by J. T. Edson
“What in god’s name is going on?” Crayne asked, having stood transfixed by astonishment over what he was witnessing. “I’ve never seen you before in my life!”
“I know you haven’t,” the woman agreed and her voice had become that of a well educated Southron. Strolling by, she retrieved the reticule she had dropped in order to have the full use of both hands. Opening its neck, she reached inside to produce the short barreled revolver placed there after taking it from its owner. “Here, but if you’re carrying it for what I think you may be, you’d best forget it.”
“I don’t know wha—!” the Bostonian began.
Reminded of what had brought him to Mulrooney, the remarkable behavior of the woman having momentarily driven it from his thoughts, Crayne looked around. He discovered that David Icke had stopped and was watching what was happening. Finding himself under scrutiny, the author turned and hurried away.
“Not for that!” the woman stated, withdrawing the revolver as the young man turned and reached towards it. “I don’t know what’s between you and him, but he knows you’re after him. That’s why he led you here, so Forey and Potter could stop you.”
“Stop!” the young Bostonian gasped, having noticed the particular emphasis placed upon the word and realizing what it might have been used to imply. Looking from one to the other of the men he had thought were nothing more than chance met cowboys, then staring again at his rescuer, he went on, “You mean they meant—?”
“They for sure weren’t just a couple of cowhands on the prod against Pat-Landers,” the woman asserted with complete assurance, glancing around in a way which reminded the young man of a wary wild creature surveying its surroundings for potential danger. “Fact being, as soon as you’d made anything like a move towards this cut down Peacemaker of yours or even if you didn’t make one they’d have shot you down as dead as Kelsey’s nuts.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Crayne croaked, staring at the speaker as if hardly able to accept the evidence of his eyes, much less what she had just done and was now saying.
“If I give you your Colt back,” the woman drawled, darting glances about her. “Will you give me your word that you’ll come with me and wait until you’ve heard me out before you try to commit murder with it?”
“Murder!” the Bostonian repeated, the full ugly implication of the word striking him as it had failed to do previously.
“Murder,” the woman reiterated. “Could be I’ve called the play wrong, but I reckon that’s what it would’ve come down to should you have been let catch up with—!”
“How did you know?” Crayne croaked, his voice hoarse, staring at the revolver being held in his direction.
“That beard and wig look real enough,” the woman explained, glancing to where her two victims were beginning to stir and show signs of regaining consciousness. “But I made them out as fakes as soon as I saw you and, going by this pair of choice pistoleros having been told to lay for and make wolf bait of you, so did Buckton.”
“Buckton?”
“Hell, yes. Likely you’d know the son-of-a-bitch as ‘David Icke’.”
“I do, but I still don’t understand—!”
“You will soon enough,” the woman promised, making a gesture with the Colt. “Well, do I have your word that you’ll come along and hear me out if you take this?”
“Why should I give you my word about anything!” Crayne challenged, despite a growing belief that he was not talking to an ordinary person and concluding she was unlike any other member of her sex he had met. Looking to where he had last seen the man he was intending to kill, he found only an area devoid of all human life. “Oh damn it. He’s gone—!”
“You can easy enough find him again, should you still be loco enough to want to,” the woman pointed out, an edge of impatience and annoyance having come into a voice which suggested much more grace and glamour than was implied by her appearance. “But that’s all the way left up to you.”
“Then why are you here?” the Bostonian asked, realizing this was unlikely to have come about by chance.
“I’ll answer all your questions, but not here and how,” the woman promised, her manner indicating she was adamant on the matter. “Marshal Kail Beauregard’s as honest a peace officer’s could have been found to take over the badge from Dusty Fog, xvi but I’m not over eager to have him asking me the why-for I took down those two yahoos while I’m wearing a disguise the same as you are. So make your choice and pronto, mister. Take your gun and come with me, or go try to do what you’ve come to Mulrooney for. Either way, I’m lighting a shuck away before the marshal or his deputies get here, or Forey and Potter come ’round and have to be quietened down again.”
