New Mexico Madman (9781101612644) (10 page)

“Back yonder at that burned-out station, Pol—Polva—”

“Polvadera.”

“Yes. I seen you hunkered down on your heels studying the ground for a long time. What didja figure out?”

“Well, judging from the prints—especially the overlaps—I'd guess we got about twenty renegades raiding in these parts. Their mounts are a mix of shod horses, likely stolen from whites, and unshod mustangs stolen in raids on other tribes. After the raid they headed due east.”

“Twenty,” she repeated, biting her lower lip. “Are they gonna attack us?”

“How long is a piece of string? All Indians are notional. Could be they left these parts for better targets.”

“Twenty,” she said again, and Fargo saw her chin tremble. Still thinking, he realized, about what Methuselah told them last night at Los Pinos, the stupid old goat.

“Listen,” he told her firmly, knowing that Kathleen, too, was hanging on every word, “there's no call to go puny. Everybody back in the land of steady habits believes all wild Indians are expert horsemen. But Apaches are mostly indifferent to horses—most would as soon eat one as ride it. They prefer sneak attacks on foot, but the open country around here forces them to ride.”

“That's good?”

“Hell yes, it is. We'd be in a lot tighter spot if this was twenty Comanches or Kiowas. They practically live on their horses. But with Apaches, a mounted attack won't be near as dangerous.”

“You mean, you think we got a chance?”

His sturdy white teeth flashed in a smile. “Honey, I
always
plan to win.”

The wink he gave her told her his boast included winning with women, and she encouraged his confidence with a flirtatious smile.

Malachi Feldman poked his head outside. “What about the others, Mr. Fargo? The white men who attacked you yesterday—think you scared 'em off?”

“They're mercenaries,” Fargo replied, “and not likely to draw most of their wages until they finish the job. But they ain't stupid enough to try attacking us in this open country. They'll send in their card later, but I'd wager we're all right for now.”

Fargo said nothing about the mirror flashes he and Booger had spotted earlier today. Flashes traveling in relay—and both men knew there were no U.S. Army mirror stations along this route.

“‘Honey, I
always
plan to win,'” Booger mimicked when Fargo turned back around. “You'll play push-push with her next while old Booger will be forced to skin the cat. Well, you best poke her quick, catfish. What you told Trixie just now—that was turning dung into strawberries.”

“How you figure that?”

“Happens them 'Paches notch their sights on us, it won't matter a jackstraw how piss-poor they ride. You know damn good and well them red sons is some pumpkins at marksmanship, and they got plenty of rifles. Most Injins count on big medicine to guide a bullet, but 'Paches have learned to aim. Twenty raiders agin two of us, Fargo.”

“Ain't
you
the sunshine peddler. There's three other men along.”

Booger howled like a dog in the hot moons. “
Men?
Fargo, this ain't no peyote dream. The God-monger and the stargazer is both worthless cheese dicks. Hell, neither one of 'em is even heeled.”

“Ashton has got mettle in him. And his pepperbox will chuck plenty of lead in a close-in fight.”

“Aye, but he's saving them whistlers for me and you.” Booger loosed a streamer, barely missing Fargo. “Use to was, you found only by-God
men
west of Big Muddy. Now it's all these mail-order yacks wearin' pretty conchos and dressed in reach-me-downs from stores. Christmas Crackers! These gussied-up dudes like Ashton would starve and go naked without stores.”

Booger was a complainer by nature, but Fargo knew he was right in the main. It had already begun: the methodical destruction of the American West, soon to be incinerated to ashes by the inflammatory gas of “expansionist” politicians and their sidekicks, the merchant capitalists and their new “investment consortiums.” The buffalo, once found in thundering herds numbering into the hundreds of thousands, was now on the wane, and the Plains tribes would inevitably follow. And before too long, the one-man outfits like Skye Fargo, too, would be relics of the past, ground up in a profiteering onslaught of mines, railroads, timbering and farming.

Booger's voice sliced into his ruminations. “Eyes right!”

Fargo glanced east and felt his stomach knot into a fist. Puffs of dark smoke were rising above the horizon.

“Apaches,” Booger announced. “And that smoke talk is all about us.”

