The Trailsman #388

by Jon Sharpe

  “Now there we agree,” Fargo conceded. “But wisdom isn’t my strong suit.”

  La frontera, Fargo knew from long experience, was far more than simply a border demarcation. It was actually a unique “third country,” neither quite Mexican nor quite American. It extended for approximately twenty miles on either side of the long border and featured its own foods, customs and harsh, unwritten laws—even its own hybrid language known as Spanglish. But most of all, as Valdez had just hinted, it was fraught with its own unique dangers.

  Valdez drank a second cup of coffee while Fargo packed up his gear and tacked the Ovaro. The mestizo knocked the rawhide hobbles off his sturdy roan gelding and lithely forked leather. Fargo, however, was a bit slower swinging up onto the hurricane deck.

  “If I were you, gringo,” Valdez said, “I would rest here for a few hours. And that is friendly advice,” he hastened to add.

  Fargo grinned weakly. “I’ve been in worse shape. Where you headed?”

  “Wherever it is best for me to be,” Valdez replied from a deadpan.

  Fargo shook his head in wonder as both men cleared the thicket. “You are the world-beatingest man, Valdez. But I thank you for dragging me back into cover. And good hunting.”

  Valdez opened his mouth to reply. But all that came out was a harsh grunt of pain when a fire-hardened arrow punched into his left thigh with a sickening sound like a cleaver slicing into a side of raw beef.

  3

  Santiago Valdez, face twisted with pain, reflexively reached for the arrow, fletched with black crow feathers, protruding from his thigh.

  “It’s a long way from your heart!” Fargo snapped, reining the Ovaro around in a circle to spot their attackers. “Let it go for now.”

  Fargo saw the attackers making a beeline toward them from the east in a boiling cloud of yellow-brown dust. He had expected to see an Indian war party, but was forced to do a double take: There were only three men, all apparently white judging from the pale reflections of their faces.

  Only three . . . at first Fargo was tempted to handle them with his Henry and its sixteen-round magazine. But just then a bullet snapped past his face, and he realized these were far from average marksmen—still at least four hundred yards out they were nonetheless shooting with near pinpoint accuracy from horseback.

  Another arrow whiffed in, this one so close the feather burned Fargo’s left temple.

  “Make tracks!” Fargo urged the pain-distracted Valdez, slapping the roan hard on its rump. “These ain’t no thirty-five-cent bandits!”

  Both horses bolted to the west. The unknown archer, Fargo quickly grasped, was the most dangerous of the trio. Despite bouncing atop a galloping horse, he was nocking and firing arrows with a speed and accuracy Fargo had seen only in Comanches.

  The Ovaro, well rested and eager to stretch out the night kinks, quickly raced from a gallop to a headlong run, and Valdez’s strong roan did not fall far behind. Fargo had noticed a percussion rifle in the mestizo’s saddle sheath, but it was all the wounded man could do to stay in the saddle.

  An arrow punched into Fargo’s nearside saddlebag, missing his leg by a hairbreadth. Fargo took the reins in his teeth. Plucking his Henry from its boot, he levered a round into the chamber and twisted halfway around to the right. Lodging the rifle’s butt plate in his hip socket, he began levering and firing.

  Again, again, yet again he levered and fired, watching his bullets kick up dust and adjusting his aim to walk the rounds in closer. Finally, with his seventh or eighth shot, the lead rider’s hat went spinning off his head, and the wary trio opted for discretion over valor, reversing their dust. Fargo served them up a few more chaser shots in case they changed their minds.

  He reined back slightly, slowing the Ovaro to a canter and allowing an ashen-faced Valdez, who seemed oblivious to everything except pain, to catch up.

  “Get your feet back into the stirrups!” Fargo shouted to him. “And hold on! Soon as I find a good spot, we’ll rein in and get that arrow point out.”

  Fargo studied the desolate terrain. This stretch of the borderland was mostly barren and desiccated, the vast, yellow-brown monotony broken only by wiry tufts of palomilla grass, low clumps of prickly pear and the occasional tall, thin cactus known as Spanish bayonets. But it was also crisscrossed by arroyos, and he spotted the mouth of one straight ahead.

