New Mexico Madman (9781101612644) (11 page)

“That damn Booger won't give us much time 'fore he sneaks down here,” she whispered, “so I'm gonna do what I been wantin' to since I seen your hard pizzle.”

Tight, wet heat flowed over Fargo's length as she took as much of him as she could into her eager mouth. Her head pistoned back and forth, faster and faster, fueled by the fire of lust raging inside her. The way she tightened her lips and cheeks on him—grip and release, grip and release—made Fargo feel as if his manhood were sheathed in a snug velvet glove that had come to life.

It didn't take much of this treatment before Fargo felt himself swelling drumhead tight. He suddenly groaned like a man in pain, erupting over and over until his weak legs folded and he collapsed to his knees in the water, dazed and panting.

“Before you leave Santa Fe, Skye,” her hot whisper tickled his ear, “can I feel that big, beautiful thing inside me?”

“Hell, yes,” he replied, “unless we can wangle a way to do it sooner. Matter fact”—he guided her hand downward—“feels like he's already angry again. Why'n't we—”

Just then, however, Fargo heard the long, ululating howl of a coyote, ending on a series of yipping barks.

The favorite signal of Apaches prowling in the dark.

“Get dressed quick,” Fargo told her. “Our fun is going to have to wait.”

* * *

June fifteenth dawned hot and still, a breezeless morning with an ominous feel to it that set Fargo's teeth on edge. He had slept very little the night before, even when Booger spelled him in two-hour rotations. But the expected attack did not come.

A full night's rest, with grain and plenty of water, had put some fettle back in the horses. Booger's whip was already cracking soon after sunrise.

“We can get this rig to La Joya by noon,” Booger predicted, “unless Red John takes a fancy to hit us sooner.”

Fargo studied the terrain through his field glasses. This stretch, between the Rio Grande to the west and the Los Pinos mountains to the east, was mostly desolate and flat, wiry patches of
palomilla
and the occasional cholla cactus the only terrain features. But it was also crisscrossed by deep arroyos, desert ditches formed over centuries by sudden downpours. For raiding Indians these provided a hidden network of attack trails that kept them below the horizon until just before an attack.

“It won't be beer and skittles after La Joya, either,” Fargo pointed out. “Red Sash and his Jicarilla renegades could hit us anytime between here and just south of Albuquerque. That's why I'd just as soon have the frolic now. Lomax's yellow dogs will be on our spoor again soon enough, and I'm for shaking these Apaches off us now.”

“The hell
you
bawlin' about?” Booger demanded. “
You
got pussy last night. Old Booger's gonna die with a dry dick. Gerlong!” he shouted at the team, tickling the leaders with his whip.

Hundreds of miles of stagecoach driving without relief showed clearly in Booger's slack, exhausted face and cracked lips. The unrelenting Southwest sun, the swirling billows of eye-galling dust, even the constant fatigue of controlling the reins exacted a harsh toll and would have left most drivers prostrate by now.

“I don't like this,” Fargo said a few minutes later, watching a point about two miles to the northeast. “We got no wind, but there's a dust haze coming at us. I can't spot any riders though.”

“Arroyos,” Booger said grimly, snatching his North & Savage from its buckskin sheath. “Them Apaches can move around like moles.”

“Get set for a dustup!” Fargo called down to the passengers. “Stay below the windows. If any fire arrows hit the coach, it's up to you men to jerk 'em out if you can reach 'em.”

“Moses on the mountain!” Booger exclaimed. “Here they are to open the ball!”

The desiccated earth suddenly seemed to be spitting out Apaches as they debouched from an arroyo only a mile or so east of the stage. Fargo recognized the distinctive red headbands of the Apache and, as they rode closer, the deep chests and powerfully muscled arms that set them apart from the rest of the mostly slender-limbed Plains warriors. Most had rifles raised high in one hand, a few others red-streamered lances or iron-bladed battle axes traded from the slave-trading
Comancheros
.

