Fargo 12

by John Benteen

  When that was done, he became aware of hunger. He lurched back down the street and on the way he found an old single-tree fallen off some ancient wagon. He carried it like a club. When he reached the house in which the body of Mac Steele lay, he halted, listening. That low pitched snarl of feeding animals still came from within.

  Fargo gripped the single-tree—three feet of hickory with metal caps and eyes at either end—in both hands and stepped up on the porch and through the. door. At the sight of a man looming above them, the three coyotes crouched over the body raised their heads. This was something different from the helpless animal Fargo had been before. In terror, they yapped, and suddenly all three of them rushed for the door that he blocked.

  Two of them got away, dodging between his legs or around him. He broke the back of the third one with the single-tree.

  Then he searched the house, trying not to look at what the animals had fed on. The Frosts had indeed cleaned it thoroughly; there was no morsel of food, nothing in the way of a weapon, and they had even, apparently, taken his boots.

  But what had been the body of Mac Steele still possessed a pair.

  Fargo, inured to death, nevertheless felt his stomach lurch as he knelt before the body. The coyotes had done vast damage. White bone gleamed amidst bloody flesh. He vomited up some of the water he had drunk as he pulled the boots free.

  But that was not the end of it. He must search Steele’s pockets. He did that, somehow; they were still intact on the thighs, though there was not much left of the torso. The Frosts had taken everything they contained. Except for—Fargo stiffened as he felt something in the very bottom of the last pocket. Then breath rasped out of him as he pulled out three or four wooden matches.

  He put the boots under his arm. He held the precious matches carefully between the fingers of his right hand; with his left, he picked up the dead coyote. Then he left that charnel house forever, closing the door behind him to keep out scavengers, and went down the street into another. It had a fireplace, too. In it he built a nearly smokeless fire of dried boards. He ripped as much skin off the coyote as possible with a shard of broken glass smashed out of a window, gutted the animal, and toasted it. Even his cast-iron stomach rebelled at such a meal, but he needed strength, and food was the only way to gain it.

  When he had flesh in his belly, he was much stronger. He sat down, tried on the boots. They were far too small. He cut them with the glass knife until at last he could get his feet into them.

  Fed, watered, bandaged and booted, he spent the next hour searching the town. Maybe somewhere he could find a knife. Any kind of weapon, an ax, a hatchet—surely something must have been abandoned here.

  But the town had been dead a long tone, and the Paiutes had passed through here often. The Indians had cleaned the place of everything of any possible use. Nor were any of Steele’s mining tools in evidence. Fargo guessed that the Frosts had taken them along. They were like vultures; anything that could be sold for a nickel, any kind of loot, they were unable to resist, even with sixty thousand in gold in their possession.

  All his search yielded him was the bottle he had pulled from beneath the store, four more like it, and an old broom leaning in one corner of a deserted building. That and the rawhide thongs he had cut from wrists and ankles.

  Well, it would have to do.

  He should have spent the afternoon and night resting, regaining strength, but the hatred in him was a substitute for rest. The Frosts were undoubtedly far ahead of him, but the longer he waited, the longer would be their lead. Come nightfall, when it was cool, he would be on their trail.

  He used the piece of glass to cut more leather from his boots. With that he plugged the bottles, after filling them with water. There were plenty of rawhide thongs; he tied a dove hitch around the neck of each bottle, slung them from his belt with the rawhide. There was more left over; and he had a use for that, too.

  It did not take him long to find what he wanted: a great spike used to fasten a heavy timber. He burned the timber in the fireplace until the nail fell free into the coals. Then, carefully, he broke off the broom handle just above the frayed-out straw.

  When the nail was red hot from the embers, he picked it out carefully with two sticks. He used it to burn a groove in the end of the broom handle. He had to reheat it twice before the groove suited him. Then he let the nail cool. After that, He laid it in the socket he had made along the broom handle, complete with a deeper notch burned by the head. It fit nicely. He wrapped it tightly with the rest of the rawhide. When he was through, the nail’s head protruded four inches past the end of the stick. It was a crude but effective lance.

