Hell on Wheels (A Fargo Western #15)

by John Benteen

  He had been fighting for a living, one way or another, ever since he could remember. Geronimo’s Apaches, in their last bitter foray, had killed his parents on their small New Mexican ranch, but had missed the hidden child. A neighboring couple had taken in the little boy, not out of pity, but as an extra ranch hand there was no need to pay, as a kind of slave. Fargo had endured that until he was twelve, and then he had run away. Since then, he’d never looked back, growing up in a hard school, painfully self-taught. He’d punched cattle, rough necked in the oil fields, fought in the prize ring. Once, down on his luck, he had even been a bouncer in a Louisiana cathouse. Then came the Spanish-American War, and as a member of the fabled Rough Riders, the volunteer regiment recruited by Theodore Roosevelt from among the cowboys, bronc busters, lawmen and hardcases of the West, he’d found his true calling—combat. He took to soldiering like a duck to water, following up the War in Cuba with a Cavalry hitch in the Philippines during the Insurrection there. After that, he’d gone into business for himself. He gradually built up a reputation so that men knew that Fargo would tackle anything on two conditions: the price had to be right and the job did not get his picture on a wanted poster in the post offices and sheriff’s offices across the country. Otherwise, he was not fussy, and he was efficient: satisfaction guaranteed. But if he should fail, nobody would get his money back, because, in Fargo’s case, failure would mean that he was dead …

  That, he knew, was bound to happen sooner or later. You could only take the pitcher to the well so often. Then you ran up against somebody younger, faster on the draw, maybe smarter ... or just luckier. Nobody lived forever, and the bullet with his name on it might already be in the cylinder of someone’s gun. That was all right, too. Old was something he had no intention of getting. Life was for living, and danger, booze and women were the spices that flavored it. When he could no longer enjoy life seasoned to his taste, he’d cash in. One thing sure, he would not drag out his days like an old sick dog too toothless to bite if someone kicked' him. He’d seen other fighting men go out like that, good ones, and it turned his stomach.

  So what he made, he gambled, drank, and wenched away, living high—go first class or don’t go at all was his motto; and when he was broke and sick of the fat easy life, he went out and found another war somewhere.

  He was broke now, and there didn’t seem to be a thing in prospect. All at once, everything had gone sour. The cards had turned against him: he’d dropped five thousand at poker in as many days. Then he’d heard a rumor about a possible smuggling operation across the Canadian border and had drifted up there to check on it. It hadn’t panned out—too much risk for the profit. The Canadian Mounties, like the Texas Rangers, were bad people to get in trouble with. And then, heading back to Junction Flats, the horse went. He was dog-tired, in a rotten mood, and this penny-pinching railroad that apparently would rather kill a man than break its rules, had lit the last short end of his temper’s fuse. So if that bear of a brakeman made the least false move, he would use the gun.

  But Landslide Bly only sat and glowered at him, and the train thundered through the night.

  The whistle blasted. The conductor stirred and looked at Fargo as the train slowed. “We’re coming into Junction Flats. We’ve got to go to work.”

  Fargo nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “All right, Bly, get out there,” the conductor said.

  Fargo watched the big man narrowly as Bly stood up, but Bly went straight to the door leading to the caboose’s forward platform. He halted there with hand on knob and turned his head. His voice was like the growl of a bear disturbed at its kill. “Feller, don’t think this is finished yet.” Then he went out, closing the door. Through its glass, Fargo saw him nimbly climb the ladder on the end of the car ahead.

  The conductor traded places in the observation cupola of the caboose with the slack-chinned brakeman who’d occupied it for the past twenty minutes, and that brakeman went out, too, lugging a lantern. Alone in the caboose’s lower level, Fargo returned the conductor’s pistol, unloaded now, to the drawer of the table; he wanted nothing on him he could be accused of stealing. Then he went out on the rear platform of the caboose.

  They were rolling into the vast railroad yards of Junction Flats. Here the mighty Continental-Western road had one of its division headquarters, a repair shop, loading pens for stock, sidetracks and make-up yards where trains were put together. Here also was where it made connections with smaller railroads feeding in from northern and southern points, like veins into an artery.

