by Jon Sharpe
“It means we’re gonna sell you to your brother, sweet nips,” Butler replied. “Cash money over the counter. But until we get the legem pone, we’re tasting the goods. Matter fact, we plan to eat a lot. Gorge ourselves, y’unnerstan’?”
She bit her lower lip until she tasted the salty tang of blood.
“Le’me see your jahoobies, sweet meat,” he ordered.
“My . . . ?”
“Your tits, goddamn it! Your catheads, your motherlovin’ puffy loaves! There ain’t nothing under that dress but you, and them tits look real good. Lift the dress up high.”
She moved back a few paces and shook her head.
“Brash as a rented mule, ain’t she?” Butler said. “Show her the widow-maker, Pablo.”
The Mexican raised a sawed-off shotgun at her.
“I . . . I’m not much use to you dead,” she stammered.
“As long as it is still warm,” the Mexican assured her in a disgustingly intimate voice, “it is quite pleasant. We can still trick your brother into thinking you are alive. Butler and the Scorpion are both the lowest of disgusting animals and touched with insanity. Do you really wish to count on logic to save you from us?”
When she stared at those twin barrels she felt her calves go weak—they stared right back. The Scorpion laughed with a boy’s pleasure in mischief when the frightened blonde went a shade paler.
“’S’matter, sugar britches?” Butler taunted. “We play too rough for a high-toned slut like you? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Now . . .”
He pulled a stiletto from his boot. “You set them tits on the glass for us right now, woman, or I’m carving my initials in ’em. And that threat ain’t just lip deep.”
A sob got past her will to resist them, and then a flood of tears. The Mexican laughed long and hard as if she did it for entertainment.
Butler’s pinched face suddenly went hard and dangerous. “The dress,” he repeated.
Her face burning with shame, her stomach a cold ball of fear, she gathered her white cotton dress by its hem and lifted it until it was bunched under her chin. Both men immediately lost their mirth, impressed into silence.
“Well, goddamn, well,” Butler said slowly, his voice hoarse and frightening. He swallowed hard.
Neither man would even blink and miss a moment of this sight. This was woman-scarce country, but even if it wasn’t, this was a once-in-a-lifetime piece, one of those beauties most men never even spoke to.
Karen averted her burning face from their frightening, leering masks of lust and cruelty. Stoically, she focused her eyes instead on a desert hawk soaring in the distance. Its freedom mocked her, especially when she realized how raggedly they were both breathing as they groped her with their eyes.
Now, she thought. Now they would rape her—and worse.
“Pablo, is that pussy hair or golden silk?” Butler finally said, moving magnetically toward her. “It ain’t even crinkly. Man, I ain’t waiting . . .”
“This Fargo,” the Scorpion spoke up in a forceful, warning tone behind him. “He works on a man’s nerves. They say it is his hard eyes and taunting sneer.”
Butler turned around and the grinning Mexican shrugged. “You know how it is, ’mano. The nervous man’s hand sweats, the gun slips . . . and it is said he has taken more than one fool he caught wallowing in the rut.”
Butler’s face went rigid. “Yeah, you been pushing that line plenty—how no man can kill or outwit Fargo. You know why you greasers lost half your country to us Americans? Because we’re mean, hard murderers, and neither gospel nor gunpowder can reform us. There ain’t nothing can back us down.”
“I happen to agree,” the Scorpion said. “And have you forgotten that Fargo, too, is an American?”
Butler cursed and turned away.
There it is again, Karen thought, Skye’s name. That’s who they are afraid of! Hope sparked within her at the very image of him in her mind.
Fargo would come, she told herself. And she clung to that hope like a drowning man clings to a log.
19
The tracks started out headed northeast, and then after about two miles they jogged sharply to the northwest. Nothing lay in that direction but an eruption of dead, gray-black mountains marked only UNNAMED RANGE NO. 7 on Fargo’s army map.
