by Jon Sharpe
A six-foot-long tree branch had been trimmed of shoots and stuck in the ground where they were bound to see it. The top of the branch had been split, and wedged into the crack was a yellowed sheet of paper.
“What now?” Simonson asked.
Fargo pried the paper from the branch. He read the crudely scrawled note aloud. It was short and to the point. “Stop trailing us you sons of bitches or the girl dies.”
Another refrain of oaths greeted the threat. Laffery wagged his rifle and hollered, “They’re trying to buffalo us, boys! They won’t dare harm Heddy because they know they’ll pay, and pay dearly! I say we all push on, and the Swills be damned!”
“Not so fast,” Simonson said. “The Swills know they’ll hang, no matter what they do, so they might murder Heddy to spite us.” He motioned at Heddy’s father. “I say we hear what George wants to do. He has more at stake than any of us.”
Tinsdale gnawed on his lower lip. He stared at the note, then at the untamed wilderness beyond, and finally at Fargo. “You’ve impressed me as being a man of honor and intelligence. What do you suggest?”
Fargo hooked a leg across his saddle and leaned an elbow on it. He repaid the compliment by being brutally honest. “We’re close. Very close. And the Swills know it. They know we’ll catch them soon, which is why they left the note. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them is spying on us right this second.”
The statement created a stir, and many of the emigrants raised their rifles and anxiously scoured the vicinity.
“If we keep on, Mr. Tinsdale,” Fargo said, “the Swills will carry out their threat, if for no other reason than to give themselves a better chance of escaping. Right now your daughter is riding double with one of them, and his horse is tiring.”
“God, no,” the father said, profoundly distraught. “She’s our only child. It would crush my Harriet’s heart. To say nothing of my own.”
“So you’re advising us to turn around?” Lafferty asked. “What about Heddy? How can we abandon her?”
“I didn’t say we should,” Fargo corrected him. “We’ll head for the wagon train like they want. Make them think they’ve scared us off. Once we’re in the trees, the rest of you will keep going. I’ll hide and continue tracking them once I’m sure it’s safe.”
“You’re going on alone?” Simonson said.
“Not on your life, he isn’t,” John broke in. “Have your forgotten my brother? I’m seeing this through to the end.”
“I am, too,” Tinsdale said. “What sort of father would I be if I turned my back on my own daughter?”
“Think for a minute,” Fargo urged. “If they’re spying on us, they might not notice if just one of us slips away from the rest. But they sure as hell will notice if three of us do. And since I’m the only man here who tracks for a living, I’m the one who has to go on.”
George Tinsdale removed his hat and ran a hand through his greying hair. Fatherly love wrestled with logic, and logic won. “Very well. As much as it goes against my grain, I’m willing to permit you to carry on alone.”
“Well, I’m not,” John stated. “I made a vow and I intend to keep it. Where the Swills go, I go, and there’s no way anyone can change my mind.”
Fargo was becoming tired of the younger man’s selfish attitude. “And what about the girl? Her life doesn’t mean a thing to you?”
The emigrants stared at John, their disapproval plain. Lafferty voiced the sentiments of the rest when he said, “Be reasonable, youngster. Mr. Tinsdale’s daughter matters more than your thirst for vengeance.”
“Please, son,” Tinsdale pleaded. “For Heddy’s sake, if not for mine or anyone else’s. I’m terribly sorry about your brother. But getting her killed won’t bring him back again, will it?”
John made a growling noise deep in his throat and smacked his right fist against his left palm. “I hate this! I simply hate it!” For a few seconds he regarded the ring of faces with blatant resentment. Then his shoulders slumped and he averted his gaze. “All right. I’ll do as you want. But don’t expect me to like it.”
Fargo slid his left boot into its stirrup. “I’ll lead the way back. But three or four of you need to stay close so the Swills won’t notice when I break away.”
In compact order they wheeled their animals and walked their horses into the trees. They put on a good show. Tinsdale was a portrait of misery. John was mad enough to spit tacks. Many of the others were upset at being thwarted, and it showed.
