The Trailsman #396 (7 page)

The six soldiers were quickly buried under desert moonlight. Mounted, and very nervous, soldiers constantly guarded the stalled expedition.

Robinson, Fargo and Grizz Bear palavered in the shadow of the crude station.

“I say we just push on through the pass now,” Fargo said. “We can be down on the flatland by sunup or a little after.”

“I ain't so sure sunup wouldn't be better,” Grizz Bear countered. “We're paring the cheese mighty close to the rind. You know they're out there close right now, hanh?”

“Yeah. I've heard their lizard clicks.”

“What's that?” Robinson demanded. “You both
know
the savages are nearby?”

“Them ain't lizards clicking,” Grizz Bear rubbed it in, recognizing the fear in Robinson's voice. “That's how Tasenko's Mojaves signal each other on the warpath.”

“Besides,” Fargo said, “I saw plenty of fresh prints made by moc­casins. They're on us, all right. And we're sitting ducks up here.”

“I don't get it,” Robinson fumed. “The other tribes that've harassed us over distances all had horses. How can these Mojaves move so fast and keep up with us?”

“Why, hell,” Grizz Bear replied, “look how easy we have to push our horses in this heat. The River People can easy cover sixty miles of desert in one day on foot. They travel ­light—­don't even need to carry no food. They just pound mesquite pods into meal and bake some tasty cakes from it.”

Reluctantly, but feeling obligated, Fargo looked at Robinson. “Wha'd'ya say, Sarge? It's time to make a move.”

“I didn't want us here in the first ­place—­you know that. I said so in front of witnesses.”

“You ought to set up as a lawyer,” Fargo suggested. “You sure's hell talk like one.”

“Never mind the guff! In Beale'­s—­I mean Lieutenant Beale's absence you've asserted authority over mine. So nothing's changed, Fargo. You want to play the big he-bear, so play it. But I'm not responsible for anything that might happen to those camels.”

“Not to mention your beloved men,” Fargo added in a voice laced with sarcasm.

“Now, that's a damn good deal for you, ain't it, Red?” Grizz Bear nosed in. “You get to hog the credit if Fargo saves the mission. Happens he don't, you can put the cootie on him.”

“I'm inspecting the guard,” Robinson announced coldly.

“Cowardly son of a bitch,” Grizz Bear muttered after the soldier huffed off.

“Yeah, but he's not afraid of fighting and dying. He's afraid of being the first and last man responsible. But that's exactly what a good leader is.”

Deke saw Robinson leave and limped over to join the other two. Behind them the drivers and wranglers were working harder and harder to hold the long, ragged formation in place.

“That's ten full bags of water, boys,” he said. “There's ten more left untouched and the rest of our water safe in barrels.”

“If we go to light water rationing,” Fargo said, “we can make it up
if
this is all we lose. Damn straight there better be water ahead.”

“It's none of my dicker,” Deke said. “I'm just the cripple who slings hash. But maybe it'd be safer to just head back to Fort Mojave.”

“Ed told me that any retreat to a post would mean the end of the Camel Corps,” Fargo said. “The Indian Ring and other crooks in Washington City are looking for the first excuse to put the kibosh on it. I think that's what Ed is doing right ­now—­arguing with them over funding. There's plenty who profit from lawlessness.”

“What about this fly speck coming up west of the mountains?” Deke said. “Must be water if people live there.”

“There is, but they won't share it,” Fargo replied. “They sell ­it—­five dollars a gallon.”

“It was the Mexican,” Grizz Bear suddenly cut in, not listening. “Salazar cut them ­mother-­lovin' bags.”

“Well, if it wasn't redskins,” Deke said, “then it had to be somebody with this expedition.”

“Ahuh,” Grizz Bear agreed. “I warned Beale he was hiring too many beaners.”

“Like hell,” Fargo said. “Anybody good enough to sneak in on us could've slit those bags. And the Scorpion keeps good sneaks on his payroll.”

