The Ysabel Kid (4 page)

It was this ambidextrous skill and the tricks which Tommy Okasi taught him that enabled him to rise from private to Captain in command of a self-contained troop of cavalry and to make older men obey him. The deadly and, apart from in the Orient, at that time unknown techniques of ju-jitsu and karate along with his speed helped him to handle himself in any kind of fight. Several larger men met with Dusty’s knowledge of the Nippon fighting way called “the empty hand” learned that their rough house knowledge was of no use against him.

“Who are they?” Dusty indicated the still forms, although he could guess the answer even before it was given.

“Them borrowing neighbours you was talking about,” the Kid replied. “The five
pelados
Giss and Kraus sent after me.”

Dusty spoke fair Spanish and knew what
pelado
meant when spoken in the way the Kid just used the term. Literally the word meant one who removed the skin from a dead animal. Used as the Kid spoke it
pelado
meant the lowest form of thief on the border, the kind which would rob a dead body. These five looked as if they might have come into that category before their days of robbery and murder were brought to a not untimely end.

“Looked tolerable keen to get acquainted,” Dusty remarked. Then he remembered the one the white stallion chased into the woods. “Your hoss took after one of them.”

“Reckon he caught up with him,” the Kid replied and whistled shrilly.

“Yeah,” Dusty agreed as the white came out of the woods with blood on its legs. “I reckon he caught up with him.”

Neither of the pair was worried about the killing of these five Mexicans. Both had been killing from necessity since their early teens and knew that in this case not only did they save their own lives but they finished five worthless careers with the possibility that they also prevented the five murdering others. That kind of Mexican bandit were without pity or mercy and would kill to rob without any scruples. The treacherous attack, if it had been successful would have caused the five Mexicans no conscience worries. It was better for the world in general and for the well-being of the two young Texans in particular that all five were dead.

“Let’s move camp some,” the Kid suggested. “This lot stink worse than a week dead polecat and they’re crawling with seam squirrels. Must have come from downwind or that ole Nigger hoss of mine would have got on to them sooner. They handled it real nice. Man’d say it was lucky you was along here.”

“They handled it nice.”

“Sure, murder’s their best play. They don’t take to no shooting war, not with anybody who can handle a gun.”

Dusty lifted the coffeepot from the fire and emptied it out. He looked around and the Kid indicated where he would find water. While Dusty took the pot along to wash it out and allow it to cool the black-dressed youngster rolled his warbag in his bedroll and slung it ready to be strapped on to the saddle. He caught the big white stallion, checked it to make sure the Mexican hadn’t managed to wound it, then saddled it and slipped on the bridle.

When Dusty returned the Kid lashed the coffeepot to the back of his bedroll then slid the Dragoon gun, still with the butt attached into his saddleboot. He gripped the saddle-horn and went into the saddle with a lithe, Indian like bound. Dusty caught his paint and mounted, looking at the Kid.

“You know this section better than I do, so lead on.”

They rode off side by side. The Kid had put out the fire and now as the sound of their hooves faded off the silence came down once more, only broken by the soft buzzing of the flies which gathered round the five bodies.

Dusty watched the other young man as they rode along. There was an Indian caution in the way he lounged in his saddle and although he didn’t seem to be taking any notice the Kid’s eyes were never still and his ears tuned for any small sound which might serve as a warning to him.

Neither spoke but both were busy with their thoughts. Dusty thought over what he knew of this dark youngster who he’d saved from death. The Ysabel family were border smugglers and had been ever since the United States made taxable certain goods from both countries. To have lasted as long as they had needed skill, brains and local knowledge. It also meant they needed to be fighting men down to their wild Irish-Kentucky-Creole-Comanche toes and the Kid was all of that. It also meant he knew Mexico and the Mexican people, from the rich hacienderos down to the poorest, most ragged peons. That knowledge would be invaluable if he would ride with Dusty on this mission.

The Kid led on to such effect that he brought them to a pleasant clearing on the banks of a stream.

“Best night here,” he said, looking round. “No place we can get to worth going afore dark.”

