Thirteen riders rode in single file up the moonlit slope of Yellow Grizz, the only sounds the blowing of horses and the occasional ching of a spur. About halfway up the mountain, Ozark Bill Brassfield, the leader, dropped back to join Gus Latimer and Franklin Perley.
“Say, Gus, do you trust that half-breed to be telling us the straight?”
Latimer made a farting noise with his lips. “Yeah, ’bout as much as I trust that cock-knocker Fargo.”
“Me and you,” Brassfield said, “have hitched our thoughts to the same post. Here’s how we play it. You pick five men. When we get topside, your bunch will circle around the east shore of the lake. Me and Perley and the other men will take the west shore. Powell swears up and down that Injin Slim don’t know about this raid.”
“Did you tell that Mexer gal?” Latimer demanded.
“Are you plumb loco?” Brassfield bristled as he always did when telling a lie. “Even if I did, she wouldn’t spill it to Fargo. That gal’s got a case on me.”
“Think so? I’ve seen her watching Fargo, Billy, and little Rosita is wet for him.”
“Horseshit! That’s all part of her act.”
“Uh-huh, sure it is. Women act around Fargo, all right.”
Franklin “Strangler” Perley cut in impatiently. “Never mind that beaner hoor. What I want to know is, do we throat-slash the horses in the corral before we jump Fargo?”
“Perley, did you ever get outside of them whiskey mills back in St. Louis?” Brassfield demanded. “When you throat-slash a horse, them giant lungs turn into bellows and force all the air through the slash. It makes a noise just like Gabriel’s horn. Besides, once we kill Fargo, who gives a frog’s fat ass about the horses? We’ll just add ’em to our string. Out here, a good horse can fetch two hunnert dollars.”
“I druther add them two Holman women to our string,” Latimer said. “Powell don’t want ’em touched—something about the army and West Point chivalry, or some shit. But, Billy, I wouldn’t be talking just yet about ‘once we kill Fargo’ if I was you. Fools have buried him hundreds of times and somehow he remains above the horizon.”
“I get damn sick and tired of hearing you soft-lip that lanky son of a bitch!” the hotheaded Ozark Billy exploded. “What are you, his damn sodomite? I s’pose you’re the only swinging dick who can kill him.”
“He’s gonna kill you, Perley, and Powell,” Latimer predicted. “At the end, me and him are gonna square off, and that’ll put paid to it.”
“Then why ain’t you done it by now, gun slick? You had the chance.”
“Because Fargo is dessert,” Latimer said, “and dessert always comes last.”
* * *
The other four men were hidden and Fargo was tossing another branch onto the fire when he heard the owl hoot.
“Here’s the fandango,” he called to the others. “Remember, hold your fire until I open the ball. Don’t confuse my Henry with their gunshots. Dave and Dunk, keep an eye on those tadpoles and don’t let ’em break cover.”
Fargo was backing into a bracken of fern when a second owl hoot sounded, this one louder and more urgent.
“What in tarnal blazes is that fool half-breed tryin’ to pull?” Dunk said in a low voice. “Hell, we heard him the first time. Mayhap that red son is signaling to the Pukes.”
Fargo had a sudden hunch. He sprinted about twenty yards toward the south shore and placed his ear just above the ground. Then he sprinted in the opposite direction and listened again.
“They’ve split into two groups,” he told the others. “One’s moving along the south shore, the other the north. It’s a pincer trap. Dave, you two swivel your barrels left.”
In a few minutes Fargo spotted shadows moving in from the north. The riders were walking their horses now. When they were only twenty feet out from the clearly illuminated buckskin man, the lead man halted. His men moved up in a line beside him.
It was Bill Brassfield’s voice that ordered, “Now, boys!”
A hammering racket of gunfire opened up just as the second group arrived. Their guns added to the spectacular din, spitting red-orange tongues of muzzle fire into the night. Fargo watched his buckskin man writhe and twitch as slugs rained in on him. Jess must have gotten addled by all this commotion, because Fargo heard his Springfield open up. But it was no harm done since Fargo’s Henry began cracking at almost the same time.
While the attackers were blasting the hell out of Fargo’s buckskins, the defenders behind the night riders lit up the night with an Old Testament vengeance. Steve’s Greener roared, and one of the attackers howled like a dog in the hot moons. Dave’s Spencer wiped a man out of the saddle, and Dunk pitilessly tied in to the horses with his magazine rifle, dropping two and trapping a rider. Before the man could crawl out, Fargo splayed him out with a head shot.
At first Powell’s men attempted to shoot back, but in the dark and confusion their bullets whistled wide and plunked into the water. When Fargo blew a fourth man from the saddle, however, it broke the back of the attack. Without waiting for a command, the badly mauled ruffians galloped north toward the slope.
“Dammy!” Dunk exclaimed. “I ain’t had that much fun since the hawgs ate Maw-maw!”
“That’s our second skirmish now, Mr. Fargo!” one of the twins exulted. “How’d we do?”
