by John Benteen
Reminiscing for only an instant, Fargo broke the gun, checked the bores. They twinkled flawlessly, no sign of rust or pitting. Each one of those cylinder bores could throw nine double-zero buckshot in a pattern against which, at short range, no man or animal could stand. That was why it was incomparable in close combat. It only needed pointing, not aiming, and it could not miss.
He’d attached a sling to the weapon, and now he slipped his arm through it so that the gun hung, barrels down, behind him. It seemed an awkward way to carry it—until Fargo, slipping his thumb beneath the sling, twitched it. Suddenly the barrels came up under his right arm, pointed forward, and in the same instant, his left hand shot across his body, ready to trip the triggers. If it had been loaded and fired, it would have sprayed a wide front with a lethal sleet of lead, and that, in this position, the gun was upside down, made not a jot of difference.
He transferred the gun to the other shoulder, performing the maneuver just as smoothly with the roles of his hands reversed. He was ambidextrous, able to use either hand with equal proficiency, a rare gift that had saved his life more than once.
The shotgun was the cornerstone of his arsenal. He spent a long time lubricating it, before restoring it to the chamois-skin case and laying it beside the Winchester.
Then he took out the bandoliers—heavy belts designed to crisscross over his torso. One held rounds for the .30-30, the other was heavy with fifty shotgun shells. Noting a speck of mould on that one, he carefully wiped it away, and then inspected the priming end of every shell and cartridge. Satisfied, he coiled the bandoliers on the bed, took out the pistol belt and hip-holster for the .38. The belt’s cartridge loops held rounds carefully prepared by Fargo, the slug of each notched crisscross, to open and expand on impact with flesh, thus packing tremendous shock and stopping power. Fargo had served on Mindanao in the Philippines during the Philippine Insurrection. The .38 had been standard issue then, for a cavalryman, but its normal loads would not stop the Juramentados—the drugged and fanatical Moros of that southern island, who, running amok in a killing frenzy, could absorb a whole cylinder and still chop down their man. The Army had gone to the .45 Automatic, for its greater stopping power, but Fargo hated automatics: they were poorly balanced and always jamming. He stuck by the .38, with notched bullets or hollow-points, and it worked. No matter where you hit a man, such a slug would put him out of action; in his time, he had stopped more than Moros with them.
Besides clothes and certain personal papers, the trunk was packed with extra boxes and belts of ammo. Over the years he had developed certain preferences and loaded his own ammunition and carried an ample stock with him wherever he went.
With the guns checked, he had another drink. Then his left hand flashed to his hip pocket, came out holding a strange-looking knife. Four inches of shining steel protruded from between folding handles of water buffalo horn. Fargo released a catch, flicked his wrist, and the handles flipped back into his palm, revealing another six inches of razor-sharp steel. He had got the knife in the Philippines, too, on Luzon. Made by the artisans of Batangas, it was without peer as a cutting weapon; Fargo had proved the legend that its point could be driven through a silver dollar at a single blow without dulling or deformation. He held the blade out level, in the dangerous way of the experienced knife-fighter, and made several adept passes, lunges, with his left. Threw it into his right hand, continued without interruption to cut the air, drive home an attack on an imaginary enemy. Then, so deftly it was a blur, he folded, locked the weapon and returned it to its special sheath in his hip pocket.
He replaced the weapons in the trunk, put on clean shirt, tie, set his campaign hat on his head at a jaunty angle. Thumbing out his watch, the kind used by railroad men because of its remorseless accuracy, he saw he had a couple of hours before meeting Varnell at the town hall. Time to look Alamo Wells over more thoroughly, starting at the nearest bar.
~*~
Which was named The Home Corral. At this time of day, it was not particularly crowded; a few townsmen, several horse-soldiers who were probably on twenty-four hour pass. Fargo ordered a large, cold beer and helped himself to the free lunch. With mug in one hand, sandwich in the other, he took a table in the corner, back to the wall, an instinctive precaution. He sipped the beer, ate, watched people wander in and out, part of his mind detached, part of it constantly alert.
