Fargo 18

by John Benteen

  In its main sala, he stopped short. There, slumped down in a chair, cigar between his teeth, sat a short, thick man in a military uniform not much different from that of a U.S. Cavalry officer. A Colt .38 was set for a cross-draw in front of his ample belly, and his eyes were like two flakes of black bottle glass. When he saw Fargo, he grinned. “Señor Neal,” he said.

  “General Villa.” Fargo instinctively, if a little painfully, came to attention before one of the two or three generals he’d met in his life whom he genuinely admired.

  Villa arose, slowly; and though Fargo towered inches above him, he was nevertheless imposing. He was a dangerous man, as Fargo well knew, given to whimsical and sudden decisions; he could be cruel, vindictive, but he understood the people and shared their earthy humor, their sufferings and their hatreds. That was his strength.

  “Señor Neal,” he said. “My people and I owe you a debt of gratitude. I have just been discussing it with La Capitana Angelita. I would give you a medal—a very big medal with fancy writing on it, but until I am Presidente and the Revolution is complete, you will have to take a handshake instead.”

  “That,” Fargo said, putting out his hand, “and a couple of mule loads of silver for the guns I bought.”

  “That has been arranged. And a slight bonus for your service to the cause at the battle outside of Tres Barrancas. But—” His face darkened. “What kind of country do you come from, Fargo? Why has your President Wilson, who is like an old woman, turned against me?”

  Fargo shrugged with his unbandaged shoulder. “They don’t call me in for consultation.”

  “No,” Villa said. “But they have made me very angry. Well, no matter. We will continue to provide you with a market for your guns. But ... I have discussed something with Captain Angelita. You will have your money and we will buy more guns—but there is a young American woman you must take home with you. Her name is Rose Pemberton.”

  Fargo looked at Angelita. She smiled. Fargo said, “That’s an order direct from you?”

  “It is the wish of my great captain Angelita. One of my Dorados. Yes, it is an order.” Fargo shrugged. “Then I’ll take her with me.”

  “Good,” Villa said, and he shook hands with Fargo. “I think the next load of rifles should be delivered near Torreon. We will be in touch with you, but our army has plans for movement.” He turned, embraced Angelita, then went out.

  “All right,” Fargo said to Angelita. “You get your wish. I take Rosita home. Where is she?”

  “At the hospital,” Angelita said. “We are alone. Rose works very hard among the sick. I am re-outfitting my command. We are both busy. But—” Her dark eyes met Fargo’s. “I am free for the afternoon. Only—you are very sick.”

  Fargo met her gaze.

  “Sick, hell,” he said. “Where’s the bedroom?”

  Angelita smiled. “I’ll be very gentle with you, Neal ...”

  ~*~

  “No,” Angelita whispered. “Please, no more. I am very happy now.”

  This was a week later. Fargo had spent those seven days here at Angelita’s house, sharing her bed at night. In the daytime, he went to the Hotel Centrale de Chihuahua, once the elegant center of social life for the foreign populace, but now a somewhat rundown place where Villa’s officers brought their girlfriends. There he drank and gambled and ignored the anti-American sentiment that was like a miasma in the place. He spent two hours outside of town, every day, practicing his marksmanship and when he had nothing else to do, he squeezed a small rubber ball in his left hand to keep his muscles in tone. During all that time, he barely saw Rose, and when he did, she was withdrawn and silent.

  Once he heard Angelita and her arguing fiercely.

  The day came, though, when he cursed silently while she ripped the tape away from his ribs and freed his arm from the sling. “You are fit to travel now,” she said. “The ribs have knitted. So has the collarbone. You will be slow with your left arm for a long time, though. Remember that. Another month, maybe two. During that while, you’ll be handicapped.”

  “Okay,” Fargo said. “As long as I can travel. Good enough. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “We?” Rose looked at him steadily. “I’m not going.”

  “Angelita says you are. And she’s right. Anti-American sentiment’s growing every day here. You know—” he met her eyes “—what the Federales did to you. If things go on the way they are, the Villistas might do it, too.”

  Rose looked away. “Angelita will protect me.”

