by John Benteen
Fargo took the weapons, not betraying the almost knee-shaking relief he felt at having his hands on guns again. He buckled the pistol belt around his waist, looped the bandoliers over his shoulder, slung the shotgun. “I’ll follow your orders, General.”
“If you do, you shall someday be a wealthy and powerful man.” Hernandez looked from Meredith to Fargo. “Now—you are dismissed, all of you.” His eyes ran over Juanita and be grinned like a jackal. “I have other matters to attend to.”
When they were outside, Meredith let out a long breath of relief. “Well, I brought it off for you, Fargo. It’s you and me, now.” He lowered his voice. “We both got to look sharp and keep our eyes open. Hernandez needs me to get out the silver. All the same, you never can tell with a man like him. I feel a lot better having you with me. It’s worth the ten per cent to me. You see? I’m sticking to my promise. You’ll get five per cent more than you asked for. That’s how much it’s worth to have you on my side.” He squeezed Fargo’s arm. “Fargo, there’s so much silver in this mine you wouldn’t believe it. We play our cards right and watch each other’s back so these Mexes can’t stick knives into it, and we’ll be rolling in the stuff.”
“When do you divide up the first time?” Fargo asked.
“We’re going to coin the silver—Hernandez is going to issue his own pesos. We’ll be the only outfit in this region dealing in real silver instead of paper money. As it comes off the machine, we divvy up. Hernandez gets two-thirds, I get one-third, and you get ten per cent of my third. By two weeks from now, you’ll have ten thousand dollars in silver, maybe more. Until then, just, for God’s sake, keep your nose clean, eh?”
“Don’t worry,” Fargo said. “I didn’t come all this way to go home with empty pockets.” He looked at the throng of soldiers, still celebrating their victory. Many of them were very drunk and there were several fights going on. “Right now, I’m going to hole up and get some sleep and stay out of the way. These buscaderos have had too much of a taste of gringo blood. They might want some more.”
“That’s a good idea,” Meredith said. “I—” He broke off. From within the house came a shrill, ululating scream. It shivered the air above the noise of the celebration for a moment, then died to a kind of sob. Juanita. “Go on,” Meredith said.
“I’m going,” Fargo said, and he picked his way carefully across the yard, stepping clear of any possible trouble, to the shack he had shared with Morse Clark. Behind him, the scream rose once again; but he did not look back.
In the shack, he stretched out on the bunk. Outside, the noise swelled to a hound-pack-baying sound of whoops and howls. The Mexicans were pulling out all the stops. Fargo found cigars in his war bag, which, amazingly, had not been looted, and lit one. He lay there smoking, watching the smoke drift up.
Well, he had brought it off. He had his guns back. No Winchester, no horse, but the shotgun, the pistol, the knife. They would have to be enough.
He had no intention of staying here; none of being Hernandez’s lieutenant nor Meredith’s sidekick. He had conned them into trusting him, but he had no trust in them. They were losers, both of them. If they were winners, it would have been different. If Hernandez had been content to take the silver and split it up as it came from the mine, it would have been different, even. But Hernandez had it in his head to challenge Villa, and that was very, very bad medicine. A man like Hernandez had no business challenging Villa, and when Villa got wind of all this silver down here for the taking from a man who intended to put him out of business, being linked up with Hernandez was going to be damned unhealthy. Villa would chew Hernandez up and spit him out
If Fargo had a credo, it was this: be on the winning side.
He thought, too, about Juanita. Well, that had been necessary. Not only to save his skin, but hers. If he could get away from here, he had plans to come back for her; only for the moment had he had to sacrifice her to make escape possible. But if he had allowed himself to be killed like Delaney, there would have been no hope for her at all. She would be roughly used for a while, but at least she would stay alive; and that was better than being dead. Meanwhile, he had to get some rest. He was exhausted and knew it. He did not want to waste any time and it was going to be hard and dangerous and he needed to be fresh.
He had locked the door to the shack. With his hand on his pistol, he let sleep claim him.