  Both riders descended into the deep, flash-flood erosion ditch and dismounted, Fargo helping Valdez from the saddle.

  “Fargo,” the copper-skinned pistolero hissed through gritted teeth, “I’ve had arrows in me before, and they never hurt like this. Maldita! Perhaps it is poison tipped.”

  “Stretch out on your back,” Fargo ordered. He had already glanced at the arrow penetrating his saddlebag. “It’s not poison tipped—the point is fashioned from sheet metal. We’re going to play hell getting it out—I don’t dare shove it through. Least you’re not losing much blood. Got any whiskey?”

  Valdez was trembling in the early stages of shock. “Offside saddle pocket,” he muttered.

  Fargo was surprised when he dug out a bottle of Very Old Pale, distilled especially for American army officers. He made Valdez take the bottle down by a few inches, then snapped the arrow off short and cut a swathe of the cotton trousers away to expose the ugly red pucker of the wound.

  “Sheet metal points,” he explained as he pulled his Arkansas toothpick from its boot sheath, “tend to clinch tight around bone. You can’t just cut them out. Here, knock back some more of this oil of gladness—you’re going to need it. I’m going to have to do some cutting to get a better look-see.”

  Fargo lit several lucifer matches in a row to sterilize the tip of his knife. Knowing that being too careful would only prolong Valdez’s agony, he quickly cut out a gobbet of bloody meat for a better view of the interior of the wound.

  “Cristo!” Valdez cried out, reverting to Spanish in his agony. “Quieres matarme?”

  “No, I’m not trying to kill you,” Fargo insisted, studying the bloody maw of wound intently. “There, I see how it is. It hit bone, all right, but you got lucky. Most of the arrow’s force was spent by the time it reached you, and the point has clinched on only one side. Hold on. . . .”

  “Sagrada Virgin!” Valdez moaned, pain screwing his voice up a few octaves. “Que pena tan fuerte! Ay, Dios!”

  “Stop kicking around,” Fargo snapped as he turned to rifle in a saddlebag. “You’re making it bleed more, chucklehead.”

  Fargo pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth and secured with a rawhide whang. He opened it and selected a fishhook, tying it to a length of catgut thread.

  Fargo knelt beside the wounded man again. “Damn it, man, lie still or I can’t finish the job.”

  When Valdez failed to comply, Fargo threw a short, hard jab to the “sweet spot” of the mestizo’s jaw, halfway between the earlobe and the point of the chin. Valdez slumped, knocked out cold, and Fargo worked quickly.

  After several attempts he managed to hook the clinched side of the arrow point and wiggle it loose before lifting it out. Fargo flushed the wound well with Very Old Pale and packed it tight with flour to clot the blood. Then he swathed it with linen strips and tied them off.

  Valdez drifted back to awareness a few minutes later, groaning. But the alcohol was kicking in now, and he no longer floundered like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

  Fargo tucked the mangled arrow point into Valdez’s shirt pocket. “Keep that for a souvenir. If the wound doesn’t mortify in the next day or so, you’ll survive. It’s going to start bleeding again, though, so you’ll need to pack it with flour or gunpowder—beef tallow is even better if you can lay hands on some.”

  “It feels like you took off my leg.”

  Fargo lifted Valdez’s head so he could knock back another slug of liquor. “Who are those hombres?”

  Valdez ignored the questio
n.

  “Are they the same ones,” Fargo pressed on, “who blasted the river out of its bed last night?”

  Valdez still ignored him.

  “You ungrateful son of a bitch,” Fargo said. “Maybe I will lop off that leg.”

  “Look, I’m grateful, Fargo. I’ll tell you this much: You don’t want to brace any of those three. As you just found out, they are dangerous men. Each was hired for his—how do you say it?—extraordinary skill at killing. Now that they’ve seen you with me, they will move heaven and earth to kill you. Do the smart thing and put la frontera far behind you.”

  Fargo cursed. “This trail is taking more turns than a cross-eyed cow. Well, since they were nearby I’m going to assume they were in on that blast last night. You say they were hired—are you after them or whoever hired them?”

  “Who first made days and gave them to men?”

