For a moment, the vast room, with its brooding sculptures of thick-bodied, ancient Indians long dead, was silent.
Then Fargo said, “That’s a tall order. Every bandit and every outlaw in lower Mexico will be on the prod now that the government’s collapsed. They’ll block your expedition off. And the Lacandon Forest. Nobody gets through there.”
“That’s your problem,” Stoneman said. “I paid you five thousand dollars to come here. I’ll pay you another five to go there. You bring them out, the people and the things my son designates as baggage, you’ll get another five.”
Fargo laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Stoneman asked, frowning.
“You want me to work my way through revolutionaries, bandits, jungle, whatever—rescue some scientists—not only that, maybe haul out tons of stuff, fighting all the way and you offer fifteen thousand?”
“This day and time that’s a substantial sum.”
“Maybe to you. I can make more than that in a month running guns.”
“Mr. Fargo. You’re a hard man to deal with. All right, twenty then. But you’ll be under Ned’s orders from the time you make contact with him.”
Fargo stood up. “I enjoyed the conversation, Mr. Stoneman.” He turned as if to go. At that moment, the double doors of the room opened; only later did he realize that Stoneman had pushed a buzzer on his desk. Then, though, Fargo halted, staring at the three bulky Irish plug-uglies who barred his exit.
“I don’t do business this way, Stoneman,” he said thinly. “But I may kill some men before I get out on the street.”
“They’re experienced. They may kill you too.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
He stood there, hand inside his coat.
“Mr. Fargo, I don’t like the way you deal,” Stoneman quavered. “I have a gun pointed at your back.”
“You couldn’t hit me with it,” Fargo said easily. “I’ve seen how your hand shakes. You’re too old.” He grinned. “I could kill you and maybe all three of them. Then I would have to go to the Colonel for protection. But he’d stand by me.”
“The Colonel?”
“I was in the Rough Riders in Cuba; he commanded ’em.”
He did not take his eyes off the three men at the door, but he heard Stoneman sigh at the mention of that name. “The Colonel. Yes. He’s my worst enemy, my most powerful one. I’ve heard mention of your connection with him.”
“Then tell your men to get out of the way,” said Fargo. “We can’t deal.”
For a moment, the old man was silent. “Fargo,” he said at last. “Ten when you leave. Twenty when you get back. Add that to the five you’ve already got, it makes thirty-five thousand.”
Fargo stood rigidly, hand on gun butt. “Fifteen when I leave.”
“Forty thousand total?” Stoneman’s voice quavered.
“Take it or leave it,” said Fargo. “Because in thirty seconds I’m walking out of here. If your people get in my way, you’d better be prepared to pay their funeral bills.”
Again silence. Fargo knew that Stoneman did indeed have the gun pointed at his back. He also knew that Stoneman would not shoot. It would be easier for him to pay the extra five thousand.
He heard the shuddering rasp of breath behind him. Then Stoneman said, “All right, Fargo. Turn around and sit down. I’ll meet your terms. There’s nobody else I can hire with as much brass as you. Fifteen more now and twenty when you get back. But I expect results.”
“You’ll get ’em,” Fargo said, eyes still on the thugs beyond the door.
“Then, leave us,” Stoneman said to them. Like wraiths, they vanished.
“All right,” Stoneman added. “Now, Fargo, let’s talk business.”
Fargo turned, as the shaking hand laid down its gun. “Suits me,” he said.
~*~
Two weeks later, Stoneman’s private yacht nosed into the Harbor of Belize, the capital of British Honduras, with Fargo aboard.
Take all the lousy little Central American towns that were ever built, Fargo thought, once he was ashore—roll them up into one, then spread them out again—then you had Belize.
The single British toehold on this end of the continent, it had been founded by stranded buccaneers centuries before. A malarial hellhole on the Caribbean coast, it contained maybe eight thousand people, some Indian, some Mestizo, damned few English. Beyond it stretched trackless wilderness, grazing land and jungle in which the rivers were the only roads. British Honduras backed up to Quintana Roo, a province of Mexico so wild, deserted, it did not even qualify as a state. It was flanked by Guatemala, where Fargo, thanks to certain activities on the losing side a year or two before, was wanted to the tune of two hundred dollars American—enough to make a Guatemalan rich for life.
