That night Fargo skipped a fire and plumped his bedroll out with his saddlebags and the Ovaro’s saddle blanket. He slipped quietly away and slept on the grassy bank of the lake, using his saddle for a pillow. The Ovaro was only a few feet away in the silvery moonlight, a reliable sentry. Fargo never slept heavily in times of trouble, only resting in a waking trance. But the night passed peacefully enough.
He was tacking the Ovaro, just after sunup, when a reedy voice called out from the thickets behind him, “Fargo! Don’t shoot, I’m coming out.”
Fargo whirled, filling his hand. A skinny half-breed with his long hair tied off in back emerged from the brush. He wore filthy sailcloth trousers, a beaded buckskin shirt, and Apache-style knee-length moccasins. His only visible weapon was a bone-handle knife with an obsidian blade, tucked into a sheath on his right ankle.
“Let me guess,” Fargo greeted him, still keeping him covered. “The man who hooked that skinned face onto my fish line.”
The half-breed glanced down at his own feet. “I tied it on, yeah. But I didn’t skin it off anybody, and I ain’t the one killed the man it belonged to.”
“No, I believe that. You were hired by Jackson Powell to locate my camp and spy on me, huh?”
The new arrival nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“The white-eyes call me Injin Slim. The name my people gave me—before they banished me for having the paleface stink—is White Man Runs Him.”
“Well, which do you prefer?”
The half-breed smiled for the first time. “Slim.”
“All right, Slim, what’s the deal? You’re working for Powell, which means you wear the no-good label. Now you show yourself to me. What’s your grift—you hoping to work both sides of the ditch, collect double wages?”
“Wages? Powell offered me one thousand dollars to murder you in your sleep, and I could have. I can steal a sleeping wife from her bed and not wake up her or her husband.”
His tone was boastful. Fargo gave him a steely-eyed stare. “Yeah? Well, I’m a bachelor, and if you’d been fool enough to try a bedroll killing with me, I’d be using your guts for garters. I’ll grant you’re good at nighttime movement, but I knew you were out there.”
Slim flushed. “Yeah, when that girl came and you opened fire on me, I like to shit my pants. A couple of your bullets parted my hair.”
“All right, but let’s get down to cases. You claim as how you’re working for Powell. So, what do you want with me?”
“No money. Only to help you while I continue to work for Powell.”
Fargo looked at him askance. “Help me for no money? Why? We ain’t chummy, and I don’t see any angel wings on you.”
“You never will, either, Son of Light.” He surprised Fargo by using the name Navajos had given him after he saved their children from slavers. “I have ears for the things that have been said about you. That’s why I told Powell I would not kill you. But yesterday that white devil went too far—he has begun blaming his own murders on my people. My mother was pure-quill Ute, my father a fur trapper with the Hudson’s Lake outfit. The Utes will not harm me, but neither will they let me live with them. Still, I will not help any man who blames his killings on them.”
“And that’s the whole shootin’ match?” Fargo demanded.
Slim nodded. “Powell is generous with the gold, and I want more of it. But it’s damn hard for him to know what’s going on up here, and I can collect wages while actually throwing in with you.”
Fargo pulled at his beard, mulling all this. “You could be selling me a bill of goods, in which case I’ll kill you deader than a Paiute grave. But I tend to believe you, Slim. Maybe we can make medicine.”
Fargo leathered his shooter. “How often do you meet with Powell?”
“Every day after sunset. He wants a full report on you.”
“Does he tell you any of his plans?”
Slim grunted. “He holds his cards close. He only parleys with his subchiefs: Ozark Bill, Frank Perley—the one they call the Strangler—and that dandy who smells like a perfumed whore, Gus Latimer.”
Slim paused to grin. “And you know all about the one-eyed whip-man, whose name can no longer be pronounced among the living.”
Fargo grinned back. Slim was Indian enough to observe the custom of never naming the dead for fear they might hear you and answer.
