Fargo rode up to the house, bright and early on the morning after the raid on his buckskin man, shaking his head in wonder at the persistence of carrion birds. Despite the thick tree cover around the lake, vultures already wheeled like merchants of death. Dunk must have spotted them, too. Fargo saw his bent-over form hurrying toward the west shore to slaughter the dead horses.
Susan, apparently not giving a tinker’s damn what Inez said, had left long before for the house, Rosita in tow. Susan was scandalized that Fargo intended to let a young woman “scavenge in the woods like a medieval peasant.”
Fargo, leading the Ovaro, was rounding the eastern shore of Lake Bridger when a horse snuffled from the pines to his right. He flipped the reins forward and shunted his Henry to his left hand, shucking out his Colt and thumb-cocking it. He edged into the trees far enough to spot Ozark Bill Brassfield’s dapple gray gelding.
Fargo stood still and alert, studying his surroundings. He realized immediately that Brassfield would be here alone for only one reason: He had discovered that Rosita was gone and he suspected that she had gone to Skye Fargo. But why, Fargo wondered, wasn’t Ozark Bill on the south shore at Fargo’s camp? Probably, he answered his own question, because he figured the raid last night would make a camp along shore too dangerous.
So then, where was he? Sticking to the trees, Fargo headed toward the house. As he passed the icehouse he heard a raw scraping noise. He glanced to his left and saw Brassfield tugging out the picket pin that secured the hasp to the icehouse’s thick, insulated door.
Fargo grinned when he realized: Like most folks out West, Brassfield had never seen an icehouse and figured this was just an outbuilding turned into a steamy love nest for his vagabond woman and the Trailsman. Brassfield, six-gun in hand, pulled open the door and gaped in astonishment at the blast of frigid air that assaulted him.
Fargo jerked his Arkansas toothpick from its boot sheath. “Hey, Bill,” he called out, “lose something?”
Brassfield flinched and pivoted toward Fargo just as he released his knife in a hard, straight throw. It punched hard into Brassfield’s chest and straight into the heart, dropping him as if he’d been poleaxed. An idea had occurred to Fargo, a wicked idea, and he hurried over to the corpse. Fargo dragged him into the frigid interior and dumped him on the floor against a stack of huge ice blocks.
“If you’re a good boy,” Fargo told him as he left, securing the door, “maybe I’ll stand you to a drink later.”
As Fargo had expected, things inside the Holman house matched the temperature of the icehouse out back. Inez was so high on her horse she’d require a ladder to get off. All three Holman brothers were silent as statues, staring intently at their plates and hastily devouring their eggs and slapjacks.
“Well,” Inez greeted the new arrival from a stiff, pretty face, “I suppose you’re happy now, Mr. Fargo.”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Fargo replied mildly, shoving his long legs under the table. “I do get cheerful now and then, but generally there’s a bottle involved.”
“Or perhaps a willing woman?”
“Well, give me both, and I’ll edge toward happy.”
Despite his best efforts, one of the twins—Fargo was double damned if he knew which one—sputtered with laughter. As usual when Inez was in a peeve with Fargo, she piled his plate high with food.
“It’s no humorous matter, Mr. Fargo. You’ve turned my husband and young brothers-in-law into backcountry bandits.”
“Sugar dumpling,” Dave cut in, “I was in the army, remember? Skye Fargo is a Fifth Avenue gentleman compared to the common soldier.”
Inez, wound up to a fare-thee-well, didn’t seem to hear her husband. “Bandits,” she repeated as if Fargo might be deaf. “This morning I had to feed a hungry Indian with deplorable table manners. And now . . .”
Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at the two twins, busy ogling Rosita.
“You’re free to turn her out,” Fargo said, busy forking food into his mouth.
“No, that wouldn’t be Christian, and Rosita is a likable girl. It’s just . . . oh, dash it all! This whole turn of events shocks me sick and silly.”
Fargo felt a pang behind his heart when he realized that Inez, whom he deeply admired in spite of her highfaluting airs, was so upset she was ignoring her one comfort, the felt-covered box on the shelf.
“I can’t blame you, Inez,” he said kindly. “This is no country for a college-educated lady from Dayton. But to quote a Northern Cheyenne chief I know from Powder River country: ‘I did not send out the first soldier. I only sent out the second.’ You read all those fancy books—do they ever speak about justice? Because right now that’s all we got: just us.”
