Alaska Steel (A Neal Fargo Adventure #3)

by John Benteen

  The fur clothing was Eskimo-made of prime wolf skins, the hoods of the parkas lined with wolverine fur, which would not ice from the moisture of the wearer’s breath. The mukluks and the soft, fawnskin socks were chosen with equal care; he knew too well how poor footgear could butcher feet when snowshoeing. He bought the bear-paw pattern snowshoes from an old Indian who lived at the back of town and whose craftsmanship surpassed any Fargo had ever seen.

  That was only the beginning: supplies were easier to come by now in the towns of the interior than they had been five or ten years before, but they were still not plentiful, and Fargo bought food, clothing, and equipment for two people for a year. Because he did not know where their quest would take them or how long it would last, he prepared for every eventuality, winter and summer. None of it would be wasted: if not used, it would sell in Circle for half again what it had cost to purchase in Nome and ship upriver. The gear ranged from axes to gill nets, from rubber boots to wire and buckles for making game snares. He threw in a few Newhouse steel traps and plenty of cheesecloth mosquito netting. From fishhooks to matches, bacon to bourbon, he stinted on nothing. Once you were in the backwoods, you could not run to the general store to pick up something overlooked—something the lack of which might make the difference between life and death.

  The only purchases he did not make in Nome were of ammunition—for he had plenty loaded to his own specifications in the trunk—and dogs and sled, which could be easily gotten upriver, at Circle or Fort Yukon when they were needed. Meanwhile, roaming all over Nome, he renewed his inquiries about Dolan. Somebody here besides the still-unconscious Hannon must know of the man—whoever had left that note at the hotel, whoever was a member of the Committee of Ten, whatever that was. But all his probing was fruitless; nobody would admit to knowing anything of either Dolan or any organization called the Committee of Ten.

  On the day before Jane’s ship was due, Fargo completed the last of his purchases. By now, his pile of gear, stored in a log shed behind the store of the Nome Trading Company, was enormous. Fargo turned the key in the steel padlock which sealed it, checked the door, slid the key into his pocket, and thrust a cigar between his teeth. He stood there thoughtfully for a moment; then he walked around the side of the store and down the main street of the town. Maybe by now Hannon had regained consciousness.

  It was nearly twilight, and getting cold. Fargo turned up his jacket collar. There was no doubt that the Indians were right; freeze-up would come early this year. It was something you could smell in the air. Well, if Jane came in on schedule tomorrow, they’d leave on the river steamer the day after.

  Then he was at Fielding’s office. The doctor had his headquarters in one room of a long, low building which also served as a hospital. Fargo found him there by his roll top desk, just pouring a well-earned drink of rye after a long day. Fielding did not look pleased to see him. “Something I can do for you, mister?” He was a big man in his late fifties, with arms like a blacksmith, an impatient mouth, gentle eyes.

  “Yeah, Doc,” Fargo said. “I came to ask about Hannon—Jesse Hannon.”

  Fielding’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. I know you now. You’re the one that laid that table leg up alongside his head.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, he’s suffering from a skull fracture and subdural hemorrhage. I’ve trepanned to relieve the pressure. He’ll get well eventually—he’s got a constitution like a bull moose. But it’ll be a spell.”

  “He hasn’t waked up?”

  “No. May not for another week.”

  “Any delirium? Done any talking, any babbling, while he was out?”

  “No,” Fielding said. “Silent as a clam. You did a thorough job on him. It’ll be a long time before he’ll be able to work hard enough to pay my bill.”

  “I’m sorry.” Fargo fished a couple of double-eagles from his pocket, let them clatter on the doctor’s desk. “Maybe this will help some with the charges.”

  The doctor stared at the gold. “Most unusual. You chop him down, then pay for him to be healed.” Some of his frosty manner thawed and he took another glass from a cubbyhole in the desk. “Have a drink.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Fargo took the glass, sat down in a chair the doctor indicated by a wave of the hand. “Maybe,” he said casually, “Hannon’s got a partner who could pay some of his bill. Or a friend.”

  “No. He was a lone wolf.”

  “You mean nobody’s come to see him since he’s been here?”

  “Only the police. And Denny. But Denny doesn’t count.”

