by Jon Sharpe
She surprised him by nodding submissively. “But I’m stuck here now and isn’t it your job to protect the weak?”
Fargo grinned. “What was I doing this morning when I was hanging out in the wind and ducking bullets and arrows—not to mention a war club that curled my toes just to look at it?”
The pretty, engaging smile was back just for a moment. “That’s protecting all of us. You’re good at that. But, Skye, I’m begging you—protect me. Something terrible is going to happen to me.”
Fargo narrowed his eyes. “Now why do you say that?”
“Look me straight in the eyes, Skye, and tell me you don’t sense it, too.”
Fargo did look straight into those bewitching eyes. And when he did the fine hairs on his forearms tingled and stiffened.
“I don’t see a damn thing,” he told her firmly.
“You’re a good liar,” she told him, “but not good enough. Please, Skye—protect me?”
She looked a long plea at him and turned and hurried off before he could reply. Fargo stood there baffled, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
12
By the middle of the afternoon the camel caravan had gone into camp on the desert plain three miles north of the human cesspool called Doomed Domains.
Usually the exotic Middle Eastern animals and their colorful drivers were prominently paraded through the small desert settlements. This created a huge stirring-and-to-do, and the circus atmosphere increased public excitement and interest in the army’s new venture. But the unsavory reputation of this tarantula pit had caused Ed Beale to declare it off-limits except for the men required to deliver the medical supplies.
Fargo finished a meal of drop biscuits and stew and tossed the plate into Deke’s wreck pan. He bent over to scrub his hands in the sand. From the other side of the camp came heated cursing and a sharp, precise whip-crack.
“Fat boy’s playing with that blacksnake more,” Fargo remarked.
“A man like Robinson won’t never stumble,” Grizz Bear said. “One thing that can’t fall down is a worm.”
“Where do you figure the Mojaves will hit us next?” Fargo asked him.
The old desert rat stopped gnawing on a thumbnail. “It’s too flat and open for a big stretch coming up now. But you know them giant rock formations around the old prospecting camp at Joshua Tree?”
Fargo nodded. He considered that massive swath of spectacular rock sculptures one of his favorite areas of natural beauty in the American West. It was also, however, ideal terrain for outlaw and Indian ambushes.
“It’s true the Mojaves live mostly in the river valley,” Grizz Bear added. “But they been crossing this desert since God was in short pants, mostly to trade and parley with the coast tribes. They know them damn Joshua Tree rock formations like no white man does. Still, we got more low mountains coming up, too. Them red devils could jump us there.”
“Speaking of being jumped, Fargo,” Deke cut in, speaking low, “look what’s sashaying your way.”
Bobbie Lou Davis, her excellent figure flattered by a thin, floral-print dress, had emerged from the tent and was making a beeline toward Fargo. Her copper hair glowed in the desert sun, and those sleepy-lidded eyes were limpid emerald pools egging on his lust. Fargo rose politely.
“Well, hi there, Skye,” the singer greeted him in her purring tone. “Or should I call you stranger?”
She lowered her voice just above a whisper. “I was hoping we might’ve taken care of something by now. When?”
“Well, we—”
“I want to do naughty things to and with you,” she murmured. “Things all girls think about but don’t admit. You make a girl want to do that.”
“Jesus,” Fargo said. “Well, we could—”
She lowered her voice even more intimately. “I mean it, Skye. I want you to screw me so hard you leave me sore,” she whispered, the blunt words exciting on a “good girl’s” lips. “I saw the size on you yesterday when you were with Rosalinda. Oh, it took my breath away! Soon. Skye? Please? You’ve got me so hot it feels like fire between my thighs.”
She suddenly angled away and Fargo was sorry now he’d stood up. Grizz Bear and Deke broke into hoots when he covered his obvious arousal with his hat.
“Push-push,” Grizz Bear said.
“Ten fingers up, ten fingers down,” Deke tossed in. “Why not just go the whole hog and bull her out in the open like the Sioux do? That’s prac’ly what you done with Rosalinda.”
