By ten o’clock, a moonless darkness had settled upon the land. As they tightened saddle cinches, Stokes’ voice quivered slightly.
“Neal, maybe we’re crazy. Maybe—”
“Easy. We’ve come too far now to turn back.” Fargo pulled on a latigo. “Anyhow, maybe it won’t be as bad as it looks. After all, a lot of people up there with Schmidt are draft dodgers and deserters. They’re there because they didn’t want to fight in the first place. It’s however many real pros he’s got with him that we got to worry about. You keep your nerve and do what I say, we’ll make out all right.”
Stokes fell silent. They mounted, rode across the rolling grassland toward the nightmare country in the distance, bearing toward Sheep Mountain. Presently fingers of the Badlands reached out to embrace them. They kept their horses at a walk to minimize the sound of hoofbeats. Then the land fell away into a deep draw, where the grass began to taper off, and now there was little around them or underfoot but naked soil, bereft of all but the most scanty dry land foliage. Knife-edged ridges and shaly slopes loomed above them. And now, in the darkness, there were expected drop-offs and sudden barrier walls. Presently Fargo reined in. “This,” he whispered to Stokes, “is as far as horses take us. Off-saddle, cache the horse gear. We’ll take the ropes, canteens, the saddle bags with grub, and all our weapons; nothin’ else.”
Quickly, they swung down and stripped the mounts. Freed, the animals naturally turned back toward grass and water. Saddles and bridles were quickly cached. Then, in the remaining darkness, they worked their way forward on foot, heavily burdened. Fargo’s shotgun was slung, his rifle carried.
Stokes had slung the bow, now strung, his quiver full of arrows, also carried his long-gun in his hand. The coil of joined rope was draped around Fargo’s shoulder, the saddlebags and canteens were slung over Stokes’ torso.
It was slow, tortuous, nerve-wracking going. Like two ants, all right, Fargo thought, making their way across a vast expanse of cinders. The night was hot; he sweated, but not entirely from the heat or the burden of equipment, weapons, ammunition, that he lugged. For now they were working ever more deeply into the incredibly rough country around Sheep Mountain, and for every foot of forward progress they made, it was necessary to move twenty or thirty roundabout. There were sudden cliffs, forty, fifty, a hundred feet, which could neither be descended nor climbed in the darkness, and they had to edge this way or that until they found ways down or up. By four, they had used up their strength, and anyhow, false dawn streaked the sky. It was time to go to ground.
They sheltered beneath an overhang in a narrow cleft whose walls reared a hundred feet above them on either side. Above them in the darkness loomed the massiveness of the mountain, named for the bighorn sheep that had once grazed there. Fargo let the exhausted Stokes sleep while he stood first watch, rifle and shotgun at the ready.
Dawn came, briefly transforming the hellish terrain all around them to something splendid, as light glinted again off the naked layers of various ancient earths. Flat on his belly, palms shielding the lenses of the binoculars to prevent reflection, Fargo scanned all that lay before him, and his courage almost failed at what he saw. For all their striving, they still had at least another three hours of the same brutal travel they had put in tonight even to reach the real base of the mountain. Then, in what darkness was left, they would have to make their climb.
He scanned the mountain closely. Its flanks were raw-naked, cut and seamed, apparently impassable. At its top, it leveled off into a rugged, grassy mesa, hundreds of feet above where they now lay. Almost arrogantly, as if certain of their safety, the men up there had built breakfast fires, and fingers of smoke curled upward against the cloudless sky. Then Fargo stiffened.
Most of the bighorn sheep, Stokes had said, were long gone from the Badlands. But, Fargo saw, not all. Up there on the mountainside, four dun blots were climbing: a big ram with curling horns, a couple of ewes, a yearling. The big man in khakis lay immobile, watching them closely. They seemed certain of their route, as if they had traveled it often, and while a man could not necessarily go where a mountain sheep could, these animals would not, on the other hand, pick a trail so difficult that the short-legged yearling could not negotiate it.
