The Fortune Hunters Read Free

Pinkerton’s services in his name. So everything will be ready to show Captain Fog what to do and where he and his men must go.’
    For a long moment Ole Devil sat in silence. A man could trust Elmo Thackery to make some hawg-stupid will and drop the handling of its provisions on somebody else’s shoulders.
    However, Ole Devil owed Thackery a favour from back in the old days before some twist of fate turned Thackery into the scheming, suspicious, money-grabbing old miser he became. A man like Ole Devil Hardin did not lightly toss aside his obligations. Under the circumstances there was only one thing he could say.
    ‘All right. If you call out and tell them to rig my buggy, we’ll go into Polveroso City and send word to Dustine.’
    ‘Certainly. By the way, Thackery authorised me to pay you a bank draft for the sum of one thousand dollars to cover loss of time and expenses incurred by the floating outfit—’
    ‘Only he told you not to mention it until after I accepted, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to take the chore for the money,’ grinned Ole Devil. ‘That’s typical of Elmo Thackery. He lived mean and he died the same way.’
    oooOooo
    1. Bill-show: A Wild West Show such as Buffalo Bill Cody toured the East presenting.
    2. Told in The Fastest Gun in Texas by J. T. Edson.

CHAPTER TWO
    CAPTAIN FOG MEETS MR. COHEN
    THE Right Honourable Lady Winifred Amelia Besgrave-Woodstole—or as she was better known, Freddie Woods, co-owner of the Fair Lady Saloon and mayor of Mulrooney, Kansas—sat on the edge of her bed and rolled a black silk stocking up over a very shapely leg.
    Thinking of the previous night, Freddie smiled. If anybody had told her a man would attract her in such a manner, she would have laughed in the teller’s face. Several men had tried; rich men prepared to drop their all in her lap; handsome men with a string of female conquests behind them. Until last night all had failed to attract the beautiful and mysterious lady mayor of Mulrooney.
    True, the successful man had made quite a name for himself. He had been a Confederate Army captain at seventeen, with a name as high as Turner Ashby or John Singleton Mosby’s ever stood. With the War over, he did not sink into oblivion and dreams of past glories, but had become the segundo of the OD Connected ranch and famous for his ability both as ranch foreman and trail boss. It was he who tamed a tough Montana mining town when three good, but lesser, men died trying. 1 And he became Mulrooney’s first town marshal, responsible for framing the laws which made Freddie’s city into the one Kansas trail drive end where a Texas man received a fair deal. Folks claimed he was the fastest gun in the West, and Freddie did not dispute the claim. Nor was he a mean hand with bare fists in a roughhouse brawl.
    A man with such a reputation and capabilities should, by popular conception be a veritable giant, handsome as a god of old and fully able to attract the favours even of as discerning a lady as Freddie Woods.
    Dusty Fog stood five foot five and a half inches in his bare feet. Although she had long since forgotten the point, Freddie was a good two inches taller than him. His dusty blond hair looked tousled as he stood washing the shaving-lather from his face in Freddie’s small bathroom. While he was good looking, he did not have eye-catchingly handsome features, yet there was strength to his face if one took time out to look. He seemed more impressive with his shirt off, for then the spread of his shoulders, the powerful muscles, lean waist and generally strong physique showed their full potential. One was inclined to pass Dusty by and ignore him as a small, insignificant cowhand when dressed, for he did not have the flair to best set off his expensive clothes. His black Stetson hat, with a Texas style low crown and wide brim, hung on the chair where rested his gun-belt, a matched brace of bone handled Colt Civilian Peacemakers, butt forward for crossdraw in the