It was as if he had slapped her. She stood in stone silence for perhaps thirty seconds, her lower lip trembling.
“I know,” she said in a tiny, faraway voice. “I do believe you could hold your own with an Oxford don, Mr. Fargo—Skye. It’s just that women worry so much for their men.”
“Right back atcha,” Fargo assured her.
A thump on the door made Fargo clear leather. “Fargo,” came Injin Slim’s reedy voice, “that ugly yahoo Chicken Pete is riding up the slope. Musta been bad trouble at Buckskin Joe—he looks like he ain’t had a shit for a week.”
“All right,” Fargo called back out. “And launder your talk—there’s women in here.”
“And two outta three of them women let you slip into their moccasins, huh? Two at once! Bully for you! You got one a’ them forked peckers like the white man’s devil?”
Rosita couldn’t follow Injin Slim’s Ute-accented English and missed most of this. Susan, however, blushed crimson to her blond hair roots, and Inez was shocked into a daze. Feeling mortified himself, Fargo hastily scraped his chair back and aimed for the door, planning to meet Chicken Pete after throttling Injin Slim.
But Slim had wisely hurried off. Fargo walked out to meet Chicken Pete as he crested the mountain. “Howdy, Pete. So the butcher’s bill was steep, huh?”
The prospector tightened the reins and sat his saddle, looking down at Fargo. “Mighty steep, Trailsman. Five men slaughtered, including Latham. He’s et his last bug. Powell’s killers tried to make it look like Utes done it, but it was a poor job.”
Fargo tugged at his short cropped beard, face thoughtful. “Five men, you say? Then it was turnabout for last night. Powell’s baboons botched a raid up here last night, and we killed four of them. That prob’ly means one died later.”
“Used to was, all any of us wanted was to work our claims, and we didn’t care a hoot in hell ’bout nothing else. But we jawed it over good this morning, and the men are ready to attack Last Stand Gulch. But we was sorter wonderin’ if you got any big ideas on the best way to do it?”
“Pete, it’s got to be done, and mighty damn quick. You boys are right there. Powell has already imported killers, and he can send for more. But as things stand right now, courage alone won’t whip his force. He’s got at least twenty men, not counting the ones he keeps close around him, though I know for a fact that Brace and Brassfield are dead. And Powell himself has a set on him.”
Chicken Pete nodded. “Yeah, but we got around sixteen men that ain’t too old or stove up.”
“Sixteen men, but how many of their weapons are just squirrel guns and old flintlocks? Pete, Powell’s jackals all have repeating rifles and they’re dead shots. Most hail from Missouri or Arkansas, and that’s damn hard ground. Most of the professional killers in the West come from there.”
Chicken Pete’s face slacked in surrender as he recognized the truth of Fargo’s words. “Yeah, we’d just be looking for our own graves if we attack bravos like that. You know, if only we woulda stood up to—”
“It’s too dead to skin now,” Fargo cut him off impatiently. “To hell with ‘if only.’ I didn’t say we ain’t gonna attack. It just has to be done right.”
Pete’s ugly map perked up. “We?”
“Blood, guts, destruction, the chance to die hard and grow maggots. When has Skye Fargo ever passed on such a bounty? I told you before that I mean to smoke Powell down, and that won’t happen until his hounds are cut down. But the main mile, Pete, is for us to control the element of surprise—we’re taking on a stronger force, and we don’t want to send in our card before we have to.”
“Hell, that shines. But one a’ their spies prob’ly seen Jacob drilling us in Aspen Ring by now.”
“Drilling is no threat. There’s citizens’ militias all over the West and damn few of them ever go into action. Powell knows that. Go back and tell the rest to keep working their claims. Just stick to the usual humdrum. Real soon now we’ll mount that attack, but first I’ve got a little surprise that just might unnerve some of them. Right now, though, I’m going to visit that gulch and see if I can’t improve the odds a mite.”
“How?” Pete enquired eagerly.
“You say five prospectors were killed?”
“Dead as last Christmas.”
Fargo nodded. “All right. Five it is. Maybe even six if I turn over the right hole card. And if I plant number six, the whole shebang comes down.”