  “Angelita fights like a lioness. But she’s not bulletproof.”

  “You’re saying that, if she goes—”

  “You’ll be finished here—except as a plaything for Mexican soldiers. And anyhow, she’s got too much to do to protect you. I’m riding out, and it’ll be your last chance. You’re to come with me.”

  She looked at him and then down at the floor. “I—”

  “You’ve been raped by a gang of Federales,” Fargo said. “You want to be raped by a gang of Villistas? Okay, if you want it that bad, you stay.”

  Rose raised her head. “No,” she said, face pale. “God, no. I’ll come with you.”

  They rode out of Chihuahua City on an avenue flanked by plane trees that passed Villa’s military headquarters. Rose’s last night of Chihuahua was a reminder of the horrors of civil war—a body swung from a tree in front of headquarters, clad in bloodstained khaki, its contorted face a dark purple: some high Federal officer captured by the rebels.

  Heading north, three pack mules strung out behind them, they entered the high desert that lay between Chihuahua City and the border. They followed well-traveled roads that wandered from waterhole to waterhole, and passed through little mining towns that were nothing but a store, cantina and livery stable. The word had gone ahead of them: they were to have safe-conduct through Villa country.

  Rose Pemberton might as well have been a wooden doll for all the companionship she offered on that ride. She spoke almost not at all, slept well away from Fargo, let him do the cooking, which was minimal, and cleaned up afterwards. She was, he noted, a damned good horsewoman and knew how to handle guns; and she took her turn on watch, although they were still in Villa’s country and their safe-conduct was guaranteed. But Fargo trusted no one, not with sixty thousand in silver on the pack mules.

  Presently they were on the high plateau south of the Rio Grande, only one day’s travel from the river. That night they camped in the ruined, crumbling remains of an old Spanish mission. Somehow, in the search for metal, one of its bells had been overlooked, and, from time to time, it clanged mournfully in the wind.

  The armies that had contended for this terrain had all camped within the ruins, and it looked and smelled like it. But one chapel still held an image of the Virgin of Guadelupe, and it was clear and clean. They spread their blankets in there that night. Then they watered their horses and themselves at a cistern of clear cold water behind the mission. It was full, and Fargo said, “Me, I’m going to have a bath. You can look the other way if you want to.”

  Rose smiled for the first time. “I’m a nurse. I’ve seen you stark naked and a lot of others besides. Help yourself. I’ll see to supper.”

  “Good. That simplifies things.” Fargo stripped clothes away from a hard, scarred body, floated in the cistern for a while, shotgun always within easy reach. Rose built a fire inside the ruins and put coffee on to boil. Fargo was just climbing out when she reappeared. Her eyes ranged up and down his hard-muscled nakedness. She carried a blanket over her arm. “Here,” she said, “you’ll need this. It’s getting cold.” And she wrapped it around him. In that moment, she was very close to him, her eyes strange, something swirling in them. Fargo was about, instinctively, to reach for her when she turned away.

  “Now I’m going to bathe,” she said.

  He stood there watching as, without more preliminary than that, she began to strip, unbuttoning her blouse. The long leather skirt dropped and she stood there in cotton undervest
and pants. Her back to Fargo, she peeled those off, exposing smooth white flesh, rounded hips, soft buttocks, long, shapely legs. She stepped into the cistern, and then she was floating on her back and he saw the sharp pink points of her nipples, like tiny islands above the water.

  He turned away, found a cigar, lit it, shifted the boiling coffee off the flame. Presently, she called: “Fargo.”

  He went to the cistern, still swathed in the blanket. Rose, naked, dripping, climbed out. “I’m cold,” she said.

  Fargo went to her. “Here,” he said and opened the blanket, and she came inside it and he wrapped it around her and then her body, damp and cool, was against his. She shivered slightly. Then her arms went around his waist. Fargo looked down at her, threw the cigar away, bent and kissed her.

