by Jon Sharpe
Rough customers abounded. Hooded eyes watched him from the warren of dark alleys that had replaced the streets. Within ten minutes Fargo had witnessed a knife fight and a mugging and fended off countless scraggly soiled doves and beggars. However, the denizens of this wretched place knew the broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, well-armed, buckskin-clad, blue-eyed outsider was no easy mark and wisely avoided confronting him.
Fargo concentrated on the grogshops and eating houses, inquiring about the three men. But even when he greased palms, no one could or would cooperate. A man carrying a bow and arrows could hardly go unnoticed, yet the residents of Scorpion Town had evidently developed a selective blindness. Nor could Fargo blame them for their silence—there was no law to protect a man in this godforsaken patch of squalor, and violent retribution was a way of life.
Fargo emerged from yet another filthy hovel after coming up with nothing but a big goose egg.
“Sssst! Senor!”
Fargo glanced right at a garbage-strewn entrance to an alley. A Mexican in filthy, torn clothing and deteriorating rope sandals beckoned him closer.
“I hear you look for three gringos,” the man said when Fargo had stepped closer. A livid white scar ran from the corner of his left eye to the hinge of his jaw.
“You hear right. Do you know where they are staying?”
“Si. For un precio I will show you where.”
“And what is that price?”
The man held up five dirty fingers. “Americano dolares.”
“Five dollars is steep. Describe these men.”
In halting English the Mexican gave a fairly detailed description of all three.
“All right,” Fargo said, “but I been spreading all that around. How do I know you’ve actually seen them and know where they stay?”
“Pues, I theenk there is one theeng you did not say, uh? The gringo with the arrows—he go to el medico to have bullet take out.”
“So far, so good,” Fargo said. “Where are they staying?”
“It is no good to tell you, I theenk. The alleys, they have no names. As you see, they are—como se dice? They tweest like snakes in sand. Better I show you.”
Fargo nodded. “But I warn you now, Sancho—if this is a fox play I’ll have your guts for garters.”
The Mexican held out his hand. “First el dinero.”
Fargo sniffed a rat here. But so far he was just barking at a knot and he felt that time was turning against him. He decided to roll the dice.
He handed the Mexican a gold cartwheel and followed him through a series of dark, filthy alleys that turned Fargo’s stomach. They passed an old woman on her knees performing fellatio on a grossly fat man who smelled like a mash vat; a decomposing human body crawling with rats; several young Mexican boys beating and robbing an old man who screamed over and over that he was being castrated by Satan.
Fargo made a mind map of the route as they penetrated deeper and deeper into the vile heart of Scorpion Town. At first Fargo had wondered why three no doubt well-paid killers would choose such an area. Now he understood why. Anyone trying to locate them might well prefer to harrow hell itself. Fargo already regretted his decision to search for them here.
Finally the Mexican entered a short, straight alley and pointed to a door at the end of it.
“That is where they stay,” he announced. “Pero they are not there now. Each day they leave—como se dice? Muy temprano.”
“Very early?”
“Eso, si. Very early.”
“How do you know all this?” Fargo demanded although all of it fit the few facts he knew.
“Mi tio, Salvador, my uncle, he own building. For two dollars, I can open the door.”
Fargo handed him two silver dollars. “Open it. And don’t ask for any more money.”
The Mexican started into the dark alley. Fargo had taken only three steps when he caught a sudden movement in the tail of his left eye. Something struck him from behind with the force of a mule kick. His head seemed to explode in a burst of white light, and Fargo’s knees buckled.
Fargo dropped to one knee and almost blacked out. The Henry was snatched from his left hand and he felt his holster lighten as somebody else on his right tugged the Colt out. He knew that if he succumbed to the darkness now enveloping him he would die in the next few seconds.
Summoning deep reserves of strength and will, Fargo jerked the Arkansas toothpick from its boot sheath even as he heard the metallic click of his revolver being cocked. He dropped prone on his right side an eyeblink before the Colt barked only inches away.
