by John Benteen
It made a darting tongue of flame from a low ridge not twenty yards away; El Tigre had circled him nicely.
Fargo swung the shotgun and fired at that slash of orange light almost before it had vanished.
The weapon’s roar seemed to shake the air. But then there was only silence, profound, absolute; and the short hair prickled on the back of Fargo’s neck. If at least one of those nine buckshot had not connected, he was finished. His own gun flash was bound to have given away his location to El Tigre.
He waited, holding breath, eyes straining at the darkness. Then, despairingly, he saw it.
It climbed to its feet from behind the ridge of sand—the figure of a man; of El Tigre. Fargo saw the Winchester, barrel up. He saw El Tigre stride up over the sand ridge, slowly, cautiously, come down its near slope. There was the whisper of moccasins approaching across the hard-packed, sunburnt earth.
It was useless, of course, but Fargo reversed the shotgun, made a club of it.
El Tigre came on, with short, careful steps, the rifle ready, pointed at Fargo. He was fifty feet away; now forty; thirty; now Fargo could hear the rasp of his breathing, see the moon-glinting whiteness of the teeth revealed by the snarl that twisted the dark face. Then El Tigre halted, fifteen feet away, stood with feet wide-planted, looking down at Fargo.
“Now,” he said in a hoarse voice of terrible hatred. “Now, you’ll die, at least. One damned white-eye dead.” He pointed the Winchester at Fargo’s head.
Stood poised like that for the longest second Fargo ever lived. And then gave a strange, rasping sigh, swayed, and, to Fargo’s amazement, dropped to his knees, Only then, in the silver light, did Fargo see the two widely-spaced, strangely puckered punctures under El Tigre’s left arm, pouring twin streams of blood—the entrance holes of buckshot.
El Tigre’s face twisted. His head went back. He tried to raise the Winchester again, but his arms were not equal to the effort. And suddenly, as Fargo watched tensely, hands white-knuckled around the shotgun, the Indian began to make a strange, keening, wailing noise. It was another pair of seconds before Fargo knew what it had to be: a strangled attempt at the Apache death song.
Then it broke off in a kind of sob. El Tigre fell forward limply. That was the end of it. Fargo lay there still clutching the shotgun, feeling empty, drained, strengthless for a very long time. Then there was the sound of many horses and the cavalry detail came up.
Chapter Ten
The Commandant was named Pershing. He and Fargo had met before, on Mindanao. A man with a face of rock-hard integrity, lips thin beneath an iron-gray mustache, he leaned back in his chair in his office at Fort Bliss and raked cold eyes over Fargo and Nola Shane, standing together before his desk.
At last, after a long silence, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s impossible.”
“But it’s true,” said Fargo.
“I don’t doubt that. I’ve known you long enough to accept your word.” Pershing fingered his mustache thoughtfully. “But I simply cannot submit such a report to the War Department.”
“There were thirty of them,” Fargo said. “We only accounted for fifteen bodies. The other fifteen must have escaped, made it across the Rio. They’re still down there somewhere; so is the rest of their band, the old men, the women and the children. Somewhere in the Sierra Madre—”
“Then all we can hope is that they’ve learned their lesson, that they’ll stay there.” Pershing sat up straight, his scratchy voice suddenly brisk. “Apaches, bronco Apaches. And do you know what would happen if I reported their presence? First of all, the reputation of every officer who participated in the last campaign against Geronimo would be sullied: Crook; Miles, great names in the Army, Fargo.”
Yes, Fargo thought wryly. Members of the Club.
“Their reputations are secure. But if it were known that they were fooled by the Indians, that they let a band escape after claiming total victory—” He broke off. “But that’s not the main point. The main point is that if the word got out that wild Apaches still existed, even only a handful of them as far away as the Sierra Madre, the whole Southwest would be in an uproar. The whole country would be. Our troubles with Villa and all the other Mexican factions would be forgotten. There’d be an outcry, a ferocious demand to mount a full-scale campaign against that one little bunch. The government would have to draw off its troops from everywhere else, leave the border open to Mexican raiders, concentrate hundreds of soldiers in a march into Mexico after them—which, in turn, might precipitate a general war with Mexico. It would ruin all our troop dispositions, every plan we have made for the defense of the border.”
Fargo nodded. That made sense.