  “Denny? Who’s Denny?”

  “I don’t know his last name; nobody does. He’s the town idiot. Used to be a prospector, got snowed in all by himself one winter, nobody knows what happened to him then but when he came out his hair was white as yours and he was crazy as a hoot owl. Not the first time it’s happened when a man’s penned into solitary confinement for four, five months at a time. Only worse than usual with him. Now he hangs around Nome, does odd jobs, sleeps wherever he can find a warm place. He’s harmless—and he’s curious as a pet coon, got to poke his nose into everything. He’s the only one came to see about Hannon.”

  Fargo finished the drink. “Where would I find him?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Who knows? Liable to be anywhere around town, day or night. You can ask for him. Everybody knows him. Shouldn’t take you long to locate him.”

  Fargo stood up. “Much obliged.”

  The doctor also got to his feet. “Me, too, for the money. If you’re going up river, good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Fargo said, with his hand on the door. Then he paused, struck by a thought. “This Denny—this idiot. Where was he wintering when he got snowed in and how long ago was that?”

  “Oh, only two or three years ago. And as to where—I’m not sure. But I think it was somewhere up around Birch Creek beyond Circle City.”

  Fargo let out a long breath. “I see,” he said. “Circle City.” Then he opened the door and went out while, behind him, the doctor poured another drink.

  Fielding had been right. It was easy to locate Denny. Fargo found him asleep in the lean-to behind the saloon where he’d had his fight with Hannon, dozing behind some empty barrels. “Denny,” Fargo said, opening the door and standing in the doorway.

  “Huh? Huh? Whozzat, huh?” A lanky, loose-jointed figure unfolded itself and came erect, knuckling at its eyes.

  “My name’s Fargo. I want to talk to you.” A lantern hung from the lean-to roof. Fargo tilted back the shade, turned up the wick and struck a match. In the quickly flaring yellow light, he looked at Denny.

  The man was not much older than Fargo. His hair was long, thick, unkempt and silvery. The two-days’ bristle of beard on his chin was, however, red, without a trace of gray. The deep-sunken brown eyes stared at Fargo vacantly, and the mouth gaped half-open, its lips loose and red. “What?” Denny said. “Who? What you want with Denny?” Then he pointed. “Oh,” he said, like a child proud of learning a lesson. “I know you. I know you ... You hit the other feller.”

  “Hannon,” Fargo said. “I hit Hannon.”

  “I seen it.” Denny giggled. “You spanked him good. Oh, did you ever spank him. My mama spanks me sometimes.” He drew in a long, shuddering breath. “Yeah.”

  “Denny, listen to me.” Fargo took out a double-eagle. It gleamed in the lamplight. “You know what this is?”

  The man stared at it, scratching his ribby body under his tattered mackinaw. His nose had been running and he had not bothered to wipe it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That’s gold. I used to hunt gold. A long time ago. My mama made me quit.”

  “Your mama,” Fargo said. He tossed the gold piece, caught it in his palm. “Denny, your mama would want you to have this. Your mama would want you to tell me why you went to the hospital to see Hannon, too.”

  “Hannon?” Denny kept on scratching. “Yuh. The man you spanked.”

  “Denny.” Fargo’s voice was patient
. “You used to hunt for gold up on Birch Creek, right? Near Circle City.”

  “Circle City. Birch Creek.” Suddenly Denny began to shiver. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh.” He shivered like a man racked by deep chill, though it was fairly warm in the lean-to. “Circle City.” Suddenly Fargo realized that tears were running from Denny’s eyes, down his beardy cheeks.

  Fargo went on. “Denny, why did you see Hannon? Did you know Hannon in Circle? Did you ever know a man named Dolan in Circle? Hal Dolan?”

  “Dolan.” The shivering increased. Fargo could hear Denny’s teeth chattering. “No. No, never, no Dolan. Oh, God, no, not Dolan. Never. My mama wouldn’t let me play with a man named Dolan.”

  “You knew Dolan.” Fargo’s voice was harder, now, inexorable. “You knew Dolan. Knew Hannon then, too. And, Denny—you knew the Committee of Ten.”