“I was right,” Fargo said. “I count twenty. Some are riding big cavalry sorrels, some mustangs. Doesn't look like they plan to charge right off. The one with the copper brassards on his arms must be Red Sash—he's carrying the medicine shield.”

“Them mother-humpin' Apaches like to play with their food,” Booger said. “They'll likely pace us for a time to scare the snot outta the passengers and unstring our nerves. All the time, they squeeze in gradual like, then—whoop!—they'll commence to shrieking and attack us full bore.”

“That's the way of it,” Fargo agreed. “But they expect me to be armed with the usual express gun. They don't know we got Mr. Henry's magazine repeater on board, the gun you load on Sunday and fire all week. To hell with waiting for the attack, old son. Soon's they close in a few hundred yards closer, I plan to start kissing the mistress.”

Fargo rolled atop the coach and took up a spread-legged prone position. He kept his Henry down out of sight, instead deliberately letting the sawed-off double-ten show.

Dust spiraled up as the Apaches gradually reined their mounts closer, riding in a long skirmish line that would form into a flying wedge once they attacked—unlike most tribes, the adaptable Apaches emulated the tactics of their American and Mexican enemies.

“Can't this coach go any faster?” the preacher shouted out the window. “God bless us, they're getting closer!”

“Caulk up, you white-livered, chicken-gutted psalm singer!” Booger shouted back. “Why'n't you quit huggin' that damn Bible and read us something from it? I like that part where Joseph ties his ass to a tree and proceeds to Bethlehem. Musta had India-rubber hinders in them days, huh?”

“You blaspheming bully! May you roast in hellfire!”

“And may you die of the runny shits, you horse-faced whelp of an unbaptized whore!”

Fargo laughed out loud, shaking his head. “Booger, you are some piece of work.”

“Upon my word, Fargo, that half-faced goat better pray he dies today. Happens he don't, Old Booger will be wearing his guts for garters.”

Still Fargo waited, letting the Apaches close into better range. He wasn't sure his strategy of sudden, quick, surprise kills would work with this tribe. Northern tribes believed in strict gods who placed great value on the holiness of an Indian's life—thus most battle leaders called for retreat after the loss of one or two braves.

But the Apaches, tempered hard by their harsh environment and constant warfare to stay alive, believed in a more remote god called Great Ussen. Ussen was mainly seen as natural forces such as the power of motion in the wind. Thus, steep battle losses did not confer holy disfavor.

“All right!” Fargo called down to Booger. “I'm opening up on them. Stay frosty and shoot plumb. They'll try to spread out and get to our left flank for a pincers. I want you to drop only horses, Booger. We can't let them get close enough to kill our team.”

Fargo had to combine accuracy with speed and fully exploit the element of surprise. He dropped a bead on the last rider in the skirmish line, and the Henry kicked into his shoulder when he knocked him from the saddle. Rapidly firing and levering, he worked his way up the line. In the ten seconds or so that it took the Jicarillas to realize they were up against a dead aim with an excellent repeating rifle, Fargo had killed or wounded five Apaches.

Booger, meantime, had opened up with his North & Savage. His sitting, offhand position and slower weapon made him less effective, but he sent three horses buckling, further weakening Red Sash's battle group before the surprised Apaches even got off a shot.

However, the battle-hardened warriors recovered quickly, and their excellent marksmanship made retribution swift and punishing. They opened fire with a vengeance, shrill war cries punctuating their coup de main.

“Here's the fandango!” Fargo sang out cheerfully as a flurry of slugs and flint-tipped arrows peppered the coach.

A moving target was harder to hit, and Booger kept the coach in swift motion, alternately whipping the team and returning fire. Fargo, down to eleven loads in his Henry, fired more selectively. He hit fewer braves as the Apaches resorted to their defensive riding patterns and lowered their target profiles.

“Oh, Jesus, I've been shot!” Malachi Feldman's voice screeched like a hog under the blade.

