Apache Ambush

14

Fargo swore, and flew on up the slope. Some men would not have gone to her rescue. Some would have said that she and her fool of a husband brought their fate down on their own heads. Some would not have gone because their spines were tinged yellow.

Fargo was no coward. As for foolishness, he had done a few things over the years that made him question whether he had a lick of common sense. But the real reason Fargo went bounding up that slope to save a woman whose last name he did not even know was that he suspected the party responsible for slaying her husband and abducting her was the man he was after.

It could be Apaches. But Apaches usually holed up at night.

Odds were, it was Fraco.

The dark was a soup of shadow and menace. Fargo stayed alert for boulders and anything else he might collide with. Soon he was in among a scattering of evergreen shrubs.

The screaming had stopped. Fargo was about to yell Harriet’s name when he suddenly drew up short.

Talk about foolish! Here he was, barreling through the night with no thought to his own welfare. It could be just what Fraco wanted. The woman might be a lure to draw him into an ambush.

Fargo broke out in a sweat. Another mistake like that could get him killed. He firmed his grip on the Henry and stalked forward cautiously, pausing often to test his surroundings for signs of life.

Seconds dragged on millstones of unease. His nerves were stretched to the point that a scritching sound brought him around in a crouch with his trigger finger starting to tighten, but it was only a small animal of some kind that went scrabbling off in fear.

Fargo swallowed. He was letting Fraco’s reputation spook him. He must remember that he had fought Indians more times than most ten men combined. If anyone was a match for the half-breed, it was him.

Still, the expectation of getting an arrow in the back was enough to make any man cautious. Fargo chafed at his slow hunt but it could not be helped. To move any faster invited disaster.

He could not say how long he had been at it when hooves thudded behind him. Crouching, he waited, and soon a rider appeared leading a black-and-white horse by the reins. ‘‘Over here!’’ he said, but not too loudly, and showed himself.

‘‘Finally,’’ Stack said, drawing rein. ‘‘I have been looking all over for you.’’

‘‘How did you know which way I had gone?’’

‘‘I heard the woman scream. I was still a ways from their camp, and when I got there and found you missing, I figured you had gone after her.’’ Stack’s tone suggested he did not think it wise.

‘‘I think Fraco has her,’’ Fargo said, stepping to the Ovaro. ‘‘He could be anywhere.’’

‘‘Then why in hell are you doing this? You don’t owe her or her idiot of a husband anything.’’

‘‘You keep forgetting that Fraco tried to put an arrow in me.’’

Stack leaped to the obvious conclusion. ‘‘And you are hankering to blow out his wick. That I can understand. Any man who won’t stand up for himself is not much of a man.’’

‘‘You don’t have to help if you don’t want to,’’ Fargo told him.

Stack was silent a bit; then he said, ‘‘I am no Samaritan. And I have no grudge with Fraco. But we are on the same side in this and I will stand by you, come what may.’’

Fargo gigged the Ovaro. They made better targets on horseback, but by the same token they were higher off the ground and could see farther. Then there was another factor—Fargo had learned to rely on the Ovaro’s hearing and sense of smell. He had lost count of the number of times the stallion had saved his skin with a timely warning.

They roved for a good half hour but did not turn up a trace of their quarry or his captive.

Reining up, Fargo said in disgust, ‘‘We are wasting our time. They could be anywhere.’’

‘‘They say the breed is fond of dainty morsels,’’ Stack remarked.

Fargo scowled. It would be a horrible way to die, the deepest fear of many a female. ‘‘We will go back to their camp and wait until dawn.’’

‘‘Why bother? The dunce of a husband is dead.’’

‘‘They had three horses,’’ Fargo reminded him. The horses had been picketed, and if they could not pull loose they would starve. He brought the Ovaro around and headed down the mountain.

Stack came up alongside him. For some reason he was being talkative. ‘‘What do you aim to do with their horses?’’

‘‘I haven’t given it any thought,’’ Fargo said. Beyond ensuring they didn’t suffer.

