Troubled range (17 page)

With no more concern than he showed when looking at his brothers, Big Tup walked forward, bent and dug his hand into Tilda-Mae's hair. He lifted the girl's head from the

ground, looking at the dirty, bruised features and glazed unseeing eyes. Releasing Tilda-Mae, he let her flop to the ground once more and turned to look at Jaya who supported herself by the corral rail, gasping for breath, sobbing and trying to hold the ripped top of her dress together.

"You whupped her fair V square, lil furrin gal," Big Tup said. "She won't bother you or your man again."

Bending, he lifted his sister and carried her to her horse, draping her face down over its back.

At the same moment Johnny came up, limping and with his wounded arm hanging limply at his side. In his good hand, he held a Colt.

"Let it lie, Johnny!" Mark snapped, stepping into his line of fire.

"Look at what she did to Jaya!" Johnny growled, turning his eyes to the little girl who had sunk to her knees.

"You should see what Jaya did to her," Mark grinned. "Boy, when you're all married off to her, you do what she says. That gal fights like Dusty, uses a lot of the same tricks."

At another time Johnny might have been interested to know of somebody who could use the fighting techniques so ably practised by Dusty Fog. Right now his only interest was Jaya.

Dropping the Colt, Johnny sprang to the girl's side. She turned her face to his.

"I—I would have gone away—rather than let them hurt you," she said.

With his good arm, Johnny lifted the girl to her feet and supported her as he headed her for the house. Mark turned to watch Big Tup leading the scrub horse and its burden up the hill and saw two of the brothers on their feet. The youngest turned and jumped to where his rifle lay, but Big Tup bellowed and waved a hand to Tilda-Mae. Lowering the rifle without lining it, the young man moved down to meet Big Tup and his sister.

Picking up the Colt Johnny had dropped, Mark looked at it, then turned.

"Hey, Johnny!" he called. "The next time you decide to throw a gun around in the dirt—do it with one of your own."

Mark looked at the other two occupants of the room and grinned as he sank stiffly into a chair at the breakfast table.

"What's so funny?" Johnny growled, limping up and taking his seat.

"I was thinking what a sorry looking bunch we look," Mark explained.

Hobbling stiffly around with the food and coffee, Jaya looked at the two men's faces and smiled.

"Do I look like you?" she asked.

"Worse," Mark replied.

It was the morning after the day of the fights. Although none of the three meant to, they had slept in late and Jaya, first awake, now served them their food. On taking her seat, she looked at Johnny and Mark, then started to giggle. Her merriment started Johnny chuckling, for he too now saw what amused Mark.

After the departure of the hill family, Mark helped Johnny to care for Jaya, then patched his amigo's wound up, using a basic knowledge of such matters gained in years of hectic life. The wound proved to be more messy and painful than dangerous, but Mark put Johnny's arm in a sling to prevent him using it too much.

With Jaya and Johnny's help, and his own terrific strength, Mark unloaded the supplies and stored them in the root cellar under the house. Then he moved as much of the furniture back into the house as he could manage. After that Mark was only too willing to go to sleep.

Jaya had bathed the previous night, combed the tangles out of her hair and now, with a couple of additions, looked her usual self.

"Where'd you learn to fight like you did?" Johnny asked her. "I never saw anybody but a French-Creole kick like you did."

"It is an old Siamese fighting trick," she replied. "I was a wild child and learned to defend myself from the native children."

"You sure did," Mark grinned. "If you hadn't tangled with her, we'd likely still be out there, or dead."

"They would have killed us all?" she gasped.

"They're hill folk, mountain men. Don't go by the same

standards as other people. They've lived to that code ever since their kind moved in from the east. Cut one hill feller and all his kin bleed. They live by the rules their fathers and grandfathers laid down for them. That's why they didn't shoot after you and the gal tangled. She'd made the fight a personal thing and they couldn't cut in."

"Then she won't come here again?" Jaya asked.

"Not after Johnny," Mark replied. "That's for sure. Under the code of the mountain folk she was whipped fair and square and she's got no claim on him."

"She never had," Johnny growled.

"I feel a little sorry for her," Jaya put irt, ignoring Johnny's comment.

