Missouri Manhunt Page 8

  “I am listening,” Deputy Gavin said.

  “I say we make camp. We will sit around the fire and talk. That will give whoever is watching the idea that we are talking it over.”

  “What then?” Bobbie Joe asked.

  “One of us slips away and goes on alone,” Fargo proposed. “One person has a better chance of sneaking up on them than all of us together.”

  “I take it that you mean for that person to be you?” Deputy Gavin asked.

  Fargo nodded. He was the best qualified. “Unless you have a better idea.”

  Bobbie Joe objected. “But what if all of them are out there watchin’ us, not just one? They are bound to notice when you slip away, and will be ready for you. One of us should go with you to watch your back.”

  “I will go with him,” Deputy Gavin said.

  “It can’t be you,” Bobbie Joe responded. “You have to watch over Spicer. Besides, it should be someone who can move through the woods as quietly as a mouse, and that would be me.”

  “I can be as quiet as you, girl,” Old Charley said.

  “Maybe you can,” Bobbie Joe admitted. “But you mentioned once that you are not as spry as you used to be. Well, I am spry and then some.” She grinned. “You stay and rest those old joints of yours.”

  Deputy Gavin looked at Fargo. “I leave the decision up to you. Who will it be? Old Charley or Bobbie Joe?”

  Fargo pondered. The old scout or a backwoodswoman. In his estimation they were about equal except that, as Bobbie Joe had brought up, Old Charley was older. But he did not hold Charley’s age against him. Maybe the old frontiersman was a shade slower than he used to be but his vast experience more than made up for it. Even so, Fargo said, “I pick Bobbie Joe.”

  Old Charley spat tobacco juice, this time in disgust. “Why her and not me?”

  “I want you in reserve in case they get us,” Fargo said.

  “Gavin will need someone he can depend on.”

  “And he can’t depend on me?” Bobbie Joe asked, sounding as if her feelings were hurt.

  “You are the one who volunteered,” Fargo reminded her.

  “It is settled, then,” Deputy Gavin announced. “Foley, you make the fire. Take your time and put on a show for whoever is spying on us.”

  “Why am I always the one who does the fire?” the big freighter rumbled. “The rest of you should take turns.”

  “You will do it because I say to do it,” Deputy Gavin said. “That I always pick you is neither here nor there.”

  “The hell you say,” Foley complained, but he did as he was told.

  Fargo contrived to have the Ovaro near the trees when he dismounted. He waited with the others while Foley gathered wood and watched with them as Foley nursed a flame to life. Then he sat with them for a while and pretended to listen while Gavin gave a short speech about how it was the civic duty of every citizen to oppose lawlessness.

  Then, with a glance at Bobbie Joe, Fargo rose and walked into the woods. To an onlooker it might appear he had gone for more firewood or to heed nature’s call. He whistled softly, and the Ovaro came to him as he had trained it to do.

  Bobbie Joe lingered a few minutes. Then she, too, rose and entered the trees, leading her horse by the reins.

  Fargo promptly mounted and gigged the pinto. Sticking to cover, he rode to the southwest.

  Right behind him came Bobbie Joe.

  They had gone a half mile when the ground steeply climbed. In a few hundred yards they came to the top of a ridge. Reining up, Fargo rose in the stirrups and scanned the woods. He did not spot anyone but he did see their camp, plain as could be. “If there is a watcher, he must be close,” he whispered, and dismounted. “You wait here while I scout around.”

  “Nothin’ doin’,” Bobbie Joe replied. “I did not come along to nursemaid the horses.”

  Fargo removed his spurs and slipped them into his saddlebags. Together they crept along the ridge. He made no more noise than that cougar the night before. To her credit, neither did Bobbie Joe.

  They had not gone far when Fargo stopped and stiffened. He had heard a hoof stamp. A tangle of briars blocked his view. He could not see over them so he went around, circling until he glimpsed black amid the green. It was a hat, a wide-brimmed black hat such as Indians favored, only this one was on the head of a short, stocky man whose features hinted at a mix of red and white and perhaps a little brown thrown in.

  “Yoas,” Bobbie Joe whispered.

