by John Benteen
Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
The Mexicans needed guns and Fargo needed money—so they made a deal. Getting the arms past the cavalry patrols along the border would take some doing, but Fargo thought he could handle it. There might be a problem later with the Mexicans—you never knew which way the sons of senoras were likely to jump—but as always Fargo figured to take it one man, one bullet at a time. The kind of trouble he didn’t count on when he took the job turned out to be the worst trouble of all-the Apaches. Geronimo was dead, and the big wars were over, but deep in the mountains the last of the Mescaleros still prowled like rabid wolves.
APACHE RAIDERS
FARGO 4
By John Benteen
First published by Belmont Tower in 1973
Copyright © 1973, 2014 by Benjamin L. Haas
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: June 2014
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover image © 2014 by Edward Martin
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This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
The three Mexicans, stepping out of the chaparral, covered Fargo with as many rifles. Swathed in cartridge-laden bandoleers and gun belts, faces blackened by the sun, they bore the stamp of revolucionarios—Pancho Villa’s men. For this was, after all, Villa’s country—and the guns packed on the mule train strung out behind Fargo had been ordered by him for delivery to this remote little town far below the Rio Grande.
“Alto, hombre!” The man in the forefront of the trio was short, squat, with the cold eyes of a rattlesnake. “Hands up high!” He twitched the Winchester barrel. “One wrong move, you’re dead.”
Slowly, Fargo obeyed, hands going up. Sitting on his tall bay, he betrayed no fear; he’d spotted this guard before they’d seen him, had expected this challenge. His mouth widened in a grin not unlike a wolf’s snarl. “No wrong moves, amigo. I’m here on business. Colonel Lopez is expecting me.”
“Maybe.” They ran their eyes over him. What they saw was a tall gringo—inches better than six feet in height—with wide shoulders, narrow waist, long legs slimmed by years in the saddle. He wore a battered old campaign hat dating from Army service in the Spanish-American War, and the hair beneath it was prematurely snow white, in startling contrast to his sunburned skin. The eyes that stared back at them without fear were gray and hard, deep-set beneath white brows; the craggy nose had been broken more than once; an ear was cauliflowered; his cheeks bore scars. It was an ugly face—though women liked it—a face molded by hard years of fighting: thirty-eight of them. The squat Mexicans’ eyes flickered away from it, a little awed.
That awe increased as they totaled the weapons Fargo carried: the man was an arsenal. In addition to the Winchester in a saddle scabbard and a Colt .38 revolver, an old Army issue rode in a holster on his right hip, and a knife of strange design was held in a scabbard on the left. But they were not what made the soldiers’ eyes widen; the shotgun did that.
It rode muzzles-down on a sling behind Fargo’s right shoulder—a ten-gauge Fox Sterlingworth, its barrel and breech beautifully chased and engraved, inlaid with silver. Once it had been a very long gun, a fowling piece. Fargo, however, had sawed it off; now the barrels were very short, with wide-open bores. The Mexicans were all fighting men, and they knew that such a gun was possibly the most deadly short-range weapon in existence: each barrel could spray nine heavy buckshot in a wide-flung, lethal pattern against which nothing living could stand. What they did not know was that, far from being inaccessible in the seemingly awkward position in which it was carried, the gun could be brought into action in a fraction of a second. A twitch of Fargo’s right thumb, a jerk of that sling, and both barrels would swing up under his right armpit; a flash of his left hand across to trip the triggers—and buckshot would rake a front yards wide, straight ahead of him. Even now, covering him with rifles, they were the ones on the edge of mortality.
And maybe they sensed that as their eyes completed the inventory of his gear. A bandoleer of rifle cartridges for the Winchester, another of thick, ugly rounds for the sawed-off: these crisscrossed his thick chest over the sweat-stained khaki shirt, their brass burdens glittering in the sun. The brass cartridges in his pistol belt glittered, too. The leaden nose of each slug had been deeply notched in a cross to convert those ordinary loads into missiles that would expand tremendously on impact, rip off an arm or leg, drive a huge hole in the flesh of chest or belly, destroy a man’s head totally. This was a man equipped for killing; and they read in his face that he would use that equipment as readily and easily as he breathed when he thought it necessary.
