by Sharpe, Jon
“I begrudge no man who desires peace, safety and a comfortable life,” Fargo replied. “But I’ve got jackrabbits in my socks, you know that. The moment I feel hemmed in, I push on. Besides, that monotonous, punkin-butter life holds no appeal for me. I’m a natural-born drifter and trouble seeker. And this stallion mounts the filly of his choice, not just one the law tethers him to.”
“Spoke like a man, by God! You ain’t as stupid as I look, catfish.”
A few minutes later Fargo again climbed topside to inspect their backtrail. He shaded his eyes with his hand and closed them to slits against the glaring sun and swirling dust.
“Riders on our six,” he called back to Booger.
“Red aboriginals?”
“Don’t seem likely—they generally avoid the white man’s roads and attack from the flanks.”
“P’r’aps those hired assassins have give up on parlor tricks and decided to hug.”
Again Fargo raised his field glasses and focused them finer. He spotted sombreros and crossed bandoliers.
“Mexican freebooters,” he reported. “Maybe a dozen to fifteen, riding hell for leather and closing on us fast.”
The lawless conditions in Mexico—where new “revolutions” were as frequent as the change of seasons—had given rise to closely knit bands of ruthless land pirates in the northern provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua. Disdainful of international boundaries, and leery of the Texas Rangers, they raided with impunity into New Mexico Territory knowing there was no organized authority to stop them. Fargo had faced their ilk before: kill-crazy marauders of no-church conscience who took a human life as casually as shooing off a fly.
“Hell’s a-poppin’!” Booger roared gleefully. “Best way to cure a boil is to lance it. Now it’s time for Booger’s Law!”
Despite the danger pressing ever closer, Fargo couldn’t resist a grin. He knew all about “Booger’s Law” because surprise was one of Fargo’s favorite tactics too: when being pursued, and unable to escape, sometimes the most effective action was to attack the attacker.
Booger reined sharply to the east, turning the team around on the dusty flat. Fargo grabbed the hoist rail and lowered the upper part of his body until his face was framed by one of the windows.
“We got a little barn dance coming,” he warned the passengers. “Kneel down as low as you can and hang on tight as ticks—you’re in for a wild ride.”
Everyone obeyed except Kathleen Barton, who coolly ignored him and remained upright in her seat.
“You bolted down, Princess?” he demanded. “That order applies to everybody.”
“I paid dearly for this seat, Mr. Fargo, and I have no intention of giving it up for that filthy floor.”
“All right,” Fargo said. “I’ll send Booger down to enforce it.”
She went pale as new gypsum and immediately crouched in the narrow space between her seat and the middle one.
“That’s it,” Fargo goaded just before he swung back up. “Say your prayers like a good girl.”
“Beast!” she flung after him.
By now Booger had the swift wagon pointed due south and was whipping the six-horse team to a frenzy, his blacksnake cracking and popping. “Hee-yah! Hee-yah, you spavined whores!”
Fargo braced his legs and climbed onto the roof of the wildly rocking coach. He went down flat between the trunks, laying the Henry’s long barrel on the cargo rack to steady his aim. The freebooters, no doubt fortified by their numbers and Dutch courage, continued charging unabated.
The horsemen began chucking lead even before they were within range. Fargo heard the insignificant popping sounds of their rifles, saw yellow geysers of sand begin to spit up from the ground out ahead. The Henry’s long, rifled barrel gave it excellent accuracy, but Fargo was up against moving targets from a moving target, and he held his powder until the enemy’s first rounds began snapping past his ears.
Even now Fargo would rather have waited longer, but one dead horse hanging up in the traces would halt the coach. He began levering and firing, laying his bead on riders and horses alike. Fargo hated like hell to kill horses, but given the number of riders and their brutal history he was intent only on reversing their dust.
Repeatedly the Henry bucked into his shoulder, brass casings glinting in the sun as they spat from the ejector port. Bullets chunked into the box and the top of the coach, but Fargo set his lips in grim determination and continued the lead bath.
