The Trailsman #281

Skye Fargo rode all night, following the trail of an anonymous killer who was as pitiless and monstrous as any he’d ever hunted down.

The cutthroat and arsonist had taken no pains to cover the clues as to where he’d hidden in Chico Springs, nor to cover his trail as he first rode out. But Fargo quickly realized he was up against a trail-savvy foe.

Time and again he left clever false trails, forcing Fargo to waste time backtracking. And Fargo very nearly lost him altogether at the Canadian river, where the killer had waded upstream, left a false trail, then waded back downstream before again bearing southwest. All these moves were much quicker and easier for the killer to make than for Fargo to figure out from scant sign.

He’s mighty damn careful, Fargo realized. And good at dodging pursuers. That only made him more dangerous.

The trail sneaked its way toward Springer, a fact that made Fargo nervous for several reasons—including Sheriff Sam Rafferty. Never mind that the lawman was getting a bit long in the tooth. Though his once eagle eyes were now bespectacled for reading, his aim was still true and his mind still sharp as a steel trap.

Then again, Fargo recalled, the lovely Bobbie Jean Davis had breathlessly urged him to visit her in Springer: Girls get that tormentin’ itch, too. Fargo pictured her moist lips and double-handful waist, the blond hair like spun-gold sunshine. A light blonde like her usually had a silky, wispy bush below. . . .

Forced by such pleasant thoughts to adjust himself in the saddle, Fargo reluctantly pushed the saucy beauty from his mind. And just in time: He was on the feather edge of riding smack into view of an Indian raiding party.

Fargo drew rein and swung down, quickly patting the Ovaro’s neck to calm him before leading the stallion into a stand of piñons. He counted six riders in single file, backlit by the moon and topping a rise just ahead of him. They rode small, fourteen-hand mustangs with hair bridles and sheepskin pads for saddles.

Even before he could clearly make out their hide leggings, knee-length moccasins, and loincloths, he guessed they must be Apaches—one of the few tribes Fargo knew of that weren’t superstitious about leaving their campfires after dark. The dozens of peaceful local tribes, Pueblos like Antonio Two Moons, were mostly Christianized farmers and herders now. They minded their own business and had given outsiders little trouble since the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

But that left four dangerous tribes—Apaches, Comanches, Navajos, and Utes—raiding in this area. That included much slave-taking of women and children, and Fargo had been in the thick of that mare’s nest before. This bunch wasn’t painted for war, but with Apaches he could never be certain. Unlike a Sioux or Cheyenne, they might kill a man on the spur of the moment, without any religious rituals first.

Or they might nod politely and pass by. Fargo would rather not roll the dice if he could avoid the gamble altogether.

They were passing by only about fifteen feet in front of him now. He had made sure to duck downwind so their mustangs wouldn’t whiff the Ovaro. He recognized the clan notchings of both Jicarillas and Mescaleros, Apache groups once native to northern New Mexico, where they often still raided the mountain villages.

This bunch had evidently also raided military outposts in Old Mexico—they carried sturdy Mexican Army carbines and wore crossed bandoleers bristling with ammunition.

Fargo already had enough on his plate with vigilantes and the law out for his hide. Now he was also going to have to dodge some of the toughest and most fearless warriors in the entire red nation. A familiar churning of his guts told him their paths would cross again—especially now that he, too, had become a hunted creature of the night.

“We jumped over a snake that time, boy,” Fargo muttered as he swung up onto the hurricane deck again.

Fortunately, the slow pace of tracking had been easy on the Ovaro. But by sunrise Fargo had been awake for twenty-four hours, much of it spent climbing on and off his horse, squatting over faint signs, hanging halfway out of the saddle to watch the ground. He was worn out, and knew he should have spread his blankets for a few hours. But he had cut fresh sign on his quarry, in the grassland and hill country about ten miles northeast of Springer.

Trouble was, he was now caught in the open, and dawn didn’t linger in the vast emptiness of the Southwest. Already he was casting a shadow.

Fargo paused to study the surrounding terrain. His weathered eyes narrowed to slits in the already glaring sunlight.

The trained vision of a veteran scout took everything in at once. Fargo deliberately avoided focusing on anything specific. He simply let the entire landscape flow up to his eyes, as he had once explained the elusive art of scouting to a young cavalry officer.

That’s how he spotted the flash of what he guessed were binoculars, and then the riders—still only flyspecks on the horizon—bearing down on his position at a full gallop.

“Ah, hell,” he said with quiet resignation. “Well, old warhorse, we’re up against it again. Gets old, don’t it?”

He thumped the Ovaro’s ribs with his heels, and the stallion was off like a scalded dog. This latest escape would mean losing the trail Fargo was working. But by now he was convinced his man was headed, for whatever hellish purpose, straight toward Springer.

