Fargo glimpsed movement in the woods over Trask’s shoulder.
A buckskin-clad figure materialized with the Hawken to his shoulder. Before he could shout a warning, the Hawken belched lead and smoke.
Ben Trask’s face burst in a gout of flesh, bone and blood.
42
Fargo started to draw but as he was clearing leather a piece of flesh struck him on the right cheek near his eye. In reflex he recoiled and grabbed at it, and Igmar Rolf melted into the vegetation.
Trask’s heavy body keeled from the saddle and hit the ground with a thud.
Fargo went to rein around Trask’s horse and go after the mountain man. He heard shouts from the cowboys and then he was in the forest. To the north came the crash of brush to the passage of a large animal. He caught sight of Rolf on a mule, flying at a gallop, and gave chase.
With all the trees and thickets and boulders, Fargo couldn’t gain. He became aware of streaks of gray-brown on either side of the mule: Goliath and Esther, the wolf dogs.
He wondered why Rolf was fleeing north instead of east. For half a mile the mule proved remarkably fleet. Unexpectedly, Rolf reined to the west, toward the valley floor—and the herd.
Fargo angled to cut the mountain man off but he was too far behind. By the time the Ovaro pounded into the open, Rolf and the wolf dogs had reached the cattle.
Punchers were farther back and up ahead but none were close enough to stop him.
Fearsome brays pierced the air. Goliath and Esther sprang in among the cows, biting and clawing and wreaking havoc.
Igmar Rolf whooped and waved his Hawken.
Fargo raised his Colt to shoot. The mountain man’s intent was obvious, and he had to stop him. But the harm had been done. The savage howls of the wolf dogs, the mooing and bleats of stricken cows, the whooping and the hollering and the commotion, sent a wave of fear through the herd. As if possessed of one mind, they broke into motion.
“Stampede!” a cowboy hollered. “My God, the critters are stampedin’!”
Fargo had witnessed stampedes before. Docile herds were turned into raging rivers of destruction, their hammering hooves leveling everything in their path.
“Stop them!” a puncher screamed.
“Turn the leaders!” another cried.
It was too late for that. The thousands of head were fleeing pell-mell up the valley.
Fargo was fortunate that he was twenty yards from them when they broke. Or so he thought until he glanced to the south and discovered that the tail of the herd was stampeding, too, and sweeping wide as they came. A spreading line of heads and horns was coming straight at him.
Hauling on the reins, Fargo made for the timber. A cowboy south of him was trying to do the same but the leading wave of beeves slammed into him and his horse like a storm-tossed breaker on the Pacific shore. Fargo would never forget the squeal of the puncher’s horse and the man’s death wail.
The din assaulted Fargo’s ears. He rode for his life, the ground under the stallion quaking. He still had the Colt in his hand; he could shoot one or two but what good would that do? He jabbed his spurs and prayed.
Dust filled his nose and he tasted it on his tongue. Somewhere a man shrieked. He hoped it was Igmar Rolf, that the mountain man had been killed by his own hate.
The living wall of death was almost on him. Another jab of his spurs, and the stallion plowed into the forest heedless of the limbs that scratched and tore.
Behind Fargo a raging phalanx of cows thundered past. He stopped and turned in the saddle and watched the brutes streaming up the valley. They would run for miles, maybe clear to the north end.
The thought jarred him.
“God, no.”
Fargo reined north and came to a gallop. He stayed in the trees. He had no choice. The valley floor was covered with cows. There was no way he could get ahead of the herd and try to turn them.
His horsemanship was put to the test. Constantly reining right and left to avoid oaks and pines and boulders, he paralleled the herd. They passed the midway point and thundered around a bend. Terror-struck sheep fled.
The sheepherders would hear the stampede, Fargo told himself, and head for the high timber. If not—he refused to think about that.
From the front of the herd came shots, a cowboy making a desperate bid to stop the dreadnought of hooves and horns, Fargo reckoned. He wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work. Nothing would stop these cows short of exhaustion.