“All right, then
why
won't that skulking son of a bitch Salazar never meet a man's eyes?” Grizz Bear demanded. “Christ, Fargo, you need an elephant to sit on you? I've gone to school on Mexers. He's from the Scorpion's ­hometown—­he was in this deal from the jump.”

“Grizz, when it comes to those ‘sneaky eyes' you're turning a pimple into a peak. There's plenty of foolish talk, in those back-of-beyond Mexican pueblos, about
mal ojo
, the evil eye. Hell, some Mexers teach their kids early on how it's dangerous to hold eye ­contact—­that their souls can be stolen if they do.”

“Well,” Grizz Bear conceded reluctantly, “I can't gainsay that. Injins is the same way. But I'm a-tellin' you, Fargo, that copper son is broodin' on how you done for his brother, and there's a blood chit on you.”

Fargo nodded once to grant the possibility. Grizz Bear had what the newspapers politely called “the ­anti-­Mexican complex,” but that didn't mean he was wrong.

“But why,” Fargo reasoned, “would a man bent on avenging his brother take such a long way around the barn? Cutting those bags doesn't kill me. Anyhow, never mind.”

He fell silent and studied the jagged, moonlit outcrops surrounding them on both sides. And that wasn't all that surrounded them.

“Grizz Bear, would you say the Mojaves have been around the ­big-­talking guns very much?”

“Cannons and artillery and such? Don't seem likely. Some of the River People went up agin the Espanish a couple hunnert years back and likely tasted grapeshot. But this bunch under Tasenko mostly fights ­small-­arms skirmishes with trappers and silver miners and such.”

“All right,” Fargo said. “I'll talk to Robinson. We might be able to keep them off us in that pass.”

Fargo hunted down Robinson and the word was quickly spread: the camels were to lead what amounted to a retreating charge out of the pass. The horses, mules, fodder wagons and mobile kitchen would follow holding the fastest possible pace. Fargo and Grizz Bear would take the point, and squads of five soldiers each would ride rearguard and protect both flanks.

But Fargo would have to catch up to Grizz Bear after remaining behind to mount a distraction. When the expedition was well under way, he went inside the empty hovel where six lonely, bored and ultimately terrified soldiers had spent their last days on anonymous and thankless duty.

Wind whistled through the pass, ghost voices echoing and singing in thousands of nooks and crannies in the surrounding outcrops. It was a lonely sound tinged with the threat of death: those Mojaves could spring at any moment.

Fargo tugged the fuse out to its ­two-­foot length and placed the can of blasting powder in the middle of the dirt floor. Beale had ordered them brought along to clear possible rock slides. Fargo ­thumb-­scratched a lucifer to life and it flared up, revealing the crude sleeping pallets and empty ration cartons.

The fuse sparked with a serpentine hiss and Fargo fled outside and down the pass toward the sheltered spot where he'd hobbled the Ovaro. The Trailsman had barely ducked to safety when the whole damn world exploded around him in a ­crack-­booming, ­orange-­flashing roar. The entire pinnacle seemed to be hurled away like a toy ball in a giant hand.

Chunks of rock began to rain down the slopes, and the choking cloud of dust blackened out the moon and stars.

The Mojaves couldn't have missed that fireworks show,
Fargo thought as he turned the stirrup and forked leather. And it had to impress them.

Now if it would only buy enough time to get that strange caravan safely down onto the desert floor where they'd have a fighting chance. . . .

•   •   •

Whether by luck or design, the U.S. Army Camel Corps spent the next hour making excellent progress heading due west out of the Old Woman Mountains. At places the ground beneath the
horses' and mules' shod feet turned to hardpan that threw off clopping echoes from the surrounding rock walls.

The camels had not even been forced to their second wind. But eventually, despite the cool night air, the ­pack-­laden mules began to lather. Not liking it any, Fargo halted the caravan to spell them about three miles from the point of egress below.

“I miscalculated those damn mules,” Fargo complained to Grizz Bear. “I thought they had more bottom left. We're still sitting ducks.”

Grizz Bear ignored this. “You know, hoss, talkin' 'bout them water ­bags—­Rosalinda is a Mexer, too.”

