by J. T. Edson
One of the men screamed as he took a .44 caliber soft lead ball in the right shoulder and was hurled from his feet with an arm he would never use again. An instant later, just as he was satisfied with his aim at the vague figure beyond the gaseous cloud, the second hired gun was felled by bullets from the Winchester carbine and Spencer of the other two ‘white Indians’ who had crossed the path to take part in the pursuit.
Realizing yet another potential danger was ended, the Kid raced onwards. Unsure exactly how many times he had fired, which was excusable under the circumstances, he was disinclined to rely upon there being loaded chambers. Dropping the revolver, he reached across to bring the massive James Black bowie knife from its sheath.
‘Pelado!’
At the shouted word, meaning a corpse or grave robber of the vilest kind in the Spanish spoken along the bloody border between Texas and Mexico, Salar turned from the horse he had been unfastening. Seeing the Kid rushing towards him, he brought up and aimed the Sharps. Excellent though it undoubtedly was for accuracy at long distances, it was much less suitable for fast work at close quarters. With the sights aligned on the chest and right forefinger squeezing the trigger, he watched his intended target suddenly commence a rolling dive. Unable to alter the direction of the barrel or halt the pressure, he fired and knew he had missed.
Alarm flooded through the Mexican!
About to drop the now empty rifle and draw his Colt, the chance was not presented for Salar to do so!
Ending the roll in a kneeling posture, the Kid swung his right arm in a swift horizontal arc. Passing just above the waist belt, the razor sharp edge of the bowie knife’s blade sliced through the white silk shirt and bit onwards deep into the flesh below. It ripped across the width of the lower torso like red hot steel passing through butter. Unable to cry out, Salar turned involuntarily away. The Sharps slipped from his grasp and his hands went to where the intestines were flooding out of the mortal wound. Buckling at the knees, he toppled dying to the ground.
‘A:he!’ grunted the Kid, as much a Comanche as “Is-A-Man” had been when counting coup upon Dennis “Waxie” Corovan in Holbrock.
‘Are you all right, Cuchilo?’ Annie asked, reining her horse to a halt.
‘Yes,’ the Kid replied. ‘How about them?’
‘If any are still alive, they’re running!’ Mort claimed. ‘Let’s go and get those fools critters of ours back, shall we, Cuchilo?’
‘Be be—!’ the Kid began, but was interrupted by the sound of many hooves approaching from the direction he had come. Looking at the riders galloping through the woodland, he went on, ‘Well I’ll be damned. I didn’t know either of them were hereabouts!’
~*~
‘You in the jailhouse! Can you hear me?’ Leftie Scanlan yelled. ‘I got your word, but it’s not going to work. I’ve got Banker Humboldt out here with a gun to his head. If you don’t fetch out the half-breed and hand him over, I’m going to find out if he really does have dollar bills instead of brains!’
‘He has got Humboldt!’ Captain Dustine Edward Marsden “Dusty” Fog confirmed, having crossed the office to raise the cover and look out of a loophole in the shutter of a window. ‘This we didn’t count on!’
‘I don’t reckon he’d be loco enough to do it,’ commented Sheriff Jerome Dickson, coming from where he had been keeping watch at the rear.
‘Or me,’ the small Texan admitted. ‘But can we take a chance on it?’
The clock on the wall of the office had just struck noon!
Ever since daybreak, the main street of Holbrock had resembled a ghost town!
At the request of Brenton Humboldt, passed around the previous evening as he had promised, the citizens had remained in their homes, keeping their children inside and leaving their businesses closed!
Following the plan outlined by Dickson, he and Dusty had not been outside the jailhouse. Closed shutters protected the windows and the two doors were secured by locks and bolts.
Although neither had believed an attack would be launched when the segundo of the Standing DMS ranch saw they had done as announced, they had fully loaded every firearm on the premises and were prepared for defense or a siege.
From what they had just heard, the small Texan and the peace officer realized their intentions were being thwarted in a way neither had envisaged!
Opening the loophole in the other window, Dickson joined Dusty in studying the situation!
Neither underestimated its extreme gravity!
Instead of having ridden to where the street broadened to form what amounted to a small plaza in front of the jailhouse, or approaching on foot along the sidewalk—perhaps with others closing in at the rear—Scanlan had brought his men so they had given little indication of their coming. They now formed a half circle in the square. Some were watching the building with rifles in their hands. The rest faced and were menacing the townsmen who were gathering beyond them.