They off-saddled and left the horses picketed apart for the two stallions were eyeing each other and snorting warningly. Then while the Kid lit a fire Dusty got his food out and started to make a meal.

With the food done they settled down on their bedrolls and started to clean their weapons. It was then that Dusty saw the two Dragoons were not a matched pair. The one from the holster was the older, Second Model, with the square-backed brass trigger-guard and the seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. The other was of the rounded trigger-guard, eight-inch-long barrel, and cut for the attachable carbine stock, which was known as the third model.

The detachable stock lay on the bedroll at the side of the Kid and was one of the rare canteen-containing kind which Dusty had read about but never seen before. So always eager to examine something new in the way of weapons he asked if he could look at the stock. The Kid’s face was expressionless as he handed it over. Dusty saw this newer Dragoon was a finely engraved piece even as he turned the stock over and looked first at the canteen, then at the plate inlaid in the butt. The knife had only made a slight dent and he could read the lettering engraved in the silver.

“To Mason Haines from his friend Jethro Kliddoe.”

“Nice piece,” Dusty remarked as he handed the stock back after examining it for a time. He wondered how it came to be in the hands of the Ysabel Kid, for that dark boy could not be Mason Haines, nor would a Mosby rider call Kliddoe friend.

“Sure,” the Kid’s voice was soft and gentle yet there was that Comanche mean look in his eyes again. “One of these days I aim to head north and take it back to ole Yellerdawg Kliddoe.”

Dusty made no attempt to question this remarkable statement. Kliddoe had been the Union Army’s equivalent of William Clarke Quantrill, a man who committed murder and plundered in the name of his flag and under the pretence of fighting for his cause. He would hardly be the sort of man a Dixie boy would go out of his way to see at any time.

“What are you aiming to do now, Lon?” Dusty asked as he unrolled his gear to get fresh bullets for the guns.

“Waal, there were eight of them after me and Gis’ll be just busting his pants to know how they got on. I’m headed back to tell him. Surely hate to see a friend unhappy and worried.”

“Why not ride with me?” Dusty asked softly, watching the other’s face, “I’m going south, too.”

“Into Mexico?” the Kid inquired. “It’s no place for a southern boy right now.”

“I know. There are a few down there. That’s why I’m going.”

“To join ole Bushrod Sheldon?”

“To fetch him back home.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE wasn’t a sound for the moment, the Kid’s Indian dark face showing no expression as he looked at Dusty. He did not speak for some time, then remarked, “A man’d say you surely picked a real easy way to make a living.”

Dusty shrugged, thinking the same thing himself. “Sure, but if General Bush don’t come back we can’t offer to send help to the Juaristas.”

The Kid thought this over. He and his father supported the Juarez cause from both personal and business reasons. However with the Southerners fighting for Maximillian they steered clear of actual conflict with the French. The family smuggling business was feeling the troubles south of the border badly and until peaceful conditions returned again there was no point in a man trying to run contraband over the river. A man needed steady, reliable customers to run a successful smuggling organisation and there were enough forces of law and order arrayed against the smugglers without having to fight off French soldiers or Juarez irregulars who were from the south of Mexico, and did not know who a man was.

“I’ll go along with you, Dusty. But I can’t see Bushrod Sheldon coming back.

Dusty reached into his pocket and took out the letter handing it over. He knew that the message was private but some instinct told him that he could trust the Ysabel Kid and that if he put his cards on the table this Indian-dark boy would be more than willing to help him.

The Kid read slowly, mouthing the words to himself and scowling at the more difficult pieces. However, even though much of the letter was in phrases he could not understand, he did know one thing. The Yankee Government wanted Bushrod Sheldon back in the States and they wanted him really badly. There were concessions in that letter which made the Kid think and he knew that Bushrod Sheldon might even accept the terms. Word had it his men were tired both of the French and being so long away from home.

“I’ll help you when you find Giss and Kraus then,” Dusty promised. “I’ll keep the rest of their men off you, if I can.”

