Valley of Skulls (Fargo Book 6)

by John Benteen

  Brassfield’s thick chest rose and fell with sucked-in, let-out breath. “No matter,” he said. “Vic’s dead now. And you will be in a few minutes.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Brassfield—” Darnley’s voice crackled.

  “No,” Fargo said. “If he’s got something to settle with me, let’s get it over with. Brassfield. You mean it?”

  “I mean it, Fargo.”

  “Guns or knives?”

  Brassfield’s mouth warped beneath the beard. “You took my brother with a knife. But he didn’t know cold steel the way I do, Fargo. Nobody knows cold steel the way I do.”

  “Then knives,” said Fargo.

  “Yeah. Knives.”

  “Outdoors? In here?”

  “It’s too dark outdoors,” said Brassfield. “God, Fargo, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this chance.”

  “Well make the most of it,” Fargo said. “The rest of you stand back and give us room.”

  There was a general exodus to the walls. Then Fargo and Brassfield were alone in the center of the room, between the tables, both of them standing easily. It had been a long time, Fargo thought. The Brassfields had kept on robbing trains well after everybody else had given it up; Al Jennings was in jail, Cassidy and his Wild Bunch had fogged out and disappeared, but the Brassfields stayed with it. And so the reward had been too tempting to turn down. But it had been a fair fight, except that Lon Brassfield was right; his brother Vic had been good with cold steel, but not a genius. Fargo was a genius. On the other hand, from what he had heard, Lon Brassfield was, too.

  It was, he thought with a kind of savage pleasure, going to be a damned good fight.

  “Come ahead, Lon,” he said and drew the Batangas knife, and his wrist flicked and the handles dropped into place, unfolded, within his palm, and ten inches of narrow, razor-edged steel glittered in the lamplight.

  “Yeah,” Brassfield said, and he drew the Bowie and went into a knife-fighter’s crouch, hunched, gut protected, side presented.

  They moved cautiously toward one another in the total silence of the huge room. The Bowie had a twelve-inch blade, and it was as good for hacking as for thrusting. Fargo’s lighter knife lacked the weight for that sort of combat, but that did not bother him. His stance matched Brassfield’s as they edged closer, lightly balanced on the balls of their feet.

  Two yards away, Brassfield stopped. “By the way, Fargo. Don’t try to shift hands and guard on me. I know you can use your left hand good as your right. You won’t take me by surprise that way.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Fargo said. “Otherwise, I might have left you an openin’.”

  “I’ll find one,” said Brassfield. He came in fast then, swiftly as a striking snake.

  Fargo saw the big Bowie blade wink out. He slacked his right leg, sagged, opened his left arm, and the steel went between bicep and torso, missing flesh. Then he pivoted, wheeled away, clear, and came in from the flank; but where his blade should have taken unprotected flesh, it met hard steel. Brassfield was every bit as quick and canny with a knife as he, had recovered, parried, and finely tempered steel chimed, bell-like, as their blades met.

  With a shock that Fargo felt all the way up his arm. Brassfield had muscle, too. He turned the Bowie, tried to use its leverage to wrench Fargo’s knife away, but Fargo let the Batangas blade slide off without resisting and slashed in again and was met by Brassfield again, and this time Brassfield’s knife edged past Fargo’s guard and drew blood along the inside of his arm.

  That was too close, thought Fargo, backing swiftly. A half inch more and the tendons would have gone, the artery spouted blood. This was a fight that would take every ounce of speed, skill, strength and ingenuity.

  The hush was total as they circled, maneuvered. Fargo thought of the two fighting cocks in the ring in San Antonio. The same, exactly the same. Brassfield charged; Fargo sidestepped, Brassfield had expected it, turned, Fargo parried just in time. The Batangas knife slid down the Bowie blade, locked it for a moment, and they were face to face.

  Brassfield’s breath was foul. “Next time,” he rasped, eyes glittering, confident. He broke the lock, and Fargo dodged back just in time to keep from being gutted. Off balance, he had to yield and yield again as Brassfield came in hard, the long, heavy, sharp blade flickering and slashing, dangerous on stroke or backstroke, either one.

