The lawyer’s name was Callahan, and Fargo liked his businesslike manner, his bluntness, and the way he looked a man squarely in the eye—a trait not common in most of the lawyers Fargo had met. “Yeah,” Callahan said. He was a big, gray-headed man with wise blue eyes. “There’s been a lot of talk about the way your sister’s handled the Dane Ranch since your father died and you went away, Mrs. Pemberton. It’s pretty strange.”
“Strange, how?” Fargo asked.
Callahan shrugged. “I don’t know all the details. All I know is that after Dr. Dane passed away, she sold some of the stock and left El Paso for a while—several months. Talk was that she was in New Orleans. Then she came back, and suddenly she fired all the old hands and hired on a bunch of new ones—tough hombres, drifters, with that Luke Shannon who seems to be her foreman or whatever. And then she sold off the rest of the breeding stock, mares, stallions, foals and all ... and now she’s about out of business, but she still has all those men out there. The Sheriff checked into ’em, but couldn’t find any warrants out against them, and since they’re theoretically on her payroll, he couldn’t roust ’em for vagrancy, but he’s not happy about having a bunch of obvious gunmen roosting in the county. Still, they don’t bother anybody. Neither Lola nor any of those men come into town very often ... and really, nobody knows what’s going on out there. But you’re certainly entitled to your half of the ranch, Mrs. Pemberton, and to take possession of it any time; and to an accounting for the proceeds from the sale of all the horses. But Mr. Fargo’s right; the best way’s to handle it through the courts. I’ll put the legal wheels in motion, and we’ll see what happens. Where can I reach you, Mrs. Pemberton?”
Before Rose could speak, Fargo said, “Reach her through me. I’ll be around and in touch with her.”
Callahan’s eyes narrowed. Then he nodded. “That’s not a bad idea, if you’ve got in mind what I think. After all, if something happened to Mrs. Pemberton, that would be quite a windfall for her sister. And considering the men she’s surrounded herself with—yes, Mr. Fargo, I think that’s wise.”
When they had left his office, Rose turned to Fargo. “But I need to go to work—”
“What you need to do is lay low,” Fargo said. “I’m taking you out to stay with Templeton in Isleta, and you’re not to come to El Paso or let Lola or anybody know where you are. Understand?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I do, now—some, anyhow. That sister of yours has hired a bunch of gunmen. Why, I don’t know. But I do know she’s signed on a lot of the kind that don’t come cheap. And I figure that’s why she sold off your horses when she came back from New Orleans—to pay their wages. Whatever she’s up to, it’s something big—and you coming back right now’s gonna throw a wrench into her gears. So we get you out of the way until this is settled one way or another.”
Rose bit her lip. “All right,” she said at last, glumly. “But you’ve done so much for me already ...”
“I promised Angelita I’d bring you home safe and sound. But right now it looks like you’re in as much danger as you were in Mexico. Until I find out different, I reckon the promise I made to her and Villa still holds.” He grinned tightly. “I’m not bein’ big-hearted about it. Villa’s my prime gun market. Angelita’s one of his best officers. He has to keep her happy, and I got to keep him happy, so it’s all a matter of business with me. You see?”
“I see,” she said. “And I’ll do exactly as you say.”
They rode out of town after dark, and Fargo saw her safely settled with Templeton—who also recognized it as a business matter and who would see to it that no word of her presence there leaked out. Then Fargo returned to El Paso. For the moment, the matter was out of his hands, and now he could have his spree. Which, for the next few days, he did, spectacularly, Rose forgotten, for there were plenty of other women in El Paso and a lot of them had been waiting for him to come back. There were also faro and chuckaluck layouts and no limit poker games and excellent bourbon and fine Havana cigars, and, all in all, a lot of ways for a man to unwind after the nerve-wrenching work of running guns and dabbling in revolutions. He savored everything the town had to offer, and as always money flowed through his fingers like sand. But that was what he made it for—to spend.
