by John Benteen
“How much?”
“Damn, a lot. Three, four, five … eight, nine, and ... ten, twenty bags!”
Now all the Frosts were at the fireplace. They bent over the pile of buckskin pokes. Then Roy straightened up, faced Steele and Sandy again. “That all? There oughta be more than that.”
“It’s all,” Steele said wearily. “Sixty thousand dollars worth.”
Roy rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Well, gal, you saved your old daddy a lot of hurtin’.”
Sandy gasped. “Now, you’ll let us go?”
Roy strode over to where Steele sat propped against the wall. “I didn’t say that. I just said you saved him a lot of hurtin’.” Suddenly his hand flashed down in an incredibly quick draw. Sandy’s scream and the thunder of a Colt mingled. Steele had not even had time to cry out before the heavy slug blew his head apart and killed him.
“You bastard!” Sandy cried and, bound, nevertheless flung herself at him.
Roy, laughing, swung the Colt barrel. It chopped her head. She gasped, fell forward on her face, lay unmoving. He looked down at her. “Damned spitfire! Well, we’ll take some of that outa her.”
“Sixty thousand dollars!” Chad whispered. “Fifteen thousand bucks apiece! Man, can I have a blow-out! When we git to Mexico—”
“Shut up,” Roy said. “Maybe we ain’t goin’ to Mexico. They’re fightin’ down there. You want them spics to take it away from you?”
“Then where—?”
“We’ll decide that later. Right now, we still got to deal with Big Ugly here.”
“I’ll take keer of him,” Clint said. “I owe him one fer the way he kicked me when we jumped him—right where it hurts the most. And I want that sawed-off shotgun of his, too, for myself. It’s a damn purty weapon.”
“You can have it,” Roy said. “I’m takin’ his Winchester, though.”
“Well, there ain’t neither one of you gonna git that funny lookin’ knife of his,” Dorsey put in. “That’s mine!”
“Hell,” snapped Chad. “That don’t leave me nothin’ but the Colt, and I already got a pistol.”
“That .38’s a better weapon than that beat-up old six you’re carryin’ now. Didn’t you see what his belt’s loaded with? Hollow-points.”
“Aw, okay. If that’s all I git ...”
“We’ll split the weapons up later. Right now, Clint, you get him outa the way. Fast. Then we’re gonna load up the girl and ride.” His voice rose in exultance. “Sixty thousand bucks in dust, a mess of good guns, a bunch of horses and all sorts of camp gear. And”—his boot toe nudged Sandy’s prone body—“and a gal to play with. It’s been a rich strike, brothers!”
“Yeah,” Clint said. Standing over Fargo, he rested his hand on his gunbutt. Looking up into those jet eyes, Fargo knew he was as close to death as he had ever come and, in another pair of seconds, would at last know what it felt like to die. He cursed soundlessly, not afraid of death, furious, though, at the prospect of dying like this, bound and helpless, unable to fight back, take any of them with him. Then his fury died, to be replaced by a cold, implacable hatred of the Frosts, a bitter, iron-hard emotion that somehow calmed him.
Then Clint’s hand fell away from the gun. “I hate to do it so damned quick,” he said.
“You’d better do it quick and get it over with,” Fargo said. “You had better be damned sure to kill me. Because if you don’t—”
“Oh, I aim to kill you, all right. Jest not all that quick. I changed my mind about shootin’ you. You kicked the hell outa me. So I aim to. stomp you to death.” And then, suddenly, his boot lashed out again.