Fargo pivoted on his hip and wrapped his legs around one of the assailants, toppling him onto the upturned blade of the toothpick. Heat washed over his hand as the weapon penetrated vitals. But he knew he couldn’t let up now because a second attacker had the Henry.
Fargo jerked his knife free and rolled fast, feeling the wind as the second assailant swung the Henry at his head. Fargo leaped to his feet and lunged forward, driving the Arkansas toothpick deep into his assailant’s torso and giving it the “Spanish twist.” The man emitted a high-pitched scream of pain and dropped to the ground like a sack of grain, flopping wildly for a few seconds until death closed his account. The leather-wrapped blackjack he had used to sap Fargo was still clutched in his right hand.
All this had taken only seconds. Scar Face started to bolt toward the nearby mouth of the alley, but one of Fargo’s long legs managed to hook him and send him sprawling. With lightning speed Fargo pinned him facedown with a knee in his back.
He grabbed a handful of hair and jerked the downed man’s head back far enough to slip the toothpick’s razor-honed edge in front of his windpipe.
“All right, cockchafer, I just killed two alley rats. You wanna make it three?”
“No, senor, por dios, no! Por favor, no me mata!”
Fargo pressed the blade tighter. “One more lie out of your filthy sewer of a mouth and I will kill you. Are the men I described really staying here?”
“Si, senor, yes, yes! Mi tio Salvador does own este edificio, and the men do stay here. The only lie is that I can open the door.”
“I can open it. But you’re coming inside with me. You get cute on me one more time, Mexer, and I’ll feed your liver to your asshole.”
Fargo wiped off the gory blade of his knife on the pant leg of the nearest corpse. Then he sheathed the weapon and stood up to retrieve his firearms. His head throbbed like a Pawnee war drum, and he was unsteady on his feet.
He leveled his Colt on the supine, cowering Mexican.
“All right, get up. And I’m already tickling the trigger, scum bucket, so at least pretend you got more brains than a rabbit.”
10
Fargo frisked the Mexican and found a cheap knife strapped to his ankle. He easily snapped the blade from the haft merely by holding the knife at an angle while he stepped on the blade.
“If you’re going to carry a blade,” Fargo remarked sarcastically, “steal something better than a two-bit frog sticker.”
Fargo pulled a passe-partout from his possibles bag, a master key more widely known as a bar key. It was slotted and held four sliding bits that fit most of the door locks. It was part of a “detection kit” issued to him by Allan Pinkerton when the famous sleuth hired Fargo for a difficult case in Missouri. Fargo had kept the bar key when he turned the kit back in.
Keeping a close eye on his prisoner, Fargo managed to open the lock with the third bit he tried. The door swung open with a meowing sound.
“You go in first,” Fargo ordered, wagging the Colt at him. “Any parlor tricks, chili-pep, and I’ll burn you down.”
Fargo followed the Mexican into a single room with a bare puncheon floor and a few sticks of crude furnishings. The place smelled of stale sweat and rancid food. Fargo left the door open for illumination.
“Sit ther
e,” Fargo said, pointing the Colt’s muzzle at a three-legged stool. “Don’t move until I tell you to.”
He glanced quickly around. Three crude shakedowns covered with stained and rumpled horse blankets sufficed as beds. One corner was cluttered with discarded tin cans and whiskey bottles, flies droning around them, and dirty clothing was scattered on the floor. But the room, like that saddle pocket he had searched a couple of days ago, yielded no clues to the three men’s identity or purpose.
Real professionals, thought a frustrated Fargo. And right now they were likely searching for him along the Rio.
“These three men,” Fargo said, “do you know any names?”
“No, senor,” the Mexican said. “Lo juro—I swear it. My tio, he ask no questions. These men, they are not el tipo to, how you say, make the small talk.”
Fargo believed that. He rifled through the pockets of the clothing. Again he found nothing until he checked the front pocket of a pair of sailcloth trousers—long sailcloth trousers that must have belonged to the beanpole. His fingers encountered a small, waterproof gutta-percha pouch.
