Six-Gun Gallows (10 page)

Fargo crossed to the Ovaro and tugged the Henry out of its boot.

“Just in case what?” Dub demanded.

“In case they kill me,” Fargo said matter-of-factly. “If they do, they'll start looking for my horse so's they can find that pouch.”

“Won't you be on your horse?”

Fargo shook his head. “Here's the play. I'm gonna advance on foot under the tree cover. They're moving slow. When I'm within range, I'm gonna open fire with all I got. The point is to make 'em think they found my camp. If I know this trash, they'll turn tail and run if one or two are killed. They'll come back in force, but we'll have them lured by a decoy camp. That buys us some time and, with luck, I winnow out a few more jayhawkers.”

“What if they do kill you,” Nate asked as Fargo quickly checked the loads in his Colt, “and come looking for your horse?”

“I left you two the glasses. Get up in that tree and watch. If I go down, just abandon your plow nags and ride double on my pinto. Stick to cover and bear west along the creek. When you're clear, ride back to your place and rest and feed the stallion. Then one of you take that pouch to Two Buttes.”

Nate started to object, but Fargo was already in motion, sprinting through the trees. His long, muscular legs took him forward quickly, and he held his Henry at a high port. Fargo tried to keep a tree or cluster of bushes ahead of him at all times to block their view of him.

He ran for perhaps fifteen minutes, then suddenly heard voices. Fargo slowed to a walk and advanced cautiously, rounding one of the creek's many bends. He could see his enemy through the trees now, cautiously poking into the brush.

Fargo took up a position behind a cottonwood with a lightning-split trunk, laying the barrel of his Henry in the crotch. His finger curled around the trigger as he dropped a bead on a man riding a sorrel. Fargo expelled a long, slow breath and took up the slack. The Henry bucked into his shoulder, and the jayhawker's face was wiped out in a red smear.

Fargo knew the key to this plan was the element of surprise and the rapidity of his fire. He levered, swung the notched sight onto a bearded man and fired again The bullet struck him in the hip and doubled him over his horn.

Shouts of panic and confusion went up, and several horses reared up. Fargo levered, spotted a target, laid his bead—and then his luck ran out when the hammer clicked uselessly on a faulty cartridge.

Goddamned factory-pressed ammo
, Fargo thought, forced to pry the dud from the breech with his finger since only spent casings went out the ejector port.

He racked the next bullet home and heard another sickening click. Unfortunately, his enemies heard those clicks, too, and suddenly things were happening nineteen to the dozen.

“We found the bastard's camp!” a voice roared out. “His gun's jammed, boys! Rush him!”

Bullets tore chunks out of the tree and sent shards of bark into his eyes. Cursing, but staying frosty, Fargo tossed down the Henry, shucked out his Colt, and expended all six rounds at the wall of men pressing forward. He killed at least one horse and saw another man spin from the saddle, blood pluming from his chest. Two men cried out from wounds.

Not until Fargo expended the last shell in his six-gun did he glimpse the man called Moss in the corner of one eye, sighting in with that lethal Big Fifty at almost point-blank range.

Fargo threw himself to one side at the same moment that Moss fired, the big-bore widow-maker sounding like a cannon at this range. A white-hot wire of pain creased the left side of Fargo's neck, so intense he feared he was killed. But his defiant instinct to fight until the end took over.

Knowing it was his last hope, and praying those faulty shells had no more brothers, Fargo snatched up his Henry, levered, and felt the weapon kick into him. It still held plenty of shells, and with Shanghai Webb's patrol already badly shot up, the jayhawkers wanted no more of this cartridge session.

Even as the wound on his neck dripped blood down his chest, and made Fargo wince in throbbing pain, he heard the hired thugs retreating toward Sublette.

“Holy Hannah, Mr. Fargo!” Nate exclaimed. “We thought you was a gone beaver when them sons of Satan charged the trees. So many guns was poppin' it sounded like river ice breaking apart.”

“Didn't I tell you lead tends to fly around me?”

“Some of it didn't quite make it around you,” Dub said, staring at his neck.

Nate said, “Wasn't you scared?”