That did not bother him. In khakis, with the cavalry hat jaunty on his head, he took a hack to the best hotel, which was not much. He wore his pistol openly on his hip, set for a cross-draw; the Batangas knife was sheathed on the other hip. His other weapons were in the trunk, stuck in the boot of the cab drawn by a thin, rickety animal.
His room was big, high ceilinged, hot as the hinges of hell, with a jalousied door and windows that looked out onto a paved court. Mosquito netting hung over the lumpy bed. He put the trunk on the bed, took out his weapons, checked them, oiled those that needed it, and shoved the trunk beneath the cot after having retrieved one of his three bottles of American bourbon. He pulled the cork with his teeth, took a long swallow, set the bottle on the battered chest that was the only other furnishing in the room, and then went downstairs.
There was a bar and dining room in which the air seemed not to have been changed since the founding of the colony. It was deserted, except for a sleepy Negro barman. Fargo asked what sort of whiskey they had and was surprised to find Scotch in long supply. He took a glass of the smoky stuff and sat down at a table, back, as usual, to the wall.
While he sipped his drink he contemplated what lay ahead of him.
The Valley of Skulls. Stoneman had pointed it out on the map. It was deep in the Lacandon rain forest, and the only safe access for Fargo to it was through British Honduras and Quintana Roo—so primitive that the word of revolution would not have reached it. He could not go through Guatemala because of the reward out for him, and he could not take the short route in because of the flare-up of bandits and revolutionaries in Yucatan, Campeche, and Chiapas itself.
The landing of Stoneman’s yacht at any port there would have been a signal to draw the vultures, and they would have stayed with him all the way to his destination—if they did not kill him first for his guns and outfit.
So he would have to work his way in through British Honduras and Quintana Roo, through jungle broken only by the monterias, the hell-hole logging camps of Mexico, where enslaved Indians were driven until they fell to get out the fine mahogany of the region. Under the best of circumstances, it would have been a brutal trip to the Valley of Skulls; this way, it was going to be close to impossible. And yet, he had taken Stoneman’s money and he was going to do it …somehow, some way.
Tossing off the glass of Scotch, signaling for the bottle to be brought, he remembered the rest of his session with the gaunt and withered old man. “All right, Stoneman. Exactly how many people have I got to bring out?”
“There are four Americans. Dr. Telford; his daughter Nancy; Telford’s assistant, a man named Norris; and my son Ned.”
“Wait a minute,” Fargo said. “There’s a woman?”
“Nancy Telford’s my son’s fiancée, Fargo. Also, she’s an excellent archeologist in her own right. She’s used to roughing it.”
“All the same, I didn’t count on a woman.”
Stoneman’s eyes narrowed. “Your price is already set. Don’t try to raise it again.”
“No,” Fargo had said. “No, I won’t. But go on. How many other jokers are there in this deck?”
“I told you that there was something valuable, something rare, that I want brought out with them. It’ll be a heavy load, Fargo. You’ll need mules.”
Fargo frowned. “It won’t be easy getting mules into a place like that.”
“Which is your problem. For forty thousand dollars, I’m sure you can solve it. According to the information I have, you’ll need at least six pack animals.”
His mouth was a thin, bloodless line. “I didn’t pay a fortune to finance that expedition, Fargo, to have what it has uncovered left behind there in the jungle. They have unearthed certain items that, to me at least, are beyond price. I want those brought out. Even if ... ”
He hesitated. Fargo looked at him keenly. “Even if what?”
“Even if you have to leave some of the people behind,” the old man said. “Not my son, of course. You’re to bring him with you, no matter what. But … Well, he’ll show you what you must bring out. And if you have to choose between the cargo and the people, the cargo comes first. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Fargo. “What is this stuff that’s so valuable?” He looked around, gestured. “Statues, masks, monuments? More of this stuff? You’re loaded with it already. You’d double-cross your own expedition to get another load? Hell, that stuff’s lain out in the jungle for centuries. It could stay there until things quiet down. You could wait; it won’t rot.”
