by Jon Sharpe
“Mr. Fargo, I’m a goner! My hands’re slipping!”
Fargo had his own imminent demise to worry about. The gunfire from above remained steady and he had already beat the house percentage too many times. He followed the bullet-savvy Ovaro’s lead and dove toward the base of the rock-strewn slope. If he hugged it tightly, the shooters in the rimrock couldn’t angle their bullets down on him.
“Mr. Far—”
“Shut up, you damn fool!” Fargo shot back. He winced when the shouting made his injured head hurt even more. “I know you’re there. All that damn screaming saps your strength. Just hang on!”
“My hands—”
“Settle down!” Fargo was rapidly dallying one end of his rope around the saddle horn. “Dig your toes into the face of the cliff to take some strain off your arms.”
The shooters overhead, losing their bead on Fargo, switched to the smaller but more vulnerable targets offered by Jude’s hands.
“There’s a rope coming over,” Fargo told him between gunshots. “Grab it first with your strongest arm, then pull yourself over quick, boy, and cross to the slope.”
“Cross? Cripes, there’s lead flying every—”
“All right, drop to your death if you want to, kid,” Fargo called over, flipping the rope over the edge. “Hell, I ain’t your wet nurse. But in case you decide to quit bawling and be a soldier, wait until you hear my Henry open up. Then haul your freight lickety-split. You got the space of sixteen shots to save your bacon.”
Fargo dreaded what he had to do next, especially after having just cheated the Reaper once. He waited a few moments until his breathing had settled a little. Then he tucked hard, rolled fast out into the trail and came up smoking.
“Move it, kid!”
Holding tight patterns on the two known positions, Fargo put the magazine repeater through its paces, levering and firing until hot brass surrounded him and he heard gun oil sizzling in the barrel. The men topside got off several shots as Jude scrambled to safety, but Fargo’s lead persuasion had thrown off their accuracy.
The kid streaked past him and Fargo sprang to safety behind him, both men huddled with the Ovaro tight against the slope.
“God dawg!” Jude exploded in gasping relief. “I was hearing harps, Mr. Fargo. Criminy, thanks.”
“You owe me a beer, pip-squeak. Where’s your Sharps?”
“It went over the cliff. Dang, you got a big old bloody groove over your ear.”
“Hurts like a son of a bitch and now I’ll have to change my part to hide it.”
Jude was still too scared to appreciate the humor. “What we gonna do now?”
“We know they don’t want a fair fight, so they’ll be escaping while we retrieve your horse. Like I said, I figure they’ve got some kind of redoubt in these mountains. So if they don’t light a shuck this might be the place. We’ll soon know.”
“I hope Karen is all right,” Jude fretted. “We ain’t seen no sign of her.”
“I’m worried about her, too,” Fargo said. “But right now, like it or not, it’s not about her. It’s about the kill, remember? And we both better improve in a puffin’ hurry, trooper, because one more performance like this one just now will sink us and Karen.”
• • •
It was just before sunset when Fargo spotted a reminder that frontier troubles took many forms.
Jude had retrieved his cavalry sorrel and the two men confirmed that the outlaws and their captive had indeed escaped deeper into the mountains. Fargo was convinced by now, from the pattern of tracks in the camp, that Karen was indeed a prisoner. If she weren’t, her prints would be distributed around differently and not be so confined.
They picked up the trail and the two horsebackers were crossing a barren ridge that offered a stunning panorama of the Mojave in the last golden flush of sunlight.
“Think we can spot the expedition from up here?” Jude wondered.
“They should have watered at Yucca Springs by now,” Fargo said, raising his binoculars and focusing out for distance. “If they . . .”
Fargo trailed off and loosed a long whistle.
“What?” Jude demanded.
“Damn my eyes,” Fargo said softly. Then, raising his voice: “Jude, m’boy, we have one shitload of savages a few miles or so away.”
“Mojaves?”
