by John Benteen
Rose was silent.
“I know,” Fargo said. “Women don’t like to hear men talk that way. But, me, I don’t arrange my life accordin’ to what women like. Now, keep your eyes open. And if you see anything funny on the way back to town, you holler, pronto.”
Five
The lawyer’s name was Callahan, and Fargo liked his businesslike manner, his bluntness, and the way he looked a man squarely in the eye—a trait not common in most of the lawyers Fargo had met. “Yeah,” Callahan said. He was a big, gray-headed man with wise blue eyes. “There’s been a lot of talk about the way your sister’s handled the Dane Ranch since your father died and you went away, Mrs. Pemberton. It’s pretty strange.”
“Strange, how?” Fargo asked.
Callahan shrugged. “I don’t know all the details. All I know is that after Dr. Dane passed away, she sold some of the stock and left El Paso for a while—several months. Talk was that she was in New Orleans. Then she came back, and suddenly she fired all the old hands and hired on a bunch of new ones—tough hombres, drifters, with that Luke Shannon who seems to be her foreman or whatever. And then she sold off the rest of the breeding stock, mares, stallions, foals and all ... and now she’s about out of business, but she still has all those men out there. The Sheriff checked into ’em, but couldn’t find any warrants out against them, and since they’re theoretically on her payroll, he couldn’t roust ’em for vagrancy, but he’s not happy about having a bunch of obvious gunmen roosting in the county. Still, they don’t bother anybody. Neither Lola nor any of those men come into town very often ... and really, nobody knows what’s going on out there. But you’re certainly entitled to your half of the ranch, Mrs. Pemberton, and to take possession of it any time; and to an accounting for the proceeds from the sale of all the horses. But Mr. Fargo’s right; the best way’s to handle it through the courts. I’ll put the legal wheels in motion, and we’ll see what happens. Where can I reach you, Mrs. Pemberton?”
Before Rose could speak, Fargo said, “Reach her through me. I’ll be around and in touch with her.”
Callahan’s eyes narrowed. Then he nodded. “That’s not a bad idea, if you’ve got in mind what I think. After all, if something happened to Mrs. Pemberton, that would be quite a windfall for her sister. And considering the men she’s surrounded herself with—yes, Mr. Fargo, I think that’s wise.”
When they had left his office, Rose turned to Fargo. “But I need to go to work—”
“What you need to do is lay low,” Fargo said. “I’m taking you out to stay with Templeton in Isleta, and you’re not to come to El Paso or let Lola or anybody know where you are. Understand?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I do, now—some, anyhow. That sister of yours has hired a bunch of gunmen. Why, I don’t know. But I do know she’s signed on a lot of the kind that don’t come cheap. And I figure that’s why she sold off your horses when she came back from New Orleans—to pay their wages. Whatever she’s up to, it’s something big—and you coming back right now’s gonna throw a wrench into her gears. So we get you out of the way until this is settled one way or another.”
Rose bit her lip. “All right,” she said at last, glumly. “But you’ve done so much for me already ...”
“I promised Angelita I’d bring you home safe and sound. But right now it looks like you’re in as much danger as you were in Mexico. Until I find out different, I reckon the promise I made to her and Villa still holds.” He grinned tightly. “I’m not bein’ big-hearted about it. Villa’s my prime gun market. Angelita’s one of his best officers. He has to keep her happy, and I got to keep him happy, so it’s all a matter of business with me. You see?”
“I see,” she said. “And I’ll do exactly as you say.”
They rode out of town after dark, and Fargo saw her safely settled with Templeton—who also recognized it as a business matter and who would see to it that no word of her presence there leaked out. Then Fargo returned to El Paso. For the moment, the matter was out of his hands, and now he could have his spree. Which, for the next few days, he did, spectacularly, Rose forgotten, for there were plenty of other women in El Paso and a lot of them had been waiting for him to come back. There were also faro and chuckaluck layouts and no limit poker games and excellent bourbon and fine Havana cigars, and, all in all, a lot of ways for a man to unwind after the nerve-wrenching work of running guns and dabbling in revolutions. He savored everything the town had to offer, and as always money flowed through his fingers like sand. But that was what he made it for—to spend.
