Death Valley Vengeance

by James Reasoner

  Fargo held up a hand to stop her. “Right now you need to use the money you have for supplies. There’ll be time enough to talk about the other later.”

  “All right.” She looked at him levelly across the table, and he saw that her eyes were a deep, rich brown. “I meant what I said, though. Remember that.”

  Fargo gave a curt nod, thinking that it wasn’t likely he was going to forget.

  They finished their breakfast and left the café. Fargo asked, “Where are the mules?”

  Julia pointed. “Over there in the corral.”

  It was the same place where Fargo had left his Ovaro for the night. “I’ll get them and lead them down to your wagon so I can start hitching them up,” he said. “You go on to the store and see about the supplies. I’ll be along directly.”

  “You think it’s safe for us to split up?”

  Fargo glanced around. The camp wasn’t nearly as busy as it had been the night before. The prospectors who had clogged the single street were back up in the fan-shaped hills, either working their claims or searching for new ones. But there were still quite a few people around.

  “You have your gun?” he asked.

  Julia slipped her hand into a pocket in her dress. “I try to keep it with me as much as I can.”

  Fargo nodded. “All right, then. I don’t think anybody’s going to try to bother you in broad daylight, but if they do, fire a shot and I’ll come a-runnin’.”

  “If I have to fire a shot, I intend to aim it at whoever’s bothering me.”

  “Then I’ll come along and haul off the body,” Fargo said with a grin.

  He left Julia there and headed over to the corral, thinking as he did so that she was one of the feistiest young women he had run into lately. Beautiful, too, with that thick dark hair, those brown eyes, and a tiny dimple in the middle of her defiant chin.

  She had made it pretty plain once again this morning that she wouldn’t have any objection to going to bed with him. Fargo had a feeling she would be an inventive, enthusiastic partner if they ever did wind up sharing some blankets.

  The problem was that Julia was still using that to barter with him, and Fargo didn’t care for that attitude. When he made love with a woman, he wanted it to be for the sheer joy of the experience for both of them, not because she felt like she owed him something. Maybe, once he and Julia knew each other a little better, things would be different.

  What she didn’t know was that he would have helped her find her father simply as a favor to her, and to his friend Colonel Price. Loyalty meant a great deal to Skye Fargo, and so did justice. He never refused help to someone who deserved it.

  The proprietor of the corral greeted him with a grin. The man stood by the pine pole fence, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. He had built a little campfire by his tent, and he had bacon sizzling in a pan.

  “Howdy,” he said. “Had breakfast yet?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” Fargo replied. “I think what you’re fixing up there will be better, though.”

  “You’re welcome to share.”

  Fargo shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  “Come to pick up that fine horse o’ yours?”

  “That’s right, along with Miss Slauson’s mule team.”

  “Slauson?” the man repeated. “I thought you were looking for a fella named Slauson.”

  “I thought so, too. Turned out I was wrong,” Fargo said dryly.

  “I know the mules you’re talking about. They belong to that pretty young lady who came into camp in a wagon a few days ago. She never told me her name, though, or I sure wouldn’t have told you I didn’t know anybody named Slauson.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fargo assured him. “She found me just fine.”

  “The two of you goin’ someplace together?”

  Fargo hesitated. The corral man was friendly, but Fargo didn’t really know him. Anyway, he had always played his cards pretty close to the vest, just out of habit, and Fargo didn’t see any reason to change now.

  “That’s right,” he said, and left it at that.

  The corral man seemed satisfied with the answer. He set his coffee down and said, “I’ll help you with the mules.”

  He and Fargo had just turned toward the pole structure when a man came around the far corner of it. Fargo recognized the young, ratlike face, which was now contorted with hatred and anger.

  “Now you’ll get what’s comin’ to you, Fargo!” the man cried as he jerked up the double-barreled shotgun in his hands.

  The range was about twenty feet. At that distance, the charges in the Greener’s twin barrels would blow apart not only Fargo but also the corral man beside him. Fargo’s hand dipped toward the Colt on his hip. Two lives rode on the speed of his draw.

