by John Benteen
And, as if in answer to his curses, he heard the thunder.
It came from far away, beyond the Chisos. Hearing its rumble, the Indians reined in, turned to look. But there was nothing to see. Ten miles away, twenty, one of those ferocious desert storms was gathering. Then El Tigre gave an order; they rode on.
But now Fargo was doubly alert. Something—he was not sure what—had leavened his despair with hope. He began to think—and think hard. In his mind, as they rode, he constructed a map. Summoning all his knowledge, he put together a mental chart of the Big Bend country. It was in three dimensions, complete with every draw, creek bed and arroyo.
“El Tigre,” he said. “Tell me exactly where these soldiers are camped.”
It had grown dark, now. That distant thunder continued, like artillery fire very far away. They could see long, jagged white arteries of lightning slicing the sky. It was one hell of a storm, but it didn’t seem to be moving their way.
“I do not know the name of the place. But it is right on the bank of the Rio, where a deep draw runs south, near a ford.”
“That would be near San Vicente, at the foot of Glenn Draw,” Fargo said. He twisted in his saddle, looked north again at the tremendous, awesome display of electrical fireworks miles away, almost masked by the bulk of the Chisos.
“Yes. Except for the draw, the country is open all around. The draw is very deep and wide and twists and turns.”
“Then we’ll use it to approach them.”
“I don’t think so,” El Tigre said. “My plan is to circle, divide my men, hit from both sides at once—after we’ve taken out their guards.”
“Then they’ll mow you down like grain,” Fargo said.
“What?” He could feel the Indian’s eyes on him in the darkness.
“They cut you down if you come in across the flats. Hell, man, haven’t you heard of machine guns?”
“Machine guns? A small cavalry patrol will not be carrying such heavy weapons.”
“The hell they won’t. Lewis guns weigh nothing at all. You can carry a Lewis gun and its tripod in a boot on the saddle. Do you think they’d send ten men out in country where they might come up against a hundred Mexicans without machine guns?” Fargo laughed harshly. “It takes a trained crew maybe three seconds to man a Lewis gun; they’ll already be set up to cover the approaches to the bivouac. The first alarm, they’ll spray the flats on either side with more lead than you’ve ever seen in your life. Probably they’ve got hand grenades, too. I thought you said you’d studied the way the Army operates.”
“I have.” El Tigre had to raise his voice above the rumble of the distant thunder. Fargo was pleased to see that he attached no special significance to it. But, then, when you came down to it, he was not desert trained. He called himself an Apache, yes; but he had lived most of his life in the Middle West, not these badlands which were the Apaches’ ancestral habitat. Nor did any of his men seem concerned about the storm. They had grown up in high mountains, among forests and streams that never ran dry.
Only Fargo knew what that lightning up there meant.
A chance at life.
One long, lone, lousy chance.
For his life and Nola’s—and the lives of ten American soldiers.
“I have studied the American Army,” El Tigre went on. “I still do not think—”
“Suit yourself.” Fargo shrugged. “You attack across the open, you’ll lose most of your men. There goes your dream of an Indian empire. But you’re the boss. I have to take my chances along with the rest of you. I’m willing to do that.”
“You had better be.” But El Tigre fell silent. They had ridden another mile before he spoke again. “What would be your plan?”
Fargo looked at peaks on their right and left. “We’re between Talley Mountain and Mariscal Mountain right now. We want to swing north, hit Glenn Draw well above the American camp. Move down the draw and use its shelter to approach.”
“I’m not a complete fool.” El Tigre’s voice was contemptuous. “If the draw offers an approach, they’ll have it guarded, That’s where their machine guns will be.” He snorted. “In its bottom, we’d be caught like rats in a trap.”
“All right,” Fargo said indifferently. “Throw away your advantage of surprise—”
“What advantage?”
