Arizona Renegades (11 page)

Fargo would rather tangle with a dozen mountain lions than a single jaguar. Jaguars were larger, heavier, meaner, less predictable. And unlike most cougars, they weren’t afraid of humans. This one was a huge male. From the way it was stalking Gwen, Fargo suspected it had preyed on humans before.

A line of cottonwoods announced the presence of a stream. The farm girl’s tracks led into them. Handprints showed where she had knelt to drink. Then she had sat awhile, resting. Unknown to her, the jaguar had been watching from the undergrowth. When she moved on, so did the big cat. It had sniffed at the spot where she sat, then fell into step in her wake, matching her pace.

Gwen had gone south. Perhaps she reasoned the stream would bring her near the road, but it curved to the east later on. She had paused and paced, debating whether to follow it or to strike off across country. Nine out of ten people would stick with the water. But country-bred women had more grit than most. Gwendolyn had continued southward. She must have a hunch that sooner or later she would hit the road, and she was right.

Provided she lived that long. The jaguar had narrowed the distance between them.

Fargo had no reason to think Gwen even knew it was there. The lengths of her stride grew shorter and shorter, showing how tired she was. He marveled that she never halted to catch some sleep, yet it was just as well she didn’t. The jaguar would seize the opportunity to seize her.

Then both sets of tracks changed their pattern. The jaguar had stopped. So had Gwen, scuff marks revealing she had turned. Either she saw or heard the cat roar. She ran, and the jaguar fell into a lazy lope. She was at its mercy and the predator seemed to know it. It was in no rush to finish her off.

Fargo raised his eyes from the prints, certain he would soon find Gwendolyn’s ravaged body. If so, he would kill the jaguar. Once one developed a taste for human flesh, it became a habit. Laziness was also a factor. Animals disliked hard toil as much as people. And compared to wary deer and fleet-footed antelope, humans were ridiculously easy for the big cats to kill.

Spurring the stallion into a gallop, Fargo scanned the rugged terrain. Gwen might be lying behind any of the large boulders ahead, her body ripped to pieces. He shut the image from his mind. Then, faintly, a voice wavered. So faint, Fargo wasn’t sure he had heard it until it was repeated. Slowing, he cocked his head.

“Skye! Here I am! Here!”

Movement at the top of an isolated oak on an otherwise arid slope galvanized Fargo into a gallop. Gwen clung to the uppermost limb, a branch so thin it was a miracle it supported her weight. She waved and laughed for joy, her perch swaying precariously.

“Thank God you’ve come! I thought I was a goner!”

In a spray of dust Fargo reined up. The jaguar’s tracks ringed the base of the tree but the cat itself did not appear to be anywhere around. Vaulting off, he hollered, “Do you want me to come get you?”

“No need! I’m not helpless!” Gwen slid to the next lower branch and from there clambered down with an agility Fargo admired. He saw that she had torn the lower half of her dress off. From the knees down, her legs were bare. Fine legs they were, too. Not as full or shapely as Melissa’s but enticing enough to turn the head of any man.

Fargo stood back as she flipped onto the bottom limb, twisted, and alighted beside him as lightly as the beast that had stalked her. She was scraped, scratched, and bruised, her face smudged, her hair a worse mess than Melissa’s, but she was alive. “You had me worried,” he admitted, and was nearly bowled over when she threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight enough to crack his ribs.

“You weren’t the only one,” Gwen said softly. “I don’t know how much longer I could have clung on up there.”

“Where’s the jaguar?”

Gwen pulled back and gasped. “How did you—?” She glanced at the ground. “Oh, the tracks. It was here a few minutes ago, then it ran off. I think it heard you coming.” Shuddering, she bent her ankle so he could see a bloody slash. “I lost count of how many times it tried to reach me.”

Fargo brushed his fingers over a series of deep claw marks on the trunk. Jaguars were good climbers. But their weight restricted them to lower, thicker branches. It had been clever of Gwen to climb so high. He spied part of her dress lying on the other side of the tree, the fabric rent to ribbons.

Gwen noticed and wearily smiled. “The jaguar did that when I flapped it in his face.” She brushed at a stray bang. “The pesky critter kept climbing higher and higher. I tried to break a branch to hit it, but couldn’t. So with my teeth and my nails, I ripped my dress and shook the piece at him when he climbed too close for comfort.”

