High Country Horror (13 page)

Badger was leading Gladys along the base of the cliffs. He was smiling and singing and happy as a bluebird.

Fargo stayed hidden. He saw Badger hike to a point where two cliffs merge and turn to a solid wall of rock. Prospector and burro walked into the rock and out of sight.

“How the hell?” Fargo said. He let a few minutes go by and climbed on the Ovaro. A flick of the reins and he was out of the trees. His skin crawled with the expectation of taking a slug but not a single shot thundered from on high. He trotted to the spot where Badger and Gladys had vanished, and drew rein.

The cliff didn’t merge. There was a narrow gap, wide enough for a rider, leading to who-knew-where. Faint impressions in the dirt hinted that Gladys wasn’t the only animal to go through. Unless Fargo was mistaken, those impressions had been made by horse hooves wrapped in fur.

“Got you,” Fargo said, and grinned. He gigged the Ovaro and ramparts of rock rose on either side, blotting out most of the sunlight. The gap seemed to go on forever. He thought at any moment it would end, but it didn’t. By his reckoning he had gone more than half a mile when the cliffs gave way to a broad expanse of caprock and hard ground. In the far distance a black mesa reared.

Fargo drew rein. He rose in the stirrups but couldn’t spot Badger and Gladys anywhere. The burro’s prints were easy enough to follow—for a few dozen yards. Then the caprock began, and tracking became a tedious exercise of looking for scrapes and chinks, however slight. At first Fargo thought the trail was leading toward the black mesa but it led to the south of it, across miles of hot wasteland. The sun burned like a furnace. A lizard skittered from his path. He glimpsed the tail end of a snake slithering under a large flat rock; the tail had rattles.

The ground was nearly solid rock. Fargo found it increasingly harder to find sign. The minutes crawled into an hour and another hour. He was sweaty and thirsty and would like to rest but there was no cover, only the burning sun and the hot rock and the lizards and snakes.

When next Fargo glanced toward the black mesa he was to the west of it, and a lot closer. Almost as if Badger were taking a roundabout route to get there. Maybe it was the same route the Ghoul took, Fargo reflected. The better to hide his trail. This near, he saw that the mesa was sprinkled with dark pines and split by shadowed arroyos and recesses. Just the sort of place Apaches might use as a sanctuary—or a white man who kidnapped white women.

A flapping sound made Fargo forget the mesa. Turkey vultures were rising into the air directly ahead, their bald heads a vivid red. Their great wings rising and falling, they slowly gained altitude, moving faster as they climbed in ever widening spirals. He had the illusion they were coming out of the ground, but that couldn’t be.

Then the stink washed over him in an invisible wave of loathsome odor.

Fargo almost gagged. Quickly, he adjusted his bandanna so it was over his nose and mouth, sparing him from the worst of the reek. The Ovaro didn’t like it, either, and whinnied and shied. Fargo gigged it on to a basin about twenty yards across. A few straggling carrion eaters sluggishly sought the sky, one passing so close, he could count every feather.

Fargo had come across gruesome sights in his travels: pilgrims in a Conestoga, butchered by the Sioux; Mexican freighters, tortured by Apaches; a backwoodsman, clawed to death by a bear. But
this
was more gruesome than any of those. This was something different, something unnatural, something vile.

The basin had become a charnel pit. Bodies and pieces of bodies covered the bottom. Some of the remains were animal: deer skulls and hide and legs, the bones of bears, the complete skeleton of a horse, and a host of smaller bones from the likes of rabbits and raccoons. Most, but not all, had been stripped of flesh.

It was the other remains that interested Fargo: the human remains. Only four women had gone missing so it stood to reason there would be four bodies, or parts from four. But there were more, and not all of them were female.

Fargo counted nine human skulls. None of the skeletons was intact from the neck down. Judging by how the bones were scattered, it appeared to him that they had been chopped into chunks and pieces. He remembered Badger saying something about finding a leg, and put two and two together.

