Troubled range (12 page)

Mark also turned, saw the seaman and acted. Faster than Johnny moved, Mark brought out his left hand Colt, his right hand shooting out to send the old soldier staggering to safety. Flame ripped from the barrel and the seaman reeled back under the impact of the lead. He still held his gun and tried to shoot, swinging the Adams in Mark's direction. It gave Mark no choice. He fired again, sending the bullet into the man's head and tumbling him in a lifeless heap on the floor.

The girl screamed, twisting away from the sight and standing with her hands clenched at her sides. Everybody in the room swung around, preparing to take cover. Smoke dribbled up from Mark's Colt and Johnny thrust his weapon back into its holster.

"Thanks, Mark," he said. "Looks like the feller saw I'd run a bluff on him and didn't like it."

"Sure looks that way," Mark replied. "I figured you hadn't filled the flush at all."

"I hadn't. Reckoned to give him a chance to win his boat back. I'd best go thank the lady, she saved me for sure."

"Go to it," Mark answered. "I'll send for the marshal."

Crossing the room, Johnny halted by the girl and looked down at her. She turned a frightened face to him.

"Thanks for the warning, ma'am," he said. "I'm sorry about what happened to your man."

"He is not my man," she replied. "You are."

"MeV Johnny asked, his voice rising a shade. "How'd you make that out?"

"My name is Jaya Hara. You won me from the captain. I saw him give you the papers."

The town marshal arrived and heard the details of the shooting, declared it to be self-defence and that no action

need be taken against Mark. In Texas at that time people took the sensible view that a man could defend his life, or the life of a friend, even to the extent of killing an aggressor should it be necessary. Mark had not sought a fight, but he shot to prevent the seaman killing Johnny and the law rightly found no fault in his actions.

Leaving the marshal to attend to the removal of the body, Mark crossed the room and joined Johnny at the bar. The little girl stood with Johnny and from the expression on Johnny's face, he was trying to explain something to her.

"I can't own you, Jaya," Johnny was saying as Mark joined them.

"You do," she replied and Mark could detect a faint accent in her speech. "The captain sold me to you. I saw him."

"Mark," Johnny groaned, turning to his big amigo, "tell Jaya that a man can't sell a gal to anybody."

"Let's get out of here first," Mark replied. "Like the marshal says, that feller might have friends, and he doesn't want a shooting war between the cowhands and sailors."

Turning, Mark headed for the door. Johnny watched him go, then followed, for he could see the wisdom in the marshal's suggestion. If the dead man had friends they might come back looking for revenge. Johnny and Mark could handle their guns and take care of their end in any man's fight, but the sailors would tend to side with their kind. This in turn would bring the cowhands in to help Mark and Johnny and could blow the whole town apart at the seams.

"Give me my bag, please," Jaya said to the bartender. "The smaller one."

"Sure," he replied, bending to lift a canvas duffle-bag from the floor. "How about the other one?"

"I do not want it," she answered, swinging the bag to her shoulder and hurrying across the room after the departing men.

"What were you saying in there?" Mark asked as he and Johnny left the saloon and walked along the sidewalk.

"That lil gal, Jaya she says her name is, she reckons I bought her off that sailor."

At that moment Johnny sensed rather than heard the girl

and turned towards her. Mark also swung around, looking at the bag the girl carried.

"What in hell?" Johnny snapped. "Look, gal, I don't own you."

"Yes you do. You have paper—"

"Durn the paper!" Johnny interrupted. "I'll give you the—"

"Let's get off the street and talk this out!" Mark put in urgently, for a few people were looking in their direction, attracted by Johnny's rising voice.

"Yeah, we'd better," Johnny replied. "Come on—and give me that durned bag, gal."

Jaya looked at Johnny in surprise as he took the bag from her hand, slung it on to his shoulder and turned to walk away. For the first time her full lips parted in a smile. Her mouth looked just a shade too large for some tastes, but the teeth were firm and even, without the gold filling so many Chinese girls sported. She fell into line behind him and followed on his heels.

Stopping, Johnny looked back at the girl. "Come on up here and walk between Mark and me, gal," he ordered.

"It would not be correct for me to do so," she answered.

