The Trailsman #388

by Jon Sharpe

  For a moment he glimpsed a tall, whipcord-thin man peering out of the mouth of an alley across the street—peering right at the Western Union office.

  Fargo had to decide if the mercenaries were lying in wait to cut him down as he came outside or if they were now spotters keeping tabs on his whereabouts for the killer from Taos. He rolled the dice on the latter and strolled casually out of the office as if unaware of their presence.

  “Get ready for a set-to, old warhorse,” Fargo remarked quietly as he un-looped the reins and swung up onto the hurricane deck.

  He reined around into the street and suddenly thumped the Ovaro with his heels. “Hee-yah!”

  Fargo shucked out his Colt and headed straight for the mouth of the alley. He had given his word to Valdez that he would try to avoid killing these “bread crumbs” as Valdez called them. But things were vastly different now that a consummate killer had likely arrived, and Fargo was damned if he would just passively let these two set him up for the slaughter.

  He charged closer across the wide street, forced to veer hard to avoid an old woman who stepped off the boardwalk to cross. The delay gave the two thugs time to mount. Fargo heard the rataplan of hooves as they fled down the alley.

  The Ovaro shot into the alley, ears pinned back, and rapidly put on speed. Fargo spotted the two riders ahead of him, escaping in single file. The burly one brought up the rear, and when he looked over his shoulder Fargo recognized the mean slash of mouth. One of the heavy Colt Army revolvers was suddenly barking in his fist, bullets hornet-buzzing past Fargo’s ears.

  Fargo returned fire as the Ovaro closed the gap, but hitting a moving target with a handgun from a speeding horse, at this distance, was better suited to a circus trick shooter. And the tight alley with all its obstacles jutting into the way meant Fargo had to control the reins closely, eliminating use of his Henry.

  He emptied his Colt and managed to snap the spare cylinder in as the two dirt workers reined into another alley. Fargo hauled back and tugged rein, the skidding Ovaro veering into the alley as the burly gunman opened up with his second Colt Army.

  A bullet grazed Fargo’s forearm in a searing trace of heat as the two men continued to trade shots. Just ahead of Fargo a huge dray horse, panicked by all the deafening gunshots, reared up and knocked over a pyramid of empty barrels, spilling them across the alley into Fargo’s path.

  It was too late to rein in. Fargo stretched forward and low over the Ovaro’s neck. “Hi-ya!” he shouted. “Hii-ya!”

  The Ovaro went low and made a powerful leap, muscles uncoiling like powerful springs. Man and beast went airborne, easily clearing the barrels. The Ovaro landed barely missing a stride. Ahead of Fargo the two escaping thugs reined into yet another alley.

  Fargo pursued them into it and was just in time to watch them break out onto the desert flats west of El Paso. Now Fargo figured he had the advantage of a stronger, faster horse. He speared the brass-framed Henry from its boot.

  Six shots suddenly rang out behind Fargo. They came in such rapid succession that he figured there had to be at least two shooters.

  “Rein it in, Fargo!” a familiar voice shouted. “The seventh bullet won’t miss!”

  He hauled back and reined the Ovaro around. Santiago Valdez sat his roan. He holstered the empty gun and shucked out the second.

  “So you’d kill me to keep those two shit stains alive?” Fargo challenged him.

  “Kill you? No. But I’ll wound you if I have to. Without them I don’t find my favorite boy.”

  “I see those double actions really work,” Fargo said. “I couldn’t even blink my eyes between shots, they came so fast.”

  Valdez rode closer. “Now that I’ve stopped you,” he confessed, “I’ll tell you the truth—only one worked. The other jammed on me before I got the first shot out. I told you these things are still experimental.”

  “And yet you stake your life on ’em?”

  “I told you—one always works. I’ve never had both jam at the same time. That’s six shots for me in the same time you only get off three.”

  Fargo shrugged. “It’s your call. I’ll wait until they’re perfected. So you’re still hoping you can follow these two to the honcho? I thought the big idea now is to watch Ripley Parker.”

  “Unfortunately,” Valdez fired back, “a lanky buttinsky named Fargo seems to have driven him off, too.”

