The Phantom Gunman (A Neal Fargo Adventure. Book 11)

by John Benteen

  “No more than you,” Fargo said. “Never laid eyes on him until today.”

  “I thought you were one of his gunmen.”

  Fargo only shook his head. “No. I have other business in Lincoln County.”

  “Such as?”

  “I thought you came here to thank me, not ask questions.”

  “I can’t help being curious about you. I’ve never seen a man quite like you before, Fargo.”

  “You took the trouble to learn my name.”

  “Of course, checked the register to see who you were and what room you were in.”

  Fargo smiled thinly. “All right, now you know. That I’m Neal Fargo, that I carry a lot of guns, that I’m not tied in with Trent. Anything else whoever sent you would like to learn?”

  She sat up straight. “I came of my own accord.”

  “Is that a fact?” Fargo said sardonically.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Gracefully, she got to her feet. “It’s … lonely here in Lincoln. Oh, there are men, lots of ’em. But … none to compare with—” She broke off.

  “Compare with who?”

  “A man I know.” She smiled. “My father. Maybe he spoiled me. He taught me to set pretty high standards. I haven’t run across a man like him before, here. Until... now.”

  Fargo got to his feet. There was a light in her eyes that he recognized. Whatever her motive in coming here, that light was genuine. “Your father must be quite a man.”

  “He is. But … he’s my father.” Her voice was low, soft. “You aren’t.”

  “No,” Fargo said and went to her and pulled her to him.

  She came willingly, pressing soft breasts against his chest, molding the rounded curve of belly against him, making room between her soft thighs for his tough leg. Her lips were open, soft, moist. When he kissed her, she met him with the tip of her tongue. His arm tightened, and then both of hers went around him, and her fingers stroked the short, white hair at the nape of his neck and her body moved. The kiss lasted a long time.

  At last she broke away, panting. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh …” Her eyes gleamed in the lamplight.

  Fargo set aside his drink. He went to her again. She backed away, but the fireplace blocked her. She was staring at him strangely. He took her, pulled her to him once more. This time, as her body pressed on his, his fingers deftly began work with the buttons down the dress’s back. She made no protest.

  When he was through, she helping him, the lamp and firelight gleamed on a body flawlessly made, its skin smooth and slightly swarthy. She was trembling and the nipples of her breasts were erect, jutting. She whispered, “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you want to.” He kissed her neck.

  “Yes. Oh, yes.” When his hands touched her soft flesh, she sighed.

  “Never pass up anything you want to do,” Fargo whispered. “Next time, you may not have the chance … ”

  She clung to him. “That’s what my father always said.” Then she said, “Please. Blow out the lamp.”

  “All right,” Fargo said, and did so.

  ~*~

  He was not the first, but he did not think there had been many before him. Even so, she was better than women he had had with far more experience. When it was over, she lay beside him, breathing hard in the darkness. “Oh, Fargo,” she whispered. “Dammit. Dammit.”

  “Damn what?”

  “Why you came here.”

  His body stiffened. “You know that, too?”

  “Yes. Everybody does. And ...”

  “And what?”

  “Why don’t you go away? Just go away. I … could go with you. I would like to.” Her hand stroked his muscular chest, the hard belly. “There’s been enough of trouble here. I’ve lived with trouble all my life. I would like to go somewhere where there isn’t any. With somebody strong enough to … respect. Somebody who could protect me. Somebody like you, Fargo. We could leave Lincoln, you and I. Go to Roswell or Santa Fe or somewhere.”

  Fargo chuckled in the darkness. “You must want me out of here pretty bad, Nita.”

  “I—I do. You could get killed here.”

  “Or,” Fargo said, “kill somebody who’s important to you. Important enough for you to give everything you’ve got in his defense, to try to push me out of here.”

  Nita sat up quickly. “Fargo, damn you—” Her voice was soft but furious.

  Fargo said, “Girl, do you think I was born yesterday? An hour after you meet me, you want us to go off together. I’m good, but not that good. And you may be lonesome, but not that lonesome. Who’re you trying to protect?”

  Her breasts bobbed as she sprang out of bed, “Oh!” she rasped. “You’re worse than Trent.”

