Hangtown Hellcat (7 page)

5

On the second morning after the attack on Big Ed’s crew, just after sunrise, Buckshot built a fire with deadwood that gave off little smoke. From long habit he made the campfire Indian style by burning the logs from the ends, not the middle, to avoid wasting wood.

Fargo boiled a handful of coffee beans in his battered, blue enameled pot while Buckshot took charge of the trout Fargo had impaled the evening before. He gutted the fish on a flat rock, wrapped it in leaves, and tossed it into the hot ashes to bake.

“Christ, Fargo,” Buckshot complained, “this damn coffee is too thick to swallow and too thin to chew.”

“It’s better than that river bottom poison you brew,” Fargo retorted. “If it’s so bad, how’s come you’ve had two cups?”

“One cup gives me a bellyache. Two moves my bowels.”

They finished eating and Fargo spilled the dregs of his coffee into the grass before rinsing his mess kit in the creek.

“Let’s tack up and grab leather,” he said. “With luck I’ll get you killed today.”

Fargo loosened the tether and let the Ovaro buck for a minute to shake out the night kinks before he tossed on the blanket, pad, and saddle and cinched the girth. Then he secured his bedroll under the cantle straps. The morning was cool and breezy, perfect riding weather. They picked up the lone rider’s trail and resumed their southward trek.

“There’s one thing stumps me,” Buckshot remarked after they had ridden a few miles. “Why did these puke pails bother to attack the work crew? All they got to do is pick any stretch of the line to the east of here and pull it down.”

“They’ll likely do that, but it’s only temporary. Western
Union hired repair crews for every sector. Our sewer rats were hoping to stop the project or at least delay it for a good spell by scaring off the workers. Don’t forget, we ran ’em off before they could kill a bunch more of the men.”

Buckshot nodded. “All that shines. Happens you’re right, there’s a good chance they’ll attack the crew again.”

“It’s our job to prevent that,” Fargo said. “I ain’t making this ride for my health.”

By midmorning they had topped a low rise and Fargo reined in. “Here’s where the three riders joined back up,” he announced, swinging down out of the saddle and tossing the reins forward to hold the Ovaro.

Buckshot joined him and the two men squatted on their heels, studying the ground carefully.

“Our man got here first,” Fargo said. “It must be their regular rendezvous point—you can see he waited for the two flank riders. His horse moved around grazing, and the grass in some of those prints has sprung up higher. The other two got here a couple hours later, both about the same time.”

Buckshot used the toe of his boot to break open some horse dung. “Almost dry—they were well ahead of us. Well, we knowed that, but look here, Skye—these horses is being grained. Grain ain’t all that easy to come by out here.”

Fargo nodded. “You mighta been right, old son. Looks to me like maybe they got a well-supplied hideout somewhere. If that’s so, these three aren’t likely the whole shooting match.”

Fargo took his army field glasses from a saddle pocket and clambered to the top of a nearby rock cairn. He studied each section of the terrain long and hard.

“It’s a poser,” he finally said, lowering the glasses and climbing down. “The terrain south of here is mostly flat and open. I don’t see any canyons, no thick patches of trees, no places for caves even. Maybe you were right and they’re all the way down on Bitter Creek.”

Now that the trail was again easy to follow, they thumped their mounts up to a long trot. Now and then Fargo again searched the land out ahead with his binoculars.

They rode through occasional meadows bright with blue columbine and white Queen Anne’s lace.

“Pretty country,” Buckshot remarked. “Makes a man wish he could paint it or write poems about it. That bumpologist down in El Paso? He said that I’m a sensitive son of a bitch.”

Buckshot pinched his nostrils and blew out two thick streamers of snot. Most of it smeared his shirt, and Fargo shook his head in disgust.

They made good time as the sun rose straight overhead at midday, heating up. His grulla still in motion, Buckshot took the reins in his teeth, shifted his weight, threw a leg around the saddle horn and built himself a cigarette.

“I’m pure-dee bumfoozled about another thing, Skye,” he said. “Happens these yellow curs
are
alla way down on Bitter Creek, why would they join up agin where they did? Hell, it’s another full day’s ride. Why not stay split up until they was closer?”

Fargo had already begun rolling that question around in his mind. “That’s one nut I haven’t cracked yet.”

“Well,
both
mine is cracked. We been pounding our saddles straight for hours now. Let’s spell and water the horses—I gotta drain my snake.”

They drew rein in the shade of a leathery-leaved cottonwood. Fargo drank from his canteen before watering the Ovaro from his hat. Then he climbed up into the rough-barked cottonwood and took another squint through his army-issue field glasses.

“Pay dirt, Buckshot,” he announced triumphantly. “I just spotted a man peeking out from some bushes. A little over a mile ahead of us.”

“’Bout damn time. Just one?”

“Hang on…no, there’s at least two showing.”

“They look like owlhoots?”

“I’d say of the deserter variety,” Fargo replied. “They’re both wearing parts of army uniforms. Say! There’s a third. It’s priddy clear they’re sentries, but what the hell are they guarding? There’s no buildings, no camp, just a long line of brush.”

“Mebbe a dugout?” Buckshot suggested.

“Could be, I reckon. Maybe hidden behind the brush. It
would have to be mighty damn big because I can’t see any horses either.”

“Can they spot our horses, you think?”

“No,” Fargo said, still staring intently through the glasses. “There’s knolls and little stands of pine between us and them.”

“So what do we do? Sit and play a harp?”

“Right now we’re neither up the well nor down. It’s no use to ride closer after dark—we need to see what we’re up against. I think we can get in a lot closer if we use the natural cover.”