“That little filly will soon let you mount for a fine ride,” Grizz Bear said. “Her and Rosalinda both are what they call fast young ladies. But Karen, now she’s working you, boy. She’s dick hungry, too, and she’ll likely serve it up like the other two. But she wants it to look like she was sorter swept up in it and wasn’t being a bad girl like them others. She’s exfluctuated as all hell to admit her cunny is calling the shots.”
“Yeah, you two Romeos know all about women,” Fargo replied. “Which is surprising in men who mate with livestock. Anyhow, never mind all that. The kid should have the medical supplies lashed to a mule by now. I’m taking him with us.”
Fargo started toward the corral, Grizz Bear scuttling to keep up.
“The kid? Hell, I thought you liked him,” he protested. “I been in that vermin’s nest, Skye. It ain’t no place for a country clodpoll who colors up when pretty gals smile at him.”
“You saw him make that six-gun sing,” Fargo reminded him. “He wasn’t blushing then. You know damn good and well the Scorpion and his rat bastards won’t waste this opportunity in Doomed Domains. Jude’s held up pretty good in combat so far, and I think taking him along is a smart play.”
“Ahuh, he’s a crack shot,” Grizz Bear said. “But otherwise he don’t amount to a hill of beans.”
From force of habit Fargo scoured their bleak surroundings with intense concentration. He glanced to his right just in time to watch a yellow-gray coyote slink off through a dry wash, grinning at some sly secret. Wind gusts constantly swept the gravel and sand and reshaped the face of the land even as he looked at it.
“Look yonder,” Grizz Bear told him, pointing to the right with his chin.
Juan Salazar sat on an ammo crate running a bore patch through the long barrel of his Walker .44. Clearly he’d been watching Fargo, but predictably his eyes cut away as soon as Fargo noticed him.
“May I rot in hell,” Grizz Bear averred, “if that pepper gut ain’t fixin’ to send you to the white buffalo. Shit fire, Fargo, has your brain come unhinged? He never watched you like that before you croaked his brother. And look how much he tends to that weapon so’s you can see him. And you can mark my words, mister: he’s the sneaky, low-down son of a bitch that cut them water bags.”
“One thing I’ve noticed about you,” Fargo said as he checked the loads in his Colt. “You don’t give a tinker’s damn if you put the noose before the gavel. Just remember to stifle your hot-jawing tonight—if trouble comes, I want it to be the right trouble, not some piddling shit you stir up.”
• • •
The three of them rode south, Grizz Bear leading the pack mule.
“Here’s a lulu,” he said. “This Injin chief makes his first trip to a city and checks into his first hotel. ‘Me heap big sleepy,’ he tells the clerk. ‘Me go right to bed.’
“Well, he goes up to his room and the first thing he notices is a blanket on the bed. So he pulls it off and takes it down to the desk. ‘Me want make report,’ he says. ‘Last man who stay in room forget’m take overcoat.’”
Fargo made a sound of distress, Grizz Bear roared at his own joke and Jude just looked puzzled.
“’S’matter, colt?” Grizz Bear demanded. “Don’tcha get it?”
“I get it. It just ain’t funny, is all. None of your jokes are.
What hotel would rent to an Indian?”
“It’s a joke, bonehead. Christ, you ain’t even got hair around your pecker. How would you know what’s funny?”
Grizz Bear tried to spit but only sputtered dryly. “The whiskey in this hole is cheap popskull,” he volunteered. “But it’s only twenty cents a jolt. This child is getting’ snockered on the cheap.”
“Like hell you are,” Fargo said. “Two drinks is your limit.”
“Fargo, walk your chalk! When it comes to drinking whiskey, it’s better to go down hard than to hedge.”
“Only a harebrained fool goes down hard when danger surrounds him.”
They rode another fifteen minutes in silence. They crested a low sandbank and the squalid settlement eased into view like a chancre on the hide of the earth.
“God-dawg!” Jude exclaimed, reining in. “People actually live there?”
“People? Huh! Demented jackals and hyenas,” Grizz Bear assured him. “Scum lower than a snake in a wagon rut.”
