by Jon Sharpe
Without breaking stride, Fargo vaulted onto the stallion and reined around. He seized hold of the reins to John’s bay and applied his spurs. At a mad gallop he sped to the northwest, paralleling the Snake. Trees and bluffs constantly blocked his view. Then, several hundred yards farther, he spotted a bobbing thatch of hair in the midst of roiling water and heard a piercing wail.
“Help me!”
Fargo galloped around a bend, narrowly avoided a fallen tree, and came to a flat stretch. He also came abreast of John. The current had slowed, but it was still too strong for even the strongest of swimmers to fight.
“Stay afloat!” Fargo yelled. So long as John kept his head above water, there was hope. “I’ll throw you a rope up ahead!”
John was flailing his arms and didn’t answer.
Thundering around another bend, Fargo flew along another flat stretch of ground. By now the Ovaro had a good fifty yard lead, but it needed more.
Then Fargo came to the top of a rise and saw more rapids several hundred yards beyond—rapids twice as fierce as those John had already gone through. Scores of huge, jagged rocks would tear him to pieces. He wouldn’t stand a prayer.
Reining sharply to the left, Fargo guided the pinto down a slope to a six-foot-high drop-off. Springing down, he grabbed his rope and moved to the brink. Quickly, he made a noose and swung the lasso a few times, limbering his arm. The river narrowed somewhat at that point, but unless John was a lot closer to the near side of the river than the far side, the rope wouldn’t be long enough.
Fargo held the loop down low, next to his leg. Around the bend bobbed John Carter, still striving mightily to reach shore. “John! I’m over here!” Fargo shouted, but the young man didn’t hear him. He hollered again.
There would only be one try. Fargo couldn’t miss, or Carter was doomed. He yelled a third time, and finally John stopped pumping his arms and raised his head high out of the water.
“Mr. Fargo! Help me! I can’t last much longer!”
Fargo was well aware of that. The cold and the exertion were taking their toll. Eventually John would succumb, were he to live that long; the next rapids would see to it he didn’t. Fargo began to swing the rope in practiced circles. “Be ready to catch this!”
Roping a man in moving water was a lot more difficult than roping a stray cow or calf. The noose had to be thrown just right or the current would sweep it out of reach. Fargo locked his gaze on the young man’s tousled hair, gauging the distance foot-by-foot, and when he deemed the moment right, he tossed the lasso out over the Snake. It settled a yard in front of John, who lunged, and missed.
Fargo felt a brief sinking sensation. Then, at the very instant the current was about to carry him beyond reach, John lurched forward again and this time he succeeded. Swiftly, he slid the loop over one arm and across his back.
“For the love of God, pull!”
Not quite yet, Fargo figured. Bracing himself, he dug in his soles. The jolt, when it came, was worse than he imagined it would be. The rope went taut and he was yanked forward. For harrowing heartbeats he teetered on the cusp of disaster. Every muscle bulged, every sinew was strained to its limit. Bunching his shoulders, he found purchase and slowly began to move backward. The rope dug into his palms, scraping the skin, and his wrists and elbows felt fit to break, but inch by Herculean inch he moved farther from the drop-off.
The river fought him. It refused to relinquish its hold, the current battering John without cease. Relentless, inexorable, it would not be denied the life it wanted to claim.
Fargo grit his teeth and pulled harder. He didn’t like how the rope was scraping against the edge, didn’t like how a few of the strands had frayed. Thankfully, John had gone limp, otherwise the task would have been doubly difficult.
Step by slow step, Fargo continued to back up. If only he could pull John in close to shore, where the current wasn’t as strong!
“Mr. Fargo!” the young man bawled.
Fargo was concentrating on the rope to the exclusion of all else. Whatever Carter wanted could wait.
“Mr. Fargo! Look, damn it! Look!”
John was pointing toward the bend. A huge log had swept around it and was bearing down on him like a runaway carriage. Foam frothed along its entire length, and the front end bobbed up and down like the obscenely thick neck of a giant snake.