Fargo had to admit that if he were the Swills, he would think the emigrants had given up all hope.
As soon as the trees closed around them, Tinsdale, Simonson, and Lafferty reined their horses up alongside the Ovaro. Fargo slowed to let them pass, and once they had, he reined around a thicket and on into a cluster of saplings. Doubling over the saddle, he watched the rest of the party go by. John Carter brought up the rear, and he was none too happy. For a moment Fargo thought the hothead would veer aside, too, but John was as good as his word and soon everyone had melted into the distance.
Fargo was alone. He peered out into the valley, but no one appeared. As motionless as the trees around him, he bided his time. The Ovaro was well-trained, and other than an occasional twitch of an ear and flick of its tail, it never moved.
Fargo figured an hour should be long enough. By then, the Swills were bound to be convinced the emigrants were gone, and would be riding hard to the north.
Bit by bit the sun climbed, bit by bit the shadows lengthened. At last Fargo uncurled, lashed the reins, and cantered from concealment. No lead was thrown in his direction. No shouts were raised. His gambit had worked.
On the far side of the valley were more tracks. They revealed that five of the Swills had gone on ahead while one had stayed behind to see if the emigrants heeded the note. When he was convinced they had, the sixth man had ridden off to catch up to his friends and relay the good news.
The Ovaro stallion ate up mile after mile, but Fargo was careful not to gain too much ground. It was best if he caught up to the Swills after the sun went down, when he could use the element of surprise to best advantage.
Fargo hadn’t wanted to say anything to John or the emigrants, but he was glad to be on his own. The emigrants were ill-matched against hardened desperadoes like the Swills, and for their own sakes it was better they had been induced to go back.
The same applied to young Carter. A man blinded by bloodlust took reckless gambles that cooler heads avoided. John’s fiery desire for vengeance would only get him killed.
High hills rimmed the horizon. Fargo reached them as the sun was setting, and slowed the pinto to a walk. The Swills would make camp soon and he wanted to come up on them when they were ringed around their campfire and off guard.
Fargo got to thinking about Suzanne Maxwell and the other missing women. Were they alive? Or had the Swills killed them after indulging themselves? Come what may, another visit to Les Bois was in order.
Twilight descended, shrouding the hills in gloom. Fargo wove on until it was too dark to see the tracks he was following. Reining to the left, he climbed a steep slope to a broad shelf. From there he could see quite a distance.
About two miles off, a campfire glimmered. Smiling to himself, Fargo climbed off of the pinto. He would wait a while before moving in. While the stallion nipped grass, he treated himself to a handful of pemmican. He was on his third piece when he was startled by the thud of hooves, from the south.
Fargo pushed erect. Either some of the Swills had somehow swung around behind him, or he was in for an unwanted surprise. Swinging back onto the Ovaro, he descended until he was twenty feet from the bottom. He made little noise, so the pair of riders who trotted out of the darkness had no inkling he was there until he spoke. “I thought the two of you agreed to return to the wagon train.”
John Carter and George Tinsdale reined up.
Fargo rode down, anger bubbling within him. Tinsdale wore a guilty expression, but Carter was defiant, as usual. “I to
ld you I wanted in on this and I meant it,” John defended his betrayal of trust. “Before this night is out the Swills will rue the day they were born.”
“And you, Tinsdale?” Fargo asked. “What’s your excuse?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t forsake my daughter in her moment of greatest need. John convinced me to rejoin you.” Tinsdale patted his mount. “We’ve nearly ridden our horses into the ground to catch up. I was beginning to believe we never would.” He gazed off across the hills. “Are the kidnappers nearby?”
“Close enough.”
John grinned and hefted his rifle. “Good. I can’t wait to get them in my sights.”
“Just so they don’t get you in theirs,” Fargo said.
9
The Swills had camped in a gully at the base of a hill, an ideal spot. The gully helped to hide their campfire, and from the top of the hill a lookout could see back down the trail a fair distance thanks to the half-moon that had risen and was bathing the countryside in its pale radiance.
