by John Benteen
Then he had spared the stallion all the time he could; he and Braga mounted. They loped for a while; then Fargo put the horse back into a dead run.
Any ordinary animal, corral-kept and grain-fed, would have been dead beat long before, but Cimarron kept on, galloping steadily through the night. Another half hour, and he had to be rested again; and that was the pattern that was followed for hours as he carried them across the rolling, night-shrouded range. They met no riders; the only alarms were a few cattle roused from bed ground, snorting as they dashed away into darkness, frightened. They were not like the fighting bulls; most of them were Shorthorns imported by Hierro to breed up his stock, square-built and fat. A lot of beef, Fargo thought; a lot of beef for German soldiers. No wonder von Stahl wanted this estancia.
Presently they struck a road. Fargo let Cimarron travel only a short distance on it; then, begrudging the loss of time, swung him in a circle. This was undoubtedly the main track to headquarters; if there were guards out, they’d be here; and he had no time to deal with them, could take no chances of alarm being given.
A few minutes more and the stallion was trembling with fatigue, gait faltering. Now he had to rest again; that made, Fargo calculated, a good hour and a half the strain of carrying the double load had cost them. But there was no help for it; and he swung down once more. As he stood beside the horse’s head, he tensed, then swore softly. From the distance came a thin, reedy sound—the crowing of a single rooster. The estancia was not far off, now; but neither was dawn.
And yet, he could not travel on. Not until Cimarron had regained some tatter of strength. Another fifteen minutes passed before the horse raised its head. Fargo motioned Braga into the saddle, seized a stirrup, and as the stallion struck off at a lope, ran alongside, his own long strides swift and steady, like the gait of a hunting wolf. He kept that up for over a mile, to give Cimarron extra respite; then there was no more time to lose, not a second of it, and he mounted again and put the big horse once more into a dead run.
He squinted at the sky; it seemed to him that it was lightening slightly. In this latitude, at this season, dawn came early, and gauchos were up before daylight. Christ! he thought. We’re cutting it right down to a hair!
Then he hauled back on the reins. Ahead, a high rise of ground loomed against the sky. From behind that ridge, the crowing of roosters was loud, immediate. Fargo jumped down, passed the reins to Braga, ran swiftly up the hill, threw himself to the ground just behind the crest, and stared down the slope.
Below him, all too clearly revealed as darkness definitely began to ebb, the estancia still slept.
Most Argentine ranchers, because of close links to Europe, built the mansions on their estancias in styles copied after French chalets, or English manor houses. Hierro’s links, though, were with Mexico and Spain, and the sprawling casa below, of stuccoed adobe, roofed with red tile, was almost exactly like that of Don Augustin’s place in Sonora, lacking only the fortress like wall that had encircled that holding. One break, anyhow, Fargo thought, sizing up the layout.
The roosters kept on crowing, plenty of them now. He could clearly see what lay below: beyond the house itself were stables, corrals, outbuildings, and a ring like the tienta ring on Don Augustin’s ranch, for trying out the fighting animals. But between the house and the spot where Fargo lay, there was a village: twenty or thirty mud huts to house the gauchos who worked the ranch. They would be, Fargo thought, full of von Stahl’s gunmen—and to get to the main house itself, he and Theo would have to pass through that village. There was no time left to circle it.
Fargo hesitated, thinking hard, squinting at the sky. At any time, now, that place down there might come alive. But, he decided that was a risk they had to take; it was now or never. The death of Braga’s pinto had been bad luck; now, if they just had a touch of good to offset it—
He scrambled back down the hill. “No lights burning anywhere down there yet,” he whispered to Theo. “We’ve got to chance it. The only question is, how to get in the house ...”
“No problem,” Braga answered. “In this country, doors are never locked. Unless the German observes different customs...”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t,” Fargo said. “Well, let’s go.”
Despite the nearness of the thing, maybe because of it, he felt a savage, heady kind of joy as he swung into the saddle, touched Cimarron with spurs. They crested the hill; then Fargo, as soon as they were off the skyline, reined the big horse to a walk, lest the pound of his hooves give them away.
