The archer was fitting another shaft to his bow-string.
Nickelby came off the porch and Fargo thrust the guns into his arms, then darted to the Sharps. A second shaft whizzed past, missing his head by inches. Fargo’s answering shot lifted the Paiute off his feet and slammed him to earth.
Lame Bear and his remaining companions promptly melted into the high grass.
Only about a third of the emigrants had made it inside. Kids were pushing and shoving in near hysterics as their mothers tried to calm them and their fathers ranged along the porch.
A bellow from up the canyon warned Fargo to feed another cartridge into the Sharps and set the trigger.
“Here they come!” Ledbetter shouted.
Dix and Thorn and Swink came barreling around the bend. The moment they set eyes on the emigrants, they unleashed a blistering volley.
Lead splatted against the posts, against the wall, and into flesh. Someone screamed. Fargo fired, reloaded, and fired again. Dix and Swink were on their knees to steady their aim but Thorn charged madly, banging off shot after shot.
Some of the men dropped flat and returned fire. So did Cathy Fox.
Thorn came to a stop, squeezed off one more shot, then ducked behind a boulder, cursing luridly. “They’ve killed Caleb and Zeke!” he shouted to his brothers.
Almost all the women and children were now inside. Only Cathy and Sarah were left, and Cathy shoved Sarah ahead of her, saying, “Think of your daughter!”
Dix and Swink had sought cover. Along with Thorn, they were holding their fire. Or reloading, Fargo figured.
Just then a Paiute reared up in the tall grass and let fly with a feathered shaft. Fargo instantly banged off a shot with the Sharps but the warrior had dropped down. The arrow struck the wall, narrowly missing Jurgensen.
Fargo wished he had his Henry. It held fifteen rounds, not just one. Rapidly feeding another cartridge into the chamber, he backed toward the doorway.
From the vicinity of the spring came a yell. Shorty and Preston were on their way. Dixon answered them but Fargo did not quite catch what Dixon said. Jurgensen and the rest of the men had made it inside, and he followed, leaning against the inner jamb with the door wide open.
It was the only way in and out. That worked in their favor in that their enemies could only get at them from the front. But it also worked against them in that if they were hard pressed, they had no way to escape. The two windows were barely wide enough for a child to squeeze through, let alone an adult.
Dix, Thorn, and Swink were warily working their way nearer. They had plenty of boulders to hide behind and were smart enough not to show themselves for more than a second or two.
Waving stems of grass clued Fargo that the Paiutes were crawling closer, too. No sooner had he noticed than the grass parted, framing Lame Bear’s vicious features. Fargo took a bead but the grass closed and the opportunity was gone.
Jurgensen and Cathy sidled to his side. The rest of the women were to the back of the room with the children, the men were at the windows.
“How long do you think we can we hold them off?” Jurgensen anxiously asked. “A day? A week?”
“An hour,” Fargo set him straight, “if that.” Farmers and clerks were no match for outlaws and warriors.
Jurgensen peeked out, his throat bobbing. “We can’t just wait for them to massacre us.”
“I agree,” Fargo said. There was only one thing to do and he was the only one who could do it. Ideally, he should wait for night but the sun wouldn’t set for twelve hours.
Cathy’s shoulder bumped his arm. “What will they do? Rush us all at once? Or maybe try to burn us out?”
“Who can say?” Fargo replied. It depended on how much value the Barneses placed on the trading post and its contents. The thought sparked another. “There’s supposed to be a root cellar here somewhere. Ask Sarah and Mrs. Jurgensen to help you find it.”
Fargo raised the Sharps. Grass was moving a stone’s throw from the porch. He could not see the Paiute but he had a fair idea where the warrior was, and centering the sights on the approximate spot, he fired. A swarthy figure leaped erect, clutched at his side, and reeled toward the trees.
“There’s one!” Ledbetter cried, and all the men fired at once. A leaden hailstorm smashed the Paiute to earth. The grass thrashed and then was still.
A cheer went up from the emigrants. Lusty whoops and yips all out of proportion to their achievement.
