by Jon Sharpe
Fargo thought he would bite off his tongue. The pain was infinitely worse. It tore through him like a burning brand through soft wax. And it was only the first of ten or eleven Gus delivered. By the end Fargo was half-conscious and as limp as a wet rag. He was grateful when the blows stopped, so grateful he almost thanked Gus aloud, almost thanked the buzzard who had put him through it.
“Time for more food and drink!” Jericho Swill declared. “Everyone into my cabin and we’ll pass around another bottle.”
Pounding waves of anguish pulsed through Fargo. Blood was dripping from his sides and soaking the top of his pants. He barely had the energy to raise his head and watch the Swills go in. As soon as the door closed he gathered his remaining strength and violently twisted his wrists back and forth. He had to free himself. Another couple of whippings and he would be too weak to make the attempt.
The rope bit deep into his skin. Fargo resisted the discomfort and kept twisting, twisting, twisting. He lost track of time. His shoulders ached but he didn’t stop. His wrists were pools of agony but he didn’t give up. The rope grew slick with blood, and he was able to move his wrists a little. Encouraged, he twisted harder.
Suddenly the door opened. Fargo feigned unconsciousness as the Swills gathered around for another go at him.
“He’s passed out on us, Pa!” Billy declared. “Let’s wait a while. It’s no fun when we can’t hear ’em squeal.”
“Hold your britches on, boy,” the patriarch said. “Harvey, wake our guest up. We don’t want him to miss out on the festivities.”
Fargo lay still as the oldest son clomped into the cabin. Soon Harvey was back. His footsteps came closer, ever closer, and the next moment Fargo was deluged with a bucket of water. He swallowed as much as he could, and felt brief, soothing relief spread across his back and down his arms. Licking drops from his face, he grinned at Jericho Swill. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Jericho wasn’t amused. His face flushing, he motioned at Billy, whose turn it was with the bullwhip. “He think’s he clever, boy. Show him what we think of his cleverness.”
Billy Swill took to the task with unrestrained zeal, cackling with each swing. The deeper the lash bit, the louder he laughed.
Gritting his teeth, his fists clenched and his shoulders bunched, Fargo endured the onslaught in stoic silence. It angered Billy, who soon stopped cackling and applied the bullwhip with redoubled vigor.
“Scream, damn you!” Crack. “Why won’t you do like the rest?” Crack. “What makes you so different?” Crack. “Scream! Or so help me I’ll whip you until you do!” Crack.
Fargo girded for yet another blow, but it never came. Jericho Swill had grabbed his youngest son’s wrist and was wresting the whip from Billy’s fingers. “Enough, boy! How many times must I repeat myself? We want him to die nice and slow. Keep cutting into him like that and you’re liable to put him out of his misery much too soon.”
Billy cursed, but he let go. “I’ve never hated anyone in my life as much as I do this varmint, Pa,” he snarled. “I can’t wait to bury him.”
“Patience, boy. All things come to him who has the patience to wait for them.” Jericho squinted at the sky. “We’ll let him lie there until sundown, then start in again fresh. Everyone might as well go on about their business until then.”
Fargo was left alone. Closing his eyes, he laid his cheek in the dirt. The pain was almost too much to bear. To complicate matters, fatigue gnawed at him. Not from lack of sleep but from the brutal flogging. He craved rest but he didn’t dare doze off. He would just lie there a moment, then work on freeing his wrists. Just a minute. Or maybe two. That was all he needed to pull himself together.
With a start, Fargo opened his eyes and lifted his head. Shadow mired the valley, and the air was considerably cooler than it had been. He had slept the afternoon away! A sliver of sun was all that was left. Soon it would be gone, and the Swills would resume torturing him.
“No,” Fargo groaned aloud, and tried to twist his right wrist. It was abominably stiff and tremendously sore, and moving it required every ounce of will he possessed. He turned to his other wrist.
For a moment Fargo couldn’t believe his eyes.
Suzanne Maxwell was crawling toward him. Half-starved though she was, bedraggled and filthy and as weak as a kitten, she clawed at the earth to pull herself along. A few more yards and she would reach him. And wonder of wonders, in her left hand she held a butcher knife.
