by John Benteen
Fargo ejected the empty round; replaced it with a live one. He felt a certain sadness; the animal had given its all to him. Then he put that out of his mind. He was afoot, wounded, without food or water, in one of the most desolate wildernesses in the world, the Sierra Madre. Behind him there were, perhaps, fifty or sixty armed, experienced soldiers after his skin. He knew that his chances of survival were not worth a plugged nickel.
The odds were fair enough. He turned and began, awkwardly, to walk.
Like a wounded, skulking wolf, he kept to cover, hiding his trail. Hernandez might or might not think it worthwhile to send men after him, but he would take no chances. By mid-afternoon, he was glad he had not while he lay up in a thicket of brush, Colt and shotgun ready, the riders were all around him. The buzzards had drawn them to the mule and they had fanned out.
But not even the Yaquis in Hernandez’s outfit were Fargo’s masters in the art of trails and trail-sign. A superb tracker and trailer himself, he knew what they would be looking for, and he left no such sign. Legend to the contrary, not even a Yaqui could find a print on rock or on the bed of small streams, provided you kept out of the silt. You put each twig and stem back in place as you traveled and you never dug in with your heels, and you didn’t spit or leave snags of fiber on thorns; and when you had passed, it was as if only the wind had blown through.
So he lay hunkered down in a thicket of gnarled, stunted oak while they coursed all around him like greyhounds after a coyote—blind greyhounds. The legs of a horse once were within a yard of him and he began to tremble for fear the animal would smell him and snort; but the wind was with him and the blood-taint of his wound never reached its nostrils. Then, signaling softly one to another, they rode away. But Fargo didn’t move. Too wise for that, he lay there, shoulder racking him with agony now, until after sundown.
When he finally crawled out, began to walk, it was black dark and bitter cold. His left shoulder throbbed, the pain going all the way down to his hip. He was hung over from the tequila, weak from thirst and starvation; and, as he lurched along, his brain began to build fantasies. One of them was that he was, silently and covertly, being followed. Of course: panthers. Panthers liked to do that, he thought crazily. He had had it happen to him before, in the Yukon and in Alaska. Panthers liked to pad along silently in the brush, watching you. But they were cowards; panthers did not attack people unless they had cubs and you menaced them. So he had nothing to fear from the mountain lions.
But it wasn’t mountain lions.
By midnight, he knew that, too. It wasn’t mountain lions and it couldn’t be lobos, because they would howl. But there was something stalking him. Something that moved as noiselessly, as invisibly, through the darkness as any animal. With his thoughts seemingly traveling in spirals now, his belly racked by hunger, his shoulder throbbing, he tried to think of what it could be. He thought of all the animals of the mountains.
And the humans.
And then he knew.
And then Fargo did a strange thing.
He unslung the shotgun. He unbuckled the gun belt and let it drop. He threw down the Batangas knife. And he backed away from all that armament. Because that was what they were afraid of; that was why they had not showed themselves.
Then, in Spanish, he called out: “Friends! You men there, in the brush. Come out! I won’t hurt you! I need your help! Come out!”
He stood there, alone, naked of weapons, defenseless, waiting. He had to make the same speech again, his hands raised. They were his only salvation, now.
After his second call, when he backed farther away from his weapons, the Tarahumaras came out of the brush.
The Indians of the Sierra. They were dressed in rags. Most of them carried bows with arrows nocked. A few of them carried antique muskets; one of them had an arquebus that must have dated from the days of the Spaniards.
They came out of the brush, twenty of them, like phantoms, like the very spirit of the Sierra Madre, dark shapes in deeper darkness. They moved in around him, silently, and Fargo stood there, hands high above his head, waiting for them. He looked at their dark, impassive faces. Then he let out a sigh and sat down, hands still raised.
He said, dizzily because of fatigue and his wound and hunger: “Welcome, friends.”
The Tarahumaras, the shyest, most primitive of tribes of the southern mountains, gathered around him. Their torsos were bare and so were their feet. They looked at him as if he were a curiosity, a profound curiosity.
Fargo said wearily: “After I have rested, you must take me to Chihuahua and to Pancho Villa.” Then, too weary to worry about what happened to him, he lay back and abandoned himself to the Indians.
