by Jon Sharpe
“At Tierra Seca, right?” Deuce Ulrick said.
Winslowe nodded. “And a second blast must come soon. It’s best to do these, ahh, reconfigurations of the river in one fell swoop. Fortune favors the bold, not the procrastinators.”
“When, boss?”
“I’ll be discussing that with Mr. Winslowe. In the meantime you three must concentrate on Valdez.”
“Now, see, that’s what I don’t get,” Ulrick said. “You say he’s out to kill you. But what the hell for?”
Perry’s lips tightened for a moment before he waved this aside. “Let’s just say he’s on a vengeance quest. You know how these men with Latin blood are—they live for the blood feud.”
“He’s got Kiowa blood, too,” Johnny Jackson pointed out. “Them sons-a-bitches know how to kill a man fifty ways before breakfast.”
Perry’s bland face turned grim. “Indeed. Which makes it all the more imperative that you kill him as soon as possible. I don’t think he’s figured out yet where I am—that’s why he’s watching you three like a cat on a rat.”
“I mighta killed him already,” Jackson boasted. “I was too far back to see if I hit him in his lights, but he was doubled up in the saddle, all right.”
Slim Robek turned away from the window to address the others in his hillman’s twang.
“I been studying on this,” the Appalachian said in his feminine voice. “A body oughter fret this ’breed sure enough. He’s left plenty of widows and orphans. But I’m more afeared of Fargo and what he’s fixin’ to do. The boss here says Fargo’s got no call to stick around these parts and nose in, and could be that’s true. But we come nigh to killin’ him today, and from what I’ve heered of Fargo, that’s all the call he needs.”
“A good point,” Perry said. “I said I suspect he’ll move on, but until we know more I think it might be wise to consider both men equally dangerous. If Fargo does decide to stir things up, he’s the type who will want information first. That means he’ll have to return to the location of the blast.”
“We’ll toss out the net,” Ulrick said. “If he hangs around here long enough, we’ll send him over the mountains, all right.”
“No better men for the job,” Perry said. “But your remark about his being a newspaper hero, Deuce, has set me thinking. We don’t just need to eliminate him—we need to do it quickly before he possibly gets the word out to the wrong authorities. Meaning that perhaps I had better take out some insurance.”
“How so?”
“This very day I’m going to send a messenger rider up to Taos.”
Ulrick’s face suddenly paled and he sat up straighter. “You mean Mankiller?”
“Yes, Mankiller. In fact, his handler is already down here in a strategic location. I made sure of that when Mr. Wins-lowe explained the importance of this assignment.”
“But you know how Mankiller can be, boss.”
“I do indeed, Deuce. That’s why I’m sending for him.”
4
Skye Fargo had carefully pondered the bizarre situation with the deliberate rerouting of the Rio Grande, studying all of its vexing facets.
He could simply follow Santiago Valdez’s advice and put la frontera far behind him. After all, a myriad of powerful robber barons were already raping the frontier to amass personal fortunes in gold, silver, timber and land, and Fargo knew that no one was going to stop their greedy onslaught—not when the barons had the politicians in their hip pockets.
But this crime had been personalized when those three thugs—obviously on someone’s payroll—had tried to snuff his wick. And although Fargo was not possessed of do-gooder instincts, neither could he just ignore the importance of the astounding land grab he had witnessed. One man stealing land from another man was a private feud. But one man stealing land from an entire country, and altering an international border to do so was dangerously provocative in a region that was already a tinderbox of tension, ill will and resentment.
Reluctantly, Fargo concluded that he would have to make a report to Colonel Josiah Evans, commander of Fort Union in the Department of New Mexico. Evans had hired Fargo, earlier that year, as a contract scout for a mapping expedition into the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies.
The two men had not exactly hit it off, Evans being a rule-book commander who considered Fargo too undisciplined and disrespectful of authority. But Fargo considered Evans honest and upright and perhaps likely to follow through forcefully when he learned what had happened.