  Fargo’s hand moved almost too fast for the eye to follow. The revolver came smoothly out of leather. The barrel tipped up as Fargo’s thumb drew back the hammer, and then flame gouted from the muzzle as the Colt roared.

  The bullet smacked cleanly into the chest of the man wielding the shotgun and knocked him backward. The barrels of the scattergun pointed skyward as he involuntarily jerked the triggers. With a pair of dull booms, the shotgun sent its charges of buckshot harmlessly into the air.

  A moment later, as smoke still curled from the barrel of Fargo’s Colt, the buckshot pattered back down like leaden rain.

  Fargo stalked forward, keeping his gun trained on the fallen man just in case he had another weapon. The rat-faced would-be killer wasn’t in any shape to pose a threat, though. He pawed at the hole in his chest that welled blood. His back arched as the heels of his boots scratched futilely in the street.

  The young man looked up at Fargo. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “I got . . . I got another brother!” he gasped. “He’ll settle with you . . . you bastard! You’ve killed me!”

  “What’s your name?” Fargo asked. He knew the young man’s last name was Tyler, but he figured he ought to know the front handle, too, so he could tell whoever was in charge of burying around here what to put on the marker.

  “J-Jonah . . . Jonah Tyler.”

  “I wish you hadn’t made me shoot you, Jonah Tyler,” Fargo said, but by that time it was too late. Ratface was beyond hearing him.

  Fargo shook his head and holstered the Colt after reloading the chamber he had emptied. The corral man came up beside him. A few other bystanders who had been drawn by the shots stood a short distance off, watching.

  “Reckon you just saved my life,” the corral man said. “That Greener would’ve blown the hell out of both of us if it had gone off while it was pointed in our direction. I never saw a draw quite so fast.”

  “Nothing makes a fella move like the imminent prospect of having his head blown off,” Fargo said with a humorless smile.

  “Well, the kid was asking for it, that’s for damned sure. What was that he said about having a brother?”

  “According to him, I killed his brother last year,” Fargo explained. “We had a run-in at the saloon last night when he tried to take a knife to me.”

  The corral man rubbed his beard-stubbled jaw. “Yeah, I think I heard some gents talking about that.”

  “Evidently he has another brother, and that one’s going to be coming after me, too.”

  “I don’t think I’d want the sort of enemies you seem to have, Mr. Fargo.”

  Fargo didn’t necessarily want them, either, but the way trouble followed him around, he didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter.

  “Mr. Fargo!” a voice called anxiously.

  He turned to see Julia Slauson hurrying toward him, a worried look on her face. As she came up to him, she went on. “I heard shooting, and when I stepped out of the store to have a look, I saw you over here with . . . with . . .”

  Her eyes cut toward the bloodied body in the street, then looked away. “Are you all right?”

  Fargo nodded. “I’m fine. How are you coming with those supplies?”

 
She glanced at the corpse again, as if surprised that he could be so calm under the circumstances, then said, “The clerk had just started gathering them for me.”

  “Go on back over there and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “All right.” She hesitated. “This . . . this shooting didn’t have anything to do with . . .”

  “It was strictly a personal grudge,” Fargo assured her.

  She nodded and went back to the store, but she threw a glance or two over her shoulder along the way.

  “We ain’t never been properly introduced,” the corral man said as he put out his hand to Fargo. “My name’s Dale Wiley. Figured you ought to know it, seeing as how you saved my life and all.”

  “Glad to meet you, Dale,” Fargo said as he shook Wiley’s hand.

  A short, grizzled man in a leather apron and a knitted cap came down the street wheeling a cart. He greeted Fargo and Wiley by saying, “If’n you’ll toss the deceased in here, I’ll take him off and plant him.”

  “You’re the local undertaker?” Fargo said.

  “Close as Blackwater’s got, anyway. I do a little barberin’, carpentry, odd jobs and such. Anything for a dollar.” The man spat in the dust.

