The Trailsman #396

by Jon Sharpe

Fargo pushed through and looked up toward the rimrock. For a moment he glimpsed a bronze, ­well-­muscled arm with a thick leather strap around the ­wrist—­protection from the powerful snap of bowstrings. Then it disappeared.

  Fargo figured that spotter was about a hundred feet above him, and likely there was no clear shot from down here. The problem was the steep slope itself, an expanse of loose talus and scree and gravel. He had to reach that thin granite ledge just below the rim of the giant rock spine.

  Fargo left his shooter leathered, needing both hands for this treacherous climb. With footing so precarious he strained both arms to haul himself upward, mostly by grabbing on to boulders. Fargo had already severely taxed his arm muscles during the earlier climb and now they trembled violently.

  Again a flash of bronzed skin, a glimpse of ­raven-­black hair. Fargo guessed the spotter was maneuvering around for a better view of the camel caravan below.

  He strained to inch himself closer to that ledge. He was only a few feet from gaining it, his tortured arms feeling stretched to the point of tearing.

  Damn it, man, exert yourself!

  Fargo gave it his best effort and a little more, hauling himself onto the ledge. Two seconds after he was safe, the ledge collapsed under him.

  Fargo made a wild stab at the more solid rim. His left arm snagged it, and Fargo hung at a precarious angle over a steep, unstable slope.

  As the collapsed ledge took rocks and gravel with it the ­startled Mojave whirled around and discovered his enemy only a few yards away. Emitting a cry of triumph, he shrugged a ­five-­foot bow made from desert willow off his shoulder. In a blur of speed he tugged a barbed arrow from his quiver and nocked it.

  Because he had needed both hands to climb, Fargo’s Colt was still holstered. The Mojave drew his bowstring taut. Fargo, dangling by one arm at an awkward line of fire, still managed somehow to ­speed-­draw and plug the Mojave.

  The impact knocked the brave backward and released the arrow, which missed Fargo by scant inches. But Fargo cussed when he realized his shot had not been fatal. The Mojave, blood pumping from his right thigh, rolled hard to the left, and Fargo had no line of fire from this dangling, restricted position.

  Nor could he establish a better one in time, because he had absolutely nothing under his feet. All he could do was let ­go—­risking death or certain serious ­injury—­or hang there by one already exhausted arm and wait to be skewered.

  No good, Fargo told himself. You need a third way, Trailsman, and you need it now.

  Fargo holstered his short iron and summoned a last reserve of strength that came more from sheer cussedness than muscle. He threw his right arm, too, over the lip of rock, and planting his feet firmly he scrambled over the rim and into the teeth of danger.

  The move surprised the wounded Mojave, who had been moving in to finish Fargo off with his club made of mesquite ­hardwood—­the tribe’s most feared weapon. When Fargo landed in a heap in front of him the big, muscular brave cocked his right arm back to hurl his potato masher.

  Fargo, sprawled on his left side, cleared leather. He tried for a clean head kill but pulled it by an inch or so and pulped the Mojave’s nose. While the warrior writhed on the ground, screaming, Fargo rose to his knees and tossed a finishing shot into him.

  He tried to stand but strength deserted him and Fargo sat down hard, chest heaving. This time his perilous gambit had panned color. He had won and he planned to keep on winning. But Fargo knew how it was: on the wild frontier the end of one battle usually marked the beginning of the next, not some glorious final victory.

  Maybe, Fargo thought idly as he recruited his strength, I could try my hand at barbering. . . .

  11

  For several years the tiny, dusty, ­desert-­flat berg west of the Old Woman Mountains had borne no name. But once its population began to hover around fifty, adjusted for gun and knife fights, it took on the ironic name Doomed Domains. After all, there was no reason whatsoever for going there except to end your life.

  Doomed Domains had a secret freshwater source but only an alkali tank for travelers. The single road through it was more like a goat trail. Long ago the place might have dried up in the desert winds. But the U.S. Army Camel Corps saw it as a valuable location for a regional supply depot if the camel caravans became permanent on this new supply route.

