by John Benteen
What he took next from the trunk was a gun case of the softest, finest genuine chamois, holding a short, bulky weapon. When he withdrew it from the case, it proved to be a sawed-off Fox shotgun, ten gauge, originally designed as a duck and goose gun. Fargo had cut away most of the length of its barrels, so that what was left was one of the most lethal weapons known to man—the riot gun. Now, he stroked its truncated length with especial fondness, running his hands over the receiver, ornately and beautifully engraved and chased with silver. He could feel through his fingertips the inscription worked into the floral design: To Neal Fargo, gratefully, from T. Roosevelt. His wolf’s mouth quirked; nobody but himself would ever know how he had earned this gun or that inscription.
He had added a sling to the gun, short, but adjustable so it could be hung over his shoulder, muzzles down behind his back. A tug at the strap would swing up the barrels under his arm, and with either hand he could trip the triggers. Then the gun would blast nine buckshot from each barrel, and those, spraying wide, would mow down anything in their path. Whether he fired it right side up or upside down made no difference; it was deadly.
He slung it on his right shoulder, checked the sling, then took it off. After that, his hands again made sure that its burden of oil was neither too light, too heavy nor gummy in the heat. Then he slid the weapon back into the chamois-skin case and fastened its flap with loving care. He laid it with the Winchester and the Batangas knife and fished out the bandoliers and gun belts.
If you were a gunman, soldier of fortune, and revolutionist by trade, you had one axiom: never get caught short of ammo. The pistol belt, made to fasten around his narrow waist and carry the Colt when he rode horseback, held short, fat .38 cartridges, but not the ordinary kind. The Army had given up the .38 when it had decided that it would take something heavier to stop the fanatic, jurimentado Moros of the Philippines when they ran amok. It had then adopted the .45 Colt automatic. But Fargo found the .45 unsatisfactory because of its short barrel, poor balance and excessive recoil. He remained wedded to the old .38, but he took no chances with stopping power, either. The cartridges studded into his pistol belt were hollow-points, dum-dums, which would spread on impact, ripping a terrible hole in flesh. There was no doubt in Fargo’s mind about their stopping power. He had stopped too many men with that gun and that load to doubt it.
He laid the pistol belt aside, inspected the full bandoliers. Made to crisscross over his chest, one held seventy rounds of .30-30 ammunition. The other was fat with fifty thick shells for the shotgun, each loaded with nine .00 buckshot. When he wore the bandoliers and the pistol belt, it was a lot of weight to carry. But he would rather carry the weight than run out of bullets at the wrong time.
He peered down into the trunk. What was left in it was a variety of clothes and box after box of ammunition. He had very specific preferences in propellant loads and bullet weights; and it was not always possible to obtain these in out-of-the-way places. So he carried as much ammunition as possible wherever he went, loaded to his own specifications.
There was one thing else in the trunk: a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. Fargo took that out and pulled the cork with strong teeth. Then he drank from it, long and deeply. It had been a hard and lengthy day out there at the Ince studios in Santa Ynez Canyon, and he was glad it was over. Now he knew what had bothered him about acting in the movie; he didn’t like being beaten to the draw, even in make-believe. It gave him the creeps. When your life depended on your gun speed, slowing it deliberately, even for pay, was bad medicine. He drank once more, thinking of Jane Deering. He wondered what a woman like her would have in mind that would require a man like him.
Outside of bed, that is.
He drank again and put the bottle up, and waited for her car to come.
Chapter Two
The area called Beverly Hills was just beginning to build up. Jane Deering’s house was a rambling Spanish hacienda, behind a high, stuccoed, whitewashed wall. Palm fronds clicked and rustled in the gentle night breeze. Fargo got out of the car on a graveled drive, directly before front steps that led up to a wide verandah. When he rang the bell the door opened immediately, and a Japanese butler said, in perfect English: “Mister Fargo?”
“That’s me,” Fargo said.
“Please come in. Miss Deering is waiting.”
