by John Benteen
“Way I understand it, you’ll do ’til one comes along. Move!”
She looked at him, eyes, blazing, then said “Yeah, I’ll move.” Back straight, she strode ahead of him, out of the room. Fargo saw the musette bag that held his extra ammo, slipped it over one arm, followed.
The outer bar room was deserted, the bartender still unconscious from that full-powered bottle blow. Sara Raven’s head swiveled as she surveyed it. Then she said, “Horses! Out the back!”
“What?”
“That’s where the horses are!” She was already running toward the back door, nimble as an antelope. Fargo hesitated, followed.
It opened to a yard, and on the other side of that was a corral. Two saddled horses drowsed at its rails, both superb animals. Sara blurted: “Garfield always kept them here, his get-away mounts.” She unlatched reins, swung up. Fargo was right behind her. Somehow, in this moment, leadership had passed to her.
Sara swung her horse around, and for a moment her eyes met his. “I don’t know who you are,” she snapped, “but you’re a long cry from Garfield or Dogan. I’m past caring. I’ll help you get out of here and you can have the rest of it, too, but for God’s sake, if you’re running, stick by me and help me get away, too!”
Fargo understood, then: understood the desperation of this lean, lovely girl sold by a killer stepfather to a gross monstrosity like Garfield. “I’m with you,” he rasped. “Don’t worry.” His hands caressed the shotgun, and its cold-steel feel, almost part of his own flesh, told him everything was all right. He raised the weapon with a wild exultancy, two spare rounds from the musette bag in his hand. “Ride. Head south, downriver, and take us out of this.”
Her answer was, “Hiiyaah!” She kicked the horse, leaned forward in the saddle, long legs gripping, body balanced, a fine rider. The animal rocketed around the store building, and Fargo’s was right behind. As they came into the clear, his overtook and he was in the lead. He saw four men pour out of a cabin, gaping. One reached for a gun, and the other stayed his hand. They were the horse-thieves.
“Ride out, Sara!” one yelled, and it was obvious they knew her and were on her side. Sara didn’t answer, only lashed the horse with reins and bent into the wind and headed through the scattering of huts, bearing on a course that led downriver, long blonde hair streaming out behind.
But it was not to be that easy. The last hut on the outskirts disgorged three men, in time to see Fargo and Sara racing toward them. Fargo heard a shout borne on the wind’s whip: “That’s Garfield’s girl and she’s runnin’! Stop her, or Dogan’ll have our hides!” They scattered, drawing sixguns. Fargo lashed the mount, made a length ahead of Sara. On his left, he saw a bearded man on one knee, arm outstretched, Colt in hand, other hand locking wrist as he tracked Sara. Fargo fired the right barrel, pointing the shotgun across his body.
It bucked, roared, and the man screamed, went backwards. Fargo turned in the saddle, saw the other two, side by side, staring, guns upraised. No time to inquire their intentions: he loosed nine buckshot on the run from the left barrel.
They spread, those lethal pellets, in a wide, terrible screen. Both men screamed as they were caught simultaneously by the blast. Then they went down, kicking. It did not matter to Fargo whether they were dead or not, as long as they were out of action. He broke the shotgun, thrust in two fresh rounds, and Sara, eyes wide, awed, came up alongside.
“Who are you?” she screamed.
“Fargo!” he yelled back, and spurred the horse.
Now they were racing through the meadows, heading for the cover of the cottonwoods. Forty miles, Fargo thought. Damned near that much before they made the boats, a full day’s travel and possibly fighting all the way. As if to confirm his foreboding, he heard hoofbeats coming from the right, saw Lew and Billy, drawn from their guard-posts at the ferry by the sound of gunfire, pounding toward him, rifles raised. A bullet slapped by his head as they opened fire, out of shotgun range.
“Keep low!” Fargo bawled. “Head for those woods!”
Sara heard him, sank in her saddle, sheltered by the horse’s neck. Fargo slipped forward like an Indian, heel hooked over the saddle, arm around his mount’s neck, other hand free to fire beneath it. Their fine horses pounded toward the cottonwoods, two hundred yards away. Lew and Billy chased, shooting as they came. Dogan men, he thought, those two, through and through.
