Range War (9781101559215) (19 page)

Fargo came on another and then a third. He passed more dead sheep than he cared to count, and more than a few dead cows.

Several buzzards were circling over the north end of the valley when he got there. Somehow the carrion eaters always knew when a feast was on the table.

The sheepherders in the skirmish line had died horrible deaths. Their mangled remains was enough to churn anyone's stomach.

The camp was worse.

Bodies, or what was left of them, were everywhere—men, women, children.

Dismounting, Fargo roved among the slaughtered. Few were recognizable; faces had been stove in, heads had been split apart. Here and there lay body parts; a finger, a bloody tooth, part of a nose.

A pair of female legs jutted from under a wagon on its side. The wagon had split apart, revealing the head and shoulders of the woman the wagon fell on. It was Constanza, her mouth agape, the whites of her eyes turned red from burst blood vessels.

“Bitch,” Fargo said. He took a few more steps, and stopped.

Off in the trees someone was quietly sobbing and sniffling.

“Who's in there?” Fargo called out.

Sheepherders appeared, seven, eight, nine, some stumbling in shock, others weeping. Lorenzo was among them, comforting a woman.

“Is that all of you?” Fargo asked as they straggled into the sunlight.

“There are a few more, I think, senor,” Lorenzo said numbly, and motioned with his thumb behind him.

A man limped around a spruce. His clothes were a mess and his cheek was swollen, and he was using a tree limb as an improvised crutch.

An older woman trailed after him, hugging herself and weeping.

Then it was a young woman, a child in her arms, the girl's face buried in her shoulder. Tears moistened the woman's cheeks. She came to him and said in relief, “I thought perhaps you were dead.”

“Thought the same about you, Delicia,” Fargo said, annoyed at how his throat constricted.

The little girl stirred and straightened and looked at him with eyes sad beyond her tender years.

“Yoana,” Fargo said.

“It was terrible,” Yoana said, and sniffled. “My mother and my father—” She couldn't go on, and her face sank to Delicia's shoulder again.

Delicia put her forehead to Fargo's chest and closed her eyes. “We barely made it.”

Fargo enfolded them in his arms. “The one who did this will pay,” he vowed.

Delicia drew back and stared at the carnage in bleak sorrow. “Small consolation. I wish that—” She stopped and gazed past him. “Oh no. Not them. Not now.”

Griff Wexler and fifteen or sixteen cowboys were coming up the valley.

“What can they want?”

“I'll find out,” Fargo said. “Get everyone back into the trees.”

It didn't take much urging. One look at the cowboys and the sheepherders were quick to seek cover.

Fargo moved out to where the skirmish line had been and waited with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. If the punchers aimed to do the survivors harm, they'd have to answer to him—in blood.

Caked with dust, their clothes damp with sweat, their faces grim, the Bar T hands slowed and spread out. Griff Wexler was out in front, Billy-Bob on his right, Hank on his left.

Fargo let them get within a dozen yards when he announced, “That's close enough.”

Griff drew rein and the others followed suit. “Wondered what happened to you.”

“I'm wondering what you're doing here,” Fargo said.

“We came to see how they made out,” Griff said with a nod at the devastated encampment.

“Is that all?” Fargo asked suspiciously.

“And to help if we can.”

“You hate sheepherders.”

“I hate sheep,” Griff said, “and I admit I'm not fond of those who raise them. But there were women and kids here, and I'm not heartless.”

“Me either,” Billy-Bob said.

Hank nodded in agreement.

The cowboys were worn and tired from their efforts to stem the stampede. One puncher had taken a horn in the leg and his crude bandage was bright crimson. Another had his arm in a sling.

“How many did you lose?”

“We're still lookin' for bodies but eight so far,” Griff said somberly. “Five more are back at our camp, so busted up they can't ride.”

“It caught us off guard, those cows spookin' like they done,” Billy-Bob said.

“What happened, exactly?” Griff Wexler asked. “Hank, here, says he saw Mr. Trask get shot but it wasn't you who shot him. And the next we knew, there was all that damn howlin'.”