“I cannot wait!” Stoneman’s eyes glittered. “I’m old, Fargo, and my time’s running out. All my life I’ve dreamed of seeing, touching, feeling, possessing the—what this expedition’s uncovered. You’ll see it soon enough and you’ll understand then why. Meantime, what you don’t know won’t hurt you, I assure you. But take my word for it: what Telford and Ned have uncovered in the Valley of Skulls—what you are to bring to me—is worth anything and everything it cost: any amount of trouble, any amount of blood.”
“And you still won’t tell me what it is?”
“I said you’d learn in due time. When you reach the Valley of Skulls. I have reason for my secrecy, which you’ll understand then. Meanwhile—forty thousand, Fargo. To bring me the cargo from the Valley of Skulls. No matter what you have to do.”
Fargo hesitated. Then he grinned tightly. It stank; it stank to high heaven. But few jobs that paid off in that kind of cash didn’t. All right, Stoneman was covering a hole card. But as long as he came across, what difference did it make?
“Okay, Stoneman,” he said. “You’re on. I’ll take the job. For forty thousand, I’ll guarantee you your son and the cargo, whatever it is, minimum. That price holds, even if the rest of ’em don’t get out.”
“Exactly. And … there’s one more thing, Fargo.”
“What’s that?”
Stoneman’s old, dry voice was cold and hard as iron.
“There may be moments in days to come when you’re tempted to double-cross me. Before you do that, consider one thing.”
“Which is—?”
“That I’m one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. And that I know how to hate and hold a grudge, Fargo. And if you give me cause to, if you turn against me, I’ll spend any amount of money, hire any number of men to find you wherever you are and teach you what it means to betray Ned Stoneman.”
Fargo smiled faintly. “You’re scaring me to death.” Then his own eyes turned hard, despite the stretching of the smile to his wolf grin. “I’ll do my job, Stoneman. But remember, that threat works both ways. You try to slip one to me, I’m a good hater, too. And you can’t hire enough men to keep me from coming after you and getting you.”
Stoneman looked back at him for a moment. Then he laughed, a short, harsh barking sound. “Yes, by God! We understand each other, don’t we? You remind me of myself when I was young. All right, Fargo, we have a deal. Now, to details. I’ll put my yacht at your disposal. It’ll take you where you want to go and meet you wherever you plan to come out...”
Now, drinking more Scotch, Fargo considered. He could work his way through the jungle, make Chiapas somehow, buy the mules from one of the logging camps. After that, it would get trickier. Then he looked up, aware that the light had changed; someone was standing in the door. Suddenly, he tensed as he recognized that gigantic breadth of shoulder, the handsome face, the narrow hips, saw the thumbs of big hands hooked in the two crisscrossed buscadero belts that supported Colt .45’s, Frontier Model. “Darnley!” he said.
“Well, damn my eyes,” the other answered, his voice richly accented in the English way. “Neal Fargo. You bloody bastard, how the hell are you?” And he strode toward Fargo’s table.
Fargo stood up. Darnley was as tall as he, two years younger, strikingly handsome in contrast to Fargo’s scarred ugliness. He wore a khaki shirt, canvas pants, stockman’s boots. His hand was big, hard. He was the second son of an English lord, a remittance man so wild, rough, and uncontrollable that his family had sent him to this colony to avoid a scandal at home and paid him a monthly wage to stay here. He was one of the best natural fighting men Fargo had ever met; and they had been in combat on the same side a couple of years before in Guatemala. There was a reward on Roger Darnley’s head there, too. As they shook hands, Darnley asked, “Neal, what are you doing back in these parts?”
Fargo motioned him to a chair. “Drifting, Darnley. Just drifting.”
The Englishman sat down, reached for the bottle, drank from its neck without waiting for a glass. “Not the way I hear it. You just got off a magnificent big white yacht.”
Fargo’s mouth twisted. “You really stay in touch, don’t you?”
“That’s my business.”
“Oh, is it? And just what business are you in now?”
Darnley grinned, showing white, even teeth. His pale blue eyes danced with devil-may-care amusement. “About the same as you. A little of this, a little of that, the main thing the money and not too careful about the rest.” Then he sobered. “That was Stoneman’s yacht—Ned D. Stoneman, the American oil man.”
“Was it? I hadn’t noticed.”
Darnley laughed, but with less good humor this time. “Funny, you’re not usually that careless. What is it, Fargo? What brings you back down here?”
