by John Benteen
Actually, though, there was no real need to worry for the moment. Rex Harrod was still in prison, a week had passed since Fargo had been hired, Harrod still had only three more weeks to live. For the moment, the only thing Lola had to fear was the possibility that Harrod had friends on the outside who might come at his bidding to take revenge on her. But Fargo knew from experience that men like Harrod had few friends. Swarms of admirers might follow them when they were up, but when they were down and out of luck, no one gave a damn about them. Still, there had been gaps in Lola’s story Fargo didn’t like; he still had that sense of everything not adding up. And there was likelihood that there was more at stake here than a hard case’s determination to get revenge on the woman who’d betrayed him to the law. There was money in this deal somewhere, big money, and Fargo could smell it. And the scent interested and aroused him, the way the smell of blood did a wolf. But for the moment, he was not pushing. He would find out what he wanted to know in his own way in his own time.
At the back door, he whistled softly, twice, the call of a desert quail. In a moment, there was the sound of a bolt being drawn and the door swung open. Lola was there, a sheer robe covering an even sheerer nightgown. “Anything?” she asked tensely.
“Nothing,” Fargo said.
She relaxed a little, but she shook her head. “Three more weeks. I don’t know whether I can take it or not.”
Fargo grinned. “How do you think Harrod feels? What about some coffee?”
“Yes, I’ll make some.” She went into the kitchen.
Fargo closed the door, checked the bolt. The house had shutters on the windows, and these were closed, too, and bolted. Breaking, but not unloading, the shotgun, he laid it on a table, then lit a cigar.
While Lola made the coffee in the kitchen, he mentally reviewed everything he’d learned about Rex Harrod and her relationship with him. And, Fargo admitted, she had good reason to be frightened.
In the five years since Harrod had been barred from the ring, he had drifted down into the New Orleans underworld, which was the most extensive and the toughest south of New York. It swarmed with criminals, racketeers, safecrackers, killers, and thugs of every sort, and Harrod’s cold-blooded brutality, plus his sledgehammer fists, had soon made him one of its leaders. He had a finger in every crooked pie, and he made payoffs to and took them from important Louisiana politicians. Everywhere he went, two bodyguards went with him.
“Flash Murphy,” Lola had said, “and a man they call Jimmy-the-Blade. Murphy’s a gunman and a killer—the fastest draw on the Gulf Coast, they say. I never could stand him—he reminded me of ... of a rattlesnake. And Jimmy-the-Blade was even worse. He carried a half-dozen different kinds of knives with him everywhere he went, in his pockets, on his belt, strapped on his ankle—some the size of butcher-knives, some little daggers he could slip into a man without even being seen. He was a tall, thin man with the longest arms …”
“Harrod and a pair like that,” Fargo said. “Nice people you got mixed up with.”
“But you don’t understand. Look,” Lola said, “all my life, I’ve felt out of place. Stuck out here on this ranch, no action, no excitement—with my looks. I’m my mother’s daughter, not my father’s, and my mother was a ... a kind of wild thing trapped into marriage when she was too young to know what she was doing. She wasn’t meant for this sort of life, either, or marriage to a steady, upright dull-as-dishwater type like my father. And besides, he was a doctor and gone all the time. She got lonesome and ... she couldn’t help herself, she played around and he caught her at it and ... after that she was even more unhappy, and it killed her while she was still young. Then he married Rose’s mother who was more his type—and, of the two of us, she was always his favorite. Okay, let that ride. All I’m saying is that when I finally got out of here, to New Orleans, and met Rex Harrod one night at Antoine’s, it was like a whole new world opening up. There was the biggest, handsomest, wildest man I had ever met and—I fell for him like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t leave him; we ran together for a long time. And he took me down into his world and it was a world that fascinated me, I liked it. It might have been mean, but it was exciting. You knew every day that you were alive. You understand?”
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “I understand.”
