by John Benteen
His mouth twisted in contempt. “The local sheriff wouldn’t serve it. Flat out refused to, said he wasn’t gittin’ mixed up with the Canfields. Said he’d never be able to bring Jess in without killin’ him, and if he did that, he’d have all the other Canfields after him and his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel. So he hollered for the Rangers.”
Penny looked toward the Rio. “We’d jest received orders to move our whole company down here to patrol the border. I couldn’t spare but one man—my best. I sent Bat Carson up there to serve the warrant. Moved the rest of the company down here. Word reached me through the Army weeks ago that some of Steed’s men found Bat dead outside of Black Canyon. He had been shot in the back with .44 rifle bullets; looked to the sheriff like loads for a Henry. I understand Jess Canfield carries a .44 Henry.”
“He does,” Fargo said.
Penny’s lean, beardy face was grim. “There is nothin’ I’d like better,” he said harshly, “than to take my whole company up there and wipe out that nest of hillbilly snakes, beginnin’ with Jess Canfield. But Austin won’t let me. They say I got to keep every man down here on the Rio until further notice. Meanwhile—well, Bat Carson was a man I have rode on many a scout with. Savin’ maybe you, I never had a better friend.”
“I’m beginnin’ to see,” said Fargo.
“Austin says they’ll send a man, some men, soon, when they’ve got some free. I don’t feel like waiting. I want Canfield’s hide and I want it now. I want you to get it for me.”
“I’m no law officer,” Fargo said.
“No. But you ain’t no outlaw, either, unless I bring you in this go-round. And—I’ve got another warrant for Jess Canfield down yonder in my saddlebags. With it in your possession, you could go up yonder and make a citizen’s arrest of Canfield.”
Fargo ground out his cigarette. He shook his head, trying to analyze this proposition. Never had he run into anything like this before.
“He wouldn’t come without some lead in him,” he said at last.
“That’s what I’m hopin’,” Penny said.
His voice roughened. “Don’t think the Rangers are gettin’ too weak to kill their own snakes. If I could get loose, I’d like nothin’ better than to go up there and brace Canfield myself. I know I could take him. The only other man I know who could is you.”
Fargo was silent. Presently he said, “Has it occurred to you that if I killed Jess Canfield I’d have his whole family down on me? They’d declare a blood feud against me. From Roarin’ Tom on down to the youngest kid that could sight a rifle. They wouldn’t rest until they got me. The only way I could save myself would be to kill them all.”
Penny looked straight into his eyes, without expression. “As long as it was in self-defense—”
“That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it?” Fargo said quietly.
“Let’s look at it this way,” Penny said. “Canfield’s killed a Ranger. That means a Ranger has got to kill Canfield. That means the other Canfields will declare war against the Rangers. It means that the Rangers will have to wipe them out sooner or later. And it means some Rangers will get killed doing it, because we can only operate in a certain way; we can’t shoot until fired upon. It will be a blood feud between the Canfields and the Rangers, and will go on and on. But not if somebody else kills Canfield. A private citizen, somebody who’s not a Ranger. You, Neal. I want Jess Canfield either brought in for trial or dead. What happens after that won’t concern us—unless somebody swears out a warrant against you. And the Canfields never went to the law in their whole life.”
He paused. “I’d never make anybody but you such a proposition. But it’s no wilder than some of the jobs you’ve done for Teddy Roosevelt on the sly. That revolution in Panama that gave him the excuse to send in Marines and secure the Canal Zone so he could dig the Big Ditch. A few other jobs I’ve heard rumors of. More than once, you’ve pulled off some deals nobody else could have done.”
“For money,” Fargo said.
“I can’t pay you any money,” Penny said. He looked out the cave, down the slope to where the other Rangers waited in concealment. “All I can offer you is your life and freedom.”
“I take this job, my life ain’t likely to be long.”
“It’ll be even shorter if you don’t.” Penny’s voice was cold. “God knows, Neal, after what we’ve been through together, I don’t want to have to kill you. But if we don’t make a deal right now, you’ve only got two choices. Come out with your hands up and go to prison, or come a-shooting. And you can’t burn down us all—not even with that arsenal. I’m at least offering you a chance to see another sunrise.”