  Fargo tugged at his singed beard. “This is personal with you, right? You’re not after those three—you’re after whoever has them on his payroll.”

  “I’m drunk, but not that drunk. You’re wasting your time trying to prod me. I’ll say it again: Your only chance is to clear these parts.”

  “I’m the one who decides what my chances are. That blast last night wasn’t meant to kill me. But this just now was. And nobody tries to kill me without answering for it. I’m sensitive on that score.”

  “Fargo, I know about your reputation, and I know you’re death to the devil. But you have no idea what you’ll find if you’re stubborn enough to turn this rock over. That’s all I have to say, so don’t ask me any more questions.”

  “All right,” Fargo surrendered. “I’ll button it. I’m more likely to get blood from a turnip than to pry information out of you. But there’s something you can tell me. . . .”

  Fargo slid one of the squat, odd-looking revolvers from Valdez’s holster. “I’ve never seen a gun like this—the hell is it? A foreign model?”

  “Yes and no. It was designed by Adams of London, but it’s been made in America since 1855 in very limited numbers. It’s called double action, but it’s still considered experimental. You won’t likely see another one.”

  “Double action?” Fargo replied skeptically. “I’ve heard talk of such a gun. The army rejected the model they tested because it jams too easy. They concluded it would be ten years, at least, before a reliable one came on the market.”

  Valdez nodded. “This one jams, too—too many small, moving parts. They have to be cleaned and oiled constantly and the sear bends too easy. You almost have to be a gunsmith to keep it working. It’ll be a long time before it replaces that single-action Colt of yours.”

  “Then if it’s half-assed why do you carry it?”

  “Because the time required to thumb-cock a revolver can be an eternity in a gunfight, especially when you’re facing more than one man.”

  “There’s that,” Fargo allowed.

  “This Adams double action shoots as fast as I can pull the trigger.”

  “Sure, if it doesn’t jam. Every man to his own gait. Me, I’d rather have a slower barking iron that’s dependable than a faster one that’s not.”

  “Why do you think I carry two? I always draw them as a pair. It’s not likely they’ll both jam at the same exact time.”

  Fargo holstered the gun again. “Well, whatever you’re up to, you’re mighty damn serious about it.”

  “Serious as cancer,” Valdez agreed.

  Fargo stood up again and tied hobbles on the roan. “You should be safe here. You got food and water?”

  “Plenty of water and buffalo jerky.”

  “All right. I recommend you rest here until at least nightfall. I’m heading out.”

  “Headed north—way north?” Valdez said hopefully.

  “Nope. I’m going to take a close look at that blast site so I can eventually report it to the army up at Fort Union. And then I’m going to pick up the trail of those three skunk-bit coyotes.”

  “Report it? What’s it to you?”

  “What, do you need an elephant to sit on you? A chunk of Mexico has just been stolen by gringos—a rich chunk of Mexico. This region is already a simmering pot, and it’s going to boil over when this gets back to the Mexican government. ’Case you haven’t noticed, the border region has been peopling up lately. Do you want the ’forty-seven war to flare up all over again?”

  “I tried to help you out,” Valdez said. “Now it’s your funeral.”

  “Distinct possibility.” Fargo turned a stirrup and forked leather. “But like I said, I don’t let any son of a bitch try to kill me and then just ride away like it’s none of my business.”

  “I’ve heard that about you.”

  “You heard right,” Fargo replied, gigging the Ovaro toward the mouth of the arroyo.

  • • •

  El Paso was a rough frontier town hardly known for its luxurious accommodations. However, it was also a mining center visited by a limited number of ultra-wealthy capitalists. Thus, the one notable exception to its drab boardinghouses and fleapit hotels was the Del Norte Arms on Paseo Street.

  This impressive, five-story edifice was constructed of solid fieldstone and featured a parquet-floored lobby, wrought-iron balconies, plaster ornaments on the ceilings and deferential employees in gold-braided livery.

  One week before the massive blast that altered the course of the Rio Grande, Santa Fe mining kingpin Stanley Wins-lowe had reserved the huge suite of rooms that comprised much of the fifth floor. An adjoining room was now occupied by “businessman’s agent” Harlan Perry. Late in the afternoon on the day that Mexico had suddenly shrunk by thousands of acres, Perry was visited by three men he proudly referred to as his “intervention team.”