  “The Committee of Ten.” Denny whispered the words. Then, before Fargo’s eyes, his face seemed to dissolve. His chin shook, his lips flapped, the tears streamed from his eyes. All at once, without warning, he threw back his head, gave a piercing shriek. It was horrible, shrill, a cry of agony. He put his hands to his temples, howled again.

  Fargo strode up to him, seized the slack of his mackinaw. Denny stank to high heaven. Fargo shook him fiercely. “Denny,” he rasped, “stop it! You hear, stop it! Or I’ll spank you, too!” He put his face close to Denny’s, lips pulled back in a wolf’s snarl. “You hear? Shut up and tell me about the Committee of Ten! Tell me about Dolan!”

  Denny screamed again. He struck out wildly, the blow glancing off Fargo’s face. “No! No, can’t tell you. Mama won’t let me! Mama, Mama, Mama!” His voice dissolved in blubbering, sobbing. “Mama, Mama, Mama ...”

  Fargo grunted in disgust, let go of Denny. The deranged man immediately crumpled to the floor, cross-legged, sat there blubbering incoherently. “Mama—”

  Fargo stood over him for minutes. Denny only cried and cried. At last Fargo gave up in disgust. Well, maybe tomorrow he’d try again, with better luck. He crammed the double-eagle into Denny’s coat, turned away, feeling somehow dirty at having touched off this crying spell in the helpless thing that had once been a miner, but was now a child. “All right, Denny. I’m going now.” He blew out the lantern, went out and shut the door. He could still hear Denny crying in the lean-to as he went through the back door of the saloon to get a drink.

  He had only the one, and there was plenty of space around him while he took it. People eyed him watchfully and kept their voices down. Fargo tossed off the rye and looked at them with a certain contempt.

  He paid for the drink and left the saloon. He pulled up his collar against the cold biting wind, and decided to take a shortcut through an alley. Then Fargo saw it, the flicker of movement at the other end of the alley. He threw himself aside and down, just as the gun bellowed, its flame jet red in a gray wall of fog. As he hit the ground he rolled, the Colt out, and he fired by instinct, twice, into the dark space between two log buildings, at the gun flash. A man screamed, and the Colt roared again, aimed lower; there was a gurgling cry and then silence. Fargo lay in the mud beside the walk, the gun up, holding his breath, waiting.

  But there was no sound from the alley. The fog whipped and swirled around its dark mouth. Down the street, doors opened, voices chattered, feet pounded on the sidewalk. Fargo got cautiously to his knees. Still the alley offered no menace. He scrambled to his feet and, with gun out, ran to the corner of one of the buildings that flanked it.

  Then a voice behind him rasped: “Fargo. What the hell?”

  Fargo jumped, whirled, and had the Colt’s muzzle buried in Ross’s belly before he recognized the policeman. Then he let out a gusty breath, dropped the gun away. “Jesus, Ross. You ought not to come up behind a man like that.”

  “I want to know what the devil’s going on here.”

  “Some joker took a potshot at me from that alley. I returned the fire, must have hit him, he hollered. I reckon he’s in there now. Whether he’s dead, I can’t say. For all I know, there may be more than one.”

  “We’ll see,” Ross growled and drew a Colt .45 automatic. With his other hand, he unclipped a carbide light from his belt. He lit it and it rayed out a bright, white beam. Then he edged around the corner, past Fargo, and cast the light into the alley.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he grunted, holstered the gun, and stepped into the alley.

  Fargo came behind him, Colt lowered.

  They stared at the sprawled body in the mud, its hand clutching a Winchester rifle. The carbide light shone white on the corpse’s silver hair and tattered mackinaw. Two of Fargo’s three bullets had hit, the expanding slugs making terrible wounds, but both were in the torso and the body was easily recognizable.

  “Hell,” Ross said. “You shot Denny. Damn it, Fargo, you shot the idiot.”

  Fargo touched the rifle with his boot toe. “You see that, Ross? The idiot, as you call him, shot at me first. I don’t give a damn how his sanity stacks up, a bullet from his gun could kill me just as dead as any other. He was out to get me.”

  “But why, damn it? Why?”

  “For the same reason that Hannon slugged me. Because I asked him about Dolan.”

  Ross was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. It’s obviously justifiable homicide. But you get out of my jurisdiction, Fargo. You get the hell out of Nome.”

