by John Benteen
Fargo locked the barrels back to the fore-end. “She’s a handful, I bet,” he said carefully.
Clark laughed raucously. “There’s enough there for both hands! I know!”
“Oh? That kind, huh?”
Clark laughed again. Then his voice turned contemptuous. “That poor son of a bitch, Delaney. She’s put horns on him with every white man in this outfit—and maybe some of the Indians, too. But, of course, now that Meredith’s back ...”
“She and Meredith have something going?”
“I told you, she’s always got something going. But, yeah, with Meredith it’s a little different. After all, half that silver belongs to him.”
“Half belongs to her husband, too.”
Clark was perfectly sober now. “Yeah. If he can keep it.”
Fargo ejected the live rounds from the Army Colt. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Meredith’s the kind of man that takes what he wants. And Delaney’s a nice guy, but he ain’t the kind who can protect what he has.” Clark sat down on his bunk. “Hell, I’m talking too much. But it’s been so damn long since I had another real professional to talk to. Besides, if you’re taking over, you’d better know the ins-and-outs.”
“My taking over bother you?” Fargo asked as he cleaned the Colt.
“Hell, no. I’m damned glad. Don’t think I ain’t heard of you. I’d rather have you here than a dozen jacklegs.” He helped himself to a drink of tequila from Fargo’s bottle. “It’s all yours, now. Including figuring out a way to get three hundred thousand of silver past Hernandez with an outfit that’s outnumbered four to one. And then from here to the border through Pancho Villa and God knows how many other bandidos.” His laugh was mirthless. “Yeah, it’s all yours and you’re welcome to it.”
“Thanks,” Fargo said. Putting up his weapons, he pulled off his boots and rolled over on the bunk. He tucked the holstered Colt under the straw-filled pillow, pulled up a musty-smelling blanket, and, in three minutes, he was dead to the world.
This bell of the hourglass that was the canyon was enormous. Where it rounded off to a dead end, the mine shafts riddled its wall. A lot of capital, Fargo saw, had been invested in these diggings, in the stamp mill and the smelter, the bunkhouses for the men, the big headquarters house, more elaborate, where Delaney, Crystal—and. Meredith—were quartered. The buildings and corrals were well away from the diggings: protection from snipers on the rim rock. That had been Meredith’s idea and it was a good one.
With Morse Clark, Fargo rode away from the mine, down the canyon toward the neck of the hourglass. They kept to the center of the canyon to avoid rifle fire from the towering, purple walls in the distance. But as the canyon narrowed toward the neck, they had to run a gauntlet of harassing fire. Clark’s sorrel and the line-backed dun he’d provided for Fargo stretched out as bullets whined about them.
The neck was a deep, narrow gorge with sheer walls. The dynamiting which had blocked it and formed a high barricade of rubble had also undercut the walls on either side, so that here they were comparatively safe from fire from above. Of his eighteen men, Clark kept six on duty at the barricade at all times, six sleeping in reserve behind it in the shelter of a ledge, and six back at the mine as another, mobile reserve.
It was dark in the gorge, shadowy. Fargo climbed up the great barricade of split boulders and shale and rubble that choked the entrance, careful to keep his head down. The six hired gunmen on duty looked at him curiously. They were a tough bunch, each man equipped with not one, but two Winchester carbines and plenty of ammo. Clark, Fargo saw, knew his business.
Keeping his head down, he peered over the edge of the barricade. Beyond the end of the gorge, the canyon bellied out into spaciousness again, and far out on its grassy floor, he saw the smoke from Hernandez’s fires. They were well out of rifle range; using his glasses, he saw men moving about them and counted forty before he gave up. His guess was sixty.
Plus the men on the rim rock. Tall odds.
“They got nothing to do but wait,” Clark said. “They’ve rushed us two or three times and found out it ain’t worth it. But for three hundred thousand, they can sit out there for a year; by that time well have all starved to death and they can just amble in and pick up all the silver they can tote.”
Fargo nodded. “We can’t shoot our way through ‘em hampered by a pack train. We’ve got to go on the offensive, start cutting down those odds. A few night attacks of our own, some picked men, some dynamite. We’ve got to shake ‘em up.”
