Fargo 12

by John Benteen

  Fargo fell, twice, got up. Once he blew sand from his Colt. In a way, that was rather ridiculous since he lacked the strength to raise and aim the weapon.

  With agonizing slowness, the blot of green came closer. He saw, now, the fringed heads of a couple of palms, the cool growth of reeds and plants in their shade. There was water there! For the moment, that was all he concentrated on. He forgot the Frosts, the smoke, the darker blot beside the oasis. All he wanted was water.

  The horse raised its head, nickered. It smelled it, too; lurched faster behind Fargo, almost overran him. He checked it, swung into the saddle. The animal staggered at a crazy turn across the flats. Once it fell to its knees, got up, went on.

  Then there was shade over Fargo. Splashing, the horse plunged into a scummy waterhole, head lowered. Fargo fell out of the saddle, landing in water, letting it close over him. It was like a blessing. He opened his mouth, let it pour down his throat.

  Then, with moisture in him, reason returned. He and the horse alike would die if they drank too much too quickly. He staggered to his feet, dripping, in the middle of the shallow pond not more than five yards in diameter.

  It took all his returning strength to wrestle the dun away from the waterhole, tie it to a tree. But now he remembered the Frosts and the smoke, and he raised the dripping Colt and approached the dark blot twenty feet from the northern fringe of the oasis.

  Once it had been an Indian wikiup covered with a canvas tarp. Now it was only a smoldering bunch of ashes.

  Two bodies lay beside it. Fargo stared down at them, guessing that they were Paiutes, some kind of Indians anyhow.

  The man had been blasted with buckshot. His body lay contorted like a bundle of rags.

  The woman had been shot through the head with a pistol or rifle. Her full skirts were bundled up around her neck, her coppery body naked from the waist down.

  For the moment, Fargo lacked strength to do anything except feel the hatred that filled him intensify. What poor goods had these Indians owned, camped beside the oasis, that had made it worth the Frosts’ while to kill them and burn their shelter? Nothing; and he understood, now, as he sank to the ground panting, savoring the water that soaked his clothes. Nothing at all. Just that he was not the only one on a killing spree. The Frosts, Clint and Roy, had the taste of blood now, and they could not stop killing either.

  Fargo rubbed his face. Alaska was a long way from the Mojave Desert, and yet he thought of Alaska. Of trap lines and the wolverine. The wolverine, a member of the skunk family, was forty pounds of pure savagery. It killed for the sake of killing, destroyed for the sake of destroying, and it was hated by every trapper and shot on sight. A thieving, clever, ruthless animal, it ruined whatever it could not use.

  The Frosts, he thought, were wolverines. What they could kill, they would; what they could carry off, they would steal; what they could not use, they would destroy. Wolverines were given no mercy; neither should the Frosts be.

  Well, he told himself, rising slowly, they had outsmarted themselves. If they had been content to let these two Indians live, he would have lost their trail and probably died in the desert. Or if they had only killed the Indians … But they had had to destroy. They had had to burn the wikiup.

  He spun the cylinder of the wet Colt. It was clogged with sand.

  Their greediness had saved him; it would doom them now.

  He holstered the gun when it was working freely, went to the horse and carefully gave it water before he himself drank again.

  ~*~

  Fargo buried the two Indians in desert fashion, covering their bodies with rocks. They were probably from one of the many tiny reservations in Southern California: Morongo, Agua Caliente, or the like, tired of agents and the white man’s ways, retreating for a little while at least into the isolation of the Mojave. And, ironically, meeting their doom at the hands of the whites they had traveled so far to get away from.

  He drank again and watered the dun again and filled the goatskin bag. He ate beans and bacon and slept the sleep of the exhausted between the ashes of the brush house and the mounds of rocks over the two bodies. Morning came; and when he awakened, he had his whole strength back. He ate, let the dun browse in the greenery. Then he mounted up, rode on with enough water now to get him to San Bernardino no matter what happened.

