by John Benteen
“Win? Hell, no. The army’s thinned out, sure, but there’re strong naval forces at a half-dozen different bases and plenty of ships offshore to send landing parties. Besides which, once the fighting really starts, the Government will have soldiers back here so fast it’ll make your head swim. But they can cause a lot of trouble. And they can get a lot of people killed before they’re finally whipped.”
“Well, what are we gonna do?”
“Hope like hell they fall for the sucker line I pitched them. Get some room to move around in. Then take any chance we can get, find Jade, wherever she is, and get the hell out of here.”
He clapped O’Bannon on the shoulder. “Meanwhile, we have to play it close to our vest. These people are crazy; that’s all. Shrewd, maybe, but crazy, too—the old man’s crazy with bitterness. And he’s brought his son up to be the same way. His daughter—I don’t know about her. There’s something there ... maybe something we can turn to advantage. I do know this: as far as they’re concerned, we think they’ve got a chance. We’re anxious to work with ’em, share in the spoils. You understand? Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if you start bitchin’ about the way the army treated you while you were in. After all, you didn’t serve out your time. Neither did you, Weatherbee. So, if you get a chance, carry on about it. And, otherwise, for God’s sake, keep your trap closed. We’ll just have to play this by ear from now on.”
O’Bannon grunted; but he was not stupid, and Fargo relaxed, seeing that he comprehended.
Nevertheless, it was a long night. Tomorrow might bring reprieve or execution. Meanwhile, though, Fargo knew that he would need all the strength he could muster. Like an animal, he put thought of the future out of his mind and slept.
Then daybreak. He could tell by the distant crowing of roosters. Presently, bowls of rice were pushed in the door. They ate hungrily. They had just finished when there were footsteps in the corridor. Spott Carter’s voice snapped something in Tagalog. Then he entered the room, carrying a Colt .45 Frontier Model in his hand. “All right, Fargo,” he said. “My father wants you downstairs. The other two stay here.
Fargo looked at him. “What’s the verdict?”
“You’ll find out in a minute.” Carter gestured with the gun. “Now, move.”
~*~
Below, the old man sat at breakfast, Marcy at his right. She wore a blue dress today, one that emphasized her heavy breasts even more than the one of yesterday. She looked at Fargo sidelong, without turning her head, apparently intent on the plate before her.
But old Will Carter leaned back in his chair, his white beard and mustache faintly spotted with egg-yellow. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fixed on Fargo those mad eyes.
“All right, Fargo,” he said. “I’ve decided your fate.”
Fargo stood straight, face expressionless. He waited long enough to spoil the old man’s fun and make the old man have to speak again. “You live,” said Carter.
“Thanks,” Fargo said.
“Now, hear me out.” The old man pointed. “You live and so do your friends—for the time being. But that doesn’t mean you’ll go on living. You’re on trial, probation. You get no weapons, and you don’t go outside the palisade unless there’s someone with you. There’re guards and they have orders to shoot you if you try. Meanwhile, you begin to drill my men in the service of those pieces. We’re short of ammunition, so it’ll all be dry-firing until you’re damned sure they can hit what they aim at. You have the freedom of the compound—but you make no attempt to contact the Chinese girl. She’s a prisoner upstairs. You don’t talk to Marcy, either, and she’s not to talk to you— understand? And your friends stay locked up until we’re satisfied with you. They’re our hostages; you make a false move, they get it, hard and in a way that hurts. Is all this clear?”
Fargo nodded. It was as much as he’d dare hope for.
“You’ll be under guard of Borang and his Moros while you go about your duty. And God help you if you run afoul of ’em! There’s nothing Borang would like better than to whack off your infidel head!”
He gestured. “They’re out on the porch now. You’re to go to the artillery park with them, begin their training in the use of dynamite guns. Borang will interpret for you; he speaks English.”
He leaned back in his chair. “That’s where you stand. How fast you improve your standing’s up to you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Fargo, and he saluted. The old man liked that and returned the salute with briskness.
Then Spott said, harshly: “Move out, Fargo. Borang’s waiting.” And he followed Fargo through the house to the wide veranda. There the Datu and his Moros squatted, flat-heeled, smoking brown paper cigarettes.
