Bandolero (A Neal Fargo Adventure Boook 14)

by John Benteen

  Men yelled and screamed, coming out of their blankets to see the stampede bearing down upon them. Some went down, punched by rock-hard hooves. Others ran. Fargo laughed. Ahead, Liz was bent low on the sorrel, riding like a jockey, and he saw flame spout from the .38 Colt in her hand. Easily the big black stallion raced through the mob of lesser horses, caught up with her. “Bear right!” Fargo yelled and only hoped she caught his croaking order amidst all the racket.

  She did, deftly changed her mount’s direction. At that instant, a man reared up from the ground, raising his rifle. Fargo swung the shotgun, but Liz already had the Colt pointed. She fired point-blank, and a hole opened in his belly and he went back and down and a horse ran over him.

  The hidden basin was full of turmoil now. Guns roared wildly, aimlessly; men yelled. Fargo heard O’Brien’s voice, like a bugle call above the noises “Fargo! Goddamn you, Fargo!” But he was far behind.

  A lot to learn, my boy, thought Fargo. You ought to have had this horse saddled and right by your bed!

  Then there was no time to think as the stampeding horses parted before him and he saw a flying wedge of men, maybe a dozen, big enough to divert the running animals, charging toward them from the left. He switched the shotgun from the right to the other hand and lined it. It jerked in his grip as both barrels fired. Men went down, and horses caught by flying pellets screamed. Then the gap closed; Fargo could not see what destruction he had wrought as more horses stampeded by. He rammed in two fresh rounds from the bandolier and lashed the stallion with the rope’s end.

  It ran like a dream. Just depriving O’Brien of such a horse was some revenge. Ahead, Fargo saw the dark wall of hills that rimmed in the basin looming. He only hoped the pass would not be clogged with stampeding horses, hold them up and make them sitting ducks for the rifle-fire of the heavy guard details above. Well, there was one way, anyhow, to try to block that. Two rounds of buckshot on either rim above the passage out should have a fair effect even though the pattern would be wide-open by the time the lead reached the heights. He lined the Fox with his right hand as, ahead, Liz neared the passage, and, catching motion on the rim, blasted off both barrels. He did not wait to see the effect, shoved in another pair of hulls, fired up and to the left. Then the walls of the pass loomed above him.

  There were horses in this narrow slot. Liz checked her mount. “Fargo ... !”

  “Shoot ’em!” Fargo called. “Clear the way!”

  “Shoot the horses? Oh, God—”

  But he heard the Colt go off. He also heard the slap of a rifle bullet by his head. And more lead was coming from the rear. Another bullet raked by from above and on the left, and Fargo tilted the Fox, fired upward. A man howled something; a rifle fell into space, clattered on the rocks. It was followed by a body that landed just in front of Liz as she forced her sorrel through a screaming turmoil of wounded animals. The sorrel made it and Fargo followed, and then they were out of the valley and in the clear, with horses racing all around them. The stallion once more overtook Liz’s sorrel. “You all right?” Fargo croaked.

  “I’m all right!”

  “Reload that Colt and ride like hell! I’ll cover you!”

  He turned, sent eighteen buckshot more in a deadly sleet back toward the pass. It caught horses, riderless, and at least two men, mounted bareback, in pursuit. Fargo reloaded, lashed the stallion, and it raced on. He’d chosen a fine mount for Liz, but it was not nearly so fast, and he had to slow the big black horse in order not to lose her. Through rocks, skittering down washes, climbing slopes, ladling and kicking, they rode on through the last sheltering darkness of early morning. The tumult in the basin behind them faded in the distance.

  And in half an hour, Fargo knew the horses had to rest.

  Sorrel and stallion alike were white with lather, and he felt the big black’s barrel pumping beneath his thighs. He found a nest of boulders, pulled up. “Let ’em breathe,” he husked. “But don’t get down. That jaw bridle won’t give you much control.”

  As exhausted as their mounts, they stayed up, the night wind blowing around them idly. After his burial alive, Fargo was hurting for water, but he did not let that bother him. If he had to, he could go another six or eight hours without a drink. Much longer than that without food. Right now, there was something more important. He turned to Liz. “Woman,” he said, “you did good. You did just fine. But 1 still don’t know how you came to dig me up.”