Still, he never lost himself so completely in his pleasures that his alertness diminished. A man in his hard trade had enemies—lots of them, some whose faces he had never seen. Nor had he forgotten that he’d made new ones—Lola Dane and the man called Luke Shannon. When Callahan finally had legal papers served on Lola, there would be reaction of some kind, and he’d best be ready for it. So, as always, in public places he sat with his back to the wall and watched who came in the door; and he changed hotels every night. That was a lot of trouble, but being dead was more.
A week passed: he won fifteen thousand dollars gambling, and then the cards and dice turned against him and he lost it back plus twelve of his own. He left the games for two nights to give his luck a chance to turn, and it didn’t. He was five thousand in the hole in a game in the back room of a saloon near the river when the assistant bartender came in and slipped him a note.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Fargo tipped back his hat, leaned back in his chair, read the slip of paper, tucked it in his pocket. Then, coolly, he surveyed his cards. “Open for five hundred,” he said quietly. “And this is my last hand for tonight.”
“Five and your five,” the next man said, and the bets went around the table; and Fargo saw immediately that it was one of those action hands when everybody held good cards. Before the draw, there was nine thousand dollars in the pot.
“One card,” Fargo said. He added it to his hand without looking at it, chewed his unlit cigar. Under the gun, he bet a thousand dollars. He drew one raise of a thousand, another folded, two called, and he re-raised a thousand. That left two men in, who only called. Fargo spread four aces on the table. “Natural bullets,” he said.
A kind of sigh went around the table. Four queens, four jacks and a full house had been his opposition. Fargo allowed himself a faint smile. His luck had turned: maybe at a good time. He raked in the chips, counted them, turned to the man next to him, a professional gambler named Pelham whom he’d known for a long time. “I’ve got an urgent business appointment. Cash these for me and hold the money, okay?”
“Right,” said Pelham, whose livelihood depended on his reputation for total integrity. Fargo stood up, knowing the money would be there when he needed it. “Give her a kiss for me,” Pelham said and grinned.
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Fargo said and went out. But before he entered the main room of the saloon, he loosened his Colt in its shoulder holster.
The man named Shannon was out there, all right, at the bar, exactly as the note had said. And, as the bartender had added, he was drunk, armed, and dangerous. There were laws against carrying guns openly in El Paso nowadays; the old wild days had supposedly long since passed. But since the Revolution had started across the river, they were winked at because of a feeling that the violence south of the Rio might boil across that narrow strip of water at any time. Therefore, the fact that Luke Shannon wore his Colt strapped low on his right hip and tied down was not something to excite comment or attract attention from the law. Fargo, though, saw the gun at once, and he saw, too, the flare that lit Shannon’s eyes at the sight of him, and instinctively he flexed his body slightly, loosening the stiffness acquired at the poker table.
There was space at the bar. Fargo stopped, five feet from Shannon. “Hello, Luke,” he said. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah,” Shannon said. “Yeah, I wanted to see you. I been looking all over town for you.”
Fargo said quietly, “Now, Luke, let’s get one thing straight. I do not want a quarrel with you. I call on all these people to witness it. I will be happy to settle any differences in a friendly discussion.” His voice was loud: he already knew that he would either have to kill this man or be killed by him. He wanted to make sure that any killing he had to do would be quickly dismissed by the law as justifiable homicide.
“Differences,” Shannon said. “Friendly discussion.” His voice was harsh, rasping. Then he spat an obscenity.
“Luke,” Fargo said, still loudly and with a certain stilted courtesy. “I will not engage in a dispute with a drunken man. When you are sober, if you have something important to say, come back and see me then.”
“Sober, goddamn you—” Luke stood up straight, hand dropping to his side.
