by John Benteen
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Fargo was making good money running guns across the border to Pancho Villa. He didn’t give a damn about the Mexican Revolution, as long as the money was good. Then a dangerous Mexican-Irishman named Carlos O’Brien and a good-looking El Paso saloon girl came along and Fargo found himself facing a firing squad armed with his own guns. After that he had to fight his own bloody war in the middle of the revolution. Even for Fargo, it was the toughest chore he ever had to face.
FARGO 14: BANDOLERO
By John Benteen
First published by Belmont Tower in 1973
Copyright © 1973, 2016 by Benjamin L. Haas
First Smashwords Edition: August 2016
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover image © 2016 by Edward Martin
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges * Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Author’s Note
This book is based on fact. Germany did present a plan to the Carranza government of Mexico for war with the U.S., including the arming of Blacks and Mexican-Americans. To this day, doubt lingers among old-timers as to whether Pancho Villa really raided Columbus, New Mexico at one o’clock on the morning of March 9, 1916, or whether he was framed. A retired Colonel with whom I’ve often split a bottle, and who was a horse-soldier shavetail at Columbus when the shooting started, never really thought it was Villa.
He went with Pershing into Mexico and never thought, either, that the Army really tried to catch Pancho Villa. But, in January 1917, when the last elements pulled out, the country was mobilized and the Army trained for the war in Europe to come a few months later, in which John J. Pershing would command American forces.
This, then, is one explanation, based on truth, expanded perhaps wildly by imagination, of what might have happened at Columbus and behind the scenes. Anyhow, I thank the Colonel, who told me what it was like there on that morning.
John Benteen
Chapter One
The Colt machine gun’s rate of fire was four hundred rounds per minute; which, Fargo calculated, gave him, according to the book, exactly two minutes of resistance left in which to cover the retreat. Unhurriedly, he took a thin, black cigar from his pocket, bit off its end, clamped it between his teeth and lit it. Firing aimed and careful bursts, he could buy another five minutes, anyhow, when Carranza’s men began their charge.
The long-barreled weapon was well concealed in a nest of boulders on the forward slope of a gravelly Chihuahua ridge in Mexico. Below, on the flat, out of range, the Federales—as Carranza’s men called themselves now—swarmed about the little village with its adobe huts and adobe protective wall like ants in a kicked-over hill. Recovering from the shock of Villa’s attack, they were regrouping, infantry massing, cavalry forming. They had fought well, Fargo thought. So had Villa’s men, though the attack had failed. When it came to guts, aggressiveness and nerve, nobody could beat the Mexicans, no matter which side they were on. The cowards and inept had long since been killed off in years of revolution. What remained was a hard core of experienced and savage fighting men.
Alone here in the boulder-nest, Fargo sucked in smoke, then checked certain things about his weapon. The machine gun was tripod mounted, and its six-millimeter ammunition could be fed in by hand or would feed itself from a basket on the side of the weapon’s receiver, swiveling with the traverse and elevation of the gun. Since Fargo was alone, the ammo was in the basket. He checked the alignment of the belt, and then he added weight to the deeply seated front legs of the tripod by bracing them with stones. When he settled on the seat provided on the rear leg, the tripod remained steady. Fargo rolled his cigar across his mouth, adjusted the field sight.
He was a big man, burned down to bone and muscle entirely by weeks in the deserts of Northern Mexico. If, on his last binge in El Paso, he’d put on any flab, it was long since gone, and the rocks around him seemed no harder than his wide-shouldered, deep-chested body in its sweat-plastered khaki shirt and denim pants. The battered old cavalry hat perched cockily on one side of his head had been nicked by bullets, not all of them shot at him in this campaign. He’d had that hat since 1898, when he had served in Cuba as a sergeant in the Rough Riders, and it was as much a part of him as the prematurely white hair, close-cropped, beneath it, or the craggy face of startling ugliness, with nose broken more than once, one ear cauliflowered, a slit of a mouth, skin weathered to the tan of saddle leather, and blue-gray eyes as cold as ice-chips. It was a face that awed men with the knowledge to read it and that had a different and more puzzling effect on women, the product of more than thirty- five years, most of which had been spent in fighting for hire, for he was a soldier of fortune by profession.