* * *
After Chicken Pete headed back down the mountain, Fargo called Dave Holman outside and warned him about the corpse freezing in the icehouse. At first, when he explained about his plan to use that corpse later, Dave just speared his fingers through his curly red hair and looked at Fargo as if he were a talking dog.
Moments later, however, he burst into gales of mirth. “It might get us all killed, Skye, but it’ll be one for the history books.”
At Fargo’s request Dave went back inside and slipped back outside with one of the three Ketchum grenades. Fargo tucked it carefully into a saddlebag—it had a pressure fuse—and forked leather, reining around toward the trace.
“Luck,” Dave called out to him. Fargo raised a hand and headed down Yellow Grizz Mountain.
Down on the grassy flat, he gigged the pinto up to a three-beat canter. The Trailsman knew that, after he had been sighted near the gulch during his recent reconnoiter, his task would be even more dangerous today. Powell favored roving sentries in heavily wooded country, and there might even be a picket outpost or two. So Fargo forded Frenchman’s Creek at a remote spot much farther upstream and doubled back to the east, eyes and ears constantly alert.
He closed in steadily on the gulch, branches swiping at his face. Once he was forced to dismount and lead the Ovaro through trees so closely grown that their branches had intertwined. Small game scattered in every direction, and he held tight rein on the Ovaro. He didn’t believe he would survive a repeat of that last incident when a snake had spooked his stallion.
A sudden voice, close by and shouting in a backwoods twang, made Fargo stop the Ovaro by pressuring him with his knees.
“Yo, Davis! Is that you?”
Fargo waited long enough to see if anyone would answer. Then he shouted back, “Yeah! Trouble?”
“Not if it’s just you. A damn rabbit come tearing by me. You musta spooked it.”
“Yeah, I seen it.”
Fargo waited a couple of minutes, then started toward Last Stand Gulch again. The trees began to thin out, and he halted the Ovaro and swung down. Taking no chances, he hobbled the Ovaro before moving forward. Fargo leapfrogged from tree to tree, closing in on the lip of the gulch. The last fifty yards he covered in a low crawl until he reached some juniper trees overlooking the gulch.
His disappointment was keen. Powell was taking no chances, and each sentry was now in a rifle pit with a brush screen in front of it. Fargo’s plan to kill at least five sentries was hopeless. With patience he might douse the glims of one who showed himself for a moment, but then he’d have to make a mad dash to safety.
Better, he thought, to try for number six and cut off the head of the snake.
The end of the gulch, where Powell had established his tent headquarters, was about one hundred yards to Fargo’s right. He knew it would be well guarded, but the same densely wooded ground that protected that end also provided cover for one patient man.
Taking an interminable time to do it, Fargo returned to the Ovaro and removed the Ketchum grenade from his saddlebag. The Ovaro was well hidden here, so Fargo decided to leave him. After that grenade exploded, Fargo would have to run like hell, anyway, so it wouldn’t take long to return.
“Steady as she goes, old warhorse,” Fargo muttered. He took a chance and removed the hobbles. “Case I don’t get back, you will not become an outlaw horse. I pity any stupid son of a bitch who tries to catch you.”
Fargo wended his way through the tangled growth, hidden yet hindered. He spotted more sentry pits at this end and crouched low, long experience helping him move silently over the debris of the forest floor. Finally, risking discovery at any moment, he was close enough to the gulch to see Powell’s tent.
The fly was closed, and he had to assume the kingpin was there—Powell was not one to survey the field. Fargo hefted the grenade, debating the right toss. He had used them during scouting stints with the army, and he knew the factory standards were not standard at all. He had seen one explode when accidentally dropped, while others had bounced harmlessly off boulders.
If he aimed at the tent itself, the grenade might not detonate, so Fargo aimed for the rocky ground just in front of the fly. The moment he stepped clear of the trees to make his throw, the hail went up.
“It’s Fargo, boys, just above the boss’s tent! Put at him!”
The crescendo of rifle fire was so loud, it sounded like a forest of frozen tree limbs breaking. Bullets thwacked into the trees all around Fargo as he made a hard overhand toss. A second later the grenade blast drowned out the gunfire, flaming canvas went airborne, and whoever was inside the tent shrieked like a soul in torment.
With hot lead making the air hum around him, Fargo began a mad dash for his horse.