“We even talked about getting married. Rex said to put it off until he made one last deal—it would make him rich for life and then we could take off and go to Cuba, Europe, anywhere I wanted to.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I don’t know,” Lola answered, and Fargo knew that she was lying. Again, he did not press it.
“But then,” she said, eyes flaring, “I caught him cheating on me. It turned out he had a whole string of other women on the side—and he’d promised most of them the same thing. And when I found that out, I just went crazy. By then, he’d talked too much, I knew too much about his business. And I knew he had committed a triple murder in Texas, in Galveston—he’d tried to kidnap a rich businessman’s daughter and things went sour and instead he killed her and her parents. Beat the old man to death with his bare hands ... And so I wrote a letter to the Rangers, turned him in, told them where they could find proof. They had the New Orleans police take him, two Rangers brought him back to Texas, he killed one of them trying to escape; the other knocked him out—and they didn’t even try him for the triple murder. Just killing the Ranger was enough.”
“Yeah, I know,” Fargo said. The first law of survival in Texas was Never kill a Ranger.
“But he guessed who’d turned him in,” Lola went on. “And one day an ex-con showed up here with a note from him, smuggled out of prison.” She’d handed it to Fargo. He’d read it quickly. You bitch, it said. You’d better pray and pray hard. These walls will never hold me and I’ll never hang. And when I get out I’ll come for you and what I’ll do to you then will make you wish you’d never been born. You know me. I always keep my promises. Rex.
“The law,” Fargo had asked. “It never took Flash Murphy or Jimmy-the-Blade?”
“No. That’s what scares me.”
“He’s not a gunman himself.”
“Flash was his gun, Jimmy his knife.”
“And if what you’ve told me’s the truth, all of it, they may have written Harrod off. By now, somebody else will have taken his place—somebody who can pay ’em. A man in prison slated to hang’s not a profitable sort of friend.” Fargo had looked at her keenly. “Lola, tell me all of it.”
“I have,” she said and turned away, and again he knew that she lied.
“And yet you say that after Harrod’s hanged, you’re going to leave here, deed Rose your half of the ranch, just clear out forever. Where to? And using what for money?”
Lola’d whirled on him. “Goddamn you, Neal Fargo, what difference does it make to you? You’re getting paid, and damned well, and I’ll keep my promise about Rose! The rest of it’s none of your blasted business! Maybe I’d rather make my living flat on my back, maybe I’d rather whore in some cat-house in Paris, France, than live out here on this dusty ranch the rest of my life! Maybe—You mind your business and let me mind mine!”
And so, Fargo thought, he had done that. It was not always easy, shut up here alone in this house with a woman like Lola Dane. She was a woman who liked men and needed them, and his big, rangy, ugly masculinity had its effect on her, just as her blatant beauty had on him. But this was business, and he did not mix it with pleasure. Despite some pretty spectacular efforts to get him into her bed, he held himself aloof. A woman who was hiding something was bad medicine in a deal like this ... And maybe Flash Murphy and Jimmy-the-Blade had found another boss and maybe they had not. All he knew for now was that every day he rang up Templeton on the telephone Lola had had installed at great expense, and Templeton knew everything that went on—and so far, Templeton had no word of Rex Harrod.
Lola returned with the coffee. When she set down the tray, the robe and nightgown fell away as she bent over, revealing lu
sh, dangling breasts. “Neal,” she said, “I’m awfully jumpy tonight.” She came to him, pressed her body close. “It’s not the kind of night I want to sleep alone—”
“Lola,” Fargo began, “I told you—”
Then he broke off. The telephone on the wall was ringing. One ring, two, then one again. It was a call for the Dane Ranch.
He and Lola looked at one another. “You answer it,” she whispered as it rang again.
Fargo pushed her away, went to the telephone. “Dane Ranch.”
Central in El Paso said, “Go ahead.”
“Fargo.” It was the voice of Templeton. “I just got word from Brownsville. Rex Harrod busted out four days ago.”
