New Mexico Madman (9781101612644) (7 page)

Trixie brought her lips close to Fargo's ear. When she whispered, her animal warm breath was a tickling caress.

“Skye? I sneaked outside and spied on you when you done that Mexican girl. Laws! My naughty parts been tingling ever since. The
size
on you—it took my breath clean away. I hope I'm next.”

By the time the new team was hitched, the dark sky directly overhead was turning grainy with the promise of a new day. Only a few minutes later the newborn sun painted salmon-pink streaks over the eastern horizon. By the time the passengers were all aboard, the newly risen sun had begun to burn off the mist hovering over the nearby Rio Grande.

And now all could see the huge crater in the yard—as big as the Concord itself.

“This ain't the usual greasy-sack outfit we're up against,” Fargo said grimly. “
These
boys are loaded for bear. And it's only June thirteenth.”

Booger stared at the crater a few more moments and then cracked his blacksnake, the stagecoach jerking into motion with a rattle of tug chains.

“Bad medicine,” he muttered to Fargo. “Powerful bad medicine.”

* * *

Russ Alcott lowered his spyglass and cursed. “I ain't
even
believing this shit, boys! That motherlovin' station ain't been touched! And there's a big ol' hole way out in the yard.”

“You sure you put the powder close enough to the house?” Spider asked. “I mean, it was dark and all.”

“Does your mother know you're out? Christ, there was a full moon, and I paced off the distance from the door—fifteen feet. That crater is at least three times that distance from the house.”

“Maybe it rolled,” Cleo suggested.

Alcott aimed a withering stare at him. “Yeah, and maybe every Jack shall have his Jill, too. That ground is level as a billiard table. 'Sides, I dug a little wallow for it.”

“Then Fargo got to it,” Spider declared. “And the cockchafer musta done it just in the nick of time.”

The three men were hidden behind a juniper brake near the river and had already watched the stagecoach leave.

“Lomax ain't gonna like this,” Cleo fretted. “If Fargo ain't killed by—”

“It's too dead to skin now,” Alcott cut him off. “The nearest mirror-relay man is up ahead at Bosque Grande. At ten o'clock sharp I'll send the signal that Fargo is still alive. Lomax won't like it, but he knows damn good and well it'd be easier to tie down a bobcat with a piece of string than to kill Fargo. We still got plenty of time—losing a battle won't keep us from winning the war.”

Alcott was quiet for several minutes, pondering options. Suddenly he made up his mind.

“Boys, that bosque just north of us is at least a ten-mile stretch of cottonwoods and pine that ain't been cleared for crops. Cleo, you may be a few bricks short of a load, but ain't nobody can shoot as plumb as you with a long gun. You're gonna get your chance to drop a bead on Fargo.”

7

By late morning a glaring yellow sun was stuck high in the sky as if pegged there. Even the thoroughbraces couldn't spare Fargo's bruised head from constant jolts of pain when the Concord rattled over stretches of washboard trail or plunged into sudden dips.

“Booger, you spiteful son of a bitch,” he complained at one point. “You're deliberately driving over the worst spots to deal me misery.”

Booger loosed a guilty giggle like a boy caught playing with himself. “For a surety. If I cannot kill you all entire, it will be the death of a thousand ruts.
You
sneaked out last night for pussy, eh? And left old Booger to his blue balls.”

Fargo shook his head in disgust. “What, I'm a pimp now? If you weren't so damn mean and ornery to women, you might get a little bit now and then. Cutting farts at the dinner table doesn't impress them.”

“Pah! You hog it, Fargo! Next you'll prong Trixie—she's itching for you. But I guarandamntee, Fargo—you'll never play push-push with Her Nibs.”

“That leaves me a broken man.”

Booger jabbered on as if Fargo had not spoken. “No sir, Trailsman, you'll not point
her
heels to the sky. See, she's use to them yapping lapdogs in top hats and swallowtails. She needs to be took on the ground like an animal, is all.”

“Get your mind off tail,” Fargo snapped. “We got killers to waltz with. And a bosque coming up soon.”

Again Booger ignored him, cracking his six-horse whip over the leaders in his irritation. “That high-toned bitch grates on a man's nerves, she does.”

Fargo waved all this aside, pivoting around and climbing onto the top of the coach. He gazed past the strapped-down trunks to check their backtrail. Roiling clouds of dust from the coach obscured the view, but with his field glasses he thought he could make out dust puffs far behind them.

He climbed back onto the box. By now Booger, who had never found any virtue in silence, had changed the subject. “
Look
at yourself, Fargo—you're poor as a hind-tit calf, just like me. Roving all over Robin Hood's barn, and for what? Mince pie, that's what! Why, a smart, handsome son of a bitch like you could've got hitched to a rich skirt and, as they say, managed her money for her.”

“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 hat. “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.