by Jon Sharpe
“Pile on the agony,” Fargo said out loud.
The Ovaro showed his concern by suddenly sending a load of horse apples loudly plopping to the ground.
“There’s a glue factory in your future,” Fargo promised.
He built a cooking fire from mesquite wood and boiled a handful of coffee beans before frying up some bacon, eating it out of the hot pan. Afterward, as he drifted down into his first sound sleep in days, an image plagued him: Santiago’s glass-marble eyes staring at him from a head twisted halfway around like that of a child’s broken doll.
• • •
Fargo kicked his blanket off at sunrise and stood up, twisting out the night kinks. He tacked the Ovaro and broke camp. He had just grabbed the saddle horn and was about to hit leather when he stopped himself. Curiosity impelled him to take a quick look at the sandy ground surrounding the thicket.
He had taken only a few steps out into the open when Fargo felt his blood turn to icy slush.
“Son of a bitch,” he said out loud, dumbfounded.
How? And why?
The half-circle prints were back again, stopping only about ten feet from where he had lain sleeping. How could the Apache possibly have found him so quickly, how did he again slip up on the ever-vigilant Ovaro, and why, Fargo demanded of the cosmos in general, didn’t he close for the kill? He certainly hadn’t hesitated with Valdez.
There was only one possible explanation for the “how” part of it, Fargo decided. The Apache had recognized him or his horse last night riding toward Mesa Street and waited around, following him to this spot. As to why he hadn’t killed him . . . Fargo recalled Valdez explaining that the Apache was an avid believer in Indian black magic. Fargo couldn’t figure the angle, but maybe that somehow tied into it.
Still unnerved, Fargo swung up and over and reined the Ovaro back toward El Paso. He knew it was risky as all hell to return after the carnage on Mesa Street last night, but Fargo had told Colonel Evans he would check for any return messages from Fort Union.
He didn’t expect anything more than a curt, perfunctory reply if even that. But as Fargo read the yellow flimsy the clerk handed out the window, his opinion of Colonel Josiah Evans went up a few notches:
HAVE ATTACHED ALL PRIORITY TO YOURS OF 7 SEPTEMBER AND AM ACTING ON MY OWN AUTHORITY. SITUATION POTENTIALLY SERIOUS. ARRIVING ASAP WITH ENGINEERS, DEMO TEAM. YOUR HELP NEEDED TO IDENTIFY SPECIFIC LOCATIONS AND COMPLETE REPORT. CHECK FOR ME AT BALDERAS INN ON TEXAS STREET. YOU ARE ON SALARY AND PER DIEM.
• • •
“Did Santiago suffer?” Rosario asked.
“Some,” Fargo admitted. “But not nearly so long as his wife must have.”
“He was shot?”
“Strangled,” Fargo replied, leaving it there. He saw no reason to tell this woman that “strangled” was painting the lily or that her brother-in-law’s heart had been cut out and stolen.
It was late morning on Fargo’s ninth day in the borderland, and the two of them sat at a table in Antonio Two Moons’s cantina. Business was slow and they spoke in low tones, Fargo’s eyes constantly darting to the doorway.
“Do you know,” she told Fargo, “Santiago always believed he would die avenging my sister? But he also believed he would someday kill Harlan Perry. That is why he bought these strange new guns that you say ja—ja—”
“Jammed,” Fargo supplied. “But only one did. So Harlan Perry was the name of the man you both wanted so bad?”
Rosario nodded, her pretty face sad at the news of Valdez. “It is an odd thing, Fargo. For so long Santiago and I planned for the death of Perry. Now it has finally come to pass and I feel little joy. Only a great relief that it is finally done.”
“Revenge,” Fargo replied, “isn’t always sweet, especially since it cost Santiago his life. But he would have had it no other way.”
“Como no. He told me once that without Estrella he would have taken his own life. He stayed alive only to kill Perry. Perhaps, after all, it was best that he died. Fargo, how can one man be like you and another like Santiago?”
Fargo raised a puzzled eyebrow. “You wanna chew that a little finer?”
