Arkansas Assault

by Jon Sharpe

  “How come?”

  He was dressed in a soiled captain’s hat and a ragged red shirt that had once had longer sleeves. Apparently he’d torn them off when the weather had turned hot. He had one glass eye, an earring dangling from his left lobe, and several holes where teeth had once resided. He set his squeezebox down and picked up a violently hairy gray cat and began to stroke her.

  “The screams.”

  “The screams?” Fargo said.

  “I’ve heard ’em.”

  “On Skeleton Key?”

  “You bet on Skeleton Key.”

  “Anybody else hear these screams?”

  “You don’t take my word for it?”

  “It’s always better when you have two or three other witnesses.”

  “Well, for one, Queenie here heard ’em.”

  “The cat?”

  “You damn betcha the cat. You got somethin’ against cats?”

  “No, nothing at all. It’s just that Queenie might have a hard time telling me about the screams. If you see what I mean.”

  “Well, I can hear her just fine and dandy. She talks to me all the time. Don’t you, Queenie?” At which point the cat looked up and lapped his chin with a long pink tongue. Hell, maybe they did communicate with each other.

  “And she wasn’t the only one who heard them screams.” He nodded down to the sad-eyed beagle lying beside him. “Pirate Jack heard ’em, too. You said you wanted two or three witnesses. Well, you’re lookin’ at ’em, son. Me, Queenie, and Pirate Jack.”

  Fargo hesitated, taking in the soft aromas of weeping willows. Life on this tug boat—at least at night—could be comfortable and relaxing. As long as Cap’n Billy and his talking pets were far, far away.

  “What I need to know, Cap’n Billy, is how I can get on that island.”

  “Ain’t no way. Not with the dogs.”

  “What dogs?”

  “I ain’t actually seen ’em but I sure as hell have heard ’em. Man killers, for sure. Plus there’s the timber itself. I played there when I was a young’un. Really easy to get lost. Thickest timber I ever seen. Like one of them African jungles you read about.”

  “I couldn’t get past the dogs?”

  “Not them dogs. The Key’s good sized but not that good sized. Them dogs would find you right away. You’d be dead in two minutes.”

  Fargo set to rolling himself a smoke. He offered Cap’n Billy the makings but Billy shook his head. “What else is on the Key? You got any idea?”

  “I got no idea. Not for sure. But I got suspicions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I was goin’ by there one morning when it was real foggy. Could barely see your own hand. If I didn’t know this part of the river so well, I’d never have chanced it. Anyway, I got a little lost and got closer to the key than I normally would. They’ve got NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere and who knows if they wouldn’t just start shootin’ at somebody who got too close to them? Now I can’t swear this because I could only see in little bits and pieces through the fog. But I’m pretty sure I saw what they was off-loadin’ that day. And this was two days before the Fourth of July a couple of years ago.”

  “You didn’t say what they were off-loading.”

  “Well, it looked to me like they was takin’ bodies off and puttin’ them on the key. The funny thing was, the little look I got at them, the bodies didn’t seem dead. Their arms was flailin’ around too much. They looked like they might justa been knocked out or somethin’, you know what I mean? Kinda flounderin’ around. But you’d never see a dead person flounder like that. I had a lotta experience with dead people, believe me.”

  He obviously wanted Fargo to ask him about all the experiences he’d had with dead people, but Fargo knew that he might be here for hours if he let the Cap’n start slinging the shit.

  “You ever think of any way you could sneak on that island, Cap’n?”

  The old fart laughed. “Sure. There’s an easy way.”

  “There is?”

  “Get yourself captured and let them take you there.”

  11

  A few minutes later, Fargo was on the road to the Noah Tillman ranch. Given all the turbulence around him, Fargo realized that the deep shadows on either side of the road could hold people who wanted to get rid of him. The animals in the surrounding woods sounded lonely and desolate in the transition from day to night.

  Soon enough, Fargo passed the spot on the stage road where Daisy had been buried. Her only sin had been being the missing man’s sister. No matter where you went, there were predators like the Tillman family. And no matter where you went, there were innocent victims like Daisy. The primitive law of the jungle also applied to the affairs of human beings. He was most interested in meeting Noah Tillman. He just hoped he could hold his temper in check.

  As he approached the Tillman ranch twenty minutes later, he noticed that a pine tree shook slightly, even though there was no wind at all. Man with a rifle, for sure, monitoring Fargo. And if there was one, then there’d be two.

  The second one appeared moments later, stepping out from behind a pile of boulders off to the side road.

  Even in the dusk, which tended to soften things, the gunny looked formidable. Short, wide, and looking very comfortable with the carbine he’d pointed right at Fargo.

  “Private property here, mister.”

  “I was hoping to see Noah Tillman. Name’s Fargo.”

  “Mr. Tillman only sees people by appointment. You got an appointment, mister?”

  Fargo smiled. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Then head back to town.”

  “Which one of you’s the better shot?”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “You or your friend in the tree?”

  In answer to his question, the man in the tree fired three quick shots close enough to the big Ovaro stallion to make it mighty nervous.

  “I’m sure neither you nor your horse really wants to find out which of us is the better shot, mister. Now head back to town.”

