The Trailsman #388

by Jon Sharpe

  West’s jaw muscles bunched tight. “Keep that snappy patter going and you’ll be picking lead out of your liver. This is a private detail, Fargo, not city time. I get ten dollars a shift for sitting on my prat and counting roses on the wallpaper. You know how much a deputy earns every month?”

  “About thirty dollars give or take a bribe.”

  “You got it in one, bright boy. Plus a dollar for every puking drunk I haul off to the calaboose. Look, drifter, what the hell business could you have with a big muckety like Winslowe?”

  “Just tell him Skye Fargo wants to see him for a few minutes.”

  “Would you like to send in your card?” West said in a tone laced with sarcasm.

  “Just tell him I’m here to see him about a wandering river.”

  “A wandering—?” West narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Fargo. “Tell me . . . do you smoke it or take it with a spoon?”

  “About a wandering river,” Fargo repeated.

  West heaved his big bulk out of the chair and tapped out “shave and a haircut” on the door before disappearing inside. In less than a minute he came back into the hallway, studying Fargo curiously.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “His Nibs said to go on in. But pile all your weapons out here. And the door will be wide open. You try to pull any sneaky shit and I’ll blast you into the middle of next week.”

  “I’ll be a good boy,” Fargo promised, piling his weapons on the floor.

  He entered a huge, luxurious room replete with heavy teak furniture and plaster busts of great American capitalists. A portly, balding man wearing a suit with satin facings on the lapels stood waiting in front of French doors leading to a balcony.

  “Mr. Fargo, I’m a very busy man and my time is money. Now, what is this nonsense about a wandering river?”

  “Let’s skip the parsley,” Fargo replied, “and get right to the meat. Are you planning another blast at Tierra Seca?”

  Winslowe wore a monocle dangling on a gold chain. He raised it to his right eye and studied Fargo as if he were a curious specimen of insect. “Are you daft, man? I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “There’s no virgins at this party, Winslowe. I just want to know if you plan on stealing more of Mexico.”

  “I’ve heard of you, Fargo. A womanizing drifter whose exploits are ballyhooed in the newspapers and penny press. Perhaps that cheap reputation of yours has gone to your head. To me, however, you’re just one more stinking part of the steaming dungheap. Were I you, I would clear out of these parts at once.”

  “You mean before the Apache finds me?”

  Winslowe flinched as if he’d been slapped. “How do you—?”

  He caught himself in the nick of time. Fargo grinned. “You just can’t get decent help nowadays. I know you’ll never go to jail, Winslowe, not with your money. But I’m going to make sure you never pull any of that silver out.”

  “Ahh . . . now casements are flung open. So this is a shakedown? All right, I’ll play along. How much are you demanding?”

  “Two million dollars and a night in bed with your wife,” Fargo answered promptly. “If the butler doesn’t mind giving her up for a night.”

  Winslowe’s face turned beet red. “You arrogant mudsill. Do you realize that for a thousand dollars I can have that deputy in the hallway shoot you dead right now and claim you attacked me?”

  “Let’s ask him,” Fargo suggested. He raised his voice. “Hey, West? Porky here claims you’ll kill me for a thousand dollars. Is that right?”

  West, who was watching the two men from out in the hallway, replied in a bored tone, “I’d prob’ly negotiate for a higher fee. But for two bits I’d beat the shit out of you and throw away your buckskins.”

  “Deputy,” Winslowe hastened to say, “that was a libel on me. I told Fargo no such thing.”

  “Technically,” Fargo said cheerfully, “it would be slander.”

  Winslowe lowered his voice. “Fargo, you obviously have no idea who you’re trying to intimidate. If you have a price in mind, name it. If not, vacate these premises.”

  “I’m leaving,” Fargo said. “I have no proof you’re planning to seize those ridges at Tierra Seca, just a gut hunch based on my knowledge of greedy bastards like you. If you do blast that section it will almost certainly kill innocent people. And if you do that, I guarandamntee I will hunt you down and kill you.”

  Rage bloated Winslowe’s face. “Deputy West!” he shouted. “This trail tramp just threatened my life!”

