Diablo Death Cry

by Jon Sharpe

  ONE LAST DROP

  “Two more miles and we’ll break into open tableland,” Fargo said. “If we—”

  The Trailsman never finished his sentence. The Ovaro, moving forward at a slow, steady trot, planted his left forefoot and then suddenly plummeted toward the ground.

  Fargo, caught completely by surprise, jerked his feet from the stirrups. His first thought was that his stallion had stepped into a gopher hole, and Fargo didn’t want his legs trapped when the Ovaro fell.

  But this “hole,” Fargo quickly realized when both of the Ovaro’s forelegs were swallowed up, was a man-made pitfall trap. The leaf-covered framework of boughs collapsed, and Fargo pitched forward hard over his pommel—straight toward three pointed stakes smeared black with deadly poison!

  SIGNET

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  The first chapter of this book previously appeared in High Plains Massacre, the three hundred eighty-third volume in this series.

  Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2013

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-101-62137-0

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Excerpt from TRAILSMAN #385

  The Trailsman

  Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.

  The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.

  The Southwest Trail (Texas and New Mexico), 1861—where Skye Fargo sets out to make a few easy dollars and gets caught in a deadly web of conspiracy and treason.

  1

  The words had plagued Skye Fargo’s mind since he had headed south from Red River to start this new job: Wait for what will come.

  That was how Hernando Quintana had ended his first dispatch to Fargo. And what eventually came was a new chamois pouch filled with five hundred dollars in gold double eagles—and a promissory note for five hundred more at the completion of the job.

  That was way too much money. And Fargo had learned long ago that when men overpaid him, it generally meant he was going to be the meat that feeds the tiger.

  Wait for what will come.

  “The story of my life,” Fargo muttered.

  “The hell are you mumbling, Catfish?” demanded the man mountain blocking out the sun on Fargo’s left. “Speak up like you own a pair!”

  Fargo and his recently hired companion, Bill “Booger” McTeague, were riding through the flat saw grass country of the Gulf Coast in east Texas. On their left, the metallic blue water of the Gulf of Mexico stretched out to infinity, furling waves beating themselves into cotton foam as they crashed onto the white sand beach.

  Fargo reined in his black-and-white pinto stallion and shaded his lake blue eyes with one hand, taking a careful squint ahead and behind. He sat tall in the saddle, a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, crop-bearded man dressed in fringed buckskins. A dust-darkened white hat left most of his weather-bronzed face in shadow.

  “What I said,” Fargo finally replied, “is that the two of us will soon be up against it. The back of my neck has been tingling for the past hour.”

  “Pah!” Booger loosed a brown streamer into the knee-high grass. “Pull up your skirts, Nancy! All you jaspers with pretty teeth are squeamish. Why, this job is money for old rope. We may have to kill a Comanch or two, and p’r’aps a few Apaches will try to blow out our wicks, is all.”

  Fargo gigged the Ovaro forward again after loosening his Henry repeater in its saddle boot.

  “We’ll be hugging with red aborigines, all right,” he said. “You can’t avoid them on the southern route into California. And these Southwest tribes can’t be bought off with tribute like the ones up north. Matter fact, we’re being watched right now—and there’s a tribe in this area, the Karankawas, known to be cannibals.”

  At this startling intelligence, Booger’s head snapped toward Fargo. “No Choctaw here, Catfish. Is that the straight word?”

  Fargo’s lips twitched into a grin. Booger’s moon face looked more curious than frightened. The shaggy giant was six feet five inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighty-five pounds. His prodigious bulk forced him to ride a saddle ox on long rides like this one. He was thick in the chest and waist, his arms bigger around the wrists than most brawny men were in the forearms. He wore a floppy hat and butternut-dyed shirt and trousers with knee-length elk-skin moccasins.

  “It is,” Fargo replied. “But it’s not cannibals watching us, old son.”

  “Fargo, you double-poxed hound, I am not the lad for riddles. Who is it?”

  Again the ominous words snapped in Fargo’s mind like burning twigs: Wait for what will come.

  “I don’t have the foggiest notion in hell,” he admitted. “But I suspect it’s somebody who’s been expecting us, and I doubt if he means to invite us to a cider party.”

  Booger threw back his head and howled like a wolf. “Faugh! A good set-to makes my pecker hard. Put a name to it and I will kill it. Nerve up, you little pipsqueak. Say! Old Booger used to whip an Overland swift wagon on the San Antonio Road. There is a fine whorehouse at Powder-horn. We can get liquored up and plant our carrots before we even report to these dagos.”

  “Clean your ears or cut your hair. I think somebody’s laying for us. No frippit and no carousing until we puzzle this deal out.”

  Booger looked mortally offended.

