The Floating Outfit

A short-story collection featuring the men sworn to serve Ole Devil Hardin, the crippled Texas rancher. The fastest guns and the fiercest fighters in the Southwest, they were known as Ole Devil's Hands and Feet. Dusty Fog, Waco & Doc Leroy, and Mark Counter, all fast with their guns, possessing special skills to help with any situation, they were a force to be reckoned with.

You're in that untamed stretch of hot, naked land known as Texas. All you need is a gun. And the skill to shoot it at the right time and the right place...and, of course, the right man. A little advice: Don't aim your gun at a guy named Dusty Fog, the Rio Hondo Gun Wizard. They say he's the fastest draw in Texas. That just might be idle hearsay--but are you fool enough to take that chance...?

Grattan, Texas is a bad place to get an education-and a worse place to be a teacher. One by one, the school masters and marms were given a choice: Take a permanent recess or a bullet in the brain. In no time at all, the schoolhouse was empty. But now there's a new instructor in town. He's packing a six-shooter in his primer. He plans to teach a deadly lesson in revenge. And his name is Dusty Fog.

Ole Devil Hardin's O.D. Connected Ranch was watched over by an elite crew of top hands called the Floating Outfit. Most of them were veterans of the War Between the States. They were skilled with rifle, revolver and knife. Folks in West Texas knew better than to trifle with them. And the biggest man among them was the smallest, a range-toughened ex-Rebel cavalry officer called Dusty Fog.

They came from the East—well-heeled city men with money in their wallets and greed and hate in their hearts. They aimed for the cattle country of the Rio Hondo, which they thought to take over with the aid of their hired gunmen. In choosing the Rio Hondo country, they chose wrong, this country meant an outfit called the OD Connected, and that meant a man called Dusty Fog.

A phony doctor, a murderer headed for the stockade for life, a bare-knuckled lady boxer and her two beautiful daughters ... an odd assortment was holed up in Baptist's Hollow taking refuge from Lobo Colorado's rampaging warriors. Four Texans were with them. Three of them were big. bold-looking cowboys. The fourth was their leader-a soft-talking little man named Dusty Fog.

Ranch-owners in the newly formed Comanche range banded together to organize a great round-up. John Chisum, the Cattle King, planned to gain control by making sure that one of his men was picked as the roundup captain. But the job went to a passing stranger. Removing him should not have been any great problem. However, there was one small detail: the name passing stranger was Dusty Fog.

Things were looking bad for Red Blaze. First somebody put an arrow into his partner; then somebody put a bullet into a friendly Apache girl from the reservation. Somebody wanted the Apaches on the warpath, and to do it they had to get Red out of the way. But Red had a friend, a certain small Texan with a tall reputation. Name: Dusty Fog.

Hell's Doorway - that was Triblet, the meanest kind of trail-end town, where the corrupt grew fat on the sweat and grit of honest people. At least, that's how it was till the Floating Outfit started cleaning things up. They were the toughest bunch of town tamers the West ever knew, led by a small Texan named Dusty Fog--who wouldn't stop till there wasn't an argument left standing.

None of the peace officers available struck the Governor of Kansas as suitable to clean out the worst, most corrupt town of all. So he called on five Texans who had already brought law to two tough towns. Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, Waco and Doc Leroy pinned on their badges. Then they went to work in the face of opposition from the corruption destroying Trail End.

WANTED – DEAD $5000 It might have been the normal poster put out by a law enforcement office that the Ysabel Kid held out, until the others read the name of the wanted man – Dusty Fog! “For five thousand dollars, every bounty hunter and two-bit gun slick west of the Pecos’ll be after your hide,” the Kid growled. “What do you aim to do about it?” Doc enquired. “Stop them,” answered Dusty Fog.

The first book in a trilogy this sets the scene. When he inherited an Arizona ranch from an uncle he barely knew, Stone Hart packed off with a rambunctious support of Texans Dusty, Mark and Lon and a thundering herd of longhorns. But in the wilds of Arizona, some of Hart's new neighbors were hell-bent on claiming the ranch as their own.

Spanish Grant County is open for the taking, and the East Coast sharpies are moving in. But the one man standing in the way is rancher Stone Hart, who has friends by the name of Fog, Counter and Ysabel. And when the members of General "Ole Devil" Hardin's floating outfit are joined in Arizona by a lady named Calamity, the land grabbers, bushwackers, and bank robbers have a wildcat by the tail.

The forces of greed aren’t going to let go of Spanish Grant County without a final fight, and an army of hired gunslingers take on a bantam-fighter-turned-sheriff named Fog, the fists of a blond giant Mark Counter, the honed steel of a silent killer, the Ysabel Kid. And what the outlaws can’t win with Colts and Winchesters they’ll try another way earning the ire of a shootist named Calamity Jane!

There were some strange goings-on in Roberts County, New Mexico. Men had been disappearing without trace and all attempts to find them had failed. When Mark Counter disappeared, Dusty Fog, and the Ysabel Kid went looking for him. Mark was their friend and they aimed to find him, even if it meant taking on the whole of the county, it would be just too bad for anyone who tried to stand in their way.

Belle Starr, lady outlaw, had been murdered, cut down from behind by a double charge of buckshot. Nobody knew who had killed her. But Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid swore they would bring in the murderer. Getting whoever killed Belle meant a lot to the three Texans. It meant more than ever to Mark, for he had planned to ask the girl to be his wife.