“You didn’t sleep a wink all night, did you?”

“No. And if I don’t get some soon, I’ll pass out.” Gwen stifled a yawn. Her eyes were bloodshot, her features haggard.

Fargo would rather take her to Melissa but an hour’s delay wouldn’t do any harm. “You can take a nap if you want.” Clasping her hand, he moved toward a shelf above the oak. “Not a long one, mind you. I’ll stand lookout for the jaguar and the Apaches.”

“How are the others?”

Briefly, Fargo related everything that had taken place. She grew immensely sad on hearing about Tommy Jones, Joseph, and Michael.

“I’m beginning to think going to visit my aunt in California is the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. I’d have been better off writing her a letter.”

Chuckling, Fargo avoided a small rock outcropping. He was almost to the shelf when two things happened simultaneously. Gravel under his feet gave way, clattering like so many marbles and pitching him off balance. And on the rim of the shelf a great feline head appeared, its slanted eyes aglow with bestial ferocity.

“Skye!” Gwendolyn screamed.

Fargo tried to right himself and bring the Henry into play but the cat was lightning quick. Snarling viciously, it sprang.

Skye Fargo had only raised the Henry halfway but it saved his life. When the big cat slammed into him with its forepaws slashing, the rifle was struck instead of him. The Henry was torn from his grasp as he was flung backward. Stumbling, Fargo recovered and hurled himself to the right to evade another flurry. He hit on his shoulder and rolled down the slope, the jaguar just a step or two behind him, rumbling growls loud in his ears.

Fargo had let go of Gwen as he fell. He was glad the cat ignored her, and he hoped she had the presence of mind to get away while she could.

Then there was no time for thinking. Fargo came to a stop in a sliding rain of dirt and stones. He pushed onto his knees just as the jaguar reached him. It never slowed, never hesitated. Steely muscles rippling, it pounced. Fargo barely got his arms up and the beast was on him. Claws sliced his left arm, his side. He was bowled over and slid further, the cat astride him and trying to rip open his throat with its great fangs.

Fargo was a goner. He could no more slay a jaguar with his bare hands than he could outrun an antelope. Frantically, he clawed for his Colt but one of the cat’s legs had it pinned against his side. Nor could he lift his leg to get at the Arkansas toothpick. He stared up into the cat’s bristling face, at its gleaming teeth and long whiskers and blazing eyes. He felt its warm breath, tinged with the fetid odor of flesh and blood from its last meal. He was gazing into the face of death, and he knew it.

Poised for the kill, the jaguar paused.

Fargo had always expected to meet a violent end. With the life he led, it was only natural to think a bullet or arrow would bring him low. Or maybe a grizzly would take him unawares. Or he would be caught in a buffalo stampede with nowhere to take shelter. But he had never thought one of the big cats would be responsible. Certainly not a jaguar.

A person could never predict how their life would turn out. Fate was too fond of springing surprises.

Then, unaccountably, the jaguar jerked and snapped its head around. It uttered a coughing roar.

Fargo couldn’t understand why until he saw a rock strike it on the side.

“Get away from him! Scat, damn you!” Gwendolyn Pearson had a stone in each hand and was barreling toward the riled carnivore as if it were a house pet that needed to be disciplined. “Go! Leave us be!”

“Run!” Fargo shouted, but she paid him no mind. The cat had momentarily forgotten about him and glared at her, its lips curled, its tail twitching. Fargo still couldn’t reach the Colt, but out of the corner of an eye he spied a large rock. As the jaguar turned back to him, he smashed the rock against the side of its head with all his strength. At the same moment, Gwen threw a stone that thudded against its ribs.

The jaguar leaped straight up into the air, a good five feet. It wasn’t seriously hurt but the pain had rattled it. By twisting its entire body, the jaguar was able to land so that it faced both of them.

Gwen had picked up another rock. “Go eat something else!”

Fargo saw the cat crouch to spring. It was so close, he could reach out and touch it. He started to go for his pistol but realized that even if he put two or three slugs into it as it charged, there was no guarantee he could stop it from reaching her. So, as the jaguar’s rear legs uncoiled, Fargo did the only thing he could think of to save Gwen—he seized its tail.

