by John Benteen
When he reached it, hours later, not long before the sun came up, he saw that they were already there and crossed. He sent the bay splashing through the shallows of the Rio Grande. Then, reining in, he hissed: “Fernando?”
“Si, Jefe, aqui.” Fernando chuckled. “It worked, like a witch’s charm. When that noise broke up the canyon, the whole bunch of soldiers dashed toward it. As soon as we saw the way was clear, we put the mules into a run. You drew them off well, superbly: we had no trouble.”
Fargo nodded. “Good.” He turned in the saddle, looked at the chaparral-clogged expanse of wasteland that lay before them. He took out another cigar, clamped it between his teeth. Starlight fell on the ruins of the old Spanish presidio, manned now by nobody. In the distance, the little barrio that had grown up around it still slept. “But now,” he said softly, “we are in Mexico. And now the trouble begins.”
Two
Trouble had been Mexico’s middle name ever since Fargo could remember. Geronimo’s raiders, who had killed his parents, had come out of Mexico. For years, Diaz’s Rurales had terrorized the border, oppressing the ordinary Mexican, licensing bandits and outlaws to prey on them and on the Americans across the line for a cut of the profits. Finally, in 1910, Francisco Madero had roused the nation to revolution against its oppressors; and Madero’s strongest supporter had been a horse-thief, gunman, and bandit chieftain named Dorotheo Arango, who had taken the alias of Pancho Villa. Arango had been a vaquero on a big hacienda, until the son of the huge ranch’s owner had raped his sister. Then Arango had neatly shot the rapist between the eyes and headed for the hills, where he had built up an army of outlaws. Backing Madero, when Madero had been betrayed and killed by supposed allies, Villa had pushed the Revolution on his own, had conquered all of Northern Mexico. Villa was a fighting man par excellence, and a man of the people, and the people followed him. But his rival, Carranza, was more conciliatory toward the big land owners and the United States, and now Carranza had made himself provisional president, been recognized by President Woodrow Wilson’s government, and had sent his chief general Obregon out to smash Pancho Villa.
Villa had once enjoyed Wilson’s backing before it had been switched to Carranza and Obregon; now the United States had written him off, proclaimed No more guns to Villa! and spread American troops along the border to enforce that edict.
Carranza and Obregon received guns officially from the American government. Villa had to buy his on the black market. He had the silver for it, wrenched and looted from the rich Chihuahua and Durango mines within his domain. And that was where Fargo and his gun-running came in. What had drawn him was Villa’s silver; but he knew Villa, too, now, and admired the man. He wanted to see him win. And he wanted to get his share of Chihuahua silver.
At the same time, Obregon, Carranza’s general, had to choke off the flow of arms to Villa, who had turned against Carranza, was contending with him for the rule of Mexico. Villa had the people of Northern Mexico behind him; if he ever got guns enough, he would be unstoppable. So Obregon would have troops, companies of them, patrolling the south side of the Rio Grande. And, Revolucionario or Federal, cavalrymen did not come any better than the Mexicans.
Fargo knew from intelligence he had received that there were at least two regiments of Federales between him and Angelita, who was to receive and pay for the guns on Villa’s behalf. There could be a lot more than two regiments; and there could be hordes of freelance guerillas and bandidos who would cut their own mothers’ throats for a gold coin, much less a fortune in weapons.
All that lay between him and Angelita. And his money.
He had no intention of letting it stop him.
~*~
He left his mule-train hidden in the chaparral, scouted on ahead. Before he moved out, he fished in his saddlebags, brought out a couple of the new-issue hand grenades, shaped like small pineapples, of which he had bought a dozen from a corrupt quartermaster sergeant in El Paso. He knew them and didn’t like them much, and he felt a certain spookiness as he hooked the handles of a pair of them through the epaulettes of his shirt, an officer’s model. The pins of the damned things sometimes fell out and then they could blow a man to smithereens or make his body a leaky sponge. But what they could do to massed troops, scattering shrapnel like an artillery shell, he respected; and it was worth the risk.
“An hour out, an hour back,” he told Fernando. “If I’m not back in two hours and a half, lie low and keep your head up.” Then he put the bay deeper into Mexico.