The two men stopped every half hour to give their mounts a few swallows of water. The trail they followed was hit-and-miss depending on the level of drifting sand. But Jude eventually realized Fargo was hardly bothering to look down for sign. He seemed to know where Alvarez and Butler were headed with their prisoner.
“Their bridles are pointed right into those mountains,” he told Jude. “Likely they got a redoubt or some such there. And there’ll be excellent ambush nests—they figure no sane man would follow them that far.”
“Then what’s that make us?”
Fargo’s teeth flashed under his sand-coated mustache. “I’ll be generous and call us fools.”
They rode for another twenty minutes in silence before Jude’s worried voice cut into Fargo’s concentration. “They got no call to kill her, do they?”
Fargo willed himself patient. “Kid, that’s at least the third time you’ve asked me that. Set it to a tune, why’n’cha? Look, the outlaw trash who have Karen are mad dogs off their leashes—I can’t give you a cast-iron guarantee she’ll live. But she should be worth more to them alive. The best solution is to find them quick as we can.”
“Yeah. Well anyhow, that big mouth Grizz Bear ain’t got no right to accuse Karen and other folks like he does,” Jude said resentfully.
“He’s a blowhard,” Fargo agreed. “Likes to stack his conclusions a lot higher than his evidence. He’ll back you in a fight, though, and he’s tough as boar bristles for a man past fifty. I just hope Robinson doesn’t cross him—Grizz Bear has done some cold-blooded killing in his day.”
“Is he a murderer, Mr. Fargo?”
Fargo kept his face deadpan. “Nothing I’ve ever witnessed.”
Jude looked at him and caught the drift of Fargo’s reply. “Oh. Well, anyhow, he’s got no right to make up lies about Miss Bradish.”
Fargo agreed but he didn’t have the heart to remind the love-struck young fool that appearances were often deceiving—and “baseless rumors” sometimes correct.
Protect me, Karen had begged him. Was it just part of the grift, a way of keeping suspicion off her while she did her man’s bidding? But the usual way a beautiful female outlaw bent a man to her will was through sex.
Rosalinda and Bobbie Lou had given it up like patriots, but Karen hadn’t even seriously flirted. Was it just a “good girl” act? Grizz Bear was a slanderous old goat, but he was right: there was no proof Karen had been abducted.
“Just quiet down and keep a sharp eye out,” Fargo told the private. “Nurse your damn grudges later. For Karen’s sake, the best thing we can do right now until we kill those two roaches is keep them on the run. We hang on like ticks, we keep them nerve-frazzled, ducking bullets real or imaginary, constantly worried about their own hides. One thing we don’t do is trap them.”
“Why?”
“Would you corner a wolverine or a badger? We want them desperate, Jude, but not hopeless. Desperate men will still bargain, and we might have to bargain to get Karen. But hopeless men are past all controlling.”
Closer, ever closer to the mountains the two men pressed as the afternoon sun punished the desert with temperatures soaring well over a hundred degrees. They slogged on through a glaring expanse of sand and scrubby creosote, tossed between two horns: when they weren’t wishing they’d brought more water they were battling saddle sleepiness.
Fargo halted them in the lee of a wind-scrubbed knoll. They fed the horses a few handfuls of parched corn and a small drink from their hats.
The men allowed themselves only a few swallows of water.
Before they mounted, Fargo slid his Henry from its boot and quickly checked the firing mechanism for sand. He had not kept a round in the chamber because of possible “cook-offs” from the direct sun.
“All right,” he said, sheathing the Henry and turning a stirrup, “hop your horse and let’s do some depopulating.”
• • •
As the exhausting hours dragged past like an eternity in hell, Karen found one consolation: the two men had grown too nervous, and increasingly too tired, to terrorize her.
Each took turns napping while the other watched for Fargo. But now both men were awake, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly as they cast continual glances at Karen.
They’re about to do something, she realized, feeling her heart pulsing hard in her throat.
Dear God, wasn’t it horrid enough already? She felt filthy and exhausted and on the brink of nervous collapse. She hadn’t stolen a moment’s rest because of this heart-hammering fear—not just of rape, but of what else these two sick, evil men might do to hurt her.
