by John Benteen
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Fargo went up to the Dakotas to buy horses for the army. This was 1918, but the country out there was still nearly as wild as in the old days. Holed up in the Badlands, the closest thing to hell on earth, were the meanest bunch of deserters, rustlers and killers in the West. This was what Fargo had to face to get his string of horses back to the Army. So he loaded his .38 Officer’s Model Colt with hollow-point bullets and set out to give it a try.
CONTENTS
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
About the Author
Copyright
The Series
Piccadilly Publishing
Recommendations
One
Now in mid-August it was hot, the whole town of Rapid City sizzling with the heat as if it lay in the bottom of an enormous skillet. The wind from the southeast swept across the great Dakota plain with nothing to break it, sucking moisture from men’s bodies, cracking lips, drying eyes, raising a thin swirl of dust. The thermometer on the saloon porch, Fargo had noted as he’d stepped inside at noon, had registered about a hundred, and that was in the shade. No one, if he could help it, stirred abroad on such an afternoon, and Fargo was no exception. Beneath the slowly-turning fan blades in the sawdust-floored room that was cool only by comparison, he sat alone at a corner table, back to the wall, sipping beer, waiting for the horse rancher from whom, possibly, he would buy fifty cavalry re-mount geldings, and feeling no pity at all for the clod-hopping dry-farmers who would be out plowing this afternoon in this blistering weather, breaking up the good range grass and ruining the country.
The man who, erect, would have stood inches over six feet, his broad torso bulked out the sweat-soaked khaki shirt he wore; his long legs were also encased in khakis and cavalry boots. Tipped back on close-cropped hair gone prematurely snow white was a battered horse-soldier’s hat he’d worn for nearly two decades now, ever since he’d been a sergeant in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in Cuba in the Spanish-American War. Nearing forty, he had a face seamed and tanned by weather, scarred from fighting, one ear slightly cauliflowered. It was a rugged, brutal face, and so homely that, perversely, it was nearly handsome, the kind that drew the quick, speculative looks of women and respectful glances from men who knew a professional fighting man when they saw one. That had, after all, been his trade for decades, and the marks it had put on him were etched too deep ever to be erased. For years he had roamed around the West and a lot of other places, too, a soldier of fortune, selling his guns to the highest bidder, smuggling arms across the Rio, ramrodding a revolution in this banana republic, fighting for the government in that one, depending on who paid the highest fee. And it felt strange to be here on a mission totally law-abiding, beyond criticism by anyone, in which there was no real chance for the big money he liked to make.
Still, he thought, taking out a thin black cigar, clamping it between strong, white teeth, there was a war on. American soldiers were now, in 1918, fighting in France. The biggest goddamned war there ever had been, maybe the biggest there ever would be—and he was frozen out of it! He, who’d fought in Cuba, pulled two more hitches in the cavalry in the Philippine Insurrection and after that commanded armies, divisions, regiments, battalions of barefoot, brown skinned Revolutionaries or Federales! Too many old wounds, too many broken bones, the Army medics said, and not even the influence of Teddy Roosevelt, his old commander in Cuba, had been able to get him into service. He drained the beer, signaled for another.
And yet, dammitall, he had to do something. And, as an ex-horse soldier, if there was one thing he knew, it was cavalry mounts. So he’d wangled, with Roosevelt’s help, this assignment from the War Department—civilian purchasing agent for the cavalry. Roaming around the West, buying horses to government specifications—not, of course, that they’d ever be used in France. But the hammerheads and broomtails still served a purpose along the Mexican border, where Germany and Japan both were trying to foment a Mexican attack against the Southwest. Ironic, because until not long ago, he’d been dodging the Army on the border, running forbidden guns to Pancho Villa. Still, it left him with some sense of participation, some tenuous connection with his old branch of service, and that was better than nothing ... He’d half finished his second beer when the saloon door opened and two men entered. Fargo set down his glass. He knew at once that the one in the lead was the one he’d come to meet.
Spurs jingling, the tall, silver-haired man with the graying beard strode directly to Fargo’s table. He wore a ten-gallon hat, chambray shirt, Levis, and, Fargo noted, a Colt six-gun in a holster on his hip. Well past fifty, he was rawboned and rangy, and his voice was soft and deep. “You must be Neal Fargo. I know everybody else in the joint.”