Still, he never lost himself so completely in his pleasures that his alertness diminished. A man in his hard trade had enemies—lots of them, some whose faces he had never seen. Nor had he forgotten that he’d made new ones—Lola Dane and the man called Luke Shannon. When Callahan finally had legal papers served on Lola, there would be reaction of some kind, and he’d best be ready for it. So, as always, in public places he sat with his back to the wall and watched who came in the door; and he changed hotels every night. That was a lot of trouble, but being dead was more.
A week passed: he won fifteen thousand dollars gambling, and then the cards and dice turned against him and he lost it back plus twelve of his own. He left the games for two nights to give his luck a chance to turn, and it didn’t. He was five thousand in the hole in a game in the back room of a saloon near the river when the assistant bartender came in and slipped him a note.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Fargo tipped back his hat, leaned back in his chair, read the slip of paper, tucked it in his pocket. Then, coolly, he surveyed his cards. “Open for five hundred,” he said quietly. “And this is my last hand for tonight.”
“Five and your five,” the next man said, and the bets went around the table; and Fargo saw immediately that it was one of those action hands when everybody held good cards. Before the draw, there was nine thousand dollars in the pot.
“One card,” Fargo said. He added it to his hand without looking at it, chewed his unlit cigar. Under the gun, he bet a thousand dollars. He drew one raise of a thousand, another folded, two called, and he re-raised a thousand. That left two men in, who only called. Fargo spread four aces on the table. “Natural bullets,” he said.
A kind of sigh went around the table. Four queens, four jacks and a full house had been his opposition. Fargo allowed himself a faint smile. His luck had turned: maybe at a good time. He raked in the chips, counted them, turned to the man next to him, a professional gambler named Pelham whom he’d known for a long time. “I’ve got an urgent business appointment. Cash these for me and hold the money, okay?”
“Right,” said Pelham, whose livelihood depended on his reputation for total integrity. Fargo stood up, knowing the money would be there when he needed it. “Give her a kiss for me,” Pelham said and grinned.
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Fargo said and went out. But before he entered the main room of the saloon, he loosened his Colt in its shoulder holster.
The man named Shannon was out there, all right, at the bar, exactly as the note had said. And, as the bartender had added, he was drunk, armed, and dangerous. There were laws against carrying guns openly in El Paso nowadays; the old wild days had supposedly long since passed. But since the Revolution had started across the river, they were winked at because of a feeling that the violence south of the Rio might boil across that narrow strip of water at any time. Therefore, the fact that Luke Shannon wore his Colt strapped low on his right hip and tied down was not something to excite comment or attract attention from the law. Fargo, though, saw the gun at once, and he saw, too, the flare that lit Shannon’s eyes at the sight of him, and instinctively he flexed his body slightly, loosening the stiffness acquired at the poker table.
There was space at the bar. Fargo stopped, five feet from Shannon. “Hello, Luke,” he said. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah,” Shannon said. “Yeah, I wanted to see you. I been looking all over town for you.”
Fargo said quietly, “Now, Luke, let’s get one thing straight. I do not want a quarrel with you. I call on all these people to witness it. I will be happy to settle any differences in a friendly discussion.” His voice was loud: he already knew that he would either have to kill this man or be killed by him. He wanted to make sure that any killing he had to do would be quickly dismissed by the law as justifiable homicide.
“Differences,” Shannon said. “Friendly discussion.” His voice was harsh, rasping. Then he spat an obscenity.
“Luke,” Fargo said, still loudly and with a certain stilted courtesy. “I will not engage in a dispute with a drunken man. When you are sober, if you have something important to say, come back and see me then.”
“Sober, goddamn you—” Luke stood up straight, hand dropping to his side.
“You heard me,” Fargo said. And then he turned his back on Shannon—
And threw himself simultaneously even as his right hand whipped under the coat and came out with the .38. In a crouch he pivoted and heard the slap of Shannon’s slug go by his ear even as Shannon’s six-gun roared, and then Fargo lined the Colt and punched a .38 hollow point through Shannon’s throat.