  Brassfield came in harder and harder on the offensive, giving Fargo no chance to stand and fight, regain balance. “Hah!” Brassfield made that sound with every sword like stroke and dagger thrust. “Hah, hah, hah!” And their blades rang and chimed and belled.

  Then something struck Fargo behind the knees.

  A bench, slewed crosswise from one of the tables. He saw the gleam of triumph in Brassfield’s eyes; this was what he had been driving for. Slam Fargo up against the bench, off balance, then lunge and get him. All that went through Fargo’s head in a split second, even as he parried again; then he moved back a little more, tripped over the bench and fell sprawling on his back as he evaded Brassfield’s thrust.

  He landed hard, open and vulnerable, and Brassfield’s mouth twisted, his yellow teeth shining in the depths of his beard. Brassfield leaped the bench and came in for the kill, thrusting downward, and now Fargo had his opening. Too eager, too sure, Brassfield almost fell on him and Fargo rolled and thrust upward with the Batangas knife and felt it enter flesh, deep and hard. He turned it and ripped just as Brassfield’s Bowie plunged into the hard packed dirt floor where Fargo had just been. And then Fargo was on his knees, lifting Brassfield impaled on his knife, as Brassfield’s body went dead and the Bowie dropped from his hand. Fargo had fallen backward over the bench deliberately, landing exactly right, gathered, ready, tempting Brassfield, and his opponent had taken the bait. When Brassfield had leaped the bench and come down, he had been the one off balance, the one vulnerable, and that had killed him. Now, gutted from groin to breastbone, Brassfield swayed backward, fell off of Fargo’s blade, landed on his back, kicked once, made a strange sound, and then was still.

  Withdrawing the Batangas knife, which was reddened to the hilt, Fargo stood there, panting.

  “Christ, man,” said Darnley. “You ripped him wide-open.”

  Fargo clenched his teeth against an upsurge of bile. Though he was trembling with reaction, coolly he knelt and wiped the blade clean against Brassfield’s thigh. Then he folded the handles and returned the knife to its sheath.

  “Yes,” he said. He looked around, hand on his Colt. “Brassfield got any friends resent that?”

  Nobody spoke or moved. Except the girl who had been on Brassfield’s lap. She was Indian, very young, not over seventeen. Her eyes wide, her small-nosed, pretty face blank with surprise, breasts the size of melons, she looked from the body on the floor to Fargo. Then she said, in Spanish, “Senor. Gracias. Nombre de Dios, gracias!”

  It was not what Fargo had expected. “You were his girl?” he asked in Spanish.

  “His slave. He was a dog, a beast. Thank God you’ve freed me from him. I hated him.” Then she spat violently on the weltering body.

  “All right, Fargo.” Darnley laughed shortly. “Her name’s Luz. I guess she’s yours; spoils of war.” Then he barked: “Clean up this mess, you people hear? Drag him out, wipe up the blood! I’ll not have this mess in my headquarters.”

  Somebody asked numbly: “Bury him? Tonight?”

  “Bury him, hell!” Darnley snapped. “Drag him to the forest. Let the jaguars and the vultures and the ants bury him. Just take him far enough so he won’t stink.” Then he turned to Fargo. “Neal, you must be hungry. What about some dinner?”

  The thought of food made Fargo’s stomach clench.

  “A drink first,” he said.

  “Right,” said Darnley. “You’ve earned it. A fresh bottle.” He snapped orders to another woman. She shuffled off, came back with an uncorked bottle of Scotch and passed it to Fargo. He drank, long and deeply. When he lowered the bottle he said, “
Now, I can eat.”

  Darnley’s bedroom was small, off the main room. There was a cot with a mosquito bar, a table, a couple of chairs, and books piled all around; Darnley was a great reader. Centipedes and ants crawled, however, in and out between the pages. In this climate, the creatures bred everywhere.

  Darnley poured more Scotch and passed it over. “You see, Neal you’d never have made it on your own, anyhow. Oh, you’d probably have gotten there, sneaking through the jungle … nobody’s better in the jungle than you, I know that. But with a bunch of scientists and six mule loads? You’d never have gotten out again. Not when the word went around that those six mules were hauling a ton of gold.”