10

By turns Booger cursed, nursed and cajoled his exhausted team northward, resting them a few minutes every half hour. Fargo helped him harness the two spare bays into the lead, but the stronger horses were fighting four weaker ones and the coach still plodded along slower than a man walking.

The afternoon had begun to fade as they reached the time of day Fargo called “between dog and wolf,” neither day nor night.

“Fargo, this shit's for the birds,” Booger announced. “Mayhap we can reach La Joya by midnight or thereabouts, but this stretch of the road is called the Kidney Crusher—filled with washouts and holes. We'd hafta use the running lights or risk busting an axle, if you catch my drift?”

Fargo caught it. Apaches were not constricted, as were many other tribes, by superstitious taboos against nighttime warfare. Like the fierce Comanches, they did some of their bloodiest work in surprise raids after dark. And those four bright running lamps would be beacons guiding them to the slaughter.

“I'll scout ahead and find us a spot to camp,” Fargo said. “The team needs a long rest. And we'll be safer if we fort up. When you hear me fire one shot, bring the rig forward.”

He tossed down his tack and climbed off the coach. Kathleen poked her head out. “Where are you going, Mr. Fargo? And please don't tell me ‘crazy' this time.”

He explained the situation to the others. “You folks might's well step out and stretch your leg—uhh, limbs,” he corrected himself, grinning at the actress in the grainy twilight. “But stay close to the coach. Ashton, can you work a Henry?”

“I'm no marksman with a rifle, but I know how to work a repeater.”

“I'll leave it with you.” Even if the man was working for Lomax, Fargo reasoned, he wouldn't try anything now—he had no horse to escape on, and he needed Booger and Fargo in the face of this Apache threat.

Kathleen approached him while Fargo was checking his cinches and latigos. “Mr. Fargo, this delay troubles me. I open at the Bella Union on the twenty-first of this month. If we don't arrive in Santa Fe on the nineteenth, as scheduled, I won't even have time to recuperate from this horrid journey and attend dress rehearsal.”

“I've got the nineteenth on my mind, too,” Fargo assured her, “but for a different reason.”

“I understand your meaning. So have I,” she admitted. “I fear Lomax terribly. But the show must go on. We actors have our code, too.”

Fargo turned the stirrup and swung up and over. “I respect that, lady. We can make up for lost time later, maybe, but those horses are damn near dead in the traces. There's no help for it—things are the way they are.”

He touched his hat brim and gigged the Ovaro forward. Luck was with the travelers: less than a third of a mile ahead Fargo discovered a good spot in the lee of a small mesa, a circle of juniper trees with a small creek behind them. By the time the coach reached him and pulled off the trail, the last light had bled from the sky.

Fargo built a fire in a pit and put on a can of coffee to boil. He added his supply of hardtack and dried fruit to the last of Kathleen's hamper and a meager, somewhat odd meal was shared out.

“Booger and me will take turnabout on guard duty,” Fargo remarked as he sipped from a tin cup of coffee. “But everybody stay alert. Keep a close eye on my horse—he's a crackerjack sentry. You won't catch Apaches sneaking in, but he's trained to alert at the Indian smell.”

“I'll gladly take a stint of guard duty,” Ashton said. “You two need your sleep, too.”

Fargo shook his head. He had no proof against Ashton, but with Booger and Fargo both asleep, and the Ovaro available, it was too great a risk to trust him.

“'Preciate the offer,” he said. “But me and Booger are drawing wages to get you folks through.”

Trixie and Fargo had been exchanging coy glances in the flickering firelight. Booger noticed this and knew exactly what was on their minds. Now he watched Fargo from a sly, slanted, expectant glance. “Push-push,” he whispered.

The preacher had been nervous and withdrawn since learning of the Apache menace. Now he spoke up.

“I fear it is God's will that we are all about to be slaughtered by the Godless red horde. I urge all of you to make peace with our Creator and ensure your place in His kingdom. No matter the weight of your sins, if—”

“Ease off that calamity howling,” Fargo snapped, seeing the fearful look on the women's faces. “Just put some stiff in your spine, preacher. We're in a dirty corner, all right, but I've wangled out of worse.”

