by J. T. Edson
Putting to use the knowledge acquired while serving in the capacity of deputy for Dusty Fog as a town marshal on two occasions, by the time he reached Stillwater, the Kid had decided how he might bring about the desired effect. xvi In the kind of coincidence no author of fiction dare employ in a plot, he had met an acquaintance upon whom he had felt certain he could depend to support him in his plan. Learning what was expected of him, the most inaccurately named Dude had immediately and willingly offered his assistance. xvii Agreeing that he would be unlikely to be taken for the kind of easy victim previously sought by the robbers, despite the fancy attire he always wore, which accounted for the only name by which he was known, he declared his confidence in being able to produce the result that would be required of him.
Although the Kid realized he would not be considered suitable for the same reasons as Dude under normal circumstances, he had made a significant change to his appearance that he hoped would serve his needs. Wanting to be sure he could not be mistaken for a more suitable candidate who might be passing through Stillwater, he retained his all-black garb. However, he made a change to his visible armament by removing the bowie knife and its sheath from his gunbelt to leave them with his most distinctive Winchester rifle—which bore the proud designation “One of a Thousand”—in the room he had taken at the town’s best hotel. xviii
Making a round of the saloons and other places where the trio of robbers might locate their victims, the Kid had flourished what appeared to be a large wad of money. In reality, this was no more than carefully shaped pieces of newspaper with a couple of ten-dollar bills at the top and bottom. Following him on each occasion after he had left, without letting any indication of their association be apparent, Dude had announced loudly that he was just a damned half-breed who was not even a cowhand and not only worked as a horse wrangler—considered a person of much lower standing by the men handling the cattle on a trail drive despite having a most important function to perform—but would not even spend his earnings when paid off to buy something better than the ancient Colt Dragoon he carried. The impression left by Dude was that he considered “Billy-Sam” to be no more than a cheap penny-pincher and a considerable coward when put to a test.
On leaving Stillwater that morning, putting to use the training in such matters he had received during his childhood spent exclusively with his maternal grandfather, Chief Long Walker—his father having spent much time away on the family business of catching mustangs combined with smuggling—in the village of the Pehnane Comanche, the Kid soon began to believe that his ploy was going to pay off. He had also been grateful that the need to keep far more alert than he gave the impression of being was causing him to put aside his feeling of misgiving over the way he had deserted Dusty and Mark Counter back at Mulrooney.
Before the Kid was a mile on his way toward Bent’s Ford, where he would find the excuse he intended to use for the shoddy way he had treated his two amigos, he had detected distant signs of being followed by somebody. Taking into account the way in which whoever they might be were taking care to try to remain out of his range of vision so he could not make out how many riders there were, other than there being more than one, he had continued on his way without letting any indication of knowing they were there be detectable.
By the time his big white stallion gave the signal, to which he responded in a mocking fashion, the Kid had established that the followers were three in number. What was more—although he was not aware of the fact due to the small amount of information Tilghman had received about the way in which the robberies were carried out—he was very close to the area in which they had always made their move. All he knew was that they had come to such a close distance without allowing him a clear view of them that he felt the time was at hand when he must take some form of action against them. He was also pleased that certain arrangements he had made prior to leaving Stillwater were still known only to him. Scanning the terrain, he found what he was looking for about a mile ahead.
Apart from being tallish and skinny in build, Tony Lennon, Tom Loflin, and John Birt had two other traits in common. They had come from similar middle class—middle management backgrounds. Having proved incapable of holding down any employment that their respective families had considered suitable and refused to accept other jobs they regarded as being below their social scale, each was sent west to live on what in England was called a remittance, with the proviso generally imposed there that they not return home. xix Every one of them had a desire to acquire sufficient money to live in a manner they felt they deserved without needing to do any kind of work. That was why they had elected to start robbing such Texas cowhands who were passing through Stillwater and met their requirements where the possibility of dangerous resistance was concerned.
While the trio were looking out for likely prospects the previous night, so well had the Ysabel Kid played his role and Dude helped to create the desired impression, they had decided he was the one best suited to their purpose. They had already considered and discarded Dude because, in spite of how he dressed suggesting to the contrary, they had believed he would prove too dangerous to be chosen as a victim. However, none of them had doubted that a half-breed employed as nothing more than a horse wrangler and armed with just an ancient cap-and-ball revolver would offer all the qualities they were seeking.
Satisfied that they had nothing to fear from their intended victim, the trio had followed him to the small hotel and heard him tell the clearly uninterested clerk on the reception desk that he would be checking out around seven the following morning so he could fetch his horse from Whitley’s livery barn and get on his way back to Texas. Although they hated to rise so early, they had considered that the size of the bankroll they had seen him flourishing made it worth their while to do so. If they had been more perceptive, they might have changed their opinion about the harmless nature of the black-dressed “half-breed” from the quality of his huge white stallion and the fine-looking Winchester rifle in his saddle boot.