“That’ll be all right with me. But we’re going to have us one helluva time if the French find out that this letter is being sent. They’ll be looking for us and if they find us they’ll be on us foot, hoss and artillery.”

“You’ll be scaring me next.”

The Ysabel Kid grinned at Dusty. He was getting to like and feel the magnetism of the small man. Somehow the Kid felt the same admiration for Dusty as he had for his father. They were much alike those two. Even though Dusty was small, soft-spoken and inconspicuous and his father was a big, wild black Irish Kentuckian. It was the air about them, an air that called for obedience and loyalty, the air of a born leader of men.

With the Ysabel Kid for an ally Dusty got down to the more serious work. He first of all prepared to load his guns. The Kid was stripping the caps from his carbine stocked Dragoon gun ready to load a couple of empty chambers. Removing the percussion caps from the others was a simple precaution for a chance knock could ignite them and fire the charge in the chamber, sending a ball out. Dusty opened a packet of Colt Combustible paper cartridges and extracted enough to reload the two revolvers. He was about to load them when he saw the Kid taking out some round moulded lead balls and a powder flask.

“Help yourself to these cartridges if you’re out, Lon,” Dusty remarked. “I’ve plenty of them to spare.”

“Nope, thanks,” the Kid juggled the balls in his hand. “You can keep them sort for me. Give me a soft lead round ball any time. It’ll stop man or b’ar dead in his tracks first shot. Shaped bullets don’t hit that hard.”

Dusty laughed, watching the Kid feed powder into the chamber, then place the ball on it, pushing it home, turning the chamber under the hammer and forcing the ball home. Dusty ripped the protective foil from the cartridge and made a small hole in the cover, turned the chamber and rammed it home. They loaded the empty chamber in the same manner and then slipped the percussion caps on the nipples.

With their weapons loaded and ready for use Dusty got back to the business on hand.

“Where is Bushrod Sheldon?” he asked. “Last I heard he was down near Saltillo or Neuve Rosita.”

“Neuve Rosita it is. There is a fair-sized garrison there, about five hundred men, French and the Sheldon boys. It’s a hard country down there but I know it.”

“Do you know the men who ride for Juarez down that way?”

“Sure, Don Ruis Almonte was one of the men Giss wanted to kill. He’s a friend, we did plenty of business with him.”

Dusty sat back and wondered if it was worth going to Brownsville and wasting time trying to locate the man Handiman told him would be there. With the Ysabel Kid riding along with him he might be able to do without whatever the other man might be able to give.

“Trouble is there’s more than one bunch working that area,” the Kid went on. “Some of them are all right, but there’s others who aren’t any better than those five we killed back there.”

“We’ll head down to Brownsville then,” Dusty suggested, he explained about the man he was supposed to meet there.

The Kid was not too keen on going to Brownsville for Sheriff Tom Farron was one man he and his father steered well clear of when working on the border. However, such was the Kid’s faith in Dusty Fog that he was willing to go not only to Brownsville, but to hell if necessary.

“Let’s get some sleep first,” he said.

They rolled on to their blankets and pulled the suggans over them, laying on top of the tarps, and were soon asleep under the stars, the two horses grazing and sleeping near by.

At the first light of morning Dusty and the Kid were awake and, after a wash and shave, and a meal, they saddled their horses and rode on their way towards the thriving town of Brownsville. They passed along quiet trails until finally a wider scar in the land was before them. The main Brownsville trail.

Riding alongside his new-found friend, the Ysabel Kid felt a new peace of mind, and a feeling of well-being stirred inside him. With the five men Dusty helped to kill, and the three he’d got himself in Mexico, there were no more Giss and Kraus men after him. Also he’d now a friend to ride along with him on his search for vengeance, a friend whose skill would be a help to him and one who would not spook or do something stupid in a tight corner.

He threw back his head and started to sing in a clear tenor:

“A Yankee come into West Texas,

A sweet-talking hombre and sly,

He fell in love with Rosemary Jo

Then gave her the good-bye.”

