by John Benteen
Fargo backed away, the lance raised and out. He had to be careful, very careful. The lance gave him reach, but there was danger even in that. In physical strength he would be no match for Dorsey right now. If Frost could grab the lance, he could pull it out of Fargo’s grasp, then cut Fargo to ribbons at his leisure. Fargo had to wait until he had a sure thrust, one Dorsey could not block.
They circled the fire, Dorsey crouched, confident, the knife out and menacing, Fargo fending him with quick, short jabs of the lance head, none quite long enough to give Dorsey a chance to seize the broom handle. Dorsey was quick on his feet; Fargo’s feet were raw and blistered, and he was hampered by the slitted, ill-fitting boots. All the odds, he knew, were on Frost’s side, and he could not afford a single mistake.
“I tole that damn Clint to make sure of you.” Dorsey’s voice was a hoarse rasp as they circled. “But he don’t listen to nobody. The sonofabitch thinks he’s goddelmighty! I tole him to kill that girl, too, but him and Roy and Chad warn’t through with her.” He moved forward subtly, eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Well, let the three of ’em ride into Vegas with her. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with a woman that can squeal to the law. I got my own gold; I can buy my own woman—when I git through with you!” And suddenly, swift as a rattler, he lunged, right hand slashing with the knife, left outflung to fend and seize the lance.
Now Fargo had his opening, his one chance. He shifted weight in that fraction of a second, threw the lance from right hand to his left before Dorsey’s arm could hit it. Simultaneously, he dropped to his knees, braced the end of the broom handle on the ground.
And Dorsey, surprised by the weapon’s shift, ran full into the four inches of outthrust nail. It caught him just above the navel, and his lunging weight bowed, then broke the broom handle.
He staggered back, the length of stick dangling, bobbing from his belly, stared down at the spike that pierced him. His eyes widened, his mouth twisted. He seized the stick, pulled it out, and when it came free he screamed with pain, and blood gushed down his shirt and crotch. “You bastard!” he howled, “you gut-stuck me!”
Then he lunged at Fargo with the knife.
But now the odds were shortened; Dorsey had a wound that would kill him slowly, and he was in shock. There was no speed, only a clumsy hacking, and Fargo eluded the blade easily, clamped Dorsey’s wrist with both hands, twisted. The knife dropped. Fargo let go of Dorsey and the dying man staggered on past him; Fargo’s hands closed around the double hilt of the weapon, and he came up crouching, went at Dorsey. Dorsey saw him coming, read his doom, put up both hands to fend it off, his eyes huge, despairing, his mouth opened to howl.
Fargo grinned and struck him low, just above the belt buckle, rammed in the full ten inches, twisted. Dorsey screamed, pushed at Fargo, fell backward free of the blade, landed hard at the rim of firelight. His knees drew up convulsively and he clasped both hands over the wound. He screamed again and kept on screaming.
Above him, Fargo stood with knife poised, almost struck again, then held his hand. His own eyes glittered like flakes of ice; a kind of madness possessed him. In that moment, that hideous sound was like the sweetest music.
“Oh, it hurts!” Dorsey cried, a curious bubbling in his voice. “My God, it hurts!”
Fargo laughed again, a wild, cold sound. “Good,” he whispered, and Dorsey screamed louder as Fargo took the man’s cold hands and dragged his body beyond the firelight.
“For God’s sake!” Dorsey blubbered. “I can’t stand this pain. Finish me, oh, finish me!”
Fargo stood over him. “No,” he said. “Not yet. That would be too easy. I figure it ought to take you about four hours to die. That ought to be just about right.” And he turned away.
The screaming went on, loud and hideous in the night. Coolly, Fargo went to the fire, lit a piece of brushwood. Holding it high as a torch, he searched until he found the gun he had kicked out of Dorsey’s hand. He thrust it in the scabbard, after replacing the fired round, belted it on. Dorsey kept on screaming. Fargo paid no attention. His face was like a mask, his eyes a little mad, his white teeth gleaming in a kind of snarl as, wholly unconcerned, he found a frying pan, bacon, beans, and cooked himself a meal.