Fargo gave a gallows grin. “You might say they’re the starter dough. It’s a damn conclave. That’s one tribe calling in its allies, usually for war. I recognize Mojaves, Yumas, Yavapais . . . Christ, even a few Paiutes. Looks to be at least a hundred warriors and there’s likely more coming.”
“Will they . . . I mean—”
“Attack the expedition? Hell, you numbskull, why do you think they’re down there—to discuss the causes of the wind?”
“The rest might not know about the Indians! We—”
Fargo snapped his fingers to get the kid’s floundering thoughts back on track. “You giving up on Karen, is that it?”
Jude looked insulted. “When I give up on breathing!”
“All right, forget the damn Indians for now. A God-spouter told me once how the damned go through hell one room at a time, and our fight right now is out ahead of us.”
• • •
No more nascent moon. From the position of the polestar, Fargo guessed it was nearing midnight.
“Wake up, Rip Van Winkle.”
Jude’s head snapped up. “Huh? Guess I dozed off for a second.”
“That’s painting the lily. You’ve been sound asleep in the saddle for fifteen minutes, snoring like a leaky bellows. I let it go, but we’re closing in on ’em again. The last horse droppings I checked were still warm. Shake off the cobwebs, kid, the fandango’s coming.”
They had ascended into another dangerous stretch of trail. Giant rock formations, detritus from some massive geological upheaval eons ago, formed impassable terrain on both sides of the narrow sand wash that served as trail.
“I’m guessing,” Fargo said in a voice just above a whisper, “that we’re closing in on their redoubt. We’re coming up on the highest point with the best view in every direction. They’d want that.”
“I sure hope they—”
“If they raped her they raped her,” Fargo cut him off wearily. “Seems like you’d be more worried if she’s alive. Now pipe down. There’s a good chance they’ll see us coming in this moonlight, and I’m damned if I’m riding into another turkey shoot.”
They rode another ten minutes in silence. Fargo craned his neck constantly to study the craggy, moonlit expanse out ahead. Abruptly he reined in.
“What?” Jude whispered.
“I can’t be sure, but I thought I saw a cigarette glow for a second. ’Bout halfway up that slope just ahead of us. One thing for sure, there’s no lightning bugs around here. Swing down, kid.”
Fargo tossed his right leg over the cantle and dismounted, landing light as a cat. He handed his reins to Jude.
“Best put hobbles on both horses. Wait here with your Colt to hand. I’m gonna head up that slope for a better look.”
“Hold on!” Jude objected. “What if you’re—I mean—”
“What do you do if I’m killed?” Fargo chuckled. “Hell, that’s your problem, Private. Far as I’m concerned, the world ends when I do. Who I truly feel sorry for are all the women who’ll never get to ride the Fargo express.”
21
The spot was ideal for anyone on the run in this god-forgotten stretch of the central Mojave: a long rock shelf located halfway up the wrinkled slope of a lava hill.
From the desert floor below, the shelf appeared to be just another outcrop. But a climb upward soon revealed a big, natural chamber formed by wind erosion under the shelf. The area was as big as a ballroom, which left plenty of room for
horses and people. And it included a perpetual pool of cool, clean seep water and a generous cache of stolen food and weapons.
Jim Butler and Pablo Alvarez stood under the outcrop sharing the last of their tobacco. Butler’s pocket watch showed one a.m. A long, open slope led up to them, offering no cover larger than a few scrub weeds and small rocks.
Karen Bradish sat behind them in numb lassitude, so exhausted and hopeless she had grown indifferent to her fate. But she was thus in an excellent position to watch subsequent events unfold and shock her into awareness.
“Chuck that butt, you damn fool,” Butler snapped. “You’re too close to the edge, Fargo could see it.”
The Scorpion laughed before he inhaled a leisurely last drag and flipped the butt away in a glowing arc. “And you vowed to kill him! The big pistolero vowed to kill him as he might crush a roach. Mira! Look at the bravo now with Fargo close enough to piss on us—your spine, like your dick, has turned to cheese.”
“You’ll soon find out my bullets haven’t turned to cheese, you greaser loudmouth. I’m telling you you’re a fool if you stand that far out in this moonlight.”