A Mexican’s face disappeared in a red smear and he was wiped from the saddle. A horse crashed to the ground, another, and now Fargo heard the solid reports of Booger’s big-bore North & Savage—the gutsy driver had taken the reins in his teeth to free his hands. At first only one or two freebooters peeled off at the flanks and wheeled their mounts. But as the death coach hurtled ever closer, an unstoppable juggernaut of terror, the main body broke in a chaotic rout.
“Keep up the strut a little bit longer!” Fargo shouted down to Booger, fearing a false retreat—a favorite trick of Mexican raiders.
But the gang had supped full and didn’t regroup for another charge. By now the team’s bits were flecked with foam, and Booger reined them in to a walk to cool them out.
“Raggedy-assed greasers,” he announced. “All gurgle and no guts. Hell, them snot-nosed cadets at Chapultepec put up more fight in the war of ’forty-seven. We best spell the team, Skye—they’re blown in.”
He pulled back on the reins and kicked the brake forward. Fargo swung down and threw open the doors. “Everybody all right?”
The women and Malachi Feldman were whey-faced with fright. Lansford Ashton, however, seemed exhilarated. “We’re fine, Fargo, thanks to you and that crazy-brave whip-master.”
Pastor Brandenburg, clutching his big clasp Bible as usual, seemed oddly calm to Fargo. “You must be a veteran of shooting affrays, Preacher,” Fargo remarked as he offered a hand to Trixie.
“Not at all, Brother Fargo. My heart is still in my throat. But we were all in the Lord’s hands, and I had faith He would see us through.”
“Sheep dip, witch doctor!” Booger scoffed, appearing beside Fargo. “It was two pagans with big cojones what saved your bony ass.”
Fargo admired each woman as he handed them down. Kathleen looked quite fetching in side-lacing silk boots, a ruffled dress with pagoda sleeves, and a lace shawl. Her wing-shaped eyes were lined with just an alluring touch of kohl—a scintilla was currently fashionable among respectable ladies, but too much would be scandalous.
It was Trixie, however, who truly riveted both men’s eyes. Her impressive breasts were on brazen display, pushed to spectacular height by stays laced tight as turnbuckles.
“Now here’s something I don’t quite savvy, Fargo,” Booger said loudly enough for all to hear. “A woman will lay half of her jahoobies out to plain view as Trixie does. But will they show us an inch of the legs? Pah!”
“In polite society the word is ‘limbs,’” the preacher corrected him as the three men began to pile out. “And proper ladies do not reveal that portion of their anatomies because they inspire concupiscence in men.”
“Mebbe a dog will hump a leg,” Booger said low in Fargo’s ear, “but all this child yearns to see is fur and early morning dew.”
“Bottle it,” Fargo muttered, recalling Trixie’s hot confession to him back at San Marcial station. “I’m horny enough just looking at Trixie—I don’t need you stirring the coals.”
In his irritation Booger forgot to keep his voice down. “Horny, is it—you? That’s a banger! That little Mexer gal come in the house last night looking all-fired happy.”
“She sure did,” Trixie said, giving Fargo a tantalizing smile.
The actress goaded Fargo with a disdainful twist of her lips. “It seems your next conquest is at hand, Mr. Fargo.”
Fargo touched his h
at. “Hope is a waking dream, Miss Barton.”
“Mr. Fargo, your sign must be the bull,” the astrological doctor piped up.
“Oh, Fargo is full of the bull, right enough,” Booger said, bulging a cheek out with his tongue.
Lansford Ashton laughed, enjoying all of it. “Miss Barton, some think I have a flair for composition. Perhaps there is enough material in this journey for a good play of the bawdy persuasion?”
“I am an actress, Mr. Lansford, not a temptress.”
He bowed by way of apology. Fargo had the distinct impression that Kathleen had an unfavorable opinion of the man. This despite Addison Steele’s assertion, back in El Paso, that the two of them would get along well. In fact, Fargo mused, nobody on this stagecoach seemed to like Ashton, nor did the man much care.
While the horses got a breather Fargo quickly ran a wiping patch down the Henry’s bore and reloaded the tube magazine.
“Mr. McTeague,” Kathleen said, “are we likely to reach a station soon?”
