by Jon Sharpe
He had noticed also that Robinson, a heavy sleeper, was lax about checking the posts. Without stepping on Robinson’s toes, Fargo had set up his own sign/countersign system for quick verification that each post was secure.
He rode out first to the flank where Jude was posted. Things were tense because of the earlier attack, and Fargo couldn’t shake a sense of menace.
“Who goes there?” the nervous private challenged, a disembodied voice in the dark.
“You wouldn’t know me,” Fargo replied cheerfully. “I’m new here.”
Jude finally imitated a weak laugh when he realized Fargo was poking fun. “Man alive, I got the fantods, Mr. Fargo. I ain’t so sure but . . . I thought I seen shapes moving toward the corral. I passed the word on.”
“Yeah, I heard the field music earlier,” Fargo said. “But I took a good squint all around the corral and checked with the closest sentry there. I’ll look again when I finish checking the posts.”
Fargo gigged the Ovaro down the line. His simple countersign system was designed to be fast and efficient so he wouldn’t have to waste time dismounting.
“Jennings,” he said as the Ovaro trotted past the next picket hole.
“Apples,” the soldier called out his countersign.
Fargo moved on, the cooler night air allowing nervous sweat to ooze out from under his hat. “Helzer.”
“Grapes.”
On down the line, Fargo feeling his pulse in his palms now. “Lindquist.”
“Blueberries.”
The Ovaro snorted and sidestepped at the next picket post. Fargo knocked the riding thong off the hammer of his Colt and swung down lightly to the ground.
“Hanchon.”
Each silent second that ticked off seemed to mock Fargo on the threshold of death. Tonight a raft of rare clouds obscured the moon, and Fargo could make out only an insubstantial form. But like his nervous stallion, he recognized a sharp metallic odor.
Finally: “Strawberries,” replied a muffled voice from the rifle pit.
Fargo went down on one knee and thumbed his hammer back. He’d give it one more chance because young soldiers were often stupid. The correct answer was “peaches.”
“Name your messmates, Hanch—”
A six-gun barked so close to Fargo that he briefly made out the shooter’s carved-in-stone face in the muzzle flash. His aim was off by an inch and Fargo dropped, rolled, then came up on one knee, again cussing and fanning his hammer. He saw a shadowy form leap from the rifle pit and race away from the camp perimeter.
Fargo dropped a fast bead on the shadow and an eyeblink later the desert night exploded into fire and thunder when two shooters with rifles opened up on him, laying down covering fire for the man escaping. Fargo was caught flush, one slug knocking his hat off and another tugging at his shirt when it passed through the empty folds under his left armpit.
He tucked again, rolled fast and then even faster when he heard bullets chunking into the ground just behind him, chasing him. Fargo banged into a rock with his hip and realized moments later the firing had stopped and horses were thundering north into the dark maw of desert night.
Deke and Grizz Bear came forward from camp with a lantern. The anemic light revealed that Private Sebastian Hanchon’s throat had been slashed, with surgical precision, from ear to ear—the calling card of el Scorpio and his heartless killers.
“He killed the picket closest to the camel corral,” Fargo said. “He was after the camels, not the sentry. Tell Hassan to do a head count on them.”
“You think it was Jim Butler that unlimbered on you?” Deke asked.
“Not the one in the pit,” Fargo said. “He was a half-breed. I only got a look in muzzle flash, but maybe Yaqui or Pima mixed with Mexican.”
Sergeant Robinson had edged into the ring of soldiers and civilians crowding around the dead trooper. He worked his way closer to Fargo.
“You say it’s two days to good water?” he asked in a subdued tone.
“If we keep good time,” Fargo qualified.
“Yeah, if. But you watch those camels plenty, Fargo, and so do I. You saw all the signs tonight, didn’t you?”
“I was hoping I was wrong. But I see the drivers are wearing out their prayer rugs, trying to head it off. There’s a walk-down coming.”
Robinson stood close enough for Fargo to read the apprehension in his tensely drawn features.