  “No. But smarter. I—” But she had already seized her clothes, was slipping into them. In the dying firelight, her face was a lovely mask of anger, shame. Fargo felt a touch of regret as he himself got up, began to dress.

  “I hope he kills you,” she whispered. “Oh, I hope he kills you.”

  Fargo latched his belt. “Who?”

  “You know who! Billy the Kid!”

  Quite calmly, but full of exultance at this confirmation, Fargo said, “Maybe he will. I understand he’s fast.”

  She made no answer to that. She was fully dressed, now. She turned away, back straight and rigid, strode to the door. “To think that I—”

  “Tried and failed,” Fargo said, wryly, but not without regret. Then, as she turned the key, he reached for the shotgun quite by instinct. She flung the door wide, and through it he saw the huge reach of sky, moonlit, and the silver pouring out on the ground sloping toward the Bonito behind the hotel, the shadow pattern of the rails and wire of the corrals, where horses drowsed; saw too, then, the flicker of motion in that web of shadows and the glint of moonlight on metal; and he reacted instinctively.

  “Down!” he roared and gave her a mighty push. She went sprawling off the walk, flat on her face in the dust. At that instant, a rifle cracked the darkness with a tongue of flame and a sharp report. There was no time for Fargo to take cover; something smashed into his chest with terrific impact, hurled him a pace backwards, and he knew he was hit, and hit hard.

  And yet, quite by instinct, he had raised the shotgun, aimed it. He pulled the right trigger, and even as he dropped to his knees, he felt the gun buck, heard its roar, and knew that nine buckshot were hurtling toward the source of the shot and could not miss. He felt strange, numb, and warm blood poured down his belly. But out there by the corrals, a man screamed. Fargo saw the figure come erect, out of the pool of shadow, fall sideways, the rifle dropping from its hand. It kicked once, then lay still. His vision was blurred, but he thought he recognized the contorted face, patched with bandages. Savitts. He cursed; what a hell of a way to die, cut down by a stupid bounty hunter! Then everything was remote, fading, including Nita scrambling to her feet. He heard her cry his name, but he was sleepy, the world seeming to whirl away from him like a thrown ball. He was aware of falling forward, but he never felt himself hit the ground.

  Chapter Six

  There was a while—he could not tell how long—when he lingered in a kind of half-world. Strange dreams, part hallucination, part memory, came and went in tatters and fragments of delirium. He saw his father and his mother, faces he had hardly known, so young had he been when the Apaches killed them. He heard the sharp splat of the Mausers of the Spaniards on Kettle Hill, and the Colonel’s crowing voice: “On! On, men! Kill the bastards!” Then a woman said, “Neal. Oh, Neal!” He had loved her, but he could not remember which one she was. The crowd roared around the prize ring as he danced out to meet the tank town fighter who called himself Dempsey … Then the Mexicans came at him, the banditos who were trying to take over Rosarita. He pulled both triggers at once and saw them explode in a spray of blood and flesh as eighteen buckshot plowed home … “This is a very dangerous mission,” the Colonel said. He was not a Colonel any longer, but a President. “The whole future of our scheme for a canal acros
s the Isthmus depends on it … ” And he lay spread-eagle in the desert, pegged down there by the Apaches who had killed his parents, and two vultures hovered over him, waiting to get to his eyes and genitals, and they had human faces, and one was Selman and the other had the face of Trent...

  Nita’s face. It came and went, too, and another. A man’s. A tanned and weathered face, with humor wrinkles around the blue-gray eyes, the mouth with its white, even teeth smiling often, above the strong jaw. Hands touched him when that face was over him, hands that were sometimes gentle, hands that sometimes hurt. “Easy,” the face said. “Now, rest easy…”

  Once Fargo remembered screaming. Vaguely he realized that was when the hands took out the bullet. After that it was better, a lot better.

  Finally, one morning, his head cleared. The room was large, its walls painted white. There were two other beds in it, but they were empty. It was about the sort of hospital a town like Lincoln would have. There were clean sheets under and over him, and he could breathe without the splash of pain in his chest that had tormented him in the beginning. His hand went to the bandages swathing his torso. He had been hit hard, but in his time he’d taken worse. Another scar, a few days in bed, a few days more to regain strength and speed. He knew the toughness of his own body, how fast he could recover from such a wound. The trouble with most people was that they were full of self-pity and self-concern when they’d been hurt. Fargo was like an animal. He accepted the hurt, took care of himself until it healed, if he could, but he did not panic or worry or use the hurt as an excuse to coast...

