The Border Jumpers (A Fargo Western Book 16)

by John Benteen

  The kiss, wholly carnal, lasted a long time. Then she broke away. “Neal,” she whispered. “Help me undress.”

  Fargo did. He had been right. There was nothing under the single garment. He peeled it away, revealing huge, soft heavy mounds of white, firm beneath his touch, their nipples as big as silver dollars and hard-pointed. A curved belly inset with a dimple of a navel, arched hips, a vee of crisp blonde hair between the ivory of the thighs ... “Oh, Neal,” she gasped. “Now, you ...” Her hands clawed hungrily at his shirt, the buckles of his belts. After a moment, she said in awe, “So big, so strong, so many scars ...” Then she was pulling him to her, as she sprawled on the bed, mouth seeking his. “Neal,” she whispered, and then she quit talking, the only sounds she made a quick, stertorous grunting and moaning and then, suddenly, a quavering scream of fulfillment ...

  Later, much later, drained of desire, she and Fargo lay together, one soft white leg of hers thrown across his body, her hand stroking his muscle-banded chest. “Neal,” she whispered, “you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “As much as I can be and still earn my pay.” His cigar-tip glowed in darkness.

  “Is there any way you can stay in touch with us? I’ll worry about you. One man alone. How in the world can you bring it off?”

  Fargo’s body stiffened. He knocked ash of the cigar into an ashtray on the bed table. “Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself.”

  “I hope so. But ... you know, that troop of cavalry is supposed to be guarding all the crossings and the fords. How will you even get across the river? Where?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fargo said.

  “But I will.”

  “Then it’s too bad.”

  She suddenly sat up in the bed. “You men. You’re all alike with your secrets ... First Heinz and his money, then you ... You drive women crazy.”

  Fargo’s grin in darkness was not unlike a wolf’s snarl. “And women do the same to men, always asking questions.” He rolled over, pulled her down. “Suppose you stop talking for a while ...”

  “Damn you,” she whispered, but as his hands moved over the softness of her breasts, her mouth opened wide, and her hips began to move, and her legs parted, and she asked no more questions ...

  ~*~

  The light, Fargo thought, twenty-four hours later, was just right. Enough to see by, but, with the sun almost set, not enough for accurate shooting by any hidden rifleman.

  Lying on his belly in the brush, he scouted the far bank of the Rio with binoculars. Unlike this side, which dropped off a good thirty feet straight down, the Mexican side was sloping, shelving. But it bore a similarity to this side in that it was furred with chaparral, a jungle of thorned brush tightly interwoven, save where game trails pierced it. Mesquite, prickly pear, yucca, huisache—all the barren-land plants that sprang up where cattle had overgrazed the range. Except at the crossings, both sides of the Rio Bravo del Norte—the Rio Grande—bore a rind of chaparral miles wide. It had taken Fargo quite a while to work his way to this point on the river through that hell of spikes and thorns.

  Before daybreak, he had left Jane’s ranch, mounted on one of the big remount geldings she had sold him. Brush scars on its hide, knots of encapsuled thorns, told him that it was used to work in the chaparral, brush-wise. He led the livery mount, turned it in, and, still smelling of Jane’s perfume, ate a good breakfast at the local cafe. When the bank opened, he deposited fifteen thousand dollars, paid his bill at the hotel, stored the nearly empty trunk against his return. He was leaving the hotel when he encountered George Trace on the sidewalk.

  “Fargo,” the older man said. “I was looking for you.”

  “Trace.”

  The range detective’s lined face worked. “Maybe I had too short a fuse yesterday. If I did, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t help feeling these people hadn’t given me a square shake, a chance to show what I could do before they called you in.”

  Fargo said, “You’ll get a chance, Trace. It’ll take some time for me to do what I aim to do. You’ll more than pay your freight in the meantime.”

  “I aim to,” Trace said. “Anyhow, Fargo, like you said yesterday, we’re both pro’s. I think we ought to work together. Let’s have a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you what I got in mind and you tell me what you figure on doing.”

  “No,” Fargo said.

  Trace’s face went hard; his eyes were flakes of ice. “Now, hold on, Fargo ...”