He sat cross-legged on the blankets, ate with appetite, swilled half a gallon of strong coffee. The screams died away to a low, constant moaning. Fargo got the blankets the spear had tossed awry, arranged them in a bed.
The moaning continued. Fargo went to Dorsey, bent over him, the Batangas knife in hand. He found cigarettes in Dorsey’s shirt pocket, took them out, lit one, inhaled the smoke gratefully. “Fargo, please finish me. Oh, this is turrble. Please, please, finish me. Dorsey’s voice was a whisper of agony.
Fargo said, “I think your boots will fit me.” He sat down beside Dorsey and pulled them off. Dorsey howled with pain when that jarred his body.
“Yeah, they fit,” Fargo muttered, pulling them on. Then he stood up. “Well, Dorsey,” he said, “the Frosts made a mistake, didn’t they? And you’re paying for it. But don’t worry, you won’t be the only one.”
“Fargo, in the name of God—”
“I don’t think He’s paying us any attention,” Fargo said. “The girl, Dorsey. Is she all right?”
“I—” He broke off, moaning.
“Speak up,” Fargo snapped. “You tell me what I ask, maybe it’ll earn you a quick bullet.”
“She’s all right. Was … last time I saw her. Fargo, I jest... can’t stand—”
“Tell me.” His voice, inexorable, was like flint on flint.
“We took her with us, yeah. First night, we all worked … her over good. Then I wanted ... to kill her. She was slowin’ us down … But others still wanted her ... Clint, especially, he’s … hooked on her. We argued, I fought ’im, he whupped me... chased me outa camp...”
“Where they bound for?”
“Don’t know. Vegas first... then south, somewhur. Mexico, likely... Fargo, if you’re human—”
“Maybe I was, once,” Fargo said. “I don’t know. If I was, the last of it went away a couple of days ago. I don’t feel human, Dorsey. It pleasures me to hear you howl.”
“Oh, Fargo—”
“On the other hand, I’ve got to get some sleep.” Fargo pulled the Colt from holster, thumbed back its hammer. “So long, Dorsey,” he said. He aimed it and pulled its trigger. Instantly the moaning stopped.
Fargo went back to the fire, drank another cup of coffee, smoked another cigarette. He groped beneath the saddle, found there four bags of gold dust. He was no longer interested in the gold; it might have been only so much rock.
What he was interested in was vengeance.
He wrapped himself in blankets, pillowed his head on the saddle, and lay down to sleep, the sixgun clutched tightly in his hand, the Batangas knife in its sheath.
Chapter Six
True to their pack rat instinct, the Frosts had saved and divided up everything. When morning came, Fargo found in Dorsey’s gear his one spare shirt wadded up inside the old cavalry hat.
There was food, too, plenty of it, and a goatskin nearly full of water. After ten hours’ sleep, Fargo ate and drank heartily, paying no attention to what lay beyond the campsite, or the vultures already making dark flakes in the vast, blue, sun-dazzled sky above. Instead of feeling better, he felt worse, stiff and sore in every joint and muscle. That, though, would wear off once he had ridden for a while.
One word kept running through his mind as he loaded the mule. Vegas.
They would be there now.
Three of them against himself. Long odds.
Of course, he could always go to the law for help.
His mouth curled at that idea. No, the odds were about right. To hell with the law! He was going to kill the Frosts himself, and anyone who dared to help them, too. He itched to do it, yearned and craved to. The need for it was as strong within him as a drunkard’s need for whiskey. He was going on a spree, he vowed, of a different kind—a killin
g spree.
Wearing his spare shirt, the cavalry hat perched on the back of his head, Dorsey’s Colt on his hip, the Batangas knife in its case and Dorsey’s Bowie in his boot, he mounted up, took the mule’s lead rope, and struck out south.
~*~
Soon he cut their trail again.
It was older, now, and they were traveling faster, as if the decision had been made that they’d wasted too much time. He read the signs of four horses with riders, one of them carrying a lighter weight than the others, plus some led animals. After a while, far ahead, he saw vultures circling low. He made a wide swing, came up cautiously, his heart hammering. Suppose they had at last taken Dorsey’s advice, killed Sandy—?