  Though it was one o’clock in the morning, there was plenty of activity on this web of rails. At the water tower, a passenger train bound east took on water. Boxcars rumbled and clanked as switch engines shunted them back and forth. Like great black beasts, the locomotives chuffed and snorted at their labor. Headlights beamed; fireboxes glowed like hell’s red windows; sparks sprayed and drifted from high smokestacks; yardmen’s lanterns bobbed like fireflies; voices yelled and couplings clanged.

  As the train eased into this confusion, Fargo poised; then, long before it stopped, he swung off the caboose’s platform. He landed easily on the cinder fill, ran a few steps to regain his balance, then loped off across the yards, dodging in and out of the shadows of parked boxcars. He knew all about yard bulls, the railroad detectives who patrolled such places only too eager to use their clubs and guns on tramps and hobos, always ready to prove how tough they were. Landslide Bly, if not the conductor, would certainly have alerted them, and they’d be waiting to take him when the train halted. Trouble with them would profit him nothing. He had no need to prove to himself or anyone else how tough he was, and he always avoided fights that promised no financial return.

  He was like a shadow as he drifted across the yards, watching his footing carefully: he knew, too, about open switches and frogs in which a man could catch a foot as tightly as in a trap. Once he stopped, looking backwards, and saw men swarming around the caboose, which he could pick out by its lighted windows. He grinned tightly, wolfishly, then ran on.

  Presently he reached the main street of Junction Flats. Because of the railroad, the town was built to last and was growing every day. At the street’s northern end, the buildings were solid, of brick, housing respectable businesses. But down here on the south end, near the yards, there were bars, honky-tonks and brothels, all the deadfalls that sprang up near railroad tracks. Fargo made for a bar called The End of Track. He had done a lot of drinking there, lost most of the rest of his stake at poker. He was known and he’d have credit. After what he’d been through, he was thirsty.

  Even at this hour, The End of Track was wide-open, its customers mostly railroad men, but with a sprinkling of cowboys in from the range, a few sheepherders, some miners, and, of course, the local gamblers, toughs, and pimps. A few tired-eyed prostitutes circulated through the crowd, occasionally trudging upstairs with a customer.

  Tom Whitlow, the owner, was behind the bar himself tonight, a hugely fat man in his late fifties, hair gray, expensive clothes, and with only the stubs of fingers on his right hand, the back of which was hideously scarred. He’d been a locomotive engineer until a wreck had pinned him in the cab and jetting steam had cooked one hand and most of his torso before he had worked free. He had, he said, never been on a train again since that day; yet, he could not free himself of his fascination with the “high iron,” as the railroaders called it, and had gone into business down here near the tracks and prospered.

  Now, seeing Fargo, he smiled. “Neal—” Then the smile went away. “Jesus. What happened to you? Somebody jerk you through a knothole?”

  Fargo’s eyes flickered to the mirror behind the bar. Desert alkali and railroad soot had smeared him from head to foot with a gray, ashy coating. “Just about. Gimme a bottle, Tom. But it’ll have to be on jawbone: I’m flat busted.”

  Whitlow shrugged. “So what? With me, your word’s better’n most men’s greenbacks. Write your own ticket.”

  Fargo laughed shortly
. “I just tried that with Continental-Western and damned near got my head smashed.” He poured a drink, tossed it off, sighed as it hit bottom, then poured another. “Look, what the hell kind of railroad is Continental-Western and what kind of division does this Hawk Morrison run? I—” He broke off as he saw the expression that crossed Whitlow’s face.

  “Neal,” Whitlow said hastily, “look, I got a big crowd here tonight. I’m busy, ain’t got time to talk. The bottle’s on me, anything you want. Only let me see to my customers.” Quickly he went down the bar, back turned to Fargo.

  Fargo stared after him, frowning. Nobody down the bar was demanding service. And the expression on Tom Whitlow’s face at the mention of Continental-Western and Hawk Morrison had been one of plain and unmistakable fear.

  Fargo shrugged. The hell with it. The hell with Continental-Western. He took the bottle and a glass and went to a vacant table in the corner, where his back would be to the wall: a measure of instinctive caution. He slumped into a chair and poured another drink. He had just raised it to his lips when the door of the saloon opened and Landslide Bly shambled in. And right behind him came a tall, saturnine man in a black suit and black broad-brimmed hat. He could have been, from his clothes and the lean, ascetic look of his thin face, a minister. But Fargo’s eyes did not miss the Colt .45 in the open-ended, low-cut holster slung low on his hip.

