by J. T. Edson
“Reckon he believed the story?” asked the Kid.
“He accepted it,” Belle replied. “Can they trace the half-breed to Giss?”
“He’s one of their regular bunch. Happen they try at it, they could tie him in with Giss ‘n’ Kraus.”
“I doubt if they’ll bother. But, if that man did hear my name, we’re in for trouble, Lon.”
A view to which Shafto subscribed when he heard the Kid’s findings. They gathered in Shafto’s private quarters at the rear of the building and he listened to the other two before adding his quota.
Already there had been a noticeable increase in the Yankees’ surveillance of the building. By the time he climbed the gate, Shafto could see no sign of the man who had escaped; which led him to believe that the other had entered the Yankee-owned house across the street. On hearing the man’s report, the Yankees worked fast. Usually they maintained a watch from only one upstairs room of their houses at front and rear of the consul’s property. When Shafto last checked, there had been four observers training telescopes from positions where they could cover almost all of the grounds and building. The increased scrutiny gave mute testimony that the man had heard Belle’s name and that the Yankees regarded the Rebel Spy’s arrival in Matamoros as being the prelude to trouble.
“They’ll cling like leeches now they know you’re here, Belle,” Shafto warned.
“I know,” she replied. “I think we could get by them and on our way in the dark, but they’d soon come looking. If only we could throw them off our trail—.” She paused, then went on, “Suppose we make them believe that I’ve achieved the purpose of my visit?”
“How do you mean?” Shafto inquired; while the Kid sat and listened, ready to give any help he could.
“What’s the most significant recent Yankee development, either here or in Brownsville?”
“There was a ship arrived yesterday across the river, with six of those thirty-foot steam launches as its deck cargo. And the Waterbury, a steam sloop, came in this morning.”
In a trip down the Mississippi River aboard a submersible warship during her second mission with Dusty Fog, Belle had seen one of the U.S. Navy’s thirty-foot steam launches. She also knew of them in connection with Lieutenant William B. Cushing’s successful attack on the Confederate ironclad war-ram Albermarle. Small, fast, carrying up to ten men, armed with a spar torpedo and 12-pounder boat howitzer, the steam launches proved effective craft in shallow waters.
“Those launches could mean the Yankees are planning stronger offensive action against the blockade runners,” Belle remarked. “Catch them close in, when they’re not expecting trouble. Two fully manned launches could deal with any blockade runner, even without using their torpedoes.”
“Or they might be planning to raid up the Rio Grande,” Shafto went on. “I’ve been expecting the Mississippi Squadron to try something like that down here ever since the Yankees took Brownsville.”
“Either’s possible,” Belle admitted. “Launches would be ideal for running up the Rio Grande, raiding and hunting for your supply trains, Lon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” agreed the Kid.
“Then they’re what we need,” the girl stated. “Let’s see if we can make the Yankees believe I came down here to warn you about the launches and help in their destruction. That may throw them off the real trail.”
“It might at that,” Shafto answered. “And it’s important enough for our folk to send you.”
Belle accepted the compliment without comment: although she could not help but compare it with the open, or thinly hidden hostility that had often greeted her in the early days of the War.
“Can we bring it off?” she asked. “I mean, have we the means of doing it?”
“Sure we have,” Shafto insisted. “I’ve been gathering equipment for a strike at the Yankee shipping in Brownsville harbour when the time was right.”
“What kind of equipment?” Belle inquired, although she could guess.
“Torpedoes. I’ve a couple of keg floaters and one of the new drifting kind hid out down by the river. One of our raiders landed them at the bay where you came in, Belle, and Lon helped bring them here.”
“How can you be sure the Yankees’ll know you’re in the game, Miss Belle?” the Kid put in. “It could be Cap’n Rule here, or ole Rip Ford from across the river doing it.”
“They’ll know I’m involved,” Belle said quietly. “You see, they’re going to capture me.”
“You’d best tie that a lil tighter for a half-smart ill Texas boy like me to follow,” the Kid drawled. “How’s you getting captured by the Yankees going to help us?”
“It won’t,” Belle smiled. “Unless I can escape once they’ve seen and recognised me. I’ve an idea that might work.”
Listening to the girl’s scheme, Shafto and the Kid decided that it might just work, given careful organisation plus a little luck. It would be risky in the extreme, but the girl felt that the ends justified the means.
“How do we get a boat in close enough to do it?” asked the Kid. “I reckon the Yankees’ll keep some sort of guard out.”
“They have a guard boat working the mouth of the bay,” Shafto supplied. “And the Waterbury’s moored well out. Both her and the other ship will have some of the crew rowing guard. It won’t be easy to get in close. I planned to send the torpedoes down with the current, let it carry them into the bay and hope for the best.”
“We must have something a bit more certain than that,” Belle stated.
For a minute almost none of them spoke, each turning over the problem in silence. Then the Kid broke it.
“Didn’t I see a big ole tarpon in the kitchen when I come through?”
“It could be,” Shafto answered. “The staff either buy them, or go out and catch them for the table.”
