by John Benteen
“You’re a shotgun man!” Cord rasped. “But cold steel’s my weapon! I’ll skin you the way I’ve skinned a lot of critters!” And he came in again, knife darting forward like a snake’s tongue.
Fargo caught it on his own blade, tried to lift. Cord’s weight and strength were too much. Cord’s blade came loose and ripped toward Fargo’s belly. Fargo twisted and felt the cool whisk of steel go past, and in that instant he took his gamble. He flipped the knife from injured right to left, caught it deftly and then Cord’s flank was wholly open. Fargo aimed the blade and fell forward, and even as Cord drew back for another stroke, he felt the tempered steel go through flesh, glance off bone, go in deeper, and he twisted it and ripped downward.
Cord screamed as entrails bulged through the wound. He turned, raised the knife, cramped at his belly with his left hand. Fargo slashed Cord’s wrist, bandage and all and the knife fell away and Cord reeled back, eyes wide, as Fargo came in again, going up and in, hard, on the left side of Cord’s breastbone, aiming for the heart.
He felt the small guard of the Batangas knife collide with flesh. He turned the blade, withdrew. Cord sat down hard on the rushing boat’s center thwart. He stared at Fargo. He rose. Then he whirled, and as his legs gave way, he fell overboard into the river.
The tan water swallowed him as if it could devour a million like him before its appetite was sated. Fargo caught a glimpse of a slack face trailing blood from its mouth before it plunged under. Then he staggered backwards, sat down hard on the bow compartment. He held the knife in the river, washed its blade. There wasn’t much in his stomach, but he tossed what there was into the Green, rackingly. And then he lifted his head and heard the rapids’ roar.
Turning, he saw the rocks like teeth in a shark’s jaw arrayed before him. Vaguely, he knew there was something he must do. A sandbar lay on the right side of the river, and it seemed to him he had to make that. But a paddle wouldn’t do it, would be like a fly swatter in an invasion of locusts. He lurched to the center thwart, unshipped the oars, dropped them into locks. He leaned back, sinking them into water.
Just in time, he braked the boat. Water sucked and gurgled at the blades, as he leaned all his weight, summoned all his strength, into the bite of the right oar.
It was enough, but just barely. The boat turned in the current, rushed to the left bank. Fargo heard sand grate as it grounded, just short of the rocks. He summoned strength to leap out, drag the boat up higher. Then he sat down on the sandbar, exhausted from two days of action without sleep, and waited for the others to join him.
Presently they did, the whole outfit rushing down the stream and Sara Raven, with yellow hair flying out behind, just behind Michaelson in the second boat.
~*~
The camp was well hidden in a cleft in the canyon walls, after a twenty-mile run down the Green. In the darkness, the river made its continual seething rush, and occasionally there was the splash of rock falling from the canyon walls above the main stream. Flickering firelight cast a yellow pattern on the face of the girl, weary and still full of shock, and on the faces of the men around her.
“So there it is,” Fargo said harshly, bone weary himself. “Double-Barrel Dogan’s still alive, and he’s down there somewhere—” he gestured toward the south. “And he has Colonel Knight and four men penned up like hogs, waiting to be slaughtered if anybody comes against him. Cord’s Park, below the Crossing of the Fathers, just above the Arizona line. Full of outlaws, Sara says; thirty, forty, of the old wild crew holed up there. Well, there ain’t no help for it. We got to go in there somehow and get Knight out.”
Vane paced back and forth restlessly. “Fargo, I don’t see how we can do it. The girl says that place is a fortress, locked in by canyons all around. Only one entrance, and that fortified. How can nine men go up against such odds?”
“I’ve faced longer ones,” Fargo said. “Besides, what else could we do?”
“Leave the river. Get word to the Colonel. Then have the Utah state authorities move. Send in a huge posse, or the Army ...”
Fargo tipped back the cavalry hat, looked at Vane wryly. “You served under Colonel Knight. You got a grudge against him?”
“Grudge? Of course not! He’s one of the finest men I ever knew.”
“Well, you talk like you want to see him dead,” Fargo said harshly. “Send a bunch of troops blundering in there, Dogan’ll know they’re coming days before they get there and be long gone. And he won’t take Knight with him. He’ll do like Garfield said they did with spies. Kill him, slit his body open, stuff it full of rocks and roll him in the river. No, there ain’t but one way to do it. And that’s for the nine of us to tackle Cord’s Park ourselves and get Knight out, somehow.”
