by Jon Sharpe
“Simmer down,” Fargo warned, seeing El Burro’s eyes start to snap sparks. “It’s too dead to skin now. Let’s just all get out of here in one piece.”
He added more patiently, “Jenny, you know how it is with these louts. Most of them are easy-go killers, but when it boils down to a hard fight they’re all gurgle and no guts. Taking down that excellent brush cover forces them into the open—forces them to fight or show yellow. I say they’ll show yellow.”
She thought it over. “Yes, I take your point. Well hidden in that brush they could prevent us from escaping the ‘box’ you mentioned. And it would make a siege more difficult for them because they have to get close to the edges to fire on us.”
“Which also makes it more likely that McDade’s toad-eaters will go puny on him. And less likely that you’ll decide to use this place again since it’s no longer hidden.”
“Well, you needn’t worry about that—I’ll be grateful to escape this place. But don’t be too certain,” Jenny cautioned, “that the men will be easy to scare off. You see, I have the lion’s share of the money…the swag, as Butch loves to call it. Nor are they eager to leave the safety of Hangtown. As squalid as it is, they prefer it to the dangerous, itinerant existence of outlaw fugitives on the run.”
“Yeah, well we’ll see about all that money you’re hoarding,” Fargo said.
Her eyes shot daggers at him. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Let’s stow the chin-wag,” Buckshot snapped. “Them scurvy-ridden sons-a-bitches could move on us any damn time now.”
“When the two men we just rescued finish eating,” Fargo told Jenny as he grabbed a can of coal oil, “give them each a rifle. Cover both doors, and if anybody tries to bust through, make it hot for ’em.”
Fargo cautiously cracked the back door open and peered out into the moonlit night. Norton had finished digging a rifle pit, but it was empty.
“Norton,” he called out, “it’s Fargo. If you’re on the roof, come to the back edge. But stay low so’s you don’t skyline yourself.”
A moment later the guard’s face appeared.
“See any movement along the rim of the gulch?” Fargo asked.
Norton shook his head.
“All right. We’re gonna fire up the brush now. Climb on down and hand these cans up to us.”
Safely up on the western rim of the gulch, Buckshot took the southern flank, Fargo the northern. The Trailsman watched for sentries as he hurried along the rim dispensing the coal oil. As he approached the eastern end, above the gallows, he could see orange-glowing cigarettes marking at least three sentries around the corral.
Fargo soaked his torch and huddled low to block the wind as he struck a phosphor to life. The torch flamed up and he began hurrying back toward the house, touching off the dry brush as he moved. The strong gusts quickly fanned the flames. Moments later the opposite rim erupted in flames too.
“Christ, boys, lookit!” one of the sentries shouted. “The brush is going up!”
Fargo was perhaps halfway back to the house when the rataplan of pursuing hooves sounded behind him. The bright flames made him an easy target, and rifles and six-guns opened up behind him, crackling almost like the flames.
However, those same flames also brightly illuminated the outlaws. Fargo turned, dropped to a kneeling offhand position, and put the Henry through its well-oiled paces, working the lever rapidly and chucking a deadly hail of lead at men and horses.
The lead rider caught a bullet in his leg and made the foolish mistake of reining left, too close to the snapping flames. His horse immediately panicked and bucked the rider into the midst of the burning brush. He screamed in agony and managed to crawl out, hair and clothing flaming in macabre outline against the night.
That sent the other riders retreating away from the flames, but by now men had poured out of the saloon tent below and opened up blindly toward the flaming rims on both sides. Fargo heard Buckshot’s big North & Savage booming as he, too, made for the house.
The men firing from the street below couldn’t see Fargo behind the wall of flames, but so many had opened up that a few rounds whiffed in dangerously close to him. He and Buckshot reached the rim behind the house almost simultaneously.
“Still sassy, Buckshot?”
“Sassy as the first man breathed on by God! We done stepped on the hornets’ nest now, Skye. Them pukes are bilin’ mad.”
“Good. Pissed-off men let their emotions force them into stupid mistakes. Anyhow, we’re about to make ’em a lot madder. Norton, don’t shoot! Fargo and Buckshot coming in.”