With maddening slowness, they moved upward, pausing now and then to browse at some scrubby foliage. Yet he did not begrudge the time they took; it gave him opportunity to mark and memorize their route. The sun was high; it was nearly ten before they reached a narrow bench three hundred feet below the crest. Above them reared a rock wall so sheer that not even they would attempt it; moving on, with one breath-taking leap after another, they followed the bench and then jumped from ledge to ledge as it petered out. Presently they vanished from view around the mountain-side. But the pattern of the trail they’d followed was now clear in Fargo’s mind, and he let his eyes rove up and down it ceaselessly. If they could reach that same bench, that left only the chimney.
A dark cleft in the wall, it ran from the crest down to the bench. Looking at it, thinking about the way they must go up it, made his hands sweat again and his belly knot, but there was no help for it. Presently he awakened Stokes. “You lay low, keep under cover. Don’t do anything to attract attention, but keep your eyes open all the time. And—” He told Stokes about the sheep. “If they come back, watch how they travel. Meanwhile, try to remember how you did it before.”
“I’ll do my best,” Stokes said.
“Wake me in four hours.” Fargo, shotgun cradled in his arm, stretched out blanketless, the cavalry hat wadded and served as a pillow; almost immediately he was asleep. It seemed that he had barely closed his eyes before Stokes shook him.
“Everything quiet,” the young scientist said. “So quiet, in fact, I could hear horses whinnying up there on the mesa top.”
“My horses.” Fargo’s mouth twisted. “Okay.” He drank sparingly from a canteen. “The sheep. You see ’em again?”
“Yeah. They came back around the mountain and on down. It helped. They followed just about the route I did that time before. A lot of it came back to me.” He handed Fargo some hardtack and a can of beans. “But, damn it, Neal, even if we reach the top, it’ll be just before daylight. We can’t tackle that whole bunch in daylight.”
“We won’t,” Fargo said. “There’s bound to be some cover up there. You said it was covered with grass and juniper, and pretty well cut up. We’ll find it, and lay low one more day. Then we hit.”
~*~
He stared out from beneath the overhang at the mountain, towering like doom, or like a challenge. “Sundown,” he said. “Hurry up. We got a long way to go and a lot to do before the darkness goes.”
They waited. Meanwhile, Fargo gave Stokes a short lecture. “Garfield says they got grenades up there. If we can git our hands on those, that’ll go a long way to evening out the odds. You know anything about grenades?”
“I’ve never even seen one.”
So Fargo told him how to use them, demonstrating with a rock, plus a diagram of their mechanism sketched in the dust. “Just remember, after you pull that pin, you hold the lever down. The minute that flies off, she’s ready to go. Throw overhand, like this, and then hit the dirt, flat as you can. Grenade fragments fly up and out in a kind of spray. Unless you’re right at the point of impact, there’s a kind of zone of safety if you’re scrunched flat, and that means your butt, too. You stick it up in the air, take a chunk of shrapnel, that’ll put you out of action quick as a piece in the leg or head. So keep your head and your ass down.”
Stokes looked at him with a kind of awe. “Is this the way you’ve always made your living?”
“Mostly. Some jobs are easier, some harder. Not many harder than this one so far, though. There’s just one thing more. Remember what I told you, half dollars don’t shoot back. You’re gonna have to kill men up there, for the first time. You git buck fever and freeze up on me, we’re both dead. So when the time comes—”
“Yeah?”
“Mary Running Deer. You love her?”
“You think I’d be here if I didn’t?”
“All right,” Fargo said. “Well, there’s a lot of ways a man can rape a woman.” Tersely, brutally, obscenely, he recited them, as Stokes’ face went pale.
“Goddammit,” the young man whispered, “stop it. You hear? Damn you, stop it!”
“Just remember,” Fargo said coldly, “when you have to draw down on a man, he may be the one to have done those things to the girl you love. Remember that; it’ll make it easier to take him out.” He squinted at the sky; the sun had finally vanished in a flame of red, a purple dusk had settled over the enormous cinder bed that was the Badlands. “Let’s get the gear together.
“It’s time to move.”