“I said I was drifting.”
“On Stoneman’s yacht? Luxurious drifting.”
“I go first class.” Fargo took out a thin, black cigar, bit off its end, clamped it between his teeth. “Let’s say I’m doing some oil prospecting for Stoneman.”
“All right. We’ll say that.” Darnley signaled for a glass. “That doesn’t mean I have to believe it.”
“That’s up to you,” said Fargo.
“Oh, sure.” The glass came; Darnley poured whiskey. Then he leaned forward. “What is it, Fargo? Something good? It must be something good to bring you down here.” His eyes were pale and cold now. “And I want in.”
“No,” said Fargo. “It’s nothing big and there’s only room for one.”
“You’re wrong. There’s got to be room for me. Otherwise, you don’t operate.”
Fargo took the cigar from his mouth. “What the hell you mean by that?”
“Oh, I’ve been busy since you last saw me, Fargo.” The Englishman’s smile came back easy, charming, but it did not deceive Fargo. He had seen Darnley smile just like that as he pulled the trigger to execute a wounded prisoner. “Or haven’t you heard of Darnley’s Raiders?”
“No.”
“Well, you will. It’s my own little army, Fargo. Well, not so little, either. Forty, fifty men. And all top-hole fighters, thoroughly experienced and tough as boot leather. You’d be surprised how many good men like that there are down here, Neal; this is a fine place to hide out. Your American Wild West is taming down, and the gunmen are pulling out. There are French outlaws stranded in Panama when the French gave up on their canal... Spanish hidalgos dispossessed by revolutions here and there; English remittance men like myself; plus a few whites who’ve been here all their lives, grandsons and great grandsons of the old pirates and buccaneers. Darnley’s Raiders, Fargo, and it’s as tight and tough a little outfit as you’re ever likely to see—and I run it!” He took out a cigarette. “We operate in British Honduras, on the Yucatan Peninsula or in Guatemala.”
“You’re wanted in Guatemala.”
“I’m wanted in a lot of places. So are my men. We don’t let that stop us.” He snapped a match, lit his smoke. “We go where we please, when we please and nobody stands against us.” His eyes met Fargo’s. “Not you, not anyone.”
“We’ll see,” Fargo said.
Darnley leaned back, negligently crossed his legs. “Oh, yes, I’m sure we will.” He was abruptly serious again. “Look here, Fargo, I know you. You didn’t come here for a rest cure; you came for money. You’re always where the money is, like a vulture at the meat. Well, I’ll tell you now; you deal us in.”
“No,” Fargo said.
“You’re being stubborn.”
“There’s not enough to go around.”
“There is if you’re here for the reason I think you are.”
Fargo rolled the cigar across his mouth. “Which is—?”
“Stoneman’s yacht. An expedition financed by Stoneman in the place called the Valley of Skulls, in Chiapas. They’ve found what they were looking for, and you’re here to bring it out.”
“Suppose I was. Some stone statues, that sort of thing. No money in those. Just Mayan relics.”
Darnley looked at him strangely. Then a curious smile crossed that handsome face. “Fargo,” he said, “you’re slipping.”
Something in his voice froze Fargo. He looked at Darnley carefully. “Am I?”
“You sure as hell are if you believe that stone statue business. Damn it, Fargo, you know you’re here because they’ve found the Golden Gun!”
Neal Fargo neither moved a muscle nor flickered an eye. But suddenly he understood. The memory of a legend, of stories told around a hundred campfires, came back suddenly. All at once it fitted; everything fell into place. Yes, he thought with rising excitement. Yes, that was it. Surely. That was why Stoneman was willing to shell out forty thousand; that was why the cargo he was to bring from the Valley of Skulls took precedence even over the lives of the members of the expedition. It all made sense now. Good sense. From Stoneman’s viewpoint, anyhow.
“Nothing happens in my territory that I don’t know about,” continued Darnley, bending close, his voice a whisper. “Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Guatemala, here ... I have my spies, Fargo, everywhere. I knew that Stoneman had sent an expedition to the Lacandon Forest; I knew they were supposed to be digging for Mayan ruins. And then, a few days ago, I found out something else—something that ties in nicely with your presence here.”
“Go on,” said Fargo.