A splash of color on the other side prompted Fargo to circle around and dismount. Scarcely breathing for the stench, he descended. At the bottom was a pile of clothes with other garments scattered about—dresses and shirts and pants and boots and shoes. His nose and throat felt raw and when he took a breath his stomach tried to crawl up his throat. Flies rose in swarms. Maggots infested the rotting flesh. Fargo had to force himself to squat and examine the clothing. All the dresses were torn as if they had been ripped from the women who wore them.

All had a musty smell, as of long neglect, and were covered with dust.

Tufts of human hair poked from under the putrid mass of a dead doe. Fargo gripped the deer’s leg and flipped the carcass over. His insides did another flip-flop.

The hair was attached to a human head severed at the neck. A woman’s head, the skin long gone and the eyes long since rotted out or pecked out by the buzzards.

One of the first girls taken, Fargo figured. He lifted some of the clothes but couldn’t find any clue to who owned them. A crumpled dress lay to one side. He lifted it and shook it and a large black scorpion fell out and landed near his foot. Pincers waving, it raised its tail. Fargo jumped back. He went to put his hand down for balance and nearly put it on another scorpion.

The stink, the maggots, the flies—Fargo had to get out of there. He turned and scrambled up the side and reached for the Ovaro’s reins—only someone else had hold of them. “You,” he said.

“Me,” Badger answered, and cackled.

“You’re becoming a thorn in my side.”

“I like to think of myself as a pretty rose.” Badger was pointing his Sharps and the hammer was cocked. Marshal Tibbit’s Remington was tucked under his belt.

Fargo looked but didn’t see the burro. “Where did you come from?” He regretted it each time he opened his mouth; the reek was worse.

“Now you see me, now you don’t.”

“How can you breathe?” Fargo marveled.

“Easy.” Badger sucked a breath deep into his lungs and exhaled, smiling the while. “I’ve been doing it since I was in diapers. Comes natural by now.”

“You are a card.”

“Thought I was a thorn?”

Fargo nodded at the Sharps. “Don’t point that at me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Badger rejoined, and held out the Ovaro’s reins. “You take these and I’ll take your six-gun.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Sure I do. This makes twice I’ve got the better of you.”

“It’s no game,” Fargo said.

“Never thought it was.” The prospector backed off and gestured with the Sharps toward the mesa. “Walk that way. You’ll know when to stop.”

“Lower that rifle and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“Listen to you. I’m the one can blow you to hell if you so much as move wrong.” Badger’s voice hardened. “Do as I told you and walk.”

A dozen yards, and Fargo came on a another, smaller, basin. It was empty except for Gladys, who stood at the bottom dozing. “So this was where.”

“I knew someone was following me. Caught sight of you when you came out of the cliffs.” Badger made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Mighty careless of you, buckskin. How you’ve lasted so long is a mystery.”

“Now what?” Fargo asked.

The prospector raised the Sharps to his shoulder. “Do you really need to ask?”

Skye Fargo had learned long ago never to take anyone as they appeared to be. A stranger might smile and be sociable, and the moment Fargo turned his back, plunge a knife into it and steal his poke. A painted warrior bristling with weapons might appear ready to slay any white he came across, yet turn out to be from a friendly tribe. Yet knowing that, Fargo still found the habit hard to break. He’d taken for granted that the old prospector was harmless and now the old man was about to blow out his wick.

“Any last words?” Badger asked.

“You’re not the one I’m after. Why shoot me when you don’t have to?”

“I like the bonnets and the dresses,” Badger said. “I like to fondle them at night.”

“You can get them at any dress shop or most any general store,” Fargo stalled. His right hand was low at his side and he inched it higher.

“I don’t like people, remember? I don’t like towns. Every time I go into one, people poke fun at me. Laugh at me behind my back. And now the folks in Haven went and threw me in jail.” Badger was growing agitated as he talked and his mouth began to twitch.

“It’s stupid to die over a bonnet.” Fargo’s fingers brushed the bottom of his holster.

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” Badger said.

“I told you about the missing women.” Fargo cupped his right hand around the middle of his holster and his left hand around his hip.

“They don’t mean anything to me.”

Fargo nodded at the charnel pit. “You don’t care that he chops them up when he’s done with them?”

