Texas Timber War

by Jon Sharpe

While Fargo would never want to give up the mountains and the plains for an existence like this, he could understand how a life on the river could get into a man’s blood. Even when you were traveling the same route, each bend of the river held the potential for something new. It was the same in a way with him, always wanting to see what was on the other side of every hill he came to. That restless nature was what had led him to the frontier.

  ‘‘You think they’ll be waiting for us at Alligator Slough?’’ he asked Russell.

  The captain thought about it and said, ‘‘More than likely, they’ll let us get past, then try the same sort of ambush they did before, with riflemen on the banks to slow us down and pirates in canoes coming up behind us. If they can get eight or ten men on board, that’s enough to take over the boat.’’

  ‘‘They won’t be trying to loot the cargo,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘This time their goal will be to wipe us out.’’

  Russell nodded. ‘‘I know it.’’ He pulled back the blue jacket he wore and revealed the butt of a revolver that was stuck through his belt. ‘‘There’s nothing wrong with my right arm. I can still shoot a gun. Caleb and the other fellas are armed, too. We’ll put up a fight—that’s for damned sure.’’

  Fargo knew that, but just putting up a fight wouldn’t be enough. They had to win and reach Shreveport and the U.S. marshal, or Baxter would continue to get away with his campaign of murder and terror aimed at Lawrence Kiley.

  By the time they neared Alligator Slough, Fargo had begun to recognize a few landmarks that warned him they were closing in on the likely spot of an ambush. Things looked a little different from the bayou than they did ashore, but Fargo’s keen eyes took that into account. When he said something about that to Russell, the captain nodded.

  ‘‘Yeah, the mouth of the slough’s not more than half a mile ahead of us. If you need to use that rifle, Fargo, you go right ahead. I’ll take the wheel one-handed if I have to.’’

  ‘‘No, you won’t,’’ a voice said from behind them, in the open door of the wheelhouse.

  Fargo had already heard a soft step on the stairs and started to turn. His face hardened into a grim mask as he saw Isabel Sterling standing there in the doorway. She wore man’s trousers and a white shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail behind her head.

  ‘‘Isabel!’’ Russell exclaimed. ‘‘What in blue blazes are you doing here?’’

  Fargo could have asked the same thing, but he thought he already knew the answer. He said, ‘‘You stowed away, didn’t you?’’

  She smiled. ‘‘I came on board while you were eating breakfast, Skye. I’m sorry I had to pretend to be asleep when you left. But I didn’t want you and Cap’n Andy to have to make this trip alone. I thought I could help.’’ She took a step into the wheelhouse. ‘‘Besides, I didn’t want to stay there in Jefferson by myself. Not when Gideon might show up at any time.’’

  ‘‘You mean Cutler, that no-good husband of yours?’’ Russell asked. ‘‘Has that varmint raised his ugly head again?’’

  Isabel nodded, her smile tinged with sadness and a little fear now. ‘‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I think he sent someone to track me down, and he knows where I am now.’’

  ‘‘We can’t be sure of that,’’ Fargo pointed out.

  ‘‘I wanted to be here with the two of you,’’ Isabel said. ‘‘I’m sure of that.’’

  ‘‘We ought to turn this boat around and head right back to Jefferson,’’ Russell said.

  ‘‘Don’t you dare! I came to help, too, not just to run away from Gideon . . . again. If there’s trouble, Skye can take care of it while you navigate, Cap’n Andy, and I’ll take the wheel. That way you won’t have to risk reinjuring your arm.’’

  ‘‘Be a lot more to worry about than this ol’ arm of mine if those river pirates take us over,’’ Russell grumbled.

  Isabel rested a hand on Fargo’s shoulder. ‘‘That’s not going to happen,’’ she declared. ‘‘We won’t let it. If it comes down to it, I can fight, too, as long as you’ve got an extra gun for me.’’

  ‘‘Spare pistols and ammunition in the map cabinet.’’ Russell shook his head gloomily. ‘‘Let’s hope it don’t come down to that.’’

  That was Fargo’s hope, all right. While they were talking to Isabel, the stern-wheeler had continued to steam on down the bayou. They had to be getting close to Alligator Slough by now, but so far there had been no sign of Red Mike McShane and his gang.

