The Floating Outfit 46

by J. T. Edson

  The Kid vaulted into the saddle of McKie’s horse and rode into view and, for the first time, Peraro saw his opponent in this desperate game. The Mexican frowned as he studied the dark-faced young man on the other side of the basin. There was something familiar, and yet unfamiliar, about the gringo. Peraro tried to think who this man was. What one lone man could have entered his town like that and kidnapped Perez, the Alcalde and taken the two horses.; All too well, Peraro knew how light a sleeper the sentry was, yet he’d let this man get near enough to die before he woke properly. The kidnapping of the Alcalde would not be hard, but Perez was another proposition. The bandit was far more dangerous drunk than sober, and he would be a veritable tigre to catch.

  Peraro thought of all the deadly men along the border, trying to decide which of them might be capable of this. None of them fitted the bill; for none of them would even bother to rescue the gringo girl. Strangely, he did not think of el Cabrito—for it was several years since the Ysabel Kid rode the Rio Grande.

  “Leave your weapons up there, and I’ll leave mine this side,” the Kid called back.

  Peraro dismounted and drew the rifle from his saddle-boot, watching the gringo repeat this. Then he unstrapped his gunbelt but, in putting it down, slid the knife from its sheath and shoved it into the top of his boot. The move was very smoothly done and Mavis, so intent on watching her rescuer, did not notice it.

  The Kid collected the reins of the two horses and led them out. Perez was still gagged, and the Alcalde tied to his mount to prevent him from falling off. The small procession moved down the slope and Peraro came forward, leading the girl.

  They halted and left the horses, coming together on foot, the girl following Peraro and wondering who this dark, handsome youngster was. He looked far too young to be doing anything like this.

  Peraro, too, was studying the Ysabel Kid, from his pushed-back JB Stetson and the curly black hair to the high-heeled boots on his feet. If the Kid had been wearing his usual clothes, Peraro would have recognized him immediately and acted in a far different manner. As it was, the Mexican decided to kill this young upstart. These gringos were all alike; guns were their weapons. None of them appreciated the value of a knife as a fighting weapon.

  “Who are you, señor?” he asked.

  “I didn’t ask you that,” the Kid replied in English, knowing that his Spanish might give him away. “I’ve returned your men, and you’ve brought the gal. I’ll take her back to her ranch and I reckon you’ll leave her alone.”

  Peraro smiled mockingly. The young gringo stood with his hands behind his back, thumbs hooked into his Waistband. He was in a perfect position for a killing slash.

  “You may think what you wish, señor,” he replied—and lunged forward, with the knife coming from his boot-top and driving up at the Ysabel Kid’s body.

  The girl screamed as she saw the knife, thinking that such speed must take her rescuer unaware. She reckoned without all the long years of training, and the Ysabel Kid’s Comanche-wild co-ordination of mind and muscle. Even as Peraro’s knife reached out for his vitals, the Kid side-stepped and the eleven-and-a-half-inch blade of his bowie knife glinted in the sun. Peraro’s blade was parried and pushed aside. The Kid’s knife ripped in low.

  Peraro nearly died at that moment. His lunge, aimed at what should have been an unsuspecting and unprepared man, was sent with all his strength. The knife blow missing, caught him off balance and, just in time, he saw the bowie knife coming up at him. Flinging himself to one side, he felt the blade of the other’s knife just touch him. He whirled and crouched, the knife moving in small circles as he attacked.

  “I never saw a gringo who could use a knife,” Peraro hissed, as he slashed at the lithe shape before him.

  The Kid avoided the ripping cut with a bull-fighter’s grace and cut in, bringing the bowie knife up in a savage drive. “You never heard of James Bowie?”

  The men circled, knives leaping and flashing in the sun. The true knife-fighter always went for the stomach first, the throat as a next resort; never for any place where he could only hit bone and do little permanent damage. These two were good, very good. Perez watched, and then threw a leg over his saddle-horn, to jump down. Although his hands were tied, he came towards the Kid, launching a kick at him.

  It was desperate now; and the Kid knew it. He avoided the kick and almost ran into a knife-thrust, then jumped clear. Fighting a man like Peraro was dangerous enough, for the Mexican was skilled with his knife; and, with this added edge, he could write finish to the Kid.