“Maybe,” the leader of the guards said again, and there was even a touch of fear in his voice now; certainly respect. “We shall soon see.” He moved forward. “Hand over your weapons—”
“No,” Fargo said.
The man froze. His eyes raised themselves to lock with those of Fargo. He licked his lips; Fargo saw the curl of his finger around the trigger of the Winchester. “Gringo,” he said harshly, “I think you do not understand—”
“No. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I’m here on Villa’s business. He ordered rifles; I’ve got two hundred of ’em on these mules—all new Springfields. Lopez is to receive them and pay me for them. I don’t do business without my guns. You want them, you’ll have to take ’em. And I warn you now, you try it, somebody’ll get hurt.”
“And you’ll be dead, hombre.” There was bluster in the man’s voice.
“No deader than you. Or, for that matter, Lopez, if you kill me. I’m under Pancho Villa’s protection. I’m the best source of rifles for his army. This isn’t the first load and it won’t be the last. You kill me, Villa’ll hang your hide and your colonel’s, too, up on the fence to dry.”
There was half a minute then when it could go either way. There in the hot, dry sunlight of the vast, high desert, nothing stirred, nothing moved, and there was no sound as the three men with rifles confronted Fargo. He saw the conflicting emotions, the indecisiveness in their faces. Then he broke it with words, an order. “Now, cut out this foolishness and take me to Colonel Lopez.”
His tone was that of a man used to commanding, expecting to be obeyed; it broke the last of their courage, their will. He saw the leader let out a long breath. Then the man nodded. “Very well. But we shall be watching you every instant.”
Fargo’s grin was cold. “That’s what you get paid for.”
They didn’t answer that. Instead, the leader snapped an order; one of the three went into the thorny brush, emerged leading horses. They kept their rifles trained on him as they mounted. Then the squat man jerked the gun muzzle.
“All right. Come. We go to Santa Rosa.”
Two of them guarded Fargo; one fell behind to push the mules, five animals, linked by a rope to Fargo’s saddle. Thus, a small parade, they wound through a narrow lane in the chaparral, a path carved out by hungry goats. Ten wordless minutes later they came out of the brush and onto an open flat where the miserable little village of Santa Rosa baked in the merciless sun. The detachment of fifty soldiers gave the scattering of little adobe huts around the
dusty plaza an air of unusual activity.
As they rode in, Fargo was taut as a tightly wound clock spring. In this summer of 1915, Northern Mexico was a rattlesnake nest of soldiers, regular and guerrilla, and bandits. Villa and Obregon in the North, Zapata in the South, other, lesser leaders as well. They waged war against the government under Huerta and against each other. Loyalties shifted from day to day, alliances were made and fell apart; yesterday’s comrade-in-arms was today’s enemy; and everybody with a gun and a cartridge to load it with was out for what he could get. Under such circumstances, smuggling guns across the Rio was probably the riskiest way to make a dollar in the world; but Fargo liked dollars, and the higher the risk that earned them, the sweeter they were.
Nevertheless, Tomas Lopez, the leader of this particular band of revolutionaries, was an unknown quantity. Fargo was due twenty thousand dollars in gold for these rifles, and presumably, Villa had given the money to Lopez to pay over. Also, presumably, Villa had made it clear that Fargo was too valuable to his movement to be harmed. But how loyal was Lopez to Villa—or how much did he fear the great chieftain of the Revolution, the Lion of the North? Twenty thousand was a fortune—and so were two hundred rifles. Maybe just enough of a fortune to tempt Lopez to double-cross his leader, keep both gold and rifles for himself. In which case he would pay Fargo not with money but with lead, worry about Villa later. After all, the money and the guns were here and Villa was far away in Chihuahua. Fargo’s left hand was on the reins; his right was kept unobtrusively high, close to the shotgun’s sling, as they wound into the plaza under the curious stares of lounging, gun-hung soldiers and the shabby, dirt-poor inhabitants of the village. They were mostly Indians.