  Chapter Two

  Neal Fargo drained the glass, set it down slowly, easily. His right hand slid instinctively beneath the table, loosened the .38 Colt in its holster, then came up to join the left in plain sight. He waited, knowing who these two sought.

  He was right. Little eyes squinting, Landslide Bly scanned the room. Then his gaze came to rest on Fargo. The tiny mouth in the granite-slab face twisted in a grin. Fargo felt the floor shake as Bly lumbered across the room, followed by the man in black.

  And suddenly there was silence in The End of Track—the taut, ominous silence that comes just before the fiercest storm. Then a sound familiar to Fargo, the shuffle of feet, the scrape and scrabble of chairs. Sensing trouble, bystanders were getting out of the line of fire.

  Tom Whitlow came around the bar. His fat face was pale. “Landslide,” he said hoarsely. “Brady—”

  The man in black had eyes green and hard as two stream-slickened stones. Without looking at Whitlow, he said, “Don’t get in our way, Tom.”

  Whitlow bit his lip. Fargo saw again the fear in his face, as he retreated behind the counter. Then Fargo forgot Whitlow, forgot everything except the two men coming toward him.

  Bly halted six feet away and the man in black, Brady, took station a yard to his right. That holster on his hip ... Fargo saw the brass swivel pinning it to the belt, the deep cut of the scabbard’s throat, exposing grip and trigger of the gun. So, he thought, Brady was a man who liked an edge. He would not even have to draw to fire; at close range he could simply swing the holster up and shoot from the hip, through the open end. Fargo’s mouth thinned. It was not a rig that impressed him ...

  “Hello, Landslide,” he said evenly.

  “There he is, Brady,” Bly rumbled. “The ugly bastard busted into the caboose and made hisself at home. Broke the company rules.”

  Brady nodded. His face was pale, that of a man who rarely saw the sunlight, his voice soft, almost a whisper. “You’re Neal Fargo?”

  “I am. And you?”

  “They call me King Brady.”

  Fargo’s shaggy brows went up. “King Brady? I’ve heard that name before. Only it was pinned on a detective in a dime novel. Old King Brady.”

  “That’s right,” said Brady. “I’m a detective, too. Railroad detective, C & W—Continental-Western Railroad.”

  “You’re off your beat,” Fargo said. “This ain’t a railroad yard. Or didn’t you notice?”

  “It’s railroad property,” Brady said. “C & W owns it, leases it to Tom Whitlow. It’s my beat.” He went on, in that soft, husky voice. “And I’ve got arrest authority on railroad property. I’m arresting you, Neal Fargo.”

  “Do tell. On what charges?”

  “Armed trespass—on a C & W highball freight. Come on. We’ll go uptown and I’ll turn you over to the Marshal. Now. I’ll have your gun.”

  Fargo grinned, and even Brady’s eyes flickered slightly at the way that cold, wolfish snarl split the ugly face. “In a pig’s eye you will,” said Fargo. Then he went on, each word clear, distinct. “I paid for my passage on that train, and I’ve got a receipt to prove it.”

  “Makes no difference. You used force to get your ticket. Still amounts to trespass. And you assaulted a railroad employee.” He jerked his head. “Come on, Fargo.”

  Fargo said quietly, “Brady, I’m gonna tell you somethin’. I’ve had a damned bad day, and right now I’ve got my gut full of you and your C & W Railroad and that damned dancin’ bear there beside you.” He draped his left arm casually across the back of a vacant chair beside him; his right hand was still on the table. “So you got two choices. Either git the hell out of here and leave me to have my drink in peace or go for that Colt. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a man use a swivel holster. Maybe you’re better with it than the last man was. He’s dead.”

  Brady’s face did not change. “Well, Fargo—” His hand moved, and so did Fargo, who flung himself sideways. Brady got off the first shot with lightning speed, and Fargo heard it slap past him and chunk into the wall as he hit the floor on one knee. Then Brady was turning his body, trying to bring the still holstered gun into line again, causing a second’s delay. Time enough for Fargo to draw, aim, fire. The roar of his gun almost merged with the report of Brady’s, but Fargo did not miss. Brady screamed as the hollow-point slammed into his shoulder: cloth and blood flew as it expanded, and the impact picked him up and threw him backward to the floor.