“Not until Los Pinos, Your Nibs, well after dark.”
“Then I suggest we enjoy a nooning while the team rests. I have a few things I’ll gladly share around. Mr. Fargo, will you kindly bring the wicker hamper on my seat?”
“Sure, let’s get outside of some grub,” Booger agreed eagerly.
The travelers moved to a small apron of shade under a pine tree beside the trail. Their eyes widened when she lifted the lid of the hamper: it was crammed with an astonishing array of delicacies, including pickled oysters, canned beef and ham, French rolls, cakes and confectionary of all sorts.
“No wonder you can spurn the way station food,” Trixie said.
Fargo munched on a roll and a few oysters. While the rest finished their meal he checked on the Ovaro and the spare team behind the coach, feeding them a little crushed barley from his hat. The rig teams would soon be switched out at a swing station just before the stretch of cottonwoods and pines known as Bosque Grande.
As the passengers were reboarding, however, the actress made a little cry of distress, pointing at the top of the coach. “Oh! Look, one of my trunks is missing!”
“Strap must’ve broke during the hard run,” Fargo said. “Don’t worry—it’ll be alongside the trail somewhere.”
Fargo was right—they spotted it only a third of a mile north. But the trunk had opened on impact, scattering its intimate and feminine contents all over like confetti: slim chemises, velvet-trimmed cloaks, walking and carriage dresses, hats and ribbons and caps and bonnets, jackets, gloves and wrappers, a lace-trimmed corset cover—and Fargo’s favorite, a pair of frilly red lace pantalets.
Booger whistled. “Christmas crackers! No wunner the horses been lugging since El Paso. And glom them dainties! Oh, Lulu girl!”
Fargo did glom them well as he helped the blushing actress gather up her belongings. He forced eye contact before surrendering the pantalets, which she quickly stuffed into the trunk.
“So you’re an actress and not a temptress, huh?” he teased her. “Well, that was mighty tempting. Is that what you wear when you play Juliet?”
“Or the Whore of Babylon?” Booger taunted from up on the box.
“Oh, go to blazes you . . . you boorish, arrogant . . . oh, damn both of you rude bumpkins!”
She fled back into the coach and Fargo and Booger laughed so hard they almost dropped the trunk again.
8
Fargo’s merriment, however, faded quickly as the coach rolled inevitably closer to the prime ambush region of the bosque.
“There’s one more swing station before Los Pinos?” he asked Booger.
“Aye, but it’s at Luna Bluff, Trailsman. And that means we hafta clear the hull damn Bosque Grande first—with a stale team that’s already wore down to the nubs.”
Fargo nodded, catching his drift. If trouble struck, they couldn’t count on outrunning it.
“Addison Steele ordered me to stick with the coach at all times,” Fargo said, thinking out loud. “But either we bend with the breeze or we break.”
“Spell that out plain. I’m a simple son of a bitch and no boy for riddles.”
“Lomax’s hired guns need to kill me first. That blast last night at San Marcial was meant for me—they could easy have planted the charge at the back of the station if they just wanted to kill Kathleen. And that anonymous letter she got sounds to me like Lomax means to kill her himself on June nineteenth.”
“Why, you glory-grabbing piker! They need to kill old Booger, too, happens they want to harm his passengers.”
Fargo grinned. “Believe me, old son, I count on that. That’s why I told your boss I would accept no driver but you. But see, it ain’t likely that Lomax’s dirt workers know that I’ve got a one-man army whipping this stage. To them, you’re just a big bastard who blocks out the sun—an easy target they can’t miss when they decide to shoot you. Assuming even a buffalo gun could drop you, which I doubt.”
Fargo paused when the stage topped a low rise and he spotted the vast bosque, spread out like a dark painting before them, the Rio Grande looping through it. He had once contracted as a fast-messenger rider for the army in these parts and knew it was a bushwhacker’s paradise.
“So let’s give them me,” Fargo resumed. “I’m gonna ride on ahead and let them have at it.”
Booger mulled this, then nodded. “Needs must when the devil drives, eh? And the devil is driving this rig. Old Booger will make them dry-gulchers the sorriest sons of bitches in seventeen states if they come at this rig.”
