by Jon Sharpe
“Wilfred dug it originally as an Indian tunnel,” she explained. “It runs straight behind the barn and comes out in a dry creek bed. You head about fifty feet to the left and there’s a thick tangle of hawthorn bushes. They hide a small cave that Wilfred dug. So between Dan’l Boone, the peace pole, my Jennings rifle and this tunnel, we aren’t exactly helpless females.”
“Well,” Fargo said, “it’s ingenious, for a fact. I guess you ladies have survived this long without a man, you don’t need one now.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,” Krissy said.
Lorena chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive the girl, Mr. Fargo. It ain’t often we see a man as handsome as you. Or any other kind, for that matter.”
“I take that as a compliment from both of you, ma’am,” Fargo said, wishing like hell both these boys would turn into birds and fly away. It had been too damn long since he’d enjoyed the mazy waltz, and a tumble with either of these women was just the carnal tonic he needed.
“Anyway,” Fargo added, pulling a rawhide pouch from his pocket, “sometime back I got into a poker game with some soldiers and skinned ’em good. I consider poker winnings found money, and I got no use for it. I’d be honored if you folks would accept it.”
When Lorena refused to extend a hand, Fargo grabbed her wrist and extended it for her. He poured $100—five double-eagle gold pieces—into her palm.
“Mr. Fargo, we can’t—”
“Like hell you can’t. It’s poker profits, not hard-earned pay. There’s something else I been thinking about: these towhead boys of yours. You women could still use some protection, and they need to learn how to take care of themselves. It won’t take long to mold good clay into good plainsmen. Why don’t I start by taking both of them with me to the trading post in Sublette? We’ll stock you up on dry and can goods and such.”
“Say! you’re whistling!” Dub exclaimed. “Me and you, Nate, real plainsmen!”
Lorena looked as if she’d woken up in the middle of a dream. “Mr. Fargo, I don’t know how to thank—”
“Found money, Mrs. McCallister, found money, remember? The wages of sin. ’Nuff said.”
“Well, don’t you have to be somewhere?”
“The Nebraska Panhandle, but there’s time,” he replied, leaving it there.
But Fargo strongly suspected he would sign his own death warrant if he headed toward any military installation while that pouch was in his possession. Nor did he plan to leave this area until he put “paid” to an account—that remorseless slaughter he witnessed yesterday, a sight seared into his memory for life.
Fargo and the McCallister brothers rode east for about an hour, closing in on the Cimarron River. Fargo kept his eyes to all sides, looking for motion, not shapes.
“When you’re in wide-open country,” he told his companions, “don’t focus your eyes too much on one spot. Let them take in everything—I call it letting the terrain come up to your eyeballs. And now and then, do this.”
Fargo tugged rein until he was facing north. “I’m looking at everything ahead of us from my side vision. Sometimes that shows things front vision will miss. Good trick for flatlanders to remember.”
“You expect more trouble, Mr. Fargo?” Dub asked.
“I always expect trouble, lad. That way you’ll be ready for it. But now that you’ve brought it up—it’s only fair to warn you that lead tends to fly around me.”
“Hell, we seen that already,” Nate said. “That’s why we want to side you.”
“Look, slip a noose on this ‘side’ business, why’n’cha? I’m a one-man outfit, and we ain’t gettin’ chummy. I told your ma I’d show you some trail craft, and I will try not to get you killed. Speaking of that . . .”
Fargo hauled back on the reins, lit down, and rummaged in his offside saddle pocket. He removed two handguns, giving one to each of the brothers.
“Dub, the weapon you’re holding is a Colt Navy, single-action. You’ve prob’ly shot squirrel guns, but do you know what single-action means?”
“Yessir. After you shoot it, you have to cock the hammer back to rotate the next bullet into the chamber.”
“Well, your pa taught you something, anyhow. Nate, your gun is a Lafaucheux six-shot pinfire revolver. It’s French. Ever heard of pinfires?”
“No, sir.”
“Instead of a hammer that strikes a percussion cap,” Fargo explained, “it shoves a long pin straight into a paper cartridge. Not a bad gun, but the cartridges are hard to locate.”
