by Jon Sharpe
Robinson turned to flee, but Fargo moved swift as a striking snake, encircling the soldier’s left ankle with the lash and sending him crashing to the ground. Again, again, a third time the whip snapped, Robinson huddling in a ball and begging for mercy.
“You don’t like it when it’s turnabout, huh?” Fargo said, laying the next slash across Robinson’s face and ripping a cheek wide open. He threw the whip down on top of him.
“You strike me as a back-shooter,” Fargo said. “So stand up now and jerk that barking iron while you’re mad. Your holster’s worthless, so we’ll start with our guns hanging at our side.”
“I’m not a gunslinger,” Robinson protested, sitting up.
“Let it go,” Fargo said, cooling off a bit and reminding himself that some of these soldiers were just boys with their pants tucked into their boots. But he added in a tone that brooked no defiance, “If you use that whip on me or any of the men or animals for punishment one more time, I’m gonna peel your hide with it. Savvy that?”
Before Robinson could answer, a soldier from the second squad, Rudy Mumford, raced up to Fargo, his face tight with urgency. He was so agitated he barely noticed that his unit commander sat in the sand with a bloody trench across his face.
“Bad cess, Mr. Fargo! I just checked the water supply. Somebody knocked the bungs out of four of the big barrels. They’re all dry as a year-old cow chip!”
14
Twelve days after crossing the Colorado, the newly imposed severe water rationing was taking its toll.
The camels, who seldom required any water beyond that in the scarce water holes, posed no problem. But the horses and mules were not desert animals and had to drink every day. Since human consumption was the priority, they would soon have to begin shooting animals if water wasn’t found.
Fargo, confident and optimistic by nature, felt a vague sense of dread weighing on him. In the deserts east of the Colorado River, even some of the most dependable tanks had been dry or nearly dry—nothing left but little tepid puddles filmed with dead bugs. And these deserts farther west were usually even drier.
He knew no rain dance would save them. The army had once recorded a thirty-two–month period on the Mojave without a drop of rain. That meant the few water tanks and holes marked on Fargo’s map could be bone dry.
He and Grizz Bear, both veteran survivors of parched deserts, knew where to look for water in small quantities. It could often be found near mesquite trees, though never on the surface. And appreciable amounts of water accumulated in the spongy guts of the barrel cactus. But these sources could help one patient man survive for a time—not an expedition with thirsty horses and mules and scores of humans.
“Fargo, it’s plain as piss stains on a mattress,” fumed Grizz Bear during breakfast. “It was Salazar knocked them bungs loose. Flush out your headpiece, boy! That sneaky chili pep means to drain that water and keep enough of it to get him back into Old Mex or hooked up agin with the Scorpion.”
“So he’s going to kill all of us to get back at me?”
“It ain’t just you, damn it! He’s with the Scorpion just like his brother was.”
“Prove it,” Fargo said absently, blowing on his coffee.
“Now, as to that,” Deke cut in, “two soldiers said they seen him during all that camel ruckus—seen him real close to the water barrels.”
“There was a sentry guarding them,” Fargo said. “I talked to him. He didn’t mention seeing Salazar.”
“Ahuh,” Grizz Bear said. “And that boy allowed as how he got sidetracked watchin’ the ruckus.”
Fargo said nothing, but the chain of events, two days ago, made him wonder. He had confronted Salazar and the man walked away. A couple of minutes later the trouble broke out in the camel corral.
“Let’s hog-tie that shifty-eyed greaser and force him to acknowledge the corn,” Grizz Bear insisted. “He’s a bad egg, I’m telling you.”
Jude, Fargo noticed, had been unnaturally quiet this morning. He sat cross-legged in an oblong of shade cast by the mobile kitchen.
“Kid, what’s on your mind besides your hat?” Fargo asked him. “You look like somebody kicked your dog. Or did Karen forget to smile at you?”
“She never forgets to do that. It’s just . . . now I ain’t saying this is true nor nothing.”