Once more, in darkness, they began their agonizing progress forward through the jagged, brutal land toward the mountain’s base. Now there was no time to lose; at a sheer fifty-foot drop, Fargo looped the rope around a boulder, tested it with all his weight, and then, with gut knotted, swung out into space, worked his way down. Reaching bottom, he waited for Stokes to follow. The young man, with less fear of heights, made it more quickly, pulled the rope after. They coiled it and went on.
Twice more, in the early hours of the night they used it, again to negotiate another drop, another time to climb, when Fargo, using all his skill, managed to dab a loop, after several tries, around an upthrust of rock he could barely see, sixty feet above them. Down a more gentle slope, and then Stokes took the lead, guiding them through a twisting labyrinth of cuts and draws and washes.
But for all the urgency they felt, it was still nearly midnight when they reached the base of the mountain itself.
And that was no better—fluted buttresses of shale and stone and earth, narrow ledges ... Fargo sought, found a landmark spotted earlier when he had been watching the mountain sheep. It took an hour’s arduous, risky, blind climbing to reach it, and there were times when his nerve almost failed. Without Stokes’ help, his prior knowledge of the terrain, he would never have made it at all. But from here, this precarious ledge that was the jumping-off point, they could trace out the route the sheep had taken. It would be a slow process in the darkness, but in some respects easier for him than for Stokes. Darkness was the friend of the fighting man, the soldier of fortune, and over the years he had developed night sight better than that of most men. Deliberately he kept his eyes wide, staring, to collect whatever light was available, which was almost none, and he could make out objects where Stokes could see nothing at all.
So he groped forward, upward. From time to time, it was impossible not to dislodge a rock or a shower of earth. Yet that was not as serious as it might have been. With the constant wind that blew here, rocks were always falling somewhere and earth being dislodged. As long as their traveling made no pattern of such sounds, they were not likely to cause alarm. Anyhow, any guards awake would be watching the trail, which was far away, on the northwestern side of the mesa.
Still, that climb stretched every nerve, every muscle Neal Fargo owned. More than once he and Stokes paused, panting, plastered tightly against the wall, summoning not only strength but courage to go on. And somehow they always managed to find it. Hours passed; sweating, feeling trapped in a nightmare, Fargo lost all sense of time. Then, at last, along a ledge and finally a two-foot jump, small and simple, and then they would be on the bench. And yet, in his exhausted, shaken state, that two feet seemed a yawning chasm to Neal Fargo.
“Neal?” Stokes’ whisper came from behind. “What’s wrong?”
Fargo took a deep breath. “Nothin’,” he muttered and forced himself to jump. He landed sprawling on the bench, then moved aside shakily to give Stokes room. Stokes stepped easily across. They were at the base of the chimney. And the worst part of the climb, the part Fargo dreaded.
But he could not back off now. Guts was doing what you were most afraid of, conquering your fear. Still, realities had to be faced. One was that Stokes was a better climber than he and had less fear of heights; had already, once, worked his way a hundred feet up that cleft. “You’d better go up first,” Fargo whispered. “And we’d better rope ourselves together. We got to muffle our gear, too, so it don’t rattle and click.”
That took some doing. Fargo had to remove the bandoliers of cartridges, shotgun shells, wrap them tightly around his waist, securing them with lengths cut from the rope in such a way that they did not click together. The shotgun he slung across his chest. Stokes tied the canteens so they no longer swung free from his waist: each would still be burdened with a rifle in one hand, but the rifles were indispensable. A full half hour passed as, as silently as possible, they made themselves ready, and then they lashed each end of a thirty-foot length of rope around their respective torsos. But, Fargo knew, that was a wan precaution. If one fell, he would almost inevitably drag the other with him.
“I’m ready when you are,” Stokes whispered at last.
Fargo took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
They eased into the rock cleft, Stokes first, bracing his back against one side, his boot soles against the other. Almost nimbly he went up into the darkness, and soon, as the rope slack paid out, Neal Fargo followed. Making sure his Colt was tightly seated in its holster, he rammed his back hard against one side of the cleft, planted his boots against the other, and with body hunched, used a measured amount of strength to hold himself in place. Then, sliding his torso, moving one foot after the other, he began to hunch-walk his way up the chimney.
