Diablo Death Cry Page 6

  “Don Hernando, bethink yourself.” Captain Salazar interceded. “Surely you jest? Por Dios! These are godless savages armed with dangerous weapons.”

  That tore it for Fargo. He enjoyed the hell out of watching the pompous graduate of “Seville’s elite Colegio Militario” stew in his juices.

  “I think you should take them on,” Fargo told his employer. “We’ve got some rough Indian ranges ahead of us, and these two could prove useful. And they’d make good roving sentries on our perimeter at night.”

  “So be it,” the viceroy replied. “I trust your judgment in these matters. But please make sure they boil their clothing and bathe.”

  Salazar again started to object, but Quintana waved him quiet. “The matter is settled, Diego.”

  Booger, watching his archnemesis, Sergeant Rivera, turn apoplectic with rage, grinned like the cat who fucked the canary before he ate it. He was about to crack his whip when Cherokee Bob spoke up.

  “Hold your horses a moment, big fellow. I was noticing your moccasins. I’ll bet you five dollars I can tell you right where you got them.”

  Booger, who loved a wager, looked at him asquint. “That’s money for old rope, John. But have you got five dollars? That’s heap big wampum for a blanket ass.”

  Cherokee Bob looked at Fargo, who had to bite his lip hard to keep a straight face. “I’ll cover his end of the bet, Booger.”

  “I’ll sweeten the bet,” Cherokee Bob added. “If I can’t tell you exactly where you got them moccasins, I’ll pay you five dollars. If you lose, you only gotta pony up a dollar.”

  “Money in the bank,” Booger scoffed. “Ain’t no way in hell you could know where I got ’em. Even Fargo don’t know that. You’re on, featherhead.”

  “You got them on your feet.”

  Booger purpled with rage while Cherokee Bob shook with the silent “abdomen laugh” Indians had perfected for treaty signings.

  “Heathen, you can kiss my—”

  “Pay up,” Fargo snapped. “No need to get your back up—you walked right into it.”

  “H’ar, now! He—”

  “I will not abide any man who welches on a bet. I paid up when he burned me with it at Fort Smith.”

  Booger dug a silver dollar from a chamois pouch on his belt and threw it down beside the trail. “Fargo, you double-poxed hound, I—”

  “We’re waiting, Mr. McTeague,” Quintana called out his window.

  “I suggest you folks wait a little longer.” Cherokee Bob spoke up. “And make sure those women stay put.”

  He looked at Fargo, the mirth fading from his face. “There’s something up ahead you need to see. And I’ll warn you right now—it ain’t too pretty.”

  • • •

  Fargo reined in and swung down from the saddle. He had seen plenty of brutality in his day, and on occasion he had been responsible for some. But what he stared at now taxed him to the limits of his endurance.

  The naked girl who lay—or, rather, lay heaped—across the trail was barely recognizable as human. Her severed head—minus the scalp—and limbs had been tossed on top of her entrails. A squirming, shifting blue-black blanket of flies buzzed so loudly the horses nervously stutter-stepped away.

  “Is she a Mexican?” Salazar asked, averting his eyes. Lieutenant Aragon hastily retreated and retched into the grass. But Sergeant Rivera, Fargo noticed, just seemed bored as he gazed stone-eyed at the unspeakable atrocity.

  “Could be a mestizo,” Fargo replied, meaning of mixed Mexican and Indian blood. “Or most likely a full-blooded Indian. Her cheekbones are high and pronounced.”

  “What does it matter now?” Rivera asked. He swiped irritably at the flies.

  “Las moscas are eating her as we speak. The ancient Christian rite of human sacrifice is a purification ritual that binds the holy. Binds them as one against the infidels and pagans who obstruct God’s perfect plan.”

  Fargo fought off a sudden impulse to kill the smug bastard on the spot. “Pagans like me, you mean?”

  “Sergeant Rivera was not condoning this barbarism,” Salazar said. “It was merely a philosophical observation.”

  Booger and the two Indians had followed on foot. They arrived now.

  “I see the butcher’s bill was steep,” Booger said, removing his hat and swiping at the flies. “This is a rough piece of work even for Comanches.”

  Fargo shook his head. “Don’t put it on them. Comanches are like Apaches. They got little use for scalps. Somebody else did it.”