  With two Winchesters trained on him, Fargo knew there was no point in playing hero. He had no doubt that they were working up to killing him. Trespassing, they’d say. Tried to reason with him, they’d say. Then he went for his gun, they’d say. He didn’t give us no choice, they’d say.

  “And here I was hoping for a nice, friendly visit,” Fargo said.

  “You haul your ass back to town and right now, trouble-maker,” said the man in the tree, a disembodied voice in the gathering gloom.

  “Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” Fargo said to the gunny in front of him.

  “You ain’t got no choice at all, mister.”

  The best way to make sure they’d think he was heading back to town was to make one more try to see Noah Tillman.

  “Would you at least tell him a Mr. Fargo is here?”

  “We got a list, mister. The people who get in to see Mr. Tillman every day. And you ain’t on that list.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive. Now you get outta here.”

  So Fargo did the only thing he could. Turned his stallion around and rode slowly away. A long, glum ride back to town. At least that’s what he wanted them to think.

  By the time Fargo had found a place to sneak on to the ranch, a half-moon hung in the sky like a tilted gold teardrop. There were enough stars to give you a jolt, a sense of the whole vast universe that nobody could comprehend.

  Fargo hid behind a copse of cottonwoods for two passes of the sentry. He timed them out. He would have approximately ten minutes to get on to the property and into the house.

  The dog was also a problem, a handsome German shepherd that also walked the rough mile-long tract of this particular sentry section. The dog would be more of a threat because of its bark. Even if he eluded the handsome creature, the dog would alert both the sentry and the people in the house. Another sentry, maybe two, would join the dog.

  He c
ould shoot the dog but that, too, would attract attention. What he had to do was distract the dog’s attention.

  He ground-hitched his stallion and walked a quarter-mile to a wood as dark, yet moon-splashed, as any in a midnight ghost story. He spent only minutes before luckily finding a dying deer. He never killed needlessly. This animal was diseased, crying deep in its long, elegant throat, eyes rimed shut with crust.

  He took out his knife and attempted to end its life quickly and painlessly. The elderly deer spasmed, made a faint noise, trembled for only a few seconds, and then sank into death. He slung it over his shoulder and walked back to his place in the cottonwoods.

  He waited for the sentry to pass by again. He ran up an eighth of a mile with the deer, ducked beneath the barbed wire and pushed the body into plain sight.

  He quickly vanished back into the shadows and ran back to the cottonwoods.

  The dog picked up the scent almost immediately, running toward it with curiosity and clear joy.

  Fargo dove for the barbed wire, belly-crawled beneath the fence, and jumped to his feet once he’d cleared the way.

  He didn’t even pause to see what the dog was doing. No time. He broke into a sprint that within a few minutes brought him to the grand mansion itself. The place resembled one of the English manor houses you always saw in pictures of the British countryside where the gentry lazed away their days fox hunting and having sex with the maids.

  He knelt behind a large well. A guard with a shotgun stood in front of the side entrance, silhouetted against lamplight from inside.

  One more obstacle to remove before he got inside and confronted Noah Tillman.

  He fell back, rooting around on the shadowy earth until he found a rock of sufficient weight. Fargo had played in his share of throwing games, even pitched a little baseball in his time—strictly amateur stuff but a hell of a lot of fun—and he hoped his arm was up to the task tonight. There was no other way he could take the guard out. Rushing him would cost Fargo his life. And trying to sneak up on him would probably mean the same thing.

  There was a large cottonwood just to the east of the side entrance, one that overlooked two picnic tables. It would be a long throw but this was the only cover he could find. As with the German shepherd, he’d have only one chance.

  He hoped he knew what the hell he was doing.

  On the ride back from what he hoped would be his last appointment of the day, Sheriff Tom Tillman thought about how tired he got of doing his stepfather’s bidding.

  It was now a few minutes after seven and he was just now getting back to his office from an incident he’d been forced to oversee. He wouldn’t have dared sent a deputy because the incident had involved one of the local grandees who, if Tom had not shown up, would have complained to old Noah about how Tom should have handled this himself.

  And then old Noah would rag on Tom’s ass for an hour or two. Noah was just like Tom. He believed in strict control of his life. No surprises. The thing was, Noah had all of the money and most of the power and so when it came to a showdown between the two, Noah always won.

  Tonight’s incident had involved the grandee’s drunken son holding a knife to his wife. The grandee didn’t want anybody else to know about this, so he’d summoned Tom out there and Tom spent three hours trying to talk reason to the son. He insisted that his wife had been unfaithful. She insisted that the son was the unfaithful one. The problem was that the son had a butcher knife big enough to carve up a jungle elephant and was holding it to the slender, white throat of his fetching young wife, about whom Tom had had many fanciful fantasies himself.

  Finally, Tom threw a bottle of expensive bourbon against the east wall of the bedroom they were all in. This distracted the drunken son just enough for Tom to jump him, wrench his wrist so hard he had to drop the knife, and then knock the stupid bastard unconscious with a single and impressive punch.

  The young wife fell not into the arms of the grandee but into the arms of the lawman. The way she moved against him ignited his loins and made him think that maybe his fantasies about her may someday come true.