That duality had been learned in a hard school. Apaches had killed his parents on their New Mexico ranch during their final flare of violence in the days of Geronimo, but they had missed the child hidden under some blankets. A neighboring couple had taken in the orphan boy—not out of generosity, but because they wanted the unpaid labor. At the age of twelve, he’d had enough of slavery, curses and abuse; he ran away, never looked back. Since then, he’d punched cows, cut timber, roughnecked in oil fields, fought in the prize ring, turned his hand to whatever he could find, even once serving a term as bouncer in a Louisiana whorehouse. But when he’d joined the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, he’d found his true vocation—soldier and fighting man. A hitch in the cavalry in the Philippines after Cuba, and then he’d gone in business for himself. Now he hired out to fight, his skills at the service of the highest bidder. He was not choosy about what he did, so long as it did not outlaw him in the United States. And he liked money—lots of it. The things he wouldn’t do for it could be listed on the back of a postage stamp.
He’d made a lot of it in the Mexican Revolution, but he’d spent a lot, too. He’d work a while, make a big stake, go on a spree. Gamble, drink, indulge his taste for good-looking women; and then, when he was broke and jaded with the easy life, look for another job to lean him down, stretch his mind and body to their limits, and fill his pockets. Wholly professional, he had, over the years, become top man in his hard field, and he did not come cheap. Now, sipping the beer, he wondered if these ranchers down here along the border were really prepared to meet his price. Well, he’d soon find out.
Likely, if they didn’t, he’d cut it, something he never used to do. But nowadays jobs were getting scarce and, for that matter, he wasn’t getting any younger. Sooner or later, a man’s reflexes slowed down, along with his legs; wits and eyes dimmed. He had a few good years left; but for that matter, the demand for a man like him wasn’t likely to outlast him. The West was filling up, now, taming down. He had to take what he could get while he could get it.
Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about growing old. Few men in his profession did. It was not something he had any desire to do. Winding up like, say, old Wyatt Earp, sunning himself in his rocking chair in Los Angeles, a parody of his former greatness. There were others, less fortunate, Fargo could name, too; he had seen them—once proud men now panhandling and living on cheap wine, sleeping under bridges, massaging their arthritis with horse liniment. No. He would keep on going until the inevitable. Somewhere, right now, the bullet with his name on it might be in the cylinder of a Colt or the tube of a Winchester. Better that than growing old.
He ground out his cigar; it tasted bitter.
He drained his glass, signaled for another beer.
Waiting for it, he watched the kid lieutenant at the bar.
Shavetails were no novelty to Fargo; he’d broken in plenty of them in his time. There was, when you came down to it, no more miserable creature on God’s earth than a freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and by the looks of him, the lanky boy there was as green as they came. Likely the old and wise non-coms had been riding him hard, giving him a rough time. Reserve, National Guard, likely: he didn’t look like a member of the Club, a West Point graduate. He looked, in fact, as if he’d lost his last friend, staring down into his glass of beer.
Fargo grinned faintly. Well, it was a phase they all had to go through. You grew up quick, got educated fast when you went on active duty with the cavalry, and it was a bitter process that separated the men from the boys. But it was like reaching puberty, there was no way of bypassing it. If
the kid there had what it took, ten years from now he’d be a major or a light colonel and scaring the living Jesus out of the second johns who reported to him.
The beer came. Fargo settled back, remembering the old days on Luzon, Mindanao. Then, when the glass was half empty, he sat up straight. For a moment, he thought he was seeing things. It was almost as if his memories had conjured up the hulking, leathery sergeant who strode into The Home Corral.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Fargo whispered. “Brannigan.” And his lips thinned, his eyes went colder. He saw palm huts blazing, heard women and children screaming. He saw Brannigan holding the girl by her long, black hair, ripping clothes from her nearly breastless brown body ... Fargo drew in a long breath. Then he pulled his hat down over his eyes, sank back in his chair. If Brannigan saw and recognized him, there might be a fight. What was past was past. He had business to attend to, and ... Still, on the table before him, his hands clenched and unclenched, and he was not aware that they were doing that.
Brannigan, he saw, wore staff-sergeant’s stripes and had gotten fatter: he looked like an enormous sausage stuffed into the khaki uniform. His face was not so much tanned as red; his nose seemed to have been broken at least one more time since the old days, and there was a scar on his jawbone. But it was Brannigan, all right; and one thing about him had not changed—he was drunk. You could strip Brannigan naked, put him on a six-foot square raft in the middle of the ocean, and still he would contrive to be plastered by mid-afternoon.