“About women, I mean. Santiago was a handsome man like you, and women were drawn to him. But in all this world he loved only one woman. No other even tempted him. But you . . . you are like a bee sampling flowers, and you never return to the same flower twice.”
“Now, that’s a slander on me,” Fargo protested. “Twice is generally my minimum—sometimes I return to the same flower four or five times in less than an hour.”
She slapped his arm playfully. “Again you boast to get me excited. I confess I am more like you than like Santiago—I, too, like to sample different flowers. But perhaps you will not wish to touch me after I was with—”
“Lady,” Fargo interrupted her, “I been thinking about ‘touching’ you ever since I first laid eyes on you. But it’s a bad idea right now. That hell-spawned Apache who killed Santiago is after me now, and I’d best keep my wits about me or he’ll be using my teeth for dice. Matter fact, me and you are not going to see each other again until I’ve settled up with him—one way or the other.”
“But why would he kill you now? Perry hired him, and he is dead.”
“Actually, it’s Stanley Winslowe who pays the bills. Besides, Ripley Parker controls the Apache, and Parker wants my guts for tipi ropes.”
Fargo pulled a folded paper from his possibles bag and began to unfold it on the table.
“What is that?” Rosario asked.
“A map that Santiago drew,” Fargo replied. “I glanced at it last night. I had words with him one time about the fact that he didn’t give a damn about anything except killing Perry. But this map shows where Winslowe’s vermin buried their explosives. Santiago wanted to help after all, but he figured he had to wait until he killed Perry or died trying.”
“Yes, but that does not matter now, verdad? Ulrick and the skinny bomb maker are dead.”
“Parker isn’t. Depending on how close he worked with the others, he might know where the stuff is. And guncotton—that’s the explosive—is easy to use. He wouldn’t likely know exactly how to plant it to shape the charge, but that might not stop him from trying. There’s a reasonable chance he at least knows the spot where they planned to blast the river, and if so, he could do a lot of damage here in Tierra Seca.”
Rosario backhanded a renegade strand of hair from her eyes. “I was like Santiago—only killing Perry mattered. Now he is dead and I feel shame. Many here could die. But you said soldiers are coming?”
“Yeah, but they’ll take at least three or four days. I have to blow this stuff up on the off chance Parker means to carry out the plan before then.”
Rosario thought of something. “If Parker knows where it is, he can show the Apache also, verdad? And they may guess you will try to destroy it and wait for you there.”
“ ’Fraid so,” Fargo said. “But I don’t think that Apache needs to be told a damn thing or wait in one spot for me. I’m wondering if he’s even human.”
“You can defeat him,” Rosario said confidently. “You are the Trailsman.”
“Whipping him is the plan, all right. But I’ve had bad luck ever since I got here. Winslowe’s thugs were always just a little bit too smart for me.”
“Santiago said it was you who were too smart for them.”
“I only managed to notch my sights on one of them. It was Santiago who killed the other two. And twice now that damn Apache has sneaked close enough to spit on me. I need better cards or a fresh deck.”
“Vaya! Is the army not sending men down here because of your report? Santiago told me how Winslowe’s criminales tried many times to kill you, and each time you sent them running. He told me you saved his life during their first attack. And he said they became so—how you say—afraid of you that finalmente they
stayed away from you and only watched you.”
“I s’pose all that’s so. But it’s not just about staying alive and scaring men off. When they’re trying to kill you, you have to kill them first. This Apache isn’t afraid of any man, and once he decides to close for the kill, I better be one second faster.”
Rosario suddenly looked troubled. “Fargo, you speak of this Apache killer. Do you believe in the power of dreams?”
“Not so’s you’d notice. Why do you ask?”
“Last night . . . I did not yet know that Santiago was dead. Yet, his ghost appeared to me in a dream. His”—she crossed herself before going on—“his chest was ripped open and, Blessed Virgin, his heart was gone.”
Fargo felt the hair on his nape stand up. He hadn’t said a word about that to Rosario.
“He said only one thing to me,” she pressed on. “He told me: ‘Tell Fargo the Apache is coming for him, and the only way he can survive is to die before he is dead.’ In the dream I asked him what this meant, but he faded away without answering.”