  The grandee was all gratitude and praise. And Tom was fittingly modest.

  But as he rode back to town—he always checked in at the office before going home for the evening—the fantasy of the fetching wife began to fade, he started thinking about the man Fargo. The man seemed honest and, unless he was the killer, didn’t have any reason to lie about the dead girl or her supposedly missing brother.

  He’d never really discussed this with the old man. The travelers who turned up “missing” over the years. What was done with them. Why old Noah wanted them in the first place. Even if he’d asked, the old man wouldn’t have told him. To Noah, Tom was both stepson and employee. And most of the time he treated Tom more like employee than son. Noah’s brother Aaron—a drunken wastrel, according to most folks, but the best friend Tom had at the ranch—seemed to know something about these missing people, but would shut up when Noah scowled at him.

  The way Noah seemed to feel was that he’d set Tom up as sheriff, built a nice house for him in town, made sure he married into a respectable family, and then urged Tom to begin having a brood of kids that stretched from here to sundown. Aaron often came to Tom’s house to see the kids. He got along well with Tom’s wife, too.

  That was what he needed to do now. Get Uncle Aaron, as Tom had always called him, alone somewhere so they could talk without the threat of Noah walking in on them.

  What the hell was going on here, anyway?

  12

  Maybe when his wandering days were over, Skye Fargo could get himself a job as a baseball pitcher.

  The rock he threw at the burly man guarding the side entrance to Noah Tillman’s mansion struck him right on the side of the head and pitched him sideways to the ground.

  Fargo moved fast.

  He jumped down on the man, striking him hard twice more on the side of the head to keep him out for awhile. He untied the man’s bandana and used it to gag him with. He bound the man, wrists and ankles, with the man’s belt and shirt. Fargo had learned long ago how to roll up a shirt so that it held like a strong, tight rope.

  He eased up to the side door, put his ear to it, and crept inside.

  He stood at the base of four stairs that led to a closed door. He drew his Colt, proceeded forward. Voices, now. Male. He listened again. The voices spoke in a Mexican dialect. He could piece together enough of the conversation to know that the voices belonged to servants. Apparently, they were finishing up their work for the day.

  Fargo just hoped that neither one of them opened the door.

  They finally broke up and went in separate directions. Fargo listened until their footsteps could no longer be heard.

  The door. He stood on the second step, turned the doorknob, peered at what lay on the other side.

  With the guttering sconces, the huge paintings, the pedestals bearing objets d’art of every kind, the marble floors, the vast hallway resembled a museum more than a home. Doors opened off of the hallway. He needed to get started. Somebody was likely to find that sentry soon enough.

  He moved on tiptoe down the shadowy hall, the barrel of his Colt leading the way. The open doorways were easy to peer inside. The closed doors presented more of a danger. He listened first and then pushed his way through, but found no one. Each room was decorated so lavishly that the fussiness began to detract from what could have been a simple beauty. He suspected that all this represented not the taste of a tough old bastard like Noah Tillman but the taste of a woman decorator that Noah Tillman had hired. She must’ve been damned pretty to convince a ruthless land baron like Tillman to accept all this.

  He spent fifteen minutes downstairs. The silence surprised him. The feeling was of a church late in the day, when nobody but old women prayed at the Communion rail.

  He was just about to go upstairs—something he wasn’t happy about, it being so damned easy to get trapped on a second floor—when he heard a male gringo
voice barking an order. An order for a bourbon and water and go easy on the water this time, dammit, Manuel.

  Noah Tillman, undoubtedly.

  He’d been so intent on listening to Noah Tillman that he heard—too late—the faint shuffle of shoe leather behind him.

  The cold reality of gun metal chilled the back of his neck.

  “I do not believe you were invited here tonight,” a Spanish voice said. “Now I will have to turn you over to the guards.”

  The man moved around in front of him. Fargo looked at the man who’d been shooting at him from the roof earlier today.

  “He was your cousin?” Liz Turner asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. My first cousin.”

  Her name was Bernice Cooper. She lived in a flat above an ice cream shop. She was old enough that her skin had a papery quality and her voice quavered from time to time. But her brown eyes gleamed with health and life. Liz had found her name among her late husband’s notes on Noah Tillman, and decided to visit her. Apparently, Richard had never gotten around to it.

  “And he came here why?”

  “He worked on boats.”

  “Worked on?”

  “Repaired them.”

  “I see.”

  A breeze came through the west window. In the lamplight, the small living room had a quaintness about it that made Liz feel at home. There was a couch, two chairs, a bookcase, and a tiny table where, she suspected, Bernice took each meal. The walls were covered with religious paintings.

  “And he came here—”

  “He came here to fix Noah Tillman’s boat.”

  “There wasn’t anybody who could do that locally?”

  Bernice shrugged. “Bobby Lee was the best, I guess. At least that’s what folks said. Plus he wasn’t that far away. Just a day’s ride, over to Simpson.”

  “And you saw him?”

  Bernice nodded. “Two or three times. He took me out for supper twice. He was a nice man, Bobby Lee.”

  “You think he’s dead?”