Then the squat man drew up before the largest building of the town, bearing the crudely lettered legend Cantina over its door. He gestured to Fargo to dismount and, warily, the American did so. “Colonel Lopez’s headquarters,” the squat one said, and he kicked open the door with a booted foot. “Enter, hombre.”
“Yes,” Fargo said. “But before I do, there’s one thing I’d better tell you. While I’m inside, nobody touches those rifles. Nobody tries to unpack those mules.”
“Ah? And why not?”
Fargo grinned at him. “Because, man, I’ve done this work before. Each one of those packs has a bomb—much dynamite and a special striker, rigged in so that any man trying to undo the ropes without knowing the proper method will be blown to hell—along with the guns, the mules, and everybody in this plaza. Only I can unlash those ropes safely—and they don’t come off until I have my money.”
The Mexican stared at him, jaw dropping as he comprehended. “Son of a goat,” he whispered. “You joke.”
“You think so, you touch those lash ropes. It’ll be the last thing you ever touch. Now, take me to Colonel Lopez.”
“Colonel Lopez is here,” a voice said from the doorway. “And he has heard what you just said. I see, Senor Fargo, that everything General Villa told me about you is true.”
“Maybe more besides,” Fargo said coolly, turning to confront the speaker.
For a moment, then, he and Lopez looked at each other, appraising one another. And suddenly Fargo knew beyond doubt that his worst fears were justified.
Lopez, dressed in the concho-glittering black rig of a charro, must have stolen the fancy clothes from some dead hidalgo. There was keen intelligence in his close-set, black eyes, but nothing of the gentleman about him despite his dress. He had a lean, pockmarked face with a hawk’s nose and a mouth like a slash, and a short, thick body like a section of a tree trunk; his legs were short, too, and bowed from much riding. Like Villa, he had probably gotten his start as a cowboy and a cattle thief. Unlike Villa, there was no honor in him. Fargo read a mixture of hatred, frustration, and drunkenness in his stare. Lopez held a bottle of tequila in one hand. As early as it was, he had already killed half of it.
“Then come in,” Lopez said. “We’d better talk.”
“No talk necessary,” Fargo said. “All I want’s my money.”
“We shall see.” Lopez’s face was suddenly full of naked fury. “I said come in!” he rasped.
Fargo drew a deep breath, then nodded. As the Colonel stepped back, he warily entered the dim, vile-smelling room. It contained a bar, a couple of tables; half a dozen soldiers were ranged around it with rifles under their arms.
“Sit down,” Lopez snapped. He dropped into a chair at one of the tables. Fargo sat, but not until he’d moved the chair until his back was shielded by a blank stretch of adobe wall.
Lopez thrust forward the bottle. “Drink.”
“No,” said Fargo.
“You will not drink with me?” Lopez showed yellow teeth in a snarl.
“You give me my twenty thousand, I’ll have a shot then to seal the bargain.”
Lopez was silent for a moment, the rasp of his breathing heavy in the silence. “Twenty thousand. I should pay you twenty thousand when I cannot even unpack the mules to see the merchandise?”
“You pay me the money, I’ll unpack the mules for you.”
They stared at one another for a moment. Then Lopez grinned and drank long and deeply from the bottle. “Gringo,’’ he said, “I think you lie. There is no dynamite on the mules. No man would be foolish enough to lead a pack train across rough country with dynamite capped and ready to go inside the packs. Suicide! It would be suicide!”
“Maybe. And maybe suicide to come in here without it,” Fargo said easily. “You’ll never know, Lopez, until the money’s paid. I say the dynamite’s there, you say it isn’t. All right, tell your men to unload a pack.” He had his right thumb hooked in the sling of the shotgun now, and he shifted his weight in the chair so its back would not interfere with the muzzles as they came up. “You’ll lose a man. You’ll lose a mule. You’ll lose all the rifles on it. But at least you’ll set your mind at rest.”