It caught Fargo in the flank, knocked him sideways, pain flaring. “Yeah, dammit,” Clint gritted above him, “kick the livin’ hell outa you!” Again the boot caught Fargo, this time in his belly; it seemed as if the terrific impact of that blow ripped things loose inside him; he felt the warm taste of blood in his mouth. His body was a flame of agony. His boot rose and fell and slammed, smashing against Fargo’s cheekbone, against the back of his neck, above his kidneys, in his ribs. Fargo desperately tried to roll away, but it was no use; Clint kept on kicking. Now he knew that he was finished, this was how he would die—trussed up like a calf—and then he hardly knew anything at all, did not even feel the pain any longer, as the boot toe pounded at him mercilessly and rhythmically, and it was as if he were under a pile driver, and he heard somebody cry out in agony and only vaguely realized it was himself. Now things were getting dim and still the boot lashed and pounded, and then Fargo felt everything fading out, the world twisting away from him. The boot slammed into him one more time, and then he no longer knew or felt anything.
Chapter Four
It seemed to him that he had been on a long journey in a strange land, and he was not sure whether or not he could find his way back. It was a dark terrain through which he wandered, without a gleam of light and bereft of any landmarks. There were times when, weary and afraid, he wanted to give up, but something would not let him, and he fought his way through the darkness into light.
Then he knew why he had not wanted to come back: Because when he did, he would be able to feel the pain.
Even before he was out of darkness, he became aware of it: of agony in flanks and chest and back. Every breath he drew was like being pierced with a red-hot knife. It was the pain that nagged, forced him into full, excruciating consciousness.
Fargo opened his eyes.
He lay face down on the floor of the house in the ghost town in a puddle of his own drying blood. That and the pain, never-ending and terrible, was all he could comprehend for a long time.
Then he became aware of sound.
It was a strange sound, a deep-throated growling and a high pitched yapping. He thought he was imagining it and closed his eyes. After a while, as the sound went on, something cold touched his cheek.
It took great effort, but he opened his eyes again. And found himself staring into the jaws of a coyote, about to sink its fangs into his face. Its cold nose against his face had brought him to.
From somewhere, Fargo found strength enough to yell. It did not come out as a yell, that sound, only a strangled moan. But it was enough. The little desert wolf jumped back, startled, stared at what it had taken for a corpse with wide, indecisive eyes. Elsewhere in the room, the snarling and growling went on.
Fargo had to find strength enough for another yell. If he didn’t, the coyote, attracted by the blood in which he lay, might gather up its nerve. He could see it crouching. He tried to strike out at it, but his hands were still bound.
A coyote. A lousy coyote that would scuttle for the brush at the merest scent of a man.
Only this one was hungry and had already tasted human flesh. Fargo knew what the growling was across the room, now. The coyotes were working on the body of Mac Steele. And this one, weaker than the others, had been driven by them from the corpse and—He saw its fangs glitter in the sunlight that lanced through the door. Its nerve was growing. It did not know what he was, but it did not consider him a man, not bound like this, unable to move. He was only bloody meat, and in a moment it was going to rip his face off.
With a gigantic effort of will and strength, Fargo rolled just as the coyote sprang at his face. Its jaws clicked beside his ear. He kept on rolling, and he found more wind and yelled. This time it really was a yell. “Get out! Get outa here!” And he managed to raise his bound feet and thump them on the floor. The little yellow wolf leaped across his legs and scuttled for the door. And in the same instant, Fargo saw the others, three of them—crouched across the room over what had been Mac Steele’s body—raising bloody jaws and looking at him with startled eyes.
He dared not roll further toward them for fear that, cornered at their kill, they would attack him. Small as they were, they could kill a man as helpless as he. He was nearly dead, anyhow, had been so close to it that Clint had thought him finished. It would not take much more to do the job.
He lay stil
l, staring at them. They stared back. Then, regaining courage, they went on with their gruesome feast.
Exhausted, Fargo lay gasping. He had to remain conscious; that one thought was uppermost in his head. He absolutely must not pass out again. If he did, the coyotes would begin on him, too.
He lay like that, trying not to listen to them, for a long while. His hands were totally numb; so were his feet, for they had removed his cavalry boots before tying his ankles.
He realized that at least a full day must have passed since the Frosts had killed Steele and worked him over. The coyotes had come in darkness. In the fireplace with the gaping void in its hearth where the gold had been stored, the ashes were cold and dead.
