by Jon Sharpe
“There,” he said, pointing to the bole of a fat cottonwood. “Get across and hunker behind that tree. Soon as I open up, pour the lead to ’em. But don’t show yourselves.”
Holding his Henry at a high port, Fargo raced toward the spot from which he had ambushed the jayhawkers yesterday—the same spot they had just shot up for nothing. There was one tricky piece of work, however. He could see them through the trees, about two hundred feet past the old ambush point, and he had to slip past them unobserved.
When he was closer, Fargo dropped into the grass and rolled rapidly, the movement made awkward by his gun belt and the rifle clutched to his chest.
A gunshot rang out, the bullet thwacking into the ground inches from his head, and Fargo froze, tasting the corroded-pennies taste of fear. Two more shots plunked into the ground, so close Fargo could feel the impact. Not only might he have been sighted, but if the boys thought that was him shooting, his plan was doomed along with the three of them.
“The hell you shooting at, Moss?”
“I think I just saw buckskins on the far bank. Can’t be sure. Over in there.”
“Let ’er rip, boys!” called the first voice. “Then we’ll take a closer look.”
Before Fargo could twitch a muscle, every man opened up—short guns, rifles, shotguns. Leaves fell on him, branches snapped, the bushes rattled as if hail were coming down. If Fargo tried to stand and flee, he knew he’d step into the path of a bullet. Instead, he made the hard decision to stay put—no man seemed to know exactly where he was.
“Cease fire!” the voice in charge commanded. “Jesus Christ, Moss, you hawg-stupid son of a bitch—your ‘buckskins’! A patch of cattails!”
“Hey, Moss,” jeered another voice, “the eye you got left ain’t no good, neither!”
Fargo was proud of the McCallister boys. Confusing as all this must have been, they were disciplined enough to stick to the plan. He finished the distance to yesterday’s ambush point, splashed through the creek, and stepped boldly out into the open.
The border ruffians were moving west. Fargo brought his notch sight between the shoulder blades of the last man and began squeezing back the trigger. “Welcome to the happy hunting grounds, scum bucket,” he muttered.
The Henry spoke its piece, and the jayhawker tipped sideways out of the saddle, left foot caught in the stirrup. His panicked horse took off, the dead man bouncing up and down like a bag of rags. Fargo levered, wounded a man, levered again and missed when his target spun his horse around. By now all the border ruffians had spotted him. Just as they opened up on Fargo, however, the McCallister boys rained in a deadly storm of bullets.
Fargo stood his ground, despite the bullets snapping past him, levering and firing three more rounds. Dub had killed at least two men, and Fargo watched first a claybank, then a sorrel buckle to their knees. Then he spotted the sight he had dreaded: the jayhawker leader called Moss, bringing his Big Fifty to the ready.
Fargo dove headlong into the tree cover as the big-caliber gun boomed. At the same time a panicked voice screamed out repeatedly: “Retreat, damn it, retreat!” By the time Fargo got to his feet, the badly shot-up men were thundering toward their camp, several seriously wounded jayhawkers hunched over in the saddle.
The two men in the grass had sustained hits to the head and required no finishing shots. The one Fargo killed was still bouncing across the plains full chisel, his debt to society paid in full.
Fargo sprinted toward the brothers’ position. “Fancy-fine shooting, boys! I’ll guarandamntee you they won’t play pheasant flush with us anymore.”
“Mr. Fargo!” Dub’s nearly hysterical voice replied. “Hurry! Nate’s been hit, and there’s a powerful lot of blood!”
11
Fargo’s first thought, when he heard Dub’s calamitous words, was, Damn! Nate’s a good kid, but I put him in over his head. His second thought, however, was even more troubling: If Nate dies, you’re honor-bound to take him home to his mother. Fargo would rather harrow hell and deliver a Bible to the devil than return a dead son to his mother.
“Hurry, Mr. Fargo!” Dub pleaded as the Trailsman reached his position. “Hurry!”
“All right, I’m here, Dub, get reloads in your rifle, then watch to the east in case those bastards about-face on us.”
Nate lay writhing in the grass, breathing hard like a woman in labor.
