The Trailsman #396 Page 3

  “You say her brother is rich?”

  “Well, the richest man in Los Angeles, anyhow. And he dotes on her. She’s the key to the mint, Pablo. She’ll be good for thousands in ransom. Not to mention the fine poon we can all go snooks on. You, me, Jemez, Montoya and Ham. The rest of the boys camped down at Quartzsite won’t need to know about her.”

  Alvarez looked skeptical. But Butler had worked himself into a lather just thinking about the beautiful blond singer. Sweat oozed out of the greasy tangle of his hair. But the blazing desert sun and scorching air evaporated it almost immediately. Yesterday he took a piss and the ­shake-­off drops never made it to the ground.

  “Howzat sound, Jemez?” he called over to the ­half-­breed. “Been a while since you had a little stinky finger, hanh? But the white man goes first.”

  Jemez’s dead eyes cut toward the gringo. “You flap your mouth too much, gunny,” he said, his voice flattened of all emotion yet somehow menacing. “You’ll have to get that bitch from Fargo first, and you are not man enough to brace him.”

  The wheedling grin bled from Butler’s dirty face, which tightened with ­quick-­fuse anger. “There’s ten dead men with reputations who didn’t think I was man enough to throw down on ’em. You looking to end my streak?”

  “Basta,” Alvarez said in a bored tone. “Enough with this clash of stags. If my best men kill each other in pissing contests, how will we all get rich? How will we enjoy this beautiful ­woman—­and perhaps her doting brother’s ­money—­if we do not unite against Fargo?”

  “Makes sense,” Butler said.

  “Of course we all hate each other,” Alvarez said cheerfully. “Who knows who among us will kill which others eventually? We are filthy, low animals with no code of honor. But for now we must join our skills and defeat Fargo.”

  Butler said, “So what’s our next play?”

  “They are holing up by day now, so our best chance is to hit them on the move after dark. But where they are camped right now puts them in a good spot for Montoya’s buffalo gun. He is looking at things now. Perhaps he can stay back seven hundred yards and get a clear shot at Fargo through the boulders. It would even help to kill his fine stallion.”

  “Never mind his horse,” Jemez warned. “Kill Fargo before anything or anyone else. We have fired on him, and now he is for us. Every thought now must be of killing Fargo before he kills us. And he will move like swift white wings of lightning, so we must move faster.”

  • • •

  Deke Ritter, the civilian contract cook, was a salty ­thirty-­five-­year-­old with a grizzled face, a ­gravel-­pan voice and a game leg shot up bad during the Blackfoot wars. He glanced carefully around to make sure none of the women were within ­earshot.

  “There’s this drummer named Jenkins from Ohio,” he said, “and he wants to find out if it’s true what he hears about French gals. So he saves up and goes to Paris and he meets this fine little filly in one of them fancy eating houses with cloths on the tables.

  “Well, he don’t savvy a word of frog talk and she don’t know no English. So he draws a picture of a bottle. She smiles and nods and they have ’em some wine. Then he draws a picture of a plate and a chicken. She nods again and they have ’em a fancy dinner with ice cream and all the trimmin’s.

  “By now, see, she’s starting to feel like she owes him for the big time, and she draws a picture of a bed. ‘Son of a bitch!’ Jenkins cries out. ‘How did you know I sell furniture?’”

  Grizz Bear guffawed, Fargo chuckled and Private Jude Hollander looked confused.

  “Lookit, Little Miss Pink Cheeks,” Grizz Bear roweled the kid. “He don’t get it! Say, tad, ain’tcher never done the old slap and tickle?”

  Jude flushed and looked down at his boots.

  “­Push-­push,” Grizz Bear added, and the kid turned from pink to deep scarlet.

  Grizz Bear winked at Deke and Fargo. “Say, kid, don’tcha ever get tired of cleaning your own gun every night?”

  Jude looked puzzled. “A soldier always cleans his own . . .”

  He trailed off in confusion when Grizz Bear and Deke howled with bawdy mirth. Jude caught on and took a deep interest in his boots again.

  “Your tongue swings way too loose, Grizz,” Fargo said, sopping up the last of his stew with a hunk of biscuit. “Jude, if the topkick finds you slacking here he’ll rate you hard.”