“You heard me,” Fargo said. And then he turned his back on Shannon—
And threw himself simultaneously even as his right hand whipped under the coat and came out with the .38. In a crouch he pivoted and heard the slap of Shannon’s slug go by his ear even as Shannon’s six-gun roared, and then Fargo lined the Colt and punched a .38 hollow point through Shannon’s throat.
It blew a terrible spray of flesh and blood, and more blood spouted after, and Shannon tried to raise his gun for a second shot, dropped it, put both hands to his throat, and then his head, almost severed from the body, lolled strangely and he fell heavily, boots thumping on the floor. In the desert, Fargo would have given him a finishing shot to end the agony; here there was nothing to do but wait for Shannon to die, and it took a full minute. When the boots stopped their drumming, there was an absolute hush in the place.
Fargo meanwhile replaced the spent round with a fresh one from his jacket pocket. “Morris,” he said to the bartender. “Send somebody for the police. I’ll be in the back room when they come.”
The poker players back there had risen from the table at the sound of the shots. They stared as Fargo came in and closed the door. “The business didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” he said to Pelham. “Let me have my chips back. I think we’ve got time for another hand before I have to leave.” And he sat down at the table, took out a fresh cigar, and lit it. But there was not much action in the next hand, and he won only two thousand dollars before the cops arrived.
~*~
“Well,” the magistrate said, “there can’t be no doubt. The officers say everybody in the barroom heard you try to avoid a fight and you even turned your back on Shannon and he tried to shoot you in it. So it’s justifiable homicide, no two ways about it.”
“Much obliged, your honor,” Fargo said.
“Hold on,” said the magistrate. “You don’t get off that easy. There is a city ordinance in El Paso against carrying concealed weapons. I’m fining you twenty-five dollars for toting that Colt in that shoulder-holster.”
Fargo grinned, dug in his pocket, brought out a couple of coins. “Here’s forty. Put the rest in the Policemen’s Widows and Orphans Fund. Good night, Judge.”
“Good night, Mr. Fargo. And thanks.”
Outside the main police station where the brief hearing had taken place, Fargo halted, lit a cigar, drew in the smoke thoughtfully. Suddenly he was very weary: there was always reaction after a gunfight, a killing, and nobody, no matter how tough, was immune. Besides, the man named Shannon was only one of plenty hired by Lola Dane. And with almost a dozen more stalking him, El Paso could be an uncomfortable place for him if she chose to make it so.
He walked on. Tomorrow he’d better ride out to the Dane Ranch, have a confrontation, with her, lay the cards on the table. One more try at him and it would not only be the gunman who got hurt; it would be her, too.
That was the only way to put a stop to such a situation.
The cigar tasted bitter. He was, really, tired of El Paso, already jaded with the easy living, the drinking, the women, and the gambling. He was ready to stretch himself, find a challenge on which to sharpen his teeth and claws. And Pancho had said he wanted a load of guns in Torreon ...
Only, Fargo thought, he was not ready yet for another run to Mexico, that damned left arm was still not up to snuff.
He flexed it as he strode warily back to his hotel. Torn tendons sometimes took longer to heal than broken bones. Every day the arm was a little better, but it still lacked its old strength and speed, tired easily. And a man needed two good arms in Mexico. So, although he was getting impatient, he’d bide his time, content himself with seeing Rose through her problems with Lola, though that was pretty small potatoes. Messy, like that fight with Shannon tonight, tinhorn that he was, and unprofitable ...
The night clerk was dozing behind the desk as Fargo entered the hotel and went quietly up the stairs. Unlocking the door, he entered his room, switched on the electric lights—and then the Colt was in his hand and pointed.
But there was no one else in the room—only the woman in his bed who, hair tousled, sat up, blinking, sheet and blanket falling from her naked breasts.
Fargo kept the gun aimed at her. “What the hell,” he asked icily, “are you doing here?”
Lola Dane smiled. “Waiting for you,” she said.