  Nowadays, however, it had become an outlaw haven for men on the dodge throughout the great desert basin stretching between the Rockies and the Sierra Madre. There was no law and a harsh code of survival. The place was a handful of ­mud-­brick hovels, all of them small and wretched. Empty bottles, rusted cans, and various ­bones—­animal and ­human—­dotted the drab, barren sand around the buildings.

  “You didn’t hit him this morning, Pinch,” reported the ­half-­breed named Jemez. “Fargo killed the Mojave and got the rest out of the mountains.”

  Pinchito “Pinch” Montoya, the Scorpion’s segundo, shrugged philosophically and flashed his lipless, ­turtle-­mouthed smile. “I am one man with a good but slow gun. Once the gringo soldiers discovered my position . . . so they are coming this way, uh?”

  Jemez nodded, his ­bone-­chip eyes prowling the hot, smoky, ­sweat-­stinking interior of the only grog shop in Doomed Domains, run by an old Mexican couple. There was no bar, just a raw plank counter supported by several sawhorses. There were a few crude tables but no chairs, just ­three-­legged stools that rocked unevenly when a man shifted his weight. Most of the patrons, an even mix of American and Mexican hard cases, stood at the plank counter or leaned against the walls.

  “Fargo and the rest are coming this way,” Jemez confirmed, still watching the other patrons. “Pablo says they are leaving medical supplies with Fontaine, that horse doctor some call a surgeon. They have lately been traveling at night. But I say they will keep moving today so they can arrive here in daylight.”

  The third man at the table, a gringo named Ham Rogers, was Jim Butler’s cousin and criminal sidekick. He banged the table hard with his fist.

  “Hey, brown cow!” he shouted to an elderly woman visible through a doorless arch. She wore a dark rebozo over her head and stirred a pot at an outdoor brick stove. “Knock us up some grub pronto! Comida, you savvy?”

  Rogers had a mean, ugly little face like an enraged terrier. He stared at Jemez and noticed how carefully the ­half-­breed studied everyone.

  “The hell you so scared of, ’breed? You’re the one made his brag how everybody in this puke pit knows you ride for the Scorpion, they won’t dare touch you and all that shit.”

  “Let me tell you about the Scorpion,” Jemez said in his atonal voice devoid of emotion or emphasis. “He admires men who brag, but only when they back their boasts. You and your gunslinger friend Butler have told us how quickly you will put Fargo with his ancestors. Yet, only Pinch has even come close.”

  “Yeah? Now let me tell you something about the Scorpion. Me and Jim threw in with that greaser after we heard how he was rolling in it. But so far we ain’t seen none of them buckerbabies.”

  “Kill Fargo,” Jemez assured him, “and see how your fortunes change.”

  “He’s already a dead man,” Rogers boasted. “He was dead once me and Jim agreed to snuff his wick.”

  “And yet when four of us attacked him from those cinder rocks yesterday he routed us. Both of you mighty killers combined were useless.”

  “Sure. Because it’s gotta be the right place and time when we put the kibosh on a man like him.”

  “Shake off your cobwebs,” Jemez said. “Delaying, against Fargo, is a deadly mistake. What good is it to dodge the fare if you lose the freight? If we take too long attempting to kill Fargo, he will hound us into the mouth of hell. You cannot give a man like him time to kill you, or he will.”

  Rogers cursed through the doorway at the old woman working over the stove. “Snap it up with that grub, you
dried-up old crone! De prisa, damn it!”

  Then Rogers looked at Jemez. “’Breed, you’re a bigger fool than God made you. We’re gonna do for ­Fargo—­that’s surefire, I’m telling you. But no man wants to go toe to toe with that lanky son of a bitch. He’ll have to be ambushed or somehow ­cold-­decked. You say hurry it up, get it done. I say get it right or the buzzards will be shooting dice with our teeth.”

  “It can be done as you say and still done quickly,” Jemez said. But he decided to drop it for now. “Both of you have been watching the ­woman—­Karen Bradish?”

  “Yeah, the blonde,” Rogers said, his voice going low and husky. “Don’t she wear silk dainties?”

  “I have noticed a thing,” Pinch Montoya said. “She is more modest than the other two women. She goes much farther away to relieve herself.”