“Calm down, you hysterical fool!” Ashton shouted, and there was a hard slapping sound from the coach. “You've just been creased! Cover the women!”

“God preserve us!” the preacher's voice added to the pandemonium.

A bullet thwacked into the coach, tossing splinters into Fargo's face. He still had eight shots in the Henry's tube magazine when a casing suddenly jammed in the ejector port. Knowing from experience it would take at least twenty seconds to carefully pry it out with the tip of his knife, and with several braves now in easy range and closing fast, Fargo cursed and tossed the weapon aside.

Booger was down to his dragoon pistol, the big weapon leaping in his fist. To keep the lead flying, Fargo shucked out his Colt and made six quick, successive snap-shots. Horses would have been easier targets, but he knew the Apaches probably had plenty of remounts. It was manpower he had to deplete to quell any future attacks, so Fargo targeted riders.

He and Booger wiped two more renegades from their sheepskin-pad saddles, but the Apache return fire was more deadly now, and suddenly the nearside swing horse slumped dead in the traces, dragging the coach to a stop.

Fargo knew they had reached the crisis point, and at first all seemed lost. Fargo had depleted his spare cylinder, too, and despite having killed or wounded more than half the attackers, he and Booger had no time to reload. A movement in the corner of his eye made Fargo glance toward the rear of the coach just in the nick of time to spot Red Sash with his knife cocked back to throw—in the desperate confusion, he had managed to ride around on the south flank and leap onto the coach.

Fargo rolled hard and fast as Red Sash threw his knife, grabbing the express gun and cocking both hammers. Sprawled on his back, Fargo fired both barrels almost point-blank. The twin load of buckshot lifted the Apache off the coach in a bloody spray. Seeing their battle leader land in an ungainly heap behind the swift wagon shocked the rest and broke the back of their attack. They scattered to the east like dogs with their tails on fire.

When the smoke cleared, the stink of saltpeter and death was thick in the broiling heat. Fargo, his face blackened with powder, sat up and thumbed reloads into his Colt as he watched the Apaches retreat. The sudden calm, after a pitched battle, always seemed eerie to him.

“You hit, Booger?”

“Not so's you'd notice. Think them red Arabs will mount a vengeance raid?”

“No. This bunch are after loot, not coup feathers. But I'll still feel better when we clear out of here. They'll be back to get their dead—or at least their weapons.”

Fargo raised his voice. “You folks all right down there?”

“Malachi got nicked in his ribs, Skye,” Trixie answered, a tremble in her voice. “But it's piddlin'. Laws! I thought sure we was all goners!”

“Stay put,” Fargo said. “We got to switch out a dead horse, then we're pulling foot.”

“Fargo,” Booger said just before both men climbed down, “have I thanked you yet for naming old Booger as your driver on this run? My only regret is that I will not leave a widow for you to fuck after you get me killed.”

“That is a shame,” Fargo agreed. “You got any sisters?”

11

Russ Alcott lowered his spyglass and loosed a sharp whistle. “Boys, that's what you call painting the landscape with blood. Them was Apaches they just routed, and them red sons ain't no cracker-and-molasses Injins.
Two
of 'em whipped a force that was ten to one against 'em.”

Alcott, Cleo Hastings and Spider Winslowe were well hidden in a river thicket beside the Rio Grande. Alcott, picking his teeth with a twig, was silent for a full minute, thinking hard.

“Well, that flat out does it,” he finally announced. “It's open country ahead and we ain't got a snowball's chance to kill Fargo and snatch that woman anytime before they hit Albuquerque.”

“Why don't we give Fargo the go-by and just grab the woman?” Spider suggested.

“You been grazin' locoweed? Fargo's a jobber and his job right now is to protect that pert skirt. Even if we could do it, it's no use taking her withouten we kill Fargo. They say he can hold a trail in windstorms that blow even insect tracks away. We'd never shake him.”