  He arranged the bottles around his belt so they would not clink together. Five quarts of water was not much with which to cross sixty miles of desert, mountain, and alkali flats. But he would have to make it do. As nightfall came, he went back to the trough in the corral, drank until his belly bulged, soaked himself in water. In the last light, carrying the lance, draped with bottles, a roast haunch of coyote stuck inside his bandage, he walked down the street to the edge of town and picked up the trail of the Frosts.

  Chapter Five

  It was an easy trail to follow: their four horses, two belonging to the Steeles, his dun, his mule, and some burros. They were in no hurry, and why should they be? Nothing behind them, they figured, but two dead men whom the coyotes would even now be devouring. Ahead, a high lonesome with fifteen thousand each of stolen gold dust, plus whatever their other loot brought in. And—Fargo’s lips thinned—they had a girl with which to amuse themselves. Even as he thought of what must already have happened to Sandy, a cold, calculating part of his brain was still pleased that they had reason to slow down, delay.

  For himself, every step cost him pain, but he disregarded it. He paid attention to pain only when it was a warning that death might follow. The broken ribs would hurt like hell, but they would not kill him, and so he could forget them. In this, he was like an animal. Self-pity and self-concern would have kept any ordinary man immobilized. But an animal licked its wounds and kept on functioning.

  The sun, blessedly, sank behind the Belted Range; the moon came up and the wind blew cold across the desert. Shirtless except for the wrapping around his chest, Fargo shivered and his teeth chattered. But otherwise he disregarded the cold, just as he paid no attention to the jarring agony. The cold was bothersome, but he would not freeze.

  In the silver light there was no problem in sticking to the trail. He shuttled his eyes ahead, on the alert for the unexpected, and kept to cover as best he could, but he knew he was a long way from catching up with them as yet. One thing he counted on to help him gain on them; they had been out in the desert for a long time, keeping an eye on Steele and Sandy. They would have had no whiskey. There had been two bottles of good bourbon in his saddlebags. Last night, their first night in the desert, with a woman and liquor, they would have celebrated, slept late, been sluggish about getting underway in the morning.

  At midnight, his iron strength flagged. He found the shelter of a rock, out of the wind, drank sparingly of water, gnawed the coyote haunch. While he rested, he thought over what he had heard about the Frosts.

  Although he’d never run into them before, tatters of information, gathered rumors, had lodged in his head. They were among the few genuine bad-men left north of the border at this late date. Their father, Black Jack Frost had originally been a Mormon; turning apostate, he had left his deseret, become what was called a jack-Mormon, an outlaw preying on whatever and whomever he could. His four wives had followed him; each had borne him a different son. Over the years, the women had died or left him; the sons had stayed with him. The old man and the four half-brothers who had followed in his footsteps made a formidable gang, robbing stages and trains and an occasional bank, as well as unwary travelers. They were famous for a kind of perverted Mormon thriftiness: They left nothing behind that could be used or sold. Like pack rats, they were fascinated by things: guns, jewelry, tools, h
orses, anything that could be traded or turned into a dollar.

  It had been the Mormons themselves, outraged, who had finally caught up with Black Jack, brought him to trial, seen him executed by a state firing squad. His sons had escaped, disappeared. Fargo had caught rumors of their occasional surfacing; robberies and horse stealing were attributed to them, and lately they had done stretches as professional soldiers with one faction or another involved in the complicated revolution in Mexico. He had an idea that they had been too much even for the revolutionarios to stomach, probably had been run out of the country. Drifting, and with people hunting them, this part of Nevada would have seemed a safe place to hide. Then the Steeles had come to work the French Lady mine...

  The Frosts were gunmen, accomplished fighting men. No doubt of that. Unarmed, he would have to be very clever and very lucky to take them.

  But somehow he would take them. He was a fighting man himself, and though he usually fought for money, now what motivated him was a hatred and desire for revenge that he could feel swelling invincibly inside himself. They had tried to kill him once, and they had had their chance and muffed it. They would pay for that.

  After an hour, Fargo arose and stumbled on.