At that moment they heard hooves outside and the snort of a horse, then a voice called: "Hello, the house!"

"Tilda-Mae!" Johnny snapped, thrusting back his chair.

The girl sat her horse in front of the house. Although she wore a shirt it was not clean and she had made a very poor job of cleaning the results of the fight from her face and those parts of her body which showed; nor had she done anything about her dirty, tangled mop of hair.

"Can I see the furr—your woman, Johnny?" she asked without dismounting.

"No you c—"

Before Johnny could finish his denial, Jaya came from the house and pushed between him and Mark, stepping from the porch.

Tilda-Mae squinted down at Jaya, then looked at the two men. "Can we make women talk?"

"Of course. Get off your horse. Come in and have some breakfast. We only just rose."

Slipping from her horse, Tilda-Mae stood by it. She raised her right foot against her calf, looking embarrassed. She made no attempt to walk towards the house and Jaya turned to tell the two men to go inside.

"It's all right, Johnny," she said when he showed signs of hesitation. "Go in, please."

Once left alone words rushed out of Tilda-Mae's mouth.

"I want you to help me! I want to know why it is I can't never get a man who'll stick to me. And I don't mean Johnny.

Sure I went after him, but he never said he'd marry me. But I want to know why I can't get a man."

"How would I know?" Jaya smiled.

"You furrin gals know about things like that."

Looking at the other girl, Jaya felt pity for her. Tilda-Mae was lonely and needed affection. Her brothers were kind enough in their own lights, but they did not give the girl the love and affection she craved for. So she had tried to find it with other men, and never with happy results.

"I'll help you," Jaya promised, looking the other girl over. "The first thing we do is get you a bath—"

"A bathr Tilda-Mae gasped. "You mean all over, without any clothes on?"

"Of course. A man likes a girl to smell nice. Come, I found some clothes belonging to Johnny's aunt, they might fit you, and there are other things that we can use."

"Yeah, but—" Tilda-Mae groaned, hanging back at the awful thought of having a bath.

"It's the only way," Jaya warned, taking Tilda-Mae's grubby little hand and leading her gently towards the house.

Neither Johnny nor Mark knew what Jaya planned. She gave them orders to go out and find some work, but not to come in until she called for them.

At noon, still with no sign of the two girls, Johnny saw something which took his mind temporarily off thoughts of what Tilda-Mae might be doing to his Jaya.

A large party of people were coming towards the house. Four buggies carrying neighbouring families rolled in the centre of some twenty or more men. In the lead of the party, spurring his horse forward, rode Big Tup.

"Howdy, Johnny," he greeted, sliding the horse to a halt. "Real sorry about your arm. That big feller near on cracked Lenny's head and raised lumps on Sam and Jeb. Reckon we can call it evens?"

"If that's the way you want it," Johnny replied, throwing a puzzled look at the approaching party.

"Preacher's in town," Big Tup remarked. "So I sent the boys out to gather in your neighbours. Figured you and the fu—your gal'd like company on the way in to see him."

By that time the others of the party had arrived and broad grins came to every face as they studied Johnny.

"Where-at's your gal, Johnny?" asked a stout woman. "We didn't know you'd got here or we'd've come over to lend a hand."

"Java!" Johnny called.

The house door opened and Jaya came out. There were mutters of admiration and surprise at her appearance, but what the crowd saw following her really made them sit back and stare.

"Is that you, Tilda-Mae?" Big Tup gasped.

His surprise had good cause. The girl behind Jaya was clean, her hair still curly but soft looking and tidy, and she wore a gingham dress of modest pattern. During the morning Jaya had searched through the drawers of the side-piece and found clothes belonging to Johnny's dead aunt; she died some eighteen months before his uncle. For the first time in her life Tilda-Mae wore clean underclothes instead of old flour-sack drawers and she liked the feeling. She also liked the admiring looks several young men threw her way, but remembered Jaya's advice about not throwing herself at men so stood demure and unspeaking.

"Jaya," Johnny said. "There's a preacher down at Bagley's Corners. Do we want to see him?"

"Yes, Johnny," she gasped. "Yes, please!"