Neal Fargo drew in a deep breath. “Four days ago? What the hell?”
“I know. But he had confederates and they opened up that prison like a sardine can. It was so easy, they tried to cover it up. It made them all look like fools. That’s not the point right now. He’s out and on the loose. And four days is plenty of time to get from Brownsville to El Paso. Anyhow, I just found out and I thought you ought to know.”
“Yeah,” said Fargo. “Thanks, Templeton.”
“Por nada. But, look, what about Rose—”
But Fargo had already hung up the receiver. When he turned, Lola was staring at him with eyes that were enormous.
“He’s out,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Fargo said, and told her what Templeton had said.
“My God,” she breathed.
Fargo said, “Lola. All you have to do is pick up that phone and call the Rangers in El Paso. They’ll have this place staked out in no time.”
Her face went pale. “Rangers! No! No Rangers! It’s what I paid you for, Neal Fargo! But you’re not to call the Rangers! Do you understand?”
Fargo nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I understand. Well, you’d better get some clothes on. It’s going to be a long night. We’ve got a lot of long nights ahead.” And then he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Seven
While the woman was in her bedroom, changing, Fargo double-checked the doors and shutters. Outside, he saw, cracking the door a little, the moon was rising, high and full and silvery. A hunter’s moon, they called it sometimes. His mouth thinned. Tonight it was a killer’s moon.
He closed the shotgun, draped on his belt of shells, laid his rifle close at hand. Then, alone in the living room, his right hand went to the knife-sheath on his hip. The weapon it came up holding was a strange one.
He had got it on Luzon, in the Philippines, during his service as a cavalryman in the Insurrection. Ten inches of the finest tempered steel, made by the incomparable craftsmen of Batangas on the island’s southern tip—so hard, yet so keen, that the knife-blade’s tip could be driven through a silver dollar without breaking or dulling—a claim Fargo had verified.
What made it different from other knives was that its handle was made of two pieces of hinged water-buffalo horn. These folded forward, locked, to shield all but four inches of the blade. Yet, when Fargo flipped his right hand, the handles unlocked, flipped back into his palm and locked in place there, and the whole ten inches of cutting steel was exposed, and what had seemed only a short knife was now the deadly equivalent of a full-sized Bowie.
Fargo was an expert with it, and, chin down to shield the throat, belly sucked in, he made a few right-handed passes to limber up. He held his right hand turned over to shield the wrist-artery, the blade flat and parallel to the floor. The shining steel winked like a snake’s tongue as he lunged and turned and lunged again. Then he transferred the knife to his left hand and made more passes—
And a sound of disgust growled in his throat. Slow. God, that wounded left arm was still so slow! No matter how he concentrated, tried, it still lacked the reptilian flicker of the right, and he felt pain in his left shoulder. No doubt about it, he acknowledged. If not a full half of his fighting capability in close combat, at least a third was gone, and would be until those tendons were completely healed. Against a gunman that would make no difference. Against a knife-fighter or a professional boxer, it could make all the difference in the world ...
Lola, dressed in shirt and riding pants, came back into the living room after he had sheathed the knife. “All right,” Fargo said and he went to the gun rack in the corner, took down the twenty-gauge. A double-gun, even with full-length barrels it was light enough for a woman to handle easily. It no longer had full-length barrels. In the ranch blacksmith shop, Fargo had sawed them off. And not even a woman could miss with this weapon at close range. There were no buckshot shells on the ranch for the twenty-gauge, but there were plenty of number fours for jack rabbits and the like, and number four shot at close range, more than a dozen to the shell, would discourage anybody.
Fargo had given Lola instruction with it and she knew what it could do. “You keep it handy all the time,” he said. “And wear this.” He draped a cartridge belt loaded with extra shells around her shoulder. “Just make goddam sure you don’t use it on me.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said, tight-lipped. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
“Nothing except wait. Maybe the Rangers will catch him. Maybe he’ll head for Louisiana instead of here.”
