by John Benteen
Her eyes widened in the moonlight. “Neal Fargo? But—” Then she screamed. “Neal! Behind you!” He knew in that instant, as he whirled, that he had made a mistake. Coming through the door, he should have slammed it hard against the wall, an elementary tactic in house-to-house fighting. Now the man who came out from behind it, clad in the natty uniform, high, polished boots of a Mexican Army officer, held a Luger pistol trained on him.
There was no time to shoot; Fargo reacted instantaneously. He threw the Winchester, hard. The man ducked, just as his finger closed on the Luger’s trigger, and gun flame seared Fargo’s cheek, almost blinded him, as he lunged forward, ramming the shotgun barrels into the officer’s belly with every ounce of strength his big, muscle-banded frame possessed. They dug deep into the solar plexus, slammed the man against the wall. His eyes bulged, his mouth gaped, his breath sprayed Fargo with spit as it whooshed out of him. He fired again, but the shot went wild and then Fargo had spun the sawed-off like a drum major spinning his baton, brought the pistol grip of the stock down with crushing force on the fellow’s wrist. The man groaned, and the Luger dropped. Then Fargo backed away, the Fox aimed.
“Otero!” he snapped, bending, scooping up the Luger without taking either his gaze or the gun barrels off the man whose face had gone the color of clay. Otero was tall, had once been lean and hard, but had developed a sizable paunch. He stood there gasping, breathless. Fargo grinned. “You sonofabitch. Why weren’t you out there with your troops instead of hiding in here?”
“He had to dress,” Sandy whispered. “Then the shooting began out there in the front room; he dodged behind the door, hid—Neal, oh, Neal! Is it really you?”
“It’s me.” He got his Winchester, passed it to her. “Can you use this?”
“Oh, I can use it,” she said savagely. “After what he did to me—”
“No. I don’t want him killed unless he makes a break. He’s our passport out of here. Listen, Sandy, the Frosts are dead, all of ’em. I just killed Clint. Now, hold that gun on him for thirty seconds more, then I’ll be back...”
Before she could answer, he dodged out into the hall, the Fox ready. At that second, he heard footsteps in the front room, excited voices. A door slammed open: five soldiers crowded through it, halted, staring at Fargo, guns up.
They were huddled together like sheep. Fargo tilted the Fox, pulled both triggers. Eighteen buckshot hosed down the corridor, plowed into the men. He did not even wait to see what it had done to them; at that range, he knew. He dodged into what had been Clint’s room, cramming fresh rounds in the breech. He went to Clint’s bed, fumbled desperately beneath the pillow. What he sought was not there. Watching the door, he swept the mattress off the cot with a single jerk of his hand. In the moonlight through the window, he saw the buckskin bags, seized them, crammed them in his shirt front with the rest of the grenades.
Then he was back in the other room. Sandy stood beside the bed, the gun trained on Otero. She had draped the sheet around her nakedness with one hand. Fargo took the Winchester from her, covered Otero with both weapons. “There’s no time to get dressed,” he rasped. “Just tie that sheet around you somehow. We’ve got to get out of here. Otero!”
The man’s lips moved soundlessly.
“You’re going to take us out of here. And you’re gonna make sure nobody so much as spits at us, because if anybody does, I’m going to put a lot more lead in you than you can walk around with. It’s up to you; play ball with me, lead us out of here safely, get us horses, and when we’re across the border, I’ll let you go. Otherwise”—he jerked the shotgun significantly—“live or die, you call the tune.”
“I understand.” For the first time, the colonel managed words, a trembling whisper. “But who are you? What army do you lead?”
Fargo laughed. “I lead Fargo’s army,” he said. “Greatest goddam bunch of killers you ever ran up against. You get us out of here, they’ll withdraw. You don’t, they’ll eat your men alive after I’m through with you.”
“Fargo’s army—” Otero shook his head. “I never—”
“Cut out the talk,” Fargo said. “Let’s go.”
Otero stared at him and at the shotgun. “Yes,” he whispered. “Please don’t shoot me. Follow me, and I will get you safely to California...”
He went out into the corridor, Fargo and Sandy trailing him closely, Fargo’s shirt bulging with grenades and gold. As they reached the porch they were confronted with men who stopped and stared at the sight of their captured commander under Fargo’s gun. Otero snapped orders.
There was a long, tense interval, in which Fargo—one hand holding the shotgun, fingers tight on the trigger—pulled the last grenade from his shirt and clamped his teeth on the ring of the pin.
Then, as the firing dwindled, the tension snapped. Otero’s orders were followed. Horses were brought. No one dared challenge the man with the shotgun and the grenade. They mounted. The Mexican soldiers watched in silence as the three rode out of the fort—Otero, Fargo, and the nearly naked girl wrapped in the sheet.
Their awe was matched by the cavalry patrol of the U.S. Army which had crowded to the border and drawn up there in a defensive line when the firing had begun in Mexicali. “For chrisake,” their captain whispered, staring at the spectacle.
Then they were across the boundary surrounded by American soldiers, and suddenly, behind Fargo, Sandy Steele let out a sob of reaction, began to cry hysterically.
