Fargo 12

by John Benteen

  But the man knew him, and detached himself from the bar. He came forward quite steadily, and Fargo knew he had not spent the fifty on whiskey. He was of medium height, and had a hard, honest, likable face. Now that Fargo saw him fully, he recognized the breed: desert rat, prospector. Only this one was a cut above most; he didn’t have the insanity, the wild light of delusion, in his blue eyes.

  “Mr. Fargo,” he said. “You did come, after all.”

  “Sure,” Fargo said. “I always keep my word.”

  The man put out a work-hardened hand. “I’m MacSwain Steele. You’ve never heard of me, Mr. Fargo, but I’ll tell you now—I’m here to make you rich.”

  “Well,” Fargo said. “That’s very interesting. Let’s have a drink and talk about it.”

  “No,” Steele said. “Not here.”

  Fargo frowned. “Where, then? Steele, it’s late—”

  “At my camp, north of town.”

  “In the desert?” Fargo laughed. “Steele, that’s a damned long ride. Maybe tomorrow—”

  “Tonight. I used that fifty to hire two horses from the livery stable. They’re outside now. It won’t take long.”

  Fargo mastered the faint whiskey-buzz in his head. This man had brought him luck—eight thousand dollars worth—and had had the wit to rent the horses instead of drinking up the token fifty. Again something moved in Fargo, a kind of hunch.

  He looked at Steele a moment longer and the man looked back with clear intelligent eyes. Whatever he was, he was no ordinary desert rat.

  “All right,” Fargo said. “Maybe a ride will clear my head.”

  ~*~

  The high desert above El Paso was a place of scant grass and shifting dunes. The sky overhead was immense, sprinkled with countless stars. They had pushed the horses hard; even so, the ride had taken an hour. Then, as Steele reined in, Fargo saw the flicker of a campfire, the silhouette of a small tent.

  “Here we are,” Steele said. He called out, in a low voice: “Sandy... oh, Sandy?”

  A dark shape emerged from the shadows between the dunes. As it neared the firelight, Fargo tensed in the saddle. He recognized the curved hipped silhouette of a woman in pants.

  Her voice drifted back, low and husky. “Dad?”

  “I’ve got Mr. Fargo with me. We’re riding in.”

  Then Fargo heard a sound—the faint click of the hammer of a gun being lowered—and he realized that Sandy had held a weapon of some sort pointed at them. As she turned away, he saw that it was a Winchester rifle.

  “Come on,” Steele said. They rode up to the fire.

  By then the girl had put a pile of dry desert brush on the flames and the light flared up. “You found him,” she said, a kind of relief in her voice.

  “Yeah,” Steele muttered. Both men swung down. “Mr. Fargo, meet my daughter, Alexandra. Call her Sandy for short.”

  Across the firelight, Fargo looked at the girl. She was of medium height for a woman, her face framed by brown curls. Her eyes were huge, long-lashed, her nose small, tilted, her mouth full and red. Beneath a flannel shirt, large breasts were high and proud; a leather belt cinched a slender waist, and corduroy pants hugged voluptuous hips and excellent legs. Twenty-three, twenty-four, he guessed; and he felt the impact of her beauty as she put out one small hand. “Mr. Fargo, I’m glad to know you.”

  “Miss Steele,” he said.

  “You two sit down. I’ll start coffee.” She turned away.

  Steele sat on a blanket by the fire; Fargo took the other end. “I appreciate you not letting that bouncer throw me out of that joint. I’d looked all over El Paso for you.”

  “Who told you to look for me?” Fargo asked. “And what do you want?” His eyes were on the woman as she went about her task of filling the coffee pot.

  “A man named Torrence I met in Tonopah. He told me you’d take any kind of chance.”

  “Torrence,” Fargo said. Then: “Yeah, I remember him. We were in the cavalry together in the Philippines.”

  Steele nodded. “He said El Paso was your headquarters. I’d heard of you before, Mr. Fargo; you’re kind of famous. But Torrence filled me in. You make big money and spend it.”

  “That’s the way I live,” Fargo said as the girl put the pot on the fire.

  “So I looked you up. Fargo, I’ve got a proposition to make you.”