However, to the watchers in the office, the most important sight was proof that Scanlan could do as he threatened!
Standing in the center of his men, the segundo was holding Humboldt as Mort Lewis had on the day of the flight from the jailhouse. There was, as Dusty and Dickson were aware, one very great difference. The rancher would have been unlikely to use the revolver menacing the banker. Each knew they could not rely upon Scanlan to show a similar reluctance. At least, neither was sufficiently confident in their belief to put Humboldt’s life at risk by resisting when the segundo called for them to ‘come out of there and bring the half-breed with you’.
‘We’re coming,’ the sheriff called, glancing at the sawed off shotgun he was holding, then nodding at his companion.
‘There’re times I wish I’d led a better life,’ Dusty drawled, leaning his Winchester carbine against the wall to unfasten the door. Leaving the saddle gun where it was, he continued as he started to open the door. ‘And this could be one of them!’
‘I know how you feel,’ Dickson admitted and led the way from the jailhouse.
‘I don’t see the half-breed with you!’ Scanlan growled, as the two men advanced and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk twenty feet from where he and the banker were standing.
‘You didn’t expect to,’ Dickson stated, keeping the shotgun held in front of him and down at arms’ length. ‘After last night, you know he’s not here.’
‘The hell he’s not!’ the segundo denied. ‘That big clay bank of his’s still down to the livery bam. We’d have heard him had he rid’out on something else and he sure as shit hasn’t gone on foot.’
‘How about that man of yours you found out back?’ Dickson challenged.
‘Sure we found Joe knife-ripped and wolf bait,’ Scanlan admitted. ‘But the Ysabel Kid must’ve got by Salar and his bunch, then done it coming in.’
‘It was Mort Lewis going out,’ the sheriff corrected, if inaccurately. ‘I turned him loose so you couldn’t get your lousy hands on him.’
‘If you did, you’re going to regret it,’ the segundo declared. ‘I’ve promised these good folks a hanging and I don’t aim to disappoint them. Turning a murderer loose makes you an accessory to his killings, which rates a rope in my book.’
‘So you figure on hanging the sheriff?’ Dusty asked, having allowed his companion do the talking as a matter of courtesy.
‘And you ’n’ that black dressed ‘breed you brought,’ Scanlan replied. ‘You’re in it with Dickson from soda to hock.’
‘Do you think you can do it?’ the small Texan inquired, voice as gentle as the first stirrings of a summer whirlwind.
‘Do you reckon I can’t?’ the segundo challenged, gouging with his left hand Remington into the banker’s throat.
‘’Cause, happen you do, ask Humboldt here what he reckons about it.’
‘Don’t give in to him!’ the banker ordered, face flushed with outrage over having been dragged from his home at gun point and used in such a fashion.
‘Scanlan!’
Having
been allowed to pass between two of the hired guns—who knew him to be a supporter of their employer—holding a revolver in his hand, the member of the posse with whose wife the segundo was having an affair called the name as he walked forward.
4Yeah?’ Scanlan grunted, eyeing the speaker disdainfully.
‘Martha’s told me what’s going on between you!’
‘So?’
‘So I’m going to kill you!’ the man declared and started to raise his weapon.
The betrayed husband was being far less reckless than he seemed. Nor was he acting on any spur of the moment impulse. Having suspected what was happening between his wife and Scanlan, due to hints given by neighbors, he had beaten the truth out of her that morning. This had been accompanied by a threat of vengeance on her lover. Locking her in a room at home, he had joined the crowd hoping to find some way of avoiding the reprisals. Being quick witted in some matters, he had seen what he believed opened a way which would have the added advantage of earning public acclaim and the possibility of patronage from the banker.
‘Get the hell away from here, you stupid bastard!’ the segundo snarled, realizing he was exposed to the gun of a man less likely to care than either the sheriff or the small Texan for the well-being of Humboldt.
Regardless of his belief that the betrayed husband lacked the guts to do more than threaten, Scanlan could not prevent himself relaxing the hold of his right hand and moving the Remington from beneath his captive’s chin. Making the most of the opportunity, Humboldt jerked free his neck and rammed his right elbow to the rear. As it struck and pushed the segundo away, he jumped aside.