Fargo imparted all of it: Antelope Valley, Igmar Rolf and his wife, Trask burning the cabin down, and the wolf dogs.

“I remember that old bastard,” Griff said when he was done. “Here all these years we figured he was dead.”

“He killed our boss and started the stampede deliberate?” Billy-Bob said, and patted his six-gun. “Then I reckon we know what we have to do, don't we?”

The rest of the hands nodded or voiced their assent.

“What I think is—” Griff began, and glanced sharply at the woods.

The sheepherders were coming out of hiding. Slowly, cautiously, they converged on Fargo and stood behind him as if for protection.

“Have they come to finish us off?” Delicia asked.

Griff Wexler flinched. “We're right sorry, ma'am. We'd of driven you out, sure, but not like this.”

Billy-Bob doffed his hat and showed most of his teeth. “How do you do, miss. Anythin' we can do for you, all you have to do is ask.”

“We could use a fire and food for the children,” Delicia said.

Fargo stood back as the cowboys scrambled to help. In short order two fires were crackling and a pot of coffee was perking and Griff Wexler had passed out jerky from his saddlebags.

“We have flour and such in our cook wagon,” the foreman informed them. “You're welcome to come for supper if you'd like. All of you, that is.”

“I'll round up horses for them to ride,” Hank volunteered.

Fargo was glad the two sides were finally getting along. It freed him to do something else. “I'll leave you to it,” he said. “I'm going after Igmar Rolf.”

“Not alone you're not,” Billy-Bob said.

“It was our boss he bucked out in gore,” Griff said. “Our cows he stampeded.”

“It could take days.” Fargo would rather go alone but he supposed they had a right to be in it.

“Mister,” Griff said, “we'll hunt that son of a bitch to the ends of the earth, if need be.” He turned to Delicia and said, “I beg your pardon, ma'am, for my language.”

“That is quite all right, Senor Wexler,” Delicia said. “By all means, hunt the son of a bitch down.”

The foreman laughed. “It's settled then.”

“Not quite,” Fargo said. “I'll take three of you along, no more.”

“Why not most of us?”

“We'd raise so much dust he'd spot us from miles off,” Fargo said, shaking his head. “Three and only three and that's final.” He added, “Besides, don't you have a lot of cows to round up?”

“God, do we,” Billy-Bob said.

“All right.” Griff gave in. “It'll be me and two I pick. How soon do you want to head out?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“So soon?” Delicia said.

“Rolf's got more than an hour's head start on us as it is.” Fargo turned and walked to the Ovaro and she came with him.

Yoana had fallen asleep, her cheek on Delicia's shoulder.

“It will be very dangerous, will it not?”

“It'll be him or us,” Fargo said.

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“It sure as hell does.” Fargo disliked her making a fuss.

“You do this for us after how we treated you?” Delicia said.

“I do it for me,” Fargo said. “He tried to kill me and damn near split my head open.”

“So you think only of yourself? Is that what you would have me believe?”

“Believe what you want.” Fargo took the Ovaro's reins in hand.

Delicia touched his chest and softly asked, “Why are you being so gruff with me?”

“I don't need this.
You
don't need this.”

“We share a bond, you and I.”

“Hell,” Fargo said.

“You will come back,
si
? After you have dealt with this Rolf?” Delicia kissed him on the cheek. “I would like it very much.”

“There are days,” Fargo said, and sighed.

“Senor?”

Fargo smiled and touched her on the chin. “I aim to please, ma'am.”

“I'm happy to hear it,” Delicia said.

Fargo had no trouble finding the area where Igmar Rolf and the wolf dogs had attacked the herd, but finding where Rolf went from there proved frustrating. The stampede had obliterated the mule's tracks. He spent the rest of the day going along the edge of the forest to the east.

“Nothin'?” Billy-Bob said when Fargo drew rein and swore.

Griff Wexler and a puncher by the name of Jeffers were behind them.