Since he couldn’t stop them it made no sense to ride the Ovaro into the ground. And he had to see for himself if his worst fear came true.
Fargo angled up the mountain. He had to climb a quarter of a mile before he could see the wagons in the far distance. He drew rein, and swore.
The campfires still burned, and figures were moving about.
Half a mile or more separated the onrushing herd from the camp. There was plenty of time yet for the sheepherders to flee. He could just make out the horse string and saw two or three people running to mount. The rest formed at the south end of the camp and stood there.
“What the hell are you doing?” Fargo said out loud. The glint of sunlight on metal gave him the answer.
Men with guns were going to try to turn the cows. They moved in front of the rest and formed a skirmish line.
“Damn it to hell, you fools,” Fargo railed at the wind. There weren’t enough of them. But they didn’t know that. They were used to dealing with sheep and a sheep stampede was nothing like a cow stampede. It was akin to comparing a flowing stream after a gentle summer rain and the same stream in raging flood. “Get out of there.”
The herd had reduced the gap by a quarter mile when several of the wagons lurched into motion, heading for the woodland that rose to the north. But they moved so slowly, they were turtles on wheels.
Fargo imagined Delicia on one of the wagons. He clenched his fists so hard, his nails dug into his palms.
The cattle were running flat-out. Nothing could stop them; nothing could stem the inevitable.
A lot of people were about to die.
43
The line of men with rifles and revolvers moved farther from the wagon, no doubt thinking that they should turn the herd a safe distance from their loved ones.
The flowing legion of hooves and horns was almost on them when the sheepherders fired a volley. From Fargo’s vantage, it appeared that they shot in the air. It had no effect. The cattle swept down on them and Fargo heard the crack of several more shots. He heard faint screams, too, as the men went down under the crushing weight and failing hooves.
Until the last instant Fargo hoped against hope that the cows would go around the wagons. They didn’t. They engulfed them. Wagons buckled or were smashed onto their sides.
Stick figures tried to run but they were much too slow. In a twinkling the bovine tide washed over them. Screams rose.
Thick smoke coiled from the trampled fires.
Fargo could only imagine the bedlam, and the blood. He saw one of the fleeing wagons veer sharply toward the woods in a bid to escape destruction only to be overtaken. The lead cows parted to go around on either side but the press of numbers forced those behind them to crash into the wagon. A wheel came off and the wagon canted. Faint above the rumble rose a shriek of terror. With a tremendous splintering of wood, the wagon broke apart.
The cattle reached the forest at the valley’s end and in a massive sweep of motion, they flowed to the west along the forest’s edge and on toward the south again. They only went a short way when they started to slow, their fear and panic subsiding at long last.
Fargo had seen enough. Descending to the valley floor, he used his spurs. He hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when he came on a puncher who had been caught in the stampede—or what was left of him. The puncher’s clothes were ripped and shredded; the man in the clothes was a scarlet sack of bones and ruptured skin.
Fargo came on another and then a third. He passed more dead sheep than he cared to count
, and more than a few dead cows.
Several buzzards were circling over the north end of the valley when he got there. Somehow the carrion eaters always knew when a feast was on the table.
The sheepherders in the skirmish line had died horrible deaths. Their mangled remains was enough to churn anyone’s stomach.
The camp was worse.
Bodies, or what was left of them, were everywhere—men, women, children.
Dismounting, Fargo roved among the slaughtered. Few were recognizable; faces had been stove in, heads had been split apart. Here and there lay body parts; a finger, a bloody tooth, part of a nose.
A pair of female legs jutted from under a wagon on its side. The wagon had split apart, revealing the head and shoulders of the woman the wagon fell on. It was Constanza, her mouth agape, the whites of her eyes turned red from burst blood vessels.
“Bitch,” Fargo said. He took a few more steps, and stopped.
Off in the trees someone was quietly sobbing and sniffling.