  Before he hit, Fargo was coming up in one smooth motion, Colt in right hand, the empty chair in his left. He grinned as Landslide Bly roared something, charged at him like a mountain wall falling in, big fists up and clenched. Fargo raised the chair, jammed it hard, legs forward, threw his weight behind it. His aim was good: Bly ran straight into a leg’s end. It caught him in the mouth, ripped his lips, smashed teeth down his throat. He reeled backward; blood pouring down his face, he gargled strangely, eyes full of amazement. Fargo laughed, holstered the Colt in half a second, changed his grip on the chair. Two-handed, now, he swung it sideways, like a baseball bat. Its seat ripped loose from its back as it smashed against Bly’s head. Bly lurched back, still kept his feet. Fargo raised the chair high, completed its destruction as he brought it slamming down. Wood splintered. Bly sighed, his knees buckled, and the whole room shook as he hit the floor, lay still.

  It was over, then, with less than ten seconds ticked away on the clock behind the bar. The room smelled of powder-smoke and blood and the vomit pouring from Brady’s mouth as he writhed on the floor in shock and agony. Fargo went to him, stood above him, kicked the Colt across the room.

  “Goddam swivel holster,” he said sardonically. “A fool’s rig. Tinhorn gunman’s. It ain’t the first shot that counts, Brady. It’s the first one that hits. Remember that. Not that it’ll do you any good. You ain’t ever gonna use that arm again, anyhow.”

  He picked up the bottle from the table, took a long swig, corked it and tucked it beneath his arm. “Tom,” he said, “I reckon C & W’s got a doctor. You better send for ’im. And you better send word, too, to their division manager, Hawk Morrison or whatever his damn name is. I’ll be at my hotel. I aim to get a good night’s sleep. And if any more of his men bother me, when I git through with them, it’ll be him I’ll come lookin’ for. Got that straight?”

  Whitlow did not answer.

  “Jesus,” somebody in the room said in a tone of awe.

  Fargo crab-walked across the room, headed for the door. Nobody moved. As he passed the free lunch on the end of the bar, he reached out and grabbed a fistful of sandwiches, remembering, then, that he had not eaten since mo
rning. When he edged out of The End of Track, his mouth was already full, and he chewed with gusto as he walked up the street.

  ~*~

  No one disturbed him, and he slept an hour past his usual awakening time of five the next morning, rising rested and refreshed, his first act to snake the Colt out from beneath his pillow and restore it to the holster on the bedpost. He filled the washbasin, scrubbed himself, lathered, shaved, opened a big trunk in the corner of the room, took out clean clothes and put them on: another khaki shirt, another pair of canvas pants, old Army fatigue style. By the time he perched the cavalry hat on the back of his head, he had his day planned, indeed his next few weeks. First, he’d drop in on Jared Pelham and float a loan, two or three hundred dollars. Then he’d rent a horse, ride out, reclaim the gear he’d cached in the high desert. It was important, vital stuff: the tools of his trade. Then, because Idaho had gone sour on him, he’d take a train—not the C & W—south to Cheyenne. He grinned; there was a woman there who ran a high-class parlor house, catering to the politicians and cattle barons of Wyoming. Her hair was blonde, her skin milky white, her mind like a cash register, and her resistance nil where Neal Fargo was concerned. He’d float a bigger stake from her, wait until he felt his luck had changed, run it up at the poker tables, and then—Well, he’d always wanted to see Australia. Maybe now was the time.

  Jared, though, was first priority. Right after breakfast.

  He ate in the hotel dining room, enough to satisfy him, not enough to make him slow or logy, and had the meal put on his bill. Sitting with his back to the wall, he took his time. Even in the dining room, he could hear the distant whistle of trains, the clang of coupling boxcars, the grunting of the yard hogs, the switch engines. Savoring his last cigar, he recalled yesterday’s events and frowned. Still none of it made sense to him, and it still angered him. Out here, there were plenty of places passenger trains did not serve or served only rarely. He’d never run into any division of a railroad that refused paid passage on a freight’s caboose, which was a usual thing, especially for a man stranded in the desert. If this were the old days, with train robberies frequent, he could have understood the no-riders rule, but there hadn’t been a real train holdup in these parts for nearly five, six years now. On top of which, that rule violated an overriding custom of the West: if a man lost his horse and was afoot, he was picked up by the first transportation that came along.