Texas Timber War

Table of Contents

 

 

Fists smashed into Fargo, sending heavy jolts through his body. But he stayed upright and fought back. He had dropped his gun when the first man tackled him, but he still had his fists.

He slammed a punch into the middle of a man's face, then bent to the side and snapped a kick into another man's midsection. That bought him a little room, but the respite lasted only a split second, just long enough for Fargo to drag in a breath. Then one of the other men landed on his back and looped an arm around his throat. . . .

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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, November 2007
The first chapter of this book previously appeared in
Shanghaied Six-Guns,
the three hundred twelfth volume in this series.

Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

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Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.

The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.

The big man in buckskins raced his horse along the bank of the bayou. The area was thickly wooded, so the magnificent Ovaro stallion had to weave around and through clumps of loblolly pines and cypress trees. Even though the sun was shining overhead, the forest canopy ensured that this part of eastern Texas remained in perpetual shadow.

Skye Fargo's lake blue eyes narrowed as he heard the rattle of more gunshots. The shooting had started a couple of minutes earlier as he made his way through the area, and the swift urgency of the reports told Fargo that trouble had erupted somewhere in front of him.

Some parts of this forest were all but impenetrable, and as Fargo reined his black-and-white mount to a halt and listened to the gunfire, he had considered staying out of it for a change. Whatever was going on, he might not be able to reach the spot in time to help anyone.

But that thought had been fleeting. Fargo wasn't the sort of man to ignore someone else's danger. Moving as fast as possible, he had headed in the direction of the shots.

By the time he reached the bayou, though, the gunfire had shifted. The shots now came from somewhere upstream. Fargo turned the Ovaro to follow them.

As he rode, he became aware of another sound—a deep, throaty
chug-chug-chug
that he recognized as the noise of a steam engine. He reined the Ovaro around a bend and came in sight of a stern-wheeled riverboat churning through the waters of the bayou.

Men in canoes paddled after the riverboat, and other men who ran along the banks peppered the vessel with rifle fire. A few puffs of powder smoke from the riverboat told Fargo that someone on board was trying to put up a fight, but they weren't mustering much of one.

The attackers had to be river pirates, Fargo thought. No one else would have any reason to try to stop the boat by force like that.

Fargo reached for the Henry rifle that jutted from a sheath strapped to the Ovaro's saddle. He cranked the repeater's loading lever as he brought the rifle to his shoulder. Three canoes pursued the riverboat, and Fargo aimed at the waterline of the one closest to the vessel. He sent a couple of bullets smashing through the canoe's hull just below the surface of the bayou, then shifted his aim to the second canoe.

The men in the first canoe barely had time to realize what had happened before Fargo drilled the second canoe as well. Both of the little craft began taking on water. With yells of alarm, the pirates abandoned their pursuit of the riverboat and turned to wave their arms and point at Fargo. The men paddling the third canoe dropped their paddles and picked up rifles. They started firing at the big man on the black-and-white horse.

So did the men on the banks of the bayou. As the riverboat chugged on around another bend, the pirates turned their attention to the man who had interrupted their attack on it. Shots blasted out, further shattering what had been the peaceful stillness of the piney woods, and Fargo heard bullets ripping through the air around his head.

He had shot holes in the canoes, instead of in the men paddling them, because he didn't know all the details of what was going on and didn't want to kill somebody needlessly. Also, shooting somebody who wasn't even aware of his presence went against the grain for Fargo.

But now they were trying to kill him, so all restraints were off. Fargo's Henry cracked swiftly and mercilessly. One of the men in the third canoe toppled out of the little craft, landing in the bayou with a great splash of murky water. A man on the near bank fell as well, also ventilated by a slug from Fargo's rifle. A third man clutched a bullet-shattered shoulder and howled in pain.

Even though the pirates outnumbered Fargo by more than twelve to one, his deadly accurate fire must have unnerved them. The men on the far bank bolted for cover, disappearing into the trees. So did the ones on the nearer bank. And the men in the canoes paddled hard for the opposite shore, giving up the fight.

The two canoes Fargo had holed sank before they got there, with the men inside them floundering into the water and swimming for the bank. The frantic desperation of their thrashing reminded Fargo that alligators lurked in many of these East Texas streams.

Fargo held his fire and let the men flee. The canoe that was still afloat reached the shore, and the men inside it leaped out and dragged the craft onto the bank. The swimmers clambered out of the bayou and joined them. They all vanished quickly, because they had to take only a few steps before the thicket swallowed them up.

Fargo reined the Ovaro away from the bank and moved back into the woods himself, not wanting to leave himself exposed to any bushwhackers' bullets. He brought the stallion to a halt and sat there listening, an intent expression on his ruggedly handsome face with its close-cropped dark beard. The forest was quiet. All the shooting had spooked the birds and small animals and made them fall silent.

When Fargo was satisfied that the pirates had fled, rather than doubling back to try to jump him, he slid the Henry in the saddle sheath and hitched the Ovaro into motion again.

A few minutes later he hit the trail he had been following earlier, before leaving it to seek out the source of the gunfire. The trail ran west out of Louisiana toward the settlement of Jefferson, roughly paralleling Big Cypress Bayou. But since the trail twisted and turned due to the varying thickness of the forest, and the bayou followed an equally meandering path, sometimes they were within sight of each other and sometimes they weren't.

As the broad, slow-moving stream came into view again, Fargo was surprised to see that the riverboat had pulled in close to the bank and come to a halt. It had to be bound for Jefferson, which was still several miles away, Fargo reckoned. The big paddle wheel at the rear of the boat had stopped turning, but smoke rose from the twin stacks, showing that the engine still had steam up.

Fargo cut across a field dotted with pine and cypress to reach the bayou. His keen eyes scanned the decks and didn't see anyone moving around. Crates were stacked on the main deck—goods bound for Jefferson, no doubt.

The steamboats that plied these waters came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and veered off into the Red River north of Baton Rouge, then followed the Red to Shreveport, Louisiana. From Shreveport the boats steamed up Big Cypress Bayou to sprawling Caddo Lake, which straddled the border between Louisiana and Texas and, according to local legend, had been formed by the tremendous earthquake that had shaken the whole middle part of the country nearly fifty years earlier.