The Phantom Gunman (A Neal Fargo Adventure. Book 11)

by John Benteen

  Antrim chuckled. “After that, he took his time. Spent a whole hour trying to get loose from his leg irons. Hell, everybody in Lincoln was his friend. Got one iron off, went downstairs, somebody brought him a horse, everybody else in town crowded around shaking his hand. He mounted up, rode away. Sent the horse back later, too. He might have been a lot of things, but he never was a horse thief.”

  “And then Garrett caught him at Maxwell’s place in Fort Sumner and killed him,” Fargo said. “Or so the story goes.”

  “So the story goes,” Antrim said.

  “I never believed it myself,” Fargo said. “Nobody in Lincoln County seems to, either.”

  “That was because they loved the Kid. They refused to admit anybody could kill him.”

  “Selman showed me a note signed by the Kid. Said it was in the Kid’s handwriting.”

  Antrim smiled. “Selman ought to know. The Kid chased him out of Lincoln County.”

  “Then he’s still alive.”

  “I don’t think so,” Antrim said.

  Fargo fished in his pocket, took out a picture, laid it on the doctor’s desk. “There he is, at the age of maybe twenty. Not tall, about your height. Not as wide as you. But he hadn’t got his full growth then. Blue eyes … I’ll swear, Antrim, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Kid had teeth like a gopher and you’ve got teeth better than mine, a man might almost think—”

  Antrim laughed. “A man might think a lot of things. But there’s more to it than the teeth. Billy the Kid was a gunfighter. He took lives.” Suddenly Antrim was serious. “After the Lincoln County War—and I shot men, too, then, Fargo—I swore, myself, that I would never take another human life. That was why I became a doctor. I was tired of killing, had a gut full of it. Me, I went to New York, studied medicine there. What I wanted to do was save lives, not take ’em. When I had my diploma I came back West, met Nita’s mother down in Nogales. She …” his face clouded “ … died of the cholera down there and there wasn’t anything I could do to save her. And after she was dead, I couldn’t stand the place. So I came back to Lincoln. Five years ago. And—” He broke off. Outside, on the street, there was the drum of many hooves.

  He went to the window, with Fargo behind him, looked out. The five men who galloped down the main street of Lincoln bore the mark of gunslingers, fighting men. In a cloud of dust, they passed. Antrim turned away, his face grim. “More of Selman’s warriors. That’s how many—twenty, twenty-five hired guns he’s poured into Lincoln in the past week.”

  “Selman does things big,” Fargo said.

  “He’s doing this big. Reinforcing the Dolan bunch with all sorts of outside hired guns.” Antrim’s voice was soft, yet grim. “They must be planning to hit soon. Somebody, somewhere.”

  “Trent said the Tres Rios ranch, Sue McSween Barber’s outfit.”

  “Likely. She would be the core of the opposition. He’d want to smash her first.” Antrim turned away from the window, face thoughtful, almost tormented.

  Fargo watched him. “You were saying, about the Kid …”

  “I was saying that nobody would ever catch the Kid without his guns. Whereas, me, I swore never to wear guns again.”

  “Then you were a damn fool,” Fargo said. “In this world, nobody can get along without a gun. That’s the way it is.”

  “We’ve got law and order now.”

  “You had it in the old days, too. And it was in Dolan’s pocket. Henry, if you know how to wear a gun, you’d better strap it on. You’re going to need it.”

  “I don’t want to touch one of the damned things again,” Antrim said.

  “All right,” Fargo said. “Then we’ll ride to Tres Rios without you wearing one.”

  Antrim whipped around, blue eyes widening. “What?”

  “I said, the three of us—you, me, Nita—will ride to Tres Rios without you being heeled,” Fargo answered. “I’ll tote the hardware for us.”

  “You’re crazy,” Antrim said. “I’m not going to Tres Rios. My home’s in Lincoln, my practice is here. I’m neutral.”

  “You stopped being neutral when Nita threw down on Trent and Cannon with that shotgun. They’ve got a score to settle with you. Right now, they’re staying away because they’re busy and because they know I’m here and it would cost them men they don’t want to spare to settle it. But when I leave, then you and the girl both are sitting ducks. They’ll rub you out and … Trent wants Nita.”