“Who’s in there?” Fargo called out.
Sheepherders appeared, seven, eight, nine, some stumbling in shock, others weeping. Lorenzo was among them, comforting a woman.
“Is that all of you?” Fargo asked as they straggled into the sunlight.
“There are a few more, I think, senor,” Lorenzo said numbly, and motioned with his thumb behind him.
A man limped around a spruce. His clothes were a mess and his cheek was swollen, and he was using a tree limb as an improvised crutch.
An older woman trailed after him, hugging herself and weeping.
Then it was a young woman, a child in her arms, the girl’s face buried in her shoulder. Tears moistened the woman’s cheeks. She came to him and said in relief, “I thought perhaps you were dead.”
“Thought the same about you, Delicia,” Fargo said, annoyed at how his throat constricted.
The little girl stirred and straightened and looked at him with eyes sad beyond her tender years.
“Yoana,” Fargo said.
“It was terrible,” Yoana said, and sniffled. “My mother and my father—” She couldn’t go on, and her face sank to Delicia’s shoulder again.
Delicia put her forehead to Fargo’s chest and closed her eyes. “We barely made it.”
Fargo enfolded them in his arms. “The one who did this will pay,” he vowed.
Delicia drew back and stared at the carnage in bleak sorrow. “Small consolation. I wish that—” She stopped and gazed past him. “Oh no. Not them. Not now.”
Griff Wexler and fifteen or sixteen cowboys were coming up the valley.
“What can they want?”
“I’ll find out,” Fargo said. “Get everyone back into the trees.”
It didn’t take much urging. One look at the cowboys and the sheepherders were quick to seek cover.
Fargo moved out to where the skirmish line had been and waited with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. If the punchers aimed to do the survivors harm, they’d have to answer to him—in blood.
44
Caked with dust, their clothes damp with sweat, their faces grim, the Bar T hands slowed and spread out. Griff Wexler was out in front, Billy-Bob on his right, Hank on his left.
Fargo let them get within a dozen yards when he announced, “That’s close enough.”
Griff drew rein and the others followed suit. “Wondered what happened to you.”
“I’m wondering what you’re doing here,” Fargo said.
“We came to see how they made out,” Griff said with a nod at the devastated encampment.
“Is that all?” Fargo asked suspiciously.
“And to help if we can.”
“You hate sheepherders.”
“I hate sheep,” Griff said, “and I admit I’m not fond of those who raise them. But there were women and kids here, and I’m not heartless.”
“Me either,” Billy-Bob said.
Hank nodded in agreement.
The cowboys were worn and tired from their efforts to stem the stampede. One puncher had taken a horn in the leg and his crude bandage was bright crimson. Another had his arm in a sling.
“How many did you lose?”
“We’re still lookin’ for bodies but eight so far,” Griff said somberly. “Five more are back at our camp, so busted up they can’t ride.”
“It caught us off guard, those cows spookin’ like they done,” Billy-Bob said.
“What happened, exactly?” Griff Wexler asked. “Hank, here, says he saw Mr. Trask get shot but it wasn’t you who shot him. And the next we knew, there was all that damn howlin’.”
Fargo imparted all of it: Antelope Valley, Igmar Rolf and his wife, Trask burning the cabin down, and the wolf dogs.
“I remember that old bastard,” Griff said when he was done. “Here all these years we figured he was dead.”
“He killed our boss and started the stampede deliberate?” Billy-Bob said, and patted his six-gun. “Then I reckon we know what we have to do, don’t we?”
The rest of the hands nodded or voiced their assent.
“What I think is—” Griff began, and glanced sharply at the woods.
The sheepherders were coming out of hiding. Slowly, cautiously, they converged on Fargo and stood behind him as if for protection.
“Have they come to finish us off?” Delicia asked.
Griff Wexler flinched. “We’re right sorry, ma’am. We’d of driven you out, sure, but not like this.”