  The Frosts had begun to erase their trail again. He did not bother to track them now. He swung slightly south, only to make sure of cutting it if they turned off. Otherwise, he pushed the restored dun for all it was worth.

  The journey took him two more days. Toward the end he found another waterhole. Then he crested a pass through the San Bernardino Mountains and looked down at the pleasant town sprawled out below.

  He knew from the occasional sign he’d cut, he would find the Frosts there. And Sandy.

  Chapter Eight

  After the Mojave, it was like another world. Coming down through Morongo Pass, he entered a fertile valley where every drop of water had been used to produce growth: date palm plantations, orange groves, and occasional lanes of imported eucalyptus that cast welcome shade on his sun-parched body; and men in fields or riders herding cattle looked curiously at the burnt, ragged man wearing the sixgun, riding a travel-gaunted dun. The animal shied and snorted when an occasional motor car passed it; these it had never encountered before.

  ~*~

  He came to San Bernardino itself, neither small nor large, built on the Spanish style. He rode straight up, alert, his eyes scanning either side of the placid main street, his hand not far from his gun.

  He entered the business section: brick store buildings and wooden structures along an oiled street. Saddle horses, wagons, and cars made up the fairly active traffic or were hitched or parked at the sides. He went on until he found a livery stable, rode into the cool and fragrant depths of it, and dismounted. A hostler came to take his horse, a young Mexican boy with dark, alert eyes that sized up the condition of animal and man alike and lingered on the gun on Fargo’s hip.

  “This critter’s beat,” Fargo said. “Water him just a little, grain him just a little. Wait two hours, give him more water, a full feeding and some hay. You be damned careful you don’t founder him, hear?”

  “Si. Just in off the desert? I know how to take care of animals like that.” The boy’s eyes flickered up the line of stalls. “It is a long, hard way across the Mojave.”

  Fargo said, very quietly, “Somebody else just come in?”

  The boy looked at the gun. “People come in all the time.”

  “I mean, in the past couple of days.”

  The boy said, “I’ll be careful not to overfeed this horse.”

  Fargo reached deep in a pocket. He brought out a five-dollar gold piece. “Somebody else has come in in the past two days?” He flipped the coin in the air.

  The boy caught it.

  “Come,” he said, wrapping the dun’s reins around a post.

  Fargo followed him down the line of stalls.

  The boy indicated a shaggy chestnut, a mule in the stall beside it. “I handled these two animals when they came off the desert. Very carefully, because they will always overeat and over drink at such a time.”

  Fargo said, “Who brought them in?”

  “A man,” the boy said.

  Fargo found another gold piece. He rolled it over and over between his fingers. “What sort of man?”

  The boy looked at the coin.

  “Just a man.”

  “Maybe he had a black beard,” said Fargo.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Maybe he had another man with him, and maybe even a woman.”

  “I don’t think so,” the boy said. “But I really can’t remember.”

  His eyes watched, followed, the gold piece.

  Fargo flipped it in the air, saying: “Try.”

  The boy caught it deftly. He seemed to have had a lot of practice. “I remember now,” he said. “It was only one man. He had been traveling a long way. He
was not so tall as you, but very big in chest and shoulder. He had a black beard, verdad. Some gray in it.”

  “Roy,” Fargo said.

  “His name I do not know. He wore also the seex-gun and he carried with him a Winchester rifle when he went out. He paid in advance with a double-eagle and left many things up in the loft that he said he would sell later, when he found a buyer. He had come a long way, across the Mojave. I think it is very stupid now to cross the Mojave on a horse when there is a train. But maybe he was prospecting. Maybe you, too.”

  “Maybe,” Fargo said. “Has he been back since?”

  “No, sir.”

  Fargo said, “Where do the fancy women hang out?”

  The boy blinked, then laughed. “You want a girl?”

  “I want to know where the fancy women hang out!”

  “In San Bernardino, they are everywhere. But mostly beyond the railroad station, north of it. A few blocks up.”

  “Thanks,” Fargo said. “See to the horse.”