“Where you hit, son?” Fargo said, kneeling beside him. “Belly? Chest?”
“My leg,” Nate gasped. “Left leg.”
“Your . . . ?” Fargo bit his lower lip to keep a straight face. There was a small trace of blood on the ankle of his grain-sack trousers.
“It’s curtains for me, Mr. Fargo,” he said dramatically. “No need to sugarcoat it. I’m a gone beaver, ain’t I?”
Fargo slit the pant leg with his toothpick and glanced at the wound. “Boy, get straight with your Maker. You’re about bled out.”
“I knew it,” Nat wailed. “You hear that, Dub? Gunned down on the plains. Just like in Wild West Adventures.”
“That’s right, boy,” Fargo said. “Nobody can call you pissproud now. You’re a fighting frontiersman, and your name will go down with Caleb Greenwood, Jim Bridger, and Daniel Boone.”
“Can’t you save him, Mr. Fargo?” Dub pleaded from behind him.
Fargo finally had to take pity on Dub. “Save him from what, you damn young fools? There ain’t enough blood here to feed a baby skeeter.”
“What? He ain’t shot up bad?”
“Dub, the boy ain’t even shot. I’ve wounded myself worse just shaving. He got grazed along the ankle, is all, just like I got grazed in the neck yesterday. Prob’ly a ricochet. It’s piddlin’. Take a look.”
Dub bent over his brother, then flushed to the roots of his tow hair. “Christ, Nate, you damn weak sister! Way you carried on, I thought you was dying.”
Fargo forced himself not to laugh. “Never mind. It’s still a bullet wound, after all, and a man’s first time is apt to rattle him. I’m just glad he’s all right. And the main mile is that you two fellows did some fine shooting. C’mon, Nate.”
Fargo helped him up. “I’ll put some salve on it and wrap it with a strip of linen.”
“You little she-male,” Dub muttered. “ ‘It’s curtains for me.’ That ain’t nothing but a rope burn.”
“Kiss my hinder,” Nate retorted. “You ain’t never been shot.”
They returned to their simple camp and Fargo tended to the leg. By now both boys were starting to realize they had been in their first shooting scrape—and acquitted themselves well.
“Any regrets?” Fargo asked them.
“You kidding? It beats the Dutch,” Nate replied.
“Caps the climax,” Dub added. “It ain’t like we shot up decent men. I think I’m gonna be a sheriff—maybe even a U.S. marshal.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” Fargo warned. “This today was an ambush, with the element of surprise on our side. Last night, in their camp, they were corned. But we can’t count on Old Churn-brain tonight.”
“These men sure look tough,” Dub said. “How’s come we run ’em off so easy just now?”
“Don’t get cocky,” Fargo warned. “They can be trouble when they want to be. They were smart to hightail it just now. They were caught in a pincers, and that was their own stupid fault. These old boys are too lazy to learn trail craft and tactics. They may look tough, Dub, but the truth is they’re hard.”
“What’s the difference?” Nate asked.
“Well, this bunch is what you might call easy-go killers. For them murder is as natural as taking a leak. That makes them dangerous—real dangersome, as Old Jules would put it. But only when the odds are with them because, at heart, they’re cowards like most criminals. But never forget they’re dangerous—and when they’re cornered, like rats, they fight.”
At regular intervals Fargo climbed up into the cottonwood and checked the plains all around them. He spotted one or two isolated
riders, but no one came close to the creek.
“I wish we could start a cooking fire,” Nate complained early in the afternoon. “This hardtack and jerky are hard to swallow.”
“Soak the hardtack in water,” Fargo suggested. “That way the weevils float to the top and you can pick ’em out. Then you can just eat the rest with a spoon.”
The two brothers looked at each other and seemed on the verge of puking.
“There’s weevils in it?” Nate demanded.
Fargo laughed. “The hell you think flavors it? Anyhow, we can build a pit fire after dark and stoke our bellies for the raid.”
“Good.” Dub hooked a thumb toward the opposite bank. “I made a snare, and there’s a big rabbit caught in it. I brained it with a rock.”