And God have mercy, the Mexican was walking toward her now.
He crossed to where she sat huddled against a boulder, hugging her knees. He squatted on his rowels and brought his face close to hers. Alvarez had lately become fascinated by a vein that pulsed visibly in Karen’s slim white throat. He watched it now.
“Hola, querida,” he said in a razor-thin whisper. “Have you missed me? It will not be long now, little play-pretty. Fargo will soon be dead, and we three will make a camp. And then you can get out of that wrinkled and dirty dress, eh?”
His very nearness made her feel like slugs were squirming against her skin. Even if she could screw up the courage to run away, where would she go? These filthy brutes had the only water—water they gave her only sparingly although they had plenty. She had no choice but to pray that Skye Fargo was more than a newspaper hero.
He was the only reason she hadn’t yet been raped—so far.
The Scorpion, those black, piercing eyes trapping her, raised a goatskin water bag to his lips.
“Hey, sugar nips,” Jim Butler called to her. “That ain’t no nasty alkali water. It’s clean, deep-table water from a spring. Wouldn’t a long drink of that hit the spot, huh?”
Alvarez made a big production out of rinsing his mouth before spitting the first mouthful out at her feet. Then he drank deeply, letting the water run off his chin into the burning sand.
Karen’s nostrils flared and she started to protest their barbaric behavior. But the emotional hell she’d endured since they seized her finally extracted its toll—she abruptly burst into tears.
“Let crybaby have a drink,” Butler said. “We don’t want her to dry up.”
Butler finished wolfing down some bacon they had fried. She tasted the acidic bile of fear when he stood up and wiped his greasy hands off on his shirt, watching her the whole time like a starving man at a banquet. He came over and stood beside Alvarez.
“Let’s see something nice,” he ordered Karen, his voice obscenely thick and husky.
When she hesitated he snarled and grabbed hold of the front of her dress, ripping the bodice and exposing her breasts.
“Put your damn arms down,” Butler ordered her, for Karen had raised them to cover herself.
When she hesitated again Alvarez casually raised his double-barreled “widow-maker.” Karen dropped her arms. But she turned her face, crimson with humiliation and anger, away from the men’s hungry, prodding eyes.
“Damn, man,” Butler finally said after swallowing hard to find his voice. “Damn! Tits that big on such a wisp of a girl. And glom them nipples! Look just like in ’em French paintings, don’t they? Just like juicy plums ready to be bit into.”
“All true, ’mano. But I can no longer look without having—to hell with my rule about waiting until we kill Fargo. Let us match coins. The winner tops her first while the other keeps watch.”
“I told you—she’s white meat and the white man gets first whack at her.”
“You can have her first,” Alvarez surrendered in a burst of generosity. “I never miss a slice from a cut loaf.”
It had come at last and Karen was wooden with fear. But what was about to happen was less terrifying to her than something the Mexican had said during an earlier stop: “We can still trick your brother into thinking you are alive.” Now she fully grasped their real plan, and it sent spikes of cold fear into her limbs. They had no intention of letting her live.
Damn these monsters to hell! How could God let such men exist?
Butler unbuckled his thick leather gun belt and dropped it. Then he slid the stiletto from his boot.
“You ain’t just gonna lay there like you’re frostbit,” he warned her. “You’re gonna work that little cunny of yours just like I was your lovin’ man. You try to fight me, woman, and I’ll cut you to trap bait. I like knife work.”
She had spent much of her time praying, and perhaps she was being rewarded now. The Mexican, who had scuttled up a nearby ridge to check their back trail, called out:
“Maldito! Fargo and the soldier! They are perhaps ten minutes below us!”
Karen saw the sick lust on Butler’s face transform instantly into blank, naked fear. “Watch the girl while I pack the gear.”
“Why run? He must be killed, and at the moment we are fortune-kissed, gunman! Our position is excellent and they have a bad trail. Unless, of course, you are pissing yourself with fright?”
“Me and you will settle accounts for that insult later. Help me get this bitch tied and gagged. I recall a perfect place to jump them.”
