by Jon Sharpe
Fargo wasn’t at all surprised, when he emerged from Scorpion Town and crossed Paisano Street, to find Santiago Valdez waiting astride his roan gelding and munching an apple.
“I wanted watermelon,” the copper-skinned mestizo greeted him, swinging down from the saddle. “But they were all full of bullet holes.”
“You should smile when you crack a joke,” Fargo replied, “so I’ll know when to laugh.”
“Any luck in Scorpion Town?”
“An empty hand is no lure for a hawk,” Fargo replied.
“All right, I’ll bite. What’s that mean?”
“You know damn well what it means. You’re the big mystery man whose lips are sewed tight. It’s tit for tat, pistolero.”
“Just tell me if you found their digs.”
“I did. But no way in hell could I tell you where. I just know how to get there—not that I plan on going back.”
“I’m not interested in their location—I can follow them when they pick up their horses. That is, I can try. The bastards shook me off again this morning. What I’m curious about is what’s inside their hidey-hole. Did you get in?”
Fargo grinned. “Tit for tat, mano, tit for tat.”
“I was going to give you an apple, Fargo, but to hell with you.”
By now the two men were walking, Valdez leading his horse. He was silent for about thirty seconds, conning this thing over.
“All right, Fargo. You want information for your report to the army. The mining boss who ordered that explosion is named Stanley Winslowe. He’s staying at the Del Norte Arms hotel.”
“That’s more like it,” Fargo said. “Unless you just made it up.”
“Go slip a couple dollars to a night-shift desk clerk named Juan Alvarez and find out.”
“When did you learn this?”
“Yesterday evening. I finally traced the man I’m after to that hotel. But he’s always one step ahead of me. Winslowe is still there, but my target has moved again, and now I’m back to trying to locate a sliver in an elephant’s ass. I’m hoping you found something that might help me.”
“No soap. I got inside their room, all right, with a bar key. But all I did was confirm the type of explosive they’re using. These three are careful about not leaving records.”
Valdez nodded. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. But at least I know the room is useless to me now and I won’t have to risk my hide anymore in Scorpion Town. Were you jumped?”
“Had to kill two sewer rats,” Fargo confirmed. “One of them conked me on the cabeza and my head still hurts. Any chance you’ll tell me the name of the head hound you’re looking for?”
“I’ll tell you after I kill him.”
Valdez kicked into a stirrup and hoisted himself onto the hurricane deck. “Well, back to the salt mines.”
“Hold on,” Fargo said. “Look, I already know that Rosario Velasquez has taken up with one of the three jackals trying to kill us. And I’ve figured out that you’ve somehow eavesdropped on them. Has Ripley Parker’s name come up?”
“You figure out a lot of things, don’t you?”
“Not as many as you have.”
“I been at it longer,” Valdez reminded him. “Anyhow, I can’t see how telling you about her will interfere with my plans. No, Parker’s name hasn’t come up while I was listening. But I don’t trust that weasel dick . . . that burlap-bag horseshit ain’t his natural gait. He’s a criminal and he’s in this deal somehow.”
“Rosario made a point of suggesting I talk to him.”
“Yeah? You’d best be careful about taking any of her suggestions. That little bitch is in it to win it—for herself.”
“She makes no secret of that.”
“Maybe not. But I’d wager there’s one secret she’s kept from you.” Valdez leaned forward on his saddle horn. “Did she mention that the pond scum she’s currently screwing offered her three hundred dollars to lure you into her bed so you can be killed while you’re . . . pleasantly distracted?”
“Must have slipped her mind,” Fargo said, his tone ironic.
“Of course. Look, Fargo, there’s plenty of willing women in that idiotic Phalanx or whatever the hell they call it. I’d avoid topping Rosario if I was you. I know she’s a nice piece. But she’s dangerous and sick in the head.”
“You mean that bit with the cocked gun up to her head being the only way she can come?”
Valdez grinned. “So you’ve listened in on her too? And you passed up the chance to kill one of the three?”