“All right,” Fargo said, “do you have a camp around here?”
“Not really a camp. I made a little wallow for sleeping about a hundred yards behind your camp.”
“The hell are you eating?”
Slim gave him a sly grin. “In a lake like this, that trotline of yours could feed a clan. I pull a fish off now and then and bake it in leaves.”
Fargo nodded. “Help yourself to the jerked buffalo, too, and the coffee. Every night before you report to Powell, I want you to check with me, savvy? Just maybe we can come up with a fox play and throw him off the scent.”
* * *
When Fargo hired on with Dave Holman, the chief concern had been road agents. Now it was murderers, and Fargo drew on his vast repertoire of defensive skills to protect his charges.
The Holman family, he knew, were not a priority with Jackson Powell. The raid Powell had ordered several nights earlier was only designed to dislodge Fargo, and that attempt had failed. By now Powell knew that any harm done to the Holmans would only increase the danger from Fargo. From now on the fight would come to Fargo directly. He discussed all this with Dave, Jess, and Steve as they descended Yellow Grizz.
“Maybe Powell will just cut his losses and light a shuck out of here,” Jess suggested. “I’m damned if I would take on the Trailsman.”
“Does your mother know you’re out?” Dave teased his younger brother. “Boy, use your noodle. Powell ain’t got no losses to cut yet. Whoever hired him to jump those prospectors’ claims ain’t about to pay him for air pudding. He’s being paid to clear the path for one a’ them consortiums—that’s a new word for a pack of thieves dressed in toppers and frock coats.”
“Dave’s right, Steve,” Fargo said. “If—”
“I’m Jess,” the lad put in.
Fargo winced and swore under his breath. “All right, Jess. All that backcountry lore about the Trailsman means nothing to Powell. Twice now he’s slipped out of the noose when I thought I had him trapped. And the first time his Puke pails catch me off guard, they’ll shoot me to chair stuffings.”
Jess and Steve exchanged a mirthful glance.
“Well, then,” one of them (Fargo was hanged if he could tell which) said, “mayhap you best quit meeting with Rosita at the Aspen Ring and pitching whoopee with her.”
“Now, that’s a libel on me,” Fargo protested. “All we did was talk.”
“Sure,” Dave chimed in. “Like this: ‘Nice weather, ain’t it? Let’s enjoy it naked.’”
All three brothers hooted at Fargo, who dismissed them with a good-natured wave and rode farther down the trace to look for a possible ambush. His hawk eyes spotted nothing in the thick growth and rock tumbles, nor did the Ovaro alert.
Fargo rode back to join the other three and decided to tell them about Injin Slim. As he’d expected, the news left no one overjoyed.
“I ain’t too keen on the idea of some Indian buck hanging around while Susan and Inez are up there alone,” Dave fretted.
Fargo snorted and the Ovaro twitched his ears. “Alone? Trooper, don’t sell Dunk Langdon short just because he’s all swooped over. That old salt has killed more Indians than strychnine whiskey. I once saw him kill six Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and then smear his body in their blood.”
“Dunk’s all right,” Steve conceded. “He done a fine job of breaking this sorrel to leather. But you know how it is with them Indians when they get around white women—and Susan and Inez take the blue ribbon for looks.”
Fargo laughed. “White men always make a heap of doin’s over red men lusting after their women. Some tribes will rape, but the Utes aren’t one of them. Truth to tell, they get put off their feed by pale skin, and both your gals are fair-skinned.”
“Say,” Dave spoke up, suddenly remembering something, “Skye struck a lode with that ‘put off their feed’ business. When I was posted in the Indian Territory, we found out the rez Indians refused to eat pork. They seen the inspection stamps on the meat and figured it was tattoos on dead white men.”
Fargo had put it off long enough and now sobered all three men when he explained about the gruesome discovery last night on his trotline.
