The Cowboy MEGAPACK ®. Owen Wister

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      Croxton swayed and only Drew’s crowding their horses together kept the now unconscious scout from falling into the road dust. Kirby steadied the limp body from the other side.

      “Keep pullin’ him ’round this way, amigo, an’ he’ll be planted permanent, all neat an’ pretty with a board up at his head.”

      “There’s a house—back there.” Boyd pointed to the right, where a narrow lane angled away from their road, a small house to be seen at its end.

      Drew, Croxton’s weight resting against his shoulder, studied the house. The distant crackle of carbine fire rippled across the fields and came as a rumble of warning. It was plain that Croxton could not ride on, not at the pace they would have to maintain in order to outdistance pursuit; nor could he be left to shift for himself. To visit the house might be putting them straight into some Yankee’s pocket, but it was the only solution open now.

      “Hey, those mules!” Boyd had already ventured several horse lengths down the lane. Now he jerked a forefinger at two animals, heads up, ears pointed suspiciously forward, that were approaching the fence at a rocking canter. “Those are Jim Dandy’s! You remember Jim Dandy, Drew?”

      “Jim Dandy—?” the other echoed. And then he did recall the little Englishman who had been a part of the Lexington horse country since long before the war. Jim Dandy had been one of the most skillful jockeys ever seen in the blue grass, until he took a bad spill back in ’59 and thereafter set himself up as a consultant trainer-vet to the comfort of any stable with a hankering to win racing glory.

      To a man like Jim Dandy politics or war might not be all-important. And the fact that he had known the households of both Oak Hill and Red Springs could count for a better reception now. At least they could try.

      “No use you gettin’ into anything,” Drew told the Texan. “You and Boyd go on! I’ll take Croxton in and see if they’ll take care of him.”

      Kirby looked back down the road. “Don’t see no hostile sign heah ’bouts,” he drawled. “Guess we can spare us some time to bed him down proper on th’ right range. Maybeso you’ll find them in theah as leery of strangers as a rustler of the sheriff—”

      The Texan’s references might be obscure, but he helped Drew transfer Croxton from the precarious balance in the wounded man’s own saddle to Drew’s hold, and then rode at a walking pace beside the scout while Boyd trailed with the led horse.

      There was a pounding of hoofs on the road behind. A half dozen riders went by the mouth of the land at a distance-eating gallop. In spite of the dust which layered them Drew saw they were not Union.

      “Them boys keep that gait up,” Kirby remarked, “an’ they ain’t gonna make it far ’fore their tongues hang out ’bout three feet an’ forty inches. That ain’t no way to waste good hoss flesh.”

      “Got a good hold on him?” he asked Drew a moment later. At the other’s nod he rode forward into the yard at the end of the lane.

      “Hullo, the house!” he called.

      A man came out of the stable, walking with a kind of hop-skip step. His blond head was bare, silver fair in contrast to Boyd’s corn yellow, and his features were thin and sharp. It was Jim Dandy, himself.

      “What’s all this now?” he asked in that high voice Drew had last heard discussing the virtues of rival horse liniments at Red Springs. And he did not look particularly welcoming.

      “Mr. Dandy—” Drew walked his horse on, Croxton sagging in his hold, his weight a heavy pull on his bearer’s tired arms—“do you remember me? Drew Rennie, of Red Springs.” He added that quickly for what small guarantee of respectability the identification might give. Certainly in his present guise he did not look Alexander Mattock’s grandson.

      Dandy rested his weight on his good leg and swung his shorter one a little ahead. And his hand went to the loose front of his white shirt.

      “Now that’s a right unfriendly move, suh. I take it right unfriendly to show hardware ’fore you know the paint on our faces—”

      The smaller man’s hand fell away from his concealed weapon, but Kirby did not reholster the Colt which had appeared through some feat of lightning movement in his grip.

      “You’re not going to take my horses!” Even if there was no gun in Dandy’s hand, his voice stated a fact they could not doubt he meant.

      “Nobody’s takin’ hosses,” the Texan answered. “This heah soldier’s got him a mighty sore head, an’ he needs some fixin’. We ain’t too popular round heah right now, an’ he can’t ride. So—”

      Boyd pushed up. “Mr. Dandy, you know me—Boyd Barrett. And this is Drew Rennie. We have Yankees after us. And you never said you were Union—”

      Dandy shrugged. “No matter to me what you wear…blue…gray—you’re all a bunch of horse thieves, like as not. You, Mr. Boyd, what you doing riding with these here Rebs? And what’s the matter with that man? Got him a lick on the head, eh? Well—” he crossed with his lurching walk to stand by Drew, studying the now unconscious Croxton—“all right.” His voice was angry, as if he were being pushed along a path he disliked. “Get him into the stable. I ain’t yet took sides in this here bloody war, and I ain’t going to now. But the man’s hurt. Unload him and don’t tell me what he’s been doing back there to get him that knock. I don’t want to know.”

      He led the way into the stable, and moments later Croxton was as easy as they could make him on an improvised bed of straw and clean horse blankets. Dandy turned to them with Croxton’s gun belt swinging free in his hand, still weighted down with two revolvers.

      “You want these?”

      Drew glanced at his two companions. His own carbine was gone; he had dropped it at the verge of the millpond when he had taken charge of Croxton. Boyd was without any weapons, and Kirby had only side arms. Drew started to reach for the belt and then shook his head. If Sam was able to ride soon, he would need those. And the rest of them could take their chances at getting more arms. Boyd opened his mouth as if to protest, but he did not say anything as Drew refused the Colts.

      “You keep ’em—for him.”

      The ex-jockey nodded. “Better be riding on, Mr. Rennie. They’ll come looking, and I don’t fancy having any fight here. With luck we’ll get your friend on his feet all right and tight, and he can slip south when the dust is down a bit. But you’d better keep ahead of what can come down the pike now.”

      Kirby moved, the spurs jangling musically on his boots. “I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout that theah road,” he announced. “Any other trail outta heah we can take?”

      “Cross the pasture—” Dandy directed with a thumb—“then a cornfield, and you’ll hit the pike again. Cuts off about a mile.”

      “That sounds right invitin’.” The Texan led the way back to the yard and their waiting mounts. “Obliged to you, suh. Now,” he spoke to Drew, “I’d say it’s time to raise some dust. Ain’t far to sundown, an’ we oughta git some countryside between us an’ them rip-snortin’ javalinas—”

      “Javalinas?” Drew heard Boyd repeat inquiringly.

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