The Trailsman #396 (3 page)

Robinson saw the logic of his argument but was ­unwilling—­as Lieutenant Beale would ­have—­to own the risky order.

“All right, Fargo. But if it goes bad, I'm arresting you on the spot.”

“Try that,” Fargo said in a mild tone, “and I'll gut you like a rabbit.”

Fargo sent Hassan and Turkish Tom the high sign. Without too much trouble they prodded Topsy into the ­brisk-­flowing river. A cheer broke out when the unhappy camel swam clumsily across, ­grim-­faced and vengeful. The remarkable sight was too much for Grizz Bear.

“Boys, I don't credit my own eyes!
Swimming?
Hell, lookit! Looks to me like she's trying to drag her ass out of hot coals!”

He laughed so hard he hawked up phlegm. The rest of the camels also crossed without incident, although two horses and a mule foundered and drowned.

Not to be outdone by Fargo, Sergeant Woodrow Robinson pulled his beloved blacksnake whip out from under his duster. He waded a few feet into the water and began cracking the whip and whistling loudly, pretending he was hazing the camels across.

When the time finally came the Ovaro swam the river easily, Fargo sliding back out of the saddle and taking ahold on the stallion's tail at the hardest stretch of current. He clambered up the California bank of the river, shook the water from his eyes, and glanced toward the opposite bank.

Juan Salazar stood looking in his direction as the Mexican prepared his mule for the ford.

Salazar saw him looking and averted his gaze.

“Interesting,” Fargo muttered.

“There he is, '
mano
,” said Pablo “the Scorpion” Alvarez. “Skye ­Fargo—­the man who must be killed if we are to control the desert.”

He handed a spyglass to Jim Butler. The two men were ensconced in a rock nest, watching the caravan across the dry, cracked bed of a vast and prehistoric lake. A third man, his eyes so keen he didn't need a spyglass, lay in the open sand about ten yards to their left.

The expedition had crossed the river and formed up into a day camp on the far side of the dry lake. For the past week they had been traveling only at night.

Butler peered through the glass, watching the ­buckskin-­clad scout strip the leather from his magnificent stallion.

“The big man,” he muttered. He raised his voice and added: “You been harping all along how it's the camels will sink us. Now the big idea is to kill Fargo?”

“
Vaya!
Get this one a dug!” Alvarez mocked his new gringo partner. “Of course we must kill the camels. But that will take time ­as—­how you say?—they are ­whinnied—­winnowed down. And any fool who gives this ­blue-­eyed killer enough time is marked for carrion.”

Butler handed the spyglass back to the Scorpion. Murky, ­mud-­colored eyes too small for the skull stared out of the gringo's dusty and ­beard-­smudged face.

“Yeah? All right, maybe he is rough,” Butler said. “He sure looks it. But they say Fargo is a pussy hound. He won't be looking for trouble from a woman.”

At this remark Alvarez gave a quick, sharp bark of scorn. “He looks for trouble everywhere, '
mano
, and that is why he still casts
a shadow.
El Scorpio
would never depend on a woman to eliminate him. They are weak reeds in Fargo's capable hands.”

Butler's face creased in a frown. “I gotta admit he did a helluva job on Roberto. Flushed his ass out like a quail.”

“Fargo didn't kill Roberto,” said the man on their left, a ­Mexican-­Pima Indian ­half-­breed. “Pablo did.”

“You're fulla shit, Jemez,” Butler retorted. “Pablo was right next to me when Fargo opened up, and he didn't fire a shot.”

Alvarez grinned as he smoothed his thin line of mustache with one finger. He had a square, solid jaw and a piercing gaze that could trap a man like lance points. He was the natural leader in any group of hard, immoral ­men—­the one who could always unite them in the vilest acts.

But even Alvarez shuddered inwardly at the nameless depravity in Jemez's dead, ­bone-­button eyes. When those eyes looked at any man for more than a few seconds they were generally mapping out kill zones.

“Jemez speaks the truth,” he said. “Fargo pulled the trigger, but I am the killer. You see, I . . . took Roberto's sister in La Cuesta. Evidently the girl was fragile, for somehow she died. Who knows? It was her first time and perhaps she became too excited. Sometimes I can be a stallion.”

Jemez's laugh was dry as sotol stalks. Alvarez shrugged as if embarrassed to speak of such a trivial matter.

“Roberto pretended that it did not matter, that he was still loyal to me. Perhaps that was true. But sometimes these things work at a man like a cactus thorn. So I ordered him to fire on Fargo knowing Fargo would kill him.”

“All right,” Butler said. “Maybe that was smart. But you said Juan Salazar, his younger brother, was with this army bunch. That can't be no coincidence.”

Alvarez smoothed his mustache again. “Juan Salazar has the courage of a gourd vine. Any man who works for honest wages lacks the
huevos
to be a true man.”

