Bandolero (A Neal Fargo Adventure Boook 14)

by John Benteen

  Villa nodded. “That,” he said, “is our heritage after thirty years of Diaz rule. He played one side against the other for so long ... It will take years to heal the wounds. But then it will be a great country.”

  “If it’s as great as its people, yeah,” Fargo said.

  “Later we’ll discuss the theory. For now, one thing remains. Get to El Paso, see Pershing, warn the Americans of the Columbus raid, make my case...”

  “I’ll do my best. Adios, Pancho.”

  “Fargo... Vaya con Dios”

  “Damn it, Fargo,” Liz Baines shrilled, “you gonna talk all night?” She was in the saddle, waiting.

  Fargo and Villa embraced. Then Fargo went to his horse, swung up, gathered up the lead-ropes of the spare mounts. “Keep your voice down,” he said fiercely. “Another bugle call like that and I’ll gag you. Let’s go.” And he spurred his mount.

  Now, three hours out of Rio Doloroso, she had long since taken refuge in a sulky silence. Just as well, he thought, remembering the hundreds of miles of cruel country that lay ahead of them. The longer she stayed shut up, the safer they would be.

  One thing, though, she could ride. Claimed, too, that she could shoot, which remained to be seen; so far, he had not trusted her with a weapon.

  It was not, he thought, the fact that she was a whore. She had called the turn on that beautifully. She slept with men for pay; he killed them for pay; each did what he or she was best equipped to do to survive. He had known a lot of whores: trusting none of them, many he had admired—not because of the lives they led, but because they were complete professionals. He admired professionalism in everybody: fighting man, bronc twister, doctor, prostitute. Whatever you chose to do, you should be the best at it you could be.

  And that was where the danger with her lay. She was the complete professional. Her trade was making fools of men; she could not help plying it any more than she could help the color of her eyes. But there would be no room on this journey for her to ply it with him. His trade—fighting man, killer—came first until they reached El Paso, if they were to make it there at all. So she would have to throttle back, he thought, grinning. For a moment, he felt a kind of pity for her. She was so used to having her own way with men, leading them around, that that would not be easy.

  It was not easy, either, for him to be so dispassionate toward her. She was a lot of woman, and under other circumstances, maybe he would have let her get her hooks a little way into him, anyhow. But there was no room for that luxury, and—

  “We’d better swing down that dry wash,” he said.

  She stared at the arroyo to which he pointed. “Goddlemighty, Fargo. That thing’s full of boulders. We’ll have to walk half the way.”

  “It’s either that or be skylined,” Fargo said. “When you’re skylined, they can see you a long way off, especially against a moon. Down into the dry wash.”

  “Judas. We’ll never get to El Paso at this rate.”

  “A wolf always gets where he’s going,” Fargo said. “But he travels slow and sure and sizes things up ahead of him, and he always sticks to cover and keeps the wind blowing toward him.”

  She looked at him, wind whipping her hair. “You must have taken lessons from a goddam wolf.”

  “Some,” Fargo said. “Into the arroyo.”

  Thus, they traveled on. Despite Fargo’s caution and how it slowed them they made good time, and when he judged sunrise an hour off, he scouted, then called a halt in the cover of a vast dump of boulders, many larger than the average house, at the base of a butte, one side of which had been chopped off by constant wind, as if a giant knife had cut through an enormous cake. Here there was a kind of cave. Fargo fed the horses from grain packed on one: that eliminated the necessity for them to wander, hobbled or picketed, and leave tracks. They ate dried beef, cold beans, and washed it down with water. Fargo took out a bottle of mescal. “Want a drink?”

  The cave was not large: five feet high, perhaps, ten feet deep. Liz looked up from where, at his orders, she was spreading blankets. “Is it decent booze?”

  “Mescal.”

  “With the worm? Agghhh ... ”

  “Suit yourself,” Fargo said. “No way to get it out until you damn near hit bottom.” He drank. Then he corked the bottle.

  Suddenly Liz was by him. “Well,” she said, “maybe I can stand the worm.”

  He passed the bottle to her. “One drink. No more. We can’t be boozy.”

  She drank, gagged, passed it back. “I don’t know whether it’s the liquor or the worm,” she whispered. “Anyhow, the bed’s ready.”