“Lookit there,” Dub said. “It’s got a foldaway knife blade under the barrel.”
“Good for nothing but cleaning fish,” Fargo scoffed. “There’s one serious drawback, Nate—paper cartridges go off too easy if you bang the weapon. So no cartridge under the hammer until you’re ready to shoot.”
“Where’d you get these guns?” Nate asked.
“Let’s just say,” Fargo replied, “that their former owners have no use for them now. Let’s see how you boys do. Now, I don’t expect a hit, just do your best. Dub, you first.”
Fargo was convinced that these green-antlered farm boys couldn’t likely hit a tent from the inside, so he pulled out his tin plate and flipped it high into the air.
Dub fired once, sent the plate spinning, thumb-cocked the Colt Navy in a heartbeat, fired again and made it hop even higher.
Fargo’s jaw was still falling open in astonishment when Nate took over, likewise drilling the plate twice with two shots before it hit the ground.
“Holy Christ,” Fargo said. “When your ma said you were good shots, she wasn’t stretching the blanket, was she? Boys, excuse me while I pull my foot out of my mouth.”
“Whatever trouble you’re in, Mr. Fargo,” Dub pressed eagerly, “can we side you now?”
Fargo picked up his plate, staring ruefully at the four bullet holes in it. “Well, gents, you may be green, but you’re solid wood. It’s getting too late to be riding into Sublette. We’ll make a cold camp, and I’ll sleep on it.You sleep on it, too. Like I said—lead tends to fly around me.”
5
Fargo picked a tree-sheltered area beside the Cimarron River for their camp that night. The three riders rubbed down their horses and put them on long tethers so they could graze during the night.
“If we had a fire going,” Fargo explained, “that would mark our location for an enemy. So we’ll leave the horses farther out until we turn in, then bring them in close. That way we save some grass for them. Besides, if your enemy kills your horse, he doesn’t need to kill you. A man afoot in these plains is as good as dead.”
“Shouldn’t we take turns standing guard?” Dub asked.
“My horse is an excellent sentry after dark. And whoever’s watching us is keeping their distance, and without a fire they won’t know where we are.”
“Mr. Fargo,” Nate said, “why are men watching you?”
“And shooting at you,” Nate added.
“Well, you boys have a right to know.”
Fargo reminded them about the brutal attack on the Quakers yesterday, and added the detail about the mysterious doeskin pouch the old matriarch had given him.
“The yellow-bellied sons of bitches,” Dub said. “But what’s in that pouch that they want it so bad?”
“That’s a poser, all right. For that matter, you can rob unarmed people without killing them. But I’ll tell you this much—when border ruffians don’t bother to steal from their victims, that tells me they’re getting good money from somebody who’s got deep pockets.”
“F’rinstance, who?”
Fargo shifted his back against a rough cottonwood, scratching himself like a buffalo. “Boys, to you this land looks empty. But I’ve marked the changes over the years. The Philadelphia lawyers, the New York land hunters, the deep-rock miners, the railroad barons—they’ve got their own ‘scouts,’ and they’re out here right now, figuring out how they can divide the West up among them and then tax the rest of us to guarantee their
fortunes. It’s all percentages and angles. And sometimes these scouts have to stir up some disasters to further their cause. They don’t care a frog’s fat ass for the natural beauty or for whoever they have to destroy to do their masters’ bidding.”
“Damn,” Dub remarked. “Our pa use to talk a lot like that. Anyhow, can’t you just open that pouch?”
“The order from that dying messenger,” Fargo said, “was to leave it sealed and give it to an officer. Even though I’m not a soldier, I just signed a contract for more work with the frontier outposts. That puts me under military law.”
“Oh. Then how’s come you don’t just take it to the nearest fort? There’s Fort Hays a few days northeast of here.”
Fargo grinned. Young men never seemed to run dry of questions.
“Because,” he said, “as you saw yesterday, those heel flies pestering me will kill me. They’re staying on me like ugly on a buzzard. Long as I stay in this area, they’ll try to kill me with some discretion. But if I make a beeline out of here, I’ll have every jayhawker in the territory trying to snuff my wick. You two sharpshooters need to think about all that before you decide to stick or quit.”