Fear gripped Fargo. Not fear for his sake. Fear for hers. The Swills would kill her if they caught her. He glanced at the patriarch’s cabin, then scanned the clearing. No one was outdoors. It was the supper hour, judging by the mouth-watering aromas borne on the breeze, and everyone was indoors eating. But for how much longer?
Suzanne painstakingly pulled herself another couple of feet nearer. The determination on her face was a thing to behold. Every muscle, every line, was stretched taut. Her jaw was carved from marble, and her eyes gleamed with an inner light.
Fargo’s mouth went dry. He could scarcely stand the suspense. She had to reach him. She had to. Again she laboriously dragged herself along. Only four feet to go now. “Hurry,” he whispered, every nerve jangling.
Suzanne’s response was a fierce grin and one last heave. She slumped against his arm, exhausted, and whispered, “I wondered what was keeping you.”
Her courage, her humor, her sacrifice on his behalf, brought a lump to Fargo’s throat. “They’ll be outside any minute,” he warned.
Grimly, Suzanne sawed at the rope. But she was so weak she could hardly wield the butcher knife. Refusing to admit defeat, she gripped the hilt with both thin hands and slashed at the loop. Her first stroke sliced a third of the strands. Her next completed the job. “There.” She looked at him in silent entreaty, and collapsed.
Heedless of how much it hurt, Fargo grabbed the knife, rotated at the waist, and cut his other hand free. His back screamed in protest as he bent and made short work of the restraints binding his ankles.
A sudden swell of newfound energy coursed through him. Rising, Fargo strode toward Jericho Swill’s cabin. The window glowed with light. He didn’t know how many were in there and he didn’t care. He walked right up to the door, wrenched on the latch, and shoved.
Jericho was at the table, spooning stew into his mouth. The woman in the yellow dress was in a chair on the other side of the room, knitting.
Shock rooted them in place as Fargo stalked toward the table. The patriarch dropped his spoon, shoved upright, and turned toward a pair of rifles propped against the wall. He never reach them. Two swift strides brought Fargo close enough to streak the blade across Swill’s throat.
A scarlet geyser spurted. Jericho flung his gnarled hands to his ruptured jugular and tried to shout but couldn’t. Tottering wildly, he clutched at the table, missed, and sprawled in a convulsing heap.
Fargo glanced at the. woman. He thought she would scream, but all she did was nod a few times, then go back to her knitting as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He looked at the rifles again. One was an old flintlock. The other was his Henry. And near them, hanging from a peg, was his gunbelt.
Dropping the knife, Fargo strapped the Colt around his waist. He picked up the Henry and worked the lever to feed a round into the chamber. Outside, someone was shouting. He turned to leave, and caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror. He almost didn’t recognize himself. His back was crisscrossed with angry welts and vicious cuts. Dried blood caked his shoulders and chest. In his bare feet, and with his hair disheveled, he looked like a wild man from the remote depths of the woods.
“Pa! Pa! Come a running! That Fargo fella has escaped!”
Without a pause, Fargo walked on out.
Billy Swill had been doing all the yelling. “You!” he exclaimed, and flashed a hand for his revolver.
Fargo already had the Henry to his shoulder. He fired as Billy drew, fired as Billy tried to take aim, fired as Billy’s legs caved, and as he d
id a slow pirouette to the earth.
Doors were opening all around the circle and Swills were rushing out with weapons in their hand. A rifle spat lead. A pistol banged twice off to the right.
Lead sizzled the air as Fargo fed a new round into the Henry and advanced. The tall Swill whose name he had never learned was firing at him from the corner of a cabin. He snapped a shot, and when the tall man tottered forward, mortally stricken, he fired twice more for good measure.
Around the corral rushed Harvey Swill. He paused to take precise aim and in doing so made it that much easier for Fargo to drill a .44 slug through the center of his forehead.
Fargo shifted to the right. Gus had burst from another cabin and was charging toward him, holding a shotgun. They fired simultaneously. Gus rushed his shot and fired high, but Fargo’s round split the heavyset’s Swill’s head like a sledge cleaving a rotten melon. Gus Swill toppled like a fallen tree.
