by Jon Sharpe
“You wanna spell that out plain?” he demanded belligerently.
“Certainly. I’ll make it very plain.”
She gave El Burro an almost imperceptible nod. What happened next was so quick it was over before the rest even registered the fact. El Burro’s massive piston of an arm drove the heel of his palm at an angle up into Winkler’s nose, snapping the long bone with a noise like green wood splitting. The broken bone was driven straight back into his brain, buckling his knees instantly. He flopped to the crude plank floor, reduced first to a heap of twitching humanity and then seconds later a fresh corpse.
Blood spurted from his nostrils in two powerful streamers, slapping onto the floor with a sound like a horse pissing onto frozen ground. The noise was oddly obscene in the dead quiet of the saloon.
“Somebody please drag him out of here,” Jenny said in a pleasant voice. “Even though he’s already dead, string him up on the gallows with the others.”
She turned back to Butch and Lupe, offering them a coquettish smile. Both men’s faces were frozen masks. “Nerve up, boys. I would rather you hadn’t attacked that work crew up north, but don’t worry about Skye Fargo. Any crusading fool who enters Hangtown will soon be twisting in the wind with all the others who gave this place its name.”
5
On the second morning after the attack on Big Ed’s crew, just after sunrise, Buckshot built a fire with deadwood that gave off little smoke. From long habit he made the campfire Indian style by burning the logs from the ends, not the middle, to avoid wasting wood.
Fargo boiled a handful of coffee beans in his battered, blue enameled pot while Buckshot took charge of the trout Fargo had impaled the evening before. He gutted the fish on a flat rock, wrapped it in leaves, and tossed it into the hot ashes to bake.
“Christ, Fargo,” Buckshot complained, “this damn coffee is too thick to swallow and too thin to chew.”
“It’s better than that river bottom poison you brew,” Fargo retorted. “If it’s so bad, how’s come you’ve had two cups?”
“One cup gives me a bellyache. Two moves my bowels.”
They finished eating and Fargo spilled the dregs of his coffee into the grass before rinsing his mess kit in the creek.
“Let’s tack up and grab leather,” he said. “With luck I’ll get you killed today.”
Fargo loosened the tether and let the Ovaro buck for a minute to shake out the night kinks before he tossed on the blanket, pad, and saddle and cinched the girth. Then he secured his bedroll under the cantle straps. The morning was cool and breezy, perfect riding weather. They picked up the lone rider’s trail and resumed their southward trek.
“There’s one thing stumps me,” Buckshot remarked after they had ridden a few miles. “Why did these puke pails bother to attack the work crew? All they got to do is pick any stretch of the line to the east of here and pull it down.”
“They’ll likely do that, but it’s only temporary. Western Union hired repair crews for every sector. Our sewer rats were hoping to stop the project or at least delay it for a good spell by scaring off the workers. Don’t forget, we ran ’em off before they could kill a bunch more of the men.”
Buckshot nodded. “All that shines. Happens you’re right, there’s a good chance they’ll attack the crew again.”
“It’s our job to prevent that,” Fargo said. “I ain’t making this ride for my health.”
By midmorning they had topped a low rise and Fargo reined in. “Here’s where the three riders joined back up,” he announced, swinging down out of the saddle and tossing the reins forward to hold the Ovaro.
Buckshot joined him and the two men squatted on their heels, studying the ground carefully.
“Our man got here first,” Fargo said. “It must be their regular rendezvous point—you can see he waited for the two flank riders. His horse moved around grazing, and the grass in some of those prints has sprung up higher. The other two got here a couple hours later, both about the same time.”
Buckshot used the toe of his boot to break open some horse dung. “Almost dry—they were well ahead of us. Well, we knowed that, but look here, Skye—these horses is being grained. Grain ain’t all that easy to come by out here.”
Fargo nodded. “You mighta been right, old son. Looks to me like maybe they got a well-supplied hideout somewhere. If that’s so, these three aren’t likely the whole shooting match.”
Fargo took his army field glasses from a saddle pocket and clambered to the top of a nearby rock cairn. He studied each section of the terrain long and hard.