Lacking the perception to draw the required conclusions, the trio had stuck to the procedure that had proved successful on every previous occasion—except that Lennon had been compelled to knock out the last victim with the barrel of his Colt Cavalry Model Peacemaker revolver when the first resistance they had encountered occurred—by following at what they believed was a distance preventing them from being detected by their quarry. They had gradually closed the distance and knew they would soon be arriving at the place where they had found surprise could be most easily attained. Showing a perception and ability that would have surprised their parents, confident that their presence was still unsuspected as they had neither seen nor heard anything to suggest otherwise, they attained the position from which they put in their appearance. Pulling up their bandannas so that they served as masks, it being their practice to always wear the clothing of town dwellers when not on their forays to lessen arousing the suspicions of the local constable—a man who they grudgingly conceded was possessed of some perception—each drew his revolver, ready for commencing the robbery.
Having previously been employed against young cowhands who were returning from a first trail drive and had had little experience of life before setting out, the system employed by the trio had never failed to achieve the effect they desired.
However, on this occasion they were in contention against the grandson of Chief Long Walker and a member of the Pehnane Comanche dog soldier war lodge in his own right. Furthermore, not only did he remember all he had been taught so he could attain that highly esteemed estate, his way of life since those days had never been so pacific that he could forget anything he had learned. Rather, he had refined the techniques to a high degree of competence.
The moment the Kid saw the clearing in the area of high and dense undergrowth through which he had been passing while the trio were closing the gap separating them, he knew this would be the place where their attempt at robbing him was made. Gambling upon his judgment and concluding that noth
ing would be lost should it be wrong, he made ready to handle the situation.
Being disinclined to count upon the Dragoon, because—lacking the skill with a short gun possessed by both his amigos—he regarded it as a defensive weapon with only a slightly greater range than the bowie knife that was in the bedroll attached to the cantle of his saddle, the Kid bent down to grasp the wrist of the butt and slid out the Winchester. As it came clear of the saddle boot, he twisted himself clear of the stallion’s back. At the signal he gave, the big white increased its gait and, by the time he was standing facing in the direction from which they had come, it was going out of sight along the path through the bushes at the other side.
Entering the open space with their weapons out ready, the three would-be robbers received a severe shock. Instead of riding along completely unaware of their coming, their supposed victim was standing some twenty yards away, facing toward them with a superb-looking rifle—which would have been the best piece of loot to fall into their hands so far, provided they could take it—dangling downward in an almost negligent-seeming fashion at arm’s length before him. Reining their horses to a halt, they were too taken aback by the unanticipated turn of events to give a thought to where the one the Texan was riding might be.
“Throw it down, beefhead!” Lennon commanded, using the derogatory name he had heard used to describe Texans. Although the other two would not have agreed, he regarded himself as their leader, since he—acting more out of panic than because he had thought of what to do on the spur of the moment—had dealt with the attempt at resistance shown by their last victim. As usual, he tried to make his New England accent sound as if it was the voice of a man born west of the Mississippi River. “There’s three of us and you’re on your lonesome.”
“Do tell,” the Kid drawled, and snapped the butt of the Winchester to his right shoulder and turning it into alignment with the speed many an exponent of the fast-growing sport of shooting swift-moving birds on the wing would have envied.
In the light of what happened next, the trio might have counted themselves fortunate. In the days before he became a member of Ole Devil’s floating outfit, the black-dressed Texan—responding with the speed and frequently literally deadly precision for which his Pehnane forebears were famous—would not have hesitated to shoot to kill. Now, because he suspected that his amigos did not look with favor sometimes when he took such extreme measures, deciding that to do so might serve to lessen the twinges of conscience still being experienced over the shoddy way he had treated them, he aimed accordingly.
Selected in the order that the Kid decided they posed the threat to him, he began to demonstrate the kind of deadly skill and accuracy for which he had become famous even prior to winning the “One of a Thousand” Winchester as the first prize in a well-attended shooting match at the Cochise County Fair in Tombstone, Arizona. Before any of them could try to even aim his way, Lennon received a bullet in the right shoulder. In very rapid succession, as the rifle’s lever was put through the reloading cycle in a blur of motion, Loflin and Birt received similar wounds. Thrown from the backs of their horses, which responded in an instinctive restless fashion on being startled by the shots, the trio in turn landed and fell to roll on the ground screaming for mercy.
‘You called it wrong,” the Kid drawled, walking forward ready to deal with any attempt to make a hostile move against him even though he doubted one would be made. He could hear the drumming of hooves approaching in the distance and knew the arrangements he had made the previous day were being followed. “I’m still on my lonesome, ’cause you’ll soon be headed back to Stillwater with the posse my amigo Dude ’n’ the town marshal are fetching along.”
Twelve – I Can Tell You How You Can Make A Heap More Money
“If we play it the way I say,” Jesse Wilbran asserted, paying no attention to what he believed to be nothing more than a drunken saloon girl sleeping with her head resting on her forearms at the next table, “we’ll take that ole stagecoach without no trouble at all.”