Fargo had a good lead. But he was also trapped in wide-open country with miles to go before he reached the pine ridges and brushy hollows north of Springer. It wasn’t too long before a couple of sharpshooters opened up behind him with long-range repeating rifles.

Fargo watched divots of grass flying every which way as bullets chunked and thumped all around him, arriving well before the sound of the rifle reports. Just ahead he spotted the far-flung mounds of a prairie-dog town and rode right into the thick of them.

The bullet-savvy Ovaro hardly slowed, knowing this was a race for survival. But Fargo knew most horses tended to rattle, to shy away from places where expanses of green grass were dug up. He had once watched mustangers pen a bunch of wild horses simply by plowing a line around them during the night.

His ruse worked, and Fargo made it to cover, shaking his pursuers. But as he regretfully ran his fingers through his beard, he realized he was worm fodder if he didn’t make some changes in his appearance—and damn quick.

There was an out-of-the-way trading post, on the south bank of Old Spanish Creek, run by a former Taos Trapper named Elkhorn John. Fargo hoped that word of his new fugitive status hadn’t yet reached the old recluse.

“I’m holding my own,” Fargo quipped, and both men laughed as they always did. It was their standard greeting ritual.

“The word?” The crusty old cob snorted. “The hell does this child care? Only interest I got in a buncha damn flatlanders is to lighten their wallets.”

Fargo bought a razor, shaving soap and mug, and, gritting his teeth, a complete set of the new “reach-me-downs”—mass-produced, ready-to-wear clothing. One of the stupidest damn inventions Fargo ever heard of. Hell, was the day coming when people would actually pay good money for paper to wipe their asses, too?

“Good-bye, old friend,” he muttered as he lathered up his beard. “It’s only temporary.”

Using a clear pool beside the creek as his mirror, he shaved, astonished at how naked and pale his face looked now. He peeled off his buckskins and stuffed them into a saddlebag.

Wincing in disgust at the foreign feel, he dressed in his store-bought dungarees and shirt of stiff broadcloth. Fargo wasn’t used to buttons, except when undoing them on a woman’s clothing, and his fingers fumbled with them now.

He felt like a pilgrim, but Fargo had to admit he looked vastly different without his beard and buckskins. His big problem now was the Ovaro.

True, pintos were among the most commonly seen horses on the frontier. But usually only free Indians rode stallions, most whites preferring to geld their male horses to control them around mares. Fargo could risk riding in open country, but dare not take the Ovaro into any larger towns.

He was tensed for action as he rode the final leg of the approach to Springer. But he passed no one on the road except a few farmers in straw hats, pushing a drove of mules. They hardly spared him a glance.

The Sangre de Cristo range filled the right horizon, sliced by gullies on the lower slopes. Things were humming around here since Fargo’s last visit—he even passed a few spreads with small herds of cattle.

Mostly, though, just little nester farms. Sometimes the dwellings on these smaller homesteads were little more than brush shanties covered with wagon canvas. An intricate system of acequias irrigated the corn, beans, and squash, all controlled by a large “mother ditch” with huge gates.

Fargo watered the Ovaro good before stripping him to the neck leather and rubbing him down with an old feed sack. Then he left him on a long tether in a well-hidden copse about a quarter mile outside of town. He would bring oats back later and feed the stallion from his hat.

Springer, too, was booming since Fargo last passed through. Only six months earlier, the town had become a spur on the Topeka and Santa Fe line. There was a big new mercantile in the heart of town, a new harness shop, and—bad news for the Trailsman—a Western Union window on one side of the Overland Stage and Freight office.

A few passersby studied him from caged eyes, making sweat bead up under Fargo’s hatband. He would be forced to spend the last of his money on a room just to have a place to lay low. But first he headed for an alley off the main street.

The best place to get information in a hurry would be from the talkative and friendly owner of the Queen of Sheba. Fargo didn’t remember his name, and hoped his own altered appearance was good enough to trick the owner’s memory.

The Queen of Sheba’s dual purpose was obvious the moment he slapped open the batwings and stepped into the dark, smoke-hazed interior. A gaudy faro layout was prominently positioned to draw in the suckers like flies to a molasses barrel. And instead of the usual calendars advertising O. F. Winchester’s latest firearms, the flocked wall behind the bar sported a mural of fleshy nudes—most likely painted by some talented itinerant artist.

The speaker was a rail-thin, pinch-faced man with a scruffy red beard and a goiter. He stopped wiping off the bar long enough to massage his jaw and wince.