‘‘By rights they are ours now,’’ Stack said. ‘‘We could hold on to them until we get to Silver Lode and sell them for three times what we would get for them in Las Cruces or Albuquerque.’’

‘‘I had no idea you are so fond of money.’’

‘‘I hire out my pistol to those who can afford me, don’t I?’’ Stack justified his mercenary streak by adding, ‘‘A man has to eat.’’

‘‘Some money is easier on the conscience than others,’’ Fargo noted.

‘‘I am not fussy in that regard. Once I accept a job, I do what needs to be done and I do not cry about it after.’’

Food for Fargo’s thoughts. When he got right down to it, there wasn’t much difference between Stack and Fraco. Both were killers. Both hired out their talents for top dollar. That one was white and the other only half was of no consequence whatsoever. It wasn’t the color of a man’s skin that made him who he was. It was the man under that skin.

The fire had shrunk but was still crackling. Fargo stripped the Ovaro and spread out his blankets. He was bone weary but before turning in he went through the personal effects of the recently departed Howard and his missing wife, Harriet. Half a dozen packs were crammed with provisions and clothes. Most of the clothes were Harriet’s. She had more dresses than a dress shop.

Stack was by the fire, poking it with a stick. ‘‘We can sell that stuff, too,’’ he said.

‘‘We could scalp Howard and say we took it off of an Apache and sell it in Silver Lode,’’ Fargo suggested. Scalps sometimes fetched fifty dollars or more.

‘‘That is a good idea.’’

‘‘I wasn’t serious.’’

‘‘I still think it was a good idea.’’

Fargo was seeing a whole new side to the man, and he was not liking a lot of what he was seeing. ‘‘When this job is over, what then?’’

About to jab the stick, Stack glanced over. ‘‘I will go on doing what I do. So long as there is money to be paid for pulling the trigger, I will pull it.’’

‘‘That is all you ever want?’’

Stack shrugged. ‘‘We are what we are.’’

‘‘Tell me. Did Cranmeyer hire you to protect him and his wagons, or for another reason?’’

‘‘I am not a protector,’’ Stack said.

There Fargo had it. Timothy P. Cranmeyer was not the victim of circumstance he pretended to be. Grind and Cranmeyer had both hired killers—only Grind hired more.

As if Stack could read his thoughts, he said, ‘‘Don’t think poorly of Cranmeyer. He is in over his head.’’

Fargo began rolling up one of his blankets lengthwise. He placed it so one end was on his saddle, then draped another blanket over it. For extra effect he placed his saddlebags about where a man’s head would be and placed his hat on his saddlebags.

Stack watched with interest. ‘‘Are you expecting Fraco to pay us a visit in the middle of the night?’’

‘‘We can’t put anything past him,’’ Fargo said. The breed was deadly and devious, and would kill them any way he could. Satisfied with the ruse, he took the Henry and retreated into the dark a stone’s throw from the fire.

Stack arranged his blankets similarly and moved off in the opposite direction.

Finding a boulder to sit against, Fargo placed his rifle across his legs. Now all he could do was wait. He stayed awake as long as he could. Eventually his eyelids grew leaden, his chin dipped and he drifted off. He did not sleep well.

In the stillness before dawn, a nicker from the Ovaro snapped Fargo’s head up. He scanned the vicinity and cocked his head to the wind but saw and heard nothing. The stallion had its ears pricked toward the slope above them, but after a while it lowered its head and dozed.

Fargo did the same.

The next sound that awakened him was the screech of a jay. To the east the sky had paled, a harbinger of the new day. Fargo stretched and yawned, his stiff muscles protesting. Rising, he surveyed the mountainside. All was peaceful.

Fargo leaned against the boulder until half the stars were erased by the glare of the golden crown on the rim of the world. Kicking his legs to get the kinks out, he crossed to the fire. It took only a minute to rekindle the embers and fan them to flame with puffs of breath. Enough coffee was in the pot that he did not need to make more.

Stack came out of the scrub. ‘‘That was about as comfortable as sleeping on a cactus.’’

‘‘As soon as the sun is up, we will bury the husband and rejoin Cranmeyer,’’ Fargo proposed.

