Wanted! Belle Starr!

The Home of
Great Western Fiction!

In the violent and lawless days
following the Civil War many infamous outlaws cut a bloody swathe
across the West ... John Wesley Hardin, Bad Bill Longley, Sam Bass,
Frank and Jesse James, the Daltons ... all rode and shot their way
to notoriety ....
But, with one exception, the women were less well known in
the annals of frontier legends. The exception was a beautiful,
shapely, intelligent wildcat, quick in a fight, and deadly with a
gun. Before she had ridden the owlhoot trails for long the posters
began to appear on the sheriff’s notice boards from Canada to the
Rio Grande, from the Mississippi to the Pacific ...

Wanted! Belle Starr, the
Oklahoma Outlaw.

WANTED! BELLE
STARR!

By J. T.
Edson

First
published by Transworld Publishers in 1983

Copyright
©
1983, 2016 by J. T. Edson

First
Smasshwords Edition: July 2016

Names,
characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons
living or dead is purely coincidental.

All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the author,
except where permitted by law.

This is a
Piccadilly Publishing Book

Series Editor:
Ben Bridges

Text ©
Piccadilly Publishing

Published by
Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

For Terry Bisson, Allegra D’Adamo, Ling
Lucas and everybody else at Berkley Publishing Corporation, New
York, who is helping to foist me upon the unsuspecting American
public.

To save our ‘old hands’ from repetition, but
for the benefit of new readers, we have included details of the
career and special qualifications of the Ysabel Kid, along with
references to various Old West terms and events about which we are
most frequently requested to supply extra information in the form
of Appendices.

While we realize that in our present
‘permissive’ society, we could include the actual profanities used
by various people in the narrative, we do not concede that a
spurious desire for ‘realism’ is any excuse to do so.

Lastly, as we do not pander to
the current ‘trendy’ usage of the metric system, except in the
events of referring to firearms where the caliber is generally
given in millimeters
i.e.
Walther P-38, 9mm we will continue to employ
miles, yards, feet, inches, pounds and ounces when quoting
distances and weights.

J.T. Edson

“
Indios bravos! Madre de dios,
señor
,
your
Americana del Norte
—“Red” don’t you call them?—Indians are as nothing
to frighten us. Not when in comparison with the kind of
Indios
muy
bravos
we
have in the Matto Grosso. Unlike your Red Indians, they do not ride
around openly to be shot at. No, they hide so very carefully and,
before you even suspect they are there, they have started using
their—how are you saying it?—“blowing pipes” and darts upon
you.”

There was a distinctly haughty disdain in
the voice and demeanor of the speaker, who had been introduced to
the other players in the poker game for high stakes as ‘Señora
Donna Maria Constanza del Santa Rosa’. Black haired, immaculately
coiffured, olive skinned, very beautiful, and with richly endowed
feminine contours which her clothes emphasized although not in a
blatant manner rather than concealed, her bearing was that of a
person whose birthright and upbringing had placed her in a position
of imperious authority. The low crowned, round brimmed black hat,
dove gray two-piece travelling costume, frilly bosomed light blue
silk blouse with a masculine black bow tie and the jewelry
sparkling around her neck, from her ears, on wrists and fingers,
all indicated great wealth. To confirm this supposition, even
before it had been supplemented by her frequent winnings, she had
produced a considerable sum in the currency of the United States of
America from the large black reticule which lay open on the table
in front of her.

“
Huh!” grunted the stocky and
hard featured man who although his voice suggested he had been born
and raised in the already notorious and less than salubrious Lower
East Side district of New York City had been presented before the
start of the game as “Thomas Driberg”, a cattle buyer from Chicago,
Illinois. His clothing vas that of a city dweller and his sallow
complexion suggested such might be the case, but he had on a
Western style gunbelt with a walnut handled Colt Civilian Model
Peacemaker
ⁱ
in its fast draw
holster. “That don’t seem so all-fired dangerous to me!”

“
Ha, but this is only because
you do not know anything about them, or their “blowing pipes” and
darts,
señor
,” asserted the aristocratically arrogant beauty, her
English good; albeit underlaid by a broad Spanish accent which
enhanced the implication of Hispanic origins created by her name
and appearance. “There is just one quick puff taken through a short
hollow cane tube and you are stuck with a so-little spike of wood
not thicker than a matchstick. Then, no matter how quickly you pull
it out, unless you take the only antidote which is very rare and
hard to come by in no more than five minutes, you become most
painfully dead without having seen, much less shot at, the man who
has killed you.”

