The Ysabel Kid (3 page)

Dusty looked at Ole Devil. The old man nodded imperceptibly and Dusty said, “Sure. I’ll head for home and pick up some gear I’ll need.”

“Come back for dinner, boy,” Ole Devil called as Dusty stepped from the porch and walked away. “We’ve got things to talk over.”

Hondo Fog, Sheriff of Rio Hondo County, watched his son riding towards the house in Polveroso City. He noted Dusty was afork a speed horse left behind when the crew took the remuda as being too fast for cattlework. So Hondo went along the path through the flower garden and opened the gate.

“Ole Devil fired you, son?” he asked.

“Could call it that,” Dusty replied as he swung down from the saddle and tied the horse up. “He wants me to head south of the border for him.”

Hondo Fog asked no questions, but he knew that Mexico was no place for an ex-Confederate officer to be riding these days. The sheriff made quite a contrast to his son, for Hondo Fog stood well over six foot tall, was wide shouldered and powerful looking.

They entered the living room and Hondo hung his Confederate officer’s hat on a peg, then turned and looked down at his son. Before he could ask any questions the door opened and Mrs. Fog came in. She was a tall, plump, smiling woman with the black eyes of a Hardin, yet softer and gentler than Ole Devil’s.

“You look hungry boy,” she said. “I won’t be sorry when young Betty comes back from the East. She makes Jimmo serve up better than his everlasting son-of-a-gun stew.”

Dusty grinned. His cousin Betty made other things happen at the ranch when she was there. She was only his age, just under twenty, but she ruled that spread with a rod of iron.

“I have to head back as soon as I can, maw,” he replied. “Just came to collect some of my gear. I’d like my uniform packing in my warbag.”

“Uniform?”

“Yes’m. That’s the way I’m going to have to handle this.”

“Sounds real important, son,” Hondo remarked, knowing that the OD Connected were in the middle of their spring roundup and that Dusty was the roundup captain.

“Some,” Dusty agreed, taking a chair and as his father sat down telling him of his mission. “Could be bad if General Bushrod won’t come back.”

“Could be,” Hondo was an old campaigner and full fed up with the horror of a war which set brother to killing brother. He looked to where above the fireplace a pair of crossed sabres hung below a bullet torn Cavalry pennant. “You want your sabre?”

“Not this time,” Dusty answered regretfully for he had the true cavalry regard for the sabre as a fighting weapon. “I couldn’t hide it until I needed it. I’ll take a rifle if I can.”

Hondo waved a hand towards the stand of long arms in the corner of the room and Dusty went towards them, looking them over. The single-shot, muzzling loading weapons he dismissed right away. The old Colt revolving breech rifle did not meet with his approval either. That left two choices, either a Henry rifle or a Spencer carbine. Both were repeaters and yet neither really were what he wanted in a saddlegun. The Henry was too heavy and long for comfortable saddle use and also prone to jam up if the long tube magazine was knocked against anything. The Spencer was more the length, but too heavy in calibre at .56 to be really easy in use from a horse.

“Take the Spencer if I can,” he said, looking down at the engraving on the lock.

It read: “1st New York Vols.”, a regiment neither Dusty nor his father served in nor did anything other than shoot at. The carbine and the Henry were battlefield captures, taken in the War.

Hondo Fog went to the saddleboot belonging to the carbine and Dusty unlocked a box in the corner. From it he took two wooden boxes each containing ten tubes of seven bullets for the Spencer carbine. Two cardboard boxes of Colt Combustible cartridges came next, then a buckskin bag holding ready moulded bullets and a mould to make more. Lastly he took a couple of powder flasks, one a plain horn, the other belonging to his matched brace of guns, complete with a measure to give the correct weight of powder for the chambers of the guns.

He took the pile of ammunition into the bedroom where his mother was carefully folding his cadet grey Confederate uniform with the Captain’s braid at the sleeve cuffs and the triple bars of half-inch wide, three-inch long gold braid at the collar.

“You’ll be back soon, son?” she asked as she put the uniform into the war bag and placed a couple of dean shirts on top of it.

