Wolf's Head (A Neal Fargo Adventure--Book Seven)

by John Benteen

  Now her hand closed over his. She nodded toward the table, “Breakfast’s ready. Coffee’s hot—among other things.” Smiling, she added, “If you want it.”

  “Maybe you’re hungry,” Fargo said.

  “I am. But—” Her fingers stroked his hand. “Not for breakfast.”

  “Then let it wait,” said Fargo. He arose, took off the coat, the shoulder holster, the shirt … She lay back in the bed, watching him with smoky eyes as he undressed, “How long will you be in town?”

  “Just today,” he said, and then he was in beside her.

  “Ohh ...” There was disappointment in her voice. “Well, then—we’ll make today count for all we can.”

  “That was sort of what I figured. Come here,” Fargo said. She did, sliding easily, quickly: she had shrugged out of the peignoir and the gown was open. Warm flesh molded itself against him, her mouth opened, seeking his …

  ~*~

  Later, they drank coffee, and she ate a small breakfast of toast and bacon. Then they went back to bed. After that, they drank brandy. Then there was another interlude. Presently, as the afternoon wore on, Lynne arose, dressed in a gown of blue silk that hugged every line and curve of her figure. She was like a great cat that had eaten a big and satisfying canary as she leaned back against the curve of the sofa in the living room, while Fargo squirted water from a seltzer bottle into drinks of bonded bourbon. He handed her a glass, then from his pants, thumbed out a large gold watch. It was of the sort used by railroad men, durable and absolutely accurate. Sometimes even a second, much less a minute, could make a lot of difference in his business. “One hour,” he said. “Then I’ll have to be on my way.”

  “Where?”

  “Up north.” The rest of it was none of her business.

  She smiled, inhaling smoke from her cigarette. “The Wolf’s Head Tract?”

  Fargo turned, staring with narrowed eyes. “How’d you know?”

  “A girl who lives like I do hears a lot.” Then she was serious. “Fargo —”

  “Yes.” Something in her voice made him frown, watchful, alert.

  “In a minute or two, we’ll be having company.”

  He instinctively hooked a thumb in the shoulder harness of the Colt. “Who?”

  Lynne sat up. “Saul Lasher.”

  For a moment Fargo was silent. Then he said, “Well, goddamn you.”

  “Don’t be mad at me. It means no trouble for you. He called right after you did this morning. Said you were in town, he knew you’d be seeing me—”

  “How did he know about us?”

  Lynne shrugged. “Pillow talk. He—comes here often.”

  “One of your strings, eh?” Fargo’s voice rasped.

  “If you want to put it that way, yes. Anyhow, he asked if I’d let him know when you were here. He wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing to talk to him about,” Fargo tossed off half the drink. “He tried to have me killed last night.”

  “Not Saul!” She sounded shocked.

  “Hell, yes, Saul.”

  “Well, he’s not here for any fight or argument now. He said he had a business proposition—” She broke off as there was a loud, peremptory knock at the door. Then she jumped to her feet. “That’ll be him now. Neal, please.” She put a hand on his arm. “All he wants you to do is listen to him. Please don’t—fight.”

  Fargo let out a long breath. Then he grinned coldly. “I won’t if he don’t. And I don’t imagine he will; he’d rather hire his fighting done. All right, Lynne. Let the bastard in.”

  “Maybe it was wrong,” she said, “but—I couldn’t deny him the favor.” She turned away, went to the door.

  “Hello, honey,” said a deep masculine voice.

  “Saul.” Then, almost warningly, “he’s here.”

  “Fargo? Fine.” Saul Lasher entered. Just inside the doorway he halted. “Neal,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  The logging game bred big men, hard men. Lasher was both, about Fargo’s age, about his size. He wore tailor-made business clothes but the rippling muscles beneath them were almost too much for them to contain. He was strikingly handsome, eyes as gray as Fargo’s own and quite as steady, his black hair frosted slightly at the temples, his smile, so unlike Fargo’s wolf snarl, charming, friendly. What marred the image was a scar down one side of Lasher’s face, left there by the blade of a double-bit ax in a wild lumber camp fight. Rumor had it that Lasher’s own stroke in return had beheaded his opponent like a guillotine.

