by Sharpe, Jon
“What about the passengers?” Spider asked. “Did you figure out which one is on Lomax’s payroll?”
“’Sides the actress—and, boys, she’s a humdinger—there’s a big-titted blonde I wouldn’t mind drilling into. Way she looks at Fargo, he’s prob’ly humping her already. But the three men—one’s a bandy-legged preacher and one’s a little butterball who flutters around like a nervous woman. But this third jasper, all togged out in a fancy white suit and a concho belt . . . he’s one of them old boys who looks like he went to college but could lop your nuts off quick. I’d wager he’s the one.”
“You can’t know with Lomax,” Spider said. “He’s tricky as a redheaded woman, and he just might find somebody Fargo wouldn’t suspicion.”
Alcott mulled that and nodded. His pale eyes followed the progress of the coach. “He just might, at that. We got to plant Fargo before he does, that’s the main mile. I been thinking on that. And I think I got a plan.”
Alcott pointed his chin toward the stagecoach. “I know that route good. The stage will roll until about ten tonight, then they’ll lay over until sunrise at Hatch. Tomorrow night they’ll rest at Caballo Lake. But if we kill Fargo at either place, that stage just might reverse its dust to El Paso. But two nights from now they’ll lay over at San Marcial. That’s too far north and no matter what happens, it makes more sense to just push on to Santa Fe. Lomax will shit a brick if it don’t.”
“All right,” Spider said. “But I know that area around San Marcial. It ain’t good ambush country—damn little cover. Cleo here is some pumpkins with his Sharps, but—”
“I got other plans for Fargo.” Alcott cut him off. “Won’t nobody need to draw a bead on Fargo. The station at San Marcial is run by Raul Jimenez and his sister. They put women passengers up in a little lean-to off the back of the house.”
“Who gives a damn where the women sleep?” Cleo demanded.
“We do, knot head. See, they make male passengers sleep on shakedowns Jimenez puts in the hallway right next to the front door—the opposite end from the women. That’s real providential ’cause we don’t want to kill the actress when we blow Skye Fargo to hellangone.”
“Just how we gonna do that?” Spider asked.
Alcott’s cruelly handsome face eased into a smile. He lit down from his roan and unbuckled the straps of a big pannier. He pulled out a small, sturdy cask.
“Boys, this here is blasting powder. That’s thirty seconds of fuse poking out from the top. Enough powder to blow out a ton of solid rock. Lomax got it from one of his mining buddies. Two nights from now we’re gonna sneak it up to the door of the San Marcial station and touch it off.”
The other two men looked at each other and grinned. Then Spider looked at Alcott again. “That should do it, but are you sure it won’t kill the actress?”
“Not if we set it back from the door at least fifteen feet. That should blow out the front of the station but leave the back standing—it’s a good-size house and built solid.”
“Yeah, but don’t that mean we’ll kill Lomax’s mystery man?”
Alcott smiled as he tucked the cask away again. “If we’re lucky. It’ll kill all the men ’cept for Raul, and he’s a gutless wonder we ain’t gotta worry about. And then—who needs the motherlovin’ stagecoach? Lomax just wants that bitch in his hands by June nineteenth, right? So we snatch her and take her north ourselves to Blood Mesa.”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Spider enthused. “We don’t even gotta tell Lomax exactly when we get her there—we should have her all to ourself for at least a couple days.”
By now Cleo was thoroughly confused. “Why would we want an actress?”
Spider and Alcott exchanged a mirthful glance.
“Don’t worry, Cleo,” Alcott assured him. “You’ll figure it out.”
* * *
By June twelfth, the third day of the stagecoach journey to Santa Fe, Fargo suffered a combination of sheer boredom and nerve-racking expectation. His hair-trigger alertness never wavered, a fact that tickled Booger no end.
“Look out, Fargo!” he shouted toward the end of the morning. “Oh, Jesus, Joseph and Mary! There’s a big turtle up on the right. Could be an assassin.”
“Just cut the capers and keep a weather eye out. That gun-thrower back at Vado was no turtle.”