  “See you later, Trace,” Fargo said. “I got to ride.” He unlatched the gelding’s reins, swung, aboard. “Trace.” He touched his hat brim, spun the horse, and rode at a high lope out of town, headed north. Once, looking back, he saw Trace’s blocky figure on the sidewalk, staring after him.

  ~*~

  With shotgun stowed, he rode north ten miles: that was a gambit to fool the horse soldiers, for a few cavalrymen were in town. Then he turned eastward, on to range land—Gilliam’s.

  This county itself was bigger than some eastern states, and the ranches, though not prosperous, were enormous, fences few and far between. Fargo kept to cover as he circled southeast, unreeling in his mind a map of the Rio Grande from El Paso to Eagle Pass, with emphasis on this coiling segment. Years of gun-running and border-jumping himself, in and out of Mexico, had given him an intimate knowledge of every foot of the great river, and he knew exactly where he was going.

  Only once did he see a pair of riders, working a bunch of Herefords toward the north. Otherwise, the land was empty, the cattle all pushed as far from the Rio as possible and held there. By mid afternoon, Fargo was deep in the brush along the river. He nooned there, in the shade of a boulder, shotgun across his lap. Then twilight came and he was ready to strike out ...

  Now, satisfied that the chaparral across the river was deserted, that knowledge made certain by the coming of several deer to drink, their actions calm and normal, he worked his way back to the tethered horse. There, he wrapped bandoliers and rifle tightly in his slicker and draped the awkward bundle around his neck, along with the Colt on its gun belt. He was dressed for this kind of work now: old cavalry hat, brown bandanna, khaki shirt, shotgun chaps over canvas pants, not a spot of color, all designed to blend in with the background. He used the bandanna to blindfold the gelding. Then, shotgun in his right hand, reins in his left, he put the horse along a game trail.

  The cavalry and border-jumpers and the various revolutionary armies would watch the fords. They would not expect anyone to cross here where the American bank dropped straight down ten yards into deep, swift water. Fargo grinned, and, fifty yards from the river, raked the horse with spurs, lashed it with the reins.

  It broke into a dead run, still blindfolded. Fargo clamped his thighs tight, sucked in breath. Then the horse had reached the river bank. As its forefeet flailed out into empty air it snorted, pushed off with its hind legs.

  Horse and rider arced out into space, then dropped. The gelding hit the water with a mighty splash, Fargo still in the saddle, shotgun high, reins tight to keep his mount’s head from going under. The gelding wallowed, then struck out swimming.

  Fargo leaned forward, plucked the blindfold off. Immediately spotting the far bank, the horse steadied. Cavalry-bred horses were powerful; the gelding breasted the current easily. In a few minutes, it had made the Mexican side, and, snorting, scrambled out, shaking itself like a wet dog. Fargo swung down to let it rest, looked around, shotgun ready, saw nothing to alarm him, unwrapped his weapons and restored them to their proper places, and rode on.

  His progress was slow and wary through the head-high chaparral. A quarter-moon cast an uncertain light. Two hours after midnight, when the brush had begun to thin, he holed up in a thicket, slept till sunrise. Dawn, spilling over the country, found him scouting the edge of the chaparral, staring out at the open, semi-arid, rolling plains of northern Chihuahua. The land, gloriously colored in first daylight, seemed deserted; but nobody knew better than Neal Fargo how dangerous that assumption could be. Eve
n if, for the moment, Villa’s men or those of the other factions weren’t abroad in this area, the border jumpers of Lopez Belmonte were.

  The moment he had accepted this job, his mind had begun clicking like a well-oiled machine, and two pinpoints on the map of Chihuahua he carried in his head had leaped into prominence—a pair of drowsy clutters of adobe called San Joaquin and Palo Blanco, each about thirty miles south of the Rio and about fifty miles from one another, and, as Fargo remembered, there was water and good graze at both points, a rarity in this dried-out land. If his guess was right, the rustlers would be using both those towns as forward bases, assembling there the dribs and drabs of wet cattle brought from Texas into herds big enough to be driven south to the main Lopez rancho, or to whatever point the armies demanding beef might designate. And that meant that there would be a couple of dozen men, at least, at each town. During the day, anyhow, there would be a certain amount of traffic between the two.