  But that had been in a different era, when Lasher’d been a woods boss. Now he was a business man, wealthy, with connections in the Governor’s office and in Washington. He was smooth but wary as he came forward, hand out.

  “Hello, Saul.” Fargo took the hand, shook it briefly. It was not hard any longer; good living had softened a palm once calloused and tough as horn.

  The room was silent for a moment. Then Lasher took the drink Lynne handed him. “How long’s it been? Four years? Not since the Salmon Rapids.”

  “That’s right,” Fargo said.

  “You beat me out that time,” Lasher said without a trace of rancor. “We were both driving the same river, a race to hit the mills first, skim the cream off a rising market.”

  “Uh huh. And you used every trick in the book to try to balk us.”

  “Oh, come now, Neal. All’s fair in love, war, and the timber business.” he sat down, crossed his legs. “I understand you’re going back into it.”

  “News travels fast.”

  “A fight like that one with Hotchkiss last night becomes a sort of landmark. It’ll be remembered for years—another part of the legend of Neal Fargo.” His eyes changed, losing their good humor, opaque now. “Lynne—honey, would you excuse us?”

  She hesitated, looked at Fargo. He nodded. “Yes, I’ve got to do something with my hair, anyhow.” She touched it lightly with one hand though it was perfectly arranged, and went into the bedroom.

  When she had shut the door, Lasher took out two cigars, handed Fargo one, clamped the other between his teeth. When they were lit, he blew smoke. “You’ll notice I’m not making any issue of your being—here.”

  “Issue?” Fargo grinned. “You couldn’t stop me from seeing Lynne. Or her from seeing me.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m not making any issue of it, though she’s my girl—usually. I accept realities, Fargo. Actually, I’m glad of this chance tomeet you in private, have a little talk. You’re signed on with Great Northwestern.”

  “That’s right. Duke hired me as a faller.”

  Lasher’s mouth twisted. He said a terse obscenity. “Faller. You mean that’s your cover.”

  “I’m working in the woods for pay,” answered Fargo smoothly. “Same as any other timber beast.”

  Lasher snorted. “All right. If that’s the case, you must need money. Maybe you’d be receptive to an offer.”

  “What kind of offer?” Fargo rolled the cigar across his mouth.

  Lasher hesitated. “Twenty-five thousand dollars. To work for me instead of MacKenzie.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Wolf’s Head.”

  Fargo smiled. “You don’t operate on the Wolf’s Head.”

  “Ah. But come next spring, I will.” Lasher’s face was intent. “Damn it, Fargo, I know you. With you, money talks. And you know me. When I name a sum, that’s as good as cash in the bank.”

  “And what I’d have to do for it—?”

  “Is nothing. Long as you’re on Wolf’s Head, absolutely nothing except earn lumberjack’s wages as a faller. Stay out of everything else. I don’t care what you’re drawing from MacKenzie. You do nothing while you’re out there but cut down trees and you’ll get twenty-five thousand from me—half now, half when I take over the Wolf’s Head Tract.”

  Fargo took the cigar from his mouth, stood up. “You sure are scared of me, Saul.”

  “I’ve seen you operate before. It’s worth the money to have you on m
y side. Well, Neal?”

  Fargo picked up his coat, fished in the pocket, he brought out the snub-nosed gun, jacked the loads from it. “This is something that belongs to you, Saul. Catch.”

  Instinctively, Lasher caught the little gun. “What the hell—?”

  “Last night you tried the cheap way. It didn’t work. Today you try the expensive one.” Fargo’s voice roughened. “It still won’t work, Saul. It might have if you had got me soon enough, but you’re a day late and a dollar short. Besides, when you try to murder me, you get my hackles up. I don’t know how much you paid the gunman, but that little Colt’s all you get back for your investment.”

  Shortly, coldly, then, he laughed. “I’m loggin’ for MacKenzie. Cuttin’ wood’s like punchin’ cows; you hire on to a brand, you fight for it long as it pays your wages. Against anybody, Saul, and everybody. Remember that.”

