Backwoods Bloodbath

6

The acrid scent of smoke drew Fargo into the benighted woods on the left side of the road. He had gone about twenty yards when he spied the red glow of burning embers and heard a horse nicker. Instantly, he crouched, then stealthily stalked forward until he saw two horses in a small clearing. At the center was the fire, or what was left of it. On either side lay a huddled figure in a blanket.

It struck Fargo that the pair were not expecting trouble or one of them would have been standing guard. Granted, Missouri was not the Rockies, but there were plenty of outlaws. Their lack of caution pegged them as greenhorns.

Palming his Colt, Fargo crept nearer. He would give the pair the benefit of the doubt and treat them as innocent travelers until they proved otherwise, but he would be prepared if they were not.

He came to the edge of the trees and hunkered. He scanned the clearing to ensure there were only the two. Then he glided toward them, making no more noise than the breeze. He had several strides left to take when an ember flared bright for a few seconds, fanned by a gust, and in its feeble glow something glinted in the hand of one of the sleepers.

“That’s far enough, mister. I am a crack shot and will kill you where you stand if you do not do exactly as I say.”

Fargo was furious with himself. He had made the sort of stupid mistake he thought they had made.

“Set your pistol on the ground,” the man commanded.

Any hopes Fargo entertained of diving flat and snapping off a shot were dashed when the second prone form sat up and coldly declared, “You heard him. Do it and do it fast. My trigger finger is itchy.”

Fargo made a mental note to beat his head against a tree at the next opportunity, provided he lived. His lips pressed tight, he tucked at the knees and placed his Colt in front of him.

“Now back up two steps,” the first speaker ordered, “and keep your hands where we can see them.”

In unison the pair rose. The one on the right immediately circled to the right, the other circled to the left. As soon as Fargo was between them, the man on the left extended his revolver and aimed squarely at Fargo’s head. The other man came up and jabbed his revolver into Fargo’s ribs.

“What have we here? Don’t you know it’s not healthy to go sneaking around someone else’s camp in the middle of the night?”

“Who are you?” Fargo wanted to know.

The man snorted. “You have this backwards, mister. We’re holding guns on you so we get to ask the questions and you supply the answers.” He paused. “Who are you?”

Fargo debated whether to tell them. It might be wise, he reasoned, to learn more about them first. He used the same name he had given the desk clerk back in Kansas City. “Jed Smith.”

“That’s strange,” said the first man. “There was a trapper and mountain man by that name. The Comanches killed him. Was he a relation of yours?”

“No,” Fargo answered. “Now suppose you fess up to who you are and why you are following us.”

“Us?” the second man repeated. He was stockier than the other, with a bulbous nose and a jutting chin.

“Cover him,” the first man said. “I want a good look at his face.” Squatting, he poked a stick in the embers, added kindling, and blew softly on the tiny flames that flared until he had rekindled the fire. “Now then,” he said. Rising, he gripped Fargo by the arm and turned him from side to side, studying him.

Fargo repaid the favor and discovered it was the man in the dark suit who had shadowed Draypool back to Draypool’s hotel. The one the desk clerk called Frank Colter.

As if in confirmation, the other man asked, “Do you know this tall drink of water, Frank?”

“I can’t say as I do, Jim,” Colter said. “But I would swear I should. Something about him is familiar.”

Jim wagged his revolver. “What is your connection to the League, mister?”

“The what?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Jim snapped. “By your own admission you are a friend of Arthur Draypool’s. That alone is enough to incriminate you.”

“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about,” Fargo said. He was losing his patience, and his temper. He never liked being held at gunpoint.

“Sure you don’t,” Jim scoffed. “That’s why you snuck up on us intending to murder us in our sleep. We’re not stupid.”

“No, we are not,” Frank Colter interjected. “We will go easier on you if you admit the truth. Otherwise, we must take whatever steps we deem necessary.”

“I still don’t know what you are talking about,” Fargo said.

Jim took a half step nearer. “Let me work on him. He won’t be so smug after I break a few fingers or bust a few teeth.”

Fargo tensed his legs. He would be damned if he would just stand there while they beat on him.

“There will be none of that,” Frank Colter said. “Only as a last resort will we do anything drastic.”

“As you wish, sir,” Jim said with great reluctance. “But you know as well as I do what’s at stake. If you ask me, stooping to their level is only fair.”

Colter nodded at Fargo. “I’m only offering him a chance to be reasonable. First the carrot, then the stick.”

Jim glowered, a keg of powder fit to explode. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he thumbed back the hammer of his revolver. “Say the word and I’ll start with his legs and work my way up until he confesses. We must find out what they are up to before it is too late.”

“What who is up to?” Fargo asked.

“It won’t work,” Jim scoffed. “Pretend all you want, but we know that you know, and you know that we know you know.”

Fargo’s patience snapped. “Were you born an idiot or did you have to work at it?” Without warning, Jim swung the revolver at his head. Instinctively, he ducked, but he was not quite quick enough. The barrel clipped him across the temple, not hard enough to knock him out but with sufficient force to drop him to his knees. The world spun chaotically.

“You damned traitor!” Jim snarled, and raised his revolver to do it again.

“Enough!” Frank Colter sprang and seized the other’s wrist. “Damn it, Sloane! You will do as I tell you.” He held on until Jim Sloane lowered his arm, then said, “I should have brought Pearson along. He knows how to control his temper.”

“But the rumors,” Sloane said. “The consequences.”

“That’s no excuse. We will not stoop to their level, as you put it, so long as I am in charge. Do you understand?”