  ~*~

  He walked up the street. He came to a restaurant, went in immediately. He needed food. He ordered a steak, potatoes and eggs, wolfed them down, drank a pint or more of scalding coffee, black. He never lowered his head; he watched everybody who came in.

  Roy was in town. By himself. That meant that Clint and Sandy were either hiding out in the hills or, more likely, were bound somewhere else.

  One Frost at a time. If Roy were around, he would find him. Roy, before he died, could tell him where Clint and the woman were.

  Fargo finished his meal, lit a cigarette, savored it. When it was done, he left the restaurant, went to a hardware store. There he bought light oil and a box of regular .38 cartridges, because they stocked no hollow-points. Next, he found a cheap hotel, paid in advance for a room, lugged the war bag containing the gold he had taken from Dorsey and Chad up to it with him.

  On the sagging bed he carefully cleaned and oiled the sixgun. Then he thumbed every cartridge out of the loops in his belt. They had gotten wet when he had fallen off the horse into the water at the oasis.

  He discarded them. With the Batangas knife, he painstakingly notched, crosswise, every bullet from the new box. The X cut into their blunt points would make a fair substitute for the hollow-noses; when a sliced slug like that hit, it would spread out.

  He filled his belt loops with notched slugs and loaded the chambers of the Colt with them. He oiled the holster, too, to counteract the effects of desert wind and water. Then he rubbed down the blade of the Batangas knife.

  He bathed in water from the basin in the room and shaved carefully with Dorsey’s razor. He went downstairs, bought some rosewater mixed with glycerin, rubbed it into his tender, sun-blackened face.

  He walked north. Past the station, he reached an area full of bars and dance halls. He worked them over one by one. In the first one, he drank two beers, savoring the first alcohol since he had left the road-ranch. After that, he limited himself to one beer in each, or a drink that he only sipped.

  He wasted little time in places that had no girls. Roy was here to see his woman. Likely Roy’s woman worked in a honky-tonk, in which case Roy would show up sooner or later.

  He made the rounds of all the joints, cased each one thoroughly. He found no sign of Roy. None at all.

  ~*~

  He spent a lot of money, though. Girls were wary of that ugly, desert-baked man in the dirty clothes. They shied away from him. But when he jingled gold pieces, they came.

  He questioned all who would talk to him. None of them knew of Roy or had any knowledge of a girl linked up with a man who answered Roy’s description. Fargo was puzzled, weary, and a little drunk when he went back to the hotel.

  Bars and brothels were good places to come by information; and he knew how to get it out of their patrons and inmates. But he had scored an absolute blank. If it were not for the horse and mule in the livery stable, he would almost believe that Roy Frost was not in San Bernardino at all.

  Late the next morning, he went back to the stable.

  The Mexican boy was there and recognized him. “Hola, Senor.”

  “Hi.” Fargo walked down the line of stalls with the boy behind him. Suddenly he halted.

  The mule was still in its stall, but the shaggy chestnut was gone.

  He whirled. “That horse. When did it leave here? Who rode it out?”

  The boy looked at him with carefully blank eyes. “Senor, I don’t remember.”

  Fargo looked at him with eyes agate-hard. “Maybe you had better cultivate your memory.”

  “It is very bad, Senor...”

  Fargo tensed, then relaxed. No trouble with the law ... That was one thing he had to look out for. He dug in his pocket, took out another five. The boy’s eyes lanced to it as it nestled between thumb and forefinger.

  “How is your memory now?”

  The boy smiled. “Better. For one more of those, it will go back a whole year.”

  “A year?”

  “Si, Senor.”

  Fargo’s hand dipped, brought out another coin. “You had better tell me an awful lot.”

  “I tell only what I know.” The slender brown hand shot out, whisked the gold away. “First, there is the Senora Carlton...”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Wife of Senor Fred Carlton, the banker—”

  “Go on,” Fargo said. He was thinking: a banker’s wife?

  “You see, for many months, we have kept the Senora’s personal horse here, a fine steeldust. Every morning, she rides. Not unless it is raining—and it does not rain here often—does she miss a day.”

