Fargo rode with his employers as far as Kellyville, a camp less than a mile from Buckskin Joe. The terrain they covered was mostly heavily wooded slopes and random tumbles of caprock that had broken off the surrounding peaks of the Park Range under the weight of winter ice.
“Last Stand Gulch lies off to the left,” Dave said when they reached the edge of camp. “You can’t see it from here. Riley says it got its name after some early prospectors holed up there during an attack by Utes. They survived, too. I ain’t seen the place, but Riley called it a natural defensive fortress.”
The Owensboro wagon jolted hard as one of its wheels caught a rock. Dave swore and aimed his eyes back onto the rough trail.
“That sounds like the Jackson Powell I know,” Fargo replied. “He rates aces high as a field strategist. He finished three years at West Point before he was drummed out for raping a girl in the village. According to Dame Rumor, she was scared to death to testify against him, so he beat the civilian legal charge.”
“And that’s the man,” Steve chimed in, “Inez called a cultured gentleman. A woman will turn shit into strawberries if the jasper shoveling the shit is wearing a weskit and cravat.”
Fargo laughed. “Dave, this whelp is hot-jawing your wife.”
“I know it, Skye, but the pup is right. He loves Inez, but that skirt is mighty highfalutin—her high-toned ideas have cost us a thousand simoleans. And I don’t see any way in hell Jackson is going to give it back. Especially when he finds out about Philander Brace.”
“I have different ideas on that score,” Fargo said quietly. “Speaking of which, here’s Kellyville now. You boys gonna be all right unloading the ice yourself and making the last run to California Gulch? I can meet you on your way back to Yellow Grizz.”
The Holman brothers exchanged a sly grin.
“You been thinkin’ about that hot little sen-yor-eeter, huh?” Steve roweled him.
Fargo thumbed his hat back and glanced at the sky. “Sun’s not quite straight overhead yet. I’ve got time to reverse my dust back to this Aspen Ring. Steve, Rosita ain’t just looking for some slap ’n’ tickle—there’s two hundred miles of rock-hard peeder in Buckskin Joe if that’s on her mind.”
“Yeah, but only one Trailsman,” Dave said. “Tall, blue-eyed, and notorious. That’s all any woman could ask for.”
“Inez might toss in a college degree and a monocle,” Steve said, and the trio laughed at the sad truth of his remark.
Fargo dropped back and wheeled the Ovaro. “Keep your eyes peeled, boys,” he called over his shoulder. “The war is on now. The lick-fingers have to report to their master, so I don’t think there’ll be any payback today. But Powell’s got a sack of surprises for his enemies, so keep your noses to the wind.”
Fargo didn’t bother adding, as he bore east at a fast trot, that he suspected the real surprise was reserved for him at Aspen Ring. Rosita no more belonged in Buckskin Joe than did a marble bust by Michelangelo. That meant she was there for some purpose besides singing ditties in front of horny prospectors. And the most likely person to have put her there was Jackson Powell.
Which meant, Fargo fully realized, that he might be riding into a trap. But a man had to roll the dice now and then—the “galloping dominoes” as Dunk called them—and see what came up. Otherwise he would always be waiting for his enemies to set the rules.
Besides, Fargo admitted to himself with a smile, just maybe the lovely and curvaceous Rosita did have an itch only he could scratch. A man’s duty was a man’s duty no matter how pleasant. . . .
Reluctantly Fargo forced his mind off country matters and back to his immediate surroundings. He bypassed Buckskin Joe by fording Frenchman’s Creek, riding past several startled Argonauts panning in the water.
Chicken Pete, busy shaking the slats of a long tom, called out to him. “I seen that mess hangin’ from the cottonwood. Looks like it’s comin’ down to the nut-cuttin’!”
“Looks like it,” Fargo called back. “You and Big Dick just get this bunch organized, hear? Every man for himself won’t cut it when Powell imports more killers.”
Fargo reached the base of Yellow Grizz and kept riding due east, eyes alert for the usual signs of ambush: sudden flights of birds, flashes of reflection, and most reliable, the Ovaro’s sensitive ears. So far they remained flat to his head, occasionally twitching at the distant sound of a bobcat snarling or a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting.
He broke through a motte of pine trees and crossed an expanse of stony ground, looking for any tracks. A minute later he spotted what must be the Aspen Ring, just as it had been described: a tight ring of golden-leaved aspen trees encircling a lush grassy swale.
And smack in the middle, dressed in a pretty white dress, her dark hair like a windblown mane, sat Rosita Morales.
The bait? Fargo figured a man could collect plenty of bullet holes inside that natural shooting gallery.
He swung down, landing light and silent as a cat, and hobbled the Ovaro’s foreleg to rear with rawhide strips. He slid the Henry from its sheath, quietly levered it, then palmed the wheel of his Colt to check the loads.