It blew a terrible spray of flesh and blood, and more blood spouted after, and Shannon tried to raise his gun for a second shot, dropped it, put both hands to his throat, and then his head, almost severed from the body, lolled strangely and he fell heavily, boots thumping on the floor. In the desert, Fargo would have given him a finishing shot to end the agony; here there was nothing to do but wait for Shannon to die, and it took a full minute. When the boots stopped their drumming, there was an absolute hush in the place.
Fargo meanwhile replaced the spent round with a fresh one from his jacket pocket. “Morris,” he said to the bartender. “Send somebody for the police. I’ll be in the back room when they come.”
The poker players back there had risen from the table at the sound of the shots. They stared as Fargo came in and closed the door. “The business didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” he said to Pelham. “Let me have my chips back. I think we’ve got time for another hand before I have to leave.” And he sat down at the table, took out a fresh cigar, and lit it. But there was not much action in the next hand, and he won only two thousand dollars before the cops arrived.
~*~
“Well,” the magistrate said, “there can’t be no doubt. The officers say everybody in the barroom heard you try to avoid a fight and you even turned your back on Shannon and he tried to shoot you in it. So it’s justifiable homicide, no two ways about it.”
“Much obliged, your honor,” Fargo said.
“Hold on,” said the magistrate. “You don’t get off that easy. There is a city ordinance in El Paso against carrying concealed weapons. I’m fining you twenty-five dollars for toting that Colt in that shoulder-holster.”
Fargo grinned, dug in his pocket, brought out a couple of coins. “Here’s forty. Put the rest in the Policemen’s Widows and Orphans Fund. Good night, Judge.”
“Good night, Mr. Fargo. And thanks.”
Outside the main police station where the brief hearing had taken place, Fargo halted, lit a cigar, drew in the smoke thoughtfully. Suddenly he was very weary: there was always reaction after a gunfight, a killing, and nobody, no matter how tough, was immune. Besides, the man named Shannon was only one of plenty hired by Lola Dane. And with almost a dozen more stalking him, El Paso could be an uncomfortable place for him if she chose to make it so.
He walked on. Tomorrow he’d better ride out to the Dane Ranch, have a confrontation, with her, lay the cards on the table. One more try at him and it would not only be the gunman who got hurt; it would be her, too.
That was the only way to put a stop to such a situation.
The cigar tasted bitter. He was, really, tired of El Paso, already jaded with the easy living, the drinking, the women, and the gambling. He was ready to stretch himself, find a challenge on which to sharpen his teeth and claws. And Pancho had said he wanted a load of guns in Torreon ...
Only, Fargo thought, he was not ready yet for another run to Mexico, that damned left arm was still not up to snuff.
He flexed it as he strode warily back to his hotel. Torn tendons sometimes took longer to heal than broken bones. Every day the arm was a little better, but it still lacked its old strength and speed, tired easily. And a man needed two good arms in Mexico. So, although he was getting impatient, he’d bide his time, content himself with seeing Rose through her problems with Lola, though that was pretty small potatoes. Messy, like that fight with Shannon tonight, tinhorn that he was, and unprofitable ...
The night clerk was dozing behind the desk as Fargo entered the hotel and went quietly up the stairs. Unlocking the door, he entered his room, switched on the electric lights—and then the Colt was in his hand and pointed.
But there was no one else in the room—only the woman in his bed who, hair tousled, sat up, blinking, sheet and blanket falling from her naked breasts.
Fargo kept the gun aimed at her. “What the hell,” he asked icily, “are you doing here?”
Lola Dane smiled. “Waiting for you,” she said.
Neal Fargo strode to the bed, flung back the covers. The rest of her was just as bare as her upper half, and she lay full-stretched and unashamed, moving her legs apart a little, mouth still quirked in a smile, as he ran his eyes over lush, white flesh. “Like it?” she murmured.
Instead of answering, he jerked the pillows off the bed and threw them on the floor. There was no weapon under them and satisfied that she was unarmed, he sheathed the gun. “Yeah,” he said. “It looks all right. Now, answer my question.”