“I—I’ll come with you,” Crayne decided, accepting the Colt and returning it to his waist band. Accompanying the woman away from the two slowly recovering hard cases, he went on, “How do you know David Icke and, if you don’t mind me asking, who are you?”
“My name is Belle Starr,” the rescuer of the Easterner introduced, reversing the order in which the information was requested.
Chapter Sixteen – I Know Who He Was
“Belle Starr,” Geoffrey Crane interrupted, before the first part of his question could be answered, remembering the colorful accounts of various illicit activities attributed to the bearer of that name he had read in newspapers and magazines. Staring in something akin to disbelief at the woman he did not doubt had saved him from serious injury and, if she had spoken the truth, perhaps even death, he went on, “But I’ve always heard you were beauti… They say you’re a criminal.”
“And what they say is true, whoever they might be,” the lady outlaw admitted without shame or annoyance, regarding the slighting reference to her appearance as a tribute to her skill in adopting a disguise. xvii “In fact, being a criminal is how I came to know the man you’re after.”
“You know David Icke?”
“I know of him as ‘David Icke’. And I know who he was too!”
“Who he was?” the young Bostonian queried, sensing from the way the comment had been made that the knowledge was not pleasant for the woman walking by his side.
“Back in those days, he was calling himself ‘Raymond Buckton’,” Belle explained, her tone bitter under its otherwise cultured Southern drawl. “He was one of those carpetbagger scum who came crawling like lice into the Indian Nations and all through the South after the war, looting and relying for protection on Yankee blue-bellies led by the likes of Smethurst—!”
“Do you mean the General Smethurst who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan not too long ago?” Crayne inquired, allowing himself to be guided away from the area given over to cattle shipping pens and towards what appeared to be the poorer section of Mulrooney without anybody challenging their right to depart.
“The same, except that it wasn’t murder,” the lady outlaw confirmed definitely. “And, although I don’t doubt that the Klan would have counted it an honor to have rid the world of him, they didn’t do it.” xviii
“What did Ic—Buckton do to you?” Crayne asked, deciding there was nothing to be gained by discussing such an emotive subject further and being more interested in finding the connection with the man for whom he had developed so great a hatred.
“Nothing personally!”
“Then why—?”
“He had himself appointed as Land Commissioner, or some such fancy title, for the Muskogee district of the Nations and he surely showed us Johnny Rebs what Yankee Reconstruction meant. Folks were made to sell off their land for a fraction of its worth, supposedly to be used as farms for freed slaves; although none ever came and it wound up being owned by white Yankees.”
“There was more to it than just that, though?” Crayne hinted, being sufficiently fair minded to concede there had been many injustices perpetrated upon Southrons in the name of Reconstruction.
“Plenty more,” Belle agreed. “Those who wouldn’t sell peaceably were run off, or killed by his men. One of
the families who wouldn’t sell and didn’t run were real close kin of mine. Buckton got liquored up one night and led the bunch who went to wipe them out. Way I heard it, it was him who shot down my Aunt Mae as she was kneeling by Uncle Benjamin and was laughing as he did it.”
“So you’re after revenge against him, too?” the Bostonian stated, rather than just asked.
“I’m after revenge against him, too,” the lady outlaw admitted and something in the gentle sounding words caused the young man to feel as if a chilly hand was running along his spine. The sensation made him grateful that she was not after his blood. “But not only for what happened back in the Nations since I saw and recognized him at the railroad depot.”
“How do you mean?”
“I didn’t know he was Land-Grabber Buckton until then!”
“I’m sorry,” Crayne said. “But I don’t follow you!”
“There were some decent and fair dealing blue-belly officers as well as Smethurst and his kind,” Belle elaborated. “They found out what Buckton was up to and aimed to have him arrested, but he lit a shuck before they could lay hands on him and was thought to have drowned crossing the Arkansas River while it was running in flood. That’s why I never tried to find him and it handed me one hell of a surprise when I found he was the ‘David Icke’ who I’d come down here to meet.”