“No,” she said dully. “He’ll come here. He’ll come straight here.”
“Why?” Fargo snapped.
“Never mind. Here is where he’ll come.” And something in her voice told him that she was certain of it and felt that she was doomed.
The night dragged on. The moon, a blessing as far as Fargo was concerned, rose high and shed copious silver light. It would be hard for anybody to cross the open ranch yard in that sort of full illumination. He cracked the shutters and, like a restless hunting hound, made constant circles of the house, looking out. Lola sat slumped in the living room, as if hope had drained from her.
Midnight. One o’clock, then two ... Fargo was now at the peak of alertness. If Harrod knew anything about fighting, he knew that the hour between two and three was when the human spirit was at its lowest, sleep deepest: the perfect time for attack. But, of course, maybe Harrod would not come tonight. Brownsville was far away. On the other hand, no place in Texas was far away now that there were motor cars. And someday, Fargo knew, a man would be able to cross the state in a day in an airplane. Pancho Villa had bought airplanes and hired pilots from Texas to fly over the enemy for reconnaissance and to drop grenades. He was the first military leader in the world to recognize the significance of the airplane and put it to use. Fargo had ridden in one twice, piloted by an El Paso man named Gaston and that once had been enough for him. There was not much that he was afraid of, but heights turned his hands clammy with fear. He still could not understand how Gaston could be so calm ...
Which, right now, mattered not at all. Harrod might come on foot, on horseback, by car. He would certainly not come in an airplane. And—
Out there in the moon-silvered darkness a tin-can rattled. The sound seemed thunderous in the hush.
Fargo’s teeth clamped down on his cigar.
“Lola,” he said. “They’re here.”
“Oh, God,” she said, coming out of the chair.
Fargo closed the shutter. “Don’t panic. There’s no way they can get in. Harrod can’t have many men with him, if he has any at all.”
“He’s got Flash Murphy and Jimmy-the-Blade,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“All right,” he said. “We can hold them off ’til daylight. I’ll call the Rangers, and they’ll be here by then.” He started toward the telephone, then halted, as Lola suddenly swung the twenty-gauge shotgun toward him, covering him cold.
“Fargo,” she said tautly, “don’t you touch that telephone.”
Fargo turned, staring at her. Outside, another can rattled.
“I told you,” she said coldly. “No Rangers. Now, stand away.”
“So,” Fargo said. “It was rea
lly that bad, huh?”
“It was bad,” she said. She jerked the shotgun and he backed away. Such a weapon in the uncertain hands of a desperate woman was twice as lethal as if a cool, determined man had held it. Lola held the shotgun steady, edged toward the telephone, took the receiver from the hook and jerked. The fragile mechanism of the instrument, housed in a wooden box, yielded easily; something broke inside. The receiver was loose in her hand, wire dangling. “Now,” she said. “It’s you and me and Rex—and Flash and Jimmy-the-Blade. And you’ll earn your money.”
Fargo took out a fresh cigar, bit off the end. Striking a match with his thumbnail, he lit it. “Yeah,” he said. “That I will.”
Eight
So there were three of them at least out there in the moon-silvered night—one deadly with a gun, one deadly with a knife, and the leader deadly with his fist. And for all Fargo knew, there might be more. He was not particularly worried. If she had let him call the Rangers, he would have—the easy way out. But anyhow, he had learned something he wanted to know. More—the house was a fortress. There was no way they could get in, any of them, without his cutting them down. And when daylight came, they’d be even better targets. He and Lola could endure a siege here for several days. A man on the dodge could not hang around that long. Fargo blew smoke. “All right,” he said. “We can stand ’em off.”
“I don’t want them stood off,” Lola rasped. “I want them killed. That’s what I hired you for.”
Fargo took the cigar from his mouth. “Wrong. You hired me to keep you from being killed.”