  Perez lowered his shoulder and tried to charge the Kid. At the same moment, Peraro lunged in and the Kid gave a shrill whistle. Jumping back, the Kid slipped on the grass and went down. The girl screamed in terror. Peraro yelled in triumph. Then hooves thundered and the fighting scream of a stallion, awesome and terrible, shattered the air as the huge white stallion came racing down the slope.

  Perez prepared to leap in at the gringo boy who’d shamed him when he heard the hooves and turned to see the huge horse rearing above him. He twisted aside, trying to avoid the iron-shod hooves. Then the white killer-horse was upon him, screaming, stamping and biting. Mavis Handle screamed again. She saw old Jock McKie, from Wet Slim, running down the slope. Then her knees gave way and she slipped to the ground in a faint.

  Peraro hurled forward, his knife lashing down at the young man. He came close, very close, to doing what several other eager and aspiring gentlemen had tried to do. The Ysabel Kid rolled over, the knife missed his arm, but ripped the shirtsleeve to the wrist, pinning it to the ground. Unfortunately for Peraro, it was the wrong sleeve and the bowie knife ripped up. Once again, the Kid felt the puff of hot fetid air rush against his hand, and knew his knife was buried in the other man’s stomach.

  Rolling the body from him, the Kid got to his feet, drew out the knife and rubbed the blade clean on the ground. “You allus was a hawg, Ramon,” he said. “I’d have played fair, if you did.”

  Then the Kid heard Jock McKie’s scared shouts and turned his attention to his big white stallion. Perez was down and, although he never looked much in life, made an even worse picture in death. The stallion in its fighting rage had almost kicked Perez to pieces. The Kid, Indian callous as ever, just grunted, then snapped: “Ease off there, Thunder!”

  The wild fury left the stallion’s eyes and it backed away, snorting loudly. The Ysabel Kid went up and calmed the big white, patting its neck and talking to it. He saw McKie bend over the girl and asked: “Is she all right?”

  “Just fainted, I reckon. That hoss of your’n nigh on made me faint when he went for Perez.”

  “Take her up the slope. I’ll attend to this down here,” the Kid replied.

  Jock McKie helped the girl to her feet and, shielding her from the bloody sight of Perez’s shattered body, led her up the slope. The Kid turned on his heel and looked at the terrified Alcalde.

  “Your patron is dead. Don Emilio Kosterliski is upstream there; if you take the bodies to him he may go easy on you. Then you can do what you want to.”

  “Si, señor.” The Alcalde was shaking, but also working out what his chances of survival would be if he went back to Piente and word got out what happened here in Texas. The time was on hand for a patriotic Alcalde to declare to the forces of law and order that his town was infested with bandidos. Kosterliski would be pleased with that.

  On an impulse, after he’d loaded the bodies on to the two horses, the Kid asked: “Have you seen Russel lately?”

  “He saw Don Ramon a few weeks back, and again more recently. I think he was the one who told us where to find the girl.”

  The Kid was thoughtful as he went up the slope, watching Sanchos riding back towards the border and leading the Peraro horses. The girl was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk and looked up at him. Despite her face being a trifle pale, she was well on the way to recovering her poise again.

  “I’d like to thank you for saving me,” she said.

  The Kid grinned mo
destly, as if rescuing girls was an everyday thing in his life. “Sorry you had to see what you did,” he replied. “You’d best get some rest, ma’am. Then we’ll take you back to Wet Slim.”

  “Got me some food cached back there a piece—figgered you might need it,” McKie put in.

  The Kid grinned as he rose. A man could always trust Jock McKie to do the right thing, even without telling. The old-timer’s food cache proved to be a fair feed, and by a stream of clear water. The Kid left the others to go upstream, taking his black clothing with him. He returned washed, shaved and attired as he usually was, all in black. The girl, looking at him, thought he was not more than sixteen. She could hardly reconcile this innocent-looking youngster with the savage, unshaven knife-wielder who had battled to save her life.