That meant Fargo had to act on his resolve to study that blast site up close. But after the attack on him and Santiago Valdez, he decided to wait a day. He spent that night in a cold camp on the Mexican side of the border just north of the sleepy pueblo of El Porvenir.
He rolled out of his blanket just before sunrise and ate a spartan meal of hardtack soaked in coffee. He had grained and watered the Ovaro the night before, and Fargo rode out as the bloodred sun was breaking over the eastern flats.
The country surrounding him was hot, dry and dusty, dotted with ocotillo and greasewood and the occasional oddly twisted Joshua tree. But magnificent purple mountain ranges were visible on the far horizons. Fargo favored desolate, open terrain like this—visibility was excellent and a man who remained vigilant could see anyone approaching well beyond rifle range.
And Fargo did remain vigilant. Ruthless Mexican bandit gangs crisscrossed the borderland, and they would murder a man for his boots much less a fine stallion like the Ovaro. More importantly, Fargo had a healthy respect for the trio that attacked him and Valdez yesterday. A moment’s carelessness around them, and Fargo knew his bones would end up bleaching with so many others in the desert sand.
About a mile south of the Rio Grande’s new course, Fargo encountered an old peasant on a burro.
“Que tal, viejo,” Fargo greeted him.
The old man, his face sere and wrinkled like a dry chamois from a lifetime in the sun, was polite but wary. “Buenos dias.”
Fargo was curious to know if the word was spreading about the river. He cobbled an awkward sentence together in his limited Spanish. “Anteanoche—escuche usted un gran sonido como una bomba?”
The peasant seemed to understand that Fargo was asking if he had heard the blast night before last. He nodded and replied in halting Spanglish.
“Caramba, senor! El Río Bravo, she is now muy close a mi casa! Es the work of el diablo.”
The work of three devils, Fargo thought. And, likely, even bigger devils behind the scene.
“Tobacco?” the old-timer said hopefully.
Fargo gave him one of his skinny black cigarillos and tipped his hat before moving on.
Fargo aimed for the familiar low ridge that was now located on the American side of the shifted border. He reined in and pulled the 7X army binoculars from his saddlebag, minutely studying the terrain in every direction.
“Looks all right,” he finally announced to the Ovaro, who tossed his head and snorted.
Still, something felt wrong to Fargo.
He gigged the Ovaro toward the new bend where the Rio began its long detour around the silver-bearing ridges. First he splashed his stallion through the muddy water to the American side of the former riverbed.
“Christ,” Fargo muttered.
It was only the second day since the Rio Grande had been explosively rerouted, yet already the many puddles had evaporated and the mud was baking into cracked clay. Within a week or so it would look like many other old channels of the Rio—disguising the fact that the river had not jumped its channel naturally.
The blast site, however, was still detectable. Fargo swung down and tossed the reins forward. But something still felt off-kilter to him. Out of an abundance of caution he wrapped an arm around the Ovaro’s neck and tugged him toward the ground.
Horses rarely lay down except to enjoy a roll or when sick. Bu
t the well-trained Ovaro had been taught to go down and stay down until Fargo whistled him up. Fargo had found the trick especially useful when attacked on the open plains. Recalling the superb marksmanship of that trio yesterday morning, he decided to lower the Ovaro’s target profile. A man set afoot in this terrain didn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance against that bunch.
Fargo studied the blast area up close. The old channel into which the river had been sent had been deepened by digging at its beginning to facilitate the jump—he could tell that by the slightly darker color of newly turned earth just above the slow-moving current. That color difference, too, would soon fade.
Also, whoever set the large charge knew exactly what he was doing. The blast had moved a wall of dirt forward to impede the old course. But at a casual glance it simply looked like natural riverbank.
The Rio Grande flowed steadily by with a soft murmur like the soughing of a light breeze in treetops. Nearby a flock of crows had settled down to drink, raising a ruckus of scrawking. They suddenly scattered, and Fargo realized he had been so busy he hadn’t looked around for at least five minutes.