“Never mind all that,” Fargo said, easing out of his position. “It won’t earn you jewels in paradise. Anybody hurt?”
“Not on our side,” Dunk said. “Can’t speak for this other trash. There’s four of ’em on the ground.”
Fargo quickly tossed a head shot into each man to thwart any possum players. Then he shot the two wounded horses, hating like hell to do it.
“We can’t assume they’re gone for good,” Fargo said. “Sometimes, when they get some stiff back in their spines, these rent-a-guns get mad as a peeled rattler. I’ve known them to turn around and come back, fighting like Apaches. We’ll move to new positions, load up, and see what’s coming.”
“You really think they’ll come right back after the lead bath we just gave them?” Dave asked.
“Actually, no. There must be wounded among ’em and their force is winnowed out,” Fargo replied. “But I haven’t stayed alive all these years by assuming the best.”
* * *
The fires blazed all night in Last Stand Gulch while an agitated Jackson Powell paced before his tent.
“Are you boys sure that Fargo knew the raid was coming?” he demanded. “If you just bollixed the job, admit it.”
“Boss, my hand to God,” Ozark Bill Brassfield swore. “Fargo knew, all right. I seen grass flying out of them buckskins we thought was him.”
“I’ll vouch for Bill on that,” Gus Latimer remarked casually. “And they opened fire behind us from good positions. Ain’t no doubt they knew we was coming.”
“All right,” Powell said, “so Fargo knew. The question is, how did he know?”
“My money is on the breed,” Brassfield said. “He’s the one gave us the story about the new camp.”
“He might have been tricked by Fargo. I never tell that digger Indian anything he doesn’t need to know, and he’s never around Buckskin Joe except to make brief reports.”
Powell stared at Brassfield in the dancing firelight. “You know, a man will say anything to a woman in the glow after he gets his nut.”
“Goddamn it, I’m telling you what I told Gus earlier—I didn’t say shit to Rosita about the raid.”
A combative edge had crept into Ozark Bill’s tone. Powell knew the man was hair trigger when mad and chose the diplomatic approach. “I’m not saying you deliberately told her, Bill. But she is your regular night woman, and perhaps you muttered something in your sleep.”
“Well, it don’t seem likely,” he responded in a reluctant tone, “but ain’t no man can know what he mumbles in his sleep.”
Powell glanced down the gulch toward the tent Brassfield shared with the alluring Mexican girl. “You’ve struck a lode there.”
“But she ain’t never talked to Fargo,” Brassfield insisted. “I keep a close eye on her.”
Latimer and Powell exchanged an ironic glance.
“If a woman sets her nightcap for Fargo,” Latimer said, “she’ll figure out some way to meet with him. I hear tell how he slipped the wood to a gal in Arkansas in a shit house while her husband was watching for him out front with a shotgun.”
Before Brassfield could retort, a hideous shriek of pain rent the night. “Holy mother of Je-sus, my guts’re on fire! Powell, you son of a bitch, I know there’s laudanum in your tent! Crissakes, gimme some!”
Two wounded men had returned with the raiding party. One, a Puke named Cass Everett, had caught a slug in the left forearm and would soon mend. But Franklin Perley had been drilled an inch below the navel and was a gone-up case.
“Pipe down and take the pain like a man,” Powell called out. “I don’t waste laudanum on gut-shot men. You’ll be dead before dawn.”
“You goddamn four-flusher! I caught this slug doing your bidding. Damn it, man, it hurts to beat hell!”
Perley lay within sight at the edge of the firelight. Powell signaled to Latimer to be ready. “You’ve got a short iron in your holster,” Powell reminded the wounded man. “The antique Romans fell on their own swords when they were mortally wounded. You can take care of it even easier.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of it, all right, you antique cockchafer!”
Grimacing at the pain, Perley drew his six-gun and pushed up on one elbow. Neither Ozark Bill nor Jackson Powell saw Latimer’s hand move. One moment it rested along his holster; a heartbeat later his shooter was in his hand and pointing at Perley. The gun bucked and Perley flopped heavily back to the ground, a rope of blood spurting from his forehead and splashing to the ground with a sound like a horse pissing. Perley’s heels scratched the dirt for a few moments and then it was over.
“Hell, I done him a favor,” Latimer said in a placid tone as he leathered his short gun. “And it won’t be long before I do Skye Fargo the same favor—or maybe him me.”
Brassfield looked at him sharply. “You already predicted Fargo will kill me, you perfumed asshole. So now he’s gonna outdraw you, too?”
“The cat sits by the gopher hole,” Latimer replied mysteriously. “And he waits for what will come.”
“Pitch it to hell,” Powell snapped. “Boys, I’ve got no time for joker poker. I play table stakes, and the higher the stakes the better.”
He looked at Brassfield and Latimer in turn. “It’s time for the Utes to attack again—five prospectors for the five guns we lost tonight. We picked the most stupid and gullible sourdoughs in Buckskin Joe and tried to convince them the real money is in speculation, not backbreaking labor. The contrary bastards said no, so from here on out, stout lads, it’s full chisel.”