Their premature crowing was nipped in the bud by a bellow from outside. “Can you hear me in there?”
“We hear you, Dixon,” Fargo responded.
“Give up and we’ll go easy on you.”
“You’ve tried that before,” Fargo reminded him. “It didn’t work the other night and it won’t work now.”
“We have you trapped,” Dix pointed out. “We’re out front. Shorty and Preston are out back. You have little food and no water. We can sit out here until you starve, if that’s what it takes.”
“Be my guest,” Fargo said. “But don’t forget. An army patrol is due any time now.” The lie had spooked the outlaws before, maybe it would spook them again. “Your best bet is to light a shuck.”
“We’re not going anywhere until you and those pilgrims pay for killing Granny!”
“Damn right!” Thorn cried, and rose up from behind a boulder to spray lead at the doorway and the windows.
Fargo jerked back but one of the emigrants wasn’t quick enough and toppled. Some of the women and children screamed and panic threatened to spread. “Calm down!” he commanded. He had to repeat himself several times before the shrieks died down.
Jurgensen had bent over the wounded man. It was Brickman.
“How is he?” Fargo asked.
“There’s a bullet in his shoulder but he should live if we can get it out.”
More slugs struck the outside wall but couldn’t penetrate the thick logs. Fargo turned to give Thorn a taste of lead poisoning but the wily killer had vanished.
“Fargo! Over here!” Cathy was in a far corner, beckoning. “We’ve found the root cellar.”
A rug stitched from deer hides had covered a large trapdoor into which a metal ring had been imbedded. Cathy and Sarah had opened the trapdoor, revealing a short flight of stairs.
Fargo poked his head down in. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, and when they did, he was stunned. He wasn’t the only one.
“My God!” Sarah breathed. “There’s so much!”
Eighty wagons, the army had said. Eighty wagons full of prized possessions had been plundered by Granny Barnes and her kin. There was money, of course, and lots of it, in bills and coins. There were gold rings and gold watches and gold necklaces. There were silver rings, silver watches, and silver necklaces. Family heirlooms. Sterling silverware. China. Several clocks that had been brought over from Europe and were worth considerable money. Old books that would fetch a fine price. Granny Barnes had not missed a thing.
“It’s worth a small fortune,” Cathy said.
A groan diverted Fargo to the counter. Melissa was stirring. She opened her eyes as he pulled her to her feet, and immediately screeched like a wildcat and clawed at his face. Catching her by the wrist, he wrenched her arm behind her back and pushed her to the door.
Thorn popped up with his rifle trained on the doorway but he just as quickly lowered it. “Sis? Is that you?”
“Don’t shoot!” Melissa shouted.
Dixon showed himself and cupped a hand to his mouth. “What the hell are you up to, mister?”
“What is her life worth to you and your brothers?” Fargo rejoined. “Mount up and fan the breeze or I’ll kill her just like I did your grandmother.” He was playing another bluff and counting on their affection for her to accomplish what all the lead in the world couldn’t.
“Don’t listen to him!” Melissa yelled. “I don’t care what happens to me so long as you bury this bastard!”
Dixon and Thorn vanished again, no doubt
to talk it over. Fargo reckoned that it would take them a few minutes to reach a decision. Enough time for him to spring his surprise. “Watch her,” he said, shoving Melissa at Jurgensen and Nickelby. “Shut the door behind me and keep it closed, no matter what you hear.”
“Where are you going?” Cathy asked in concern.
“To end this, one way or another.” Ducking low and weaving, Fargo was halfway to the west end of the porch when a Paiute yipped and an arrow whisked out of the blue to thump into a plank at his feet. His legs flying, he rounded the corner and raced to the rear. Everything depended on reaching it before the Barnes boys realized what he was up to.
A shout from Dixon gave him away. “Shorty! Preston! Watch yourselves! He’s headed your way!”
To the rear rose Shorty’s answering holler. “Who is?”
Then Fargo was past the trading post. He saw Preston by the fence, too startled by his sudden appearance to shoot, and he stroked the Sharps. The big rifle boomed and bucked and Preston smashed into the fence and crashed through it, a gaping hole where his jaw had been, to lie lifeless at the water’s edge.