  He looked at the Shawnee and the Delaware. “Did you see who did it?”

  “See it?” Lieutenant Aragon repeated. “Perhaps they did it.”

  “Didn’t see her killed,” Cherokee Bob said, ignoring Aragon. “But me and All Behind Him was hiding in the grass when a Mexican dumped her. Had her rolled up in a ground sheet. I ain’t certain, but it looked like one of them shit-house rats who ride with El Lobo Flaco.”

  Fargo nodded. “That’s how I make it, too. They sell scalps down in Mexico. She was dumped so we’d find her. Especially so I’d find her.”

  Fargo looked at Salazar. “Here’s what I don’t savvy. Your boss claims the Skinny Wolf has taken a freak to abduct Miranda. I can believe that easy enough. But this ain’t the best way to win a gal’s heart. You sure he’s not after something else?”

  Salazar’s eyes narrowed to slits and his nostrils flared. “You are calling His Excellency a liar?”

  “T’hell with that ‘His Excellency’ hogwash, Sancho,” Booger cut in. “He ain’t no damn king nor prince. He’s a man what pulls his pants down to shit like everybody else. ’Cept for Rivera here—when he needs to shit he just takes off his hat.”

  Booger’s imposing stature and the fierce warning in his eyes startled all three Spaniards. He was still outraged about being fleeced for a dollar and looking to vent his fury on somebody. Salazar finally spoke up, but in a muted tone.

  “Norteamericanos like you two place no great importance on lineage. In Spain, a man is the sum total of his bloodline. Many men in America cannot even name their great-grandfathers. I can name my sires and dams back to the time of the Moors. You two are certainly capable men, and no doubt fearless. But like most men in this godforsaken frontier, you are rootless. Thus you have no respect for subordination—every man knowing and accepting his place in the social order.”

  “My root is plenty long,” Booger punned. “Sires and dams? Pah! My great-grandfather never bought me a whiskey, so piss on him.”

  “Ease off, Booger,” Fargo said. “The man wasn’t insulting us, just making a point. Anyhow, we got bigger problems to fret. The Skinny Wolf and his pack can’t be that far away.”

  “The pig’s afterbirth who dumped this body,” Booger said, “had to leave a trail in this grass.”

  Fargo nodded. “And we could waste time following it. But I know El Lobo and his ways. He won’t roost long in one place, especially after something like this. And he’s a top hand at luring men into ambushes. Our best chance to kill him is when he comes to us—and he will, sure as cats fighting.”

  Again he looked at Salazar, his eyes as direct and piercing as bullets. “Hernando Quintana strikes me as a wise man who doesn’t jump to conclusions. And he told me he thinks El Lobo has a man traveling with this party.”

  “If you are implying, Fargo, that I—”

  “Come down off your hind legs, Captain. It’s obvious you’re smitten by his daughter, so why would you want to help a filthy scum bucket like El Lobo lay hands on her?”

  “Fargo,” Booger cut in, “you yourself said the Skinny Wolf could be after something besides the girl.”

  Fargo spoke up quickly before Booger mentioned the much-too-heavy coach.

  “Yeah, but even if he is, you think he wouldn’t grab her? He’s notorious for stealing beautiful women. Salazar, I’m just as
king if you’ve got any suspicions about anybody in this expedition.”

  “I respect don Hernando immensely, but he may be wrong. These men are all loyal to His Excellency and to Spain.”

  To Spain. Fargo found that remark a mite queer, but predictably, Booger had to stir up more trouble.

  “I say it’s this shifty-eyed bastard Rivera,” he announced. “He looks like the type who would kill a nun for her gold tooth and then sell her bones to a rendering plant.”

  Rivera’s blunt, brutish face darkened with rage, but before he could react Booger, moving swiftly for such a big man and roaring like a burned bear, picked him up and flung him fifteen feet out into the grass like a sack of tripes.

  Cherokee Bob and All Behind Him howled with mirth. Salazar and Aragon looked shell-shocked at this astounding show of strength—Rivera was hardly a small man.

  “Booger,” Fargo said wearily, “take one of these red aboriginals back with you. You stay behind with the coach and make sure nobody else comes forward. Send a shovel back so I can bury these remains.”