"Dad-blast it, gal, this's Texas. You come between us."

Somehow they attracted less attention walking that way, although several people threw knowing looks at them. The looks annoyed Johnny for some reason. On more than one occasion he had escorted a girl through the streets and received the same sort of looks, only then the looks had been justified. This time he had no ulterior motive; and, strangely, the thought of the implied suggestion about Jaya's morals riled him.

On reaching the hotel where they had taken rooms, Johnny went to the reception desk and jerked a thumb toward Jaya. The reception clerk, a plump, pompous dude with spectacles and side whiskers, looked at the girl, then turned an indignant face to Johnny.

"This isn't the sort of hotel—!" he began.

"They never are," Johnny replied. "The lady's taking my room and I'm bunking with my amigo"

"Yes?" sniffed the clerk.

" Yes !" Johnny barked, his hands slapping palms down on the desk top and causing the clerk to take a hurried pace to the rear. "Any objections?"

"N—no, sir. None at all!"

Actually the clerk had several objections, but he remembered that the big blond cowhand had appeared to be on friendly terms with the hotel's owner, so kept his views to himself. Besides, he knew cowhands. One wrong word could cause more trouble than the clerk reckoned he could handle.

On reaching the door of his room, Johnny unlocked it and handed the key and her bag to Jaya.

"Say," he said, "do you have any other clothes in that bag?"

"Of course."

"You'd best put another dress on. That one sure attracts attention."

"Yes—may I call you Johnny? I heard your friend call you Johnny."

"Sure you can, Jaya," Johnny replied. "Come give me a knock when you're changed, then we'll go eat."

"You not wanting me to cook for you?" she gasped.

"Not today," Johnny grinned. "Let's say you're on holiday."

"I never had a holiday before," Jaya sighed, opening the room door and stepping inside. "I like belonging to you, Johnny."

Sitting on his bed, Mark grinned at Johnny when the young cowhand entered the room.

"What's amusing you?" Johnny asked. "That's a nice gal there."

"Sure is," Mark agreed. "What're you fixing to do with her?"

"Me?"

"You," Mark agreed. "She reckons you own her."

Johnny flung his hat on to the small dressing table angrily. You know that isn't possible, Mark."

"Why sure," Mark agreed. "I know it, you know it. But does she know it?"

"I'll explain it to her while we're eating," Johnny drawled.

"It's alius easy to explain things to a gal when she's full fed."

At that moment the door of the room opened and Jaya entered. She wore a different dress. The sight of it lifted Johnny out of his chair and even Mark, who reckoned to be blase about females, stared.

From waist to ankles the dress looked normal, no slit through which shapely legs could peek seductively, the sort of thing any good woman in town would wear. Above the waist—well, it would raise a dead Indian, happen one had been close at hand. The material clung so tight that it seemed moulded to her and left her arms and shoulders bare, apart from the two straps. The neckline of the dress had been cut down lower than even a dance-hall girl in a wide-open town would chance wearing, and showed that Jaya wore nothing but the dress.

"I have changed my dress as you say," Jaya announced unnecessarily.

"Land-sakes, gal!" Johnny gasped. "Is that the only one you have?"

"No, I have others, but they are smaller than this one."

Under different circumstances Johnny would not have cared how scantily a girl dressed. Yet somehow he felt differently about Jaya. She looked so small and helpless, happen a man kept his eyes on her face. He did not feel she should dress in anything so revealing when men could see her.

"Go put a coat on," he said. "I'll take you to the store and buy you a couple of dresses."

Left alone in the room, Mark lay back on his bed and grinned-up at the roof. He knew Johnny very well and had been surprised at the cowhand's behaviour towards the girl. With any other girl, or any other girl he had met in a saloon, Johnny would never have thought of handing over his room, or worried about how she dressed. Yet he had taken the little girl in and was spending money to buy her clothes more suited to the ideas people had about how a young woman ought to dress.

Maybe the chance meeting would have its use, Mark thought. While Johnny was a tophand with cattle, ready to work all hours of the day and night, or give his life blood for

the brand he hired to, he never accepted responsibility. He would need to if he hoped to make the ranch he inherited pay. What Johnny needed was a steadying influence, a wife—but would that girl make him the right kind of wife?