“No, no, Fargo,” Booger said, his tone conciliatory. “The skinny fellow with the big Bible is right—our time is at hand.”

Booger had been visiting with his flask, and Fargo realized immediately that something sly was in the wind. He watched Booger heave to his feet and square off in front of a startled and puzzled Kathleen Barton.

“Your Loveliness, those who own souls may wish to heed the holy man. However, I am a pagan, as is Skye Fargo. I have always been Fargo's favorite gaffer—when there's dirty work, not fit for the lowest navvy, he sends for me. Well, pretty, this time he has got us both killed. So what is the point of cowardly indirection when men are about to die? On behalf of Fargo, myself, and these other three . . . men here gathered, I have a sincere request.”

Oh
,
Christ
, Fargo thought, knowing Booger's grift well enough to suspect where this was headed.

“And what might that be?” the curious actress inquired, perhaps expecting a request to perform one of her notable theatrical speeches.

Booger drew his massive bulk up formally. “For the reason I have just plainly spoke—our looming deaths—I'm after wondering: Is there the slightest chance at all of viewing your naked form before we die?”

Trixie was the first to react—she burst out laughing. “Booger, you aren't serious, are you?”

“Do you mean serious by nature, sweet britches? No . . . no, I would say that I'm quite gay, in the main. But I am a strapping big lad, and you know how we big fellows are happy by nature, having little to prove and all. And, of course, I'm hopeful that you, too, will shuck your clothing if Miss Barton will.”

This was the first time Fargo had ever seen the actress look positively stupid.

“Now see here, fellow,” Ashton interceded. “Keep a civil tongue in your head. That's quite enough of that.”

“
Is
it, Latin man? Wouldn't
you
like to see her naked? Both of them?”

“That's not the—”

“You, stargazer?” Booger demanded of Malachi Feldman, whose embarrassed silence confessed for him.

Booger turned toward Brandenburg. “And you, holy man? No pious swamp gas, catfish. Don't
you
wunner what they look like stripped buck?”

“Sir, every man has his animal nature—”

“Ha-ho!” Booger exclaimed, looking at Kathleen. “The truth knocks him sick and silly. It's unanimous, America's Sweetheart. We who are about to die beseech you—strip.”

Even in the firelight Fargo could tell her face was flaming. “You impertinent scoundrel!”

“Scoundrel, is it? You are the most beautiful woman in America. How am I a scoundrel for merely giving voice to a desire that every red-blooded man with a cod feels? What can be the harm?”

“Sew up your lips, Booger,” Fargo snapped. “It was a nice try. But now you're humiliating the lady.”

“Pah!
You're
the one who hinted you'd be under her petticoats before we reach Santa Fe—‘the cat sits by the gopher hole,' you said.”

Kathleen stared at Fargo, then back at Booger. “Apparently,” she said, her tone brittle as skim ice, “I am trapped between the Scylla of arrogance and the Charybdis of vulgarity.”

Booger looked to Fargo for a translation, but the Trailsman could only shrug.

“Sit down, Booger,” Fargo said. “You flap your gums too much. You're an honest man but you don't have to say
every
damn thing that comes to your mind.”

“It's the tormentin' itch, Fargo,” Booger said sadly as he plopped down beside his friend. “The tormentin' itch.” He leaned closer and whispered: “But as I promised you in El Paso: we
will
see her naked. Old Booger has his tricks.”

There was an awkward silence after this bizarre farce. Fargo formed balls of cornmeal and water and tossed them into the hot ashes of the campfire to bake—corn dodgers for tomorrow's breakfast.

While he thus busied himself he listened to the reassuring insect hum, rising and falling like a person breathing. The indigo sky overhead was silver-peppered with a vast explosion of stars. To protect his night vision Fargo avoided gazing into the fire as the others were doing.

Instead, he watched the shape-changing shadows beyond the glow of the blood-orange flames. In this ancient land of Coronado, where foolish men chased golden chimeras called El Dorado and Cibola, Fargo always felt it—danger, yes, always, but also the ancient mystery and enchantment of New Mexico, where entire civilizations flourished and died centuries before the
Mayflower
was ever built.

Trixie's voice suddenly stirred him from his torpor like a slap to his face. “Well,” she said, heading toward the coach, “I ain't about to waste that nice little creek. I'm gonna have me a bath. You coming, Miss Barton?”