“Pull faster!” John urged.
Fargo was already pulling as fast as he could. He gained another couple of feet, but it wasn’t enough. The log was almost there. It would plow into John like a battering ram, and crush his head like an eggshell.
“Hurry!” John screeched, throwing up his arms in a bid to protect himself.
The Snake took pity on them. Just when it seemed a collision was unavoidable, the fickle current caused the log to swerve violently to the left and it missed John Carter by the span of Fargo’s hand. Off down the river it sailed, into the maw of the rapids.
Fargo’s shoulders were protesting the abuse. But he was almost to the Ovaro. Suddenly turning, he raised the rope and snagged it around the saddle horn. The stallion automatically backed up, as it would do had Fargo roped a steer, and where Fargo’s strength had barely been adequate, the big pinto’s was more than equal to the occasion.
Within moments, John was clinging to the drop-off. Fargo ran over, bent down, and hauled him the rest of the way out. Removing the rope, he coiled it.
Carter was soaked to the bone. His jacket and shirt were torn, his shoulder holster empty. “Th-th-thank you,” he said, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. His complexion was sickly pale, his lips were blue. With every breath he took, his whole body quaked.
Fargo knew the symptoms. A person’s body temperature could sink so low that they died. “We have to warm you up,” he said, hoisting John to his feet.
John tried to walk, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He stumbled and would have fallen flat had Fargo not caught him.
“Here,” Fargo said, and guided him to the bay. John tried to mount up on his own, but couldn’t. Cupping his hands, Fargo bent and had him slide a boot into them, then boosted him up.
Grasping the saddle horn, John swayed, but clung fast.
“Try not to fall off.” Fargo swung astride the pinto, wrapped the bay’s reins around his left hand, and headed for the Oregon Trail. He controlled an impulse to gallop. At the Trail he reined north.
Fargo preferred to put as much distance as he could between themselves and the Swills, but the young man’s welfare came first. An isolated stand of trees on a wide bench a quarter of a mile inland from the Snake was as promising a haven as any. When they arrived, he rode into the heart of the stand before dismounting.
John’s teeth were chattering worse than before. He was ungodly cold to the touch, and he shook like an aspen leaf in a thunderstorm as Fargo carefully lowered him to the grass.
“Can you hear me?” Fargo asked, but all John did was chatter and groan.
Time was crucial. Fargo hurriedly gathered enough fallen branches for a fire. A dry clump of grass served as kindling. He built the flames a lot higher than he normally would, then gathered his bedroll and Carter’s and covered the shivering figure with all four blankets.
What the young man needed now was something hot in his stomach. Fargo emptied his canteen into the coffee pot. It only filled the pot halfway, but that would have to suffice. Their water skin was on one of the pack horses, which by now were in the possession of the Swills. Fargo put the pot on to boil.
John stirred and moved his mouth a few times, but no words came out. Trying again, he stuttered, “I f-f-feel like I’m b-b-burning up and f-f-freezing at the same time. How can that b-b-be?”
“Be glad you’re still breathing,” Fargo said. “Just lie there and rest. I’ll have coffee ready in a few minutes.” Carter’s lips weren’t as blue as they had been, but he wasn’t out of danger yet. Far from it. “It would be best if you shed your clothes so I can hang them over the fire to dry. Can you manage on your ow
n?”
“I’ll try.” John’s arms moved under the blankets. With painstaking slowness he undressed and slid his wet garments toward Fargo.
Fargo placed a handful of pemmican in John’s palm. “Chew on these while you’re waiting. They’ll help.”
“I’m not hungry,” John said. “All I really want to do right now is sleep.”
“Not yet.” A sawbones once told Fargo that falling asleep was the worst thing a person could do in a situation like this. “Start chewing.”
John frowned, but placed a small morsel in his mouth.
Struck by a thought, Fargo said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He took the Henry and moved to the end of the stand to survey the landscape below. The Swills weren’t anywhere to be seen, which puzzled him greatly. By rights, the cutthroats should be breathing down their necks. What was keeping them? He’d like to go see, but he couldn’t go investigate until John recovered enough to get by on his own for a while.