Fargo stood up. He himself was armed—a Colt .38 Officer’s Model around his waist, the loops of his cartridge belt stuffed with hollow-point bullets for it. “That’s me. You’re Jim Hackett?”
“The same. And this here’s Billy Kills Twice. He’s the wrangler’ll help you with the herd. They’re in the pen down by the railroad sidin’ any time you wanna look ’em over.”
“Kills Twice?” Fargo grinned, after shaking hands with Hackett extended his hand to the other man. “You’re Sioux.”
“Full blooded Oglala.” Kills Twice was in his late twenties, face high cheek-boned, eyes black as volcanic glass, nose a blade, mouth a slash. His black hair was worn in braids, otherwise, he was dressed in ordinary cowboy garb—work shirt and Levis. Six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, he had the narrow hips and hairpin legs of a rider. And, Fargo noticed, like Hackett, he also wore a gun. Both men being armed like that was unusual nowadays, this far north, but Fargo made no comment. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Fargo,” Kills Twice added.
“Likewise. Hot out there. Sit down and have a beer.”
“Aim to,” Hackett said, hooking out a chair with a spur. But the face of Kills Twice shadowed. “They won’t serve me. Against the law.”
Fargo’s mouth twisted. “One beer won’t send you off on a scalp hunt.”
“Hell, no. I can hold my liquor good as any white man.”
“That’s gospel,” Hackett said. “Billy’s a top hand, Fargo. Best man I got.”
“Then sit down,” Fargo said. “Maybe they won’t serve you, but they’ll sure as hell serve me.”
Kills Twice grinned. “Me, I think I’m going to get along right well with you if you buy those broncs, Mr. Fargo. Or is it captain or lieutenant?”
“It’s just Fargo. I’m pure civilian. Khakis are cool in summer and—”
“They blend in with the background,” Kills Twice said. “Make a man harder to see, harder to hit if he gets shot at.”
Fargo’s eyes narrowed. There was, he sensed, more to this Indian than met the eye. A top hand with horses—maybe. But he’d just signaled that he knew more than horses. He knew something, too, about fighting. As Kills Twice took a chair, he signaled for the bartender.
When the man came, his face was grim. “Mr. Hackett, you too, stranger. You know I can’t serve no Injun alcohol.”
“Nobody asked you to.” Fargo’s voice was a rasp. “Bring Mr. Hackett a beer. Bring me two.”
The bartender opened his mouth to protest, took one look into Fargo’s gray eyes, nodded and turned away. Fargo fished another pair of cigars from his shirt, handed one to Hackett, another to the Indian. “Now, about these remounts—”
“All prime geldings, saddle-broken, six years old. Dams big Oregon horses, sire a hot blood stallion leased from the cavalry. I’ll guarantee every one’ll meet specifications.”
“Good. I’m paying a hundr
ed and fifty each, government standard.”
“Then we got a deal. Billy’ll help you load ’em on the cars, ride with you as far as you’ve got to ship ’em.”
“I’m not shippin’. I’m driving. Leastways as far south as Cheyenne. Railroad out of here has to make too many connections, double back and twist around. Long train ride’s no good for horses. We can make direct connections at Cheyenne. They’ll reach Fort Bliss in a lot better shape.”
Hackett frowned. “Well, now Fargo—” He broke off as the barkeep came with the beers. Fargo paid, set both in front of himself, waited until the man’s back was turned, and shoved a schooner to Billy Kills Twice. “A present. Nobody’s sold you any alcohol. Now, Hackett, as you were sayin’—”
“I was sayin’ that—Jesus Christ!”
The sudden thunder of the guns was startling in the deep heat-sodden stillness of the afternoon. “What the hell?” Hackett blurted as they roared again—the cough of six-gun, crack of rifle, the deeper sound of a shotgun fired twice, coming from out on the street. Hackett and the Indian scraped back their chairs. Like a panther, Neal Fargo was already on his feet, dodging toward the saloon door, hand on gun butt. With the other two and the rest of the patrons behind him, he jerked the door open, sheltered as he did so behind the jamb.