Fargo looked at Otero and lowered the shotgun; and now, suddenly, he felt reaction, too. After all these weeks, sanity washed back over him like a chilling wave. All at once he felt empty, drained, and a little sick. He swayed a bit in the saddle, recovered. He held onto the horn, looked at the Mexican colonel, who had halted just across the dividing line.
“It’s over,” he said wearily. “Go home, Otero.”
Otero let out a long breath of relief. He whirled his horse, spurred it, galloped back into the darkness of Mexico from which sounded still a few faint spatters of gunfire as the Federales continued to make a show of standing off Fargo’s army. Fargo managed a grin. Then he crowded his horse close against Sandy’s and put his arm around her, held her for a long time. When she finally stopped crying, Fargo offered no resistance as the soldiers took them under guard to their command post.
Chapter Ten
Los Angeles was a big town and getting bigger. Outside the hotel room, the sound of cars, clang of streetcar bells, and clatter of horse-drawn vehicles produced an impressive amount of noise. Inside, across the card table he’d had set up, Fargo looked at Sandy Steele while he counted money.
“Dorsey didn’t get to spend any at all,” he said. “Chad threw away a lot. Roy only a few bucks. Clint paid Otero two thousand to sweeten the deal. There’s still roughly fifty-five thousand left.” He indicated the gleaming pile of gold pieces before them. “And a hell of a lot more at the French Lady.”
Sandy shuddered. “I don’t ever want to see the French Lady again. I don’t ever want to see desert or wilderness, or anything that will remind me of this nightmare. I want to spend the rest of my life in a city, any city, the bigger the better, somewhere where it’s safe ...”
Fargo looked at her. It had been four days since the fight at Mexicali. One of those had been spent in the custody of the Army. There had been talk about detaining Fargo and Sandy, of an investigation, of impounding the gold. Fargo had sent a telegram.
The answer had come almost immediately from Oyster Bay, New York. The major in command had read the signature incredulously. He had hardly laid the telegram aside when another arrived, this one from the War Department. The major had shrugged, shaken his head. Fargo had grinned. Even though he was out of office now, his old commander still drew a lot of water. When an ex-President of the United States intervened, the War Department listened.
And so they had been free to go; in fact had been driven to Los Angeles in an Army car. There, for the first time, Fargo saw Alexandra Steele in a dress. It br
ought out the beauty which not even the rough desert clothes she had always worn had hidden and which the ordeal she had endured had not erased.
Still, what had happened to her had left its scars. For two days, she would not let Fargo touch her. Last night, her mood had changed—but after it was over, she had cried in his arms for a long time. He could not fault her for that. What she had been through was more than most women could have survived: that she had come out of it with no more damage than this was a testament to her strength and courage.
He liked women with guts; he liked Sandy Steele. He had already made up his mind to stick around with her until she was all right again, until there was no more crying in the night. Now, though, he felt a touch of apprehension.
“You really mean that? About the cities?”
“I mean it,” she said forcefully.
“Then we’ll have to sell the French Lady claim. Shouldn’t be any trouble doing that. I figure we’ll ask a hundred and twenty-five thousand, probably settle for a hundred.”
She stared at him in awe? “That much? Plus all this? Fargo, we’ll be rich. We can live anywhere we want to—New York, Chicago ... somewhere in the East, where people lead decent lives.
Fargo laughed softly. “We?”
Her face changed. “Surely, after all this … You’ve had enough. You don’t want to go on fighting, killing, baking in the heat, freezing in the cold—” She put out a hand, took his. “Neal... I don’t have anybody left. I need you.”
“I’ll be around for a while.”
Something in his voice made her take her hand away. “A while?”
Fargo got up, went to the window, looked out. “Long enough to take care of the business, see you settled.” There were lights everywhere, so many people, so damned many people … “I’ll take my grubstake back plus thirty thousand dollars. You can have the rest...”
“But you’re entitled to—”
He turned. “No. No, I want money, but not too much of it. Not so much that I can’t spend it all, that it’ll tie me down.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, a little thickly: “You won’t be tied down for anything, will you? Or anyone?”
“No,” Fargo said. “You talk about going East, living in a city. Doing what? Getting up every morning, going down to an office, doing the same thing over and over in the same place, always safe, always living easy, like a pig in a pen? Hell’s fire, Sandy. That’s not living. That’s a way of dying.”
“This way,” she said, voice trembling, “you’ll die anyhow. Sooner or later. And—”
“Everybody does. Sooner or later. The dying’s not where the trick comes in, it’s the living.” He broke off, because he did not know how else to put it. “I just can’t live in towns,” he finished lamely. She just looked at him. He went to her.
“We’ll have a couple of weeks, anyhow,” he said. “Long enough for a spree.”
Then realizing what he’d said, he added: “A different kind of spree. This one without guns.”
She kept on looking at him. Then he saw the knowledge on her face that he was offering her all a man like him was able to; and as she arose and managed to smile, he saw her acceptance of that, her knowledge that not even she could change him; indeed, as she came into his arms, he was thinking that since he was already near the ocean, he might as well keep on heading West and see what Australia was really like.
FARGO 12: KILLING SPREE
By John Benteen
First published by Belmont Tower in 1972
Copyright © 1972, 2016 by Benjamin L. Haas
First Kindle Edition: April 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.
Cover image © 2016 by Edward Martin
Check out Ed’s work here
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
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