For him that climb was a nightmare that later mercifully blurred in his consciousness. By the time he was fifty feet up the chimney, his body was bathed in cold sweat. He conquered his fear by ignoring it, kept on doggedly, disregarding the shower of dirt, the occasional small rock that fell on him from Stokes’ more agile progress above. In fact, Stokes traveled so swiftly that more than once the rope came taut and the younger man had to wait on Fargo.
His back soon was raw from rubbing against the rough wall of the chimney. Once a foothold in loose dirt crumbled; he saved himself only by desperately clamping the other foot in place with lightning speed, and to his relief, it held. The immense weight of the gear he carried made it no easier, nor did the fact that he was using muscles that ordinarily rarely came into play. He had occasionally met mountain climbers in his wanderings, people who did this sort of thing for fun. They were, he thought bitterly, idiots; and he tried to disregard the fact that if he fell it would now be a drop of nearly two hundred feet and that likely he would drag Stokes down with him. It was a job, one he had to do, and that was all that mattered.
He lost track of time; looking up, which he did rarely, lest the dirt Stokes dislodged hit him in the face, all he could see was the writhing silhouette of the young man’s body, a darker blackness against the moonless sky. Then Stokes halted. A faint whisper came through the silence in the shaft. “Neal. I’m at the top. Hold fast. I’ve got to get out, and it’s gonna be tricky. The chimney widens up here. Brace yourself, in case I fall ...”
Fargo used all his strength to clamp himself in the narrow shaft. Looking up, he could discern the problem Stokes had to solve. At the very top, where the chimney opened, the young man’s body was stretched to its limit. And now, somehow, he had to perform the acrobatic feat of twisting around, getting a handhold on the shaft’s rim, pulling himself out. “I’m braced,” Fargo answered softly. “Go ahead.”
It was with a kind of ghastly fascination that he watched what happened next. Now both their lives depended on Stokes’ agility. He could hear the young man panting as he rested for a moment and gathered both strength and nerve. He saw Stokes reach up, shove the rifle over the rim. Then Stokes’ body began to revolve slowly as he turned awkwardly in the chimney. Now his feet and one shoulder braced him, and he was reaching upwards with a hand. And then suddenly Stokes let go all holds, lurched jerkily, and dirt and pebbles rained down on Fargo. He shut his eyes as Stokes make a twisting jump. When he opened them again, the young man was dangling from his hands against the chimney wall, feet scrabbling for purchase. Then, inch by inch, Stokes dragged himself upward. Now half of his torso was over the rim. Fargo’s heart kicked; suddenly Stokes slid backwards. But a groping hand must have found a hold; just before it seemed sure that he would fall, the sliding stopped. Once more Stokes edged upward, and then, somehow, was over the rim. Fargo saw his booted feet disappear and let out a long, rasping breath. He waited.
“All right,” Stokes whispered down the shaft. “You come on, now.”
Fargo sucked in wind, hunched the last fifty feet up the chimney. As it widened, he stretched his long body. Then he had reached the very top and was staring at the immense sky above him. From behind him, Stokes whispered: “Okay, let go now. I’ll pull you out.”
There was no other way. Fargo closed his eyes, let go. He dropped like a stone for a heart-stopping five or six feet; then the rope came taut and he was dangling at its end. Swinging over to the chimney’s side, he sought hand and footholds, and now Stokes was pulling with surprising strength, dragging him upwards. Another minute and Fargo was sprawled, panting, on solid ground, and never had it felt more blessed. Stokes, exhausted, lay beside him.
But there was no time to waste; recovery from the ordeal would have to come later. Fargo’s hands shook only slightly as they unlatched the shotgun, brought it up. He raised his head, looked around. They were on naked tableland, devoid of cover, but not far away from the mesa’s rim there was a dump of scrubby juniper. “Come on.” Fargo scrambled to his feet, shotgun in one hand, rifle in the other. Scuttling the rope, bent low, he and Stokes loped to the thicket, edged inside. Then they were deep in the scrubby thicket’s heart, and just in time, for dawn had now begun to streak the sky.