  “I talked to Rosario Velasquez last night,” Fargo said. “She told me about your wife. Why do I get this hunch that you and Rosario know each other better than you’re letting on?”

  Valdez ignored his question. “Yeah, I figured she’d flap her gums about it sooner or later. Anyway, it’s no big secret. I just don’t like talking about it. I intend to do something about it—if you’ll get off my neck and give me a chance.”

  “I couldn’t likely have killed these two,” Fargo pointed out. “They’re both dead shots. But I don’t want the sons of bitches dogging me like they are. You’re the one who warned me to watch my ass with this Apache, and you know damn well those two escaping right now are tracking me to make his job easier.”

  Valdez nodded. “I don’t blame you for not liking it. But the problem is, I think you can kill them just like you killed the archer. And I just can’t let that happen. It’s nothing personal, Fargo.”

  “Considering that you’re making things riskier for me, it sure feels personal.”

  “Things are the way they are,” Valdez retorted. “I told you a week ago to just point your bridle out of here.”

  “Like you said, that ship has sailed. I don’t take orders from any man, you included. I’ll do what I can to accommodate you, Santiago. But I value my life above your need for revenge, savvy? And there’s more lives at stake here than just mine, lives you don’t seem to give a shit about.”

  The two men stared at each other for a full ten seconds.

  “Looks like we understand each other,” Valdez finally said.

  Fargo nodded. “Yeah. Looks like we do.”

  15

  Fargo rode back to Tierra Seca again, taking a circuitous route he had not previously ridden. This time he held the Ovaro to a steady lope, a pace a strong horse could hold, with brief rests in this heat, for hours. It would also force anyone following Fargo to raise dust trails that would show in the clear desert air.

  He checked constantly with his binoculars. But the only dust puffs he spotted were well east of him, caused by a bull train heading toward El Paso. By midafternoon Tierra Seca and the Rio Grande hove into view beyond a low ridge.

  He rode in a slow circle around the settlement and the outlying patchwork of neat, irrigated fields, a surprising oasis of green in the yellow-brown monotony of desert. Fargo spotted no outward signs of trouble. He surveyed the workers in the biggest bean field until he spotted Carrie Stanton.

  He swung down from the saddle and led the Ovaro by the bridle reins out to meet her.

  “Parker still around?” he asked her.

  She shook her head, smiling at him. “Evidently you persuaded him to take his criminal act on the road. He left yesterday and hasn’t been back. He stole one of our best horses, but it’s worth the price to be rid of him.”

  “You know,” Fargo mused, thinking out loud more than speaking, “I got a hunch he was ready to vamoose anyway.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Listen,” Fargo said, “is there some way to call all the workers together?”

  She cocked her pretty head curiously. “Of course. But why?”

  Fargo gazed toward the nearby river and the ridges just beyond it.

  “I just need to say something to all you folks,” he said.

  Carrie frowned slightly. “Skye, I’ll listen to anything you have to say, and so will Abigail. But the rest of them . . . well, you see, one of the reasons the Phalanx came into being was our mi
strust of outsiders and their values. The group is especially opposed to violence, and you . . . well . . .”

  Fargo laughed. “Yeah, I know. But it was violence that sent Parker packing,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, Skye, and hallelujah! But most of the others don’t know that. Anyway, c’mon. We’ll give it a try.”

  She led Fargo to a clearing beside the big residence building and banged on a triangle mounted in the middle of it. Curious Phalanx members—Fargo estimated around fifty of them—trudged in from the corn, bean and squash fields. Many of the women smiled at Fargo; most of the men didn’t.

  “This is Skye Fargo,” Carrie called out to the rest although by now they knew who he was. “He’d like to address all of us.”

  “Outsiders have no place here,” objected a frowning young man with a wispy red beard who immediately struck Fargo as an overgrown spoiled brat. “This man wears a gun and a knife, and there’s another gun sticking out of his saddle.”

  “That’s a rifle, not a gun,” Fargo corrected him.

  “A distinction without a difference, sir. Both are used to kill.”

