The Sharpshooters (A Fargo Western Book 9)

by John Benteen

  The Canfield clan, thirty strong, had left their North Carolina mountains and were raising hell in Texas. One of them had shot a Texas Ranger, and the Rangers had to bring in the killer.

  The last thing they wanted, though, was to start a feud where the Canfields and the lawmen had to kill each other off. Neal Fargo’s arrest for gunrunning gave them a way out. Fargo could go free if he promised to walk into the Canfields’ lair and bring out the killer.

  That way, the Canfields would have no quarrel with the Rangers. And Fargo was tough enough to hold his own against the whole clan!

  THE SHARPSHOOTERS

  FARGO 9

  By John Benteen

  First published by Belmont Tower in 1970

  Copyright © 1970, 2015 by Benjamin L. Haas

  First Smashwords Edition: October 2015

  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 © 2015 by Edward Martin

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges ~*~Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Chapter One

  Mounted on tall, sleek mules, they came down out of the wild reaches of the Davis Mountains, thirty of them, in a winding column. Behind them creaked two springless wagons covered with tarpaulins, drawn by plodding, sharp-horned oxen. Filing past the decaying buildings of old Fort Davis, under the towering rock pile of Sleeping Lion Mountain, they entered the little town that bore the fort’s name. The hooves of their mounts stirred a stream of dust that the wind whipped down the short main street. As they rode by, Fargo watched them keenly, sizing them up as fighters, appraising the small arsenal of weapons with which each man was armed.

  They were big, lean men, wide in the shoulder, deep in the chest, rawboned and weather-beaten. Because they were all fathers and sons, brothers and cousins, and had interbred for generations, the resemblance among them was startling. The blue eyes, hawk noses, thin, steel-trap mouths, the long tow-colored hair and beards and mustaches—these were general. Some wore range garb, some bib overalls like farmers. All, without exception, wore black slouch hats, and all had gunbelts strapped around their waists. And every one of them carried a long gun across his saddle bow. It was the long guns that made Fargo’s eyes kindle. Most of them were single shot rifles. And the majority of those were long-barreled, short-stocked guns of antique manufacture—Kentucky rifles, squirrel rifles they were sometimes called, not much different from the sort of weapon used by Daniel Boone or the old-time mountain men who had, in search of beaver, opened up the West almost a hundred years before. Those so armed wore powder horns and bullet pouches slung across their bodies. The ones who balanced Sharps fifty-caliber buffalo guns before them had cartridge bandoliers draped around their torsos. And there were those who favored double barreled, big-bore shotguns; and shells for these clacked in similar shoulder belts. Fargo rolled a cigar across his mouth. This was his first look at the Canfields. No, he thought now. No, it ain’t worth it. Twenty thousand dollars isn’t enough to take on that bunch of fighting men and kill them all.

  As they swept on by with a jingle of gear and a steady drum of hooves, he took another look at the big man riding at the column’s head: the patriarch. Roaring Tom Canfield, chieftain of the clan, tall in his saddle despite his sixty-odd years, blue eyes like ice beneath the black slouch hat, silver beard falling halfway to his belt, a mane of iron-gray hair shagging down his neck to his shoulders. Roaring Tom wore a homespun shirt and woolen pants and high, black, flat-heeled boots. A powder horn and bullet pouch were draped across his body from left to right; a braided leather loop supported a steer’s big horn with a trumpet’s mouthpiece on his other flank. The long-barreled rifle across his saddle was a marvel of workmanship, its cherrywood stock and fore end inlaid with hammered silver. A huge Bowie knife rode in a leather sheath on his left hip; a Colt Navy revolver was snugly holstered on his right.

  Then he reined in his mule, lifted himself in his stirrups, scanned the street with those ice-blue eyes. They came to rest on Fargo, lingered, appraising this stranger in town, this tall man lounging against the front of the single saloon who showed such interest in the column. They ran up and down Fargo’s body, missing nothing, taking in the battered old cavalry campaign hat perched jauntily on close-cropped hair gone prematurely white, the hard, surpassingly ugly face, weathered, tanned, battle-scarred: a face that women never failed to look at more than once and which was like a danger signal to men who could read the violence which lay behind it. They inventoried the wide shoulders and flat belly and trim hips and horseman’s legs; the Colt .38 Officer’s Model revolver in its holster on his hip, the cavalry boots and spurs beneath untucked khaki pants. Something kindled in those eyes: respect and caution. For a moment they met Fargo’s gray ones, deep-set beneath pale brows under buttresses of bone. Then they slid away, and Fargo knew that Roaring Tom had him tagged with the accuracy of long experience: fighting man, dangerous, one to watch.