“Never mind that now,” Fargo snapped. “Right now we got bigger fish to fry.”

“I'm just sayin' . . . she started sniffin' you from the first day we took them gals on.”

“Hell, so has Bobbie Lou,” Deke pointed out. “And you ask me, Karen's got an itch for him, too. Christ, Ormsby, it ain't none of the women.”

“Hogwash, you simple shit! How do we even know it was really featherheads what burnt that way station down? Coulda been the Scorpion, knowing we'd take the women along.”

“So you're saying all three women are in on it? You been grazing locoweed.”

“Karen and Bobbie Lou wouldn't even hafta know 'bout it,” Grizz Bear insisted.

“Hell, Grizz,” Fargo said, “why leave the Man in the Moon out of it? And maybe the Queen of England is the rainmaker behind the whole plot?”

“Christ, Fargo,” Grizz Bear shot back, “you don't gotta be loyal to a gal just cuz you poured the wood to her.”

“Women are the last people I trust,” Fargo assured him. “Start the word back: we're pulling out.”

Grizz Bear gave him no guff, because both men had fought Indians enough to know they faced a special danger now. Even if the explosion earlier had intimidated the Mojaves back from the trail, they could still take the fight to their enemies without drawing near.

It was called the arrow drop, and it could be a highly effective tactic. The braves simply aimed their arrows at the proper angle and launched them en masse in a high arc, bringing the deadly
onslaught down on an unseen target. Fargo had seen ­well-­placed volleys kill several men at once.

And he feared it now as the caravan shuddered into motion again. The camels were complaining more than usual, and Fargo crossed his fingers against a rebellious ­walk-­down while in the pass.

But Topsy and Tuili held a lively pace. The Ovaro, glad for a chance to stretch it out, was ­hard-­pressed to keep the leaders from nipping off part of his tail. They ate up a mile, then two, and soon Fargo could see the vast infinity of flat, moonlit desert stretching before him like a silent ocean.

He heaved a massive sigh of relief that was one second premature: shrieks, animal and human, pierced his ears when the sky suddenly rained barbed death.

Fortunately for the camel caravan most of the arrows dropped on them in that first volley landed just to the right of the supply expedition.

But its effect was potentially lethal as the formation broke down in chaos and halted their escape from the mountain pass. Nor could they possibly, Fargo calculated rapidly, get under way before more arrows came slicing in.

A long traprock shelf covered the left side of the trail. Fargo shouted orders relayed by “field music,” soldiers repeating the orders, for men and beasts to squeeze as tightly as possible under that shelf.

A second flurry of arrows clattered in among the milling confusion even as they were carrying out Fargo's order. A mule began squealing piteously until someone shot it. Fargo could hear a man screaming, evidently the victim of those viciously barbed arrows.

“Now what do we do?” Grizz Bear complained. “Sit and play a harp?”

The two men and their mounts were huddled back under the shelf. Robinson was fiercely cracking his whip, haranguing the camel drivers to shelter their charges. Fargo had to concede it was gutsy of him to stay out in the open like ­that—­gutsy or stupid.

“They have to have a spotter up there somewhere,” Fargo said. “The main gather of Indians is well out of sight, so somebody had to point out exactly which stretch of trail we were on.”

“That shines,” Grizz Bear said. “But knowing that don't get our tail out of this crack.”

Private Jude Hollander worked his way forward, face pale as new linen.

“The women are safe. Jimmy Jeffries, from the first squad, got hit in the back,” he reported. “Two of them barbs is in him deep. Deke's pouring liquor into him now.”

Grizz Bear shrugged. “Piss on him. He never bought
me
a beer.”

Fargo met his eyes. “Neither have I.”

Grizz Bear stared right back from the face of a sphinx. “'At's right, ain't it? And me a fuckin' cannibal.”

“What're we gonna do, Mr. Fargo?” Jude asked, his voice tight with nervousness. Nor could Fargo fault him after witnessing the gruesome fate of those six dead soldiers at the mirror station.

“Ah, hell,” Fargo said calmly, “we're in a dirty corner, all right. But this is old hat. What's army life without a good frolic now and then?”