“It’s a poser,” he finally said, lowering the glasses and climbing down. “The terrain south of here is mostly flat and open. I don’t see any canyons, no thick patches of trees, no places for caves even. Maybe you were right and they’re all the way down on Bitter Creek.”
Now that the trail was again easy to follow, they thumped their mounts up to a long trot. Now and then Fargo again searched the land out ahead with his binoculars.
They rode through occasional meadows bright with blue columbine and white Queen Anne’s lace.
“Pretty country,” Buckshot remarked. “Makes a man wish he could paint it or write poems about it. That bumpologist down in El Paso? He said that I’m a sensitive son of a bitch.”
Buckshot pinched his nostrils and blew out two thick streamers of snot. Most of it smeared his shirt, and Fargo shook his head in disgust.
They made good time as the sun rose straight overhead at midday, heating up. His grulla still in motion, Buckshot took the reins in his teeth, shifted his weight, threw a leg around the saddle horn and built himself a cigarette.
“I’m pure-dee bumfoozled about another thing, Skye,” he said. “Happens these yellow curs are alla way down on Bitter Creek, why would they join up agin where they did? Hell, it’s another full day’s ride. Why not stay split up until they was closer?”
Fargo had already begun rolling that question around in his mind. “That’s one nut I haven’t cracked yet.”
“Well, both mine is cracked. We been pounding our saddles straight for hours now. Let’s spell and water the horses—I gotta drain my snake.”
They drew rein in the shade of a leathery-leaved cottonwood. Fargo drank from his canteen before watering the Ovaro from his hat. Then he climbed up into the rough-barked cottonwood and took another squint through his army-issue field glasses.
“Pay dirt, Buckshot,” he announced triumphantly. “I just spotted a man peeking out from some bushes. A little over a mile ahead of us.”
“’Bout damn time. Just one?”
“Hang on…no, there’s at least two showing.”
“They look like owlhoots?”
“I’d say of the deserter variety,” Fargo replied. “They’re both wearing parts of army uniforms. Say! There’s a third. It’s priddy clear they’re sentries, but what the hell are they guarding? There’s no buildings, no camp, just a long line of brush.”
“Mebbe a dugout?” Buckshot suggested.
“Could be, I reckon. Maybe hidden behind the brush. It would have to be mighty damn big because I can’t see any horses either.”
“Can they spot our horses, you think?”
“No,” Fargo said, still staring intently through the glasses. “There’s knolls and little stands of pine between us and them.”
“So what do we do? Sit and play a harp?”
“Right now we’re neither up the well nor down. It’s no use to ride closer after dark—we need to see what we’re up against. I think we can get in a lot closer if we use the natural cover.”
Fargo climbed down and both men quickly checked their weapons.
“We’ll have to leapfrog one at a time in single file,” Fargo said, swinging up onto the hurricane deck. “I’ll go first and you ride in my tracks. You know how to cover and conceal, hoss. Do your best work—the cover is thin. We might have to dismount and lead our horses.”
It was slow going, Fargo giving the Ovaro his head a
nd letting him walk. With long years of hard survival savvy to guide him, the Trailsman used every possible terrain feature to his advantage. Hills, hummocks, trees, knolls, swales—with an unerring eye for reading his environment he advanced as close as he dared. For the last few hundred yards he dismounted to lower his profile, leading the Ovaro by the bridle reins.
A brush-covered ridge offered the last possible cover and he halted, waiting for Buckshot to catch up. Fargo was close enough now to easily make out the faces of the bored sentries. Now he counted at least four.
“We’re paring the cheese might close to the rind,” Buckshot greeted him, peering out past Fargo. “Say! You’re right—where the hell’s their horses?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Them’s snowbirds, all right,” Buckshot said. “I can see at least two Spencers. So what’s your big idea now?”
“The cat sits by the gopher hole and waits. We best tie off our horses. If we watch long enough we might get a better idea how many there are and why they’re standing guard in the middle of nowhere.”
They tied their reins to weak branches—otherwise, if the horses were spooked and bolted, breaking the reins, the two men would be in a world of hurt trying to control their mounts.