  They settled down to eat the food McKie had brought out from town. The old-timer looked across at the Kid. “You , riled a tolerable heap of folks, scattering the hosses that way. I thought Handle would be fit to be tied.”

  The girl frowned. “I can’t see Uncle Philo going to all that trouble just to save me.”

  “You stop them coming?” the Kid ignored the girl’s remark. “Nope. I talked to some of the ranchers, and to Sam Walton. Told them what you said. Sam’s the man the cowhands foller. Nice gent—but a mite too fast with a gun for comfort.”

  “Know Sam all right. He used to ride for Allison’s CA. He’d want to lend a hand when he knew.”

  “Sure did,” McKie grunted. “I talked him into staying in town and riding with the bunch that’s going down there today.”

  “Today!” the Kid snapped. “How about hosses for them?”

  “Handle sent over to his spread for the remuda. They should be in town now and the bunch starting out.”

  Mavis shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Uncle Philo actually going to all that trouble, and risking riding to my rescue.”

  “Reckon so ma’am?” the Kid asked.

  “I know so. It would be the other way about, if anything. I’d have thought, what with one thing and another, he’d have taken this as a heaven-sent opportunity to get rid of me.” The Kid watched the cynical twist of the girl’s lips and knew she was telling him the truth. Certain suspicions started to form, or to crystallize, now. He bent forward eagerly. “You reckon your uncle might not want you to come back?”

  Her face flushed red as she realized that she’d been giving this young Texan a close look at a very dark family skeleton. “Well, I may have been hard on poor uncle Philo. I could have judged him harshly. After all, he was gathering men to come and rescue me. He couldn’t have—”

  “He could, and did,” the Kid replied, his face tense now as he watched the girl. “If he’d come down there after you, Peraro would’ve killed you.”

  “Would Uncle Philo know that?” she asked.

  “He’d got at least one man riding for him who did—Russel.”

  “Russel?” Her brow puckered in a frown. “Peraro talked about him. I don’t know him and, to the best of my knowledge, we never hired a man called Russel.”

  “Name’s Jones now,” McKie put in.

  “Jones?” she gasped out. “He was the man who suggested that I should ride out along the Rio Grande the day I was kidnapped. I wanted to do some painting, and he told me a place where I might find some rattlesnakes. I wanted to paint them.”

  “You found the rattlers all right, ma’am—as dangerous a bunch as you could,” the Ysabel Kid growled. “I’ll see Russel when we get back to Wet Slim.”

  Listening to that soft-drawled, gentle voice the girl could not restrain a shudder—for she knew the meeting would be very painful for the man this black-dressed cowboy saw.

  “Do you know,” she put in, “I still don’t know who you are?”

  “The name is Loncey Dalton Ysabel,” he replied. “You maybe heard of me more as the Ysabel Kid?”

  Mavis stared at this dark-faced boy. She’d not been long in the south-west but, in that time, she’d heard much about the Ysabel Kid. All of what she’d seen him do today went far towards making her think it was all true.

  “What did you mean about Uncle Philo getting me killed?”

  “That’s the way the Peraro bunch worked,” the Kid replied. “’Bout four years ago, to take just one case, Don Figaro Coronado’s gal was kidnapped by Peraro’s bunch. The ransom asked wasn’t large; ole Ramon always asked reasonable. But the Coronado’s are a dead mean bunch, and didn’t want to waste good money. They tried to force their way into town and cut down Peraro’s crowd. They were whip-sawed from the start to the end, there being a rifle behind every wall. Held the Coronado’s fifty vaqueros back easy and bust Don Figaro’s shoulder. What was left of the vaqueros started to tote him back, when Peraro shouted: ‘Here’s your gal,’ and sent her out across the back of a hoss.”

  “How?”

  The Kid looked the girl up and down for a moment. “Just think about the worst thing a man could do to a pretty, innocent convent gal. Double it and you won’t near have reached the answer. See, ma’am, Peraro’s got him a reputation. He kidnaps somebody and, like you saw, treats them real well. I bet you never been treated so politely. Then, when the ransom note is met, he sent them back. Took the daughter of one of my friends below the border. When he was paid, he gave her a silver bracelet that would have cost, maybe, a thousand dollars if he’d bought it. Sent her back in his own coach. But if he doesn’t get paid off dead on time—or someone tries to rescue the prisoner—he kills and he doesn’t kill nice.”