  “Sure,” Fargo said. “You’re a prospector. Every prospector will make you rich if you’ll only grubstake him.”

  Steele snorted explosively. “Prospector, hell. I’m a geologist, a graduate geologist. I’ve worked for every big mining company in the West. Never struck out on my own; with a wife and kid, a man has to have a steady salary. But I’m no ordinary desert rat, Fargo; I’m a scientist.”

  Fargo looked at him with new interest. “Go on.”

  “My wife died three years ago. My daughter was grown, big enough, anyhow, to travel with me. I decided to hell with working for the other man, I was gonna make some money for myself.” His eyes glittered in the firelight. “I know things about rock formations no ordinary desert rat ever dreamed of; I know all the mining techniques, too. I didn’t just roam around the desert breaking rock at random, I made a scientific study of where gold veins might occur.” He paused, lowered his voice. “Fargo, you ever heard of Eden?”

  Fargo laughed. “You mean in the Bible or the gold camp?”

  “I mean the ghost town, way to hell and gone up near the Paiute Mesa.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Fargo said. “Big mine there one time, the French Lady. Hard rock, gold and silver veins. They worked it until it petered out.”

  “That’s right,” Steele said. “Or so they thought. Then everybody hauled freight. They went down through the mountain, worked out the vein, struck water, it filled the mine, they couldn’t deal with it, and so they left. The town died; it’s just so many shacks now.”

  “All right,” Fargo said.

  Now it was Steele’s turn to laugh. “Fargo, I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you until we get down to business. But the fact of the matter is this: There’s a fortune in gold still in Eden and nobody knows where it is or how to get it out but me. It’ll take money, lots of money—by my standards, anyhow. But if I could lay my hands on the money, on a fifty-fifty split, I could make the man who gave it to me rich.”

  Fargo said, “Prove it.”

  “I’ll prove it,” Steele said. “Sandy?”

  “Yes, Dad.” She went into the tent, came out a moment later carrying a buckskin pouch. She handed it to her father. Steele pulled the drawstring. Then he dumped into his palm what Fargo immediately recognized as several ounces of placer gold dust in pure form.

  It glittered dully in the firelight. “Damnation,” Fargo said.

  “I know where there’s enough of that stuff to fill a wagon,” Steele said.

  “In Eden?”

  “Thereabouts. You’d never find it.” Carefully, he sifted the gold dust back into the bag.

  When he turned to Fargo, his eyes were hard. “I need five thousand dollars. Given five thousand, I can take a million, two million, out of what I’ve found without any help, just me and Sandy. And, Fargo—I’ve heard you’ve got money and you’ll gamble on anything. Gamble five thousand dollars on me, and I’ll make you a million!”

  “How?” Fargo asked.

  “My secret. Well. You’ve seen the gold, heard my pitch. You want in?”

  Fargo got up from the blanket, went to his horse. In the saddlebags, he had stowed a bottle of whiskey when they had left the White Longhorn. He hated to start drinking and then stop too early when he was on a spree. He sat down next to Steele on the blanket. He looked at Sandy sitting tensely across the fire wide-eyed. He thought that she would be fun to make love to; there might even be more to her than that. Something about her intrigued him.

  He pulled the bottle’s cork with his teeth, passed it to Steele. Steele took it, drank. Instead of passing it back to Fargo, he handed it to Sandy. She drank, too, prac
ticedly, like a man. Fargo’s respect for her increased. Then she handed the bottle back to him and he drank.

  The whiskey flamed in his belly. He was beginning to feel it now, a certain recklessness. And what the hell—“I’ll invest a thousand,” he said.

  Steele’s voice was dismayed. “Only a thousand? I told you—”

  “A thousand of my own money,” Fargo cut in, grinning. “I was four thousand in when you came to me at that poker table tonight and laid your hand on my shoulder. Right then and there I won my first pot and I came four thousand out, winner. So I’ll throw in a thousand of my own and four I took from those jaspers I was playing with.” He looked at Steele. “You’re lucky, Steele. Luck; I can feel it in my bones. It rides with you. Five thousand? I’ll gamble that for a fifty-fifty cut.”

  Steele stared at him. “You’re not drunk? You know what you’re doing? Fargo, I don’t want to—”

  “Have me wake up and cancel out tomorrow? No, Steele. I always know what I’m doing.” He glanced at Sandy whose mouth was slightly open, her eyes gleaming.