The hills dropped off quickly here, to join the desert, and they were slashed and cut with a spider’s web of washes and arroyos leading to the Rio and its deep canyons. He searched carefully, found nothing, returned to his pack train, and they moved on.
That was how they traveled, by leaps and bounds, Fargo scouting on ahead, then returning to move the pack train out. Angelita should be only twenty-five miles below the border, at a place called Tres Barrancas. And according to the plan, a column of Angelita’s command should be moving out even now to meet him and take delivery of the guns. Fargo did not know where they would come together, but until they did, he had to be alert continually, lest Obregon’s Federales block their junction. So he kept the pack trail always under concealment, and their progress, beneath the blazing sun, was a crawl, while he moved ahead to read the sign.
He was moving on, shotgun ready, through a deep, gravel-littered, cactus-choked wash well into Coahuila when he heard it in the near distance: the crackle of gunfire and underlying it an intermittent dry buzz like the sound of some giant insect. Fargo reined in the bay and cocked his head. Then he worked on cautiously, and when the sound of combat was clear and unmistakable, he halted, analyzing it.
The rifles, the pistols, he could identify. It sounded to him as if the column that Angelita had sent out to meet him had run into a patrol of Federales, and there was one hell of a firefight taking place out there on the bleak flats beyond the broken country. The forces, judging from the gunfire rattle, seemed to be nearly evenly matched. Except that there was, as a gambler would say, a cuter, a joker, in the deck. One side had a machine gun, a Lewis gun by the sound of it, and plenty of ammunition.
His mouth twisted. Well, obviously he had to buy in, and right away. Those were, after all, his customers locked out there in combat. He listened a moment more, judging he had about a mile to cover, and urged the bay onward, slowly, carefully. Ten minutes later, he dismounted behind a boulder not much smaller than a Baldwin locomotive, hitched the horse, and with rifle slung and shotgun in his hands, went forward on foot through a labyrinth of rock, working toward the sound of firing, which went on without diminishment.
A rock-strewn gully led up a ridge littered with red sandstone. Crouching low, watching his footing, Fargo used it for cover to reach a point where he could reconnoiter, observe. Almost at the crest, he dropped to his belly, shoved forward over the rocks, disregarding a couple of cholla thorns that seemed to leap out at him from a cactus that he brushed, lodging in his shoulder. Then he was where he could see, a merciless sun beating down on him as, like some giant khaki-colored lizard, he lay sprawled amidst the red rocks.
Below him the ground spilled away in another clutter of boulders and washes, ending a couple of hundred yards away where the bank of a ravine dropped sharply for about thirty feet. The terrain between where he lay and the lip of the drop-off was infested by khaki figures forted up in rocks. Fifty or sixty yards away, there were more on the hole’s far bank. Two dozen, easily, in all, they were firing away at the bottom of the wash. Down there, forted up in rocks, was the column from Tres Barrancas; which had obviously run smack into a Federal ambush. Returning fire as best they could, they were doomed, Fargo saw, without a chance in hell. Because, another two hundred yards up the ravine a great red rock formation jutted out into space, like the prow of a clipper ship. It dominated the vast gully below, and that was where, behind a fortification of smaller rocks, they had mounted the Lewis gun. Now, with a clear
field of fire, it could rake the Villa forces mercilessly, keeping them pinned down; in due time, ricochets bounding among the rocks in the bottom of the ravine would wipe out the Villistas even if no direct hits were scored.
Fargo lay quietly for a full minute, watching the machine gun. From his point of vantage, he could see it plainly, see the three men serving it: one a gunner, one a leader, ready with fresh drums, the third holding the tripod legs down tight to keep the gun from crawling. Two more Federal soldiers armed with rifles protected the weapon and its crew.
Fargo’s grin was like a wolf’s snarl. Possession of that gun would reverse the odds, make all the difference. And it was only three hundred yards from where he lay.
Without his rifle, he could snipe it out of action in a pair of minutes. But that would only attract attention to himself, bring Federales after him while more replaced the gun crew. No. He had to take the gun itself. Take it and keep it ...
All right, he thought. Soundlessly, he worked back down the slope. At its bottom, he discarded the rifle; he would be carrying enough weight as it was. Then he began his circle.