“I’ll leave the double-ten,” Fargo said, “so you’ll have plenty of firepower. If I trusted that damn Ashton, I’d put him up here on the box with you—he looks like he could handle himself in a frolic.”
Booger spat tobacco on the rump of the offside wheel horse. “Let’s not and say we did. I’d sooner have a smallpox blanket wrapped around me. I’ll wager a dollar to a doughnut hole that oily-tongue sharper is on Lomax’s payroll.”
“I wonder,” Fargo said, leaving it there. “See you in hell, pard.”
He grabbed his Henry and tossed down his saddle and bridle. Then he swung off the box while the stage was still rolling at an easy pace. Fargo easily kept up as he untied the Ovaro.
“Where are you going?” Kathleen Barton challenged, poking her head outside.
“Crazy,” Fargo called back. “Wanna come?”
“But you’re supposed to be my bodyguard!”
“It’s a body well worth guarding,” he assured her as the coach rolled ahead of him.
She flushed with indignation and Fargo laughed, tossing her a two-finger salute.
* * *
“Say, chummies, this spot is perfect,” Russ Alcott announced. “Damn fine cover and far enough off the stage road that we can make it to our horses if Cleo misses and Fargo comes after us.”
The three outlaws had reached a tangled deadfall in the dense bosque. Gnarled cottonwoods, usually found only in isolated patches along western rivers, had grown in profusion along this stretch of the Rio Grande. Over the decades, America’s heartiest tree—the pine—had filled in the open spaces between the cottonwoods’ spreading branches.
“I ain’t gonna miss,” Cleo declared with the conviction of a love-struck groom saying “I do.” He pointed east toward the narrow stage road. “Hell, that ain’t but a hunnert yards or so, with a nice opening so’s I can lay my bead. Old Patsy Plumb here”—he patted the hardwood stock of his carbine—“is gonna sink a big air shaft right through Fargo’s skull.”
The trio had left their horses hobbled along the river bank behind them.
“Even if Cleo misses,” Spider Winslowe said, “Fargo ain’t likely stupid enough to come at us, Russ, and just let us shoot him to rag tatters. Even afoot it’s rough slogging to move through these trees. And he can’
t spot us anyhow.”
“After the way that lanky fucker foxed us with the powder cask,” Alcott said, “I ain’t puttin’ a damn thing past him. Don’t get cocky, boys—this is a war, not a battle. I rate Fargo aces high as a survivor, and we ain’t the first swinging dicks that figured to snuff his wick.”
Spider thought about that and nodded. “You’ve packed heaven with plenty of fresh souls, Russ. If you rate Fargo that high, then I do, too.”
“Smart man. Now you two wait here. I’m going out to the trail and watch for the coach. There ain’t no way they can skirt the bosque, so they will be coming soon.”
* * *
After swinging past the coach, barely ducking in time when Booger loosed a streamer at him, Fargo still had over a mile of open trail. The Ovaro was champing at the bit to stretch out the kinks, so Fargo gave the stallion his head and let him rip.
Fargo, too, welcomed the hard run and the familiar feel of a curved saddle under him. All too soon, however, the bosque loomed just before him, and Fargo was forced to rein his reluctant Ovaro back to a trot. A faster pace would put the Concord too far behind him and defeat his purpose of serving as a tempting target in place of the stagecoach.
The killers would be expecting him on the coach, and since the shotgun rode to the left of the driver, that meant any ambush would come from west of the trail. As Fargo entered the dense woods, immediately feeling relief from the broiling afternoon sun, he reined in for several minutes to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting.
While he sat his saddle, waiting, he put his years of scouting experience to work. He sent his hearing out beyond the near distance, listening for the scolding of angry birds disturbed at human intrusion, or the warning calls of animals. Most of all, however, he kept close watch on the Ovaro’s sensitive nostrils and ears—his most reliable sentries when hidden danger lurked nearby.
Fargo slid his Henry from its boot and jacked a round into the chamber, setting the gun’s butt plate on his right thigh, muzzle pointing at the sky.