  Fargo grinned. Mimicking Winslowe’s own words from a few moments ago, he called out, “Deputy, I told Winslowe no such thing.”

  “Fargo,” the lawman called into the room, wagging his huge pistol, “you’re a bigger pain in the ass than my bleeding hemorrhoids. Clear out of this hotel before I jug you.”

  “On my way,” Fargo called back, never taking his cold, slitted stare off of Winslowe. He lowered his voice. “I meant what I said, you fat little pompous fuck. Call off your explosives team or I’ll make damn sure you die like a dog in a ditch.”

  • • •

  Harlan Perry answered his door and stared at his visitor, jaw slacking open. Even though he had an appointment with the man, it took him a minute to recognize him.

  “Christ Almighty! Was it Valdez or Fargo?”

  Ripley Parker, moving stiff as an old man, crossed the threshold of Perry’s rented cottage on Mesa Street. His lips and nose were badly bruised and swollen, and only the tape tightly swathing his rib cage allowed him to move.

  “Valdez? That ’breed has no interest in me and you know it,” he snarled. “So, guess who that leaves.”

  “He might have an interest in following you,” Perry fretted, closing the door to a crack and peering cautiously outside. “So might Fargo.”

  “They don’t even know I’m working for you,” Ripley said, gingerly lowering himself into an armchair.

  “Obviously you’ve crossed Fargo somehow. What was it all about?”

  “The twats at the commune stirred him up. Gave him an earful ’bout how I supposedly raped them and stole money from their crop fund. He also suspects I killed Dexter, their spineless ‘spiritual leader’ so I could take over the reins at the farm.”

  “You did kill Dexter. And the charges of theft and rape are true also, aren’t they?”

  “What’s got into you—religion?”

  “I told you,” Perry said, “to keep a low profile. It was a perfect setup for watching Tierra Seca. If you hadn’t been there watching things, I wouldn’t have learned that Deuce Ulrick had taken up with Rosario Velasquez. Can you return to the commune?”

  “Sure, if I don’t mind Fargo turning me into a sieve.”

  Perry began wheezing, a sign that he was agitated. “You just had to suck Fargo into this. Tell me the truth, Parker. He suspects you’re somehow linked to the river plot, doesn’t he?”

  “He doesn’t actually suspect, I don’t think. But he did some fishing.”

  Perry, busy peering past the curtains toward the street, alerted like a hound on point. He spun quickly around. “Fishing? How so?”

  “Well, he dropped Winslowe’s name to see how I’d react. But I played dumb and he let it go.”

  Perry stood rooted. “He knows Winslowe’s name? That means he got it from Valdez. This is troublesome.”

  Perry felt the jaws of a powerful trap closing on him. Fargo had just succeeded in killing Johnny Jackson. And though Perry had no proof, Ulrick’s report that two dead Mexicans had been found outside their door, gutted like fish, suggested Fargo’s handiwork—and almost certainly meant he had entered the trio’s room. Now he knew Winslowe’s name.

  “Just maybe,” Ripley suggested, his battered lips forming a grotesque, goading grin, “he knows your name, too.”

  “If so he didn’t
get it from Valdez. The mestizo wants me all to himself.”

  “Yeah, I heard something about that. I heard—”

  “Never mind what you’ve heard,” Perry snapped. “You’re being paid, and very well, to control Mankiller and that’s all. Is he here yet?”

  “I expect him tomorrow. He’s got a fast horse and he’s a tireless rider.”

  “Where are you meeting him?”

  “Why, right here, boss. You’ll be alone with him for a while.”

  Perry turned white as new gypsum and wheezed audibly. Ripley tossed back his head and laughed with gusto.

  “Just shitting you. I’m meeting him at a deserted mine outside Zaragoza. It’s a little Mexican border town about fifteen miles south of El Paso.”

  “Can you make the ride in your condition?”

  “Yeah, but you’re going to have to let me rest up here first. I got no other place to go.”

  Perry frowned. “I suppose if it can’t be avoided. . . .”

  Perry wiped his face with a handkerchief and began nervously pacing. “You can control the Apache?”

