by Jon Sharpe
The wind had shifted and was blowing from Fargo to them, and the animal had caught his scent.
Thorne spun. “Somethin’s out there.”
“Or someone,” another man said.
All of them rose and drew pistols and peered hard into the night.
“Let’s find out who or what, amigo,” a man in a sombrero said to another.
The pair stalked toward where Fargo lay.
20
Fargo was furious at himself. He’d made a greenhorn mistake. He knew to pay attention to the horses and the wind. He was flat on the ground and well hid but if they came close enough they’d spot him. He didn’t dare move the Henry to take aim or it might reflect the firelight and give him away.
“Anything?” Thorne bellowed.
“Todavio, no, amigo,” the man in the sombrero said. “Deja de gritar.”
“Speak American, you damn yack,” Thorne said. “I know your lingo but not that good.”
Peering through the mesquite, Fargo tensed. The two killers were so close he could hear one of them taking quick, nervous breaths.
“I hope it’s not Injuns,” the nervous one whispered. “Apaches or Comanches, it makes no never mind. They’re both bad medicine.”
“Be quiet,” the Mexican said.
“I lost my grandpa to Injuns. The Modocs. He got the gold fever back in ’forty-nine and went to California to strike it rich but all he got was caught and skinned alive and his throat slit.”
“If you do not shut up, I will slit yours.”
The nervous one stopped talking.
They advanced a few more steps and stopped.
Fargo stayed motionless. They were looking over him, not down.
“Don’t take all night,” Thorne hollered.
“Idiota,” the Mexican spat.
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” the nervous one said.
Fargo waited for them to turn and go back. Should he have to shoot, the rest would hunt cover, and he’d like them in the open when he made his move.
“I reckon it was nothin’,” the nervous man said.
“Si.”
At last Fargo got his wish. They turned to go. He smiled, thinking the worst was over, when something crawled onto his left hand. Instinctively, he went to jerk his hand away. But the movement might alert the two outlaws.
Whatever the thing was, it scuttled onto his knuckles. He could make out a small dark shape, nothing more. It was too heavy to be a spider and had too many legs to be a lizard. That left one thing.
Scorpion. Some were abroad at night rather than in the day. Some were venomous, and their sting could knock a man out—or kill him.
The thing’s tiny feet pinched his skin as it moved from his knuckles to the back of his hand. He could just barely make out its tail and stinger, arced over its body.
The Mexican and the other one were halfway to the fire. The Mexican glanced over his shoulder, and stopped.
“What?” the other one said.
“Something,” the Mexican said. “In the dark I cannot be sure.”
Fargo felt the scorpion crawl onto his sleeve. He was going to send it flying with a sweep of his arm but the Mexican took a step back.
Fargo imagined the scorpion crawling higher, imagined it reaching his neck. His skin prickled with goose bumps.
“What is that?” the Mexican said, and came toward him.
“Hope it’s not an Injun,” the other said.
Fargo strained his eyes until they hurt. He looked from his sleeve to the Mexican and back again.
The scorpion was at his elbow.
The Mexican was eight feet way.
The scorpion climbed past his elbow.
The Mexican paused, uncertain. “Maybe I am mistaken.”
Thorne yelled, “What the hell is taking so long? Is something out there or not?”
Fargo couldn’t see the scorpion. Had it crawled around his arm? Had it fallen off?
“Damn you, Carlos,” Thorne shouted. “Answer me. Or do I have to come over there?”
“Fool,” Carlos muttered, and turned to return to the fire.
Something touched Fargo’s neck. He reacted without thinking, swatting at it and rolling. Carlos heard him and spun and a pistol flamed in the night. Fargo fired, worked the Henry’s lever, fired a second time. Carlos tottered but he was tough and his pistol barked a second time, too.
Fargo continued to roll. He hoped to God the scorpion was off him because he couldn’t stop to check. Carlos was shooting and the nervous one was shooting, and how they missed him, he’d never know. He shot Carlos in the head, swiveled, shot the nervous one in the face.
The rest were scattering, just as he knew they would.
Consuelo had reined around and was jabbing her heels.
On elbows and knees, Fargo scrambled toward cover. Changing position saved him; leaden bees swarmed the spot where he’d just been.
A small boulder offered haven.
Fargo hugged the earth until the fusillade stopped. It had all gone to hell. Now he had to hunt them. Just as they were hunting him.
Consuelo’s hoofbeats were rapidly fading.
Fargo leaned the Henry against the boulder and palmed his Colt. He snaked from the boulder to a cactus and from the cactus into a dry wash.
The desert was silent save for the crackling of the fire.
Removing his hat, Fargo sat it next to him, then eased high enough to see over the rim. Nothing moved.
They were no doubt doing the same as he was.
Fargo could be as patient as an Apache when he had to be. Only his eyes moved, darting here and there, seeking movement or a shape where there shouldn’t be one.
In the darkness beyond the fire, someone cleared his throat.
“Can you hear me, mister?” Thorne shouted.
To say Fargo was surprised was putting it mildly. He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t make the same mistake Thorne was making.