It had to be accomplished quickly; every wasted minute could cost the lives of Villistas at the machine gun’s mercy; yet it must not be so fast that it was sloppy; that would cost his own. He paced himself, working back through a labyrinth of rocks and washes, guiding on the gun’s steady yammer, using the picture of the terrain the moment of observation had imprinted on his brain. From rock to rock, draw to draw, he worked his way in an arc, climbing upwards again, sheltered now by a beetling ledge of rock, then by the flank of a gravel hill, and finally by a nest of boulders. When, finally, he sank into the cover of the boulders, he was only twenty yards from the machine gun emplacement, behind it and on its left flank. On his own left, the Federales on the rim of the ravine were keeping up a steady rifle fusillade, pouring fire into the Villistas below.
Fargo slipped one of the grenades from the epaulette of his shirt, pulled the pin with his teeth. He grasped the grenade in his left hand, held the shotgun in his right. Twenty yards of open ground to cover, and he had to make sure that gun wasn’t turned against him as he covered it. Now! he thought, and then, over-handed, stiff-armed, he lobbed the grenade.
The handle came off with a faint pop! Except for the gunfire he might have heard the hissing of the time fuse. The lethal object made a lazy arc through the air, and then it landed fairly between two riflemen who never even noticed it—until it burst, in a storm of dust and shrapnel, smashing out their lives.
Even as it went off, Fargo was on his feet, running. The two soldiers guarding the Lewis gun had whirled, staring at the roil of dust and smoke the grenade had made. Fargo, streaking toward them, fired both barrels of the sawed-off from the hip.
Eighteen buckshot, spreading in a deadly pattern, cut down the pair of them, whirred between them, and the gunner squawked, stood erect, grabbed at the back of his neck where another pellet had driven in. He swayed, dropped to one knee. The loader turned, staring. Fargo threw the shotgun from his right hand to his left, and the Colt came up. He was almost at the gun when the loader’s paralysis broke. He tried to drop the drum of ammo that he held and reach for his rifle propped nearby. Fargo pulled the trigger of the Colt, and a hollow-nosed slug slammed into the soldier’s chest and he toppled backwards; and it did not matter whether he was dead or not; hit by that mushrooming bullet, he would, in any case, be too sick to fight.
That left the man holding the tripod of the Lewis gun. He’d been lying flat on his belly; the buckshot charge had passed above him. Now he rolled, reached for the grip of the machine gun, tried to swing it on its mount. Fargo fired again and the man’s hand dropped from the Lewis gun, and only the wounded gunner with the pellet in his neck remained in action. Dazed, as Fargo dived into the rocks, he turned—in time to catch the butt-plate of the shotgun squarely between the eyes. Then the gun was Fargo’s.
And he knew the handling of it, knew it well, was already swinging it to rake this rim of the ravine. Out there the riflemen were gaping at what was left of two of their fellows who had taken the full force of the grenade; a lieutenant was rising to his feet, staring at the bodies sprawled around the gun emplacement. In one hand, he held a saber. Now he raised it. He opened his mouth to bawl a command, but the order was never given. He was the first to feel the full force of the Lewis gun. Fargo stitched him across the middle with half a dozen rounds, and he was knocked back off the rim into the wash.
And then the gun was making its mean chatter as Fargo raked that bank of the ravine. Caught cold, the riflemen there never had a chance. They tried to rise, realign their fire, but the machine gun’s fire walked up and down the rim in a careful, well-aimed pattern, and nothing, no one, could escape it. Men yelled and died; men tried to run, fell sprawling. One man got off a shot, and one man only, and that went wild as he took a spread of bullets in the chest. And then that bank was clean and Fargo yanked off the empty drum, slapped on a full one, turned the gun to rake the far bank.
Over there, after a moment’s frozen surprise, the riflemen were shooting back. Lead sang around the rocks that shielded Fargo, splashed screaming off the great prow-like jut of stone on which he sat. Coldly, disregarding it, he stitched the far bank with a full drum, but this time with less success. The range was greater, they had better cover, surprise was not total, and he could not see them clearly, as he had the ones on this bank. But he made them keep their heads down, and from his throat burst a wild shout. “Angelita! Angelita, it’s Neal Fargo! Take ’em! Counter-attack!”