She threw long legs over the side of the bed, sat up, smoothed back her fall of shining black hair. “Like I said, I was waiting for you. Told the night-clerk I was a friend of yours. He didn’t seem to think there was anything funny about that. Seems you’ve had a lot of ‘friends’ in and out. Anyhow, I waited a long time and you didn’t show, so I stretched out—and I didn’t want to get my clothes all wrinkled.”
Fargo rolled his cigar across his mouth. “You’ve got more nerve than a brass baboon. Don’t you know I just killed your man Luke Shannon?”
The smile went away. “Yeah, I know it. That’s really why I’m here. Luke was the best I had and—”
“Then you didn’t have much.”
“Too true.” Coolly, Lola walked across the room to where a bottle of bourbon sat on the dresser. She pulled the cork, poured a splash in a cloudy glass, turned to face Neal Fargo, sipping the whiskey. “That’s what’s been worrying me all along. I got the best I could find, but all the good ones have either gotten mixed up in Mexico or in the war in Europe. You’d be surprised how hard it is for a woman that needs gunmen to find ’em nowadays, and how much they charge when she does.” She set down the glass, voice harsh. “Luke was a shorthorn, and I knew it, and I’ve got no tears to shed for him. You’re the kind I was looking for all along. And instead, you fall right into Rose’s lap! Of all the luck!” Her crooked smile came back, and she ran her hands over her breasts. “Incidentally, how do I stack up alongside my milk-and-water sister, Fargo?”
“Get some clothes on,” Fargo said.
“Look,” she said. “I know all about you. I know what you like, and I can give it to you. And ... I want to make a deal with you.”
“Nope,” said Fargo. “No deal. I’m not calling off the lawyer for a roll in the hay with you, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.” He grinned. “So it won’t work, Lola. Way I figure it, you’d be about number seventeen since I hit El Paso, so I’m not exactly hurtin’. And while you’re prime merchandise, I’ve been playin’ no limit poker for twelve hours straight and just killed a man in a gunfight on top of that, and with all that takes out of a man, you might just as well be an Army mule for all the good standin’ there buck naked’ll do you.” The grin went away. “And if it’s what you’ve got in mind, I’m too old a hand for the badger game.”
Her mouth thinned, cheeks flaming. “You sonofabitch. You wouldn’t trust your own grandmother, would you?”
“Sister, whatever else you are, you ain’t my grandmother,” Fargo said. “Now, get dressed.”
She stared at him a moment, then shrugged. He watched as she donned frilly underwear, black silk stockings, a flouncy dress that hugged her figure. Then, fully clad, she turned. “All right,” she said. “Now, will you listen to my proposition?”
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “Whatever you’ve got on your mind, spill it.”
“All right,” she said. “I’m not asking you to call off the lawyer. And I’m not fool enough to expect you to do anything for a roll in the hay. I’m here to talk about money, Fargo—big money. And the fighting you’ll have to do to earn it.” Her eyes met his. “Shannon’s dead. I want to hire you to take his place. And I’ll pay you twenty thousand dollars for one month’s work. Ten thousand in advance—and the other ten when the job is finished. You agree, carry it off successfully, and on top of that, Rose can have the whole damned ranch, free and clear. Now. How does that sound to you, Mr. Neal Fargo? Do I still look like an Army mule?”
Fargo took his cigar from his mouth, let out a long breath and a plume of smoke. His eyes searched her face carefully, and her gaze met his unafraid, even with a touch of mockery. Fargo went to the bottle, helped himself to a long swig. Then he said quietly, “Keep talking.”
“Not until you tell me if you’re interested.”
“I’m always interested in money. But you haven’t got any. You told Rose that.”
“I’ve got some and I can get some more.”
“Half of which is Rose’s.”
“All right. I sold off the stock to raise some cash, yeah. But the half of the ranch I’ll deed to Rose will be worth twice what her share of the money I got from that will come to. She won’t lose. Besides, I thought she was long since dead in Mexico and that I had a free hand. I got word that she and her husband both had been killed in an ambush in Chihuahua. So I felt no obligation to her.”
