Seven Devils Slaughter Read online

  “That’s the strangest part of all,” Jack said. “They couldn’t find so much as a single footprint. They had a frontiersman with them, a man by the name of Tanager—”

  “I know him,” Fargo interrupted. Dan Tanager worked as a guide and army scout on occasion. A former trapper, Tanager had lived with the Crows for a score of years, and was as competent as frontiersmen came.

  “Tanager couldn’t find any tracks either,” Jack disclosed. “We talked to him out in Portland. He’s a feisty old cuss, and he told us he’d never seen anything like it. He spent six or seven hours going over every square inch of ground for acres around and there wasn’t a trace of Susie anywhere. It was as if she had blinked out of existence.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Fargo said. He had an idea where this was leading, but he inquired anyway. “What does all of this have to do with me?”

  Jack Carter came closer. “We were up late talking to Mr. Denton, the gambler. He says you’re one of the best scouts in the country. That you spent time among the Sioux. That you can track anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

  “It’s been three months,” Fargo reminded them. “Whatever sign there was has long since been wiped out.” He started toward the stable. “I know what you want, but you’re asking the impossible.”

  John Carter stepped in front of him, barring his way. “Please, Mr. Fargo. You’re our last hope. We’ve spent months hunting down all the people we could who were there that day. We’ve been to the spot ourselves half a dozen times. All we want is for you to take a look. It’s not all that far.”

  “Thirty miles, at least,” Fargo mentioned. A two day ride, even if they pushed their horses, over some very rough terrain.

  “We know we’d be imposing,” Jack said, “but we can’t give up hope, not so long as there’s a slim chance our sister is still alive.” He paused, and when he spoke next, he was choked with emotion. “The three of us were real close as kids. We love Susie, Mr. Fargo. What kind of brothers would we be if we didn’t do all we could to find out what happened to her?”

  “Haven’t you ever cared for anyone?” John pressed their appeal. “Would you give up if it were your sister?”

  Fargo felt sorry for them. He truly did. But they were grasping at straws. If there had been tracks or sign of any kind, Dan Tanager would have found it. “I’d like to help. But I’d only be wasting my time and yours.”

  “How about if we make it worth your while?” Jack said. Reaching into an inside jacket pocket, he pulled out a wallet. As he did, Fargo again glimpsed the butt of a revolver in a shoulder holster. “Would two hundred dollars change your mind?” Opening the wallet, he produced a sheath of bills half an inch thick and peeled off the stated amount.

  Fargo hesitated, thinking of Mabel. Two hundred dollars would get her to San Francisco and give her enough to live on until she could find a job.

  “Three hundred then?” Jack Carter said, peeling off more. “All you have to do to earn it is spend a few hours looking over the site where Suzanne vanished.”

  “Did you two rob a bank somewhere?” Fargo stalled. He was strongly tempted, but he had an appointment to keep with a man in the Willamette Valley.

  “We’re rather well-to-do,” Jack answered. “Our father owns a string of businesses throughout Ohio. He couldn’t come with us because he’s in poor health.” Jack peeled off more bills. “Four hundred is my top offer.”

  Leaning the Henry against his leg, Fargo accepted the money. “Two days there. One day to look around. That’s the best I can do.”

  “A whole day?” Jack said, brightening. “That’s more than we dared hope. But people tell us if anyone can find anything, it’s you.”

  Fargo folded the bills and shoved them into a pocket. A certain house of ill repute in Portland would merit a visit on his way to the Willamette Valley. “Why didn’t you ask Dan Tanager to help?”

  “We did, but he refused,” John said. “He told us we were wasting our time. That if he couldn’t find her right after she vanished, he sure as hell couldn’t find her now.”

  Jack gestured at the pair of bays. “We can head out as soon as you’re ready. Don’t worry about provisions. Our pack animals are hidden up the trail a piece, where we camped for the night.”

  “Why didn’t you bring them into Les Bois?” Fargo wondered aloud.