“Chappies, when my Henry quit on me I damn near pissed myself,” Fargo admitted. “And when Moss hit me in the neck with that big slug, I figured my toes would soon be pointed to the sky. Turns out he only grazed me.”

“It's big and long,” Dub reported, making a closer study of the wound. “But it ain't deep. Not much blood, neither.”

“Good. That means it won't mortify. Nate, run down to the creek, wouldja, and pry some moss off those rocks.”

Fargo packed the wound with moss and tied it in place with one of the linen bandage strips he carried in his possibles bag.

“This is the second time today I've had ‘moss' on my neck,” he quipped. “You know what they say: a hair off the dog.”

Nate looked puzzled. “When did you put moss on your neck earlier?”

Fargo shook his head. “A mind like a steel trap.”

“Think them jayhawkers will come back today?” Dub asked.

Fargo mulled that. “I penetrated one of the puke gangs once in Missouri,” he replied. “I had to spring a female captive. One thing I noticed, the leadership's authority hangs by a thread.”

“I don't take your meaning.”

“There's no loyalty, no duty involved. It's just a criminal clan of back-shooting, coyote-bitten skunks. That means they sull when the going gets rough—they have to be bribed with money and liquor. I killed at least two men today, and wounded three more—some of them serious, and out here that spells death. So at least four are killed in the last two days alone, maybe more.”

“Now I take your drift. These peckerwoods will prob'ly liquor up today and tonight. Pa called that Dutch courage.”

Fargo nodded. “Which makes me wonder . . . by tonight their whiskey jollification should be well along, so maybe us three should make it a little jollier?”

Nate's eyes grew as large as pesos. “You mean attack them?”

“Well, call it a serenade if that sounds better.”

“I think it's smart thinking,” Dub put in. “Mr. Fargo rattled their gourds good today. Why not take it to them while they're still jumpy.”

Fargo nodded. “Now you're whistling.”

The Trailsman said nothing to worry the brothers, but just as Indians did he hated this “forting up” business. He had spent most of his time out beyond the known settlements, always needful of pushing over the next ridge, always ducking the ultimate arrow, seldom sleeping under a roof. Holing up like this and waiting was slow torture—and often a recipe for defeat.

“But do you have any idea where they're holed up?” Dub asked.

“I might at that.”

It was Fargo's way to make a mental map of any area he rode through, and he had crossed these plains numerous times.

“I can't be sure,” he admitted. “But about ten miles or so due east of here there's a big motte of pines. In the middle of the pines there's an old dugout from last century, winter headquarters for traders. It's a perfect place to hole up.”

“We hit tonight?” Nate asked.

“Hold your powder, boy. Maybe, maybe not. When you're stepping into a river, you never put your foot down until you're sure there's a rock to hold it. Before we serenade these jayhawkers, I'm going to scout ahead.”

Brassy afternoon sunlight coaxed out the furnace heat of the hard-baked September plains. Fargo closed his sleepy eyes for a moment and listened to the orchestra of the flat land: the lulling crackle of insects, the bubbling chuckle of the creek, the soft song of the prairie wind. It seemed unreal to him that, only a short time ago, he had been in a life-or-death shooting scrape here. Some said the West was foreign to men, but in truth, men were foreign to the West.

“Mr. Fargo?”

Reluctantly, Fargo forced his eyes open. “Yeah, Nate?”

“The first day we rode in—you said there was draw-shoot killers in that saloon where we ate.”

“Yeah. What of it?”

“There's some in the border ruffians, too, ain't there?”

“Some. But drawing fast isn't the main mile. It's how fast you get off a shot that counts. And you boys've got the edge there.”

“I'm not worried about no draw-shoot killers,” Dub boasted. “But I am sorta perplexed about our horses. They ain't—”

“No need to get your pennies in a bunch,” Fargo assured him. “Whatever plan we come up with will cover our escape. First, though, I have to scout and get the lay of the land. This thing can't be done slapdash.”

 

With the exception of a few isolated riders, all of whom swung wide of the creek, there was no more activity on the plains surrounding Sublette for the rest of that day.