The actress glowered at Booger. “After that lustful soliloquy we just heard? I should think not. I may
add
clothing, not take any off.”

Trixie rummaged in the boot of the Concord, then returned carrying a towel and a twisted knot of lye soap. Her eyes met Fargo's. “Suit yourself. Me, I can't wait to get out of these clothes. I just hope none of them Apaches sneak up on me—and me all alone back there.”

Booger dug an elbow into Fargo's ribs. “Push-push.”

“You go on and get in the water, Trixie,” Fargo said. “I'll be along directly to make sure you're all right.”

“How gallant, Sir Lancelot,” Kathleen barbed.

“Oh, he lances a lot,” Booger quipped, trying to keep his voice low and failing as usual.

“Yes,” Kathleen agreed. “This will be his second . . . tournament in three days. Pity, isn't it, Mr. Fargo, that you'll have to wait until Santa Fe for any new conquests?”

“Oh, but the cat sits by the gopher hole,” Booger reminded her.

“Scandalous,” the preacher muttered. “And with wild savages all around us.”

More awkward silence as the fire snapped and sparked. Soon a strong and pleasing voice—Trixie breaking out into trilling song as she bathed—reached them from the creek behind the trees:

French girls flirt with bold élan,

German girls cry, Danke schoen!

British gulls round their o's,

American gals cry, “Buy me clothes!”

Fargo was surprised to see this vigorous sally actually bring a twitch of smile to Kathleen's disdainful lips.

Skirts hitched up on spreading frame,

Petticoats are bright as flame,

Dainty high-heeled boots proclaim,

Fast Young Ladies!

“Why, she's really quite good,” Kathleen murmured. “Truly talented.”

She was indeed, Fargo thought. But Booger was right about the “tormentin' itch,” and Fargo had been feeling it in spades ever since Trixie had whispered in his ear, back at San Marcial, “My naughty parts been tingling. I hope I'm next.” He suspected her “talent” was varied.

Fargo threw the dregs of his coffee into the sand and stood up. “Guess I'll take a look around,” he remarked casually.

“Yes, for after all you're drawing wages to protect us,” Kathleen goaded, and Booger giggled like a half-wit.

* * *

Fargo did make a slow, vigilant circle of the campsite before going back to the creek. Generous moon wash, assisted by the brilliance of a heaven of stars, limned the arid landscape in an eerie, blue-white reflection. Rather than trying to spot Apaches—a bootless effort—he studied the ground for any tracks. All he found, however, were Trixie's prints and old tracks made by animals going to drink.

Fargo spotted Trixie as he rounded the circle of juniper trees, and his heart started pounding like fists on a drum. She stood in water up to her thighs, her ivory nudeness gleaming in the moonlight as she sudsed those firm, high-riding tits. When she stooped to rinse them off, turning halfway around to set her soap on the creek bank, her taut little Georgia-peach ass flexed even tighter.

“Damn, girl,” Fargo called to her as he approached, “if you ain't a sight for sore eyes.”

She whirled to watch him approach, walking stiffly from the force of his arousal. Her blond hair was done up in lovelocks with small curls water-plastered to her temples. But Fargo's eyes kept returning to those “gorgeous jahoobies” Booger worshipped with a passion—the sight of her there in the water egged on his lust, the erotic contrast posed by that delicate, thin frame supporting such huge globes.

“I wondered when you'd get here,” she said breathlessly, taking a few steps toward him. Those exciting tits swayed with real ocean motion, huge, heavy swells. “C'mon in.”

Fargo grounded his Henry, shucked his shell belt, and waded into the cool water. Trixie cupped her tits as if offering them to him and Fargo was in no dickering mood. He crouched and took first one, then the other nipple into his hungry mouth, licking and sucking them stiff.

She urged him on in a voice melodic as waltzing violins. “Nibble a little too, wouldja, Skye? Just little fish nibbles? That gets me so—
ohh
, yes, like
that
!”

By now Fargo was hot as a branding iron, and his man gland was straining for release. That's exactly what Trixie had in mind, too, as she fumbled his fly open and went down on her knees.