by Jon Sharpe
“Aye, but he best sing small or I’ll row him up Salt River.”
When Rivera’s little show failed to rile the Americans sufficiently, Lieutenant Juan Aragon waded in.
“This vast land called New Mexico—the norteamericanos declared it a territory in 1850. But centuries before, it was a northern province of New Spain. Santa Fe hosted kings and queens before the dirt-grubbing ‘pilgrims’ cleared the first trees beside the Atlantic Ocean. Now these unwashed pigs turn our beautiful women into whores and spit their filthy tobacco on ancient floors of marble.”
“Cut the waterworks,” Booger scoffed despite Fargo’s warning, for Captain Cup had him in his grip. “New Spain my hairy white ass! The Mexers chased you Dagos out first. It was them pepper-guts we stole New Mexico from, not you prissy Espanish fops. All you silly sons a’ bitches done was chase around lookin’ for cities of gold. You stupid bastards couldn’t locate your own assholes with two hands and a lantern.”
“Sew up your damn lips,” Fargo muttered. “We don’t want the fandango now.”
But by now a drunken Booger was wound up to a fare-thee-well, and his penchant for bad puns got the best of him.
“I seen all three of you catamites sneering at the whores last night. S’matter—is poking soiled doves Benicia dignity?”
A cold hand gripped Fargo’s heart as all three Spaniards reacted as if they’d been slapped hard. As one man they rose and hurried upstairs.
McDade spoke first. “Booger McTeague, you drunken Irish sot. Now they know that we know.”
“Are you soft twixt your head handles?” Deke demanded. “We’re in for a heap o’ misery now.”
Booger, instantly sobered by the magnitude of what he had just done, looked thoroughly chastened—a rare state for him. “Aye, old Booger just screwed the pooch.”
“Never mind,” Fargo snapped. “There’ll be time to shoot you later. Boys, it’s come down to the nut-cuttin’ now. I don’t think they’ll try to kill us tonight. They’ll wait until we’re all on the trail again and they can turn all their guns on us. So the four of us are going to light a shuck out of Las Cruces tonight. Deke?”
“Yo!”
“The mercado should still be open. I want you to skedaddle over there and buy a full gunnysack of that chili powder that damn near blinded me.”
“But—”
“Stick your damn ‘butts’ back in your pocket. All three of you, listen up. We’re in a mighty dirty corner now. I’m making the medicine and you’re taking it—I want no questions. Just do what you’re told. Booger. . . .”
“Yes, Skye,” the miscreant said meekly.
“You know where Cherokee Bob and All Behind Him are holed up. Ride out and tell them to head for Diablo Canyon—Bob knows where it is. Tell them we’re up against it bad and they have to go now and wait for us there.”
Fargo turned to McDade. “Bitch, there’s a gun and ammo shop over on Silver Street. The owner is a big Swede named Olney. The place will be closed now, but Olney lives in a room at the rear of the shop. Knock on the back door and tell him Fargo sent you—he’ll open back up. I’ll make out a list of the ammo we need.”
The stakes, Fargo realized, could not be higher. One stupid, drunken pun had just changed everything—perhaps even crippled a young nation. One careless word, the wrong word, and now the danger clock was set ticking.
Death had still been a distant prospect before Booger’s drunken slip. Now it was as real as a man beside them, one breathing down their necks and liable to strike at any moment.
And if Death succeeded this time, far more was at stake than the lives of four men.
17
The clock in the city plaza chimed two a.m.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Fargo told Booger. “I told Deke and McDade to sneak out by midnight and wait for us near the livery. We want to get a good lead on Quintana’s bunch. We’ve got about seventy miles of hard riding across one of the worst jornadas in the territory. We’ll have to spell our mounts often, and they won’t hold up in that desert sun if we rate them faster than a trot.”
Fargo turned the lamp down and crossed to the window casement. He eased it open just enough to glance down.
“He’s still there. Quintana is determined to keep the net around us.”
Fargo turned the wick up again. Booger sat on the edge of his bed and built himself a smoke.
“The hell’s the deal with this Diablo Canyon?”