He looked back over his shoulder toward the west and cursed his green-antlered stupidity. A few hundred yards out was a low, wind-scrubbed knoll he had studied with his binoculars. Three riders had spurted out from behind it and now bore down on him.
Fargo had faced every manner of danger so often that he could instantly calculate survival odds. He could simply hop his horse and flee, counting on the Ovaro’s superior speed and stamina to outrun the danger. But the three outlaws already had up a head of steam, and the odds were too great, given their marksmanship skills, that they could drop his horse.
He could also spread flat in a prone position, lowering his target profile, and rely on the Henry to dissuade them. But while the typical marksman would find a prone man a difficult target, Fargo believed it would be the kiss of death to give these men a stationary target of any kind.
The rifleman opened up first, his weapon making insignificant popping sounds at this distance. But his first slug tugged hard as it passed through the folds of Fargo’s shirt, and the Trailsman went into evasive action.
He levered the Henry, held it tight against his chest, and tucked and rolled fast, moving several yards before coming up to an offhand-kneeling position and firing back. He knew his only chance, against shooters this formidable, was to constantly force them to a new bead.
He fired, tucked, levered while rolling, and popped up to fire again. Now bullets and arrows stitched the ground all around him, and Fargo desperately tried to drop a bead on the middle horse. But the heavy, accurate, sustained fire kept him in constant motion and made it supremely risky to stay in a firing position for more than a second.
“Who are these bastards?” he muttered when an arrow whiffed past his ear with a sound like a bumblebee.
Fargo realized this was a Mexican standoff he could not win without taking a huge risk. The next time he rose on one knee to fire, he took an extra two seconds to drop his sights in the middle of the horse’s chest. A thin curlicue of blood snaked out and the horse crashed to the ground, sending its rider cartwheeling down with it.
But these killers were unflappable. While the skinny rake with the rifle helped the shaken rider onto his own horse, the archer kept Fargo rolling madly for his life. The men reined back around into the desert haze.
Fargo resisted the strong temptation to fire on them while they escaped. Between this attack and the narrow escape yesterday, he had depleted too many of the Henry’s shells. He might need every bullet he had if they jumped him again before he could ride into El Paso.
The Trailsman rose unsteadily to his feet and retrieved his hat, using it to whack at the dust coating his buckskins.
“Who are they?” he repeated in a tone of wonder.
He tried to whistle the Ovaro up, but fear had dried his mouth.
• • •
Fargo rode out to the spot where the downed horse lay. He had hoped it was dead, but its exposed side heaved like a bellows in death agony and a bloody pink froth bubbled from the claybank’s nostrils. Shot in a lung, Fargo realized.
He swore without heat. He hated like hell to shoot a horse, but his hand had been forced. And now he had to shoot it again.
His lips a grim, determined slit, Fargo drew his Colt and put a bullet in the dying animal’s brain, instantly ending its suffering. The offside saddlebag was trapped under the dead horse, but Fargo opened the nearside pocket hoping for some clue to the rider’s identity.
All he found, however, was a shoeing hammer and a spare set of horseshoes. These were professional killers who knew better than to leave helpful clues behind. The saddle was simple and functional in the style of the Mexican vaqueros, with tapaderos covering the stirrups to protect the rider’s feet in cactus and heavy brush.
By now, the morning was well advanced and the sun radiated furnace heat. Sweat beaded in Fargo’s hair but evaporated before it could pour onto his forehead.
The trail of the two escaping riders was clear in the desert hard pack. Fargo followed it due west on the American side for two miles, the Rio in constant sight on his left. He held the Ovaro to a trot, letting that deadly trio get well out ahead of him. Fargo wasn’t eager for another cartridge session in open country like this where he was exposed like a bedbug on a clean sheet. Another mile and he was convinced they were headed to a little border hole-in-the-wall known as Tierra Seca.
But would they just pass through or wait there for him?
