by Jon Sharpe
“We have women along now,” Robinson said. “I’m changing the route.”
“Bad idea.”
Robinson’s fleshy lips formed a scowl. “Why don’t you spell that out plain?”
“Sure. Here it is real plain: Ed Beale personally hired me and gave me my orders. I’m following those orders unless he countermands them—or unless I have to.”
“He left me in charge, Fargo, not you.”
“No one’s in charge of me. I was standing right there when he told both of us to ‘stay the course.’ And that’s what I figure to do.”
For a moment Robinson was so enraged that the veins in his neck bulged out fat as night crawlers. Suddenly he stalked wordlessly off.
“Say! He wants your guts for garters,” Deke remarked.
Grizz Bear yawned. “I didn’t know that big blowhard was yellow. Soldiers is s’pose to have set-tos with the red aboriginals. Hell, they ain’t Quakers.”
“He’s not yellow,” Fargo gainsaid. “I’ve watched him in action. He’s got balls enough when an officer is giving the commands. The thing is, he’s scared shitless about being responsible for losing the camels. This isn’t an Indian expedition, boys. It’s mainly to test the camels. And the army shucked out plenty of mazuma to get them over here.”
“To hell with Robinson,” Grizz Bear said, yawning again. “I need my beauty rest.”
“You’ll need to sleep a century,” Deke assured him.
Fargo glanced between two boulders and watched a red-tailed hawk suddenly rise from near a clump of shiny creosote bushes. The Trailsman felt his stomach tighten as he grabbed his saddle off the ground.
“I’m taking a squint around out there,” he told the other two. “I don’t like—”
The bullet struck before the sound of the shot reached them, missing Fargo by inches and digging a slight groove across the top of his saddle horn before striking a mule standing behind him. An eyeblink later the impressive crack of the big-bore rifle shattered the silence of the camp.
“God kiss me!” Deke exclaimed, diving into the sand.
“That’s a Hawken gun,” Grizz Bear warned, crouching down.
The near miss sent Fargo’s pulse thudding into his ears like war drums. He watched several soldiers armed with their Sharps rifles stumble from their tents.
Fargo, whose experienced ear had gauged the time between the slug’s arrival and the sound, snapped out crisply, “Hold your powder, boys! The shooter’s too far out.”
The wounded mule squealed piteously until Grizz Bear yanked his big Colt’s Dragoon and put a bullet in its head. Fargo had squirted forward and ducked behind one of the boulders, peering out.
A big chunk of the boulder exploded into rock dust and stung Fargo’s eyes. A heartbeat later the boom of the big Hawken sounded. Knowing the loading process for the powerful old relic, Fargo boldly leaped out into the open.
For the next thirty seconds he ignored the danger, squinting to study the outlying desert.
“The hell’s that crazy bastard up to?” Deke demanded nervously.
“He calls that ‘following the bullet back to the gun,’” Grizz Bear replied. “I’ve seen him do it before. He’s been shot at so damn many times he’s good at it. His eyes and ears tell him a bullet’s path, and then he just figures the best place for the shooter to be.”
Fargo glanced quickly behind him toward the dead mule, figuring the angle.
“Christ, look at his face,” Deke said quietly. “Hell, he enjoys thinking like a killer.”
“He was born for the gun,” Grizz Bear conceded. “But I ain’t never heard of him killing any jasper who didn’t require killing.”
Fargo ducked back behind the rock only moments before he heard the third big boom from the Hawken. But no bullet whanged in close this time, and moments later he realized why when a piercing scream rose from the women’s tent.
“Deke!” he shouted. “Check on the gals!”
Fargo figured he had at least half a minute before that hand cannon—firing a half-ounce lead ball that could drop a buffalo at seven hundred yards—barked again. The situation was desperate, but he had pinpointed the marksman’s position, a low ridge in the sand close to those creosote bushes.
Fargo had decided to hop the Ovaro bareback and rush the position behind a steady stream of fire from the Henry. Just then, however, he noticed faint dust puffs from behind the ridge as the shooter escaped.
