Valley of Skulls (Fargo Book 6)

by John Benteen

“One of these prints is outsize, swollen, puffy as hell. That jaguar’s taken a wound, maybe in a fight over a female, maybe a snakebite. But he’s got a bad foot full of pus. He left some of the pus in this print. That’s a wounded animal in there, Darnley.”

  “You think he’ll bay, then; charge?”

  “Good chance.” Fargo unslung the shotgun. “And the light ain’t good. You’d better lay aside the spear and figure on usin’ one of those Colts or let it ride until tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Darnley.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Fargo said.

  Darnley stroked his cleft chin. “I’m not. Fargo, you’ve always been the toughest man I’ve ever known. That’s bothered me.”

  Fargo looked at him. “Darnley,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying I want that jaguar. With this spear.”

  “No,” said Fargo. “You don’t want that jaguar, you want me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re beginning to catch the fever. Hell, I’ve dodged it all over the West and Mexico. A man gets a reputation with a gun, everybody that thinks he’s tough has to try him out. What you’re saying is you’re matching yourself against me with that jaguar. After the jaguar, what? Will you try to come up against me with those?” He pointed to Darnley’s holstered Colts.

  Darnley stared at him, then laughed shortly. “Fargo, we’re partners, not enemies.”

  Fargo sucked in a breath, let it out. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s hope it stays that way. Okay, Darnley, go after your jaguar. But you’re on your own; don’t expect me to bail you out.”

  Darnley’s mouth thinned. “Very well,” he said and crossed the stream.

  Fargo watched how, in the damp green twilight of the jungle, Darnley moved across the clearing beneath huge trees toward the wall of bamboo scrub. Big, muscular, young and full of strength, he went in a crouch, the short spear thrust out before him. Fargo chewed a wooden match. Yeah, he thought. This jaguar; then another. And then we’re even. After that … the guns?

  But for now he stood with the shotgun in his hand and watched the Englishman stalk forward toward the wall of brush. Somewhere beyond that green bastion, a wounded jaguar, a big torn by the looks, was holed up; it had taken flight just ahead of them. Now, nursing its festering paw, it was likely to be proddy; let Darnley even shake that bamboo and …

  The damned fool was going straight into the thicket. The bamboo rattled, clashed, as Darnley thrust his way between the canes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Fargo said and leaped the stream, raising the shotgun.

  Then came the short, harsh cough. The bamboo rattled. Darnley tumbled back into the clearing. He tripped, landed flat on his shoulders, spear pointed up. Hard after him came a blur of tawny spotted killer, a hundred and fifty pounds of hurting, enraged cat. Snarling horribly, it threw itself at Darnley, claws gleaming in the dying light, unsheathed.

  Darnley thrust upward with the spear, then rolled.

  The squall that filled the jungle was a hideous sound. The steel-headed spear caught the cat behind its rib-cage, reached up through its guts. It lashed out with all four feet; one hind paw caught Darnley’s thigh as he got to his knees, ripped his pants, sent blood coursing. Then Darnley was over the cat, had it pinned on is back, bore down on the spear, grinning like a madman. The huge animal clawed and flailed helplessly, twisting and turning on the point. Then its blood welled out; it kicked, lay still. Panting, Darnley kept grinding the spearhead in. Beside him, the Indian stood frozen, wide-eyed, hand over mouth.

  Darnley put a booted foot on the cat’s belly, pulled loose the spear. He held it erect, letting the blood trickle down its shaft over his hand. In the dim light his blue eyes gleamed. “Fargo. You see?”

  “Yes,” Fargo said. “Yes, I see, Darnley.” He felt tired and sad, for now he was afraid he would have to kill the Englishman before this deal was finished, and that was something he did not want to do. But Darnley had it; like the fighting cock in the San Antonio ring, he had it: the need always to pit himself against someone as good.

  Just let him hold off, Fargo thought, until we get that golden gun out. “Let the Indian drag the carcass,” he said, “and let’s go back to camp.”

  ~*~

  Long before they crossed the border into Mexico, Fargo knew they had nothing to fear from the Guatemalan army. It was supposed to be guarding the frontier, but Darnley had sent word ahead that he was coming and the soldiers had prudently got the hell out of his way. They would never have known they were in another country if it had not been for Fargo’s instruments.

