Fargo 13

by John Benteen

  “Judas,” Fargo began. “I never paid twenty bucks for a quart before—” He broke off as the door behind the bar scraped open, and then he stared at the man who emerged.

  ~*~

  Three hundred pounds, Fargo guessed. Garfield, if this were he, weighed that much or close to it, a shambling blob of flesh, naked to the waist, pale flesh sweating and repulsive. His head was round as a ball, furred with thin red hair, his jowls hung and dangled and he had three chins. His belly bulged enormously, and the gunbelt around it from which dangled a pair of Colts was twice the size of a normal man’s. His eyes were like black currants set in dough, his nose a blob, his lips red, the lower one slack and wet. Clad only in Levis and his Colts, barefooted, he turned Fargo’s stomach, but Fargo showed no sign of that as those berry-sized eyes raked over him.

  “Garfield,” Lew said. “We caught this jigger comin’ down the river on a thrown-together raft, looked like the breakin’ up of a hard winter. He was totin’ a sawed-off shotgun—” he laid it on the bar “—a .38 Colt, and this funny lookin’ knife.”

  “So,” Garfield said, an expulsion of breath that sent spittle flying. “Lemme see that shotgun.” Ignoring Fargo, he picked up the Fox, examined it carefully. “I’ll take this and the other stuff.”

  “Garfield,” Lew said, “I took it off him. I want that shotgun.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you want,” Garfield rumbled. “You know where this Fox goes. Look at that fine engravin’. You think he’d let somebody else have it?”

  “I want it,” Lew insisted. “I’m entitled to it.” He started to pick up the gun, and then Garfield moved.

  It was incredible that a man so squat and heavy could be so fast. One big, thick fingered hand shot out, ripped the Fox from Lew’s grasp. In the same gesture, Garfield swung the gun and the stock slammed against Lew’s jaw and Lew went back against the bar. Then Garfield had the gun under his left arm and his right hand held a Colt, and Fargo had not seen him draw it. “French,” Garfield rasped, “I’m damned tired of you. Make up your mind. Either you get back on guard and mind what I say or we throw you out and you take your chances with a Utah firin’ squad.”

  Lew rubbed his chin where the shotgun stock had slammed it. Fargo saw the flicker of fear in his bullet eyes. “Jesus, Garfield, I didn’t mean no harm—”

  “Just watch yourself,” Garfield growled. “You hear? Just watch yourself, or you’ll wind up with a blindfold on your eyes. Now you and Billy both, git back down to that ferry. I’ll handle this scissorbill—and his artillery.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Garfield,” Billy said promptly. “Come on, Lew.” He grabbed the other by the arm and led him out. Meanwhile, Garfield swung the Colt to cover Fargo.

  “Now,” he said. “I see you bought a bottle. You and me’ll drink it and we’ll do some talkin’. Sit down at that table over yonder—” he motioned to a vacant one “—and be damned sure you don’t break bad. Because I might miss the second time, but I never do the first one.”

  Fargo only grinned. “And me, I never buck a lock.” He picked up the bottle, two glasses and went to the table.

  Meanwhile, Garfield had checked the shotgun and found it loaded. He snapped it shut, and as Fargo sat down, sheathed his Colt, tilted the Fox forward, and wedged his bulk into a chair. “I reckon you know well enough what this gun will do. I’ll make it if you don’t satisfy my curiosity.”

  Fargo poured two drinks, aware of the eyes of the four men at the other table on him. Before he could speak, Garfield had drained his glass and filled it and drained it again. He smacked thick red lips. “Now, what’s your name?”

  “Neal Fargo.”

  “I ain’t surprised,” Garfield said. “Not after I seen this sawed-off and that funny knife. I’ve heard of you. Mexico, lately, ain’t it. Runnin’ guns to Villa?”

  “For a place this far back, you hear a lot,” Fargo said.

  “Our business is knowin’ who is who and what is what. And one of the things I didn’t know is that you were in this part of the country. How come you here?”

  “Well, I shot a U.S. Marshal,” Fargo said bluntly.

  Garfield poured another drink. “Did you, now? Kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fargo, grinning. “He had a funny little round hole in him when he fell down.”

  That amused Garfield, and his laugh was bubbly, but his eyes never changed. “Where did all this happen?” he asked, wiping spit from his face and draining another glassful.