“I didn’t listen in—she told me.”
“See it? When women talk up how they act in bed they’re just trying to get you all het up. Trailsman, I would avoid her like a smallpox blanket. She’s out to make three hundred dollars on your soul.”
“I’m confused here,” Fargo replied. “First you tell me an Apache, supposedly the best assassin on the frontier, is coming down from Taos to kill you and me. Now you tell me her boyfriend is using Rosario as a lure so the trio can kill me.”
Valdez took up the reins. “You’re confused, all right. Rosario will be the bait, sure. But I didn’t say the three mercenary pigs will do the killing, did I? And Rosario won’t do the killing, either. So you figure out who’s left. Here . . .”
He tossed Fargo an apple. Then he clucked to his horse and headed toward the heart of El Paso.
Fargo realized there wasn’t much to figure out. Valdez was telling him Rosario would seduce him so the Apache could kill him. But Fargo considered any man a fool who believed he could predict what that treacherous beauty might or might not do.
Danger was pressing in from all sides, but all in all, Fargo figured it hadn’t been the worst day. He knew the type of explosive that was used and the name of the kingpin who was stealing Mexican land. But there were four more key names still missing—four names he was certain that Valdez already knew. Fargo wanted those names before he contacted Colonel Evans.
And just maybe, Fargo thought as he hoofed it to the livery where he’d left the Ovaro, the name Ripley Parker would also figure in prominently. Fargo decided it was high time he found out.
11
The afternoon was well advanced, and Fargo halfway back to Tierra Seca, when he realized he was being followed.
Followed, he quickly determined, but this time not pursued.
It was the same three killers who’d been after him almost from the time he’d arrived in the borderland. Because of a healthy respect for them, Fargo had gone into full defensive mode while crossing the arid flats of the desert. Every few miles he had dismounted to feel the ground lightly with three fingertips.
The desert hardpan just under the loose sand was an excellent conductor of vibrations, and about ten miles southeast of El Paso he detected riders moving at a pace he estimated was a canter.
Following his clear tracks, Fargo guessed, but obviously not interested in running him to ground. Maybe by now he had earned their respect and caution just as they had earned his.
Or maybe they were now under orders to just monitor his whereabouts until a killer surpassing all others arrived to close Fargo’s account for good.
It wasn’t Fargo’s way to passively meet his fate, but rather, to take the bull by the horns and throw him. He mounted and heeled the Ovaro forward toward a dune straight ahead. He rode over the dune until the Ovaro was out of sight on the far side then hobbled the stallion. He slid his Henry from its saddle scabbard and, backsliding often in the loose sand, walked to the top and took up a prone position just behind the crest.
Fargo had also brought two long, pointed sticks with him. He had learned by now that both the rifleman and the archer were better marksmen than most he encountered. He wanted as much distance as possible between himself and them before he busted his first cap.
Fargo planted both sticks deep into the sand at angles form
ing an X. Then he laid the Henry’s long, octagonal barrel into the crotch formed by the two sticks. His sights were normally set at two hundred yards, optimal for game. He adjusted the mechanism to four hundred yards and settled under the broiling sun to wait.
Fargo had decided to make the deadly archer his first target. He had wounded him already, but he doubted that a hit in the hollow below his left shoulder would put him out of action for long. And those sheet-metal arrow points intimidated Fargo more than a bullet did.
When the deadly trio first barely appeared to his view they were like a shimmering, insubstantial heat mirage and looked like one object. As they advanced, the single blur separated into three horsebackers. Fargo waited patiently until they were close enough to make out the coloring of their horses.
BRASS, he reminded himself.
Breathe. He took in a long breath and expelled it slowly, pacing its release through the rest of his shot.
Relax. He willed the tension from his muscles to avoid bucking the rifle. The slightest twitch at this distance would ruin the shot.
Aim. He dropped the notch sight on the archer’s face and then lifted it slightly to adjust for bullet drift.