  The old man kept his mule tight-gathered, said something to the rider on the big sorrel beside him. That one looked at Fargo, too. Not over twenty-three or -four, except for his youth and lack of beard, he was a carbon copy of the patriarch and had to be his son. His eyes, too, meet Fargo’s, and something flared in them instantly: challenge. Fargo tensed.

  Like a young bull, he thought. On the prod, ready to fight any time, any place, anybody or anything that’ll fight him. This, he figured, would be Jess, the one Steed and Hanna had warned him about. Next to Roaring Tom, he was the most dangerous of the clan.

  Then the old man unslung the steerhorn trumpet, raised it to his lips, blew a short blast. The sound echoed, loud and mournfully, from the rock walls that backed the town. At his signal, the rest of the column halted, strung out along the street. Men dismounted, cradling their rifles or shotguns in their arms, hitched their horses. But the wagons came on to stop opposite Fargo and the bar. From beneath the hooped canvas of the one in the lead, two women climbed out and went down over the wheels, awkwardly, in long gingham skirts that dragged the dust.

  At first, their sunbonnets concealed their faces. Then they turned. One was a withered crone, but the other—Fargo took his cigar from his mouth. He was looking into eyes as blue as those of the men, but a different kind of blue, warm, cornflower blue, set in a triangular face of delicacy and loveliness. He could just see the glint of bright blond hair tucked up beneath the bonnet; he did not miss the wide, full-lipped, sensual mouth. Nor the swell of large breasts beneath the bodice of the old-fashioned dress, mounds full and proud beneath the cloth. There was an instant when her gaze met his; what he saw in it was not the hostility the men had shown, but a sudden, flaring, bold interest. For a second they looked at one another, the girl frozen, rigid, beside the wagon wheel. Then the old woman saw Fargo and her face twisted in a snarl. She seized the girl’s arm, led her behind the wagon and toward the dry goods store across the street.

  Fargo turned away and went inside the bar. Steed and Hanna were standing at the window, looking out. “All right,” Steed said. “You’ve seen ’em, now. Let’s go back there and strike our deal.” Without waiting for Fargo to answer, he led the way to the little private room in back, where their bottle and glas
ses were on the table.

  Jim Hanna closed the door, pulled out a chair with a booted foot. He was in his sixties, too, lean and tough as rawhide, and owner of one of the biggest ranches in this part of Texas. Walt Steed’s spread was not much smaller. Steed was younger, in his forties, heavy-set, running to fat. There was something about him Fargo did not like, an arrogance, as if everyone should defer to him because of his wealth and power. “All right,” he said again. “That’s the lot of ’em, Fargo. Now, our deal—”

  “There won’t be any deal,” Fargo said.

  They looked at him in amazement. He sat down, smiling faintly, poured himself a drink. Steed and Hanna dropped into chairs. “What the hell you mean, no deal? Twenty thousand dollars—?”

  “Isn’t enough.”

  Hanna fiddled with his white mustache. “Now, wait a minute. We heard Neal Fargo was the best freelance gunman left above the Rio. And that he would do anything for money—”

  “Maybe some of what you heard was wrong,” Fargo said quietly. “I make my living with guns, yeah. But I’m not a hired killer. A man’s got a job he wants done, if it’s a fighting job, I’ll take it on, provided the pay is right. And once I give my word to do it, if I got to kill somebody to get it done—” He spread his hands. “Well, that’s part of the game. But what you want me to do is go out in those mountains and assassinate thirty men, knock ’em off one by one, back-shoot ’em, drygulch ’em, pick ’em off like coyotes—”

  “That’s right,” Steed said. “The way Tom Horn knocked off those nesters up in Wyoming.”

  “They hanged Tom Horn,” Neal Fargo said.

