Collection 1988 - Lonigan (v5.0) (7 page)

The average western saloon was a place with a few gaming tables, sawdust on the floor, and a long bar. Whiskey was expensive to ship, and although a few bottles of the good stuff were handy for special customers or the owner himself, most of the patrons were served whiskey or beer often concocted on the premises or nearby and made of whatever material was available.

By the time the railroads were operating in the west and whiskey could be shipped at a reasonable price, many westerners had forgotten what good whiskey tasted like and were convinced that so-called “Indian” whiskey was better.

Many western saloons also served meals, some even of gourmet quality, but on the whole such food was catch-as-catch-can, and one ate what was available and was glad to get it.

Women were rarely on the premises unless the saloon also functioned as a dance hall, in which case women appeared as entertainers, most with quarters upstairs to which they might resort on appeal. Occasionally the dance-hall girl would be only that, limiting her activities to dancing or talking with the customers. Others had special “friends” whom they might entertain on occasion or with whom they kept company, as the saying was.

As the railroad built west, the Hell-on-Wheels towns kept pace with construction, since workers on the railroad had to have a place to spend their money and these towns provided it. Most of the saloon and gambling houses at the end of the tracks were houses in tents, a few in hastily thrown up shacks. They were wild, woolly, and lawless, each “town” lasting for a few weeks only, then moving westward to be reestablished in a new location. Cheyenne, Wyoming, which practically began in that way, remained a permanent town, a marketing place, and eventually became an important city. Fortunately, in growing up, Cheyenne has managed to retain its western flavor, as befits a town in cattle country.

H
ERITAGE OF
H
ATE

CHAPTER 1

Bushwacked Man

CON FARGO HUNCHED his buffalo coat about his ears and stared at the blood spot. It must have fallen only a minute or two before, or snow would have covered it. And the rapidly filling tracks beside the blood spot were those of a man.

Brushing the snow from his saddle he remounted, turning the grulla mustang down the arroyo. The man, whoever he might be, was wounded and afoot, and the worst storm in years was piling the ravines with drifts.

The direction of the tracks proved the man a stranger. No Black Rock man would head in that direction if badly hurt. In that direction lay thirty miles of desert, and at the end of those miles only the ramshackle ruins of a ghost town.

Con started the mustang off at a rapid trot, his eyes searching the snow. Suddenly, he glimpsed the wounded man. Yet even as his eyes found the stumbling figure, a shot rang out.

Fargo hit the trail beside his horse, six-gun in hand. He could see nothing, only the blur of softly falling snow, hissing slightly. There was no sound, no movement. Then, just as he was about to avert his eyes, a clump of snow toppled from the lip of the arroyo.

He hesitated an instant, watching. Then he clambered up the steep wall of the arroyo and stood looking down at the tracks. Here a man had come to the edge, and here he had waited, kneeling in the snow. He was gone now, and within a quarter of a mile his tracks would be wiped out.

Con Fargo slid back into the arroyo and walked over to the fallen man. The fellow wore no heavy coat, and he was bleeding badly. Yet his heart was beating.

“This moving may cash your chips, old-timer, but you'd die out here, anyway,” Con said.

He lifted the man and carried him back to his horse. It took some doing to get the wounded man into the saddle and mount behind him. The mustang didn't like the smell of blood and didn't like to carry double. When Fargo was in the saddle he let the grulla have his head, and the horse headed off through the storm, intent on the stable and an end to this foolishness.

An hour later, with the wounded man stripped of his clothes, Con went to work on him. He had the rough skill of the frontier fighter who was accustomed to working with wounds. The man had been shot twice. The first bullet had been high, just under his left collarbone, but it had spilled a lot of blood. The second shot had gone in right over the heart.

F
OR THREE BITTER days he fought for the man's life, three days of blizzard. Then the wounded man began to fail, and at daylight on the fourth morning, he died.

Getting out for a doctor would have been impossible. It was twelve miles to Black Rock, and with snow deep in the passes he dared not make the attempt. And the one doctor in town wouldn't cross the street to help Fargo or anyone like him.