Slack. Fargo gradually took up the free play in the trigger until he met the resistance of the sear.
S-q-u-e-e-e-z-e, slow and steady until the Henry kicked hard into his shoulder.
The archer’s face was suddenly replaced by a red smear. He slacked sideways out of the saddle, his left foot hanging up in the stirrup. His startled horse bolted off to the west, its dead rider dragging and flopping like a sack of rags.
Reacting quickly, the other two men reined their mounts around and reversed their dust. Their experience showed in the way they rode zigzagging avoidance patterns as they escaped, making it impossible for Fargo to stay on bead. Nonetheless, he tossed a few chasers to let them know they were in his thoughts.
Fargo tugged the sticks loose and trudged back down through the loose sand to his horse. The kill made it more likely the two survivors would think twice before tailing him again.
But the simple fact that they were tailing him now, avoiding their confident, aggressive attacks, struck him as a troubling omen. That Apache killer is either here, he told himself, or getting close. One question nagged Fargo now: Was the killer everything he was cracked up to be?
Then again, he decided, it didn’t really matter. No matter how good he was, Fargo had to make sure the Trailsman was better.
• • •
Night was descending by the time Fargo returned to Tierra Seca. Last night’s vigil watching Rosario’s house had deprived him of sleep, so Fargo decided to make a cold camp and turn in earlier. He bypassed the border settlement.
With an Apache assassin possibly closing in on him, Fargo wanted to leave no trail. He reined the Ovaro into the Rio Grande and moved downstream for a third of a mile. He emerged on the Mexican side and picked a spot within a clump of cottonwood trees.
He stripped the leather from the Ovaro and rubbed him down good with an old feed sack before putting a short ground tether on him and graining the stallion from his hat. Fargo made do with a hunk of jerky before softening bed ground with his knife and turning in early.
Sleep, however, eluded him at first.
The steady chuckle of the Rio Grande, only about a hundred feet away, was lulling as was the steady hum of insects. He also knew that the Ovaro was an excellent nocturnal sentry. But no tribe, except possibly the Comanche, was as skilled at nighttime movement and infiltration as the Apache.
Most tribes had a taboo against leaving their camp circle after dark, but an Apache was in his element after sundown. Fargo had known them to snatch wives from their blankets without waking their husbands. During these silent raids they avoided firearms and killed with rocks wrapped in rawhide.
All this stampeded through his thoughts and kept him on edge even though he had no idea if the killer was even in this area yet. But Fargo had not survived so long by assuming the best, and he decided to guide all his decisions as if this assassin from Taos had already arrived in the borderland.
According to Santiago Valdez, the mestizo pistolero was the original target, not Fargo. Which man would the Apache go after first? Valdez, obviously a man with plenty of survival savvy and iron in his spine, clearly feared this killer—a fact that hardly inspired Fargo’s confidence.
The readiness is all, Fargo reminded himself. Fighting skill, superior marksmanship, even limitless courage counted for little or nothing if a man lost the element of surprise. Fargo had to be ready, had to be the master of his fate, not the victim of it.
He finally succumbed to sleep, waking with the first roseate blush of dawn on the eastern horizon. Fargo used driftwood to boil coffee, mixing cornmeal with water and forming it into balls he tossed into the hot ashes to bake. After this spartan meal he tacked the Ovaro and began riding in slow, ever-expanding circles to look for signs of human intrusion.
All he found were the tracks of small animals that had gone to the river during the night to drink. When the sun was well up, already heating the late summer desert air mercilessly, Fargo searched the entire area with his binoculars.
The only signs of life were crows scavenging along the riverbanks and the commune farmers already working their fields. There was no sign of “spiritual leader” Ripley Parker, whom Fargo intended to confront today, but the curvaceous Carrie Stanton had already told him Parker was the one late sleeper in the Phalanx. A man who obviously claimed privileges in this “community of equals.”
Fargo trotted his stallion back toward Tierra Seca. As he rode abreast of the bean field on the western edge of the settlement, he spotted Carrie and her pretty, green-eyed blond friend Abigail Bartlett hoeing beans side by side.