  With luck, though, if he stayed tight in the brush until darkness, he could ride all night, slip between the towns, and when dawn came again, be well into Chihuahua, hidden in rough country with no one aware that he was there. That was why he had crossed the river at an unlikely spot, directly between the towns, and why he had been damned sure that no one, not even Trace or Jack Varnell, knew his plans.

  Once he was safely into Mexico, past those two strong points, he could drift south, traveling always by night. It would take him at least a week to reach the fortress-like home ranch of the Hidalgo, and not until he was there and had looked over the ground and scouted the situation could he really devise a further plan of action. Then ... well, he had a few friends in deep Chihuahua, people who owed him favors; some, he knew, had reason to hate Lopez Belmonte and his kind. With their help, he might be able to figure out a way to get at the big Spaniard. It was going to be a matter of luck and patience, but sooner or later he would get Lopez in his gunsights. Once the man was dead, Villa, Obregon and all the others would fight each other for his holdings and the rustling would stop. It was uncertain, dangerous, maybe suicidal—but after all, his fee was thirty thousand dollars and nobody laid out that kind of money for safe and easy work.

  Anyhow, he would take it slowly, carefully, traveling only by night and covering his trail, and once he was past San Joaquin and Palo Blanco, he could breathe a little easier. So, patiently as some great hunting animal, he waited out the morning hours, keeping close watch on the plain beyond the brush. For a long time, nothing stirred out there. Then, glassing the terrain, Fargo tensed. To his left, where the chaparral tapered off and open land began, there was, two miles away, movement. Fargo shielded the binoculars with his palms to prevent any reflective sun glare. Through their lenses, he saw seven riders, dressed as vaqueros, cartridges glinting in their bandoliers, rifles in their hands, walking their horses toward him.

  They were following the edge of brush, and the two men in the lead stopped from time to time to scan the ground while the others ceaselessly scanned the chaparral on one flank and the open land on the other. Fargo took the glasses from his eyes, and his lips thinned. These were Lopez Belmonte’s men, and that pair in the lead were trackers, looking for sign. This was a search party from San Joaquin working toward Palo Blanco and seeking the trail of anyone who had, last night, left the brush and crossed the plain. Seeking, Fargo thought, his trail.

  A coldness grew in him as he cased the glasses, slithered back through the thickets to where his horse nibbled grama he had pulled for it. Those men were seeking a sign, as if forewarned, that someone would have been passing through, heading into deep Chihuahua. And now, it struck Fargo, this job had assumed a new and deadlier dimension. There was no reason, none at all, for that search party—unless someone on the American side of the Rio had passed the word that Neal Fargo was coming after Lopez Belmonte. Unless someone on the American side had betrayed him.

  Fargo slung the shotgun. Well, he had no time to worry about who had done that now. Clamping his hand over the remount gelding’s muzzle, he worked it deeper into the chaparral, finally worming it into a nearly impenetrable thicket a quarter of a mile further from the edge of brush than it had been before. Since he had not ventured out of the brush, there was no trail for them to find. With any luck, they would pass by. And then—a kind of cold fury grew within him. And then there would be nothing to do but work back to the river, return to Texas. With Lopez Belmonte alerted, he would never make it into deep Chihuahua now. He’d have to wait—maybe a long time—before making another try. And somehow find out who had betrayed him and settle with him first.

  Shotgun unslung and cradled in his arm, he stood there tautly by the horse, hand clamped over its muzzle to keep it from nickering. The wind was right, blowing from the riders toward him, so if he could keep the gelding quiet, he should be all right ...

  And now, though he could not see them, he knew they were drawing even with him out there at the edge of the brush. Faintly, he heard the sound of horses’ hooves, the jingle of gear. The gelding jerked its head, tried to nicker; Fargo pinched its nostrils tight, held its jaw clamped. He held his own breath, then let it out gustily. Slowly but surely, they were passing by.

  Then it happened; the one thing that could betray his hiding place. Abruptly the wind died, then changed, and now it was blowing from the Rio, a fresh breeze rifling the chaparral into a thousand whispering voices. And out there in the open a horse, scenting Fargo’s own, whickered sharply. Then another, and Fargo cursed silently. He could tell from the sounds that the riders had halted, turned. They would be taking readings on their mounts’ pointed ears, knowing that there was a horse somewhere in there, and not a stray or wild one, either, for those would already have answered. Experienced manhunters like them would neither miss such a sign nor fail to investigate.