  Rivera struggled to his feet with his Volcanic repeater at the level. In an eyeblink Fargo jerked back his six-shooter and blew the weapon out of Rivera’s hand.

  “Booger, get a damn wiggle on,” Fargo snapped. “He needs time to cool down.”

  “Aye, he’ll be cool, Catfish,” Booger said as he grabbed Cherokee Bob by the collar and headed out, “when old Booger rips out his liver and feeds it to his asshole.”

  All Behind Him, still digging at lice, finally spoke up. “Fargo? When we eat?”

  Fargo shook his head in disgust. El Lobo Flaco, the most dangerous killer in northern Mexico and the American Southwest, had drawn a bead on the Quintana party; Booger was on the verge of starting a war with Spain; Rivera was likely to shoot both Americans in the back; and to top it off, Hernando Quintana appeared to be lying through his teeth about something mighty consequential.

  Again Salazar’s odd remark picked at Fargo like a burr in his boot: “These men are all loyal to His Excellency and to Spain.”

  Fargo gazed south across the flat, unending sea of waving saw grass. Soon the Gulf Coast would be behind them and the Texas brushland—an ambusher’s paradise—would begin. The Skinny Wolf and his jackals wouldn’t waste that opportunity, and here was a shifty-eyed Delaware Indian demanding to know when he could get outside some hot grub.

  “I knew the money was too good,” Fargo muttered, keeping a close eye on Rivera.

  On the other hand, there were two very tempting women among this party, and both of them had been giving Fargo looks he recognized well. But that pleasant thought faded like a retinal afterimage when Fargo glanced at the butchered corpse heaped on the trail.

  7

  For the next week the Quintana party made excellent progress across the southeast Texas flatland. The tall saw grass quickly gave way to short-grass plains. Unlike the overgrazed Oregon Trail, the grass remained plentiful, as did good water.

  But near the end of that first week, the terrain along the Southwest Trail began to change noticeably. Grass was still available, but now they encountered stretches of starved bushes, sage, and greasewood, interspersed with thick stands of thorny brush. The sun beat down with furnace heat by late afternoon, and at times water was scarce.

  They were entering the deceptively dangerous Texas brushland, and now Fargo doubled his vigilance. Foremost in his mind was El Lobo Flaco, the Skinny Wolf, and the cutthroat berserkers who rode with him. The expedition was also edging into ranges familiar to Kiowas and Comanches, two tribes that had made common cause and killed more white men than any other tribes on the frontier.

  However, Fargo knew from rueful experience that not all the threats were human.

  Texas, in 1861, was home to millions of wild longhorns vastly different in temperament from the domesticated breeds of cattle common in Europe and England. Unlike the more placid shorthorns and white-face Herefords, these wild longhorns had arrived with the Spanish explorers centuries ago and were the first breed of cattle to freely range North America.

  Wily and extremely deadly, some were man killers—literal bovine assassins—that hid in natural coverts and attacked humans. Four-legged bushwhackers adding to the danger from the two-legged breed.

  Ladinos, Mexicans called them—“the sly ones.” Twice Fargo had been attacked by them in the past, and both times he escaped hard death by a hairbreadth.

  “Skye Fargo, surely you are exaggerating?” teased a skeptical Miranda Quintana. “Homicidal cows? Is this another Western ‘yarn’ such as Mr. McTeague’s tale about creatures at the bottom of the glass that eat men from the inside out?”

  The sun was sinking in a scarlet blaze, and Fargo had called everyone for a meeting just before supper to emphasize the various dangers of the brushland.

  “Fargo ain’t joshing, miss,” Deke Lafferty chimed in as he knelt over one of his Dutch ovens. “I crossed Texas once slinging hash for a crew of freighters. One a’ them sons of—uh, them ladinos attacked us at breakfast. We was mighty lucky one of the drivers had him a Hawken rifle. Them wild cows is hard to bring down when the charge is on.”

  Diego Salazar was smoking a thin black cigar and keeping a close eye on Miranda—something he did religiously when the regal beauty was anywhere near Fargo.

  “Oye, compadres,” he said to Aragon and Rivera, “este hombre Fargo tiene miedo de las vacas! Que valor, eh?”

  “He did not say he feared cows, Diego.” Viceroy Quintana censured his man. “He is simply warning us of danger. We would all be wise to heed him.”