When Fargo appeared, Borang stood up. He barely came to Fargo’s shoulder, but his very fierceness made him seem taller. Black eyes glittered in a flat, brown face; his hand stroked the buffalo-horn haft of his bolo. His twenty Moros ranged themselves around him.
“This man Fargo is to give your men lessons with the big guns. As long as he makes no trouble, he’s not to be harmed. If he tries to escape or get a weapon, you’re to kill him.” Carter’s voice was flat. Fargo wondered what was wrong between the man and his sister. Before they had reached the valley, Spott himself had suggested that Fargo might join them. But his whole attitude had changed, especially since Marcy had proposed the same thing. Now his hatred for Fargo was obvious; and it was rooted in the fact that Marcy had been his advocate. It was odd, Fargo thought: Spott’s reactions were almost identical to that of a jealous lover whose sweetheart had paid attention to another man.
Now Borang nodded. “We shall watch the Christian pig closely. Come, you.” And he jerked his head.
Fargo appeared unconcerned, but every muscle in his body was tense as, ringed in by the Moros, he walked down the hill from the mansion to the artillery park in one corner of the village. He was under no illusions about his guards. There was not one of them who would not be happy to improve his future standing in Paradise by killing an infidel—and it made no difference whether the infidel was armed or helpless. He would have to walk on eggs. Like a man surrounded by strange and vicious dogs, he would have to calculate every move so as not to arouse or alarm them.
The artillery park was merely an area in which the guns were, limbered up, lined in ranks. Twenty light cannons: half the Hotchkiss two-pounders, half the old, obsolete dynamite guns. Nearby was a sturdy bunker, covered with earth, a magazine for the ammunition. Its massive steel door bore a huge, impregnable padlock.
“The General says you are to use no ammunition,” Borang rasped. “All is to be only drill.”
Fargo nodded. He walked around the guns, slapped one of the Sims-Dudleys on its long tube. It was too bad, he thought, that he couldn’t get his hands on a dozen rounds for this baby. With that many and two good men to help him, he could reduce this whole village to rubble in less time than it would take to smoke a cigarette. But there was no point in daydreaming. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”
The Moros had seen the cannon fired yesterday; but that was their only contact with it. Fargo had the Datu range them around it in a semicircle and he began to name the parts of the piece and describe their use. These fighting men were fascinated by anything that could be used for killing; and, within minutes, with Borang translating, he had their rapt attention. The chieftain himself interrupted often with intelligent questions, his own interest captured.
All through the heat of the morning they worked. They unlimbered the guns and limbered them up. Fargo showed them how the weapons could be dismantled and, along with their carriages, packed on two mules—and how ten men could transport gun and carriage by hand without difficulty with the use of carrying bars. Borang was at his heels every instant of the time. It was he who, squinting at the sun, said: “Now my men shall rest for a quarter of an hour.”
Drenched with sweat, Fargo agreed. The men found whatever shade was cast by the guns and dropped, into flat-heeled sq
uats. Fargo sat down on the trail of a gun and took out a cigar. As he lit it, he became aware that Borang was staring at him in an odd fashion. A kind of warning bell rang in Fargo’s head.
As soon as Fargo had the cigar lit, Borang got to his feet. His hand flashed out, knocked the cigar from Fargo’s lips. Then Borang picked it up, reversed it, stuck its lighted end in his own mouth. His black eyes glittered and he stood with one hand on his bolo, smiling wickedly, awaiting Fargo’s reaction.
Fargo said nothing. He was in danger, now, and he knew it. His mind raced. Even before Borang knocked that cigar away, too, he understood: Spott’s father had overruled Spott But the younger Carter was not giving up that easily. Fargo could almost imagine him giving the secret orders to Borang—wait only a decent interval. Then crowd Fargo into some rash act, provoke him until he made a break—and kill him. And now Borang had decided that the time had come.
So Fargo said nothing nor made any move; nor did he try another cigar. Despite red rage flaring in him, he sat coolly, motionless, on the gun’s trail and stared away from Borang.