Thoughtfully, Con studied the dead man. To somebody, somewhere, this man meant much. For whatever reason the man came west, it had been important enough to warrant his murder.

For this was no casual robbery and murder. Every effort had been made to prevent identification of the dead man. The labels had been torn from his store bought clothes. There were no letters, no papers, no wallet and no money. All had been removed.

“Somebody went to a powerful lot of trouble to see nobody ever guessed who this hombre was,” Con told himself. “I wonder why?”

The man was young, not over thirty. He was good-looking and had the face of a man with courage. Yet he was unburned by sun or wind, and his hands were soft.

Obviously, the killer thought the first shot had finished him. He had robbed the man and stripped the identification from his body, and then must have left him. The wounded man recovered consciousness and made an effort to get away. The killer had returned, had guessed the wounded man would keep to the partial shelter of the arroyo, and had headed him off and then shot him down.

“Pardner, I reckon I'm goin' to find out why,” Con said softly. “You and me, they didn't want either of us here. You didn't have as much luck as I did. Or maybe you were slower on the draw.”

Turning to a drawer in the table he got out a tape measure. Then, while frost thickened on the windows and the snow sifted down into drifts, he measured the body. The height, waist, chest, biceps. There was a small white scar on the dead man's chin; he noted it. On his right shoulder there was a birthmark, so Con put it down in the book.

“Somebody didn't want anybody to know who you was, so that must be important. Me, I aim to find out.”

The next day, after he had buried the man in an old mine tunnel, he examined the clothing. One by one, in broad daylight, he went over the articles of clothing. There was red clay against the heels of both shoes, a stain of red clay around the edge of the sole.

On the seat of the trousers and the back of the coat were long gray hairs. “Either this hombre had him a furlined coat or he sat on a skin-covered seat. If a seat, that would most likely be a buckboard or wagon.”

More red clay was found on the knees of the trousers. “Reckon this hombre fell onto his knees when shot,” Con muttered. “Else a feller as neat as him would have brushed them off.”

Red clay. There was a good bit of red clay near Massacre Rocks on the stage trail from Sulphur Springs.

“That mud was soft enough to stick,” he said. “And that means he was shot when it wasn't froze none. Now that norther struck about noon the day I found him, so he must've been shot that morning.”

An idea struck him suddenly. Bundling the clothes he put them in a sack and then in a box, which he hid in a hole under the floor. Then he slung his guns around his lean hips, donned his buffalo coat, slipped an extra gun into its spacious pocket, and picking up his rifle, went out to the stable.

The storm had broken about daybreak, so when the mustang was saddled he rode out taking the ridge trail, where the wind had kept thin the snow.

Two months earlier Con Fargo had ridden into Black Rock a total stranger. He came as heir to Tex Kilgore's range and property—and found he had inherited a bitter hatred from many, open dislike from others, and friendship nowhere.

Knowing Tex Kilgore he could understand some of it. Black Rock was a country of clans. It was close-knit, lawless, and suspicious and resentful of outsiders. Tex was bluff, outspoken, and what he believed he believed with everything in him. He was a broad-jawed, broad-shouldered man, and when he came into Black Rock he took up land nobody else had liked. Yet no sooner did he have it than others perceived its value. They tried to drive him out, and he fought back.

Being a fighting man, he fought well, and several men died. Then, aware that his time was running out, and that alone he could not win, he had written to Con Fargo:

If you got the sand to fight for what's yourn, come a-runnin'.

Tex Kilgore knew his man, and half the money in the venture had been Con's money. Together they had punched cows for John Chisum. Together they had gone north to Dodge and Hay City with trail herds, and together they had been Texas Rangers.

Kilgore, older by ten years, had left to begin the ranch. Con Fargo stayed behind to become marshal of a tough trail town. He went from that to hunting down some border bandits.

Tex, his riders hired away or driven off, had sent the message south by the last rider who left him. Con Fargo had started north within the hour the message arrived. Yet he had reached Black Rock to learn that Tex Kilgore was dead.