  He smiled, drank. “This way, you have an escort. Everybody knows Darnley’s Raiders and is scared to death of ’em. We can take the short way through Guatemala in and out, both. Their army won’t dare tackle my whole outfit. Now, the way I see it is this: I send messengers ahead. We go up the rivers by boat, cross from one river to another, everything will be ready, waiting. I have friends in all the monterias, the logging camps. Well, not friends, really; they pay for protection from Darnley’s Raiders, but they’ll do what I say. We won’t have any trouble getting to the Valley of the Skulls—if you know where it is.”

  “I know where it is,” said Fargo.

  “You have a map, of course.”

  Fargo grinned. “You know me better than that, Darnley.”

  “You mean it’s in your head.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The same old Fargo; never take a chance.”

  “Not an unnecessary one. I can memorize a map. As long as it’s locked up in my brain there’s no profit in anybody killing me to take it off my carcass.”

  Darnley looked hurt.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  Fargo grinned back. “Darnley, I don’t know how many people are in this world. Out of all those millions or billions, though, there’s exactly one—no more—that I trust. He was my commander in the Rough Riders and he used to be President of the United States. I’d put my life in his hands; I wouldn’t give anybody else the time of day.”

  “Nor I,” said Darnley. He smiled. “But as long as we’re watching each other … very well, Fargo. You call the shots and lead the way. We’ll tag along.” He yawned. “It’s been a long day, Neal. You can take Brassfield’s room. He was my Number Two until you fought him. It’s right next door. Bunk in; tomorrow we’ll move your gear from the hotel.”

  “Sure,” Fargo said. He arose. “Good night, Darnley.”

  It was not, he thought, as he went out, the way he had counted on working this job. But nothing ever worked out the way you figured, anyhow, and a smart man made use of whatever came to hand. So he would use Darnley and his raiders, let them help him to get to the Valley of Skulls and get the gun out. What he had told Darnley about holding it for ransom would stifle any impulse Darnley might have to cut the gun up at once and divide the gold. How he would get it away intact from Darnley later on was a bridge he’d cross when he came to it. For now, he had to keep the Englishman’s confidence.

  He pushed through the door next to Darnley’s room. When he entered, he was surprised to find a lamp burning. There was a table, chairs, a mosquito-netted cot. Fargo stared at what lay behind the netting.

  The girl Luz, stretched her naked body invitingly, looking at him through the gauze.

  “Senor,” she whispered.

  The spoils of war, thought Fargo, and his wolfish grin tugged his face. He was tired, all right, but not too tired for that.

  “Hello, Luz,” he said, and began to strip off his clothes.

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks later, Fargo, the double-barreled Fox shotgun slung over his shoulder, his Winchester cradled on his lap, rode the prow of a dugout canoe up a nameless river through the jungle.

  Behind him, Darnley, with a Lee-Enfield rifle and his two holstered six-guns, lounged, smoking. And behind Darnley, seven Indians paddled.

  It took all seven of them to propel the craft, rudely made and heavily loaded with supplies, up the swift stream. Their brown bodies glistened in the dim light of the silent rain forest as their arms moved in unison.

  Strung out behind them were twenty more canoes, each containing two of Darnley’s Raiders armed to the teeth. Also making the trip were the necessary Indians, who were being paid well, not in money, but in cloth and rum.

  They had switched rivers three times, trekking through the jungle in between. At each new stream, true to Darnley’s word, canoes had been waiting. That, Fargo thought, had made things much easier.

  Even so, they were hard enough. He had brought mosquito repellent, but these insects seemed to live off it, drink it like nectar. So, too, did the biting, stinging gnats. Then there were the leeches and the great ticks and the bugs that burrowed under your toenails and laid their eggs there. The insect life alone would have been enough to drive an ordinary man mad; then, add to that the stifling tropic heat, the ever-present danger of venomous snakes, the countless grueling portages around rapids and falls; and top it all off with the threat of the jungle Indians.