Below, the Carranza men were forming up. Behind him, on the reverse slope, the officers of the Villa forces shouted orders as they prepared to retreat. Most of the Villistas had gone on ahead; only the machine gun company which Fargo commanded had remained behind to cover them. Now it was getting out.
And only Fargo, with his single gun, would cover their retreat.
He heard rocks rattling behind him. As a single figure came over the ridge’s crest, running hard, infantry below on the flats opened fire. Lead whined off rocks all around Neal Fargo. He took the cigar from his mouth, blew smoke, turned as Captain Ignacio Mandsidor threw himself, panting, into the shelter of the boulders.
“Colonel Fargo!” Mandsidor’s handsome young face was contorted as he panted the words. “We’re ready to pull out.”
“Good. Then go. With God,” he added, in the Mexican way.
“But you, too! You must come!”
Fargo said, “Damn it all, Captain. I gave you your orders. I expect them to be carried out.”
“Don Neal ... ” Mandsidor was pleading now, not with a superior officer, but with a man he loved and respected. “You must come with us. Otherwise, you’ll die here.”
“Not if I can help it,” Fargo said, and he grinned; and it was exactly like the snarling of a wolf. Then he sobered. “Ignacio, there’s not a bullet left in this whole outfit except what I’ve got here.” He indicated the machine gun, the .30-30 Winchester rifle and the double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun which leaned against the rocks. His hands stroked the bandoliers crisscrossing his big chest. There was not much ammunition in either one of the two heavy leather cartridge belts.
Then he jerked his thumb. “You’ve got eight machine guns back behind that ridge. If you don’t get your ass in gear, Carranza’s men’ll take them all. They do that, Villa’s finished. The counter-attack’s coming any minute now. When it does, they’ll ride you down, take those guns, and wipe you out, unless somebody stops ’em. I aim to stop ’em. Long enough for you to make it out, anyhow.”
“But … alone? Look … ” Mandsidor’s voice rose. “Look, they’re coming now! Neal, they’ll kill you!”
“Nobody’s done it yet,” Fargo said. Then he roared: “Get out of here with your weapons, Captain! That’s an order!” The cavalry below was already pounding across the flat. Infantry streamed out on the flanks from each end of the village. “I don’t have tune to fool with you! Ride!”
Mandsidor s
tared at him for a despairing moment. Then he snapped, “I obey your orders, Colonel.” And ... He touched Fargo’s shoulder. “Good luck.”
Fargo didn’t answer. He ground out the cigar and found another. Mandsidor turned, scrambled up the ridge. Lead whined all around him, but he made the crest, disappeared. Fargo grunted an obscenity. The captain had meant well, but all he’d done was pinpoint the fact that there was something in this nest of rocks. Behind the ridge, he heard the captain yell: then hoof beats drummed. Villa’s machine gun crew pulled out. Fargo was alone.
~*~
Not, he thought, precisely alone. About seven hundred soldiers were coming up the ridge to find and kill him. But they were still out of certain range for the Colt. The thing to do right now was wait and let the situation develop. Then he could reap the maximum benefit from every slug he had left.
There were times when even he wondered how he got himself into such messes, and this was one of them. But there was no single hard, definite answer. It was, maybe, his destiny, just the way he was built. Looking back on it, the trail of his life seemed to have led straight to this Chihuahua ridge.
He’d been born on a New Mexico ranch, and he was only four when violence and death warped his future. Apaches, the last of Geronimo’s bronco Chiricahuas, had killed his parents, but somehow missed the hidden child. Later, he’d been taken in by a neighboring ranching couple, but what they wanted was not a son but a slave. At the age of twelve, he’d had enough of that, lined out and never looked back.