Fargo entered and looked around at the foyer in which he found himself. It was elaborate, with potted plants and mirrors. Like a real fancy whorehouse, he thought, and followed the butler through a labyrinth of halls and rooms to a small and somehow intimate sitting room, furnished only with a sofa, a bearskin rug before the fireplace, a table, and a couple of chairs. One lamp was burning; in its light, Jane Deering sat on the sofa, a glass in hand; and her amber eyes kindled as she saw Fargo. She got to her feet. “Well,” she said, “you’re here.”
“Yes.” Fargo took off the battered cavalry hat and threw it onto the table. His eyes ran over her appreciatively.
She wore a red satin evening dress, with almost no top to it, its neckline plunging below the shadowed cleft between her breasts. It clung to every curve and swell of her figure as if it had been painted on, and there was obviously nothing underneath it but Jane Deering herself. Fargo could even see the outline of her nipples, crisp and round, under the clinging fabric.
“What’ll you have to drink? It’ll be a while before dinner.”
“Bourbon,” Fargo said. “I’ve been drinking bourbon.”
“Teri,” she said. “Bourbon for Mr. Fargo.”
“Yes, Miss Deering.” Glass and ice tinkled together as the Japanese made the drink, handed it to Fargo. Then, like a ghost, he faded away. The door made no sound as he closed it behind him.
Jane Deering stood there with her glass clutched in both hands, luminescent, amber eyes ranging over Fargo again, with that appraising look, as if she were indeed in the market for a horse. Or a stud, anyhow, Fargo thought wryly. Then she said: ‘”I’ll bet you’re carrying a gun somewhere.”
“I am,” Fargo said.
“I thought you would be. You look like the type.” Her painted brows drew down over her eyes, her red lips curled. She was very beautiful, Fargo thought, and it was no wonder that hundreds of thousands of people paid money every night to look at her picture on the screen. She raised her glass. “Cheers?”
“Cheers,” Fargo said and drank. It was excellent bourbon.
Then, gracefully, Jane sat down on the sofa again. “Come sit here beside me, Fargo.”
“Sure.” He did. He could smell her perfume, floral, yet musky. Like her, it was stirring, electric with sex. She opened an ivory box on the end-table, took out two cigarettes, put both between her lips, lit them, and then passed him one. It was slightly damp with her saliva and stained with her lip rouge. She drew in smoke deeply, blew it out in twin plumes through her nostrils. “Wyatt Earp says you’ve been to Alaska.”
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “I go up every year or so. There’s still a lot of gold coming out of the ground. I ain’t much for digging, but I’m pretty good with cards. My trips pay off.”
Her hand moved over, to rest on his lean, hard thigh. “That was why I contacted you. I’m looking for a man who knows Alaska.”
“Nobody knows Alaska,” Fargo said. “There’s too much of it for any one man to know.”
“The North, anyhow. A man who knows his way around the North.”
“I know that,” Fargo said. “As well as any man, I guess.”
“Yes,” she said. “Wyatt said you would.”
“How did you come to know Wyatt?”
“My people are from Kansas. My father knew him.”
“I see,” Fargo drank some of the bourbon. Her fingertips were digging hard and wantonly into the muscles of his leg. Suddenly he took his thigh away.
“All right, Miss Deering,” he said sharply. “If you’ve got a proposition about Alaska, put it to me. Without all the handiwork. When it’s a matter of business, that’s not going to make any diff
erence anyhow. Business is one thing; a woman is another.”
Jane Deering’s face flushed, her eyes narrowed. “Very well, Mr. Fargo,” she snapped, her voice brassy. “Since you put it like that ...I want you to go to Alaska and find a man. And I want to go with you.”
Fargo looked at her. “What man?”
“My husband,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“Neither does anybody else, except the studio. The public doesn’t; it thinks I’m the sweet, virginal young knucklehead I play in all my pictures; I’d be a dead duck if it ever found out I’ve been around. So this all has to be done very secretly; but I’ll tell you this; there’s a half million dollars involved in finding him—or proving that he’s dead.” Her eyes bored into his. “A half million dollars. You understand? That’s a lot of money.”
“Yes,” Fargo said. “It is.” And he was listening closely now.