More gunfire blasted.
Clancy Swill was at the south end of the corral. He had climbed to the top rail and was firing from the hip.
Fargo filled the Henry’s sights with Clancy’s silhouette. He pulled the trigger, pumped the lever, then stroked the trigger again. He saw Clancy jerk once, jerk twice, and keel off the rail.
Quiet fell. Fargo slowly lowered his rifle. He tried to remember how many he had disposed of, and who might be left. A reminder came in the form of a pair of enormous arms that swooped around him from behind, pinning his own arms to his sides. Suddenly he was in the grip of a human vise.
“I’ll kill you!” Leon Swill ranted. “Kill you, kill you, kill you!”
Fargo let go of the Henry and flicked his hand to his Colt. It cleared leather as Leon lifted him off the ground and shook him like a bear shaking a badger. Bending his wrist, Fargo jammed the Colt’s muzzle against the man-mountain’s groin, thumbed back the hammer, and fired. Leon howled and his grip slackened. Enough for Fargo to wrench partway around and jam the barrel into Leon’s left eye. “Kill this,” he said, and fired.
For long moments afterward Fargo stood breathing deep of the crisp night air. At last it was over, truly over. They were all dead. Or were they? He heard footsteps and whirled, but it was only several women. They stopped, too timid to come nearer.
“Are you all right, mister?” one asked.
Fargo slid the Colt into his holster. His back was throbbing and his legs had grown weak. “I could use some help, ladies.”
They came to him, then, and supported him as Fargo moved toward the bedraggled figure by the stakes. “She saved me,” he said, and knelt to turn Suzanne Maxwell over. Her head lolled against his leg. Gripping her wrist, he felt for a pulse, and when the truth dawned, he threw back his head and shook the stars with his rage. “Nooooooo!”
The three woman pressed back in fear.
“Are you sure you’re all right, mister?” asked the same one as before.
Skye Fargo looked up, his eyes glistening in the lantern light. “No,” he said softly. Cradling Suzanne Maxwell in his lap, he bowed his head. “I may never be all right again.”
LOOKING FORWARD!
The following is the opening
section from the next novel in the exciting
Trailsman series from Signet:
THE TRAILSMAN #248
Six-gun Justice
Northern California, 1860—
The lust for gold brings the
death of honor, and the muzzle
of a gun brings the birth of justice.
An eagle wheeled through the sky far overhead, and Skye Fargo reined the Ovaro to a halt to watch. His lake-blue eyes shone with his appreciation of the scene’s beauty. Not only the eagle, this northern California landscape itself was one of the prettiest things Fargo had ever witnessed. The highest, snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas loomed over smaller mountains whose slopes were covered with thick, blue-green forests of pine and cedar and spruce. Fast-running, sparkling creeks twisted through the valleys. Over all of it was the blue vault of the sky, dotted here and there with puffy white clouds. Fargo thumbed back his hat and smiled. He patted the sleek black shoulder of the big paint horse. Up here in the high country, it was hard to tell that Man had ever touched this land.
Then Fargo stiffened as gunshots began to blast in the distance.
He should have known better than to start thinking about how pristine and untouched this land was. He knew good and well that a little over a dozen years earlier, thousands of men had flooded into northern California, drawn by the lure of gold. Ever since James Marshall had noticed something shining in the waters of the creek beside Sutter’s Mill, nothing had been the same here.
Fargo listened to the shots, his keen ears picking up the sounds of at least three different weapons. From the way the reports were spaced, he could tell that one person was fighting back against several. He had ridden into the Sierra Nevadas just a couple of days earlier, so he had no idea who was shooting at each other, but he knew he didn’t like the odds. He heeled the Ovaro into motion and headed down the slope of the hill on which he had paused.
There was a road at the bottom of the hill. Fargo turned to the north and urged the horse into a faster gait, just short of a gallop. He didn’t want to ride blindly into what was sure to be a dangerous setting. As he drew closer to the sound of shooting, he eased the Colt in its holster on his right hip, then drew the Henry rifle from the sheath attached to his saddle.