  The half-breed was leaning against a tree and gazing down at the camp in the hollow. Every now and then he rose onto his toes, although what benefit that did him, Fargo could not imagine.

  Of the other outlaws, there was no sign.

  “We will wait for him to move on,” Fargo whispered.

  “He won’t be easy to shadow,” Bobbie Joe responded. “He has the eyes of a hawk and the ears of a fox.”

  Yoas was also apparently in no hurry to catch up to his companions. A half hour went by. An hour.

  “Maybe Mad Dog told him not to rejoin the outlaws until the posse leaves,” Bobbie Joe ventured.

  Fargo had been thinking the same thing.

  Yoas abruptly proved them wrong by wheeling and wending purposefully among the boles. He did not go far. His horse was concealed among some pines.

  Fargo did not linger to watch the killer ride off. Turning, he made haste for the pinto, Bobbie Joe at his side every stride of the way. They quickly mounted and headed southwest. Soon they spied the breed.

  Fargo did not follow directly behind but instead paralleled the outlaw’s course. Every now and again he glimpsed Yoas far off through the trees. His worry was that the breed might catch sight of them. To prevent that, he avoided open spaces as much as was possible.

  Two hours went by. Bobbie Joe did not utter a word in all that time, until, clearing her throat, she quietly asked, “What will you do if he leads us to the rest?”

  To Fargo it was a silly question. “What else? Get Lucille Sparks out in one piece.”

  “I doubt we can do it without killin’ Mad Dog and his men.”

  Fargo considered that observation even sillier. “They are the scourge of Missouri. No one will miss them.”

  “What if we can get her away from them without killin’ them?”

  Twisting in the saddle, Fargo regarded the hill girl. “Are you leading up to something or talking to hear yourself talk?”

  “I was just askin’,” Bobbie Joe said defensively.

  It puzzled him, but Fargo promptly forgot about it as he devoted his energies to shadowing Yoas. They were well into the mountains and pressing deeper, the land a virgin paradise of lush forest teeming with abundant wildlife. Ages past, all of Missouri had been like this. Now, much of it was cultivated farmland, with more space taken each year by settlements and towns and cities. Only here, in the southwest corner, was Missouri pretty much as it had been before the coming of the white man. Only here, in the maze of mountains, waterways, and caves, could badmen like Mad Dog Terrell find a haven from the long arm of the law.

  Until now.

  Fargo could count the number of times he had been deputized on one hand. It was not that he did not believe in law and order. Without law, the frontier would be overrun by its wilder elements. As it was, cutthroats and renegades were as thick as fleas on a hound dog. Law and order were necessary, provided they were not taken too far.

  Fargo had been to places back east where a man couldn’t spit without being arrested. Places where the boardwalks were rolled up at sundown. Places where saloons and taverns were banned, gambling was considered a vile vice, and ladies were required to act accordingly in every sense of the word. He never could understand why people were content to live that way. To him, whiskey and women and cards were the spice that made civilization bearable. Without them, town and city life was a dull drudge. People got up, they went to work, they came home, they went to bed. That was it. Day in and day out, year in and year out. Their entire world might consist
of fifty square miles of real estate, if that.

  Such a life was not for him. Fargo hated to be hemmed in as much as he hated to be shackled by so-called virtue. He liked to drink when he wanted and play poker when he wanted and treat himself to a willing gal when she wanted. He liked to roam, to wander, to explore, to see each and every day a part of the world he had never seen before.

  Wisps of gray rose in the distance. Smoke, rising from a campfire.

  Fargo glimpsed Yoas once more, high up on a thinly timbered spine that separated the slope they were climbing from whatever lay on the other side.

  “It won’t be long now,” Bobbie Joe whispered. She did not sound happy about it.

  “No, it won’t,” Fargo agreed.

  From the spine they looked down on a hidden valley nestled amid stark mountains and watered by a meandering stream. In the very center of the valley, approximately a half mile off, stood a solitary cabin. From its stone chimney curled the smoke they had seen. Attached to the cabin was a corral with more than a half dozen horses.