  Just before daylight, he slept, grudgingly, for three hours in the lee of another pile of rock. Arising, he drank, gnawed the rest of the meat off the coyote haunch, cracked the bone and sucked the marrow, threw the splinters away.

  At first it was all right. The sun, not high, was not so merciless, either. But as it climbed up the brazen, cloudless sky, it became his enemy. It seared him, blistering unprotected shoulders; it dried cut and bruised lips, made them sources of agony. It boiled the water out of him, dehydrating him, and he replaced it grudgingly. But he kept going.

  Then he found their first night’s camp.

  The ashes of the fire were cold. Two empty whiskey bottles lay beside them. Somebody had thrown away a scrap of bacon; he gulped it. Then he read the rest of the signs carefully.

  He saw the marks of spread blankets. Around the fire, there was churned sand: there had been a scuffle. His sore lips twisted: whiskey and a woman; not even half-brothers were beyond falling out in such circumstances. Fine; if they had a grudge against each other, they would be watching one another, not their back-trail.

  He went on, following their signs south.

  The sun beat down on him, charring his skin, raising enormous blisters. He ripped off part of his shirt, tied it over his head to protect him from the heat. Inside the too-small boots, his feet were rapidly turning to a bloody mess.

  But they would heal. He did not slow.

  Presently, he found sign of another camp. The Frosts had decided to hole up during the heat of the day, ride only by night. There were marks, too, of another scuffle, and he was intrigued by droplets of blood on the sand beside the campfire. All these indications were much fresher than those he had followed until now, less dulled and erased by the constant furnace wind. He was closer to them.

  He had used two bottles of water. He’d had nothing to eat since daylight, and his stomach growled its need clamorously. He ignored it, too, knowing that he could go on for at least twenty-four more hours without eating. He followed their trail out of camp.

  A mile beyond, he halted. Once more, his battered lips made a kind of wolf’s snarl. Then he turned hard to the west.

  The Frosts had split up here. The main trail continued due south, following the valleys between the mountains. But cutting off were the tracks of a single ridden horse and one led mule.

  Fargo stood there, head high, surveying the country around him. Alkali flats shimmered in the sun; beyond, saw-toothed ridges and high, snowcapped peaks were plastered against the stainless sky.

  There was no way of telling which one of the Frosts had left the bunch. But he could tell that three of them, plus the girl, still headed south. Whatever they could do to Sandy had already been done; it was the lone one, the outcast, that he wanted now.

  He took a drink of hot water, then set out along the single trail, using the lance as a hiking stick.

  The lone Frost brother was in no hurry. His horse ambled at a walk, as did the mule, Fargo’s mule. Likely he was heading for Tonopah, the closest town. Cast out of the bunch, he couldn’t wait to spend his gold. He had plenty of water, one of Fargo’s goatskins, likely, on the led animal.

  He walked all day, Fargo did, in the blistering sun. By nightfall, he had only one water bottle left, but he was gaining on the Frost. The tracks were clearer, fresher.

  Fargo was also badly in need of food. He had to find something with which to fill his belly if he were going to keep his strength up. Presently, there was nothing for it; he had to leave the trail. He roamed the desert until he reached a weather-split and creviced pile of rock. He waited until the sun began to sink; soon as he had expected, a sidewinder crawled out of a crack and twisted across the sand.

  Fargo lanced it behind the head. When it had stopped writhing at last, he broke an empty bottle and used a sharp splinter of glass to skin it, more or less. Then, with one of his remaining matches, he built a smokeless fire of dried sage and ocotillo behind the rock pile. The cooked snake meat tasted like chicken. It was not the first time he had eaten it.

  Strengthened, he went on, but more cautiously now, and keeping closer to cover. The Frost he followed could not be far ahead. When he camped for the night, Fargo could overtake him.

  As he slogged across the desert, an occasional kit fox broke cover, dashed away. He saw jerboa kangaroo rats, scampering and jumping in the moonlight. They were tasty; the Indians considered them delicacies, but he had no time to hunt them. All he wanted now was to catch up with the Frost.

