by John Benteen
Fargo went to Argentina for two reasons. The first was money – $20,000 – because he never sells his gun without getting paid in advance. Professional interest was the second reason; in his time, Fargo had picked up the tricks of his deadly trade by fighting Apaches, comancheros, Philippine insurectos, among others, but he had never tangled with a bunch of bandit gauchos, the meanest breed of men in South America. This particular gang was threatening the richest breeder of prize black bulls south of the Rio Grande. Fargo’s job was to put them to bed with a shovel. A lot of good men had died trying, but Fargo was better than good. He was the best corpse-maker in the business.
THE BLACK BULLS
FARGO 10
By John Benteen
First published by Belmont Tower in 1971
Copyright © 1971, 2015 by Benjamin L. Haas
First Smashwords Edition: December 2015
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
The cow was about two years old, coal black, and with only one thing on her mind—killing. When the toril gate was open, she loped into the small ring, halted, head raised, nostrils flaring. Sharp horns, black-tipped, glinted in the morning sun of Sonora. Fargo sat the fine chestnut horse tensely, watching her, waiting for her to spot him. Those horns were not fully-grown yet, but they could deal plenty of damage.
He was a big man, wide in the shoulders, trim in the hips, long-legged, and an expert horseman, like a centaur in the heavy Mexican saddle. An old cavalry campaign hat dating from the Spanish-American War, nearly twenty years before this morning in late 1917, was tipped back on close-cropped hair. Although he was still a few years shy of forty, his hair had gone prematurely snow-white. The gray eyes that narrowed as they watched the cow were set in a weathered face of brutal ugliness, a countenance so unlike that of any ordinary man that women were drawn to it in spite of themselves and men who understood violence were soft-spoken and cautious in the presence of its owner. For this Sunday morning’s tienta, or testing of the fighting stock, on the ranch of the famous breeder of bulls, Don Augustin Hierro y Rojas, he wore, except for the cavalry hat, the garb of a Mexican charro, or gentleman cowboy. Not the ornate suit of braid and black velvet, but the uniform charros favored when demonstrating their skills as vaqueros: white silken neckerchief tied around the throat, white shirt, wingless leather chaps. He had on his own cavalry boots, and big-roweled spurs of the sort the superb horse on which he was mounted understood, as well as, of course, gunbelt and holstered pistol, without which no charro appeared in public. The only item not typically worn by charros was his old cavalry hat.
The horse beneath him was hot-blooded, Spanish, instantly responsive to the slightest pressure of spade bit or Fargo’s knees. It was used to this sort of work in the homemade bullring on Don Augustin’s ganaderla, the ranch on which the Mexican nobleman bred and raised fighting bulls for the rings in Juarez and Mexico City and for export to Madrid and Barcelona. He too watched carefully the young, black cow, understanding what would be demanded of it when the animal charged.
Then, catching scent and following that up with near-sighted eyes, the heifer lowered her head and rushed at Fargo.
He kept the horse tight-reined as the black-tipped horns menaced it, the young cow coming fast. He lowered the blunt-headed pica, braced it, waiting. At the last second, as the cow was about to slam, ripping, into the horse’s belly, he touched the reins with backward pressure, rippled his spurs along the animal’s flank. It reared and wheeled, and the black cow rushed by—but not before Fargo had punched its withers with the point of the long lance, to rouse it to greater fury.
The cow was fast; snorting, as she missed the horse by inches, she skidded to a halt, dust swirling. Turned on a dime, shook her horns, came plunging back. Fargo grinned. When the cow slid past a second time, he gave it another sharp jab with the pica. Undaunted, the animal whirled, charged again.
Fargo let go the reins; the horse knew its business and, like a good cutting horse from north of the border, could be counted on to do its work without guidance from its rider. All he had to do was stay in the saddle while it reared and shifted, and use the lance.