  “Yeah, and I seen her take a piss,” Rogers said. “She hiked her dress up way high and I seen that fine, creamy white ass of hers baying at the moon. If the Scorpion wants to ransom her to her rich brother, fine by me just so’s I get my cut. But, boys, we’re gonna screw that bitch sick and silly before we sell her to him.”

  “Both of you have been so close,” Jemez upbraided them, “and neither one of you grabbed her?”

  “Not with Fargo nearby,” Rogers said. “The Scorpion is ­right—­he has to be plugged first, and then killing the camels and nabbing the woman will be a Sunday picnic. But mark this, both of you: like Cousin Jim told yous, she’s a white woman and me and Jim get first crack at her. We don’t take leavings from greasers and Pima ­half-­breeds.”

  Jemez and Pinch exchanged amused glances. Hell, so long as he got his turn, what was his gripe? But many norteamericanos were like ­that—­wouldn’t even read a newspaper if somebody else got to it first.

  “It ain’t just Mexicans and ’breeds,” Rogers added belligerently. “I don’t take any man’s leavings. I hog it till I’ve had my fill of it and then I toss it onto the ­free-­lunch counter.”

  This remark reminded him he was starving. He opened his mouth to berate the old Mexican, but just then she hustled in with three wooden bowls of beans and tortillas.

  “You say you don’t take any man’s leavings,” Jemez said slyly. “Do you truly believe that Fargo has been around three desirable women for many days and has not put their ankles behind their ears?”

  Rogers, both cheeks puffed out as he crammed food into his mouth, waited until he had swallowed some of it half chewed.

  “Yeah, there’s that,” he conceded reluctantly. “They say women are all over him like flies on cowplop. We can’t be watching them all the time, not the way Fargo rides the line. But I ain’t seen any of the women sneak off into the mesquite with him.”

  “Fargo could fuck a chaste virgin at her mother’s funeral,” Jemez said with toneless authority.

  Rogers twitched an indifferent shoulder. “Well, at least I’d be following a white man, anh?”

  Pinch smiled his turtle grin. “If he is screwing all three women, you know what that means?”

  Rogers swallowed audibly and stabbed at the bottle of ­wagon-­yard whiskey, taking it down by two inches and banging it back to the table. He wiped a filthy sleeve across his mouth.

  “No skin off my ass,” he replied. “Ain’t none of ’em our women. Never mind the pussy . . .”

  He paused and emitted a harsh belch. He had wolfed his food down without counting on so many hot peppers in it.

  “Christ, you toothless old hag!” he yelled at the woman. “From now on lay off them damn chilies! This is America up here, and we don’t set our assholes on fire every time we fart! Don’t give me no peppered-up beans like them again or I’ll be making my next belt outta your leather dugs!”

  He turned his hard, mean face toward Jemez again. “So the Scorpion wants us to go from a lope to a gallop? When do you figure Fargo’ll get here?”

  Jemez looked outside to check the slant of the shadows.

  “No sooner than two hours but no later than sundown.”

  Rogers tipped back the whiskey again. “All right. Fargo’s never laid eyes on me. Might be that ol’ Ham here is gonna have a little surprise for the storybook hero.”

  “That is whiskey talking,” Montoya scoffed.

  Rogers shook his head and smirked in lieu of a smile. “Nope. That’s Pablo Alvarez’s dinero talking. It takes less than a second to stroke a trigger.”

  • • •

  Fifteen miles east of Doomed Domains Fargo nodded to Sergeant Robinson, who called for a halt to spell the horses and mules.

  “How’s that wounded trooper doing?” Fargo asked Deke.

  The cook shrugged. “You pay your money, you take your chances. He’s laid out on his belly in a fodder wagon.”

  “Arrow still in him?”

  Deke shook his head. “It cost him some blood when I cut into him, but he’s frettin’ more about it putrefying. Grizz told me the savages sometimes dip the arrows in pig shit and such.”

  “Not too many pigs around here,” Fargo pointed out. “But there’s plenty of poisons in the desert. If he’s not feverish in the morning, he’ll likely recover.”

  After clearing the Old Woman Mountains safely, the expedition had reined in for a ­two-­hour rest before pushing on. Sleep had to be cut drastically short in order to reach the ­mud-­hovel settlement in daylight.

  “Who’s this hombre named Fontaine?” Deke asked.