  A door opened somewhere. He turned his head. Nita Antrim, coming toward him, wore the white dress and striped apron of a nurse. The man with her had to be her father, the doctor. His face was the one that Fargo had seen in his delirium.

  As Antrim halted beside the bed, it smiled down at him. “Morning,” the doctor said. “Looks like you’re coming out of it.” Before Fargo could speak, he added: “Take his temperature, honey,” and Nita rammed a thermometer in his mouth. As her eyes met his, red crept beneath the olive skin of her cheeks.

  Fargo lay there for a moment, appraising the doctor with eyes that focused now, were clear and keen. Antrim was not tall, but he had a certain width of shoulder, depth of chest, although his belly was flat, his hips slim. His brown hair, frosted with gray, was cut short; his eyes were a brilliant, vital blue. He had excellent teeth, small and white and regular; and it was impossible not to like him and feel confidence in him when he smiled, which he did as he took the thermometer out and read it. “Temperature normal. Hungry?”

  “Could eat a steer. How long will I be down?”

  Antrim sobered. “You took a .44-40 slug near the heart. It missed the vital parts, but it tore up a lot of tissue, you lost a lot of blood. I figure two weeks will see you back on your feet, if you mind your manners.”

  “Two weeks! Hell’s fire, I can’t stay down for—” Instinctively, Fargo tried to rise.

  Antrim pushed him back, face suddenly stern, commanding. “Don’t be a fool, Fargo! You want to tear that wound loose again, spill more blood, be down an extra week or so? You lie still.” His mouth twisted. “I know you gunfighters. I’ve … patched up enough of you. Think you’re made out of iron. Well, you aren’t. You’re just flesh and blood like any other man. And,” he added harshly, “you’ll do what I say or I’ll fill you so full of morphine we won’t have to worry about you moving.”

  Fargo stared up at him, recognized here a toughness equal to his own, but of a different quality. All at once he relaxed. “All right,” he said. “But get me on my feet quick as you can. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard about your work.” Then Antrim shrugged. “Well, that’s no concern of mine. Nita, get some hot water. I’m going to change that dressing.”

  She disappeared. Antrim bent over Fargo and, with small, incredibly strong and deft hands, having pulled open the hospital gown, he began to strip away the gauze and tape. Fargo, watching the movement of those hands, caught something familiar about the way Antrim used them. “Hey,” he murmured. “You’re ambidextrous.”

  The doctor’s brows went up. “Yeah. Born that way, can use right or left, either one. It’s an advantage in surgery. How’d you know?”

  “I’m the same way myself.”

  Antrim hesitated. Then he said, “Uh-huh. I suppose it’s an advantage for a gunfighter, too.”

  “Which reminds me, my gear, my weapons—”

  “In the closet in my office. You can have ’em back when you’ve got strength enough to lug ’em.” Antrim straightened up, looked down at Fargo’s chest with satisfaction, “That’s closing nicely if I do say so myself. You must be almost as tough as you think you are. The shock alone would have finished off any ordinary man, a bullet hitting that close to the heart.” His voice softened. “I owe you a little special treatment. If you hadn’t pushed Nita down, that slug would have caught her instead. Well, you’re in a hell of a lot better shape than that joker who shot you.”

  “Savitts. What about him?”

  Antrim laughed shortly, without mirth. “He’s six feet under. A man with six buckshot in his head and chest ain’t fit for anything but burying.”

  “Good,” Fargo said.

  Nita had come with the basin of water now. Antrim sponged the wound, dried it. “I’m inclined to agree with you about that. I don’t like bushwhackers. And I hear he was a bounty hunter.” His eyes met Fargo’s. “I never have cared much for bounty hunters.” Then he jerked his head up as there was a clumping of boots beyond the door to the hospital room.

  “Go see who that is, honey,” he commanded Nita.