It would have been easy, so easy, to slide back into that dark oblivion, put an end to pain. If he could just let go, he might not even feel the coyotes when they came. As it was, every breath was agony, and there would be more agony when the little desert wolves had exhausted what they fed on across the room and looked for more—if he were not dead of thirst by then. Somehow he knew that if he only turned loose, now, let himself go, he would die, and there would be no more pain.
What held him, made him stay alive, was hatred.
He thought about the Frosts. Saw Clint’s face above him, snarling, felt again the slam of that heavy boot. Saw Roy shooting Steele cold-bloodedly, chopping down the helpless girl with the gun barrel ... And the hatred in him was like fresh blood coursing through his veins, like cool water and medicine and rest. The hatred would not let him die.
He lay still a while longer, maybe five minutes, maybe two hours. He had no sense of time. But however long, the interval was enough for strength, borne on that flood of hatred, to return to him in some measure. His head cleared a little; now he knew he could lie passively no longer. His creed had always been to fight so long as he owned a single breath. This was no time to abandon that creed. The coyotes were not the only scavengers who would come to the scent of death. They had bigger brothers in this desert—great gray lobos. If one of those came to the feast...
When Fargo rolled toward the door, he knew from the pain in his chest that he had fractured ribs, several of them. Each time he put pressure on his torso he was risking death. If one popped loose, punctured a lung …
He did not think about that. He tried not to feel the pain. All he thought about was the Frosts and how he hated them and how he must stay alive so he could kill them all. Behind him the coyotes raised their heads and watched silently as he shoved himself across the boards toward the oblong of light.
Then, covered with cold sweat, he reached the door. He managed to work through it. The morning sun was not only dazzling, its heat struck him like a hammer. He’d had nothing to drink for more than a day; his mouth was dry, his tongue swollen. Outdoors, the heat would finish him very quickly. But inside he had to worry about the wolves.
What he had to do was get loose somehow. Once on the porch, he could crane his head, look through the door, inventory the contents of the room. Except for the thing over which the coyotes crouched, it was absolutely empty. The Frosts had cleaned it out, canteens, cooking gear, gold, and all, had left absolutely nothing. They had even, he could tell as he rolled, taken his wallet and his watch.
So there was nothing inside that would help him free himself. He lay still for a while, panting and trying to think.
Then he rolled off the porch into the dust of the street.
~*~
The heat was terrible. So was the pain. He must, he thought crazily, look like a crippled worm out there in the dust, doubling his knees, straightening them out, pushing himself along on his shoulder inch by inch. But there was nothing for it; he had to find some way to cut these ropes.
It was necessary to stop and rest every few minutes. He moved perhaps fifteen feet an hour. His shoulder was raw and scraped from contact with the earth; thirst was an agony as great as the pain in his chest. But somehow he kept his consciousness, and his eyes scanned every inch of ground under the porch of the house he had just fought free of, then the alley, then the space under the cabin on the other side of it, then another alley.
He saw nothing. But, goddammit, he thought, there is always trash in a ghost town. People throw away things, bottles ... He inched along, the sun hammering at him mercilessly.
He made another thirty feet over a period of two hours. His strength was ebbing. If he didn’t find something soon, he was done for....
He decided to try the other side. He began to roll through the dust. Then he halted. From the shadow beneath the porch of a decaying store building across the way, something caught in a ray of sun piercing a gap between boards.
Fargo sucked in breath. He rolled faster. He got a mouthful of dust in the process. But then he had fetched up against the porch of the store.
And there it was, three feet back from where he lay: a whiskey bottle. A big, beautiful, empty whiskey bottle, discarded long years since by someone who had drained its contents, tossed it into the gutter, then kicked it out of sight.
All he had to do was get it.
There was barely room for his head and shoulders beneath the porch. It was a good place for sidewinders to shelter in the heat of the day. He did not think about that, only sweated and grunted and endured the agony of levering his body into the dark space.
