought them both to Caspar County.

Even without formal training, Calamity used the best technique for a peace officer involved in such a task; she let the others do most of the talking. With Mousey that proved all too easy. Starved for friendship and loving to talk, she prattled on and gave Calamity some insight into the doings of the area.

“That Dora!” Mousey sniffed indignantly. “She was in love with Sammy, yet she doesn’t even look as if she cares about him being killed.”

Calamity doubted, from the little she had seen of Dora, if the girl really loved a forty-dollars-a-month cowhand. However, Mousey’s words gave Calamity an idea of how Ella Watson ensnared the young cowhands into her cow-stealing organiza
tion. Women were far outnumbered by the men out West and the local young cowboys would easily become infatuated by a saloon-girl. After that, the rest would be easy.

“She’s a mean cuss all right,” Calamity admitted. “Does she pick on you?”

“A little. If I could fight like you do she wouldn’t.”

“You’re danged tooting she wouldn’t,” grinned Calamity and felt at Mousey’s nearest arm. “Say, you’re a strong kid. She’d be like a bladder of lard against you if you stayed clear of her and used your fists instead of going to hair-yanking. I’ll teach you how, if you like.”

Thinking of all the mean tricks Dora had played on her, Mousey gave a delighted nod. “Boy, that’d be great, Marty. Where’d you learn to fight?”

“Here and there. Hey, isn’t this the place we want?”

On their return from the bath-house and while waiting for the evening trade to arrive, Calamity began to teach Mousey a few basic tricks of rough-house self-defense in their room. From the way the little blonde learned her lessons, Calamity could almost feel sorry for Dora and next time she tried her bullying.

When Calamity and Mousey reported to the bar room to start work, Dora was nowhere in sight, being confined to her room with an eye that re
sembled a Blue Point Oyster peeking out of its shell. So Mousey did not find opportunity to put her lessons into practice.

Calamity found the feeling of wearing a saloon-girl’s garish and revealing clothing and being in a bar as a worker a novel sensation. Not that she did much work at first. Until shortly after eight o’clock only a few townsmen used the bar and they showed little interest in the girls, having wives at home who took exception to the male members of the family becoming too friendly with female employees of the saloon.

Shortly after eight a few cowhands began to drift in and the place livened. The girls left their tables and mingled with the new arrivals. Laughter rang out, a couple of the games commenced operation and the pianist started playing his instrument. A couple of the customers came to where Calamity and Mousey stood by the bar.

“Hey, Mousey, gal,” greeted the taller customer, a cheerful young cowhand sporting an early attempt at a moustache, “Where-at’s Tommy?”

“He’s not in tonight,” Mousey replied.

“Then how’s about you and your
amigo
having a drink with me ’n’ Brother Eddie?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Calamity told him. “The name’s Marty.”

“This’s Stan and Eddie,” Mousey introduced. “They work for the Box Twelve.”

“Sure do,” Eddie, a shorter, slightly younger version of Stan, agreed. “Say, what’ll you gals have to drink?”

“It’ll have to be beer until I’ve seen Miss Ella,” Stan warned.

“My mammy always told me never to look a gift-beer in the froth,” replied Calamity.

“Lord, ain’t she a pistol?” whooped Eddie. “I’ll buy ’em until you get your money off Miss Ella.”

A frown creased Stan’s face as he glared at his brother. “You hold your voice down, you hear me, boy?”

“I hear you,” Eddie answered, dropping his voice. “Hell, these gals are all right, Stan.”

“Sure we are,” agreed Calamity. “First thing a gal learns working in a saloon is to mind her own business.”

Apparently the words mollified Stan for he started to grin again. “Sure, Marty. Only folks might get the wrong idea if they heard Eddie.”

“He’s only young yet, not like two old mossy-horns like us,” Calamity answered. “Say, do we have to stand with our tongues hanging out?”

“Huh?” grunted Stan, then started to grin and turned to the bar. “Four beers Izzy, the ladies’re getting thirsty. Say Mousey, where-at’s the boss lady?”