Fargo’s head had stopped spinning but was pounding with pain. A moist sensation spread down his cheek. He touched his fingers to his temple. Blood was trickling from a small gash.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sloane apologized to Colter. “I just don’t want to see a hundred years count for nothing because—”

A twig snapped loudly in the nearby woods. Fargo glanced up just as a shot boomed and saw the slug catch Jim Sloane high in the right shoulder. The impact jarred Sloane backward. Instantly, Frank Colter spun and fired into the woods, only to be answered with a hail of lead. Colter was hit in the leg, and he, too, staggered, but he did not fall. Suddenly turning, he looped his free arm around Jim Sloane and, limping feverishly, propelled the two of them toward the vegetation. More shots split the night, but they made it to cover.

Fargo saw his Colt on the ground. Shaking his head to clear a few lingering tendrils of dizziness, he scooped it up. Footsteps pounded, and a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Arthur Draypool asked with legitimate concern. He held a smoking short-barreled Remington. “What in God’s name are you doing out here by yourself? What did you hope to accomplish?” He did not wait for an answer but motioned instead to the frock-coated pair who had materialized on either side of him. “After them! They must not escape!”

Like hounds unleashed on fleeing inmates, Avril and Zeck bounded into the forest in pursuit.

“No,” Fargo said, slowly rising. His legs would not quite work as they should. Apparently he had been slugged harder than he’d thought. “I want them alive. I want to talk to them.”

“They are highwaymen,” Draypool said. “They would have killed you had we not come looking for you.”

Fargo was willing to wager his last dollar that whatever Colter and Sloane were, they weren’t common robbers. Colter, in particular, impressed him as someone with a strong sense of honor.

“I couldn’t sleep and was tossing and turning,” Draypool said. “Then I noticed you were missing. I must say, I was shocked. You should have told us that you were going off alone.”

“I don’t need nursemaids,” Fargo said gruffly. His momentary weakness had passed and he pushed past the Illinoisan, his teeth clenched against the pounding in his head.

“Wait!” Draypool cried, snatching at his sleeve. “Let my men take care of it. That’s what I pay them for.”

Fargo paid him no heed. He plunged into the woods, paused for only a second to listen, then raced toward the sound of crackling brush. A shot stabbed the dark with flame and smoke. Another answered.

Fargo ran as fast as he dared. He cupped a hand to his mouth to shout for Avril and Zeck not to harm Colter or Sloane, but he did not call out. They wouldn’t listen. They answered only to Draypool. To stop them, he must catch up, which proved easier to contemplate than to effect.

More shots were exchanged up ahead. It was impossible to tell who was doing the shooting.

From somewhere behind Fargo, Arthur Draypool shouted for him to wait, adding, “You could hurt yourself stumbling around in the dark!”

Fargo was insulted. He was a frontiersman. He had lived in the wild for more years than Draypool and his hired guns combined.

Another blast rocked the night. On its heels rose an outcry of pain, which was promptly smothered.

Indigo shapes moved a hundred feet away. To avoid being shot by mistake, Fargo halved his speed and bent low. Presently he stopped. The woods were as silent as a cemetery.

“Fargo, please!” Draypool bleated in the distance. “Where are you?”

Fargo warily advanced. Another flurry of man-made thunder caused him to drop flat. It was well he did. Slugs buzzed overhead. One clipped a leaf that gravity zigzagged onto his hand. He glimpsed more movement, but the source was gone before he could identify it.

A minute of quiet passed. Rising partway, Fargo skirted a log. To the east three shots crackled. A thicket barred his way and he angled to the left to go around. A sound stopped him, a low groan bit off short. He crept closer to the thicket and spied a figure sprawled at its base.

Jim Sloane lay on his back, his arms outflung. His hat was missing, his jacket open, revealing dark stains on his shirt. He gave a slight start when Fargo hunkered at his elbow, then blinked and croaked, “You again! Go ahead. Finish me off, you miserable bastard.”

Fargo whispered so no one else would hear. “Why were Colter and you following Arthur Draypool?”

“As if you don’t know,” Sloane spat out. It cost him a fit of coughing that brought flecks of blood to the corners of his mouth.

“If I did I wouldn’t ask.”

“Let me die in peace, damn you. But remember one thing, mister. You won’t win. We won’t let you.”

Fargo scanned their vicinity but did not spot anyone else. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”

Sloane tried to respond but succumbed to more coughing. When he could finally speak, he rasped,

“Have your fun. But the government is on to you and the rest of the League. We won’t let you light the fuse.”

More puzzled than ever, Fargo said, “What League? What fuse? You don’t make sense.”

Instead of answering, Sloane laughed bitterly, a laugh nipped by an upwelling of dark rivulets from between his lips. “Damn!” he gurgled. “I’m not long for this world.”

“Listen to me,” Fargo said. “Draypool has hired me to track down a killer called the Sangamon River Monster. Have you ever heard of him?”

“Now who is not making any sense?” Sloane weakly rejoined. “Who ever heard of a monster in this day and age?”

“It’s a man who mutilates and murders whole families,” Fargo explained. “In the Sangamon River region near Springfield.”

Sloane blanched as pale as a sheet. His eyes swiveled and fixed on Fargo’s face. “What did you say?”

Fargo repeated it, elaborating with, “Draypool and some others want to end the bloodshed. That’s why they hired me.”

“Oh, God.”

“What?” Fargo asked, unsure of whether the man was agitated by the information or had gone stark pale due to his wounds.

“Those devils! It’s so simple!” Quaking violently, Sloane raised his head and feebly clawed at Fargo’s leg. “He has to be warned! Get word to—”

“To who?” Fargo prompted.

Jim Sloane went rigid. Tears streamed from his eyes as his mouth worked soundlessly. Abruptly going limp, he slumped onto his back and exhaled.

Fargo felt for a pulse but there was none. He heard Draypool huff and puff up behind him, but he did not turn.

“Is that one dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good riddance. Let’s hope Avril and Zeck do the same with the other.”