  Booger had whipped Overland stages across Texas and knew Fargo was telling the truth. But his contrary nature made him address himself to Miranda.

  “Cupcake, Skye Fargo is a notorious liar, coward, and reprobate, and you were right to call him on it. He would steal the coppers from a dead man’s eyes and then rob the widow’s house while she was at the funeral. Why, he—”

  “My name is not ‘cupcake,’” she said archly, “and your buffoonery is both vulgar and boring.”

  Booger glanced at Fargo and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Crikes! Ain’t she death to the Devil? Maybe somebody stole her rattle when she was a baby.”

  “Bottle it,” Fargo snapped.

  Sergeant Rivera’s malevolence toward the giant reinsman had increased tenfold since Booger tossed him through the air like a child’s ball.

  “Tonto,” he spat at Booger, scorn poison-tipping the word.

  Deke spoke up before Booger could. “Fargo, I wish you’d get them damn featherheads in line. I got food disappearing, and I’m missing a bottle of our medicine whiskey.”

  Even as he finished his complaint, Cherokee Bob’s drunken voice—off-key and rusty—reached them out of the gathering darkness.

  Buffalo gal, won’t cha

  come out tonight,

  come out tonight,

  come out tonight . . .

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to them,” Fargo said, knowing it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. “But they’ve been useful to us. They make good picket guards at night, and I’ve got them watching for sign.”

  “Perhaps,” Salazar suggested sarcastically, “they could bell these wild cows?”

  “Maybe,” Fargo said mildly, letting it go. He was more interested in the sultry glances being sent his way by Miranda—and in a less obvious way, by Katrina Robles, the woman supposedly keeping Miranda on the straight and narrow path.

  After supper, Fargo, Booger, Deke, and Bitch Creek McDade drank coffee and smoked in a circle around a crackling fire of dead juniper wood.

  “Christ,” Deke said, “these damn garlics are all clabber-lipped greenhorns. Not a one of that bunch believes Fargo ’bout the ladinos.”

  “I’m a bit of a greenhorn myself,” McDade chipped in, “and I don’t reckon that all Spaniards are cruel. Bu
t have you boys noticed how hard Salazar and his two chums use their horses? I’ve seen Salazar spur that fine Arabian of his in the shoulders.”

  Fargo nodded. Sloppy and careless treatment of horses was bad enough, but outright cruelty rated high in his bad books—and said plenty about the men who meted out such treatment.

  “Salazar and that fish-eyed Aragon are double-barreled assholes,” Booger said. “But that cockchafer Rivera is of a scurvy disposition, chappies. Say, Fargo, you palaver some Espanish—that half-faced groat called me a tonto. The hell’s that mean?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Fargo lied.

  Deke cussed. “Old man Quintana is a decent sort. But that Salazar and them two boyfriends of his really gripe my ass. Damn their bones to hell, anyway! They treat me and Bitch here like ignut chawbacons. The sons a’ bitches dress up in them gold braids and fancy cheese knives and swagger it around like they was ten inches taller’n God. Yessir, there’s them as figgers a poor man ain’t no better’n a flea-bit hound.”

  Booger loosed an explosive belch. “It’s about damn time we killed all three of them three-penny soldiers—’r at least that skunk-bit Rivera.”

  “Look,” Fargo said, “Booger, you and Deke need to ease off. The Skinny Wolf is likely out there right now, planning his next attack. Don’t waste your fighting fettle on trifles. That cunning bastard is a heap more dangerous right now than these Spanish fops.”

  “When you think they’ll hit us, Skye?” McDade asked.

  Fargo shrugged. “How long is a piece of string? I tangled with that curly wolf near the Pecos Stream, and every time I thought I had him in my sights he worked a fox play on me.”

  Cherokee Bob’s drunken, disembodied voice reached them out of the surrounding darkness, his singing wretched: “She has freckles on her, b-u-u-t I love her. . . .”

  “Them two Injins are a sin to Moses,” Deke said with a chuckle in his voice.

  “Long as them consarn fools don’t come pesticatin’ around me,” Booger said, “I don’t mind ’em. The unholy trinity hates their guts, so old Booger reckons even a bad dog is worth a bone.”