While the woman was in her bedroom, changing, Fargo double-checked the doors and shutters. Outside, he saw, cracking the door a little, the moon was rising, high and full and silvery. A hunter’s moon, they called it sometimes. His mouth thinned. Tonight it was a killer’s moon.
He closed the shotgun, draped on his belt of shells, laid his rifle close at hand. Then, alone in the living room, his right hand went to the knife-sheath on his hip. The weapon it came up holding was a strange one.
He had got it on Luzon, in the Philippines, during his service as a cavalryman in the Insurrection. Ten inches of the finest tempered steel, made by the incomparable craftsmen of Batangas on the island’s southern tip—so hard, yet so keen, that the knife-blade’s tip could be driven through a silver dollar without breaking or dulling—a claim Fargo had verified.
What made it different from other knives was that its handle was made of two pieces of hinged water-buffalo horn. These folded forward, locked, to shield all but four inches of the blade. Yet, when Fargo flipped his right hand, the handles unlocked, flipped back into his palm and locked in place there, and the whole ten inches of cutting steel was exposed, and what had seemed only a short knife was now the deadly equivalent of a full-sized Bowie.
Fargo was an expert with it, and, chin down to shield the throat, belly sucked in, he made a few right-handed passes to limber up. He held his right hand turned over to shield the wrist-artery, the blade flat and parallel to the floor. The shining steel winked like a snake’s tongue as he lunged and turned and lunged again. Then he transferred the knife to his left hand and made more passes—
And a sound of disgust growled in his throat. Slow. God, that wounded left arm was still so slow! No matter how he concentrated, tried, it still lacked the reptilian flicker of the right, and he felt pain in his left shoulder. No doubt about it, he acknowledged. If not a full half of his fighting capability in close combat, at least a third was gone, and would be until those tendons were completely healed. Against a gunman that would make no difference. Against a knife-fighter or a professional boxer, it could make all the difference in the world ...
Lola, dressed in shirt and riding pants, came back into the living room after he had sheathed the knife. “All right,” Fargo said and he went to the gun rack in the corner, took down the twenty-gauge. A double-gun, even with full-length barrels it was light enough for a woman to handle easily. It no longer had full-length barrels. In the ranch blacksmith shop, Fargo had sawed them off. And not even a woman could miss with this weapon at close range. There were no buckshot shells on the ranch for the twenty-gauge, but there were plenty of number fours for jack rabbits and the like, and number four shot at close range, more than a dozen to the shell, would discourage anybody.
Fargo had given Lola instruction with it and she knew what it could do. “You keep it handy all the time,” he said. “And wear this.” He draped a cartridge belt loaded with extra shells around her shoulder. “Just make goddam sure you don’t use it on me.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said, tight-lipped. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
“Nothing except wait. Maybe the Rangers will catch him. Maybe he’ll head for Louisiana instead of here.”
“No,” she said dully. “He’ll come here. He’ll come straight here.”
“Why?” Fargo snapped.
“Never mind. Here is where he’ll come.” And something in her voice told him that she was certain of it and felt that she was doomed.
The night dragged on. The moon, a blessing as far as Fargo was concerned, rose high and shed copious silver light. It would be hard for anybody to cross the open ranch yard in that sort of full illumination. He cracked the shutters and, like a restless hunting hound, made constant circles of the house, looking out. Lola sat slumped in the living room, as if hope had drained from her.
Midnight. One o’clock, then two ... Fargo was now at the peak of alertness. If Harrod knew anything about fighting, he knew that the hour between two and three was when the human spirit was at its lowest, sleep deepest: the perfect time for attack. But, of course, maybe Harrod would not come tonight. Brownsville was far away. On the other hand, no place in Texas was far away now that there were motor cars. And someday, Fargo knew, a man would be able to cross the state in a day in an airplane. Pancho Villa had bought airplanes and hired pilots from Texas to fly over the enemy for reconnaissance and to drop grenades. He was the first military leader in the world to recognize the significance of the airplane and put it to use. Fargo had ridden in one twice, piloted by an El Paso man named Gaston and that once had been enough for him. There was not much that he was afraid of, but heights turned his hands clammy with fear. He still could not understand how Gaston could be so calm ...
Which, right now, mattered not at all. Harrod might come on foot, on horseback, by car. He would certainly not come in an airplane. And—
Out there in the moon-silvered darkness a tin-can rattled. The sound seemed thunderous in the hush.
Fargo’s teeth clamped down on his cigar.
“Lola,” he said. “They’re here.”
“Oh, God,” she said, coming out of the chair.
Fargo closed the shutter. “Don’t panic. There’s no way they can get in. Harrod can’t have many men with him, if he has any at all.”
“He’s got Flash Murphy and Jimmy-the-Blade,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“All right,” he said. “We can hold them off ’til daylight. I’ll call the Rangers, and they’ll be here by then.” He started toward the telephone, then halted, as Lola suddenly swung the twenty-gauge shotgun toward him, covering him cold.
“Fargo,” she said tautly, “don’t you touch that telephone.”
Fargo turned, staring at her. Outside, another can rattled.
“I told you,” she said coldly. “No Rangers. Now, stand away.”
“So,” Fargo said. “It was really that bad, huh?”
“It was bad,” she said. She jerked the shotgun and he backed away. Such a weapon in the uncertain hands of a desperate woman was twice as lethal as if a cool, determined man had held it. Lola held the shotgun steady, edged toward the telephone, took the receiver from the hook and jerked. The fragile mechanism of the instrument, housed in a wooden box, yielded easily; something broke inside. The receiver was loose in her hand, wire dangling. “Now,” she said. “It’s you and me and Rex—and Flash and Jimmy-the-Blade. And you’ll earn your money.”
Fargo took out a fresh cigar, bit off the end. Striking a match with his thumbnail, he lit it. “Yeah,” he said. “That I will.”