Thus reined in by logic, Spider tried another tack. “What about the station at Peralta just south of Albuquerque? Maybe we could—”

Alcott waved this off. “Nah, we'd just be barkin' at a knot. We bollixed it up back at San Marcial and now Fargo will be on guard at the stations. Good ambush country starts just past Rio Rancho. I use to ride with Jack Dancy's gang up that way; I know the country good.”

“Yeah, Russ, but hell,” Spider protested. “This is already the fifteenth of June. By the time they hit Rio Rancho, it'll be the seventeenth before we can make another play. That gives us only three days—ain't that paring the cheese might close to the rind?”

“What cheese?” Cleo put in, confused, but the other two ignored him.

“
Too
damn close,” Alcott agreed. “But, see, we got us another problem in the mix—that goddamn driver.”

“Yeah. 'At sumbitch is a big grizz, ain't he?”

“Size ain't nothing to the matter, Spider. That bastard is crazy-brave, and that's the worst kind. Just now—bullets was humming in nineteen to the dozen, and did you
see
him laughing while them Apaches attacked? Hell, he enjoyed it. We ain't never gonna whip the pair of 'em together.”

“You mean we're just gonna give up?” Cleo demanded.

Alcott gave him a pitying look. “
Here's
a man knows gee from haw,” he replied scornfully. “When you ever seen Russ Alcott get icy boots? I'm just telling you, lunkhead, we got to kill the big grizz
first
if we want even odds at Fargo.”

“Sure,” Spider said, “but how we gonna play a deal like that?”

“I ain't got a foggy notion in hell,” Alcott admitted. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless,” Alcott said, thinking out loud more than speaking, “we can maybe rub him out in Albuquerque. That's an Overland stagecoach hub and more in the way of a saloon than a station house. Spider, are you still in thick with that pretty Mex'can whore, what's-her-name?”

“Conchita? Sure, I trimmed her just before we took this job. She's the one helped me kill Billy Hanchon. That hot little twat will do anything for a gold double eagle.”

“She still got her that crib right along the river behind Albuquerque station?”

Spider nodded. A sudden spark of hope animated Alcott's pale-ice eyes.

“Now we're cookin', boys! That big son of a bitch siding Fargo is bad trouble, all right, but he ain't got the think-piece Fargo's got. And he drinks whiskey like he's a pipe through the floor—I seen him at San Marcial. The main mile is to get him away from Fargo long enough to kill him. We're gonna ride hard and talk to this little Mexer. That coach will pull into Albuquerque sometime late tomorrow, and we're gonna make damn sure it pulls out with a different driver.”

* * *

On June sixteenth, two hours before sunset, Fargo watched the adobe and red-tile buildings of Albuquerque heave into view ahead of them.

Nestled between the Rio Grande and the Sandia Mountains, the dusty frontier outpost had, in the era of New Spain, served merely as a layover for caravans traveling the long trade route known as El Camino Real—the King's Highway—linking Santa Fe with Chihuahua, Durango, Aguascalientes and other interior cities of Mexico. Recently, however, it had become a transportation center for people and goods throughout the American Southwest.

The sight seemed to stir Booger from a hibernation state brought on by exhaustion. “My favorite station, Fargo! Good eats, cheap tarantula juice, and the best-lookin' sparkling doxies in Zeb Pike's wasteland. Old Booger will finally get himself a spot of the old in-out, hey?”

“Don't go treating the place like Fiddler's Green,” Fargo warned. “We shook the Apaches off our tails, but we've still got Zack Lomax's curly wolves looking to put us with our ancestors. Go easy on the whiskey, and keep your eyes to all sides.”

“Faugh! Them jackleg gunmen will catch a weasel asleep before they surprise
this
child.”

