Northwoods Nightmare (2 page)

McKern's Sharps, Fargo reckoned, and he smiled. A heavy-caliber Sharps could drop most anything in its tracks. No doubt the bear was dead.

A roar proved him wrong.

That might mean McKern was down, too. Fargo hoped not. The old man was the one of two people in that bunch he counted on.

Fargo swept around a bend and then around another and came on a scene straight from every guide's worst nightmare.

The bear must have torn into them before they realized it was there. Three horses were down, whinnying and thrashing and kicking, one with blood spurting from a clawed throat. Their riders were down, too, and two weren't moving. The third was McKern. The old man was pinned under his animal and struggling to pull his leg free.

Fury flooded through Fargo. He wished now he had shot the damn bear the moment he saw it. There it was, in a wild melee of men and horses, tearing into the rest of the party like a wolverine gone berserk. He snapped the Henry's stock to his shoulder, but a plunging horse filled his sights and he jerked the rifle down again.

A woman wailed in terror.

Angeline Havard was desperately trying to rein her mare out of the bear's path but the petrified mare was slow to respond and paid a fearful cost for its fright.

Roaring in bestial bloodlust, the black bear raked the mare from shoulder to belly, its claws shredding hide and flesh and ripping wide. The mare whinnied and frantically sought to escape.

In a bound the bear had its jaws clamped on the mare's neck.

Angeline screamed. She pushed against her saddle to throw herself clear but the mare stumbled and went down. Her yellow hair flying, Angeline pitched hard to the ground. But she was up on her hands and knees in a twinkling.

The black bear saw her. It let go of the mare's throat and started to clamber over the mare to get at Angeline.

Fargo flew past McKern. The old man hollered something about “blowing out that damn varmint's wick.” Fargo didn't catch all of it. He raised the Henry and took aim as best he could with the Ovaro moving under him. He fixed a bead on the back of the black bear's head. Not an ideal shot, given how thick bear skulls were, but he must divert its attention from Angeline.

The bear's maw gaped wide and it went to leap on the helpless girl.

Fargo fired, worked the lever, fired again.

With a roar of pain, the bear spun and hurtled toward him.

Fargo hauled on the reins and brought the stallion to a slewing stop. He fired a third and a fourth time.

The bear didn't slow.

Quickly, Fargo took better aim. He had a front-on shot. He might be able to hit a lung or the heart but the slug had to go through a lot of muscle and fat. He fired at its eyes, instead.

The Henry held fifteen rounds. He had already squeezed off six; now he squeezed off two more.

The bear became an ursine blur of fangs, claws, and hair.

Fargo banged off another shot.

Slowing, the bear shook its head, as a man might at the stings of a bee. Suddenly it reared onto its hind legs and kept coming.

Which suited Fargo just fine; he had the heart and lung shots he wanted. He fired, fired, fired, the Henry kicking with every blast.

Behind him McKern's Sharps thundered.

The Ovaro, superbly trained, stayed perfectly still. Its eyes were wide and its nostrils were flaring but it didn't bolt.

Fargo had lost count of his shots but he knew he only had one or two left. Another moment, and the bear would be on him. Its eyes were dark pits of animal hate.

That was when Rohan ran up. Rohan, filthy as sin, filthy clothes and filthy skin, with the fancy English shotgun he told everyone he won in a poker game. Rohan, the man in charge of the packhorses. He pointed his shotgun at the black bear's head and blew the top of the bear's skull off.

For a few seconds the bear stayed erect. That was how long it took the body to react to the fact it no longer had a brain. The bear keeled over, hitting the ground with a thud, gore oozing from the cavity in its cranium.

Rohan puffed on the wisps of smoke rising from the muzzle of his shotgun, and chortled. “Did you see that? This baby of mine would drop an elephant.”

“Seen a lot of elephants, have you?” Fargo had seen one once, with a traveling circus. The thing nearly killed him.

“No. But I ain't ignorant. I know what elephants are.”

Fargo had forgotten how prickly the man could be. “Don't get your dander up. You did just fine.”

“I'd have been here sooner but some of the packhorses tried to run off, and I figured saving our food and our bullets was more important than saving any of you.”

“Don't let the man who hired us hear you say that.”

“Hear him say what?” Theodore Havard demanded, striding up with his spare frame rigid and his shoulders thrown back, as was his habit. He had the air of a man who owned the world. In reality, he owned most of San Francisco.

“We were talking about that,” Fargo said with a nod at the dead black bear. “Where were you in all the commotion?”

“My horse threw me and ran off. It's fortunate I wasn't trampled or didn't break a bone.”

“Two of the men were mauled.”

“They are? I didn't notice.”

The rest were gathering. There was Edith Havard, Theodore's shrewish wife. There was Allen, twenty-five and unmarried. Shapely Angeline, younger by four years, brushing grass from her dress.

As for the hirelings, besides Fargo and McKern and Rohan, there were eight others. Or six, if the two prone figures and the spreading pools of blood under them were any indication.

McKern came up, reloading his Sharps. “I have half a mind to shoot this damn critter again. It killed my horse, and I had that animal going on six years now.”

“That a shame,” Rohan said. “A good horse is special. Hell, any horse is better than people.”

“Better how?” McKern responded.

“I'd rather sleep with a horse than a person any day.”