Having listened to the conversation so far, although in one respect she would have preferred more competent-looking assistants, Libby Craddock decided she would have to make do with the group upon whom she was eavesdropping.
On the other hand, the reddish-brunette—currently having a blond wig and appropriate attire—realized that the men to whom she was listening were sufficiently stupid to do what she would require of them without question, provided she handled them properly.
After all, Libby told herself, she wanted dupes with just enough intelligence to do what she needed rather than those capable of thinking for themselves.
Throughout the assignment she had taken on, the reddish-brunette considered she had met with considerable good fortune so far. With the balloon in the air, she was pushed just off a westerly direction by a steady breeze at around five to six miles per hour and carried away from the railroad track without going too far south. Back at the Circus Maximus, everybody was far too busy for some considerable time trying to cope with the fires she had started. Neither the show folk nor the fire brigade that came rushing from the town had their task made easier by needing to deal with the tiger she had turned loose so she could check on the secret cache in the bottom of its cage. While old, with practically no teeth left and its claws removed, it was still a dangerous proposition until armed police officers had come to shoot it.
When the conflagration was finally brought under control, with the big top completely gutted and much more damage inflicted, deducing from the tiger having been liberated that Libby had discovered that he had stolen the money she had stashed away, Cosmo Caithness had demanded that she be found and brought to him so he could be avenged in a most painful way upon her. Realizing belatedly what they had done, the three roustabouts made no mention of the way they had helped her get the balloon into the air. Instead, they claimed that they had seen it rising and thought their boss set it adrift to save it from the flames.
On daylight coming, the reddish-brunette had found herself over fairly open country with no sign of human habitations in the immediate vicinity. Waiting until she located a small town in the distance, she used her knowledge to bring the balloon to earth behind a wooded area far enough away to avoid any chance of an early riser seeing its descent. Safely down, she had removed all her property and set light to the means by which she had escaped. When satisfied that there was nothing left by which it might be recognized for what it had been, she concealed all she had brought with her except the means to make a change to her appearance.
Putting what she regarded as being sufficient money for immediate needs along with her weapons in the bulky handbag, the reddish-brunette had made her way to the town. Her arrival on foot came at an hour when few people were about, and she attracted no attention. Going to the livery barn, she had found only one elderly man in attendance and asked to rent a buggy in which she could go supposedly to fetch back her husband who was lying injured in an accident about a mile away. Her story was believed, and the man insisted upon accompanying her as a driver and to render any other help she might require. His kindness was repaid shortly before reaching the woodland by having the knife that had taken the life of the maid at the Grand Republic Hotel thrust into his back and killing him instantaneously. With his body hidden and her property aboard, she had had the means to return to the railroad and take a westbound train.
Nothing of interest had taken place during the journey to Ellsworth, Kansas. However, on arrival, Libby had what she considered to be her best piece of luck so far. Wondering how she could locate Belle Boyd, or find out if the Rebel Spy had reached the trail end, she had found herself at a facility offered for travelers by the railroad. A large room behind the depot was used to allow passengers going to areas where the tracks did not reach to have their baggage stored or taken to whatever means of transport they would be using to get there.
Looking around on the pretense of searching for her own property, the reddish-brunette could h
ardly believe her good fortune when she saw half a dozen fair-sized, expensive-looking pigskin suitcases all of which bore labels inscribed, “Elizabeth Hardin, OD Connected Ranch, Rio Hondo County, Texas, Via Bent’s Ford, Oklahoma.” They were in a section given over to the Wells Fargo & Company and the information that they would be required to be delivered to their depot four days later in time to be loaded aboard a southbound stagecoach.
Remembering how one of the other sets of plates had been hidden, Libby had wondered whether the same means might be used and if she could effect an entry to the building that night and carry out an examination. However, after questioning one of the attendants on the pretense of being worried about the safety of some expensive property she was expecting and might be delayed in collecting, she had been assured there were men on duty twenty-four hours a day and the last intruders had been shot before they could achieve anything. Accepting that she would not be able to accomplish anything in that direction, she had concluded she might be better advised not to try to carry out her assignment in Ellsworth. Instead, she had given thought to how she might achieve her purpose in another way—to allow the other woman to be well on the journey to Texas without anything happening, which might arouse a sense of false security and lead to a lessening of vigilance.
However, the reddish-brunette considered that one way of achieving her purpose could be ruled out. Lachlan Lachlan of the McLachlans had warned the reddish-brunette that Belle Boyd was a very sure and competent woman who would be unlikely to take chances while engaged upon such a mission. Therefore, she might be suspicious of a chance-met woman who tried to strike up an acquaintance. With that in mind, Libby had sought for the means to make the most of the start she would have and arrive at an area where a suitably relaxed state of mind had been reached.