“Got special-made choppers coming from St. Louis,” he apologized. “Some mining-camp dentist made me these wooden teeth, but they hurt like the dickens. Jones is the name. Moonshine Jones. I took that front name after Lucas County, Ohio, voted to go dry and the Temperance League ran me out of town for operating a still. Free country, my freckled ass. Psalm-singing hypocrites.”

He crossed a raw plank floor covered with sawdust. No one was drinking at the bar, but a tall redhead in a low-cut velvet gown had drawn a circle of men and kept the faro rig’s card counter clicking.

“Loop your lips over that, Dave. Ain’t bad whiskey if you put your fist through the wall to help it down.”

Fargo grinned and tossed back a shot. The liquor was indeed cheap panther piss, but he welcomed the bracing feel as it burned in a straight line to his gut.

When Fargo fished in his pocket, Moonshine waved him off. “On the house. When a fellow comes into a saloon this early, carrying his saddle, he ain’t celebrating a bonanza.”

He winked and added: “The girls upstairs sometimes do charity work in the morning, if they like a man’s look.”

Moonshine poured him another jolt. “How ’bout a plate of eggs and chorizo? Warn you, though, it’ll be a belly burner. My cook’s a Mexer, and she puts chili peps in everything.”

Fargo nodded gratefully. He’d had nothing to eat since the beans and tortillas yesterday in Chico Springs.

Moonshine called something in Spanish toward a kitchen behind the bar. Fargo glanced toward a doorless archway in the side wall. Heavy velvet curtains were tied back to reveal an attached parlor like a sultan’s harem. He glimpsed a fancy, serpentine-backed sofa, overstuffed chairs, lamps with red-fringed shades, a big giltwoodframed mirror.

Moonshine set a plate in front of him. Fargo noticed a sawed-off cuestick dangling from the saloon owner’s wrist.

“It’s just for show,” he told Fargo. “Hell, if I was any skinnier I’d need rocks in my pockets to walk in the wind.”

“You know,” Moonshine said, “I’m one to remember a man’s eyes. Seems like, while back, fellow came in here, had lake blue eyes just like yours.”

“Mighta been me,” Fargo said around a mouthful of food. “I’ve been through Springer a few times, heading down to Santa Fe.”

Fargo kept chewing, letting the remark just lay there between them. The hell were his options but to follow this trail through? Moonshine held the reins, at the moment.

“The thing of it is,” Moonshine added, “I can’t help recalling this fellow. See, these three vaqueros ‘invited’ him to play stud poker. He agreed, but quite correctly called for a fresh deck. As I recall, his exact words were, ‘These cards got more nicks in ’em than a cowtown lamppost.’ ”

“Long story short,” Moonshine resumed, “the vaqueros took offense. Words were exchanged, the bearded fellow questioned the virginity of someone’s sister, a knife was flashed. Next thing I knew, there were three holes in the wall and three Mexican cowboys bleeding in the street, calling for their mamacitas.”

“That’s the amazing thing, Dave. This fellow paid me twice what the damage cost and apologized for the bad manners of the vaqueros. Now . . . if you was to tell me that a man with mettle like that in him was a cold-blooded killer? Why, hell, I’d laugh in your face. No matter what a bunch of half-assed peckerwoods in Chico Springs swore. You catch my drift . . . Dave Tutt?”

Fargo nodded, deciding he could trust him. Moonshine knew all about being hounded and persecuted.

The familiar female voice startled Fargo. He glanced into the mirror behind the bar and recognized Bobbie Jean Davis stepping out of the gaudy whorehouse parlor.

Fargo pulled his hat lower and turned away from her line of sight. She looked pretty in a dark blue skirt and a frilly white shirtwaist. Today her blond hair fell unrestrained in back, the bold new fashion Europeans called “the American style.”

“The Robinsons had a breakdown on the road, and I got in late last night,” she said. “So I’m taking the day off until noon, whether Cynthia likes it or not, the snooty bitch. If Nate or Butch show up here, tell them the usual lie—I’m out. This time say I’m at my dress-maker’s. They don’t know her.”

Fargo watched her return to the parlor, hips rolling like a prospector’s rocker box. She headed up a narrow staircase at the rear of the parlor.

“You’re telling me,” Fargo remarked, “that Cynthia Robinson’s maid is one of your sporting gals, too?”

“Yeah, get in line. Well, she’s sitting on a gold mine, brother. I’ve told her that. A sweet little piece, ain’t she?”

Fargo attacked the last of his breakfast. “Looks good, but you know what they say. It ain’t the steak, it’s the sizzle.”

“Trust me, brother, she sizzles. But she doesn’t work here, just boards. Robinson’s snotty-assed wife threw her out of their house. And Bobbie Jean couldn’t get a room at the Dorsey because Cynthia put out the lie that she was once a whore in Amarillo.”