They scrambled down and Fargo gave the hail again at the door to avoid being cut down when they entered the house.
“Get to the front door,” Fargo told Buckshot. “When I tell you, fling it open and duck aside. We’re gonna take out that powder magazine before those drunken sots organize a plan. Jenny, Jasmine, stand by to snuff the hallway candles.”
Fargo pulled open the loading gate at the rear of the Parrot, seated a one-pound exploding shell, closed the gate and gripped the elevation knob.
“Douse those candles!” he ordered. “Then everybody clear the hallway. Buckshot, soon as the light goes out open that door and cover down. After I pop off this round, shut it again.”
The moment Buckshot shoved the door open Fargo manhandled the gun’s tripod to get the muzzle in line with the log structure serving as powder magazine. Then he cranked the elevation knob a few clicks to bring the gun on bead.
He jerked the chain lanyard, the artillery rifle rocked back in its greased slide, and an earsplitting boom shook the house. An eyeblink later the entire gulch lit up like broad daylight when the powder magazine detonated in a second explosion, a blast so loud it left Fargo’s ears ringing.
Buckshot leaped to shut the door. “Tumbledown Dick! That’s holding and squeezing, Fargo. Say! Why stop with one little love bite? We got eleven more shells—let’s just blow the whole goldang shootin’ match sky high, rats, nest, and all.”
“Does your mother know you’re out? Those horses in the corral are already spooked from the rim fires—it’s risky enough firing the one shell. We’re going to need some of those horses to get these folks to safety. And to tell it straight—slaughtering men wholesale—even outlaws—don’t set well with me.”
“Huh! You can kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out for aught I care.”
Fargo shook his head. “That risks the horses, too. If we push these men too hard and drive them out in a panic all at one time, they’ll either take all the horses or scatter the ones they don’t take. Use your noodle, old son.”
“Yeah, all that shines. But you’re the one said we need to take the fight to ’em hard and fast so’s they can’t organize a good plan. We got to end it or mend it, and it’s way past mending. So what do we do now—stand around with our thumbs up our sitters?”
“Nope. First we’re gonna cut off the head of the snake and see if that ends it.”
“Jenny’s right as rain ’bout you and Chinee riddles. The hell you talking about?”
“Butch McDade, jughead—who else? Earlier today I promised him a throw-down, remember? And I’m a man likes to keep his promises.”
* * *
On the morning of the ninth day after the attack on Ed Creighton’s work crew, smoke hazed Hangtown as the ruins of the powder magazine still smoldered along with the hot ashes where the brush once concealed the gulch.
A half dozen men had quietly slipped out during the night, and Butch McDade realized the fever had reached its crisis. The men’s faith in his leadership was crumbling fast, and he knew that if he didn’t act quickly and decisively, his cake was dough.
Soon after sunrise a man was sent to gather the remaining outlaws for a meeting in the Bucket of Blood. As the disgruntled and hungover outlaws filed in, McDade and Waldo Tate conferred at one end of the plank bar.
“Butch, this deal looks bad,” Waldo said quietly. “More of the men will dust
their hocks today if we don’t kill Fargo and that half-breed.”
“Where you been grazing?” Butch snapped, tossing back a jolt of Indian burner. “That’s old news. Tell me something useful, you rat-faced twat.”
Butch stood with his hands balled on his hips, his breathing ragged, his shoulders hunched as if to ward off wind. “Fargo’s clover is deep, that’s all,” he said as if trying to convince himself.
“Clover? Butch, you said the same thing yesterday when he gutted Lupe. Luck’s not got thing one to do with it—he’s not just some got-up, nickel-novel hero like you’ve been claiming. Lupe ain’t all of it. Look at what he’s done already to Hangtown in just one night, and how Fargo and that half-breed siding him escaped from us the first day we spotted them. The man is all he’s cracked up to be.”
“Yeah? Sounds like you wanna kiss his ass. I’m telling you he’s shit! You notice how he’s avoiding a call-down with me after that bluff of his yesterday?”
“Maybe he is sane enough to avoid a call-down with you, but he’s still got the whip hand.”
But Butch wasn’t listening. “It’s that goddamn, double-crossing Little Britches, Waldo! She used her little cunny to hook Fargo. She’s got most of the legem pone, and she’s splitting our share with Fargo.”