And she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him, then moved away with a blush on her cheeks as the watching people laughed. Her embarrassment did not last for the women of the party bore down on her, sweeping her and Tilda-Mae back into the house to do the things women must always do before a wedding.

It made a pretty picture. The bride standing blushing shyly at the side of the very nervous groom. The best man and bridesmaid in their places, the guests seated on cracker boxes, chairs and the bench brought in from its usual place on the store's porch. Bagley's Corners had not yet grown in size to the point where a preacher could live as a permanent thing, or to where a church became a necessity.

Standing with his back to the assembled crowd, the preacher prepared to start the ceremony. When the rustling and shuffling died away behind him, he turned to face the congregation.

First he looked at Java's puffed and swollen left eye and scratched cheek. Next his eyes went to Johnny's swollen nose and almost closed right eye. From there his gaze took in Tilda-Mae who sported two blackened eyes and a lump on her forehead and Mark whose left eye matched Johnny's right and whose top lip looked twice its normal size. After that the preacher looked at the crowd, to Tilda-Mae's three brothers who each bore signs of how the big blond Texan handled them; and finally to a pair of young men who carried more recent signs of a discussion as to who should escort this new, clean Tilda-Mae to town.

After travelling the Texas range for nearly twenty years in a vain attempt to save unruly souls, the preacher reckoned he could not be surprised any more. If the sight before him had not been a surprise, it would do until one came along. However, he rallied quickly.

"Dearly beloved," he said. "It sure looks like you had a hard time convincing each other it was time to come to church."

For a moment Jaya and Mark's eyes met and the girl smiled.

"We did," she breathed. "But we made it in the end."

Part Three

The Kidnappers

A sudden crash! The batwing doors of the Indian Nations Saloon burst open and the citizens of Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory—or such of them as chanced to be in the vicinity at that moment—were treated to the spectacle of Fatso Kinnear erupting into the street. He came out all doubled over, like a man who had been kicked in the belly by a mule; or hit there by a real powerful fist. On the street he dropped to the hoof-churned dirt and lay writhing in agony upon it.

An instant after Kinnear's arrival on the street, the batwing doors flew open once more and his partner, Lou Rushton, came into sight running backwards; or so it seemed. At least his stubby fat legs moved as if running, although they continued to do so after he left the sidewalk. Then he lit down on his feet and flopped backwards to crash down across Kinnear's bloated form.

Again the doors opened, although with less violence, as Mark Counter and his cousin Beau emerged. They halted on the sidewalk and looked down at the recumbent forms of their attackers with dispassionate gaze.

"It looks like they're plump tuckered out, Cousin Mark,"

said Beau, calmly setting right his grey cutaway jacket, for he was a professional gambler and always liked to appear neatly dressed when his funds ran to it.

"Looks that way, Cousin Beau," Mark agreed. "I take it you'd won some and they didn't like losing."

"Amazing deduction. They sat in the game half an hour back and I warned them I intended to pull out at ten o'clock. But when the time came they objected to my going."

Beau's accents sounded different to Mark's deep south drawl for he had spent several years in England and picked up the speech of the upper-class folks he mingled with.

"Happen they'd known you, they'd've been pleased to see you go," grinned Mark. "It might have given them a chance to win."

"My dear old cousin, that pair couldn't count to eleven without taking off their shoes—I won't say socks, they probably don't wear any. Come along the street a piece, I've something for you."

A few people had gathered around, looking at the groaning shapes on the ground. One of the crowd wore the badge of a deputy town marshal, but he made no attempt to stop Mark and Beau as they walked away. Bounty hunters had never been held in respect by lawmen of the better kind. Kinnear and Rushton were even viler than most of their breed. The deputy knew they had come into Guthrie the previous day bringing in three dead outlaws, two of whom had been shot in the back, to make collection on the bounty their heads carried.

Being unmoved by public disapproval, Kinnear and Rushton took their blood money to the Indian Nations Saloon and found a big stake poker game in progress. They sat in and found Beau among the players. Not being skilful poker players, their money soon faded away, most of it going in the mistaken belief that Rushton could fill an inside straight on the draw.