“Jesus Christ and various saints,” Dave swore softly. “Never mind the free-ranging Indian, it’s the godless white man will sink us.”
The boys had turned pale as alum powder and gone speechless.
“All of you get some stiff in your spine,” Fargo snapped. “I’m giving it to you with the bark still on it—these graveyard rats are trying to unstring our nerves, to make us go so puny we won’t fight. You need to rile cool, not get scared. There’s an old saying: Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
“Skye’s bang-on right,” Dave told his brothers. “These chicken fuckers are just trying to give us the fantods.”
“Hell,” rallied Steve, “I’ve butchered out hogs back in Dayton. And these is hogs here.”
Fargo grinned. “You owe every pig in America an apology, boy.”
Dave carefully rode the brake on the slope and talked constantly to the horses, calming them. The twins flanked the wagon on either side, weapons to hand. Fargo again spurted forward to reconnoiter. Soon the freight party reached the flat below.
“Maybe we’ll roll a seven and not run into Powell’s shit heels,” one of the twins suggested.
“Yeah, and every Jack shall have his Jill, too,” Dave quipped.
In fact, however, Buckskin Joe seemed peaceful enough as the wagon lumbered into town, a fact that made Fargo suspicious.
“Let’s swing by the creek for a minute,” Fargo suggested, spotting Chicken Pete, Big Dick McQuady, and the dimwit Latham Hastings working their long tom.
“It’s gettin’ worser ’n worser,” Chicken Pete greeted Fargo, shaking his head in disgust. “A prospector named Benny Boudreaux was found this morning, throat-slashed and scalped. There was a crow feather left behind to make it look like Innuns done it.”
“Face skinned off?”
Pete winced. “Nah—he was castrated and his pizzle and balls crammed into his mouth. I commence to wonder iffen we shouldn’t just all rabbit,” he fretted. “Dang-garn it, that’s three men killed and one crippled for life, and for what? Mince pie, that’s what.”
Fargo was getting sick of trying to put some starch in these men. “If you boys decide to light a shuck, that’s your business. Me, I aim to stick long enough to feed Jackson Powell’s asshole to his liver. Is Jacob drilling and training the men?”
Chicken Pete perked up a bit. “For a fact he is. Divided the camp into two groups, and he’s working hard in the Aspen Ring. That son of a bitch seems to be just the tonic for what ails us.”
Fargo happened to shift his glance to Latham Hastings just as the soft brain rummaged in his beard and pulled out a dead fly. Fargo’s face twisted in disgust when Latham plopped it into his mouth like a rare delicacy. He grinned at Fargo.
“Jesus,” Fargo said, “don’t you boys have any chuck?”
“Plenty of saleratus bread and salt junk,” Big Dick replied. “But Latham, he’s partial to insects. Likes worms, too.”
“Uh-huh. Look, you prospectors need to set up a night guard. But I got a feeling this deal is going to be settled quick. There’s going to be turnabout for what happened to Benny last night, I’ll see to that. We’re gonna push Powell into making his big play sooner than he wants to. With luck, we might not have to storm that damn gulch. Just keep up the strut.”
Fargo grabbed the horn and stepped up and over, reining left toward the Gravel Pan. Riley met them out back, looking preoccupied.
“Trouble?” Fargo asked him, still sitting his saddle.
“Nothing but the usual for me,” the Gothamite replied. “But there’s a shit storm blowing your way, Fargo.”
“Do I get three guesses, or is this one of those crystal-ball deals?”
“Piss up a rope, long-tall. I got a message for you from Rosita, and I think it’s a square deal. She said to warn you that a bunch of Powell’s men are gonna attack your camp tonight. And they ain’t coming to make noise—they know you’ve been stirring up the prospectors, and Powell has issued a kill-or-capture order. Rosita says he’ll pay a bonus if his men capture you and drag you back to Buckskin Joe. Then he plans to jerk you to Jesus in front of the whole camp to scare the fight out of them.”