  Fargo crawled back into the cave, struck a match. She had combined the blankets to make a single bed. Fargo felt the mescal hit bottom, warming him. But he said, “That, ain’t the way I said to do it. Two beds ... ”

  “Fargo ... That’s crazy.”

  “I said, two beds. When I want you, I’ll holler. And when I want only one bed, I’ll tell you.”’

  “Listen ... ” Her voice changed. “Neal, we’ve got a whole bottle of mescal, the bed’s twice as soft with double blankets and—”

  “And it’s your idea we get crocked and make a night of it.” Fargo’s voice was harsh. “Wait’ll El Paso for that, Liz. You compared me to a wolf. Well, I’ve got to be a wolf; too much hangs on our getting across the Rio and in time. Tonight, maybe a lot of nights, I got to keep on bein’ wolfish. I can’t smash myself with booze and a woman and sleep like a log. I got to sleep like a wolf, a panther, with nobody grabbin’ at me if I have to come up in a hurry and fight. Now, fix the beds the way I said.”

  “Damn it—”

  “Do what I told you,” Fargo said.

  She did. They lay down in their separate beds. What Fargo cradled in his arm as he went to sleep was his shotgun, the sawed-off Fox Sterlingworth. If he woke up in a hurry he would likely need that worse than any woman.

  ~*~

  When late afternoon sunlight landed into the cave, Fargo awakened long before Liz did. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, looked at the woman in the blankets next to him. In sleep; all the hardness was gone from her face; it wore a curious, relaxed look of innocence. Almost, then, he reached out and touched her, but he didn’t. He sprang up, went to look around and check the horses.

  They were where they’d been tied, and all was in order. Fargo squinted for a moment at the sunbaked, shimmering flats, dotted with creosote and yucca, cholla and all sorts of thorned and brutal plants, stretching endlessly away northward, with enough grama in between to support a minimal amount of grazing livestock. It was a raw, savage country; and it struck a chord in him. There was a magnificence in its very roughness to which he responded. It looked so lonely, he thought, but ... Armies, battalions, companies, platoons, patrols, crossed it all the time. To trust that loneliness was to die. He went back to the cave.

  “All okay—” he said. Liz was sitting up, combing her streaked hair, a brown cigarette dangling from her lips. Fargo’s eyes narrowed as he saw the open mescal bottle by the bed. “Booze for breakfast?”

  “Just to wake me up. I’ll make some coffee in a minute. What do you want for breakfast? I’m not a bad cook, and O’Brien showed me how to build a fire out of ocotillo canes. Looks like there’s plenty around.”

  “We’ll have no fire,” Fargo said. “No coffee.”

  She frowned. “Ocotillo canes don’t make much smoke.”

  “They make some. It’s a risk we can’t take. We wait ’til sundown, then we have a hot meal. Out here, it’s easier to hide a little fire than it is a smoke.”

  “Now, look.” She sprang up. “We got coffee in the pack and I want some coffee. And a decent breakfast ... ”

  “Eat some jerky, drink some water, lay off the booze. After sundown,” Fargo said. “You can gather fuel in the meantime. Me, I got to take the horses to drink. There’s a waterhole about a mile away.”

  “Why didn’t we camp there, then?”

  “Because everybody comes to a waterhole in the dese
rt. I’ll scout it first. You lay low in the meanwhile. And no fire, you hear?”

  “I hear,” Liz answered sullenly.

  Fargo stared at her a moment, then adjusted the shotgun’s sling. He went out, saddled a horse, led the other three, struck a wash and rode down it with utter caution, right thumb hooked beneath the shotgun sling. He scouted the waterhole, found nothing to threaten him, replaced what they had emptied from their canteens. Then he let the horses drink. While he did that, he kept his eyes flickering around the horizon and smoked a cigarette. O’Brien, he thought, I got to ask her some more about that joker ... So he has heard of me, was looking for me ...

  That did not surprise Fargo. His name was almost as well known in South America as in Mexico, the States, Alaska, and the Philippines. He had been everywhere and left a wide trail of violence behind him in his time.