“You ain’t even said nothing yet, chucklehead,” Grizz Bear snapped impatiently.
“There’s this jasper in the third squad who swears on his mother’s grave he seen Rosalinda sitting right on one of the water barrels during all that hullabaloo in camp.”
“He see her do anything besides sitting?” Fargo asked.
“Nope. He said she was just sitting there combing her hair.”
“Don’t it beat the Dutch!” Grizz Bear exclaimed. “See how it is, boys? It’s her and Salazar, both of ’em part of that sweet outfit Alvarez runs.”
“Grizz, I’ve just about had my bellyful of your accusations and stirring up the shit,” Fargo said. “The truth is, you hate Mexicans and you always have.”
“And you love ’em, huh?”
Fargo grinned. “Every chance I get. Listen, I want you and Jude to saddle up. There’s a more-or-less reliable water tank at Yucca Springs—”
“You can count on that one,” Grizz Bear interrupted. “I’ve never knowed it to dry up. But it’s two days from here.”
Fargo nodded. “That’s why we’re riding out. There’s a small water hole marked on my map, maybe an hour from here. But the coordinates are a guess and we’ll have to locate it.”
“I ain’t never heard of it,” Grizz Bear scoffed, “and I know the Christian name of every rattlesnake in the Mojave.”
“I know you do, old codger, but it’s worth a try. Right now we’re up Salt River.”
Fargo aligned his map to the sun, now a purple-red ball in the east, and shot a mental azimuth on a bearing slightly northwest of the expedition’s route.
“If there is water,” he remarked as the trio rode out, “there’ll be some growth around it to mark it.”
“Mebbe there’ll even be a fingerboard pointing to it,” Grizz Bear roweled him. “And hell, free ice cream for everybody!”
“I druther lemonade,” Jude said. “Cripes, I’m spitting cotton.”
Fargo slowly shook his head. “And these are the two yahoos I might have to die with?”
Jude opened his mouth to say something, but Fargo raised a hand to silence him.
“Lad, take a lesson from those camels. This dry desert air is like a giant sponge, sucking up all the moisture it can get. Those lips Grizz Bear is always poking fun at seal completely to stop evaporation. Talk only when necessary, breathe through your nose, and press your lips tight together. Here . . .”
Fargo flipped a small pebble to him. “Suck on it now and then to keep some spit in your mouth. You won’t feel so thirsty.”
“You just want me to shut up,” Jude said.
“For a kid who’s full of sheep dip, you just struck a home truth.”
They trotted their mounts under a relentless sun that grew more punishing as the morning passed. The terrain was flat, the sand of high gravel content that scraped under the horses’ hooves. Creosote bushes and saguaros, widely spaced, provided little cover for any attackers.
Two fruitless hours passed before Fargo reined in. They stripped the blankets and rigging from their mounts to cool the animals off. After letting the grateful horses and mule roll in the sand, Fargo quickly inspected the Ovaro’s feet for cracks or stone bruises.
They gave their mounts parched corn and a few precious swallows of water from their hats. Fargo moistened a corner of his bandanna and used it to wipe the dust from his stallion’s nostrils.
Jude, mindful of Fargo’s repeated admonitions, had rested in the shade cast by his big
army gelding so he wouldn’t be drinking in direct sunlight.
He twisted the cap off his bull’s-eye canteen and raised it to cracked, bloody lips. His bony Adam’s apple bobbed up and down audibly.
“Gradual on that,” Fargo snapped, snatching the canteen away from him. “That’s got to last you all day.”
They tacked their mounts and hit leather again, the saddles burning their asses like hot stoves. Again Fargo tracked along his mental azimuth. He pulled out his binoculars and traversed the country out ahead.
“Bunch grass,” he finally announced. “It’s scraggly but alive. In the Mojave that only grows around water.”
“It ain’t always good water,” Grizz Bear reminded him.
Thirty minutes later the three men knelt at the edge of a small, brackish seep spring, formed by pressure far below forcing water up through the ground.