“For God’s sake, man. The first requirement of a good tactician is to be able to put himself in the enemy’s shoes, think the way he thinks. They don’t know you’re here. They don’t have any idea there are Apaches in Big Bend. What they’re afraid of is Mexicans—Valeriano from Boquillas, outfits like that. They’re going to be looking south, watching the Rio, covering that ford and the flats around it. You come in from the north, down the draw, you take ’em from behind—cold.” He spat. The thunder was abating a little now. “Look. I’m sure enough of the way they’ll be disposed so that I’ll go ahead. You put me in the lead of the column. That way, if they’ve got Lewis guns covering the draw, I’ll be the first to get it.”
El Tigre was silent again. Then he said, “All right. What you say makes sense. I don’t want to lose a single man if I can help it. You go first—unarmed. If you’ve judged wrong, you’ll get it from in front—and from behind, too.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Fargo said. “All I want is to prove that I know my business. Tell this column to swing a little north. We want to hit the draw fairly high up.”
Once more El Tigre hesitated. Then he rattled orders. And the column of Apaches changed directions.
Now, thought Fargo. Now it was all a matter of luck. A faint, wispy hope that all the factors in the equation would work out right. He knew equations and mathematics, had studied them in gunnery training in order to become an expert artilleryman. Distance, speed, volume: they all entered into this problem, on the solution of which hinged life or death.
They rode miles more through broken country. Then, with a startled sound, the scouts reined in. Their horses, in the sultry, total darkness that had fallen, had almost walked off the edge of a great cut bank. El Tigre motioned to Fargo, put his mount up to the edge of the draw, stared down.
It was a vast gash in the earth, dozens of yards wide, forty, fifty feet deep, more in places. There was room on the floor of it, even cut with promontories and intersecting gullies as it was, to move an army in concealment, especially in this Stygian night. El Tigre consulted with the guide. Then he turned to Fargo. “You’re right. They’re camped not far from the rim, where this comes into the Rio. He says it’s the best way to come up on them.”
Then he unslung Fargo’s shotgun, pointed it at Fargo. “From here out, you lead the way. Anybody firing will get you first. And if you’ve led us into a trap, I’ll get you from behind if they don’t.”
Fargo nodded coolly. But his brain was still adding and subtracting factors. “Sure,” he said. “But the horses are tired. We’d better rest them first before we go down in there.”
They did. Fifteen minutes, that seemed interminable. Nola made strangled sounds behind her gag. Fargo stood patiently at the bay’s cheek strap, his relaxed posture belying the intensity he felt. Fifteen minutes; everything else taken into consideration, that should be just about right . . .
“Let’s mount up,” he told El Tigre at last and swung into the saddle.
They descended into the draw, horses slipping and sliding on their haunches. Reached the bottom without incident, concealed by total darkness. Fargo rode in the lead, now, and El Tigre came right behind with the shotgun trained on his shoulder blades. No one spoke; the only sound was the plodding of their horses in the soft sand on the floor of that great gash that split the landscape from north to south for mile upon mile.
A half hour passed; an hour. Fargo judged that ten minutes more would bring them within striking distance of the encamped patrol. His hands were moist on the bridle reins. Damn it, if he’d misjudged . . .
Now his eyes searched the rims above. El Tigre had been right, of course. Any non-
com who was worth his salt would have posted guards along the draw. And not with Lewis guns, either; only with rifles. The Lewis guns were a fiction; again the Apache’s instinct had been correct. Such a small patrol would not carry heavy weapons. That did not lessen the danger. A challenge; then rifle fire. And Fargo knew all too well the odds of catching a Springfield bullet in the chest . . .
El Tigre made a whispered sound. “Hold up.”
Fargo reined in, turned his mount.
The double-bores of the shotgun were trained dead on him.
“I have been thinking,” the Apache breathed. “A single shout from you, if you decide to be a hero, and all is lost. Before we move farther, I gag you. When the fighting starts, then I will … ”
Suddenly he broke off. He sat up straight in the saddle, cocking his head. “That,” he whispered. “What the hell’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Fargo said casually. But his pulses leaped.
“It sounds like a stampede. Many horses running, not far away. It sounds like—” All at once, El Tigre spun his horse around, looked behind them up the draw to the north. At almost precisely that instant, the last Apache in line let out a scream of terror.