Alvarez nodded toward the camp just past the river. “This woman,” he said thoughtfully, “this beautiful
cantante
. . . you say she is a feast for a man's eyes?”

Butler, who had only recently joined the Scorpion's gang along with his owlhoot cousin, Ham Rogers, nodded enthusiastically.

“You'll see her soon,” he replied. “I seen her close up when she sang at the Frontier Theater back in Omaha. Her name's Karen Bradish. Blond hair the color of new wheat, white skin like some creamy lotion, and more curves than a man could possibly brake for, so why bother?”

“You say her brother is rich?”

“Well, the richest man in Los Angeles, anyhow. And he dotes on her. She's the key to the mint, Pablo. She'll be good for thousands in ransom. Not to mention the fine poon we can all go snooks on. You, me, Jemez, Montoya and Ham. The rest of the boys camped down at Quartzsite won't need to know about her.”

Alvarez looked skeptical. But Butler had worked himself into a lather just thinking about the beautiful blond singer. Sweat oozed out of the greasy tangle of his hair. But the blazing desert sun and scorching air evaporated it almost immediately. Yesterday he took a piss and the ­shake-­off drops never made it to the ground.

“Howzat sound, Jemez?” he called over to the ­half-­breed. “Been a while since you had a little stinky finger, hanh? But the white man goes first.”

Jemez's dead eyes cut toward the gringo. “You flap your mouth too much, gunny,” he said, his voice flattened of all emotion yet somehow menacing. “You'll have to get that bitch from Fargo first, and you are not man enough to brace him.”

The wheedling grin bled from Butler's dirty face, which tightened with ­quick-­fuse anger. “There's ten dead men with reputations who didn't think I was man enough to throw down on 'em. You looking to end my streak?”

“Basta,”
Alvarez said in a bored tone. “Enough with this clash of stags. If my best men kill each other in pissing contests, how will we all get rich? How will we enjoy this beautiful ­woman—­and perhaps her doting brother's ­money—­if we do not unite against Fargo?”

“Makes sense,” Butler said.

“Of course we all hate each other,” Alvarez said cheerfully. “Who knows who among us will kill which others eventually? We are filthy, low animals with no code of honor. But for now we must join our skills and defeat Fargo.”

Butler said, “So what's our next play?”

“They are holing up by day now, so our best chance is to hit them on the move after dark. But where they are camped right now puts them in a good spot for Montoya's buffalo gun. He is looking at things now. Perhaps he can stay back seven hundred yards and get a clear shot at Fargo through the boulders. It would even help to kill his fine stallion.”

“Never mind his horse,” Jemez warned. “Kill Fargo before anything or anyone else. We have fired on him, and now he is
for
us. Every thought now must be of killing Fargo before he kills us. And he will move like swift white wings of lightning, so we must move faster.”

•   •   •

Deke Ritter, the civilian contract cook, was a salty ­thirty-­five-­year-­old with a grizzled face, a ­gravel-­pan voice and a game leg shot up bad during the Blackfoot wars. He glanced carefully around to make sure none of the women were within ­earshot.

“There's this drummer named Jenkins from Ohio,” he said, “and he wants to find out if it's true what he hears about French gals. So he saves up and goes to Paris and he meets this fine little filly in one of them fancy eating houses with cloths on the tables.

“Well, he don't savvy a word of frog talk and she don't know no English. So he draws a picture of a bottle. She smiles and nods and they have 'em some wine. Then he draws a picture of a plate and a chicken. She nods again and they have 'em a fancy dinner with ice cream and all the trimmin's.

“By now, see, she's starting to feel like she owes him for the big time, and she draws a picture of a bed. ‘Son of a bitch!' Jenkins cries out. ‘How did you know I sell furniture?'”

Grizz Bear guffawed, Fargo chuckled and Private Jude Hollander looked confused.

“Lookit, Little Miss Pink Cheeks,” Grizz Bear roweled the kid. “He don't get it! Say, tad, ain'tcher never done the old slap and tickle?”

Jude flushed and looked down at his boots.

“­Push-­push,” Grizz Bear added, and the kid turned from pink to deep scarlet.

Grizz Bear winked at Deke and Fargo. “Say, kid, don'tcha ever get tired of cleaning your own gun every night?”

Jude looked puzzled. “A soldier always cleans his own . . .”

He trailed off in confusion when Grizz Bear and Deke howled with bawdy mirth. Jude caught on and took a deep interest in his boots again.

“Your tongue swings way too loose, Grizz,” Fargo said, sopping up the last of his stew with a hunk of biscuit. “Jude, if the topkick finds you slacking here he'll rate you hard.”