  “Green River,” Fargo said, matter-of-factly. “I got tired of Mexico and come north. Hit Wyoming and found out there was Federal warrants out against me for smuggling. I heard some talk in Cheyenne of a man named Dogan down the Green or on the Colorado, thought he might hide me out—”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Somebody I met on the road,” Fargo said. “Let it go at that. Anyhow, I headed for Green River, figured I’d drift down here to take the heat off, lay low, Dogan or no. But the Marshals caught up with me there and we had an up scuttle and I put one down. Then I ran, stole a boat. It was night and I didn’t have time to pick and choose. It wasn’t much. Came down the river, smashed up in the canyon, damn near drowned. Made it to a sandbar, built a raft, finally managed to get this far. Garfield, I ain’t et in two days, I’m whipped and on the run. I need a place to hide. Brown’s Hole would do just fine. Or any other place where I can disappear.”

  This time Garfield did not bother with the glass, drank from the bottle in enormous swallows. He set it down, leaned forward, pale flesh flopping, stared at Fargo. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “You got money?”

  “Two hundred dollars,” Fargo said.

  “That’ll buy you ten days,” Garfield said. “Food and booze is extra. You git five days behind, you go on the books. But we charge a hundred per cent interest on the books.”

  Fargo leaned back. “Now, wait a minute.”

  “No, you wait. This is what you get. A place to hide where no law can touch you. A warnin’ system up and down this whole river, from here to below the Grand. And if anybody comes after you, they got to fight. Nobody’ll take you here or in the other place. Dogan guarantees that.”

  “For that kind of money, he’d damned well better. If Dogan comes that high, he’d better be somebody special.”

  “Oh, he’s somebody special, all right,” Garfield said, and picked up the bottle and nearly drained it. “He’s real special. He’s Double-Barrel Dogan.”

  Chapter Five

  Fargo felt no real surprise, somehow, but he did feel a wild excitement and surge of curiosity that he masked. “Don’t hand me that crap,” he said. “I won’t pay that kind of price for it. They killed Double-Barrel Dogan years ago.”

  “What they think they did and what they did is two different things,” Garfield said. “But a man like Dogan don’t die that easy. It’s Double-Barrel Dogan himself that you’re under the protection of if you hole in here. You pay what he charges, he’ll see no lawman ever lays a finger on you. You fall too far behind, we throw you out in the cold cruel world to hang. We might even turn you in for the reward ourselves; we get a lot of money that way when folks get in arrears. But as long as you treat us square and pay your rent, we’ll treat you square. Of course, there’s one little thing I ought to tell you. We’ve had spies in here from time to time. None of ’em ever got out alive. What we do with ’em is kill ’em, slit their bellies, stuff in rocks, and sink ’em in the river. If you’re a spy, you got to count on that.”

  Fargo said, “I am not a spy.”

  “We’ll know soon enough. Now, you want in or out?”

  Fargo said, “I got to think—”

  Garfield shoved back his chair, popped his fat rump out of it, and now the shotgun was aimed squarely at Fargo. “Man, your thinking time run out when you hit the river. I’ll buy your story if you shell out, and you better hope Dogan buys it, too. Now, you either pay something in advance or I get rid of you by pullin’ the
se triggers. I ain’t in a mood to palaver. I got me a new woman and she’s waitin’ in the other room.” His red lips lifted in a kind of smirk. “Dogan’s daughter. You don’t keep a gal like that hung up while you talk. You want in?”

  Fargo looked into the threatening bores of his own shotgun. “I want in,” he said. “A hundred bucks worth, anyhow.” He brought five double eagles from his pocket, laid them on the table, and Garfield scooped them up.

  “Five days,” Garfield said.

  “And my weapons back.”

  “Not all of ’em,” Garfield answered. “You get the Colt and knife, but the shotgun stays with me. It’s a present for Mr. Dogan.”

  Fargo half came out of his chair. “Damn it, Garfield, that’s my gun.”

  “Not any more. Mr. Dogan does admire good shotguns. We’ll give you two days on the books for this one, Fargo.”

  “Two days on—”

  “Be glad of that much.” Garfield’s eyes were almost lost in fat as they narrowed. “There’s another thing about the way we work, Fargo. Anybody kicks up a fuss, all the rest come down on him and lay him out. Mr. Dogan’s rules. You break bad, you’ll have twenty men against you in no time. The way Double-Barrel Dogan works, either you’re with him, in which case you pay your money and live a long time, or you’re again’ him. When somebody is again’ him, everybody else has got to be with him. They watch each other, Fargo, to make sure they don’t screw each other up. You understand?”