Dusty looked at the Kid, a smile flickering at his lips. There did not seem to be any end to the dark boy’s talents. He sang like a bird and Dusty could guess that voice had often been raised as they rode the last few safe miles along some trail bringing a load of contraband.

“Now Rosemary Jo telled her tough pappy,

Who said, ‘Now hombre, that’s bad,

In tears you’ve left my Rosemary Jo,

I’ll teach you you can’t make her sad,’

He whipped up his trusted old ten gauge,

At which—”

The song came to an abrupt end as the big white halted snorting and testing the wind as it fiddle-footed nervously. Instantly the Kid changed from a happy, singing man to a tense, hard-faced creature, no less savage than the big horse he rode. His right hand dropped and caressed the butt of his holstered Dragoon gun as his hazel eyes scoured the area. By his side, Dusty reached down and pulled out the Spencer ready for use, for he knew the horse was trained to give warning when men approached.

For a moment there was no sound, then from the thick bush up the trail a man stumbled. He staggered into the centre of the trail and fell to his knees, tried to get up and collapsed again.

It was then that the two different upbringings showed in Dusty Fog and the Ysabel Kid. Dusty, with all the instincts of the lawman, swung down from his horse to make an investigation. The Kid, however, stayed in his saddle and appeared to be contemplating a rapid escape.

Seeing Dusty going towards the man, the Kid swung down from his white and, with his old Dragoon in his hand, went forward. Then he scowled. The man wore a light blue, silver filigreed uniform, and his head was bare. The Kid knew that uniform, it was one worn by a crack regiment which rode for Juarez. The young Mexican was forcing himself up on to one hand while the other tried to pull loose the Colt from his holster. His handsome face was lined with agony and his eyes glazed over. It didn’t need a doctor to look at the blood-running hole in the man’s back to know he wasn’t long for this world.

“Lie still, señor,” the Kid’s fluent Spanish call stopped the move. “We are friends. Who did this, are they near?”

The young Mexican collapsed again and Dusty rested his carbine on the ridge at the side of the trail, then bent over him. Gently he turned the wounded man over and looked down. The bullet which struck him in the back had come right through, and there was nothing anyone could do for the man. In fact, for a moment Dusty and the Kid thought he was dead for he laid so still, hardly even breathing. Then his eyes came open and he looked up at the two men bent over him.

“Ambush—French!” he gasped out in halting Spanish, not recognising them but talking with the last of his breath. “Guns for Juarez. Tell—Brownsville—tell—get—guns—Monterrey.”

The blood bubbled up from out of his mouth and his body. With a final convulsive quiver, the slender, handsome young man went limp. In his last breath he’d delivered them a message in the belief they were his friends.

“He’s cashed,” the Kid remarked, then made what to him was a natural suggestion: “Let’s ride!”

“Not yet,” Dusty replied. “I’ll search him, then we’ll lay him on the side of the trail and send a buggy out to collect him.”

“Won’t do no good searching him. The Juarists don’t go a lot on writing when they send messages.”

Dusty was already checking the young Mexican’s pockets and the Kid looked his satisfaction at having his statement verified. He watched the way Dusty worked and got an uneasy suspicion he’d seen this kind of acting and thinking before. The suspicion was confirmed at Dusty’s next question.

“Who do you reckon he is, Lon? And where did he come from?”

“He’s a member of the 18th Rancheros, they’re light cavalry, like your bunch. Most part formed of Creoles, younger sons of the hildagos and such.”

“Do you know him?”

“Nope. There’s a couple of folk in Mexico I don’t knew.”

“Where did he come from just now?” Dusty eyed his friend grimly. “And don’t tell me from that bus. I’ve seen that.”

“You talk like a lawman,” the Kid growled back. “Act like one, too.”

“And you talk like a dead mean ole smuggler,” Dusty shot back. “Hear tell you can read sign a mite.”

“A mite,” the Kid was cautious now. “What you thinking of doing?”

“Getting a full story ready for when we get to Brownsville. I want to tell the sheriff—”

“Tell the sheriff?” the kid groaned. “You mean go into Brownsville, ride up to ole Tim Farron’s office and go in, without being took at gunpoint?”