“By God,” Stokes whispered jubilantly, “we made it.”
“This far. A good job, Stokes. You’ll do to ride the river with. Now hush. We got to lay low.”
In the last darkness, they ate hardtack, washed it down with the scanty water remaining in their canteens. And now Fargo felt a surge of confidence. They had come this far, and he was in his element again. And somewhere on this mountain top was Schmidt—and his fifty horses. And an Indian girl, if she were still alive, and a lot of money. The odds were still long, the deck still stacked against them. But for Fargo, the worst was over. Now it was just another job ...
The sun came up, against a brazen, cloudless sky. Stokes, exhausted, fell asleep. Fargo drew on his own iron reserves of endurance, built up over years, to stay awake. Edging to the limit of the thicket, he carefully used the binoculars to survey this mountain top.
It was a striking contrast to the bleak lands that surrounded it, and he could see why Schmidt had chosen it for a hiding place. Vast in extent, it was lushly grassed, almost park like, with here and there a knob or a crag. Along the shallow draws that cut it in every direction grew juniper and even a few ponderosa pine. All this lush growth was evidence of ample water, and it was a natural place for Schmidt to range his growing supply of horses. In fact, Fargo remembered, Stokes had said cattlemen had run their stock up here until a few years before; then summer drought and unexpected blizzards had wiped them out, and since then the tableland had been deserted.
Plenty of cover and room to maneuver: Fargo was satisfied. And he watched narrowly as breakfast fires once more sent up curls of smoke from perhaps a mile away, in a depression his view of which was cut off by a swelling hump of ground. Over there, if it still stood, should be a line cabin used by cowboys before the stockmen had pulled out. And ... he raised the glasses, and then he saw them on a distant hill—his horses. Nearly the whole fifty head of remounts, plus half again as many other animals Schmidt must have collected here and there, some fine hot-bloods, others heavy-boned draft animals. Fargo’s lips peeled back in a wolfish snarl. Not even a wrangler guarding them. But, of course, since the one trail down was guarded anyhow, there was no place they could stray to.
The reconnaissance completed, he pulled back deeper into the thicket. That line cabin, he thought. It had to be the primary target. Schmidt undoubtedly had made it his headquarters. And there would be stored the weapons—including the fragmentation grenades. And, more than likely, the money from the Rapid City bank. Fargo felt an itching in his palms—not for the money, but for the good, hard heft of the grenades. By God, if he could lay his hands on those ...
But that would have to wait till darkness. Meanwhile, he lay alertly in the cedars and let Stokes sleep for several hours more. No one came near the rim, approached their hiding place. Presently he shook Stokes awake.
“Give me four hours sleep. Keep your head up, anybody comes, anything suspicious, you wake me right away. And don’t you leave this cover, you hear? Under no circumstances do you leave this cover.”
Stokes’ lean face was tense. “You didn’t see or hear any sign of Mary?”
“No.”
Stokes bit his lip. “But she’s got to be there. Fargo, she’s got to be. Only a mile, probably, in that camp. Damn it—”
Fargo’s voice was iron-hard, commanding. “I don’t care if she’s only twenty feet away. We don’t break cover until dark, you understand? We’re here to do a job and get her back, not commit suicide.”
“Yeah. I understand. Only—”
“You’ve waited this long. You can wait a few hours longer.”
Stokes was silent for a moment. “Dammit, haven’t you ever been in love?”
Fargo considered that, then shook his head. “No. No, I reckon not the way you are. I’ve met women I’ve liked, but never enough to tie myself to one for life. They’re there when I want one, and when I don’t want her anymore, I can walk away and never look back. The kind of case you got on that girl affects the judgment, Stokes. It makes a man take useless risks—or back off from the ones he’s got to take. Now you get a close hitch on yourself and do like I say—”
“I guess you’re right,” the young man answered, and fell silent. Fargo looked at him keenly, then rolled over to go to sleep. Stokes had done well so far; he had to trust him. Shotgun cradled, he dozed off.