“More than that.” Pershing instinctively looked toward the West. “You say their leader, this Billy Black, El Tigre—he was going to stir up the Reservation Indians, lead them in a general offensive.” His eyes were grave. “Fargo, he could have done it. They still hate us, you know. Probably with good reason. Thirty years isn’t long for all the old hatred on either side to fade away. All it would take would be a little push—one spark in the powder keg. Then El Tigre’s dream of a general Indian uprising might come true.”
He shook his head. “They couldn’t win it, of course. But a lot of people, red and white alike, men, women and children, would get killed before it was over.”
“But it can’t happen, now,” Nola put in quickly. “EI Tigre’s dead.”
Pershing looked at her and shook his head. “Miss Shane, no leader is more powerful than a dead martyr. If the news of what El Tigre attempted, what he wanted to do, ever reached the Reservation tribes, he’d be a legend in no time. He’d become sacred, big, big medicine. And other leaders would spring up, inspired by that—” He broke off, stood up, went to his office window. Below, retreat was being held; bugles sounded out there on the dusty parade, the clear, sweet ring of “To the Colors” as the flag came down.
“No,” he said at last. “This has got to remain absolutely secret. No word of it must leak out. Let the Indians stay where they are—the wild ones in the Sierra, the defeated on their Reservations. Fallon and Murphy; their deaths have to be accounted for. All right, Mexicans. That’s how I’ll report it. The two of them killed by Mexican bandits.” He turned to Fargo, Nola.
“As for Corporal Lunsford’s patrol, they can be ordered to maintain secrecy. You two, civilians, are a different matter. I can’t order you, of course—”
“No,” Fargo said. “You can’t. But you can buy us.”
“Buy you?” Pershing’s eyes flared; his mustache seemed to bristle. “Are you suggesting I use Government money to bribe—?”
“No, sir. Not Government money. Our own.”
Comprehension spread across Pershing’s face. “Oh. The sixty thousand dollars in gold found in that arroyo.”
“That’s right. Ten thousand of it is Miss Shane’s. The other fifty thousand is mine. You’ve impounded it. Release it to us and you’ll have your secrecy.”
“Normally there would be a lot of red tape, a certain procedure to determine ownership—” Pershing rubbed his chin. “On the other hand, if it wasn’t yours, whose was it? Further than that—yes, by Heaven, Fargo, you’ve earned it. If it hadn’t been for you, there’d be a dead cavalry patrol out there right now and the whole Southwest would be a bucket of snakes.”
“Not to mention that if you hold hearings about the gold’s ownership, the whole affair will have to come out,” said Fargo easily. Pershing rarely smiled. Now his lips twitched under the mustache. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you? All right. I’ll give you a release. You can pick it up from the paymaster’s office.” He sat down behind his desk, scribbled a note, handed it to Fargo.
“Thank you, sir,” Fargo said, taking it.
Pershing looked at him a moment. Then he did smile. “No,” he said. “On the contrary, Fargo, thank you.”
Fargo gathered up his weapons and bandoleers, salvaged from bodies strewn for miles down Glenn
Draw by the flood. He slung them on, arranged them. Pershing looked from one of them to the other. “And what will you two do now?”
“I’m going to stay in El Paso,” Nola said promptly. “There’s nothing left for me back in Philadelphia—and they need school teachers here.”
Pershing’s eyes went to Fargo. “And you?”
“Who knows?” Fargo said. He turned to go.
“Fargo.” Pershing’s voice halted him. He turned.
Pershing’s eyes were cold now. “Fargo—no more guns. You hear? No more guns to Villa. I promise you, if I catch you running rifles, I’ll hang you high without a trial.”
And Fargo knew that Pershing was just the man to do it. He smiled faintly. “It’ll take me a while to spend the fifty thousand. You won’t have to worry about me until it’s all gone. By then, who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll decide to do.”
They looked at one another for a moment: two hard, wise men who understood each other. Fargo, though he was no longer a cavalryman, instinctively raised his hand to the brim of the old hat in a sharp salute. Pershing returned it. Then Fargo and Nola went out.
On the parade ground Nola said, “You’ll stay in El Paso for a while?”
“Sure,” Fargo said. “I aimed to have you help me spend the fifty thousand. You and me, we’ll do it up right, turn this town upside down.”
Nola laughed. “Quite an experience for a Philadelphia school teacher.”
Fargo laughed, too. “Baby,” he said, “you’re a long way from Philadelphia.”
She took his arm and they walked on together. Behind them, on the Fort’s huge parade ground, the sunset gun made its thunder.
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If you’ve enjoyed this book , read the rest of the series:
FARGO
Fargo
Panama Gold
Alaska Steel