“I’ll stick,” Dub said immediately.
“Me, too,” Nate echoed. “Pa always said even God hates a coward.”
Fargo rolled into his blankets. “Judging from the quality of your mother, and your marksmanship, your pa was quite a man.”
“Top of the heap,” Dub said proudly. “How ’bout your folks, Mr. Fargo?”
“Best get some shut-eye,” Fargo told them. “Could be a long day tomorrow.”
Fargo shook the McCallister boys awake at first light, then whistled in the Ovaro and tacked him.
“We’ll skip morning grub and grab something at Sublette,” he explained. “From here on in, keep your eyes peeled.”
Sublette was about a three-hour ride. Before he hit leather, Fargo lay flat on the ground and placed his right ear just above it.
“Ain’t you s’pose to press your ear to the ground?” Dub asked.
“No, just above it, or all you’ll hear is your own heart pulsing. Well, no big group of riders closing in, anyhow. Let’s dust our hocks.”
All three riders scanned the wide-open plains as they rode. The bloodred sun rose higher and turned a burning yellow.
“Mr. Fargo?” Dub said. “I been using my eyes like you said to yesterday. I think there’s riders way to the south, tracking us.”
“Good man,” Fargo praised. “I see them, too.”
When Nate started to guzzle water from his canteen, Fargo spoke up. “Gradual on that.”
“Why? Water ain’t scarce in these parts.”
“When you drink water in the sun, you just sweat it out and don’t get the use of it. And both you jays, stop pulling your horses’ heads up when they’re smelling the ground. All horses do that in country they’re not familiar with. It calms them down.”
“Dang,” Nate said. “Riding with you, Mr. Fargo, is like being in school.”
“Yeah, except this is school for staying alive. And you better remember your lessons.”
“Yessir, schoolmaster.”
A half hour later they topped a limestone ridge and saw Sublette lying in a bowl-shaped depression below them. The place had grown since Fargo’s first time there awhile back. The big, split-log trading post sat beside a feeder creek of the Cimarron. But a sprawl of newer structures—and a few large tents—had grown up around it like spokes around a hub. The Quakers Fargo had guided in two days earlier, after dark, were camped with other pilgrims in good graze about a quarter mile east of the trading post.
Fargo drew his Colt and palmed the wheel to check his loads.
“All right, boys,” he said. “Whoever’s watching us knows we’re riding in, and I’ve seen some mirror signals. Keep your weapons close to hand. Here’s how we play it. I ride in front. Nate rides about twenty paces behind me and keeps his eyes on both flanks. Dub, you’re rearguard about twenty paces behind your bother. Keep looking behind us.”
Fargo holstered his short iron. “If anybody draws a bead on any of us, plug him. But stay frosty—everybody is likely armed down there, and we don’t want to kill a man just because he shifts his rifle. Savvy that?”
Both boys nodded, looking nervous but determined. As they rode in along a rutted trail, Fargo realized the lone trading post had evolved into a rough-and-tumble settlement. Very rough: there were no raw-lumber boardwalks, no jailhouse, no hotel, no church or school, no tie-rails even. Chinese vendors in floppy blue blouses pushed wooden carts, hawking buffalo tongues pickled in brine, honeycombs, and sacks of ginger snaps.
Fargo, who had wandered nearly every trail in the West, recognized a few of the hostile faces watching them ride in, but nobody he’d buy a drink for.
“Hell and damnation!” Nate said. “Is this Sodom or Gomorrah, Mr. Fargo?”
“Never mind the gawking. Just consider it a hellhole filled with enemies. This is a good time to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”
Fargo spotted a crude sign that said SALOON AND EATS. No frame building with slatted bat wings here, just a large tent with three sides and an open front. Inside, men stood at narrow counters, eating and drinking.
“Let’s stoke our bellies before we hit the trading post,” he said. “At least it’ll be easy to see our horses.”
The three men reined in, swung down, and hobbled their mounts. The interior was a thick blue haze of smoke. Some men pretended to ignore them, others aimed hostile stares.
