by Jon Sharpe
Fargo lay there amid the mess of mutilated melons for at least twenty seconds, waiting for his balls to descend again. This was the third time now that he had somehow cheated the Reaper, and the hairbreadth escapes were taking their toll on his nerves.
A crowd began to gather, men speaking excitedly in English and Spanish. The Mexican street vendor who owned the melons had been safely off to one side, but now he began to gesture angrily at Fargo.
“Mis melones! Ay, dios! Quien va a pagarme?”
“I’ll pay for the damn things,” Fargo groused even though he hadn’t been the one who shot them to a pulp. Anything to avoid dragging the law into this. He slowly pushed to his feet. “Cuanto cuesta?”
“Cinco dolares!”
“Five dollars! Vaya, hombre! That’s highway robbery. You sell them for ten cents apiece and there’s no more than twenty ruined.”
“Pay the man, Fargo,” said a familiar voice behind him. Fargo turned to confront the same deputy who had just rousted him in the café. “See what I mean? You’re trouble on two sticks.”
“I didn’t start this,” Fargo protested. “I just stepped out of the barbershop when three men across the street tried to cut me down.”
The deputy looked at the florid-faced vendor. “How ’bout it, Manuel? Que pasa aqui?”
The vendor held his silence, extending one open hand toward Fargo. Realizing which way the wind set, Fargo slapped a half eagle into the outstretched palm.
Manuel pocketed the coin and nodded. “This man, he say the truth, jefe. I see todo que pasa.”
The deputy looked at Fargo again. “Do you know the three men who opened up on you?”
“No,” Fargo said truthfully.
“Then why in Sam Hill would they try to kill you?”
Fargo hadn’t seen a newspaper and had no idea if the residents of El Paso knew yet about the border land grab at the Rio Grande. Chances were good that they didn’t. That stretch of the Rio was remote and a good ride southeast of the city, and given the serpentine loops of the river, only someone very familiar with its course would even notice. And even fewer would believe it was man-made.
So Fargo decided to play this one close to his vest. He preferred that it be the army that first caught wind of this. Otherwise, hotheads south of the border, still smarting from the loss of the war, might provoke hotheads north of the border still smarting from the humiliation at the Alamo.
“Why?” Fargo shrugged. “Maybe they mistook me for somebody they’ve got a grudge against.”
The deputy grunted. “Mistook you? It’s more likely some of the no doubt hundreds of jaspers who have an ax to grind with you.”
“Distinct possibility,” Fargo agreed, swiping a gobbet of melon off his shirt.
The lawman shook his head in disgust. “Well, I’ll ask some questions at the saloon. But I’d advise you to dust your hocks out of town. I’ve got no cause to arrest you—this time. But we got public nuisance laws in El Paso, too, and this just now is about as public a nuisance as I ever seen. Comprende?”
“Comprendo.”
The deputy started across the street. Fargo unlooped his reins and turned the stirrup, stepping up and over. But as he reined the Ovaro around, he spotted a familiar grinning face watching him from about twenty yards down on Fargo’s side of the street.
“Son of a bitch,” the Trailsman swore under his breath. “That man is becoming my hair shirt.”
Santiago Valdez, grinning like the cat who fucked the canary before he ate it, crooked his right index finger at Fargo, beckoning him to join him.
7
Valdez forked leather as Fargo approached him.
“Hope you enjoyed the show,” Fargo greeted him. “Maybe I ought to start selling tickets.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it. But I fear now that you’ll be suffering from meloncholia.”
Fargo scowled. “My side aches, I’m laughing so hard. Thanks for giving me a hand.”
“You didn’t need me. Fargo, that was impressive. You’re starting to rattle them now. Yesterday you killed one of their horses; just now you wounded one of them. Those three aren’t used to effective resistance. You are one tough monkey.”
“Could this be love?” Fargo shot back sarcastically. He cast a glance over his shoulder toward the saloon. “Look, let’s skedaddle. I’m that law dog’s favorite boy now.”