“Sun's almost down,” Griff said. “Looks like we'll have to hold off until daybreak.”

“Which will give that no-account more time to slip away,” Jeffers said. He was a burly man of middle years, his revolver worn for a cross-draw.

“I'm not givin' up until he eats dirt,” Griff vowed.

“Makes two of us,” Fargo said. Reluctantly, he entered the woods and climbed down. It had been a long day and he was tired and stiff. He helped collect firewood, then sat back and relaxed while Jeffers put coffee on and cooked stew. There was plenty of meat; Jeffers cut it from a dead cow.

Fargo figured the cowboys would stay up late talking but they surprised him. Griff insisted they turn in early so they would be refreshed come sunrise.

Grateful for the quiet, Fargo sat and sipped. Off in the forest an owl hooted. Otherwise the valley was deathly still.

Between the two helpings of stew he'd had and the wear and tear on his body, Fargo grew drowsy. He closed his eyes and settled back and was on the verge of drifting off when the Ovaro nickered. He was instantly awake, his hand on his Colt.

The stallion was staring into the woods with its ears pricked and its nostrils flared.

Fargo had learned to trust his mount's senses. Pretending to be asleep, he turned onto his shoulder.

Black shapes filled the darkness, and one of them was moving. Whatever it was, it was low to the ground, and circling them. It seemed to be limping.

Fargo eased out the Colt.

The creature stepped into the firelight. It was Esther, the smaller of the wolf dogs. She was favoring her left rear leg, and made no sound as she crept toward them.

Where there was one, Fargo reasoned, the other must be nearby. His skin crawled at the thought that Goliath might be slinking up on him from behind.

Jeffers picked that moment to cast off his blanket and sit up. He was the closest to Esther but he hadn't seen her. He looked across the fire at Fargo. “Are you awake over there? As tired as I am, I can't get to sleep.”

Esther froze, her fierce stare fixed on the cowboy.

“Look out! To your left!” Fargo yelled, and throwing his blanket off, he pushed to his knee.

Jeffers spun in alarm and bleated, “God in heaven!” He tried to draw.

The wolf dog was a blur. Despite her hurt leg she reached Jeffers in two bounds. Her razor teeth closed on his neck with an audible crunch, and Jeffers screamed. With a fierce wrench, she tore his throat open.

Fargo fired. He hit her, too, because she yipped and let go of Jeffers. He aimed at her head but she whirled and bolted and was in the dark before he could shoot again.

Griff and Billy-Bob were sitting up and shaking off sleep.

“What the hell is going on?” the foreman roared.

Jeffers had flopped onto the ground and was in the grip of violent convulsions. His hands were over his ravaged throat but he couldn't stem the spray of blood.

“God Almighty!” Billy-Bob bleated, and scrambled to the stricken puncher.

Fargo heaved to his feet. Spots of blood marked the spot where the wolf dog had been standing when he fired. He started into the darkness but stopped. He'd be a fool to rush into her jaws.

Griff had his six-shooter out and dashed over. “Which was it? I didn't see.”

“The female.”

“Here?” Griff trained his revolver on the woods. “That must mean Rolf and the other one are out there, too.”

Fargo wasn't so sure. Why would Rolf send only the one to attack them?

Jeffers had subsided and was gurgling and gasping.

“What do I do?” Billy-Bob asked, his voice breaking. “God in heaven, what do I do?”

“There's nothing you can do,” Fargo said. “Get on your feet and get your gun out.”

“But—” Billy-Bob stopped.

With a last groan, Jeffers gave up the ghost.

“Show yourself, bastard!” Griff shouted at the darkness. “If you're man enough!”

Fargo glanced at the body. Yet another death because of two men too prideful to seek a common ground in their dispute. What would it have hurt Trask to lose a few beeves if Rolf had been willing to pay for them? What would it have hurt Rolf to let Trask graze his cows if he got a steady supply of beef for his larder? But then, he was a fine one to talk about pride.

Billy-Bob joined them, his six-shooter in hand. “Do you think it will try for one of us?”