Apache Ambush

3

Fargo wanted to beat his head against one of the trees. He had been so intent on Tilly he had let down his guard. He braced for the shot but none came. Instead, the rifle gouged harder into his spine.

‘‘This is how we will do this,’’ Stein said. ‘‘You will hand your pistol to me over your left shoulder. Any tricks, any twitches, and I squeeze this trigger and blow you to hell.’’

‘‘Stein, listen—’’ Tilly began.

‘‘Shut your mouth,’’ the prospector snapped. ‘‘You will not talk unless I say to, or I will shoot him. If you move, I will shoot him. Do anything at all to make me mad, and I will shoot the bastard.’’

Tilly opened her mouth but closed it again.

‘‘Good girl.’’ Stein mocked her. He jabbed his rifle into Fargo again. ‘‘Now the pistol. Nice and slow, mister.’’

Fargo had no choice. He could whirl and try to wrest the rifle away, or he could spring to one side, but in either case he might take a slug. He slid the Colt over his left shoulder and it was snatched from his fingers.

Stein’s laugh was ice and menace. ‘‘Well, now. This makes things simpler.’’ The pressure of the muzzle eased and he came around in front of them, his rifle trained on Fargo, his teeth showing in the dark. ‘‘I should shoot you here and now but I won’t. Care to guess why?’’

Fargo did not need to guess. He had met men like this prospector before. ‘‘You want to hear yourself talk.’’

Stein’s smirk became a scowl. ‘‘I would watch what I say, were I you. You beat on me. You threw me out in the street. I owe you, mister, for the pain and the humiliation.’’

Tilly chimed in with, ‘‘You brought that on yourself. I kept telling you to leave me be, George.’’

‘‘Now you are calling me by my first name?’’ Stein said. ‘‘Why so friendly all of a sudden? Could it be you hope to melt me with charm so I will let your new friend live?’’

‘‘Please,’’ Tilly said.

‘‘Please what?’’ Suddenly Stein bent toward them, his features those of a mad beast. ‘‘How stupid do you think I am, bitch? You had your chance. I courted you proper and you threw it in my face.’’

‘‘Since when is trying to force a woman to go with a man against her will courting?’’ Tilly angrily demanded.

‘‘I don’t see what you are complaining about. I didn’t hit you or anything, did I?’’

Tilly started to rise but caught herself. ‘‘Is that your notion of love? You treat a woman like she is your slave and you are her master, but you don’t hit her, so that makes it right?’’

‘‘Who said anything about love?’’ Stein retorted. ‘‘I just want a warm body on cold nights. I want someone to do the cooking and washing and sweep the floor now and again.’’

‘‘I was right. You do want a slave.’’

Stein took a half step toward her. ‘‘I want a woman! You have no idea how lonely it can be up in those mountains. Night after night with just you and your thoughts to keep you company.’’

‘‘There is Silver Lode,’’ Tilly said.

‘‘That shows how much you know. Silver Lode is a bunch of tents and drunks, and no women. No women will go up there because of the Apaches. They are too afraid.’’

‘‘I don’t blame them,’’ Tilly said.

‘‘I do. I cannot do without,’’ Stein flatly declared. ‘‘I want one and I will have one, and that one is you.’’

‘‘Why am I so lucky?’’

Stein shrugged. ‘‘You are the first female I set eyes on when I got here. Besides, you are a dove. You make your living pleasing men. You don’t have a husband or kids or any of that baggage. So I am taking you back up into the mountains with me.’’

‘‘You are despicable,’’ Tilly said. ‘‘If I had a knife, I would stab you.’’

Fargo had a knife. An Arkansas toothpick, which he wore in an ankle sheath. While they argued he had slid his hand under his pant leg and was inching his fingers into his boot.

‘‘It won’t be so bad,’’ Stein was saying. ‘‘I will treat you decent. I won’t beat you unless you deserve it, and I have a washtub so you can take baths like women like to do.’’

‘‘I would live like a queen.’’

‘‘Don’t be that way. I may not have much now but when I do you will share in my wealth.’’

‘‘You will give me half?’’ Tilly asked, her tone suggesting she was being sarcastic again.