  Antrim stared at him with eyes like ice.

  “Trent cost me ten thousand dollars. I paid it to him to save you and Nita. You might say that he’s in debt to me on your account. I don’t pay out money foolishly. I’m riding to Tres Rios to throw in with Sue McSween. I said I was going to take that ten thousand out of Trent’s hide, and that’s the best way to do it I know of. You and Nita are coming with me. You’re sure as hell not going to stay here where Trent can have a clear pass at both of you.”

  “No,” Antrim whispered.

  “Yes,” Fargo said. “Sue McSween Barber knows where to reach the Kid. Once we get there, she can roust him out of hiding, and he can organize an army to back her, go up against the Dolan bunch. You’ll be a lot safer with the Kid shielding you than you will be here in Lincoln.”

  “The Kid won’t shield me,” Antrim said. “The Kid’s dead.”

  “No,” Fargo said. “He isn’t.”

  Antrim’s voice rose. “Yes, dammit, he is! I know!”

  “Then who wrote that note to Selman that he identified?”

  The doctor’s face was red. “I did! I—had letters from the Kid. I sat up all night copying his handwriting, sent that letter to Selman. I thought it would scare him bad enough to make him stay out of Lincoln County. But Sue McSween won’t get any help from Billy Bonney! I tell you, he’s dead!”

  Fargo was silent for a moment. The utter conviction in Antrim’s voice dismayed him. “Does she know that?” he asked at last.

  “She ought to,” Antrim said.

  Fargo let out a long breath. “Then all the more reason why you’ve got to get out of Lincoln. Once the war starts, you won’t last a minute here. Trent will come for Nita and if you get in his way, he’ll gun you down—or have it done. No, Henry. You ride west with me to Tres Rios.”

  Antrim shook his head violently. “We’d never make it. Not with all the gunmen and the whole Dolan crowd—”

  “Anyhow, we’ve got to try.” Fargo’s voice had finality in it. When Antrim opened his mouth to protest, Fargo went on. “Henry, I owe my eyes to Nita and my life to you. I always pay my debts. The way I’m paying them now is to take you to Tres Rios with me, whether you want to go or not. And if you argue with me, I’ll buffalo you with my gun and carry you over my saddle.”

  Antrim’s eyes flared. “Try it,” he murmured.

  “I hope I won’t have to. But I’m not leaving you and Nita here in Lincoln. Where is she, anyhow?”

  “She’s asleep. She was up all night with a patient.”

  “Wake her up and tell her to pack saddlebags. We ride out of here at first good dark. That ought to see us over the hills by daylight, if we push the horses.”

  Antrim paced the room. “Maybe you’re right. I can’t risk her. She’s all I’ve got. And Trent—Christ, I’d rather see her dead than have him get his hands on her.” He was silent for a moment. “All right, Neal. We’ll go with you. But we don’t have any saddle horses. All we’ve got is a buggy and a horse to pull it.”

  “Too slow,” Fargo said. “We’ve got to ride fast. I’ll go up to Wortley’s and get my roan and buy two more mounts.”

  Antrim shook his head. “You’ll never make it. Not with the town swarming with Trent’s gunmen.”

  Fargo smiled, coldly. “Leave that to me. I’ve got my pistol. Plus, I’ll need my shotgun and a few shells. I’ll be back in a little while. You get Nita up and have her start packing.”

  Antrim sighed. “All right.”

  “Keep the doors locked while I’m gone. Look, if it will
help, I’ll leave the Colt. The shotgun will be enough.”

  “No,” Antrim said, staring at the pistol. “No. I wouldn’t touch the goddamned thing.”

  There was such loathing in his voice that Fargo knew he meant it. “Suit yourself. Just don’t let anybody in.” Then he got his sawed-off Fox from the closet, checked its loads, put four spare rounds in his shirt pocket, slung the gun over his shoulder and went out.

  ~*~

  It was the first time he had left the hospital since Savitts had put the bullet in him. There were no sidewalks in Lincoln, and when he left the doctor’s office, hospital and home combined, he stepped out into the dusty margin of the street. Antrim’s place was west of the store that had once been McSween’s, a long rambling building painted red, with iron bars over the windows. Late in the evening as it was, the place was closed now.