  Beneath his, her mouth opened. Her breasts flattened against his chest, her loins started to move. They stood there with the blanket wrapped around them, locked together like that, for a long minute. Then Fargo slipped free of the blanket. Folding it about her, he picked her up, carried her into the ruins. There he laid her down, out of the wind, still on the blanket, and she threw its enfolding edges aside and, naked, legs spread and waiting, looked up at him. “Neal,” she whispered, and she reached up and took his hand and pulled him down ... After a while, her thin rasping cries of pleasure mingled with the chiming of the single wind-shaken bell in the ruined tower ...

  Later, the blanket pulled over them once more, she lay on Fargo’s arm. Her voice was soft, tentative. “I ... feel like I’ve come back from a long journey.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him, smiled. “After what they did to me—the Federales ... I thought ... I thought I would never want a man again. That the part of me that wanted that was too sick ever to get well ... But now I am getting well.”

  “Listen,” Fargo said, “don’t—”

  “Oh, I’m not getting any ideas. I know what kind of man you are and Angelita’s warned me that you’ll be drifting on. I wouldn’t try to hold you. But I am glad to see that I can be stirred again—by the right man. It means that ... I have a future.” Then she laughed. “But right now we won’t worry about the future. The present is good enough for me.” And she rolled over, and her mouth sought his again, and her body moved hungrily against his.

  Four

  Later, shotgun ready, Fargo made a circuit on foot in starlight of the ruined mission. Satisfied that nothing offered immediate threat, he returned to the ruins. There Rose, smiling and even humming softly to herself, had supper ready. And, now that her reserve was gone, the shock which had numbed her for so long finally dissipated, Fargo learned for the first time what she had left—and what he was taking her back to.

  It was one of the biggest horse ranches in West Texas, north of El Paso. “Grandpa—Colonel Sam Dane—started it after he left the Texas Rangers. Papa—Dr. Frederick Dane—took it over, but he was busy practicing medicine and it has run downhill since. Especially since he died four years ago.”

  “Two bad,” Fargo said. “There ought to be good money in cavalry remounts now, with all the soldiers they’ve got along the border. Your husband should have stayed and managed it instead of chasing off down to Mexico to be a Revolucionario.”

  “No. Neither one of us wanted to stay there. Not with Lola and the crowd that hung around her—”

  “Lola?”

  “My half sister,” Rose said, and something in her voice made Fargo look at her sharply. “She’s five years older than I am and ...”

  “And you don’t like her worth a damn,” Fargo said.

  “No. She’s a bitch on wheels. There’s no other word for her.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I guess you’ll meet her. Then you’ll see. Anyhow, I wasn’t very old when Papa died, not old enough to stand up against her. So she took over everything and ... life there wasn’t very pleasant for me. She’s wild and strong and always gave Papa problems, and after he was gone ... I couldn’t stand it, and I left, went to El Paso and got a job nursing in the hospital there. Which is where I met Rich, my husband. We got married and decided to come to Mexico and lend our services to the Revolution, to Villa, and—” Her voice faltered, she broke off. “Well, you know the rest.”

  “So what will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. Go back to the ranch. Maybe things have changed. If they haven’t, I’ll sure not stay there. I can always get my job back in El Paso, I guess.” She laughed shortly. “Lola will be surprised to see me, I guess. She hasn’t heard from me in three years. Probably she hopes I’m dead. Then she’ll be complete owner of the place—for whatever that’s worth.”

  “Like I said, it ought to be a lot with the demand for cavalry mounts. Right there near Bliss, there should be a steady market—for a few years more, anyhow. Of course cavalry won’t last much longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “The machine gun,” Fargo said. “You saw it in that battle in the draw. Cavalry can’t charge against a well-placed machine gun. But—okay. We’ll stop in El Paso. I’ve got to get this silver in the bank, and do it without attracting too much attention. The law gets nosy when somebody brings a big chunk of Mexican silver back across the border these days. After that’s taken care of, I’ll ride out to your ranch with you, size the place up. If it looks like a bad deal for you, I’ll see you safely located in El Paso.”

  “You don’t owe me all that time and trouble.”

  “Maybe not,” Fargo said. “But I owe it to Angelita.”