  “How many times we have to go over this?” Ripley complained. “Like I told you, as long as I got that phony kachina and he knows there’s good money coming his way, I can tell him who to kill and he’ll do it. But I can’t tell him who not to kill. Once you unleash that big, spooky son of a bitch, he’s like a runaway train loaded with black powder.”

  “Well, it’s not a perfect world. First he kills Valdez. Do you understand?”

  “Valdez!” Ripley exploded, wincing and clutching his ribs. “You cowardly prissy—has your brain come unhinged? Look at me! Two busted teeth, two busted ribs, a busted nose . . . Valdez doesn’t threaten your boss’s Tierra Seca operation. Fargo does.”

  “Fargo is a serious danger to us all. But he only kills in self- defense. Valdez, in stark contrast, is searching for me night and day, and he’s closing in.”

  “Sounds like you got a problem,” Ripley sneered.

  “No, you have a problem. Remember, Winslowe is completely removed from the management of this situation. If Valdez kills me, you don’t get the rest of your money. And Mankiller rides all the way down here and doesn’t get paid, either. Use your imagination on that one. Your little wooden doll might not save you.”

  Ripley did use his imagination. “You’ve got a point,” he finally said. “All right, it’s Valdez first—and then Fargo.”

  13

  Fargo emerged from the Del Norte Arms into the grainy twilight of early evening. The doorman had recovered and watched the buckskin-clad man warily.

  “I had my little chat with Winslowe,” Fargo told him.

  “Yes, sir, somehow I thought you would.”

  Fargo grinned. “I see you haven’t been given the boot.”

  “No, sir. The desk clerk isn’t going to say a word because you . . . ahh, bypassed him, too.”

  Fargo slapped a half eagle into the surprised man’s palm. “I didn’t enjoy hitting you, fellow. And don’t call me ‘sir.’ I work for a living.”

  “Five dollars!” the employee exclaimed, staring at the gold cartwheel. “And I called you indigent.”

  Actually, Fargo thought, the way he was burning through his last wages, he soon would be.

  “Punch me again,” the doorman quipped, “and we’ll make it an even ten. By the way . . . there’s a dangerous-looking character lurking in the shadows across the street and watching the hotel. He’s wearing two guns.”

  Fargo glanced across Paseo Street and spotted Valdez grinning at him.

  “That’s just my guardian devil,” Fargo said wearily, heading across the wide, dusty street.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” Valdez greeted him, “but you must have got in to see Winslowe. Did you kill anybody?”

  “Didn’t have to. I used my considerable charm.”

  “Uh-hunh. Just like you charmed Johnny Jackson to death yesterday.”

  Fargo narrowed his eyes. “You saw that, too?”

  “No. But I found his body when I was riding into Tierra Seca. Good work, Fargo. But remember you gave your word that you won’t kill all three of them. I still need the survivors so I can find their master.”

  “Johnny Jackson,” Fargo repeated. “First time I’ve heard the name. Far as me killing the other two, don’t hold your breath. They’re hard men to kill.”

  Valdez looked worried. “What happened up there with Winslowe? You’re not queering the deal for me, are you?”

  “Hell no. I threatened the son of a bitch, but he’s not worried. But look here, Valdez. You better get a wiggle on and kill this honcho soon.”

  “You think I’m standing around with my thumb up my ass? Every time I get a close scent of him, the bastard changes his location. And following those men of his is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

  “Well, try to put some speed on, hombre. Mas de prisa, all right? I’m making my report to Colonel Evans tomorrow, but that’s no threat to you. The army is a many-headed beast, and Evans will have to work through all kinds of channels before he gets permission to look into this border deal—if he even decides to do it.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Then I wash my hands of it,” Fargo said. “I’m only sticking my neck out like this because I was unlucky enough to witness it and I figure it’s a big deal. If they don’t see it that way, to hell with it.”

  Valdez shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re worried about that bunch at Tierra Seca.”

  “There’s that,” Fargo admitted. “I’m more and more convinced that Winslowe plans to pull the same river-jumping shit there.”