Fargo said, “Let me have another cigarette. I think better when I’m smokin’.”
“Take the pack. I got more down there.”
Fargo lit the cigarette.
“You say yes,” Penny went on, “give me your word that you’ll go after Jess Canfield and serve that warrant, I wouldn’t be surprised if, when dark comes, you couldn’t make it down that slope without nobody seein’ you. Wouldn’t surprise me if you found a saddled horse down there behind that big boulder that looks like the crown of a hat. And, prob’ly, that warrant for Canfield would be in the saddlebags. Damned if it ain’t likely you’d get clean away. And we’d never even know whose ammo it was we confiscated.”
“Yeah,” Fargo said.
“So?”
“Thirty mountain men or six Rangers.” Fargo’s voice was wry. He smoked a moment longer. Then he made up his mind. “All right, Mart. I’ll take the thirty mountain men.”
Penny’s voice was full of relief. “Your hand on it?”
“Here.” And Fargo put it out.
Penny looked at him silently for a second or two, released it, stood up.
“After dark, Neal,” he said. He went to the cave’s mouth, halted, turned. “Bring me Canfield’s scalp.” He smiled faintly. “So long, hardcase.”
“Adios, lawdog,” Fargo said, and watched him go down the slope and vanish behind a boulder.
He crushed out the cigarette. This was not a deal he liked at all. But he had no choice. Then he grinned, slowly, coldly. So he would have to fight the whole Canfield clan after all. Well, that being the case, there was no reason why he should not make twenty thousand dollars on the side for doing it.
Chapter Four
There was food in the saddlebags and water in the canteen slung across the horn; and the horse was a good one. Fargo made it down the slope without a shot being fired, swung up into the saddle. He socked home spurs. Then, as he galloped out from behind the hat-shaped rock, bent low, gunfire ripped the desert silence. Lead whined high above him. Mart Penny could say in his report that the arms-runner had escaped under heavy fire and be truthful.
He rode all night, taking a circuitous route through the badlands of Big Bend, which he knew like the back of his own scarred hand. Morning found him west and north of Study Butte, holed up in a deep arroyo. He had slept four hours, the shotgun cradled in his arm, awakened, and was eating a few bites of jerky when the horse, hobbled, snorted and pricked its ears. Fargo caught that warning at once. With the shotgun slung across his shoulders, its muzzles down his back, he went silently up the dry streambed’s wall.
The three horsemen had cut his trail, were working across the flat out there toward the arroyo. He squinted into the morning light; then he relaxed. They were neither cavalry nor Rangers: they wore straw sombreros and loose white shirts crisscrossed with cartridge-laden bandoliers, ragged pants and high black boots. Mexicans. Not part of Villa’s band this far north of the Rio. His lips thinned. No, they would be some of Chico Cana’s bandits.
Fargo’s eyes glittered; his teeth gleamed as his mouth warped into a sort of snarl. Cana was a vulture, operating around Presidio: rustler, hold-up artist, he and his sizeable gang preyed on anybody who had a dollar or a gun or a horse or a watch, even their own people, the Mexican-Americans. These three bandidos probably counted themselves fortunate in havi
ng struck the trail of a lone horseman. Three against one; they’d have no trouble in rubbing him out, taking his mount, his saddle, any other goods he might have. Likely they were counting on even stripping the boots from his corpse.
Fargo slid back down the bank of the arroyo. He checked the horse’s hobbles. He laid his own Winchester and his unstrapped Colt across his saddle, along with the canteen. Then he went quickly up the arroyo to where, fifty yards from all that gear he had put out as bait, it turned. Behind the bend, he hunkered against the bank, sheltered by an overhang. Then, patiently as any coyote outside a chicken coop, he waited.
He heard them enter the arroyo through the same sloping notch that he had used. Their voices carried a long way in the desert air, and, very confident, they did not keep them down.
“It is not an Anglo soldier,” one said. “The shoes of the horse are not the Army type.”
“More likely it is a messenger from the Mariscal Mine, or the one at Study Butte. If we are very lucky, perhaps he carries a payroll.”