Since then, he’d punched cows, logged big timber, worked in the oilfields, prospected for gold, turned his hand to anything that paid a dollar. He’d been a fairly good prizefighter for a while, hence his cauliflower ear; and once he’d put in time as a bouncer in a Louisiana whorehouse. But his real calling was that of soldier.
When war broke out with Spain, he’d been accepted into Theodore Roosevelt’s First Volunteer American Cavalry—the Rough Riders. Some men were born soldiers and some had military service thrust upon them. Fargo would have been a born soldier, except for one little difficulty. Instead of taking orders from above, he preferred to work alone. Otherwise, he had become the perfect combat man, not only in Cuba but later in the Philippines, during a hitch with the Cavalry in the Insurrection.
When he got out, there was little about combat that he did not know. After that, he’d gone into business for himself. Small wars and revolutions: there was always something for a good fighting man. Special assignments, too, if those who hired him had the money to pay his price. Because he was the best, he charged accordingly. He took on jobs nobody else had the guts to handle, and he earned his exorbitant fees. And when things got slack, he could always build up his stake by running guns to Mexico.
Which was how he had got here now. Pancho Villa was his best customer. Villa had once expected to become President of Mexico. But Villa was too much soldier, too much patriot, not nearly enough politician. Venustiano Carranza, another rebel leader, had formed a coalition with Obregon, yet another leader of a rebel faction, and now was recognized as de facto President of Mexico. Now he was out to erase his most dangerous rival, Pancho Villa, who still held most of northern Mexico. He was throwing everything against Villa he had; and Villa needed machine guns and other heavy weapons badly to stand him off. Fargo made good money supplying these: but Villa’s men still needed training in how to use them. So, temporarily, Fargo had become a Colonel in Villa’s Army, partly to build up his market, partly because Villa had offered him a fabulous price in pure silver to do so, and partly, he admitted to himself, because he liked Pancho Villa and believed in him and thought Villa would be the best president Mexico could have.
His machine gun crew had won a lot of victories for Pancho. But today, he thought bitterly, they had been betrayed. This road junction was supposed to have been an easy target, but somebody had squealed to Carranza and Obregon, his military commander. They had hit a trap, walked into a hornet’s nest. Had lost a lot of men, but no machine guns so far. And would lose none, Fargo thought, if he could help it.
And now the cavalry was coming on, spreading out, and in a minute more they’d be within good range.
Fargo paid no attention to the rifle fire from the infantry which whined off the rock pile and slapped overhead. He ground out the second cigar. Tipped back his hat. Laid his eye to the field sight and traversed the gun. Now. Now, the widespread line of horsemen was within his reach. Lashing mounts and carbines at the ready, laboring up the ridge. Delicately, Fargo tripped the machine gun’s trigger.
~*~
Only an amateur would hold down the trigger on an automatic weapon and exhaust his ammo. Fargo played a tune on the Colt: it had a definite rhythm. Takataka—tak! Takatakatakatakatak! With the pintle free, he swung the weapon loosely, hosing lead down the slope in bursts—and the damage he did was terrible.
First he smashed the center of the line of charging cavalry into a dreadful mess of screaming, kicking horses and howling men. Then swung the gun, mowed the right flank like a scythe. The left hesitated, and then, as it pressed on, he turned the weapon to the other quadrant of its field of fire.
Takatakataka-tak! Takataka-ta-ta!
No shot was fired at random, every one was aimed. That was what made the difference, and as the gun moved back across the arc again, picking up the stragglers, the whole line of cavalry seemed to dissolve. Horses and men alike lay screaming on the ground or sprawled in death; and Fargo hated it about the horses. He was glad that what was left of the horse soldiers drew back, reining mounts around and retreating down the slope.
That gave him time to check his ammo. It was nearly gone, now, but the cavalry had been disposed of, and that was the important thing. On the right flank, a group of infantry had worked their way out ahead of all the rest, was swinging in, firing toward the rock burst as they came. Fargo decided to eliminate that threat, and once more the machine gun sang its dry chattering song.
Men fell in windrows. The right flank halted, the center slowed, the left froze. Fargo swung the gun, pressed the trigger—and nothing happened.