Fargo knew the place and didn’t welcome the prospect. The borderland was rife with outcast settlements populated, at any given time, by contrabandistas, owlhoots of various stripes, mystics, prophets, mixed-breeds and enterprising, freelance whores adverse to turning their earnings over to pimps and madams. Fargo had even heard, from an amused merchant on the recent caravan, that there was a newly arrived commune of “agricultural utopians” in Tierra Seca who preached peace, equality and free love.
Recalling the “free love” angle perked Fargo up in the saddle. After all, that was the only kind he subscribed to.
However, his revived mood degenerated into more curses when Fargo encountered a long bull train coming from the direction of Tierra Seca. The little settlement was located on a transport road between El Paso and the supply depot at Van Horn, Texas. The giant wheels of the freight wagons, and the scores of bulls, had obliterated the tracks Fargo was following.
Still, he spotted no tracks veering off to either side, so they were almost certainly headed toward Tierra Seca.
Fargo’s pulse quickened as he reckoned the potential danger. Maybe they expected an experienced tracker to tail them, and maybe they were holed up in the settlement right now waiting to perforate his liver. There would be no law to stop them, nor would any witnesses give a tinker’s damn—death, in the borderland, was violent, quick and unremarkable, and the only undertakers were the buzzards.
But the gambler in Fargo knew how things were: In order to win big you had to bet big, even if it was your own life you were wagering.
The Rio Grande made a long curve, and at the beginning of that curve, practically falling into the river, Fargo spotted the drab sight of Tierra Seca. There were a handful of puddled-adobe buildings, perhaps an equal number of knocked-together she-bangs and jacals, dwellings made of woven brush. Trash lay scattered in the road, including animal entrails attracting swarms of flies. The constant buzzing set Fargo’s teeth on edge.
But a new and impressive sight also greeted him: well-irrigated fields of corn and beans and squash being worked by men and women, most of them gringos. Fargo had to suppress a bark of laughter: Every one of them—even the men—were dressed only in loose sheaths of sewn burlap sacks.
“There’s the utopians,” Fargo remarked to his stallion, who loosed a whinny that sounded, to Fargo, like a derisive laugh.
&n
bsp; “Yeah,” Fargo agreed. “Men in dresses—it’s enough to make a horse blush.”
Fargo quickly, however, focused his wary gaze on the buildings and the spaces between and behind them as he rode closer. He decided to dismount and lead the Ovaro in by the bridle reins, ready to leap behind his horse if gunfire erupted—although there’d be no warning at all if that lethal archer opened up on him.
“Hey there! Hey, long-tall!”
The voice was feminine, melodic, friendly. Fargo glanced to his left and spotted a slender girl so shapely that even her burlap sheath couldn’t downplay her ample charms. She was hoeing a row of beans but walked toward the road to meet him.
“Well, now,” Fargo greeted her, tipping his hat. “I hope you’re the welcoming committee. It’s hard to believe a gal can wear burlap and look as good as you do.”
“Burlap chafes a mite,” she replied. “Whenever I can I just go naked.”
She gave him an inviting smile and Fargo felt a tickle of loin heat. The girl was around twenty with Prussian blue eyes, thick, luxuriant, burnt-sienna hair and soft, full lips like cherries ready to be plucked.
“My lands!” she exclaimed after peering closer at him. “It appears that you were recently caught in a fire. Your beard and eyebrows are singed—your hat and clothing, too. I hope you weren’t badly hurt.”
“Got drunk and rolled into my campfire,” Fargo lied. “Looks like you folks have some nice fields growing here.”
She beamed proudly. “Yes, thanks to the river. We are con- tinuing the Brook Farm tradition.”
“Brook Farm?” Fargo repeated politely while keeping his eyes on the surroundings. “I never heard of the Brook family.”
“Not the Brook family, silly. It was an agricultural commune named after a nearby brook. It was very famous.”
“I never heard of it,” Fargo admitted. “I don’t get around too many newspapers.”
“You’ve not heard of it? Goodness, you must be a true hermit! It was a wonderful community that started in Massachusetts in 1841. Many famous people joined. Even Nathaniel Hawthorne lived there for a time.”