“They hired some Indians to help them dig. Somebody in that expedition—I hear it was Stoneman’s son—played rough with them. Apparently he worked some of them to death and shot some others when they protested. Anyhow, one ran away, fled into the jungle. He made it to a monteria in Campeche, a logging camp where I had a spy. Somewhere in the rain forest, he’d tangled with a jaguar and got himself torn up pretty badly; he lived just long enough to give a hint. Something they’d uncovered there, an old gun, he said, that made young Stoneman go almost crazy, threaten to kill them all if they touched it. I thought then, when I got the word, that it might be … now you show up on Stoneman’s yacht. Two and two make four, Fargo. You’re here to bring out the Golden Gun for Stoneman. Two thousand pounds of pure unalloyed Spanish gold. That’s a lot of gold, Fargo, close to three-quarters of a million American dollars worth.” He leaned back.
“Don’t tell me,” he finished, “there’s not enough to go around.”
Fargo said nothing, only poured another drink. His brain raced.
The Golden Gun. It was a legend in lower Mexico and the Caribbean. Spanish conquistadores, it was said, had prepared a special gift for the King of Spain. Ten cannons they had cast, not of steel or bronze, but of pure gold from the mines of Mexico and sent them home in a galleon guarded by a company of soldiers. But not even the awesome power of Spain could stand against the hurricanes that racked the Gulf of Mexico. The galleon had been caught in one, slammed ashore and broken up. All but one of its golden guns had gone to the bottom of the sea. One single, precious cannon had been salvaged by the survivors. But the Indians of the coast had attacked them and driven them inland. Southward, under constant attack by vengeful tribes, they had fought their way through the jungle, through what was now Campeche, into Chiapas. They hauled with them the golden cannon, their only artillery, the only thing that kept them alive, as they turned the field piece on the warriors who came after them. Finally, driven into refuge in the Lacandon Forest, caught between tribes from north and south alike, they had halted, forted up, made a last stand. But their gunpowder ran out; they were overwhelmed and slaughtered. Before they died, when they had fired their last charge from the golden cannon, they had buried it. Then they were massacred.
And yet the legend had lived after them—that somewhere, in the vast depths of that great rain forest, lay hidden a huge cannon of purest gold worth a king’s ransom. And that, Fargo realized now, was the secret the archeologist must have discovered in the Library of Madrid; perhaps one survivor had made it back to Spanish civilization and lived long enough to tell his story. That was the inducement the scientist had used to persuade Stoneman to finance the expedition: that was what the six mules were to bring out of the Valley of Skulls, the cargo more precious than any life save that of Stoneman’s son.
Fargo took a drink. He had, in a sense, been taken. He saw that now. What he had figured on having to bring out was more of the statues, slabs, other relics of the sort with which Stoneman’s town house was crammed. Such things were so common down here that no one really gave a damn for them—not the Mexican bandits and revolutionaries, not the Indians, not soldiers of fortune like Darnley. Still, it was tough enough to haul even those out of that terrible jungle; forty thousand was a fair price for such a job. But three-quarters of a million in gold? Good God, thought Fargo, if Darnley were right, that golden gun would bring down on him every buzzard, every gun-toter and robber and soldier of fortune in this end of the world!
His mouth twisted. He’d let himself be taken, all right; this was a job worth twice what he’d agreed to. And yet he’d given his word, and the value of his word was as important as his skill with guns when it came to making a living the hard way he had chosen. But, damn! The prospect of the Golden Gun had already drawn Darnley to him, Darnley and his army. And now he would have to fight them all to get the gun to Stoneman.
His face never changed; he reached for the bottle again. He knew Darnley; not even he would stand a chance against the Englishman backed up with the kind of soldiers the remittance man had gathered. He couldn’t fight Darnley; and so there was only one other thing to do: he would have to use him …
There was a way he could do that: let Darnley and his men help him bring out the gun. Then it would be up to him to get it away from them when they had come back to civilization.
And so, without the flicker of an eye, he made his decision. “You know,” he said, “there might be something in what you say. Maybe there’s enough to go around after all. Why don’t we talk some business?”
“Now, that’s better.” Darnley grinned. He shoved back his chair. “But not here. I’ll have a mozo rustle up a horse for you. Then we’ll have one more drink and ride.”