  “I see,” Fargo said.

  “You must understand,” the boy went on, mouth twisted lewdly. “Senor Carlton is very old, dried up. His wife, she is younger, not above thirty and—” His hands described an arc in the air. “Unna muter muy hermosa.”

  “All right, she’s beautiful,” Fargo said. “Go on.”

  “She has strange tastes, though. Sometimes, when she rides, very soon, then, men will ride after her. Always strong men, yes, and usually fairly young. But rough, very rough, and of a low order.” He licked his lips. “One year ago, the same hombre who rode the chestnut came to San Bernardino. Was here for weeks. Each morning, the Senora rode; he rode after. Sometimes they would come back together, laughing.”

  “I see,” Fargo whispered. “And this morning—?”

  “She rode out as usual. Then he came and got his horse and rode after her, in the same direction.”

  “A banker’s wife,” Fargo said out loud, this time. “No wonder.” He looked at the boy narrowly. “Her husband never rides with her?”

  “Her husband rides only in a rig, a buggy or surrey.”

  Fargo took out a cigarette, thrust it between his lips.

  “And where does the Senora ride to—”

  The boy looked blank again. “I forget.”

  Fargo’s hand shot out, picked him up by the slack of the shirt front, lifted him clear of the floor, and threw him across the hallway of the barn, up hard against stacked bales of hay. “You’d better remember damned quick,” he said, “because you’ve got all the gold you’re gonna get.”

  The boy’s expression changed, and fear and respect mingled on his dark face. “North,” he whispered. “North, then east at the first fork. They have an orange grove there, and a house in the country for weekends—”

  “All right,” Fargo jerked his head. “Get my saddle and put it on the dun.”

  “Yes, sir!” The boy hastened to obey. “Their place, it is only five miles. With a sign above the gate, Carlton Ranch.” His eyes dropped to Fargo’s gun. “Which one is it you will kill? Or both?”

  “You,” Fargo said, “if you run your mouth. You. Remember that.”

  “I know nothing,” the hostler whispered, his voice chastened and afraid. “Absolutely nothing. Your horse is ready.”

  Fargo shoved him aside, put foot in stirrup, swung up. He looked down bleakly at the boy, and the
young man could not miss the unmistakable threat in his eyes. Then Fargo clamped the old cavalry hat down tight, touched the dun with spins, rode out of the barn and headed north.

  ~*~

  A night’s rest, grain and water had restored the animal. It ran eagerly once they were out of town, hooves drumming on the broad dirt road that passed between cultivated, well-irrigated fields and orange groves in which trees stood in orderly ranks like green-clad soldiers. It was fine country, all right, Fargo thought as the dun galloped, but a little tame for him. There were still big cattle spreads farther east and north and south, along the coast, and he knew all too well how rugged the desert was to the west, but this valley was a place for dirt farmers and old men who needed strong sun to warm their fragile bones. He felt out of place here amidst this peace and order; there was no room in such country for a man who made his living in the hard, brutal trade of fighting.

  And at the rate things were going, he told himself, it would not be long before the whole United States was like this, settled and tame. But there was always Mexico, South America, maybe Australia—they said Australia was a big country, and a hard one, and it was really just opening up. Maybe soon, when his string had run out here...

  Then he laughed, conscious of that touch of insanity still in the tone. Here he was on his way to kill a man, and worrying about things taming down ... His face turned grim. He’d better not relax, be lulled by the smell of orange blossoms and the drowsy quiet of the morning. Roy Frost was dangerous, and he’d better keep his eyes open—

  He began to watch the road, the terrain, just as if he were still in the desert. There were no other travelers this morning; but a thin mist of dust hung over the broad highway as if some vehicle had passed not long ago, stirring up a cloud. Maybe a mail-wagon, bound for Los Angeles...

  It should not take long, he thought. If the boy had given him the right dope, it should be only a few hours’ work to hunt down Roy Frost, wring from him all the information about Clint and Sandy that he needed—and then to kill him.