Billy-Bob doffed his hat and showed most of his teeth. “How do you do, miss. Anythin’ we can do for you, all you have to do is ask.”
“We could use a fire and food for the children,” Delicia said.
Fargo stood back as the cowboys scrambled to help. In short order two fires were crackling and a pot of coffee was perking and Griff Wexler had passed out jerky from his saddlebags.
“We have flour and such in our cook wagon,” the foreman informed them. “You’re welcome to come for supper if you’d like. All of you, that is.”
“I’ll round up horses for them to ride,” Hank volunteered.
Fargo was glad the two sides were finally getting along. It freed him to do something else. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “I’m going after Igmar Rolf.”
“Not alone you’re not,” Billy-Bob said.
“It was our boss he bucked out in gore,” Griff said. “Our cows he stampeded.”
“It could take days.” Fargo would rather go alone but he supposed they had a right to be in it.
“Mister,” Griff said, “we’ll hunt that son of a bitch to the ends of the earth, if need be.” He turned to Delicia and said, “I beg your pardon, ma’am, for my language.”
“That is quite all right, Senor Wexler,” Delicia said. “By all means, hunt the son of a bitch down.”
The foreman laughed. “It’s settled then.”
“Not quite,” Fargo said. “I’ll take three of you along, no more.”
“Why not most of us?”
“We’d raise so much dust he’d spot us from miles off,” Fargo said, shaking his head. “Three and only three and that’s final.” He added, “Besides, don’t you have a lot of cows to round up?”
“God, do we,” Billy-Bob said.
“All right.” Griff gave in. “It’ll be me and two I pick. How soon do you want to head out?”
“Five minutes ago.”
“So soon?” Delicia said.
“Rolf’s got more than an hour’s head start on us as it is.” Fargo turned and walked to the Ovaro and she came with him.
Yoana had fallen asleep, her cheek on Delicia’s shoulder.
“It will be very dangerous, will it not?”
“It’ll be him or us,” Fargo said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It sure as hell does.” Fargo disliked her making a fuss.
“You do this for us after how we treated you?” Delicia said.
“I do it for me,” Fargo said. “He
tried to kill me and damn near split my head open.”
“So you think only of yourself? Is that what you would have me believe?”
“Believe what you want.” Fargo took the Ovaro’s reins in hand.
Delicia touched his chest and softly asked, “Why are you being so gruff with me?”
“I don’t need this. You don’t need this.”
“We share a bond, you and I.”
“Hell,” Fargo said.
“You will come back, si? After you have dealt with this Rolf?” Delicia kissed him on the cheek. “I would like it very much.”
“There are days,” Fargo said, and sighed.
“Senor?”
Fargo smiled and touched her on the chin. “I aim to please, ma’am.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Delicia said.
45
Fargo had no trouble finding the area where Igmar Rolf and the wolf dogs had attacked the herd, but finding where Rolf went from there proved frustrating. The stampede had obliterated the mule’s tracks. He spent the rest of the day going along the edge of the forest to the east.
“Nothin’?” Billy-Bob said when Fargo drew rein and swore.
Griff Wexler and a puncher by the name of Jeffers were behind them.
“Sun’s almost down,” Griff said. “Looks like we’ll have to hold off until daybreak.”
“Which will give that no-account more time to slip away,” Jeffers said. He was a burly man of middle years, his revolver worn for a cross-draw.
“I’m not givin’ up until he eats dirt,” Griff vowed.
“Makes two of us,” Fargo said. Reluctantly, he entered the woods and climbed down. It had been a long day and he was tired and stiff. He helped collect firewood, then sat back and relaxed while Jeffers put coffee on and cooked stew. There was plenty of meat; Jeffers cut it from a dead cow.
Fargo figured the cowboys would stay up late talking but they surprised him. Griff insisted they turn in early so they would be refreshed come sunrise.
Grateful for the quiet, Fargo sat and sipped. Off in the forest an owl hooted. Otherwise the valley was deathly still.
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