  “So you think that Uncle knew about this?”

  “Couldn’t help but know. Russel must’ve been working for him,” McKie snapped. “Don’t you reckon so, Lon?”

  “It figgers. Russel knows Peraro’s way; he was in Piente when the Coronado gal got hers. So, if he’d set you up for Peraro, he’d warn your Uncle about it. If he was working with Peraro, that is. He wouldn’t get paid until after the ransom money was delivered, so he’d surely warn your uncle. Wouldn’t want you killing. That means he went along with this, knowing what would happen to you.”

  “Uncle Philo can be pretty persuasive when he likes,” Mavis replied. “I would think it was his idea from start to finish. He particularly needs me out of the way now.”

  “You like to tell us, it won’t go any further,” the Kid remarked. “Might make it easier for us when we get back to Wet Slim. Specially after what I did before I left.”

  The girl listened to how the Kid had prevented the previous day’s rescue attempt. She was even more impressed by the casual way he talked of it, knowing that he could easily have been shot down for even trying it.

  “I’ll try and square things up for you when we get back. I don’t think there will be any trouble over it, and I’ll see any horses which are permanently lost get paid for. But, about Uncle Philo—well, he needed me out of the way. He is only my manager. My father controlled the money in our family; he had a knack of making it. Land speculation, mines, cotton, he was in them all, and Lucky Jack Handle always came out winning. Most of his money came down to me when he died. Until I reach twenty-one next birthday, Uncle Philo is in charge—although I’m afraid Papa didn’t trust Uncle Philo, for he made sure that very little of the actual money came his way. This ranch was just another venture, but I found that money was being diverted into it at a rate which the return didn’t warrant. That was why I came here and I saw that I’d made a mistake in coming. Uncle Philo was all smiles and friendliness, which in itself should have warned me. He told me Jones—or Russel, as you call him—would show me round. I think he must have considered various ways of getting rid of me.”

  “Russel would help some,” the Kid remarked. “I know him. If you should’ve gone under, who would get your money?”

  “Uncle Philo and two other relations back East,” she replied. “I’m afraid that my father’s lawyers will remove Uncle Phil from control. They’ve been trying to for several years now. I wouldn’t let them; always felt sorry for him, I suppose.
”

  “Do you now?” the Kid asked softly.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Good.”

  There was something in the way he said it made her look up hard at him. The face suddenly was no longer young. It was hard, cold and expressionless, yet, in those red-hazel eyes, she read finish for her uncle, unless something happened to save him. The face held her attention; it wasn’t innocent now. She could not place where she’d seen that expressionless mask; then it came back to her—a painting of a Comanche warrior. The face of that brave was exactly the same as this Indian dark boy’s.

  “Lon,” she looked at him. “I—er—I—”

  “You’d best get some rest. Then we’ll ride back a piece and see what we can do.”

  The girl suddenly felt very tired; she was only too pleased to relax on the Ysabel Kid’s bedroll while he flung himself down on the ground and went to sleep. For a time she lay watching him. Then sleep came over her. Jock McKie rested his back against the tree and, with a rifle across his knees, kept watch.

  “Time to move, Miss Mavis,” McKie said as he shook the girl’s shoulder.

  She sat up and looked round. The sun was high in the sky, and she got up. The Ysabel Kid sat with his back against a tree; he was whistling and cleaning a magnificent rifle. Rising, he crossed to her. She looked at the silver plate in the butt, reading the inscription on it:

  “Presented to Loncey Dalton Ysabel.

  FIRST PRIZE, Rifle Shoot, Cochise County Fair.”

  The girl looked up at her rescuer from the rifle. She wondered if he was the same man; that innocent, baby face was there again and the pleasant, even smile on it.

  “Time we went,” the Kid remarked.

  McKie brought her the horse she’d ridden from Piente and she mounted, then waited until the Kid collected his big stallion and rode back. “We’ll head along the river for a piece, and try to stop them fools crossing over into Mexico. If they go over the line, there’ll be all hell to pay.”