Fargo's nonchalant manner calmed the kid. He mustered a nervy little grin. “Sure. This ain't the first one. Who
wouldn't
be a soldier?”

“A monkey with half a brain,” Grizz Bear muttered.

Fargo grinned at the kid's pluck. “Stout lad. Now sift ­sand—­Sergeant Robinson is headed this way.”

Jude scuttled off, hugging the sheltered side of the trail.

“Didja notice Robinson when them arrows commenced to falling?” Grizz Bear muttered.

Fargo nodded. The senior sergeant had wrung his hands like a helpless midwife.

“They've stopped firing on us, Fargo,” Robinson greeted them. “You think it's safe to hit the trail again?”

Fargo shook his head. “I'm pretty sure they've got a spotter up there on the rim who's able to see us moving down on the trail. Right now he must know we've stopped even if he can't see us under the shelf. But we're still in their thoughts.”

As if to verify Fargo's experience with Indians a third volley of arrows shattered all around them. The expedition was safe for the moment but trapped.

“What do you suggest?” Robinson demanded, his tone bitter and resentful.

That tone, familiar to Fargo, spoke volumes about Sergeant Woodrow Robinson. When conditions truly deteriorated, when men's belief in their own survival was shaken, Skye Fargo rose
up as a natural leader. No inspiring speeches about God, duty and country, just grim good humor and a ­straight-­ahead determination to keep up the strut until the job was done.

Robinson, like other petty and jealous men Fargo had been unfortunate enough to know, hated him for that natural ability. And hated him even more because Robinson himself was dependent upon it.

“I'm going to climb up topside,” Fargo replied. “If I can kill that spotter we can make a fast ­bustout—­about a half mile and we're shut of these mountains.”

“The first time you show yourself up there,” Grizz Bear said, “­you—”

Fargo raised a hand to silence him. “Save it for your memoirs. What
might
happen ain't nothing to the matter. The longer we sit here the worse off we are.”

Fargo removed his hat and speared his fingers through his hair, noting that the new day's sun was starting to streak the eastern horizon salmon pink. Then he stepped out from under the rock shelf to study the outcrops, gravel slides, talus and scree rising above him. He reluctantly decided to leave his Henry behind.

Fargo clapped his hat back on and palmed the wheel of his Colt to check the action.

“Well,” he announced, “back to the salt mines.”

•   •   •

Skye Fargo couldn't swear this was the hardest climb he'd ever made. But he was damned if it didn't rate among the worst.

At first he had been protected by an abutment of hard granite. He had also found helpful ­hand-­ and footholds. But these quickly thinned out as he gained altitude. At times he was forced to haul himself up ­hand-­over-­hand with no footholds. This was the part of Fargo's work the nickel novels and shilling shockers never mentioned: all the time spent watching, waiting or busting his hump moving into position.

He was delayed as he searched for openings through the jumble of rocks and detritus, exposing himself to anyone above. He half expected the twang of a bowstring at any moment; he had not, however, expected the undertaker's thunder of that Hawken gun.

The lead ball whanged off rock, began its piercing whine as
it bounced from surface to surface. A second shot, and this time Fargo flinched hard when the slug kicked rock dust into his face like stinging ant bites.

It wasn't coming from above. The shooter was ensconced somewhere in the rock jungle behind the trail at Fargo's back. By now the new sun was up and blinded Fargo when he looked in that direction.

A third shot, and it was clear the hidden marksman was counting on ricochets to up the ante. In the dizzying, jumbled world of stone surrounding Fargo, each shot became many more before the bullet fragmented.

The next slug fanned Fargo's left ear, and he scrambled among the rocks like a nervous monkey, seeking a ­last-­ditch crevice to duck into. He spotted a place where two ­odd-­shaped rocks left a small opening between them.

Fargo had no idea if it would lead all the way through to the top. But nothing presented itself, and a fifth bullet had just missed his lights. Taking his hat off, Fargo wriggled into the opening.