  “I understand, but I still want my shotgun.”

  “You should have brought a rifle. Dogan don’t give a damn about rifles, but he’s a fool for shotguns.”

  “Where is he? I want to talk to him.”

  Garfield laughed. “A long way off, where you can’t find him unless he wants to see you. I’m his major-domo in Brown’s Hole and what I say goes. You think I’m lyin’, that I ain’t his number one man?” His voice was boastful. “Well, that woman I got in yonder is his daughter. That’s how I stand with him.” He jerked his head. “Anyhow, he gets the shotgun and you can have that .38 and knife back. You pay for what you get and you get what you pay for and not a damn bit more or less. And you watch your step until we’re sure how you stack up.” Still carrying Fargo’s shotgun, he waddled around behind the bar and went into the other room, closing the door behind himself.

  Fargo stared at it for a moment, and then he went to the bar and picked up pistol and knife. As he sheathed them both, one of the four horse-thieves at the table said, “Well, feller, you’ve just heard the gospel. Welcome to Hell.”

  “Hell?” Fargo raised a brow.

  “Once you git in, you can’t git out again. Lemme give you some advice, don’t ever go on the books with Dogan. You do, you’re like a sharecropper back in Mississippi, where I come from when I was a kid. No matter how much you pay, you don’t get outta debt. And you try to skip, Dogan’ll either turn you in or have you hunted down and killed.”

  Fargo took out a cigar. “I still don’t believe it’s really Double-Barrel Dogan. Blame it, I’ve seen pictures of him layin’ dead.”

  Another of the quartet laughed. “You don’t know how slick Dogan is. That wasn’t him—that was his brother.”

  “His brother?”

  “Right. And it was Dogan set him and his own gang up to die. His outfit, way I heard it, was quarrelin’ about the split. Meantime, his brother had come up from Texas, wanted to join with him. Younger, a coupla years, looked a lot like Double-Barrel. Dogan was tipped off about the ambush they set up on that train, but he didn’t tell the others. Sent ’em right to their deaths, includin’ his own brother, and it worked out just like he figured—he kept all the loot they’d raked in, his brother got scragged and identified as him, and he was in the clear.”

  “Man, that’s cold,” Fargo said.

  “They don’t come any colder’n Dogan. A man that’d turn his own daughter over to a slob like Garfield—”

  “She’s jest his stepdaughter,” another said. “He spotted her mother when he come to Brown’s Hole about ten years ago. She was a rancher’s wife—this place had started to fill up with ranchers then. He decided he wanted her, plugged her old man, took her and her kid. Then Garfield decided he wanted the girl, asked Dogan for her and he just gave her to him. It’s enough to turn an honest horse thief’s stomach.”

  A man was behind the bar, now, and Fargo fished out another double eagle, bought a bottle, though there was still whiskey in the other; he did not feel like drinking after Garfield. He uncorked it, sat down with the horse thieves. They had heard of him; about their own names, they were cagy and he didn’t ask.

  Letting the bottle make a round, he said, “Help yourself. I ain’t sure what I’ve walked into. I need a hide-out, but I didn’t figure on payin’ my shotgun for it.”

  “Let that sawed-off go, it ain’t worth your life.” The horse-thieves drank deeply and one went on. “If your neck’s subject to stretchin’, this is the best hide-out you’ll ever find. Dogan came in here ten years ago with his shotgun and some rawhide men and chased all the honest ranchers out along the river. Now he damn near owns the breaks from here to the Grand Canyon. Sure, he’s a goddam slave-driver, keeps you hopin’ to score to pay him, and he makes more than he ever could robbin’ trains. But, rough as it is, it’s better than dancin’ on air. Anyhow, you can’t buck the system. Buck that, you got to buck Garfield, and even if you get past him, there’s always Dogan and that damned shotgun of his, and he’s death on wheels.”

  “Big man with a shotgun,” Fargo said.

  “They don’t come no bigger.”

  “Well,” Fargo said. “In case I wanted to buy my own riot gun back, where’d I apply?”