They had medicines. He was aware of that when he came back to full consciousness in a cave. Somebody was forcing a draught of something unspeakable down his throat from the neck of a gourd. He had wit enough to swallow it, and though he gagged, he managed to keep it down. After a time, his head cleared and he was able, unsteadily, to sit up.
Six men, clad in tattered white, made a semi-circle about him on the floor of the cave. They were scrawny with chronic malnutrition, and their eyes were unreadable. Beyond them, a couple of women ground pinon nuts in a metate.
Fargo said: “Friends.”
The oldest of them, his black hair silvered, said in halting Spanish: “Maybe. Who are you, gringo?”
Fargo’s head reeled with dizziness. A vile-smelling poultice had been applied to his shoulder; it no longer throbbed. He said: “You know of Pancho Villa?”
The man with graying hair said, “Yes.”
“In Chihuahua City. If you can get me to Villa, you will become very rich.”
The silver-haired man simply spat into the fire which illuminated the center of the cave.
“Silver,” Fargo said. “Get me to Villa and you’ll have much silver. I’ll see to that.”
The men just looked at him blankly. Fargo sucked in the stifling smell of smoke and animal fat and unwashed bodies that permeated the cave and said, again, “Villa. The Lion of the North. Do you understand? I must see Villa.”
The silver-haired man talked with the others in their own dialect. Then he said: “You are not with Hernandez?”
“You know I’m not. You saw his men looking for me.”
“Hernandez muy mala.” The old man spat again. “He thinks we are animals to shoot.”
“If you can get me to Villa, he’ll kill Hernandez. I promise it. Then you’ll have silver.”
“Silver? Don’t need silver. Don’t need—” he groped for the word “—trouble with Hernandez. You stay here. Not leave. You—” He broke off as another man came into the cave.
Fargo looked at the newcomer. He was young, stringy-thin, dressed in the same tattered whites as the others. And yet, there was a difference. He bore himself with a kind of boldness—and he carried a .30-30 Winchester, the first modern weapon Fargo had seen here. He looked at Fargo. “You awake, eh?” he said in heavily accented Spanish.
“Yes,” Fargo said. “And I want to—” But he was interrupted by a flow of dialect from the old man. The newcomer listened, looking back and forth from the old man to Fargo. Fargo caught the words Villa, Chihuahua, and Sebastian, which was apparently the young man’s name.
When the old man had finished, Sebastian sat down cross legged, the rifle across his knees. He rolled a cornhusk cigarette, looking at Fargo thoughtfully. “You want to go Villa in Chihuahua, eh? Bring Villa here? We don’t need Villa in here. Hernandez bad enough.”
“I want to bring Villa to kill Hernandez and all his men. Villa is different from Hernandez. Villa is simpatico with the Tarahumara. There are Tarahumara in his army.”
That, Fargo knew, was true. He watched Sebastian, encouraged by the light of intelligence in the man’s eyes. Sebastian was silent for a while; then he nodded. He spoke rapidly to the old man. The others spoke, too; they parleyed for a while. Then Sebastian threw the tiny remnant of his cigarette into the fire and rolled anoth
er.
“All right,” he said to Fargo. “I take you to Villa. Hernandez, his men, shoot Tarahumara like deer.” He grinned evilly. “My mother Apache. I not be shot like deer. I kill Hernandez man.” He raised the Winchester. “You pay me, I take you to Villa, Chihuahua.”
“In Chihuahua you get silver,” Fargo said.
Sebastian shook his head, “Silver? Have no use. You pay me so, this.” He got to his feet, went to Fargo’s gear piled next to the cave wall. He fumbled, then held up a bandolier—the one containing the cartridges for Fargo’s lost Winchester. It was better than half-full. Fargo blinked, then understood. To a man like Sebastian in a wilderness like this, each cartridge was worth many times its weight in silver.
Fargo nodded. “Those. And those more again in Chihuahua. Right?”