  He had traveled in rain forest like this before. A compass was all right, it helped. But there were times when you had to have closer, definite bearings; this was as lonesome and unlandmarked a place as the open sea and could only be traversed by the same sort of navigation. So he had a compass and a sextant and an astrolabe and a set of climber’s spikes like those used by the timber toppers of the Douglas fir logging camps. He also had a safety rope. Every night he scaled one of the forest giants and took a reading on stars invisible from below. Then he plotted, checked it against the data in his head, and made whatever adjustments were necessary to get them to the Valley of Skulls.

  A day after they’d passed the frontier, they reached a monteria. Here a dock thrust out into the broadening river, and heavy chains impounded enormous, restless logs. They put in, climbed out. And the first thing Fargo saw was the ant-and-vulture-picked body of a man hanging by its neck from a tree near the river.

  There was not much left of the man; white bone showed through seething corruption. Fargo turned his head away and spat. Then there was a shout from the dock. “Senor Darnley!”

  Beside Fargo, Darnley muttered: “Don Pepe Tarano, the contratista of this camp.”

  Fargo looked at the stocky man with the drinker’s belly through narrowed eyes as, followed by a crew of plug-uglies, slit-mouthed Indians bearing Winchesters, Tarano waddled up to Darnley, seized his hand. “Welcome, Don Roger. A rare honor, what brings you here? My poor house is yours ...”

  While that was going on, Fargo swept his gaze around the lumber camp. A big clearing chopped out of the jungle, hovels for barracks, better quarters for mules more valuable than the men who handled them. The timber rights to these huge forests were owned by grandees in Mexico City, big politicos. They leased them out in turn to contratistas, the contractors who recruited the illiterate, dirt-poor Indians of Southern Mexico into bondage by promising them twenty, thirty dollars a year hard cash wages. Say this of course for the contratista, Fargo thought; as often as not, the men they hired were outlaws and killers fleeing from the law; not only innocent peones. That was why their capos, their gang bosses, carried pistols and huge whips. In a monteria, a man worked until he died. Things were rigged so he could never pay his debt of advanced money; and, just before he died, he usually rebelled. Probably the corpse hanging from the tree by the river was that of such a desperate man. It was slavery, pure and simple—one of the reasons Mexico was continually racked by revolution. But for the moment, that was no concern of Fargo’s. What they needed now was mules, and Darnley had said they could get them here.

  They walked through the clearing toward the headquarters building, Darnley’s Raiders strung out behind them with guns significantly at the ready. They were indeed as tough a bunch as Fargo had ever seen, especially the English and the tropic-hardened Frenchmen from Panama. Even the tough gunmen of the monteria shrank back in the face of that army.

  In Don Pepe’s dirt-floored casa, where an ugly, full-breasted, pot-bellied Tzeltal concubine served them pulque, Fargo leaned back in his chair while the fat contratista and Darnley argued over mules. Here their worth was double that of horses, which soon sickened and died in the miserable climate. Fargo listened boredly, sipping pulque until he heard Darnley’s voice rise. “I want two dozen mules. You sell them to me at that price, or else I take th
em.”

  “But you are robbing me, Senor Darnley!”

  Darnley’s eyes were like two chips of ice. “I can rob you worse.”

  Pepe swelled like a puffing toad, then collapsed. “Si. I cannot fight Darnley’s Raiders. You shall have your mules.”

  They spent the night there. Just before dusk, the daily whippings took place—Indians who had failed to fill their quota of work or had otherwise transgressed. One man died under the lash; unremitting labor and inadequate food left him no strength to endure a beating. His corpse was rolled into the river and the current roiled it southward. The rest, even the beaten men, went to eat their scanty supper and take what pleasure they could arrange with the Mestizo washerwomen-whores.

  That night, Fargo climbed a tree, to the awe of the lumbermen below. He took his bearings on the stars, determined their course for tomorrow.

  After they left the monteria, they pushed into jungle that had never been penetrated by man; not, at least, by white men in this century. Their macheteros worked like machines ahead of them, clearing a path, blades flashing rhythmically. Fargo, Darnley, the army and the mules came on behind.