The cow came again and again; the horse anticipated every move, swerved and dodged. Fargo used the lance over and over and still the cow came after him. From the fence of the ring, Don Augustin’s deep voice rang out: “Ole! Ole!” Fargo knew the cheering was not for him, but for the bravery of the cow, which was the breeder of bulls’ stock in trade. The sire, it was said, gave the fighting bull its size and strength, but the dauntless heart must come from the mother. This cow, testing well, would live to bear many male calves that would find their ways to the bullrings of the Spanish-speaking world.
Then Fargo had used the lance enough. He put the horse up to the seats on the ring’s fence, where Don Augustin and his vaqueros sat to watch the show. “The capote,” Fargo said, dismounting.
Don Augustin grinned, passed him the magenta cape. Fargo swung down off the horse. The cow was across the ring, head down, pawing dirt. Fargo moved toward it. Compared to a fighting bull, the cow was small; yet, those horns were sharp. If he miscalculated, they could open him up, kill or cripple him.
He moved into the cow’s line of vision, cape held out in the complicated two-handed grip necessary to execute veronicas. “Eje!” he called. “Eje!” He held the cloth before his chest. The cow charged.
As she did so, Fargo’s feet moved into position, balanced. He stood his ground, swung out his right arm; following the cape, the cow rushed past, horn tip not more than six inches from Fargo’s body. She skidded to a halt, pawed the earth once more, came again. Once more Fargo passed her at close quarters. She turned sharply, horns lashing, came back again and again, and each time he used the cape to let her by, close to his body. Then she had been tested enough. From the seats, the onlookers were bellowing “Ole!” again. But this time it was in admiration of Fargo’s footwork.
The cow, flanks heaving, stood on the far side of the ring, saliva trailing in long strings from nose and mouth. Fargo coolly turned his back on her, walked toward the seats. A shout went up; he turned almost leisurely. She was coming again. He got the cape into position, caught her attention with it, pivoted his body, let her slash past, tossing the cloth. This time, weary, she plowed to her knees, scrambled up a bit more slowly. Fargo ran to the horse, swung into the saddle, tossed the cape to the rancher. Then, unlashing the riata from the saddle horn, he expertly worked the tired young cow out of the ring with a rope’s end, chasing her into a corral. He whirled the horse, brought it back at a dead run toward the seats; then, with only minimal pressure, checked it at the last minute, charro style, and, in response to the big bit’s pressure on its palate, it skidded to a halt just before it collided with the wall. Fargo swung out of the saddle and climbed to the bench where Don Augustin sat. “A brave cow,” he said in Spanish. “Very brave. She will drop many fine fighting bulls.”
“Si.” The ranchero looked at him a moment. Don August
in was in his early sixties, wearing the dress clothes of the charro—huge white sombrero, blue braided jacket, sash, gunbelt and pistol, tight blue pants and boots. “Fargo, amigo mio, you have missed your calling. You should be a matador. Or a rejoneador.” This last was a man who fought bulls and killed them with a short lance from horseback.
Fargo grinned, revealing strong, white teeth. He took out a thin black cigar, clamped it between them, lit it. “No, thanks. I like staying alive. I can fight an ignorant young cow like that, but I’m not fool enough to take on a full-grown bull.”
Don Augustin’s weathered, handsome face was expressionless, but there was something significant in his dark eyes. “You have fought things more dangerous in your time. Fargo, I think it is time we talked. Let us leave the tienta to the others, while we go inside and I tell you why I have asked you to Sonora.”
“All right,” said Fargo. He tipped back his hat, climbed down off the bench. Tethered horses were waiting outside the ring; he mounted one and Don Augustin the other and they cantered off toward the huge adobe ranch house three hundred yards away.
Although it had been hot in the bullring, it was cool in the rancher’s office, where they were sheltered by thicknesses of mud and stucco. Don Augustin, nearly as tall as Fargo, but moving with the stiffness of age, went to a cabinet, brought out tequila, glasses, lime and salt. When they were seated at the heavy table, with the first drink burning in their bellies, the bull-breeder lit a cigarillo.