A half hour later the Concord pulled in at Overland's big wagon yard. Unlike the sleep station at Peralta, the place was a hive of activity. The big depot wasn't very impressive from the outside, even drowning in burnished-gold sunlight as it was now. Departing from the rest of the town's architecture, it was a low, split-slab building with a shake roof and a long tie-rail out front still covered with bark. Nearly transparent hides had been stretched over the windows to keep out the grit-laden winds that plagued Albuquerque.

The inside, however, was bright and cheery, the plastered walls turned into painted murals depicting red rock canyons and pristine mountain ranges. The building was divided into a cluster of small sleeping rooms for children and female passengers and a bustling cantina that, like the relaxed public standards in Santa Fe, was open to both sexes.

“Where is the ladies' bathhouse?” Kathleen demanded the moment the travelers from El Paso entered the depot.

Fargo bit his lower lip to keep from grinning. “Sorry, lady, but water scarcity plagues this town. Spring runoff from the mountains was low this year, and they'll barely have enough for the horses.”

“Drat!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Half the dust from the trail seems to have settled on me.”

Trixie caught Fargo's eye. “You should have bathed in that creek where we camped, Miss Barton. It was real nice.”

“Oh, I wouldn't want to have ruined your fun—or Mr. Fargo's.”

Trixie shrugged. “Don't bother me if people watch. They might learn something.”

“Disgraceful,” Pastor Brandenburg muttered. “Modesty is a virtue, Miss Belle, as is purity.”

“What about hypocrisy?” Ashton asked the preacher. “You'd give anything to have been in Fargo's place. An honest pagan is better than a bad Catholic.”

“Now, now, Your Loftiness,” Booger soothed Kathleen, who was still petulant. “No need to fret. Old Booger gives you his word you will have a fine, hot bath when we reach San Felipe.”

“Oh? Another water trough, I suppose?”

Booger glanced at Fargo and winked. “No cruel jokes this time. A fine bathhouse just for the ladies. Plenty of privacy.”

“I'm famished,” Malachi Feldman complained. “Let's get some hot food.”

Despite the number of female passengers in the cantina, the place had the grim, masculine smell of any other frontier saloon: sweat, unwashed bodies, tobacco and pungent liquor. Fargo stepped through the archway ahead of the others and took a careful look around. Then he waved the rest in.

A big Navajo wearing a red plume in his low-crowned leather hat was tending bar, and Fargo noticed several dark-skinned Mexicans with flashing white teeth and dark, dangerous eyes—eyes that fastened appreciatively on the two women as they entered.

Trixie wrinkled her nose at the stench of heavy Mexican tobacco, stronger even than cigar smoke. “These Spaniards look like some rough fellows,” she remarked nervously.

“Pah!” Booger scoffed. “Ol' Sancho likes to flash a knife, but it's like they say about the Espanish navy: ‘A frog likes his cognac, a limey his rum, but the dago sticks to port.'”

Kathleen noticed how Fargo stayed close to her side and did not relax his vigilance.

“I certainly feel well protected,” she remarked, a note of sarcasm seeping into her tone. “I suppose next you will insist on sleeping in my room?”

“I hate to disappoint you,” Fargo replied, “but Booger and me have already agreed to take turns sitting in a chair
outside
your door.”

They settled at an empty table and Booger gathered up the meal chits, taking them back to the kitchen. Kathleen had been watching a number of young women—smoke-eyed women who flirted from behind palmetto fans—enticing male travelers.

“Well, Mr. Fargo,” she taunted, “they all certainly notice you. Perhaps you'll make that third conquest after all?”

“It's not really a conquest,” Fargo explained, “if a man pays for it.”

“Oh? Something
you
never resort to, I'm sure.”

“Why would I when there's plenty of volunteers?”

“Yes, you are a ruggedly handsome fellow, I suppose. But, of course, men who wear bloody buckskins and carry knives in their boots are perforce limited to women of easy virtue—women who make little distinction between a bed and a berry patch.”

Ashton snickered, Trixie frowned, the preacher clutched his Bible tighter. Feldman, busy untying a chamois pouch, seemed not to have heard. Fargo held the actress's gaze and replied amiably, “Generally they forget real quick where they are. And I've found that a woman who's good in bed is usually even better on the floor.”