Fargo broke out his deck of cards and resumed the brothers’ poker lessons, teaching them the fine art of bluffing. The afternoon heated up, and now and then the horses stamped their feet in vexation at pesky flies.
“Mr. Fargo,” Nate said, mulling a hand of cards, “do you think me and Dub is good enough aims to be gunfighters?”
Gunfighter. That was a new term Fargo had first heard applied to the California bandit Joaquin Murrieta, a fast-draw artist who carried a French cap-and-ball pistol in his sash for quick use. Now everybody and his mother was billed a “gunfighter.”
“Listen,” he said, “don’t let your fine aim trick you into thinking you’re quick on the draw. They’re two separate skills. Just remember there’s no second place in a gunfight—you win or you die.”
“You been in some?”
“I’ve avoided more than I’ve been in, and I’m damned if I’ll ruin my holster by oiling it. There’s more talk about them than actual gunfights.”
“Can’t be that much to pulling a gun out of a holster,” Dub opined.
“Well, I’m no gunslick,” Fargo said, standing up. “But now you two have gun belts, so let’s test your draw. You first, Dub. Make sure your gun ain’t cocked. Go ahead—skin it back.”
Dub was still clearing leather when the muzzle of Fargo’s Colt was aimed dead center on his torso. Nate fared no better.
“Damnation,” Nate said as they resumed their game. “It’s like it just jumps into your hand.”
“Yeah, well, if that impresses you, remember this—I’m slow compared to a professional gunfighter.”
“Couldn’t you be one if you wanted to?” Dub asked.
“Why would I want to? A gunfighter is a board walker in town. Spends hours every day practicing his draw in hotel mirrors, like some woman fussing over her hair. He depends on restaurants for his meals, stores for his clothes, and he makes his money doing other men’s killing for them. Just like this bunch we’re up against now.”
“It don’t sound like no way to live,” Dub admitted. “Pa use to say that a real man goes to bed every night with a clean conscience.”
“Damn straight. And you never hear of these gunmen living to old age. Dealer takes three,” Fargo said, slapping down his discards. “Say, what’s all this talk of gunfighters and marshaling? What’s wrong with being a man like your father was?”
“Nothing,” Dub said. “But he was just a farmer. You have adventures.”
“I’m just a drifter, and all drifters run into adventures. But it takes one hell of a man to work himself to death for his family. It’s natural for young men like you to want to see the elephant. But consider honest work. The West needs scouts, hunters, drovers, soldiers, boatmen, teamsters—you’ll have adventures in any of those jobs, and you won’t have to sit with your back to a wall, waiting for some seedy killer to paper the room with your brains.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being a scout for the army,” Nate said. “And you’ve taught us some tricks already. But how does a man get good enough to get hired on?”
“You have to trot before you can canter,” Fargo assured him. “Speaking of which, I know you boys are fond of your farm nags. But they’re placing you at risk out here. You need horses that can gallop and run.”
“How you plan to wangle that?” Dub asked.
“How else? I’m going to liberate two saddle horses from the jayhawkers.”
“But you told us outlaws’ horses are abused,” Nate reminded him, staring at his cards as if they’d betrayed him.
Fargo nodded. “They’ve been spurred up bad and rode hard and put away wet so much that most have saddle sores. But these dobbins will get you killed.”
Dub said, “Do we have to shoot ’em?”
“I never said that. We’ll just leave them hidden in the trees for now. I can’t guarantee their survival, but hell, I can’t guarantee our survival.”
“Is this going to be tonight?” Dub asked.
“I called one-eyed jacks wild,” Fargo reminded him. “Don’t toss it into the deadwood, pick it up and play it. Yeah, tonight. I noticed last night they only keep one guard at the rope corral. You two will wait with your dobbins out on the plains. I’ll do for the guard and pick you out two horses. After we picket them with your farm horses, we go back and give the camp a lead bath. To make sure they don’t catch us, I’ll leave the corral open. The racket of gunfire will scatter the mounts.”
“Them killers will be waiting for us tonight, huh?” Dub asked.
“As sure as cats fighting. But it’s best to keep ’em rattled. We’ve poured it to ’em two days in a row down here by the creek, and night before last I powder-burned two of them in the oak grove. By now they know the death hug’s a-comin’, and these are not men willing to sacrifice—they’re cold-blooded murderers in it to win it—for themselves. Your deal, Nate.”