“And I say it’s impossible! First of all, we’ve got the whole state of Utah to cross! A third of the Colorado River, and the worst third at that, to run! And we no longer even have a guide—”
“Better none than Cord,” Fargo said. “He’d have guided us, all right—straight into a trap.”
“Just the same—”
“Captain Vane.” The girl’s voice was quiet, but there was a firmness in it that cut through Vane’s words, made them all turn and look.
Sara Raven got to her feet and, tired as she was, wet and dirty as her clothing was, she was something to see, Fargo told himself, a lot of woman. Her next words confirmed that. “I can guide you,” she said.
Vane stared. “You?”
“I grew up down here, remember? I’ve never really been anywhere else. And ... I’ve told you how Dogan operated. Two main hideouts—Brown’s Hole in the north, Cord’s Park in the south. Dogan travels two, three times a year between them. Rides the back country upstream, shoots the river down. I’ve made the trip a lot of times. I’m sure I can show you the way.”
Vane frowned. “Young lady, I’m not certain—”
“And Fargo’s right. He’ll kill Colonel Knight and all the rest if he thinks he has to run. You send in the Army, they’re as good as dead. But I know everything about Cord’s Park, where he keeps the guards, all of it. Maybe, just maybe, you men could get in there and get Knight’s crew out, if I showed you how.”
“That’s an offer we’ll take,” Fargo said promptly.
“You hold on. Miss Raven—”
“I tell you,” she said, and her eyes glowed in the firelight, “you can do it if I help you. And I will help you on one condition.” She turned to Fargo. “I want Dogan dead.”
There was silence. “Dogan!” she broke it at last, bitterly. “He killed my real father, destroyed my mother, gave me to that swine Garfield ... If Fargo hadn’t come when he did, I’d already decided: I was going to get a gun, kill Garfield and myself.” She drew in a breath that made breasts rise beneath the wet shirt. “But it’s Dogan I really want. He’s an … an animal, a killer animal, and he doesn’t deserve to live. I’ll do anything to see him dead! And if you’ll help me, I’ll guide you down the river and into Cord’s Park!”
Vane stared at her a moment, then turned to Fargo. “You think there’s no other way?”
“I know there ain’t,” said Fargo.
“Then I guess we’re in for it. Very well, Miss Raven, we accept your offer. But—” He grinned without any humor as he looked at Fargo. “As you know, I have no combat experience.”
“That’s all right; I got enough for both of us.”
“What I mean to say is this. I can’t guarantee how much help I’ll be in a fight, since I’ve never been tested under fire. But with Miss Raven’s help, I’ll get this outfit to Cord’s Park somehow—and then we’ll see how I react when the bullets fly.”
This was a man talking, and Fargo smiled. “I ain’t worried about that.” He stood up. “Then it’s settled. All right, post a guard. Michaelson, you and Birdsong take first watch. Yadkin and Randall get the second. Sara, you can have my blankets and I’ll take Cord’s. He claimed to be a trapper, and, God knows, he smelled like one. And... the rest of it.” He st
roked his shotgun. “That part about Dogan ...” Despite his weariness, he felt that almost sick eagerness. “When we reach Cord’s Park, I’ll see to that...”
~*~
Lodore Canyon lay ahead of them; by first daylight they were up, camp struck, boats loaded. Sara’s face was grave. “It’s a good twenty miles,” she said, “and some of the roughest water on the river. Two falls, they call ’em Upper and Lower Disaster. But I’m pretty sure I know the way all right.”
“Nothing to do but try,” Fargo said. “Let’s move out.”
She settled in the bow of the lead boat, picked up a paddle, and he saw at once she could use it as well as any man in the crew. What she lacked in strength, she made up in skill, and she was cool, deft, as they pushed up and the current took them.
Cord had been right: what had gone before was child’s play. But Lodore was deadly serious. Here the river split straight through a mountain so that walls thousands of feet in height loomed above them, shutting out the sunlight. And, so Powell’s early measurement had showed, it dropped over four hundred feet from end to end of canyon, most of that in a twelve-mile space.