“Best time to catch ‘em’s at night,” the Kid said, almost to himself; then he looked at Shafto. “How well can you trust those folk of your’n?”
“They’ve had my life in their hands before now,” the man replied. “And you and your father’s too when they’ve carried messages from me to you.”
The Kid nodded and grinned. “No offence. It’s only that I’ve got a fool notion that just might work.”
After hearing the Kid’s suggestions, Belle and Shafto agreed that he had come up with a sound answer to the problem. Then Belle brought up the matter of the weapons they would be using in the attack.
As the adversary mainly concerned with defence, the Confederate States put ‘torpedoes’ as a major item in their naval armoury. The term covered what would later be known as mines, rather than missiles fired through the water. Showing great originality, the Confederate States Navy’s Torpedo Bureau—established early in the War— produced many lethal devices ranging from simple bombs disguised as lumps of coal—which, smuggled aboard enemy vessels, exploded when fed into the engineroom furnaces— to complicated mines detonated in a variety of ways.
To her relief, Belle learned that the torpedoes in Shafto’s store were of the uncomplicated variety. That would be of great help in the work ahead. So she went into further details, planning with care and trying to leave as little to chance as possible. Not until satisfied that all had been arranged and fully understood did she give the order for the other two to start. Neither questioned her right to command. In addition to risking her life by allowing the Yankees to capture her, she held the honorary—but no less official—rank of colonel in the C.S.A. Granted to her by the Confederate high command, the rank served when dealing with officious, or conservative members of the armed forces who still clung to the belief that a woman’s place was in the home.
The Kid left the house accompanied by Shafto, headed for the posada to inform his father of the latest developments. Once clear of the building, they separated—much to the annoyance of the Yankee who followed them—and Shafto went to make certain purchases from a store on the waterfront that catered mainly for the gringo trade.
Th
ere being no further point in trying to conceal her identity, Belle did not try. In fact the plan called for her to make sure the Yankees knew she was in the house. So she asked the servants to prepare a bath for her and went up to the room Garfield allocated to her. At her request, he placed her in a room at the front and with windows facing the house from which one bunch of Yankees was keeping watch. The next move in her plan did not come easily to a girl of Belle’s upbringing, but she went through with it just the same.
Entering the room, she crossed to the windows and stood where she might be seen yet give the impression that she was trying to avoid letting it happen. At that distance she could only make out a vague shape with the naked eye, but knew a telescope would reveal more. If the Yankees were doing their work properly, one of them ought to have spotted her by that time. So she turned and walked across to where her trunks stood at the end of the bed. Looking back, she could still see the windows of the other house and knew she would be just as visible through the telescopes of the Yankee observers.
“In which case, you’re going to see a lot of me,” she thought, opening one of the trunks to take out her shirt, riding breeches, boots, gunbelt and other clothing. “I hope your eye-balls bulge out so far they stick in the telescopes.”
After which sentiment, she stripped off the Mexican clothing, standing where the men across the street could see her through the window. With any amount of luck they were watching, maybe even passing word for their less fortunate colleagues to come and enjoy the view. When sure that she had given the watchers enough time, she slipped on a robe and sat down to wait until told her bath was ready. By all fair means, her presence at the consulate should be well established already. However she must make certain and continue to let herself be seen around the house.
The Confederate chemist’s claims about his skin-dye proved to be true, for it came off in the bath and left Belle looking her usual self. Returning to her room, she repeated the process of cautiously letting herself be seen at the window, then returned to the end of the bed and dressed in her male clothing. If the Yankees across the street had seen her the first time, she dare bet they were watching in the hope of another view. Which meant they would notice the change in her skin’s colour and be even more certain that the Rebel Spy was back.
After an absence of almost two hours, Shafto retutned with the required purchases. He delivered them to the girl and found that they met with her approval.
“Did you have any trouble?” she asked.
“Not much,” Shafto answered. “We picked up a Yankee outside the house and he followed me when we split up. But I lost him before I went near the store to buy the clothes. He was lucky, that Yankee.”
“Why?”
“If he’d gone after the Kid, I don’t think he’d’ve come back. Those Ysabels play the game for keeps.”
“I can imagine they would,” Belle smiled grimly. “That boy scares me.”
“That boy scares a whole heap of grown men along the border,” Shafto told her. “I went down to the waterfront to see what’s happening across the bay and have word sent to Colonel Ford, asking him not to make any moves against the Yankees tonight if he could avoid it.”
Belle nodded in satisfied agreement. Despite his failure to locate the two men in the garden, she knew Shafto to be a shrewd, capable agent. Only the fact that he could not be spared from his work in Matamoros, and his absence would probably be noticed, had prevented him from being assigned the task of delivering the money to General Klatwitter. Many men in Shafto’s position would have protested, maybe even have acted in a sulky, uncooperative manner under the same circumstances. He not only gave the girl every aid, but showed himself capable of acting on his own behalf when a forgotten point arose.
Across the Rio Grande, Colonel ‘Rip’ Ford commanded a small force trying to retake Brownsville from the Yankees. Trained in Indian warfare, Ford wore down the superior enemy strength by raids, alarms and darting attacks. If he should launch one that night, the Yankee ships would be on the alert; far more so than might be the case otherwise.