“Sure, that’s the way I usually do it.”

“Well, it ain’t my way,” the Kid objected, for he could see all too clearly what would happen if he rode merrily up to the County Sheriff’s office and announced he’d found him a dead body. Tim Farron was not the best friend the Ysabel family had. He was a lawman and a good one but to the Kid’s mind was over-zealous in his duties regarding the prevention of smuggling. There were lawmen who took smuggling to be a pleasant and legal business which supplied them with cheap goods and an extra amount of wealth. There were others who said that smuggling was against the law and tried, without success, to stop it. Tim Farron was one of the latter.

“You scared?”

“Sure, I don’t like going near jails. Pappy always tole me lookings might be catchings. So I don’t look.”

“Tell you, then, you backtrack him and see where he’d come from. I’ll see the sheriff.” Dusty was enjoying the Ysabel Kid’s worried look at the thought of going voluntarily to see a sheriff so did not mention that Tim Farron was his uncle.

“All right, I’ll do it. My pappy warned there’d be days like this.”

They lifted the body clear of the trail and laid it under a bush. The Kid took an old bandana from his pocket to hang on the branch of a tree and leave it swaying in the breeze. That would scare off any buzzard or even the wild pigs which infested the bush and which might get at the body while they were going to fetch the sheriff.

Then he turned and started to walk towards the woods. Dusty called, “Here Lon, take this with you, it’ll be more use than that ole hand cannon.”

The Ysabel Kid turned and caught the Spencer Dusty tossed to him, flipped open the lever and jacked a bullet into the chamber, then went into the bush. He found the stumbling marks left by the young Mexican with no trouble at all and followed them with no great difficulty. He hefted the carbine, feeling its agreeable weight in his hands and grinning a little as he thought of the small soft-spoken young man who’d taken charge of him so completely. It would be lonely down along the Rio Grande now old Sam Ysabel was gone. A man could not run the smuggling game on his own either. Yet there was little other than that the Kid thought himself qualified to do. He could handle cattle, but his work along that line was always done at night and mostly with little of the care a legal ranch owner insisted on when handling stock.

There was little of legal use he could put his hand to, for there was no call to know the winding smuggler trails along the big river, not as an honest and hard-working young citizen. He could read sign and was a fair hand at breaking a bad horse, but they were purely part-time occupations.

Anyhow, the Kid mused, as he followed the tracks, there was no certainty that they would come out of this business alive, and the chances were greatly against their so doing. If they did there would be time for a man to make up his mind to go or stay.

The sign was so plain that any half-bright Comanche boy could follow it, happen he had both his eyes going and it wasn’t too dark a night. The young Mexican had shown guts to come this far. He’d crawled some of it and stumbled the rest, leaving some blood behind to mark his way, even if there wasn’t a crushed growth and broken twigs for a man to follow.

Then the Kid found a blood-stained bandana laying on the tracks and after that there was no blood. This was simply explained: the young Mexican stopped the flow of blood with that bandana until he reached this spot. Likely he’d been too weak to hold on to it any more.

From that point the sign was not so plain, not that the Kid experienced any difficulty in following it. All his young life he’d been reading sign and could have followed far less evidence than this wounded man left. The tracks led on to be crossed twice by other human tracks, a big, burly man had searched down here since the Mexican passed. A man who searched the bushes but could not read sign for he’d crossed the Mexican’s line twice. The Kid was alert, ready to take action at the slightest indication he was being watched. A man who’d shoot another in the back was not the sort one took chances with.

The sign led on to the bottom of a steep, red-soiled cliff face. Here by some quirk of nature the soil was left bare and the earth told the story to eyes which were long used to reading the messages of the ground. One patch was disturbed by someone coming down in a half-roll, half-slide. That would have been the young Mexican. He’d been lucky to get down without serious injury, and he’d taken cover in the bushes as the Kid already knew. Then he’d moved off again along the line the Kid followed here.