Shorty was next to the building. He, too, hesitated an instant too long, an instant Fargo used to drop the Sharps and draw the Remington. Fargo fired as Shorty drew, fired again as Shorty fired, fired a third time as Shorty staggered and fell.
The Sharps was propped again the trading post.
Discarding the Remington, Fargo reclaimed his rifle and verified a round was in the chamber. He rolled Shorty over and was elated to find his Colt. Twirling it into his holster, he spun and sprinted to the southeast corner. He had more to do yet. Six more, to be exact: Dixon, Thorn, Swink, Lame Bear, and the last two Paiutes.
Fargo burst around the side of the building and nearly collided with a painted warrior wielding a bone-handled knife. Exhibiting the reflexes of a cougar, the Paiute slashed the gleaming blade at Fargo’s throat. It was only by accident that the cold steel rang off the Sharps’s barrel instead of shearing into Fargo’s jugular. Pivoting on the ball of his left foot, Fargo slammed the stock against the Paiute’s temple. Again the warrior sought to bury the blade in him but by then Fargo had the Sharps level and shot him in the heart.
An arrow whizzed by Fargo’s ear. Another Paiute was in the high grass, nocking a second shaft with unbelievable rapidity. Just as the second arrow was leaving the string, Fargo fired. The impact spoiled the warrior’s aim and put an end to his life. The shaft skimmed the top of Fargo’s hat.
The smart thing to do now was reverse direction and go all the way around the trading post. Dixon and Thorn and Swink and Lame Bear were expecting him to appear at the northeast corner, not the northwest. But in the time it would take him to get there, they might move. He must act now, while he knew where they were.
Fargo charged toward the high grass. Two rifles cracked but the hasty shots missed. Launching himself into a long dive, he landed on his shoulder and rolled to the right. As he jacked up onto his left knee a shrieking demon came at him with a war club upraised to shatter his skull. He fired the Sharps once, twice, three times. At each blast Lame Bear slowed a little more. The renegade leader was only a stride away when Fargo’s next shot pitched him into Paiute eternity.
Thorn was recklessly peppering the grass with lead. Dixon, ever the wiser of the pair, was holding his fire, waiting for Fargo to show himself.
On elbows and belly, Fargo wormed a dozen yards to the north and slowly rose. He could see Thorn and Dixon, both. Thorn was reloading. Dixon was scouring the grass and had not yet spotted him.
Fargo sighted down the Sharps, and when Thorn’s face filled his vision, he turned it crimson with two well-placed shots.
Dixon spun, or tried to. Two more shots put a permanent end to the last male member of the Barnes clan.
Fargo scanned the boulders for Swink. Movement pinpointed the one Swink was behind. He rushed it, his finger curled around the trigger. Not until he was clear of the grass did he see Swink Gattes on the ground, the back of his head stove in by a large jagged rock. Fargo stopped dead. “What the hell?”
From behind another boulder stepped Jared Fox. “I thought you could use some help.” He nodded at a thicket. “I fell asleep in there last night and didn’t wake up until the shooting started. It was Melissa, you see. I was going to ask her—”
Jared said a lot more but Fargo wasn’t listening. The trading post door had opened and Cathy and Sarah were flying toward him with their arms flung wide. It was a long way to the next outpost and they were bound to want to show their gratitude.
Skye Fargo smiled. He would let them.
LOOKING FORWARD!
The following is the opening section of the next novel in the exciting Trailsman series from Signet:
THE TRAILSMAN #273 MONTANA MASSACRE
The Montana Country, 1862—Where winters can be harsh and dangerous, but not as much as evil men.
The distant popping sound made Skye Fargo rein the big Ovaro stallion to a halt. He frowned, his lake-blue eyes narrowing.
That sound meant trouble, no doubt about it. The question was, would he keep riding toward it, or would he veer in a different direction to avoid it?
A faint smile tugged at Fargo’s wide mouth in the midst of his close-cropped dark beard. There was also no doubt about the answer.