“Right,” Sebastian said, grinning broadly. He put out a hand as hard as a hunk of oak and Fargo took it. “We go Chihuahua together soon. Now you sleep, rest. Long way, hard trip, Tarahumara no have horse. Maybe we steal later. Go first walk. Hard for gringo so much walk. You rest.” As if that ended the matter, he stood up, went out.
Fargo was indeed weak. He had done all he could. Now, like a wounded animal, he slept to gather strength. That night he had a good meal of roasted meat. It was from his own mule. That did not bother him at all; he ate of it hungrily, and, knowing his body needed much liquid to replace lost blood, drank quarts of cold mountain water. By morning, he was on his feet again. The next day, he insisted that they start.
By the middle of that first day, he was sure he’d made a mistake.
The Tarahumaras were famous walkers and runners; long-distance races were their favorite tribal sport. The Sierra was steep and rough, and Fargo was far from as strong as he’d hoped to be. By noon, after a long morning of trying to keep up with Sebastian, who loped along like a wolf, tirelessly, Fargo was exhausted.
They ate a little dried deer meat, drank from a water gourd Sebastian carried. “You tired, eh?” Sebastian said cheerfully. “We go slower rest of day.”
“No,” Fargo said. “No, time is important. We go fast, fast as we can.”
Sebastian nodded. “We see.”
They started out again. It took all Fargo’s will, the summoning of every ounce of strength he owned, to keep up with Sebastian, but he did it somehow; and toward mid-afternoon, he got a second wind. His body had adjusted itself to so much exertion at this altitude; or perhaps it was because they worked steadily lower down the side of the range, so that the air was thicker. By nightfall, Fargo decided, they must have covered almost as much ground as if they had been on horseback. He was glad he wore the comfortable cavalry boots and not the high-heeled, too-tight footgear most riders preferred. His feet were in good shape; and right now that could mean the difference between life and death.
Sebastian left him hidden in a ravine, sallied forth with the bow and arrows which he carried in addition to the Winchester. An hour later, he returned with a wild turkey gobbler, which they roasted over a small, well-concealed fire. They filled themselves on it and Fargo slept in utter exhaustion, oblivious to the cold that pierced the too-small deerskin blanket Sebastian had given him.
When he awakened the next morning and they finished off the turkey, he felt all right except for a soreness in his shoulder. Today, he thought, he would keep up without difficulty.
But it was not without difficulty because Sebastian was simply incredible. No one who had not been born and raised a Tarahumara could have matched that pace with ease. Nevertheless, Sebastian looked at Fargo with a new respect that night
Perhaps it was just as well that Fargo was tired. It kept him from thinking about what lay ahead. When they got out of the mountains, it would still take a lot of doing to get to Chihuahua through the various bands that roamed the country. And even if he made it to the state capital, found Villa there, he had no assurance that Villa would listen to him, that he would even get to see the Lion of the North. Meredith had said that Woodrow Wilson’s policy toward Villa was due to change. If that were true, and if it had already happened, Villa might be in no mood to listen to a Norteamericano. He might, instead, simply decide to have Fargo shot, out of hand, as a nuisance.
It all depended on the one magic word, Fargo decided. That single word, and the ability it had to stir the souls of men, was his ace in the hole.
Silver. If he spoke of silver, perhaps Villa would listen.
The next day’s hard journey brought them to the foothills of the range, north of Creel, Again Fargo slept like a dead man. When he awakened, there was no sign of Sebastian. Fargo was alone.
Immediately, Fargo’s hand went to his holster. The Colt was still there; his shotgun lay where he had carefully put it the night before. He had all his ammunition. In the gray light of dawn, he searched the ravine for trail-sign, some clue to where Sebastian had gone, but there was none.
Fargo waited, stomach growling with hunger. There was nothing else to do. The morning mist peeled back; sunlight rayed down into the ravine, and still no Sebastian. Fargo sat with his back to a boulder, cursing the delay. Then he heard a tick of sound.
Like a cat, he came alert, the shotgun in one hand, the Colt in the other. He took cover, waited, eyes fastened on a bend ahead in the ravine. The tick of sound came again; a horse snorted, Fargo pointed the shotgun. Then the rider came around the bend. Fargo let out a long, whistling breath as he recognized the stringy figure in the saddle. Sebastian rode one horse, led another. Fargo eased down the shotgun and stepped out from behind the boulder.