Then, with a titanic thundering roar, it swept around a bend in the draw. There was one frozen instant when every man there stared at it—that great towering wall of water thirty feet high, foaming, muddy, hurtling toward them with express train speed. And that was when Fargo leaped.
He left his saddle like a pouncing cougar, slammed into El Tigre, wrenching loose the shotgun. As the Indian was knocked from the saddle, both men landed hard on the bottom of the draw. Fargo heard El Tigre’s breath go out in a whooshing gasp. Then he was wrenching away the bandoleer, leaping back for the bay.
He hit the saddle without touching stirrup, shotgun and bandoleer in hand. He slammed the terrified animal with spurs, riding straight toward the great flash flood that pounded down the draw toward them. His outstretched left hand seized the reins of Nola’s horse; with his right, he fired one barrel straight into the mass of frozen Apaches and heard men scream. Then he had put the bay at the side of the draw, slamming it with the shotgun butt, Nola’s dun scrambling alongside.
When it rained in this desert country, it poured, tons of water slamming down on hard-baked, barren earth. With nothing to impede its progress, it rushed toward low ground. As Fargo knew, Glenn Draw was a vast conduit, a pipeline that drained miles and miles of desert of the run-off from such a storm. It had taken all of Fargo’s maneuvering, all his persuasiveness and duplicity, to put El Tigre and his Apaches in the path of this gigantic wall of water. It gushed from every gully and arroyo, coalescing in this draw. It now hammered and thundered toward the Rio Grande with such force that nothing could stand in its way.
Flash floods like this had been known to wipe out whole towns in minutes without warning. This one would wipe out Fargo and Nola, too, if their straining mounts could not carry them above its crest in time.
The terrified bay dug in hard with its hooves; the dun, desert-wise, scrambled alongside. Nola’s eyes were white in the darkness; she clung to the saddle-horn. Dust, and shale spewed from beneath the iron of the horses’ feet as they fought their way up the sheer wall of dirt. It slid, collapsed under their weight.
And now that towering wall of water was on the Apaches. Fargo saw its muddy, swirling mass sweep up like chips the last Indians in line. Twenty feet, thirty, more and it would have them, too. He lashed the bay, jerked the reins of the dun.
They surged up, forefeet finding purchase on the arroyo rim, heaved mightily. Below them, the spewing flood of chocolate-colored water roared like a dozen locomotives as it swept up thirty men and thirty screaming horses. With a final push, Fargo and Nola were out on high ground.
Fargo reined around. The arroyo surged with water. There was no sign of man or horse within it.
He let out a long, rasping breath. Fifty thousand in gold. No, sixty, counting Nola’s ten. That was what hurt him. All that money tumbling toward the Rio Grande.
Then he leaned toward Nola, fumbled with the gag that bound her tongue. It came loose and Fargo threw it away.
She spat, made curious noises as she regained her speech. “Fargo.” It was a trembling whisper. “What happened?”
“Tell you later. Right now, ride with me. Follow me and don’t hang back.” He spurred the bay, sent it rocketing across the flat, and Nola came close behind.
The animal had made a hundred yards before the rifle sounded. At the same time there was the solid chunk of bullet hitting flesh. The horse reared, screamed, and fell heavily on its side. When it came down, stone dead, Fargo’s leg was pinned beneath it.
Dazed, he tried to pull free. Meanwhile, he was vaguely aware that the cartridge bandoleer which he’d held in his hand had been flung beyond his grasp, though he still held the shotgun. The rifle sounded again: not a Springfield, but a Winchester. He knew, all at once, that at least one Indian had survived.
Fargo raised himself and fought to drag his leg from beneath the bay’s half-ton of pinning weight. Another slug whined by his head and he fell back, knowing it was useless.
His voice split the night. “Ride, Nola! Goddamn it, ride!”
“Fargo—”
“I said ride!” he bawled, and then she was lashing the dun, just ahead of a whining slug. He heard the dun thundering into darkness, saw her disappear. He sucked in a long breath, tried again to pull loose his leg and knew it was hopeless.
