Six-Gun Gallows (20 page)

“All I know,” Dub said, “is that we're dang lucky you had that magnifying glass.”

“Oh, it wasn't luck,” Fargo gainsaid. He reached in his possibles bag and removed three more magnifying glasses. “You can get them back in St. Joe for four bits apiece. I've pulled my own bacon out of the fire more than once with these.”

“Four bits?” Dub repeated, grinning. “The big medicine man.”

The boys laughed so hard and long that Fargo had to join in. But when their mirth wore off, and they pressed relentlessly to the northeast, Fargo recalled an old saying on the wide-open plains:
You never hear the shot that kills you.

 

As the sun dipped lower in the west, sharp gusts turned into howling winds that buffeted them. Fargo watched ghostly tines of lightning shoot down from the sky. A dark thunderhead boiled up on the horizon, and giant claps of thunder shook the ground.

Fargo stripped off his shirt.

“Shouldn't we put our slickers on?” Nate asked. “It's gonna rain like the dickens.”

“Sure is,” Fargo agreed cheerfully. “That means three things. The horses get cooled off, we get a cool bath, and Moss loses his bead. Feel the air cooling off? Let it rain.”

“Yeah, but don't we lose their trail?” Dub asked.

“Lad, by now I know they're
leading
us. Our paths will cross soon enough.”

Within minutes a saturated cloud opened up overhead. But as Fargo had explained earlier, heat radiated off the flat-stove surface of the plains and evaporated much of the water. Yet, enough reached the ground to pleasantly revive men and horses.

Storms, on the Great Plains, generally blew in quickly and blew past the same way. In less than twenty minutes the dull yellow ball of sun blazed again on their left flank, though low in the sky now. Open plains lay before them again, with little pockets of water vapor still burning off.

“All seems clear,” Dub said.

Fargo nodded. Just then, however, the Ovaro laid his ears back. Fargo hauled back on the reins, then raised a hand to halt his companions. He cleared leather and knocked the riding thong off his Colt.

“The hell?” Dub said. “You can see for miles out here, Mr. Fargo, and it's clear.”

“Humor me,” Fargo said. “My horse ain't the skittish type, and he's sending out a warning. Bloody business is close at hand. Fill your hands and keep your eyes peeled.”

Fargo thumb-cocked his shooter and nudged the Ovaro forward at a slow walk.

“But there ain't nothing here, Mr. Fargo,” Nate said. “The grass ain't high enough to hide a snake.”

“Cinch your lips,” Fargo snapped in a low voice. “This ain't no Sunday stroll.”

Fargo had no idea what he was looking for. There were no trees, no coverts, no rocky spines, no swales even—no place where an ambusher could take shelter. The one thing he had forgotten to consider was a covered rifle pit. It was so far from his thoughts, in fact, that Fargo simply gaped in astonishment when a perfect rectangle of prairie sod was suddenly flung back like a cover, and he stared into the twin, unblinking eyes of a sawed-off shotgun.

Fargo's moment of stunned immobility passed in a blink, and his tenacious will to live instinctively asserted itself. He got off a snap-shot, blowing the ambusher's lower jaw away, then hit him dead-center in the forehead with his second shot. The McCallister boys, who had once discussed with Fargo their potential to be “gunfighters,” were so taken aback by the ambush they never even got a shot off.

“Jerusalem!” Nate exclaimed. “You was right, Mr. Fargo. He's dead, ain't he?”

Dub snorted. “Nate, you turnip head. Look at him—he's dead as a can of corned beef.”

The man had toppled over onto one side of the pit. A red rope of blood fountained from his forehead. Fargo dismounted and threw the reins forward, then walked up for a closer look.

“It's a jayhawker, all right. And a pretty ingenious trap. My stallion saved all three of us, boys.”

Fargo pried the scattergun from the dead man's grip and broke open the breech. He pulled a shell out, then whistled sharply.

“Great jumping Judas! No wonder this son of a bitch was confident he'd kill all three of us. The shells are packed with
pesetas
, Spanish coins. I've seen one of these shells blow a hole the size of a door in a saloon wall.”