When he awakened, it was dark. The railroad watch told him that it was nine o’clock. Outside, the sound of revelry went on unabated: laughter, drunken shouting, the firing of shots, the twang of guitar music. He checked the loads in the Colt and in the sawed-off Fox. He also made sure that the Batangas knife was secure in its sheath. If he were going to have any chance at all, it was now, with most of the army drunk, Hernandez engrossed with Juanita and Meredith probably in the hay with Crystal.
But when he unlocked the door, he found that it was not going to be quite that easy; Hernandez was not that big a fool. Four guards, only moderately drunk, were sitting outside the shack, passing a bottle around. When Fargo emerged, all four of them got to their feet.
“Hombres,” Fargo said. “What are you doing here? I’m one of you, now.”
“Maybe so.” Their leader was a sweaty, dirty, scar-faced man built like a brick blockhouse. He dragged his hand across his mouth, looked at Fargo with eyes resentful at having missed the celebration. “All the same, General Hernandez says we’re to watch you.” He tilted the muzzle of his rifle up. “So we watch you. Where you go, we go.”
Fargo shrugged. “So we get to know each other very well, then. Come. I’m going to see if I can find something to eat.”
They kept close behind him as he went to the mess shack. There were tortillas and some unnamable stew; he was genuinely hungry and he ate well, but not enough to slow him down. The whole time, they watched him sullenly: big scar-face; a slender, handsome boy of twenty; a cruel-faced Yaqui; and a sad-looking, gray-haired man who would have been more at home tending his crop of corn than riding with revolutionaries.
“Now,” Fargo said, rising, “since I’m one of you, I think I’ll join the celebration.” He left the mess shack and strode to the bonfires that were still blazing around the corrals where men danced and shouted and drank. The four stuck to him like plaster.
They stuck to him like that wherever he went. He threaded in and out of the crowd; once, when a man tried to start a fight with him, they intervened: apparently, they were his bodyguard as well as his jailers. It became obvious to Fargo that he was not going to escape tonight unless he killed them all.
He wandered, seemingly aimless, in reality looking for something. There were saddled horses everywhere, but a horse was not what he wanted. The men trailed him as he circled the horses, cast sidelong glances into the corrals. At last he saw it: the mule he had bought in El Paso. Catching his scent, it even came toward him across the corral, thrust its muzzle over the rail. Fargo stroked it. No saddle, no bridle. That was going to make it tough. But he had ridden the mule long enough with only a lead hackamore to know that it would respond to knee pressure, almost like a cutting horse. He knew it, and it knew him.
A great deal of tequila was drunk. The noise around the fires began to ebb; now there were snoring bodies everywhere. A few diehards sat drinking and singing around a guitar player here, a teller of tall tales there. Fargo sat with them and partook of a bottle of tequila. His plan was formed now, and he began to drink.
There was one thing about drinking, he thought with gallows humor. If he died tonight, he’d die numb.
The four guards watched him, whatever he did, drinking sparingly themselves. They were obviously hoping he would violate one of Hernandez’s commandments, give them a chance to shoot him. Then they would be rid of their commission and, at the same time, have had the satisfaction of wiping out a gringo. Fargo paid them no attention. Instead, steadily and determinedly, he drank. From time to time, he offered them the bottle, but they refused, drinking from their own.
Fargo felt the tequila, but not as much as he appeared to. His capacity for holding alcohol was enormous, developed over the years. He had met few men he could not drink under the table, while still keeping his wits about him. And sometimes now he managed to dispose of the liquor without being noticed; but that was not often. He had to take most of it into his belly, yet keep his wits and body reasonably proof against its effects.
He saw that they watched him drink and judged how much he took. He saw, too, that they could not conceive of a man drinking that much and not falling flat on his face. In truth, the alcohol was getting to him; he would be seeing double soon. But he could combat that by keeping one eye carefully closed when the time came. And he knew from experience that, no matter how much of the stuff he had in him, he would not pass out; nor would the part of his brain that mattered lose its ability to function like clockwork.