“It’s water,” Fargo said in a dubious tone after smelling it, “and it’s not poison or there wouldn’t be so many fresh animal tracks around it. It might be all right for our mounts and pack mules.”
“But not us?” Jude said.
Grizz Bear stuck his finger in it and tasted it. Fargo followed suit.
“A body could likely drink it,” Grizz Bear decided, “but even a little bit will give most folks the drizzling shits for days.”
“And in desert like this,” Fargo added, “that’s like sticking your neck in a noose. The squitters can dry out a man and kill him in one day.”
Jude said, “Couldn’t it do that to horses and mules?”
The source below was likely clean, Fargo thought. But as happened often in the Far West, the water had leached through alkali dirt on its way to the surface. The brackish water had a bitter taste and left annoying grit in the mouth. For many humans it was that grit that irritated the bowel.
He looked at Grizz Bear. “You’re the desert rat, wha’d’ya say? My stallion will tolerate alkali water for a day or so. But this tastes mighty bitter—stronger than most.”
For a moment Grizz Bear studied the barren, glaring desert from red eyes swollen halfway shut.
“It’s prob’ly safe for ’em one time,” Grizz Bear finally answered. “I’d give it eighty–twenty odds. But here’s the way of it: if it ain’t safe, and them horses and mules goes puny from it in the Mojave, we’re in one world of hurt.”
Fargo nodded. “It’ll be tough going, but we’ll have to count on the water at Yucca Springs. The odds of making it are better than trusting this hole.”
Jude looked worried. “Grizz Bear says there’ll be water there, and I believe it. But don’t the Scorpion know we have to go there—and the Indians, too?”
“Kid,” Fargo replied, “you’ve already proved you’re mighty handy in a shooting fray. But now you’re also starting to wise up.”
• • •
Fargo’s plan was to wash up, trim his neglected beard, ride a wide loop around camp and then turn in for a few hours’ sleep—unless he got lucky first.
And suddenly it looked like he might. He was scraping his face with a straight razor, using a polished metal mirror hanging from a nail in the chuck wagon, when Bobbie Lou’s image suddenly flashed onto the mirror. She was crossing toward him from the women’s tent, and Fargo liked the hungry intensity of her face.
“Whatever it is you have,” Fargo told his reflection in the mirror, “treasure it.”
But his rebellious thoughts took a different turn. First there was Karen, baring her soul to him about her crippling fears but then wandering far outside camp all alone—just from modesty? Then there was Rosalinda, supposedly sitting on a water barrel right before a sentry noticed four were drained. As for Bobbie—
“Skye Fargo,” her soft Southern drawl greeted him, “you’re an awfully tantalizing view with your shirt off. Do you lift sandbags to get those muscles?”
Fargo turned toward her, dabbing soap off his face with a scrap of towel. Those gorgeous green eyes burned now with desire that she clearly wanted him to see—wanted him to feel. The loops on her bodice had been left loose at the top, and two creamy scoops were his for the taking.
“Lady, you’re prettier than a speckled pony,” he greeted her.
While some blood was still available to his brain, Fargo forced himself to recall some questions that had been nagging at him.
“You know,” he said, “you and Karen need to sing for all of us some night.”
“Pouf! Neither one of us is all that good, but we’d be glad to. Do you really think a bunch of horny men in a frontier dance hall are listening to us?”
Fargo laughed. “I wouldn’t care if you both scrawked like crows,” he admitted. “How was it you three gals ended up at that burned-out way station?”
“Why, Skye Fargo! I do believe you sound like a suspicious lawman!”
“Bobbie Lou, it’s curiosity, not suspicion. After all, three beautiful women don’t just drop down from the moon every day, especially out here.”
“But we told you,” she said impatiently, eager to resume flirting. “The three of us got on the stage at the El Paso terminal, where we first met each other. When we reached the station near some place called Palo Verde, the burned-out buildings were still smoking. You saw it . . . all those bodies with arrows in them. The driver refused to go on and insisted on taking us back to the division station. But then the caravan arrived and Lieutenant Beale kindly offered to take us because he knew we’d be marooned for many weeks.”