“Die before I’m dead?” Fargo repeated.
She nodded. “What can it mean?”
“Damned if I know,” Fargo replied, “but I hope I figure it out quick.”
20
Ripley Parker was stewing in his own juices.
Yes, Mankiller had succeeded in killing Valdez last night. But everything had gone to hell from the moment the half-breed son of a bitch had surprised everyone by diving through a side window instead of using the unlocked front door behind which Mankiller was waiting.
Parker still couldn’t believe it. Valdez had tumbled into the room, come up onto his heels with gun blazing, and—never needing to cock his hammer even once—cut down Perry, Deuce Ulrick and Slim Robek in about three seconds flat. If that second gun of his hadn’t jammed, Parker knew that he and Mankiller, too, would be walking with their ancestors.
But that wasn’t the half of it. Mankiller had picked up Skye Fargo’s trail last night and successfully tracked him to his camp beside the Rio Grande. And for the second night in a row the big, dumb, superstitious bastard had passed up a golden opportunity for an easy kill because “coyote no howl.”
Parker knew how to contact Stanley Winslowe in Santa Fe, but money and further orders weren’t the issue now. Fargo was an implacable force and had to be killed. Parker allowed no man to beat him down as Fargo had thrashed him, and only Mankiller could settle that score. And yet . . . just look at the disgusting son of a bitch!
His stomach churning, he watched the Apache run a spit through Valdez’s heart and hold it over a fire to roast.
“Mankiller,” he growled, anger spiking his voice and echoing in the abandoned mine, “you can’t keep letting Fargo off the hook. Forget about this shit with a coyote howling. That old crone up in Taos just made that up.”
Mankiller said nothing to this, turning the heart to scorch the outside evenly. He believed Maria Santos’s prophesy, but he was worried. Tonight was the last night the moon would be in full phase until three more weeks passed. But still the coyote had not howled. Why?
Perhaps an enemy’s bad medicine was interfering?
“Listen to me, damn you!” Parker exploded. “You know that I speak for Blood Clot Man. He says to never mind about a coyote howling and just kill Fargo, the blue-eyed one.”
Still Mankiller held silent. By now the heart was scorched on the outside. He bit into the hot, tasty meat and solemnly began chewing.
Parker avoided retching only by a supreme effort. He jumped to his feet and pulled the cloth away from the evil kachina doll.
“Look at Blood Clot Man!” he commanded.
Reluctantly Mankiller did, pausing in his chewing. The doll’s dark, evil eyes seemed alive to him, emanating straight from the Forest of Tears—the red man’s equivalent of white man’s hell.
But this time they seemed to be talking to him, trying to convey an important message.
“Don’t fuck with Blood Clot Man!” Parker snarled. “He can turn you into worm shit if you disobey him. Damn it, man, kill Fargo next chance you get! I’ll be hog-tied and earmarked before I let that crusading bastard get away with thumping on me like he—”
Parker suddenly caught himself, realizing his mistake. A genuine brujo would not be subject to beatings from any man.
“Like he wants to do,” he lamely amended.
Mankiller had seen the tape around Parker’s ribs as well as the obvious broken nose and teeth. He set the partially eaten heart aside and shifted his atavistic eyes from the kachina to Parker. “You say fall from horse.”
“I did. I’m saying Fargo would like to beat on me. Of course he can’t because I live by night just like Blood Clot Man and my medicine is too strong.”
Parker’s voice sounded nervous, wheedling. Mankiller shifted his gaze back to the eyes of the kachina. Again it seemed like they were talking to him.
“The coyote has not howled,” he suddenly addressed himself directly to the carved wooden doll for the first time. “Tell me why.”
Parker looked confused. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
But Mankiller did not answer him because now the kachina was speaking clearly in the Apache’s mind.
The coyote has not howled, Blood Clot Man told him, because you follow a false brujo. I do not speak through this weak white dog. Your mother was a powerful bruja and mistress of the Witchery Way. Her power flows in you, not in this cowardly whiteskin.