“Ay, Dios! No use to count on luck like that. But he’ll have a horse and some guns we can use—and if we bring back nothing from this sweep, Chico will be very unhappy.”
Then one said, “Hush. No use to announce our coming.”
They fell silent. Fargo’s horse snorted, nickered a greeting. Another horse returned it. Fargo tensed. They would just about be now at the place where he had made camp.
“Valgame Dios!” One of them laughed. “He has heard us coming and has fled. Leaving us this good horse, saddle, guns, all. Yanqui chicken-heart. Well, he can’t go far on foot. Juan, you keep an eye open. We’ll saddle the horse and lead it. Then we’ll run him down.”
That was when Fargo stepped around the corner of the bank.
In Spanish, he said: “That won’t be necessary.”
The three were dismounted, gathered around the saddle and the guns. They whirled, reaching for their pistols, eyes wide with surprise.
Fargo’s mouth had time to curl in contempt for such greedy amateurs as his right hand went up, thumb hooking in the shotgun’s sling. That thumb twitched; the short twin barrels jerked up beneath his arm, pointing forward, although upside down. His left hand flashed across his body, tripped both triggers in a smooth, flawless gesture.
It had worked perfectly: His bait had gathered them into a tight knot around the saddle and the guns. Now, eighteen buckshot went hosing down the arroyo, spreading at thirty yards, in a pattern wide enough to chip them down like wheat before a scythe. That leaden hail slammed into three bodies with tremendous force. One of them just had time to fire a shot from his drawn Colt; it plowed uselessly into the sand of the arroyo wall. It was the only shot any of them fired. Two were slammed backward by the chopping impact of the heavy pellets; the third was knocked to one side with slugs in the right arm and shoulder and fell across Fargo’s saddle blanket. He kicked and twisted, trying to reach his Colt with his left hand, his face contorted, eyes wide and staring. But Fargo had already unslung the Fox. It opened, flicking empties, and his thumb had punched another round from the bandolier across his chest. It went in instantly; a snap of his wrist closed the gun and he pulled the right trigger and the full force of nine shot sent the last man rolling off the blanket and across the sand, where, chopped horribly by all that lead, he lay still.
Fargo broke the gun again, punched in two more rounds. With it at the ready, he went down the arroyo. But there was no need this time for his habitual caution. The three of them were dead.
Fargo picked up his Colt, strapped it on. Their horses, at the gun-thunder, had fled down the draw. His own hobbled, snorted and curveted, wild-eyed. Fargo bridled it, mounted it bareback, rode down the draw until he caught up with the mounts of the Mexicans. He sized them up; two sorry nags, a mixture of cold blood and mustang, and one damned good sorrel with pure Spanish blood, stolen from some hacienda. He caught the sorrel. When he put the bridle from Mart Penny’s horse on it, he saw its mouth was raw and tender from a spade bit to which a piece of barbed wire had been added. He cursed its dead owner with the ferocity of a born horseman.
When it was bridled, he let Mart Penny’s horse go; he did not want to be caught crossing Texas on an animal with a Ranger brand. He put his own saddle and saddlebags on the sorrel, seated the Winchester in its boot, decided to keep the shotgun slung. He mounted up, rode north and west again. A half hour later, he stopped and twisted in the saddle, looking back, a dozen vultures circling in the bright blue bowl of sky.
~*~
Fargo made good time; three nights later, he drew rein outside an adobe hut on the outskirts of Marfa. It was past twelve, and no lights burned here in the Mexican quarter on the cowtown’s south side. But a small dog roused itself, yapped around the sorrel’s feet until the animal kicked it and sent it ki-yiing off. Then the hut’s wooden door swung open cautiously, and, limned by the lamplight inside, Nina Alvarez stood silhouetted there.
She was thirty, childless, her husband had crossed the Rio to join Villa and had been killed in Durango. So far as the Anglos here in Marfa were concerned, she was just another Mexican washerwoman. Actually, she was one of Villa’s best spies north of the Rio and an indispensable link in the apparatus for running guns and ammo that Fargo had set up with the guerrilla leader.