‘‘I won’t go that far, no. But I will give you what is fair for the time you spend with me. Say, a hundred dollars a month. But only if I strike it rich. If I don’t, I will give you what I can.’’

‘‘And I have no say in any of this,’’ Tilly said bitterly. ‘‘What do you think women are? Dogs in dresses?’’

Fargo gripped the toothpick’s hilt. But he did not use it. Not yet. Not until he was good and sure.

‘‘You say the strangest things,’’ Stein told Tilly. ‘‘Dogs don’t wear clothes and women don’t trot around on all fours.’’

‘‘We might as well. Men like you don’t treat us any better than they do their mongrels.’’ Tilly sadly shook her head. ‘‘All my life I have had to deal with your kind. All my life I have hated them. Give me a man who treats a gal with respect. Give me a man who treats a woman like a woman and not like a cur.’’

‘‘You are making a heap out of nothing,’’ Stein criticized. ‘‘Get used to the idea that you are mine. As soon as I deal with him’’—he jerked a thumb at Fargo—‘‘you and me are heading for the high country.’’

‘‘I will be damned if I am.’’

‘‘You will be dead if you don’t.’’

Tilly showed the whites of her eyes. ‘‘You would really do that? Kill me for not wanting to share your bed?’’

‘‘I am desperate for a female,’’ Stein said. ‘‘I would not have come all the way down here if I wasn’t.’’

‘‘Why not pay for a poke and get it out of your system? I do not do pokes for money but Bucktoothed Mary does. She lives in the third shack past the saloon.’’

‘‘A single poke will not do me,’’ Stein said. ‘‘I want it every night that I am in the mood, and I am in the mood a lot.’’

‘‘Of course you are. You are male.’’ Tilly considered a bit, then said, ‘‘I will go with you willingly on one condition.’’

Stein was as surprised as Fargo by her abrupt change of heart. ‘‘How’s that again?’’

Tilly pointed at Fargo. ‘‘Let him live and I will go up into the mountains with you.’’

‘‘Why so generous all of a sudden?’’ Stein suspiciously asked. ‘‘And why do you care so much about this saddle bum? What is he to you?’’

‘‘I never set eyes on him before tonight,’’ Tilly confessed.

Stein sniffed as if he smelled a foul odor. ‘‘I was not born yesterday. No woman does what you are doing for a complete stranger. I repeat. What makes him so damn special?’’

‘‘He is something you can never be.’’

‘‘And what would that be?’’

Tilly did not reply.

‘‘I asked you a question,’’ Stein growled, taking another half step. He raised the rifle as if to bash her across the face with the stock. ‘‘Answer me, damn you, and answer me now.’’

‘‘It is simple,’’ Tilly said. ‘‘He knows how to treat a lady and you do not.’’ She paused. ‘‘He is not scum and you are.’’

Cursing viciously and lunging at her, Stein hiked his rifle higher. ‘‘That is the last time you will belittle me.’’

Fargo had been hoping he would come closer; now he was within arm’s reach. ‘‘I reckon it is only fair.’’

Stein glanced at him in confusion. ‘‘What is?’’

‘‘You snuck up behind me when I was arguing with her, and now you are arguing with her and I have had the time I need.’’

‘‘Time for what?’’ Stein demanded.

‘‘For this,’’ Fargo said, and surged out of his crouch with his knife arm spearing up and around in an arc that ended with the double-edged blade buried to the hilt in Stein’s chest.

George Stein bleated like a stricken ram and staggered back. The toothpick came out, and with it a scarlet torrent. He made no attempt to level his rifle, but stumbled against a tree. ‘‘What have you done to me?’’

‘‘What have you done?’’ Fargo amended. He felt no sympathy. The fool had brought it down on his own head.

The rifle clattered at Stein’s feet. He placed a hand to his wound and drew it away dark with blood. ‘‘Oh, God.’’ Turning toward Tilly, he held out his dripping hand. ‘‘All I wanted was some company.’’

‘‘You will have plenty of company in hell,’’ Fargo said, and stabbed him again, in the heart.

