Fargo 13

by John Benteen

  “Right. Two coyote barks, then a third.”

  “That’s it,” Fargo said, and he faded into the willows at the foot of the sheer cliff, hundreds of feet high, that towered over him. Not far from where he hid, the side canyon made a gap of greater darkness, a slot spilling down from the highlands above. He watched the boats glide past, then they were lost in darkness. He squatted in the willows, shielded the final cigar he lit with his hand, smoked patiently until enough time had elapsed for Birdsong to be in place. Then, somewhat reluctantly, he ground out his cigar.

  The side canyon was not the only way into Cord’s Park. After the Mormons had blasted it shut, Indians had still come down to the river and crossed here, but on foot, not on horseback. On either side of the smaller canyon, they had worked trails down the cliff faces. Not trails, really, so much as a tenuous series of hand and footholds; but they could be climbed: Sara had seen men do it. Now it was up to Fargo to mount one and to Birdsong to climb the other, and when they reached the rims above, where the guards were, waiting to blow the dynamite in case of attack … Fargo adjusted his shotgun sling, the bandolier of shells, checked the Batangas knife in its sheath. Well, it was time to go. Five hundred feet, maybe more, he judged. And no way out of it. He moved behind the big willow, surveyed the rock with his hand, and then he found the trail. His gut knotted and his heart sank, as he groped up the wall. A few inches here, a few there, a place to dig in a hand or toes, and all of it weathered over decades, smoothed and slippery. He spat dryly, hooked a booted toe in the first niche, hoisted himself.

  At first, it was not so bad. Somehow it all went together. When you had one foothold, you reached for another and it was, miraculously, there, and a place for hands to grab as well. Ten or twenty feet above the ground, there was nothing to it. But ... forty, fifty. He inched higher. And slowly but surely the old fear pierced him.

  It was like pain. People died from pain because they let it worry them. The thing to do with pain was bear it. If your wound was fatal, pain made no difference; that was true, too, if it was not. Handle fear the same way, ignore it... don’t let it kill you uselessly.

  He bit his lip. He was sixty feet up the cliff, now, with seven times that height to climb. Those damned foot- and hand-holds were almost, but not quite, big enough. He paused, felt for next grasp, found it, hoisted himself another yard. It took an effort of will, but he made it. Then he was a hundred feet above the ground, and that seemed forever: the sandbar a tiny lozenge, the river a rushing fury, its rocks waiting to catch him. His head swam, his mouth was dry and panic hit him. His mouth was dry, his knees trembling, and his nails broke on the rock as his fingers dug into the scanty hand-hold. For that interval, he was capable of going neither up nor down. He only clung there, heart pounding, gut full of sickness.

  Then he sucked in a long breath. Fury rose in him at his own cowardice. He thought of his contempt for people who wanted to live forever, people who feared cold steel or lead or bad horses or wild cattle or all the other ways you could get killed. He would not be ranked with them. His pride took over, cold and fierce, and he scrabbled for another hand-hold, and another. He had mastered the fear now and the sickness. He still hated what he had to do, but it no longer touched him. Mechanically, he went on climbing, not a person, only a machine.

  Two hundred feet, three. Then, terrifyingly, a gap. He searched in all directions, pinned there like a spider on a wall, and could find no place to get a foot- or hand-hold. He dared not look down into the sickening depths beneath. There has to be one! he thought—somewhere. Balancing on his toes, swinging partly into space, he reached higher. Then he found it, a crevice into which he could get his fingers. He explored, found another near it. He would have to hoist himself up one-handed, then reach for the other. With his fingers there, find another hold above and then dig in his feet. He swallowed hard, reached up, sank fingers into the niche, let go, and then he was dangling by one hand high above the Colorado. Frantically he scrabbled with the other.

  After endless seconds, it found a grip. Fargo closed his eyes, hung there by both hands for a minute, not daring to brace his feet too hard against the canyon wall. His arm muscles shrieked with strain.

  “Shit,” he said aloud, bitterly, let go with his lower hand, swung by one and reached up again. He found another hold, pulled with all his strength. This time his left foot found purchase, and now he had two hands and a foothold.