She wore a thin cotton nightgown, and the light shone through it and outlined every curve of a full-breasted, slim-waisted, wide-hipped, short-legged body. “Quien es?” she called softly; and then, as he swung down, she recognized him. “Neal!”
When he entered the hut, closing the door behind him, she ran into his arms, pressing the soft pillows of her breasts against him, greedily opening her mouth for his kiss. He held her for a while. When they parted, she said: “You got the bullets to Pancho safely?”
“No,” said Fargo.
“What?” Her eyes widened.
“Fix me a bath and some food. I’ll tell you later. Now I’ll see to the horse.”
He fed the horse and watered it and left it in the little stable, still saddled and hackamored, so if he needed it in a hurry, it would be ready. When he went back into the hut and unslung all his guns, Nina kissed him again. She had a tub of warm water waiting, a bottle of tequila on the table, frijoles and tortillas cooking. Fargo went directly to the bottle, drank long and thirstily, and sighed.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
As he undressed, he told her, omitting his deal with Penny. “Pancho will have to bring in more weapons through Nogales. The Rangers have got the Texas border sealed off tight.”
“Then I will pass the word to him.” When he was seated, luxuriously, in the tub, she washed his back. From time to time, he dragged on the bottle. Presently she came with food; he ate that, too, while he soaked.
“Will you try a load through Nogales?” she asked.
“Later. I’ve got something else to do right now. Joe Morrison in Phoenix will have to increase his volume.” He splashed out of the tub, dried with the towel she handed him. By the time he’d finished, she had slipped off the thin nightgown and lay on the cot, waiting for him. Before he went to her, he moved his Colt and shotgun within easy reach of the bed. Then he lowered himself onto her softness.
~*~
Walt Steed branded Lazy S. For miles before he reached the Davis Mountains, Fargo had seen pastures full of fat whiteface cattle with that iron burned on their hips. Now that the war in Europe had reached a peak of fury, cattle were worth their weight in gold, and the rich grama of the basins and valleys of that hill country would put poundage on them miraculously fast. That was why Steed and Hanna had been willing to pay through the nose to get their hands on the vast acreage of Black Valley graze again. Fargo hoped they still were.
It was nearly sunset when he turned off up the lane that led to the Lazy S headquarters. When it came in sight, nestled at the foot of a juniper-clad peak, its multiple windmills spinning in the evening breeze, he drew rein, sucked in a breath of sheer app
reciation. It had been a long time since he had seen a layout like that. Black Valley range or no, Steed was well on his way to becoming a cattle king of a magnitude rivaling that of such historic figures as Charles Goodnight and John Chisum.
Ahead, a big frame house of sawn lumber, freshly painted, gleamed in the slanting light. Around it was a vast complex of bunkhouses, cookshacks and corrals. Fargo, holding the sorrel tight-gathered, tipped back his hat. Steed would have a lot of riders, of course. But it seemed to him that there were more men lounging around the ranch yard than called for even on a spread of this size. Then the sorrel snorted as a volley of gunshots sounded, like firecrackers at this distance.
The men around the corrals and bunkhouses paid no attention. The shots came again, and now Fargo had pinpointed their source. On the slope behind the house, more than a dozen men were taking target practice. And, Fargo thought, the way they were burning ammunition, someone else was paying for it. His mouth thinned; he touched the sorrel with spurs and sent it loping down the lane.
As he drummed into the yard, the lounging men looked curiously at the newcomer in the battered cavalry hat, the double-barreled sawed-off riding muzzles down behind his shoulder. In turn, as Fargo reined in, he appraised them. Some of them were ordinary cowhands, all right. But, standing out among them like wolves in a flock of sheep, there were gunmen, fighting men. Unlike the punchers, they wore holstered sixguns or Colt automatics. Lean and hardfaced, they began to sift together in a tight knot, forming a kind of pack in case this man, whom they recognized as one of their kind, meant trouble. Up on the hill, another volley of gunfire sounded.
Fargo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Walt Steed was in the process of putting together an army. And that could mean only one thing. Rangers and soldiers be damned; he had made up his mind to go into Black Valley and take it back by force.