“I have a proposition for you.”
Fargo didn’t reply.
“No one else has to die. This isn’t about you and us. It’s not personal.”
The hell it isn’t, Fargo thought.
“It’s about the knife and we don’t have it. That gal took it with her.”
Fargo wondered what Consuelo’s part was in all of this. Yet another question he aimed to have answered.
“Why swap lead if we don’t have to? Think about it and you’ll see I’m right.”
Fargo wondered why Thorne kept on shouting. It was stupid. It let him know where Thorne was. Maybe Thorne thought he was stupid enough to answer so they would know where he was. He started crawling toward the spot where the shouts came from.
“This is a job to us, nothing more,” Thorne went on. “You can ride away and there’ll be no hard feelings.”
Too late for that, Fargo reflected. He’d liked Bronack, and none of those others had deserved to die, either.
“What does it matter to you that we attacked that ranch? It’s not yours.”
Keep talking, Fargo thought. He was low to the ground, moving in slow motion so it wouldn’t give him away.
“Just say the word and this is over. Me and my boys will light a shuck and you’ll never see us again.”
Fargo was near enough that he should be able to see some sign. He rose a little higher.
“You ask me,” Thorne yelled, “a man can’t let his feelings mix in or he’ll make mistakes, and mistakes make us dead.”
It was then Fargo realized that he was making a mistake. That he’d let Thorne lure him in with the sound of his voice. And that he had no idea where the other two were.
Even as he dropped flat, guns roared on either side of him. The whine of lead told him how close he’d come. He snapped a shot at a firefly on
his right, snapped another at a firefly on his left.
Scrabbling backward, he got out of there. More shots, from Thorne’s vicinity, nearly snuffed his wick.
Fargo had been careless. He took these men for run-of-the-mill and they were as sharp as tacks.
A shape closed, a rifle spanged.
Fargo felt a tug on his sleeve. He returned fire, once, twice, three times, and the shape vanished. He heard no outcry, no thrashing, so he figured he’d missed.
Heaving up, Fargo ran. They had him hemmed. To make a fight of it invited a permanent dirt nap.
Thorne had stopped shouting.
Fargo covered nearly fifty yards, and hunkered. His blood was racing and he was sweating profusely. It had been a close thing.
He thought of Consuelo. He wanted to catch up to her before she reached the ranch. He wouldn’t if he stayed and fought it out.
A minute went by. More.
Fargo made for the Ovaro. He needed answers and Consuelo had them. He would go after Thorne later. He came to the boulder where he’d left the Henry and went on.
Something, a sixth sense, warned him to stop. He crouched with the Henry in one hand and the Colt in the other.
Something was moving. Something or someone. They would pass him twenty feet out.
Fargo bent so his chest practically touched the ground. Quietly setting the Henry down, he trained his Colt on the slinking figure.
The same sense flared again, a feeling that while he was focused on the man in front of him, another was creeping up on him.
Fargo shifted to look behind him. He wasn’t halfway around when a blow to the head pitched him to his side.
“We have him,” someone whooped.
Fargo struggled to raise the Colt but a boot stomped on his wrist, pinning his arm.
“No, you don’t.”
With his other hand Fargo grabbed for the Henry, only to have that arm pinned, too.
“Damn, he’s a scrapper. He never gives up.”
Someone else said, “He shouldn’t have come after us. Some folks don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
“So much for the great scout.”
Fargo tried to wrench free but his consciousness was slipping into a black well. He barely felt the Colt being torn from his grasp.
“He doesn’t look so great now,” were the last words he heard.
21
Fargo came awake slowly. His head hurt and his throat was painfully dry. He smelled smoke, and coffee. He was on his left side. He tried to move his arms and couldn’t; his wrists were bound. He tried the same with his legs; his ankles were tied.
“He’s comin’ around, Thorne.”
“I’ve got eyes,” Thorne growled. “And you might as well open yours, mister. It won’t do you no good pretendin’.”
Fargo blinked in the glare of the sun. By its position in the sky, it was the middle of the morning.
Thorne was across the fire, a tin cup in his hands. A swarthy Mexican and a pale kid flanked him. All three gave him flat, cold stares.
“I’m still breathing?” Fargo said in some surprise.
A humorless smile creased Thorne’s mouth. “I could have splattered your brains but that would be the easy way.”
“Ah,” Fargo said.
“You have a lot to answer for,” Thorne said. “Six of my men are dead because of you.”
The pale kid produced a folding knife and opened it. “Let me carve on him. I’ll whittle him a piece at a time.”
“What you’ll do, Charlie, is shut the hell up,” Thorne said.
“I, too, want this gringo to suffer,” the Mexican said. “He killed Carlos, and Carlos was the best amigo I ever had.”
“He’ll suffer, all right, Esteban,” Thorne said. “He’ll wish to die before we’re done.”
Ignoring the pounding in his head, Fargo asked, “Who hired you?”
“We’re about to make you bleed and that’s all you’re interested in?”
“It would be good to know why I’m bleeding,” Fargo said.
“I just told you,” Thorne said. “Six men I could depend on are dead because of you.”