Then, roughly, the Datu pushed Fargo off the trail, into the dust. “I did not say you could sit there!” he snapped.
Fargo got slowly to his feet.
“Pig eater,” Borang said. “Christian dog. You sit where I say to sit and you smoke when I tell you to smoke.”
“Yes,” said Fargo.
Borang looked dismayed at the mildness of Fargo’s answer. Then he laughed shortly. “What women you Americans are. You have no honor. You are fit only to spit upon.” And then he suited action to words. All through the morning, he had been chewing areca nut mixed with lime and betel leaf, and now he spat a red stream squarely in Fargo’s face.
Fargo slowly wiped the spittle away with his sleeve.
Borang strutted back and forth like a fighting cock. “Yes! What a coward! What a woman!”
Fargo said, quietly: “I have no weapon.”
“You would use none even if you had one. You are afraid.”
Fargo looked around. “The odds are twenty to one.”
“Even if it were only one to one, you would be afraid to fight!” Barong faced him. “You are not man enough to fight a man with a man’s weapon. Americans do not know how to use a man’s weapon. They must stay back a long distance and kill only with a gun. They are like women—afraid of cold steel!” And he touched the handle of his bolo.
Fargo looked into the man’s eyes; and he knew that no matter what he did, the Moro was determined to kill him. He could remain passive and be slaughtered like a pig; Borang would find some pretext. Besides, Fargo’s fighting blood was up.
He smiled, and it was a grin of such wolfishness that even Borang seemed taken aback for a second. “If I had a bolo,” he said, “and your men would not interfere—if it were only me and you—then you would see how much woman I am.”
The broad, flat face twisted in a stained-tooth grin. “Ha! You? You would fight me with a bolo?” The grin vanished. “I do not believe it.” He turned, barked words. The men got up, gathered around, looking surprised, then pleased as Borang addressed them. Then one of them drew his bolo and passed it to the chieftain.
Holding one of the big knives in each hand, Borang turned back to Fargo. “Let us see if you meant it. I have ordered my men that, if you win, you are not to be harmed by them. But I do not think you will win. I think your head will be lying there in the dust in five seconds from now.”
“Or yours,” Fargo said easily, but he felt nothing like the confidence he showed. He was an experienced knife-fighter and he had used a cavalry saber; he had been a good man with a machete of the type used in Mexico and South America. But the Moros were incomparable fighters with this, their own weapon, which bore some resemblance to the scimitars carried by the Arabs who had converted them to Mohammedanism centuries before and mixed their own fierce blood with that of the Malays. It had a blade thirty inches long, of finest steel, wide, gleaming in the sun, razor-edged, slightly curved; its handle was of use-polished wood, with finger knurls. It was lighter than it looked, and its balance was unfamiliar to Fargo. Nor was he going to have time to practice with it. For suddenly Borang hissed: “Now!” And then, without warning, he attacked.
Nor did he make any attempt to feel Fargo out. He came in so fast that he and blade alike were blurs, came in with the speed and fury of a mongoose attacking a cobra. Fargo got his own blade up just in time, parried, parried again, and again and again, backing away frantically. But Borang came in hard, bouncing like a rubber ball, his own blade swinging and swinging, steel flashing in the sun. He hacked, thrust, hacked again, and never eased the pressure, never gave Fargo time to recover. If Fargo’s own reflexes had not been fantastic, if he himself were not as quick as a striking snake, he would have been dead within three strokes.
As it was, he managed, as steel rang and rang again, to build a weaving, shifting, defensive wall before himself with his own blade. There was no chance to go on the offensive at all; now Borang came in low, now from the side, now from the top, in a hacking motion; each thrust was different; and Fargo’s whole being, every ounce of awareness, speed and skill, was concentrated in fending off that deadly attack.
The circle of men around him chattered and cheered their leader. The Moro’s red-stained teeth showed in a wide, confident grin. His eyes glittered with a madness approaching jurimentado. He was a fantastic killing machine on a holy mission—and Fargo had never faced a deadlier adversary. That striking arm was all muscle; those shifting feet were faster than any dancer.