After dark, Fargo built a small fire in a pit and made corn dodgers and coffee.

“You was right, Mr. Fargo,” Dub said while the three men ate. “They didn't try to flush us again. Prob'ly workin' up that Dutch courage Pa told us about.”

“When you riding out?” Nate asked.

“When I'm ready.”

“Can't we go, too? We ain't never done no scouting.”

Fargo grunted. “Which is exactly why you're not going. It's no job for pilgrims. Your ma will skin me alive if I get you killed.”

“Damn it all to hell anyhow!” Nate exploded. “Hell, all we're doing is washing bricks.”

“Good. I like clean bricks.”

“Yeah, but you said—”

“What did you expect when you asked to side me, a sugar tit? Nate, this ain't frontier school I'm running here. We're at war, and war out here is one of two things: scary as hell or boring as hell. Mostly it's boring.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Shut up, knucklehead,” Dub snapped at his younger brother. “We'll get our turn when Mr. Fargo comes back.”

“That's the straight,” Fargo said. “Nate, your hour will come. Believe me, scouting is not all beer and skittles. It takes years to get good at it. Besides, with more than one man, there's too big a chance of getting caught.”

Fargo drank a second, a third cup of strong black coffee to keep him alert. Then he wrapped his head to improve his night vision. When a nascent moon, white as new snow, appeared low in the indigo sky, Fargo scooped up mud from the creek bank and smeared his faced with it to cut reflection.

The Ovaro was already saddled, and Fargo had only to tighten the girth. He slipped the bridle on, and the stallion took the bit easily, eager to work out the kinks. Fargo stepped up into leather.

“I'm off like a dirty shirt. Keep your weapons close to hand, boys,” he told the brothers. “It's not likely they'll make a play after dark, but be ready. I should be back in a couple of hours. If I don't show by an hour before sunup, you'll know I'm dead. Light a shuck out of here while it's still dark, or they'll shoot you to streamers.”

“And just
leave
you here,” Dub protested.

“Yeah, that's an order. ‘I' won't be here by then—just a slab of cold meat leaving a lot of disappointed women.”

“Can we have Rosario?” Dub asked hopefully.

Fargo grinned as he gigged the Ovaro across the creek. “Young man, she'd eat you alive.”

Fargo bore east across the moonlit plains, letting the Ovaro run for a few minutes, then reining him back to a trot to conserve his wind if it was needed. The Trailsman's vigilant eyes left nothing alone, and several times he was able to avoid sudden sand wallows: places where the grass had died and formed pockets of loose sand that could trip up a horse.

Fargo could make out the pine motte well before he reached it: a dark, shadowy mass against the slightly lighter plains. As he drew near, he could make out fires—perhaps seven or eight—back within the trees. There could be sentries on the outer edge, but Fargo took that chance and moved within a hundred yards or so.

He reined in and dismounted, hobbling the Ovaro foreleg to rear. Then, to cover some of the Ovaro's larger splashes of white, he unrolled his blanket and tossed it over the stallion.

“Sorry about that tight girth, old campaigner,” he said softly, patting the pinto's neck. “But we might have to make a hot bust out.”

The stalwart Ovaro merely nuzzled his shoulder, inured to such necessities.

Fargo reluctantly left his Henry behind, knowing from long experience it would impede swift, easy movement. As he drew near the mass of trees, he could hear the familiar sounds of drunken revelry: shouts, laughter, catcalls, men singing bawdy choruses of “Lu-lu Girl” and “She Had Freckles on Her Butt I Love Her.”

Fargo reached the pine trees and hid behind one of them, deciding on the best course of movement and concealment. The motte was actually five concentric circles of trees with about thirty feet of clearing between each ring. Except for an apparent sentry on his right, so drunk he was practically walking on his knees, all of the jayhawkers were seated around campfires within the first three rings.

And at the hub, Fargo guessed, was the dugout where the king rat and his favorite rodents stayed.

He knew he had to work his way in closer for a better reconnoiter. Leapfrogging from tree to tree he penetrated into the third ring. Clay and corncob pipes were lit everywhere, and Fargo whiffed cheap, foul-smelling Mexican tobacco.