20
“Keep your nose to the wind,” Fargo warned Jude. “My scouting instincts are warning me this stretch coming up could get rough and ugly.”
His voice slapped Jude out of his saddle doze. It was late afternoon, the sun blazing on their left. The thick stands of ocotillo, numerous on the flatland, had thinned out as the trail wound and twisted its way higher. They had passed through a stretch of desolate lava beds, then into these rough, folded hills.
“God dawg!”
Riding in a stupor, Jude hadn’t noticed how the rough trail had squeezed in on them. To their right a steep, rock-strewn slope rose toward the jagged rimrock. To their left a sheer cliff dropped hundreds of feet to the razor-sharp volcanic rocks below.
Fargo rode about ten yards ahead of him, his eyes in constant motion. He halted every few minutes now, sun-slitted eyes peering overhead.
“Snap into it!” Fargo called back to Jude. “I got a hunch we’ll be huggin’ with killers short meter. Get your mind clear, savvy that? Forget Karen. Don’t think, just observe. It doesn’t matter that the two of us are dead shots if we don’t kill them before they kill us. Everything now is the kill, Jude.”
“Yessir!”
Sweat beaded momentarily on Fargo’s forehead before the giant sponge of desert air absorbed it. He took that as a good sign that he wasn’t seriously dehydrated yet. When a man stopped sweating in the desert, his life span was measured in hours.
“This is their first good chance to dry-gulch us,” he told the kid. “Now me, I’d favor that stretch of rimrock just ahead that’s in the shade. It keeps the sun out of the shooters’ eyes and cuts reflection and glare.”
Fargo pulled the Henry out and jacked a round into the chamber. “But they could jump us from closer down,” he added. “If they’re in short-gun range, make that Colt sing. I know what you’re capable of—that’s why you’re here.”
Some knowledge rooted in the blood warned Fargo a hunch wasn’t good enough: the fight was only moments away, and the enemy had the advantage.
“Swing down and lower your target profile,” he told the kid, throwing off a
nd leading the Ovaro by the bridle reins. “Walk to the left of your horse just behind his shoulder. Keep your rifle in your left hand in case it’s best to jerk your sidearm.”
“Man, you’ve done this before,” Jude said as he dropped to the ground.
“Yeah, and you’ve seen the elephant too, kid,” Fargo reminded him. “I saw what you did in Doomed Domains. But you still lack common sense—don’t walk so damn close to that cliff, and be careful if your horse—”
A round chunked into the ground with insolent authority only an inch from Fargo’s boot as an earsplitting rifle shot echoed down the trail.
“Go to your long gun!” Fargo barked. “They’re up in the rimrock!”
Fargo dropped the reins and left the Ovaro to his horse sense, folding to one knee and swinging the Henry up to fire offhand toward the gray-white powder smoke above. But a sudden, harrowing cry for help made him turn toward the cliff behind him.
Jude had simply disappeared as if an eagle had plucked him up. His horse was now racing back down the trail. Then Fargo spotted two hands—now twisted into desperate claws—digging into the lip of the cliff. Fargo had been on the verge of warning the kid, when the gunshot rang out, to get out of the horse’s way if it spooked.
In the mere second or two it took Fargo to register Jude’s plight, the men got off two more shots almost simultaneously. The shot Fargo heard whapped into the dirt so close to his left knee it sprayed sand on his trousers; however, the one he didn’t hear creased his head just above his left ear and instantly knocked him senseless when the whole damn world exploded around him in an orange flash.
Uncounted seconds later he became dazedly aware his face was in the dirt. There was a hellacious racket going on somewhere distant, and it felt like he’d discovered the mother lode of hangovers.
Mr. Fargo! I can’t hang on!
Fargo shook his head like a confused bull, thoughts still cloudy but rapidly clearing. That thundering racket that seemed so distant was actually close. . . .
Gunfire right here and now! Fargo suddenly remembered everything. And now Jude’s voice wasn’t muffled and distant: