Fargo kept a sharp eye out during the deliveries to Kellyville and California Gulch, but Powell’s jobbers were keeping a low profile, no doubt because they were anticipating the raid tonight.
“You don’t seem all that worried,” Dave remarked as the ice men ascended Yellow Grizz under a brassy afternoon sun.
Fargo shrugged a shoulder. “It’s chafing at me, old son. Any man who isn’t a little worried out West is either a bigger fool than God made him or a crazy bug eater like Latham Hastings.”
“You best break camp or at least move it,” Dave suggested.
“Nah. I’m partial to that spot and I think I’ll stay there.”
“Not move it? By the Lord Harry!” Steve exclaimed. “Why, Mr. Fargo, is your wick flickering? Powell has got priddy near a damn army working for him. Of course the three of us will side you, and old Dunk will, too. But ain’t this what you call poking fire with a sword?”
“Jess, I—”
“I’m Steve.”
Fargo expelled a long sigh. “Of course you are,” he said sarcastically. “I wish you two would ride so’s I can see your weapons. That’s the only way I know you apart. Well, like I started to say, I plan to make this greasy-sack outfit think I’ve moved my camp. And while those Missouri chawbacons are pretending they’re back at Chapultepec slaughtering Mexican boys, we’re gonna rise from cover and blow them a new bunghole from their rear.”
“Classic diversion,” Dave said, nodding. “Could work.”
“I’m counting on them being drunk as the lords of creation,” Fargo said. “When you’re a mercenary you require Dutch courage. Drunks will get wound up and lust for blood. But the minute something goes bad, they’re too brain-addled to adjust. Then they get icy boots and run like a river when the snow melts.”
“What if they ain’t drunk?” Jess asked.
Fargo grinned. “Ain’t you the sunny little bastard? The hell you want, egg in your beer? When Powell’s lice jumped us outside the Gravel Pan, they were sober as a temperance biddy. But you and your brother put at ’em, huh?”
Both the twins suddenly rose higher in their saddles. “Damn straight we did,” Jess said proudly.
“All right. What man has done, man can do.”
“That’s all right for man,” Dave interjected. “What about Inez? This deal coming up tonight will make enough ruckus to wake snakes. I ain’t got the guts to tell her, Skye. You’ll have to.”
Suddenly the Trailsman, full of bravado moments earlier, felt dread heavy in his stomach. In truth he feared Inez Holman more than he did Jackson Powell.
“Yeah, well, she’ll take on like all possessed, I reckon. But we can’t start backing and filling just because she’s in a snit. We’ll have to find some safe place for her and Susan in the pine woods east of your house. It’s too thick for riders, so they should be all right.”
“What time you think they’ll come?” Dave asked.
“Late. They’ll hope to catch me asleep. One thing we know for sure—unless you’re a mountain goat, there’s only one way up Yellow Grizz.”
“Well, anyhow, I hope this little tart Rosita ain’t drawing us into a trap,” Steve said. “And I still don’t think this whatcha-call’m, the half-breed, can be trusted. I ain’t calling all Indians liars, but don’t they generally lie to white men?”
“Generally,” Fargo agreed. “But you got it hind side foremost—it’s white men who first lied to them. Big lies, too, real sockdolagers. Like Andy Jackson, old Sharp Knife, promising the red nations they could have all of the country west of the Mississippi River if they’d leave the east for the paleface. They took it in the breechclout on that deal.”
“Well, hell, Mr. Fargo, would you give the whole dang West to savages?”
Fargo grinned ruefully. “You mean, like the savages who are riding up tonight to kill us and maybe skin off our faces?”
Steve opened his mouth, then shut it again, defeated.
* * *
Atop the mountain the men washed up at the outside pump. While the Holman brothers went inside, Fargo went out to the corral and advised Dunk on the latest developments.
“I figgered that bunch would be back soon,” the prospector turned hostler remarked. “You want I should put the pointed stakes across the trail after dark?”
Fargo shook his head. “True, we might impale a horse or two. But I want them to think our defenses are down. They’ll be more reckless in the charge.”
“That rings right. Most a’ my scrapes been agin featherbrains, and them sumbitches don’t charge.”
Fargo glanced at Dunk’s magazine rifle propped against the back wall of the shed. “That was made at Harper’s Ferry Armory?”
“Yep. Fine little fire stick. Bolt-action and she spits out twelve bullets as quick as you jerk the bolt. She’s small-bore, though. Now and agin I need a second bullet to put an enemy outta the fight.”
“It’s the rapid fire we’ll want tonight,” Fargo assured him. “When I give the hail to the Holman men, you come back with them.”
“Tumbledown Dick! Be a pure-dee pleasure to kill some Pukes, Trailsman.”
Fargo rode around the lake, planning to whistle out Injin Slim. But a delicious aroma of coffee wafted to him as he neared his camp, and he knew the whistles wouldn’t be necessary. He found the mixed-breed lounging on his bedroll, gnawing on jerked buffalo and sipping coffee.
“Save any coffee for me?” Fargo demanded as he lit down and loosened the cinch.
“Just drank the last of it, Fargo. You’re out of sugar, too.”
“Hell, I had a pound, you greedy piker.”
“I ate most of it,” Slim admitted. “You told me to help myself.”
“You ate a pound of sugar?”
“Uh-huh, and I don’t feel so good. Was that smallpox sugar special made for Indians?”
Fargo shook his head in disgust. “Never mind. You better feel good enough to make your report to Powell tonight.”