Alert for any way out of the predicament, Dickson began to raise his shotgun!
Swiftly though the sheriff moved, Dusty Fog proved much faster!
Crossing, the small Texan’s hands grasped the bone grips and swept the Colt 1860 Army revolvers from their carefully designed holsters. Such was his completely ambidextrous prowess, cocked and ready by the time their barrels were turned to the front, they roared at practically the same instant and slightly over half a second after the commencement of the draw. The two .44 caliber bullets entered Scanlan’s left breast less than three inches apart, sending him backwards and causing his Remington to discharge harmlessly into the air.
In echo to the cracks from the Colts, the sheriff changed the aim of his weapon and threw nine .32 buckshot balls into a ‘warrior’ who was showing signs of aggression!
A moment later, the top of his skull bursting open and spinning his hat into the air under the impact of a bullet of heavy caliber, another of the Standing DMS ranch’s hired guns was thrown from his feet as he tried to raise his rifle.
The shot had not been fired from within the town!
Turning his gaze to where the boom of a rifle sounded, one of the ‘warriors’ gave a yell of alarm. Looking in the direction he was indicating, the rest shared his consternation. Nor were many of the assembled townsmen less perturbed to see the rim—from which Annie Singing Bear had conducted her surveillance when looking for Corovan—was lined with well armed Indians. Sitting his horse between Chief Wolf Runner and a stocky, bearded white man whose most prominent piece of cowhand attire was a vest made from the hide of a jaguar, another elderly Comanche with the flowing ‘war bonnet’ denoting high social standing was ejecting the spent cartridge case from a Sharps rifle. Although of Nemenuh style and manufacture, none of his garments were made from pronghorn hide.
Riding down the slope at a gallop, Winchesters and Spencer carbine held ready to be used, were the Ysabel Kid, Morton Lewis and the ‘surprise factor’ who had led Scanlan to form an erroneous conclusion about the killing of the ‘warrior’ the previous night, Annie Singing Bear.
‘Give it up, you men!’ Dickson commanded. ‘Those Kweharehnuh won’t hurt the town people, but they’ll take the hair from every god-damned Standing DMS son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t yell “calf rope” and fast!’
‘Scanlan wasn’t following Stewart’s orders on this!’ Dusty supplemented from behind his recocked Colts, drawing an accurate conclusion with regards to the motives of the segundo; whose intention had been to have the sheriff and Mort killed, presenting his employer with a fait accompli where the ambition to gain control of the whole region was concerned. ‘You’ll get no pay from him!’
‘Can you keep those red bastards from butchering us?’ asked one of the hired guns and the others muttered a desire to be given an answer.
‘The Kid and Mort can, happen they’ve a mind,’ the sheriff replied. ‘Which they will have, if you give it up.’
‘What’ll you do to us?’ the “warrior” wanted to know. ‘Nothing,’ Dickson promised. ‘Just so long as you get the hell clear out of Holbrock County and don’t ever come back!’
~*~
‘Captain Fog!’ the sycophant said, coming over after the hired guns had taken their departure. Having noticed a certain coolness towards him from Humboldt, he was seeking to make amends for whatever might have caused it. ‘I am giving a dinner party for Brenton and his family to celebrate his fortunate escape. Would you care to be my guest at it?’
‘Why thank you, sir,’ Dusty replied, then glanced to the three “white Indians” who were standing nearby. ‘Will Annie, Mort and Lon be coming?’
‘Well—!’ the man said hesitantly. ‘I’m sure Mr. Lewis and the young wo—er—lady have other things they want to do, but your man can come with you.’
‘Why thank you ‘most to death, sir,’ the Kid drawled, in his most innocent fashion. Looking to where the reinforcements who had joined his party at the place of the ambush were still sitting their horses, he went on, ‘Reckon it’d be all right was I to fetch my grandpappy along?’
‘Grand—?’ the sycophant commenced, also turning his gaze to the rim. ‘If you wish to. He probably doesn’t feel at ease with all those Indians.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ the Kid inquired, despite guessing the answer.
‘Well,’ the man explained, being willing to show a sociable spirit to the slender Texan in order to ingratiate himself with Dusty Fog. ‘A white man wouldn’t be surrounded by so many Indians.’
‘White man?’ the Kid drawled in apparent puzzlement. Then, nodding as if understanding had suddenly come, he went on, ‘Hell, that’s Colonel Charlie Goodnight. 41 But he’s Dusty’s kin not mine.’