Mankiller pushed to his feet.
“The hell you doing?” Parker demanded, his voice now reedy with fright.
Mankiller started toward him. Parker backed away, thrusting the kachina out before him. “Blood Clot Man will pray you into the ground if you don’t obey him!”
He does not cure the disease of life, Blood Clot Man said in Mankiller’s mind. The white dog only uses you to kill the man who defeated him.
Still Mankiller advanced. Parker, in a welter of fright, threw the doll down and clawed for the Army Colt in his belt, the weapon he had taken from Deuce Ulrick’s corpse last night.
But Mankiller was surprisingly fast for such a big man. He closed the gap in a heartbeat. He gripped Parker’s arm at the forearm and elbow and flexed his muscles, snapping the bone like a dry stick. Jagged edges of broken white bone tore through the skin, and Parker howled in pain as he dropped the weapon.
He abruptly ran out of retreating room, his back bumping against the side of the mine tunnel. The big hands, each finger like a thick rope, rose toward his throat.
“No!” he screamed in a voice gone raspy with terror.
Yes, Blood Clot Man urged inside the mind of the Apache. Cure him so the coyote will howl!
• • •
At first, following Valdez’s quickly sketched map had proved easy. A dotted line led from Tierra Seca east to a wide bend in the river. A second line led due north for about a hundred yards to a circle labeled “black rocks.” Fargo found it quickly, a small heap of cinder rocks from some long ago era when molten lava had poured over the region.
Valdez had marked the river bend and rocks to give Fargo fixed references in the desolate landscape. But things got harder after that. Another dotted line led north-northeast from the rocks an indeterminate distance to a dot labeled simply “knoll.” However, several knolls in the area could have been the one indicated by the inaccurate map.
“He was a good pistolero,” Fargo remarked to himself as he gazed at the confusing terrain. “But he was poor shakes as a topographer.”
Fargo began by examining each knoll for prints or signs of digging. But this section of the borderland was loose, shifting sand pummeled by stiff winds that would have quickly erased any clues. Under a punishing afternoon sun that had weight as well as heat, he used his small entrenching tool and began the search for the buried explosives.
F
argo had learned by now not to underrate the Apache assassin who most likely was still dogging him. As he worked, moving from knoll to knoll, he watched in every direction. Shimmering heat waves danced over the desert sand and forced him to even more careful scrutiny.
Tell Fargo he must die before he is dead.
Rosario’s strange dream kept running through Fargo’s thoughts. He had never set any store in spirit knockings, crystal balls, séances and the other “third eye” foolishness that captivated so many in America. But Rosario could not possibly have known about the gruesome fact that Valdez’s heart had been cut out, and yet, it was in her dream.
But how could a man die before he was dead?
After two hours of useless digging Fargo debated the idea of giving up. After all, there was a good chance that Ripley Parker and the Apache knew nothing about the location of the buried explosives. But what if Parker did know and decided to use them? Fargo had spent the last nine days putting his ass on the line, and he couldn’t bring himself to roll the dice now with the fate of Tierra Seca in the balance.
Another hour passed and Fargo had been laboring under the cruel sun so long that black dots were dancing in front of his eyes. He was about to give it up as a bad job when the tip of his entrenching tool struck something solid.
Five minutes later, with the sun now rapidly descending, it was all spread out in the sand before him: a canvas groundsheet upon which sat eight blocks of guncotton that had been steeped in nitric and sulfuric acids, and a can of the primer known as cotton powder.
Working quickly before the sun set, Fargo stacked the blocks of guncotton back in the hole to concentrate them. He dug a small trench and lined it with the cotton powder primer as a fuse. The Rio Grande wound its way about a quarter mile due south of him, and the moment Fargo flipped a burning lucifer into the fuse trench he vaulted onto the Ovaro and raced toward the river even as the bloodred sun flamed out in the west.
He was perhaps halfway to the river when a massive boom-crack behind him stung his eardrums and sent a concussive wave slamming harmlessly into horse and rider. Falling sand pelted them and Fargo fought to settle the spooked stallion.