First a few small rapids, like the bait in a trap. Then the rush was faster, water whiter, boiling, spuming. And now the boats were runaway stallions again, racing, bucking, and after that it was as if they were birds, and flying. Fargo worked desperately with paddle and with the oars; Sara made split-second decisions, always right, pointing out the course. They ran gauntlet after gauntlet of hungry rocks, fought the sucking, whirling current, taking longer risks every second. They leaped through the narrow channel of Upper Disaster Falls, rocketed on past an island, swirled on down. Then Lower Disaster loomed ahead, and well-named. Here the canyon wall turned right angles to the stream, and the Green had cut right through it. They entered a kind of tunnel, with the wall hanging over them, fought to keep from being thrown against the side. Then Fargo sucked in his breath. The tunnel was three-sided: the water-carved ceiling hanging over them, the canyon wall on their flank, the fierce river’s surface. And ahead the ceiling lowered, and where the current rushed beneath it, the clearance was less than two feet high. Three minutes, two, and they’d be slammed hard into that closing pinch of rock—
Sara gave a signal, dug in with her paddle. Fargo got a bite with the right oar. At the last second, just before it seemed inevitable that boat and all its occupants must smash full into the rock, the craft’s prow swung out. The current split here, and Sara had caught the outside swirl, and now the boat raced toward midstream once more. Fargo twisted, saw Vane, with superb skill, make the transition in exactly the same spot, and Randall, the Coast Guardsman, follow just as deftly. Sara turned, too, for one brief instant: Fargo saw eyes shining, face glowing with excitement. Far from being frightened, she was exhilarated, jubilant. She laughed, the sound swallowed by the water, and Fargo grinned, and then, once again, they fought the river.
Yet all this was only preliminary. Ahead lay the stretch called Hell’s Half Mile. Fargo hardly saw it; when the boats raced into its foaming, boiling downward slide, there was no longer vision, only flashes, disconnected impressions like the fragments of a dream. Now they raced faster than the fastest horse could run, at express train speed, through spray and fume. A rock here on the right, fend it off; a slab of boulder there, dead ahead: the boat sheered around it. A fall, a leap into the air, plunge into water, and yet the craft shook itself, shot on. Never even in his logging days had he made such a ride, never worked so fast, so desperately, to keep afloat, never faced such risks. And then, somehow, the lead boat was through, and as the water slacked a little, Sara swung it toward a sandbar. Fargo turned once more, as Birdsong, behind him, cried out, and then he swore. Vane’s boat, leaping through the rapids just behind them swung suddenly too far right. It struck a rock, turned broadside, went over. Suddenly Vane, just as Fargo’s boat grounded on the bar, disappeared into the river. The other two of his crew caught the overturned boat, hung on, but Vane was swallowed by the spuming current.
“Birdsong!” Fargo yelled. “Hold up here and watch my gear!” He rammed the shotgun in Birdsong’s hand, shrugged out of bandoliers, threw off his hat. “Fargo!” Sara screamed, but he was already in the river.
Here, he had already seen, it shallowed, had heard the boat grate on rocks. His booted feet found bottom, he braced himself against the furious current. Fighting it, he half-swam, half-waded into the channel. Now it was around his chest, sucking at him, trying to drag him under. He fought against its mighty strength with all his own, and then he saw the bobbing figure, Vane, struggling feebly, already full of water, head breaking surface, disappearing.
And now it was a deadly race. The river threatened to take Vane’s body out past Fargo’s right by five yards or ten. He had to close that gap. Vaguely, he was aware that his own boat was putting out, Birdsong at the oars. He turned sideways to the current, waded on, still chest deep. Three yards, he made, four, and then his feet went out from under him. He was slammed into a rock, went under, caught his balance, came up spitting water. Vane’s body was like a cork, only a few yards away, and now Vane was no longer struggling. Fargo made a desperate lunge.
It was just enough: his fingers hooked in the captain’s belt. Then both men were carried down the stream. Over and over they rolled, Vane dead weight, Fargo’s strength unable to control their progress. His feet sought bottom, touched it, were swept away again. Still, he never slacked his grip on Vane.