  Once more straining upward, he found another handhold, and he relaxed. That had been a gap, but now maybe it would be all right. He hoisted, sought again for purchase—and it was all right. The foot and handholds were where they should be now, and he went up with comparative speed. Above him, he could see the canyon rim, a streak against the sky. Below, the river raced and rumbled, and the boulders waited. If a man fell now, he thought, he’d have a long time to anticipate what it would be like when he hit—

  But only another hundred feet … surely he could make that, despite quivering arms and legs. Climbing on he gained another thirty, forty ... the rim was tantalizingly close. Only fifty feet now, and ... he closed the space to thirty, twenty; then, four hundred feet and more above the river, he froze and pressed himself against the hard, cold stone of the canyon wall.

  The silhouetted figure of a man stalked along the rim. Paused, came back. Fargo could see it in weird perspective, enormous boots and legs, diminishing waist, torso and head. Saw the glint of fleeting moonlight on the metal of a rifle barrel. Dogan took no chances! His men watched these trails!

  Eyes closed, Fargo hung there for endless seconds. Then he knew what he had to do and went on up. Another ten feet, twenty, soundless as a cat, taking his time. Now the edge of the rimrock was only ten feet overhead. He heard the footsteps of the man pacing past. The guard moved twenty, thirty yards along the rim, halted, lit a cigarette. Fargo found his grips and squirreled up the last few yards. Then, clinging by both hands and one foot, he was just below the edge. He waited there. The man paced by again. Two feet, Fargo judged, from the rim of the sheer drop to the rocks below.

  Fargo freed a hand, dangled, unslung his shotgun. Hanging precariously, head just below the rim, he waited. The man came back again with bored, careless paces. As he went by, Fargo surged up, rammed the shotgun between his legs, twisted. The man grunted, thrown off balance. Then he fell outwards into space, just missing Fargo. He was so surprised he didn’t even scream until he was halfway down, and the river almost swallowed that sound. Fargo, expecting it, caught the splash he made, then he seized the edge of rimrock and was scrambling over. On solid ground, he fought back the impulse to vomit. Instead, he slung the shotgun, drew the Batangas knife, flicked back the handles, exposed the blade, and lay flat, waiting.

  Footsteps, and he had expected them. “Hey, Kelly—” Another shadowy figure, rifle up. It walked right by Fargo. “Kelly—?”

  From behind the cover of a pile of rocks, Fargo came erect. He moved soundlessly across three yards, knife blade glinting in the moonlight. His left arm clamped hard around the guard’s neck; his right hand thrust and thrust again. Teeth bit down on the hand clamping off a scream. Fargo ignored them and killed the man with a final stroke. When the body was limp, he let it drop, then took from the corpse a pistol and a Winchester. He sheathed the Batangas knife, ran low across some open ground, threw himself flat on the rim of the side canyon.

  He waited there for what seemed endless seconds. He had climbed a half thousand foot cliff and killed two men, and he had never wanted a drink more in his life. He let the reaction pass away, and then it came, from across the side canyon: the barking of a coyote.

  Fargo’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a wolfish snarl. He answered with a coyote’s bark, perfectly rendered. Then, keeping low in the moonlight flooding the rim, he searched for the detonator.

  He found it, a push-type box, designed to send a spark along wires to the capped dynamite below. He ripped loose the wires, threw the detonator into darkness. Then, in the shelter of a boul
der, he waited for a long time, until the coyote call came again. He answered that one, too. Then he ran along the side-canyon’s rim.

  A well-worn path carried him down to the bowl below: Cord’s Park. Where the side-canyon debouched into it, he paused in the shelter of a boulder, and then, presently, saw movement in the darkness opposite. He hissed: “Birdsong.”

  “Fargo? I’m here.” The Ute came to join him behind the house-sized rock. He was breathing hard, but there was excitement, a wild kind of joy, in his words. “No trouble, none at all. The Old Ones cut a fine path—and those guards were easier than deer! I’ve got two rifles and three pistols. Now what?”

  “I lost a rifle. Now we wait,” Fargo said, and they hunkered down in the shadows behind the boulder.

  A long time passed, during which neither moved nor spoke. Then, well after midnight, there was sound: a rock rolled in the side-canyon below. Fargo and Birdsong tensed as shadowy figures appeared, Vane’s blocky form in the forefront. Fargo hissed Vane’s name.

  They came together behind the boulder. “Sara’s waiting with the boats,” Vane whispered. “Did it go all right?”