“You had come to meet Icke?”
“Yes.”
“But how ?”
“Quite easily. I got word to him that there was some very good jewelry for sale, but he’d have to come to Mulrooney to pick it up.”
“Jewelry?”
“He buys it, among other things, from people like me.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Starr. Perhaps I’m dense, but I still don’t understand. Icke’s an author, a playwright and a politician !”
“So I’ve heard,” Belle drawled. “All of which helps him to be one of the biggest fences in the U.S. of A.”
“Fence?” the Bostonian queried, this being a day and age before the language of the underworld had become public knowledge.
“That’s what folks like me called the fellers who buy the things we steal,” the lady outlaw explained, deciding the young man really did not know what was meant by ‘fence’ in such a context and concluding she was wrong with regards to his reason for seeking revenge against Icke. “In fact, two very good friends of mine, who’d got hold of some bonds and other stuff while they were making a visit back East, were sent to sell it to him. Only, when they wouldn’t take the piker’s offer he made them, he fixed it so they were caught by the police and they’re still in jail.”
“Why didn’t they tell the police about him?” Crayne inquired.
“That’s something we don’t do, at least not friends of mine, anyways,” Belle replied, feeling sure her companion was not a criminal. “On top of which, they’d never met him face to face or even learned his real name; the one he’s using now. It took me some time to find out who he was. When I did, I fixed it to have him come out here on my home range so I could teach him a lesson.”
“You meant to have him killed?”
“Not then.”
“Then?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know he was Buckton until I saw him get down from the train,” Belle answered quietly, but did not mention she had noticed the young Easterner disembarking and guessed he was wearing a disguise for some reason. “Only now it isn’t just going to stop with taking the money he’s brought to pay for the jewelry. I’m going to pay him back in full for what he did to Aunt Mae and Uncle Benjamin.”
“Now I understand!” Crayne asserted. “Some of it, anyway.”
“And how about you?” they lady outlaw wanted to know, studying as much of the young man’s face as was left visible by the false beard. “You’re from Boston, by your accent, and I don’t reckon you’re after him because he’s done dirt to you, or somebody close to you, as a fence.”
“No, that isn’t why I’m after him,” the Bostonian replied vehemently and told of his reason for following Icke, concluding, “And, as the law couldn’t touch him, I swore I’d make him pay myself for what he’d done to Andrea.”
“So you aimed to just walk up and blow blue windows in him with that Colt, did you?”
“Yes!”
“In cold blood.”
“He wouldn’t let it happen any other way,” Crayne claimed. “Even if dueling was still legal, he’d never have had the guts to face me man to man.”
“Likely not,” Belle conceded. “Only, seeing it would be murder no matter how well justified you are in your reason, I don’t think you’d have been able to go through with it if the time had come.”
“Why not?” the Bostonian demanded, although he had had similar thoughts on the matter. “He deserves to die for what he did to my sister.”
“I’m not gainsaying that,” the lady outlaw said gently.
“But you don’t think I’d have the courage to do it?”
“You’re not a coward and I never even started to think you might be. But it takes a special breed of man to murder in cold blood and, if I reckoned you were that kind, I wouldn’t be walking with you this way.”
“You may be right about how I’d have acted,” Crayne sighed, concluding from the way in which his companion had just spoken that despite being a criminal she had scant regard for the kind of person who would be willing to kill in the manner he had contemplated.
“I know I’m right,” Belle claimed, having taken a liking to the young man and wanting to ensure he was aware of the enormity of the act he had intended to commit. “I’ve grown up and spent most of my life among men, good and bad, who’ve had to kill. One thing I’ve learned is how to tell the kind who can murder in cold blood, and you aren’t one of them. So I hope you’ll be willing to leave Buckt—Icke—to me.”