“Let me guess,” Fargo said. “The wife tossed her because Nate and Butch are both in rut for Bobbie Jean?”

“Nate or Butch would pay her a sheik’s ransom just to lick it once. But Bobbie Jean enjoys humping too much to ever turn it into a business and kill the fun. And she likes to choose her men. She doesn’t pick one often, but when she does, mister, she leaves ’em limping for a week.”

Moonshine hooked a thumb toward the ceiling. “Her bed’s right over the bar. When she gets into her stride? Afterward, there’s an inch of plaster dust on the bar. Even my bargain-rate whores don’t break as many bed boards in one night as Bobbie Jean can.”

“Yeah, I’d ask, too. Nothing right now. But there’s six gals upstairs and Fanny at the faro table. If a fellow makes friends, he can sometimes wangle a bed for a few nights.”

Fargo hated to do it, but he’d have to check into the overpriced Dorsey for now. He couldn’t just wander around, waiting to be recognized and shot.

“Sheriff Rafferty still around?” Fargo inquired as he slid off the stool and hefted his saddle.

“He’s down in Santa Fe on court business.” Moonshine paused, then added: “And the stubborn old mule won’t hire a deputy—says he can’t trust any man he knows. Which, until he gets back, leaves this town in the hands of our fair-minded, law-and-order Vigilance Committee.”

Fargo caught the sarcastic warning. He nodded and headed outside, angling across the street toward the Dorsey. The morning was well advanced now and the street boiling with activity. Fargo felt like the bull’s-eye on a target.

The splendor of the Dorsey’s main lobby convinced him this featherbed palace would clean him out. Bronze-framed mirrors covered the walls, and two huge fireplaces were mantled with blood onyx, marble, and slate. A group of elegantly dressed young ladies shared a large circular sofa with a central headrest. They had obviously just detrained—one of them was complaining bitterly about cinder holes in her new silk taffeta gown.

“That will be five dollars, Mr. Tutt,” a perfumed clerk wearing a stiff paper collar told him. “In advance,” he added, casting a dubious glance at the half moons of dirt under Fargo’s fingernails, then at his saddle and six-shooter.

He was just fishing the last quarter-eagle gold piece from his pocket when Butch Robinson, sided by several men carrying rifles, stepped into the lobby. The conversational buzz suddenly fell silent.

The moment Fargo saw how their eyes prowled the lobby, he realized they were part of the Vigilance Committee.

He snatched off his hat, just before Butch’s eyes settled on him, and crammed it into a saddlebag. Fargo knew Butch had seen it last night. He took his key from the clerk and turned casually away from the front desk, heading toward the spiral staircase at the back of the lobby.

Fargo didn’t even see a blur. In less than an eyeblink, the big-bore Remington was aimed straight at his lights. He must have willed it into his hand, Fargo marveled.

“Tutt, huh?” Butch’s hard little flint-chip eyes cut to the saddle. “What kind of horse you riding?”

“I had a chestnut gelding under this saddle. But two nights ago Apaches killed it and ate it. I was lucky to escape with my hair.”

“ ’Paches don’t scalp, greenhorn. Anyhow, way you’re dressed, you don’t look like the type who could escape from a blind Sunday school teacher. You oughta be bent over a plow or slopping hogs.”

“Run over to the livery. See if there’s any pinto stallions. If not, describe this yahoo to Hank. Ask if he put up a horse there—any horse.”

“A real mouthpiece, huh? Tell me something, Tutt. Your hands’re brown as walnuts, but your face is pale as a baby’s ass. Now how can that be?”

“I wear a floppy-brim hat. Covers my face. The men in my family get moles bad if we don’t.”

“Things tend to get misplaced,” Fargo replied, “when a man’s hauling ass from Apaches.”

Josh returned. Butch glanced at him, and the man shook his head. Butch reluctantly leathered his shooter.

Josh snickered before catching himself. Butch whirled toward him, palm on the butt of his Remington. “That’s real goddamn funny, ain’t it?”

“I don’t necessarily kill a man for a remark like that,” he said. “A simple apology will keep your cowardly ass among the living.”

You cocky, arrogant little bastard, Fargo thought, fuming. That’s three times now you’ve insulted me without cause.

But by now dozens of people were staring at them. Exactly the kind of attention Fargo didn’t need. This little piss squirt required a comeuppance, all right. But this wasn’t the time or place.

The girls were watching, and that was egging Butch on. “Clear?” he repeated, raising his voice.

But as he watched Butch saunter out, his armed lick-spittles in tow, Fargo knew what was really clear. First he would try to pick up the trail, or whereabouts, of that arsonist and determine what he was doing in Springer.

And then he was going to settle a past-due account with a mouthy young gun tough named Butch Robinson.