“No schools or churches, either,” Fargo said wryly. “And I guess they’re not quite ready for an opera house.”
He slewed to the right in his saddle and raised his hand up sideways above his face. “There’s four fingers between the sun and the horizon. Only about thirty minutes of daylight left. Let’s get those supplies to Fontaine while we can still find him.”
They trotted closer, the horses’ hooves kicking up yellow plumes of dust.
“There’s a sign up ahead,” Jude said.
Grizz Bear chuckled. “Ahuh. You ladies will like this.”
Some desert wag had painted three lines on a board and nailed it to a mesquite tree:
The Devil Is Sailing On A Sinking Ship, And The Place Where He Reigns Is Called Doomed Domains!!!
Jude read it aloud and looked at Fargo. Fargo laughed when he saw how pale the kid turned—Fargo could now count all of his razor cuts.
“You’ll be all right,” Fargo assured him. “Just look bored and don’t look at anybody too long. Don’t be polite. In these outlaw holes, a man who smiles and says please and thank-you is a sissy-Mary. And a sissy-Mary is killed for sport.”
• • •
Just before dark settled like a cloak over the desert hovel, they tracked down Gil Fontaine’s “office,” a dilapidated she-bang made of canvas and planks. Rusty medical instruments were heaped on a table. They found Fontaine passed out drunk on a cot, snoring with a racket like a boar in rut. The place smelled like a mash vat.
“We’ll just leave it here,” Fargo decided after failing to wake the man up. He dropped a heavy pack on the dirt floor, murdering several roaches when it landed on them.
“Guess where that laudanum will go,” Grizz Bear said. “It’s mixed with alcohol.”
Outside, several mesquite-wood bonfires had been lighted to cast a subdued ruby glow over the rude settlement. A Mexican boy about ten years old scurried around tending the fires. He made a point of ignoring the three well-armed strangers, which told Fargo he was a savvy kid.
There were no streets, just garbage-littered expanses of desert between the mud-brick hovels. The three men led their mounts and kept wary eyes scanning.
None of the structures had signs advertising any businesses. But quite a few horses and mules were hitched to a tie rail in front of the largest building. Behind it a few crude “cribs” made by tying horse blankets to ropes accommodated doves and their customers.
“They could hit us any time now,” Fargo reminded the other two. “The readiness is all, boys. If you have to, jerk it back. But once you start smoking in a place like this, be ready to keep smoking. I’ve had to blast my way out of shit holes like this before, and sometimes you just have to rack ’em up and assume nobody’s innocent.”
“Maybe,” Jude suggested, swallowing hard, “if it’s that dangerous and all, we should just leave.”
“Nerve up,” Fargo scoffed. “I’m all for avoiding trouble when it’s smart to do so. But any of the Scorpion’s gang we can kill here is one less to jump us later. Even better, it’ll start working on their minds. I killed one back at the Colorado, but a couple more might impress them into changing their plans.”
The Mexican kid was racing between bonfires to toss on wood. Fargo whistled sharply to catch his attention and waved him over. The kid held back at first, but when Fargo held up a coin to reflect in the flickering light, he trotted over.
Fargo flipped him the two bits. “Por guardar los caballos. That’s for keeping an eye on our mounts. I’ll give you another when we come out.”
The kid bit the coin, then grinned. “’Sta bien.”
Fargo paused at the open door of the desert bucket shop. A bright string of dried red peppers hung beside the doorway.
“Mexicans own the place,” Grizz Bear explained. “They’re a harmless old couple, but shit-oh-dear, don’t order no food—all of it’s a belly burner. I tried it and got the squitters for three days.”
“Keep your wits about you, Jude,” Fargo muttered.
Fargo pushed his way into the hot, smoky, sweat-stinking dimness illuminated by several coal-oil lanterns, Jude close on his heels. The young soldier, heart hammering his ribs, received a quick and shocking impression of the patrons within.
Patrons? Jude felt his armpits and scalp break out in sweat at his first sight of these raffish thugs. Some of the faces were clay-colored, all of them beard-smudged, and not one of these hard-bitten men was unarmed. A few of the Mexicans who carried no firearms wore machetes in fiber shoulder scabbards.