  “Will you look at that,” Bobbie Joe said. “As snug as can be, and no one knows about it except them.”

  “And us,” Fargo amended. “I want you to ride back and fetch the deputy and the others.”

  “No.”

  Fargo wasn’t sure he had heard her right. “No?”

  “The deputy did not put you in charge of me,” Bobbie Joe said. “I am free to do as I please, and it pleases me to sneak on down there and give Mad Dog the surprise of his life.”

  “One of us needs to get the rest of the posse,” Fargo insisted.

  “Don’t let me hold you up.”

  Fargo looked at her. “Why are you being so pigheaded?”

  “Don’t beat around the bush,” Bobbie Joe smirked. “Come right out with what is on your mind.”

  “I am serious.” Until this moment, she had struck Fargo as fairly levelheaded.

  “I am not your errand girl. I intend to go down there and find the Sparks woman. You are welcome to tag along or you can go after the deputy or sit here and twiddle your thumbs for all I care.” So saying, Bobbie Joe clucked to her dun and rode past him.

  Fargo simmered inside. She had been acting contrary all morning, and now this. Short of knocking her over the head and tying her up, he was forced to jab his heels against the Ovaro and follow her.

  Heavy timber screened them from scrutiny. At the bottom they drew rein. Except for the trees that fringed the stream, the valley floor was open grassland.

  “We can’t get anywhere near their hideout without bein’ spotted,” Bobbie Joe remarked. “Maybe we should wait until dark.”

  It was Fargo’s turn to say, “No. The sooner we get Lucille out of there, the better off she will be.”

  “Whatever you want,” Bobbie Joe said with more than a touch of amusement.

  They circled to where the stream entered the woods. Staying on the opposite side from the cabin, they picked their way among the cottonwoods and willows and oaks. Fargo had the Henry across his saddle. The only window he saw was covered by burlap. Presently they came abreast of the cabin, and he drew rein. “We will leave the horses here, cross the stream on foot, and crawl the rest of the way,” he proposed.

  “I have a better idea.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Fargo said, and shifted in his saddle. “Let me hear—” He stopped when he saw she was pointing her rifle at him.

  “My idea is for you to do exactly as I tell you. At this range I can’t miss.”

  11

  “Have you gone loco?” Fargo asked. He made no attempt to raise his rifle or go for his Colt.

  Bobbie Joe Jentry frowned. “I don’t particularly want to hurt you but I will if you force me. If you think I won’t shoot because I am a woman, you are mistaken. I have shot folks before, and I am no bluff. I have heard you are slick on the draw but if you think you can get off a shot before I do, you are mistaken.”

  Fargo tried another tack. “What is this about?”

  “You will find out in a bit. In the meantime, shove your rifle into your saddle scabbard but do it slow.”

  Fargo complied. He had no doubt she would do as she said. There was a moment, just before he slid the rifle in, when he considered swinging it like a club and trying to knock her rifle from her hands. But the steely gleam in her otherwise lovely eyes warned him he had better not.

  “Thank you,” Bobbie Joe said. “Now head straight for the cabin, and no shenanigans.”

  “They might shoot us off our horses before we get there,” Fargo felt compelled to mention.

  Bobbie Joe tittered. “You, maybe, but I doubt they will shoot me. Mad Dog would not let them.”

  On that enigmatic note, Fargo kneed the pinto across the stream and through the trees on the other side. As he emerged into the open, the sun struck him full in the face. He blinked against the glare and focused on the cabin, on the burlap flap over the window and on the door. “You could at least explain,” he tried again without turning his head.

  “Hush. Another minute or two and it will all be clear.”

  The burlap flap moved and a face appeared. It was there and it was gone. Not five seconds later the front door opened wide and out came three of the outlaws.

  The last to emerge was the breed, Yoas. The other two were as different as night from day. One was huge, even larger than Foley, with fists the size of mallets and great thick shoulders worthy of a bull. His beard was a riot of hair that had never been brushed, combed or trimmed. The other man, by contrast, was almost as short as Yoas and so thin and pale as to appear fragile. His mustache was no thicker than string. Where the huge hulk wore grimy homespun, the thin one wore the kind of clothes favored by men who lived in bayou country.