  “Right on schedule. Now, get your men up on the rim to cover us, while Birdsong and I go in and find Knight and his bunch, let ’em out and arm ’em. We’ll try to sneak back out without shooting, but if there’s gunfire, pick your targets and open up.”

  “All right,” Vane began. “I—” His voice chopped off as from the river far below there came a high, shrill, thready sound—unmistakably a woman’s scream.

  Fargo whirled. “Sara!” he rasped. And all at once he knew it had gone wrong, bad wrong. He raised the shotgun, but even as he did so, a voice boomed out through the night from the rim not far above their heads. It echoed and re-echoed in the stillness, gaining volume, so that finally it seemed to come through a megaphone. “All right!” it roared, and echoes repeated. “Lay down those guns, you men, you hear? You’re covered by twenty rifles and a sawed-off! Lay down those guns!”

  And then, still with that hollow, echoing boom, it added: “This is Dogan speaking. Double-Barrel Dogan!” And, mockingly, it added: “Welcome, Fargo, to Cord’s Park! It’s your last stop on the way to Hell!”

  There was a moment, then, where every man of Fargo’s party froze. Michaelson made a sound in his throat, raised his gun. “God damn—”

  Fargo said, bitterly, “Ease off, John. They’ve got us cold.” Because he had seen them, now. They were on both rims of the side-canyon, aimed rifles catching moonlight gleams. And there were more of them coming up the canyon trail, plugging the narrow passage that led into Dogan’s stronghold, and others appearing now from boulders ahead, where they’d been hidden. They were boxed in on all flanks, and there was no escape, no fighting back. Somehow he had led the entire party into a trap.

  “Lay down your guns or you’ll be dead in thirty seconds!” the voice boomed. “Do what I say and some of you can live! You hear me?”

  “We hear you,” Fargo yelled. And then, because they were outnumbered and caught cold and there was nothing else to do, he unslung his Fox and then fished out his Colt and put them both aside and raised his hands. Staring at him, the others followed suit, as armed men closed in on them and more menaced them from the walls above. From down the canyon, Sara screamed again, but the sound pinched off quickly.

  “We surrender,” Fargo called bitterly.

  “You’d damned well better,” the voice boomed. Then rock slid, as a man descended the trail from the rim into the canyon. He landed lightly, after sliding a few yards, regained his balance, turned, and as he strode forward, entered a shaft of moonlight. Fargo stared at the leveled sawed-off Greener, which, if both triggers were pulled, would kill every man in the party.

  “Dogan,” he said.

  “Me, in the flesh,” Dogan answered. He was a tall, narrow-waisted silhouette against the darkness. “Pick up their hardware, men, and bring them in. We’ve got a lot of business to transact ’tween now and daylight.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You bitch!” Dogan snarled, and, backhanded, hit Sara again with all his strength. Her head snapped around and she staggered back to collapse in a corner of the room. Dogan grinned and whirled, shotgun leveled. “Goes against the grain? Too damn bad, gentlemen. Just don’t move.”

  His headquarters were a barroom and store not much different from the one in Brown’s Hole. He moved the Greener back and forth, and when, under its muzzles, no one stirred, his grin widened. Still keeping the shotgun aimed, he went to a table, sat down behind it, like a judge facing a mass of accused men—or condemned ones.

  “Well,” Dogan said. He drank from a bottle on the table, and as he did so, Fargo had time, in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps spotted around the room, to size him up.

  His face was almost the one Fargo had seen in pictures supposed to be of his corpse—like a hatchet blade, narrow, big-nosed, thin-mouthed and with a pointed chin. His eyes were blue, beneath dark brows, and they were like twin gas flames. His hair, beneath the tipped back sombrero, was longer than Fargo’s and just as white, but with age; Dogan, now, would be just past fifty. But years had not sapped the vigor of his frame, tall as Fargo’s own, more slender, yet still with the quickness and power of a panther. He wore a flannel shirt, Levis, boots, and no side-arms at all. He did not need them, for Fargo knew he would never be without the Greener, whose ten-gauge bores menaced all of them.

  Dogan’s flame-jet eyes roamed over the captives, every man of the expedition, and came to rest on Fargo. Dogan’s lips peeled back from bad teeth in a grin. “And you’re still wondering how,” he said. “The great Neal Fargo, and he’s wondering how Double-Barrel Dogan caught him like a sucker in a fish-net.”