“This shit’s for the birds,” Buckshot carped. “We’re so close that if one of our horses whickers them bastards will be right on us.”
“Give over with the calamity howling. The way you take on, we might’s well shoot ourselves in the head.”
Buckshot patted the butt of his double-ten. “Sit by the gopher hole, my lily-white ass. I say we attack. You’re the one likes to lance the boils. Take the bull by the horns, says Fargo. Straight ahead and keep up the strut, says Fargo. Between the two of us we got enough lead to sink a steamboat.”
“First of all, we got no proof any of these jaspers attacked the work crew. Even if they did, we need to know where the hive is,” Fargo insisted. “What if there is a dugout somewhere behind that line of brush? We got to know how deep the water is before we just dive in headfirst.”
“Mebbe so,” Buckshot conceded without enthusiasm. His favorite tactic was the hell-bent for leather charge.
For the next half hour the two hidden men watched carefully while buffalo gnats swarmed their faces. Then—“Riders coming in from the east,” Fargo reported. “Maybe this is just an outpost.”
He watched the rider, a Mexican astride a blood bay gelding, lope closer, expecting him to dismount and take a report from the sentries.
Instead, both men felt their jaws slack open when, without breaking stride, the rider simply disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him whole!
* * *
For several stunned heartbeats the two frontiersmen stared at each other, saying nothing.
“I baked that fish with what I thought was wild onion,” Buckshot finally said. “You think maybe I used peyote by mistake?”
“It was no peyote vision, old son. I see how it is now. Either that’s one hell of a big dugout or the beginning of a gulch hidden by all that tall brush. I’ve seen some in the Black Hills and Snake River country like that—you prac’ly have to fall into them to know they’re there.”
“A gulch,” Buckshot repeated, rubbing his chin. “Might be. You’d hafta be a bird to spot it.”
“We need to somehow get a size-up of the place,” Fargo decided. “If the gang’s not too big, we’ll burn ’em down. If there’s too many—”
A sudden crashing and thrashing from the brush to their left made both men pivot toward the horses, crouching with rifles at the ready.
“Oh, hell,” Fargo muttered, “here comes a fandango.”
A black bear, full grown and weighing at least two hundred fifty pounds, had emerged into the open, aggressively woofing at this intrusion into its territory. Two things guaranteed to panic a horse instantly were fire and bears. Both horses reared up, neighing loudly, eyes rolling in fear until they showed all white.
They tugged their reins loose and bolted. Buckshot, a fast runner, tore after his cayuse, hoping to seize the reins. The Ovaro, who rarely deserted his master, ran off about fifty feet, waiting to see what the bear would do.
But Fargo realized the fat was in the fire. The shout had gone up from the sentries and already slugs were whiffing in atop the ridge as they advanced. Fargo cursed as he levered the Henry and returned fire from a standing offhand position.
A quick glance over his shoulder told him that Buckshot had failed to stop the cayuse. He was escaping to the east at a two-twenty clip. At least all the gunfire had sent the bear into hiding.
But as Fargo looked ahead again to resume firing, his heart sat out the next beat—mounted men were pouring out of the hidden gulch or whatever it was, more than he could count.
The enemy fire peppering his position was vicious and sustained. He felt a sharp tug as a slug passed through the folds of shirt under his left armpit. Bullets snapped past his ear with a sound like angry hornets, one of the slugs creasing his left cheek in a white-hot wire of pain. Fargo was forced to fall back, firing as he went, popping one of the snowbirds over.
But it was like trying to hold the ocean back with a broom, and the mounted attackers were pounding closer amid a thundering racket of fire. They expertly divided around both ends of the ridge to form a pincers.
Buckshot had joined him again, his face grim with the realization that they were about to be cut down. Trying to escape on the Ovaro would be useless—with two big riders, and the mounted attackers already riding a head of steam, they’d never get clear in time.
Fargo had learned long ago, in desperate situations just like this one, that a man had to keep his blood cool and his thinking clear. Like Buckshot, he had first learned wilderness survival at the side of the last generation of mountain men. And it was a mountain man tactic that flashed into his mind now.