Just for the hell of it, he fired both barrels under the horse’s neck. At that range, the pattern spread until only one pellet struck. Billy’s mount, stung by it, sheered off, bucked. Lew hesitated. That gave Sara time to gain the woods, and Fargo thundered into underbrush right behind her. “Take cover!” he bawled, checked his mount, swung down into thick head high greenery, sprouts and vines, and rammed two more shells from the musette bag into the gun.
Through the tracery pattern of the brush he saw them coming, Billy, mount under control, Lew pounding ahead. Sara had dismounted behind him in the woods. Fargo waited. The two rounds should be enough, but he had to stand up to rifle fire until the range was right.
Rifle fire: they pumped it at him. It whined and slapped all around his head, from two Winchesters, clipping twigs and leaves. He judged he had time, took out a cigar, lit it quickly, drew in smoke. With it clamped between his teeth, he waited as they thundered down on him. If they stayed together, that would make it easy.
They didn’t, Lew bawling something, sheering off. He was in the lead, and as he went out to the right, Fargo took him first, lining the shotgun, judging range, and when Lew was a yard inside the effective reach, firing the right barrel.
The big spread of double-zero buckshot made a wall. Lew and the horse both ran into it, and both went down. Fargo saw its damage, regretted what it did to the horse, but there was no help. Anyhow, it killed mount and rider simultaneously. The horse collapsed, and Lew went rolling and never got up again; and Billy saw that and pulled up and Fargo pivoted and fired the left barrel.
Billy’s horse screamed, went over backwards, fell on him. Then it scrambled up. Something flopped obscenely on its back: the body of a man, punched and anchored by the saddle horn that had gone straight through his body. As the horse stampeded, Billy bounced on its back, and he was not quite dead, he made a thin, keening sound. Fargo spun away, reloaded the shotgun, put foot in stirrup, swung up. “Ride out, Sara,” he yelled, saw her swing up and spurred his mount.
~*~
They made two miles through the cottonwoods, entered a thicket of sprouts and willows shaded by immense trees, rubbled with driftwood from high water. Fargo gave the command to draw up.
She reined in, spun her horse, face pale, huge eyes staring. “Stranger, who are you?”
“Fargo,” he rasped. “I told you that.”
It took a moment, and then she whispered, “That Fargo?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
“Dogan has. He’s talked about looking for you.”
“Looking for me?”
“He’s a shotgun man, they say you are. God knows, I believe it now. You’re as good as Dogan, maybe better.”
“Listen,” Fargo said, “we’ll talk about that later. Right now we’ve got to make it to the end of Brown’s Hole and meet up with some people. You know this country and you know where the guards are?”
“Do I? I’ve never been any place else. Only here and Cord’s Park and the river—”
Fargo felt as if a cold wind played over him. “Cord’s Park?”
“A valley down by the Crossing of the Fathers. A man named Tom Cord was there when Dogan came. They threw in together and—”
“I see,” Fargo murmured. “Yeah, I see.” He glanced around to make sure there was no immediate pursuit. “Sara.” His hand closed on her wrist. “You want to get away from here?”
“I told you, I’ve got to.” Her voice was desperate. “You think I want to wind up a plaything for … for men like Garfield? You came just in time. I’d managed to fight him off so far, but—” She shook her h
ead. “Fargo, I don’t know you, but please trust me, you’ve got to trust me—”
“I trust you,” Fargo said, the whole thing clear now. “But you’re gonna have to trust me. I want some answers. You ever hear of a man named Knight?”
“You mean Colonel Knight, the engineer?”
“He’s the one,” Fargo said quickly, pulses pounding.
“Of course. Dogan’s got him, in Cord’s Park. Knight and four others.”
“Ahh,” Fargo said. “So they didn’t drown.”
“Drown? Some of them did, going through Cataract Canyon. But they’d already been spotted, anyhow. Cord went out to meet them, Dogan sent him. He posed as a trapper, claimed to be able to guide them. He led them right into Cord’s Park, down below Dandy Crossing, what they call Hite’s Ferry. The ferry’s in Dogan’s hands and so’s the Park and—Dogan’s men and Cord killed a lot of them. But five of them were left alive. Dogan—I won’t call him anything else, he’s not my father, he’s not! He’s not even my stepfather, he never married my mother, just took her!—Dogan took ’em and has kept ’em ever since, in case lawmen ever come down in here and he needs something to buy his way out. He keeps them locked up, treated like dogs, but they’re still alive and—”
“That’s all I need to know,” Fargo said, voice ringing like stroke of hammer on an anvil. “Mount up, woman, and take me out of here. You lead and I’ll do the fighting. I’ve got boats waiting at the end of Brown’s Hole, and if you play ball with me, those boats will take you outside and I’ll see you’re set up good in a big town and properly looked after.”