  “I aim to. Everything goes well, I’m leaving on the river boat first thing day after tomorrow.”

  Ross’s voice was sharp. “See that you do. Meanwhile, you mention Dolan to anybody else, you have any more trouble of any kind, and so help me God, I’ll lock you up and keep you there.”

  Fargo nodded. “All right, Frank.” He holstered the gun. “I’ve got to meet a steamer in the morning. Otherwise, I’ll stay in the hotel as much as possible. And I won’t mention Dolan to anybody again while I’m in Nome.”

  “Dolan,” Ross said. “What the hell’s so important about Dolan, anyhow?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” Fargo said quietly.

  Chapter Five

  Circle City lay close to the Arctic Circle, which had given it its name. A long time ago, it had been the metropolis of the Yukon territory, the final staging point before the last plunge into the wilderness. Then it had boasted more than a thousand inhabitants, several dance halls, even a couple of theaters. But the strike on the Klondike in Canada had drawn its gold-hungry population to Dawson; the rise of Fairbanks had depleted it further; and now, on a level plain near the most northern bend of the Yukon River, more than half its four hundred buildings seemed vacant and decaying; the boom over, the streets nearly empty.

  As they got off the stern wheel riverboat Yukon Queen, Jane Deering looked at the place in dismay. “Why, it’s almost a ghost town.”

  “Yeah,” Fargo said. “We won’t have any trouble finding a place to stay. Just pick a cabin and move in.” He took Jane’s arm and they stepped off the gangplank onto the dock.

  She had arrived right on schedule, the day after Fargo had killed Denny. When she’d spotted him on the wharf at Nome, her amber eyes had lit with excitement, and she had hurried off the ship, thrown herself into his arms. She was even more beautiful than Fargo had remembered her, in leather jacket, leather skirt and boots—a rig she had worn often in her Western movies. And her body, soft against his, moved hungrily as she pulled his head down for a kiss.

  Her mouth was hungry, too; and the kiss had been a long one. When she finally pulled away, she was breathing hard. “Fargo! It’s so good to see you again.” Her breasts rose and fell beneath the jacket. “I ... I’d hoped there wouldn’t be any mix-up. That you’d be here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’d be surprised how much I’ve been thinking about you. I ... I haven’t had a man since that last night ... ”

  Fargo grinned wolfishly. “Let’s get your gear ashore. Then we’ll go to the hotel.”

  “Yes.” She looked about at Nome with curiosity. “Have you found out anything? About Ha
l?”

  “I’ve found out considerable. I’ll tell you later.”

  In the hotel room, she took pins from her hair, let it cascade down her back in a long chestnut fall, as Fargo poured drinks and told her all that had happened. Her brows drew together in a frown. “And you had to kill one man and almost kill another because you asked them about Hal?”

  “That’s right. I want to know more about Dolan. Was he a fighter, a trouble maker?”

  “Hal?” Her laugh was short and brittle. “He was a coward. He’d walk miles out of his way to avoid a fight.”

  “Cowards don’t boom around the country on construction jobs. They don’t come to Alaska, either.”

  “You don’t know Hal. He was too much of a coward to hold a steady job, meet his responsibilities. Any man who’d let his wife whore to support him hasn’t got much guts.”

  “Well, that makes it all the stranger. The more I think about this, the more I think you ought to go back to the States. This may be even rougher than I figured on.”

  Jane Deering turned away from the dresser, her amber eyes angry. “Let’s get one thing straight. I said I was coming with you and I am, I don’t care how rough it gets. I’ve got a half million dollars riding on finding out what happened to that son of a bitch and I’m not going to take anyone else’s word for it.” Then her voice changed, and her eyes half-lidded themselves. “Besides,” she said, and now it was a husky murmur as her hands went to the buttons of her blouse, “you don’t want me to go back, really, do you?” She opened the garment slowly, revealing the upper slopes of white mounds threatening to overflow their halter. Involuntarily, Fargo moistened his lips with his tongue. “Not yet, anyhow ...” The blouse came off, and then the halter and she stood there naked to the waist, breasts round, full, symmetrical, their nipples hard and pointed. “Do you, Fargo?”

  He grinned. “No. Not this minute.”