Skye Fargo was too savvy to approach from the direction they expected. He circled around to the far side of the hill, dismounted, and led Carter and Tinsdale toward the top on foot. His hope was to get above the Swills and pick them off like clay targets in a shooting gallery. Sixty feet up he froze.
A cough from higher up confirmed someone was up there keeping watch.
Flattening, Fargo motioned for John and George to do the same. Tinsdale was breathing heavily, more from the excitement than the exertion. He was a farmer by trade, and tangling with cutthroats was new to him. John was eagerly fingering his rifle and clearly couldn’t wait to start shooting Swills. Yet he, too, had never killed before. Neither had any business being there, but Fargo wasn’t about to waste his breath trying to convince them of that.
“The two of you stay here,” Fargo whispered. He had told them before they started out that they must do exactly as he told them, and they had agreed. But since they had already gone against his wishes once, he wouldn’t put it past them to do so again. “And I mean stay,” he emphasized. He crawled on to forestall debate.
A stiff wind out of the northwest helped matters some. It masked the few slight sounds Fargo made as he snaked high enough to spot a squat shape outlined against the stars. It was the silhouette of a seated figure. The lookout.
Sliding his right knee toward his chest, Fargo dipped his fingers into his boot and withdrew the Arkansas toothpick. He left the Henry lying in the grass and resumed crawling with consummate care. It took him ten minutes to cover ten feet. By then he was only a couple of yards from the lookout. He couldn’t tell who it was, but he could see the stock of a rifle that lay across the man’s legs.
The lookout’s arms were moving. He was doing something with his hands.
Fargo inched closer. Suddenly there was a scraping noise and a small flame flared. The lookout had rolled a cigarette and lit it. The glow washed over the lookout’s face but blinked out almost at once. Fargo smelled the acrid odor of tobacco and heard a contented sigh. As silently as a ghost, the Trailsman moved higher still.
Fargo had no compunctions about what he was about to do. The Swills had murdered Jack Carter. They had killed Horace Wells. They had abducted Heddy Tinsdale and Suzanne Maxwell and other unsuspecting women. They had to be stopped before they caused more grief and suffering.
Turning them over to the law wasn’t practical. For one thing, there was no law west of the Mississippi except for an occasional town marshal, and their jurisdictions were limited to the towns they served. County sheriffs didn’t exist because there were no counties. For that matter, there were no States. Only immense, uncharted territories where badmen could roam to their heart’s content and indulge in all manner of mayhem without fear of having a posse after them.
As for the military, the army was primarily concerned with the safety of emigrants bound for Oregon and California. Patrols were infrequent, and then only established trails. Soldiers weren’t meant to do the job of lawmen.
Small wonder, then, ordinary people were forced to take the law into their own hands. Small wonder lynch parties were much too common, and vigilantes served in the place of duly constituted law officers.
Fargo was only eighteen inches from the lookout’s broad back. Tensing, he saw the man raise a hand to puff on the cigarette. He waited for the hand to descend again before he struck. Suddenly, behind him, there was a faint scrape, the sound of a foot dragging across the ground.
The lookout instantly spun, the cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth.
For a span of heartbeats Fargo and the man were eye-to-eye. It wasn’t one of the Swills, or at least not one he had previously encountered. Then the man galvanized to life and opened his mouth to shout a warning while snapping the rifle to his shoulder.
Fargo surged upward, clamped his left hand over the lookout’s mouth, and thrust with the toothpick. The double-edged blade sliced through the man’s wool shirt and buried itself to the hilt between two ribs. Stiffening, the lookout struggled to free himself, but the next second blood spurted from his nose and lips and he sagged, weakening fast.
Fargo stabbed him again, and yet once more, to be sure, and didn’t let go until the man stopped twitching. He wiped his left hand on the lookout’s shirt, did likewise with the toothpick, and slid the knife into his ankle sheath.
Boiling mad inside, Fargo turned.
John and George Tinsdale had followed him up. John had brought the Henry, and now held it out to him. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get this over with.”