“Did he throw you out of town?”
“Not quite. But he’s on the feather edge of jugging me.”
“There’s a saloon on the next street over. I’ll stand you to a drink.”
The two men reined left at the next cross street and tied off at a corner saloon called La Paloma Blanca. Fargo ordered a beer, Valdez a whiskey, and they sat at a table away from prying ears.
“Don’t worry too much about Jim West,” Valdez assured him. “He likes to swing his eggs around, but he barks more than he bites. He’s not so bad for an El Paso lawman. I’ve locked horns with him a couple times, too.”
“Never mind that,” Fargo said after taking a sweeping-deep slug of his beer and knuckling foam off his mustache. “I’m getting sick of this coy schoolgirl shit of yours. You’re obviously staying on those three bastards like white on rice. You won’t tell me why. All right, that’s your beeswax. But a man can only jump over a snake so many times before he finally gets the fangs in his ass. At least tell me where they’re holed up.”
“Why? So you can kill them and ruin my plans?”
“Look, that’s the third time now in four days that they’ve tried to douse my glims.”
“Fargo, I’ve figured out by now that you’re like a cat—which means you’ve still got six lives left.”
Fargo expelled a long sigh of frustration. “Christ, let’s not cloud the issue with facts, huh? Since you’re bird-dogging them so close, why didn’t you follow them when they took off running?”
“Because they’re always dangerous, but even more so when the pressure is on. I already told you I’m not after them. I want the son of a bitch whose boots they lick. If I let them kill me—or if I help you kill them—I’m up the creek without a paddle.”
“All right,” Fargo said, “I do plan to kill them. I admit it. What choice do I have except to run away? But just like you I first want to locate the honcho.”
Valdez shook his head emphatically. “Just like me? Like hell! You want to find the brain behind the muscle so you can report him to the army—you told me so. I intend to kill him. If I cooperate with you, I shoot a hole in my own canoe.”
“What’s the difference? Either way the head hound will find his dick in the wringer. What he did jeopardizes the U.S. and amounts to treason, which means he’ll stretch hemp or face a firing squad.”
Valdez’s eyes went distant and his face hardened into a mask of pure hate.
“What’s the difference? Vaya—this son of a bitch plays the government like a piano. Besides, ‘treason’ is a strange word coming from you, Fargo. Since when do you wrap yourself in flags?”
“I didn’t say I’m personally offended. I’m saying that’s the federal offense.”
“I don’t give a shit about any of those words,” Valdez said, “and I don’t count on the cheese dicks in the government to settle my scores. Do you?”
Fargo’s silence answered for him.
Valdez added, “I know it makes no sense to you. Like the philosopher says: The heart has its own reasons, and reason cannot understand them.”
Fargo studied that hate-twisted face. “I take your point. You want the man who controls these three because, somehow or other, he caused the death of someone you love, right?”
Valdez ignored the question.
“The man you’re after,” Fargo pressed, “is he at the very top of the heap?”
“For my purposes, yes. For yours, no. He, too, is fed by a master. But I don�
��t care about the top dog either.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed how this is personal for me, too. Those three are hell-bent on killing me.”
“Yeah, but I was on their list before you were. Their boss made sure of that.”
“Do you know where they’re holed up?”
Again Valdez remained silent. But this time, Fargo noticed hopefully, he seemed to be debating with himself.
“Look, Fargo,” he finally replied, “I have a general idea where they are. I also happen to think you’re a basically decent man and I don’t want to see you cut down. Besides, I could use your help to a point. But before I tell you anything, I’ll have to get your word that you won’t kill them until I get my man.”
Valdez paused to knock back his drink. “More important, if you manage to track them to their boss before I do, I want your solemn oath you won’t kill him, either. That pig’s afterbirth is mine. After I put him under, you can do whatever the hell you want to with my blessing.”