Something, he had no idea what, brought him bolt awake no more than an hour later. He rolled over instantly, the sawed-off Fox at the ready, hand groping for the rifle. “Stokes,” he whispered, and then he realized he was alone.
Fargo cursed silently, feeling a thrust of apprehension. Then he heard the whisper, coming from the thicket’s edge. “Neal! My God! Come here, quick!”
He was in motion instantly, crawling through the fragrant, wind-whipped juniper to where Stokes lay at the brush’s edge. “Neal—” There was a strange, strangled sound in the young man’s voice. “Look! She’s there—”
Fargo stared. Skylined against the blue, the girl in the buckskin dress had just topped the crest of the swell of ground ahead. And now, frantically, she was running, making straight toward their thicket as if she sought its cover, her black braids flying out behind.
“It’s Mary,” Stokes rasped. “It’s—” He half-rose.
“Wait!” Fargo clamped an iron hand on Stokes’ wrist. The girl ran down the slope, skirts lifted, legs driving, and now two men topped the rise, coming hard behind her. One was tall, slat lean, with a hawk’s face and a fringe of black beard, the other shorter, heavier, with a round, red face; and he was laughing as he ran. “It won’t do you no good, you Injun bitch!” Fargo heard him yell, a little short of breath. “Schmidt says it’s our turn with you! And, by God, we aim to have it!” He and the lean man picked up speed.
The girl, too, ran faster, and Fargo could see the terror, the despair on her round face. For all her swiftness, they were gaining on her easily, especially the tall man with his long legs. Once she stumbled, fell, picked herself up, came on. But now she changed direction. No longer headed for the juniper, she ran straight for the mesa’s rim—and its sheer three-hundred-foot drop.
“Neal, she’s gonna kill herself!” Stokes whispered. He raised his rifle.
“Easy,” Fargo snapped. “She’ll never make it. They’ll catch—”
And they had. Even as he spoke, Mary Running Deer fell again. Panting, breathless, she rose once more, but now they were upon her, not two hundred yards from where Fargo and Stokes lay concealed. The tall man pounced, seized her arm. She screamed, fought to free herself. The short man slapped her face, seized the other arm. “Told you!” His voice carried clearly. “Now, you don’t fight, be good to us, you won’t git hurt! Otherwise, damn your red soul—” He slapped her again, the blow’s force knocking her head around.
Beside Fargo, there was a whisper of sound. Then, suddenly, the short man gave a muffled cry. Neal Fargo stared as the arrow seemed to materialize between his shoulder blades, buried nearly to the feathers.
“Stokes!” he grated. “You damned fool—” But he was too late.
As the short man dropped sideways, hitting with the limp impact of one killed instantly, the tall man stared. Mouth gaping, he jerked his head this way and that. “Bud!” he yelled, and, the girl forgotten, his hand swooped toward the gun on his hip. He was fast, had it clear of leather before the second arrow hit.
Stokes had got it off with a speed that was incredible. It caught the tall man in the chest. He screamed, a high, piercing sound that would carry a long way in the windy silence, and, worse, his trigger finger, closing by reflex, fired his Colt. The slug went straight down, plowing into the ground, as he fell backwards, kicking, writhing. His hand clawed at the arrow as the gun thunder died; he screamed again, and then the life went from him.
Mary Running Deer dropped to the ground, dazed. “Stokes!” Fargo blurted, but it was too late now. The young man broke cover like a bull elk.
“Mary!” he yelled, running towards the girl.
Fargo cursed.
She looked up, eyes widening. “Jon! It’s—”
“It’s me!” Stokes scooped her up, held her tightly. “Come on!” He lifted her, was running towards the thicket. But already Fargo could hear the yelling from far away, behind the rise. Those screams of agony, that single gunshot, had been heard.
Stokes plunged into the juniper, the girl spilling from his arms. She landed hard, stared wildly at Fargo, and Stokes put an arm around her. “It’s all right,” he whispered.