  He’d met a lot of Hispano-Irish in his time, but never this O’Brien. Mexico and South America were, though, riddled with Irish names. In the days when Spain had ruled the southern part of the Western hemisphere, many Irishmen had fled there to make common cause with Spain against the English crown. Their presence had drawn others, later; and a lot of Irish who’d come to the United States after the potato famine had drifted south, seeking better opportunities.

  This O’Brien, though, must be something special, for Carranza to entrust him with such a ticklish mission as starting war with the United States.

  Which could work, if Germany was serious, Fargo thought as the horses drank. Villa was out of favor, commit some crimes, blame them on him, suck the American Army into Mexico. Help it crush Villa, then turn against it. Bite off in ambush the best part of its border strength, then strike hard and fast across the boundary, the Fronteriza. And whether the southern Negroes and the Americanized Mexicans rose or not—and some of them would—an unprepared America would be in serious trouble; and a lot of people would die along the Rio. A double-double-double cross of the kind commonplace nowadays in Revolutionary Mexico. You could add two more doubles to that and still—

  Then, as he turned his head, he stiffened.

  The wisp of smoke, though thin and pale, rose high, totally visible against the cloudless blue above the desert. It was like a beacon, signaling to everyone for miles around that someone was there. At the cave.

  Fargo made a sound in his throat. He grunted an obscenity. Then he was in the saddle without touching stirrup. The led horses whinnied as he spurred and the ropes tightened. He rode at full gallop all the way back up the wash.

  ~*~

  “You damned stupid slut!” he raged. He was too smart to pour water on the fire, send steam boiling up behind the smoke. He kicked frantically, dug with his hands, threw dirt over the blaze of ocotillo canes, quenching smoke and flame simultaneously. In doing that, he knocked over the can of boiling coffee. It spilled across Liz Baines’ ankle, and she screeched and came up clawing.

  “You burned me!” she screamed, voice ringing through the wash, echoing and re-echoing. Her nails went for Fargo’s eyes.

  Almost casually he swung his big left hand. He had been born with the gift of being able to use both hands equally well. The blow was short, economical, and deft. It made a solid splat as it hit her face and knocked her back into the cave.

  She sprawled across the blankets. “Damn you!” she howled, and it was a banshee’s shriek. A bugle call could not have carried farther. “I’ll—” She struggled to her knees. Frantically she groped for a weapon, and then she found one—a knife some well-meaning Villista had packed in with the goods. Fargo had not even known it was there, that big butcher blade. But she used it as if she’d held one before as she came up, making for his gut.

  “Oh, hell,” Fargo said wearily, and he did three things in sequence. He stepped aside, put out a booted foot and tripped her. And he seized her wrist and twisted.

  The knife dropped. Liz hurtled down the shallow slope, landed on her face in dust and gravel. Fargo picked up the knife and threw it far off into the rocks. “I carry the only frog-sticker in this outfit,” he growled. Then he finished stamping out the fire.

  Liz picked herself out of the dust. Her face was bleeding where it had scraped against the gravel: her eyes were twin flames. “Neal Fargo, I’ll—”

  Fargo turned. “Woman,” he said, “you’ll not do a thing. You want to make the next night’s ride lashed face down across the saddle?”

  “I—” She looked into his eyes, broke off. “I—”

  “Now,” said Fargo, “get yourself on the bit, like the cavalry says. Roll them blankets and pack the gear. We got to move out.”

  “Move?”

  “You just put up an advertisin’ sign tellin’ everybody for forty miles around somebody was here. You say you don’t like Mexicans. Well, you better get a taste for ’em. You seem hell bent on gettin’ captured and passed around among an army of ’em! Move!” He turned, picked up a saddle and a blanket, started to put the gear on their mounts.

  He had just finished knotting a latigo when he stiffened. He dropped the horse’s reins, knowing it would stand, whirled. Muttering to herself, Liz was tying the blanket rolls.

  “Get back inside that cave,” Fargo rasped. “All the way inside. No matter what happens, don’t come out unless somebody comes in after you and drags you out—”

  “What—?” She looked over her shoulder, blinking.

  “Your advertising sign worked, all right,” Fargo said. “Like I said, dammit, stay down. Company’s coming.” He swung up on his own mount, leaving her staring, and rode up the wash.