  He shot the sun; he shot the stars; he guided them according to the memorized back-azimuths in his head. Somehow he brought them through that jungle, across three hundred miles of wilderness, exactly to the place for which he aimed. A week beyond the monteria, deep in Chiapas now, they heard gunfire before they saw the Valley of Skulls.

  On a jungled ridge crest Fargo tensed. “Darnley.”

  “I hear it,” the Englishman said.

  “How far off, you judge?”

  “Two miles, maybe three.”

  Fargo cocked his head. “Way I make it, there’s three, four guns against two dozen.”

  “About that,” Darnley said.

  “Two, three miles through this country will take the rest of the day.” Fargo turned. “Let me have that machete.” He took the broad-bladed knife from an Indian.

  Darnley’s eyes kindled. “What—?”

  Fargo gestured. “The Valley of Skulls. It’s down there. Some damned revolutionaries or bandits have found that place. Those few guns can’t stand off all the rest. I’m going down there, around, flank ’em. One man can move quicker than your army.”

  “Two,” said Darnley, loosening his Colts in their holsters. He grinned.

  “Two, then,” Fargo said. “Get a machete and come on. Tell your men to follow quick as they can.”

  “Right!” The Englishman barked orders, seized a blade. Then he plunged into the jungle. “Come on, Fargo!”

  They both knew the rain forest. They went at a high lope, hacking vines, chopping lianas, whittling through bamboo thickets. They were headed downhill toward a kind of basin. They followed its rim, slithering quickly and silently through the forest like two wild animals, mowing down what lay before them.

  The gunfire grew louder.

  Fargo, sweating gallons, hacked a vine that bled water freely. He drank from its pouring end, moved on. The people in the valley were giving good account of themselves, and the attackers, probably led by some amateur bandit who had just got his first repeating rifle last week, were bunched out front. That would make it easier.

  An hour; now the rifle fire of the attackers was somewhere to their right. Fargo unslung the double-barreled gun, the ideal weapon for this sort of combat. He looked at the perspiration-drenched Darnley, and that wolf’s grin tugged his pale lips again.

  “All right, Darnley, we’re on their flank. Let’s go in.”

  “Yes, by Jove,” said Darnley, drawing both guns. “Let’s.”

  Now they abandoned their machetes. As they slithered through the brush and cane like snakes, the ground rose steeply. The higher they came, the less jungle there was. Suddenly they had reached the forest’s edge; Fargo halted, staring out at a high rimrock that overlooked a wooded valley. From the last of the cover he and Darnley could see men ranged behind rocks and bushes, firing downward: these were the attackers.

  Fargo thumbed extra rounds from the shotgun bandolier, cupped them in his palm. “Let’s go,” he whispered.

  They ran out into the open, low, zigzagging, Fargo with the shotgun leveled, Darnley with a Colt in each hand. The brush came to their knees. Fargo saw a man in white peon garb, huge straw sombrero, shirt tied around his belly, skintight pants. He was lying flat, firing into the valley. Beyond him, more were in ragged ranks. The man was so intent on shooting he did not hear or see Fargo coming.

  When they were within twenty yards, Fargo jogged to one side. “Take him,” he snapped to Darnley and ran to the rear of the line.

  He glanced back long enough to see Darnley aim a Colt, pull the trigger. The end man of the line dropped his gun, slumped, the top of his head blown off. Then all hell broke loose.

  “Dios!” somebody yelled. Men looked around. They saw Fargo, spotted Darnley, were frozen for an instant. Fargo, in that split second, lined the sawed-off, pulled the right trigger.

  Its nine buckshot plowed through the brush. Men screamed as pellets found flesh, ripped in. Up the line, half a dozen others made the mistake of rising, turning, staring at the maker of this unsuspected onslaught. Fargo fired the left barrel, sent nine buckshot hurtling toward them, then dropped breaking the gun as he hit the ground and cramming in new loads.

  Overhead, lead whistled. But they were a fraction, a hair, too late. He clicked the Fox shut, pointed it above the brush without exposing himself, sent more shot, eighteen this time, whirring out along the rim as he pulled both triggers.

  Rolling frantically, he heard the screams, he knew the loads, deadly as canister, had gone home. He snapped in new shells. Behind him, now, Darnley’s Colts were coughing. Fargo risked crawling to his knees.