“A goddamn deliberate slowdown by stubborn camels,” he fumed, “right when the rest of us need water most! I was counting on Topsy and Tuili and their drivers to maybe ride on ahead and bring back enough water for the rest of us to get through.”
“Just calm your nerves,” Fargo said, not unkindly and so only Robinson could hear. “You’re a strong man with plenty of guts. It’s going to get rough, soldier blue, because a man dying of thirst is as dangerous as a Kiowa Sash Warrior. You’re going to have to be stronger than the rest—a few of your men are already muttering about revolt, and maybe that’s one nail you’d best hammer down quick.”
Fargo said nothing else. The man was right to be scared, but dead wrong in wringing his hands and showing fear and indecision to his men. Why cry about the obvious? Everybody knew they needed those camels to move full chisel. Otherwise . . .
Fargo glanced at the dead soldier now being lifted out by his comrades.
Otherwise, Fargo finished his thought, there’d be one big difference between Hanchon and his buddies: there would be no one to bury them.
• • •
The camel rebellion Fargo called a walk-down began gradually that night and continued in earnest the next night.
Fargo had witnessed two of these revolts previously, east of the Colorado when Lieutenant Beale was still in direct command. Neither had threatened the mission because water had been adequate, and both slowdowns had lasted two full days and then abruptly ended—apparently called off by the lead camels.
Beale had laughed off the first walk-down, sworn under his breath at the second. But unlike Fargo he had refused to believe these rebellions might prove disastrous to the Camel Corps’ mission. And now, seriously short on water in a dry stretch of the Mojave, a two-day slowdown could mean fifteen miles a day instead of thirty.
That could mean one full day added until they reached Yucca Springs—one full day some might not survive.
As before, the savvy camel drivers used every possible tactic to goad more speed from their sluggish ships of the desert: singing, cursing, serenades with exotic flutes and stringed instruments. But nothing altered their stubborn allegiance to a steady walk.
On the morning of the fourteenth day since fording the Colorado, as the caravan went into its daytime camp, Fargo pulled Jude and Grizz Bear aside.
“We should have been reaching that water by late tonight,” Fargo said. “That ain’t gonna happen.”
“Add a day,” Grizz Bear agreed.
“One day, assuming those camels don’t sull even more,” Fargo reminded him. “Turkish Tom told me he’s seen them lie down and refuse to move for a day at a time back in his country.”
“We can’t risk that,” Jude said. “We got the women and—”
“Damn straight we can’t risk it,” Fargo cut him off. “The three of us are going to take enough water to push our mounts at a good clip. We’re riding on ahead to Yucca Springs, each of us taking two water bags. That should be just enough to ration some to everybody and keep the horses and mules from foundering.”
“We best be quick about it,” Jude fretted. “Some of the boys are talking ’mongst themselves, and they got their eye on the last of our water.”
Fargo nodded. He had noticed the first signs of desperation among the tired, irritable soldiers, their senses and good judgment dulled by thirst and unrelenting sun and heat. Under Beale they would tough it
out because of the strength of his character and leadership.
But most of them despised Sergeant Robinson, and as an old army saying had it: “There’s always that ten percent.” Fargo feared that ten percent, the professional malcontents and troublemakers, would foment desertion and claim the water.
Robinson objected at first to Fargo’s plan, complaining about the loss of the extra water. Nor did he like the prospect of losing three marksmen when threats dogged them like afternoon shadows. But it didn’t take long for the Trailsman to rein him in with hard, realistic logic.
The trio rode out due west rating their mounts at a lope. The daytime heat was grueling for man and beast. Every thirty minutes the men led their mounts for ten minutes; every hour they spelled and watered them, seeking what shade they could find. Now Grizz Bear and Jude showed more restraint, swallowing water only when Fargo did and sucking on pebbles between drinks.
The strict schedule allowed steady progress, and about a half hour before sundown Grizz Bear announced grandly: “Ain’t but a whoop and a holler away now, boys, just behind some low lava hills coming up! Lookit how this old jenny has pricked up its ears! But take a care for wild mustangs—they get mean in these parts.”