  It was more likely, though, as Captain Russell had said, that the pirates wouldn’t strike until after the Bayou Princess had gone past the slough. A few minutes later, the mouth of the smaller stream came in sight on the left. That was called port, Fargo reminded himself, since he was on a boat. The moss-draped trees sort of screened the entrance to the slough. Fargo watched it closely as the stern-wheeler paddled its way past. No canoes loaded with river pirates lurked in the shadowy tunnel formed by overhanging tree branches.

  It was possible they had gotten there before the news of their departure from Jefferson reached McShane. Unlikely, but possible. Or maybe the pirates knew about it but hadn’t had time to set up an ambush. Fargo didn’t know. Either way, all he and his companions could do was press on.

  Alligator Slough fell behind. Russell and Isabel heaved sighs of relief, but Fargo was still tense with worry as he stood at the wheel, his hands clasping it loosely at the moment. His eyes were always moving, scanning the banks along both sides of the bayou, searching for any signs of an ambush. The trees and brush were so thick that a small army could be hidden in them, and the people in the riverboat might not know about it until the bushwhackers opened fire.

  Even though they had passed Alligator Slough, Fargo spotted several of the big reptiles sunning themselves on the banks up ahead. The gators could be found all up and down this bayou, as well as in Caddo Lake up ahead, not just in the slough that had been named for them.

  ‘‘Take a couple of turns to starboard,’’ Captain Russell said. ‘‘There’s an old snag up here a couple of hundred yards.’’

  Fargo turned the wheel, shifting his hands from grip to grip as it revolved. The Bayou Princess began a ponderous swing to the right.

  As it did, Fargo saw the alligators on the near bank suddenly lunge into the water with a swish of their muscular tails. The gators could have spotted a big fish or some other prey in the bayou they were going after. . . .

  Or they could have been spooked into moving by the presence of some other predator in the brush near them.

  And the most dangerous predator of all was man.

  Fargo let go of the wheel and reached for his Henry rifle. ‘‘Take the wheel,’’ he snapped at Isabel, grateful now that she was here. ‘‘And keep your head down!’’

  ‘‘Skye, what is it?’’ she asked, but even as she was speaking, she grabbed hold of the wheel as Fargo had told her.

  ‘‘I’m not sure—’’ Fargo began as he lifted the rifle.

  Then a volley of shots roared out from the near bank. As Fargo crouched, he heard several of the bullets thud into the wall of the wheelhouse. Another slug passed directly through the open windows, coming in from the right and going out to the left without hitting anything. Fargo sensed as much as heard the low-pitched hum as the bullet passed close by his head.

  Puffs of smoke from the brush marked the location of the bushwhackers. Fargo opened fire, cranking off four rounds as fast as he could work the Henry’s loading lever. The growth was so thick that he couldn’t tell if he hit anything, but he would have been willing to bet that he made at least one of the hidden riflemen duck for cover.

  That didn’t stop the shooting, though. Rifles started barking from the other bank, too. Fargo swiveled in that direction and loosed another three shots. He heard the crackle of pistols from down below and knew that Caleb Thorn, Rollie Burnley, and Jasper Milton were joining in on the fight.

  Captain Russell, who was kneeling next to the chart table, turned his head to look out the rear win
dow of the wheelhouse. ‘‘No canoes coming up behind us!’’ he reported, and that was one bit of good news, anyway, Fargo thought.

  But they still had to run the gauntlet between the bushwhackers hidden in the forest bordering the bayou. Fargo swung around and threw some more lead to starboard.

  ‘‘Trouble up ahead!’’ Isabel called out.

  Biting back a curse, Fargo turned to look and saw a couple of canoes slicing toward the center of the stream, one from each bank, about fifty yards ahead. He frowned as he realized that they were empty. The pirates must have shoved the canoes out into the bayou, hoping to block the riverboat with them. But the Bayou Princess would just push the canoes aside without any trouble.

  Then Fargo’s blood turned to ice in his veins as he realized that the canoes weren’t empty at all. True, no one was in them paddling.

  But each canoe was occupied by two kegs of blasting powder.

  Fargo grabbed the speaking tube and shouted, ‘‘Reverse! Reverse! Give it everything you’ve got!’’