  “Fargo, when did you become so old maidish? I do not require your permission to top a hot little senyoreeter.”

  “You do as long as you’re working
for me, you mammoth ape. I put you on the payroll because Quintana demanded the best driver I could find. But I won’t take your damn guff.”

  “No need to get your bowels in an uproar. Gerlong there, Ambrose!” Booger called to his saddle ox. “G’long there, whoop!”

  At first Fargo had been skeptical of Ambrose. But although the huge, placid beast could not move at a fast clip, he could cover twenty-four miles in four hours even in heavy sand. The Ovaro had quickly accepted the good-natured animal, and in any event the only alternative for a man of Booger’s size was a conveyance and team.

  Fargo’s startling blue eyes stayed in constant scanning motion despite the flat, open terrain. He especially paid attention to the Ovaro’s delicately veined ears. They were often the first indication of potential trouble.

  Ten minutes passed in silence, each man alone with his thoughts. Then:

  “This Espanish hombre,” Booger said. “The hell’s his name again?”

  “Hernando Quintana.”

  “Is he one a’ them whatchacallits—grandees?”

  “Nah. He was a viceroy until the Mexican Revolution.”

  “The hell’s a viceroy?”

  The Ovaro’s ears twitched. Eyes slitted against the bright sunlight, Fargo took another good squint around them.

  “It’s a fellow who governs a province for the Spanish king,” he finally replied. “This one was in charge of Monterrey, Mexico. A lot of ’em were killed when the revolution broke out, but this Quintana escaped to New Orleans.”

  Booger grunted. He hawked up phlegm, spat, then said sarcastically, “Bully for him. Them garlics gripe my nuts. It’s them bastards that taught the featherheads to scalp and torture.”

  “Never mind the soapbox,” Fargo said, watching the brisk gulf breeze ripple through the tall saw grass in waves. “Just keep a weather eye out for trouble. We’re both hanging out here exposed like a set of dog balls.”

  “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, nervous Nellie! Why, a titmouse couldn’t sneak up on us in country this open and flat.”

  Fargo couldn’t gainsay that. But years of frontier survival had taught him how danger sometimes gave the air a certain texture. And he felt that texture now—a galvanic charge like the one he sometimes felt just before a massive crack of thunder and lightning.

  Booger gnawed off a corner of plug. When he had it juicing good, he parked it in his cheek and said, “Say, Catfish . . . will there be any women in this dago’s party?”

  “He mentioned his daughter.”

  “Ha-ho, ha-ho! A daughter, and he hires on the Trailsman? Oh, Lulu girl! You’ll have her ankles behind her ears before next breakfast.”

  Fargo let out a long, fluming sigh. “Booger, you ain’t got enough brains to have a headache. Now, you listen up: Spaniards are known for taking quick offense. I want you to mind your manners around them, hear? You keep a civil tongue in your head. And Christ sakes, don’t be spying on the women when they bathe. That’s a dangerous habit and will get you shot someday.”

  “Pipe down, you jay. Easy for you to say—you’ve seen more quiff than a midwife. Old Booger ain’t had a woman in so long he’s forgot what the gash that never heals looks like.”

  Fargo snorted. “Somebody get me a violin.”

  Within the next hour the two riders reached the northeast shore of Matagorda Bay. Powder-horn, a jumping-off settlement a few miles inland, marked the beginning of a good wagon road that had been well traveled since the army built it in 1849. Fargo was to join the Quintana party there.

  They turned west onto a narrow trace that led past wind-swooped palm trees and gigantic live oaks draped in gray-green curtains of Spanish moss. Fargo considered this part of Texas an extension of the Deep South but far more dangerous: law was scarce and gangs of ruthless contrabandistas controlled the region, part of the smuggling operations that flourished all along the western Gulf of Mexico.

  The giant, spreading limbs overhead blocked much of the sunlight, and the wide-boled trees themselves made for an ambushers’ paradise. The Ovaro, used to wide-open country and good visibility, stutter-stepped nervously now and then—like Fargo, he didn’t take to being hemmed in.

  Fargo had jerked his brass-framed Henry from its saddle scabbard and now rode with it balanced across his left arm. Booger, rocking sideways on his loose-skinned saddle ox, kept his cap-and-ball Colt’s Dragoon to hand.

  “This place is heap bad medicine,” he remarked. “Too damn quiet, hey? No bird noises, no insect hum. Quiet as the grave. Gives old Booger the fantods.”

  Fargo had noticed the same thing. The stillness was so complete it seemed to scream.

  Again, the unwelcome words nagged his memory like the tag end of a song he hated but could not shake: Wait for what will come. . . . Wait. . . .

  The trace narrowed even more and Fargo gigged the Ovaro ahead so the men could ride single file. A carpet of leathery oak leaves covered the trace.

