Trouble Trail by J. T. Edson Read Free Book Online Page A

Catching the eye of one of the drinkers, a big. burly, red-haired man with a face that was so Irish it might have been painted emerald green. Calamity gave him a friendly wink, showing that she understood how he came to be in such company. Unfortunately, he read the sign wrong.
    Turning from his friends, the big sergeant came forward and joined the dance set being formed. With casual ease, he planted himself alongside Calamity and beamed down to her.
    ‘The name’s Paddy Muldoon, colleen,’ he told Calamity in a brogue so thick it could have been cut with a knife. ‘Sure and they say you’re Calamity Jane.’
    ‘Sure and they’re roight.’ Calamity answered, ever willing to be friendly at such a moment.
    ‘And there’s not another girl like you anywhere in the world.’
    ‘If there is, I’ll whip her so fast she’ll think the hawgs have jumped her.’
    ‘You could do it!’ Muldoon bellowed. ‘Let’s get married and raise the finest fighting family that’s ever been born.’
    At that moment they separated and Calamity found herself partnering Beau Resin. She nodded towards Muldoon and grinned. ‘I’ve just been proposed to, Beau.’
    ‘By Paddy Muldoon?’ asked the scout, showing a remarkable lack of concern. ‘If you agreed, and he thought you meant it, he’d take off out of here faster’n a Neuces steer.’
    ‘That’s what I figured.’ groaned Calamity. ‘I no sooner get a decent offer than the feller heads out.’
    ‘Don’t let it bother you, honey-chile,’ Resin drawled, giving her waist a squeeze. ‘I’ll allus love you.’
    Another change in partners brought Calamity to Muldoon again, although under the rules she should not have met up with the sergeant in that set. They whirled around together, Muldoon dancing with gusto, abandon, but little skill. However, Calamity had long been spry on her feet and used to avoided being trampled on by her partner.
    At the end of the set Muldoon started to head towards Calamity, but she went back to Resin and her freighter friends. The big sergeant stood watching her, not exceptionally bothered, when he felt a hand on his sleeve. Turning, he looked down at Hack.
    ‘Now that’s no way for a gal to treat a cavalryman, is it, Paddy?’
    Normally Muldoon’s reaction would have been to tell Hack where to go. However, pay day was a few days away and Muldoon had never been a man to look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially when it toted a load of good Old Stump-Blaster in its chubby hand.
    Taking the offered bottle, Muldoon drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scowled after the departing couple. ‘It is not,’ he agreed, then slapped Hack on the back in a friendly manner which almost caved his spine out through his chest. ‘You’re not as bad as I allus reckon you was.’
    Three dances went by, with Muldoon joining in every set and imposing his bear-like scowl on anybody who tried to get near Calamity. Of all the crowd only Beau Resin ignored the scowls. The soldiers at the fort knew better than cross big Paddy Muldoon and the travellers on the wagon train recognised him as a dangerous when wet proposition. For his part Muldoon knew he possessed but one rival for Calamity’s affections. Beau Resin, a civilian—normally Muldoon had respect for the abilities of a good scout such as Resin, but not when the scout became his rival for the affections of a real good-looking girl—was grabbing Calamity every time the caller announced a change of partners and Muldoon had never been a man to stand mildly by while the ground was cut from under his feet.
    So Calamity found herself with only two partners. which had never been the intention of square dancing. She also attracted the disapproving glances of the other women. Normally such glances would not have worried Calamity, but they did that night for Calamity realised the delicacy of the situation.
    ‘Let’s go see how the other half live, Beau,’ she suggested at the end of a set,