Brannigan halted, looked around the bar. He saw the lieutenant there, and suddenly his eyes glittered, his thick lips curving in a grin of anticipation. It was an expression Fargo had seen before, the one that had always crossed Brannigan’s face when he had a fresh batch of raw recruits to work on. Lumbering across the room, he took a place at the mahogany beside the shavetail, hit the bar with a ham sized fist, roared in a voice like a rusty saw cutting oak, “Awright, Johnny! Git on the bit and bring the usual!”
The lieutenant, not looking at Brannigan, edged away a foot or two. Brannigan grinned at himself in the mirror behind the bar. The bartender brought a glass of beer, a double shot of rye. Brannigan picked up the whiskey, turned, raising the glass.
“Sure,” he said loudly, “and we’ll drink this one in memory of Kelly Atkins, the best horse-soldier that ever forked a mount! He’s dead and gone, through no fault of his own, and may the Devil have plenty of booze on hand in hell fer dear ole Kelly!” He tossed off the rye, chased it with the beer, sighed, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.
Fargo tensed. Kelly Atkins ... Yeah. Atkins and Brannigan had been a pair, two of a kind. Atkins the better soldier, the steadier man, but still wild enough; Fargo remembered the scheme they’d worked together on Luzon. A dollar a month from every man in the platoon, or, as platoon sergeant and section leader, they’d see he got gigged, wound up on extra duty or court-martialed. Extortion, pure and simple, and a dollar was a thirteenth of a private’s monthly pay. Atkins, the smarter of the two, had thought it up, Brannigan enforced it with his fists. And Fargo, then squadron sergeant-major, had put a stop to it.
“Dear ole Kelly Atkins,” Brannigan went on, signaling for another drink. “Dead and gone. Run over by a bunch of cows. And all because his platoon leader wouldn’t give him a stirrup when his horse went down. All because his platoon leader hoisted tail and run out when the bullets flew, down there on the ole Rio Bravo! Ah, well, we all got to go sometime. But what a way to go—because a fancy college kid that oughta be home suckin’ his mother’s titty instead of wearin’ khaki lost his guts!”
The room was silent, and, Fargo realized, all eyes were focused not on Brannigan, but on the young shavetail at whom the Irish sergeant was staring mockingly. The young man kept his head down, staring at his beer glass.
Then Brannigan’s hand shot out. “By your leave, lieutenant!” He jerked the shavetail’s shirt tail out. “Less see that yeller streak ye got on your backbone.”
The young man jerked up his head, turned. Next to Brannigan, he looked thin and frail, but his eyes were blazing in his handsome face. “Sergeant, that will be enough.”
“Will it, now, sor?” Brannigan stepped away from the bar, hooking big thumbs in his web belt. “Disrespect to an officer is it now? Well, I’ll tell ye a little secret, sor. There ain’t much respect in this outfit fer a man that dogs it when his buddies are under fire!”
“Sergeant, you are insubordinate.” The boy’s voice trembled.
“Me? Why, beggin’ the lieutenant’s pardon, but ole Francis Xavier Brannigan knows the regulations. And the fact is, sor, ye’ve got no rank! Ye’re suspended from all duties until yer hearin’, and ye ain’t nothin’ in this man’s army! Not flesh nor fowl, nor good red herrin’—nothin’ but a snot-nosed kid with a yeller liver!”
His voice rang out across the room. Fargo, watching both of them from beneath his hat brim, felt his stomach turn. Now was the time for the boy to act, to take a swing at Brannigan. He had, of course, no chance at all, but that was not the point. Challenged like that, a man disgraced himself not by being whipped, but by not fighting back at all.
But the young lieutenant did not fight. He drew in a breath almost like a sob. Stepping wide around the hulking sergeant, he started for the door. Brannigan tripped him. The boy went down on one knee. Slowly, he got to his feet. Brannigan watched, waited, grinning. But instead of turning on him, the shavetail strode toward the door, back straight, trying to muster all his dignity. He had no dignity. He had not fought, and besides, his shirttail was out.