“Why should I? I didn’t know any of those folks. To me they’re just body parts.”

Fargo sighed and slid his right hand up to the grips on his Colt.

“I don’t care about the women. I don’t care about you. I don’t care about anyone but me,” Badger said.

“I’ll ask you one last time to lower the Sharps.” Fargo tensed for the draw. He would sidestep as he shot in case the rifle went off.

“All I care about is gold.”

The idea that popped into Fargo’s head almost made him smile. Keeping his voice casual he asked, “Have you looked up there?” He nodded toward the black mesa.

Badger looked. The Sharps dipped a couple of inches and he replied, “Why would I want to do that?”

“That’s where the townsfolk in Haven say some was found.”

“What are you talking about?” Badger asked suspiciously.

“I heard about it from the marshal. There was a man called Wells who found nuggets. He told everyone it was a big strike and he bought provisions and went back out but they never saw him again.”

“I never heard of any desert rat named Wells.”

“He worked at the livery. Prospected in his spare time. He disappeared about the same time as the first of the women.”

Badger blinked and said, “Why, it could have been him who did it.”

“The Ghoul?”

Badger nodded. “You saw what’s down in that pit. He’s killed men before. I bet he killed Wells.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you ain’t clever like me.” Badger lowered the Sharps and turned and stared at the mesa. “So that’s why he’s up there. It’s not the women. It’s the gold. He wants it for himself.”

Fargo took his hand off the Colt. “That’s where the Ghoul is?”

“You’re awful slow,” Badger said. “He has a secret place. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve seen him rubbing the women. He likes to rub and rub as if he can’t get enough.”

“You’ll show me where it is?”

“Find him yourself. All I want is the gold, damn it.” Badger walked down to Gladys and snagged the lead rope. “I can’t believe I never thought to look up there. All the times I’ve walked past it, and the times I snuck on up to spy on that fella you’re after.” He tugged on the rope and led Gladys up the other side. “We never see the nose on our own face.”

Fargo was quick to take the Ovaro’s reins and hurry after him. It didn’t nettle his conscience that he’d lied. It was either that or shoot the old prospector dead. “Wait up.”

Badger was pulling the burro as fast as he could walk. “Gold, you said. Nuggets. I wonder did he chip them from a vein or did he find them lying loose?”

“Can you at least tell me where you saw the Ghoul?” Fargo asked. “What part of the mesa?” It would help to narrow it down. The mesa had to be half a mile long and a quarter of mile wide.

“Up it a ways.”

“How far up? And on which side? The north? The south? The east? The west?”

“This is the one,” Badger said.

“What is?”

“I’m getting too old for this. I need a big strike so I can buy me a cabin somewhere and spend the rest of my days taking it easy in a rocking chair.”

Since Fargo had already made up a whopper of a story, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to add to it. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

“Keep your horse. I wouldn’t swap Gladys for anything.”

“Not that kind of deal,” Fargo said. “If you’ll tell me exactly where you saw the Ghoul, I’ll tell you the rest about Wells.”

Badger stopped. “There’s more?”

“Wells let drop a hint about where he came across the nuggets,” Fargo fibbed. “There’s a landmark he mentioned. It might help you find them.”

“If that’s so, how come no one else has gone after the gold before now?” Badger wanted to know.

“You know how people are. Most townsmen are too scared of hostiles to stray far from town. The farmers can’t take the time away from their crops and livestock. Others are just too lazy.”

“Are they ever. They expect the gold to jump into their pockets.”

“Not everyone has as much grit as you,” Fargo told him.

“I have grit?”

“You’re out here in the middle of nowhere all by your lonesome. It takes a brave man to do what you do.”

“I suppose it does at that.” Badger grinned. “I never thought of it like that but being a gold hound ain’t for cowards.”

By then they were in the mesa’s shadow. Badger stopped and said in earnest, “Meeting you was the luckiest day of my life.”

Fargo almost felt bad deceiving him.

“Now where is this landmark?” Badger turned toward the mesa. “Point it out.”

Fargo scanned the upper reaches. He had his choice of several prominent features. “Do you see that cleft near the top?”