The Ysabel Kid Read Online Free

strongest men.
    “Get some burgundy, Tommy,” Ole Devil ordered as he shook Handiman’s hand and looked his friend over. “Didn’t recognise you with all that shining brasswork, Philo, and you’re getting as fat as a hawg.” He glared at his servant who hadn’t moved. “Where’s the burgundy?”
    “Betty San told me no burgundy for you in daytime. She make me one time sick Nippon feller she hears I give it to you.”
    “Betty’s back East,” Ole Devil barked back. “She’ll never know.”
    The small Texan came up on to the porch after the others and sat on the rail, swinging his legs idly. He looked Handiman over for a long moment then remarked, “I thought it was strange, a full-blowed Yankee general coming here looking for Cousin Wes and without an escort.”
    Handiman got it now, although his aide was still puzzled. It explained the young man’s animosity and his careful surveying of the range as he rode alongside the buggy. Handiman laughed: “You thought I was hunting for Wes Hardin?”
    Then Collings got it. John Wesley Hardin, Ole Devil’s nephew, was being hunted by the Army for killing a drunken negro who attacked him. The young Texan thought this was what brought General Handiman here and so showed caution and escorted him to the ranch to prevent him going anywhere he shouldn’t. Collings scanned the range and wondered if even now Wes Hardin might be watching them over the sights of a rifle, primed and ready for trouble.
    “Didn’t really think you’d be fool enough to try it alone,” the Texan went on. “But like Uncle Devil always says—”
    “I can imagine, son,” Handiman interrupted, his tones more friendly now. Then he turned his attention back to Ole Devil. “You being stove up this way puts me in a hell of a spot.”
    “How come?”
    “I’ve been sent from Washington by Sam Grant. He wants you to do something for him, something real important.”
    “Well now, does he?” Ole Devil’s frosty black eyes glinted at the thought of President U.S. Grant wanting his help so badly as to send the head of his Secret Service after it. “Old Sam must be getting pretty close to the blanket if he’s sent for me to help him.”
    “We needed you badly,” Handiman agreed as he looked down at the blankets covering Ole Devil’s lower regions. “How did this happen?”
    Ole Devil jerked an expressive thumb to where the boy was leading the big paint stallion round in front of the corral. “See that paint there. Finest piece of hossflesh I’ve bought in years, a real good hoss. Young Dustine here handles it real well. I tried.”
    Handiman looked with renewed interest at the small young man. He might be young and not look much at all but he must be a horseman if he could trim and break the mount which threw and crippled the South’s greatest horse-master, Ole Devil Hardin.
    “It leaves me in a hell of a hole,” Handiman remarked, wondering if he should tell Hardin why he’d come here and yet not wanting to say too much about it in front of his aide and the small man.
    “Best tell me about it then,” Hardin answered.
    Handiman coughed and looked at the small Texan who still lounged on the rail. “How about showing Mr. Collings here round the ranch house?” he asked.
    “Sorry, I just came in to see you didn’t get lost. I haven’t time to act as guide for your boy,” the Texan swung down from the porch and jerked his hand towards the door. “Get Tommy to show him into the study, the guns might interest him. I’m going to the cookshack, Uncle Devil, Jimmo sent his louse in after breakfast and hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him since.”
    Handiman offered his cigar case to Ole Devil and watched the young man walk away, then directed Collings to go and look over the collection of firearms which decorated the walls of Ole Devil’s study. Then with the porch cleared and the cigars going started to tell what brought him here. Ole Devil sat back, relaxed and enjoying his smoke, but