“Will Colonel Ford cooperate?” she asked.
“He always has before,” Shafto assured her. “The situation across the bay’s still the same. Three of the launches have been lowered from the ship, but haven’t left the harbour. Up to the time I left, only the Waterbury had put out its chain armour.”
As a precaution against attacks by torpedo or war-ram, Yankee ships at harbour or lying off Southern ports often hung a curtain of ‘chain armour’ around their sides from about eight feet above the water-line and extending some twenty-four inches below the surface. Made of lengths of chain-cable lashed together and suspended from a rod, the ‘armour’ offered some protection and lessened the effect of a ram’s charging impact or torpedo’s explosion.
“The new drifting torpedo’s designed to go under the armour,” Shafto replied. “By the way, I’ve arranged for a good man to follow that Corstin woman when she comes back to the hotel.”
“That’s good,” Belle said. “I’ve a feeling there’s more to her being here than meets the eye.”
They stood in the hall talking and then went on with their plan for confusing the Yankees. Returning to her room accompanied by a Negro maid, Belle changed into a dress. She handed the male clothing to the maid and asked, with gestures, for it to be washed. Sure that the Yankee watchers read her scrubbing motions correctly, and would see nothing wrong in a Southern girl expecting a coloured servant to wash clothes worn only for a short time, she followed the maid from the room. Then, to the maid’s surprise, she cancelled the order and took the clothes back again. However, being used to the eccentric ways of white fools, the negress asked no questions.
Shortly before dark the Kid returned, but he came neither in his usual clothing nor as a poor peon. Instead he arrived dressed in the style of a vaquero and riding his huge stallion which had turned into a piebald. Clothed in such a manner, he could wear his normal weapons. So the Dragoon Colt hung in its holster, the bowie knife rode its sheath and his Mississippi rifle was in the saddleboot.
“It’s an old trick,” he explained, seeing the girl studying the black patches on the stallion’s white coat. “Some powder a Pehnane tsukup, old man, makes up for us. It stands up to a fair washing in river or rain.”
“I don’t think anybody across there will recognise you,” Belie replied, curiosity satisfied. “Are you ready?”
“Why sure,” the Kid answered. “Pappy’ll be waiting for you when we’re all through. With luck, we’ll win you a day’s head start afore they know you’ve gone.”
oooOooo
* Tehnap’: an experienced warrior.
Chapter 6
Hell’s Fire. It’s A Woman
Rising to the surface, a tarpon over five foot long sent a swirling eddy in the direction of the Yankee guard boat and submerged again. By that time such appearances had become so common that the sailors rowing guard across the mouth of Brownsville’s harbour no longer commented when one occurred. At that early hour of the evening, hardly past eight o’clock, they acted in a far more lax manner than later in the night, or on another station. Further north along the coast, attacks by Confederate submersibles, war-rams or other surface vessels kept the blockading fleets constantly on the alert. No such alarms had come in Brownsville, Colonel Rip Ford being a plainsman, skilled at land fighting but with no knowledge, or means, of making war on water.
However the relaxed performance of duty did not cause the men to overlook the two boats out on the river. One halted some way upstream, hanging in the current, while the other dropped down closer to the guard boat’s line of patrol.
“Ahoy there!” the midshipman commanding the guard boat called. “What boat’s that then?”
At the same moment he nodded and a man uncovered the head of a bull’s eye lantern to illuminate the other boat. Two Negroes lowered heavy weights on ropes to halt the boat’s progress and the third held a powerful fishing pole. Turning t
owards the speaker, the third Negro answered.
“We’ns out fishing for t’pon, sah,” he said, holding up his line with a small bait-fish kicking on the hook. “They am running just now.”
Seeing the man in his ragged shirt and pants, nobody would recognise him as the immaculate butler from the Confederate consulate. To the midshipman, raised in New England, the trio in the boat looked like any other ragged, ordinary negroes to be seen south of the Mason-Dixie line.
“Guard boat ahoy!” bellowed a voice from the steam-sloop moored just inside the harbour entrance. “What’s that boat doing?”
“It’s just some coons fishing, sir,” the midshipman called back. “Want for me to move ‘em on?”
“No, they’re doing no harm. If they catch one, have it sent aboard here.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Could you-all put out that light, sah?” the butler asked. “It am scaring the t’pon and I’d surely not want Cousin Rastus along there to catch one if I don’t. When dat happens, his missus done takes on and boasts about it and that gives my woman the miseries and I don’t get a lick of peace.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” grinned the midshipman and gave the required order.
Light or no light, the tarpon did not appear to be frightened away and it seemed that Cousin Rastus’ wife would have nothing to boast about the following day. Dropping in his bait as the light went out, the butler allowed it to float down the river. Barely had it gone three yards when there came a vicious swirl in the water and the fishing pole bowed over violently. Then a tarpon shot into the air, rising in the kind of leap fast gaining its kind the reputation of being superb sporting fish. Again the tarpon jumped, arching its body high as it tried to throw the hooks embedded in its jaws.