“Upstairs, I think,” Mousey replied.

“Just have to wait a spell then. Here, Marty, take hold and drink her down.”

The beers came and the cowhands drew up their chairs, sitting with Calamity and Mousey at a table. While drinking, Mousey and the cowhands discussed local affairs. Calamity noticed that any attempt to bring up the subject of cow stealing was met with an immediate change of subject by the cowhands. Not that she kept asking questions, but Mousey seemed to be interested as might be expected from one who had been some time in Caspar County. While Stan and Eddy cursed the departed Gooch for a cowardly, murdering skunk, neither appeared eager to discuss why he might have shot down the two Bench J cowhands. Showing surprising tact, Mousey changed the subject and told of Danny’s defeat of the Rafter O’s bay. A grin played on Calamity’s lips as she listened; it appeared that Danny Fog had been making something of a name for himself since his arrival.

“Let’s go have a dance,” Eddie suggested.

“Sure, let’s,” Mousey agreed.

Already several couples were whirling around on the open space left for dancing. Calamity, Mousey and the two cowhands joined the fun and it was well that Calamity had always been light on her feet for cowhands did not often make graceful partners. However, Calamity had long been used to keeping her toes clear of her partner’s feet when dancing and found little difficulty in avoiding
Stan’s boots as they danced in something like time to the music.

Calamity saw the two buxom girls who acted as Ella’s lieutenants standing by the bar and watching her. For a moment she wondered if they might be seeing through her disguise. If she had heard their conversation, she would not have worried.

“That Marty doesn’t dance too well,” Maisie remarked.

There was a considerable rivalry between Phyl and Maisie and the red-head took the comment to be an adverse criticism of her as she took Calamity to see Ella and had her hired.

“Maybe she’s out of practice,” she answered. “
You
should know they don’t go much for dancing classes at the State Penitentiary.”

Before Maisie could think up a suitable reply, Phyl walked away. The matter dropped for neither girl felt sufficiently confident in her chances of winning to risk a physical clash that would establish who was boss.

“Hey, Phyl,” called Stan, leading Calamity from the dance floor. “Where-at’s Miss Ella?”

“She’s still up in her room, but she ought to be down soon,” Phyl answered. “You wanting to see her real bad?”

“Bad enough. We, me’n’ Eddie’s going with the boss to take a herd to Fort Williams and’ll be away for a month. I wanted to see if—well, she’ll know.”

“I’ll go up and see her,” Phyl promised.

On reaching Ella’s door, Phyl knocked and waited.

“Who is it?” Ella’s voice called.

“Phyl. It’s important.”

The door opened and Phyl entered to find Ella standing naked except for a pair of men’s levis trousers. This did not surprise the red-head for she knew that her boss had not been in the room all afternoon.

“What’s wrong?” Ella asked. “I’ve only just got back from the hideout.”

“It’s Stan, that kid from the Box Twelve. He’s down there and wanting to see you. Only he’s pulling out with a herd and won’t be back for a month.”

Ella frowned as she went to her bed and removed the pants. Knowing why Stan wished to see her, she did not care for the last piece of Phyl’s information. The cowhand had delivered ten stolen yearlings to Ella’s men and awaited payment, but she knew that if he rode out with the money her place would never profit by it.

“Who’s he with?” she asked, standing clad in her black drawers and reaching for her stockings.

“His kid brother.”

“I mean of our girls.”

“Mousey——”

“She’s no good for what I want,” Ella interrupted.

“That new gal, Marty’s, with them. Her and Mousey’s got real friendly.”

“Marty, huh? This might be a chance to find out just what she’s like.”

“Hey, that reminds me, boss,” Phyl put in. “You had an answer to that telegraph to Austin. Marty
was
put on the stage by the town clown, for lifting a drunken dude’s wallet.”

“I thought as much,” Ella stated, drawing on her stockings. “Go down and tell Stan I’ll be in soon, and after I’ve paid him off, you can let me have a word with Marty.”