Now it was three in the morning, the time of the lowest ebb of human vitality. Only one or two soldiers were still awake, and they were groggy. The four guards were yawning. But it was not only weariness that dulled them; it was the certainty that Fargo was stinking drunk. After that much tequila, he had to be.
Then Fargo got to his feet. He staggered and lurched, once fell to his knees, got up unsteadily. He threw the empty tequila bottle aside. Aimlessly, he weaved across the open area between the corrals. The guards sighed, looked at each other, and followed him.
At the pole gate of the corral that held the mule, Fargo was massively, disgustingly sick. Everything in his stomach came out, by design; he wanted to rid himself of as much of the tequila as possible before he made the break. The guards muttered in contempt and revulsion.
Fargo, vomit dribbling from his chin, leaned against the gate, stared at the guards. The mule came, nuzzled him, and Fargo’s left hand crept up and seized one of the animal’s ears. Held it tightly. He mumbled something soft, incoherent, to the mule, and then began to giggle at the guards. Indeed, they swam in his vision, but when he closed one eye, they came into focus. The guards stood there, grouped, watching him. Scar-face said, “All right, hombre. Let the animals alone. You are not to ride—”
“But…ole friend here, you see?” Fargo’s Spanish was slurred. “He an’ I came long way together. Best damn mule in world.” He reached across his body with his right hand, as if to stroke the animal’s muzzle. His left hand tightened its grip on the ear. Then, in a blurred movement, he tilted the slung shotgun under his armpit upside-down, pointed it and pulled both triggers.
The mule jumped at the roar. Fargo held it tightly. The four guards screamed as eighteen buckshot sprayed into them; Scar-face crumpled; the young one lay kicking, holding his belly; the Yaqui raised his gun, then fell over; the old man pointed a hand at Fargo, whispered something and died. Fargo saw all that in the instant before he went up and over the rails of the gate, sweeping them out of their sockets as he landed, still holding the mule’s ear.
He was on the animal’s back in a flash. His thighs clamped its barrel; he hit its rump with the shotgun. The mule brayed, jumped the last two rails of the gate, and, as Fargo hit it again, it landed running.
The killing and the rest had not taken over a minute. Around the fires, a few men scrambled to their feet, looking around blankly. Fargo drew his pistol, bent low over the mule, and went pounding across the open. He shot one man who loomed in front of him, the hollow-point bullet blowing the fellow’s face apart. The mule soared over one of the bonfires, landed hard, gathered itself and kept on running. Now there was confused shouting; suddenly guns began to crackle. Somebody jumped up in front of the mule and the animal knocked him down, trampled him as it galloped on.
It responded well to his knees. It zigzagged in the moonless dark, out of the firelight now. Fargo caught a glimpse of a startled figure in a rectangle of light that was the wide flung door of the main house: Hernandez. Then that was past. Feeling no fear, too drunk for that, full of wild exhilaration, he thumbed loads out of the bandolier, crammed them into the sawed-off. Lead whined around him, now, as he pounded down the canyon, but with the tequila in him, he felt immortal.
He still had danger ahead of him. The barrier had been blown, once again sealed the bottleneck of the canyon with a pile of rubble. There would be guards on it; not many, and those not very alert. But the gunfire down the canyon would have awakened them, and they would be waiting.
He was in the clear now, past the mine complex. The mule’s hooves drummed steadily. No more lead flew around him; those sober enough to mount and ride would be saddling horses. He was not worried about them. It was the men at the barrier who worried him. Thank God, he thought, the night was dark as a pocket’s inside!
Now the canyon began to close. He was riding between the walls of the gorge; the barrier loomed ahead, thirty high-piled feet of boulders and rubble. Men stirred on top of it, skylined, a half dozen of them, sleepily trying to pierce the darkness with their eyes, confused by this disturbance inside, rather than outside their rampart
When he was within range, Fargo began to fire with the shotgun.
This was why he loved it so. It was the closest thing to real artillery a man could carry on his person. He fired one barrel at a time, sweeping the top of the barrier with buckshot as he galloped toward it, practiced fingers cramming in new rounds, firing again. Men yelled and dropped flat; with that much lead flying around him, any sensible man took cover.