“Fargo is the best,” the Scorpion agreed. “But I selected this place to defeat the best. Unless he knows spells to make himself invisible he cannot move on that slope. A pocket mouse could not surprise us.”
“They say Fargo is better than Apaches at finding cover where there don’t seem to be any.”
“Your guts are showing all over the place, ’mano,” Alvarez mocked him. “Perhaps you—”
The bullet arrived a fraction of a second before the crack of the rifle. It punched into the Scorpion’s right cheek and out his left, destroying teeth and gums and shattering one eye socket.
“Christ!’ Butler yelled when bloody gobbets of flesh and chips of tooth sprayed his face. He dove to the ground just before another slug whanged into the opening under the rock shelf.
Alvarez had not been killed, which would have been more merciful. Now the first moments of nerve overload passed and the pain of his hideous injuries struck him full force before shock could numb it.
The howl he unleashed unnerved Butler and Karen alike. The marksman below could easily have finished off Alvarez; instead, he was evidently leaving him to work on Butler’s nerves. Just like Alvarez warned he would.
The strategy succeeded. After twice telling Alvarez to take the pain like a man, Butler used one foot to slide the sawed-off double ten closer. A few seconds later the shotgun roared and the remains of the Scorpion’s neatly mustachioed face shredded in a hurtling wall of buckshot.
“Just me’n you now, puddin’,” Butler said. “I don’t have to go shares with nobody now.”
Karen surprised herself by speaking up. “Yes, keep living your sick, male-bravado fantasy. Skye Fargo has killed four of your . . . companions. Do you really think he’ll stop now?”
“Since you’re giving it to me with the bark still on it, le’me return the favor, Goldilocks. You better mother-lovin’ pray he don’t kill me because I guarandamntee you’ll cash out before I do.”
• • •
Fargo wasn’t sure which man he had shot—the blue-tinged moonlight gave good profiles but didn’t show features.
“I’m guessing it was the Scorpion,” Fargo told Jude. “I think a gringo’s face would have reflected more light. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter who it was. Either way there’s one more to kill.”
Fargo had retreated back down the slope after taking his shots. He and Jude watched the opening above from behind a shoulder-high mound of stones and dirt. After a few minutes of silence a man’s voice shouted down to them.
“Lissenup, Fargo! The next time you get cute, the bitch gets aired out.”
“I guessed right,” Fargo told Jude. “No accent—that’s Jim Butler.”
Raising his voice, Fargo called up: “I don’t want that, Butler! You ready to parley?”
“Fargo, you ain’t gonna play me like a fuckin’ rube! ‘Parley,’ to you, means I surrender the girl and then you kill me.”
“Like I said, I don’t want her hurt. Think about it. Maybe we can strike terms. I hear you’re a gun-thrower of some repute. Maybe we can work out something along that line.”
Evidently Butler was talked out for now. Fargo tried to spark the negotiations without success.
“Poor Karen,” Jude fretted. “No telling how many times they outraged her up there.”
Fargo had given the kid repeated warnings. He backhanded him hard, sending Jude reeling. “Stop being such a sickening mooncalf. You can be in love with a woman without acting like some chicken-legged poet. How many times do I have to screw your head on straight?”
“One thing you ain’t no expert on, Mr. Fargo, is love,” the resentful soldier fired back. “You ain’t never loved a woman, so how could you know? Love is s’pose to be sorta like a lifelong passion. All you feel for women is lust, and that’s just the animal kind of passion.”
Fargo laughed at his spunk. “Kid, you’re better off with asthma than with passion: asthma lasts. Listen, curl up and get some sleep while I stand watch. We’ll go turnabout in two hours. The lay of this area tells me there’s no other way out of there.”
Shortly after sunrise Butler became talkative again. “Fargo!”
“I can hear you!”
“If you really want to settle this with a call-down, that’s jake by me. It’s your funeral.”
“The devil’s in the details. Name your terms,” Fargo called back.
