The Trailsman #355

They broke camp early the next morning, not long after sunrise. Fargo and Adelita hadn’t had much sleep, but they didn’t let on before the others that anything had changed. Fargo figured they had their suspicions, especially Alvie, but nobody said anything.

Not that anything had really changed. He and Adelita had accepted each other as equals, but he’d been willing to do that from the start. Adelita was the one who’d been bothered, but now she knew Fargo in the most intimate way possible and no longer considered him a threat to her authority. She hadn’t taken control of him as she might have hoped to, but neither had he tried to command her. They’d shared the experience, and that was as it should be.

“That depends on whether they could follow Ike’s trail better than I could,” Fargo said, “or whether they know where Lorne Speight’s hiding out. Or whether they get lucky and stumble across something.”

“I might be smart about women,” Alvie said, “but that’s’cause of all my experience with ’em. Comancheros is a whole’nother story.”

Ike arrived at the entrance to Dead Man’s Canyon about noon. He didn’t like the looks of the place at all. The entrance was flanked by high rocks, not mountains, but high enough to be impressive considering the mostly open country around them.

He couldn’t see much past the entrance from where he sat on one of the mules that he’d been riding to give his horse a rest. He knew that the canyon wound down among high rock walls until it branched off into two smaller, much shorter, canyons. All three of them ended at blank rock walls. That was what his cousins had told him, at least.

“Speight’s in the one on the right,” one of them had said, “but it’s not likely that anybody’d get that far without being shot. He has men all along the main canyon, and they all have guns. He’s not a man who likes company.”

Ike worried a little about that, but he didn’t look like anybody who’d be a threat to Speight. He was just a man with a couple of mules to trade, as far as anybody could see. If they’d let him in, he could tell them what else he had, and since it was well hidden, he didn’t think they’d kill him.

He wasn’t certain about that last part, though. They might think he was just a liar and do away with him. Or they could wait until he led them to the guns and kill him after they had them.

That was too far in the future to worry about, however, so Ike clucked at the mule and rode on down to the canyon entrance.

Nobody shot him when he got there, so he rode on, passing into the shade of the canyon walls. He had the feeling he was being watched, but although he scanned the rocks on both sides of him, he couldn’t spot anyone. Once he thought he may have caught the glint of a rifle barrel, but he couldn’t be sure that’s what it was. Might’ve been just his eyes playing tricks on him.

He went through the canyon like that, passing from sun to shade, watching the rocks, and seeing nothing other than an occasional bird and one jackrabbit that ran into the brush along the trail.

The canyon was about a mile long, Ike figured. He came to the place where it continued for a little way ahead and the two other canyons forked off in other directions. He turned the mule’s head and headed into the one on the right.

The man appeared in front of him as if by magic. First he wasn’t there and then he was. Ike blinked his eyes twice to be sure the man wasn’t a mirage.

“You’d better have a good reason for being here,” the man said. “Else I’ll shoot you where you sit.”

“You might be sorry if you do,” Ike said, his voice not as steady as it had been. “I told you, I got other stuff. Speight would like to hear about it.”

“Hell, why do I have to do it? Speight’ll have my guts for garters if this fella’s not worth the trouble.”

He went back behind the rock and came out riding a horse that Ike didn’t think looked one bit better than his own. He didn’t think it would be smart to point that out to Rufe, however, so he didn’t. He did what Rufe said and followed him.

Fargo’s bunch rode most of the day without catching sight of the soldiers who’d been escorting the wagonload of guns. Fargo thought they could be miles away, or they could be close. It was impossible to say.

“Well, he’s ahead of us, whatever happens to him,” Alvie said. “That’s fine with me. I wouldn’t want to be in his boots about now.”

They were sitting on their horses about two miles from the canyon. Adelita was beside them, with her men a little way behind. They could see the canyon rocks rising up from the flat landscape.

“I know how we won’t,” Alvie said. “I’d as soon ride into a wildcat den as into that canyon. At least I could see the wildcats, and they wouldn’t have guns.”

“Ike stole them rifles all by hisself,” Alvie said. “If he could do that, Fargo could probably take on the whole state of Texas.”

“If I get Ike, they’ll come boiling out of that canyon like hornets some kid stirred with a stick,” Fargo told her. “You’ll have to deal with them.”