“I thought about that. Before he left for the States, Meredith gave strict orders against it.”
“Well, he’ll be ready to change his mind now. I’ll talk to him about it.” Fargo scrambled down off the thirty-foot-high pile of stone, went to his horse. He frowned as he mounted; it was a bad situation, all right; maybe even worse than Meredith had painted. He’d earn his money getting the silver out of here.
They made the dash into the open through a few scattered bullets; and when they were safe, reined in and rode to the mine at a more leisurely pace. They had made about half the distance when they spotted a rider loping toward them down the center of the canyon, Clark made a sound in his throat. “Crystal,” he said.
He looked at Fargo curiously. “It ain’t me she wants,” he said. “And I got work to do up at the mine. See you later.” He touched spurs to his mount and galloped ahead of Fargo. As he passed Crystal, he didn’t rein in or even nod; and she looked straight ahead. Fargo guessed there was considerable ill-feeling between them. Fargo had enough troubles without getting mixed up with the boss’s wife. But he lifted rein, loped forward up the canyon to meet her.
When she saw him coming, she pulled up and waited, “Good morning, Fargo,” she said. Her green eyes raked over him slowly, insolently, and with something shining in them that had its effect on Fargo despite his resolve. She was not a woman it was easy to ignore—not in that tight white shirt stretched to the limit by her breasts, in the whipcord riding pants that might have been painted on her splendid hips and thighs. He touched the campaign hat. “Morning, Mrs. Delaney.”
She sprung her horse alongside his, so close her thigh brushed his knee. “Crystal.” Her coppery hair was clubbed behind her head, tied with a ribbon; it glinted in the dazzling morning sunlight. “We don’t stand on formality around here.”
“Okay,” said Fargo. “Crystal.” They rode along together. She was a good horsewoman; she managed to keep her leg in almost constant contact with his.
“You’ll be pleased to know that your little greaser girl’s sleeping like a log,” Crystal went on. “She was completely frazzled out.” She laughed a little coarsely. “Can’t say I admire your taste in women. She looks like something the cat dragged in. I expected better from you.”
“She’s been through a lot,” Fargo said. He moved his horse away from her. Like Clark, he had troubles enough.
She caught up with him. “Sam and Ted are in deep conference. I’m at loose ends as usual. I thought I’d ride out and show you around. In case there’s anything you haven’t seen that you want to see.”
“I’ve pretty much seen it all,” Fargo said.
Crystal laughed softly. “Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “Your hair’s almost completely white, isn’t it? How’d that happen?”
“A hard life,” Fargo said.
“I’ll bet.” Her voice softened. “I’ll bet you’ve really been around, seen the elephant and heard the hoot-owl.”
“Pretty much,” Fargo said.
“You don’t talk a whole lot, do you?”
“Only when I’ve got something to say.”
Crystal’s horse crowded against his, their legs touched, then she put a hand on Fargo’s thigh. “The strong, silent type. I like that in a man.”
Fargo reined in, turned his mount. “All right, Crystal,” he said. “I might as well give it to you straight. I came here to do a job for your husband and for Meredith. You’re a he
ll of a fine looking woman, and I’ll bet you’re a ball of fire in the hay. If this was El Paso or San Antone, nothing’d be more fun for me than to find out. But this ain’t El Paso and it ain’t San Antone. It’s out in the Sierra Madre with an army of Mex bandits looking down our throats. Right now, for the time being, there’s all the trouble I need outside this end of the canyon. So I’m too busy to play games. You come see me after I’ve got this silver across the Rio, after Delaney and Meredith have paid me off. Then I’ll give you all you can handle. But until then, you let me alone, you hear?”
Crystal went rigid in the saddle, face paling, eyes suddenly hard. “Why, you son of a bitch,” she whispered. “It’s that little Spic wench, isn’t it? You think she’s better than I am?”
“I don’t think anything,” Fargo said. “I’m just telling you to go peddle it somewhere else for right now.”
Her face twisted in rage. She snarled an oath, raised the quirt that dangled from her wrist, slashed at Fargo’s face. His hand was like lightning, seizing the whip before it struck home. He nearly pulled her from the saddle when he jerked it loose. He looked down into her face, and what she saw in his eyes suddenly erased the fury, replaced it with fear.