Neal Fargo strode to the bed, flung back the covers. The rest of her was just as bare as her upper half, and she lay full-stretched and unashamed, moving her legs apart a little, mouth still quirked in a smile, as he ran his eyes over lush, white flesh. “Like it?” she murmured.
Instead of answering, he jerked the pillows off the bed and threw them on the floor. There was no weapon under them and satisfied that she was unarmed, he sheathed the gun. “Yeah,” he said. “It looks all right. Now, answer my question.”
She threw long legs over the side of the bed, sat up, smoothed back her fall of shining black hair. “Like I said, I was waiting for you. Told the night-clerk I was a friend of yours. He didn’t seem to think there was anything funny about that. Seems you’ve had a lot of ‘friends’ in and out. Anyhow, I waited a long time and you didn’t show, so I stretched out—and I didn’t want to get my clothes all wrinkled.”
Fargo rolled his cigar across his mouth. “You’ve got more nerve than a brass baboon. Don’t you know I just killed your man Luke Shannon?”
The smile went away. “Yeah, I know it. That’s really why I’m here. Luke was the best I had and—”
“Then you didn’t have much.”
“Too true.” Coolly, Lola walked across the room to where a bottle of bourbon sat on the dresser. She pulled the cork, poured a splash in a cloudy glass, turned to face Neal Fargo, sipping the whiskey. “That’s what’s been worrying me all along. I got the best I could find, but all the good ones have either gotten mixed up in Mexico or in the war in Europe. You’d be surprised how hard it is for a woman that needs gunmen to find ’em nowadays, and how much they charge when she does.” She set down the glass, voice harsh. “Luke was a shorthorn, and I knew it, and I’ve got no tears to shed for him. You’re the kind I was looking for all along. And instead, you fall right into Rose’s lap! Of all the luck!” Her crooked smile came back, and she ran her hands over her breasts. “Incidentally, how do I stack up alongside my milk-and-water sister, Fargo?”
“Get some clothes on,” Fargo said.
“Look,” she said. “I know all about you. I know what you like, and I can give it to you. And ... I want to make a deal with you.”
“Nope,” said Fargo. “No deal. I’m not calling off the lawyer for a roll in the hay with you, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.” He grinned. “So it won’t work, Lola. Way I figure it, you’d be about number seventeen since I hit El Paso, so I’m not exactly hurtin’. And while you’re prime merchandise, I’ve been playin’ no limit poker for twelve hours straight and just killed a man in a gunfight on top of that, and with all that takes out of a man, you might just as well be an Army mule for all the good standin’ there buck naked’ll do you.” The grin went away. “And if it’s what you’ve got in mind, I’m too old a hand for the badger game.”<
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Her mouth thinned, cheeks flaming. “You sonofabitch. You wouldn’t trust your own grandmother, would you?”
“Sister, whatever else you are, you ain’t my grandmother,” Fargo said. “Now, get dressed.”
She stared at him a moment, then shrugged. He watched as she donned frilly underwear, black silk stockings, a flouncy dress that hugged her figure. Then, fully clad, she turned. “All right,” she said. “Now, will you listen to my proposition?”
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “Whatever you’ve got on your mind, spill it.”
“All right,” she said. “I’m not asking you to call off the lawyer. And I’m not fool enough to expect you to do anything for a roll in the hay. I’m here to talk about money, Fargo—big money. And the fighting you’ll have to do to earn it.” Her eyes met his. “Shannon’s dead. I want to hire you to take his place. And I’ll pay you twenty thousand dollars for one month’s work. Ten thousand in advance—and the other ten when the job is finished. You agree, carry it off successfully, and on top of that, Rose can have the whole damned ranch, free and clear. Now. How does that sound to you, Mr. Neal Fargo? Do I still look like an Army mule?”
Fargo took his cigar from his mouth, let out a long breath and a plume of smoke. His eyes searched her face carefully, and her gaze met his unafraid, even with a touch of mockery. Fargo went to the bottle, helped himself to a long swig. Then he said quietly, “Keep talking.”