  A thick-bodied man in peon clothes, brandishing a Winchester, was on his feet, running forward, brown face contorted. “Here!” he yelled in bastard dialect. “Here, my bravos! This is where they’re shooting from! Follow me!” Four men sprang up, ran behind him.

  Fargo, half erect, lined the shotgun. The thick man saw him, halted dead; the others slammed into him from behind. Then it was too late for all of them. Fargo pulled both triggers.

  It was as if they had all run head on into an invisible wall. They fell backward, mowed down like wheat in a writhing, twisting mass. Fargo caught the tang of cordite from the breech as he opened the gun and slugged in new rounds.

  He was just closing the Fox again when the bullet caught him.

  Fortunately, it was a sharp-pointed, steel-jacketed Mauser. It went clean through his shoulder and kept on going. Even so, it jerked him around like a toy figure, knocked him on his back.

  Somebody yelled in triumph, and then they were coming after him. He tried to rise, aim the shotgun, but the shock was too much. He could not lift himself and his shirt was wet. They were going to get him.

  Then a pair of booted feet planked themselves beside him. Above his head, as he dropped back, he heard the deep sound of Colts. That, he realized vaguely, was Darnley standing over him, aiming each shot methodically and dropping a man with every one. Somewhere, very far away, men cried out. Then he heard the words: “Vaya! Vamos! Andale!” It was a desperate shriek. He heard the six-guns keep on roaring, the sound of galloping hoofs as the bandits mounted and rode. Then there was silence. As Darnley dropped to his knees beside him, Fargo sank back.

  “You took one,” Darnley said.

  “Plug the hole,” Fargo rasped. “I’ll be all right. Plug the hole and let’s go down.”

  Chapter Six

  Cautiously, the two men descended into the Valley of Skulls. The jungle was dense, towering; but a narrow track led from the rimrock through its green, otherwise impenetrable mass. Fargo, his shoulder expertly bandaged by Darnley with his own undershirt, half a quart of water from the Englishman’s canteen in his belly to help replace the blood he’d lost, gained strength instead of losing it from the exertion. His lean, tough body had the resilience of an animal’s; mor
e than that, he took a wound like an animal. Once he knew it was minor, he dismissed it, wasted no time on the self-pity and self-coddling that would have kept a lesser man in shock for hours. He moved along briskly as they wound down into the vast basin. Though Darnley urged him to, Fargo would not give up the slung shotgun or the bandoliers, but merely adjusted them so they did not ride the wound.

  Still, he was content to trail Darnley, who took the lead, a reloaded Colt in each hand. The big Englishman could move like a stalking cat himself, and neither he nor Fargo made more than a whisper of sound as they passed ever deeper into the valley. Both were wholly alert; the members of the expedition must have perceived that someone had come to their rescue. They were amateurs, and amateurs were always jumpy after battle, inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.

  They had made a mile, maybe two, when Fargo touched Darnley’s shoulder. The big man froze wordlessly. Fargo moved alongside, pointed. Darnley followed the gesture, nodded.

  Ahead and to the right, the wind blew through bamboo that edged the trail. The cane rippled and clacked in the breeze; but there was one spot in its center where the feathery tops moved counter to the wind. Someone was in there, stealing away. Someone, Fargo thought, who did not know much about moving through brush. Likely it was a member of the expedition, but this was no time to take chances.

  Darnley grinned. He holstered one Colt, touched Fargo in a signal to wait. Then, silently and fluidly as a snake, he eased into the green wall.

  Fargo, the shotgun ready, took cover at the trail side. For five endless minutes the jungle was silent except for the whisper of the breeze in its millions of leaves. Then came the scream.

  It was high, shrill, and furious: a woman’s cry. The cane whipped, crashed; Fargo tensed as the screaming came closer, as something trampled down the brush. Then, ten, fifteen yards down the trail, Darnley lurched into view, both arms wrapped around a woman who fought like a female jaguar, twisting, biting, kicking.

  “All right, lady, all right!” Darnley laughed, pinioning her arms tightly as she battled him, disregarding the kicking of booted feet against his shins. “We’re not going to hurt you, I tell you! We’re friends!”