  A mighty shudder ran through the riverboat as Caleb Thorn threw the engines out of gear and then into reverse. The big paddle wheel attached to the stern jerked and jolted to a stop. The action was so violent it felt as if the whole vessel was going to shake itself to pieces. But then the paddle wheel began to turn in the opposite direction.

  That was the only chance of slowing down the boat enough for it to avoid the floating bombs up ahead. The Bayou Princess still had enough momentum, though, that it kept going forward even as the paddles churned the water and tried to hold it back. Fargo saw sparks flying in the air as fuses attached to the kegs burned closer and closer to the blasting powder.

  He knew their time was up. He dropped the rifle, grabbed Isabel, and pulled her to the floor of the wheelhouse. At the same time he shouted to Russell, ‘‘Get down!’’

  The curved bow of the riverboat had just nudged between the booby-trapped canoes when the kegs of blasting powder exploded. The four blasts weren’t simultaneous, but they were so close together they sounded almost like one.

  The floor of the wheelhouse tilted for a second under Fargo and Isabel as the force of the explosion lifted the riverboat’s bow out of the water and tore huge chunks from its hull. Fargo slid across the wheelhouse and crashed into the wall. Then the boat crashed back down into the water, throwing up a massive splash. The shattered bow plowed into the bottom of the shallow stream. The engines screamed, running away wildly as the angle of the vessel lifted the paddle wheel completely out of the bayou for a moment.

  Fargo was stunned by the banging around he had received. He pushed himself up onto hands and knees and saw Isabel sprawled nearby. Russell was sitting up, propped against the map cabinet. His face was gray with pain, but Fargo didn’t see any blood on the bandages around the captain’s wounded arm, so that was good.

  But that was about the only bit of good news, Fargo realized. He didn’t know the extent of the damage the riverboat had suffered, but it wasn’t moving anymore, and it might never move again.

  He grabbed the Henry and surged to his feet. As he did so, a bullet buzzed past his ear. The men on the bank had emerged from cover and were raking the boat with rifle fire again. Fargo brought the Henry to his shoulder and snapped off a shot, sending one man plunging backward as Fargo’s bullet smashed into his chest.

  Pistol shots still sounded on the lower decks, proving that somebody was still alive down there and putting up a fight. But the defenders of the Bayou Princess were heavily outnumbered, and the boat itself was a sitting duck in the water. More canoes, these filled with river pirates, put out into the bayou, and the men on the banks laid down volley after volley of covering fire. Fargo was forced to dive to the floor as slugs began to punch their way through the bullet-riddled, weakened walls of the wheelhouse.

  ‘‘Stay down!’’ he told Isabel and Russell.

  A moment later, the guns fell silent. Fargo heard the heavy sound of boots on the deck, followed by a flurry of gunshots, then more silence. He knew the pirates had boarded the boat.

  ‘‘Stay here,’’ he grated as he came up in a crouch. He kicked the wheelhouse door open and saw a couple of roughly dressed men starting up the stairs. He recognized one of them as Linus McShane, Red Mike’s brother. Fargo fired the Henry, hitting the other man, who was slightly in front of Linus. The river pirate howled in pain and fell back, the arm that Fargo had just drilled flopping uselessly as blood welled from it.

  Linus emptied the pistol he held in Fargo’s direction, forcing the Trailsman to duck back to avoid the hail of bullets. A second later, a voice that he recognized as belonging to Red Mike shouted, ‘‘Hold your fire, Fargo! Hold your fire, damn it!’’

  Fargo stayed where he was, covering the part of the stairway he could see.

  ‘‘You hear me, Fargo?’’ Red Mike called. ‘‘You better talk to me!’’

  ‘‘I hear you!’’ Fargo shouted back. ‘‘What do you want?’’

  ‘‘You and whoever’s up there with you better throw out your guns and surrender! You can’t get off this boat!’’

  ‘‘Surrender and let ourselves be killed, you mean?’’

  ‘‘You won’t be hurt!’’ McShane insisted. ‘‘You got my word on that.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, your word means a whole lot after you’ve tried to blow us up and shot at us a couple of hundred times!’’