“Butch, never mind Little—”
“Never mind a cat’s tail, you little ferret! Go smoke you another tar ball and get some more big ideas like that knife fight.”
Butch stewed some more and his face turned choleric with rage. “It’s the bitch, I’m telling you! Acts like she’s one of the Quality—oh, her shit don’t stink! Well, mister, she gave Butch McDade the rough side of her tongue one time too many. I’m gonna let every swinging dick in this gulch bull her, and then I’m gonna feed her liver to the dogs.”
Waldo gripped Butch’s beefy shoulder. “Snap out of it! You’ve been arguing full bore about how we have to settle Fargo’s hash. Now you’re harping on Jenny. Butch, just admit it—Fargo has put ice in your boots.”
Butch snarled and knocked the hand away. His booming voice rose in anger. “Ease off that talk, Waldo, or you’ll be getting your mail delivered by moles. It’s Fargo who’s got icy boots. He’s yellow! All I ask is for a call-down with that lanky, woman-stealing bastard, that’s all.”
“All right, Butch,” said a calm, commanding voice from the open fly of the tent. “Let’s get thrashing.”
17
Every man in the Bucket of Blood had riveted his attention on the unfolding argument between Butch McDade and Waldo Tate. No one had noticed the two imposing figures now filling the entrance.
At the sound of Fargo’s voice, McDade froze like a hound on point. Waldo, however, immediately turned away and lost himself among the other men.
Fargo’s Henry was at sling-arms around his left shoulder. Buckshot held Patsy at the ready, watching the assembly with hawk eyes that stayed in constant motion. He remained in the entrance when Fargo took a few steps inside.
“Sounds like you’re a big he-bear on the scrap,” Fargo said amiably. “Me, I’m the kind of hombre likes to accommodate a jasper who’s eager for a frolic. You are eager for a frolic, ain’t you, Butchie Boy?”
Butch finally looked at him, his face twisted with insolence. “Fargo, you’re a damn fool. You see how many armed men are in this tent? You just strolled right into the lion’s den.”
“That’s the only way to beard him. So I’m yellow and a fool? I’ll give you the fool part—every man has a fool up his sleeve now and again. But by ‘yellow’ do you mean that I have a liver condition?”
Butch averted his eyes. “I think you know what it means.”
“I do, yeah. But I guess it don’t matter how much you insult me now—I came here to kill you, and since a man can only die once, you can have at me all you want. It’s the least I can do for a blowhard, white-livered, murdering son of a bitch who’s seen his last sunrise.”
A few men looked restless and on the verge of some action. Buckshot noticed this and spoke up.
“My name is Buckshot Brady, and this here is my gal Patsy Plumb. I learned my lore from the Taos Trappers, Kit Carson, and Uncle Dick Wootton, and I am a voracious, man-killing son of a bitch! I’ve kilt Utes, Apaches, Sioux, Crows, Cheyennes, Mexers, dagos, frogs, limeys, and that’s just my Sunday list. I’m plumb savagerous and mean when my dander is up, and the first one a you little sissy bitches what goes for her gun”—here Buckshot wagged the barrel of his double-ten—“is gonna get a meat-bag fulla blue whistlers.”
“Don’t let that mouthy ’breed buffalo you, boys,” McDade said in a tight, nervous voice. “Nor Fargo neither. We got the numbers on ’em!”
“Seems to me, Butchie Boy,” Fargo said, “like you’re trying to weasel out of that call-down you wanted so bad. Never mind them—this is our waltz.”
“You got no dicker with me, Fargo. I ain’t never done nothing to you.”
“Opinions vary on that. I count at least three times you tried to get my life over. One up north in a cowardly ambush; the second time six days ago when I first rode into these parts; the third time yesterday when your greaser buddy tried to add my ears to his necklace. But it was a fellow named Danny Appling who sent me down here.”
“Hell, I don’t know nobody by that name.”
Fargo nodded, smiling his smile that wasn’t really a smile. “You don’t know his widow or kids, neither, but you killed him just the same. Cut him down in cold blood. That account has to be settled.”
