Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
LOOKING FORWARD!
SHOOT TO KILL
The three punchers burst into the woods and one jerked his pistol up.
Fargo shot him. He aimed at the man’s shoulder but the man shifted just as he squeezed the trigger and he was sure the slug hit lower. “Drop your hardware!” he bellowed at the other two.
Instead of obeying, one veered to the right and the other to the left. Fargo swung behind an oak. It wasn’t much cover but he hoped it would cause them to break away and hunt cover of their own.
It didn’t.
Yipping like Apaches, the two Texans closed on him, their six-guns blazing.
Slivers exploded from the oak and several stung Fargo’s face. He aimed at the rider on the right, and fired. This time he didn’t try for the shoulder; he shot dead-center and the man’s arms flew back and his legs flew up and he tumbled over the back of his saddle.
SIGNET
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, December 2011
The first chapter of this book previously appeared in Utah Deadly Double, the three hundred sixty-first volume in this series.
Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
All rights reserved
ISBN : 978-1-101-55921-5
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The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
The Guadalupes, New Mexico, 1859—
where lonely summits loom over a
forbidding land of the lawless.
1
Out of the dark mountains rose a howl that made the man by the campfire sit up and take notice. Loud and fierce, it was unlike any howl he’d ever heard. It echoed off the high peaks and was swept away by the wind into the black pitch of the night.
Broad of shoulder and narrow at the hips, Skye Fargo wore buckskins and a white hat turned brown with dust. A red bandanna, boots, and a well-used Colt at his hip completed his attire. He held his tin cup in both hands and glanced at his Ovaro. “What the hell was that?”
Fargo made his living as a scout, among other things. He’d wandered the west from Canada to Mexico and from the muddy Mississippi River to the broad Pacific Ocean. In his travels he’d heard hundreds of howling wolves and yipping coyotes and not a few wailing dogs, but he’d never, ever, heard anything like the cry that just startled him. More bray than howl, it was as savage and raw as the land around him.
Fargo settled back and sipped some coffee. Whatever it was, the thing was a ways off. He leaned on his saddle.
“In a week we’ll be in Dallas. Oats and a warm stall for you and a fine filly and whiskey for me.”
The Ovaro had raised its head and pricked its ears at the howl. Now it looked at him and lowered its head to go back to dozing.
“Some company you are,” Fargo said, and chuckled. He drained the tin cup and set it down.
By the stars it was pushing midnight. Fargo intended to get a good rest and be up at the crack of dawn. He was deep in the Guadalupe Mountains, high on a stark ridge that overlooked the Hermanos Valley. A ring of boulders hid his fire from unfriendly eyes.
This was Apache country, and outlaws were as thick as fleas on an old hound.
Fargo laced his fingers on his chest and closed his eyes. He was on the cusp of slumber when a second howl brought him to his feet with his hand on his Colt.
This one was a lot closer.
The Ovaro rais
ed its head again. It sniffed and stomped a hoof, a sure sign it had caught the animal’s scent and didn’t like the smell.
Fargo circled the fire to the stallion. He wasn’t overly worried. Wolves rarely attacked people, and despite the strangeness of the howl, it had to be a wolf. He waited for a repeat of the cry and when more than five minutes went by and the night stayed quiet, he shrugged and returned to his blankets and the saddle.
“I’m getting jumpy,” he said to the Ovaro.
Pulling his hat brim low, Fargo made himself comfortable. He thought about the lady waiting for him in Dallas and the fine time they would have. She was an old acquaintance with a body as young and ripe as a fresh strawberry, and she loved to frolic under the sheets as much as he did. He couldn’t wait.
Sleep claimed him. Fargo dreamed of Mattie and that body of hers. They were fit to bust a four-poster bed when another howl shattered his dream. Instantly awake, he was out from under his blanket with the Colt in his hand before the howl died.
The short hairs at the nape of Fargo’s neck pricked. The howl had been so near, he’d swear the thing was right on top of him.