  “I ain’t sure this one’s got even a dollar in his pocket, Sanderson,” Wiley said.

  “Well, whatever he’s got, it’ll be enough, I reckon. I’d bury him anyway. Somebody’s got to.”

  Fargo took the dead man’s shoulders while Wiley got his feet. Together, they lifted him and heaved him into the cart. Sanderson trundled the body away to dispose of it. There wasn’t much room for sentiment in a place like Blackwater.

  With that unpleasant task taken care of, Fargo and Wiley got hackamores on the mules and led the balky critters out of the corral. Fargo gathered up the reins and said, “I’ll go hitch them up, then come back for my stallion.”

  “Want me to saddle him up for you?” Wiley asked.

  Fargo shook his head. “I generally handle that chore myself.”

  Wiley nodded in understanding. A lot of men preferred to saddle their own horses so that they would know the job had been done right.

  Fargo took the mules down the street to Julia’s wagon, tugging hard on the reins when they tried to resist. He tied them to one of the wagon wheels, then one by one got them hitched up to the vehicle. When he was done he left them there and returned to the corral.

  Wiley was eating breakfast by this point. The bacon had burned a little while he and Fargo were almost getting shot by Jonah Tyler, but it still smelled pretty good, as did the coffee. Fargo wouldn’t have minded sipping another cup and shooting the breeze with Wiley for a while, but he had work to do.

  When he had the saddle on the Ovaro, he took the stallion down the street and tied him in front of the emporium. The building had a wooden framework, but the sides and roof were made of canvas hastily stretched and nailed onto the boards. It was a fast way to put up a building.

  The canvas entrance flap was tied back to let in light and air. Fargo went inside. Just as in the saloon, counters had been set up by laying planks over barrels. Planks and crates formed shelves where canned goods and other supplies were stacked. Fargo spotted Julia in the rear of the place, talking to a clerk.

  The counter in front of her was piled high with bags of flour, sugar, beans, and salt; sides of bacon wrapped in oilcloth; boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges for Fargo’s Colt and the Henry rifle he carried; canteens, and other assorted items they might need on their trip.

  Julia turned to Fargo and asked, “Any more trouble?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. The team’s hitched up, and my horse is saddled and ready to go.”

  The young clerk said eagerly, “I’ll put all this in a box for you, Miss Slauson.”

  She gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

  Fargo waited until the supplies were boxed up, then lifted the box and carried it out of the emporium. Balancing it on one shoulder, he took the Ovaro’s reins in his other hand. Julia walked alongside him.

  “Looked like you made a conquest, the way that clerk was grinning at you,” Fargo commented.

  “Are you jealous, Mr. Fargo?”

  “Not particularly. And call me Skye. If we’re going to be traveling together we might as well be on good terms.”

  “Yes, indeed, Skye. And I’m Julia, of course.”

  Fargo nodded. When they came to the wagon, he placed the box of supplies in the back. By the time he walked to the front, Julia had climbed onto the driver’s seat without waiting for any assistance.

  “I’m ready,” she said as she took up the reins. She had been wearing a bonnet with the strings tied around her neck, but the bonnet itself was pushed back. Now she had pulled it up so that it shielded her head from the sun.

  Fargo swung up into the saddle. “Do you have any idea where to start looking for your father?”

  “I’m sorry,” Julia said with a shake of her head. “All I know is that he came to this area.”

  Fargo nodded as he thought. “Death Valley runs pretty much north and south. We’re close to the north end, on the west side. There’s no gold or silver out on the salt flats themselves, so nobody prospects there. The claims are all in the hills bordering the flats on both sides.”

  He pointed as he talked, indicating where he was talking about. Julia listened with keen interest.

  “We’ll work our way down the west side, along the Panamints to the Owlshead Mountains at the south end of the valley. Then, if we haven’t found your father yet, we’ll come back up the other side along the Black Mountains.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “A week, maybe two. We can’t push the mules in this weather.”