Fargo paused to recall Cindy’s words about the leader of the border ruffians: After he buttoned my dress back up, he whispered in my ear, “Life is a disease, and the only cure is death.”
“What is it, Mr. Fargo?” Dub asked, watching his face.
“I was just thinking how queer it is. We’ve had plenty of settos with this bunch, but we still haven’t laid eyes on the biggest toad in the puddle.”
Throughout the afternoon Fargo climbed the cottonwood to keep an eye on their enemy. But the only activity was an isolated rider or two heading into Sublette. Near the end of the afternoon a freight wagon pulled by six big dray horses rumbled up to the trading post.
Dub was busy cleaning the Spencer carbine. “See anything, Mr. Fargo?”
“Nothing we need to worry about. A pair of jayhawkers rode to a saloon, but most seem to be staying at their camp.”
“Waiting for us,” Nate said.
“The way you say,” Fargo agreed. “This won’t be like the magazines you read. You could get killed. We all could. Are you certain-sure you want to do this?”
“I know Pa would have,” Nate said. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Me, too,” Dub added. “These sons of bitches are trying to kill us.”
“Stout lads.”
Fargo hung from the lowest limb and dropped to the ground. The McCallister boys’ faces looked brassy in the fading sunlight.
“Almost time to knock up some grub,” he said. “Nate, dress out that rabbit and spit it. I’ll lay a fire.”
Fargo scooped out their fire pit even deeper and piled up dried grass and crumbled bark for kindling. He was out of lucifer matches, so he removed the flint and steel from his possibles bag. When the sun finally blazed out on the western horizon, he struck sparks until the kindling was ablaze, then piled small chunks of dead branches onto the flames.
Rabbit meat got too greasy if it was actually cooked, so Fargo just quickly scorched it and divided the food up.
“Before we leave,” he said, chewing the hot meat, “make sure you’ve got six beans in the wheels of your handguns. Dub, stick to the Spencer and reserve one short gun for any close-in trouble. Nate, that trade rifle won’t be worth a kiss-my-ass for this fandango tonight, so just leave it behind. Empty one handgun and keep the other in reserve for any trouble on the retreat, savvy that?”
“Good. I’ll steal the horses while you boys wait. Then I’ll post you. Retreat on your own as soon as you’re down to your reserve gun. Try not to throw any lead until I open fire, but the second you hear my Henry cracking, wake snakes, hear?”
Fargo let those orders sink in before adding the rest: “Nighttime shoot-outs are confusing, and we want maximum firepower to scare them into thinking there’s more than three of us. And speaking of nighttime, remember that your muzzle flash gives them a target. So move a few feet to a new spot after every two shots.”
Fargo wiped his hands in the grass. “One more thing. I don’t count on many kills tonight, if any. They won’t have big fires burning, and they won’t likely be drunk. This raid is mostly to harass them and convince the drones to desert their leaders.”
Fargo glanced overhead and saw the branches making cracks in the moon. The talking part of it was over. Now came the hard doing.
“Time to raise dust,” he said. “Now, I need a promise from both of you.”
“Yessir?” Dub said.
“Just this. I never plan on getting killed or shot up bad, but if it happens, I want you boys to hightail it back to camp. Don’t wait for me.”
“You’d wait for us,” Dub objected.
“You miss my point. I do want you to save your hides, but also, that pouch can’t fall into their hands. Somebody has to deliver it to the soldiers. My horse is used to you boys now and considers you friends. He’ll follow you on a lead line. He’s yours if I don’t make it out. But promise you’ll retreat and deliver that pouch.”
“Promise,” Dub said reluctantly.
“Me, too,” Nate said.
“All right. Make sure you bring your blankets along, I’ll show you another scouting trick. Let’s go raise some hell.”
Despite a bright full moon, dense clouds darkened the plains, which Fargo took as a good omen. They trotted their mounts due east, Fargo enforcing strict silence. About halfway to the motte of pines, Fargo told the boys to wrap their heads as he did.