“First off, don’t get stupid and forget the bitch! Until you and me get squared for the draw, her life is on the line.”
“All right. What else?”
“That little brat with you . . . I heard a full report on how he’s a gunologist. I ain’t gonna have that blue-belly trick-shooter cut me down while I’m busy popping you over. He’s gonna give you his gun belt and you’re gonna tote it up here. Bring your Henry and his rifle, too.”
“You saw him go over that cliff yesterday. He lost his rifle.”
“Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it? When you’re halfway up here, toss all the artillery aside except for your short iron. I want the kid standing down below in the open where I can see him the whole time.”
“That goes both ways,” Fargo told him. “Before either one of us shows, you’re coming out in the open, too.”
Butler did, thrusting Karen out before him and stepping clear of the rock overhang, but crouching carefully behind her.
“Since you’re hiding behind a woman’s skirts,” Fargo added, “I can’t see your gun hand. Hold it out straight to the side. If it drops I’m burning you down, Butler, and I will shoot Karen if it’s the only way to kill you. That’s not a bluff.”
In fact it was but Fargo hoped it would work. He gathered up the weapons, leaving his gun hand unencumbered, and started slowly up the slope. Fargo sensed some kind of trap but was willing to risk it to end this ordeal for Karen’s sake. Soon he was close enough to make out Butler’s murky eyes, peeking at him past Karen’s wildly mussed hair. The hopeless, apathetic look on her face jolted Fargo.
As for Butler, he maintained a brave sneer but felt his throat close with fear when Fargo gave him the faint shadow of a dangerous smile: a smile that was really a promissory note on a death come due.
“How we playing this deal?” Fargo asked in a bored tone, adding, “Keep that damn arm up, Butler.”
“We play it like this!” Butler growled, suddenly ducking back under the overhang with Karen still in front of him.
Fargo, expecting a hail of lead, jerked his shooter back and dropped flat on the slope. Instead of gunshots, his eyes widened in surprise when Butler’s big bay gelding burst from inside with Butler and Karen astride it, Karen trapped in front.
The big horse bore right down on hi
m and Fargo had no time to do anything but roll hard to clear the path. And now he realized how brilliantly Butler had snookered him: Jude was now unarmed, and when Fargo rose to his knees Butler spun around in the saddle and opened fire, pinning Fargo down on the outlaw’s only exposed flank.
By the time Butler neared the bottom of the slope he was out of handgun range from Fargo’s position. He sprang to his feet.
“Jude! Heads up!”
Fargo hated to risk the damage, but he trusted Sam Colt’s sturdy workmanship as he heaved his six-gun with all his might down the slope. It landed short of Jude but skidded almost to his feet.
By the time Jude leaped forward to pick it up, Butler had gained the trail and the big bay was picking up thundering speed. Jude had a clear shot but hesitated, worried about hitting Karen.
“Jude!” Fargo bellowed. “You have to take the chance! He’s riding double—once he’s clear of here, Butler will have to kill her to make a faster escape.”
Fargo could see everything clearly from up on the slope. By now the range was long for a short gun, and Jude had a difficult moving target. Nonetheless the kid screwed up his courage and Fargo’s Colt jumped in his hand. Fargo had the infinite satisfaction of watching Jude’s shot punch into the back of Butler’s skull just above the neck, a pebbly gout of blood exploding from his brain.
But that superb shot set off a disastrous chain of events.
As Butler tumbled from the saddle Karen managed to hang on. But Butler’s left foot got caught in the stirrup. His horse continued galloping forward, the dead body bouncing wildly beside it. But the dragging weight suddenly forced the bay to stumble hard on loose shale, front legs splaying out from under it.
The horse fell hard but struggled to its feet and tore off in a panic.
Karen, however, lay ominously still.
Fargo raced down the slope. By the time he reached the supine and unconscious woman, Jude knelt over her in a useless dither. Fargo looked over the kid’s shoulder and forgot to take his next breath: despite all she’d been through, the young woman lying there in the early-morning sunlight was so pretty she stole it from him.