  “What about water?”

  “There are springs in the hills and some wells along the edges of the salt flats, if you know where to find them. Not all the wells have drinkable water, though. Some of it’s too salty. We’ll fill all the canteens and our water barrel anytime we find a good supply of freshwater.” He pointed across the valley. “There are some big warm springs over there around Furnace Creek. Of course, that’s one of the last places we’ll get to.”

  Julia nodded. “You were right. This is going to be a dangerous undertaking, isn’t it?”

  “We’ll be all right,” Fargo told her. “It’s just a matter of being careful and knowing what you’re doing.”

  “And you know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “Most of the time.” Fargo lifted the reins and heeled the stallion into motion. “Let’s go.”

  He rode down Blackwater’s single street. Julia flapped the reins and shouted at the mules and got them moving after a moment. Fargo paused at the edge of the settlement to wait for her. Then he rode south with the wagon rolling along steadily behind him.

  Blackwater, and the wash that had given the camp its name, soon disappeared behind them. The ground was rocky in places, hard-packed dirt and dried, salty hardpan in others. The wagon didn’t have much trouble negotiating the terrain.

  To Fargo’s right were fan-shaped hills that had been formed by rockslides and silt washing down from the Panamint Mountains. The hills were cut by narrow canyons, dry washes, and arroyos that ran water only during the very occasional downpours. It was in those hills, along the canyons and washes, that prospectors searched for pockets of gold and silver.

  They would have to check every wash for Julia’s father. It would be a tedious, time-consuming job, but Fargo didn’t know how else to proceed. They might get lucky and find the elder Slauson in a day or two, or it might be a week or even more before they ran across him—assuming he was even here around Death Valley somewhere.

  The air had been a little cool before dawn, but as soon as the brassy red ball peeked over the mountains to the east, it started getting hot. The temperature rose as the sun climbed higher in the sky. By midmorning Fargo was sweating heavily, and when he looked back at Julia, he saw dark stains on her gray dress. Sweat was j
ust something people in these parts had to put up with.

  Around noon they reached the first of the canyons that led up into the hills on their right. Fargo called a halt and said, “After we eat a little, we’ll have a look up that way.”

  “It’s almost too hot to eat,” Julia said. “I’m not even hungry.”

  “Neither am I, but we’ll eat some anyway. Got to keep our strength up.”

  “We just started,” she pointed out.

  “This weather will drain a body quicker than you think it will.”

  Fargo cooked biscuits, making a big enough batch to last for several meals, and he gave Julia some jerky to chew on, too. As she gnawed at the tough, dried strip of meat, she said, “How are you supposed to eat this, anyway?”

  “You’re doing just fine,” Fargo told her with a grin. “After a while, you’ll get used to it.”

  She just shook her head as if that wasn’t likely to happen.

  When they were done with their simple meal, Fargo poured water in his hat and gave the stallion and each of the mules a drink. Then they headed up the canyon, which was only about fifty yards wide. It ran fairly straight for a few hundred yards but then twisted through the hills so that they couldn’t see beyond the bend.

  They hadn’t gone very far when the hot, still air was suddenly filled with the sound of gunfire, coming from somewhere up the canyon.

  3

  Fargo reined in and stiffened in the saddle as he heard the banging of pistols, the sharp cracks of a rifle, and the dull booms of a shotgun. It sounded like a small-scale war going on up there, with at least half a dozen different guns involved.

  He looked around at Julia, who had pulled the wagon to an abrupt halt, and snapped, “Stay here!”

  “Skye—” she began, as if she was going to argue, but it was too late.

  Fargo was already galloping up the canyon, pulling the Henry rifle from its saddle boot as he rode.

  He didn’t like the idea of leaving Julia alone, but he was convinced the shooting wasn’t a distraction meant to lure him away from her. Anybody who was burning that much powder was serious about it. Whoever was up the canyon, they were doing their best to kill each other.