Jane Deering took his empty glass, got up, went to the table where the butler had left the whiskey. She began to mix more drinks. “I told you my parents were from Kansas. My old man farmed and was a religious fanatic, hellfire and brimstone, you know what I mean ? When I wasn’t doing the work of three people, inside the house and out, I was being preached at. I couldn’t stand it, I had to get out of there.”
“Right,” Fargo said. “Went through something like that myself, down in New Mexico, after Apaches killed my folks and another couple took me in. They didn’t want a kid, they wanted a free farmhand. I took off from there when I was twelve and never went back.”
“I waited until I was sixteen,” Jane said. “Then a man came through—he was twenty-one, twenty-two—and when he put the make on sweet little old innocent me, it was like Grant taking Richmond. I ran off with him. And, like you, I never went back.”
“But you married him,” Fargo said.
“Yes. I held out for that much. Officially, I’m still Mrs. Harold Dolan. But I haven’t seen Hal in more than five years. I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. That’s what I’ve got to find out.”
“Why?”
“The half million. When I met him, his parents were dirt farmers down in East Texas, didn’t have a dime to their names. He had pulled out, too, gone to work for the railroad in track construction. He was what they call a boomer, always leaving one job, heading for another. He pulled me along with him, all over the West, until we finally hit California, about six years ago. Then I got a chance at the movies and started to make a little money. I wasn’t going to be dragged away from here. I’d had enough of it.”
Fargo nodded, sipping his drink.
“But Hal had the itchy foot. He heard the Government was planning a railroad in Alaska, between Juneau and Fairbanks. He took off—deserted me—went North. I had a few letters from him. He left the railroad, went north to the Yukon or the Klondike or whatever it is, said he was going to try his luck in the gold fields. Four years ago, I had a letter from a place called Circle City. It took a long time to get to me. He said he was outfitting for a trip into the mountains, that he was finally onto something big, and this time he was either going to make it or die trying.” She drank, long and deeply. “That was the last time I ever heard from him—or anyone else ever did.”
“I see. And the half million?”
“Six weeks ago, a man came to see me. A lawyer from Texas, he’d traced me down. We tried to ignore the fact that Hal’s parents even existed—dirty, poverty-stricken, ignorant hillbillies. What we didn’t know was that their hundred acres of worn-out land sat right on top of the biggest new oil field in East Texas. While we were scratching for a living and existing from hand to mouth, they were getting rich on oil.”
“Now I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“But old Mr. Dolan couldn’t stand prosperity. Four months ago, drunk as a lord, driving a new car, he hit a Hereford bull as it crossed the highway. He must have been going like hell; it killed the bull and Mr. and Mrs. Dolan, all three.”
Fargo nodded. “And Hal—your husband. He was the only heir?”
Jane swallowed the rest of her drink. “That’s right. The estate as it stands now comes to a half million, and there’ll be more. Hal’s the sole inheritor. And—” Fargo did not miss the glitter in her amber eyes “—if it turns out that something’s happened to him up there—if he’s got himself frozen to death or eaten by a bear—why, then ...”
“You get the money,” Fargo said.
“Yes,” she said, and her breasts rose and fell beneath the sheer fabric. “Yes. I get the money.”
Fargo was silent for a moment. He looked at this lovely woman, at the rich surroundings. He could feel greed and eagerness in the air. It excited him a little, too: the smell of big money. Then he said: “I don’t see why you’re so eager. How much is it I read somewhere that you make a week? A thousand? More? You’ve come a long way from Kansas; you’ve got money of your own.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I have. But it’s not going to last much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked at him. “How old do you think I am?”
He ran his eyes over her. “Twenty-two, twenty-three … ”
She laughed. “I’m five years older than that. Thirty’s not far off for me, Fargo—and it’s pretty hard to pretend you’re an eighteen-year-old virgin when you’re thirty and you’ve been around. It won’t be long before it starts to show; and when it does, I’m dead in pictures. Because I’m not an actress, you see? I got by on looks, on a certain something that comes across on film, even if it doesn’t really exist.” She sobered, thrust a cigarette into her mouth. “And there’s the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Her eyes met his, levelly. “Men,” she said.