  “I never heard of him. Grizz Bear yonders all over the Mojave and he’s met him. Says he used to be a contract surgeon until the army cashiered him for drunkenness. But Doomed Domains is a military protectorate, and they rate medical supplies.”

  “He’ll sell ’em,” Deke predicted. “I would. Hell, they sell water in that town for five bucks a gallon! And there’s plenty who pay it. I hear it’s the Scorpion behind that deal.”

  Fargo was about to reply when he saw Karen Bradish coming toward him. He noticed that her usual rosy glow was gone as was the glide in her walk.

  “Mr. Fargo, this can’t go on!” she announced as if she were the obvious boss here.

  Fargo touched his hat. “Can you chew that a little finer, Miss Bradish?”

  “This! I mean . . . this!” she repeated helplessly, sweeping one arm out dramatically to indicate a landscape straight from the devil’s sketchbook. A long, open slope led up to them, barren and colorless, offering no shade larger than an ocotillo plant or a lone mesquite tree, which was actually just a shrub. The sun burned the ground like a pit of coals.

  She stamped her foot in frustration. “You assured me, Skye! You said we only had to buck up. But it’s just one horrid thing after another. Criminals shooting at us, Indians attacking us, someone slashing our water bags . . . and I don’t think I can survive this awful desert! It just sucks the life out of me.”

  Fargo studied her sympathetically. Clearly she was suffering. Her face was wan from worry and fright and she kept twisting her slim, tapered hands together in anxiety. The unrelenting sun and heat allowed a person no more than a couple of hours of uneasy sleep, and then only if snatched before noon. The monotonous diet and scanty water ­rations—­plus the constant fear of what lay around the next turn in the ­trail—­had exacted a harsh toll on her.

  “Karen, women weaker than you have survived it. You do have to buck up, there’s no other choice. Remember that Beowulf fellow you talked about. You have to be strong like Rosalinda and Bobbie Lou.”

  Anger firmed her features. “Yes, I saw you and Rosalinda being ‘strong’ together. My lands! Like two wild dogs right out in public! Is Bobbie Lou next or have you already shared strength with her, too? And do ­you—”

  She flushed and bit off the rest of her words. Fargo refused to touch that one. “Why don’t you try to rest a little?” he suggested.

  Her face settled into a petulant frown. “Don’t
use that tone! I’m not a child!”

  “That’s debatable.”

  Now, Fargo told himself. Ask her now while she’s upset and off guard. Surprise the truth out of her . . .

  “Karen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would any of you ladies know anything about those water bags being slashed?”

  Her jaw dropped in astonishment and her usually expressive, unusually pretty face went blank in disbelief. Then the big amber eyes snapped sparks.

  “Are you seriously accusing ­me—”

  “How ’bout the name Pablo Alvarez? Know him?”

  “Why this inquisition? How ­dare—”

  “Sheathe your horns, lady,” Fargo cut her off. “Now did I accuse anyone? A fellow can’t get to the bottom of things without turning over a few rocks to see what’s underneath.”

  “But to even ­suggest—”

  “Shush it and listen to me. You don’t have to sit on the benches at West Point to know how important that water is to us out here. If you know or see anything, lady, tell me. This could turn bad on ­us—­real bad.”

  The fight suddenly drained from her. Her shoulders slumped and she cast one despairing glance around the desolate terrain. A crystal dollop of tear suddenly welled from one eye, but the thirsty air sucked it up quickly.

  “Skye, would you admit that some people are stronger than others?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’m not as strong as Rosalinda and Bobbie Lou, and I am certainly no Beowulf. I seem perfectly normal and strong to others when I’m in the confines of civilized urban society. But I’m terrified now. Sometimes it grips me so hard I can’t breathe and I want to scream.”

  “I get scared sometimes, too. You just have to reach down inside and overcome it. This is the frontier, and there’s no other choice.”

  “You still don’t understand! I’m weak, Skye, when I’m under adversity. I’m not pioneer stock. And please don’t waste time telling me again how I can do it. I can’t.”

  Fargo shrugged helplessly. “You don’t leave a man much to say. If you’re really that much of a weak frail, you should’ve stayed east of Big Muddy.”