  The camel caravan had set up camp in a low wash where giant boulders threw some shade for men and beasts. The increasing heat and danger had forced Lieutenant Beale to order nighttime travel only just before he was ordered to Fort Mojave. By now they had fended off warpath Indians, freebooters, gangs of highway bandits, even one drunken, ragtag “army of the people” scared spitless by the camels. Indians, too, were sometimes less of a threat after dark, but Fargo knew the evil night was the Scorpion’s chosen element.

  Still, he favored the decision. Traveling in the daytime heat was becoming an almost literal torture. Besides, desert air was exceptionally clear, and moonlight and starlight reflected generously off the sand. But nobody could sleep more than a few hours in the oppressive daytime heat.

  Fargo tossed his metal plate into a big wreck pan Deke had set up behind the mobile army field kitchen, a clumsier version of a civilian chuck wagon. He scrubbed his hands in the sand and then poked a slim, dark cigarillo between his teeth.

  Grizz Bear, seated nearby on an upended ammo crate and gnawing on his fingernails, watched Fargo survey their surroundings.

  “How’s it look, Skye?” he asked, spitting out a sliver of nail.

  “We could be in a better position. The boulders help some. But Robinson refuses to double the picket posts, and a patient shooter could get close enough to do some nasty work.”

  “Sets me back on my heels a mite,” Grizz Bear admitted, “knowing we got Alvarez and River People to hug with. If either bunch catches us ­flat-­footed . . .”

  “You’d stand in a breadline and demand toast,” Fargo scoffed, shaking the remark off like it was a fly in his face. “I’ve seen you parley with the Mojaves before, and they seem to cotton to you. Besides, you know the big chief, what’s-­his-­name.”

  “Tasenko. It ain’t like I stand in thick with him. You know, that son of a bitch is death on poker? I tried to learn him the rules, but he just plays by his own. The first is that he always wins.”

  Grizz Bear chuckled at the memory before his weathered face turned somber.

  “But all this was back in the shining times before they put a vengeance pole up against Americans. Them warriors is built like Apaches, Fargo, all muscle and fight. A Mojave with one a them ­potato-­masher war clubs can crush a man’s skull like an eggshell.”

  “If it comes to that we’re well armed,” Fargo pointed out. “Every soldier was issued one of Christian Sharps’s ­falling-­block rifles and a .36 caliber Colt sidearm.”

  “Shit! Most of ’em couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a banjo. Hey, sprout!” he called to Jude. “You ever fired that short iron you’re totin’?”

  But the young soldier didn’t hear him. He had craned his neck around to stare across the large camp clearing. Conical Sibley tents, ­standard-­issue for troops in the field, dotted the camp. But Jude was gazing at a larger, ­command-­style tent with its oversize fly tied to two poles to provide shade outside.

  “Lookit the horny little bastard,” Grizz Bear barbed. “Staring into their tent and praying for a glimpse of one of them gals naked.”

  “Can you blame him?” Deke demanded. “Any one of the three could give a dead man a boner. My favorite is that little senyoreeter Rosalinda. Damn but them Mexican gals got fine tits. You won’t see a growed one with ­itty-­bitty titties.”

  Grizz Bear, who didn’t much like Mexicans or anyone else, slanted a sly glance toward Fargo. “Ain’t you wondered yet, Fargo, what Mexer town she’s f
rom? Mebbe La Cuesta?”

  “Tell you what,” Fargo said. “When I look at Rosalinda, the only geography I got on my mind is hers.”

  Deke chuckled. “Amen, brother. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell if she axed the pope just so’s I could see those outstanding tits of hers. ’Course, I’m a baptized Lutheran.”

  “How can a person have geography?” asked a confused Jude.

  Grizz Bear groaned. “Rock this one to sleep, mother.”

  “The ladies never come out of their tent much,” Jude complained.

  “You can’t blame a calico for hiding out, son,” Deke replied. “Every man here is horny as a brass band. Them women know we don’t see no clothes when we stare at ’em.”

  While this conversation went forward, Fargo watched a stunning blonde named Karen Bradish emerge from the tent and bear in their direction. Her figure was fetchingly outlined in a ­wine-­colored dress trimmed with velvet and dyed feathers.

