Fargo (A Neal Fargo Adventure #1)

by John Benteen

  Fargo pushed Juanita into another room. Crystal, he thought, as he closed the door behind them, would learn about Fierro. For that matter, Fierro would learn about her. “Hell,” he said aloud, “they’re made for each other.” Then, as Juanita threatened to become dead weight again, he sat her down on the bed the room contained.

  She was staring at him. “You…you gave me away. You gave me to Hernandez.”

  “It was the only way,” Fargo said. “Don’t you see? I had to stay alive, get my guns back. Otherwise there was no hope for you.”

  Juanita rubbed her bruised face dazedly. “I didn’t know…I thought…Tomorrow… Tomorrow, he was going to turn me over to his army. Somehow, I was going to get my hands on a gun, I was―”

  “Hush,” Fargo said. “Hush. Forget about that now. It’s all over. You’ll ride out of here with me to Chihuahua. Maybe to El Paso. Anyhow, it’s all over now.”

  Juanita stared at him, yet, as if she could not believe it. Then, suddenly, comprehension at last came into her eyes. All at once there were tears on her cheeks. She clung to him. “Oh, Fargo! It is over.” And she buried her face against his chest, crying.

  They sat like that for a long time, Fargo holding her. From down the hall, there came a scream: Crystal.

  Fargo did not look around.

  Presently Fargo eased Juanita back on the bed. She lay there, exhausted, eyes closed. “Fargo,” she murmured.

  “What you need,” Fargo said, “is a drink.” He got up, went across the hall into the office. In what had been Delaney’s desk, he found a bottle. He uncorked it, took a long drink. Then he went back to the bedroom.

  Just inside the door, he stopped short. Juanita still lay on the bed, but now her breasts rose and fell rhythmically, her breathing coarse and regular. Exhaustion, the release of tension, had claimed her.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Fargo said. “She’s asleep.” Then he laughed softly, sat down on the bed beside her and took another drink.

  He could wait.

  The train of mules, each laden with an enormous burden of silver, made a long dark snake on the floor of the canyon. The ameros, Indians from the mine who would serve as drivers, were lined up alongside the coiling column.

  The Tarahumara, Sebastian, resplendent in captured charro clothes and almost more guns than he could carry, waited at the porch of the headquarters house with two saddled horses. When Fargo and Juanita emerged, he smiled, teeth shining in the morning sunlight. Sebastian was rich and full of honors; a Villista; a happy man.

  Fargo grinned at him. “Buenos dias, Sebastian.”

  “Good morning, Senor Fargo.” Sebastian stepped aside as Fargo gathered up the reins. His eyes ran appreciatively over Juanita.

  In the saddle, Fargo looked at Sebastian. It was time to start, and there were no soldiers here, nor Fierro. Fargo frowned, looked at the railroad watch. “Where are the others?”

  Sebastian pointed. “Out on the flats.”

  Fargo turned in the saddle. “Wait here,” he said to Juanita. He touched spurs to his mount, loped past the mine to the sprawling, shimmering, sun-baked flats where Sam Delaney had been put to death by Hernandez.

  Hernandez, Fargo thought, mouth quirking. Hernandez, who had been captured cowering under the machinery in the smelter, hands over his head like a child expecting a beating. The great bandit, the challenger to Villa, Hernandez.

  The man had been locked in the stonewalled mine jail for two nights now. Fargo had wondered why Fierro had saved him for so long, when The Butcher had executed all the other captured men with his own hand. Now, as he rode to the flats, he guessed the answer.

  The big roan that had belonged to Meredith snorted as Fargo reined it in. Fargo stood up in the stirrups, uncased his binoculars and put them to his eyes. What was happening out there on the flats swam into clear, dreadful focus.

  Thirty mounted men in ranks of five curbed restive horses on the far side of the flats. In the center of the level area, something not much bigger than a gourd rested on the ground. It had, however, a face and a mouth—a mouth opened, and screaming. It was Hernandez, buried up to his neck in the ground, in a hole he had dug himself.

  Fargo glassed the other waiting, watching soldiers. The binoculars came to rest on Fierro. Beside him, wrists tied to the saddle horn, Crystal sat slump-shouldered, staring dully into space.

  Even from this distance, Fargo could hear Hernandez screaming. It was a thin, reedy sound. It was obscene in all the sunlit, fresh beauty of the morning.

  Then Fierro drew his right-hand gun. He held it pointed straight up.

  Fargo thought of Sam Delaney.

  He felt no regret or sorrow for Hernandez as he pulled the roan around. Galloping back toward the mine, toward the mule train of silver, and Juanita waiting patiently beside Sebastian, he knew that it was all finished now, and that Fierro and the army would have no trouble in catching up.

  He came alongside Juanita. “All right he said. “Next stop Chihuahua.” Then he rode to the head of the column. He caught the eye of the chief attiero and took the cavalry hat from his head and held it high. Then he brought it down in a sweeping gesture. His voice rang out across the canyon, “Move out!” Then, like a sluggish snake, the column edged into motion. Fargo gathered rein, curbed the roan, and watched the treasure-laden mules file by, on their way to Villa.

  About the Author

  Ben Haas aka John Benteen was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1926. His imagination was inspired by the stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction as told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. Ben’s father was also a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres, “…so I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.”

  Largely self-educated (he had to drop out of college in order to support his family), Ben wrote his first story, a pulp short for a western magazine, when he was just eighteen. But when he was drafted into the Army, his dreams of becoming a writer were put on hold. He served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and saw action in the Philippines.

  Returning home to Charlotte (and later Sumter, in South Carolina) in 1946, Ben married Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh four years later. The father of three sons (Joel, Michael and John), Ben was working for a steel company when he sold his first novel in 1961. The acceptance coincided with being laid off, and thereafter he wrote full time.

  A prolific writer who would eventually pen some 130 books under his own and a variety of pen-names, Ben wrote almost twenty-four hours a day. “I tried to write 5000 words or more every day, scrupulous in maintaining authenticity,” he later said.

  Ben wanted to be a mainstream writer, but needed a way to finance himself between serious books, and so he became a paperback writer. Ben’s early pen names include Ben Elliott (his grandmother’s maiden name), who wrote Westerns for Ace; and Sam Webster, who wrote five books for Monarch. As Ken Barry he turned out racy paperback originals for Beacon with titles such as The Love Itch and Executive Boudoir. But his agent was not happy about his decision to enter the western market, and suggested he represent himself on those sales. Ben had sent a trial novel to Harry Shorten of Tower Books. Ben’s family remembers it being A Hell of A Way to Die, written for Tower’s new Lassiter series. It was published in 1969, and editor Shorten told his new author to create a western series of his own. The result was Fargo.

  The success of Fargo led to the Sundance series. Jim Sundance is a half-Cheyenne gunslinger who takes on the toughest jobs in order to raise funds to fight the corrupt Indian Ring back in Washington.

  The short-lived John Cutler series followed, and then perhaps Ben’s crowning achievement, the Rancho Bravo novels, published under the name Thorne Douglas.

  Ben Haas died from a heart attack in New York City after attending a Literary Guild dinner in 1977. He was just fifty-one.

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