Green-antlered Jude looked as if he expected a punch line at his expense, but Fargo took the warning seriously. On the grassy expanses near desert water holes, “scrubs” formed herds or manadas and could attack with ferocity—especially when they spied captive horses, which they often tried to liberate.
The manadas were led by vicious, long-maned stallions, some of them using their sharp front hooves to become man-killers. Once, in West Texas, Fargo had been forced to set a hasty grassfire to drive off an aggressive herd too numerous to shoot.
But at the moment he feared two-legged killers. The Ovaro, sensing water ahead, tried to break into a canter, but Fargo shortened the reins and fought him back. The sun was still glowing a soft yellow-gold low in the west.
Fargo whipped the dust from his hat and took a careful look all around them. This spot was well protected from sight by several abutments of black rock. They blocked the sun and threw the desert into weirdly elongated shadows. It wasn’t long before the rolling mass of lava hills loomed before them.
An easy pass led through the small uplift of hills, and Fargo could see the heartening sight of grass beyond it—slightly brown grass, yes, but alive and the best you could expect. But instead of quickly gaining the pass, Fargo reined in and swung down, hobbling his stallion.
“What’s wrong?” Jude said, his voice tight with impatience. He wanted to plunge his face in that water and shout “Hallelujah!” in a yes-and-amen voice.
Grizz Bear snorted as he slid down from the saddle. “‘What’s wrong?’ Fresh from the tit! Tad, you yourself was just sayin’ how the Innuns and that motherless Scorpion all know we’re comin’ here. And don’t you know our mounts will break if we get any closer?”
Jude had watched Fargo pocket some charred wood from Deke’s cooking fire. Now he realized why when Fargo used it to smudge all their faces.
“Bright moon tonight,” he explained. “In the desert nothing reflects at night like a white man’s face—makes for an easy target.”
Fargo grabbed his Henry and stuck a box of spare cartridges in his pocket.
“Dang,” Jude said, watching him nervously. “You must be expecting bad trouble.”
Fargo ignored him. “Sun’s setting. We’ll all move through the pass on foot until we’re exposed again. Then we fan out and it’s a low crawl the rest of the way to the water. There should be cover. Jude, don’t drink until we give you the word it’s safe.”
They cleared the pass without trouble and emerged just after the sun had set. Fargo went to the ground immediately and leapfrogged from mesquite shrub to barrel cactus to spindly yucca tree.
There was a long, sighing hiss to his right.
“Mr. Fargo!” Jude whispered. “Cripes!”
The kid had hunkered behind a wagon-shaped mound of sand. “What?” Fargo said impatiently, trying to place that hissing sound. It wasn’t a snake.
“Mr. Fargo, there’s something wrong with this—”
The mound suddenly emitted a hissing jet of steam. Despite their precarious plight, Fargo chuckled when he realized what was going on.
“Don’t shit your britches, infant,” Grizz Bear said in a hoarse whisper. “You’re huggin’ a fumaroles, you consarn idiot. Move to a new spot ’fore your chestnuts get roasted!”
Fargo had had his own run-ins with fumaroles, which weren’t always easy to spot. They dotted parts of the desert, open vents over pockets of bubbling magma. They could be good sources of heat, but careless men had steamed themselves to death.
They steadily moved in closer. No gunshots, no arrows, just the peaceful, moonlit desert vista of a life-giving water source. But very quickly Fargo’s vigilant eyes picked out something else.
Shapes. Small shapes scattered around this near end of the small water hole.
Fargo felt his stomach seem to wring itself out when he realized what they were and what they meant. He took a deep breath and detected a faint, familiar odor like that left lingering after massive wolf kills.
“Shit, piss and corruption!” Grizz Bear said from about fifteen feet away. “Fargo, do you—”
“’Fraid I do,” Fargo cut him off.