“It was a shoot-and-scoot,” Fargo called back to Grizz Bear. “No sense chasing him in this open country. You know the way of it: I’ll just ride into a trap.”
“He wasn’t just shooting at rovers,” Grizz Bear said, kneecaps cracking loudly as he rose to his feet. “He was tryin’ like hell to put the quietus on Skye Fargo especial.”
“Story of my life,” Fargo replied calmly, digging at some rock dust in the corner of one eye. “We’re lucky he took up that position—he didn’t have a clear shot at the camels.”
Both men aimed toward the women’s tent, which was ominously silent.
“That’s two attacks in one day,” Grizz Bear fretted, “and we ain’t even out of sight of the river valley yet. We’re in for six sorts of hell, Fargo.”
“You need a sugar tit, bawl-baby. What’d you expect when you made your mark on the contract, a trip to Delilah’s lap? You’re drawing fighting wages.”
Grizz Bear opened his mouth to retort. Just then, however, a choked sob reached them from inside the tent, and both men quickened their pace.
5
“You told me we’re not in grave danger!” a nearly hysterical Karen Bradish accused Fargo. “Well, my stars! I’d call a bullet sailing through our tent awfully grave!”
The blond songbird pointed to pieces of a broken tortoiseshell brush scattered on the tent floor.
“Rosalinda was brushing her hair when the bullet hit that inches from her head. If Roberta and I hadn’t been lying down—”
“A little danger adds savor to life,” Fargo tweaked her.
Karen bristled, but a strikingly pretty Mexican woman standing close to Fargo suddenly laughed.
“Skye is right to be humorous,” she said in clear but accented English. “Of course Karen is frightened. Certainly I am. But we must be brave and accept dangers. This trouble is not Skye’s fault.”
She flashed Fargo a pearly smile. The voluptuous Mexican beauty had sensuous, pouting lips. Her blouse bared her shoulders and her flawless topaz skin.
“Of course it isn’t,” chimed in the third woman in the tent, singer Bobbie Lou Davis. While not quite as fetching as her stage partner, she was still a fine example of desirable woman flesh with her mass of copper curls and big emerald eyes. Right now she wore nothing but a thin muslin chemise, and all three men kept glancing at the exciting dark triangle where her bush showed faintly through the garment.
Grizz Bear was gnawing away on a fingernail, pleasantly agitated by the proximity of three attractive females—the odor of perfume inside the tent, and the fancy French soap Karen used, mixed deliciously with the teasing, heart-accelerating scent of a ready woman. Grizz Bear guessed it was Rosalinda and Bobbie Lou wanting to get naked and climb all over Fargo.
Deke Ritter, however, was the most openly horny of the three men. He hadn’t been able to pry his eyes away from Bobbie Lou in that skimpy chemise. Fargo had to bite his lip when he saw the cook awkwardly move his hat over his crotch. Karen Bradish saw this, too.
“We really should try to rest now,” she hinted to Fargo. “We thank all three of you for your concern.”
“Maybe you gals’d feel better if I stayed awhile,” Deke suggested.
“You’ve got work to do,” Fargo told him, gripping his elbow and propelling him outside of the tent.
“Ho-ly jumpin’ Judas,” Deke declared whe
n the tent was well behind them. “I wonder if I can find a knothole in the chuck wagon. Brother, I need one.”
“Both of you turn in,” Fargo said. “It’s past noon. We’ll be pulling out at sundown. Sleep on your weapons.”
Fargo sought the shade of a boulder and, using his saddle for a pillow, caught a few hours of uneasy rest in the merciless heat. He roused himself, feeling sluggish, when Deke clanged the triangle calling the civilian crew to supper about an hour before sundown.
Fargo was halfway through a plate of salt beef and biscuits with flour gravy when bedlam broke out.
One of the camels had somehow escaped the corral. Their thickly padded feet made little sound, and now the reddish-brown beast had trampled two of the Sibley tents. Hassan, Turkish Tom and other drivers were chasing after the rampaging animal in a confusion of clanging bells and foreign curses.
Grizz Bear shook with laughter, food spraying from his mouth. “Them ugly sons of the sand is comical, ain’t they?”