“I’ll try. I’d best get back before Betty comes home or I’ll be in bad trouble. That ole paint of mine got into her truck garden and surely mussed it up. I want to see that it’s straightened out before she gets back.”

Mrs. Fog watched her small, soft spoken son with eyes that were bright with pride and unshed tears. She was worried at his going on so dangerous a mission but knew that few men were better equipped to do it. She’d seen him ride to war in the footsteps of his father and uncle at fifteen and then return at eighteen a Captain and a hero. Then she’d seen him go west to help another uncle. Colonel Charles Goodnight, in the first of the early cattledrives after the War, drives which were to set the pattern and bring money pouring into Texas for the next few years.

She’d faith in this small son, her elder son, and knew that he would return to the Rio Hondo country.

Dusty settled down on the bed and cleaned his Colts and the Spencer, then let his mother pack away his cleaning gear and fasten the bag. She fetched his bedroll with its tarp, suggans and blankets and rolled it neatly for him to take and strap to his saddlecantle.

After a meal Dusty took the gear out to the waiting horse and while Hondo fastened the bedroll on Dusty slid the carbine into the saddleboot his father had already fixed cavalry style to the left side of the saddle. Then he turned and kissed his mother and gripped his father’s hand. He saw people looking, kinsfolk mostly and all good friends. They would be curious as to where he was headed but even if they asked, which wasn’t likely, Hondo Fog would not tell them.

“Watch yourself down there boy,” Hondo said as Dusty swung up into the saddle. “And if you have any trouble getting to see ole Bushrod Sheldon, or in getting him to listen to you, see Major Jubal Granger. He’s an old friend of mine and he’ll help you all he can. I reckon ole Jube will be just about ready to come on home again. And so will the other men.”

“I’ll do just that,” Dusty agreed. “Reckon I’d better call in and see Uncle Tim, down to Brownsville. He’s still the sheriff there?”

“Sure, he’ll help you find the man.”

“I’ll tell him you asked about him,” Dusty remarked. “Any word for Aunt Martha while I’m there, maw?”

“Tell her I’m all right and that we’ll try and visit them later in the year,” Mrs. Fog replied. “You take care of yourself, son. Be careful.”

“I always am. Now don’t you start in to sniffing, maw, or you’ll likely start me going too.”

Mrs. Fog held down the tears, she managed a smile up at Dusty, then said: “You just take care.”

“Sure,” Dusty agreed. “
Adios!
”

Hondo Fog put his arm round his wife’s shoulders as they watched their son riding out of town towards the OD Connected. They stood there for a long time and watched him fade into the distance. Then they returned to the house again.

The following morning Dusty Fog stood on the porch of the ranch house and looked at Ole Devil Hardin and General Handiman.

“I’ve got your letter, but what’s your message for Bush Sheldon?” he asked.

Ole Devil grunted and held his hand out.

“You tell him to get back to the United States and stop his fooling around. There’s only me’n Sam French left here and we’re tired of handling these damned Yankees alone.”

CHAPTER THREE

DUSTY FOG’S big paint stallion picked an easy way along the winding trail through the thickly wooded Texas country. Dusty sat relaxed in the saddle, yet he was alert for every sound or movement. That sort of caution paid even on the better, more used trails. On a narrow sidetrack like this it was essential for there were bad whites and Mexicans roaming the wooded country and a man had been murdered for far less than a magnificent stallion, a good saddle and a brace of matched Colt revolvers.

With each loping stride of the big paint carrying him nearer to Brownsville Dusty grew more watchful and alert. So far nobody knew of his mission or his destination, of that he was sure. Handiman insisted that he hadn’t told anyone why they were in the Rio Hondo. That was some consolation, for Dusty knew that he was in for a hard time even without the added hazard of the French knowing why he was going to see Bushrod Sheldon.

The man in Brownsville might, or might not be of help to him. Dusty was not even sure who the man would be for Handiman couldn’t tell him. However the Cameron Country Sheriff was one of Dusty’s numerous kin and might be able to help locate the man. If not Dusty meant to stay on only for two days, then strike south on his own.