  Fargo walked up the street, past the rock tower of the ancient Spanish fort, past the foundations of the burnt McSween house. Ahead, outside the hotel, and, beyond that, outside the saloon, many horses were tethered. Gunmen’s mounts, Fargo thought; the town was swarming with pistoleros.

  It was strange, he thought, that now, in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, there were still so many gunmen. But fighting went on: in Mexico, Central and South America; Alaska was still frontier, and so were the new possessions of the United States, the Philippines and the like. Plenty of wars, and wars bred gunmen like manure bred maggots. Once you had made your living with your trigger finger, had proved to yourself that you were good at it, then you had a trade. There were a lot of people for hire who had learned their trade in war. Like himself. He smiled thinly. The gunman was like the cockroach. No matter how hard society tried to wipe him out, his numbers not only remained steady, they multiplied. It had cost money for Selman to scour the world for the gunhands Fargo had seen ride past Antrim’s office. But Selman had the money, and the gunmen came to money, the way flies came to manure. They were not the fast-draw kind, usually, not the way he was or Cannon, but they understood the business of fighting and killing.

  As he neared the heart of town, he began to see them. They lounged on the sidewalk, in small groups, still not mingling with one another, each as feisty and suspicious as a fighting cock, having nothing to do with others of their kind they did not know. But, he realized quickly, they had all heard of him from Trent, and even if they hadn’t would have recognized him as one of their own ilk. They watched him, and he felt a kind of current flowing behind him as he walked toward the hotel and its livery corrals. The gunmen were coming after him.

  Fargo hitched his thumb beneath the sling of the shotgun.

  The hotel was only a few paces away, now, a white L-shaped building twenty yards back from the street, with corrals full of horses. More men lounged on the veranda, and all of them were draped with guns.

  Fargo twitched his thumb, unslung the Fox. Now he carried it cradled in his arm, his hand around its pistol-grip, his fingers close to its triggers. The men on the porch saw him coming and saw the two huge black bores of that sawed-off. They knew what such a weapon could do. They made way as he entered the hotel.

  In the tiny lobby, he stood with his back to the wall, and, thus, was able to watch the entrance and the dining room simultaneously. “I owe you for a night,” he said, “and for two weeks of looking after my horse.”

  The dour man behind the desk said, “Trent paid for it.”

  “Trent?”

  “Yeah.” The man’s lean cheeks were pale. “He paid the charges and took your roan as security.”

  “Where’s the roan?”

  “Still out in our corral, but—”

  “I want it. And the two other fastest horses with the most bottom that you’ve got.”

  “Mr. Fargo, I can’t—”

  “Yeah, you can,” Fargo said, jamming the shotgun forward.

  The man sighed. “I—reckon.”

  “Let’s go,” Fargo said.

  “Just be careful with that Greener.”

  “It’s not a Greener, it’s a Fox.”

  “Ever’ sawed-off’s a Greener to me. I used to drive for Wells Fargo and they issued Greeners.” Then they were through the door, and there were a lot of men on the porch who hitched at their gunbelts and stood aside as Fargo and the innkeeper emerged. They had not had instruction, no orders, and they were not anxious to go up against a riot gun. They let Fargo and the dour man pass.

  At the corrals, Fargo spotted the roan. Among the other twenty animals penned with it, he picked out a sorrel and a claybank. “I’ll take my horse, the sorrel and the dun,” he said.

  There was a crowd of men behind him. They had followed from the street, from the veranda, all Trent’s, all new and indecisive and afraid of the Fox. It was a good thing, Fargo thought, that neither Trent nor Cannon was here, else a dozen or more guns would have been turned against him.

  The innkeeper snapped orders to a Mexican youth. The boy roped the horses, led them to the fence. “I want my own saddle and two more,” Fargo said.

  “The whole thing comes to five hundred dollars,” the innkeeper quavered.

  Fargo smiled. “Bill Sue McSween Barber at the Tres Rios Ranch. She’ll send you the money.”

  “How do I know?”

  “Because I said so.” Fargo jabbed him with the shotgun. He felt the eyes of that phalanx of gunfighters surrounding him, uncertain, leaderless. He had turned so that he could watch them, and now he swung the Fox again, slightly menacing them, as a warning.