“Ahh, you quivering old crone, that was two days ago. Did he show at Hatch or Caballo Lake? Just a drifter headed down to Old Mex. Son, you’re building pimples into peaks.”
“The fandango’s coming,” Fargo assured him. He removed his hat and whipped the dust from it. “Christ, not even noon and it’s hot enough to peel the hide off a Gila monster.”
“It’ll be hotter when we meet in hell,” Booger opined. He pulled his flask out of his shirt. “Kickapoo Jubilee will perk you up. Let’s dip our beaks.”
Fargo downed a jolt of the powerful Taos Lightning and shuddered as it mule-kicked him. He hadn’t had a beer since his arrival in El Paso. And he missed his saddle after long hours on a hard seat.
Booger eyed the flask thoughtfully before he tucked it away. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Catfish, I’m horny as a brass band. When we bed down at San Marcial tonight, let’s get them two dolly birds snockered and see can we play hide-the-sausage with ’em.”
“Some knight of the ribbons you are. With me it’s always the lady’s choice.”
Booger snapped the reins and splashed an amber streamer off the rump of the nearside wheeler. “Pah! Easy for you to say. You never get woman hungry like the rest of us poor, ugly bastards. They flock to you like flies to syrup. But I’m fearful, Skye, truly fearful. A man can explode into a thousand little pieces if he don’t relieve the pressure.”
Fargo shook his head in disbelieving wonder. “Booger, you’re so full of shit your feet are sliding. You can’t explode from being horny.”
“Why, you soft-brain! It’s been proved by them professors at them colleges in France and England. Proved by them as knows! See, a man is just like a volcano. He’s got to have him a woman now and agin; got to relieve the pressure inside him, or else he’ll explode like a steam boiler. Look it up in the almanac.”
“If you ever explode, you big galoot, you’ll exterminate the buffalo. Well, you’ve always got Rosy Palm and her four daughters.”
“True, thank God. The poor man’s harem. It comforts a man to know he can hold his own.”
Fargo used his army binoculars to scan the terrain all around them, cultivated fields to his left, arid flats and distant mountains on his right. All looked peaceful nor could he spot any good ambush points. Nonetheless, his inward eye kept seeing that two-gun trouble-seeker back at Vado with the shifty, bone-button eyes. Fargo’s instincts told him an attack was soon coming and that he must be ready for it.
The readiness was all . . .
They reached the swing station at Lago Seco, and while the stock-tender switched out the teams the weary passengers climbed out to stretch out the kinks. Fargo handed Kathleen Barton out, astonished again at the woman’s beauty. She wore her hair tucked up under a wide-brimmed straw hat with gay “follow-me-boys” ribbons streaming behind it in the hot breeze.
She surprised him by meeting his gaze frankly. “I place most men into three categories, Mr. Fargo: heroes, villains or fools. Our driver definitely fits that last category. But I’m not certain yet about you.”
Fargo was about to reply to that unexpected comment when he was interrupted by Malachi Feldman. “Mr. Fargo, may I inquire as to which sign you were born under? I’d dearly love to work up your chart—for a nominal fee, of course.”
Booger leaped down and almost squashed the little man. “Emigrate, you half-faced goat!” He brandished a fist as solid as a cedar mallet. “Or would you like a taste of the knuckle dusting?”
“Come down off your hind legs, Boo
ger,” Fargo snapped. “The doctor is harmless.”
“Pah! He’s a load in my pants.”
Malachi backed discreetly away but stared spitefully at Booger. “You, sir, have stars lined up in the Eighth House of the Zodiac. Your days are numbered.”
The preacher had climbed out behind Lansford Ashton. He, too, glowered at Booger. “Repent, Mr. McTeague, before it is too late. Do not wait until you are on your deathbed, for there is no sudden leap from Delilah’s lap to Abraham’s bosom. You are bound for a fiery hell!”
“Turn off the tap, you spineless psalm singer. I will not leap from Delilah’s lap until I’ve had full use of it. You may have Abraham’s bosom to yourself, for you strike me as a sniveling sodomite. As for your fiery hell, I druther play checkers with Satan than a harp in heaven, for a man should be with his kin.”