  “I have a hunch,” he said. “I’ll ride that hunch. How do you want it, Steele? Cash or check?”

  Chapter Two

  Steele had taken cash, of course. Fargo had pulled it from his pocket, handed it over. “Wait a minute,” Steele began. “We need a written agreement—”

  “No, we don’t,” said Fargo. “I always keep my word.”

  “How do you know I will?”

  Fargo smiled. “If you don’t, I’ll find you and take the money out of your hide.”

  “But don’t you even want to know the details?”

  “All I want,” Fargo said, “is for you to write me at General Delivery, El Paso, when you’ve made your strike. It may take a while before I’m in town to get the letter, but if I don’t catch a slug somewhere, I’ll get it sooner or later.”

  He got to his feet. “I’m tired, going back to the hotel and get some sleep. Write me when you’ve hit it rich, Steele.” v

  Sandy Steele sprang up. “Mr. Fargo—”

  He turned. “Yes, ma’am?”

  Her eyes met his. He saw something in her face. It was a good thing for her, he thought, that Lily had completely fixed him up. “You haven’t had your coffee,” she whispered.

  “It would only keep me awake,” Fargo said. He put foot in stirrup, swung up. “Let me know in El Paso when our ship comes in, Steele. So long, Miss Sandy …” Then he spurred the horse and galloped off through the immensity of the high desert and the enormous sky.

  ~*~

  Since then he had lost the twenty thousand, or what had remained of it, gambling; had drunk it up, wenched it away, or peeled off part of it to the vast network of Mexicans who provided him with intelligence of affairs along the border. He had had a dozen women and had been in two gunfights. He was dead broke. He could use the twenty thousand or more that Steele claimed to have found at Eden.

  It was past three o’clock, and the heat had abated a little. Fargo watered the animals sparingly, drank sparingly himself, pulled the picket pins, and swung into the saddle, gathering up the mule’s lead rope.

  He spurred off across the alkali flats, hat pulled low over his eyes. Ahead loomed the bulk of Paiute Mesa. Behind and around it roiled high, scrub-clad mountains. Off to the left of the Mesa lay the ghost town of Eden. Maybe, if he were lucky, he would make it by nightfall.

  As he rode across the baking flats into the gathering purple shadows, Fargo’s hand went up from time to time to caress the shotgun. With its breech behind his back, he could not trace out the inscription worked into the intricate engraving: To Neal Fargo, gratefully, from T. Roosevelt. But he knew it was there, worked into the iron of his favorite weapon. The man who had presented it to him had been his Colonel in the Rough Riders, later President of the United States. What Fargo had done to earn the shotgun was a secret between the two of them, but it had been a crucial and important task.

  Fargo shifted the shotgun from his right shoulder to his left. It made no difference which shoulder it rode on: he had been born ambidextrous, capable of using either hand with equal facility and speed. It was a gift that had more than once stood him in good stead, even saved his life.

  By the time the sun slanted low, the mountains were near. Presently, in twilight, he began to climb. He rode up draw after draw, gulch after gulch, following an ancient, almost obliterated wagon road, the one trace that the town of Eden had been connected with civilization.

  Just before last dark, he reached it.

  It was an eerie place, a scatter of decaying shacks and empty houses in a narrow valley. The old mine that had provided its reason for being was located at the valley’s head. Its buildings were still intact—in this country, wind was the enemy, wind and sand, not rot. He saw the huge scattered pile of its tailings as he entered the single street of the deserted town.

  Ghost town. It was an apt name. On either side, doors swayed in wind, slammed and opened, and shutters banged. Crumbling adobe, falling-down wood, sightless windows, deserted alleys, horseless hitch racks. A tumbleweed rolled across the street like some scuttling, living thing. A jackrabbit took off in huge bounds from beneath a porch.

  Once this place had seethed with life; only thirty years ago, it had been a brawling boom town. Now, hemmed in by mountains, it was as desolate as the moon itself.

  Except for that house up there near the mine. In the gathering dusk, Fargo saw the wink of lantern light. He spurred the dun, and the mule came after as he galloped up the street.