Kathleen flushed just as Booger returned with a bottle of red-eye and a tray of pony glasses. “Grub pile in just a few minutes. No beans this time, Miss Barton.”

She flushed even deeper. But by now Booger had shifted his attention to Feldman. “H'ar now, you little pop-eyed freak. What's that in your pouch?”

“The world-famous traveling moon pebbles, Mr. McTeague.”

“No Choctaw here, catfish.”

“It's not Choctaw, it's plain English. I assume you are aware that millions of birds migrate to the moon every winter?”

“Teach your grandmaw to suck eggs.”

“It's scientific fact,” Feldman insisted. “Surely, at night, you've seen geese flying into the face of the moon. It is only a few hundred miles from Earth and easily reached by most birds.”

Booger looked a question at Fargo. The Trailsman, by a supreme effort, kept a straight face. “I have heard,” he replied truthfully, “that birds can fly to the moon.”

“Indeed they can,” Feldman said, warming to his theme. “And some of them bring back moon pebbles in their beaks. Pebbles like these.”

He shook out six round, gray objects the size of marbles and formed a circle with them on the table. Booger finished his whiskey and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, staring at them. “Pah! Them could be kidney stones passed by a bull moose for aught I know.”

“No, sir. These moon pebbles are distinct, for unlike any pebbles found on Earth they are animate—they can travel on their own.”

He reached into the pouch again and produced a “pebble” twice the size of the others. “All they require is a leader stone. The moment they sense the presence of a leader, they immediately travel to it—safety in numbers and all that.”

He placed the largest pebble in the center of the circle. Booger started, his eyes widening, when the six smaller pebbles instantly rolled inward until tightly clustered around the large one.

“Carry me out!” he exclaimed. “Carry me out with tongs! Them sons-a-bitches scuttled like bugs! Fargo, you seen that too?”

“Sure did,” Fargo replied.

“Well, old Booger is clemmed! I'll allow I never seen the like in all my born days! Say, little fellow, what will you take for them?”

Trixie, unable to hold off any longer, sputtered with laughter but disguised it as a cough. Even Kathleen, Fargo noticed, was actually smiling.

“McTeague,” Lansford Ashton said, “have you never heard of magnets?”

He suddenly brought a fist down hard on one of the pebbles. It disintegrated to a white powder, revealing a small piece of metal within. “These ‘pebbles' are merely plaster of paris painted gray. The biggest one has a magnet inside.”

“Ignore this skeptic, Mr. McTeague,” Feldman spoke up quickly. “I might be persuaded to part with these rare objects for—”

Booger cut him off with a growl, his face bloated with anger. “Walk your chalk, you filthy bedlamite, or I'll pump a bullet into your bagpipes. You think old Booger don't know sic 'em about magnates? Why, I spotted your grift all along.”

“Magnets,” Fargo corrected him. “Not magnates.”

“Hey, Booger,” Trixie cut in, “I got some pieces of wood that can square-dance. Wanna buy 'em?”

Booger scowled and poured more whiskey while everyone except Kathleen and the dour-faced preacher laughed. Fargo, however, closely watched a pretty Mexican soiled dove who had not taken her attention off Booger since he arrived, her eyes watching him through the black lace mantilla over her head.

Kathleen saw Fargo watching the girl and mistook his interest. “Surely, Mr. Fargo, she's a mercenary. Or perhaps you think even a pretty adventuress will dally with you gratis?”

“Take a closer look. It's not me she's eyeballing.”

Kathleen did look. “Yes . . . yes, I see what you mean. Well, I suppose Mr. McTeague is an easy sale. He's already drunk.”

“Could be,” Fargo said. “But there's plenty of other men in here I'd pick first if I was a sporting girl.”

Kathleen suddenly caught his drift. “You don't mean . . . ?”