The paint turned a sharp bend in. the trail and came out into a clearing. Dusty halted the horse and looked round, alert and watchful for someone was camping here. A small fire was burning in the centre of the clearing, a coffeepot bubbling on it. A bedroll and warbag lay on the other side of the fire and at the far side of the clearing, looking at him, stood a magnificent white stallion not an inch smaller than Dusty’s seventeen-hand paint. The horse was without bridle or saddle, they lay near the bedroll.

That was all, there was no sign of the owner of horse or outfit.

“Who’d you ride for in War, friend?”

The voice, soft, drawling and a musical tenor, seemed to float out of the air in a ventriloquial way. Dusty judged it to come from the left and went down off his horse on the “Injun side”, left hand leaping across his body, the bone-handled Colt coming out cocked and ready. He stood very still, trying to locate the speaker. The woods lay silent all round the clearing, not even a bird stirring to help give him a clue. Apart from the two horses Dusty might have been alone here, but the voice came again to prove he was not.

“Asked a real sociable question, friend.”

“Texas Light Cavalry,” Dusty replied, twisting round slowly, almost sure the voice came from the far side of the clearing. “How about you?”

A short mocking laugh came from behind Dusty and the sound which might come from a cocking revolver. The small Texan spun round, dropping to one knee and firing in a flickering blur of movement at where the clicking sound came from. The bullet sent splinters flying as it sank into a thick tree and a voice which came from behind it said: “Don’t shoot, I’m coming out.”

A tall, Indian dark, black-dressed youngster stepped from behind the tree. He stopped and looked at the hole in the trunk then compared it with his own body and nodded. “Fair piece of offhand shooting a man’d say, friend.”

Dusty looked the other over. He didn’t look to be more than sixteen at the most but for all of that he was a dead cool hand. The bullet would have caught him in the body at heart level had he been stood in front of the tree instead of behind it.

“My own fault,” the youngster went on. “Shouldn’t have fooled about like that and then step on a rotten stick.”

He came forward, giving Dust a better view of him. His black JB Stetson hat was hanging back by its storm-strap and his hair was curly, so black it shone almost blue in the light. His face looked handsome, young and innocent, almost babyish but those red-hazel coloured eyes were not young, they were old, watchful and hard. Like his hat and his hair all his clothing was black, from the silk bandana round his neck to his boots. Only the butt forward walnut grips of the old Dragoon Colt at his side and the ivory hilt of his bowie knife at his left relieved the blackness.

This youngster walked forward with the long-legged, free stride of a buck Apache. In his hands he held a second Colt Dragoon revolver, this one with a detachable canteen, carbine stock fitted on it.

“Howdy,” he greeted as he halted in front of Dusty. “Smelled your dust a piece back and concluded to hide and see who you was before I showed.”

“You expecting borrowing neighbours, friend?” Dusty inquired as he blew the smoke from the barrel of his Colt and holstered it. Such caution might mean the boy was on the run from the law, or just that he liked to pretend he was. Dusty was a shrewd judge of character and knew the boy was not the sort to be playing children’s games.

“Man has to watch who comes up on him down here, happen he wants to grow up all old and ornery,” the boy replied. “Coffee’s on the boil, light and take some.”

“Thank you, friend,” Dusty went to his paint and felt inside the bedroll, bringing out a tin cup. “One thing I learned in the army was always to keep my gun and coffee cup on hand all the time.”

“I thought I’d seen you afore,” the youngster took Dusty’s cup and filled it with strong black coffee. “You’re Cap’n Fog of the Texas Light. I saw you that time your pappy and Colonel Mosby told Quantrill just what they thought of him. You wouldn’t have seen me, I warn’t but a private and right at the back of the Mosby bunch.” He paused and refilled his own cup. “The name is Loncey Dalton Ysabel.”

“Better known as the Ysabel Kid?”

“To sheriffs, the border patrol and other kind of friends,” the young man answered cheerfully. “You heard of me?”

“I’ve heard.”