Sebastian grinned broadly. “You think I leave, eh? I make long trip in night. Steal two horses. We ride now, not walk, eh? But first eat.” He took from the saddle two dead jackrabbits.
Fargo never learned where Sebastian had stolen the horses, much less the saddles and bridles. Explanation was almost beyond Sebastian’s uncertain Spanish. But they were good mounts, small, tough, hill-trained. In the saddle again, Fargo once more felt complete, whole; and all his confidence returned.
They pushed the horses hard. Twice they stopped; Sebastian sensed danger that Fargo could not. Each time, he was right; bands of riders passed them, while they held their mounts’ muzzles to silence them. They were gun hung, tough-looking and there was no way of telling whose men they were. Fargo decided that either Sebastian had fantastic hearing or he had actually smelled the bands while they were at a distance.
They rode that day and the next one through foothills barely less rugged than the mountains themselves. There were villages, now, and they circled wide around them. It could not be much farther, Fargo thought, to the city of Chihuahua. He struggled to control his impatience. It was unlike him to be impatient; and when he analyzed the cause of it, he realized that it was Juanita.
It had been almost a week now since he had escaped from the Sierra Princess. Hernandez would keep Juanita to himself for a time, but he could not monopolize her for too long. The men would want her and he would be forced to give her to them. He might manage to hold on to her for a week, perhaps for two, but not much more. And it was that knowledge that kept pushing Fargo like an invisible hand at his back.
That and the score he had to settle with Meredith. Meredith had double-crossed him. Meredith had used him. Fargo did not allow himself to be used by anyone—except on his own terms. Meredith was going to pay for that He was going to pay, too, for Morse Clark and Sam Delaney and a lot of other Anglos whom he’d betrayed to Hernandez.
If.
If the word silver would get Fargo to Villa.
At mid-afternoon of that second day, they crested a ridge. Sebastian reined up in the cover of a clump of trees and pointed. Below, a road crawled like a snake through a deep valley. Even as Fargo watched, a dozen mounted men galloped along it, and the one in the lead wore a sombrero heavily trimmed with gold. He was a Dorado—one of Villa’s bodyguard—and these were Villa’s men. Then Sebastian pointed to the north.
“Chihuahua,” he said; and in the misty distance, Fargo
saw the spires of its churches rising from the beautiful valley in which it lay.
There was nothing to do now but come out into the open. Fargo made Sebastian understand that it would be necessary to use his shirt. The Indian gave him the dirty white rag, and Fargo unloaded the shotgun, tied the rag to its muzzles, and, holding it aloft as a flag, galloped down the slope.
Except for a few women on their way to market with baskets of eggs on their heads, the road was deserted. Nevertheless, Fargo kept the flag high, and his muscles were tense, as if he expected a shot from ambush. The dust had barely settled from that band led by the Dorado. There were bound to be other soldiers on the road to Chihuahua.
Then they rounded a bend and came upon them. Troops were dug in on either side of the road; there were cavalry pickets, and a detachment of infantry in the road itself, checking all passers-by. It was a strong roadblock; the beginning of the defenses of the city. Fargo and Sebastian reined in. Waving the white flag, hands well away from their weapons, they walked their horses gingerly, as the cavalry galloped forward to surround them, guns trained.
At their lead was a short man on an Arabian stallion, obviously the officer in charge. He wore a suit coat, a battered Fedora, bandoliers, carried a Winchester and two Colt Peacemakers strapped about his waist. As the big-hatted, cartridge-draped soldiers closed in around Fargo and Sebastian, his dark eyes raked over the American in surprise. Then he tipped back the Fedora.
“All right,” he said in good English. “Halt, both of you.” He leveled the Winchester on Fargo’s belly. “Who the hell are you, man? Give an account of yourself. Where did you come from and where do you think you’re going?”
“My name’s Fargo. Is General Villa in the city?”
The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe.”
“I want to see him.”
“General Villa’s too busy to see every lost gringo that wanders into Chihuahua.”
“He’ll want to see me,” said Fargo.