Fargo climbed down and both men quickly checked their weapons.

“We’ll have to leapfrog one at a time in single file,” Fargo said, swinging up onto the hurricane deck. “I’ll go first and you ride in my tracks. You know how to cover and conceal, hoss. Do your best work—the cover is thin. We might have to dismount and lead our horses.”

It was slow going, Fargo giving the Ovaro his head and letting him walk. With long years of hard survival savvy to guide him, the Trailsman used every possible terrain feature to his advantage. Hills, hummocks, trees, knolls, swales—with an unerring eye for reading his environment he advanced as close as he dared. For the last few hundred yards he dismounted to lower his profile, leading the Ovaro by the bridle reins.

A brush-covered ridge offered the last possible cover and he halted, waiting for Buckshot to catch up. Fargo was close enough now to easily make out the faces of the bored sentries. Now he counted at least four.

“We’re paring the cheese might close to the rind,” Buckshot greeted him, peering out past Fargo. “Say! You’re right—where the hell’s their horses?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Them’s snowbirds, all right,” Buckshot said. “I can see at least two Spencers. So what’s your big idea now?”

“The cat sits by the gopher hole and waits. We best tie off our horses. If we watch long enough we might get a better idea how many there are and why they’re standing guard in the middle of nowhere.”

They tied their reins to weak branches—otherwise, if the horses were spooked and bolted, breaking the reins, the two men would be in a world of hurt trying to control their mounts.

“This shit’s for the birds,” Buckshot carped. “We’re so close that if one of our horses whickers them bastards will be right on us.”

“Give over with the calamity howling. The way you take on, we might’s well shoot ourselves in the head.”

Buckshot patted the butt of his double-ten. “Sit by the gopher hole, my lily-white ass. I say we attack. You’re the one likes to lance the boils. Take the bull by the horns, says Fargo. Straight ahead and keep up the strut, says Fargo. Between the two of us we got enough lead to sink a steamboat.”

“First of all, we got no proof any of these jaspers attacked the work crew. Even if they did, we need to know where the hive is,” Fargo insisted. “What if there is a dugout somewhere behind that line of brush? We got to know how deep the water is before we just dive in headfirst.”

“Mebbe so,” Buckshot conceded without enthusiasm. His favorite tactic was the hell-bent for leather charge.

For the next half hour the two hidden men watched carefully while buffalo gnats swarmed their faces. Then—“Riders coming in from the east,” Fargo reported. “Maybe this is just an outpost.”

He watched the rider, a Mexican astride a blood bay gelding, lope closer, expecting him to dismount and take a report from the sentries.

Instead, both men felt their jaws slack open when, without breaking stride, the rider simply disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him whole!

*   *   *

For several stunned heartbeats the two frontiersmen stared at each other, saying nothing.

“I baked that fish with what I
thought
was wild onion,” Buckshot finally said. “You think maybe I used peyote by mistake?”

“It was no peyote vision, old son. I see how it is now. Either that’s one hell of a big dugout or the beginning of a gulch hidden by all that tall brush. I’ve seen some in the
Black Hills and Snake River country like that—you prac’ly have to fall into them to know they’re there.”

“A gulch,” Buckshot repeated, rubbing his chin. “Might be. You’d hafta be a bird to spot it.”

“We need to somehow get a size-up of the place,” Fargo decided. “If the gang’s not too big, we’ll burn ’em down. If there’s too many—”

A sudden crashing and thrashing from the brush to their left made both men pivot toward the horses, crouching with rifles at the ready.

“Oh, hell,” Fargo muttered, “here comes a fandango.”

A black bear, full grown and weighing at least two hundred fifty pounds, had emerged into the open, aggressively woofing at this intrusion into its territory. Two things guaranteed to panic a horse instantly were fire and bears. Both horses reared up, neighing loudly, eyes rolling in fear until they showed all white.

They tugged their reins loose and bolted. Buckshot, a fast runner, tore after his cayuse, hoping to seize the reins. The Ovaro, who rarely deserted his master, ran off about fifty feet, waiting to see what the bear would do.

But Fargo realized the fat was in the fire. The shout had gone up from the sentries and already slugs were whiffing in atop the ridge as they advanced. Fargo cursed as he levered the Henry and returned fire from a standing offhand position.

A quick glance over his shoulder told him that Buckshot had failed to stop the cayuse. He was escaping to the east at a two-twenty clip. At least all the gunfire had sent the bear into hiding.

But as Fargo looked ahead again to resume firing, his heart sat out the next beat—mounted men were pouring out of the hidden gulch or whatever it was, more than he could count.

The enemy fire peppering his position was vicious and sustained. He felt a sharp tug as a slug passed through the folds of shirt under his left armpit. Bullets snapped past his ear with a sound like angry hornets, one of the slugs creasing his left cheek in a white-hot wire of pain. Fargo was forced to fall back, firing as he went, popping one of the snowbirds over.

But it was like trying to hold the ocean back with a broom, and the mounted attackers were pounding closer amid a thundering racket of fire. They expertly divided around both ends of the ridge to form a pincers.

Buckshot had joined him again, his face grim with the realization that they were about to be cut down. Trying to escape on the Ovaro would be useless—with two big riders, and the mounted attackers already riding a head of steam, they’d never get clear in time.

Fargo had learned long ago, in desperate situations just like this one, that a man had to keep his blood cool and his thinking clear. Like Buckshot, he had first learned wilderness survival at the side of the last generation of mountain men. And it was a mountain man tactic that flashed into his mind now.