Fargo hated to keep a lady waiting, but he also believed a man should check the water before he waded into it. Moving in quick spurts, leapfrogging from tree to tree, he covered the entire ring and discovered no shooters lurking.
A silver-smooth laugh from the clearing startled him. “Surely, Senor Fargo, you do not think I asked you here to kill you?”
Feeling sheepish, Fargo stepped into view and touched the brim of his hat. “I don’t think it was your plan, miss, no. But you wouldn’t be the first pretty girl used to bait a trap.”
He crossed to her in a few rapid strides and knelt beside her, amazed at how much prettier she was up close. Her topaz eyes were big and wing-shaped, her skin a flawless golden brown. Lips like juicy ripe berries dared him to kiss her.
“Por un hecho, for a fact, I am supposed to—how you say?—lure you to your death,” she replied, her tone bitter now. “So many terrible things I must do now because of this pig-man Jackson Powell.”
“So you do work for him?”
Her eyes blazed with indignation. “Work? For this piece of basura, this garbage? I would be raped by Apaches before I choose such a thing. He rode into Nuevo Laredo, my home, and he—how you say?—examines all the village girls. He picks me. Then the pig-man seizes mi madre y mi hermana, my mother and sister.”
Fargo raised a hand to silence her. This was vintage Jackson Powell and he knew where it was going. “So now you do everything he tells you to do or they’ll be killed.”
She nodded, her pretty face a mask of misery.
“Where is he keeping your mother and sister?”
“He will not tell me. But de vez en cuando, I mean, now and then, he brings them to see me so I will know they are still alive.”
“If all that’s true,” Fargo said, “why are you meeting with me? Surely you know what would happen if Powell knew about this.”
“Claro. He would kill me and my family. But, Senor Fargo, where I come from in Mexico, very near la frontera, the border, I have seen the evil of men such as the pig-man Powell. Men just like him came to take the scalps of wild Indians for bounty. But they found it much—how you say?—much more easy to scalp los Mexicanos because we have the same dark, coarse hair.”
“So what you’re driving at,” Fargo said, never relaxing his vigilance, “is that you figure the pig-man will kill you and your family no matter what you do?”
“Exacto. And so I am here.”
“What’s Powell got you doing now, Rosita? Besides singing in the Gravel Pan, I mean.”
“He calls me a spotter. I know all of the men. And which ones have plenty of gold but very little . . .” She cast about for the word.
“Smarts?” Fargo supplied.
She nodded. “Some are so stupid that, when they are drunk, they tell me what clever places they hide their gold in. Powell makes me tell him, and it is stolen. But this is only so he can pay his criminales. My big job is to persuade certain men, men with claims the pig-man wants to take over, that they must sell their claims to him for pretty ‘shares,’ he calls them. If they do not agree to sell, he will kill or—how you say?—cripple them. So far he has killed no one, but he has hurt two men so bad they cannot search for the gold. He can then take over the claims.”
Fargo nodded. Some of this he had already figured out or been told by the sourdoughs. And Rosita was wrong about the killing—Otis Scully only played at prospecting, and on abandoned claims. Powell had ordered his death for cooperating with his nemesis, the Trailsman. It irritated Fargo that he felt himself getting sucked deep into a looming war. His personal vendetta against Jackson was no longer a simple matter and, willy-nilly, he knew he was plunging into the thick of a mare’s nest.
“What about you and Ozark Bill?” he asked.
Storm clouds suffused her face. “Another pig-man! He is handsome and strong, but evil like Powell. Powell has declared me Brassfield’s woman as a present to his segundo. I am forced to live with him in a tent in a place called—called—”
“Last Stand Gulch?”
“This, yes. I must submit to him, and he is very jealous. He killed one man for pulling me into his lap. Always he watches me.”
“Then how did you slip away to come here?”
“After you killed the man who had only one eye, Brassfield went with his friends to talk with the pig-man. Riley let me go, but I must hurry back.”
“All right, pretty lady, let’s get down to cases. I believe your story, and I don’t think you came here as part of a trap to kill me. But what do you want from me?”
“I only want to tell you these things. To tell you that I am forced to do the things I do. Riley has told me about you, que tipo de hombre eres—what manner of man you are. And I know it is true just by looking at you. Senor Fargo, I already see—from the killing today—that you are the only hombre de veras, real man, who will stand up to this pig-man Powell. I want to be on your side and help you.”
She flushed and glanced away. “That is not all I want from you, but this is not the time to speak of that. I must hurry back.”