‘‘Coyotes and buzzards have to eat, too,’’ Stack said.

‘‘I will do it myself if need be.’’ Fargo went to reach for his tin cup and happened to set eyes on his blankets and saddle. For a few moments he was riveted in consternation, unable to understand why the blanket he had rolled up and covered was now on the other side of the saddle. ‘‘What the hell?’’

‘‘Aren’t those your saddlebags?’’ Stack asked, pointing.

Fargo looked, and suddenly his bewilderment took on darker hues of suspicion and dread. His saddlebags were a dozen feet away. Then it hit him. If the rolled-up blanket was not under the other blanket, why was there a bulge as if a body were underneath?

Stack was apparently wondering the same thing. ‘‘It can’t be,’’ he said. ‘‘No one could have snuck in and out that quiet.’’

Gripping the edge of the spread blanket, Fargo steeled himself. He had a pretty fair notion of what he would find. Or, rather, whom. He pulled the blanket off and could not resist a gasp.

Stack swore.

Harriet was on her back. She was stark naked. In life she had been pretty but there was nothing pretty about the way she looked now.

Stack said a strange thing. ‘‘I can never get used to this. No matter how many times I see it, I just can’t.’’

Harriet’s eyes had been gouged out. Her ears had been cut off. Where her nose had been was a jagged cavity. She no longer had breasts. And that was not all. She had been cut, a wound so deep, only a bowie or some other large knife could have made it. The cut started at her pubic region and went clear up and under her ribs.

‘‘Why would he do that?’’ Stack asked, more to himself than to Fargo.

Fargo shook his head.

The cut was gruesome enough, but what Fraco had done after he cut her was worse. The breed had pulled out her internal organs. Her intestines, her stomach, everything, were gone.

Fargo’s own stomach churned but he held the contents down.

‘‘I bet she was alive when he started in on her,’’ Stack said. ‘‘They say he loves to torture more than anything.’’

Fargo could imagine the torment and terror the woman had gone through. Right up to the very end she must have suffered abominably. He spread the blanket back over her and carefully wrapped her in it.

‘‘I don’t savvy,’’ Stack said.

Fargo was trying to shake the image from his mind but it was too fresh, too vivid. ‘‘Don’t savvy what?’’

‘‘The breed. He snuck in here right under our noses and placed her under your blanket when he could just as easily have finished us off.’’ Stack scratched his chin. ‘‘Why did he let us live?’’

Nodding at the figure in the blanket, Fargo said, ‘‘Maybe this was his idea of a joke. Maybe he was rubbing our noses in it, showing us how much better than us he is. Or maybe this was his way of daring us to keep after him.’’ Or maybe it was for all those reasons, or none of them.

‘‘He must not know who we are,’’ Stack said. ‘‘He must think we are settlers or townsfolk.’’

Fargo doubted whether that would matter.

‘‘I would be insulted if he did,’’ Stack rambled on. ‘‘It would mean he has no more respect for us than I do for a bug.’’

‘‘You are taking this personal.’’

‘‘I never take anything personal,’’ Stack assured him. ‘‘In my line of work that buys an early grave.’’ His eyes narrowed. ‘‘But you are, aren’t you?’’

Yes, Fargo was. The half-breed had put the woman under his blanket. It was the same as a drunk throwing whiskey in his face, or a cardplayer calling him a cheat. He would not stand for those insults. He would not stand for this. Sliding his arms under the body, he lifted and carried her to a flat area wide enough for both bodies. He did not have a shovel but he remembered seeing tools in their packs.

Stack did not help dig. He stood with his rifle cradled, scanning the slopes above. ‘‘In case he tries to pick us off.’’

‘‘Didn’t you say he is partial to a bow?’’

‘‘Howard’s rifle is missing.’’

Sweat was streaming down Fargo’s sides. He stopped to press a sleeve to his face.

‘‘We will run into the breed again,’’ Stack predicted. ‘‘I feel it in my bones.’’

Fargo grimly placed his hand on his Colt. He hoped so. And the next time, only one of them would ride away.