Fargo returned to the clearing. The aroma told him the coffee was done. Filling his cup, he held it in both hands. It was almost too hot to touch. “Sip this nice and slow,” he advised as he hunkered next to his charge.
John’s first attempt resulted in a gagging fit. Coughing and sputtering, he curled up into a ball and complained, “Take it away. I don’t want any yet.”
“Would you rather die?”
“Leave me alone. My eyelids feel as if they weigh a ton.” John pulled the blankets up around his ears.
“Fine. If you want to kill yourself, go right ahead,” Fargo said. “Forget about your sister. Forget what the Swills did to your brother.” It had worked once before. Maybe it would work again.
John poked his head out, the old fire in his eyes. “I’ll never forget what those bastards have done as long as I live.” Trembling, he slowly sat up. “Give me the damn coffee. I’ll show you.” Impetuously, he took a gulp and yipped like a scalded coyote.
“Sip it,” Fargo reiterated.
The piping-hot Arbuckle’s soon restored the color to John’s cheeks. He was on his third cup, and chomping like a starved horse on his fourth piece of pemmican, when Fargo rose and climbed onto the Ovaro.
“Where are you off to?”
“To see about our pack horses.” Fargo didn’t go into detail. The young hothead would insist on tagging along, and he was in no condition to tangle with the Swills. “If I’m not back by sunset, as soon as you’re able, head for Fort Hall.”
“When will you get it through your thick head of yours that I’m not going anywhere until those riffraff have been punished?” John said curtly. “Don’t worry about me. I survived the river, I can survive anything. Off you go.”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘too cocky for your own good’?” Fargo asked, and reined to the south. In five minutes he had reached the Oregon Trail. He was making for the bluff where he had left the other horses. A continuous check for tracks revealed that the only fresh ones were theirs.
The bluff reared ahead. Slanting to the east, Fargo rode to the top of a ridge that overlooked it. As he had guessed, the pack horses were gone. So were the Swills. In a roundabout fashion, using every available bit of cover, he gained the top of the bluff and dismounted.
Here, at last, were tracks. The six riders he had seen had indeed found the pack animals. But instead of pushing on in pursuit, they had turned around and gone back the way they came. Why? It wasn’t like the Swills to give up so easily.
Fargo went over every square inch of the bluff again, then stood and stared to the south, mystified. Something far off caught his eye. A patch of white, followed by another, then another. Great humped shapes were scuttling across the land in a long row, like giant beetles. Prairie schooners. A wagon train was coming up the Oregon Trail.
At last, the Swills’ departure made sense. They had spotted distant smoke from the train’s early morning cook fires and either lit out for Les Bois—or gone after fairer game.
Mounting, Fargo covered the few miles to the bench at a trot. The wagon train would stop at noon, as they invariably did, and the wagon master needed to be warned about the Swills.
John was squatting by the fire, a blanket over his shoulders, his clothes still hanging on the rope Fargo had strung. “I was beginning to worry. You’ve been gone quite a while.” He smiled and touched his shirt. “They’re almost dry. I can ride out whenever you want.”
Fargo told him about the emigrants. “If we’re right about the Swills,” he concluded, “every young woman on that wagon train is in danger.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” John quaffed the last of the brew, then dressed. Soon they were once again riding hell-bent for leather along the Oregon Trail, only now they were riding in the opposite direction.
John’s good mood faded. He didn’t have a thing to say until they crested the bluff and beheld the wagon train nooning two hundred yards below. As was customary, the wagon boss had ordered the sixty wagons drawn up into columns, four abreast. A few cook fires had been lit, but for the most part, few emigrants ate during the midday break. The nooning was mainly for the benefit of their teams. And while the animals rested, friends and acquaintances gathered to enjoy an hour’s respite from the toils of the trail.