Jude Hollander had sneaked off to eat with the civilians. “If you think a man can’t get chummy with a mule,” he said, “try winning over one of them. Nasty? Don’t I reckon!”
“It’s their stubborn nature that will sink this camel deal,” Fargo predicted. “They don’t rebel outright and honest like a mule—they’re more cunning. Lately we been getting thirty miles on a good day, and that’s top-notch in the desert. But if Topsy and Tuili decide to make it ten miles a day, or five, nobody’s going to change their thinking.”
Even so, Fargo was impressed with the amazing animals. Beale had tested the heavily laden camels once by depriving them of water for ten days. He didn’t have the heart to deprive them longer, but Fargo saw no signs they were suffering. A horse or mule carrying a full load and deprived of water would die in just two days in the desert.
Grizz Bear glanced at Jude and grinned wickedly. The lad was staring toward the women’s tent. All three women were awake and eating their supper under the fly, sharing a slanting rectangle of shade it cast in the westering sun.
“Push-push,” Grizz Bear said quietly and the kid flushed.
Grizz Bear roared with laughter. “‘Must you corrupt such a sweet young lad?’” he minced, trying to sound like Karen Bradish but coming off like a parrot with a sore throat. “I think Miss Karen is sweet on you, pup. Mebbe you can get a little bit of frippet.”
Jude stoically ignored him. “Mr. Fargo, you crossed the Mojave before. Is it as dry as some of the men are claiming? Rudy Mumford, in the second squad, says there’s some places that don’t see rain for two years.”
“I don’t keep records,” Fargo replied, “but that wouldn’t surprise me. There’s creatures in some stretches out ahead of us that go their entire lives without even one drop of water.”
“Now, I ain’t that green. That just can’t be—no more than them fish Grizz Bear claims ain’t learned to swim yet.”
Fargo tossed his plate in the wreck pan and crossed to the rope corral to tack the Ovaro. As he was fastening the throat latch on the bridle, Fargo felt his scalp tingling. He turned around and saw Juan Salazar standing about twenty feet behind him.
You just watch that chili pep, Fargo, and you watch him close. You done for his brother and there’s a Mexer blood chit on you now.
Fargo nodded at the man and forked leather.
• • •
It was Fargo’s habit to make a sweep of the terrain out ahead, in the waning hours of daylight, before the expedition pulled out each night.
The wranglers and drivers and packers were hard at it as he rode out. Fargo had noticed it early on: the horses and mules, though controllable now, were constantly unnerved by the camels, and would panic if they got too close. But from day one the imperturbable camels seemed oblivious to the other animals, serenely chewing their cuds while a half dozen army horses reared up screaming all around them.
Fargo grinned as the Ovaro trotted past one of the fodder wagons. Some frisky enlisted men (Fargo suspected Jude and his messmates) had painted the wagon bright red dotted with blue and white stars. This only added to the impression that an exotic troupe of nomads was crossing the American desert.
Fargo held the Ovaro to a trot, mindful of the next attack by an enemy determined to end his days. He gave wide berth to an expanse of giant, spiny-limbed saguaros, some rising to fifty feet.
Fargo liked the open, spread-out nature of the desert. Because of the brutal competition for water, things didn’t crowd each other, and every piece of vegetation flourished in abundant space. A man could look into, look through, a vast swath of desert, and enemies were forced to find ambush nests that Fargo had learned to avoid.
He rode in a sweeping pattern, watching especially for the dangerous clumps of rattlesnakes that sometimes came out in numbers to cool off as the sun began to set. Desert sidewinders secreted a more lethal venom, and one bite could kill a man. Fargo had no desire to find out how many bites would kill a camel. He watched for the sidewinder’s distinctive trail in the sand, a string of connected J’s.
Heat lightning flashed out on the horizon but there was no chance of rain coming. Fargo spotted no snakes, including the two-legged variety. Only a jackrabbit with long donkey ears. It flashed out of sight with astonishing speed after he startled it from hiding.