Sunlight glittered on the remnants of the gold lettering on the shattered plate glass window across the street: “BANK OF RA—” Five men wearing linen dusters, bandanna masks across their faces, sombreros pulled down over their eyes, were pouring through the bank’s open door, guns in hand. Two also carried big canvas bags. “Robbers—” Hackett blurted in Fargo’s ear. “They—”
“Back!” Fargo yelled, and with a sweep of his left arm knocked the horse rancher sprawling against the Sioux. At that instant one of the men across the street, seeing the saloon door open, lined a shotgun, fired both barrels. Fargo, behind the jamb, heard the familiar rush of buckshot spraying through the door. Behind him, men screamed in pain. Then Fargo’s Colt was in his hand. It bucked in his palm, and the shotgun man, weapon empty, staggered back as if kicked by an invisible mule. He hit the broken plate glass, fell across it, lay sprawled impaled, legs kicking for an instant, then still. The other four stared and Fargo jumped back as one loosed four rounds from a Mauser pistol at the saloon door. Then the quartet was running down the street, had piled into a waiting Ford truck with its engine running. The truck roared off, the bank robbers flat in its bed, and Fargo plunged through the door.
“Goddammit!” he rasped, yearning for a rifle. He lined the Colt, thumbed the hammer, sending four shots after the speeding vehicle. The hollow-points, slamming against the tailgate, shattered uselessly. Then the truck careened around a corner and was gone.
Fargo swore again, swiftly thumbed fresh rounds into the Colt. Now the street was filling with people, pouring out of business places, saloons, staring at the corpse sprawled in the broken window. Gun in hand, followed by a crowd, Fargo ran toward the bank. Kicking the unlocked door wide open, he dashed in, halted, staring at the carnage before him.
Counting employees, there had been five people in the place when the robbers had hit it. They had killed them all. Both tellers lay in pools of blood behind their windows, cash drawers open. A built-in vault gaped like a steel mouth, and in its open doorway lay what must have been the bank’s president, cut to pieces by nine buckshot fired at close range. Behind the desk, sprawled in his swivel chair, another officer had taken the second barrel before he could fire the nickel-plated Smith & Wesson he’d dragged from a drawer. And on the floor in the center of the room sprawled the body of a middle-aged woman, eyes wide, and staring, dress soaked with blood, the contents of her overturned market basket scattered around her.
“Hell,” a voice behind Fargo rasped. Outside on the street, there was tumult, the backfiring of Model T’s, the whinnying of horses as men mounted, someone bawling orders for the pursuit. Fargo turned to see Hackett staring bleakly at the slaughter. “Five here, two in the saloon. That makes seven.” He made a sound in his throat. “Goddamn them.”
The room reeked of blood, trapped gunsmoke, the voided bowels of the dead. Fargo pouched his Colt, face impassive. He had seen so much death in his time that his own reactions to it had been long since burnt out. “So they got two in the saloon?”
“The buckshot did it.” That was Billy Kills Twice, voice toneless. “Would have got us, too, if you hadn’t knocked us back. Me, I’m obliged.”
“Por nada.” Fargo turned. A man wearing a police uniform had laid the body of the one he’d killed out on the sidewalk, knocked off the hat, pulled down the bandanna. Fargo went to him, shoving through the clustered crowd, stared down at a contorted face belonging to a hook-nosed man in his twenties. “Anybody recognize him?” he asked the cop.
“No. But he’s one of that Badlands gang, you can bet on that.” The policeman straightened up, eyes raking over the tall man in khakis, taking in the cold eyes, the scarred and homely face, going to the holstered Colt. “You’re the one that got him?”
Fargo nodded.
“Judas, you blew his chest apart.”
“Hollow-points,” Fargo said. “It don’t take but one to stop a man.”
“This town’s grateful to you, Mr.—”
“Fargo. Neal Fargo.”
The policeman was in his mid-forties, with a tough, wise face. “Neal Fargo?” His voice held a certain awe. “I’ve heard of you. Down in the Oklahoma oil fields—”
“I’ve been there. I’ve been a lot of places.”
“Yeah. And with trouble followin’ you like a trained dog. What you doin’ in Rapid City?”