Fargo felt a kind of relief when he vanished through the door. Brannigan guffawed, slapped the bar. “Well, I said it, didn’t I? Goddam Eastern college brat, no guts in ’em! Good ole Kelly can roast content in hell, now!” He swept his gaze around the room, harvesting glances of admiration—and of fear.
And then his eyes shuttled past Fargo, quickly came back. Brannigan frowned, stood up straight.
“Hey, you,” he called.
Fargo did not move. Brannigan took a step toward him. “You with the Rough Rider hat. You look at me when I speak to you.”
Fargo sighed, leaned back in his chair, tipped back the hat. “Hello, Brannigan,” he said.
The big sergeant stood there frozen, staring. Then that grin split his face again. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought so. Neal Fargo.” He lumbered over to the table, stood there staring down at Fargo. “Where the hell’d you come from?”
“Here and there.”
Brannigan stood there, hands clenching and unclenching. Fargo knew what was in his mind. Primed for a fight, deprived of it, Brannigan was still keyed up, savage. “God damn,” he said. “You’re uglier than ever, know that?”
“Too bad.” Fargo sipped his beer.
“Beer,” Brannigan said. “A kid’s drink without you put some rye in it.”
Fargo said, “Go have yourself a boilermaker. On me. For old times’ sake.”
“Old times.” Brannigan spat the word. “Ole times when me and Kelly Atkins took a lot of crap from you. You think I’d drink on your money?”
“Suit yourself,” Fargo said.
“Atkins is dead, y’know.”
“So I heard. We all got to go sometime.”
“He was the best friend I ever had.”
“Maybe the only one,” Fargo could not help saying.
“You’re glad he’s dead, huh? That tickles you.”
Fargo said, “Brannigan, I don’t give a happy damn about Kelly Atkins one way or another. It’s been a long time since Luzon. Now, go have yourself a drink and leave me be.”
“Scared, huh? Scared to death of ole Francis X. Brannigan, ain’t ye, Fargo? Well, you better be. I can whip your ass.”
Fargo sighed, stood up. “Brannigan, I think I proved you couldn't a long time ago. Up in Pampanga province, when your platoon set fire to that village, tried to rape that girl.”
“They was Insurrectos. She was a spy.”
“T
hey were rice farmers that didn’t know a damned thing about the revolution. And she was a fourteen year old kid that just happened to be the first female you got hold of.”
“She was a Flip whore. All them Flip women are whores. Maybe she was your whore, Fargo.”
Fargo said tautly, “So it didn’t last, huh? Okay, Brannigan. You’ll get another chance. But later, eh? I’ve got business to tend to in about an hour, and I don’t want to get all marked up right now.”
“Sure, it would ruin your pretty looks, wouldn’t it?”
“Likely,” Fargo said and drained his glass—and then threw the mug hard straight in Brannigan’s face.
Even as it smashed home, he was out and around the table. One fist drove hard into Brannigan’s gut; rank whiskey breath whooshed out of the sergeant’s mouth. Fargo’s right came over, hit Brannigan on the temple. Brannigan reeled, off balance. Fargo came in quickly, drove a knee into the sergeant’s groin. Brannigan, trying to raise his fists, doubled over in agony. Fargo came down hard on the back of Brannigan’s neck, just at the base of his skull, with the blade of his right hand. Brannigan’s knees gave way, and he flopped over on his back. He struggled weakly to rise. With measured force, Fargo kicked him on the jaw’s point. Brannigan’s teeth clicked and his mountainous body went wholly limp. Fargo watched him closely for a moment, then, sure he was out, bent and fished Brannigan’s automatic from its holster. Going to the bar, he handed it to the counterman. “Give him this when he wakes up,” he said. He took out a cigar, lit it, and then went out. It was not, of course, finished with Brannigan yet—that is, if he stayed in Alamo Wells. But for the time being, he could go to the conference without looking like something played with by a cougar.
Fargo’s mouth twisted. As many barroom fights as Brannigan had had, he should have learned long ago that mouth counted for nothing. What counted was who landed the first blow. But, then, Brannigan had always been stupid, Atkins had been his brains ...