Dusty had heard plenty about a certain Indian dark young man called Loncey Dalton Ysabel, better known as the Ysabel Kid. He’d also heard of the Kid’s father, Sam Ysabel, as a prominent gentleman of the border smuggling bunch. Sam Ysabel was a wild Irish Kentuckian who’d come to Texas m the early days and rode as scout for Jim Bowie; riding scout was how he’d missed the Alamo. After the war with Mexico, Sam Ysabel pushed into the Comanche country and came back with a beautiful wife, daughter of Chief Long Walker and his French Creole squaw. Out of that dangerous mixture of bloods was born one child, a son who inherited the sighting eye of an eagle from the sure-shooting, rifle-toting Kentuckian stock. From the French Creole side he got a love of cold steel for a fighting weapon and the inborn ability to handle a knife. From his Comanche grandpappy he’d got his horse savvy, the ability to read sign where a buck Apache might falter. From all of them he’d gained a power of fight savvy and a willingness to match against anyone who tried to make him toe the line.

This was Loncey Dalton Ysabel. The Mexicans along the border said his name in whispers as an harbinger of death and destruction, yet there were many of them who called him friend. He was said to be good with his hand gun, a master at the noble art of knife fighting and beyond all par with a rifle. The rifle was not in evidence at the moment, or Dusty couldn’t see it anywhere.

“Heard anything good?” the Kid asked.

“Some,” Dusty grinned at the other youngster. The Rio Grande country did not come under Hondo Fog’s jurisdiction as sheriff of Rio Hondo County so the Ysabel family had never come into conflict with the Fogs. In fact Dusty and his father were inclined to look on smuggling as the Ysabels did it as harmless and certainly not breaking any serious law. “Your pappy along?”

“He’s dead. Gunned down from behind by a pair of border rats called Giss and Krauss.”

“I thought they worked for your pappy?” Dusty could read the pain and anger behind those soft drawled words and in the Comanche mean look in the red-hazel eyes.

“They did. Not regular, but when we couldn’t get good men. Came to see us in our camp on the other side of the river, wanted us to sell some of our friends to the French. We wouldn’t do that and they left the camp. Then while pappy was saddling up to ride and warn Don Ruis they shot him down from behind. That’ll be Giss I reckon. He claims to be more than a fair hand with a rifle. Kraus tried to down me, bust my Hawken to hell and gone and lit out afore I could get to my ole Nigger hoss here.” The Kid paused, his face still that inscrutable Indian mask. “I took after them and trailed them down towards the French at Neuva Rosita. Then when they got into the French camp they sent their renegade Mexicans after me. I lit out, a man can’t handle that sort on their own ground. Come north to the line and crossed over. I’ve been hid out here for a couple of days. Happen I’ve given them the slip. I’ll be headed back there again.”

Dusty knew there was more to the quiet told story than just the bare facts as the Kid laid them down. He could picture the Indian dark boy trailing the men who murdered his father, cold, savage and more dangerous than any Comanche Dog Soldier. Then being hunted north by the Mexicans. Dusty pitied Giss and Kraus if the Ysabel Kid ever caught up with them.

“Sorry about your pappy.”

“So’ll Giss ‘n’ Kraus be when I meet up with them.”

The Ysabel Kid had rested his carbine-stocked Dragoon on his saddle to pour out the coffee. He bent over the fire now to poke it up to a better blaze and was still bending forward when the big white stallion tossed back its head and snorted loud and hard.

At the same moment five dirty, ragged Mexicans burst out from the bushes at the far side of the clearing. They were a savage, hard looking bunch, each man holding a French muzzle loading carbine and all with a knife sheathed at their belts.

The sudden appearance might have taken the Kid by surprise, but his reactions were fast. He dived forward, hands reaching for the Dragoon gun leaning on his saddle and lit down rolling, easing back the hammer. He knew he would be too late to save himself, for although three of the Mexicans could not hit a barn from the inside, the other two were excellent shots and would not miss him.

This pair halted, lining their carbines on the rolling figure, the other three charging in closer but keeping out of the line of fire.

