High Plains Massacre (16 page)

The following is the opening

section of the next novel in the exciting

Trailsman series from Signet:

 

TRAILSMAN #384

DIABLO DEATH CRY

The Southwest Trail (Texas and New Mexico), 1861—where Skye Fargo sets out to make a few easy dollars and gets caught in a deadly web of conspiracy and treason.

 

The words had plagued Skye Fargo's mind since he had headed south from Red River to start this new job:
Wait for what will come.

That was how Hernando Quintana had ended his first dispatch to Fargo. And what eventually came was a new chamois pouch filled with five hundred dollars in gold double eagles—and a promissory note for five hundred more at the completion of the job.

That was way too much money. And Fargo had learned long ago that when men overpaid him, it generally meant he was going to be the meat that feeds the tiger.

Wait for what will come.

“The story of my life,” Fargo muttered.

“The hell are you mumbling, catfish?” demanded the man mountain blocking out the sun on Fargo's left. “Speak up like you own a pair!”

Fargo and his recently hired companion, Bill “Booger” McTeague, were riding through the flat saw-grass country of the Gulf Coast in east Texas. On their left, the metallic blue water of the Gulf of Mexico stretched out to infinity, furling waves beating themselves into cotton foam as they crashed onto the white sand beach.

Fargo reined in his black-and-white stallion and shaded his lake-blue eyes with one hand, taking a careful squint ahead and behind. He sat tall in the saddle, a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, crop-bearded man dressed in fringed buckskins. A dust-darkened white hat left most of his weather-bronzed face in shadow.

“What I said,” Fargo finally replied, “is that the two of us will soon be up against it. The back of my neck has been tingling for the past hour.”

“Pah!” Booger loosed a brown streamer into the knee-high grass. “Pull up your skirts, Nancy! All you jaspers with pretty teeth are squeamish. Why, this job is money for old rope. We may have to kill a Comanch or two, and p'r'aps a few Apaches will try to blow out our wicks, is all.”

Fargo gigged the Ovaro forward again after loosening his Henry repeater in its saddle boot.

“We'll be hugging with red aborigines, all right,” he said. “You can't avoid them on the southern route into California. And these Southwest tribes can't be bought off with tribute like the ones up north. Matter of fact, we're being watched right now—and there's a tribe in this area, the Karankawas, known to be cannibals.”

At this startling intelligence, Booger's head snapped toward Fargo. “No Choctaw here, catfish. Is that the straight word?”

Fargo's lips twitched into a grin. Booger's moon face looked more curious than frightened. The shaggy giant was six foot five inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighty-five pounds. His prodigious bulk forced him to ride a saddle-ox on long rides like this one. He was thick in the chest and waist, his arms bigger around the wrists than most brawny men were in the forearms. He wore a floppy hat and butternut-dyed shirt and trousers with knee-length elk-skin moccasins.

“It is,” Fargo replied. “But it's not cannibals watching us, old son.”

“Fargo, you double-poxed hound, I am not the lad for riddles. Who is it?”

Again the ominous words snapped in Fargo's mind like burning twigs:
Wait for what will come.

“I don't have the foggiest notion in hell,” he admitted. “But I suspect it's somebody who's been expecting us, and I doubt if they mean to invite us to a cider party.”

Booger threw back his head and howled like a wolf. “Faugh! A good set-to makes my pecker hard. Put a name to it and I will kill it. Nerve up, you little pipsqueak. Say! Old Booger used to whip an Overland swift wagon on the San Antonio Road. There is a fine whorehouse at Powder Horn. We can get liquored up and plant our carrots before we even report to these Dagos.”

“Clean your ears or cut your hair. I think somebody's laying for us. No frippet and no carouse until we puzzle this deal out.”

Booger looked mortally offended.

“Fargo, when did you become so old maidish? I do not require your permission to top a hot little senyoreeter.”

“You do as long as you're working for me, you mammoth ape. I put you on the payroll because Quintana demanded the best driver I could find. But I
won't
take your damn guff.”

“No need to get your bowels in an uproar. Gerlong there, Ambrose!” Booger called to his saddle-ox. “G'long there,
whoop
!”

At first Fargo had been skeptical of Ambrose. But although the huge, placid beast could not move at a fast clip, he could cover twenty-four miles in four hours even in heavy sand. The Ovaro had quickly accepted the good-natured animal, and in any event the only alternative for a man of Booger's size was a conveyance and team.

Fargo's startling blue eyes stayed in constant scanning motion despite the flat, open terrain. He especially paid attention to the Ovaro's delicately veined ears. They were often the first indication of potential trouble.