Now the light was growing, darkness lifting from the plains. Still, no lamps burned in the village. Cimarron fought the bit a little, as Fargo kept him at a slow plod around the back of the settlement and then up its side, his head turning constantly, seeking any motion, any sign of life or wakefulness, his shotgun up.
Now they were almost past the scattering of huts. A hundred yards of open ground and they would be near the rear of the casa grande, the big house. There a courtyard, with flagstone patio, was screened with heavy shrubbery and the wings of the building. If they could gain the safety of that, and if the back door of the casa were not locked—
Fargo almost began to think they would make it. But just as they passed the last hut at the corner of the village, the delays of riding double betrayed them. Fifteen minutes earlier, and the man who came groggily out of the hut’s door, hair tousled and hands unfastening his pants would still have been asleep in there.
As it was, he stood, staring blankly at the spectacle of two men riding double on a huge, steel-colored horse, one of them carrying a double-barreled shotgun, the other armed with a carbine-stocked Mauser and both strangers. There was an interval of five seconds, possibly, during which his sleep-fogged senses tried to cope with this; and his slowness of thought cost him his life.
Braga saw him, aimed the Mauser and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report seemed thunderous in the silent dawn.
The man screamed, pitched back through the doorway. Another scream, a woman’s, came from inside.
Fargo cursed. Now the game was up. But there was no help for it; they were in the soup, had to fight their way out as best they could. He slammed spurs into Cimarron’s flanks; the stallion pounded across the open space in seconds, broke through the shrubbery around the patio. Fargo left the saddle, even as a chorus of surprised yells came now from the village, ran to the metal-strapped back door of mahogany, seized its handle, leaned against it.
Braga had been right; it gave promptly under his weight. Meanwhile, men were swarming out of the village. “Come on!” Fargo snapped.
“Cimarron,” Braga answered, hesitating.
“Let ’im go!” Fargo whirled, shotgun up, found himself in what was obviously a kitchen. It was dark, deserted. He heard Braga slap the horse hard, heard Cimarron snort; then there was the pound of hoof beats. With Fargo’s rifle, drawn from the saddle-scabbard, in one hand, the Mauser in the other, Braga ran into the kitchen. Once he was inside, Fargo slammed the door and locked it.
Now success or failure was a matter of seconds. Somewhere in here was von Stahl; they had to find him and find him fast and take him before he came awake, responded to the alarm of shot and shouting. Besides, men would be coming in through other doors. Fargo ran out of the kitchen, into a corridor. It was long, dark, deserted; ahead, it spread out into a vast main sala, or room; beyond that was a foyer, and the front door. There was a bar on it, he saw, but it was not in place. He ran to it, slammed it shut, whirled. Leading up was a flight of stairs, von Stahl would be up there somewhere on the second floor.
Fargo took the stairs three at a time, Braga behind him. Men were pounding on back and front doors, now, and shouting loudly. As Fargo gained the upstairs landing, a lamp spilled light into a corridor through an open door. Fargo ran toward it, shotgun leveled, ready. A figure appeared in the doorway, and his fingers tightened on the triggers. Then he halted, staring; there was no mistaking the silhouetted shape, all curves and sle
nderness beneath the transparent gown; it was a girl. He swore, eased off on the Fox’s triggers just in time. “Carla,” he rasped. “Carla Hierro?”
Her eyes widened. “Yes. But—”
“Don’t move, Mr. Fargo,” a voice said then, from behind her. “Don’t move an inch, and drop your weapons. Believe me, if you do not, the girl is dead.”
And now, behind the body of Carla Hierro, another shape appeared and this one was tall and wide-shouldered, lamplight glinting on blond hair. Its left arm went out, clamped around Carla Hierro’s throat, and Fargo, from the angle at which he stood, could see the pistol, a Luger, thrust into her back.
He sucked in a long breath. Behind him, Braga had halted indecisively. Below, men kept pounding at the outside doors. Fargo looked into a pair of the iciest blue eyes he had ever seen, staring unwaveringly back at him across the top of the girl’s head. He saw the panic in her face as the strong, bare arm choked off sound; and, in that instant, he knew that he had failed; that he had not overcome the current of bad luck running against him. Then, down the hall, other doors swung open.