The camel caravan had set up camp in a low wash where giant boulders threw some shade for men and beasts. The increasing heat and danger had forced Lieutenant Beale to order nighttime travel only just before he was ordered to Fort Mojave. By now they had fended off warpath Indians, freebooters, gangs of highway bandits, even one drunken, ragtag “army of the people” scared spitless by the camels. Indians, too, were sometimes less of a threat after dark, but Fargo knew the evil night was the Scorpion's chosen element.

Still, he favored the decision. Traveling in the daytime heat was becoming an almost literal torture. Besides, desert air was exceptionally clear, and moonlight and starlight reflected generously off the sand. But nobody could sleep more than a few hours in the oppressive daytime heat.

Fargo tossed his metal plate into a big wreck pan Deke had set up behind the mobile army field kitchen, a clumsier version of a civilian chuck wagon. He scrubbed his hands in the sand and then poked a slim, dark cigarillo between his teeth.

Grizz Bear, seated nearby on an upended ammo crate and gnawing on his fingernails, watched Fargo survey their surroundings.

“How's it look, Skye?” he asked, spitting out a sliver of nail.

“We could be in a better position. The boulders help some. But Robinson refuses to double the picket posts, and a patient shooter could get close enough to do some nasty work.”

“Sets me back on my heels a mite,” Grizz Bear admitted, “knowing we got Alvarez
and
River People to hug with. If either bunch catches us ­flat-­footed . . .”

“You'd stand in a breadline and demand toast,” Fargo scoffed, shaking the remark off like it was a fly in his face. “I've seen you parley with the Mojaves before, and they seem to cotton to you. Besides, you know the big chief, what's-­his-­name.”

“Tasenko. It ain't like I stand in thick with him. You know,
that son of a bitch is death on poker? I tried to learn him the rules, but he just plays by his own. The first is that he always wins.”

Grizz Bear chuckled at the memory before his weathered face turned somber.

“But all this was back in the shining times before they put a vengeance pole up against Americans. Them warriors is built like Apaches, Fargo, all muscle and fight. A Mojave with one a them ­potato-­masher war clubs can crush a man's skull like an eggshell.”

“If it comes to that we're well armed,” Fargo pointed out. “Every soldier was issued one of Christian Sharps's ­falling-­block rifles and a .36 caliber Colt sidearm.”

“Shit! Most of 'em couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a banjo. Hey, sprout!” he called to Jude. “You ever fired that short iron you're totin'?”

But the young soldier didn't hear him. He had craned his neck around to stare across the large camp clearing. Conical Sibley tents, ­standard-­issue for troops in the field, dotted the camp. But Jude was gazing at a larger, ­command-­style tent with its oversize fly tied to two poles to provide shade outside.

“Lookit the horny little bastard,” Grizz Bear barbed. “Staring into their tent and praying for a glimpse of one of them gals naked.”

“Can you blame him?” Deke demanded. “Any one of the three could give a dead man a boner. My favorite is that little senyoreeter Rosalinda.
Damn
but them Mexican gals got fine tits. You won't see a growed one with ­itty-­bitty titties.”

Grizz Bear, who didn't much like Mexicans or anyone else, slanted a sly glance toward Fargo. “Ain't you wondered yet, Fargo, what Mexer town
she's
from? Mebbe La Cuesta?”

“Tell you what,” Fargo said. “When I look at Rosalinda, the only geography I got on my mind is hers.”

Deke chuckled. “Amen, brother. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell if she axed the pope just so's I could see those outstanding tits of hers. 'Course, I'm a baptized Lutheran.”

“How can a person have geography?” asked a confused Jude.

Grizz Bear groaned. “Rock this one to sleep, mother.”

“The ladies never come out of their tent much,” Jude complained.

“You can't blame a calico for hiding out, son,” Deke replied.
“Every man here is horny as a brass band. Them women know we don't see no clothes when we stare at 'em.”

While this conversation went forward, Fargo watched a stunning blonde named Karen Bradish emerge from the tent and bear in their direction. Her figure was fetchingly outlined in a ­wine-­colored dress trimmed with velvet and dyed feathers.

Grizz Bear spotted her, too, and shot a conspiratorial wink at Fargo. Neither Jude nor Deke had spotted her, and she was already within hearing.

“All three ladies are beautiful,” Jude said solemnly. “But I think Miss Bradish gets the blue ribbon.”

“Oh, she's a looker, all right,” Deke agreed eagerly. “But she's one of them proper, ­high-­toned gals who glides along like she's in church. You don't wanna fart in front of her. Now me, I like a gal who knows how to wiggle her hips when she ­walks—­a gal like Bobbie Lou. A gal who wiggles her hips for you is telling you she knows how to work a man's pump handle real good. ­She—”

“Mr. Ritter!”

A surprised Deke turned around. Karen Bradish slapped him so hard she left an imprint of her hand on the beardless part of his cheek.