  She brushed back streaked hair blowing around her face. “Fargo, I don’t know what to say ... I hated you, oh, God, I hated you and when O’Brien rode by and I saw him, all 1 could think of was getting even. I thought I could handle him, that he’d jump at the chance to have me again and ... I didn’t know, don’t you understand? I didn’t know what he’d do to you.”

  “I wouldn’t think that would matter.”

  She paused. “Maybe it didn’t, until he gave me to Jimenez. Then everything seemed to fall in place. I don’t know. All of a sudden I understood everything, why you did what you did, how you’re different from O’Brien ... ”

  “I ain’t that different,” Fargo said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  “Maybe and maybe not. Anyhow, I couldn’t let you die. So I ... ” To his surprise, she laughed softly. “The worm,” she said. “That damned worm in the mescal bottle.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Jimenez had a bottle of mescal. Full. He made a play for me. I put him off, played up to him, but ... I told him I wanted a present. To prove he was a man.”

  Fargo stared at her in the subtly lightening darkness.

  “The worm,” she said. “I told him I’d give him the best time he ever had if he could drink down to that worm.” She laughed again, more brassily this time. “Well, the fat, stupid slob felt his manhood was challenged. He tried it. But he didn’t make it, thank God. He passed out like a log, snoring, three-quarters through the bottle. That gave me my chance to get to you.” She let out breath. “The Rio Rest may not be a first-class hotel, but it’s a lot better than the blankets of some Mexican buscadero. Fargo ... Neal. I won’t ever betray you again. Just take me to El Paso, and I’ll do everything you tell me to.”

  “I’ll see you get to El Paso,” Fargo said, “but first we got to go to Columbus and it’s a longer ride. We’ve balked O’Brien, but we ain’t stopped him. He’ll be on the way, hell for leather, any minute. And even if he don’t catch up with us, he ain’t gonna worry too much about us. He knows we got no food, no water, no saddles and no spare horses—and it’s a damned long, hard trip to Columbus and we don’t dare be seen by him or even any Villistas. He can still make Columbus ahead of us, unless we outride him. And every minute counts. If we go straight to El Paso, we’ll get tied up in the chain of command. We got to get directly to the Thirteenth Cavalry and alert ’em.”

  Liz Baines was silent for a moment. Then: “Neal, how can we do it? You said it yourself: we’ve got no water and no food and all this Godforsaken desert to cross. Maybe we’d better just lie low and let O’Brien have his way.”

  “We’ll find water,” Fargo said. “And there’s always food. Don’t worry. Now. Let’s ride on. We’ve got to keep to low ground and under cover. And they’ll be after us and I can’t watch everywhere at once. I'll keep my eye on the backtrail. You watch for birds.”

  “Birds?” Her voice was incredulous.

  “White-winged doves,” Fargo said. “Come sunrise every morning, they fly for water. They’re shaped like bullets and go near as fast. Keep your eyes peeled up and if you see some, let me know. Now, let’s move out.” He turned the stallion, its breathing normal now, and they rode on at a good pace, but keeping something in reserve.

  ~*~

  And so, he thought, it would be a race, and the stakes were the highest, maybe, he had ever played lor: the future of two countries, maybe the world. Certainly the lives of hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. Even he was staggered by the deadly magnitude of this long gamble, and he set
a brutal pace across the Chihuahua desert in a dawn that peeled back darkness from vast, empty flats, vivid, barren buttes and ridges, draws and washes. Then Liz blurted: “Fargo! Look!”

  They swept across the sunrise, a dozen bullet-shaped, swift-winged silhouettes flying north. A desert dove would go five miles to water, not much more. Fargo guided on their passage, lashed the stallion. As more birds came over, he corrected course; in an hour, they found the brackish little waterhole, around which doves flocked tamely. “Fargo! Can’t you shoot some? I’m starving!”

  “Don’t dare risk a shot. Let’s water up, move on.”