  Fargo heard McShane chuckle, of all things. ‘‘Yeah, that trick with the blasting powder in the canoes was a pretty good’un, wasn’t it? If you hadn’t been able to slow that boat down a little, it would’ve been blowed to pieces, and maybe you along with it. So you’re right—I wanted you dead. But now that I think about it, I’ve changed my mind.’’

  That puzzled Fargo, and he didn’t know whether to believe Red Mike or not. And there was also the question of whether or not he and his companions would be any better off as prisoners of the river pirates.

  But even as he asked himself that, he knew the answer. They were outnumbered and couldn’t escape, which meant that if they continued to fight, sooner or later the pirates would storm the wheelhouse and kill him and Captain Russell. They might just take Isabel captive if they could, but she would eventually die, too, when they got tired of abusing her.

  But as long as he still lived, there was hope. He had won out against seemingly overwhelming odds in the past.

  Even though Fargo was already leaning in the direction of surrendering—for the moment—McShane tipped the scales by adding, ‘‘Throw out your guns, or these three old fools will die, Fargo. You got my word on that, too.’’

  Fargo risked a look and saw Caleb Thorn, Rollie Burnley, and Jasper Milton down on the hurricane deck, surrounded by McShane’s men. All of them had blood on their clothes, but they were standing straight and didn’t seem to be hurt too badly. All McShane had to do was give the order, though, and his men would riddle them.

  Fargo glanced at Isabel and Russell. ‘‘What do you think?’’ he asked them in a quiet voice.

  ‘‘The Princess is hard aground,’’ Russell said. ‘‘I could tell that by the way it felt when she came to a stop. She won’t be going anywhere soon, and maybe never again if those explosions did enough damage. Seems to me that we don’t have much choice.’’ If he hadn’t looked pained already, that admission probably would have caused the grimace that came over his strained features. ‘‘Besides, I don’t want anything else happening to my crew.’’

  Isabel swallowed hard. ‘‘I agree, Skye. Red Mike will murder us all if he’s forced into it. Maybe if we pretend to cooperate, we’ll have a chance later to escape.’’

  Fargo’s mouth was a grim line. Giving up stuck in his craw. Always had and always would . . . but maybe not for much longer, depending on how things worked out here.

  He might not live long enough to worry about it.

  ‘‘All right,’’ he called to Red Mike. ‘‘You win, McShane! We’re coming out!’’

  ‘‘Throw all your
guns out first!’’ McShane ordered.

  Fargo laid the Henry on the floor and gave it a push, sliding it out the door. He heard the clatter as the rifle fell down the steep stairway. He followed it with his Colt and the pistol Russell had, then tossed out his Arkansas toothpick last.

  ‘‘Is that it?’’ McShane asked.

  ‘‘That’s all,’’ Fargo replied. There were guns in the map cabinet, the captain had said, but none of those weapons had been broken out during the fight.

  ‘‘Then come ahead!’’

  Fargo got to his feet and helped Russell up. ‘‘How’s the arm?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘It just hurts from being banged around. I don’t think it started bleeding again.’’

  Fargo nodded. He held on to Russell’s good arm to steady the captain as they emerged from the wheelhouse and started down the stairs. Isabel followed close behind them.

  At least a dozen guns were pointed at them as they reached the hurricane deck at the bottom of the stairway. McShane grinned and said, ‘‘You should’ve known better, Fargo. This bayou belongs to me. Nobody travels up or down it without my say-so.’’

  ‘‘Things may not always be that way,’’ Fargo snapped.

  ‘‘I wouldn’t count on it.’’ McShane turned to his men. ‘‘Put them in the canoes and take them ashore. Keep a close eye on them, especially Fargo here. I got a feelin’ that he’s a tricky one.’’ The boss of the river pirates chuckled again. ‘‘If he tries anything, throw one of those old-timers in the bayou. I’ll bet the gators are hungry. They always are.’’

  12

  Once the prisoners had been taken ashore, they were marched through the woods at gunpoint, surrounded by the river pirates. Fargo was able to talk to Caleb Thorn, Rollie Burnley, and Jasper Milton and found that while all three members of the crew had been nicked by flying lead, none of them had serious injuries. Captain Russell was still gray-faced from the pain of his wounded arm, but it wasn’t bleeding and he seemed fairly strong.

  Isabel trudged along beside Fargo. She asked in a half whisper, ‘‘Why didn’t they kill us?’’