When Johnny returned, he presented Jaya clad in a gingham dress of modest, conventional pattern. A parcel he carried contained two more, and various articles of underclothing the storekeeper's wife insisted Jaya would need, for her scanty wardrobe did not contain any such luxuries.

"Let's go eat and talk things out," Mark suggested.

Over the meal, with Jaya attracting little attention in her new clothes, the girl told her story.

Jaya was born in a seaport on the Siam coast, although Mark had only a vague idea, and Johnny none at all, where this might be. Her father had been a German trader, her mother a Javanese dancing girl. Not that her father had been a very successful trader, the girl admitted, in fact he spent so much time drinking that he rarely had any business to support an ever-growing family.

Four years ago her father needed money and sold her to the man Mark killed, the captain of a small trading ship. From the calm way Jaya spoke of the matter, it did not appear to be an unusual transaction in her home land. The captain kept her on the ship as his cook and servant, strangely he had treated her as nothing worse—probably because he planned to sell her to some brothel keeper when she matured and knew he would gain a higher price that way. Then for some reason not unconnected with piracy, but into which Jaya did not go, the man sailed for the United States. He brought his ship around the tip of Southern America to make for the eastern sea-board rather than chance recognition on the west coast. On arrival at Brownsville, the captain had been in urgent need of money. He brought the girl ashore to try to sell her, however, the card game at the Last Battle Saloon gave Jaya a stay and Mark wrote a finish to the man's plan.

"I did not want to be what he would sell me for," she finished, looking at Johnny with her luminous black eyes and pleading that he believed her. "I am good girl. I cook good,

mend clothes or make them. I am strong, work very hard for you all the time, Johnny."

"But I don't own you," Johnny groaned.

"You do. You have the papers."

"Dang the papers!" Johnny yelled, then dropped his voice. "They don't mean a thing. You can go any time you want."

"I not want to go," she said. "You good man, you own me. 1 not leave you."

Nor would any amount of arguing shake the girl. Mark tried to help out by explaining the impossibility of Johnny owning her, but she brushed aside every suggestion that she was free.

"Blast it, Mark!" Johnny growled as they followed the girl upstairs after the meal. "How do—say, I've an idea. Let's me and you go out and have us a time. That way she'll see that 1 don't care."

"I'll go along with you," Mark replied. "It may work."

Not until they had reached the saloon nearest to the hotel did Johnny remember he had left his saddle, bedroll and war bag in the hotel room that he loaned to Jaya. Yet he did not worry for his every instinct told him his belongings would be safe.

It had been Johnny's intention to get drunk, which he did, then pick a gal as unlike Jaya as he could find and take her back to the hotel with him. That ought to show Jaya he wanted no part of her. He even had the right girl picked out, a large, buxom blonde beauty who would make two of Jaya in size and heft. The girl would have agreed to Johnny's proposal, but did not get a chance.

Just as Johnny started to walk towards the girl and suggest they made a night of it, he seemed to see another face before him. One with a mass of long black hair, dainty, pretty features and luminous, yet sad, black eyes. Suddenly Johnny wanted no part of the big blonde.

Instead he drank more than he meant to. Whisky never made Johnny aggressive. The only effect it had on him was to make him sleepy. After a time Mark steered Johnny back to the hotel. In their room Johnny gravely thanked Mark, shaking his hand and telling him that he was the best damned

amigo a man ever had. Then Johnny undressed and headed for his blankets which lay on the floor at the side of the room. Mark had done some drinking himself, though not as much as Johnny, and certainly not enough to make him lose his memory. Yet he could not remember Johnny bringing the bedroll into the room and spreading it out ready for use.

Mark was still thinking about the matter of Johnny's bedroll when he went to sleep. Light sleeper though Mark usually was, he did not hear the door open. A dark shape entered, spent a few minutes in the room and left as silently as it came.

"Where in hell's my clothes?"

Daylight streamed in through tbe room's window as Mark woke to Johnny's wail of anger. Sitting up in bed, Mark looked across the room to where Johnny sat on his blankets and stared around the room.