  Lasher arose, hand caressing the Banker’s Special, big thumb turning the empty cylinder around and around. His eyes met Fargo’s, and they were hard and dangerous. “All right, Neal. But don’t forget. I came up in a hard school. I know how to play rough, too. Go ahead and back MacKenzie. And sign your death warrant at the same time.” He thrust the gun into his pocket, wheeled. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Fargo.”

  Fargo said, “Lasher, I’ll keep everything you’ve said in mind. Believe me, I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Lasher didn’t answer. He only strode out, slamming the door behind him.

  Fargo stood there, staring at it for a moment. Then, from the bedroom, Lynne emerged. “Neal, what was that—?”

  “End of a business discussion,” said Fargo.

  Lynne Houghton blinked. Then she took his arm. “I don’t know what’s between Saul and you, but right now it doesn’t matter. Not to me. Neal, the day’s not over—”

  Fargo sighed. “No. It’s just beginning. Before long, the crew’ll pull out for Wolf’s Head. Sorry, honey.”

  She looked at him. After a moment, she said, “No, you’re not. You’ve got what you came for. Now you want something else. Damn you, Neal.”

  “That’s the way I’m built,” he grinned. Then he kissed her long and hard. “Goodbye. See you after the fall drive.”

  He turned toward the door. Her voice stopped him short. “Neal.”

  “Yeah?” Hand on the knob, he looked at her.

  Lynne’s eyes were huge and serious.

  “Neal—come back.”

  He nodded. “I aim to,” he said. “So long.” Then he went out and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter Four

  They left Seattle at six o’clock that afternoon, riding north in darkness on the day coaches of a little train—forty lumberjacks, their quarterly blast in town over now, most of them with freshly-emptied pockets and surly with hangovers. At midnight they disembarked at a hamlet high in the hills where wagons drawn by mule teams waited. The hangovers were not helped by the jolting over rough roads which had been corduroyed in spots. As always in such circumstances, Fargo slept while he could, like a huge cat, gathering rest.

  Higher into the mountains they climbed, the mules straining in their harness. Daybreak found them in big timber but it had been cut over. In the gray light Fargo judged that this was the beginning of the Wolf’s Head; the cutting had been selective and good stands of smaller trees were left to reseed and preserve the wilderness.

  Then they descended into a valley swirling with mist. As it cleared briefly, Fargo saw the logging camp below them: five long log bunkhouses in a semi-circle, a cook shack, mess hall, office and tool sheds. Beyond the Wolf’s Head River had been dammed and a chute ran down its steep flank into the big pond thus formed. There, cut logs floated in rafts, waiting until there was enough accumulated timber to warrant blowing the dam and starting the drive.

  Men came awake as the wagons rattled down the hill, stopped in the middle of the camp. From the lead wagon Duke Hotchkiss leaped down, clad in mackinaw, stagged pants, caulked boots. “Awright, you farmers!” he bellowed at the dozing men. “Daybreak in the swamps. Roust out! You got two hours to git settled and eat; then we start highballin’.”

  Beside Fargo, a young, blocky redhead with wide shoulders beneath his mackinaw grinned sourly. “Good ole Duke, he’s all heart.” He picked up a bedroll, slung it over his shoulder. “You need help with that trunk, feller?”

  “I can manage.” Fargo jumped from the wagon, hooked one strap of the trunk with a hand and carried it easily on his shoulder, his other hand occupied with rolled blankets. The redhead leaped down beside him. “That’s a might big turkey.”

  A turkey was what loggers called a man’s bag of possessions. The man went on, full of curiosity. “What you got in there—crown jools?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “My name’s Milligan, Jerry Milligan. I’m a faller on Side Number Three.”

  “Fargo. I’m hired on as faller, too.”

  “Good. Likely you and me’ll work together.” Milligan’s grin vanished. “There’s a vacancy. I lost my partner jest before we got paid off and went outside.”

  “Lost him?” Fargo looked sharply at Milligan as they entered a bunkhouse. He set the trunk down, stowed it under a bunk next to the one on which Milligan tossed his bedroll.

  “That’s right.” Milligan nodded. “But nothin’ I could help. In fact, we ain’t figgered out yet how it happened. We found him floatin’ out there in the pond one mornin’. All we can make out is that he musta tried to cross on the logs in the dark and fell in and a log bounced up against him and crushed his skull.”