And so he circled, defensively, with the Moro bounding all around him, leaping, thrusting, and snarling imprecations. Five seconds, ten, fifteen, twenty, sixty—a minute of that attack, two—though he had not yet managed to draw blood, Borang’s speed and confidence were not diminished. He came on inexorably, slashing and thrusting and Fargo knew that it was only a matter of time, now. He was still off balance, and either he got it back and went on the defensive or one of those blows would take his arm, the next his head.
Then his chance came. Not even Borang could keep up such a blur of speed without faltering for an instant. He hit and slashed and Fargo parried and then, for just a clock-tick, Borang fell back a step. He had expected to have Fargo’s head long since; now he backed off for an instant’s reappraisal of tactics.
It was what Fargo had been waiting for, the leverage he needed. In that clock-tick of time, he shifted weight, and now he was on the attack. Borang looked surprised, startled, as Fargo came at him with blade hacking and slashing, and now the Moro was just a touch off balance. He’d not expected such a fierce attack from an American, and, if anything, Fargo’s onslaught was fiercer than Borang’s had been. For, like the Moro, Fargo fought to win, fought to kill, and there was only one way to do that, and that was to attack and attack again, and now his own arm was a blur, his own blade in constant motion and Borang parried and backed. Fargo gave him not one wink of time in which to recover, but bore in and bore in, drenched in sweat, sweat pouring down his face, his mouth unconsciously twisted in that wolf’s grin. There was no fear in him, but only fighting instinct, killer lust that matched Borang’s. Moreover, Fargo’s arms were longer and equally as strong, his stroke as fast; and for the first time a flicker of concern crossed the Moro’s face and the shouting of his fellows faded as Borang found himself caught in a fight for life instead of the easy execution he had counted on.
It was a hard, dangerous way of fighting. The blades moved so fast, the opponents shifted position so rapidly, that each was left open to the other a dozen times; there was no way, in fighting of this slam-bang kind, to maintain a guard. And yet neither drew blood; the openings came and went so fast that they were gone before they could be seized and taken advantage of. Not until one of the swordsmen tired, or some unexpected factor tipped the balance would there be blood drawn, a kill made.
Then Fargo decided it was time to take the risk. This was the other man’s game, and he could n
ot play it indefinitely without losing. He had one hole card; if it were high enough, he’d live; if not, he’d die. But it was his best chance.
Harder and harder he came in at Borang, driving the Moro around the circle. Borang grinned; a few seconds more of such fury and Fargo’s right arm must play out, slowly, and then—he watched that arm, lured it, sought to tire it. Fargo slashed in again. Then he pulled back. Suddenly he threw the bolo—not at Borang, but from his right hand to his left. It was done in a heartbeat, and Borang’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped open as Fargo, taking advantage of his inborn dexterity with either hand, came at Borang from the other flank, the bolo gripped just as tightly, his stroke just as dexterous. Off guard, Borang tried to change his center of gravity, his stance, cover himself. He was like lightning, but Fargo was even faster. In the second in which Borang was vulnerable, Fargo got him. The weaving blade of Fargo’s bolo hacked solidly into the flesh of Borang’s right arm, on the inside, as that arm came around to meet the threat. Borang grunted and blood spurted and the bolo dropped from fingers that severed tendons could no longer control. Borang had perhaps half a second, then, to stare into Fargo’s face, to realize that he was doomed. Then Fargo swung the bolo with all his might, mercilessly.
Without pausing, Fargo jumped over the headless body. Under his onslaught, the circle of Moros gave way. Then he was in the clear, facing them as he backed off, the bloody bolo ready in his hand.
They stared at him, chattering among themselves. Now, either they honored Borang’s promise or he had all of them to fight. Fargo kept on backing, away from the artillery park, through the village. The Moros came after him cautiously. He still did not know whether they meant to fight, but he knew better than to turn and run. That would be the sure way to have them after him.
Then he knew that this was not over. Promise or no promise, he was to be killed. Promises to infidels were of no value anyhow. He heard the rasp of steel, as bolos were drawn, and the Moros fanned out, a rank of them approaching cautiously, still wary of that bloody weapon in Fargo’s hand.