Then he was where he could do it: open his mouth and close his teeth around the bottle’s neck. Clamping it tightly like that, he tried to back out.
That was harder than going in, slower.
He made it finally. He was in the open. He had the bottle.
Now he must find some way to break it.
He looked around, craning his tired neck. Quickly; he had to do it quickly, while he had some tatter of strength remaining. But there was no rock on the street, nothing but dust and sand. Nor would it break against the decaying wood of the building.
He clamped his teeth down hard on the bottle neck, hoping his bite would shatter it, risking a cut tongue, maybe death, to do that. But the bottle was hard, thick. It resisted that pressure.
All right, Fargo thought. A fireplace...
There had better be one in the store. If not, he was truly finished. This was the last shot in his locker.
Still grasping the bottle in his teeth, he hitched himself up the rickety steps. That was a struggle in itself, taking more strength than he had counted on. When he gained the porch, he had to lie panting for a long time. Then he rolled the bottle through the open door of the deserted building and squirmed in after it.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to dimness.
There was no fireplace. Only a sandbox that had once held a potbellied stove.
Fargo used the last of his breath to curse. He almost gave up then finally. But he thought of the Frosts. And they still lived and there was still life in him, and he could not die while they drew breath. Desperately, his eyes searched the room. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, on which to break the bottle.
And then he laughed aloud.
All that effort wasted; if he’d only had sense enough to look at the damned window!
It had been long since smashed by wind and weather or some passing vandal, and its glass panes lay in shards on the store’s floor, beneath the sash.
Hope rose in Fargo like a flame. He forgot the bottle, wriggled toward the broken glass.
When he reached it, he appraised the fragments carefully. One shard was exactly like a dagger. He cut both lips and tongue picking it up with his teeth. It took him a long time to find a crack between two floorboards, and he cut himself worse wedging the glass down into it.
He rested, then.
When he had more strength, he hitched around. His hands were numb, totally without feeling, but the wrist above the ropes located the wedged blade-edge for him. Awkwardly, body bent back above the upthrust dagger point that, if his strength gave out and he let himself drop, would stab him, he began to work the rawhide against the edge.
A f
ull fifteen minutes went by before several strands had given. Sweat poured off him; he rolled over to breathe, then got back into position. Another agonizing quarter of an hour passed.
His arms were cut and bleeding.
But then it was done, the last thong severed, and his hands were free. Fargo murmured something that could have been curse or prayer and flopped forward on his face to wait through the pain of returning circulation.
It was a long time before that was over and he could use his fingers again. Then, slowly, breathing hard, he sat up, grimacing at what that did to the smashed ribs. He took the glass in his hands and sawed loose the thongs around his ankles.
Presently, they parted. Fargo flung them aside.
And then, weakly, unsteadily, he scrambled up, and used what strength he had left to laugh. He was on his feet again, and that was all he asked. His laugh was a wild, crazy, grinding sound. He was on his feet, and no matter where the Frosts went now—no matter if he had to follow them to the world’s end—they were, all four of them, as good as dead.
In socked feet, he tottered down the street to a corral empty of animals—but with a watering trough that was full.
He buried his head in it, drank long and deeply, forced himself to stop before he was satisfied. Instead, he ducked his whole upper body in the trough, let the water soak into his raw, dehydrated flesh. Then he drank some more, and when he stood upright, he was twice as strong—four times as strong—as he had been before.
His chest still pained him at every breath. His body was a screaming mass of interlocking bruises; but even under the ferocious impact of Clint’s boot, his hard muscles had saved his arms and legs from fracture. Now, he thought—lips curling in a snarl like that of a wolf—all he had to do was somehow make it across the desert, sixty miles of rough and bitter country, on foot, with crushed ribs, without food, canteen, or weapon, and barefooted. If he could do that, he would be all right.
And somehow he would do it.
The first thing was to strap those broken ribs so he could move around.
He took off his shirt, wrapped it as tightly around his torso as he could, tied it in place. That lessened the pain, gave him more mobility, but every step still hurt.