Then Fargo said, almost wearily, “On your way, Crystal.” Savagely, he lashed her mount. It whirled, reared, nearly unseating her. He hit it again and it lined out in a dead run for the mine. Fargo kept his own horse tight-reined, watching her go. Then he hung the loop of the quirt around his saddle horn and put his own dun into a trot, keeping well behind her. She did not look back at him.
Fargo found Sam Delaney and Meredith in the office of the big house; Delaney motioned him to a chair and Meredith, rolling a cigar in his mouth, said, “Well, how do things look?”
It seemed to Fargo that there was tension in the office, as if the partners had been arguing; and there were a great many papers spread on Delaney’s desk. “Not good,” said Fargo. “It’s going to take a while. The odds are too long right now and we’ve got to cut them down.” He told them of his plans: sorties out of the fortress with picked men, an offensive to whittle at Hernandez’s strength.
Delaney listened closely, his long, thin face pale. When Fargo was through, he said tensely: “Isn’t there some quicker way? We’ve got to get that silver to the border in a hurry.” He touched the papers. “Certain financial matters—I stand to lose some damned valuable property there if we don’t.” He shot a narrow, unhappy look at Meredith.
“I don’t know,” said Fargo. “There might be another way, but it’s more of a risk. Instead of having to fight Hernandez on his ground, we could fight him on ours.”
“What do you mean?” Meredith sat up straight, broad face alight with interest
Fargo took out a cigar, lit it. “How’s your dynamite supply?”
“Good,” Delaney said promptly. “We’ve got plenty.”
“All right,” Fargo said, “We could do this. We’re being watched from the rim, but the moon’s waning; it’ll be black dark by tomorrow night. Okay; then we move out and lay a mine field: plant dynamite charges on our side of the barrier down there in the bottleneck, like this.” He took a pencil and a piece of paper from the desk, made a sketch, showing the pattern, a checkerboard that extended from the barrier well into their section of the canyon. “Then we make a hole in the barrier, withdraw our men, and put them into ambush right under the walls. We’ll have to dig some rifle pits and use some camouflage, Hernandez will look at that hole in the barrier; he’ll wonder what’s going on. Sooner or later, if it stays there and the barrier’s undefended, he’s going to sneak up to it. Then he’s going to send men through it, probably at night. We let the men come in. Then—we’ve got more dynamite planted in the wall back at the barrier—we blow it and trap ‘em. And as they come across this mine field we’ve made, we blow that, too. Then we clean up what’s left with rifles.”
Delaney and Meredith looked at one another. “By God,” Meredith said with admiration, “you’re a genius. A damned genius, Fargo!”
“You think it’ll work?” Delaney stared at his partner.
“Hell, yes, it’ll work. If it doesn’t, we haven’t lost a thing!”
Delaney got up and began to pace. “I don’t know. It’s exposing the mine and all the silver to Hernandez. And Crystal…I don’t know.”
“Hell, it’s our only chance! Hernandez has got the men, but we got the dynamite!” Enthusiastically, Meredith slapped the desk.
“And suppose something goes wrong?” Delaney said. “Suppose the dynamite doesn’t blow?”
“Doesn’t blow? Doesn’t blow, hell!” Meredith jumped to his feet. “Who’s the best powder man in this outfit?”
“You are,” Delaney said promptly.
“You’re damned right! I cut my teeth on a piece of dyno! I can rig that whole field to go anyway Fargo wants it to, one at a time or all at once! If we can sucker Hernandez in here…He’ll think we opened the barrier so we can make a dash for it. He’ll come romping in—or any part of his men—and we’ll blow ‘em to shreds! If we’re lucky, we ought to cut his force at least by half. Right, Fargo?”
“That’s about what I figure,” Fargo said. “About six sticks to a mine. You got any scrap-iron or even rocks, bury ‘em with the dyno, right on top of it. When it goes, it ought to go at once, crisscross that whole end of the canyon. Then, even if it doesn’t get ‘em all, their horses will be out of their minds. Our riflemen shouldn’t have any trouble pickin’ ‘em off.”