  Fargo didn’t answer. He was looking at Sara, battered, limp in the corner. She had been almost dragged up the canyon-gate to Cord’s Park by two more armed men, and although they had already roughed her up, Dogan had worked her over savagely. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop him, menaced by his shotgun and the revolvers and pistols of a dozen other men.

  “So I’ll tell you,” Dogan said. “Heliograph.”

  Fargo snapped around, suddenly alert.

  “Gets you, huh? Never counted on that? The river, yes, or horseback, but not on mirrors.” Dogan leaned back in his chair, but he kept his hand on the riot gun. “The sunshine telegraph, just like the Army used chasing Apaches. I’m organized, Fargo, It’s part of the service people pay me for. I’ve got heliograph stations set up every ten miles back in the badlands. We use Morse Code and the sun and mirrors do the rest. Fast as telegraph. And you didn’t think of that.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Fargo looked at Sara.

  “And she didn’t tell you. Well, she didn’t know. It was something I figured she was better off not knowing. But it’s there. Ten hours after you killed Garfield and went off with her in Brown’s Hole, we knew it here. We’ve watched you all the way downriver. Knew when you were coming in here, let you come. Cost me four men, but they were way behind on the books anyhow, and I had to get rid of ’em. Worth it to let you deliver yourself and all your crew.”

  His hand stroked the shotgun. “But it was worth it, even if they hadn’t of been. Had men staked out all up and down the approaches; you walked in slick as a whistle. And now ... now I got more bargaining power. You and the Injun don’t count, Fargo, but that still leaves six soldiers and sailors and bigwigs of one kind or another. Add those to Knight and his people, it gives me eleven valuable bargainin’ counters if it ever comes to that. Plus, I got Sara back, three good river boats and—I appreciate it, Fargo. You not thinkin’ of those mirrors.”

  “I should have,” Fargo said bitterly.

  “No reason for you to. Nobody uses heliograph any more, now that the telegraph runs everywhere. Only us owlhooters.” He shoved back his chair, stood up, and raised the Greener. “Injun,” he said to Birdsong. “Move over there against the wall.”

  Birdsong faced him de
fiantly. “Go to hell, white man.”

  Dogan came out from behind the table. He walked up to within two feet of Birdsong. “You dirty Ute,” he said. “I just rubbed out a woman of your tribe because she was so troublesome. Killed her, you understand? Good thing Sara came back; I need another woman. Now—over there against the wall.”

  “Go to hell,” Birdsong rasped again.

  Like a drum-major’s baton, the shotgun whirled in Dogan’s hands. The stock struck Birdsong, and he staggered back, brought up against the big room’s log wall. Dogan pivoted, and now the gun was reversed again, stock by his hip, barrels pointed. “Bang,” he said. “You’re dead.” And he pulled one trigger.

  The shotgun’s roar was deafening in the little room. From the corner, Sara made a thin sound. Birdsong made none at all. Caught at close range by nine buckshot, he was nearly cut in two. His mutilated body simply collapsed silently, dead before it struck the floor.

  Dogan whirled, and now the gun was lined on Fargo. Fargo tensed, but Dogan only grinned. “Neat, eh?” he said. “You’d appreciate it, being a shotgun man.”

  He waited for some reaction, and when none was forthcoming, he said, “Jonas. Bring me that Fox.”

  A squat man came forward with Fargo’s shotgun and bandolier. Dogan dropped into his chair again, laid the Greener aside. He examined Fargo’s shotgun, and his eyes glowed, his face lit. “Judas, what a fine weapon. The Greener’s good, but this engravin’—it must have cost a fortune.” He broke the gun, saw that it was fully loaded, closed it once more, and now it was the Fox he leveled at Fargo. “Jonas. Take the rest of ’em away. Shut ’em up with Knight and the others and mount a guard. Leave me alone. All of you leave me alone with Fargo.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jonas said. “Move out, you men.”

  Vane protested, but all those guns pointed at him stifled it. Hands raised, the men filed out, covered by more than two guns each. “Ross!” Dogan barked.

  A trailing man turned. Dogan jerked his thumb. “Her. Sara. Take her in the bedroom and lock her in and stand guard outside the window.”