“
How?” inquired the tall,
gaunt and somberly clad man whose black and white attire, despite
the fact that he was involved in a game of chance where
considerable amounts of money were being bet, implied he was a
member of the clergy.

“
Poison, Fath—Reverend
Huckfield,” the beautiful young woman explained, making the
substitution because she had discovered that the person she was
addressing did not care to be referred to with the honorific more
in keeping with the Catholic faith than that of his, as yet,
unmentioned denomination. “A most deadly poison of a kind not
widely known outside our country. As I told you, Manuel, my
husband, is part Matto Grosso Indio and he knows of such things. He
says it is called “curare”
ⁱⁱ
and I have seen, with my own eyes,
him kill a full grown bull with the “blowing pipe” and dart just as
quickly as the men he has used it on for me have died.”

Everything about the young man who was with
her and whom she indicated by a casual wave of her bejeweled hand
implied that, regardless of having been mentioned on more than one
occasion as “Manuel, my husband’ in a tone that suggested more of
an apology than pride he was of a lower social status. Tall,
slender, yet exuding an impression of wiry strength, his whole
appearance gave credence to him being of mixed blood. Bareheaded,
his straight black hair hung down to shoulder level and was held
back by a headband of scarlet cloth. However, with the exception of
his eyes, there was an almost babyishly innocent cast to his
handsome, Indian-dark features which did not seem in accord with
the possession of the lethal knowledge and tendencies referred to
by his wife. The eyes, a curious red-hazel color, held a glint,
even in repose, which suggested the apparent innocence was not
necessarily indicative of his true nature. Sitting ramrod straight
in his chair, seemingly far from at ease in such company, he
conveyed the slightly puzzled expression of one who knew he was the
subject of a comment in a language he could not understand.

Regardless of the extreme affluence
suggested by the attire and jewelry of his wife, there was no such
elegance about Manuel. He wore a loose fitting light tan colored
waist length leather jacket, an open necked and multi-hued cotton
shirt such as was sold cheaply in the trading posts of Indian
reservations throughout the United States, and yellowish-brown
Nankeen trousers tucked into the legs of low heeled, but sharp
toed, black riding boots. A massive, ivory handled James Black
bowie knife was sheathed on the right side of his waist belt, which
was broad enough to support the far from inconsiderable weight, but
he showed no sign of being armed in any other way.

Only the Indian dark young man
seemed at odds with the place in which the high stakes game of
poker was being played. Although on the outskirts of Newton, a town
in Kansas depending for the majority of its income upon the large
herds of half wild longhorn cattle driven north from various parts
of Texas to its railroad pens,
ⁱⁱⁱ
the mansion and fittings of its
sitting-room had appointments equal to any in a larger Eastern
city. Nor, Manuel excepted, did the players appear out of place in
such a setting as far as their clothing, displayed wealth and
proclaimed occupations were concerned.

However, appearances can be deceptive!

Certainly nothing about the game of poker
and its participants was what it seemed on the surface!

The events which had brought it about had
commenced a few days earlier!

“
To hell with you and your
god-damned tail-peddlers!” called the tallest of the three men who
had emerged, with indications of having drunk ‘not wisely, but too
well’, from the side entrance at the insistence of the brawny
bouncers employed by the Sunbird Saloon. Then, discovering they did
not have the alley to themselves, he swung his gaze from the door
which was being closed and went on in a lower voice, “Well now,
just take a look at what’s a-coming, Cousin Bert, Cousin Jubal.
Ain’t she just about the purtiest thing you ever did
see?”

“
I don’t know about that,
Cousin Henry,” assessed “Cousin Bert”, the second in height, his
accent also indicating his birthright was in Illinois. “But she’s
sure enough close to being the fanciest I ever did see!”

“
That’s as maybe,” claimed
“Cousin Jubal”, his tone bitter and indicating that he too was from
the “Sucker State” which was once the home of the late and great
President Abraham Lincoln. “But I just bet she’s reckoning’s how
she’s a whole heap too good ’n’ fancy for ordinary working fellers
like us. ’Specially seeing we’ve been cheated out of all our
hard-earned money in there ’n’ can’t afford to pay her nothing,
neither, to act all friendly to us.”