“The Revolution has ended,” he said.
Fargo nodded.
“For seven years,” Don Augustin Hierro y Rojas went on, “Mexico has been torn by battle. Carranzo, Villa, Obregon, Zapata: violent factions contending. Now, however, the war is over, the usurpers of Madero’s government overthrown; and I think from now on, we shall have peace.”
“Maybe,” Fargo said.
“You have made a lot of money out of the Revolution,” Hierro said. “Everywhere, one has heard of Neal Fargo, who ran guns across the border to Villa when no one else could get them through. Neal Fargo, whom they say is the best of the Anglo fighting men, one who has seen service in many wars, one who has hired out his guns to many factions. Who works for money, and who, once he has agreed to undertake a task, cannot be stopped in the execution of it.”
He paused, drank. “Doroteo Arango—or Francisco Villa as he is now known—and I have long been good friends. He served Madero; and Madero was like a brother to me. And you are like a brother to Pancho Villa and so I have heard much about you. I know, for instance, that you were born on a New Mexican ranch, that your parents were killed by Apaches while you were still a baby; that you were taken in by a couple on another ranch who wanted not a child, but a peon. That they treated you unmercifully and that at the age of twelve you ran away and never came back.”
He arose, went to the window, glass in hand. “Since then, you have been a vaquero, a logger in the big timber of the forests of the American Northwest; you have worked in the oil fields in Texas and Oklahoma; you fought professionally in the prize ring. You were in the Alaskan gold rush; you have been a professional gambler; once, they say, you were even a—what is the word in English?—a bouncer in a house of ill-repute in Baton Rouge; but that was when you had fallen on hard times. But your real profession is as a soldier and a fighting man.”
He turned, took his cigarillo from his mouth, blew a plume of smoke from a big, beaklike nose. “In the American war against Spain, you were in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After that, you served in the American cavalry in the Philippines, during the Insurrection there. For various reasons, stemming from the Spanish-American War, you had the complete confidence of Theodore Roosevelt, former Presidente of the United States; and often you were of service to him on secret missions which could only be carried out by a civilian. It is said you helped foment the revolution in Panama which gave the United States the opportunity to get the Canal Zone. You carried out other tasks more significant, or less. You have fought in a dozen small wars all up and down the continents of the Western Hemisphere, including our own Revolution. Sometimes you command troops as an officer. Sometimes you operate strictly on your own. Always, you fight for money. And—” He broke off, staring at Fargo with hard eyes. “And when you undertake a job, you will kill as many men as necessary to complete it.”
Fargo ground out his own cigar. “That’s about the size of it,” he said. “Your investigation has been complete.”
“Not entirely,” said Hierro. “Where did you learn to use a capote like that? To fight the cow?”
Fargo grinned. “A long time ago, when I was young and needed money badly, I talked a matador in Juarez into taking me in his crew. He was a damned good bullfighter. His only trouble was, he lost his nerve, had to drink too much to face the bulls. I had only worked for him for a couple of months before he went in the ring with too much tequila in him. He misjudged his animal, and he got a cornada—a wound—that killed him. By then, though, I had learned a certain amount from him.”
“Very much, to judge from your display a little while ago.” Don Augustin sat down again. “It is good that you understand the bulls. Only a man who did could carry out the job for which I hope I can hire you. It is one very difficult and very dangerous. But, if you bring it off, I am prepared to pay you twenty thousand American dollars and expenses.”
Fargo looked at him for a moment. Then he said, “For that kind of money I don’t care what it is. I’ll bring it off.” Then he took out another cigar. “What is it you want me to do?”
“I will tell you,” said Don Augustin; and he began to talk.
~*~
Six weeks later, Fargo got off a ship in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires. The capital of Argentina. Fargo saw immediately, as the horse-drawn hack took him to his hotel, that it was a hell of a city.