There were another set of footprints in the red soil. Both the toes pointed upwards but the Kid knew from their shape and cut that one set was made as a man came down, lowered by a rope and walking. That would be the only way a man could get down or up the slope on his two feet. A rope tied to some tree at the top, then come down it hand over hand, feet braced against the soil, digging in and leaving a real clear imprint.

The boots were high-heeled, though the soles looked blunter than the usual style a cowhand wore. They were boots meant for riding, to cling to the stirrup and give a brace to the legs, not for walking in. He would know that sign anywhere and if he ever saw it again he would be able to identify it without difficulty.

The Kid surveyed the slope but knew that without a rope he would have a lot of trouble to get up there. Even if he got up there he would not be able to do a thing, for the man who’d come down here was on a horse and would likely be well back to the Rio Grande by now. The young Mexican said something about an ambush by the French, which meant they’d got him and they’d be French soldiers after him. The Kid knew that any French soldier who was above the line would hardly wait round. He’d do his work and light out fast.

So the Ysabel Kid returned in the way he’d just come, striding along at a good speed. However, he was alert and something caught his eye on the way back. It lay in the bushes, a small saddlebag, half hidden from view even from this side. From the way he’d come the Kid would be unable to see it. He’d been concentrating on the tracks coming and giving no attention to any side issues.

The saddlebag was made of good quality leather and bore the crest of the 18th Rancheros. It was only fastened with a buckle, but the Kid did not open it; instead he slung it over his shoulder and returned to the Brownsville trail where Dusty was waiting.

“Where did he come from?” Dusty asked.

“Back there in the bush. Must have been bad hit some ways back. Tracks ended for me at a slope. I couldn’t climb. He’d come down it, likely got hit at the top. Crawled into the bushes and hid out. Another man came down the slope. Used a rope to get down. Might mean there were more of them at the top. He came down and made a search, but couldn’t read sign any. Crossed the Mexican’s line twice and never saw it.”

“Could have been French soldiers after him,” Dusty remarked. “That means they’ll have lit out for the border real fast. They wouldn’t want to be taken in uniform on United States soil.”

“Killed a man in cold blood, but they wouldn’t know he’d been found. Why’d they light out? I allow they’d come along the Brownsville trail here and see if they could find him.”

“Not if they’re in uniform,” Dusty objected.

“Uniform or not, they could hang just as high—”

“That’s not it, Lon. It’s international law. We don’t recognise the Maximillian Government in Mexico and to us the French and Mexicans are fighting. So if we catch any of their nationals wearing uniform we have to intern, hold them until peace is declared or other arrangement is made.”

“Say, I found this saddlebag,” he said, showing it to Dusty. “Reckon we can see what is in it?”

“Why sure,” Dusty agreed, taking the bag and opening the flap.

“Wowee!” the Kid whooped. “Man, I never saw so much money in one lump in all my wicked and young life.”

Dusty thumbed through the stack of notes. They were all hundred-dollar bills and formed a fair amount.

“What are we going to do with it?” the Kid asked, then groaned. “Oh, no! Dusty, you ain’t going to turn all that money over to Tim Farron?”

“Sure we are,” Dusty replied. “What did you think of doing with it?”

“Know a hollow tree where we could hide it until we come back from Mexico,” the Kid suggested. “Then we could buy us new clothes, a couple of them Henry repeaters and I’d take you to see a few places along the bord—”

Dusty shook his head, watching with some amusement the play of emotion on the Ysabel Kid’s face as he realised that Dusty was determined to give the money over to the law.

“Wouldn’t miss a couple of them,” he went on.

“Likely, but we’ll hand it in. Wait a minute, what was he saying, the Mexican, just before he died?”

“Something about guns for Juarez, take them to Monterrey,” the Kid growled, as he eyed the saddlebag. “All right, but when you die and go wherever you’re going and they ask you what you ever did bad in your life, you tell them you ruined a poor lil ole quarter Comanche boy for good.”

“How’d you mean?”

“Why coming here, taking me to see the sheriff and toting in all that money and not taking none of it for our trouble. I tell you Dusty, my kin’ll stop talking to me, sure as I’m born.”