“Move it or lose it, mooncalf,” Grizz Bear growled at Jude, shouldering the kid out of the way.
Grizz Bear slapped two dimes onto the plank counter. “Whiskey, Arturo,” he told the elderly barkeep. “And slop it over the brim, amigo.”
While the bar dog poured out Grizz Bear’s antifogmatic, Fargo took a careful read of the fifteen or so men watching him from caged eyes. Not “men,” he corrected himself—many of them were reptilian killing machines. Men who lolled around bone-idle all of their lives except for brief moments of violent murder.
“Two more jolts, Arturo,” he told the barkeep, planking four bits. Fargo didn’t think Jude could handle this coffin varnish, but if he was man enough to be in here he was man enough to at least sip it.
Grizz Bear had taken a quick look around and didn’t like what he saw.
“There’s shecoonery afoot, Fargo,” he warned quietly. “The death hug’s a-comin’.”
Again Fargo’s eyes swept the dim, smoky interior. He looked at hands, at weapons, noted the angles and potential ballistic lanes.
He did some quick arithmetic: Grizz Bear had six big conical balls in his Colt’s Dragoon, a knockdown gun so powerful a hit to the arm could be fatal; Jude had six rounds in his army-issue Colt but it was unlikely his Sharps would come into play. Fargo, much handier with a rifle, could fire twenty-two times between handgun and rifle, twenty-eight if he had time to snap the spare cylinder into his Colt.
More than enough bullets, but it wasn’t volume that would save them: it was speed and accuracy and being first to hit.
Grizz Bear tossed back his drink and shuddered violently. “Christ on a crutch! You can taste the gunpowder. But I reckon it’s good for curing the French pox.”
Two men, especially, drew Fargo’s notice. They sat at one of the tables and were apparently engrossed in draw poker. One was a pinch-faced gringo who must have been born mean, the other a lipless Mexican.
“Them two’s the only ones that ain’t looked at us,” Grizz Bear remarked as he followed Fargo’s gaze.
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “They’re making a point of not looking at us.”
“What? You think the Mexican could be the Scorpion?” Jude blurted out too loudly in his nervousness.
>
“Damn it, kid,” Fargo muttered, “no need to be parading it. Lower your voice.”
But evidently Jude had been overheard. Harsh laughter exploded and three men suddenly moved in front of the door and filled their hands. The two cardplayers at the table now stared grinning at Fargo as several more men drew their weapons.
“Here’s the elephant, boys,” Fargo said quietly. “It’s gonna be a hot bust out. When I give the word I want both of you to drop fast to the floor. Jude, start from the left and drill any man who’s got us under a gun. I’ll start from the right after I kill the two head hounds at the table. Grizz Bear—”
“Drop the three at the door,” the old salt finished for Fargo, “and then it’s hey-diddle-diddle and up the middle.”
“Cripes!” Jude protested in a whisper. “They already got the drop on us.”
“Shut up and do what you’re told,” Fargo ordered. “Hell, all they can do is kill you.”
“’At’s right,” Grizz Bear tormented the kid. “Ain’t like it’s the end of the world, hanh?”
The lipless, turtle-mouthed Mexican, wearing the scarred leather chaps of a vaquero, rose and swaggered toward the Americans, a Savage Arms trigger-cock revolver in his fist.
“Welcome to Doomed Domains, hombres!” he called out with false bonhomie, clearly enjoying himself. “Where every man has a set on him and every woman says yes!”
Fargo had felt this before: the sense that he was both participating in and observing his fate at the same time. It felt just like a dream, only he knew this was the real, brutal world. And he knew the moment of truth was here, perhaps in the next breath.
His fabled marksmanship was less valuable, right now, than his honed reflexes and quick reactions. Timing was the key now—perfect, flawless timing. If he muffed it by even a second, the three of them would be shot to chair stuffings.
“Very slowly,” Turtle Mouth ordered, “step away from your rifles and drop your gun belts to the floor. The first one who tries to play the hero will die the hardest.”