  Here we go again with the “sir” shit, Fargo thought. Out loud he said, “Never mind my weapons. It’s violence I’m here to help you avoid.”

  Fargo spent the next few minutes detailing all of it: How he had witnessed, and been caught in, the initial blast seven days ago; the purpose for shifting the river’s course; Parker’s likely place in all of it; and his conviction that Winslowe intended to pull the same stunt here at Tierra Seca. He added that the blast could come at any time now, almost certainly in the dead of night.

  “It’s pointless to take all this to authorities in El Paso,” Fargo concluded. “Winslowe is wealthy, and men like him use money like manure—they spread it around. By now he’s paid off important men on both sides of the border.”

  The reaction among the listeners was mixed. They had a dim view of rich capitalists, and some appeared ready to believe him. A larger number, however, looked skeptical or even openly suspicious of him. Red Beard spoke up again.

  “We don’t even know who you are. Maybe this Stanley Winslowe, if he even exists, is using you and this story to drive us out.”

  “You’re so full of shit your feet are sliding,” Fargo said bluntly. “Did I say you should leave your farm? All you really need to do to protect your lives is sleep on the far edge of your fields, the side away from the river. It’s this building that’s in the danger zone.”

  “Sleep on the ground?” protested a man with jug ears. “You may be used to that, but we aren’t. And our kitchen and food and other supplies are in this building.”

  “So? It’s safe during the day, so go ahead and use it. You can see the river clearly from here, and if anybody was down there planting explosives in daylight you’d see it. As for sleeping on the ground, it’s comfortable enough if you do it right.”

  “Such a blast as you describe,” said a woman who appeared older than most others in the Phalanx, “would destroy our irrigation system.”

  “It would for a fact,” Fargo replied, “or at least the part of it close to the river. The big problem, though, would be the rerouting of the river. A fancy irrigation system is worthless without a good source of water. But I’m going to be working to stop that blast.”

  “It’s all utterly fantastic,” Red Beard opined. “You can’t just control rivers like that.”

  “Skye isn’t a liar!” Abigail spoke up hotly. “He told you he witnessed it a week ago.”

  “And he was in that blast,” Carrie pitched in. “I saw him right after it happened. His face was blistered and his beard singed. His beard is fixed now, but look at him . . . his buckskins are burned, and you can still see where his eyebrows were singed.”

  “Naturally Peace Child and Hope speak up for him,” Red Beard said, his tone tinged with accusation. “They both went off into the cornfield with him.”

  “So what?” Carrie demanded. “You’re just jealous ’cause we won’t do it with you.”

  “It was Skye,” Abigail added, “who ran Ripley Parker off yesterday. How many of you regret that?”

  “I’m glad he’s gone,” Jug Ears admitted. “But I’m the one who cleaned up all the blood in his room. Yes, Mr. Fargo ran him off, but he used terrible violence to do it. Perhaps . . . just perhaps he has even killed him. No one has seen him.”

  “Think maybe I ate him, too?” Fargo quipped.

  All this seemed to embolden Red Beard further. “Mr. Fargo is an outsider, and a very violent one at that. I’ve read things about him and all the graves left in his wake. Hope and Peace Child are obviously under his spell. They—”

  “Oh, go to hell, Sebastian!” Carrie snapped. “You don’t have the gumption of a gourd vine!”

  “See?” Red Beard exclaimed to the others. “All of you just heard her! She is clearly in violation of our Oath of Universal Peace and Justice that she promised to obey.”

  “I’m just curious,” Fargo told him. “You’re swinging your eggs all over the place right now as you pick on women. But where were you and Jug Ears when Ripley Parker was grinding all of you under his heel?”

  “At least he was one of us.”

  “One of you, yet he raped and beat women? He wasn’t in violation of your big oath?”

  “Well, at least he took that oath and joined us. Will you?”

  “I don’t swear oaths,” Fargo replied. “And I don’t join groups. I’m what you might call a majority of one.”

  “Well, we don’t reason that way,” Jug Ears put in. “Individualism is the bane of the collective good. It leads to greed, war, suffering, violence—”

  “Put a sock in it,” Fargo cut him off in disgust. “I got no time for your sweet-lavender stump speech. I’ve done my best to warn you folks, and I told you what I think you need to do. I suggest all of you at least think about what I said. That explosion could come anytime now.”