“It was supposed to be nine.”
“Glad we could disappoint you,” Thorne said. He held out a hand to the pale kid. “Charlie, give me that clasp knife of yours.”
“What for? It’s mine.”
“Are you sassin’ me, boy?”
Reluctantly, Charlie set the knife in Thorne’s palm. “I better get it back.”
Thorne set the knife down with the tip of the blade in the fire. “We want it good and hot,” he said to Fargo.
“You should let me do it,” Esteban said. “I once rode with a breed who was half-Apache. He taught me things.”
“I’ll teach you things, too,” Thorne said.
“Who paid you the money Consuelo gave you?” Fargo tried again.
“You saw that?”
“Why did someone have you steal the bowie only to give it back?” Fargo tried anew.
“Questions, questions,” Thorne said. “But you don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about. You’re throwin’ eggs at the wall and hopin’ one sticks.”
“You can’t blame me for trying.”
“I reckon not. I’d likely want to know, too, if I was in your boots.” Thorne moved the clasp knife so more of the blade was in the fire.
“Tell me, gringo,” Esteban said. “The other knife, the one in the case, is it really the knife of the great Jim Bowie?”
“It might be.”
“He was a man to admire, that one,” Esteban said. “They say he was fearless. And he very much loved my land and my people.”
“He loved them so much,” Thorne said sarcastically, “he fought to be free of Mexico.”
“He married the daughter of the vice-governor,” Esteban said, “and they say he wept when she died of fever.”
“They say a lot of things,” Thorne said. “Me, I don’t care. He’s dead and gone. Fifty years from now no one will remember who he was.”
“They’ll always remember the Alamo,” Charlie said.
“For a while,” Thorne said. “Texans longer than most. But no one remembers anything forever.”
“You think you know it all but you don’t,” Charlie said.
“I know people make a fuss over things that don’t matter, just like you’re making a fuss over who the hell remembers the Alamo.”
Fargo had recovered enough to test his bounds. The ropes were tight. He could feel the Arkansas toothpick snug in its sheath strapped to his ankle but getting to it was another matter.
“And don’t think I’m picking on your precious Jim Bowie,” Thorne was saying. “George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. They’re nothin’ to me but dead men.”
“I kind of like George,” Charlie said. “He was honest through and through.”
“Simpleton,” Thorne said. He picked up the clasp knife and examined the tip. “Not quite hot enough yet.” He put it to the fire again. “It needs to glow red.”
“Where do you go from here?” Fargo asked.
“What’s it to you?” Thorne rejoined. “You’ll be dead when we ride out.”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re damned peculiar, is what you are,” Thorne said. “But me, I’m heading for Denver. It has more whores than New Orleans and some of the best sippin’ whiskey anywhere.”
“I wouldn’t mind some red-eye myself,” Fargo mentioned.
“I’ve got a little left in my flask,” Thorne said. “But you ain’t gettin’ any.”
“We could give him some as a last request,” Charlie said. “That’s what the law does when they’re fixin’ to execute somebody.”
“Do I look like the law?” Thorne said.
; “I hate it when you get in one of your moods,” Charlie said. “All you do is bitch.”
Thorne snarled and cuffed Charlie across the face, sending him sprawling. “That’s enough out of you, you peckerwood.”
Charlie scrambled into a crouch, his hand stabbing for his pistol.
“No.” Esteban grabbed the younger man’s wrist. “You are not fast enough. He would kill you.”
Charlie was livid. “He shouldn’t ought to have done that!”
“Don’t overstep yourself, boy,” Thorne warned.
Who knew what might have happened next if someone hadn’t said pleasantly, “The three of you squabble like children.”
The killers jumped up, and Fargo twisted his head.
Consuelo had gotten within twenty feet of the fire without being seen or heard. She was leading her horse by the reins, and her hood was down.
“What the hell?” Thorne said. “You’re supposed to be back at the ranch by now.”
“I had unfinished business,” Consuelo replied. She looked at Fargo as she said it.
“What more is there?” Thorne said. “We have our money and you have the damn knife.”
“I would like to talk about that,” Consuelo said, “if you will permit me. I could use a cup of coffee first. It was a long night and I did not get any sleep.”
Thorne motioned at the pot. “Help yourself, lady. There’s plenty left.”
Consuelo’s blouse and skirt were covered with dust, and she swiped at them as she came to the fire. She was about to sit when she said, “I almost forgot. Un momento.” She returned to her horse and brought her saddlebags back with her.
“What do you need in there?” Thorne asked.
“Womanly things,” Consuelo answered with a smile. She set the saddlebags down. One flap was open, and the oak case jutted out. She opened the other flap and took out a tin cup. “For my coffee, por favor.”
“Permiteme, senorita,” Esteban said. He picked up the pot and filled her cup. “Suficiente?”
“Si,” Consuelo said. She drank and sighed and fluffed at her hair.
“So what do you want to talk about?” Thorne asked. “It must be important for you to come all the way back.”
“I want to talk about opportunity,” Consuelo said. “Sometimes it is right in front of us and we don’t see it.”