Injin Slim, looking pale around the gills, unfolded to his feet. “Ain’t like I got much choice, buckskins. He’ll kill me if I miss even one.”
“You’ve got some news for him tonight, all right? Tell him the Trailsman has moved his camp from the south shore of the lake to the west shore.”
Injin Slim’s long, thin face look puzzled. “Why?”
Fargo was banking on the fact that the half-breed was kept in the dark on Powell’s plans, and his reaction now suggested just that. “Never mind. The less you know, the safer you are. Just tell him it looks like I moved because this old spot was fished out.”
Suspicion clouded the mixed-breed’s face. “I see which way the wind sets. You’re leading Powell’s jackals into a trap. And that means my bacon is in the fire for leading them to a false camp.”
“The way you say. So when you return tonight, stick to the tree cover. And don’t be fool enough to show yourself to Powell after this.”
“Look, Fargo, way I see it, Powell and his murdering scum can eat shit and go naked. He’s framing my tribe, and that’s why I made medicine with you. But Powell pays top dollar, and I was hoping to get a few more shiners from him before he snapped wise.”
“Fair enough,” Fargo said reluctantly, reaching a hand into his hip pocket. “Would two double eagles take the sting out of your loss?”
“Forty dollars, huh?” Slim assumed the deadpan face of an experienced horse trader. “That don’t match Powell. Toss in a ten-dollar eagle and we’ll spit on it.”
“Done,” Fargo said, “but I’m damned if I’m gonna shell out that kind of cash so you can rest on your bony ass and eat all my sugar. You are one excellent sneak and you move through thick woods at night quiet as a mouse. Until these vermin are exterminated, I want you to be our roving sentry after dark and watch the lake area and the house.”
“Will you toss in coffee and eats?”
Fargo nodded. “Inez Holman makes biscuits so light you have to hold them down.”
Injin Slim spat on his right palm and Fargo did the same before both men shook on it. Slim glanced at the sun through a break in the trees.
“Only four fingers left between the sun and the ground,” he remarked, estimating time the same way Fargo did. “I best go lick my master’s boot.”
“You do that,” Fargo said. “And just in case you get any greedy idea about doubling the double cross, let me spell it out plain: If you try to turn me around on this deal, I’ll track you to the ends of the earth, hang you upside down over a small fire, and slowly roast your brains. And that’s not just flap-jaw—I’ve done it to my enemies.”
* * *
Well after dark Fargo built up a hot fire on the west shore of Lake Bridger. He had recently changed into his freshly laundered pair of buckskins, so he stuffed the dirty pair with grass and wrapped the lower half of the buckskin man in a blanket at the edge of the fire’s glow. He laid his hat at the top of the blanket as if covering his face.
He gave the hail and soon Dunk and the Holman brothers joined him.
“You think the horses in the corral will be safe?” Dunk fretted. “I could tether ’em in the woods.”
“I’m playing a hunch,” Fargo replied. “I calculate the attackers will want to catch me by surprise, and if they kill or scatter horses the noise would carry easy on the water. And I’m hoping that by the time they skedaddle, all they’ll want is to get shut of this place.”
He looked at Dave in the cloud-draped moonlight. “The women are safe?”
“Safe as sassafras, but Inez is fit to pop a vein. We found a nice, grassy spot behind a big deadfall. Susan stretched right out, but Inez is pacing back and forth like a caged tiger and hugging that damn box of hers.”
Fargo grunted. “I’d wager she’s got some choice words for me.”
“First time I ever heard her cuss,” Dave admitted. “I’m glad I decided against having you tell her about tonight.”
A voice materialized out of the darkness. “Don’t shoot, it’s Injin Slim coming in.”
Dunk loosed a string of curses. “Injin Slim? That hammerhead is in this mix?”
“Where the hell you been?” Fargo demanded when Slim appeared beside him. “Bust your leg in a badger hole? You told me you’d be back short meter.”
“Ah, after I reported to Powell and gave him the new-camp story, I stopped by Riley’s and knocked back a few jolts.”
“All that gold burned a hole in your pocket, huh?”
“Yeah, and now it’s burning in my belly. Wish I woulda left that sugar alone. I’m about to upchuck.”
Dunk swore again. “Fargo, you been bamboozled. I know all about this one. He’s all-fired lazy and crooked.”
The old salt turned toward Injin Slim. “Acknowledge the corn, you sunburned bastard. You’re in cahoots with Powell, ain’tcher?”
“Acknowledge a cat’s tail, you old fart sack. If you swoop any lower, your head will be up your ass. As to Powell, I ain’t spoken for.”
“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining! You may have Fargo lipping salt from your hand, but I won’t credit your lies, not by a jugful.”
“This is all fascinating as hell,” Fargo’s sarcastic voice cut in. “But you two can kill each other later. Slim, you got a firearm?”
“Never shot a barking iron in my life. I always go to the knife.”
“Well, I’m fond of my knife, too, but blades won’t be much use tonight. Go to the north shore of the lake and hide good. At the first sign of riders, give the owl hoot.”
“Hell,” scoffed Dunk, “this jackleg savage can’t do no owl hoot.”
Slim did one and even Dunk was impressed into silence.
“Won’t be long now,” Fargo predicted as Injin Slim melded into the shadows. “Dave and whoever that twin is closest to you, get behind them rocks at the edge of the water. Dunk and the other twin, hunker behind them hawthorn bushes. I’m gonna be roving skirmisher. The second you hear my Henry open up, start pouring it to ’em. The more we kill tonight, the fewer we have to kill in Last Stand Gulch.”