  The moon was high, the trail fresh. Ahead, the desert crested into a sudden wave of rock-strewn ground, a high ridge, thrown up like an ocean breaker. Fargo pulled back into the shelter of a rock burst. He knew, somehow, that over that ridge was the man he sought.

  And he knew, too, that everything, including life itself, depended on his playing this exactly right.

  His whole being cried out for vengeance; he wanted to charge down there with his lance, spear the Frost; whichever one it was. But that man had guns and knew how to use them; and he was whole, uninjured, and strong. Fargo was sick with the pain of broken ribs, cut mouth, raw feet and blistered shoulders, weak from injury and lack of proper food. In hand to hand combat, he would not stand a chance against any Frost.

  All he had was time.

  He used it to work forward, up the slope, crawling on his belly the last sixty yards. He reached the ridge, his body studded with cactus thorns and scraped by flint. Then he peered down into the hollow beyond.

  Embers of a fire made a sullen red glow. A man sat cross-legged before them, and, as Fargo watched, heaped on more brush. In the up-flickering light, Fargo saw the black mustache and knew that this was Dorsey. Behind him was spread a bedroll with a saddle ready to be used as a pillow. Beyond, a picketed horse and Fargo’s mule nibbled listlessly at the scant fodder.

  While the fire flamed, Dorsey stood up, yawned, stretched, looked around. He unbuckled his gunbelt, coiled it beside the saddle with the butt of his weapon where it would be within easy reach. He took off his spurs. Then, without removing any other clothes, he lay down, wrapped the blankets around himself.

  Fargo waited with the patience of an animal wholly concentrating on its prey. The Frosts were animals themselves and used to being hunted, and it was not likely that Dorsey would be easy to take, even in sleep. Fargo had to give him at least an hour, let him settle into the deep unconsciousness that comes with first rest.

  Minutes passed slowly. Fargo watched the moon, the stars; exhausted as he was himself, he had no difficulty in keeping awake throughout that long watch. Every nerve, every muscle, was keyed up; his whole life hung on the proper carrying out of this attack.

  After an hour he was certain that Dorsey was as sound asleep as he would ever be this side of death. Fargo tested the wi
nd, making sure it blew from the horse and mule toward him. He clutched the lance and held it ready, arose from cover, and, as soundlessly as a shadow, worked his way down the slope.

  Dorsey did not stir. Fargo was thirty feet away from him when the wind shifted.

  Suddenly it struck him from the back, carrying his scent toward the animals. Immediately recognizing it, the mule lifted his head, pricked his ears, then shattered the silence with a loud bray of greeting.

  ~*~

  At the animal’s first raucous sound, Dorsey Frost came awake like a great cat, hand reaching out and jerking the sixgun from leather even before his eyes opened.

  Fargo gathered all the strength he had left and pounced.

  Frost saw the silhouetted figure lunging at him with the lance. His eyes widened and instinctively he rolled aside. Fargo’s thrust with the spear missed, the nail ramming into blankets inches away from Dorsey’s body. Then Dorsey’s gun blared. Its yard-long streak of flame seared Fargo’s flank as he whirled, kicked out, aiming his boot for Dorsey’s chin.

  The boot missed, struck Frost’s gun hand instead. The Colt went spinning off into darkness, and Dorsey grunted something as Fargo brought up the lance again. But the blankets came with it, entangled on the point, and Dorsey somersaulted back. Then he was on his feet and something glittered in his hand as he fell into a crouch; and Fargo recognized the long, thin blade of his own knife.

  “You,” Dorsey whispered. There was awe and terror on his face, as if he had seen a ghost. He lunged at Fargo.

  Fargo spun awkwardly aside, tugging furiously at the lance, and the blankets fell away. Dorsey missed; his rush carried him into full firelight and he whirled, dropping into that crouch again. His eyes went from Fargo’s face to the improvised spear, and suddenly the snaggled teeth beneath the mustache showed in a grin. “I don’t know how you’re still alive,” he husked, “but you won’t be long.” He came in, then, slowly, cautiously, and Fargo could tell by stance and balance that he was a master knife-fighter.