“It makes no sense,” Fargo muttered to his companions. “It’s like they have a score to settle.”
Fargo spotted a bunch of buffalo hiders in their characteristic bloodstained, greasy rags. “Stop staring at them, Nate,” he warned. “Hiders are a rough crowd, especially when they see a man ride in on a farm nag.”
The only item on the menu was beef and biscuits, so Fargo ordered three plates.
“Fresh out,” replied a balding barkeep in sleeve garters and a string tie.
Fargo could see the Chinese cook behind him, stirring a pot. The Trailsman knew this was a make or break moment: these frontier vermin were listening to every word, and if Fargo didn’t crack the whip now, he and the brothers might not make it out alive.
“Lissenup, you dough-belly peckerwood, and lissenup good: I don’t chew my cabbage twice. Now, you rustle up that grub pronto or I’ll wear your guts for garters.”
The barkeep paled. Fargo watched his eyes slant toward the left side of the tent. A heavyset thug, whose hand-tooled holster was tied down with a rawhide whang, shook his head no.
Without hesitation, Fargo pushed his way over and confronted the man. Fargo rested his palm on the butt of his Colt.
“Who in the hell are you to decide if I eat or not, cockchafer?” he demanded.
“Fuck you, buckskins. You ain’t—”
Fargo backhanded him so hard that the man staggered backward. He cursed, his right hand twitching toward his big dragoon pistol.
Quicker than eyesight Fargo’s Colt leaped into his fist. “Don’t miscalculate yourself, mister. You’re about one eyeblink away from crossing the River Jordan. Now toss down that hog leg and light a shuck out of here before I ventilate your guts.”
Suddenly losing his bravado, the thug did as ordered. This time, when Fargo returned to the crude plank bar, no one met his eye. And three plates of steaming food were waiting.
“Damn, Mr. Fargo,” Dub said, “you sure put the shawl on that son of a bitch. But how’s come everybody around here acts like you raped their mothers?”
Fargo sopped up some pot liquor with a biscuit. “I’m hanged if I know, boy. But I got a feeling we’ll find out quick enough.”
“Three beers,” Fargo ordered when the trio had finished eating. “And draw ’em nappy.”
The bartender pretended not to hear. Fargo had just made his point with the thug, and didn’t want to overplay his hand. So this time his tone was les
s threatening.
“You best clean your ears, bottles. I ordered three beers. I don’t care who told you to give me the frosty mitt—you’ve got more to fear from me than from him.”
The nervous barkeep met his eye. “I b’lieve that’s so, stranger. Three barley pops it is, nappy.”
“Can’t we have whiskey?” Dub complained in a low voice.
“Pipe down, you jay. The whiskey, in roach pits like this, doubles as undertaker’s fluid.”
“Yeah, but me and Nate ain’t never—”
“Just enjoy your beer and keep your eyes to all sides. Case you haven’t noticed, there’s draw-shoot killers in this bunch. And they’re on the featheredge of shooting us to trap bait.”
The mugs of beer came, and Fargo was surprised to find it cold—somebody around here must have harvested winter ice and stored it in a sawdust pit. He laid some coins on the counter.
“On the house,” the barkeep said. “I got a feeling I’ve been misinformed about you.”
“How so?”
The barkeep shook his head. “Rather not say. It could have consequences for me, if you take my drift. But it wouldn’t be the first slander spread around here.”
The barkeep was obviously scared and Fargo didn’t push it. Just then he recognized the Ovaro’s trouble whicker and glanced outside. A furtive-looking man with a soup-strainer mustache stood between Fargo’s pinto and Nate’s big dobbin.
The moment he reached for the offside saddlebag, Fargo cleared leather and shot him through the hand. The would-be thief howled and took off on foot. In a heartbeat, Dub and Nate bolted from the tent saloon and tackled him. Fargo followed them into the filthy street.
“Jesus Christ, mister, you shot my goddamn hand!” the man howled.
“That’s because I knew you weren’t stealing my horse,” Fargo replied. “Or I’d’ve shot your noggin. What are you after in my saddle pockets?”