At times the walls narrowed to an A-shape and Fargo was forced to crawl. The passage was narrow enough to begin with and closed in on him even tighter as Fargo progressed with glacial slowness on bleeding elbows and knees. At one point he had to fight down a sudden surge of “cooped-up panic”—he was wedged tight, unable to proceed forward or retreat.

Fargo willed himself calm. Then he let his muscles go slack and expelled all the air from his chest. This left him just barely enough room to squeeze forward again.

Finally he glimpsed a wedge of sky. He was still extricating himself from the tight passage when muffled, excited shouts went up from the men in the expedition, followed by a crackling volley of gunfire.

Finally opening up on the shooter, Fargo guessed. Robinson's usual quick decisiveness . . .

Fargo pushed through and looked up toward the rimrock. For a moment he glimpsed a bronze, ­well-­muscled arm with a thick leather strap around the ­wrist—­protection from the powerful snap of bowstrings. Then it disappeared.

Fargo figured that spotter was about a hundred feet above him, and likely there was no clear shot from down here. The
problem was the steep slope itself, an expanse of loose talus and scree and gravel. He had to reach that thin granite ledge just below the rim of the giant rock spine.

Fargo left his shooter leathered, needing both hands for this treacherous climb. With footing so precarious he strained both arms to haul himself upward, mostly by grabbing on to boulders. Fargo had already severely taxed his arm muscles during the earlier climb and now they trembled violently.

Again a flash of bronzed skin, a glimpse of ­raven-­black hair. Fargo guessed the spotter was maneuvering around for a better view of the camel caravan below.

He strained to inch himself closer to that ledge. He was only a few feet from gaining it, his tortured arms feeling stretched to the point of tearing.

Damn it, man, exert yourself!

Fargo gave it his best effort and a little more, hauling himself onto the ledge. Two seconds after he was safe, the ledge collapsed under him.

Fargo made a wild stab at the more solid rim. His left arm snagged it, and Fargo hung at a precarious angle over a steep, unstable slope.

As the collapsed ledge took rocks and gravel with it the ­startled Mojave whirled around and discovered his enemy only a few yards away. Emitting a cry of triumph, he shrugged a ­five-­foot bow made from desert willow off his shoulder. In a blur of speed he tugged a barbed arrow from his quiver and nocked it.

Because he had needed both hands to climb, Fargo's Colt was still holstered. The Mojave drew his bowstring taut. Fargo, dangling by one arm at an awkward line of fire, still managed somehow to ­speed-­draw and plug the Mojave.

The impact knocked the brave backward and released the arrow, which missed Fargo by scant inches. But Fargo cussed when he realized his shot had not been fatal. The Mojave, blood pumping from his right thigh, rolled hard to the left, and Fargo had no line of fire from this dangling, restricted position.

Nor could he establish a better one in time, because he had absolutely nothing under his feet. All he could do was let ­go—­risking death or certain serious ­injury—­or hang there by one already exhausted arm and wait to be skewered.

No good,
Fargo told himself.
You need a third way, Trailsman, and you need it
now
.

Fargo holstered his short iron and summoned a last reserve of strength that came more from sheer cussedness than muscle. He threw his right arm, too, over the lip of rock, and planting his feet firmly he scrambled over the rim and into the teeth of danger.

The move surprised the wounded Mojave, who had been moving in to finish Fargo off with his club made of mesquite ­hardwood—­the tribe's most feared weapon. When Fargo landed in a heap in front of him the big, muscular brave cocked his right arm back to hurl his potato masher.

Fargo, sprawled on his left side, cleared leather. He tried for a clean head kill but pulled it by an inch or so and pulped the Mojave's nose. While the warrior writhed on the ground, screaming, Fargo rose to his knees and tossed a finishing shot into him.

He tried to stand but strength deserted him and Fargo sat down hard, chest heaving. This time his perilous gambit had panned color. He had won and he planned to keep on winning. But Fargo knew how it was: on the wild frontier the end of one battle usually marked the beginning of the next, not some glorious final victory.

Maybe,
Fargo thought idly as he recruited his strength,
I could try my hand at barbering. . . .