Stein threw back his head and gasped. He tried to speak but all that came out was blood. He started to quake and fell to his knees. Clutching wildly at thin air, he gurgled. Froth dribbled from his mouth. It was the last sound he uttered. Going as rigid as a ramrod, he pitched onto his face, convulsed and was still.

‘‘That was ugly,’’ Tilly said.

‘‘It was him or me and I was damned if it was going to be me.’’ Fargo wiped the toothpick clean on Stein’s shirt and replaced it in his ankle sheath. Reclaiming his Colt, he shoved it into its holster. ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said, offering his arm.

‘‘What about the body?’’

‘‘Is there an undertaker in Hot Springs?’’

‘‘If there is, he is keeping himself well hid. The town is not big enough. Give us four or five years.’’

Fargo had half a mind to treat the coyotes and other scavengers to a feast. But he had seen a few children earlier. It would not do to have them come across a rotting body. ‘‘Is there someone who will bury your late admirer for, say, a dollar?’’ That was all he was willing to pay.

‘‘I bet I can find you someone for half that,’’ Tilly said. ‘‘Money is hard to come by in these parts. There are not many jobs to be had.’’

Hot Springs was unnaturally quiet, the street still empty. Heads were poking out the saloon door, and when Fargo and Tilly appeared, shouts broke out and men came streaming through the batwings.

The prospector’s death was the most exciting thing to happen in Hot Springs in a coon’s age. Most of the hamlet’s populace came out to view the body and to tell what they were doing when the shots rang out. A few bragged that they heard Stein’s death rattle. One man even claimed to have witnessed the stabbing, but since he lived at the other end of the street and was toting a half-empty bottle of red-eye, no one believed him.

Fargo wanted nothing to do with the shenanigans. He roosted in his chair at the corner table in the saloon and renewed his assault on his own bottle. He had never been one of those who took delight in viewing violence or its aftermath. When he came on a wrecked wagon or an overturned buckboard, he was not the kind to stand and gawk. Spilled blood did not hold the warped fascination for him that it held for so many.

Fargo had seen too much blood spilling to regard it as entertainment. Life on the frontier was savage and hard, especially for those who dared venture into country few whites if any had ever set foot in. The mountains and prairies were the killing grounds for hostiles and renegades who had no qualms about murdering every innocent they came across.

The tally of wounded or dead Fargo had come across, or helped send to the other side, would fill a city the size of Santa Fe. To him the violence was as much a part of the frontier as the mountains and the prairies themselves.

Fargo had the saloon to himself. Even the man who owned it and his wife had gone to see the body. Tilly was off finding someone to do the burying. He was on his third chug, the bottle upended over his mouth, when the batwings parted and in came the last two people he wanted to see. Smacking the bottle down, he said gruffly, ‘‘Go away.’’

‘‘We have as much right to be here are you do,’’ Timothy P. Cranmeyer said. ‘‘Saloons are open to the public, after all.’’

‘‘Just so you are not here to badger me,’’ Fargo warned.

‘‘As a matter of fact,’’ Cranmeyer said, ‘‘I would like to make the same offer I made earlier. Come work for me for two weeks and I will pay you seventy-five dollars.’’

‘‘Earlier it was sixty.’’

‘‘Earlier I only had a hunch you are the kind of man I need,’’ Cranmeyer said. ‘‘Now I am sure of it. You are not squeamish about killing.’’

‘‘Only when I have to.’’

‘‘Frankly, I don’t care why you do it just so you will squeeze the trigger if we are set upon by Apaches or others. A lot of men lose their heads and their nerves and can’t or won’t.’’

Fargo had sometimes wondered how it was that some men could not kill, no matter what. ‘‘No.’’

‘‘What will it take to persuade you?’’

Fargo sighed. ‘‘Let me make it plain. There is no chance in hell. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Run along or I will throw you out like I did that other idiot lying over in the trees.’’

‘‘Honestly, now,’’ Cranmeyer said.

‘‘Jackass.’’

Krupp chose that moment to start around the table, declaring, ‘‘That does it. I warned you about insulting Mr. Cranmeyer. The only way to teach you some respect is to pound it into you.’’