  “Well, Tom Horn wasn’t the fighting man you are. They say you’ve done everything. You were in the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, the cavalry in the Philippines during the Insurrection there. You’ve tried the gold fields in Alaska, you’ve been a professional prize fighter, a gambler, a logger, worked in the oil fields. And, God knows, you’ve been mixed up in enough revolutions down in Mexico and Central America. There ain’t nobody can beat you with those guns of yours, that Colt, that Winchester; and, most of all, that sawed-off riot gun they say you like to use. That’s what we’ve heard; that when there was trouble, Neal Fargo’s the man you want. And that’s why we asked you to come to see us—”

  “All that’s true,” Fargo said. “You left out a few things.” He grinned, coldly, like a wolf. “I’ve done my share of cowpunching, too, and one time I was even a bouncer in a whorehouse in Baton Rouge when things got tough. But even being a bouncer in a whorehouse beats being a paid back-shooter.”

  Jim Hanna’s lips thinned. He leaned forward across the table. “All right, it’s a nasty proposition. But we understood you weren’t picky. I don’t like the idea, either, but we’ve reached a point where we can’t afford pickiness ourselves.”

  He poured a drink. “Those damned Canfields,” he grated. “They got no business here anyhow. They should have stayed back in those North Carolina mountains where they come from. The people back in those hills are a hundred years behind the times, and so’re the Canfields, with their corn-whiskey makin’ and their blood feuds.”

  “It was their feud with another clan, the Whipples, that got ’em run out of North Carolina,” Steed added. “Nobody even knows what started that dispute, but those two hillbilly families been at war with one another for fifty years, shootin’ each other from ambush, killin’ each other on sight. All because of some insult that didn’t amount to a hill of beans to begin with. Anyhow, the Whipples finally got the upper hand. They got into politics and used their power to force the Canfields out of them hills. They had one last big fight, the Canfields shot hell out of the Whipples and then took off west.”

  “I know all that,” Fargo said.

  “And we’ve already told you the rest,” Hanna added. “How the Canfields showed up here two years ago, moved into the Davis Mountains. The whole damned family, thirty fighting men and all their wives and daughters and little kids, just took over Black Valley up there, the best rangeland and water in this part of the country, squatted on it, and then—” His voice crackled with anger. “Then started plowin’ up the grass to grow corn to make their damned moonshine whiskey with.”

  “And you and Steed had been runnin’ cattle in there and they forced you out.” Fargo lit another cigar. “You didn’t hold title to the land—”

  “Neither do the Canfields. Title’s all tied up in court; Indian claims, Spanish land grants, and the Federal government tryin’ to claim it belongs to them. It was anybody’s land, and it was worth a fortune to us as summer graze.”

  Fargo chuckled without much humor. “And the two of you—worth God knows how much money, and with more than fifty riders apiece. You couldn’t throw ’em out?”

  “Don’t think we wouldn’t like to,” Hanna rasped. “There’s nothin’ Walt and I would like better than to put together an army and go in there and just rub all of ’em out, the way we used to do it in the old days. But the old days are gone. We try it now, we’d have the Rangers and the Army down on us before you could spit. On top of which, you can’t hire gunhands any more the way you used to. There ain’t enough of ’em left. And ordinary cowboys won’t go up against the Canfields for their fifty a month and found.”

  “Anyhow, Black Valley’s a natural fort,” Steed said. “Only one entrance, through Black Canyon, and that’s a damned trap. Thirty men, all sharpshooters like the Canfields—those people can knock the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards with them damned antique muzzle-loaders of theirs—could stand off an army. No. The only way is for one man to sneak in there. One man that knows how to fight Injun style—like you. As good at long-range shootin’ as any Canfield, and who could pick ’em off from ambush one by one, the way you’d kill rats in a barn.”

  “And get out again,” put in Hanna. “Without leavin’ any tracks. Nothin’ to connect him—or us—to the shootin’s. Goddamn it, Fargo, we want that range. And we’re willin’ to pay you a fortune to get it back for us. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Not really,” Fargo said.

  They both stared at him.