“It’s a red-rock canyon due west of Las Cruces. I learned about it during a scout for the Army Topographical Corps. Navajos use it for a burial ground.”
“Katy Christ! You know what happens to hair faces when the featherheads catch ’em in their sacred ground. That’s heap bad medicine.”
“Yeah,” Fargo acknowledged, “but it’s a chance we’re going to take. Diablo Canyon is perfect for what I got in mind.”
Fargo crossed to the door and slowly eased it open a crack.
“They’ve still got a guard by the stairs, too,” he told Booger.
“Happens we do manage to sneak out, Skye, you know we could just liberate their horses.”
“What good would it do? The viceroy is rich enough to buy every horse in the area. Remember, we’re not trying to escape—we have to lock horns with them if we mean to put the kibosh on their plot.”
Booger saw the truth of this and nodded. “Yes, for we have not one jot of proof we can take to the law or the army. We scatter their horses and we’re just putting off a nasty job.”
Booger licked the paper and quirled the ends of his cigarette. “Fargo, this child swears by all things holy—I’m powerful sorry for saying ‘Benicia’ in front of the garlics.”
“Tell you the truth,” Fargo replied, “I’m almost glad you did. I’ve been waffling about how to play this deal. Now you’ve forced their hand and ours. But let’s stow the chin music and make our move.”
Earlier, Bitch Creek McDade had delivered a pasteboard box filled with the cartons of ammo he had purchased. Fargo picked it up from the dresser and hefted it.
“We can’t risk taking on that hallway guard,” he said. “It would cause a commotion. And we can’t shoot at the one below our window, either.”
Booger caught on. “So we conk him on the cabeza with that box.”
Fargo nodded. “It’s plenty heavy. First let’s rustle up a rope and get it ready.”
Slicing their linen sheets into long strips, they knotted them together and tied one end to the steam radiator under their window. Fargo slowly eased the casement open and Booger handed him the box. The Spanish guard stood just to one side of the window and about ten feet out from the building.
“It’s a tricky angle,” Fargo muttered. “I got one chance to do it right or our cake is dough.”
Fargo would have to push the box out as he dropped it, skewing it slightly left at the same time. He worked all the vectors out in his mind.
“Let ’er rip,” Booger whispered.
Fargo released the ammo-weighted box. There was a hard whumph from below, a surprised grunt, and a second later the sentry lay heaped in the grass.
“I’ll go down first,” Fargo said, throwing the rope out and tossing a leg over the sill. “For Christ sakes wait until I’m clear before you start down. If that rope breaks and you land on me, I’ll be turned into a damned accordion.”
When both men were safely on the ground, Booger gathered up the scattered boxes of ammo while Fargo quickly checked the guard.
“Broke his neck,” Fargo said. “He’s dead.”
“Serves the bastard right. They mean to kill us.”
“From here on out, no pity and no mercy,” Fargo agreed. “These ain’t just crooks—these jackleg soldiers are foreign invaders attacking a sovereign nation. I wish somebody else could skin this grizzly, but it’s come down to us. C’mon.”
>
“What if there was guards on Deke and Bitch?” Booger fretted as the two men headed for the livery on the outskirts of Las Cruces.
“I hate to say it,” Fargo replied, “but that’s not our lookout. I like both of them, but every man will have to pull his own freight from here on out. These Spaniards appear to have poor trail-craft, but even a blind hog could follow the trail we’re about to leave—and they will follow it. We got one helluva fight brewing, Booger, against a passel of well-disciplined marksmen who know how to hold and squeeze.”
“I know,” Booger said joyfully. “Ain’t it the berries?”
Fargo grinned in the dark. “It’s a privilege to be here,” he agreed.
• • •
Fargo gazed out across the desolate, shimmering vista. A distant spine of barren mountains seemed to melt and re-form in the blistering heat.
“Good God Almighty,” McDade said. “I’ve read about deserts, but this is the first I’ve ever seen. Only nine o’clock in the morning and it’s hotter than the hinges of hell.”
“It’ll get hotter,” Fargo assured him.
