The Floating Outfit

The war was over. The South had lost. But the Texas rebels of the Floating Outfit were too busy to surrender. They must go down into Mexico to convince Bushrod Sheldon to come back to Texas so the US can aid Juarez. They had to smuggle a thousand Henry repeaters across the border to Juarez--and to do it they needed the help of the bad-hat, war-wise kid named the Ysabel Kid. First time in eBook.

Post-Civil War Texas is a hell of a rough place. And for a man wearing a kilt, it is even rougher. Colin Farquharson insists on retaining his native Scottish dress but to do so unarmed on the Texas frontier could get him killed. At least it provides a distraction for the bandits attempting to rob the stage he's on and a distraction is all his fellow passenger, the Ysabel Kid, needs.

An Apache warhorse gone wild, he was the magnificent prize in a fierce mustanger range war on the west Texas plains. On one side was a small army of hired killers armed to the teeth. On the other side was a proud Scot and his Texas woman, backed up by three cowhands from the Floating Outfit: Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid and Dusty Fog. Just about an even match!

The cities of the eastern States were hungry for beef. The problem was how to get it to them. Colonel Charles Goodnight had a plan that might work—if he had all the luck he needed. Things seemed to be going well, especially with the Floating Outfit on his side—Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid and Dusty Fog, the small Texan who walked tall. But what Goodnight didn’t need was an enemy like John Chisum.

Other States were carved or born, Texas grew from hide and horn. Charles Goodnight thought he had the answers and aimed to prove it. Backed by Ole Devil Hardin’s already legendary floating outfit, he set off with three thousand five hundred head of cattle for Fort Sumner. With Dusty Fog as his segundo, Goodnight meant to deliver his herd and so pave the way for Texas to grow from hide and horn.

Colonel Goodnight's cattle drive to Kansas could save war-torn Texas, but it would ruin the slaughter-house owners who stayed rich but keeping the ranchers poor. The 'hide and tallow men' hired an army of gun-hung toughs. Goodnight had the help of the Floating Outfit. And Fort Worth had itself a war!

The slaughter-house owners were marking stolen longhorns with the Floating Outfit's brand in a vicious scheme to stop the cattle drive to Kansas. Mark Counter tracked them to their headquarters, then levered his Winchester into lightning action...

They didn’t have any law in Quiet Town—except that of the gun. Three good men had the badge of Sheriff and died wearing it. The good citizens felt that their town needed a real lawman, someone who would play the killers and hard cases at their own game. They knew of one man who could do the job. His name was Dusty Fog.

When young Wes Hardin stepped up to a wrestling booth to try his strength against big, brawny Negro Sam. Within a few minutes a vicious gunfight had developed, and then Wes was on the run, branded a murderer and without a single witness left alive to testify to his innocence. Then he met his cousin, Dusty Fog along with others of the Floating Outfit took up the fight against those against Hardin.

Since Thad Toon had put the ‘Indian sign’ on Ben Holland’s spread, no cowhand would ride with the Rocking H’s trail drive. Just to make sure, a rough-cut gang of killers had been hired to keep it that way. Then Dusty Fog and the Floating Outfit rode into Granite City, and Dusty decided to take up the dare … and teach the Double T what Texas trail-bossing was all about!

The wagon train was heading for Backsight, the people looking to the West and a new home. Only Colonel Raines and his scout, Tom Blade, knew the dangers. Then Blade was killed in an ambush, and Raines rode into Hammerlock to get help from the law. He found four men who had been friends of Tom Blade. Three tall Texans-the fourth was a small and insignificant-looking cow hand named Dusty Fog.

He was big, blond and dangerous. From the top of his low-brimmed Stetson to the soles of his cowhide boots, he was one hundred percent fighting man. A member of the legendary Floating Outfit and right-hand man to the Rio Hondo gun wizard, Dusty Fog, Mark Counter was a man to be reckoned with. A man whose second name was trouble!

Fast and deadly as a snake which gave him his name, Sidewinder, the limping Comanche war chief, rampaged across Texas and threatened the peace between his people and the white men. Only a man with a tremendous knowledge of the Comanche could hope to prevent Sidewinder from endangering the whole Comanche nation. The Ysabel Kid was such a man - and he knew it would end when one of them lay dead.