He opened it, puzzled at first. A residue of tan-colored powder coated the inside. Fargo sniffed it and immediately recognized the acrid, sulfurous smell: cotton powder, the primer material used to detonate the powerful explosive known as guncotton.
Guncotton had been in use, mainly for excavation and mining, since the 1840s. It was obtained by steeping cotton in a strong mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids. Fargo had seen it a few times, usually pressed into slabs that looked more like papier-mâché blocks than cotton. Just a few of them, properly detonated, would have been enough to cause that gargantuan blast that almost sent him to glory four days ago. This cotton powder, an excellent and safe primer, was merely pulverized guncotton.
At least one of the three men knew his way around explosives. Now Fargo had another concrete detail to report to Colonel Evans. But he also needed names, especially of the higher-ups.
The guncotton blocks could have been manufactured right in this room. Were these men done making it? Again Fargo thought about the ridges opposite Tierra Seca, and a squiggle of foreboding moved along his spine.
“Listen up,” he told the Mexican. “I ought to kill you right now—you intended to kill me.”
“No, senor, not to keel you! Only to—”
“Bottle it, asshole. I warned you about the lies. Just a warning to the not so wise: You know these three men are hard killers, right?”
The Mexican nodded.
“If you’re stupid enough to try selling them information about me, they’ll pay your asking price, all right. And after you tell them I was in here, they’ll kill you deader than last Christmas. They leave no witnesses. Me entiende?”
“I understand, senor.”
“You made seven dollars off me today, and I’m letting you keep it. That’s a week’s wages for an honest worker. Count yourself lucky. Now dust.”
“Dust, Senor?”
“Scram. Vamoose. Afuera.”
The grateful Mexican fled with alacrity. Fargo left right behind him, locking the door again.
Now he knew where the trio was holed up. But did that matter much? Fargo had decided he wasn’t suicidal enough to hang around Scorpion Town in the hope he could tail these three to their honcho. And according to Santiago Valdez, they were damn hard men to tail.
Thinking of Valdez made Fargo’s skin pimple as he again recalled the last thing Valdez had told him: The Apache is coming, and hell is coming with him.
• • •
“Gentlemen,” Harlan Perry said in his cultivated baritone voice, “are you absolutely certain that neither Valdez nor Fargo followed you here?”
“Sure as sun in the morning,” Deuce Ulrick said confidently. “Valdez tried to follow us this morning from the livery, but we split up and he decided to follow me. I shook him off my tail and then hid in the mercado watching him try to locate me.”
“If you were hidden, and close enough to watch him,” Perry said, “why didn’t you kill him?”
“Christ! We weren’t out in the desert. There were at least a hundred people surrounding me. After that shoot-out in town with Fargo day before yesterday, I figured it was best to lay low.”
Perry thought about that and nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. But I must say that you boys have disappointed me lately—and more importantly, Mr. Winslowe. You’re not measuring up to your past record.”
Ulrick’s mean slash of mouth twisted itself even meaner. “Yeah? Well, we ain’t up against tinhorns here. Both those sons of bitches are slicker than cat shit on ice. Maybe you and Mr. Winslowe oughta take a crack at them sometime.”
“Settle down, Deuce,” Perry said in a placating tone. “Again you have a good point and I’m caught upon it. After all, neither of these two men won his reputation in a card game. But Mankiller should be here soon and that will end it.”
“Boss,” put in Johnny Jackson, “this is the third time now you’ve moved since we come to El Paso. What has Valdez got against you that’s got you so jumpy?”
Perry, as if buying time, opened a box of his imported cigars and passed them around to his subordinates. He had rented a pleasant little cottage on Mesa Street, a modest neighborhood hardly known for intrigue and derring-do. The room reeked of eucalyptus from its most recent fumigation to treat Perry’s chronic congestion.