Fargo grinned, eyes raking over her womanly figure, shown to perfection in this thin, simple cotton dress without the usual feminine under layers that would kill them in this heat.
“Yeah, he was kind,” Fargo replied. “Kind to all of us men.”
“If you must ask questions,” Bobbie Lou suggested, “try Rosalinda.”
“Why?”
“She’s a Mexican, isn’t she? And just before both times when the water was dumped out, she disappeared from the tent. Skye?”
“Hm?”
“With this horrible water rationing, my mouth is dry. You know what’ll get it wet real quick? Some deep kissing like us Southern girls are good at. Will you help me get it wet—for starters?”
Fargo hesitated only because he was desperately trying to figure out where.
“Oh,” she added, her voice flattening with disappointment, “perhaps the other girls are right—you’re just too exhausted to play?”
“At the moment, not so’s you’d notice,” he assured her.
Those fetching eyes gazed below his belt. “Oh, I notice something mighty consequential.”
“Got any ideas where?” Fargo said. “I’m on the feather edge of dragging you under this chuck wagon, girl, and taking you on the ground like an animal.”
“I’d like that with you, but we won’t need to be so brazen. Karen and Rosalinda will be leaving any moment now.”
“Leaving?”
“You needn’t look worried,” she assured him. “They’ll be right here in camp. They’re only going to watch the camels, and Jude Hollander will escort them and deliver a nice, long lecture on the beasts.”
Fargo’s strong white teeth flashed through his beard. “Jude was easy for you to lasso—anything to be near Karen. But how’d you get Karen and Rosalinda into it? They can’t stand the smell of those camels.”
She cocked her head and gave him a lazy-lidded, up-and-under look, smiling mischievously at him.
“Easy. Touching myself in the dark and thinking about us doing it only made me want the real man even more. So finally I told them they could either leave or stay and watch us—perhaps even learn.”
Bobbie Lou tossed back her head and gave a silvery-smooth laugh. “Rosalinda wanted to stay and strap you on herself when you and I finish. Can you imagine?”
Every damn day, he thought, with Karen tossed in like the third ball in a juggling act.
“I s’pose you nixed that idea?” Fargo said, disappointed.
“Yes, but only for your own good,” she told him. “You see, even a stallion like you won’t have the stamina for a second woman when I get done with you.”
“Talk is cheap,” Fargo teased her.
“With a man like you, cheap is what I want to be. Cheap like this . . .”
She rose up on tiptoes. Her billowing copper waves caressed his cheek when she whispered in his ear. Her soft breath was almost as erotic as the words so naughty she couldn’t say them aloud.
Fargo saw Jude arrive to escort the other two women. Seeing Karen emerge reminded him.
“Did you talk to Karen about not going so far out from camp?”
“Yes!” She punched him hard on the arm. “I’m not the jealous type, Skye Fargo. But when you’re about to spread a woman’s thighs, don’t bring up other women—especially pretty women like Karen. I’m going to punish you for that—punish you hard.”
“All right, Bobbie Lou,” Fargo said. “You been talking dirty and showing me those fine tits, getting me all het up for days now. Let’s get thrashing, and you can punish the hell right out of me.”
She grabbed his hand and tugged him into motion. “May I be on top? I like to get as much of the man inside me as I can, and being on top is best for that. And, see, I’m real good at acrobatic splits.”
Fargo laughed as they neared the tent. “There you go again. Big talk. You know what? I’ve discovered it’s the quiet girls who stammer and blush that turn into savages in the sack. The big talkers like you just—Jesus!”
He had no sooner stepped into the tent than she had thrown him down on his back onto a soft pallet of blankets. With one quick tug the dress was lying in a puddle beside Fargo and she stood naked over him, her face as hungry as he’d ever seen a woman’s. He unbuckled his shell belt and laid the rig aside, then untied his fly to relieve the painful pressure caused by seeing her up close and naked.