When Churn Wycliffe’s gang killed Sailor Sam Carol, Mark Counter of Ole Devil Hardin’s legendary Floating Outfit swore to bring them to justice. In the end Mark found Wycliffe a prisoner of the Kaddo Indians, doomed to die by torture. But Mark aimed to take his old friend’s killer in for trial … even if he had to lick the whole Kaddo tribe to do it.

McGraw couldn't figure it. Who would want his dry, rocky ranch badly enough to send a hired killer after him? McGraw needed help, and he knew where to get it. During the War he had served in the "Texas Light" under Dusty Fog of the Floating Outfit. His old captain wasn't one to turn his back on a friend. Or an enemy, as the silver-strikers found out when they faced his twin Colts!

Like the man the mob was trying the lynch, the Ysabel Kid was half Comanche. He was a crack shot with a Colt Dragoon, a master of the border country art of "cut-and-slash," and the fastest shot with a Winchester Yellow Boy repeater Texas had ever seen. Of course the mob didn't know that. All they say was a baby-faced kid in black who needed to be taught a lesson...

The landgrabbers were after Mort Lewis's spread. But there was one problem. Mort's grandfather was a Comanche War Chief and if Mort were killed a thousand warriors would avenge his death. Two men rode to stop the war before it began. One was the Rio Hondo Gun Wizard, Dusty Fog. The other was half-Comanche like Mort, the "white Indian" known throughout the new State of Texas as...the Ysabel Kid.

Three hombres were robbing cowhands of their cattle-drive pay. And the Ysabel Kid had been deputized to stop them and he intended to bring justice to this lawless land. But another gang was also at work in the Texas hills, and they had snatched the granddaughter of Ole Devil Hardin, from the local stagecoach. Now the Kid wants more than justice, he wants revenge.

Mark Counter made his living breaking wild horses. Taming wild women was another story altogether. And "wild" was too tame a word for the likes of Mary Jane Canary, Madame Bulldog and the notorious outlaw know the world over as Calamity Jane...

The war with the North was over, but Texas was still a battleground. Outlaw bands ravaged whole towns, drenching the Border Country with blood. Deadliest of all was the silent band of knife-artists know as "the Bad Bunch". The Floating Outfit were all that stood between Texas and the law of the blade! But even Fog, Counter and the Ysabel Kid found The Bad Bunch a mite trickier than expected!

To Gavin Gartree’s bunch of hardcases, “work” was a cussword, “innocent” was a come-on, and a young pilgrim girl was an invitation to a molestation. But nothing was quite as it seemed. The young pilgrim girl in question was accompanied by a seemingly inconsequential Texan named Dusty Fog. Though small in stature, he was a giant when it came to fighting and always made his first shot the last shot.

Luke Crammer had slaughtered a white buffalo which could easily launch a full-scale war between the Kiowas and the white men of North Texas. Sioux war-chief, Grey Bear had been kidnapped by a bunch of hardcases and branded a thief; he could not accept such shame and do nothing. Only one person could possibly off the trouble—the Ysabel Kid , the man the Pehnane Comanches called Cuchilo … The Knife.

The sign said "Moondog" but the town was called Yellowdog. It was a yellow town of cowards, hardcases and damn fools. Danny Fog had died trying to bring some law to Yellowdog. The townsfolk stood by and watch as he was brutally beaten to death in the streets. His older brother Dusty and the Floating Outfit didn't intend to repeat the error. If no man in Yellowdog would back him ... Sam Colt would!

Karl Mallick was a genius at the real estate business. Anybody who was reluctant to sell at his price had his mind changed by Mallick's Double K gun thugs. Then Mallick hit a snag. Three Texans were waiting at the Lasalle ranch: The Ysabel Kid was one of the men. Mark Counter was another. The third man was small and insignificant looking . . . His name was Dusty Fog!

Dusty Fog knew it was big trouble this when he agreed to become marshal of Mulrooney, Kansas—knew it and accepted it because he had good men at his back. Yet it seemed that not even the combined talents of Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, Waco and gambler Frank Derringer could handle the feud between Freddie Woods and her chief rival in the saloon business, Buffalo Kate.