Ranch War

of her Navy Colt.

The words chopped off as she heard the faint sound of a footstep behind her. Faint only because the person making it was stepping real careful and avoiding making undue noise, not because some distance separated him from the girl.

Anger blazed up inside Calamity, driving the thoughts of how they knew her name into oblivion. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours she had committed a serious error of tactics. Concentrating on the two yahoos blocking her path, she had clean forgotten that skinny-gutted loafer who had dogged her trail since she left the hotel. In fact, his presence behind her answered some of the problems which had troubled her. He must have been following, soft-footed as a cat, to point her out to the pair.

Only he had made his presence known just a mite too soon. His pards were still about twelve feet away, beyond arms’ reach. Seeing the girl’s right hand approaching the ivory butt of the holstered Colt, the loafer lunged forward. He wrapped his arms about her upper torso from the rear, drawing her toward him. Instantly his companions let out curses and sprang forward.

Calamity had learned how to handle such sneaky attacks, as she proceeded to demonstrate. Allowing her captor to pull her in his direction, she waited until she felt his body against her spine. Then she snapped back her head as hard as she could propel it. The base of Calamity’s skull rammed with considerable force into the center of the man’s face. Red fires of agony seemed to burst inside the man’s head at the savage impact. With a howl of pain, he released the girl and staggered backward. Blood gushed between his fingers as he clasped his hands to his face.

Despite having removed one threat to her well-being, Calamity knew that she was a long, long way from being out of danger. Job and the Mexican came toward her, their expressions warning her that they had no harmless intent. Of the two, Oton moved the faster, drawing ahead of his companion.

Having freed herself from the loafer’s restraining hands, Calamity once more reached for her gun. Tough she might be, and well able to hold up her own end in a hair-yanking, anything-goes, rough-house brawl with another girl; but her assailants were not girls. She figured that her best chance against the two men would be to get out the old Navy Colt and start burning powder. In addition to halting the Mexican, the sound of the shots would attract attention to her dangerous situation. The opportunity to do it was not granted to her.

Gliding forward with the speed of a weasel chasing a rabbit, Oton stabbed out both his hands. Closing his fingers on the lapels of her jacket, he wrenched them apart and down over her shoulders. Although the jacket had not been fastened, it still gripped her arms and prevented her from completing her draw. Once again the girl found herself partially trapped and countered the move in a fast, efficient manner.

Instead of trying to retreat, which Oton expected her to do, Calamity moved to meet him. With her upper arms pinioned, she could draw neither Colt nor whip. Unfortunately for the Mexican, her legs were still free. A point which she proceeded to take rapid and devastating advantage of. Going in as close as she could, Calamity drove up her right leg. Powered by a set of shapely, but well-developed muscles, her knee drove between Oton’s legs. It caught him right where it would do the most good, for Calamity, if not for him. If she had been able to get in closer and put more force behind the attack, she would have tumbled her victim in numb, helpless agony to the ground. Instead, her knee arrived hard enough to make him gasp a gush of garlic-scented breath into her face as he released the jacket and fell back a pace.

Having taken two of her attackers out of the game, if only briefly, Calamity’s luck ran out. Slower on his feet than Oton, Job proved sufficiently fast for the girl’s undoing. Elbowing the Mexican aside and ignoring the loafer who stood glaring wildly at the blood that splashed from his nostrils on to his upturned palms, Job launched a punch in the girl’s direction. She saw the blow coming just a moment too late. Even as she tried to duck under it, the burly man’s knotted fist crashed against the side of her jaw. Instantly Calamity’s world seemed to explode into brilliant flashes of light. She seemed to be falling through space, then her shoulder collided with something hard and unyielding. After that, everything went black for her.

Watching Calamity pitch sideways, ram her shoulder into the wall of the building and collapse, Job followed her. Bending down, he took hold of her jacket and started to raise her.

“Let’s get her into the alley afore——” the big man began.

Leaning against the hitching rail and rubbing at the place where Calamity’s knee had struck him, Oton shook his head.

“She’ll have the papers we want on her. Get them now, just in case somebody’s seen us. We may have to run for it before we’ve done the rest of our work.”

“Be best,” grunted Job and reached under Calamity’s jacket. Producing the envelope, he lifted the flap and looked at the contents. “These’re ’em. Now let’s——”

“Leave her to me!” the lanky man screeched, drawing his revolver with a blood-smeared hand. “I’ll kill her now and save you doing it!”

Chapter 4 WAS THE LETTER IMPORTANT?

THE TEXAS COWHAND STRIDING ALONG LEICESTER Street looked exceptionally young and naive. Especially in view of the weapons about his person. A Winchester Model of 1866 rifle dangled almost negligently from his right hand. Walnut handle pointing forward, an old Colt Dragoon hung in a low “cavalry twist-hand” open-topped holster at the right side of his belt, and an ivory-hilted James Black bowie knife graced the sheath at the left.

Six foot in height, slender yet conveying an impression of strength and untiring energy, he had raven-black hair. In fact, black might have been his leitmotif. All his clothing, low-crowned, wide-brimmed Stetson, tight-rolled bandana, shirt, calfskin vest, trousers, boots, gunbelt even, was of that somber hue. His deeply tanned face had almost babyishly innocent features that were belied by the reckless glint in his red-hazel eyes. Those eyes would have warned a stranger that this was no bald-faced boy trying to impress people. None of the town’s original inhabitants, or many folk who knew the lands west of the Mississippi River would have even started to think it. He walked with a long, free stride, seeming to glide rather than step. His whole being told that there was here a young man, born and brought to maturity in the range country. In his time, he had seen much of life and something of sudden, violent death.

That tall, baby-faced Texan had seen his first light of day in the village of the Pehnane—by translation, Wasp, Quick-Stinger—Comanche Indians. Born to a wild Irish- Kentuckian and the only daughter of Chief Long Walker’s French-Creole pairaivo, favorite wife, he had been given the name of Loncey Dalton Ysabel by the band’s medicine man. His mother had died in childbirth and, in the traditional Comanche way—his father being away much of time on the family’s business of mustanging or smuggling—he was raised by his maternal grandfather. A noted war leader in the Dog Soldier lodge, Long Walker had taught the boy all those things a Pehnane warrior must know.* Skill of riding came early and he reached considerable proficiency, for the Comanche were horse-Indians second to none. Equally important and well-learned had been the ability to handle weapons; which every Nemenuh† brave-heart needed to know if he was to be worthy of the name.

By the time he had reached his fifteenth birthday, the Ysabel Kid—as he was known among such Texans as he came into contact with—could handle a rifle and show the deadly sighting skill of a Kentucky hill man. His skill in the use of another weapon had already brought him the man-name Cuchilo among the Pehnane; the word was Spanish for Knife. While not fast, in the accepted Western sense of the word, he considered himself adequate in the use of his old Dragoon Colt. He could follow tracks and read the message they told as if it had been printed as a story in a book. With greater ease, in fact, for his white man’s schooling had been fragmentary. Few men of either the white or red race could equal him at silent movement, hiding undetected or locating concealed enemies. All three subjects had formed a part of his Pehnane higher education.

The War between the States had come in time to prevent the Kid from having to choose whether to support the white or Comanche sides of his bloodline. Accompanying his father, he had joined Mosby’s Raiders and won the Grey Ghost’s commendation by his skill as a scout. Then the Confederate States’ Government had found a better use for the Ysabel family’s talents. Sam Ysabel and his son had been returned to Texas, where they had collected cargoes, run through the U.S. Navy’s blockade into neutral Matamoros and delivered them to the authorities north of