“Since I don’t give my word lightly, let’s chew this a little finer. You saw what happened today—I might have to kill in self-defense.”
“You’ll never kill all three of them at once—never. What I’m asking is that at least one stays alive. That’s my best chance of finding the man I really want.”
“Well,” Fargo said, “you want to kill their boss and I at least want to know who he is—something you evidently already know—so I can get to the robber baron above him. So I’ll give you my word—insofar as I can.”
Valdez nodded. “Have you heard of Scorpion Town?”
Fargo nodded. “Sure. It’s the roughest part of El Paso. About five square blocks in the south of the city past the slaughterhouse.”
“Yes. Filled with shacks, fleapit boardinghouses, grog shops, cathouses, gambling dens—a place the law seldom enters and never after dark. I’ve tracked them to the edge of the place, but I always lose them in the twisting, narrow alleys.”
“You telling me they take horses into a smoky row like that?”
Valdez shook his head. “They board their horses on the western flank of Scorpion Town, at the livery stable on Paisano Street—place owned by an old man named Benito Gonzalez. But he’s crooked as cat shit, and you don’t want to ask him no questions.”
“ ’Preciate the information. I got a pretty good look at all three of them today, so at least I know who to look for.”
Valdez spun his empty glass around in his fingers. “I trust your word. But you’re the last man I should be helping—you’re too damn good at what you do. Por eso, you might learn too much and get in my way. That would be unfortunate for you.”
“Here we go again, ring-around-the-rosy,” Fargo said wearily. “I take it we’re back to the thinly veiled threats?”
“I would not threaten a man like you, Fargo. Either I would kill him or I would not. But no threats. I do, however, give fair warning at times if I respect a man.”
“Fair enough. As for getting in your way, I won’t do it on purpose. And I won’t hesitate to kill you either if it comes to that. Let’s hope it doesn’t. Just one more question.”
“Questions don’t bother me because it’s answers that matter, and I give very few.”
“What do you know about Rosario Velasquez back in Tierra Seca?”
Valdez grinned. “What any red-blooded man would know the moment he sees her.”
“Yeah, she’s some looker. But why would she bother to warn me I’m a dead man if I side you? What’s it to her?”
Valdez assumed an innocent mien and shrugged. “Can any man read sign on the breast of a woman? Better to ask what came before time began.”
“Is she tied in with these three killers somehow?”
“I hear that all women are weak reeds in your hands, Trailsman. Find out for yourself. Bend her to your will after you poke her.”
“Once again,” Fargo said, “I come up with nothing but the sniffles. Well, what about this commune leader, Ripley Parker? You got any skinny on him?”
“That’s two questions, but I’ll answer: All I know is that, like you, I don’t trust him. But clearly he gets a lot of pussy, and maybe that’s all he’s after.”
“You know,” Fargo said, “my life would be a lot simpler right now if I’d left that damn arrow in your leg. Well, maybe I’ll see you in hell, huh?”
Fargo clapped on his hat and started to scrape back his chair.
“Speaking of hell,” Valdez spoke up, arresting Fargo’s movement, “there is one more thing I can tell you because it does not interfere with me. From now on, sleep on your guns.”
“I’m doing that already.”
“Then do not even sleep. There is a fourth killer, this one coming down from Taos. He is an Apache, and he is the worst hurt in the world. He makes the three you are up against now look like toothless dogs. At first he was summoned only to kill me, but almost certainly you are now a target also.”
“An Apache?” Fargo repeated. “There are plenty of dangerous killers in that tribe—what’s he called?”
“You won’t know his name. Unlike you, he has no reputation. That is because only those who live around him know his name, and they live in terror of repeating it. It is said that he lives by night, the Apache way of saying he practices witchcraft, not religion. Just saying his name, they believe, means certain death because he was spawned from the same evil that created el diablo himself.”
“As usual with you,” Fargo said, frustration clear in his voice, “I ain’t got the foggiest notion in hell what you’re talking about.”