  The jungle tribes were all around them, their presence felt. They were close to the border now between Guatemala and Mexico, and this was the haunt of the various tribes grouped all together under the designation Lacandon. Fargo had seen them before: they were a handsome people, the men of a beauty almost as great as that of their women, and they were wholly wild. They still used poisoned arrows and darts fired from blowguns, as well as a few old blunderbusses garnered from what few civilized expeditions dared to penetrate this area. They were out there now in the jungle, following, waiting. But they would not attack; not against forty heavily armed men. It would have been different, though, Fargo thought, if he had been trying to make this journey alone.

  Darnley gave an order. The lead canoe put in to a great sandbar on the river’s edge. “We’ll camp here for the night,” the Englishman said, getting out.

  “It’s early,” Fargo said.

  “We need meat. I’m going to send out hunting parties.” As the men clambered ashore, Darnley ranked them up like soldiers. Looking at them, Fargo pondered again the fact that he had never seen such a hardcase group gathered under a single banner. Every one of them was an expert fighting man, seasoned and utterly ruthless.

  Darnley sent half of them to the jungle. Carrying rifles, pistols, shotguns, they moved off into the pathless jungle in various directions. The rest ranged themselves in a perimeter guard around the camp. The big, young Englishman stalked back to Fargo, cigarette waggling between his teeth. “What about you? Shall we do our share of hunting?”

  “Why not?” Fargo had no stomach for lounging idly around camp.

  “Bueno.” Darnley turned, barked orders. Two Indians came up the river bank carrying short spears with steel heads. Darnley grinned, took the spears, then turned to Fargo holding one out.

  Fargo looked at it, grinned. “Have you ever done that?”

  “No, I’m eager to try it. They say it’s great sport.”

  “It is if you’re lucky.”

  Darnley frowned. “What do you mean by lucky?”

  “If you’re lucky, you don’t meet a jaguar at all. If you’re just a little bit lucky, you run into one but he doesn’t charge you. If you’re unlucky, he charges; and if you’re very unlucky, you don’t hold that spear just right when he jumps. And they bury you. If they think that much of you.”

  “You’ve really done it? You’ve killed a jaguar with a spear?”

  “Twice,” said Fargo. He plucked at the heavy bandoliers crisscrossed over his chest; his shirt was sodden beneath them. Then he threw the spear Darnley had given him back to its owner. “You can try yours if you want to. I don’t have anything to prove. I’ll stick to the Fox sawed-off if one comes at me quick.”

  “All right,” said Darnley. “You can cover me.”

  “You go to hell,” said Fargo. “If you’re nuts enough to take o
n el Tigre with a spear, that’s between you and him. You can take the consequences.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t shoot if I were being mauled by a cat?”

  Fargo looked at Darnley and rolled his cigar across his mouth.

  “You’re a little bit younger than I am. One thing you still got to learn. Don’t run around playing hero unless you aim to play hero all the way. Why should you go into it knowin’ I’m gonna bail you out if things go wrong? Why are you entitled to an advantage over the cat?”

  Darnley frowned. “You’re a hell of a bloke. You’d let a jaguar kill me if I miss him with the spear?”

  Fargo grinned around the cigar. “Like I said, if you want to meet him hand to hand, that’s between you and him.”

  “Fargo, I don’t understand you at all.”

  “Damn few people do,” Fargo said. “Not even me, always. You want to kill some meat, I’ll help you. But you want to play games, that’s your lookout. I didn’t come into this jungle to play games.” He threw the cigar butt away. “Let’s go huntin’,” he said.

  He had been offhanded about it because there was not really much chance that they would meet a jaguar. The big cats were deadly, far worse than American mountain lions, but they were shy and clever. Even with the Indian tracker running ahead, Fargo doubted that they would get more than a few monkeys; likely they would dine on fish caught by the canoe men.

  Then, where a rivulet crossed the sodden floor of the forest, the Indian tracker grunted, pointed. And Fargo and Darnley saw them; the fresh pug marks, so new they were not quite full yet with oozing water.

  “Well,” said Darnley. He grinned and hefted the spear. “We might have some luck after all.”

  “Maybe,” Fargo said. He knelt, inspected the tracks. Then his backbone turned cool; a kind of shiver walked down his spine. “You’ll have some luck if we cross this stream and go into that scrub yonder.”

  Darnley blinked. “What do you mean?”