“Christ, man, there was three of us rode up there. How do you know which one of us—”
“It’s all one.” Fargo cut him off. “A fish rots from the top, and that raid was your idea. You sowed the wind, and now you’ll reap the whirlwind.”
While all this went forward, Waldo Tate had discreetly been moving through the crowd of men, angling behind Fargo. Buckshot had seen him, too. The moment Waldo’s hand tickled his canvas holster, Buckshot shouted, “H’ar now! You men standing next to or behind that back-shooter Waldo Tate best make a big hole around him on account I aim to put one through him.”
The men cleared away from Tate as if he carried plague.
Waldo went pale as new gypsum. “Now, just hold your horses, Brady! My hand to God, I was only—”
“Chuck the flap-jaw, you egg-sucking groat. I seen what you was up to.”
“You can’t just gun me down, man!”
“Fargo wouldn’t, maybe. He’s a noble son of a bitch, and he’d likely give you an even chance. Me, I’m just a stone cold, mother-lovin’ killer.”
“I got gold, Brady, plenty of it! I can make you rich! I—”
Buckshot thumbed one hammer back with a menacing click, and Waldo fell silent abruptly as if he’d been slugged.
“You’re a back-shooting coward,” Buckshot pronounced in his gravelly voice. “Danny was just workin’ hard to feed his family when you scum buckets burned him down. Then you three bushwhackers turned your guns on me and Fargo.”
“He ain’t stupid enough to kill you, Waldo,” Butch scoffed. “He knows his ass is grass if he does.”
“Yeah,” Waldo said, grasping at this straw, “you best think about it because—”
Patsy’s right muzzle spat flame and double-aught buckshot, the blast deafening inside the tent. Tate’s entrails splatted in a greasy spray onto the wall of the tent behind him, his corpse flying head-over-handcart. Before the men could recover from their shock, Buckshot broke open the breach and inserted a shell into the empty chamber.
“Good God-a-gorry!” someone exclaimed.
“That’s two down, Butchie Boy,” Fargo said, his eyes hard as blue gems now. “You’re the last one. Get coiled and throw down.”
“Now, just a goddamn minute here, Fargo,” McDade blustered. “You’re on my range now. I don’t hafta—”
“Shut your filthy sewer and keep it shut. I’m making the medicine around here and you’re taking it. You just made your brag how you wanted a draw-shoo
t with me. So here’s your big chance to make your boys proud—quit mealymouthing and throw down.”
“Nerve up, damn it, alla yous!” Butch shouted to his men. “The hell you waiting for? We got the numbers on these bastards—smoke them down!”
“Fargo’s right,” spoke up Cliff, the snowbird who had challenged Jenny at the knife fight yesterday. “You got it bass-ackward, Butch. You’re the one’s been spoiling for a cartridge session with Fargo, not us. Well, there he stands.”
“Throw down,” Fargo repeated.
“Holy Hannah!” someone exclaimed. “Butch just pissed himself!”
“Jerk it back,” Fargo ordered. “This is the final reckoning, McDade.”
As if finally realizing cowardice wouldn’t save his bacon, a transformation came over McDade’s brutally handsome face. Determined confidence washed out the craven fear, for after all McDade had every right to trust in his skills as a shootist. That skill had left a trail of graves from Missouri to California, and besides, for all his notoriety, Skye Fargo was not ballyhooed as a gunslinger. All the guts in the world couldn’t trump superior speed in the draw.
“All right, crusader,” he replied, pushing away from the plank bar and coiling, “I been packing heaven full of fresh souls for a long time, but there’s always room for one more.”
A slight movement of McDade’s neck muscles was all the warning Fargo needed. Here’s the fandango, he told himself just before McDade made his play and Fargo filled his fist with blue steel.
It was over in a few thundering heartbeats, but for Fargo the critical moments of life-or-death action always had a dreamlike slowness to them as if they were happening underwater. He became both participant and observer simultaneously.
The observer in him realized, heart sinking, that Butch McDade was faster, his walnut-gripped Remington clearing leather an eyeblink before Fargo’s Colt. But the participant in him remained confident and sure of purpose when a nerve-rattled McDade bucked his trigger, the bullet tracking wide and taking a couple of fringes off Fargo’s shirt.