Dusty’s tin cup fell, his hands crossing and the matched guns coming clear of leather and both roaring at the same instant. The two men who’d halted and lined their guns already both took lead. The man at the right dropped his rifle and his hands clawed up at his face as if trying to stop the blood which oozed from the hole between his eyes. The other man staggered as lead smashed into his arm, then he stumbled backwards with the carbine falling. Finally, he turned and ran for the shelter of the woods.

Dusty’s shots had sounded before the cup hit the ground. The big white stallion gave a scream of rage and raced after the wounded man. They disappeared from sight in the woods and after a moment a hideous cry shattered the air, mingled with the terrible screams of a fighting stallion and the sickening thuds as steel shod hooves tore into flesh.

The Kid bore a charmed life, aided by Dusty’s shooting. The other three men fired at him on the run, which in itself was not conducive to good shooting, even when the nerves were not jarred by the lightning speed the small insignificant man drew and shot. Of the three carbine bullets one went into the fire sending sparks and flames erupting, the second kicked up dirt near Dusty and the third fanned just over the Kid’s head as he came up and shot one. One of the trio rocked backwards, a small hole in his chest but what looked like half his back torn off where the .44 ball came out.

The last two Mexicans dropped their empty carbines and snatched out their long bladed, wicked looking knives. With these they were far more dangerous as they hurled straight at the Kid.

Dusty leapt to one side but he could not get a clear shot at the two men. He raised his right hand gun fast, eyes lining the V notch sight in the tip of the hammer with the foresight, then he fired once. The Ysabel Kid afterwards swore he felt the wind of that bullet passing him. The Mexican at his left was knocked back off his feet, hit in the right eye by Dusty’s accurate and fast thrown shot.

The last man was in close. He brought the knife round and up in a driving rip which was aimed to lay the Kid open from belly to brisket. With a slower, less agile man this might even then have succeeded but the Ysabel Kid moved with all the inborn speed and fightsavvy of his Comanche ancestors. The butt of the carbine-stocked Dragoon gun came round parrying the knife which shattered its point against the tarnished silver plate inlaid in the woodwork. The Mexican, lunging forward with all his weight behind the blow was unable to stop himself and came right in on to the upswinging black clad knee as it drove for his groin. The Kid felt his knee ram home with all his power behind it and heard the man’s agonised scream as he doubled over clutching the injured organs and stumbling past in a painwracked crouch.

Coming round fast the Ysabel Kid acted with savage, Comanche speed and lack of feeling. He gave the Mexican neither time to recover from his pain nor from his staggering, forward movement. The Dragoon’s attached stock lifted and drove down with all the power of the Kid’s lithe body behind it, sending the metal shod butt plate smashing into the Mexican’s temple. It was a killing blow and from the way the Mexican’s limp body flopped to the ground the Kid knew no further blow would be needed to end the affair.

Holding his Dragoon cocked and ready for instant use the Kid went around the bodies to make sure that no further trouble need be expected from that source. Then he stood looking down at Dusty’s first victim and the fallen rifle which indicated the place the second stood before Colt lead reminded him of urgent business in some other place. They were some distance apart and yet the small man hit both of them, one fatally in that flickering half second from dropping his cup to planting the lead. The Kid was a fair hand with a revolver himself but he knew that here was a man who was the master of any he’d seen, up to and including one of his kin, the terror from Mill Creek, Bad Bill Longley.

“I called your shooting wrong,” he said as he recalled the wind of the close-passing bullet. “It’s more than fair and I never before saw a man who could use a gun with either hand the way you did.”

Dusty did not regard his ambidextrous prowess with a gun as anything unusual. Yet it was and told a tale of a boy’s determination to make up for his lack of inches some way. All his life Dusty had felt his small size set him apart from the tall men of his clan. Even at school he’d been the smallest boy of the class although he’d never been bullied for it, he was too wild a scrapper for that. Yet in an attempt never to be noticed for his lack of inches Dusty forced himself to learn to use either hand for every purpose from writing to shooting. His natural aptitude and perfect co-ordination between hand and brain made him a fine shot and gave him the extra flicker of speed so necessary a man.