He heeled the stallion into a fast trot toward the source of the gunshots.
A cold wind blew off the Rocky Mountains in front of him, slicing like icy fingers through the fringed buckskins he wore. Fargo knew that winter was fast approaching; normally he would not have been up here in the high country at this time of year.
But a friend had asked him for help, and Fargo was not the sort of man to turn down such a request. He had stocked up with provisions at Fort Laramie and then headed northwest, into the vast, sprawling reaches of the Rocky Mountain country.
The way Washington moved the territorial lines around, it was sometimes difficult for a man to know exactly where he was, at least according to the official maps. But the people who lived up here called the place Montana, and that was good enough for Fargo. Maps didn’t mean all that much, anyway, where he was concerned. Skye Fargo was a trailsman. He knew where he was, pretty much all the time.
He was on his way to an isolated Army outpost called Fort Newcomb. It had been established earlier in the year to help protect the hordes of wealth seekers who were on their way west to the goldfields in Idaho Territory. Not surprisingly, the Indians who lived in this part of the country didn’t like the ever-increasing numbers of whites moving across their land.
The summons that brought Fargo here came from the fort’s commander, Captain Thomas Landon. Fargo had known Landon for quite a while and had worked with him a couple of years earlier, when Fargo was doing some scouting for the Army down in New Mexico Territory.
Landon had not gone into detail in his letter about why he wanted Fargo to come to Fort Newcomb, but that didn’t matter. Fargo was willing to ride up to the fort just because a friend had asked him to.
But now, unless he missed his guess, those shots he heard came from the vicinity of Fort Newcomb. And that meant he was riding into trouble.
Of course, that had never stopped him before. . . .
The Ovaro’s ground-eating pace made the miles roll behind them. Here in the foothills, the terrain was definitely rugged but far from impassable. After a time, Fargo spotted a column of smoke climbing into the arching blue sky, which made him even more worried about what might have happened.
Down at Fort Laramie, he had heard rumors that a large band of Crow warriors under a chief known as Broken Hand had been raiding in this area. Supposedly they had wiped out several parties of gold seekers.
But with winter coming on, there weren’t many prospectors traveling through the mountains in Montana, and the wagon trains full of immigrants headed to Oregon wouldn’t return until the spring. Broken Hand and his warriors would have a shortage of targets to attack.
So may
be they had turned their attention to the Army post, Fargo thought grimly.
The smoke grew thicker and blacker. Fargo knew from the way it looked that it had to come from burning buildings. He rode around a bare, rocky knob of ground and found himself at one end of a long valley. At the other end lay Fort Newcomb. And just as Fargo had suspected, that was where the smoke came from.
The wind blew toward him and carried with it faint yips and shouts. Fargo quickly drew back around the knob and looked for a place of concealment. He suspected that the war party was coming right at him. It probably numbered at least forty or fifty warriors, maybe more, and one man was no match against such odds. As much as he disliked avoiding a fight, sometimes that was the only course of action that made any sense.
He found a crevice in the side of the rocky knob and swung down from the saddle to lead the Ovaro into it. It gradually narrowed down from six feet wide at the entrance until the stone walls came together. Fargo turned the stallion around and backed the horse as far into the defile as they could go, which was about forty feet.
Then he drew his Sharps rifle from the saddle sheath and worked the lever to throw a cartridge into the chamber. He hoped the Indians would pass by without even glancing into the crevice, but if they spotted him, he would put up a fight. Only a couple of them could come at him at a time.
Unless of course they decided to stand out there and fire arrows through the opening until he was riddled. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, Fargo thought.
He heard horses coming. The swift rataplan of hoof-beats grew louder. A large party of riders swept out of the valley. Fargo brought the rifle to his shoulder and nestled his cheek against the smooth wood of the stock. He held his breath as the war party galloped on past his hiding place.
He didn’t let it out until the Indians had moved on without noticing him and the Ovaro. He had caught only fleeting glimpses of them, just enough to know that his suspicions were correct. They were Crow, and he had no doubt that they were the band of marauders led by Broken Hand.
Nevada Nemesis Page 14