  “A long way from here, friend,” a horse-thief said. “Brown’s Hole serves the north; Garfield runs it. Dogan’s got another layout just above the Arizona line serves the south, Texas and all. Near the Kaibab Plateau, a hole back behind what they used to call the Crossing of the Fathers. It’s twice as full of hard men as this place, and there ain’t no way to git to it anyhow without swinging south and coming up, less you want to run the river. Let Garfield have your shotgun and relax.”

  “Maybe,” Fargo said.

  One of the horse rustlers looked at him keenly. “Friend, you got an unsettled manner. We don’t want to be mixed up in nothin’ that concerns you. Come on, boys. We’ve had enough excitement for a while. Let’s head for our shack.”

  They went out, not bad men, Fargo knew, in the sense of being vicious, but, like so many other outlaws he had met, hemmed in by rules until they could not live. He sat there with his bottle, but no longer drinking, only thoughtful; now he was alone in the room, save for the bartender, a huge man with a slack, stupid face.

  From the room behind the bar, a woman’s voice suddenly shrieked in fear and horror. “No. Please, no!”

  Fargo heard, as it tailed out, a bubbly laugh.

  He’d found what he’d come here for; now it was time to leave, and there would never be a better chance. But not without his shotgun. And Garfield was obviously very busy. Fargo picked up the bottle, went to the bar. “I’d like a fresh glass,” he said.

  The slack-faced giant only stared at him. Fargo said, “Dammit, a fresh glass.” The man frowned, turned uncertainly toward the shelves behind him. Fargo swung the bottle.

  It made a sound like a melon falling off a wagon as it connected. The big man sighed, fell behind the bar. Fargo grinned, pleased he’d got his twenty dollars worth. He drew the Colt, went to the door. The thing about a place like this, he mused, was that it all hung on one man’s reputation and one man’s shotgun. Dogan’s rep, and maybe Garfield’s, had everybody buffaloed, and Garfield, anyhow, in his lust, had grown slack. Fargo stepped back a pace, sizing up the door, then threw his hard body against it with all his strength.

  A wooden latch screamed, gave. The door slammed open, Fargo lurched into a small, foul-smelling room. Garfield turned from the bed in one corner, his huge belly spilling ov
er pants he was just about to shuck. The girl on the bed lay drawn up in a tight knot, back to Fargo, and he could tell nothing about her. Garfield blinked, then his big body moved with amazing speed as he reached for Fargo’s shotgun on the table.

  Fargo fired two rounds from the Colt, straight into Garfield’s belly. Exploding, those hollow-points, in flesh, they drove Garfield back before his hand touched the Fox. The room was sprayed with bits of him, and yet his thickness was such that neither slug had reached a vital place. He squealed, and his hand dug for his Colt, and Fargo raised his aim. The third bullet left almost nothing of Garfield’s thick lipped face. It was like a mountain falling when that gross bulk hit the floor. Fargo spun, reaching for the shotgun. At the same instant, the girl rolled over, staring.

  Fargo snatched up the Fox, trained it on her. “Don’t yell,” he said.

  “Thank God,” she said. “You killed him.” She was young, not far into her twenties, long-legged, slim-bellied and lean hipped, with small, pointed breasts. Her face, framed by tangled blonde hair, was striking, blue eyes, short nose, red mouth, firm chin. “He’s dead!” she cried out with growing triumph.

  Fargo had no time to waste, but she was worth a look. “You’re Dogan’s daughter.” Then it hit him: a hostage. “Up,” he rasped. “Find some clothes, git ’em on, and hurry. You’re comin’ with me.”

  Long lashed eyes blinked. “I don’t understand, but—away from here? Yes. Oh, God, yes!” She sprang off the bed, and Fargo whirled to face the door, in case the shots had drawn anybody. But, as he’d expected, all the guards were on the outer edges of Brown’s Hole, looking for people coming in, not those going out. Over-confident, he thought. Run a place too long your own way and you get the big head.

  Now the girl had on a shirt and Levis. She reached for boots, but Fargo seized her arm. “Come on. You move ahead. You’re Dogan’s daughter, and anybody comes at me, you get it.”

  He did not expect the surprising strength with which she wrenched away. “I’m not his daughter. My name’s Sara Raven! I’ll never take his name.” She put out a hand, seized his arm. “If you’re leaving, I’ll come with you, anywhere, but … don’t you understand? I’m not his daughter!”