Fargo was silent.
Jane lit a cigarette, blew smoke. “I like men, Fargo,” she said. “I have to have them. But I have to sneak and plot to do it. You’d think that now, in 1914, the great American public would realize that women like to go to bed with men. But it doesn’t, and my whole career hangs on the fact that all those dolts out there who write me idiotic, soupy fan letters think I’m some sort of angel of purity. And I have to keep up the pretense. Well, I’m tired of pretending, Fargo. I want to let go, be myself, not have to account to anybody, not the studio, much less all those fools out there. They worship me, Fargo, they think I’m some kind of goddess. Well, I’ll tell you what kind of goddess I am. There was one time that Hal and I were so down and out that the only way we ate was on what I picked up as a hooker in a cheap hotel in Denver. I worked the rooms there for two months—and you know something? I liked the job!”
She laughed harshly. “I don’t intend to take it up again. But I do want to be free to go with who I want to when I want to and not have to worry about ruining my career. With that half million added to what I’ve already got saved and what I can save, I can tell them all to go to hell. I won’t have to worry then about losing my looks or falling from grace because I’m seen smoking a cigarette or taking a drink in public, or any of that crap. I’ll be safe, secure, and—” her voice rose—“free!”
For a moment, the room was still; the air in it seemed to vibrate with the intensity she generated. Then she said, “So if that half million’s coming to me, Fargo, I want it. If Hal’s still alive, I want him to claim it so I can divorce him and take my share. I’ve got to find him or find out what’s happened to him, and I don’t know anybody who can do that but you. If he’s dead, you find proof, you get five per cent of the half million. If he’s alive, I’ll pay you the same amount out of my account—twenty-five thousand dollars. And I go with you.”
Slowly, Fargo shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, if I take the job, you don’t go with me.”
“Yes, I do. That’s part of the deal. This is too important to me to trust wholly to anyone else. I have to be along.”
“Look,” Fargo said. “You know how big Alaska is? And winter coming on? It’
ll be hard enough to find one man in all that space without being hampered by a woman.”
“You’re not going to be hampered. I’m tough.” Jane Deering’s voice rasped. “You don’t lead the kind of life I’ve led without being tough, and I mean physically as well as mentally. I do my own stunts in my films, Fargo, did you know that? I’ve done things to entertain those idiots out there, to make ’em sit up and catch their breath, that not many men would have the guts to do—maybe not even you! Ever jump from a horse to a speeding train, Fargo? Or ride over a hundred foot cliff, hoping you won’t break your neck when you hit the water below? I’ve had to do more to earn my money in this business than a lot of you so-called ‘adventurers!’ And I’m a good shot, too, with a rifle or pistol!”
“Maybe,” Fargo said. “But you don’t know what it’s like up there. Even if we left tomorrow, summer would be almost over by the time we got there. We’d just make it up the Yukon by boat to Circle City before the ice. Then we’d be stuck—right in the middle of Alaska, for the rest of the winter. The chances are, Hal Dolan’s been a long time gone from there, and we’d have to follow him, no telling where. But wherever it was, it wouldn’t be easy—likely we’d have to go by dog team; and I’ll bet you can’t even use snowshoes, can you? And all that in temperature so low, weather so cold that you touch iron and it pulls your flesh off. Huh-uh. It’s risky enough for a man who knows his way around; take along a woman—and a tenderfoot, a cheechako, at that—and the risk triples.”
Jane Deering was silent for a moment. Then she said: “I’m not afraid. But, evidently, you are. Is the extra risk worth another five thousand?”
“I’m not trying to bleed you,” Fargo said. “I’m trying to explain how it is.”
“And I’m trying to tell you,” Jane Deering said, “that you never met a woman like me before. I can stand the gaff, Fargo. Thirty thousand dollars—and I go with you.”
Fargo stared at her coldly. Suddenly it hit him that she might be right. Any woman who had come this far, had made it this big, with no more start than she’d had—in that moment, he recognized something in her that was kindred to him: a toughness that, no matter how bad things got, would not whimper or break. He made his decision.