  Grizz Bear spotted her, too, and shot a conspiratorial wink at Fargo. Neither Jude nor Deke had spotted her, and she was already within hearing.

  “All three ladies are beautiful,” Jude said solemnly. “But I think Miss Bradish gets the blue ribbon.”

  “Oh, she’s a looker, all right,” Deke agreed eagerly. “But she’s one of them proper, ­high-­toned gals who glides along like she’s in church. You don’t wanna fart in front of her. Now me, I like a gal who knows how to wiggle her hips when she ­walks—­a gal like Bobbie Lou. A gal who wiggles her hips for you is telling you she knows how to work a man’s pump handle real good. ­She—”

  “Mr. Ritter!”

  A surprised Deke turned around. Karen Bradish slapped him so hard she left an imprint of her hand on the beardless part of his cheek.

  Grizz Bear rolled on the ground convulsed with laughter while Fargo was forced to turn his face away to hide his grin.

  “That’s a start, cottontail,” Deke said, rubbing his cheek. “I like it rough.”

  “I realize that men who rarely bathe are vulgar when they talk among themselves,” fumed the indignant woman. “And you didn’t know I was present. But must you corrupt a sweet young lad?”

  She nodded toward Jude, who instantly looked horrified.

  “All of you should know better,” she added with chilly dignity, her sternly pretty face swiveling to stare accusingly at Fargo.

  Fargo’s appreciative eyes frankly took her measure. Karen, her ­song-­and-­dance partner Roberta “Bobbie Lou” Davis, and a young Mexican beauty named Rosalinda Gonzales had been rescued at a ­burned-­out way station at Palo Verde in western New Mexico Territory.

  Karen and Bobbie Lou were headed for work in Los Angeles, a growing town of five thousand residents, where Karen’s older brother supposedly owned a thriving dance hall and other concerns. Rosalinda, a young widow, claimed her husband had been gunned down in Las Cruces. Now she was traveling to join her family in California’s San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles.

  “Miss Bradish,” Fargo replied to her rebuke, “Jude is young, but he’s a soldier. Men who live in barracks and tents don’t behave like plaster saints. I’m afraid there’s no protecting his virgin ears.”

  “That ain’t the only part of him that’s virgin,” Grizz Bear muttered so only Fargo could hear him.

  “Oh, I suppose that’s so,” she suddenly relented, strain showing in her voice. “And all three of us do appreciate being allowed to travel with the caravan. I’m just scratchy and out of ­sorts—­it was frightening crossing the river, and it’s so terribly difficult to sleep in this horrid daytime heat.”

  Fargo nodded sympathetically. The southern route across New Mexico, Arizona and the Mojave Desert of California was among the hottest, longest and driest trails Fargo knew of. Only Death Valley to the north offered more brutal conditions, but it could be more quickly crossed. If this was tough on him, what must it be like for females who normally slept in feather beds?

  “We heard the shooting earlier,” Karen added, “and one of the men told us a member of the party was murdered. Are we in grave danger, Mr. Fargo?”

  “Grave danger? Nah,” Fargo lied. “There’s always some risk traveling on the frontier. You’ll be fatigued, all right, and mighty glad when it’s all over. But we’ll get all three of you through if you just pluck up.”

  Fargo’s evident confidence seemed to rally her. “Yes, we three ­can—­we will—do this. God made Beowulf stand on his own two feet before He agreed to help him slay the dragon. And we girls will slay this dragon, too.”

  Grizz Bear, sitting behind the pretty singer, caught Fargo’s eye. The cynical old desert rat smirked as he brought his right index finger up to his neck and pulled it across in a fast ­throat-­slashing motion.

  4

  Although always ­dog-­tired by night’s end, Fargo couldn’t get used to turning in while the sun was blazing. So he always delayed it until the last few hours before the expedition moved out.

  After breakfast he checked the Ovaro carefully for saddle galls. He fished a hoof pick out of a saddlebag and removed a few small stones from the stallion’s hooves. He also kept a close eye toward the horizons, liking this location less and less and regretting he’d let Robinson pick it.

  “Got the fantods?” Grizz Bear asked, noticing Fargo’s vigilance.