  They did, but by three o’clock, their thirst was once more intense, as the brutal sun hammered down on them, and hunger was like a clawing animal caged inside them. Then Fargo found the grove of bisnagas, plump barrel cacti. Legend said you could cut off their tops and drink as from a spring, but he knew it was not that easy. He sheared away their spines, chopped the pulp inside the thick-bodied plants, and he and Liz chewed it, squeezing out sour, alkaline moisture, not much, but enough to keep them going. He managed to mash out a few swallows for the horses, gathered pockets full of the pale, yellow, spineless fruits, off which he knew desert animals fed, and once more they rode on. Toward sunset, the doves began to fly again, and Fargo followed them, for they watered twice a day.

  This waterhole was bigger, though not much more appetizing. They drank, then Liz said, “Fargo, I’ve got to wash. I’ve got to have water on my skin.”

  He nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll stand guard.” She stripped, completely without shame or hesitation, and this time he felt desire, strong and definite. Neither working in the Rio Rest or what she had endured so far in the desert had affected the flawless curves of her figure, the ripe breasts, the long, fine legs. She stood up to her knees in water, sponging herself, then dressed. “I feel better,” she said.

  “You keep a lookout. I’m rinsin’ off, myself.” He put the weapons close at hand, shucked his clothes, hastily sponged away the filth crusted on him. The alkali in the water stung all the cuts and scrapes he’d suffered in the past rugged week, but he also was revived and restored, almost as if he’d had a sleep. Liz watched him with as much interest as he’d watched her. “Damn,” she said. "All those scars. Where’d you get ’em?”

  “Take a week to tell you. Maybe after we get across the line, I’ll have the time.”

  “If we get across the line,” she said. “How much longer, Fargo?”

  "Yesterday was the fourth of March. O’Brien said he’d hit Columbus on the eighth. We got to make it in two days, two and a half at most.”

  “We’ll have starved to death by then.”

  “There’ll be food tonight,” Fargo said.

  She blinked. “What are you, a magician?”

  “Just wait.” He dressed, strapped on his weapons. “Let’s ride.”

  When he judged there was half an hour left of daylight, he halted, in a desolate hell of rocks and gravel that provided good cover but offered almost no forage for the horses. He gave them the bisnaga fruit he’d gathered, sent Liz to gather dry canes of ocotillo. He went hunting, too. First, he found the nest of a kangaroo rat. It was a mass of dried, shredded desert vegetation. He stuffed it inside his shirt, went to the cool side of a rock-face. There, as he’d expected, he found three fat sidewinders, waiting for nightfall to begin their hunt. He killed the rattlesnakes with rocks, skinned, filleted them. Returning to the camp where the horses were hobbled with the ropes used as jaw bridles, he made a fire, striking sparks from the back of the knife blade with a piece of flint, blowing them to life in the rat’s nest. He roasted the white snake meat, seasoned it with gunpowder from a pistol bullet. Liz shied off at first, but hunger won. “Why, it tastes kinda like chicken.”

  “Sure.” Fargo grinned. “And from now on, chicken’ll taste like rattlesnake ... ”

  They put out the fire. It was dark, now, and the wind was chill. Liz nestled closely against Fargo in the hole he’d scraped for them in the sand behind a rock. “If I ever get back to the States ... ” she whispered. And now her voice was the sad, yearning, weary one of a little girl.

  “We’ll make it,” Fargo said.

  She was silent for a moment. “It’s some country, ain’t it?”

  “Here or there?”

  “There.”

  “It’s all right,” Fargo said. “It ain’t a bad place at all. I spend a lot of time away, but I’m always glad to get back.”

  Presently she said, “And you’re not doing it for the money, are you?”

  “I like money,” he said cagily.

  “But it’s not the main reason, not this time.”

  “No,” he said at last “Maybe we’re gonna have a war. But if America’s mixed up in one, it ought to be the right one. And war with Mexico would be the wrong one. Somebody’s got to try to stop it.”

  “You think O’Brien’s plan would work?”

  “It won’t if I can help it,” Fargo said. “But I’m not the main one, the main one’s you. Your story; you’ve got to back me up. Without you, they won’t pay attention to me. Not quick enough, anyhow.”

  She laughed strangely. “Is that a fact? So it all hangs on me. That’s odd. For the first time, I feel important. Feel like I count for something. Maybe there’s more to Liz Baines than just another Texas hooker after all, huh?”