And now there was no more bottom and they were both in the current and this could be the end. Fargo gasped for air as his head went under, came up, and he fought with powerful strokes of his left arm and kicking legs to right himself. But Vane dragged him down and there was no chance to get a carry. Either he let the captain go or he died himself . ..
Then, through the roar of water, he heard the woman’s voice, its shrillness carrying. “Fargo! Here!” He went under, surfaced, shook water from his eyes and saw it, Sara in the prow, holding out a paddle, as Birdsong fought with oars to maneuver the boat and hold it stable. Fargo made a frantic grasp, missed, and Sara screamed and swung the paddle, and this time his left hand seized the blade and he hung on. Birdsong yelled something, dug in with the oars, and the boat turned around, dragging Vane and Fargo with it as Sara braced herself, and now everything depended on the girl’s strength.
River-bred, she had plenty of it. Somehow she managed the weight of two men with the river sucking at them, as Birdsong put into shore. Fargo found bottom, dug in his feet; then, gasping, exhausted, he struggled out on a sandbar, dragging Vane with him. The second boat came tumbling down the river, lodged against a rock, two men clinging to it. Fargo, spreading Vane out on the sand face down, spitting water himself through mouth and nostrils, saw Sara put the boat into the stream again.
He turned his attention to the captain. Vane lay still, but his chest rose and fell with breathing. Fargo drained water from him, after checking Vane’s mouth with two fingers and straightening out his swallowed tongue. He saw a purple bruise, a swelling knot, on Vane’s skull just behind the eye, where Vane had hit a rock. Then Sara’s boat was coming in with the other in tow, and the third craft, coming unscathed through the rapids, followed.
Birdsong leaped out “Fargo, you all right?”
“Whiskey,” Fargo gasped. “A bottle in the back compartment.”
Birdsong went after it. Sara dropped to her knees beside him. “Neal, oh, Neal. You almost drowned.”
“Almost don’t count,” Fargo whispered. He turned his head, looked at her through blurry eyes, and what he saw in hers was almost as good as the whiskey, when Birdsong came with it.
But there was Vane to see to first. Fargo poured a drink down Vane’s throat, had one himself, passed the bottle to Michaelson and the corporal in Vane’s crew. By the time it came back to him, Vane groaned, stirred, and Fargo helped him sit up and gave him another drink.
“Judas,” Vane whispered. “Close, damned close.”
“We
’ll make camp here,” Fargo said. “Randall, check the boats. See what we lost in that turnover and report.”
“I know we lost our rifles,” Michaelson said.
Fargo’s heart sank. A fight in the offing and three long guns gone. “Well, it can’t be helped. Anyhow, you saved your pistols. We’ll see about more rifles later.”
“See about—?” Michaelson blinked. “From where?”
“I don’t know. Take ’em off of Dogan’s men, I guess. Let’s get under cover in those willows.”
~*~
Vane was tough. By nightfall, with some coffee in him and some food, he was his usual brisk, efficient self. He, Fargo, Michaelson, Yadkin, Randall and Sara sat around a fire, map spread out. “We should have lined those last rapids,” Fargo said.
“No.” Vane’s voice was crisp. “It was my fault. Spray blinded me, and I missed a turn Miss Raven made. I’ll not let that happen again...”
“All the same,” Fargo said, “it’s too long a chance. We can’t lose more guns.”
“Then disassemble and stow your guns,” Sara cut in. “You won’t need them anyhow between here and the Dandy Crossing. From now on, it’s mostly white water. We’ll be going so fast and the cliffs are so high that nobody could hit us. And ... if you’re going to save Colonel Knight, you’d better not waste any time. There’ll be boats behind us and riders circling the back country to carry the word about Garfield to Dogan. We’ve got to outrun ’em. The river’s the fastest way to do that, but not if you take time to line the boats.” Her voice was suddenly intense. “Believe me, I know the way. If you’ll only follow exactly—”
“We will,” Vane said. “You’ve certainly proved yourself as guide today.” He turned to Fargo. “This is in my area of authority. We’ll not line the boats. We’ll make the fastest possible time to Cord’s Park.”
Fargo looked at him and grinned. “Vane, don’t ever worry about your guts. You’ve got more of ’em than one man needs.” He finished mopping the shotgun with oil, worked its action, crammed in two fresh, dry shells. “Now, I’m gonna take a look around.”