“Skirmishers waltz!” he shouted to Buckshot, who caught on instantly.
The two men stood with their backs braced one against the other. In perfect synchronization they rotated clockwise in a continuous circle. Not only did this reduce two targets to one, it allowed them to keep up a deadly, methodical, sustained field of fire to all four flanks.
“Horses are as good as men!” Fargo roared out above the unbelievable din of battle. “They’ll be chasing us soon!”
The Henry’s huge magazine capacity and rapid-firing lever action were critical now. Fargo propped the stock in his hip socket and fired with deadly accuracy, first a horse, then its rider. The attackers were just out of effective range of Buckshot’s double-ten, but his North & Savage repeater was nearly as fast as Fargo’s Henry—the trigger guard was combined with the lever, and when Buckshot moved it the cylinder revolved and cocked the hammer.
The attackers, their blood up for a quick slaughter, were stunned when the two men were able to rack up several kills and break up the pincers. Both groups fell back in a confused moil, wounded and dying men and horses raising hideous shrieks.
“Now!” Fargo told Buckshot. “Break for my stallion!”
Bullets nipping at their heels and kicking up plumes of dirt all around them, the beleaguered defenders raced full bore to the Ovaro. Fargo seized the reins, vaulted into the saddle, and pulled Buckshot up behind him.
Fargo thumped the stallion with his heels and the Ovaro shot forward as if spring-loaded.
“Them cockchafers ain’t giving it up!” Buckshot shouted behind him even as a bullet knocked the left stirrup from under Fargo’s boot.
At first, even under a double load, the Ovaro’s superior speed and endurance opened up a slight lead. Soon, however, the attackers began to slowly gain, bullets raining in more accurately. A yellow cloud of dust boiled up behind the pursuers.
“We can’t outrun ’em!” Fargo called to his friend. “So let’s outgun ’em!”
“Steal their women and fuck their horses!” Buckshot rallied behind him. “Put at ’em, Trailsman!”
Fargo had learned tha
t when escape was impossible, a sudden surprise attack was often the best option. He wheeled the Ovaro and both men shucked out their short guns.
Raising war whoops, revolvers blazing, they charged into the teeth of the attack. A man twisted in his saddle, blood blossoming from his wounded arm. Fargo emptied his wheel, took the reins in his teeth, and popped in his spare cylinder. With his third shot the lead rider slumped in his saddle, his jaw blown half off, then slipped from his mount.
One foot caught in the stirrup so that his body bumped and leaped over the uneven ground, slamming his wound hard over and over and making him scream like a hog under the blade. This broke the momentum of the attack as his unnerved companions fanned out helter-skelter to avoid this two-man juggernaut of death.
Fargo reversed their dust and headed in the same direction Buckshot’s cayuse had taken. Both men were so powder-blackened they wore raccoon masks.
“Skye,” Buckshot said behind him, “me ’n’ you has been invited to a few balls in our day. But that one caps the climax. You coulda knocked me into a cocked hat when all them sons-a-bitches come spittin’ up outta the ground. My nuts still ain’t dropped back into the sac.”
“I figured we were celestial,” Fargo admitted.
“We done some fancy shootin’ back there. But if your stallion hadn’t held like he done, them double-poxed hounds woulda turned both of us into sieves by now.”
“No bout adoubt it,” Fargo agreed.
“Mister, I mean this is the onliest horse of its kind!”
“He’s a fine old campaigner,” Fargo said, patting the Ovaro’s sweat-matted neck. His bit was flecked with foam, but the stallion tossed his head as if it was all in a day’s work.
“How you set for ammo?” Buckshot asked.
“My long gun’s empty and I’ve only got five shells for it in my saddle pocket. I’ve got seven loads for my Colt in my shell belt. How ’bout you?”
“Six slugs for my rifle, six for my short gun, eight for Patsy.”
“I never expected we’d be locking horns with a battalion,” Fargo said in a tone of self-reproach. “We were numbskulls not to pack along more ammo. Say, there’s your cayuse.”