  The brothers exchanged glances. “Let’s just say we deemed it best, and let it go at that,” the oldest replied.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll be right back.” Fargo reentered the saloon. Loud snoring still issued from the back room. He took the stairs three at a stride and opened Mabel’s door without knocking. She was curled up on her side, her red hair splashed across her cheek. In repose her face was smooth and innocent. He counted out two hundred dollars and laid the bills out near her pillow.

  The Carter boys were mounted and waiting over by the stable when Fargo re-emerged. He claimed his saddle and bridle from the tack room where he had left them the night before, and within minutes had the stallion saddled. A golden glow bathed the eastern horizon as he lightly tapped his spurs to the pinto’s sides and trotted south from the settlement.

  The Carters were grinning like kids whose fondest birthday wish had been granted. Half a mile down the trail they reined to the right and proceeded on through white pines to a clearing where two pack horses had been picketed. In the center was the charred remains of a campfire. Four large bulging packs had been left propped against the bole of a tree.

  “You took a gamble leaving everything here,” Fargo commented. A bear would make short shrift of the packs. And a roving warrior would be more than happy to help themselves to the horses.

  “We didn’t know if we’d run into the Swills,” Jack said as he and his brother set to work loading their supplies. “We wanted our hands free, just in case.”

  “They tried to prod us into a fight,” John referred to the saloon incident. “Clancy Swill fired those shots into the ceiling to show off. To demonstrate what he would do to us if we weren’t careful.”

  Fargo had gone back up to Mabel’s room after the Swill clan departed and never heard the full story. “What was that all about, anyway?”

  “Your guess is as good as ours,” Jack said, engrossed in tying down a pack. “We came up this way to ask around and see if anyone had heard anything about Susie. We’re convinced she’s still alive. Call it crazy, but we both have a feeling we just can’t shake.”

  John nodded vigorously. “We’ve had it since we first heard the news. Susie is alive. I just know she is. She was taken by hostiles and is being held in a village somewhere.”

  Fargo admired their devotion but he couldn’t help but think they were deluding themselves. The Kalispels and Flatheads to the east and the Yakimas and Spokanes to the west were at peace with the whites. Numerous smaller tribes called the region home, but none, so far as he was aware, were on the warpath, or had ever taken a white woman captive. They might indulge in a little horse stealing, but that was about it.

  “We had heard about Les Bois from Tanager, the old scout,” Jack mentioned. “When we got there, Harry Barnes was nice enough, but he wasn’t any help. Then the Swill brothers came in. Barnes told them who we were and why we were there. That’s when the trouble began.”

  “Billy Swill started insulting us,” John said. “He claimed we were stupid to believe our sister was still breathing after all this time. He made fun of our clothes, calling us a pair of ‘citified dudes.’ His exact words.”

  Fargo frowned. In some quarters hazing greenhorns was a popular sport, but it was not one with which he agreed.

  “I told that buck-toothed hooligan that at least we know how to bathe regularly,” John related, “and he became quite upset. He was going to take a swing at me, but Clancy stepped in. He swore at us, and when we wouldn’t go for our guns, he accused us of being yellow.”

  “I assured them we didn’t want any trouble, but it didn’t do any good,” Jack Carter said. “They d
idn’t seem to care. All that mattered to them was putting us in our place. Along about then was when Clancy whipped out his revolver and shot at the flies on the ceiling. He hit three of them, too. Best shooting I ever did see.”

  “Then you came down,” John concluded, “and put them in their place. They’re liable to skin you alive if they ever get their hands on you.”

  “They can try,” Fargo said. He wouldn’t lose sleep worrying. In the wild he was in his element, and if the Swills came after him, they would regret it.

  Soon the brothers were ready. Each of them grabbed hold of the lead rope to one of the pack animals and filed toward the trail. Jack assumed the lead.

  The sun was half an hour high, the forest alive with the chirping and warbling of a legion of birds. A jay squawked at Fargo from high in a fir. An orange-and-black butterfly flitted by on gossamer wings. Further on, a rabbit bolted out almost from under the Ovaro’s hooves.