  “That’s about what I figure on earnin’, minimum, on any job I take on. Not hardly ever less, sometimes more. And sometimes I do two jobs a year or even three. In between spells of work, I like high living. Good liquor, high-stakes gambling, and … ” he smiled, “ … women. The best women. They come high. Not that I pay ’em, but if they’re good to me, I’m good to them, spend money on ’em. That’s where my money goes, and it goes fast. The point is, though, that twenty thousand dollars ain’t all that big to me. Especially now.”

  “What do you mean, especially now?” asked Hanna.

  Fargo gestured carelessly. “The revolution in Mexico’s still goin’ full blast. Time was when the revolutionaries could buy guns and ammo freely in the United States. Now the government’s laid down an embargo on sales to ’em. That shoots the price way up. I can run one load of ammunition across the Rio to Villa and make as much in two weeks as you folks want to pay me for this job of yours. And at a hell of a lot less risk.”

  “Risk? You got to dodge the Rangers, the Army, the Border Patrol. You got to dodge the Mexican government’s army, bandits—”

  “Yeah,” Fargo said. “But that’s better than the Canfields.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a man who plays the odds. I like the big money. I figure the risks to get it, take what’s necessary, not one bit more. Right now, I can make more with less risk running guns and ammo to the Mexicans.”

  He drank, poured another shot, and jerked his thumb toward the street. “I watched ’em come in for their supplies and to sell their whiskey. I sized ’em up. Not that I really had to; I spent a stretch in those Carolina mountains of theirs one time, and I know what kind of men they breed. Mountains breed the toughest men there are. If you’re their friend, they’ll lay down their lives for you. But if you insult ’em, even so much as spit on o
ne of ’em’s boots, much less hurt one of their kinfolk or mess with their women, then you got to fight the whole damned family. Right down to the last man. They’ll declare a blood feud against you and come after you and you got to kill ’em all, right down to the last little kid that’s old enough to raise a gun and aim it. If you don’t, sooner or later they’ll get you.”

  “That’s what we want you to do. Wipe ’em all out.”

  “Even to the young ’uns,” Steed added. “Nits breed lice.”

  Fargo’s mouth twisted. He stood up. “No, thanks, gentlemen. Kill your own snakes. I got business across the Rio Grande.”

  “So you’re afraid,” Steed said cuttingly. “The great Neal Fargo’s afraid of a bunch of hillbillies.”

  Fargo turned, slowly, and stared at him with gray eyes like flakes of cold iron. Steed’s face paled, he pushed back his chair under that terrible gaze. Then Fargo let out a long breath. His ugly face relaxed. “Steed, I only fight for money. It’s my stock in trade and I don’t give anything away free, not even when a man badmouths me. But I wouldn’t try it twice if I were you. I might break one of my own rules and pistol-whip the hell out of you.”

  He took his cigar from his mouth. “I’ll lead an army or run a revolution or run guns or do anything else I can to make a buck. And God help anybody who tries to stop me. But I don’t bushwhack men I don’t even know, who’ve done nothin’ to me, for lousy pay. Not unless I’m a hell of a lot hungrier than I’ve ever been. I’ve got nothin’ against the Canfields and they’ve nothin’ against me, and I’m content to leave it that way. If, sometimes, when I’m on business of my own, they get crossways of me, that’s a different matter. But when I become a hired assassin, it’ll only be because I’m too old and feeble to stay alive any other way. I ain’t old and feeble yet. So long, Steed. Hanna. Thanks for the whiskey.” Then he turned, walked out.

  ~*~

  Just past the back room’s door, he halted. The main barroom was not large; and right now it was thronged with gun-hung Canfields. Roaring Tom, standing to one side, was directing the others as they lugged in case after case of quart fruit jars of clear, white liquid or rolled in kegs filled with the same potent homemade corn whiskey. “Now, look sharp, thar, you, Bert, Sam, Willie. Don’t you trip and throw ye’se’f down with them ’ere jugs. Take it gentle with that ’ere kaig, Joe Junior.” They hauled the stuff into another back room and stacked it. Festooned with powder horn, shot case, and steerhorn trumpet, squirrel rifle cradled in his arm, the old man strode to the bar. “Thar y’are, Mr. Forrest. Thet thar’s all prime corn, second and third run copper still. I’ll take our money now, iff’n ye please.”