What he found was dead burros. The animals had slowed the Frosts down too much. Rather than turn them loose to wander on their own, the brothers had killed them.
That was the way their minds worked. Fargo rode on with new urgency. When they were through with Sandy, they wouldn’t turn her loose, either.
The cracked ribs: every jounce of his loping mount sent waves of pain through him. But he pushed Dorsey’s short-coupled roan hard, covered a lot of desert, a lot of hills. The Frosts were still maintaining a constant distance ahead of him, maybe even gaining on him. They were riding around the clock, too, as if they were eager to reach civilization.
But, he thought, holding the horse to a gait he could endure, the Frosts had been out in the desert for a long time. Las Vegas would hold them up for awhile.
Then another thought struck him. They were thrifty people. Whatever they possessed they liked to turn into money. They possessed Sandy Steele, and there was a market for women in Las Vegas in the brothels frequented by cowmen and miners. That thought made it harder for him to keep the horse at a comfortable pace. But it would do neither her nor him any good for him to faint or weaken himself with pain now.
Two days later, with his water running low, he saw the thrust of Sheep Peak on his left, the humped range of the Spring Mountains on his right. Down there in the valley between was Las Vegas.
By now the stiffness and soreness was wholly gone from his whipcord body. The ribs still hurt—and they hurt plenty—but not nearly as much as before. Ahead, the trail of the Frosts was older now, but still plain. He pulled up the roan. He could even see where their spoor joined the wagon road that coiled between the ridges.
Now what he had to think about was how to take them.
He had weapons, true: Dorsey’s Colt, his own knife, the Bowie. But they had pistols and knives, too; and on top of that they had rifles, and they had his sawed-off Fox. He knew better than anyone else in the world how deadly a weapon that was.
If he rode in straight up, the moment they spotted him all three would be out with everything they had to get him.
Usually he was a man who played the odds. No real professional liked to go into battle with the odds on the other side. But, curiously, right now he did not give a damn about the odds. He took out his Colt, checked it, spun the cylinder. All he wanted was a chance to kill the Frosts. Let the three of them come against him, let them use their sixguns, knives, their rifles and his shotgun. Even so—he could feel it in his bones, a cold certainty—they would not stop him before he had killed them all.
The hell with it, he told himself, and spurred the roan and hit the Las Vegas road at a high lope.
The town was small, a scattering of painted houses on the desert, its only reason for existence its railroad junction. But there was grass and water, and the leaves of a few cottonwoods flickered in the breeze. The animals went eagerly down the slope;
Experimentally, he jabbed the horse with Dorsey’s spurs. It broke into a hard run, and though he felt pain, there was not too much of it. Yes. He was in shape to take them.
On the outskirts of Las Vegas, Fargo slowed. A main dusty street lined on either side with a few houses, some honky-tonks, the railroad station: that was about all the town consisted of. He loosened the gun in its holster as he entered the place, his eyes sweeping the plank sidewalks on either hand. He did not expect to see the Frosts out on them; but he thought he might see their horses.
His eyes caught none that he recognized. But the people on the street looked at him curiously, this tall man with a week’s silver-brown beard, coated from the peak of the campaign hat to the rowels of his spurs with alkali and desert dust.
Such men were not rare in Las Vegas, not even in 1915, but the look on his face, the way his hand dangled near his gun, was.
The Frosts, Fargo figured, would have hit here two days before; They would have been seen around town; so would Sandy. He had to ask; and the place to ask was the biggest saloon in Las Vegas. He spotted it ahead, the Nevadan. He put the roan up to the hitch rack, swung down, tied it and the mule. From Dorsey’s saddlebags, he took one poke of gold dust, slipped it inside his shirt.
The place was big, and, like most Nevada towns, it had gambling layouts in the rear that ran around the clock. The swinging doors clashed behind Fargo as he pushed through, hand near the Colt. His eyes searched the interior for members of the Frost family, saw none among the thin crowd here at this time of day. Then he went to the bar.
It was good to be out of the sun. “I want a beer,” Fargo said. “Cold as hell.”