Fargo helped her to her feet. “Then we’ll speak of that later, all right? I’m gonna have it on my mind from now on. As for the rest—it’s going to be a hard slog, Rosita, muy duro, because pig-man will bring in more guns if he has to. Just maybe you will be able to help, but don’t contact me directly from now on. Riley is trustworthy, so we’ll communicate through him. Esta bien?”
She flashed round white teeth as dazzling as pearls. “Esta bien. And I, too, will have that on my mind. Hasta la vista.”
* * *
Fargo’s meeting was brief and he was able to meet the Holman brothers just as they were leaving California Gulch after delivering the last of their ice blocks. As the trio rode back through Buckskin Joe, Riley emerged from the Gravel Pan and flagged them down.
“One of Jackson Powell’s thugs brought this in for you,” he told Fargo, reaching up to hand the mounted man a folded sheet of paper. “Said it’s the answer to your request for a thousand dollars.”
Fargo opened the sheet. Steve nudged his sorrel closer to look over Fargo’s shoulder. “Tarnation, Mr. Fargo! There ain’t nothin’ on that paper but a big black ball. What in Sam Hill does it mean?”
“Powell used to be mixed up with a secret criminal society called the Black Hand. It started in Sicily and first came to America at the port of New Orleans. The Black Ball is what they send to anybody they plan to kill.”
“Damn,” Steve said, paling a few shades. “The Black Ball.”
“Don’t let that hogwash freeze your boots, little brother,” Dave scoffed from the seat of the wagon. “We already know Powell is notched on us. That black dot ain’t nothing to the matter. It’s up to us to kill that rabid cur before he bites us. Skye is right—we take the bull by the horns or we get gored.”
“Now you’re whistling,” Fargo approved as they rolled out of camp and toward Yellow Grizz. “But Jackson Powell is one hard man to kill—I’ve failed at it twice. We’ll have to play this thing just right.”
“You really think Rosita is on the level about wanting to help us?” Steve pressed for at least the third time since Fargo had reported his meeting to them.
“If she’s not she’s a damn fine actress,” Fargo replied. “But I don’t see anything she can do without getting herself killed. It’s going to be up to the prospectors to see this thing through. We can watch for the main chance, and if it comes I mean to put Powell under. But it’s almost certain sure he’ll be bringing gunmen in, and likely plenty of them. Unless we can kill Powell first, we’ll have to deal with the whole caboodle.”
The slow trip up the face of Yellow Grizz Mountain was uneventful. As usual Dunk met the men at the corral gate and took charge of the horses. While Dave and Steve headed toward the pump to wash up, Fargo lingered behind in the corral to help Dunk.
“What’s the story, old-timer?” Fargo said as he pulled Steve’s saddle off. “See any Utes today?”
“Trailsman, that’s a stumper. Since we set the meat out for ’em, I ain’t seen no red Arabs watching the place. But just a short spell ago—Dave left me his army spyglasses, see?—I was lookin’ over at the far side of the lake where your camp is. And I caught sight of a sorter . . . movement, you might say, in your camp.”
Fargo mulled this over while he stepped into the shed and tossed his saddle on the burro. “Can you chew that a little finer, Dunk? A man can’t make a meal out of the word ‘movement.’”
“Consarn it, boy, I know it’s poor fixin’s. But that’s all I seen. For mebbe the space of a heartbeat. Now, it ain’t no big freak to spot movement near a lake. Coulda been a painter,” he said, meaning a panther. “I’ve spotted one prowlin’ around the lake. But the color was wrong.”
“All right, what color did you see?”
“Copper. Like mebbe the skin of an Injin.”
“Well, you know the featherbrains are accomplished thieves. I deliberately left my blanket and sack of sugar and such out there, figuring that if braves came across it they’d think it was tribute—might lower the chances of attack.”
Dunk grunted. “This child was brung up to kill Injins, not understand ’em. But I’m thinking mebbe you got the right idea. There’s a smart chance of Utes in these mountains. Happens they all decide to paint and dance, we’re all gone suckers. Things bein’ the way they are, we need a man who can think like an Injin.”
“Now, that’s a tall order. Too many white men figure they’re smarter than the savages, but look how many West Point scalps have ended up on coup sticks. The Indian mind is different, but it’s not inferior.”
Dunk shook his head stubbornly. “I won’t swallow that story. Christ, Fargo, have you lost your mind? Injins are too ignorant to harness the wheel. And superstitious? Why, they believe in magic stones that make them invisible to their enemies. But they are mighty brave and fierce fighters, and Dave Holman oughter know that. I like that lad, and I’ll allow that his pilgrim brothers got sand just like him. But he’s a blame fool for bringin’ women this far west. It’s a sin to Crockett.”
Fargo grinned. Coming from Dunk, all this amounted to a stump speech.
“We agree on that last point,” Fargo assured him. “But they’re here now, so let’s do our best to keep them alive.”