‘Not yours?’ queried the sycophant.
‘Shucks, no,’ the Kid confirmed, his tone mocking and sardonic. Raising his right hand to give a wave to which the elderly Comanche holding the Sharps rifle responded in the same manner, he concluded, ‘That’s my grandpappy, Chief Long Walker of the Pehnane, up there on the rim. See, mister, I’m what you’d call a “White Indian” myself.’ 42
In Conclusion
Having read the Berkley Books, February, 1981, U.S.A. edition of THE HALF-BREED—which, for some unaccountable reason, we have never supplied to Alvin Dustine ‘Cap’ Fog in any of its editions by Corgi Books—he sent the added information which has provided the basis for this book and asked if we would give precedence to producing this ‘expansion’.
Cap said that, as it has become the habit in ‘liberal’ movies and television shows to portray any successful businessman whose efforts and efficiency have proved beneficial to the economy of the United States of America as a criminally inclined, grasping, corrupt and immoral bigot, he felt we should make amends to the memory of Brenton Humboldt and we were only too willing to do so.
Appendix One
Soon after his enrolment in the Army of the Confederate States, 43 Dustine Edward Marsden ‘Dusty’ Fog had won promotion in the field to captain before he was seventeen years of age and was put in command of the Texas Light Cavalry’s hard riding, harder-fighting Company ‘C’. 44 Leading them throughout the campaign in Arkansas, he had earned the reputation for being an exceptionally capable military raider and a worthy, if junior, contemporary of the South’s other leading exponent of what eventually became known as ‘commando’ tact
ics, 45 Turner Ashby and John Singleton ‘the Gray Ghost’ Mosby. 46 In addition to his other exploits, he had prevented a pair of pro-Union fanatics from starting an Indian uprising which would have decimated much of Texas, 47 and supported Belle ‘the Rebel Spy’ Boyd on two of her most dangerous assignments. 48
At the conclusion of the War Between the States, Dusty became segundo of the great OD Connected ranch in Rio Hondo County, Texas. Its owner and his paternal uncle, General Jackson Baines ‘Ole Devil’ Hardin, C.S.A., 49 had been crippled in a riding accident, 50 which placed much added responsibility on Dusty’s young shoulders. This included handling an important mission upon which the future relations between the United States of America and Mexico hung in the balance. 51 While doing so, he was helped by two men who became his closest friends and leading lights in the ranch’s floating outfit, 52 Mark Counter 53 and the Ysabel Kid. Aided by them, he had helped gather horses to replenish the war-reduced remuda of the OD Connected, 54 then was sent to assist Colonel Charles Goodnight 55 on the trail drive to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 56 which had done much to help the Lone Star State recover from the impoverished conditions left by its support of the ill fated Confederate cause. With that accomplished, he was equally successful in helping Goodnight convince other ranchers it would be possible to drive large herds of half wild longhorn cattle to the markets offered by the railroads passing through Kansas. 57
Having proven himself a first class cowhand, Dusty went on to earn fame as a very competent trail boss, 58 a roundup captain, 59 and a town taming peace officer. 60 Competing in the revolver handling competition at the first Cochise County Fair, he won the title, ‘The Fastest Gun In The West’, by beating a number of well known exponents of rapid gun handling and accurate shooting. 61 In later years, following his marriage to Lady Winifred Amelia ‘Freddie Woods’ Besgrove-Woodstole, 62 he became a noted diplomat.
Dusty never found his lack of stature an impediment to his achievements. In addition to being naturally strong, 63 he had taught himself to be completely ambidextrous. 64 Possessing perfectly attuned reflexes, he could draw either, or both, his Colts—no matter whether the 1860 Army Model, 65 or their improved successors, the 1873 Single Action Army Model 66—with lightning speed, and could shoot very accurately. Ole Devil’s ‘valet’, Tommy Okasi, 67 was Japanese and a trained samurai. 68 From him, along with the General’s ‘granddaughter’ Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Hardin, 69 the small Texan had been taught ju jitsu and karate, neither of which form of unarmed combat had received the publicity they would later be given, they were little known in the Western Hemisphere at that time. Therefore, Dusty found the knowledge a very useful surprise factor when he had to fight bare-handed against larger, heavier and stronger men.