Elsewhere, days generally bled into the nights, gradual and slow. But here in the desert night just fell like a theater curtain. By the time Fargo returned to the expedition, now rolling out in a shuddering confusion, a deep indigo sky was scattered with an infinite profusion of stars. The pure air and reflecting sand made visibility excellent—and turned all of them, Fargo reminded himself, into much easier targets.
But the night also brought blessed relief from the heat. After daytime temperatures soaring well over a hundred degrees, some nights could turn downright cold before dawn. A few mornings Fargo had even found traces of frost on his bedroll, and there had been a particularly parched section of the Yuma Desert where he had gratefully licked the morning dew off his saddle.
“Skye!”
Fargo recognized Bobbie Lou’s slight Southern drawl. She and Karen were each riding on separate fodder wagons. Rosalinda rode with Deke on the leather-padded seat of the mobile kitchen.
Fargo rode alongside the wagon and tipped his hat to her. “Bobbie Lou . . . lass, you gals sure do brighten up this trip.”
Bobbie Lou beckoned him closer. She kept her voice just above the rattling and jouncing of the wagon. She leaned in close to Fargo so the young private driving couldn’t hear her. Lilac perfume wafted to Fargo’s nostrils.
“Did you like looking at me earlier in the tent?” she asked him.
“Is Paris a city? I liked it just fine. Matter fact, I been seeing it over and over in my mind since then.”
“Good. I liked you looking at me,” she goaded him. “It got me . . . warm down below, you know? Like wax was melting between my legs.”
Damn, Fargo thought. If she was trying to get him het up, she was succeeding in spades.
“We could make it even warmer,” Fargo assured her, forced to shift in the saddle.
“Then let’s do,” she urged him. “As soon as possible. Please?”
“Or even sooner,” Fargo agreed, snapping a two-finger salute before he rode off.
All around him some drivers were singing to their camels, others cursing them. Topsy and Tuili, two of the most useful of the desert beasts, were out front setting the pace.
Fargo rode a loop around the caravan, noting the position of the soldiers riding flank. He found Jude Hollander riding drag in the choking dust—where Robinson had been sticking him lately.
“Keep a constant eye to our back trail,” Fargo warned. “The Scorpion’s bunch are out there, and they’re on us close.”
“Yessir. Mr. Fargo, I heard about how yo
u and Sergeant Robinson locked horns over changing the route. Wha’d’ya gonna do if he orders us north around them mountains where the mirror station is?”
Fargo had been wondering about that himself. If Robinson made good on his threat, he’d have to order a jog to the north within the next day or so. Fargo was in the right—his orders came from Ed Beale, and Ed hadn’t changed them. Still, the idea of a civilian scout commandeering an entire military expedition was daunting to Fargo.
“If it comes to that,” Jude vouchsafed, “most of us soldiers are stringing along with you even if it means fighting Mojaves in the mountains.”
“Hearken and heed,” Fargo reproached him just before he gigged his horse forward. “You’re in the army and Robinson is your topkick. Don’t be stupid enough to even be talking about such things. Treason is a hanging offense. Just follow your orders and let me worry about Robinson.”
The Scorpion and his killers . . . a possible Indian war looming . . . questions about Juan Salazar’s motives . . . a dangerous desert hell to cross . . . and now a possible showdown with Red Robinson on the near horizon.
“Pile on the agony,” Fargo muttered. “Just pile it the hell on.”
6
For the next three days the bizarre camel caravan pressed farther west with a grim sense of purpose.
At sunrise on the fifth day since fording the Colorado, a saddle-sore Skye Fargo searched for a spot to make camp. But a search seemed pointless—the parched desert plain stretched out ahead like a geographic death sentence, broken only by sterile mountains devoid of plant or animal life. And yet Fargo had noticed how those lifeless mountains put on quite a show, changing colors all day long as the sun struck their rocks from different angles.
“The Old Woman Mountains are dead ahead,” he told Grizz Bear just after the expedition had halted for the day. “We should reach them tonight. And Robinson hasn’t altered the route.”
“Ahuh. You buffaloed His Nibs this time, Trailsman. But that blowhard son of a bitch wants your scrotum for a ’baccy pouch. Don’t put your back to him or Juan Salazar.”