Sentries were always posted, so Fargo wasn’t surprised when a hail rang out and a bearded outrider in homespun clothes and a short-brimmed brown hat rode out to meet them. The man had the look of a farmer, and a friendly manner to match.
“Greetings, friends. Where might you be bound? If it’s Fort Hall, you would be well-advised to keep a watch on your scalps. We saw fresh Indian sign not three days ago.”
“I’d like to speak to your pilot,” Fargo said. Pilot, wagon boss, wagon master—they were all the same.
“That would be Horace Wells. I’ll take you to him.” The farmer reined his horse around, and they fell into step beside it.
“Tell me,” Fargo prompted, “have you seen any other strangers today?”
“Can’t say as we have, no,” the man answered. “Fact is, we haven’t seen any other whites since Fort Hall. This is mighty perilous country to be abroad in. Mr. Wells says that just last year, a husband and his wife fell a bit behind the train he was piloting, and when he went back to check on them, he found the husband dead, his head bashed in.”
“What about the wife?” John inquired.
The farmer scratched his bushy beard. “They never did find her, best as I recollect. Mr. Wells says hostiles did it. The poor woman must have been dragged off to live in some buck’s lodge.”
Fargo had noticed that every time an emigrant or a few horses went missing, hostiles were always blamed. “Wells found Indian sign, did he?”
“I can’t rightly say,” the man said. “You’d have to ask him.”
They passed another outrider and neared the wagons. Curious stares were directed their way. Adults stopped chatting to study them. Children stopped playing to gawk. Having guided a few trains in his time, Fargo knew that any diversion, however minor, was a welcome break in the monotony of their daily grind.
Horace Wells turned out to be a beanpole with the imperious air of an army general. Which wasn’t unusual. Wagon bosses generally ruled their trains with an iron will. They were hard men, but they had to be. Hundreds of lives depended on them. Wells was talking to several emigrants and looked around as the sentry rode up. “What have we here, Mr. Simonson?”
Fargo spoke before the farmer could answer. “We’re here to warn you to keep a close watch over your women.”
“Whatever for?” Wells demanded.
“We believe a gang of cutthroats has been kidnapping women from wagon trains.”
A portly emigrant chortled as if the idea were insane. “Kidnapping women? What kind of nonsense are you trying to panhandle? Is this another example of those tall tales frontiersmen love to tell?”
“We’re serious, mister,” John declared. “Ask Wells, here, about the woman who disappeared from a wagon train he
was guiding last year.”
“Hostiles took her,” Wells said.
“How do you know?” Fargo asked. “Did you find their tracks? Was her husband scalped?”
“No. But who else would have done it?” Wells glanced from Fargo to Carter and back again. “Oh, I understand. You’re saying that these phantom kidnappers of yours are to blame? You’ll forgive me if I take your outrageous claim with a grain of salt. Do you have any proof of these accusations?”
The portly emigrant had questions of his own. “Who are you gentlemen? How is it you know so much about these alleged abductions?”
“Because my sister was one of the women taken,” John said. “My brother and I have been searching for her for months, but he was murdered by the men responsible.”
“And who might they be?” Horace Wells asked.
The wagon master was skeptical, and Fargo couldn’t blame him. On the face of it, their claim was preposterous. No white man in his right mind would commit such a vile deed. Not when he knew that if he was caught, he would be forced to dance a strangulation jig at the end of a rope.
“As vicious a pack of rabid dogs as ever wore pants,” John answered. “Murderers, butchers, thieves, and worse.”
As if that were their stage cue, who should come riding in alongside another sentry but Clancy Swill and three of his brothers: Gus, Wilt, and Billy. Gus had a nasty bruise on his jaw from where he had been slugged, while Wilt and Billy both had their right arms in slings.
“It’s them!” John cried, and grabbed at his shoulder holster. He forgot he had lost his revolver when he tumbled into the Snake River and his fingers closed on empty air.
“Hold on, there!” Horace Wells bellowed, and at a snap of his fingers, half a dozen burly emigrants ringed John’s bay, ready to pull him off.