  “Too many ambush nests out there, old son,” Fargo replied as he attacked the tangled witches’ bridles in the Ovaro’s mane with a metal currycomb.

  “Why hell! Soldier blue is out there on picket guard,” Grizz Bear reminded him sarcastically. “Most likely squeezing pimples or diddling theirselves.”

  “Even if they’re alert there’s enough space between them to plant cotton fields.”

  “Well, leastways the Mojaves won’t make their play in open country,” Grizz Bear said. “They’re foot soldiers and too savvy to attack across open ground against long guns. What’s bitin’ at me, Skye, is wondering if the Yuma and Piute tribes will back their play. They made common cause wunst to drive Hudson Bay trappers out of the river valley, and mister, it was a bloody piece of work.”

  Fargo nodded. “I look for them to hit us when the terrain changes. Right now the load in our pants is the Scorpion.”

  The first white men had come to the deserts searching for mythical cities of gold. And eventually some found real gold and other mineral wealth. But Fargo had seen how every legitimate enterprise also spawned criminal parasites like Alvarez, men who would never do an hour’s honest labor but would fight savagely to protect their criminal ­empires—­even a wasteland empire.

  Deke Ritter, trailing a reek of the medicinal whiskey, crossed to the horse corral favoring his crippled left leg. “What’s the next stop for this Arabian medicine show, Fargo?”

  “Food and medical supplies for a ­mirror-­relay station in the Old Woman Mountains,” he replied absently. Fargo was watching a slice of ­yellow-­brown desert visible between two of the huge boulders partially ringing the camp.

  He shifted his eyes and found another opening between boulders, then a third. Those three and more left him, many others and some of the camels clear targets for a good rifle marksman.

  Earlier, Roberto Salazar had missed by inches, but it was a tough angle. Anyone drawing a bead from the surrounding desert, however, had several plumb lines into the heart of camp.

  “Way I hear it,” Grizz Bear said, “it ain’t likely them six men at the mirror station is still alive. The mirror signals stopped a few weeks back. Last time the army was able to push a supply train into them mountains, Indians made off with their water barrels. Only three men made it back to Fort Mojave. One of ’em took sick with brain fever and died.”

  “There might be a water source up there,” Fargo said. “If so, they can kill enough snakes and jackrabbits to stay alive.”

  “Stand by for the blast,” Deke muttered. �
��Here comes Red Robinson.”

  “You men should’ve turned in by now,” the sergeant greeted them curtly.

  All three men ignored the remark. Robinson glanced around. “Have you seen Private Hollander?”

  “Seems like he’s on picket guard,” Deke said.

  “Yeah, seems like,” Robinson repeated, irritation clear in his tone. “That shitbird had best straighten up and fly right. Twice now I’ve caught him mooning around the women’s tent when he was supposed to be on duty. I hope you men won’t forget that he’s in the army. I need soldiers out here, by-god men, not a pathetic mooncalf who still shits yellow and reads love poems.”

  “He seems like a stout enough lad to me,” Fargo said. “But I’d say he was smart to sign only a ­six-­month enlistment. I agree he’s poor shakes as a soldier.”

  Clearly, however, something more important was on Robinson’s mind.

  “Fargo,” he said brusquely, “I’m considering a change to Beale’­s—­that is, Lieutenant Beale’s route. I think we should swing well north of the Old Woman Mountains.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the scout and expert Indian fighter, and you ask why? You yourself said you think the place is lousy with Mojaves.”

  “So what? We’ve hugged with ­gut-­eaters before. You’ve got six soldiers marooned out there, and they’re owed army support.”

  “Christ, Fargo, that bunch has gone to glory by now.”

  Robinson made a visible effort at patience. So far they’d lost a few horses, mules and many of the sheep they’d hauled along for fresh meat. But not one camel, and until today not one man had been ­lost—­and even a hotheaded martinet like Robinson knew Fargo had plenty to do with that.

  But the NCO also harbored a deep well of resentment. To him, the next guy was always a prick. Lieutenant Beale championed Fargo, and Robinson was sick and tired of men like ­them—­puffed-up newspaper heroes. A tribe of ­back-­scratching cousins who hogged all the glory and lorded it around while treating the iron backbone of the American ­West—­her career army ­sergeants—­like Joe Shit the Ragman.