  Fargo hooked a stirrup and forked leather. He swept an arm out toward the fertile, flourishing fields.

  “You got a nice deal going here. Like I said, I’ll do my best to stop this blast. But I’ve got killers after me, and anyway, you can’t always count on others to protect you. Texas is an organized state. Sure. But it’s still a damn dangerous place. There’s free-ranging Indians around here including Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches—dangerous tribes all.”

  “The Indians,” Red Beard interrupted him, “were all noble savages until the white man—”

  “Save it for your memoirs,” Fargo said. “And it’s not just the tribes. Here on the border there’s roving bands of Mexican criminals who call themselves armies. It’s a miracle all of you haven’t been wiped out by now.”

  Fargo pulled his rifle from its boot and held it up so all could see it.

  “This is a Henry repeating rifle. You load it on Sunday and it fires all week. You can buy them in El Paso. Somebody here has to know how to shoot. I suggest you lay in some of these and learn how to use them. Soldiers are scarce as hen’s teeth, and the Texas Rangers are spread too thin to help you. Self- defense isn’t violence, and you need to defend yourselves.”

  Fargo booted his weapon, tipped his hat at the group, and gigged the Ovaro toward Tierra Seca’s only street.

  • • •

  Toward sundown Deuce Ulrick and Slim Robek met with Harlan Perry at his rented cottage on quiet, unassuming Mesa Street.

  Perry, who usually exhibited the calm demeanor of a riverboat gambler, was now visibly on edge. For a full minute after he let the two men inside he anxiously studied the street through a crack between the door and the jamb.

  “Relax, boss,” Ulrick scoffed. “We shook Valdez and Fargo this morning. They got no idea in hell where you’re staying.”

  Ulrick described Fargo’s wild charge against them after the Trailsman left the telegraph offic
e.

  “He come at us like a bull outta the chute—mister, I mean bold as a big man’s ass! And it was one helluva cartridge session,” Ulrick concluded. “We didn’t actually see Valdez stop Fargo. But there was six shots lickety-split from one of the ’breed’s double actions, and Fargo just quit the chase.”

  “Hell,” Slim threw in, “Valdez might coulda even shot him. We ain’t seen hide nor hair of either one since.”

  “Nah, ain’t likely he shot him,” Ulrick gainsaid. “Them two been talking chummy for some time now.”

  Perry removed a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his silk-lined vest and mopped at his sweat-glistening face. Anxiety always worsened his congestion, and now his breathing sounded like a leaky bellows.

  “There’s only one reason why Valdez would have stopped him,” he fretted. “The man is obsessed with killing me, and he knows you two are his best hope of locating me.”

  Ulrick looked at Slim and winked.

  “Yeah, boy,” Ulrick said, “that son of a buck wants your balls on a platter, all right. Be a damn shame if me and Slim got a mite careless. Hey?”

  Perry flushed red with anger. “Is that a threat or a poor joke?”

  “Ahh, just pulling your leg, chief. But that bastard sure is nursing a powerful grudge against you. The hell did you do to him?”

  Perry moved to a front window and cautiously peered past the curtains. “That doesn’t matter now. Any inkling as to what was in Fargo’s telegram?”

  “Now there we hit pay dirt,” Ulrick boasted. “I managed to bribe the telegraph operator. Fargo made a report to some colonel named Josiah Evans up at Fort Union. He didn’t mention your name or ours, but he named Mr. Winslowe. And the meddling son of a bitch has figured out the whole plan with moving the river. He knows all about Tierra Seca and even the type of explosive we’re using.”

  Perry dropped the curtain and mopped his face again. “It wouldn’t have gotten this far if you boys had done your jobs and killed him. You’re not being paid top dollar to give reports about how he’s outsmarting us.”

  “Yeah? Tell that to Johnny Jackson’s ghost, why’n’t you? You’re the one who pulled us back after he killed Johnny. And it was you ordered us just to watch and track him.”