Then, from out of the darkness, along the rim of the draw, a voice sounded: soft, trembling with rage, frustration and hatred. “Fargo! Goddamn you, Fargo—”
El Tigre. So he was the one who’d escaped.
Fargo did not answer, but he stretched out one arm, groping for the bandoleer. It lay a tantalizing distance away, maybe a yard, and now he could see the brass ends of the shotgun shells in it glittering in the moonlight as the last of the storm clouds drifted away. The sound of the flash flood was like a train crossing a trestle in the distance.
His hand could not come near the ammunition, and he had only one round left in the left barrel of the shotgun.
“Fargo,” the voice sounded again, nearer. “Goddamn you, they’re gone, they’re all gone.” It was full of grief, of tears. “I’m the only one left. And that because you knocked me off my horse. I scrambled up the bank in a place no horse could climb—”
Fargo changed the position of the shotgun in his hand, stretched and strained to catch the bandoleer with the end of the barrels, rake it toward him. But the weapon was too short; stretch as far as he could, its sawed-off length still fell short of the belt by six inches.
“It’s all right, though,” the voice of El Tigre called. “I don’t care about any other American. It’s you I want now. If I can kill you, I’m happy. Because it was you that put us in that draw. You knew—” The voice broke off, in a sob of hatred. “I’m coming after you, Fargo. And I’ve got lots of rounds in this rifle. I’m coming up on you, and you won’t know I’m there until I kill you.”
Fargo still did not answer. The pain in his leg was intense. He had to be satisfied, he knew now, with the one round. It was not much, but it would have to be enough.
“And then—” He judged El Tigre was a couple of hundred yards away, “and then—there are still a few Indians left in the Sierra. I’ll find the gold somewhere down this draw. I’ll hide it, go after them. I’ll start over again. I won’t rest until every white man is gone from the Southwest, and this time I’ll kill them all, on sight. But, first … I’m coming after you.”
Fargo made sure the left barrel of the shotgun was clean of sand and lay motionless.
Now the moon was full exposed; the desert all around was lined in silver light and shadow. He stared in the direction from which the voice had come, but he saw nothing except rock and cactus.
Nor had he expected to. El Tigre was a corrupted Apache, but he was still a Chiricahua. For all his ignorance of the desert, he wo
uld have an instinct for a situation like this. Like a great cat, he would move closer, patiently, until he was within point-blank range. And Fargo would not know he was there until he fired.
Near Fargo’s head, the wind rustled dried canes of ocotillo. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. The sound of the flash flood had died now. Very far off, he thought he heard the clatter of voices from the Army camp. But the soldiers were on the other side of that huge draw, confused by what had happened. They were too far away and too disorientated, even roused by the sound of gunshots as they had been, to help him now.
Minutes passed.
Five of them, maybe ten.
Fargo lost track of time. His leg had gone numb now. On the stalk of his neck, his head pivoted ceaselessly, scanning the terrain all around him. Once he saw a clump of yucca move.
But it was only the wind.
He could feel his heart pounding as he lay pressed against the cold sand. Time, now. El Tigre had had plenty of time to move into position. He was out there somewhere, out there in the shifting shadow and silver with a Winchester in his hand and plenty of bullets.
He would, Fargo thought, be along any minute now.
To play his role of executioner, at which he would likely succeed.
Again the wind in the ocotillo; in the creosote; in the yucca. Goddamn the wind, Fargo thought. The wind was El Tigre’s ally. It masked any sound of movement that he might make.
And then the wind died. The desert night was deathly still.
Fargo thought. Now, now he must be in position. He must!
He groped with his left hand, found a rock the size of his fist. He had this one trick left, and no other. It was an old trick and a shabby one, and his only hope was that El Tigre had had too much school and not enough desert.
He threw the rock. With all his strength.
It made a low arc through the air. Hit a clump of dried brush with a crashing sound. With his other hand, Fargo raised the shotgun.
The rifle flash came.