“There’s just eleven of us,” Alvie said. “There’s bound to be as many as fifty of them. I don’t much like them odds.”

“I’m not afraid,” Alvie said. “Just careful. I didn’t get to be this old by going up against five men at one time.”

“Some of that number will be women and children,” Fargo said. “You won’t have to worry about them. Probably not more than thirty men. Could be only twenty.”

“That sounds a little better,” Alvie said, “but look here. We don’t know for sure Speight won’t just buy those rifles and let Ike go on his way.”

“It could happen like that,” Alvie insisted. He looked off into the distance. “Ain’t very damn likely, though, is it?”

“Not very,” Fargo said. “If it does happen like that, you’ll be here to stop them from getting the guns when they go after them.”

Fargo hadn’t seen the reflection of the sun on binoculars or rifle barrels, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t missed it.

Adelita looked around the countryside, taking it in with calculating eyes. After a few seconds, she turned to Fargo and said, “We will be ready.”

Fargo didn’t ask what they’d be ready for. He simply nodded and rode away. His idea was that Speight would be in the right-hand branch of the canyon. Most people were righthanded and tended to turn that way when given a choice. Besides, using the left hand was associated with bad luck by a lot of people. Not for any logical reason, but some people didn’t care much about logic. Fargo also remembered that on Wellman’s map the right-hand branch had been somewhat longer and more crooked. That feature would appeal to someone looking for concealment.

Fargo also figured that Speight would be at the very end of the canyon, backed up against the wall so that nobody could get at him from behind.

That was a lot of assumptions, and if Fargo was wrong, Ike might be dead by the time he got there, if he wasn’t dead already. Fargo didn’t put much stock in the idea that Ike would be able to talk Speight into paying him for the rifles. Speight wasn’t that kind of man.

Alvie Vernon wasn’t the only one who’d heard of Speight. Fargo knew about him, too, and there were those who said that he was more vicious when torturing his enemies than any Comanche. The Comanche admired bravery and to some of their warriors, to torture a man was to put him to the ultimate test. As Fargo knew, it was a test that no one passed.

Speight didn’t care about testing a man’s courage. To him, torture was two things. It was a way to get information, but it was also something that Speight enjoyed. Or so the story was told. Fargo couldn’t vouch for it. If it was even half true, however, Ike would never ride out of the canyon, not unless Fargo could bring him out.

As Fargo rode, he wondered why he was bothering with Ike. The man was a killer, and if he got back to San Antonio, he would face a hanging rope. But the rope was justice, Fargo thought. Torture was something else—brutality, mainly—and it had nothing at all to do with justice. If Fargo could get Ike away from Speight, he would. It was only right to let the law have the last word on him.

And then there were the rifles. Adelita wanted them. The government wanted her to have them, and only Ike knew where they were. Fargo didn’t think the soldiers who had lost them would be able to find them. He had to get Ike to lead the way to them.

Just how he was going to do that wasn’t clear to him. If he was right about where Speight was located, then Speight would be likely to guard his back. But maybe not as carefully as his front. After all, there was no way a large force could get into his camp from the rear, not without giving him plenty of warning. There’d be a guard up in the rocks somewhere, but Fargo guessed there would be no more than two, and maybe only one. Getting past one man wouldn’t pose much of a problem.

Ike was buck-naked, spread-eagle on the hard-packed earth in Speight’s encampment. His arms and legs were stretched tight and tied to stakes pounded into the ground. The sun burned down from the clear blue sky, forcing him to keep his eyes closed most of the time.

It wasn’t his fault, damn it. How was he to know that Speight wouldn’t even listen to him? The man was crazy—that was all there was to it.

Ike had done everything right. He’d followed Rufe into the camp, where the women and children had made fun of him and even thrown things at him. He didn’t mind that. Let’em have their fun. The payoff was getting closer all the time.

The camp was mostly tents, with a few small wooden buildings, just dry tinder that looked like a good wind would blow them down, if there was ever a wind in the canyon. Speight was in one of them, and that was where Rufe took Ike.

The interior of the building smelled like something had died in it, but Ike thought it was just that Speight didn’t bathe very often, if ever. There was a rickety table on one side of the room with food scraps lying on it. The scraps had been there a while and didn’t help make the smell any better.