“I’m curious, friend,” Ashton addressed Booger. “It strikes me as unusual that a man of your evident size and strength—and I might add rough-hewn intelligence—should bullyrag everyone around him, even women.”
“Bullyrag, is it?” Booger narrowed his eyes. “Aye, you’re a sly one. Spouting Latin and dressed like a peacock, yet I’ve glommed that pepperbox pistol in your valise. You’ve had it factory-rigged to fire all the barrels as one. How poor can a man’s aim be that he needs to fire six bullets at once to hit his man?”
“A man who pauses to aim a handgun is likely to die, isn’t that right, Fargo?”
“That’s how I see it,” Fargo answered calmly, holding Ashton’s eyes until the man walked off to join the actress.
“Bad medicine,” Booger muttered, watching him.
“I don’t like him,” Trixie said. “He looks like a gentleman, but he leaves a smear like a snail.”
“A gentleman,” Booger scoffed, “is a fool who gets out of the bathtub to piss.”
“Did you really spot a pepperbox in his valise?” Fargo asked Booger.
“Did I speak Chinee, Trailsman? Aye, it was a pepperbox—with six beans loaded.”
“Interesting,” Fargo said.
* * *
As darkness settled over the Rio Grande Valley like a black cloak, Fargo lighted the coach’s four oil-burning lamps, equipped with reflectors, for night driving. Almost three hours later they reached the station at San Marcial, their final destination until morning.
Fargo untied the Ovaro and the two team replacements and watered them before turning them out into the large paddock. All three horses were holding up well with the slow pace and lack of any weight to pull or carry. But the Ovaro, eager for a run, repeatedly bumped his nose into Fargo’s shoulder.
“I know, old campaigner,” Fargo soothed him, giving his withers a good scratch. “You ain’t cut out for plodding along and neither am I. But we’ll stretch out your legs soon.”
Before he joined the others inside, Fargo grabbed his Henry and made a quiet search around the station in the buttery moonlight. He found no sign of human tracks or intruders, and the singsong cadence of insects suggested no one lurked nearby. Still, that uneasy prickle on the back of his neck had returned—the “truth goose” that often warned him of danger.
The surrounding, shape-shifting shadows hid trouble, and Fargo felt sure it would hit before sunrise.
He washed up at the pump out back, stood quietly listening to the night for a few minutes, then went inside.
This station, run by Raul Jimenez and his younger sister, Socorro, was one of the best on the line. The moment he stepped inside he saw the straw shakedowns in the short entrance hall, provided for male passengers. One of the men had lugged in a trunk for the actress and Fargo veered around it into the large main room.
The usual long trestle table dominated the room, but ladder-back chairs, scarred from spurs, replaced the benches. A big, doorless archway led into the kitchen, and Fargo spotted a roasting range of mud brick and mortar with a tin canopy over it to channel smoke and smells into a flue in the chimney.
Just then, Socorro Jimenez turned from the range to bring in a platter of biscuits and spotted Fargo. The pretty, shapely Mexican gave Fargo a welcome-big-boy smile as big as Texas—a smile he suddenly felt throbbing in his hip pocket. She wore a peasant blouse, baring one light brown shoulder, and a wild cascade of dark hair framed her face with wanton appeal.
Well, now, Fargo thought, instantly recognizing the message those smoldering black eyes sent to him.
All the passengers except Kathleen Barton were already seated at the table.
“Mr. Jimenez,” she said in her imperious tone, “will you kindly show me to the ladies quarters? I’d like to freshen up before evening repast.”
“Pues, claro, senorita,” Raul replied, hovering around the great lady like a paid toady. “This way, por favor.”
She gazed at the Trailsman. “If you’re done ogling that serving girl, Mr. Fargo, would you kindly bring my trunk?”
Booger grinned wickedly. “He’ll need a moment before he can walk right, muffin.”
She stoically ignored this crudity, following Raul to the rear of the house. Fargo hoisted the trunk onto his back and trailed them.
“What is the meaning of this?” he heard her exclaim as he reached the slope-off room.
The Jimenezes had provided female passengers a small bedroom with a threadbare, rose-pattern carpet and a washstand with enameled pitcher and bowl.