“But you’re only a wom—!” the Bostonian began.
“I know I’m ‘only’ a woman,” the lady outlaw drawled, showing no offense at what had almost been said. “But being one is why I’ll be able to get to and at him.”
On the point of asking how his companion intended to wreak her revenge upon the person they both had such good reason to hate, the attention of the young Bostonian was divested from the subject.
Two men had come from a small saloon a short distance ahead of the couple. Although their black hair was cut short, they had aquiline coppery brown features which reminded Crayne of paintings he had seen depicting Indians and were, he guessed, indicative of an admixture of blood with that race. Tall and lean, they were dressed after the fashion of Texas’ cowboys. In addition to the holstered Colt, each also carried a sheathed knife on his gunbelt.
After looking at the woman and the Bostonian for a moment, the Indian-dark pair exchanged low spoken comments. Then, stepping from the sidewalk, they started to stroll forward. Nonchalant as it seemed, Crayne considered there was something vaguely menacing about the prowling manner in which they were moving. They looked wary and alert, as if ready to take whatever action might become necessary without a moment’s hesitation.
“What’s wrong?” Belle inquired, having noticed the change which had come over her companion.
“Those two men coming this way!” Crayne hissed, looking at the lady outlaw and holding down his voice. “They look dangerous.”
“They are dangerous!”
“Are they working for Icke?”
“No, they’re good friends of mine. Hey there, Sammy, Blue, come and meet this gent from Boston, Massachusetts. You’ll find he doesn’t care for good ole Land-Grabber Buckton any more than we do, except he knows him as ‘David Icke’.”
“Now that sounds like you’re a feller with real good sense,” announced the taller of the pair, Blue Duck, his accent that of an Oklahoman and only slightly guttural. “What do you reckon, amigo?”
“I’ll float my stick along of you, Blue,” Sammy Crane replied, his manner of speech indicative of similar origins. “Did you see good ole Land-Grabber
, Belle?”
“I’ve seen him,” the lady outlaw confirmed, as the pair started walking along with her and the Easterner.
“I hopes he looked in good spirits,” Blue Duck drawled, but without any noticeable sincerity in his voice.
“He looked spry and happy,” Belle declared. “Where’re you bedding down, Boston?”
“At a small rooming house not far from the railroad depot,” Crayne answered. “And my name is—!”
“Just ‘Boston’ will do for us,” the lady outlaw interrupted, but in a friendly manner. “Anyways, he probably knows you went there. So we’d best get you moved out. Or, better still, if you don’t have anything you value and need in your room, you can stay away altogether.”
“I don’t have anything I need. At least, nothing that can’t be replaced,” Crayne asserted. Knowing he would have to take flight immediately, if he succeeded in his purpose, he had realized the futility of bringing anything of value which could help trace him should he make good his escape. “But I don’t want to leave Mulrooney until I’m su… Until after I’ve seen what happens to Icke.”
“That’s all right with me,” Belle accepted and pointed to a small wooden shack standing slightly away from its neighbors. “That’s where we’re staying. It isn’t luxurious, but it’s clean and, if you’re so minded, you can move in with us. Provided you’re willing to leave handling Buckt—Icke—to me.”
“You’ve got a deal, Miss Starr,” the Bostonian declared without hesitation.
Chapter Seventeen – How It Was Done
Even before coming to the rescue of Geoffrey Crayne, whom, at her own insistence she never knew other than as ‘Boston,’ Belle Starr had been engaged upon the preliminaries to extract vengeance upon David Icke for the betrayal and imprisonment of her friends. Putting to use the facilities available to her, she had learned all she could about her intended quarry and, based upon this information, had selected from her extensive repertoire of schemes those she had felt best suited to her needs. The active stages of the preparations had been commenced two days before the arrival in Mulrooney of the receiver and his other pursuer. However, she had not settled upon the exact method to be used until after they had come.