Even as he shouted that, a deep-voiced command sounded from within the ravine. Then Villistas were breaking cover, scrambling up the far bank and firing as they came. Fargo kept the gun at work precisely as a dozen men, led by a towering figure in a great, gold-embroidered hat, boiled out of the ravine. Then, as they made the rim, he checked his fire. From now on it was up to them.
They fought hand to hand, there on the rim, rebel guerillas and khaki-clad Federales. Fargo saw the tall figure in the gold sombrero smash down with a carbine butt, saw an opponent go down. He heard a roaring war cry: “Viva Villa! Viva Villa!” and the leader in the gold hat reversed the gun, shot an oncoming soldier in the belly. “Viva—” Then, from behind Neal Fargo, there was a scrape of sound, barely audible above the noise of battle. Instinctively he turned—and saw that he’d miscalculated.
There were three of them, a lieutenant and two privates, and they were charging, bearing down on him from five yards away. The lieutenant had a saber lined and pointed as he lunged in, intent on ramming Fargo through. Fargo reached for the shotgun instinctively, but even as his hand closed on it, he remembered it was empty.
And now the lieutenant was on him, the saber point almost at his belly, and the rifles of the soldiers behind pointed dead-on, and Fargo lashed out with the shotgun and knocked the saber blade aside, and then, with left hand still locked on the grip of the Lewis gun, he threw himself up and backwards, taking the machine gun with him.
There was no other way to save his life—or to keep them from regaining possession of the gun. As the saber recovered, made another stroke, and rifles roared, Fargo and the machine gun both went off the prow of rock. Forty feet man and gun alike plummeted to the rock-strewn bed of the ravine below. There was no time to think, only instinctively to let his muscles go loose and limp so he would not land knotted up. Everything whirled around him. Then he hit, with tremendous impact, and there was a flare of pain and after that only the blackness of oblivion—
Three
“Dead?”
“No; he lives.”
And then a deep contralto voice, in Spanish. “Easy, my bravo. You saved our lives. We won’t let you die.”
For only a moment consciousness flickered in Neal Fargo. He saw the face beneath the gold-embroidered hat. Then he sank back into stupor. It was broken on occasion by excruciating pain, lancing through his chest. The pain was caused by a jouncing, dragging motion. Vaguely h
e realized that he was lying on a travois, a litter rigged between two poles dragged behind a horse. There was one particularly bad time when the horse must have stumbled and the travois rolled and he nearly spilled off. Pain brought a bright flare of consciousness for a pair of seconds, then pinched it out again. After that, he knew nothing else until much later.
Then, slowly, he came awake again. The motion of the travois had ceased. That deep voice said again in Spanish: “How is he?”
Another voice, softer, lighter, that of a woman, replied, Spanish heavily accented, “Not too bad. Broken collar bone, couple of broken ribs. And that left arm’s dislocated. We’ve got to put it back.”
“Yes.” Strong arms held him. Someone seized the left arm, pulled.
“Jesus Christ,” Fargo rasped, as his whole torso seemed to explode in agony. Then it was over and he lay back, breath rasping. Every breath hurt to draw in and let out, but nothing like that quick intensity of agony as the bone had, with an audible rasping click, slipped back into its socket.
“Angelita—” Fargo panted.
“I know. Here.” Someone held his head. Then he savored the sharp bite of tequila. He drank thirstily from the bottle put to his mouth, aged back. Then he slept again.
This time, when he awakened, it was to full consciousness. He was swathed in blankets, lying near a campfire. Around it were fifteen men, of whom two sat hunched, hands clasped around their knees. Fargo realized vaguely that those two were prisoners. The night wind blew cold. He tried to move, realized his torso was swathed in bandages, his left arm in a sling. He lay back, calling: “Angelita.”
A figure arose from beside the fire, strode toward him, spur rowels jingling, big gold-embroidered hat bulking against the starlight. It stood over him a moment, then knelt beside him. Its hand touched his cheek. “Fargo,” the deep voice said. Then Angelita tipped back the sombrero and he could see her face.