Then the great wall of rubble was there. Fargo, still firing, kicked the mule. Willingly, it began to scramble upward, sure-footed, making light of rolling rock and slippery surfaces that would have broken a horse’s leg in a minute. As it heaved and struggled, gunfire erupted from the top of the barrier. Fargo methodically, fired a barrel of the Fox at each flash. At this distance it was impossible to miss with nine buckshot, even hardly aiming, even with the mule lurching beneath him. Men screamed. Four flashes, four caterwauling yells and there was no more shooting as the other guards, surprised and terrified, held their fire. Still spending ammo recklessly, Fargo kept raking the top of the barrier.
Then the mule had crested; here was the moment of maximum danger. He was skylined. Fargo bent low; and as he clung to the animal’s neck, he was actually laughing. Partly that was drunkenness; partly it was sheer joy at fighting, at throwing his life on the line as he had many times thrown dice on green felt. He even had time to wonder quickly how people who had never done this could say that they were alive. Then the bullet hit him.
It was a random slug; and it caught him in the shoulder, hard, and if it had not been for his iron thighs gripping the mule, it would have unseated him. He felt warm blood pouring wetly across his torso, but there was no pain: shock quenched it; the pain would come later.
He kept on shooting, vaguely aware that he was spending too many rounds. The mule was slipping, sliding, down the other side of the barrier, now. Fargo clung to its neck, quit firing. The mule fell to its front knees once, scrambled up. Lead whined around him; but they had no gun flashes to use as target now. Then the mule was on the level. Holding the wound in his shoulder with one palm, trying to stop the flow of blood as best he could, Fargo kicked the animal mercilessly. It lined out, belly down, running. And now, he thought vaguely, he was safe. It would be a long time before they could get horses over that barrier. He was safe—if the bullet he’d taken didn’t kill him.
Swaying dizzily, holding tightly, Fargo somehow found strength to laugh again. He was still chuckling crazily when the mule, slowed now to a trot, began to climb the pass out of the enormous canyon.
Chapter Nine
The rest of it, for a long time, was like a dream. Vaguely, Fargo remembered halting the blown animal; and, while it breathed, he ripped his shirt to shreds, awkwardly fashioned a tight, compressive bandage over the bullet hole in his shoulder. Having been shot before, he could assess the wound. It was not really severe, if—if infection did not set in. If loss of blood did not weaken him so profoundly that, a fugitive in the wilderness without food
or water, this weakness made the difference between survival and death by hunger or thirst. Or if, having to fight again, the stiffness in one arm did not slow him fatally.
There was no doubt about it. His margin for survival was very small. But then, it always had been.
Cresting the pass, he put the mule into the wind-warped pines, headed north. The tequila had worn off, now, and so had shock; and at every jarring step the animal took, it was as if somebody had plunged a red hot branding iron against his flesh. But he was used to pain; he bore it stoically. When the mule had rested enough, he put it into a gallop again, though that hurt terribly.
It went on gallantly through the pines, across rocks, as dawn streaked the sky, gave way to full daylight. They would, perhaps, be on his trail by now; or maybe they would let him go. Fargo didn’t know which, but he dared take no chances. He pushed the mule very hard, perhaps too hard.
Exhausted, it made its first false step—and its last one. Fargo, living in a dizzy half-world by this time, was aware of its agonized bray as, crossing a nest of boulders, it suddenly sank to its knees. He was aware, too, of a dry sound like the popping of a stick.
He reeled off the mule, keeping a cautionary hold on its ear. Braying pitifully, it tried to scramble to its feet, succeeded. But Fargo, through blurred eyes, saw the crazy, dangling angle of its right foreleg. It had stepped into a crack and the torque of its fall had broken that leg.
Its agonized sound made echoes ring in the silent mountains. It capered crazily on three legs. Fargo stared at it through squinted eyes. It pranced weirdly, the front leg dangling. Fargo muttered a curse and drew the Colt. He took careful aim. He fired. The thunder of the shot rang like a tocsin through the mountains. The mule snorted and went down, shot through the heart.