This was a typical southern New Mexico jornada, a hot, barren expanse of alkali dirt. Nothing about this dead, desiccated terrain spoke of hope. In the distance Fargo occasionally saw a tall, narrow, pointy cactus known as Spanish bayonet; closer to hand was cracked and parched earth with scattered tufts of wiry palomilla grass, so worthless the horses scorned it.
Booger spat—or tried to. All his parched lips could produce was a pathetic, sputtering noise. His saddle ox, however, was enduring the heat better than the horses were. Nor was its slower speed a problem—the horses, by now, could barely hold a trot. Every hour the men were forced to spell them by dismounting and walking them for ten minutes.
“Christmas crackers! I’m spitting cotton,” Booger complained. “Why’n’t we share out a canteen?”
“Nix on that,” Fargo said. “There’s a spring at the bottom of Diablo Canyon. Until then we’ll need every drop for the horses.”
Fargo usually carried a goatskin water bag tied to his saddle horn, but when they tried to fill it at the livery, he had discovered a slit in the bottom—no doubt the handiwork of the Spaniards. The men had been forced to make do with filling their canteens.
Deke, the oldest of the four, was suffering the most. “How much farther?” he asked Fargo in a cracked voice.
“I figure we’re about halfway,” the Trailsman replied. “We’re not exactly making jig time. And you might’s well face it: the second half will be the worst, so buck up. That’s why I wanted us to build a lead—we’ll need to rest up.”
Fargo pulled some pebbles out of a saddle pocket and gave each man a few of them. “Suck on these, boys. It’ll help your mouth produce some moisture.”
“I wonder if those two crazy Indians went on ahead like Booger told them,” McDade said. “I’d wager they just cleared out and washed their hands of us. Why should they give a hoot about a white man’s battle?”
“No, they followed orders,” Fargo said. “You can see their tracks. Matter fact, they shoulda reached the canyon hours ago. They were riding at night.”
“They don’t give a damn whose battle it is,” Booger said. “It’s just, they’re death on Deke’s fine cooking.”
“I’m just mighty glad to hear they’ll be waiting,” Deke said. “Them two red grifters are dangerous killers.”
“Crick . . . crack,” Booger said, and despite their suffering and the looming prospect of a hard death, all four men laughed.
• • •
Captain Diego Salazar looked slender in the saddle, but capable and bold, his neat mustaches now tipped with white dust that seemed to age him a few years.
Despite the furnace heat and unrelenting sun, he refused to remove his expensive frogged tunic of red velveteen. It, like his mustaches, was white with alkali dust. It was also unbuttoned and limp from dried sweat.
He rode his coal black Arabian, a desert horse by lineage, flanked on either side by Lieutenant Juan Aragon and Sergeant Miguel Rivera. The rest of his men followed in a tight double file.
“We are gaining on them,” he told Aragon and Rivera. “Their dust is easier to see now. They have little water and their mounts must be near foundering.”
“The long weeks of forbearance are over,” Rivera said, a fervent glint to his eyes. “His Excellency has finally given us the order to kill Fargo. I have thirsted to do so since first laying eyes on this arrogant, godless pagan whom his nation’s newspapers call the savage angel.”
“Sergeant Rivera, you must still practice forbearance,” Salazar said sternly. “Yes, you have just cause to kill him. But for me it is also an affair of personal honor. You know that he beguiled and seduced Miranda. Kill as many others as you will, but leave him for me. He has already promised me a duel, and the point of my sword is the period that will end his life.”
“The Road of By and By,” Aragon said, quoting an old Spanish proverb, “leads to the House of Never. Swift action first gave us this New World empire, and swift action is how we will return Californio to Spain. And eventually, perhaps, New Mexico with it.”
“And swift action,” Salazar added, “is how we will kill Fargo and the dogs who lick his hand. He is only a man, but a man surrounded by a legend. When I kill him, I will also kill the legend.”
18
The glare from the sun on the hardpan and white alkali was unrelenting. Sweat eased out from Fargo’s hairline and immediately evaporated. But the dust cloud boiling up behind them was rapidly growing closer.
“It ain’t just that they got water and we ain’t,” Deke complained. “They musta got started before sunup to be this close.”