  Fargo considered. He could not mount up, run for the river. Even if he made it before they caught him, they’d shoot him while he was in the water, helpless, because there was no hope of climbing out up that sheer bank on the American side. No, the game was up; he’d have to fight.

  Swiftly, he tied the gelding to a mesquite limb, and the minute he let go its muzzle, it neighed shrilly. But Fargo was already gone, rifle in one hand, shotgun in the other, scuttling through the brush like a javelina, oblivious to the thorns that raked him. In a half dozen minutes, he reached the kind of shelter he sought—a thicket of mesquite, cactus and other fanged undergrowth dense enough to conceal him and a good hundred yards from where the horse was tied, still whinnying. He edged into the thicket, grimacing as its barbs raked his flesh, then stretched out on his belly, cleared himself a field of fire without lessening his concealment, and waited.

  By then, they were coming, leaving their horses outside the chaparral with a holder, working in on foot. A voice called softly in Spanish: “Spread out. Keep your eyes open. Anything that moves, shoot it.”

  Fargo thumbed extra rounds for the shotgun from his bandolier, cradled them in his palm. Fifty, sixty yards away brush crackled. They were working through in an extended line, guiding, as he had hoped, on the tethered horse’s nickering. Minutes passed. Then one called quietly, “Here’s his mount, saddled. He’s somewhere around. Look sharp ...”

  “To the right,” someone else called. “He’s over to our right. I found a piece of cloth ...”

  Fargo drew in a gusty breath. So he had left a piece of his shirt behind on a thorn. Well, that was either his bad luck—or theirs. He raised the shotgun slightly.

  And now they had changed direction, and the chaparral swayed and clicked as they made their way toward him through it, slowly, carefully, with total alertness. He could make out now the outlines of some of them, like shadows in all the interlocking greenery. In a rough line, they were about five yards apart and gradually nearing his hiding place, halting occasionally to look around.

  Fargo lay motionless, letting them come. Fifty yards, thirty ... Then one man stepped cautiously into an open space, a narrow aisle through the underg
rowth. Rifle ready, he swept the terrain with his eyes. His gaze came to rest on the tangled thicket that shielded Fargo. He was tall, bony, almost pure Indian and nobody’s fool. He looked speculatively at the thicket, and then soundlessly faded back into the brush. Fargo heard him make a faint clicking sound, like a beetle. Other men, a pair of them, converged on him. Then there were three of them behind a screen of brush about twenty-five yards away.

  And, Fargo knew, he could wait no longer. A few seconds more and they’d hose lead into that thicket to flush him out. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a wolfish snarl. The shotgun came up, lined on their hiding place. Then he pulled both triggers.

  The gun roared, bucking in his hand. Eighteen buckshot whistled through the chaparral like a hurricane gust, clipping twigs, chopping leaves. The double charge plowed into the covert where the three men huddled. Someone screamed, an eerie sound of agony. The brush thrashed, then was still, even as Fargo, the gun already reloaded, pumped another round into it and another, crammed two more shells into the weapon’s breech.

  Further away in the brush, men yelled, and branches crashed as they plowed through the chaparral in the direction of the shooting. Fargo saw a thrashing to his right, caught a glimpse of a high-crowned hat, rolled, swung the shotgun, loosed the right hand barrel. A strangled yell and a short, thick bodied man lurched into the open, bleeding from a half dozen wounds. He stood there for an instant, staring at the thicket, mouth gaping open, eyes wide; then he dropped his gun and pitched forward on his face. Fargo swung, fired the left barrel blindly, reloaded, then slipped backwards, out of the thicket.

  But the two men left alive in the chaparral were neither fools nor cowards. They had located the source of the shotgun fire and opened fire with rifles. Lead slapped and whined around Fargo’s head as he scrambled to his feet, smashing through the undergrowth like a charging bull. Once he turned, let go with another round aimed blindly behind him, thought he heard a yell of pain. Then, ahead, he could see bright daylight as he neared the brush’s edge. Rifle in one hand, shotgun in the other, he broke through, was in the open.