  Based on what he had been told, Fargo reckoned that the huge one was Mattox and the other must be DePue, which proved to be the case.

  “Mon Dieu! What have we here? To what do we owe the honneur of your visit, mademoiselle?”

  “I am lookin’ for Mad Dog,” Bobbie Joe said. “I have somethin’ important to tell him.”

  “And a gift, too, I see, ma chère,” DePue said, grinning. “Who might this fine fellow with you be, mon amie?”

  Bobbie Joe told him, adding, “And how many times must I tell you not to call me your sweetheart?”

  DePue put a hand to his chest as if in pain. “Ah, mademoiselle, I am stricken. To have one so fair accord me such little notice—it is a humiliation I can not bear.”

  “Still as full of it as ever,” Bobbie Joe said.

  Mattox let out with a great roar of a laugh and slapped his tree trunk of a thigh. “That is what I like about you, girl! You always put that uppity Creole in his place.”

  DePue let out with an exaggerated sigh. “Will you never get it right, you mountain of muscle? I am Cajun, not Creole. Comprenez-vous?”

  Mattox shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Cajun. Creole. They are all the same to me.”

  “Not to me,” DePue said. “I take pride in my heritage.”

  “You are a runt who talks funny,” Mattox said. “What is there to be proud about?”

  DePue colored and moved his jacket aside to reveal a Smith & Wesson revolver, worn butt forward. “If Mad Dog did not insist I keep you alive, I would use you for target practice.”

  Mattox laughed some more. “You are welcome to try, puny man. But even if you empty your six-gun into me, I will still reach you and break your scrawny Cajun neck.”

  “Aha!” DePue exclaimed, clapping his hands in mock delight. “You can get it right when you try! You are not the utter imbecile you make yourself out to be.”

  At that juncture Yoas stepped past them, growling. “That’s enough, senor, out of you and him both.” He glared at Fargo, then gave Bobbie Joe a quizzical look. “How did you find us, senorita? Mad Dog never brought you here that I know of.”

  “We followed you.”

  Mattox’s bushy eyebrows practically met over his bulbous nose. �
��You don’t say, missy? Awful sloppy of you, breed.”

  Whirling, Yoas hovered his hand over his holster. “I have told you before, gringo. Do not call me that. Do not ever call me that.”

  “I will call you what I damn well please,” Mattox informed him. “And if you don’t like it, you are as welcome as the Frenchman to do something about it.”

  Fargo hoped they would come to blows, or worse. He was ever so slowly inching his hand toward his Colt. If they kept it up a little longer, they were in for an unwelcome shock.

  Behind him, a gun hammer clicked. “No, you don’t,” Bobbie Joe said. “You have behaved so far. Keep on behaving and I will keep you alive.”

  Yoas had also heard the click. Turning, he stepped to the pinto and relieved Fargo of the Colt and the Henry, saying as he did, “We are sloppy. We should have disarmed you first thing.”

  Mattox came over, hooked his gigantic hands under Fargo’s arms, and swung Fargo to the ground as easily as Fargo might swing a feather. “Why don’t you join us, mister? Our boss will want some words with you when he gets back.”

  “Where is Mad Dog, anyway?” Bobbie Joe asked.

  “Off with the girl, mademoiselle,” DePue answered. “He is having a lot of fun with her.”

  Fargo’s worst dread had come true. Lucille was being molested. “Some outlaws you are,” he said in contempt.

  DePue’s head jerked up. “Oui, monsieur. We are the best. It is why we have lasted longer than anyone else. It is why we will go on stealing to our heart’s content.”

  “Stealing is one thing,” Fargo said. “Taking the woman was another.”

  “Oui, it was,” the Cajun concurred, and laughed heartily.

  Yoas swore. “I warned Mad Dog not to do it but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him a posse would show up.”

  “We all expected the law to come after us,” Mattox said. “But you are the one who brought them to our doorstep.” His chuckle was reminiscent of a bear’s growl. “Mad Dog won’t be none too happy about that. He won’t be happy at all.”