Free The Fortune Hunters by J. T. Edson Page B

the big Texan’s face. One way and another Calamity Jane knew Mark Counter pretty well. They had been good friends for several years and had sided each other in a couple of tight corners. Calamity reckoned she knew when Mark was funning her, and he did not appear to be doing so at the moment.
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to see him!’ she finally said. ‘You’ve never become one of them, have you?’
    ‘One of what, gal?’ grinned Mark.
    ‘One of them stinking socialists, or whatever they call themselves! That bunch who come out of them fancy eastern colleges and start dripping brotherly love over us uncouth, horny-handed workers, hating our guts all the time but willing to use us happen it’ll get them what they want.’
    ‘What do they want, gal?’
    ‘Everything anybody’s worked hard to get and that’s showing a profit. You surely haven’t joined them.’
    Mark grinned. His father owned the biggest ranch in the Texas Big Bend country; one built by hard work and because Big Ranse Counter was smarter and more able than the other men around. Where they had been content to let Big Ranse take the responsibility and risks of ownership, they played safe and accepted wages. The way Mark looked at it, his old man had worked damned hard for what he got and had the right to hang on to it, not hand it over to folks who had been willing to sit back and take his pay while he built his spread up.
    ‘Nope. I’m going to collect him for his old man, ‘lease to get a share of his old man’s will.’
    ‘Had you asked me,’ sniffed Calamity, ‘I’d’ve said Thackery’s maw and paw only met the one time.’
    ‘And I’d say you’re a vulgar, uncouth young lady for thinking such thoughts, Calam,’ Mark grinned.
    One of the reasons he liked Calamity was her complete disregard for the conventions which bound the womenfolk of their day. Calamity lived the way she liked, said what she pleased, and stood full willing to back her words if called on them. She certainly showed no offence or anger at his comment, merely throwing back her head and laughing merrily.
    ‘Aren’t I though?’ she said. ‘And I’m a good cook with it.’
    ‘Why sure you are, Calam. And the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach they do say.’
    ‘I’ve got me a skillet in the caboose,’ Calamity remarked, then became serious again. ‘Are you for real coming up here after Thackery?’
    ‘Why else?’
    ‘Him and his kind’s been riling up the railroad bosses with their trouble-causing and rabble-rousing. They’ve been causing unrest among the track-laying gangs with all their talk about all men being equal and having the right to share their hands on everything other folks have had brains enough to build.’
    ‘You reckon I’ve taken to selling my guns now, Calamity?’
    ‘No I don’t. Only the railroad bosses can play rough when they have to. The last Socialist who came up here flapping his lip left faster’n he come.’
    ‘Alive?’ Mark asked.
    ‘Sure. You don’t have to lean heavy on scum like that. Speak a mite rough to them and they run screaming for the law to protect them. Funny thing about that is they can’t say a good word for the law any other time.’
    ‘And you figure they’re thinking of leaning on Thackery a mite?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Calamity. ‘When I came down to Newton on the train Thackery was expected, but hadn’t arrived. All I know is that the railroad bosses aren’t fixing in to have him or his sort talk the construction gangs into any more delays, and they know a helluva lot of ways to make a man mighty unhappy if they don’t like him.’ She paused and looked out of the window, watching the rolling plains fall behind them. ‘Say, how’s Cap’n Dusty, the Kid and all the folks?’
    And so the subject of Thackery became shelved to let them talk about mutual friends and discover what each had been doing since their last meeting. While they talked, and wondered how