“Valdez’s personal vendetta against me is nothing to the matter at hand, Johnny,” he said dismissively. “By the way, how’s your shoulder?”
“Ahh, it’s stiff. By tomorrow I’ll be up to snuff with my bow. One thing’s for sure—I owe Fargo one.”
“Mankiller will settle that score. I expect his arrival anytime now.”
“Arrival here?” Slim Robek interjected in his girlish voice and Appalachian twang. “You mean he’s staying rightcheer with you?”
Perry paled at the very suggestion.
“Hardly. Mankiller is reminiscent of the infamous Viking Berserkers. They enjoyed killing with such zeal that, after they annihilated their enemy, they sometimes killed each other to prolong the battle. Mankiller is rumored to have killed his own employer on at least one occasion. No . . . as I mentioned at our last meeting, his handler is in this area and he will be our liaison.”
“What’s a lee-asian?” Slim asked.
“A go-between,” Perry explained patiently. “By the way, Slim—do you have enough material for the Tierra Seca blast?”
Slim nodded. “I got enough and exter besides. I whipped up a new batch.”
“I hope you’re being discreet—nothing in your room?”
“Naw. A body won’t find squat in that puke hole of ourn ’ceptin’ cockroaches. I brung the hull shootin’ match out to the desert. I wrapped ’er good in canvas treated with neat’s-foot oil and buried it deep.”
“Have you had a chance to study the parameters for this second explosion?”
“Parameters? That word’s a might far north for me.”
Perry smiled as if indulging a slow child. Slim had little formal education, if any at all, but he was a genius around explosives.
“I mean, Slim, have you worked out the best location for the guncotton in order to rechannel the river?”
Slim nodded. “She’s all worked out. Is Mr. Winslowe fixin’ to name the date?”
“He’s already named it,” Perry replied. “We have a date certain, and it’s soon. But I won’t be passing it on to you three until just before the scheduled blast.”
“How’s come the big hush this time?” Deuce demanded.
Perry leveled his deceptively mild, professorial gaze on Ulrick. “Because, Deuce, you’ve been indiscreet with women yet again. I know all about the lovely Rosario Velasquez.”
At this intelligence all three of his visitors exchanged astounded glances.
“How do you know about her?” Ulrick demanded. “You got a man in Tierra Seca spying on us?”
“‘Spying’ is a bit melodramatic, Deuce. Never mind my source. My point is that you tend to become a little too . . . forthcoming when you fall in love.”
“Love? Hell, all I’m doing is poking her. She’s just a whore.”
“You said the same thing about that little redhead out in Sacramento. You remember her—the one who went to the district attorney with a startling amount of information about our activities? If the fetching Rosario is truly just a whore, why have you given her nearly two hundred dollars? That kind of money buys a mistress, not a prostitute.”
Deuce’s mouth twisted but he said nothing.
“At any rate,” Perry resumed briskly, “both Mr. Winslowe and I understand matters of the heart. Sometimes a man, entangled in the naked limbs of a tempting siren, inadvertently says things. So our reticence about the date of this next explosion is merely a practical precaution.”
“It ain’t necessary,” Deuce groused.
“Perhaps you’re right. Then again, it would be tempting to warn your lady love to clear the area. And then she warns others. But that could incriminate us.”
“She ain’t in no danger nohow,” Slim put in. “Her place won’t be nigh enough to the blast. But them silly shits in the burlap bags all sleep in one big building close to it, and most of them will go up.”
“Yes,” Perry said. “Tragic victims of ruthless Mexican revolutionaries—or so a respected El Paso newspaperman has been handsomely paid to report.”
Johnny Jackson laughed and smacked his thigh. “Mr. Perry, you are some pumpkins! That’s just the tonic we need.”
“Let’s not be complacent,” Perry warned. “Fargo and Valdez are both out there, each working on his own. Remain vigilant and try to stay apprised of their whereabouts. Mankiller works fast but it will help immensely if he knows where to start.”
• • •