Speight himself was an unimposing little man who regarded him from where he sat in a straight-backed chair tilted back against the wall near the only window in the single room. It was hard to judge, but Ike guessed he couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. It was hard to say much about his face because it was virtually covered with a thick black beard, from which his wild eyes peered out.

As soon as he saw those eyes, Ike knew he was in trouble, big trouble. They seemed to be glowing in the dim light in the room. They were the eyes of a madman.

Speight grunted. There was something in his hands. It looked like a book. Ike couldn’t believe the man was reading a book.

“Says he has something to trade,” Rufe told him. “All’s I saw was two mules and a horse. Might do for eatin’. Not much else.”

Speight looked up, his eyes shining in the forest of his beard. He raised the book he was holding in one hand and gestured with it in Ike’s direction.

“ ‘Any outsider who comes near shall be put to death.’ Numbers three:ten.” He lowered the book. “Kill him.”

“Wait,” Ike said, trying not to sound as desperate as he was. “Wait. You can’t kill me. I have more than a horse and mules. I have Henry rifles.”

“They’re hidden. But I know the way to where they are. I can show you. I’ll sell ’em to you for a good price. You’ll see.”

Ike knew it would be a big mistake to answer that question. He’d be dead as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Save us the time and trouble,” Speight said in that dead man’s voice of his. “Tell me where they are.”

That was all Ike knew for a while, and now here he was, blistering in the sun, with a bunch of women heating something in a fire close by. Ike had a feeling he wouldn’t like what they were going to do to him. He might as well tell them what they wanted to know before they started burning him and cutting him.

But if he told them, they’d kill him. Maybe they were going to kill him, anyway, but he’d hold out as long as he could.

Fargo came to the scattering of rocks in back of the canyon without any trouble, and he didn’t think he’d been spotted. He tied the Ovaro to a bush well away from the canyon rim. The big horse looked down at the ground and started to crop the sparse prairie grass.

Fargo left him there and began to make his way through the rocks. The going was fairly easy. There was a gentle slope up to the rim, but there were plenty of rocks and bushes to provide cover.

As he moved along, Fargo kept a watch for the guard that he knew had to be there, somewhere or other. He didn’t think the man would be too alert, because it was almost a certainty that no one else had ever tried to come at Speight from behind.

But Fargo wasn’t wrong. He spotted the guard, who was leaned back against a boulder, taking advantage of the little shade it gave him, his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was either asleep or near to it.

Fargo hated to kill a man for no reason at all, especially a man who had no way of defending himself. As he slipped closer, he pulled his big Colt.

When he reached the boulder, the man stirred and pushed up his hat. His eyes widened when he saw Fargo, and he reached for the rifle that lay across his lap.

Before he reached it, Fargo had clubbed him with the barrel of the Colt, and he slumped sideways against the boulder.

Fargo couldn’t take a chance that the guard would wake up and give the alarm, so he gagged the man with a piece of his shirt and tied his hands and feet with strips of cloth cut from his pants. The man might work free, but not anytime soon.

Leaving the man where he lay, Fargo took the rifle and climbed down through the rocks at the rim of the canyon. He looked down and saw the tents and buildings of the camp. A little corral held some horses and mules. Like the rest of the camp, it was flimsily constructed.

Fargo knew what Ike was in for now that he was staked out. First they’d burn his feet and hands, then maybe cut them off. After that, they’d start on the more tender parts. Then they’d skin him. Give Ike credit, though, he must not have told them where the rifles were. That was the only reason he was still alive.

A fragment of a poem Fargo had heard years before popped into his head. He didn’t remember where he’d heard it, but it had likely been declaimed by some half-drunk medicine show performer. The poem was about some battle or other. Fargo didn’t remember much about the poem and nothing at all about the battle. He just remembered a couple of lines of verse:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. . . .

Fargo was wearing buckskins, he didn’t have any cohorts, and he wasn’t sure what an Assyrian was. But if he was going to save Ike, he was going to have to come down on the little camp below him like a wolf on a sheepfold.

Fargo estimated that the canyon was about a quarter of a mile deep, more or less. The sides weren’t steep. A man could get down them without breaking his neck if he was careful, but the Trailsman didn’t have time to be careful.