  “What was he doin’ crossin’ the river in the dark?” Fargo untied his bedroll, spread his blankets on the cheap straw mattress.

  “That’s what we don’t know. Maybe goin’ for a walk, maybe—” Milligan smirked “—he figgered on tryin’ his luck with Barbara.”

  “Barbara? Oh, you mean the Government Inspector’s daughter.”

  “You’ve heard about her, huh?” Milligan whistled, made an expressive curving gesture with his hands. “Yeah, Charlie Ross always did figger himself as God’s gift to women. She and her daddy live over across the river in the clearin’, out of camp where she won’t be exposed to us roughnecks. That’s supposed to be off-limits to us, but Charlie, he’d git a sniff of perfume and away he’d go and to hell with everything.” Then he sobered. “Expensive sniff.”

  Other men were spreading out their beds. Milligan dropped his voice. “That ain’t been the only accident, either. I tell you, Fargo, Duke’s a good boss, but this seems to be a jinxed job. You got to watch your step around here. I never seen so many men killed or crippled on one operation in all my life. And no accountin’ for it. Duke takes every safety precaution, right by the book, and these are all experienced men, no greenhorns. And still, there’s always somethin’ happenin’.”

  He straightened up, moved closer to Fargo, his pale blue eyes serious.

  “There’s somethin’ in the air. You know how it is when there’s a forest fire a long ways off, a big one, a crown fire roarin’ through the tree tops? Even miles away, when you can’t really see it or smell the smoke, you know it’s there, a kind of stingin’ in your nose, a taste on your tongue. Whatever is goin’ on here is like that—like a crown fire.” He spat into the sandbox under the cold stove in the center of the room. “I reckon I’m spooky. I swore when we went out to Seattle that I wasn’t coming back in to the Wolf’s Head. I changed my mind but now I wish I hadn’t. Seems like to me I can feel and taste whatever it is all over again, and it scares me.”

  “Loggin’s always dangerous,” Fargo said.

  “Sure. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m just losin’ my nerve. All I know is I’ve worked from New Brunswick to Maine to North Michigan and all through Oregon and Washin’ton, and I ain’t felt like this since the Tillamook Burn started and looked like it was gonna burn up the whole Northwest. Well, hell, let’s go eat.”

  ~*~

  The mess hall was big, with trestle ta
bles. The bull-cook—cook’s helper, swamper, and general man of all work—was kept busy hauling platters laden with food. Meals in a lumber camp were always enormous, and with good reason. Fargo stuffed himself, well knowing how much fuel a man could burn in a hard day’s work in the Douglas fir.

  Then the meal was over; Hotchkiss slammed on the end table and jumped to his feet. “All right, you hay-shakers! Playtime’s over, it’s back to work. We got to git out a pile of timber between now and the drive and anybody I see doggin’ it, I’ll take apart in little bitty pieces and forgit to put him back together again! Side One and Two, move out! Side Three, we’re gonna re-rig and start a new cut. Fargo, you’re on Side Three, workin’ with Milligan. Stick with him and he’ll show you around!”

  The men filed out of the mess hall, went to the tool houses, were issued tools by the clerk. Between them, Fargo and Milligan drew two double-bit axes, a file, wedges, a crosscut saw, and a small can of kerosene. The mist had lifted and Fargo got a better view of the surroundings. Mountains towered all around them clad in a thick shag of fir. Roads spiked out in all directions from the camp, penetrating the cut-over woods. The men of the first two sides piled into wagons, were hauled into the forest. In the distance Fargo heard the sputtering snort and then slow, steady thunder of donkey engines.

  Other wagons were brought up. With Hotchkiss and ten other men, Fargo and Milligan loaded up. The last one to climb aboard was a lean, wiry man of about thirty, who, despite the fact that he stood nearly six-feet six, moved as smoothly and fluidly as a cat. He carried a belt and a coiled rope over one arm, stowed ax and saw, and put on top of them a pair of climbing irons, brace-like frames to fit over his boots, long spikes, razor-sharp to bite into the wood of a tree trunk. Fargo recognized immediately the gear of the high-climber.

  Milligan introduced them. “Chuck Hoskins, Neal Fargo.”