  Fargo grinned. “I think there’s a hell of a lot more.”

  She rolled over; now their faces were dose together, her breasts pushing hard at him. Her arm went around him, she threw a leg across his body. “Fargo. Neal ... ”

  “Yeah,” he said, and he fastened his mouth on hers.

  For a while, then, he could forget the desert, the danger, the combat that lay ahead. But only for a while ...

  ~*~

  Two hours later, she was sound asleep, but Fargo was still wakeful. Maybe that was because he lacked tobacco; maybe it was a sixth sense working in him, a hunch. He’d learned not to disregard such restlessness. Without waking Liz, he rose, strapped on his weapons. He checked the horses, they were all right. But whether they would last, being ridden bareback, pushed at such a brutal rate, was a question. The stallion might make it; the sorrel was in worse shape. And if it went down and the stud had to carry double, it might give out, too.

  But that was not what bothered him right now. He felt an urge to take one last good look around. He climbed quietly up the sloping side of a boulder, lay flat on its top, and from their height he could see for miles. He turned his head slowly, from left to right, and it had made half its arc when he stiffened, sucked in his breath.

  The campfire’s winking flame was vivid in the darkness, an orange-yellow blob about two miles away.

  Fargo made a sound in his throat, slid off the rock, ran to Liz, awakened her. She sat up with a start.

  “Hush. Listen close. They’re out there, a couple of miles away. They musta struck our trail at the waterhole and followed it, camped when night came on. Didn’t wanta walk into my shotgun in the dark. They’ll aim to catch up with us early in the morning.”

  “Oh, my God. We got to ride again?”

  “Not yet. I’m gonna scout ’em first. With any luck, maybe I can turn this into a break for us. You know how to use my shotgun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll leave it and the ammo with you. It’ll probably be a good three hours before I get back. You hear somebody, afoot, on horseback, you call out. You know the song, The Eyes of Texas—?”

  “Sure.”

  “If he don’t whistle part of it by the time he’s in range, open up, because it won’t be me. Understand? Then mount and ride like hell.”

  “Neal ... ”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be back. But if I don’t, you head due north, take both horses, switch one to the other every three hours. Anybody comes at you, use the shotgun. Let me have the pistol and the knife.”

  “Neal,” she said again.

  “You got it?”

&n
bsp; “I’ve got it.”

  “Then sit tight, keep your ears open, and don’t get too wrought up. I aim to get us some spare horses, some grub, and anything else I can lay my hands on. Then we’ll make it to the border in half the time.”

  She swallowed hard, but she had guts. “All right. But... be careful.”

  “I always am,” Fargo said; he bent and kissed her and then, with his weapons, vanished into darkness.

  ~*~

  It took him a solid two hours to cover the two miles on foot, traveling like a hunting animal. And that was all right, because, according to the stars and moon, it brought him into position about three o’clock. That was a good time, because men slept most soundly then, their spirits at the lowest ebb.

  His guess had been right. O’Brien had sent a detail after them, but not a large one. Six men, and they were camped in a hollow, horses picketed beyond, on a flat. The campfire was a bed of glowing embers, but he saw five bedrolls and stacked gear around it, and, scuttling through the rocks that rimmed the camp, it did not take him long to find the sixth man, the guard.

  The big hat was the tipoff, looming against the sky from behind a boulder. Fargo found cover in some rocks, waited patiently. He wanted to be sure there was only one guard.

  After a half hour, he was satisfied. And by then, the man had come out from behind the rock, looked around, rifle cradled in his arm, bandolier of cartridges gleaming on his chest. He rolled and lit a cigarette, took a slug from a bottle, then leaned against another flank of the boulder. He was bored and sleepy, and Fargo let him drink again. Then he drew the Batangas knife, unlatched its handles. A flip of his wrist lodged them in his palm, exposed the knife’s long blade. Fargo began his stalk.

  It took him a full twenty minutes, testing every place he set a foot before he let his weight come down. He checked the wind, too, so horses would not scent him and give alarm. Presently, holding his breath, he was behind the boulder on which the guard still leaned.