He went back to the man he’d knocked out. The man was awake, but he wasn’t able to do anything other than squirm around while Fargo cut the rest of this clothing to ribbons.

With the strips of cloth, Fargo tied bundles of dried brush together, with a rock in the middle of the brush. He made five bundles. That would have to do. He gathered his bundles and went back up to the top of the rim.

He checked the larger rocks around him and found a few he thought would do to start a small avalanche. A big avalanche would be even better, but he had to make do with what was available.

Glancing down into the canyon, Fargo saw that the women were about to begin work on Ike. They stood over him, holding the heated iron, putting it close to his face, so he could feel the fiery metal and know what was in store for him.

Fargo didn’t let himself hurry. If Ike got burned, that was too bad for Ike. But if Fargo made a mistake, it would be the end of him and Ike both. He took a lucifer from his pocket.

Ike knew what they were going to do. He’d known all along, but at that instant it became real, and he knew he couldn’t take it. He’d thought he could stand the pain to prolong his life, but it wasn’t going to be like that.

Ike’s stomach churned, and when the red-hot iron almost touched the skin of his face, his fear got the best of him. He screamed and wet himself. The women jumped back, pointing at him and laughing.

The women looked at him, and he could see the disappointment on their faces. They thought he was a coward, but what the hell? He wasn’t going to let them burn him. Anything was better than that, at least for the moment. He’d tell Speight where the rifles were, and Speight could kill him. He could stand that better than to be burned all over his body.

Tears came to Ike’s eyes. He didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t stand the unendurable pain he knew was coming.

Speight came out of his building and walked over to Ike, his shadow falling across him. Ike heard his dead man’s voice.

A little of Ike’s courage returned, enough to let him say, “To hell with you, you bastard. Cut me loose. I’ll tell you where the rifles are.”

“I can’t tell you. I know where the place is, but I can’t tell you how to get there. I’ll take you. You can have the guns. Just let me go after you get them. That’s all I care about.”

Ike struggled to keep himself from screaming. “Goddamn it, I said I can’t tell you. You can burn me, but I still can’t tell you. You have to let me take you there!”

Speight smiled. It was a terrible thing to see. “I don’t need the rifles that bad. I’d rather stay here and watch the women work on you than to have them.”

Ike knew that Speight meant it. Though the heat of the sun on Ike’s skin was almost as intense as the heat from the iron, he was suddenly as cold as if he’d plunged into a mountain stream at snowmelt time.

Speight pulled a pair of dirty leather gloves out of his back pocket. He looked down at Ike as he pulled first one and then the other on his hands. He clasped his hands together to smooth out the leather. When he was satisfied with the way they felt, he went over to the fire and pulled out one of the heated rods.

“Come to think of it,” Speight said, walking back over to where Ike lay, “I’d kind of like to work on you, myself.”

Fargo was surprised to see the man come out of the building. It had to be Speight, considering the way the women deferred to him. Fargo couldn’t hear what he was saying to Ike, but he figured Ike must have decided that he didn’t want to be tortured. Fargo couldn’t really blame him.

The rifle Fargo had taken from the guard was an 1853 Sharps. It hadn’t been well cared for, but Fargo figured it would still shoot. He didn’t think he could hit Speight with it at such a great distance and shooting downhill besides, but he might scare him.

Speight spun around. Fargo didn’t know if he’d been hit or not, and he didn’t have time to look. He dropped the rifle, struck the lucifer, and set fire to the bundles of brush and threw them one after the other. He hoped at least one of them would land on a tent or a building, but he didn’t have time to look at the results. He was too busy pushing rocks over the edge of the canyon rim.

As soon as he got the rocks rolling, Fargo began running behind them, a reckless run down the steep slope that he hoped wouldn’t end with him lying dead at the bottom.

One of the buildings was burning. So was one of the tents. People were milling around, yelling and trying to figure out what was happening. Some of them ran to the building that was on fire. Brush behind another of the buildings was burning. The horses ran around in the corral. One of the bigger rocks crashed into a house. Another one hit something, bounced, and slammed into a man before rolling over him.

Fargo hit the canyon floor bruised and scraped, but he kept right on running. Nobody was paying any attention to him. They might not even have known he was there. He pulled out his Colt, just in case.

Speight was nowhere to be seen, so if Fargo had hit him, he hadn’t been killed. Fargo didn’t have time to look for him. He had to get to Ike.