The road took a sharp turn and plunged down to cross a creek at the bottom of a little draw. A wooden bridge spanned the creek, or at least, it would have if someone had not come along and chopped holes in the timbers. At the side of the road just short of the bridge, a buggy with a black canopy lay on its side. The wheel that was on the top side of the overturned buggy was still spinning. One of the mules hitched to the buggy was down, motionless and probably dead. The other was still in its harness.
Fargo surveyed the scene as he pulled the Ovaro to a stop. He saw puffs of gunsmoke coming from behind a cluster of rocks on the creek bank, not far from the ruined bridge. Whoever had been in the wrecked buggy must have taken refuge there. More shots came from the trees along the slope to Fargo’s right. Those would be the bushwhackers, Fargo decided.
To his eyes, the story told by what he saw was clear as day. The bushwhackers had chopped holes in the bridge, then opened fire on the buggy as it started down the hill. The buggy’s driver hadn’t seen the ruined bridge until it was too late to stop without wrecking the vehicle. He must have been thrown clear in the crash, and he had scurried into the rocks, forting up there to put up a fight.
Even without knowing the driver of the buggy, Fargo was certain whose side he was on in this fight. He swung a buckskin-clad leg over the Ovaro’s back and dropped to the ground.
Holding the Henry slanted across his chest, Fargo moved into the trees. Rifles cracked and pistols barked as the bushwhackers continued to pour lead down at their intended victim. From the bottom of the slope, a heavier roar sounded as the man in the rocks fought back. He was using an old percussion pistol, Fargo judged, and the gun wouldn’t be very effective against the sort of odds he faced.
Fargo was going to do what he could to even those odds.
He spotted a man crouched behind a tree, firing a pistol down toward the creek. Fargo stopped and took aim, then squeezed the trigger of the Henry. The rifle bucked against his shoulder. He saw the bushwhacker’s hat fly into the air and heard the startled yelp that the man let out. Then Fargo was on the move again, darting behind the thick trunk of a tall pine.
He crouched and used the underbrush for cover as he worked his way along the slope. The man whose hat he had shot off yelled, “Hey! There’s somebody else up here!”
Fargo bellied down onto the ground as he located another of the bushwhackers. The man was between a couple of rocks. From this angle, Fargo didn’t have a clean shot at him. But there was more than one way to skin a catamount.
Fargo snugged the butt of th
e Henry against his shoulder and began to fire as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever. The slugs smashed into one of the rocks that hid the second bushwhacker and ricocheted into the space between the boulders. The gunman howled in surprise and fear, and the narrow part of his body that Fargo could see disappeared from view as the man hunted better cover.
Something crashed through the brush behind Fargo. He rolled over and reached down with his right hand to palm the Colt from its holster. He saw a flicker of black and white through a gap in the brush and recognized it as a cowhide vest. Fargo triggered two quick shots in that direction, then rolled again and came up on his feet. He darted behind a tree as bullets smacked into the trunk, sending slivers of bark flying into the air.
“Who is that son of a bitch?” one of the bushwhackers shouted.
“I don’t know! I never got a good look at him!”
Fargo holstered the Colt and went to hands and knees to crawl along the slope. He came to a sharp drop-off and slid down it, landing in some fallen pine boughs at the bottom. He worked back toward the road a short distance, then picked up a broken branch and flung it through the air so that it made a racket in the undergrowth to his left. When the bushwhackers fired toward the sound, Fargo sent three fast shots screaming through the trees around them.
“There’s more than one of them! Damn it, I’m gettin’ out of here.”
He heard more sounds of men struggling through the thick undergrowth. If he had wanted to, tracking them would have been no trouble. But he was content to let the three men go. He had spoiled their ambush without being forced to kill anyone, and rescuing the driver of the wrecked buggy was all he had set out to do.
Fargo waited until he heard hoofbeats receding in the distance. Then he waited some more, just to make sure the bushwhackers weren’t trying some sort of trick. When he was satisfied they were really gone, he walked back to the road and whistled for the Ovaro. The horse came trotting down the hill to him.