“Well, hello there, Skye!” Carrie greeted him in her musical lilt. “Aren’t you the early bird?”
Fargo doffed his hat. “Peace Child and Hope . . . two of the prettiest farmers I ever saw.”
The welcoming smile on both women’s faces turned into troubled frowns as they glanced at each other.
“Never mind those stupid ‘rebirth’ names,” Carrie said. “Abigail and I are getting out of here as soon as we can.”
“Trouble in utopia?”
“Plenty of trouble,” Abigail said. “And its name is Ripley Parker—a vicious tyrant who has the gall to call himself ‘Justice.’”
“What’s he up to?”
“It’s a mighty long list,” Carrie said. “The Phalanx believes in free love. But free love means we women have the right to say no if we don’t want to do it with somebody. That pig Parker raped me last night, and he’s raped other women in the group.”
Carrie slid the burlap sheath off her shoulder to show Fargo a huge bruise the dark purple color of grapes. “This is what I got for trying to resist.”
“He hasn’t done a lick of work,” Abigail fumed, “but he’s taking money from our crop sales and keeping it for himself. One of the men, Jim Stacy, tried to express the group’s grievances to him. He savagely beat Jim up—knocked three of his teeth out and broke his jaw.”
“Why don’t the men just jump him as a group?” Fargo asked. “There’s plenty of them.”
“We don’t believe in violence,” Carrie replied. “Besides, Parker has a gun. I saw it under his bed when he knocked me to the floor. That’s strictly against our rules.”
“He’s up to something,” Abigail said. “We keep horses and wagons to haul our crops into El Paso and to bring back supplies. He keeps taking one of the horses to ride somewhere. He disappears for hours at a time.”
“And Skye,” Carrie put in, “he keeps badgering me all about you, especially about where you’re staying and do I know what you’re up to. Why would he care so much about your activities?”
“Good question,” Fargo said grimly. “I think I’ll go ask him.�
�
Fargo nodded toward the long, low, mud-brick building alongside the Rio Grande. “This humble spiritual advisor sleeps there, right?”
Carrie nodded. “He’s got his own little room at the left end where the door is.”
“Be careful,” Abigail tossed in. “He’s a dangerous man. Are you going to kill him?”
Fargo had to grin at the hopeful note in her voice. Evidently “nonviolence” had its limitations even among utopians.
“I’m not planning on it,” Fargo replied as he started across the field. “Then again, I tend to believe a woman when she tells me she was raped.”
• • •
Fargo lifted the latchstring and pushed the plank door open. Sunshine flooded in through the doorway and revealed a dirt-floored room with a wooden bedstead in the middle. Ripley Parker, snoring on his back, lay atop a shuck mattress. Fargo tucked at the knees and peered under the bed, spotting a large-bore, double-barreled horse pistol. He propped his Henry near the door and moved farther inside.
“Drop your cock and grab your socks, Rip,” Fargo sang out.
Parker snorted and started awake, rising up on one elbow. “What the . . . ?”
“You’re sleeping away the best part of the day,” Fargo chided with brisk cheerfulness. “Why, your burlap-wrapped flock out there is hungry for spiritual advice while they work their asses off.”
The bright sun stabbing into his eyes made the bully blink irritably. “Oh, it’s you, Fargo. Wha’d’ya want?”
Again Fargo noticed how the soft Virginia drawl clashed oddly with the twice-broken nose and lumps of scar tissue around Parker’s eyes. His shoulders were knotted with hard muscle and the knuckles of his third finger joints were misshapen.
“I see you’re a pugilist,” Fargo remarked. “Did you fight for money?”
Parker sat all the way up. Now that he was coming fully awake his eyes took on a wary cast. “Not money except side bets. I was the navy champion back in ’fifty-three.”
“I’m duly impressed,” Fargo said. “There’s some tough bare-knuckle fighters in the navy.”