“Pues, senorita, it is the best we can afford,” Raul apologized.
“I don’t mean the room. I mean that.”
She pointed to one of the iron bedsteads, its legs set in bowls of coal oil.
“That keeps the bedbugs off, Princess,” Fargo informed her, struggling to keep a straight face. “Won’t help much with the snakes, though.”
“The . . . ?” Her face suddenly drained of color. Like an Indian at a treaty ceremony, Fargo had perfected the silent “abdomen laugh.” By now, however, his belly ached.
“If one crawls in your bed during the night,” he advised her, “don’t move a muscle. I’ll get it out in the morning. However, it may require some groping under the blankets.”
“Oh, you’d love that!”
Fargo winked at her. “You’d love it even more. I’m . . . experienced in these matters.”
She was on the verge of throwing the pitcher at him, so Fargo beat a hasty retreat. By now Socorro had laid the table with a veritable feast in Fargo’s eyes: hot beef, chili beans and sourdough biscuits and tortillas. Booger had devoured a biscuit in one bite before Pastor Brandenburg spoke up.
“Sir! We have not said grace.”
Booger quickly did the honors for him: “We thank the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—he who eats the fastest gets the most.”
Fargo tied into his meal with gusto, glancing up as Socorro returned to the kitchen for more biscuits. She shot him an inviting, cross-shoulder glance, the moist tip of her tongue quickly brushing her upper lip. Booger winked at Fargo. The human bear had already drained a half bottle of pulque, and Fargo sensed a hullabaloo coming.
The actress returned, clearly in a foul mood. She stared at the table as if it were piled with raw tripes.
“It ain’t Delmonico’s,” Booger boomed out with his mouth full, leering at her. “But a hungry dog must eat dirty pudding. These beans’re delicious.”
“Beans?” Kathleen repeated in a horrified tone. “Again?”
“’S’matter, cottontail,” Booger teased around his mouthful of food. “’Fraid you’ll toot in front of us?”
She turned scarlet, which only egged the drunk reinsman on. Banging both fists on the table to keep the beat he bellowed out:
Beans! Beans! Good for your heart!
The more you eat, the more you fart!
The more you fart, the better you feel!
So eat your beans at every m
eal!
Like a professor proving a theorem, he suddenly tilted sideways on his chair, lifted one stout leg, and broke wind with resounding force.
“Did an angel speak?” he said innocently, staring at the petrified actress. Her face crumpled in disgust and revulsion and, as if spring-loaded, she stormed off in high dudgeon.
“Fox smells his own hole first!” he shouted to her retreating back.
Nonchalantly he reached across the table for her untouched plate.
“Ain’t she silky-satin?” he barbed, scraping her supper onto his plate.
“Sir, you are a barbarian,” the preacher announced.
“Sheep dip, Bible thumper. I ain’t never shaved a man in my life. ’Course, I have cut a few throats in my day,” he added with a menacing glower. “Ask Fargo.”
Fargo, however, was staring into the kitchen, where Socorro was hidden from everyone’s view but his. One hand reached up to tug down her peasant blouse, baring two beautiful tits that suddenly gave him an appetite for something besides good cooking.
“Think I’ll have a look outside,” he told the others, and Socorro smiled.
6
His Henry to hand, Fargo slipped out into the moonlit yard. Socorro’s bold advances inside had lust throbbing in his blood, but even the rut need could not quell his gut conviction that serious trouble was about to erupt.
He circled the station, senses alert, Henry at the ready. For some reason he recalled his meeting in El Paso with Ambrose Jenkins and Addison Steele. Jenkins had quoted an anonymous letter sent to Kathleen: Behold! The day cometh.
The day being promised, Jenkins surmised, was the nineteenth of this month—the one-year anniversary of Kathleen’s public and scornful rejection of Zack Lomax’s marriage proposal. If Jenkins was right, her day was coming in one week.
But for Lomax to succeed, Fargo’s day had to come sooner. The stagecoach was deep into New Mexico Territory now. Maybe Fargo’s day was tonight. Maybe—