Ten minutes passed in silence, each man alone with his thoughts. Then:

“This Espanish hombre,” Booger said. “The hell's his name again?”

“Hernando Quintana.”

“Is he one a them whatchacallits—grandees?”

“Nah. He was a viceroy until the Mexican revolution.”

“The hell's a viceroy?”

The Ovaro's ears twitched. Eyes slitted against the bright sunlight, Fargo took another good squint around them.

“It's a fellow who governs a province for the Spanish king,” he finally replied. “This one was in charge of Monterrey, Mexico. A lot of 'em were killed when the revolution broke out, but this Quintana escaped to New Orleans.”

Booger grunted. He hawked up phlegm, spat, then said sarcastically, “Bully for him. Them garlics gripe my nuts. It's them bastards that taught the featherheads to scalp and torture.”

“Never mind the soapbox,” Fargo said, watching the brisk Gulf breeze ripple through the tall saw grass in waves. “Just keep a weather eye out for trouble. We're both hanging out here exposed like a set of dog balls.”

“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, nervous Nellie! Why, a titmouse couldn't sneak up on us in country this open and flat.”

Fargo couldn't gainsay that. But years of frontier survival had taught him how danger sometimes gave the air a certain texture. And he felt that texture now—a galvanic charge like the one he sometimes felt just before a massive crack of thunder and lightning.

Booger gnawed off a corner of plug. When he had it juicing good he parked it in his cheek and said, “Say, catfish . . . will there be any women in this Dago's party?”

“He mentioned his daughter.”

“Ha-ho, ha-ho! A daughter, and he hires on the Trailsman? Oh, Lulu girl! You'll have her ankles behind her ears before next breakfast.”

Fargo let out a long, fluming sigh. “Booger, you ain't got enough brains to have a headache. Now you lissenup: Spaniards are known for taking quick offense. I want you to mind your manners around them, hear? You keep a civil tongue in your head. And Christsakes,
don't
be spying on the women when they bathe. That's a dangerous habit and will get you shot someday.”

“Pipe down, you jay. Easy for you to say—you've seen more quiff than a midwife. Old Booger ain't had a woman in so long he's forgot what the gash that never heals looks like.”

Fargo snorted. “Somebody get me a violin.”

Within the next hour the two riders reached the northeast shore of Matagorda Bay. Powder Horn, a jumping-off settlement a few miles inland, marked the beginning of a good wagon road that had been well traveled since the army built it in 1849. Fargo was to join the Quintana party there.

They turned west onto a narrow trace that led past wind-swooped palm trees and gigantic live oaks draped in gray-green curtains of Spanish moss. Fargo considered this part of Texas an extension of the Deep South but far more dangerous: Law was scarce and gangs of ruthless
contrabandistas
controlled the region, part of the smuggling operations that flourished all along the western Gulf of Mexico.

The giant, spreading limbs overhead blocked much of the sunlight, and the wide-boled trees themselves made for an ambusher's paradise. The Ovaro, used to wide open country and good visibility, stutter-stepped nervously now and then—like Fargo he didn't take to being hemmed in.

Fargo had jerked his brass-framed Henry from its saddle scabbard and now rode with it balanced across his left arm. Booger, rocking sideways on his loose-skinned saddle-ox, kept his cap-and-ball Colt's Dragoon to hand.

“This place is heap bad medicine,” he remarked. “Too damn quiet, hey? No bird noises, no insect hum. Quiet as the grave. Gives old Booger the fantods.”

Fargo had noticed the same thing. The stillness was so complete it seemed to scream.

Again, the unwelcome words nagged his memory like the tag end of a song he hated but could not shake:
Wait for what will come. . . . Wait. . . .

The trace narrowed even more and Fargo gigged the Ovaro ahead so the men could ride single file. A carpet of leathery oak leaves covered the trace.

“Two more miles and we'll break into open tableland,” Fargo said. “If we—”

The Trailsman never finished his sentence. The Ovaro, moving forward at a slow, steady trot, planted his left forefoot, then suddenly plummeted toward the ground.

Fargo, caught completely by surprise, jerked his feet from the stirrups. His first thought was that his stallion had stepped into a gopher hole, and Fargo didn't want his legs trapped when the Ovaro fell.

But this “hole,” Fargo quickly realized when both of the Ovaro's forelegs were swallowed up, was a man-made pitfall trap. The leaf-covered framework of boughs collapsed, and Fargo pitched forward hard over his pommel—straight toward three pointed stakes smeared black with deadly poison!