by J. T. Edson
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 nearby.
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 newfound 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 center 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 recognizing 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 hidalgos and such.”
“Do you know him?”
“Nope. There’s a couple of folk in Mexico I don’t know.”
“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 buzz
ard 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 bloodstained 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 recognize the Maximilian 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 realized 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.”
Chapter Five – A Plug Hat from New Haven
The town of Browns
ville, Texas, was large and prosperous. From the port in the war ranged Confederate blockade-runners. Now trade poured in here both from Mexico and from over the Atlantic. It was a town of contrasts, seamen of many nationalities thronged the streets and the dock area while further back could be found farmers, cattlemen and others who made their living from the lush and fertile lands of Cameron county.
Cowhands were no novelty here and none noticed the two men who rode in that early afternoon. This suited Dusty Fog and the Ysabel Kid, particularly the latter for he was unused to city life and disliked being crowded in by people. He also disliked seeing uniformed city marshals watching him.
“You still aiming to go and see the sheriff?” he asked.
“Why sure.”
“Then let’s pull in here and have a meal at the saloon. I hear ole Tim Farron don’t feed his prisoners too good and he’ll surely jail us as material witnesses when we tell him.”
Dusty grinned cheerfully; the Kid was worried that his reputation as a smuggler remained untarnished by a visit of his own free will to a sheriff. Dusty was just as determined that they do the right thing and report the murder to the county authorities so an investigation and report could be made. However he felt hungry and did not want to drop in on his Uncle Tim unexpectedly. He turned his horse towards the saloon, hearing the Kid’s sigh of relief at this reprieve.
The Eagle saloon was not busy as they pushed through the batwings, only a party of five or so cavalry troopers drinking at the bar and from the look of them well on the way to being carried out. They were talking loud and boastfully and one huge, red-faced soldier looked to be their ringleader. Dusty frowned. He was still military enough to want to take the soldiers and bounce them clear out of the saloon right straight to the stockade where they would learn that drunkenness didn’t pay.
The two young Texans stood at the door for a moment watching the troopers, then a man came into the bar from the rear door which led to the living quarters.
“Now there’s a man dressed for trouble if I ever saw one,” the Kid remarked.