When Ike saw Fargo, his eyes bugged out so far that the Trailsman could have raked them off his face with a stick.

Fargo ran for the corral, not looking to see if Ike was behind him. A man stepped in front of Fargo. Fargo shot him in the middle of the chest. The man toppled over, and Fargo ran on past.

The horses had calmed a bit when Fargo reached them. Fargo stuck the pistol in its holster and opened the corral gate. The horses swirled around and then ran through it.

As one of the horses passed him, the Trailsman seized its mane and pulled himself up onto its back. Leaning low over its neck, Fargo guided it toward Ike, who stared at him in shock.

Fargo swerved just in time. He reached down and grabbed Ike’s forearm. The horse’s forward motion and Fargo’s grip pulled Ike along. Ike got the idea and allowed Fargo to draw him up behind him onto the horse’s back. Ike wrapped his arms around Fargo and held on tight.

Fargo heard gunshots and bullets zip over him, but he wasn’t hit. Neither was Ike. Fargo dug his heels into the horse’s side, urging it to go faster.

A huge man ran out from behind a rock and put up his pistol. Before he could pull the trigger, the horse had reached him. Fargo kicked the man in the face and he fell backward.

The horse wasn’t used to carrying a double load, but Fargo thought it would be a while before Speight’s men rounded up the other spooked horses. Fargo and Ike should be able to get out of the canyon ahead of them. But they’d be coming.

When they reached the canyon mouth, they surged up a slope and out into the open. Fargo saw no sign of Alvie, Adelita, or her men, but he knew they were out there somewhere. He hoped they wouldn’t shoot him. Or Ike. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to save Ike.

As they rode through the brush, men rose up around them. They’d been completely hidden, even from Fargo’s keen eyes. They were better than Fargo had thought they’d be. He pulled back on the horse’s mane and managed to bring it to a halt.

“Damnation!” Alvie said. “I never thought I’d see the two of you ridin’ together. Much less with one of you naked as a jaybird.”

“Get off the horse, Ike,” Fargo said, sliding off himself. “Maybe they can find you something to put on.”

“He’s the one,” Fargo said. He started to reload his pistol. “Get him some pants. Speight and his men won’t be too far behind us.”

Someone threw Ike a shirt. Someone else tossed him a belt and a pair of pants. Ike fumbled into them as quickly as he could.

Fargo laughed. “You’ve got the nerve of a government mule. You just stay still and try not to get yourself killed.”

They didn’t have long to wait. Speight and his gang rode out of the canyon, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them. They seemed to be following the tracks of the horse Fargo and Ike had ridden.

Adelita and her men waited until the riders were in their midst. Then they rose up and started shooting. Fargo and Alvie followed suit. Pistol and rifle fire drummed out a deadly tattoo.

Speight’s bunch had Adelita’s men outnumbered, but they were taken completely by surprise. Five of them were down almost at once, dead or wounded before they knew what was happening.

Fargo shot until his Colt was empty. As he reloaded, he watched Adelita. Her rifle jammed, and she threw it to the ground. She took the whip from its place at her belt and gave her wrist a backward flip. The whip uncoiled and she immediately slashed it forward.

It coiled around the neck of a rider. His hands went to his throat as if a snake encircled it. His face reddened, and he was jerked to the ground, his hands still trying to pry the braided leather from his throat. Adelita let him try.

Adelita dropped the whip and spun around, pulling the pistol from the holster on her left side. She fired it in almost the same motion, and Fargo fired as well. A man dropped off his horse only a few yards away from Adelita. She looked at Fargo.

One of the riders, Speight no doubt, yelled something and turned back to the canyon. The few men who were left on their mounts jerked the horses’ heads around and headed after him, back the way they’d come.

The air was full of dust and gun smoke. Fargo’s ears rang from all the shooting. He started to say something, but he never got a chance.

Ike jumped up and hit him in the side of the head with a balled fist. As the Trailsman fell, Ike snatched the Colt from his hand. He didn’t shoot Fargo. Instead he fired at the retreating riders. Fargo stood up in time to see one of them throw up his hands and fall off his horse.

Speight, Fargo thought. When it came to back-shooting, Ike turned out to be a lot better this time than when he’d ambushed Fargo and Alvie.