As the cab carried him down the Paseo Colon, he looked at the town with admiring eyes. The streets were paved with asphalt; the Plaza de Mayo was magnificently landscaped, and not even Paris could be more beautiful. Buenos Aires was called the Paris of South America, and, Fargo thought, it was probably the only Paris he would ever see. He had volunteered for the American Army as soon as war had been declared, but not even Teddy Roosevelt’s influence could get him in. He had too many old wounds; Army doctors had declared him unfit for service. No matter that fighting had been his trade for more than twenty years; no matter that his gun hand and aiming eye were shatteringly swift and accurate; no matter that he had commanded more troops in battle than most generals who would be sent to the Western Front. They had their rules, and they followed them; Fargo had given up. Anyhow, there was still enough fighting going on elsewhere to keep him busy …
As the hack clopped along Fargo’s mind ran back to his conversation with Don Augustin in Sonora.
“The Hierro bulls,” the old hidalgo had said, “were original stock brought from Spain by my great-great grandfather when he received his land grant in Sonora from the King. Since then we have preserved the strain carefully and zealously. Ay, de Dios, Fargo, not even the great Miuras are the equal of the Hierros in the bullring. For two hundred years we have cultivated our herd. Each bull is bred for the greatest fighting qualities in the ring. Our breeding stock is totally our own, unique to the Hierro family. Hierro, as you know, means iron, and our bulls, like our men, are of iron.”
“I am familiar with your bulls,” Fargo said, taking a drink of tequila and licking salt.
“You understand then why, when the Revolution broke out in full force after the assassination of Madero by Huerta, it seemed necessary to ship most of my breeding stock, my best cows and finest bulls, out of the war zone. Otherwise, they would have been slaughtered for beef for the various armies.”
He gestured toward the window. “The cow you fought a while ago was only a cull from my main herd. A true Hierro heifer would have made her seem a rabbit. The Hierro fighting cattle are the fiercest animals that ever walked the bullrings of Mexico or Spain.”
“I’ve heard that said.”
Don Augustin nodded. “When the Revolution began, it was immediately apparent that my main ganado, my prize breeding stock, must be sent elsewhere for safekeeping; otherwise, it would have been destroyed. Thus, when war broke out, I shipped my best cows and bulls to Argentina, where my cousin Caesar has an estancia, a huge ranch on the pampa. He swore that he and his gauchos would guard them with their lives. And my daughter—”
“Your daughter?”
“Carla, my only child. She, too, was sent to Caesar’s estancia for safety; Sonora has not been a safe place for either young girls or cattle in the past few years.”
“I see. And where do I come in?”
Augustin’s face went grim. “Something has happened in Argentina, and I am not certain what. For three months there has been no word from my cousin or my daughter. Sixty days ago, however, I sent two of my best men, Antonio Vega and Ricardo Mansilla, both seasoned vaqueros, handlers of the bulls, and fighting men, to Argentina to investigate and to bring back Carla and my herd. They were under strict orders to write me regularly, and so they did for the first week they were in Argentina. A gap of several days, and then one final letter … ” He drew a folded sheet of paper from his desk.
“This was mailed from a small town called Rio Carmen in La Pampa province of Argentina; it was the last communication I had from them. I shall read:
“Patron.
“Today Antonio and myself set out from this place for the estancia of Don Caesar, the situation of which we could learn nothing of in Buenos Aires or any other place. We had ridden only thirty kilometers when we encountered a large band of gauchos who inquired of us where we were going. When informed that we had business with Don Caesar Hierro, they told us in no uncertain terms that we were not to be allowed to pass, that they were Don Caesar’s riders and that no strangers were allowed on Estancia Hierro. We presented documents from you, but they were firm, and they were too many for us to fight our way through. So we have returned to Rio Carmen, and from this place will make another attempt, this time by night. It is plain that something is very wrong at Estancia Hierro, but what we do not know. We shall, however, carry out our mission or lay down our lives in the attempt.