Trying to avoid the copious flow of blood, Fargo found a double handful of the special shells in the dead man's ammo pouch. He walked back to Nate's horse.

“Well, I was hoping to get a third good rifle, but this little crowd leveler is even better.”

They were already overburdened with weapons, so Fargo pulled the trade rifle from Nate's saddle and tossed it on the ground, replacing it with the scattergun.

“That Indian rifle ain't worth a whorehouse token,” he said. “Even the Cheyennes didn't want it.”

“That makes three enemies left,” Dub said as Fargo turned the stirrup and forked leather. “And one of 'em, at least, knows how to kill on the plains.”

“Be dark soon,” Nate remarked as they rode out. “We riding all night?”

Fargo shook his head. “Bad idea. In the dark, that ambusher could've cut all three of us down. They don't want to shake us, remember, so no need for a reckless hurry. Besides, the horses need a good rest.”

About two miles ahead they encountered a claybank horse, lying on its side and hobbled so it couldn't rise from the grass.

“I wondered where that jasper's horse was,” Fargo said, swinging down and stripping all the leather from the mount. He cut the rawhide hobbles and the claybank twisted to its feet, shaking off the saddle and racing across the plains.

“With luck he'll join a wild herd,” Fargo said. “If not, he'll die. A horse is like an Indian—he's nothing without the group.”

At the time known as “between dog and wolf”—neither day nor night—Fargo called a halt. They stripped their horses of tack, rubbed them dry, and spread the sweat-soaked saddle pads and blankets to dry in the grass. After watering the horses, they placed them on long tethers to graze.

“We better grain them later,” Fargo said. “Grass is getting dry.”

He opened a can of beans with his knife and shared them with the brothers, eating them cold.

“We'll take turns on guard,” he said. “I want both you boys to watch my stallion close. If he starts to toss his head, and especially if he whickers, give the hail.”

“You think they know where we are?” Nate asked.

“I'd hate to gamble wrong on that one,” Fargo replied. “I didn't spot them, even with spyglasses, and it's not likely they can see us. But it would be easy to follow their backtrail right to us. Stay awake on guard and sleep with your weapons.”

Fargo volunteered for the final stint of guard. While the moon clawed higher toward its zenith, he slept fitfully, exhausted but worried about his inexperienced companions. As marksmen they had few peers, and he knew they had plenty of courage, but they were farmers, not frontiersmen.

However, the night passed without incident, and Fargo shook the McCallister boys awake at the first flush of dawn on the horizon.

“It's almost daylight and they know we're dogging them,” Fargo said, “so I'm boiling a handful of coffee beans. We'll eat in the saddle. Tend to your weapons, then your horses. And don't forget to inspect their feet.”

Each man drank two cups of coffee so strong it made the boys shudder.

“Lissenup,” Fargo said. “Our quarry may no longer be ahead of us. They could be on our flanks, or even behind us, setting Moss up with that Big Fifty. Once we hit leather, we raise our skyline considerably. A Sharps, in the hands of a prone shooter, can drop a horse at fifteen hundred yards, a man at a thousand. So today we ride in single file, and keep fifty feet between each of us.”

He looked at Nate. “I'll ride first and watch what's ahead of us. You take the middle and watch both flanks. Dub, I want you to ride drag and get a sore neck watching our backtrail.”

They both nodded. “Think there'll be trouble today, Mr. Fargo?” Dub asked.

“I'd bet my horse on it. Belloch hasn't got the manpower to openly stop me from going to a fort, and he wants that pouch the way the devil wants souls.”

“If Belloch really killed that senator,” Nate said, “shouldn't he be took prisoner steada killed like the rest?”

“Personally,” Fargo said, “I'd like to decorate a cottonwood with him, or even drag-hang him behind my horse. But we won't kill him unless we have to. I ain't crying in my beer for any politician, but General Hoffman was a good soldier and popular with the troops, and the army deserves a crack at Belloch.”

“Won't the government back in Washington City want him?”

“Believe me, boy, the army knows how powerful the railroad lawyers are, and they won't send him back. Besides, Territorial law applies out here first, not U.S., so he'll spend some time in the crowbar hotel at a fort, then be fitted for a hemp necktie. First, though, the army will want to know what's going on with these railroad wars.”