  He reached the house—formerly that of the superintendent—at the foot of the gouged face of the hill where men had wrenched wealth from earth. He did not dismount, but unslung the shotgun, held it tilted toward the door. “Hello, the house!” he cried.

  The door cracked. Then, in the last light, he saw the face of Sandy Steele, “Who—? Fargo!” She flung the door wide, turned. “Dad, Fargo’s here!”

  There was a hitch rack. Fargo swung down, looped the dun’s reins and the mule’s lead rope around it tightly. Through the door, Mac Steele strode out onto the rickety sidewalk, a gun strapped around his waist, his face more thickly bearded than Fargo had last seen it. His eyes lit, his mouth curled. “Fargo! Damn, I’m glad you’re here!” He ran forward, half-embraced the tall man.

  Fargo shook his hand. Then Sandy came around her father’s body shyly, and he took her hand. Her fingers clung to his as he greeted her. “We’re so glad to see you,” she whispered, gray eyes meeting his. Fargo waited for her to pull her hand free of his; she did not do it immediately.

  But at last she pulled loose. Up and down the street, doors flapped in the ceaseless wind, and at this altitude it was cold.

  Steele said, “Well, Fargo, I’m glad you made it. Sandy and I have been working like bastards. We’ve upped the ante by ten thousand apiece easy since I wrote that letter to you.”

  Fargo surveyed the deserted town. “How? Damned if I can see how.”

  “Come inside.” Steele chuckled. “I’ll show you how.”

  Fargo followed the Steeles into the big house. It was empty save for their sleeping gear in separate corners, pots and pans around the fireplace in which embers glowed, and the table on which the lantern sat.

  Steele went to the fireplace. His hands trembled as he pried up the mud bricks of the hearth. “Fargo,” he whispered, “look at this.” There was a big cavity underneath the bricks, and from it Steele lifted leather bag after leather bag.

  Fargo took the first one, opened it, stared down into it. Sandy held the lantern above his head. In its light, what glittered up at Fargo was gold dust, pure and floury.

  “Christ,” he whispered, awed. He hefted the bag. It weighed at least five pounds. And was worth, he knew, nearly three thousand dollars. “Where’d you get this?”

  Now all the bags were out of the hole. Steele neatly ranked ten of them on one side of the hole, ten on the other. He laughed. “This is left-overs.”

  “Left-ove
rs?”

  Steele pointed in the direction of the shaft and tailing pile at street’s end. “Hard rock mining. They stamped the ore, extracted all they could and dumped the tailings. But their methods were primitive, Fargo. They took eighty per cent of the gold out, left twenty in the waste. And the waste was chewed up fine. That’s where this gold came from; I took it out of the stamp-mill tailings by placer mining.”

  Fargo looked at the fortune spread out before him. “I don’t believe it.”

  Again Steele laughed. “It’s true. And there are thousands more there. Fargo, they were fools, amateurs. They skimmed the cream; what they didn’t realize was that the milk was worth a fortune, too. They used chemical methods to retrieve the gold; it never occurred to them that if they would wash the tailings they could take out another fortune.” Fargo stroked a plump bag. “There ain’t enough water in these mountains to wash the tailings.” Sandy grinned happily. Steele said, “For God’s sake, man, what did you think I wanted that five thousand for, beans and bacon? The shafts are full of water; that’s why these people quit. I used that five thousand to buy a strong pump I could haul in on mule back and thousands of feet of rubber hose. That was all I needed. Millions of gallons of water down in that mine—plenty to sluice the tailings through Long Toms and rockers. All I’m doing is placer mining the left-overs—and getting rich!” He shook his head. “All they could think of was pick-and-shovel mining, high-grading. They had no knowledge of scientific methods. Fargo, the tailings run about thirty dollars a ton, and I can wash and work six tons a day—just me and Sandy and the things I’ve rigged. But the ore here was running two hundred dollars to the ton, and thirty seemed like small potatoes to them. It didn’t even occur to them that they could pump the water to wash it out from their own shafts.”

  He sobered. “It wasn’t their fault. Twenty-five years ago, when this digging’s closed down, they didn’t even have the high pressure pumps that would bring the water out. And besides, the company had richer diggings in Arizona to concentrate on.”