“What?” Jude demanded, and Fargo heard the hammer of his Sharps click. “What’s wrong?”
“Hold your powder, kid,” Fargo said wearily. “Nobody has to bother attacking us now.”
“Why?”
Fargo ignored him, gazing at those shapes in the blue-tinged moonlight: a desert fox, at least two coyotes, a bobcat, several jackrabbits. All freshly killed: several sets of eyes still reflected in the moonlight. Killed by the water they trusted. . . .
“Because of strychnine,” Fargo finally answered. “Yucca Springs has been poisoned.”
17
All three men shared a long, stunned silence while the full meaning of Fargo’s announcement sank in like a death sentence in court.
It’s geography that wants our hides now, Fargo thought. Grizz Bear nailed it two weeks ago when he described the Mojave to Jude: “It just . . . don’t . . . stop.”
Fargo could, with some hardships, find enough water to get himself out of this desert. But searching for small pools near mesquite trees and sucking cactus sponge wouldn’t save the camel caravan, and that’s what he’d been hired to do.
“Are you sure, Mr. Fargo?” Jude said. “I ain’t never heard of strick—strick—whatever you said. But, I mean . . . how can you tell from here the water’s poison?”
Fargo rose to his feet. The Mojaves didn’t know about strychnine, and if the Scorpion poisoned this hole he wouldn’t likely bother with an ambush here. And if Mojaves had massed near here, they would have drunk the water and joined those animals.
“Start figuring things out for yourself, kid,” Fargo snapped. “You’ve got enough guts to fill a smokehouse, but learn to observe. The answers are usually in front of you.”
Fargo turned toward Grizz Bear. “They’ve tangled our twine good this time, old son. How would you play it now?”
“If we had all our fuckin’ pay, we could just light a shuck.”
“That’s too low even for a pagan like me,” Fargo said. “Listen, my map shows no more water until the Weeping Woman springs near Joshua Tree. You know the place?”
“Ahuh. We might be jumped there, all right, but they can’t pizen the water,” Grizz Bear said. “It’s a fast, constant flow. But God’s garters, Fargo! That’s four days west of here if you make good time. With ’em damn camels being ornery we’ll never get that hunchback medicine show there in time.”
“Can’t somebody ride for help?” Jude said.
“Nowhere to go that could help in time,” Fargo told him. “With severe rationing we’ve got maybe five days. If we kill animals and drink the blood, maybe drink our own piss, some could hold out a little longer. A rider with plenty of water—water we can’t spare—and a good horse might make it to San Bernardino in four or five days. It’s a Mormon settlement and they send out rescue teams. But they couldn’t get to us in time.”
“The rest are waiting behind for us,” Jude fretted.
“Not waiting,” Fargo corrected him. “Headed in our direction.”
“Yeah, but they think we’ll be meeting them along the way with water. You know how Robin—uh, Sergeant Robinson is. He might even order a halt waiting on us.”
“Worried ’bout your bride-to-be?” Grizz Bear roweled him. “Lord, boy, now she can’t even wash the pee stains outta her dainties. Oh, hell, I forgot! The Princess Karen don’t pee.”
“It ain’t funny,” Jude snapped.
“The hell it ain’t! All is grist that comes to my mill. Old Grizz Bear won’t thirst to death. I can find water in any desert—enough just for me. I didn’t sign on to die.”
“You two jays pipe down,” Fargo said. “Jude’s right, we have to send a rider back—preferably with some water.”
Grizz Bear shook with laughter. “Hell yeah! And every Jack shall have his Jill!”
Fargo nodded toward the water hole. “That water’s poisoned. But the map marks this as fed by an underground spring somewhere close by.”
“Won’t that be poisoned now, too?” Jude asked.
“Nah. The pressure flows from the spring, not into it.”
“Fargo, you’re barkin’ at a knot!” Grizz Bear scoffed. “You mean to dig up the whole damn area in the dark?”
“I think I know where that spring might be. Look at those saguaros over there on the right about fifty feet. Notice anything odd?”