Fargo nodded. “Okay, I’ll go along with that for now. All the same, I’m fussy about what kind of job I take.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve done some checking on you, and that was one thing nobody mentioned.”
“I’m clean here in the United States. Not wanted for any crime—so far—and never have been. I won’t do anything that’ll get my name on a post office wall. That’s the main thing.”
She nodded. “This won’t, if you’re careful. There’s a man who wants to kill me. Never mind why—”
Fargo grinned coldly. “I could think of a reason or two ...”
“Be quiet. He wants to kill me, and I’m afraid of him. If he comes, it’ll be within the next thirty days. After that, I no longer have to fear him and your job’s over. You may not have to lift a finger to earn your twenty thousand, but if you do, you’ll be up against a man every bit as big and hard and mean as you. And I have no idea whether he’ll come alone or bring a dozen men just as tough along with him. All I know is that I’ve been living in fear for over a year now. I’ve bled myself white paying for protection. And for him, the next month is now or never. If he doesn’t move by then, he’ll be dead, I’ll be safe. But for me, these next thirty days are when I’m in the most danger.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am,” said Lola. Her voice trembled slightly. “Because right now he’s in state prison in Brownsville. And he’s sentenced to hang thirty days from now. But, Fargo, until they drop him through the gallows door, I can’t draw an easy breath.”
Fargo stared at her a moment. Then he said, “It still don’t add up. Twenty thousand to save you from a man in prison who can’t even get at you.”
“It makes sense if you know the man,” said Lola. “Did you ever hear, Fargo, of a man named Rex Harrod?”
And now, suddenly, Neal Fargo was beginning to understand. “Rex Harrod,” he rasped. “Heard of him, hell! I went fifteen rounds in the ring with him once when I was prizefightin’. I figure he fouled me twice a round, but the referee was bought and paid for. He won the bout and gave me this.” Fargo touched a short, ugly scar above his left eye. “He meant to thumb out that eyeball, but he didn’t quite make it. And I left some scars on him, too.”
“Then you know that Rex plays rough.”
“Rough enough so they finally barred him from the ring after he crippled two or three good fighters and killed one. He was a contender for the heavy-weight championship ’til then—but the sonofabitch would do anything to win.”
“He still will.”
“How did you get mixed up with Rex Harrod? And why’s he in prison, sentenced to hang?”
“I ... met him in New Orleans, over a year ago. And he’s sentenced to hang because he killed a Texas Ranger, resisting arrest. But …” Her bravado was gone, now, and naked fear trembled in her voice. “But he won’t hang, he swears he won’t. He swears he’ll break out and come for me and kill me. And ... and I believe him, Fargo! I’m afraid not to! Because anything Rex says he will, he’ll do! And ... I know it, I feel it in my bones! They’ll never put a rope around his neck! Not before he’s ... got back at me, seen me die ... And if he doesn’t come himself, he’ll send somebody. I’m sure of it! And you’ve got to help me! You helped Rose for nothing, that lawyer says. Risked your life to bring her out of Mexico! Well, I’m asking you to help me and risk your life for me, and I can give you anything in bed that she gave you, and I’ll pay you a small fortune besides!”
Fargo said, “If you’re that scared, why don’t you take the twenty thousand you’d pay me and run? Take off to Australia, Canada, somewhere—”
“There’s no place I could go he couldn’t find me! The only thing to do is wait for him here. Let him come to me and have enough force on hand to kill him when he does! The world’s not big enough for me to hide from him! All I can do is wait and hope—for another month!”
Fargo was silent, going to the bottle, taking another drink. He thought of Rex Harrod, big, handsome, packing a lethal punch in either fist, catlike and ruthless. Unlike most boxers, Harrod, in the ring, was always out for blood, not only to win but to hurt. Even now, Fargo could remember vividly that nightmare bout with Harrod; himself, fighting as Kid Neal, still young and inexperienced, Harrod like some sort of machine of destruction out to grind him up. Two rounds, and Fargo had realized that Harrod not only meant to win, he meant to do it by crippling Fargo for life, and the rest of that bout had been a battle for survival. Harrod had got a few surprises; Fargo had not been easy prey. And Fargo had survived—with a hatred for Harrod that had never left him. He’d taken great satisfaction later in learning of Harrod’s being barred from the ring and then had lost track of the man, hadn’t thought of him in years. But now he understood why Lola Dane was terrified of a man in prison and sentenced to the gallows. Because she was right: Rex Harrod’s sort was never safely dead until planted six feet under.
