pretty, shapely girl who was naked to the waist, briefly clad below it and carried a smoking Winchester carbine. Exclamations of interest and approbation rose from the men who had followed him in.
“Are you all right, young lady?” the big man demanded.
“Sure,” Calamity replied.
“Then we had better withdraw,” the man stated, in tones that brooked no objection. Backing toward the door, he forced the others to leave. Turning his head so that he did not look at Calamity, he went on, “If I might make a suggestion, ma’am, you should put on a robe. The marshal or one of his deputies will be around to find out what’s happening and he’s sure to want to question you.”
“I’ll do just that,” Calamity promised. “Leave the door open a mite so’s I can find a match and light the lamp.”
After the men had left, Calamity crossed to the wardrobe and took a box of matches from the pocket of her buckskin jacket. She lit the lamp and went to close the door, but could not follow the man’s advice. Her normal way of life precluded the need for possessing such high-falutin’ garments as a robe to wear over her sleeping clothes. However, she knew that he had been correct about the marshal or a deputy coming. So she slipped on her shirt and pants, then produced a pair of moccasins from her
When she appeared in the passage, Calamity’s wearing apparel drew almost as much comment from the men as had their first sight of her inside the room. Ignoring them, she went to where the big man stood talking to Philpotter.
“Do you get this sort of thing happening regular?” the girl inquired, looking at the clerk.
“This sort of thing?” Philpotter repeated.
“Fellers trying to bust into a gal’s room from the door and the window,” Calamity elaborated.
“There was another of them at the window?” asked the big man.
“Yep,” agreed Calamity. “It was him I was trying to get a shot at just afore you bust in.”
“Did you hit him?” the man wanted to know.
“Missed,” answered the girl. “He lit out through the alley back of here.”
“Would you know him again?” the man inquired.
“Nope,” Calamity admitted. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. He sure won’t smell like a rose, way I got rid of him.” She turned her attention to Philpotter again. “How’s about it, friend. Do you get this sort of thing coming off regular?”
“Certainly not!” the clerk yelped indignantly. “It’s the first time such a thing has happened here.”
“
Chapter 3 A POOR, DEFENSELESS GAL LIKE ME
AT NINE O’CLOCK ON THE MORNING AFTER HER ARRIVAL, Calamity Jane walked down the stairs to the entrance hall of the Railroad House Hotel. Philpotter was no longer at the desk and his tall, lean, sour-faced replacement almost mirrored his first reaction at the sight of the girl. Apart from not earning the
“Howdy,” Calamity greeted amiably as she reached the desk. “Where-at’s Counselor Talbot’s office?”
“On Leicester Street,” the clerk replied. “You turn right, go by the newspaper office and take the street alongside the stock-pens toward the railroad depot.”
“Thanks,” Calamity said, and decided to give the man some good news. “I’ll likely be picking up my gear and pulling out after I’ve seen him.”
“Which room would that be?” the clerk inquired frostily, but he looked a mite relieved to hear the information.
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen!—Oh! So you’re the one—”
“If there’s two of us, I’ve never seen the other,” Calamity answered. “What’d your pard tell you about last night?”
“My par——?” the clerk began. “You mean Mr. Philpotter. He told me about the robbery, but I thought he was joking about the way you dre——About how you were——I mean about your clo——”
“Let’s just leave it that he told you and save some spluttering,” Calamity suggested, dropping the room key on the desk’s top. “I don’t suppose that deputy’s been back to say he caught them two polecats?”
“No,” the clerk replied, throwing a glance toward the open front doors.
“I wasn’t expecting he would have,” Calamity admitted. “See you around, feller. Don’t let them two come back and wide-loop the desk from under you.”
Taking out a white handkerchief as the girl turned, the clerk shook it violently and mopped his brow. Calamity walked away from the desk, deciding that she would have been surprised if the deputy town marshal who had arrived to investigate the shooting had managed to locate and arrest the intruders.
On his arrival, the deputy had performed his duties efficiently enough; but there had been little he could do. After learning the cause of the commotion, he had requested the onlookers not directly concerned with the incident to return to their rooms. When all but Calamity, the big man in the nightcap—he had proved to be the senior cattle-buyer for a major Eastern meat-packing combine—and Philpotter had disappeared, the deputy had suggested that they should conclude their talk in the girl’s room. There he had listened to her story. Although acting as nervous as a hen with a chicken-hawk circling its brood, Philpotter had laughed along with the important guest and the peace officer when Calamity described her use of the chamber-pot as a weapon. The clerk had even joined in the complimentary remarks made on the subject of the girl’s courage and initiative. Those qualities, unfortunately, could not do anything further.
Regretfully Calamity had been forced to admit that she could not describe either intruder with any degree of certainty. The best she could manage was to state that the man at the window had been heavily built, probably tall and not wearing a hat. The other had been tallish, slim, with black hair, clad in cowhand clothes, carrying a knife and toting an Army Colt with Tiffany grips in what was known as a “half-breed” or “swivel” holster. His companion had called him what sounded like “Houghton” which hinted that he was of Anglo-Saxon birth.
The cattle-buyer and Philpotter had been able to add little more. They confirmed the girl’s description of the physical appearance of the man in the passage. While both had noticed that he sported a drooping black mustache, neither could say what kind of features he had.
Borrowing a lantern from the desk clerk, the deputy had led the way outside and to the rear of the building. Finding the hat, they had examined it but it did not prove to be informative. It was a Stetson such as could be purchased from any general store west of the Mississippi River. Being stepped on by its bulky owner had squashed out any features that might have served as pointers to its place of origin.
The ladder had proved to have been stolen from alongside one of the buildings to the rear of the hotel. It had offered no clue to the person who had stolen it and the lantern’s light had not been strong enough to illuminate the faint trace of blood where the splinter had spiked into the man’s palm.
So there had been nothing to give the deputy a start in his search. Even the name Calamity had heard spoken did not help. Like all such towns, Mulrooney had a large, ever-changing, transient population. Many of the visitors did not even stay in town, but bedded down on the open range. A fair proportion of the floating population used whatever name came handiest. So the best the deputy could offer was that he would check through the marshal’s reward posters and see if he could find a mention of a man called “Houghton” who matched the slimmer intruder’s description. He did not offer much hope of success. Hotel sneak-thieves rarely rated the offer of a reward for their capture.
Being aware of the difficulties facing trail-end town peace officers, Calamity and the cattle-buyer had been satisfied with the deputy’s offer. Philpotter had raised no objections, even if he thought them. It had always been his policy to pay lip-service to the desires of influential clients. If any of them had wondered why the intruders had selected Calamity’s room as the start of their depredations, the point was not raised. Calamity put it down to no