“Buying cavalry remounts under Army authorization.”
Sourly, the policeman grinned. “Ordinarily you aren’t the type we’d want around. On the other hand—” He touched the corpse with a boot toe. “You’ve been mighty useful today. That’s one less, anyhow. Of course, there’s still plenty more.”
“Plenty more what?”
“Plenty of the Badlands gang. They’re—” Then the crowd was pressing in, and the policeman had to turn away to clear it.
“Come on, Hackett, Billy,” Fargo said and strode away, heading not toward the saloon he’d just left, where there would be more bodies, excitement and confusion, but toward another one.
Hackett and the Indian caught up. “Fargo,” the rancher said. “Listen, we ought to join the posse. The sheriff’ll need a man like you—”
Fargo shook his head. “I killed one of ’em. That’s my quota. I didn’t come here to chase bank robbers, I came to do a job for the Army. And we’ve got business to finish. Let’s have another beer and then we’ll go down to the pens and look at your horses.”
A few minutes later they were at another table in a nearly empty barroom, and each had a schooner of beer. Hackett was looking at Fargo oddly. “Neal, I don’t understand you. Hell, you were first out on the street, blasted one of those bandits, tried to get the rest, took that much risk. Now, you don’t seem to give a damn about running down the rest.”
Fargo grinned wryly. “That bastard with the shotgun lined down on me. That made it personal—and now we’re even. As for the rest of ’em, they’re not my business. I didn’t have any money in that bank, and there’s no money to be made out of chasin’ ’em. A professional don’t give away anything for free. It’s the sheriff who’s gittin’ paid to run ’em down, not me. The only thing I’ve got going is these remounts. I’m not getting paid for them, either, but it’s a different thing with them. I’ve got a personal interest in this war.”
He took a long draught of beer, set down his glass, grin vanishing. “All the same, I’d like to know. This Badlands gang—who are they, what are they?”
Hackett wiped foam from his moustaches, face grim. “Scum,” he rasped. “Absolute scum. Most Army deserters and draft dodgers, and a hard core of old-time gunmen and owlhooters. There must be dozens of ’em—the minute the war started and it looked like they might h
ave to get shot at, they headed for cover. You ever seen the Badlands?”
“I’ve seen them,” Fargo said. The Dakota Badlands were famous, an enormous stretch of bleak and wind-eroded pinnacles and hills and sinks and gulches the Devil himself might have designed, lying southeast of Rapid City between the Cheyenne and White Rivers, partly within, partly outside the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation. “I’ve never traveled through ’em, had no reason to.”
“You’re lucky. It’s as rough a country as you’ll ever find. Twenty years ago, during the Ghost Dancing days, the time of Wounded Knee, a lot of Oglala and Brule Sioux holed up in there and defied the whole United States Army. Oh, there’s a few places where there’s grass and timber, and water just barely fit to drink, but mostly it’s a good place to stay out of. Pure hell, especially at this time of year. But it’s a fine hidin’ place for people on the dodge, and that’s why all those deserters and draft-evaders headed for it. In there they can just vanish or do like the Injuns did—stand off an army.”
He took another swig of beer. “But they got to live, so they use it as a base to strike from. Rustle cattle, steal horses, raid lonesome little shirttail ranches and wipe out ever’body on ’em and steal supplies. Lately they gone to robbin’ banks. This is the second one they hit. Which is why everybody’s started packin’ guns again, like in the old days—and why, just before the shootin’ started, I was about to tell you to forget trailin’ those horses to Cheyenne. Fifty good cavalry mounts with only two men to guard ’em would be meat on the table for that bunch.”
“Maybe,” Fargo said quietly. “But meat that might be kind of tough to chew. Anyhow, I’m gonna trail the horses. I got another bunch waitin’ in Cheyenne to ship right now I’ve already bought.”
“Then I can’t promise Billy Kills Twice’s help. I figured he’d help you on the train, not have to take the risk of an overland drive.”
The Indian set down his beer mug. “Mr. Hackett, of course I work for you, and what you say goes. But—” His eyes flickered over Fargo. “I never was much of one for trains. Me, I’d rather work horseback. You say the word, and I’ll be glad to make that drive with Mr. Fargo.”