  They drew back. All but three. The trio stood their ground, a man in the lead short, very short, not over five feet one or two. Cocky, blustering, the way little men often were. He dominated the other two, despite his lack of height, and they followed him as he stepped forward.

  “Feller,” he said, thumbs hooked in gunbelt, “I think your name’s Fargo.”

  “Sure is,” Fargo said.

  “In that case, you leave them horses there until you git Mr. Trent’s permission.”

  “I don’t have to ask Mr. Trent’s permission for anything,” Fargo said.

  “I think different. He’s down in Seven Rivers. You don’t take no horses out of here until he gits back.” The short one took another step forward. He wore two low-slung Colts, and his face was creased and angry above his fringe of beard.

  “Sorry,” Fargo said. “I need the horses.” Without turning his head, he said to the Mexican boy, “Saddle ’em.”

  “Si, senor.”

  Now the Fox was up tilted to menace the short man, his two backer-uppers, and the crowd behind them, which, knowledgeably, immediately dissipated, getting out of the way of stray lead. “Listen, Shorty,” Fargo began.

  “My name ain’t Shorty. It’s Hughes. Ed Hughes.” The little man’s face flamed scarlet.

  “You don’t want to draw in front of this riot gun,” Fargo said.

  “I ain’t afraid of you and your damned shotgun,” Hughes snapped.

  “You ought to be,” Fargo said, and then he fired one barrel downwards, into the dust at Hughes’ feet. The nine buckshot stirred a cloud, and Hughes gasped, jumped backwards, stumbled and fell against the two men behind him. While they were all in a muddle, Fargo drew the Colt, too.

  When they had come out of it, he said, “There’s still nine buckshot in the gun and six rounds in this pistol. Little man, you want to make a play, play. But this Colt is loaded with hollow-points. If I don’t do nothing but hit your arm, it tears it off.”

  Hughes bit his lip. He stared at Fargo, then backed away.

  “I ain’t had no real orders from Trent.”

  “You’re out lucky,” Fargo said. He went to the roan, swung into the saddle, gathered the reins of the other two mounts. He swung the Fox again, seeing half a dozen men about to go into action, watching them wilt under the lethal menace of its bore. He grinned, lips peeling back from his teeth in a snarl like that of a hunting wolf.

  “Cry on Trent’s shoulder when he comes,” he said; and he
sidled the roan out of the yard with the other horses following. He kept them all covered with the shotgun as he went. Only when the animal had crab walked a couple of dozen yards down the street and nobody had moved did Fargo turn it and spur it and put it and the two led horses toward the doctor’s office at full gallop.

  Chapter Eight

  The doctor stared as Fargo, dismounted now, not only entered the house himself but led the reluctant horses through the door and into his office. “What the hell?”

  Then comprehension lit his eyes. “You think we’ll have trouble getting out of here?”

  “Likely. And can’t do it at all if the horses are exposed so somebody can put bullets in ’em.”

  “Why should they try to stop us?” Antrim began to pace. “You gave back the ten thousand; they think you’re out of it. They know I’m no factor in this …”

  “Don’t be a fool. Trent knows I’ll fight him now, link up with Sue Barber. You think he’ll let me get out of town without trying to bring me down? Not to mention what he owes Nita for making him crawfish with my shotgun. On top of which, he wants her. Or do you aim to let him have her?”

  Antrim’s blue eyes went cold. “No,” he said thinly. “Hell, no.”

  “Look out there,” Fargo said.

  Antrim went cautiously to the window, pulled back the curtain. Already men were drifting toward the house, men with guns. Some took up station behind cover across the street. Others fanned out on the flanks of the house, behind it. “Trent and Cannon aren’t here, but somebody’s bound to have sent for ’em after I came to Wortley’s and took the horses. Meanwhile, they’ll pen us up while they wait for orders.”

  Antrim sighed. “Then we’ll have to fight our way out.”

  Nita came into the room, then. She wore riding clothes: sombrero, jacket and man’s shirt, Levi’s and boots. She halted, staring at the horses. Fargo explained briefly. He had not expected her to show fear, and she did not.

  “All right,” she said coolly. “Everything’s packed in the saddlebags and ready to go. Your instruments, everything, Dad.”