  “Congratulations are in order, gentlemen,” he announced as he handed around imported cigars banded with gilt paper rings and poured out four glasses of bourbon from a crystal decanter. “It’s true that we have a couple of flies in the ointment. But you did an exceptional job last night—perfectly executed. Mr. Winslowe has authorized me to pay all of you a generous bonus.”

  Perry was almost professorial-looking with his gold-rimmed spectacles, neat spade beard and slight, chicken-wing shoulders. Most men with callused hands dismissed him at first glance as a lavender-scented poncy, an impression he carefully cultivated to disguise the ruthless cunning of a man adept at “clearing the profit path” at any cost to innocent human life. His room reeked of eucalyptus fumigation, which he endured three times a week to treat his chronic congestion.

  “Yeah, boss, Slim done a good job with that shaped charge,” agreed Deuce Ulrick. “But it looks to me like that half-breed Valdez might have help. I’m pretty sure that was Skye Fargo who sided him this morning. Dame Rumor has it that Fargo rode into El Paso yesterday with a caravan.”

  “It was Fargo,” Perry said with certainty as he passed the drinks around. “He was indeed in town, and the description you gave me fits perfectly.”

  “Fargo is a good man to let alone,” fretted Slim Robek. “I was up north when that son of a bitch tracked down and killed the Butcher Boys gang.”

  Perry nodded. “He and Valdez are both formidable men and we won’t take either one of them lightly. However, both men are known to be one-man outfits, and it’s too early to conclude that they’ve teamed up. Valdez, of course, is a permanent impediment that will have to be removed. But Fargo is a drifter, and the popular impression that he is a crusader is hogwash. I suspect he’ll move on.”

  “Maybe so,” Ulrick said. “But he might be a witness to what we done. And him being a newspaper hero and all, if he does decide to report what he seen, people will tend to believe him.”

  “I’ve considered that. But you say it was dark and he couldn’t have seen your faces?”

  “Ain’t likely.”

  Perry shrugged. “No rose without a t
horn, right? Assuming he even saw you last night, it’s good that he can’t identify anyone. Eventually someone around here may prove what happened, but Mr. Winslowe has taken steps on that score—the Chinese call it ‘gate money.’ At any rate, I have the utmost confidence in the three of you, and so does Mr. Winslowe.”

  Perry’s confidence in his carefully assembled team was amply justified by their past performance. He surveyed all of them now as they imbibed, congratulating himself yet again for his resourcefulness.

  Deuce Ulrick, Perry’s chief lieutenant, was sprawled negligently in a chintz-covered armchair, a draw-shoot artist who had learned to enjoy killing in the charnel house of the Mexican War. He was a strong, barrel-chested man with blue-black beard stubble, dead, flint-chip eyes and a mean slash of mouth like a scar. His brutal appearance belied a good brain, and his take-charge manner made him a natural leader among criminal elements.

  Appalachian Slim Robek, six foot four and whipcord thin, stood in the embrasure of a window watching the street below. He was both a dead shot with his Model 1855 Colt revolving cylinder rifle and a superlative explosives expert. His grating, girlish voice and panther-scarred face were off-putting, but the successful explosion last night attested to Perry’s canny insights into the worth of men.

  Perry’s gaze cut to the fourth man in the room, Johnny Jackson. His flat, chinless, deadpan face was unremarkable, but he was unsurpassed in the silent ambush. The expert archer could nock and shoot ten arrows with lethal accuracy while a rifleman was chambering a single round into a breechloader. His Osage-orange–wood bow strung with tough buffalo sinew was copied from the Kiowas, known for the strongest bows on the frontier. His fox-skin quiver was stuffed with fire-hardened arrows tipped with sheet-metal points, each arrow expertly crafted by Jackson himself.

  “I have the utmost confidence in you three,” Perry reiterated, collecting their glasses and filling them again. “The blast last night was crucial to Mr. Winslowe’s plans for expansion of his operation. But, as you know, he has also purchased mining rights to a second land parcel that abuts the Rio Grande.”