“I said, drop your guns,” Wilhelm von Stahl, thrusting the Luger harder against Carla’s back, rasped. “You see? You are, in any event, trapped, you and your friend. I had not anticipated that you would get through my men at Rio Carmen, but having heard so much about you, I knew at once when the alarm broke out that it must be you and that you had come for the girl. Unless you drop your guns, the only way you will take her back is dead. But, then, you will be dead yourself—” And his head turned slightly and Fargo followed the direction of his eyes.
A half dozen armed men had emerged from those opening doors, stood there in the hall with guns trained on Fargo. The man in their lead, with a shotgun of his own leveled from the hip at Fargo wore the tight, black clothes of a compadrito of Buenos Aires, a young tough. And his face was still raw and gruesome with the scabbed-over cuts made by the gun sight when Fargo had pistol-whipped him; his nose was a bulbous, swollen parody.
“Jorge will not hesitate to shoot,” said von Stahl. His face was in the clear, now, as he shifted position slightly. It was a face of startling handsomeness, smiling, almost pleasant. It was, also, Fargo recognized, the countenance of a professional fighting man with every quality of mercy long since burnt out of it. He would, if he had to, kill the girl, all right.
And so they had him. He could go down fighting; but that would sign Carla Hierro’s death warrant, Theo’s, as well as his own. Fargo let out a long breath.
Luck—and something else. More than the wind had carried news of his coming to Wilhelm von Stahl, had told the German what sort of man he was, had prepared him in advance for this assault. Slowly Fargo lowered the shotgun. Dead, he was not worth a damn to anyone. As long as his heart beat, there was a chance, but corpses had no chance.
“All right, von Stahl,” he said quietly. “I surrender. Theo! Throw down your guns!”
The gaucho squawked a protest.
Fargo opened the shotgun, let the shells eject. He laid it on the floor. “I said,” he rasped, “put down your guns!” Now he was unfastening the belt that held the Colt.
Jorge, grinning twistedly, strode down the hall, the guard of men behind him. “Very well, my friend. We meet again.” He held the shotgun in his left hand; the right wrist was in a sling. “I have many debts to pay you.” He jerked his head as Fargo let the pistol drop. “Now, that knife in your hip pocket.”
The Batangas knife followed. Fargo stood there unarmed, helpless, as Jorge knocked the weapons away with a kick of his booted foot. Braga, muttering, had followed suit and put the Mauser and the Winchester on the floor. Men passed Fargo, went to him, surrounding him and taking up the guns.
When they were disarmed, von Stahl stepped around the girl. He was naked to the waist, his only garment a pair of riding breeches into which he had obviously hastily stepped. Facing Fargo, he was just as tall, just as wide in the shoulder, deep in the chest. A ridged scar on either cheek—saber scars, Fargo guessed, remembering Pamela’s description and what he knew about German noblemen—accentuated rather than marred his good looks. His voice was soft, his English unaccented.
“You might have got away with it if you had come a half hour earlier. I brought guards into the house only as a precaution; we did not really think you and one other man could shoot your way through ten of my toughest gauchos. And if you had come earlier, perhaps you would have caught us all asleep, taken me in bed with my querida here.” He grinned mockingly at Carla Hierro. She turned her head away. For the first time, Fargo got a good look at her. She was strikingly beautiful, about twenty-one, hair black as jet, loosened and falling over her shoulders all the way down to rounded breasts, the nipples of which glinted dully through the transparent nightdress. Her eyes were huge and dark, circled with fatigue, her skin like ivory, her mouth red, but with a bitterness, a kind of despair, in its set.
“Anyhow, you did not make it in time. And so, sooner or later, you’ll die. But, in the meanwhile, there are questions I must ask you. Jorge, tie him up.”
Jorge’s face was a crusted mask; the gunwhipping had robbed him permanently of his good looks. His mouth warped in a vicious grin. “Don’t worry, Jefe. I’ll take care of him.” Then his eyes glittered. “This time, Fargo, it’s your turn!” And suddenly he raised the shotgun and swung it hard, and its barrels slammed against Fargo’s temple, and in that instant, the world exploded, and Fargo fell into darkness.
Chapter Seven
The sound was like the yowling of a lost soul in hell, and it went on and on. At first it seemed to come from a great distance; then, as Fargo’s head cleared a little, it was nearer, a terrible undulating wail beginning low, like a rumble, shrilling to a quavering scream, then dying away in deep, throaty sobs—the bellow of an enraged bull.