The Ovaro was staring intently at a gap between two of the boulders.
Fargo sidled toward it. Warily, he peered out and broke into gooseflesh.
A pair of eyes glared back at him. Huge eyes, like a wolf’s except that no wolf ever grew as large as the thing glaring at him. In the glow of the fire they blazed red like the eyes of a hell-spawned demon.
For all of ten seconds Fargo was riveted in disbelief. Then the red eyes blinked and the thing growled, and he shook himself and thumbed back the hammer. At the click the eyes vanished; they were there and they were gone, and he thought he heard the scrape of pads on rock.
Breathless, Fargo backed to the Ovaro. The thing might be after the stallion.
As the minutes crawled on claws of tension and silence reigned, he told himself the beast must be gone.
Fargo reclaimed his seat. He added fuel to the fire and refilled his battered tin cup. He’d wait a while before turning in.
From time to time Fargo had heard tales of wild animals bigger than most. Up in the geyser country there once roamed a grizzly the size of a log cabin, or so the old trappers liked to say. The Dakotas told a story about a white buffalo twice the size of any that ever breathed. Up Canada way, several tribes claimed that deep in the woods there lived hairy giants.
Fargo never gave much credence to the accounts. Tall tales were just that, whether related by white men or red men. He didn’t believe in giants and goblins. But those eyes he saw weren’t made by any ordinary-sized critter.
Fargo shrugged and put them from his mind. The thing had gone. The Ovaro was safe and he should get some sleep. He put down the cup and eased back on his saddle but it was a long while before he succumbed. The slightest noise woke him with a start.
Then came a noise that wasn’t so slight—a scream torn from a human throat.
2
For the second time that night Fargo’s skin crawled. He pushed to his feet and moved past the boulders.
The scream was borne to him out of the valley below. It keened to a high, ululating pitch, and ended as abruptly as the snuffing of a candle.
Fargo could tell the screamer was a man, possibly young, and were he to wager on it, probably dead. He probed the veil of darkness for sign of another fire or the light from a dwelling. There was none. Were he to go searching, he might stumble around until daybreak and not find the victim.
Suddenly, from the same vicinity as the scream, rose a piercing howl trilling with ferocity, the same as earlier.
The implication was obvious; whatever had paid him a visit had attacked someone else.
Fargo returned to the fire and pondered. By rights it was none of his affair. He could skirt the valley and push on to Dallas and a high time with his lady friend. He decided that was what he would do and after a while he turned in. Sleep proved elusive. He was lucky if he’d slept two full hours by the time pink splashed the eastern horizon. He chewed a piece of pemmican and finished the rest of the coffee and was in the saddle when the sun gave birth to the new day.
For a moment Fargo paused. Then, instead of reining aside to skirt the valley as he’d intended, he swore and tapped his spurs and rode down into it.
Hermanos Valley was eleven miles long and half that wide. Lush grass covered the valley floor, bordered by timber on the lower slopes. As Fargo recollected, it had been a haven for sheepherders since the days of Spanish rule.
The valley was unique in that above the timberline, a quarter-mile-wide bench, rich with grass, made for more excellent graze. As he neared it he saw hundreds of woolly white shapes.
In a clatter of rocks and pebbles the Ovaro came down the last slope and Fargo drew rein. The nearest sheep showed no alarm. Most ignored him.
Fargo clucked to the stallion. After a dozen yards the Ovaro whinnied and tossed its head and came to a stop of its own accord.
A splash of red in the green grass told Fargo why. Palming his Colt, he dismounted and advanced on foot.
The body was on its back, the face contorted in terror. The throat was a shredded cavity; it had literally been ripped out. A few flies were crawling in and around the ruin. Scarlet drops had spattered a serape and the white cotton shirt and pants.
It was a boy, not more than fifteen or sixteen, Fargo judged. Whatever attacked him had killed him swiftly. Other than a few claw marks, the clothes were untouched.