“All right, hell!” Fargo rasped. “You’ve just ruined everything. You—” But the damage was done now, and there was no use whining. All surprise was lost. “Git down!” he snapped, and pushed the girl farther back into the junipers. “Lay flat and hug that ground if you want a chance to live. All hell’s gonna break loose in about a minute. Stokes, you’ve ruined our play. But maybe we can stand ’em off—”
“Let ’em come, the bastards,” the young man snarled, and Fargo saw that he was in a frenzy. “Let ’em come, I’ll kill ’em all—” He snatched up his rifle, worked the lever.
Fargo touched his arm. “You shoot before I tell you to, I’ll kill you myself,” he grated. Stokes stared at him defiantly, then turned away, rifle uplifted, ready.
So this was it, Fargo thought. All his planning, all their efforts gone for nothing. That was what he got for taking on an amateur—and yet he could not blame the man. But Stokes had ruined every chance they had—
And now they came, on foot and mounted, guns glittering in the sun as they crested the rise, half a mile away.
A big man on a sorrel horse—but not Schmidt—reined in on the skyline. “Bud!” he yelled. “Tabor! What the hell—?” Then he swung his horse as he saw the bodies, gestured. “Over there! Spread out! There’s somebody up here! Find the bastards! You hear? Find ’em and burn ’em down!” His voice, wind-borne, carried clearly.
“I’ll show you—” Stokes snarled and lined his rifle. Fargo seized the barrel and struck it down. “Wait. Too far. Let ’em close the range. Lay flat, make every shot count, but don’t fire until I do.”
He counted fifteen of them as they came on, eight or nine on horseback, the rest on foot, all spread out in a line of skirmishers wholly professional. They had come here to hide, he thought, to escape being soldiers, and yet Schmidt had made soldiers out of them anyhow—and now, some would die in combat. But, more than likely, so would he and Stokes—
Now the range was closing. The sorrel curvetted, its rider pointed. “That clump of juniper. Watch it, they may be holed up in there. Better rake it—if they’re in there, drive ’em out!”
So they could wait no longer. “Now!” Fargo rasped, raised his own Winchester. The man on the sorrel was swinging down. Fargo aimed and fired, and the slug caught him before his boot touched the ground. The horse, frightened, whirled and ran, dragging the body, one foot caught in the stirrup—and then, beside him, Stokes’ rifle was thundering, and he was levering more rounds into this own gun and picking targets.
But those targets were shooting back. At the first slam of Fargo’s gun, there had been one frozen moment. Now the men out there threw themselves flat or jumped for cover, and as they opened fire, the thicket seemed suddenly to swarm with deadly insects. Bullets hummed and slapped through brush, clipped twigs fell, bark flew. “Down flat!” Fargo yelled, “and pick your targets!” He pressed himself hard against the earth as he emptied the Winchester, scrabbled to shove more rounds into it. The range was still too great to use the shotgun.
Then, from behind the crest of land, a deep voice boomed out—one he recognized, had heard before when the raiders had attacked his horses. “On your feet! Spread out, damn it! Circle ’em!” Schmidt—and he came hard and fast, mounted on a big bay, one of Fargo’s own cavalry horses, bent low over the horse’s neck. It was raw courage he displayed—and leadership, and his presence galvanized the others. Suddenly they were up and running, and as they fanned out in a semi-circle, the bullets chugged into the thicket from all directions simultaneously.
“Charge ’em! Take ’em!” Schmidt, red-shirted as before, pounded toward the thicket, and as he came in range was firing a six-gun with each hand, reins in his teeth. Fargo felt the burn of lead across the strap muscle where his neck joined his shoulder, but he jerked a round into the rifle’s chamber, lined it on Schmidt. The red shirt was in his sight, he could not miss—
His finger never squeezed the trigger. He heard the whine of lead ricocheting from a rock within the thicket. Caught only a second’s fraction of that deadly sound—and then, suddenly, his whole head seemed to explode. As the spent bullet slammed into his skull, light seemed to explode behind his eyes, and then it turned to darkness, deep and total, as the rifle slipped from his grasp ...