“Yes, by God!” Lopez turned in his chair, signaled to the squat guard in the doorway. “Emilio! Take one of the mules well away from town. Unpack the thing and inspect the rifles!”
Beneath its sun-blackening, the guard’s face changed color visibly. For a moment, he did not answer. Then he shook his head, licking his lips nervously. “Jefe—” His voice trembled. “Jefe, I have always served you well—”
Lopez’s eyes narrowed, his mouth twisted. “You refuse to obey?”
Before the guard could answer, Fargo spoke. “I’d like to point out, Colonel, that each mule carries forty rifles. That’s a lot of guns to lose in an experiment. And, of course, it won’t help you a damned bit when it comes to unpacking the rest.”
“Jefe,” Emilio pleaded, “what he says is true—”
Lopez stared at him for an instant. Then he turned, struck the table. “Very well,” he snarled. “The money. Twenty thousand! You shall have it.” He rattled orders. One of the men went behind the bar, came out with saddlebags. They were heavy; he walked lopsided under their weight. When he put them down on the table, Fargo heard the unmistakable chink of coins.
He kept his right hand on the shotgun sling. With his left, he cautiously unfastened each bag and peered warily inside. What he saw satisfied him; the panniers were loaded with American double-eagles. Carefully, he strapped the bags shut again. Then he slung them over his left shoulder, their weight a satisfying burden and got to his feet. “All right, Lopez,” he said. “Fair enough. Now, I’ll unpack the guns for you.”
He went casually out of the cantina door, and Lopez arose and followed him. “Just in case there’s a mistake,” Fargo said when they were outdoors, where the pack train waited, “we’d better take the mules out on the flats, away from town.”
Lopez hesitated suspiciously. Fargo shrugged “All right. We’ll unpack ’em here. But if one should go, that’s the end of Santa Rosa.”
Lopez’s mouth twisted. “Very well, out on the flats. But no tricks. You’ll be under heavy guard.”
“Sure,” Fargo said. He tied the saddlebags behind the cant
le, lashing them securely. Then he gathered up the lead rope of the mule train. Men fell back as he turned the animals around, made way, gave him wide berth. Then, at Lopez’s orders, fifteen soldiers mounted up. They followed Fargo and the mules out of town, keeping well back. Then they swung out wide to envelop him, all fifteen rifles trained on him.
Five hundred yards away from town, he halted the train in the middle of a bleak, sun-hammered flat devoid of everything but cactus. The Mexicans were still covering him with their guns, but fell back a little farther. Lopez yelled, “Now, man! Unpack those rifles! And if you try any tricks, you shall be shot down like a dog!”
“Sure,” Fargo called back. He dismounted from the bay. It stood patiently, ground-hitched, the mules strung out behind it. The silence was profound as Fargo went to the first animal in line. It stood motionless with its head down under the burden of nearly four hundred pounds of weapons packed in cosmoline-filled wooden cases. Cautiously, Fargo began to untie the diamond hitch which held the canvas-covered load in place.
One lashing came loose, then another. He was faintly aware of whispers from the onlookers; they were audible even at a great distance in the desert silence. He slipped his left hand under the canvas, found the dynamite capped and hidden there, two sticks bound together. With his right he pulled a match from his shirt pocket and struck it on his thumbnail. Under cover of the canvas, he lit the short fuse attached to the bomb. When he heard its hissing he turned leisurely. Then, with a quick, deft, powerful motion, he threw the dynamite and ran for the bay.
He was in the saddle without touching stirrup, and the strange knife was out of its sheath in the same instant A flick of his wrist and its peculiar handles, made in two sections of water-buffalo horn, came back into his palm; another flick, the mule-train lead rope was severed; a third blurring motion and the knife was sheathed again, and all this even as the dynamite bomb sailed through the air, before it hit the ground. Then he socked spurs to the bay and leaned forward to scoop up its reins, crouching over its neck to make a smaller target. As the animal rocketed forward he heard the screams of the soldiers, their shouts of terror as they realized what he had thrown. As he had figured, panic froze their trigger fingers for one crucial second.