Fargo sipped the whiskey. Harrod: he would like another crack at that bastard. Unconsciously, he fingered the scar above his eye. Then he looked at Lola, who was waiting tensely. Still, there was something about this that did not ring quite true. “Why’s Harrod want you so bad?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“If I hire on, it’s all my business. I don’t bet in the blind.”
“All right.” Lola looked away. “After my father died and Rose got married and went off, I sold some of the horses and took the money to New Orleans. I wanted some action—the kind you can’t get, stuck off in the sticks on a horse ranch, or in a town where everybody knows you. And I met Rex there ... And we had our fun together, all right. And ... he was mixed up in a lot of things in New Orleans, shady stuff, all kinds of rackets, and I think he knew every killer and thug on the whole Gulf Coast. To me, that didn’t matter. I fell for him—and hard. He claimed to have gone overboard for me, too, and ... We even talked about getting married. Then ...” She hesitated. “I found out he had half a dozen women on the string. I was only one, he’d made a fool of me. And I knew he was wanted in Texas for a crime, and I thought I’d make him pay. I ran out on him, came back here, sent a letter to the Rangers; they had him arrested in Louisiana and sent two men to bring him back. He tried to escape and killed a Ranger doing it, but the other one got the drop on him. They tried him and sentenced him to hang. He guessed I was the one that blew the whistle on him, and he got word to me—somehow he was going to get out and come after me and when he got me ... Well, you know what kind of man he is. He’d kill me, all right. But not right away. I was terrified, I had to have some protection. So I sold off the stock and used the money to hire Luke Shannon and his crowd. But the cure was almost worse than the disease. It didn’t take long to see that they couldn’t stand up against a man like Rex, especially if he brought some men to side him. All they were interested in was the high wages I was paying them. Some of them I tried to run off, but they wouldn’t go. Then you came along, and ... the minute I saw you, I knew you were the answer to the problem. I had to get you on my side. And believe me, Fargo, I didn’t send Luke against you tonight. That was his own idea, to pay you back for the pistol-whipping you gave him.” Then, as if so much talking had exhausted her, she sat down on the bed. “I need you,” she said gustily. “I need you worse than Rose does or ever did ... For God’s sake, do we have a deal?”
Fargo was silent for a moment. Then he said: “We have a deal when I see some money.”
Lola’s mouth twisted. “I thought so. Thank God.” She opened her handbag, took out an envelope. “There’s a check for ten thousand dollars. Cash it at the bank tomorrow, and then we’ll go together out to the ranch. All right?”
“Okay,” said Fargo. He inspected the check, stashed it in his billfold.
“Now,” Lola said, trembling with relief. “You work for me. And ... I’ve rented the room next door to yours. I’m afraid to stay alone, too far from help anymore.”
Fargo said, “All right. You need me, holler. And if this check clears tomorrow, we’re in business.”
“Yes,” she said. “In business.” She stood there a moment longer, staring at him, eyes meeting his. Her tongue moved wetly across her lips. “Fargo,” she whispered.
“Go to bed,” he said. “Next door.”
She looked at him a few seconds longer, her mouth twisted, and then, without a word, she went out.
Fargo locked the door behind her. He heard her enter the next room, move around. Dead tired, he had another drink, a slow one, slumped in a chair and frowning. There were still things that didn’t add up, but his mind was too fatigued now to worry over them. Absently, he rubbed the scar above his eye. He didn’t know how Rex Harrod could break out of state prison, and probably it was impossible. But he found himself almost hoping that he would have to earn that twenty thousand the hard way.