The young man would never know how close Fargo came to slugging him. They had both nearly gotten him killed. But there wasn’t a moment to spare. Snatching the Henry, Fargo dropped onto his belly and peered over the hill.
A small spring glistened on the near side of the gully. Grass covered the bottom, and was being nipped by the horses. Lounging around the fire were Clancy Swill, his brothers Gus, Billy, and Wilt, and Porter, Gus’s friend from the card game in Les Bois, the man whose nose Fargo had broken. Huddled between Clancy and Gus was their captive.
Heddy Tinsdale was no girl. At nineteen, she was in the full flower of her beauty. Luxurious russet hair framed a lovely face currently creased in anxiety. She possessed a full, voluptuous body, the kind that turned heads on a city street. Her wrists were bound behind her back, and she was gazing sadly into the fire. But she wasn’t devastated by her abduction, as some women would be. Far from it. Now and then she cast spiteful glances at her captors. And when Gus had the audacity to place a hand on her thigh, she suddenly bent and snapped at his fingers with her teeth. Gus jerked back, and Clancy and the others laughed heartily at his expense.
“My poor Heddy,” Tinsdale softly groaned, and went to shove to his feet.
“Don’t you dare,” Fargo whispered, grabbing his arm. “We have to do this right or she might take a slug.”
John was awestruck. “She’s beautiful!” he whispered. “I can’t fault those bastards for their taste in women.”
“Temper your urges, young man,” Tinsdale said gruffly. “That’s my daughter you’re talking about.”
“No disrespect intended, sir,” John said sincerely. “It’s just that I haven’t seen anyone as lovely as her since I can’t remember when.”
Fargo focused on the slope. It was bare of cover. Not so much as a single bush grew anywhere. He’d have liked for one of them to move in close to spirit Heddy out of there when the lead started to fly, but doing so would entail working around the hill and coming up on the gully from the side. He glanced at his companions, debating whether to pick one of them for the job. Tinsdale had all the stealth of a cow, and John couldn’t be trusted to do as he was instructed. But he couldn’t do it himself. He was the best shot, and the top of the hill was the best vantage point.
Clancy Swill had twisted and was gazing upward. From where he sat he couldn’t see the body of the lookout, but he could definitely tell the lookout wasn’t where he was supposed
to be. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he hollered, “Donny, where in hell are you?”
Removing his hat, Fargo jammed the dead man’s headgear onto his own head and sat up. He was banking that in the dark, Clancy couldn’t tell the difference, and he waved an arm to signal all was well.
“No falling asleep up there, you hear me?” Clancy yelled. “We don’t want anyone sneaking up on us!”
Gus Swill laughed. “That’s not likely to happen, big brother. I saw those pilgrims tuck tail and ride away with my own two eyes.”
“They’re not the only ones we have to worry bout,” Clancy said, “or have you forgotten this is Injun country?”
Their voices dropped, and Fargo wasn’t able to hear the rest. “One of us needs to sneak down there and be ready to help Heddy,” he whispered. “John, you’re elected. Don’t shoot until I do.”
“Why him? She’s my daughter,” Tinsdale objected louder than he should.
“Keep your voice down, damn it!” Fargo whispered, and explained, “John is younger and quicker and can get her out of there a lot faster than you could.”
John beamed, but whether because he was happy to do his part to save Heddy or because he entertained a more personal motive, it was hard to say. “I’m on my way,” he said, and scooted back down the hill until he was about midway, then he carefully angled around toward the gully.
“Can we trust him?” Tinsdale whispered the very question that was foremost on Fargo’s mind.
“No. But he’s all we have.”
Clancy and his brothers were passing around a bottle of rotgut. Billy took a long swig and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Leering suggestively at Heddy, he imitated a crowing rooster, even going so far as to flap his arms in imitation of a rooster’s wings. His brothers thought he was hilarious.
“They’re animals,” Tinsdale whispered. “Filthy, rotten animals. Every last one deserves to be exterminated.”
“No argument here,” Fargo said. He had been holding the Henry across his knees, but now he tucked the stock to his shoulder. He didn’t aim at the Swills. Not yet. Not until John was in position.