  “Two more miles and we’ll break into open tableland,” Fargo said. “If we—”

  The Trailsman never finished his sentence. The Ovaro, moving forward at a slow, steady trot, planted his left forefoot and then suddenly plummeted toward the ground.

  Fargo, caught completely by surprise, jerked his feet from the stirrups. His first thought was that his stallion had stepped into a gopher hole, and Fargo didn’t want his legs trapped when the Ovaro fell.

  But this “hole,” Fargo quickly realized when both of the Ovaro’s forelegs were swallowed up, was a man-made pitfall trap. The leaf-covered framework of boughs collapsed, and Fargo pitched forward hard over his pommel—straight toward three pointed stakes smeared black with deadly poison!

  2

  One reason Skye Fargo had cheated death so often was his hair-trigger reactions at those critical moments when other men tended to freeze up.

  The instant Fargo crashed into the pitfall, things started happening ten ways a second. The Ovaro managed to avoid the stakes, twisting fast and scrambling out to safety before his hind legs entered the trap.

  As for his master—even as Fargo flew over the pommel, he managed to deftly swing his long Henry rifle out in front of him. He didn’t have the luxury of planning his movement—it was pure reflex and athleticism.

  In the fraction of a second that he was airborne, Fargo somehow got the Henry into position with both hands on the walnut stock. The very moment it slammed muzzle-first into the pit, Fargo literally vaulted over the stakes.

  He barely managed to clear the pitfall and crash down safe on the opposite side.

  “Well, God kiss me!” Booger exclaimed in awe behind him.

  He heaved himself off Ambrose’s back. “Still sassy, Tumbledown Dick?”

  Fargo, heart still pounding like a Pawnee war drum, rose a bit unsteadily to his feet. He caught the nervous Ovaro by the bridle reins.

  “Still sassy,” he replied. “But that was paring the cheese mighty close to the rind, old son.”

  “The hell is that shit?” Booger demanded, staring at the shiny black gunk on the stakes.

  Fargo picked up his hat, slapped the dust from it, and clapped it back on his head.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve seen it before. It’s extracted from plants. Sure as cats fighting, it will air-choke a man quicker’n you can gobble a biscuit. Settle down, old warhorse,” he added, patting the Ovaro’s withers.

  “This pit’s fresh dug,” Booger said. “But if it was the work of road agents, how’s come they ain’t shot us to chair stuffings by now?”

  “There’s nobody waiting around here,” Fargo replied. “My pinto would have alerted. This wasn’t the work of curly wolves looking for swag—since nobody knows I hired you, it was meant to kill me. Like I said, somebody knows I’m coming and wants to stop me.”

  “H’ar, now! Fargo, you are the world-beatingest man. Every rain shower ai
n’t meant to get just you wet.”

  “Maybe,” Fargo said, not sounding too convinced.

  When the Ovaro had been gentled, Fargo checked the cinches and latigos. Then he turned the stirrup and swung up onto the hurricane deck.

  “There could be another pitfall,” he said as he tightened the reins. “Crowd the side of the trail as much as you can and be ready to tug rein.”

  “Crowd the side of the trail,” Booger repeated in a scornful voice, “and be ready to tug rein. Fargo, is your brain any bigger than your pee hole? There is no bit in Ambrose’s mouth. You call this reins?”

  Booger shook the tough leather thong in his left hand. Saddle oxen could not be controlled by bits, so a short, strong stick had been forced through the cartilage of the nose. The thong was tied to each end of it. Because of the extreme tenderness of the nose, an ox could thus be steered and managed, but somewhat clumsily.

  “Prob’ly won’t matter,” Fargo said. “The pitfall will be dug for a horse, and Ambrose is too big to fall in. Hell, you’re too big.”

  “Large and in charge,” Booger boasted as the two men again bore west.

  They rode silently, the only sounds the creak of saddle leather and the Ovaro snuffling. In new country a horse was nervous until it had smelled the ground sufficiently, so Fargo gave the stallion his head.

  “Happens somebody is trying to put the quietus on us,” Booger spoke up from behind Fargo, picking up the conversational thread from earlier. “You think it’s this pepper-gut Quintana?”

  “Makes no sense. I just finished a job as a payroll guard for Colonel Oglethorpe up at Fort Smith. He’s from New Orleans and says Quintana has lived there since just after the Mexer Revolution. I’ve never met Quintana, so why would he try to plant me?”

  “And why not? Fargo, you sheep-humping, chicken-plucking bachelor of the saddle, many is the night I’ve prayed you into the ground, pretty teeth and all. Gerlong there, Ambrose! Whoop!”

  A few minutes later Booger again broke the preternatural silence.