  Fargo explained his encounter earlier that day with Ripley Parker. When he mentioned the kachina, Valdez visibly started.

  “Chingame!” he swore. “Fargo, that’s it!”

  “That’s what?”

  “Cristo! I knew Parker was up to something, but I didn’t connect it. Que estupido soy! How could I have been so stupid not to follow him?”

  “If you’ve got a point,” Fargo said impatiently, “feel free as all hell to make it.”

  “This Apache killer . . . he’s a big believer in anti, Indian witchcraft. That kachina you saw is actually Hopi, but anti mixes up stuff from several tribes in this region. Rumor has it that a gringo is the only one who can control the Apache. It’s got to be Parker, don’t you see? That kachina has got something to do with how he’s controlling the killer.”

  Valdez swore again. “It’s Parker I should have followed to find the man I want.”

  Fargo mulled it and nodded. “Yeah, all that rings right. What would a scummy maggot like Parker want with a wooden hoodoo doll? Unfortunately, you’re going to play hell locating him now. After that beat down I gave him this morning, he ain’t likely stupid enough to return to the farm.”

  “Fargo, you’re the one with all the hunches—”

  “I have to have hunches,” Fargo cut in, “since you won’t tell me a damn thing.”

  “Never mind the violin. Do you think the Apache is down here by now?”

  “I’ve already decided to assume he is. That’s the best way to be ready.”

  Valdez glanced nervously around in the gathering darkness. “Same here. An Apache, especially one who follows the Witchery Way, is going to strike at night. Be ready, Fargo. Neither one of us has ever faced a killer like this one.”

  • • •

  Mankiller had pounded the buffalo-hide saddle of his coal-black stallion day and night, eating parched corn on horseback and stopping only briefly to spell, feed and water his mount.

  Now, as his stallion splashed through the Rio Grande just north of Zaragoza, Mexico, a full moon made the placid water scintillate with glowing pinpoints of color. He glanced up at that large circle of moon, seeming almost near
enough to reach out and touch. The prophetic words of the old curandero, Maria Santos, sounded inside his head:

  You must attack under a full moon, in the darkest part of the night, at a place where two worlds meet. A lone coyote will howl, and that is when you must strike. Before that howl falls silent, the blue-eyed one will be dead.

  Mankiller constantly shifted the reins from one hand to the other so that he could use the free hand to continuously squeeze the hard India rubber ball that had honed his grip to that of the jaws of a bear trap. It was said, by some who dared speak of him at all, that Mankiller enjoyed killing. But these fools failed to understand: What others called cold-blooded murder was, to him, a duty, even a sacred obligation.

  His mother, a highly feared bruja among the Coyotero Apaches, had taught him from his earliest years that life was a disease and the only cure was death. Thus he perceived himself to be a curandero much like Maria Santos. Whenever possible he killed with his bare hands because it was more personal, as if he were literally handing those diseased with life into the dark underworld of the blessed cured.

  This worthy, blue-eyed opponent Maria had foreseen that he would go up against in la frontera—an important man must die importantly, and Mankiller hoped to kill him with his hands.

  But sometimes this was not possible, so he also carried an old Italian “dagg” inherited from his Mexican father. The weapon was a short, heavy pistol with a hardwood butt that curved only slightly. Its bell-nosed barrel made it useless beyond twenty paces, but its massive bore would literally tear a man’s heart out when fired close in, and Mankiller always killed close in. If silence was preferable and there wasn’t time to throttle his victims, they were dispatched with the spiked tomahawk tucked into his sash.

  He never made his victims suffer; the killing was always quick. There was no enjoyment, no torture, no guilt even when he killed children. And when he sometimes ate his victims’ hearts, it was from respect, not depravity. By eating a worthy man’s heart, as he meant to eat the heart of this blue-eyed one, he ingested his courage and skill.

  In less than an hour Mankiller had reached the played-out Otero silver mine just outside the small settlement of Zaragoza, not far from the sterile mountains where he had been born. He dismounted and led his tired stallion toward the crumbling headframe. He noticed yellow-orange flickers of light and, as he drew still closer, voices speaking in Spanish.