  She went to the door and disappeared through it. Then a familiar voice said, “If Fargo’s awake, I want to see him.”

  “He’s awake,” Nita’s voice came, “but he can’t have visitors yet.”

  “He’ll see us. Git outa my way, girl.”

  “Now, listen, Trent—”

  Antrim straightened up. “Excuse me,” he said very softly. He moved out of Fargo’s line of vision. Fargo could not see the door, but when Antrim reached it, the doctor said: “Trent. You heard Nita. Fargo needs quiet, rest. Come back in two days.”

  “Don’t have two days to wait. Move, Antrim. Let us by.”

  “No,” Antrim said, with an edge of iron in his soft voice.

  “Doc, I don’t want to have to get rough with you.”

  Antrim was silent for a moment. Then he said, as if the threat had intimidated him: “All right, But only for a minute.”

  Trent laughed. “Didn’t I tell you, Cannon? Push him, he always backs down.”

  “A hospital’s no place for rough stuff,” Antrim said thinly. “Go on in, Trent.”

  Fargo heard their boots coming toward him. Then the two men stood over his bed. Beneath his slouch hat, Trent’s handsome, florid face was split in a mocking smile. “Well, big man, you didn’t get far working by yourself, did you?”

  Fargo didn’t answer, eyes going to the man, Cannon, who stood by Trent. The name was vaguely familiar: there had been a gunfighter by that name in Nome and Skagway, one of Soapy Smith’s wild bunch. He was said to be good, damned good. And the man with Trent looked good.

  Cannon was tall, maybe thirty-five, wide and rangy and long of arm, with black hair beneath his Stetson, eyes like close-set obsidian, a hawk’s nose and a wide, hard mouth. There was no particular animosity in his expression as he looked at Fargo; his face bore the neutrality of a man doing a job, no more, no less. He wore range clothes and a single Colt low on his right hip; and there was no doubt at all in Fargo’s mind that he knew how to use it, and fast. “So you’re Neal Fargo,” he said. “I’ve heard about you a long time. Never expected to see you down like this when we met. I’m Jess Cannon.”

  “A long ways from Nome,” Fargo said.

  “Things are quiet up there. A man goes where the money is.”

  “Oh?” Fargo murmured.

  Trent was st
ill grinning. “That’s why we’re here, Fargo. I come to tell you that you’re fired. Jess is taking over your job, now you’re out of action.”

  “I won’t be out of action long,” Fargo said.

  “Too long for Selman. Besides, I reported to him on your stand-offish attitude. You won’t take orders, Cannon will. Nope, Selman’s taken you off the job. And you owe him the ten thousand dollars he paid you in advance. I’m here to collect it. Where is it?”

  Fargo went rigid in the bed. “You tell Selman to go to hell,” he said quietly. “I’ve kept my part of the bargain so far and collected a slug in the process. I’ll keep the rest of it when I’m up. Selman gets no money back from me.”

  Trent’s grin vanished. “Fargo, I want that cash.”

  Fargo laughed, it was not a pleasant sound. “It’s in an El Paso bank. Nobody can draw it out but me. All right, then. I’m off the job. But the down payment I keep for expenses and the waste of my time.”

  Trent said, angrily: “You think so? You don’t know Thad Selman. Nobody beats him out of ten thousand. He picked you because he thought you were tough, and a lousy loudmouthed footloose bounty hunter lays you low. So Selman made a mistake. He don’t like makin’ mistakes. He wants his money back, and he’ll get it. You give me a draft on that bank for his ten thousand, you’re in the clear. When you get well, you can ride outa Lincoln County and forget it all. But you try to hang on to that cash, you’ll have Selman against you with everything he’s got. And one of the things he’s got is Jess Cannon, here.”

  Fargo looked at Cannon. His face still expressionless, the gunman nodded. “Part of my job, Fargo. To collect.”

  “It ought not to be hard,” Trent said. “With him laid low like a pig ready for the slaughter. Wait a minute, Cannon.” He moved across the room. “Antrim!” he snapped. “We need a little privacy. You and your girl stay outa here for five minutes, you hear? We got important confidential business with Fargo.”

  Antrim’s voice came back from somewhere beyond the door. “Trent, I can’t allow that.”