Fargo had trouble, at first, moving his tongue to speak. He had to cope with the chalky grit coating the inside of his mouth, as well as dry lips cracked so deep they showed blood.
“Likely they found the dead sentry when a man was sent to relieve him,” he replied.
“Are we gonna make it to that canyon before they catch us?” McDade asked, his face a freckled mask of worry.
“We will,” Fargo said, his tone more confident than he felt. “It’s only about three miles now.”
He had grave doubts about their mounts. Booger’s saddle ox was plugging patiently along, but the horses were sulky with exhaustion, even Fargo’s Ovaro. The men had watered them from their hats for the last time ten miles back, and now the horses were at the scrag-end of their endurance. It was McDade, an excellent wrangler, who kept them moving, coaxing the trail-worn animals in the voice of a patient old friend.
“Fargo,” Booger said, “you’re the one’s always saying how you druther be attacked out in the open where you can pick your enemies off before they get in close. Why’n’t we just dig sand wallows and commence to busting caps when they’re within range?”
“For one thing,” Fargo replied, “that leaves us two men short—Cherokee Bob and All Behind Him. For another, these soldiers are on Quintana’s payroll because they’re dead shots. Even if we wrestle our mounts down, they make for big targets. Those Spaniards can hang back, kill the horses, and then throw a fiesta because that’ll mean all of us are gone coons, too. How long you figure we’ll survive out here afoot—and with no water?”
“’Bout as long as a snowball would last in hell,” Booger admitted.
“We’ll get to that canyon first,” Fargo assured him. “And if we use it right, we’ll turn the viceroy’s big plans into brain vapors. Okay, boys, light down and spell your mounts.”
The men, faces sagging with weariness, slid down and walked the animals for the next ten minutes. Fargo glanced from man to man: their eyes had that dull, bovine gaze caused by staring for long hours at open country without any reference points.
The sun had reached its zenith, the heat so fierce that “cook-offs”—bullets heat-detonat
ed by the scorching metal of weapons—had become a risk. Fargo recalled a time, crossing the vicious Salt Desert of Utah, when a round had cooked off in the Henry’s sun-heated tube magazine—he had damn near broken his neck when the spooked Ovaro chinned the moon and bucked him off.
“Unload your weapons,” he called out, “and pocket the rounds. Our guns are blazing hot.”
He swung out the cylinder of his Colt and emptied it before also emptying his spare cylinder and the Henry’s magazine.
“What if them garlics catch up to us and we got nothing but our dicks in our hands?” Booger carped.
“When ain’t your dick in your hand?” Deke quipped.
“Whenever Pretty Teeth here ain’t around to hog all the quim.”
Fargo’s cracked lips eased into a grin. “Ain’t my fault women got good taste in men. Anyhow, don’t fret, Booger. We’ll make it safe to that canyon and dip our weapons quick in the spring to cool them before we reload.”
Still walking the Ovaro, he pulled out his binoculars to study their back trail. The Spaniards were close enough now that he could recognize Salazar, Aragon, and Rivera, their faces as grim as Inquisitors under their tall shako hats.
Close and gaining. Fargo felt a prickle of alarm move up his spine in a tickling squiggle. Booger’s ox, Ambrose, was holding up, but Deke and McDade’s mounts were about blown in.
“Mount up!” he called. “As soon as you butt your saddles, Deke and Bitch, lean forward and bite your horse’s ears—and bite ’em hard!”
Neither man questioned the order. The moment Fargo chomped into the Ovaro’s tender ear, the enraged stallion surged forward, as did the other two horses. The burst of speed wasn’t sustained long, but suddenly the lip of a vast, steep, redrock canyon hove into view up ahead on their right.
“By God, we made ’er!” Deke exclaimed. “Hoo-rah, boys!”
“Skye said we’d beat those devils,” Deke said in a welter of elation.
“It’s too early to tack up bunting,” Fargo snapped. “We’ve got to hustle now. There’s only one way in, and it’s narrow, so follow me in single file. Booger, you’re the rearguard. If anybody rides in behind us, shoot him to wolf bait.”