“Right.” The bartender drew a schooner, shoved it at him. “That’ll be a dime.”
Fargo took the buckskin bag from his shirt. “Weigh that out, give me coin for it.”
The bartender’s eyes widened as he hefted the poke. “Yes, sir! I’d better let the manager do this.” He set down the bag, scuttled off.
Fargo sipped the beer. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. It sluiced away the alkali and trail dust and gradually sent little feathery messengers of relaxation along his taut nerves. His eyes kept on scanning the place. Then the manager was there.
“You got some dust to weigh out?” He was big with a thick layer of fat on his body. His eyes were keen, assessing Fargo as he lifted the bag, set up his scales.
“That’s right,” Fargo said.
Carefully, the man dumped the dust into a tray. “I guess you’re the one they were expectin’. They said you’d be along when you got over your mad.”
“Who said that?” Fargo asked casually.
“Them other three,” the man said. “Jesus, this comes to two thousand, nine hundred and forty dollars. I’ll have to dig to find that much gold coin.”
“I could take it to the bank, but then you wouldn’t make your two hundred dollars profit,” Fargo said.
The saloon manager goggled. “Two hundred? I only take two per cent.”
“Drag two hundred,” Fargo said. “That’s what I’m paying for information. You cashed some other pokes like this?”
“Three of ’em. It pushed me. I had to get the money from the bank. They said you’d be along later, that they had some kind of fight with you. That was day before yesterday. They gambled some, drank a lot.”
Fargo nodded. “That’s the way they are. They still around?” His eyes lanced past the gambling layout. Beyond it there was another wing of the building with a narrow corridor and a lot of doors on either side, like the hallway of a hotel. He knew what that was, a crib where the whores, at this time of morning, were still sound asleep. “They had a girl with them. I figured that they would—” But now the manager’s face had changed. “You ain’t their brother,” he said.
“No,” Fargo said “Take your two hundred and keep talking.”
“I don’t think I’d better talk to you.”
Fargo moved casually. When his hand came down on the bar again, the Colt was underneath it, aimed at the man’s chest.
“If I was you, I would,” he said quietly.
“Mister, you can’t—”
“I can pull this trigger. I’d rather not. I’d rather you made two hundred clear for waggin’ your tongue.”
The big man’s wise and knowing eyes searched his face. Then he said, softly: “Put that thing away. It
will only get you in trouble with the law. She was important to you, huh?”
“Yes,” Fargo said.
“Well, I didn’t deal with ’em. Everybody here in Las Vegas, we all book our girls through the same man. It’s bad medicine to try to bring in outside talent. I turned ’em down. I mean, she was just what the trade likes, only you can’t buck the outfit that already exists. So I said, no. You understand?”
“I understand,” Fargo said.
“So they gave up, rode on out. Took her with ’em.”
“All of ’em? All of ’em rode out?”
The man was silent.
Fargo said, “Talk.” He shifted the gun on the counter.
“Man, you can’t get away with that. We got law in this town. You shoot me, you’ll wind up in jail or six feet under.”
“A lot of good that’ll do you,” Fargo said. His finger curled around the trigger.
The manager licked his lips. “The way I understand it, they all rode out. But I’ve heard that one of ’em laid over at the road-ranch.”
“Which road-ranch?”
“Place called Eagle’s Wing, five miles south of town. Run by a man named Chelsea. He has a bar, keeps four or five women. They say—I don’t know, only heard—that two of ’em and the woman traveled on, one is laid up there. Spends money like water, that’s what’s got everybody talkin’.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know his name. The one without a beard.”
Fargo said, “Chad.”
“Huh?”
“Weigh up the goddamn gold,” Fargo said. “Take your drag and give me another drink. Whiskey, this time.”
~*~
He was in no hurry now. Not enough, anyhow, to begrudge himself the three stiff drinks, a bath and shave at the barber shop, and a visit to the doctor.
The doctor said, “Man, you ought to stay in bed for at least two weeks.”
“Can’t afford it,” Fargo said. “Wrap some tape around me and fix me up so the ribs’ll mend right.”