The incensed jaguar spun, a front paw flashing, but it couldn’t quite reach Fargo’s hand. It lunged, just as another stone pelted it on the head. In baffled outrage the predator glanced from Fargo to Gwen and back again. It was confused. Prey rarely gave the big cats such a hard time.

“Don’t come any closer!” Fargo yelled while making a bid for the revolver with his left hand.

Another stone hit the jaguar, on the tip of the nose this time. Frenzied, it dug its claws into the ground and tore loose from Fargo. The next moment, in a fluid spurt of speed, it bounded off toward a cluster of boulders, moving so fast it was out of sight before Fargo could snap off a shot.

“We did it!” Gwen exclaimed. “We drove it off!”

Fargo stood and dashed to the Henry. They owed their lives to a fluke of feline behavior, nothing more, and he wouldn’t put it past the cat to come after them again once it had calmed down. “We’re getting out of here,” he announced.

The Ovaro was still by the oak. Fargo took Gwen by the hand and hastened lower. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded. “Chucking stones at a cat that size?”

Gwen could be sarcastic when she wanted. “I’m sorry. I guess I should have let it rip you to shreds. Oh. And you’re welcome for saving your hide.”

Fargo stopped. There was no denying he owed her his life. If she’d done as he told her, the jaguar would be feasting on his flesh right that minute. “It’s not that I’m not grateful,” he clarified. “I’d just hate to have anything happen to you.”

“Aren’t you the sweet one,” Gwen playfully teased. Rising on her toes, she kissed him on the chin, close to his mouth. “I’ll take that as an apology.”

Grinning, Fargo steered her to the stallion. It stared at the clustered boulders, ears erect. Wishing he could hear what it did, Fargo mounted, then lowered his arm for Gwen to hang on to so he could pull her up. “Are all Missouri girls as brave as you?”

“I can’t speak for all of them,” Gwen said while straddling the pinto’s broad back, “but my folks taught me never to take any guff off anyone or anything. My pa may have been a dirt-poor farmer but he had more gumption than most ten men. And my ma was always at his elbow, through thick and thin.” She placed her hands on Fargo’s hips. “I miss them both, terribly. The Good Lord called them to their reward much too soon.”

“They’ve both passed on?”

“Pa died about a year ago. An accident. He was clearing trees for new acreage to plow, and one of the trees fell on him. Broke his neck.” Gwen coughed. “As for my ma, she just wasted away after pa died. She wouldn’t take a bite, wouldn’t hardly ever drink, wouldn’t do anything but lie there with tears in her eyes. Without him, she said, life wasn’t worth living anymore.”

“You couldn’t force her to eat?”

Gwen’s tone became bitter. “Ever try to force-feed someone? It ain’t easy. My sisters and brothers and I tried, but we couldn’t get much down her. Believe me, Skye. When a person makes up their mind to die, there ain’t a whole lot you can do except watch them slowly fade away.”

“I’m sorry.”

The farm girl shrugged. “That’s the way the hog bladder bounces. I lost my grandparents when I was seven and always thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Then my folks up and died. Makes you wonder. Why does the Good Lord let us suffer like that?”

“I’m no parson, Gwen.”

She fell silent, and Fargo rode on under the blazing sun. Ranging wide of a steep-walled ravine, he came upon a broad canyon. Specks circling high in the sky drew his interest, especially when they circled lower and lower and finally merged with the ground ahead.

“Are those what I think they are?” Gwen asked.

“Buzzards,” Fargo confirmed.

“Haven’t seen any in a long while. There used to be a lot in the woods around our farm, but my brothers used them for target practice.”

Eleven of the ungainly carrion eaters had gathered and were tearing at something that lay in dry brush. Fargo slanted to the right. He took it for granted they had found an old cougar kill, or maybe one of the jaguar’s. A gust of wind proved him wrong. Loose papers fluttered across the ground, causing the stallion to shy as if at a sidewinder.

“What the dickens?” Gwen said. “Where’d they come from?”

Fargo reined up and swung off. He snagged one of the papers on the fly. At the top of the sheet, in big, bold, fancy letters, were the words “New York Stock Exchange.” Below the heading were lists, a lot of names and numbers in separate columns, which he couldn’t make any sense of.

“What is it?”

Fargo handed the paper to her and retrieved another. This one was a letter from the law firm of Klempner, John-son, and Foster. It was addressed to a Brandon J. Leonard in San Francisco and had to do with money Leonard had invested.