Sara’s eyes seemed to glow. “What town? A town as big as Yuma?”
“Let’s talk about Oyster Bay, Long Island,” Fargo said. “And New York City. But later. For now, let’s ride.”
~*~
They took it more slowly now. Sara said that Garfield had guards posted all along both sides of the river, in order to give alarm if any substantial party passed through. “There’s two things Dogan was scared of,” she told Fargo. “First was maybe a big expedition of lawmen. Second was any kind of outfit that might open up this country. When he saw those Knight people using all those fancy instruments, he knew he had to take them ...”
They worked their way along the floodplain, keeping to the cottonwoods, and, with Sara’s expert knowledge, dodging guards. By nightfall, they were far down Brown’s Hole. Fargo only rested the horses, made no fire, cooked no meal. When their mounts were ready, they rode again. This time through the humid darkness and swampy traps of the Green’s tidewater; but Sara Raven knew every foot of the way. She never led Fargo false, and even in the moonless fastness of the woods they made good time.
Daylight was not far off when Sara finally reined in. “Fargo, it’s not more than a mile or two to the end of where you can take a horse downriver.” She swayed in the saddle with fatigue, but she had guts, was a stayer. “If you’ve got an outfit waitin’, they’re bound to be in the mudflats below what we call Double Buttes.”
“Maybe,” Fargo said. He had not told her that the boats he was trying to reach were guided by Tom Cord. If the boats weren’t there … well, that was something he did not want to think about. Because if Cord had somehow moved them, talked Vane into going on downriver … Like baby mice in a bottle, Fargo thought. That’s how we’ll be in Brown’s Hole. No way to get out, none at all.”
He remembered his final conference with Cord and Vane. Twin Buttes, they’d been called on the map. “The boats are supposed to be there,” he said. “Lead on.”
They threaded their way through swampy bottomlands, heavily wooded with cottonwoods and willows and a few stray aspens, ever closer to the river’s edge. Then Sara struck a trail. “This ought to take us to the last place any boats can be, under Double Buttes.”
They followed it in the gray light of false dawn. Now Fargo could hear the familiar river’s rush, muted here, yet still strong. “I’ll go in front,” he said and tilted the shotgun out across the saddle. The horse edged through dim, fog-shrouded woods at a walking gait with Sara close behind. Fargo was completely tense, all his concentration focused, ready to fight or run. The boats could be there, the boats could be gone, or there could be an ambush in their place.
Horses’ hooves made squelching sounds in the mud. Now the river was only a few dozen yards away. Out of the fog, a dim figure reared. “Who goes there?” it demanded, and Fargo saw the muzzle of a rifle trained on him, and despite that, the tension slacked.
“Michaelson,” he said, “It’s Fargo.”
The young engineer stepped out of the willows, stared at Fargo, grinned. Then, when he looked at Sara Raven, his grin went away. “Fargo—”
“Explain it later. Everybody there where they’re supposed to be?”
“Of course. We had some trouble with Cord; he wanted to move the outfit past where you said to stay. But Vane and I talked him down. Fargo, this young lady …”
“Mr. Michaelson, meet Miss Raven. She and I have run off from Brown’s Hole together. I’ll put her in your charge.” Fargo swayed slightly in the saddle with weariness, but he mastered that feeling. There was much, he thought, that he still had to do. “Take us down to camp, Michaelson,” he said.
Chapter Six
The boats had been efficiently hidden in reeds and willows: it was, according to Fargo’s instructions, a fireless camp that had been made higher in the cottonwoods. Daylight had just begun to fall into it as he rode in, with Michaelson and Sara following at a much slower pace, the engineer walking at her horse’s head. When Fargo saw the gray forms of the tents, he swung down, and at once Vane was hustling up the path to meet him, with Cord right behind him.
“Fargo! Damn, man, it’s good to see you back! Did you learn anything?”