“I told you all you need to know.”
“Yeah, well, if all you just said is true, how do you know about him and that he’s coming?”
“I make it my job to hear things that I’m not supposed to.”
“And you believe everything you hear?”
“Fargo,” Valdez said, “everything we have discussed in this saloon means nothing if you do not believe what I tell you now: The Apache is coming, and hell is coming with him.”
• • •
Every Coyotero Apache knew the story about Mankiller although few ever spoke of it, and then only in hushed whispers.
It was said that, at the exact moment he was born in the heart of Apacheria, a wild black stallion no one had ever seen before or ever saw again raced past the crude wickiup where his mother gave birth. She was Spanish and Apache, a highly feared bruja, or witch, trained in the black arts known as anti, the Witchery Way. That wild-eyed black stallion, the people said, was an omen that her son belonged to the evil of night, not to the Coyotero people or even the human race.
Mankiller grew into a mountain of a man, thick-limbed and superbly muscled. His face was like carved granite, never wearing an expression, never registering emotion. His most striking and lethal feature, however, was his huge, powerful hands. Each finger was as thick as a bluecoat picket pin, each raw knuckle like a big stone. They were menacing, dangerous hands—hands capable of choking a bull to death.
And it was these hands that were his weapons of choice. Mankiller’s grip was so huge and powerful it could cut off both the jugular and the trachea, stopping blood and air simultaneously. In the Apache world he was unsurpassed in stalking and tracking, unsurpassed at silent movement, cover and concealment. His victims received no warning, no mercy, no justice.
Death was the coin of his realm, a coin he spent freely. No man looked him in the eye, for it was said he had inherited mal ojo, the eye of the evil fascinator, from his dam. Mothers hurried their infants from his sight, for any child he fixed his gaze upon soon sickened and died.
Men hated and feared him, yet none ever challenged him, not even the hotheaded white men who killed any Apache foolish enough to roam among them. More than one had pissed his pants in fear when Mankiller cast those lifeless, terrifying eyes upon them.
Mankiller lived in an abandoned shack at the edge of the pueblo, and no one knew how he supported himself but he always had money—white man’s gold and silver. He had no friends, spoke to no one, and was suspected in the brutal murders of several locals—all strangled to death and found with their broken necks so swollen their chins seemed to have disappeared. But Mankiller was never charged because no man had the courage to try to arrest him.
He crossed the huge plaza slowly, head turning neither left nor right. As he walked he rhythmically squeezed two solid, India rubber balls to keep his hands and wrists strong. At the far side of the plaza he stopped in front of a mud-brick dwelling, still squeezing the balls.
Inside, an old Mexican woman named Maria Santos was stirring a pot of posole. She was known as a curandero who mixed herbal potions and gathered medicinal plants in the surrounding valley. It was also believed that she was a soothsayer who possessed the “third eye” that allowed her to see the future.
She had just begun to taste the stew when a shadow fell over the entire doorway, blocking out the sun. Instantly her blood seemed to stop and flow backward in her veins.
“You,” she said without turning around. She made the sign of the cross.
Mankiller bent forward to clear the doorway and took one step inside. The voice that spoke to the old woman was guttural and labored, as if badly rusted from lack of use.
“Throw the bones, vieja.”
Trembling in every limb, still refusing to look at the visitor, Maria rose from her kneeling position in front of the baked-clay hearth. She reached toward a shelf made of crossed sticks and picked up a wooden box. Inside the box were, among other magical items, a dozen small animal bones, brightly painted in red, black and yellow: the “pointing bones” said to divine future events.
Sweat poured profusely from her face, and her hands trembled so violently that she almost dropped the box. She moved to the center of the rammed earth floor and outlined a circle with evenly spaced animal claws and teeth taken from the box. When she was finished she drew out a silver necklace, from which hung a single charm in the image of a bluebird. This she draped around her neck.