Half an hour later Ella strolled downstairs dressed in her usual work-day style and showing no sign of having sneaked out of town that afternoon, taken a long ride and not long returned from visiting the hiding place of the stolen cattle.

“Did that feller see you-all, Miss Ella?” Stan asked eagerly as she came up.

“Sure, Stan,” Ella answered and held out the envelope she carried. “Say, what’s in this?”

“Poker winnings, ma’am.”

Like the rest of the cowhands who became involved in the cow stealing, Stan believed that Ella merely acted as an innocent go-between for the hard-case Stocker who took the cattle from them. Taking the envelope, Stan opened it and extracted the money. He slipped four of the ten-dollar bills into his wallet and turned to the bar.

“You’ve been lucky,” Ella remarked, watching him thrust the wallet into his hip pocket.

“Sure have, ma’am,” Stan agreed with a grin. “This’ll sure buy us a time when we get to Fort Williams.”

“So you’re deserting us, Stan,” Ella smiled.

“Shucks, it’ll only be for a spell. Say, ma’am, can I buy you a drink?”

“I’ll take a brandy, Stan, thank you.”

“One brandy, two glasses of whisky, something for the gals and one for you, Izzy,” ordered the cowhand. “Say, when’s old Pedlar Jacobs coming up here again?”

“Don’t know, Stan,” replied the bartender. “He comes and goes. What’s up?”

“Got him a real fancy white-handled Army Colt last time he was in. I figured I might buy it. Is he a friend of your’n?”

“Not especially,” grunted the bartender and moved away to attend to another customer. One thing Izzy did not wish to discuss was his association with Jake Jacobs, particularly before his boss.

“Drink up and have another, gals,” Stan told them, ignoring the departing Izzy. “I’m just going out back.”

As Eddie elected to go along with his brother, Ella had her chance to talk with Calamity. First Ella sent Mousey off with a message for Phyl, then turned to her latest employee.

“When Stan rides off, I want you to bring me his wallet,” the saloon-keeper ordered. “And don’t try
to look shocked or innocent. I heard from Austin and know why you left town.”

“Oh!” said Calamity flatly, not quite sure how she ought to react.

“You don’t need to worry about that here, either. As long as you only do it when I tell you. Go to it and lift his leather for me.”

“Yes’m,” said Calamity.

Yet she felt worried by the assignment even though it presented her with a chance to gain Ella Watson’s confidence. Calamity remembered Murat’s warning that she must not become a party to any crime by actual participation. Even without the warning Calamity would have shrunk from stealing and did not want the young cowhand believing she was a thief.

At that moment Stan and his brother returned and Ella drifted away. The two young cowhands behaved in a more steady manner than Calamity would have expected, knowing how most of their kind acted when in the money. Although Stan and Eddie bucked down to enjoying themselves, they did not go beyond the ten dollars the elder brother retained for his payment. Of course, ten dollars could get a couple of cowhands reasonably drunk, even when buying drinks for various friends.

“Ten o’clock, time we was riding, Brother Eddie,” Stan remarked after bringing Calamity from the dance floor.

“Sure thing, big brother,” grinned Eddie. “See you around Mousey.”

“Now me,” Stan stated, his arm around Calamity’s waist, “I’ve got more good sense than to pick up with a gal who’s got a feller. You-all coming to see me on my way, Marty, gal?”

“I sure wouldn’t miss it for the world,” replied Calamity.

Arm in arm, she and Stan left the room, with Eddie following on their heels. Outside the youngster left his elder brother on the sidewalk while he went to collect the horses. Slipping his arm around Calamity’s waist, Stan looked down at her.

“Do I get a kiss afore I leave?” he asked.

“Not out here. Let’s go into the alley.”

“We’re on our way, Marty, gal.”

On reaching the shelter of the alley, Calamity turned to face the young cowhand. Like she figured, he might be trying to sprout a moustache and act all big and grown-up, but Stan lacked practical experience in such matters. In her time Calamity had been made love to by some prominent gentlemen, the kind of fellers who could near on curl a girl’s hair just by taking her in their arms. Stan did not come into that class by a good country mile.