Fargo whistled in the Ovaro and inspected his tack: saddle, cinches, latigos, stirrups, bridle, and reins. Then he rigged his horse and inspected each of the stallion's hooves, prying out a few small stones.

“Let's make tracks,” he called out. “And remember: one man daydreaming, out here, could get all of us killed.”

 

After a long search, Rafe Belloch lowered his field glasses and turned to his two companions.

“It's hopeless by now, gents. Bledsoe was supposed to kill them, then run ahead for his horse and ride all night to meet us. It's past four p.m., and not a speck on the horizon.”

“No sign of Fargo's bunch either?” Moss Harper asked.

“No. But I'd guess they camped last night.”

Levi Carruthers, busy rolling a quirly, shook his head in bafflement. “I can't figure it, Mr. Belloch. I can't cipher nor write, like you, but I know the science of killing. That was a perfect trap.”

“It was clever,” Belloch agreed. “I suspect the weak link was Bledsoe. Men like Fargo develop the reflexes of a cat. Bledsoe must have taken a moment too long to fling the sod aside and get his shot off.”

“You said there's no sign of Fargo, either,” Moss interjected. “What if we lost him?”

Belloch shook his head. “They say Fargo could follow a wood tick across solid rock. Besides . . .” He pointed at the buffalo-chip fire burning nearby. They had built it in a pit because of powerful wind gusts that had been building for hours. “He can't miss that smoke.”

“If you're right, Mr. Belloch,” Levi said, “that means Fargo has Jed's scattergun and all them coin-loaded shells. That gun could take the vinegar out of a she-grizz protectin' her cubs.”

“Not if we snuff their wicks first,” Moss said. “And we will.”

“Bravo, Moss,” Rafe said. “You just placed the ax on the helve. That's the confidence that Shanghai lacked. We're fools if we wait for Fargo to close with us. We'll seize the initiative while he's out in the open, vulnerable.”

Levi Carruthers, who had spent more time on the frontier than either of these men and knew about Fargo, took an ember from the fire and lit his cigarette, saying nothing. But he was worried about Belloch's sanity. Despite all that Fargo had inflicted on them in just over a week, Belloch still acted like a man who held the high ground and all the escape trails.

Rafe noticed his silence. He had to raise his voice above the gusting wind. “Levi, you seem skeptical.”

“Well, what I've seen and heard of Fargo? He's no man to rate low. That trap we put Jed in—that's never come a cropper before this.”

“Oh, Fargo's a top hand, for a fact, and killing him will not be a featherbed job. But we'll get it done. Granted, he's all grit and a yard wide, but he hasn't got the mentality to match wits with me . . . us, I mean.”

Rafe's horse, a light tan palomino with ivory mane and tail, fought against its picket, skittish from the increasing wind.

“Quite a blow making up,” Moss remarked. “And we're headed right into it.”

Levi nodded, trying to protect his cigarette. “This'll be an allnighter. Might be best to camp right here and double-tether the horses.”

“Maybe,” Rafe said, glancing around. “But we'll have to use up valuable grain on the horses. I noticed it miles back—the grass is high and it's not quite dead, but it's brown and dry. These central plains have seen little rain.”

“Jesus, Moss,” Levi said. “Mr. Belloch just hit on it.”

“Hit on what?”

Levi's weather-beaten face creased in a grin. “ 'Member how we done for them pukes at Hutchinson? The ones camped in that draw?”

Moss snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah! This now is even better.”

Belloch followed all this with avid interest. “I'm open to new plans, gents, but it helps if I know what they are.”

Moss grinned. “Sure, boss. Try this on for size . . .”

 

Late in the afternoon Fargo called a halt to water the horses.

“Looks like I might win your horse,” Dub roweled him, speaking close to Fargo's ear to be heard above the wind. “You bet your horse we'd be attacked somehow today.”

“I've got until midnight,” Fargo reminded him. “Bet's still on.”

The wind quieted for a few moments, calming the horses.

“I'm glad the sons of bitches are leaving us alone,” Nate said. “Proves we got 'em scared.”