The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

th’ hardware!” Kirby ordered.
    Hatch’s grin was gone. The fingers of his big hands were twitching, and the twist of his mouth was murderous.
    “Lissen—” the Texan’s tone was frosty—“I’ve a finger what cramps on m’ trigger when I git riled, an’ I’m gittin’ riled now. You loose off that theah fightin’ iron, an’ do it quick!”
    Hatch’s hand went to his gun. He jerked it from the holster and slung it across the floor.
    “Now th’ one you got holdin’ up your belly…an’ your knife!”
    The Colt that Hatch had taken from Drew and a bowie with a long blade joined the armament already on the boards. Drew made a fast harvest of all the weapons.
    “Well, we sure got us some bounty hunter’s bag,” Kirby observed as he and Weatherby finished using the captives’ own belts to pinion them.
    “There may be more comin’; they talked about some captain.” Drew brought Boyd back to the warmth of the fire.
    Weatherby nodded. “I’ll scout.” He disappeared out the door.
    Jas’ was rocking back and forth, holding on one knee the injured hand Kirby had roughly bandaged; his other arm was fastened behind him. There were tears of pain on his cheeks, but after his first outcry he had not uttered a sound. Hatch, on the other hand, had been so foul-mouthed that Kirby had torn off a length of the bed covering and gagged him.
    Simmy sat now with his back against the wall, watching their every move. Of the three, he seemed the likeliest to talk. Kirby appeared to share in Drew’s thoughts on that subject, for now he bore down on the small man.
    “You expectin’ some friends?” Compared to his tone of moments earlier, the Texan’s voice was now mildly friendly. “We’d like to know, seein’ as how we’re thinkin’ some hospitable thoughts ’bout entertainin’ them proper.”
    Simmy stared up at him, bewildered. Kirby shook his head, his expression one of a man dealing with a stubbornly stupid child.
    “Lissen, hombre, me—I’m from West Texas, an’ that theah’s Comanche country, leastwise it was Comanche country ’fore we Tejanos moved in. Now Comanches, they’re an unfriendly people, ’bout the unfriendliest Injuns, ’cept ’Paches, a man can meet up with. An’ they have them some neat little ways of makin’ a man talk, or rather yell, his lungs out. It ain’t too hard to learn them tricks, not for a bright boy like me, it ain’t. You able to understand that?”
    Kirby did not scowl, he did not even touch the little man. But as one drawling word was joined to the next, Simmy held his body tighter against the wall, as if to escape by pushing.
    “I ain’t done nothin’!” he cried.
    “That’s what I said, little man. You ain’t done nothin’. But you’re goin’ to do somethin’—talk!”
    Simmy’s pale tongue swept across working lips. “What…you want—wantta…know?” he stuttered.
    “You expectin’ to meet some friends heah?”
    “Th’ rest o’ the boys an’ th’ cap’n; they may be ketchin’ up.”
    “How many ‘boys’?”
    Simmy’s tongue tripped again. He swallowed. Drew thought he was trying to produce a crumb of defiance. Kirby reached out, selecting Hatch’s bowie knife from the cache of captured weapons. He weighed it across the palm of his hand as if trying its balance and then, with deceptive ease, flipped it. The point thudded into the wall scant inches away from Simmy’s right ear, and the little man’s head bobbed down so that his nose hit one of his hunched-up knees.
    “How many ‘boys’?” Kirby repeated.
    “Depends.…”
    “On what?”
    “On how good th’ raidin’ is. After a fight thar’s always some pickin’s.”
    Drew was suddenly sick. What Simmy hinted at was the vulture work among the dead and the wounded too enfeebled to protect themselves from being plundered. He saw Kirby’s lips set into a thin line.
    “Kinda throw a wide rope, don’t you, little man? How many ‘boys’?”
    “Maybe five…six.…”
    “An’ this heah cap’n?”
    “He tells us wheah thar’s good pickin’s.” For a moment the man produced a spark of spite. “He’s a Reb, like you—”
    “Have you used this place before?” Drew broke in. If this were either a regular or temporary rendezvous for this jackal pack, the quicker they were away, the better.
    “No, the cap’n said to meet here tonight.”
    “I don’t suppose he said when ?” Kirby’s question was answered by a shake of Simmy’s unkempt head.
    Boyd