  They crossed the Rio the next night, under cover of darkness, well downstream from El Paso. Juarez was held by Villa, but you didn’t simply ride across the International Bridge with a couple of mule loads of silver. They missed encountering a cavalry patrol by a hair, but they made it safely to the house of a man named Templeton in Isleta. Fargo had done business with Templeton before; the man charged two percent brokerage to trade American greenbacks for Mexican silver. As the agent for several confiscated mines, he could funnel bullion and coin into banks without arousing suspicion. Fargo threw in the mules and he and Rose entered El Paso next morning bold as brass and the bank asked no questions when he deposited currency to his account.

  He still had his room at the El Paso House, and his trunk was there, a big, iron-strapped box into which, now, after carefully cleaning it, he stored the Fox double-gun, along with the bandoliers. After a bath, he changed into town clothes—white shirt and tie, corduroy jacket, specially cut to hide the .38 which now rode in a shoulder holster under his left arm and long enough to conceal the strange knife in its special sheath in his right hip pocket. He had been born ambidextrous, could use either hand with equal facility, an edge that had more than once saved his life, but now he wore his armament for use only with his right. The fact was that the broken collarbone, the cracked ribs, and the torn tendons from the dislocation still troubled him, and his left lacked its usual speed, power, and dexterity. That, he knew, was something only time could take care of.

  With cavalry boots polished to a high sheen, whipcord pants worn outside them, and the battered Rough Rider’s hat perched jauntily on his close-cropped white hair, he could have been a prosperous rancher or oil man or miner in town for a weekend. After he’d thus transformed himself, he and Rose went on a shopping tour; he bought her a pair of frilly town dresses and a decent riding outfit to replace the worn shirt and skirt that had seen such rough treatment in Mexico. That night, seeing her for the first time in a gown with lace, cut low to reveal her shoulders and the swell of hips, her hair brushed until it shone, just a touch of powder and rouge on her face, he was impressed. Impressed enough, in fact, not to spend the night drinking and gambling; there was better entertainment in her room next door to his.

  The next morning he rented a buckboard and they set out for the Dane Ranch. It took them a good six hours to reach it, and the whole way Rose was silent, apprehensive and depressed. Bitch on wheels, Fargo thought, and his curiosity about Lola Dane heightened.


  They were on Dane property long before they reached the ranch house. And, Fargo noted, this layout had everything a horse outfit needed—except horses. The good pastures along the road were nearly empty, the grama ungrazed and high. “Not a hell of a lot of stock,” Fargo said.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to it all. We had hundreds of good quarter horse brood mares—”

  “Maybe your sister sold it all off. In which case you’ll have some money comin’ to you.”

  “I could use some,” Rose said. “Here, the fork to the right. That takes us to the ranch house.”

  Twenty minutes later, it came in sight: a big Spanish-style house, tile roof glinting in the sun, but stucco peeling from its walls, and a surrounding complex of stables and corrals, all now badly in need of repair. Rose made a sound in her throat. “If Papa could only see this! He always kept things so spic and span—and she’s let it go to rack and ruin! She—” The girl broke off as, from behind the house there came a chorus of shouts and whoops. “That’s the bronc corral,” she said. “Sounds like someone’s making a ride.”

  A raucous, mocking roar drowned her words. Fargo grinned. “Somebody didn’t make a ride.” The buckboard rounded the corner of the house and he pulled up the team.

  Nearly a dozen of them, they sat on the top rail of the corral or lounged around outside it, and Fargo’s grin faded and his eyes narrowed. Those men on the fence might be a lot of things, but cowboys and horse wranglers they were not. Not with all those guns and a couple of whiskey bottles being passed back and forth—something prohibited on every working ranch he’d ever heard of, at least on a weekday like this one. When Rose started to get out of the rig, he pushed her back on the seat. “Wait,” he said quietly.

  The men at the corral were unaware of their presence. The big hammerheaded, line-backed dun stud inside had just, in cowboy parlance, not only got his man but tried to eat him. Its rider tossed, it had chased him to the fence, teeth bared, and now, reins trailing, it snorted and buck-jumped around the enclosure as he, the object of the jeering, took hasty refuge on a rail. “Hell, Luke,” somebody yelled, “first you fly like a bird, then you run like a jackrabbit! What kinda critter are you?”