Fargo didn’t meet Vane’s outstretched hand and his gaze went past the Captain to Cord. “Well, I learned considerable,” he said, and he lined the shotgun. “One of the things I learned is that Cord’s a goddam spy. He’s the one betrayed Knight to the outlaws.”
“Fargo—?” Vane began, but Fargo shoved him aside. He confronted the bulky Cord now, the shotgun aimed. “Leave me alone, Vane,” he said. “I’ve got things to settle. Cord, you’re Dogan’s man.”
“I never heard of Dogan,” Cord growled, but his face was taut.
“Sara Raven says you did.”
“Sara—” Cord’s eyes lifted. He saw Michaelson coming, the girl’s weary figure on the horse. His jaw dropped. Then his gaze went to the shotgun and in the dawn light his face was like something cast from tallow. “Now, wait—”
“No waiting,” Fargo said. “The Colonel trusted you and you pulled a double-cross. Part of Dogan’s operation’s to have spies everywhere. You were on hand in Yuma, weren’t you, when the Colonel came looking for a guide—?”
“Fargo,” Cord began. Then his mouth twitched, his hand flashed for his gun. Two things happened simultaneously, Fargo fired both barrels of the Fox, and Vane struck it down, and all eighteen buckshot plowed into the mud. And Yadkin, the geologist, seized Cord’s wrist with both strong hands and twisted and Cord’s Colt fell free. As it landed in the mud, Cord whirled, smashed a fist into Yadkin’s face. The man fell back, and Cord began to run, heading for the boats.
Vane was still holding the shotgun; Fargo released it. He dashed through a screen of willow sprouts after Cord, fishing Colt from holster. Now, in the gray light, he made out the boats in an inlet.
Cord leaped into the hinter one, cast off, seized a paddle, shoved. The boat stuck in the mud. Fargo came up alongside. “Cord!” he bellowed, and Cord swung the paddle. It hit the barrel of the Colt and ripped the gun from Fargo’s hand. Cord laughed, and the boat backed, headed for midstream. Fargo reached for the gun, saw it covered, its barrel plugged with muck. As Cord, in the stern, backed the boat, Fargo sprang into the prow.
Cord gave a mighty shove, the craft moved out into the current. Then Cord threw the paddle amidships and his hand flashed behind him. When i
t came up, the fourteen-inch blade of Cord’s Bowie glinted in the sunrise.
Cord balanced on limber legs, knife thrust out before him. Yellow teeth shone under peeled back lips as he said, “All right, Big Ugly. Game’s played my way now.” The boat swung into the current, moved downstream.
“We’ll check that,” Fargo said, and his own knees caught the rhythm of the moving craft, and then Cord came at him, lunging straight down the boat, knife out. Fargo’s hand flashed back of his empty holster to where the Batangas knife was sheathed. It came out, he flipped his wrist, the buffalo-horn handles flipped and locked and the ten inch blade was naked. He brought it up just in time to make it chime against and deflect Cord’s knife as the boat picked up speed, sliding swiftly down the river. Fargo’s wrist-strength and the tempered blade made Cord’s Bowie sheer away, and then Fargo went for Cord’s gut, but Cord blocked him with the blade.
They knew each other now and both fell back a pace, and the boat went on, bucking. Cord dropped into a crouch, and Fargo followed suit, blade of the Batangas knife parallel to the ground in his right hand, chin down, gut sucked in, arm across it, and then they came at one another. Steel rang on steel, and Cord tried to hack his way past Fargo’s guard, and the Bowie had this advantage which the Batangas knife lacked: a big wrist-guard. Fargo’s blade deflected Cord’s attack, bound straight for entrails, but Cord’s blade leaped up, slid over the small guard of the Filipino knife and laid open the back of Fargo’s wrist. Fargo felt no pain, but he yielded. Cord came in again, and both men had injured rights, now; Fargo’s newly cut and Cord’s where Fargo’s teeth had bitten. That was irony: bandages protected the inside of Cord’s wrist, where the blood was.
Thrust and parry, ring of knife on knife and the boat bucking under them, rushing on. Fargo, pinned against the bow compartment, dared not turn his head to see what the boom of water behind him meant; Cord bore in, blade a winking flicker in the rays of sunlight falling down into the river bed.