  ~*~

  He rode up the arroyo like a man of peace, reins in his left hand, right on the big pommel of the Mexican saddle. The shotgun dangled muzzles down, stock up, behind his right shoulder on its sling.

  A hundred yards from the cave, he checked the horse, listened. Yes. Around the bend. Four men, he judged. Coming at a walk, cautiously. Fargo kept his mount tight-reined and waited, right thumb hooked in the shotgun sling. There was nothing hostile about his posture, except maybe the cocky tilt of the cavalry hat, which rode at an even meaner angle because the burn on the back of his head was sensitive.

  But he was very tense, every muscle mobilized and ready.

  Then the four horsemen came around the wash’s bend. One in front, three behind, all tightly grouped because of the arroyo’s narrowness. The leader reined in. staring.

  “Neal!” he exploded. “Don Neal Fargo!”

  Fargo eased, but only a little. “Paradisio.”

  The sergeant, neatly dressed in khakis, bandoliers, and the big hat of the Villista, put his mount forward a few more paces, hands gripping simultaneously the reins and the Winchester across the saddle-horn.

  “Paradisio Miliàn,” Fargo said. “It’s been a long time.”

  The sergeant checked his mount, grinned. “Si. That was a good drunk we had together in Saltillo.”

  “A fine one,” Fargo said. “I will always remember our comradeship.”

  “I, too.” Paradisio frowned. “Don Neal, what do you do out here? Where do you go?”

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  Paradisio frowned. “I am in the Army of Tomas Rinaldo now. On patrol.”

  “Against whom?”

  “Against everybody,” Miliàn said. “Against the Carranza forces, against the gringos.” His handsome young face darkened. “Every gringo,” he said, “that I meet is, according to my orders, to be taken directly to General Rinaldo.”

  “But not harmed,” said Fargo.

  Now Miliàn’s eyes were blank. “For disposition,” he said. “Whatever that may mean. The orders come to General Rinaldo through General Fierro.”

  “How long will I be delayed? I’m on a very important mission for General Villa. I have orders here—”

  “One day to our headquarters, anyhow.”

  “And that means another back, at least. Two days.” Fargo said, “Paradisio. We are old friends. I cannot spare the time.” He reached
in his pocket with his left hand, drew out a safe-conduct Villa had given him, for what it might be worth. “Read this.”

  Paradisio bit his lip. He took the orders, stared at them, and Fargo noticed he held them upside down. That was not surprising. Diaz had not been interested in educating even smart young men like Miliàn. Then the sergeant handed the orders back. “Very well. You are allowed to pass. It is against my instructions, but since we have known each other for so long ... I—” Then he stiffened in the saddle. “Who is she?”

  Fargo turned. His left hand almost wrenched off the saddle-horn as he saw Liz Baines standing outside the cave, staring at him and the four riders. Oh, he thought, the stupid shit ... He turned forward. “She travels with me, on a mission for General Villa.”

  Paradisio looked at him hard, then frowned, eyes slits. “Don Neal,” he said, “it is one thing to let you through against my orders. But another to let a yellow-haired gringo woman pass. I would be adobe- walled if I did that. I must take you to General Rinaldo. And her with you.”

  “Paradisio, that's not necessary. Look, I’ll read the orders to you—”

  “I could not tell if they were right or wrong. The General and his staff can. No, Don Neal, you must come with me. We’ll only hold you a little while, but it is necessary.” He turned the rifle, and now its bore pointed at Fargo. “The woman makes everything different.”

  “Doesn’t she?” Fargo said bitterly. The other three grouped themselves tightly behind their sergeant and also raised their guns.

  And Fargo’s mind worked like an abacus.

  That was a calculating , machine popular in the Orient; he had seen it in the Philippines. If you knew how to use it, you moved little beads back and forth along strings of wires, and always you came up with the right answer. The little beads, made clicking sounds. It seemed to Fargo that he could hear them in his head.

  They had been about to let him go. But now, because of Liz’s appearance, they would take him to General Rinaldo. Rinaldo was a friend of Fierro’s; likely Rinaldo would have Fargo killed and take the woman for his own. Even if he didn’t, even if he honored the safe-conduct from Villa, they would lose two, maybe three days. And meanwhile, O’Brien might be readying the Carranza forces for the strike against Columbus that meant war.