Fargo hunkered and cast about for sign. The grass was flattened in spots but there were no paw prints.
Fargo frowned and stood and shoved the Colt into his holster. He had no means to dig a grave other than his hands.
A broken limb from the timber below would suffice, and he went to the Ovaro and gripped the reins and was about to climb on when behind him a rifle lever ratcheted.
“Stand where you are, gringo, or I will kill you.”
Fargo didn’t know which surprised him more, that he had been taken unawares, or that the speaker was female. He looked over his shoulder and almost whistled in appreciation.
She was twenty or so, with flowing black hair, lustrous in the sun. Her beautiful dark eyes, at the moment smoldering with anger, were highlighted by long lashes. Her face was the kind that would cause men on the street to stop and stare. She wore a plain dress that covered her from her neck to her ankles but couldn’t hide her charms.
“Buenos días,” Fargo said, and smiled.
She put her cheek to her rifle and sighted on his chest. “Gringo pig.”
“We’re starting off on the wrong foot,” Fargo said. “What did I do that you treat me like this?”
She nodded toward the body. “You killed Ramon, bastardo .”
“I tore his throat out with my teeth?” Fargo said. “Be sensible.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Where’s what?”
“The dog you gringos use to kill us.”
Fargo’s patience was fraying. He didn’t like staring into the muzzle of her rifle. Any moment her finger might twitch. “Lady, I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t,” she said, and wagged her weapon. “Unbuckle your gun belt and let it fall. I am taking you back. At last we have caught one of you, and we will do to you as you have done to us.”
Fargo was confident he could dive to one side and draw and shoot her before she shot him but he had no desire to harm her.
“What’s your name?”
“Delicia.”
Fargo couldn’t help it; he chuckled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Fargo said.
“Take off your gun belt, senor.”
“I’ll explain this to you just once. I had nothing to do with this. I’m on my way to Dallas. I heard a wolf last night . . .” Fargo paused. “At least, I think it was a wolf. And later I heard a scream that must have been Ramon. I just found his body, and that’s all th
ere is to it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Delicia said.
“What reason would I have to lie?”
“You are one of them.”
“One of who, damn it?”
“You know.” Delicia put her cheek to the rifle again. “I will not say it again, senor. Unbuckle your pistola or I will shoot you.” Her jaw tightened and her eyes grew hard with determination.
Fargo had no doubt she would. He could kill her, or he could go along for the time being. Slowly lowering his right hand, he pried at his belt buckle. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No, gringo,” Delicia said. “You are the one who has made a mistake, and before this day is over, you will pay for it with your miserable life.”
3
At the north end of the valley was a spring. Ten wagons, varying in length from twelve to sixteen feet, were parked in a half circle around it. The sides and the backs were wood, the tops were canvas curved tight over hoops. The back wheels were slightly larger than the front, and the tongues lay on the ground.
The teams were in a string near the spring.
Fargo had seen similar wagons before. Sheepherders throughout the West used them. From the number, he gathered that more than one family shared the graze in the Hermanos Valley.
Fargo slowly approached, leading the Ovaro with the body of Ramon over the saddle, Delicia trailing after him with her rifle pointed at his back.
Beyond the crescent of wagons, the sheepherders were going about their daily routines. Most were simply dressed in the cotton clothes they favored. Some of the women had colorful shawls and belts. Some of men wore serapes and ponchos. White hats were much in evidence, although a few wore black.
There looked to be thirty females or more, running in age from about seventy down to small children, and about the same number of men. Several campfires were crackling, and the aroma of food and coffee was tantalizing.
Fargo went around a wagon tongue into the camp.
At a yell from a youth, the sheepherders stopped what they were doing and converged. A considerable commotion ensued. Ramon was examined amid gasps of dismay. A middle-aged woman burst into tears. Voices were raised in anger, and two brawny men turned on Fargo and seized him by the arms and a third man drew a knife from under a poncho and advanced with it held low to thrust.
Range War (9781101559215) Page 1