  Fargo smiled. To others the forest was a frightening realm of savage beasts and doubly savage men, but to him they were home. Most of his adult life had been spent roaming where few others had ever roamed before. He had spent more nights under the stars than under a roof. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  As they rode, the Carter brothers revealed more about themselves. They were from Cincinnati. They had been raised on a thirty acre estate, and had gone off to Syracuse University after completing high school. Jack had followed in his father’s footsteps and now helped oversee the family’s lucrative business enterprises. John had become a lawyer, much to his father’s disappointment, and was making a name for himself.

  A year ago, Suzanne, the youngest, had married the son of another prominent local businessman, Tom Maxwell. Perhaps to show he was as capable as her father, Maxwell took it into his head to travel to the Promised Land, as Oregon was widely known, and build a business empire of his own. “The land of opportunity,” he proclaimed to everyone who would listen, and succeeded in sweet-talking Suzanne into going along.

  “We tried to convince her not to go,” Jack said over a shoulder, “but she had taken Maxwell for better or for worse, and she was bound to do her wifely duty come hell or high water.”

  John swore under his breath. “But even Maxwell couldn’t be bothered to help us! Like Tanager, he felt it was a waste of time. It’s only been three measly months, and Maxwell has already forgotten about her.”

  “But we haven’t,” Jack declared. “And we never will, not so long as there’s a thread of hope.”

  By the middle of the afternoon they were winding down out of the range region onto the arid Columbia Plateau. They came to the crest of a barren hill and Fargo took the occasion to draw rein. “Hold up,” he said, and shifted in his saddle. He had been watching their back trail all day, and now his instincts were rewarded with a pinpoint of light approximately a mile away. “We’re being followed.”

  Jack had climbed down and was bending to examine his bay’s left front hoof. “Are you sure?” he asked, anxiously scouring the landscape. “I don’t see anyone. Who do you think it is?”

  “Maybe it’s that gambler,” John said. “He was going to leave Les Bois today or tomorrow.”

  “It could be anyone,” was Jack’s assessment. “Harry Barnes told us there are thirty or more homesteads back off in the woods. Cabins, mostly, although he swore that one family lives in a cave.”

  Fargo turned around. At the base of the hill the trail meandered past a dry wash high enough for his purpose. “I want the two of you to go on ahead. I’ll join you later. If I haven’t caught up by nightfall, pitch camp, but keep the fire low. Don’t sit next to it, and don’t turn your back to the dark.”

  “You sound like you expect someone to jump us,” Jack Carter said.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Fargo responded. The precautions he had suggested were simple ones every frontiersman worthy of the name heeded. Precautions most any Indian would take. But the majority of whites were far too careless for their own good. They kindled fires large enough to be seen for miles off. They sat close to their fires for warmth, making excellent targets. And, worst of all, they stared into the flames, not off and away from them. If attacked, they would be blinded for the crucial five or ten seconds it took their eyes to adjust to the darkness around them.

  “Why can’t we stay with you?” John asked. “We have a vested interest in keeping you alive.”

  “I want whoever is following us to see your tracks,” Fargo explained. He rode with them to the base of the hill, then another fifty yards or so along the edge of the wash, at which point he reined sharply down to the bottom and on around a bend.

  John waved and hollered, “Be careful!”

  Fargo listened to the dull clomp of their receding hoofbeats. Sliding from the saddle, he shucked the Henry from its scabbard. Small stones and loose dirt speckled the sides of the wash, and he was careful not to slip as he climbed to the rim. He hunkered just below it. The spot he had chosen couldn’t be seen from the top of the hill, but he could see the crest clearly enough.

  Fargo made himself as comfortable as he could and settled down to wait. He thought about Suzanne Maxwell, about how devastated her brothers would be if he couldn’t help them find the explanation to her disappearance. But it wasn’t unheard of for people to vanish. A husband went off to chop firewood and was never seen again. An Indian maiden left her village to pick berries, and all that was ever found was her basket. Children bounded into the forest to play and never returned.