He lay listening to it for a long time, not daring to open his eyes, the pain in his head almost unbearable, made worse by that hideous sound. Each bellow seemed to shake his skull, send waves of agony lancing through his brain.
Then, a little, the pain abated. Gingerly, he peeled back his eyelids. The first touch of light hurt, and he closed them again. A moment later, he tried once more. This time, it was better. He found himself looking up at a ceiling beamed with thick wood, and it was mid-morning. He was on a bed. When he tried to move, he found that his hands were tied together, his feet bound.
Then a voice said, mockingly, “So, you’ve had your sleep out, eh?”
A face loomed over him, the badly chopped one of Jorge, with hatred glittering in its eyes. He held a pistol in his left hand, a Colt Peacemaker with its hammer cocked. He lowered the barrel slowly and with relish and pressed the muzzle squarely between Fargo’s eyes. “Do you know,” he asked in a soft, gloating voice, “how little pressure it would take to pull this trigger and send your skull flying into little pieces, plaster this room with your brain? Do you know that only a quarter of an ounce more, a second more, and there will be nothing left of you above the eyes?”
Fargo stared down the barrel of that Colt, saw the finger curled around the trigger, saw it tighten. He lay stiffly, stomach knotted. Then, just as he would have sworn the gun had to fire, it swung away from him. Jorge laughed and eased down the hammer.
“But that would be so quick and easy and so painless. And you are not to die like that, the jefe has promised me. When he’s through questioning you, you’re mine.” Jorge touched his swollen nose, his face crisscrossed with cuts. Then he looked away, toward a window, toward the source of that bellowing. “I have a much more interesting death in mind for you.”
He pouched the gun, whipped a knife from his belt. Fargo tensed, but the blade slashed the bindings of his ankles. Jorge stepped back, picked up Fargo’s own Fox with his left hand, and leveled it. “Up, hombre. Señor von Stahl wants to see you downstairs.”
Under the threat of the twin muzzles, Fargo raised himself to a sitting position. Waves of pain lanced through his head. “How long have
I been out?”
“I struck you harder than I meant to. Von Stahl was angry with me for that. You’ve been out a full day—twenty-four hours.”
“Damn,” Fargo grunted. He got to his feet, stood there dizzily. Then the pain ebbed; his whipcord toughness conquered it and he was in possession of himself again. Not that, under those double muzzles, knowing all too well that there was no escape from them, that did him any good.
“Move,” Jorge said. Fargo went a little unsteadily out the door of the upstairs bedroom, down the hall to the stairs, with Jorge behind at exactly the right interval, close enough to shoot, not so close that Fargo could whirl and knock the gun away. Jorge knew his business all right, Fargo thought …
He made it down the stairs, and his legs were steadier by the time he reached the bottom. Jorge gestured to double doors leading off the main sala. They led into what must have been Hierro’s office and now was von Stahl’s. When they swung open, they revealed the German behind a huge desk, his feet, in polished riding boots, propped up. He was sipping mate, the spicy herbal tea of the Argentine, from a gourd with a metal straw in it.
When he saw Fargo, he swung down his feet, stood up. “Ah, good morning, Herr Fargo. I trust you had a pleasant rest?”
Fargo did not answer.
On the wall behind von Stahl was a pair of cavalry sabers, blades crossed. Without looking, the German reached up, took one down, whipped the air with it. Its sharply honed edge glittered as it slashed back and forth. Then von Stahl lowered it. “You may leave us, Jorge.”
“Patron, I should stay, with my gun—”
Von Stahl’s handsome face darkened. “You idiot. I have my Luger, I have this—” he whipped the saber again “—and his hands are tied. I said leave. I want to question him in private!”
“Si,” Jorge nodded reluctantly, went out, closing the door behind him.
Von Stahl raised the saber again. “I meant it, Fargo. I am an expert with this; it is my favorite weapon. Years at Heidelberg, where I was always first with it; then more years in the Army, the Prussian cavalry. In that organization, a man truly learns to use this sword. One false move and I can slice your head from your neck so fast you’ll not even know it’s gone. Until—” he grinned “—you sneeze.”