“Then we’ll try it,” Meredith said with decision. “Right, Sam?”
Delaney was still hesitant, unsure. He picked up a pair of thick-lensed spectacles, donned them, then took them off again. “I don’t... All right, Ted. If you think it’s best You and Fargo are the fighters, here. I would like to hear what Morse Clark thinks. I’ll send for him.”
He went out. While he was gone, Meredith grinned ebulliently. “Damn, Fargo, that thousand dollars I gave you in Paso was the best money I ever spent!”
“We’ll see,” Fargo said. “We’re still a long way from the Rio.”
Delaney reappeared with Clark, who, it turned out, had been right outside. Fargo explained his plan; Clark listened closely, frowning in concentration. When Fargo had finished, Clark snorted. “Hell, why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’re for it, too, eh, Morse?” Delaney asked.
“Damned right. We leave that barrier open long enough, keep real quiet up here at the mine, Hernandez won’t be able to figure out what the hell’s going on. We’ll stop the stamp mill; that’ll confuse him further. Pull back our men— Sure, his curiosity’ll get the better of him. Then we blow the barrier behind his patrol and shoot ‘em like fish in a barrel. We might get a quarter, maybe even a half of his command. That’ll shake him bad, loosen him up for when we make our rush.”
“All right,” Meredith said. “Then it’s decided. All work’s to be done in black dark, eh, Fargo?”
“Total dark,” Fargo said, “and quiet as a mouse. You’ll have a busy night tomorrow night, Meredith.”
“Just the kind of business I like,” Meredith grinned. “You found my weakness, Fargo. I’d rather handle powder than eat when I’m hungry. I’ll take full charge of that end.”
“She’s all yours,” Fargo said.
“Until then, I reckon,”‘ Meredith said, “there’s nothing to do but wait.”
“That’s sort of the way I figured it,” Fargo said. He arose and went out.
“Fargo.” The voice from the hallway halted him. He turned.
He hardly recognized Juanita; her hair had been washed and combed, shone sleekly, she looked rested and the clothes she had borrowed from Crystal—probably before Crystal’s rebuff by Fargo—fit her like a glove. Apparently Crystal liked seductive clothing; the red satin blouse was cut low in front, the skirt tight as a drumhead over hips and pelvis. Involuntarily, Fargo gave a low whistle.
Juanita smiled. “You like me better this way than in black
—or in rags, all dirty and with my hair tangled?”
“You’re a knock-out,” Fargo said.
Juanita glowed; her eyes met his boldly, then downcast themselves modestly. Her voice was a whisper. “I have this room all to myself,” she said. “And it is almost siesta time.”
Fargo grinned. “Americans don’t take siesta,” he said. “But in this case I might make an exception.” He looked up and down the corridor; it was empty; and, besides, he had nothing else to do right now. “Let’s see what kind of quarters they gave you,” he said, and he followed her into the room.
Chapter Seven
It must have been like this in the old days, Fargo thought, when the Apaches were on the loose. Not all those coyotes howling up on the rim rock were coyotes. Nor were those answering from the other end of the canyon. The moonless night was astir with life and danger.
That was good; it meant that Hernandez might be about ready to take the bait
Surely, Fargo thought; crouching in the rifle pit, he must be wondering what the hell was going on at the mine. If he didn’t send in a patrol—and a big one—tonight to find out, he had more patience and brains than Fargo had given him credit for.
Yesterday morning, they had stopped the stamp mill. The cessation of its roar, after all these weeks, must have been enough in itself to cause Hernandez to wonder. And surely his watchers on the rim had noticed that all activity at the mine had ceased. Then they had dynamited the barrier, blown a gap in it that would easily admit several horses abreast. And all the defenders had disappeared from it. Fargo had seen Hernandez through his binoculars; he did not think the slender, vain-looking, handsome man in charro clothing all speckled with hammered-silver conchas was a man either of great imagination or limitless patience. He had been out there wondering about it all for nearly thirty-six hours now. That should be about as long as he was able to hold out
All right, Fargo thought, tipping back the campaign hat on his bristle of snow-white hair, let him come. Everything was in readiness.