  Nature was a cruel mistress. The price of survival was eternal vigilance. A single blunder, however minor, was enough to turn a healthy, living person into maggot bait. The hunter who tried to cross a frozen lake when the ice wasn’t thick enough; the climber who missed a handhold midway up a cliff; the warrior whose bowstring snapped as he was bearing down on an angry bull buffalo. They were vivid examples of strokes of bad luck that ended in death.

  Fargo had survived for as long as he had because he never took risks unless he had no other choice. He always did whatever best increased his odds of greeting the next dawn. Granted, there were exceptions, as there were to any rules of thumb, but if there was one thing living in the wild had taught him, it was to look before he leaped—as the old saw had it.

  The sun gradually arced higher. Twenty minutes to half an hour had gone by when Fargo heard hoofbeats again. Only these were approaching from the north, at a gallop. Two horses, he reckoned. Ducking low, Fargo removed his hat. There was no need to keep his eyes on the hill. Its shadow splayed across the wash, and it wasn’t long before the shadows of the two riders seemed to rise up out of it, and then halted.

  Fargo imagined they were surveying the country ahead. He wasn’t worried about being spotted. The walls of the wash were too steep, and the bend concealed the Ovaro. Hoofbeats resumed, moving slower this time. Fargo heard voices growing louder by the second.

  “—done it back in the mountains,” someone was griping. “It’s too open now. He’ll be harder to pick off.”

  “Not at night, he won’t,” said the second man. “We’ll wait until they’ve gathered around their fire. My Sharps will drop him where he sits.”

  Shem Swill, Fargo deduced, curling his finger around the Henry’s trigger. The other had to be one of Shem’s brothers.

  “I just don’t like it, is all,” said the griper. “Why didn’t Clancy take care of this hombre his own self? Why did he send us?”

  “Because you’re the best tracker in the family, Wilt,” Shem responded, “and I’m the best rifle shot.”

  Wilt muttered a few words Fargo didn’t quite catch, then declared, “I still say we’re taking a chance. This Fargo fella is famous. If we kill him, some of his friends might come nosing around. And the last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Famous or not, the bastard shot Billy,” Shem said. “No one hurts a Swill without paying dearly. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, remember?”

  They were clos
e enough now for Fargo to hear one of them spit. He tensed his legs, intending to wait until they were right on top of him, and then spring out. Movement out of the corner of his eye called for a change in plan. The Ovaro had strayed a few feet past the bend toward him. In another few seconds the Swills would spot it, and be forewarned. Jamming the Henry’s stock against his right shoulder, he leapt up over the rim. “Looking for someone, gents?”

  Shem and Wilt Swill were twenty-five feet away. Shem had the big Sharps slung across his back. Wilt was armed with his bone-handled skinning knife and an old Colt Walker revolver. They reined up, Shem automatically starting to unsling his rifle. But he thought better of the idea when Fargo thumbed the Henry’s hammer back.

  “You again!” Wilt exclaimed.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Shem blustered. “Do you always go around pointing guns at folks for no reason?”

  Swinging the Henry from one to the other and back again, Fargo slowly advanced. “I call planning to bushwhack a man reason enough.” He should shoot them where they sat. He had the right. West of the Mississippi, every man was his own judge, jury, and executioner. “Go for your guns. I’ll give you more of a chance than you were fixing to give me.”

  Shem reached for the Sharps.

  “Don’t!” Wilt said. “He’s bluffing. If we keep our hands off our hardware, he won’t do a damn thing.”

  “Are you sure?” Shem asked uncertainly.

  “Clancy has been asking around about this feller,” Wilt said. “And everyone tells him the same thing. This Fargo character ain’t no killer. Not unless he’s provoked.” Wilt smugly smiled and raised his hands into the air. “Go ahead, mister,” he challenged. “Put a hole into me. I dare you.”

  Fargo shot him.

  The slug cored Wilt Swill’s shoulder in almost the exact same spot Billy Swill had been hit. The impact catapulted Wilt from his saddle and he tumbled to the ground in a whirl of limbs. His raccoon hat went flying. So did his revolver. He landed with an audible thud on his head and shoulders, and didn’t move. His horse shied, prancing off to the west a few dozen yards.