All right, he thought. Anyhow, Ignacio and the others are long gone.
Now he moved pantherishly, despite his size, his big body almost a blur. He slung the sawed-off, double-barreled Fox twelve-gauge shotgun. Then, working expertly, he jerked the hot machine gun from its mount, careful not to fry his hands on the barrel.
Laying it aside, disregarding lead snarling all around, he folded the tripod. He would not leave even one of Villa’s precious automatic weapons to the Federales. Nearby lay two leather scabbards, connected by a heavy strap. Fargo rammed the tripod in one, the machine gun in the other. He slung the whole contraption over his right shoulder. Its total weight was just short of a hundred pounds.
Then he picked up his rifle.
Heavily burdened, the Fox muzzles down behind his right shoulder, a hundred pounds of machine gun on his left, he loosed a couple of well-aimed rounds from the Winchester down the slope, and, without waiting to see their effect, bent low, legs driving on a zigzag course, ran up the hill.
It was as if he ran through sleet—but this sleet was lead, not ice. It whistled, slapped; a bullet raked his flank and wet his shirt with blood. The full fire of a hundred guns was focused on that weaving figure racing, lungs straining, for the safety of the ridge crest, the reverse slope beyond. He felt the Rough Rider hat twitch as a slug notched its brim. Then he had made the top, was, chest heaving, lurching downhill. And now he was out of their line of fire.
Fargo halted for a moment, panting, sweat running down his face in sheets. Then he was oriented again: his horse was over yonder, fifty yards below and to the right, straining against its tie rope looped around a stunted mesquite. Fargo’s thighs were wooden, his left shoulder aching fiercely beneath the machine gun’s weight, as he ran toward the horse.
He had covered all but twenty yards when they appeared, sweeping around a notch in the ridge’s crest—ten cavalrymen, a
rmed with carbines, coming at the run, their course designed to block him from the horse. Fargo halted, but they had seen him, turned, and now they came straight for him, guns up, and in that instant he dropped his rifle.
It clattered on the rocks, as his right thumb dug behind the leather sling of the twelve-gauge sawed- off. That thumb twitched, and the muzzles of the gun, dangling behind his back, came up beneath his right arm and into line. He turned his body so that, although the shotgun was upside down, triggers up and chambers down, its barrels were lined; and his left hand flashed across his chest and tripped both triggers.
The roar of both shells at once was thunderous. The shotgun kicked back on its leather sling, as each barrel hurled nine big buckshot straight toward the knot of soldiers. Spreading wide from the open bores, the eighteen buckshot made a deadly wall. The cavalrymen rode head-on into it, and the effect was terrible.
Horses screamed, went down; and the animals behind piled into them. Men cried out and fell, what had been a hard-charging knot of horsemen suddenly became a bloody, writhing mass of flesh. Nine uniformed men were caught in the pile-up and those not hit by lead were crushed by horseflesh or smashed by flailing hoofs. Only one rode free.
He was a lieutenant, handsome, young, and very brave. Under other circumstances, Fargo would have bought him a drink, enjoyed his company, for this was a professional soldier through and through. He revealed that by his calmness, the way he checked his mount, raised his Smith & Wesson pistol, brought it carefully into line on Fargo, disregarding the slaughter around him.
There was no time to reload the shotgun. The lieutenant’s revolver was aimed and steady. Neal Fargo threw himself aside; his right hand flashed down, jerked the Officer’s Model .38 from his own belt holster. Before the Smith & Wesson spurted flame, Fargo lined the Colt and pulled the trigger.
The six rounds in its chambers were loaded with hollow-pointed slugs. Hollow-points provided extra stopping power for just such situations as this one. Fargo’s first shot had to go true and it had to stop the other man, and it did. It hit the lieutenant in the chest, and the exploding lead seemed to blow him apart around the breastbone. The soldier’s shot plugged into his saddle pommel; he lurched backwards over his horse’s rear. One foot caught in a stirrup and his body, dragged, bounced gruesomely as the horse stampeded, but that made no difference, for he was already dead.