It required no detailed study to understand what had happened. The Texan's enemies besieged him and he fought it out with them. Three had been killed and two wounded, and the attackers had had enough. They pulled out and abandoned the fight. What they didn't know was that one of the last bullets had left Kilgore dying on the cabin floor. A few days later they found out when a chuck line rider showed up with the news.

Only, Con Fargo, lean and frosty eyed, heard it at the same time. He noted the satisfaction on some faces, the indifference on others, and the harsh laughter of a few.

Putney, a huge mountain of a man, had turned to a lean Mexican.

“Mount up, Gomez!” he said. “We'll ride out and take over!”

“Sit still.” Con, the stranger, lifted his voice just enough to bring stillness to the room. “I'm Kilgore's partner. I'm takin' over!”

“Another of 'em, huh?” Putney sneered. “You takin' over his fightin', too?”

“He was my friend,” Con said simply. “If you were his enemy, you have two choices: get out of the country by sundown, or fill your hand!”

Putney was said to be a fast man. Black Rock changed its ratings on speed that day. Putney's six-gun never cleared leather. Con Fargo, one elbow on the bar, let Putney have the first one in the stomach, the second in the throat.

Gomez was a cunning man, but the sound of gunfire confused him. He went for his gun as the first shot sounded. He was against the wall on Fargo's right, while Putney was straight ahead of the former Ranger. Yet somehow the left hand, the elbow still on the bar, held a gun too. Fargo's head swung just for an instant, the second gun spouted fire, and Gomez hit the floor, clawing with both hands at the burning in his chest.

Con waited for a moment, letting his eyes survey the room. Then calmly holstering one gun, he thumbed cartridges into the other. He looked up then.

“My name's Con Fargo,” he said pleasantly. “I'm goin' to be around here a long time. If,” he continued, “any of you had a hand in killin' my pardner, you can join your friends on the floor, or start ridin'. Soon or late, I'll find out who you were.”

He rode out to the Kilgore spread and took over. Twice, during the following week, he was shot at from ambush. The second sharpshooter failed to shoot sharp enough, or to move fast enough, having fired. Friends found him lying behind a rock with a bullet between his eyes.

Con Fargo rode alone. He had no friends, no intimates. In town they sold him what he needed, and once they tried to charge him twice what the supplies were worth. He paid the usual price, picked up his goods and left. Yet that very day he mailed a letter to some friends in Texas.

Then he found the dying man. Riding toward Massacre Rocks, he grinned wryly. After all, he had been a lawman, a badge toter. It was only natural that he try to find the killer of this man. Then, in a sense, it was his fight. Both had come into a country full of enemies.

Twice, after he reached the stage trail, Con slipped from the saddle to brush the snow from the road. Each time he found tracks of the buckboard, frozen solid. They headed right across the plain toward the black wall of Massacre Rocks.

A
MBUSH WAS EASY here. For twenty miles in any direction, there was only one way a man could get through the rock wall with a team: the gate at Massacre Rocks.

Fargo scouted it carefully and, finding no one, he rode on through. Here again he found wheel tracks. Then, fifty yards further, there were none. Backtracking, he noticed two strange circles under the thin snow. He walked over and kicked the snow from them. They were the iron tires from the buckboard. No doubt somewhere near would be the other two.

Soon he found a charred and partly burned wheel hub, and then he kicked the snow from a piece of what had been a seat. The cushion covered with an old, mostly burned wolf hide. Carrying the hub and the seat to the rocks he concealed them in a place where there was no snow to leave a mark.

It had been muddy and the murdered man had fallen. There should be marks in the red clay. Studying the situation, Con chose the most likely spot for the drygulcher to hide, and from that and the remnants of the burned buckboard, he found the end of the tracks.

Nearby, after sweeping several square yards of snow, he found where the wounded man had leaped from the buckboard, then the spot where he had gone to his knees. It was all there, frozen into the earth by the fierce norther.

And there, where the ambushed man had fallen, were boot tracks! Con Fargo knelt quickly. This was what he had been looking for. With his hunting knife he dug carefully around each track, then lifted the circles of frozen earth from the ground. He concealed them in another hollow in the rocks.