McKern took a step back. “Has anyone ever told you that you're a mite weird?”

Of all of them, Allen Havard was the least flustered. He sat his expensive saddle, immaculate in a riding outfit that cost more than most men earned in a year, and sniffed in distaste. “Are you two buffoons done?”

“Sorry, Mr. Havard,” McKern said.

Allen smirked at his father. “I knew it would come to this. I just knew it. I told you, didn't I, before we ever left home.”

“Don't start, boy,” Theodore said sternly.

“I'm a
man
, Father, and I'll thank you to treat me like one.”

“Must we bicker like this in public?” Edith asked.

Rohan drew a hunting knife and hunkered next to the black bear. He pried its mouth open and began to dig at the gums.

“My word!” Edith exclaimed. “What in heaven's name do you think you're doing?”

“This critter doesn't need its teeth anymore. I aim to make them into a right smart necklace.”

Allen Havard uttered a sharp bark that passed for a laugh. “You should have listened to me, Father. I just hope to God this isn't an omen. If it is, we're all doomed.”

Born in New Jersey, Theodore Havard spent every moment he could at the shore. He loved the sea. At fourteen he hired on as a cabin boy and sailed the world, working his way up the nautical chain until he was a captain of his own ship, which happened to dock in San Francisco. He saw that the once-sleepy little Spanish settlement was destined for great things, and as San Francisco grew, so did his shipping concerns. He became the king of San Francisco shipping. Wisely, he invested a large portion of his profits in real estate, doubling and tripling his wealth. Now it could truly be said that Theodore Havard had everything.

It included a wife who was ten years older. Edith had been working as a clerk in a waterfront store when Theodore set eyes on her and decided she was the woman for him. No one could figure out exactly what he saw in her. She was plain, for one thing, and constantly carped, for another. To be fair, she carped about everything, and not just him.

They had three children.

Allen, the dandy, loved fine clothes and fine food and fine entertainment. He saw himself as urbane and the rest of humanity as clods. That his father made him work for his money annoyed him considerably. Allen regarded work as beneath him.

Angeline was the youngest. If her parents weren't surprised that they gave birth to such a beauty, everyone else was. Angeline was stunning. Her golden hair shimmered as if it were the sun. Her complexion was flawless, her eyes a bright emerald green. Then there was her hourglass body. Fargo had admired that body often. He admired it nearly every time he glanced at her on the long journey north.

Kenneth Havard was the oldest, and the one Fargo had yet to meet. Kenneth was, by all accounts, sober and hardworking. As his father before him had gone off to see the world and make something of himself, Kenneth decided to do the same. But where his father loved the sea, Kenneth liked his feet on solid ground. When he heard of the Fraser Canyon gold rush in the British colony of British Columbia, he did as thousands of Americans had done, and hastened north to make his fortune.

Amazingly, Kenneth found gold. Most did not. Most dug and panned hour after hour and day after day and ended up with nothing but calluses and disappointment.

Kenneth survived the so-called Fraser Canyon War, and when many of the disappointed greedy later left, he stayed on to work his claim. A dutiful son, he wrote regular letters home. His mother begged him to pay them a visit but he pleaded he couldn't take the time.

Four months ago the letters had stopped.

Theodore Havard sent an inquiry to the British authorities to find out why. The reply—that their son had gone missing—shocked Theordore and Edith so much, they decided to travel to British Columbia and investigate. They needed a guide. British Columbia was sparsely populated, Fraser Canyon remote. To get there they had to pass through untamed and largely unexplored country. They needed someone who knew the wilds and wildlife and wild men, white and red, who would as soon slit a traveler's throat as talk to him.

As fate would have it, Fargo happened to be in San Francisco playing poker, wetting his throat with whiskey, and being as friendly as he could be to doves who caught his eye. Luck, ever a fickle mistress, drained his poke. So when Havard's man Cosmo sought him out and offered him the job and after some dickering offered to pay him three times what he would normally make as a guide, Fargo accepted.

Fargo didn't know what to make of Cosmo. Edith referred to him as their butler but Cosmo was much more. He dressed Theodore. He shaved Theodore. He fed Theodore. He ran errands and handled business matters. He was more like a wife than a butler, and more like a wife than Edith. Perhaps that explained why they couldn't stand each other.

The expedition, as Allen liked to call it, numbered seventeen, counting Fargo and the Havards and Cosmo, but now, thanks to the black bear that thought it was a grizzly, they were down to fifteen.

McKern had been everywhere and done everything. He was a good shot with that Sharps of his. He was fond of liquor and cards. Of all of them, Fargo liked McKern the most.

Rohan loved horses. They were all he cared about. He never went anywhere without his shotgun. And he never, ever took a bath.

Of the others, there was one Fargo didn't like. His name was Strath. He had a ferret face and ferret eyes and wore two knives, one on either hip. He wore a cap and seaman's garb and supposedly had worked as a crewman on several ships. He knew nothing about British Columbia and less about the wilds, and why Cosmo hired him, Fargo couldn't say. But something about the man made the skin on his back prickle whenever Strath was standing behind him.

So here they were, well on their way, and well north of the border. After Cosmo spoke a few words over the two dirt mounds about souls and eternity, they resumed their long trek.

Fargo was in the lead, the rest trailing after him in single file. They had only gone a short way when hooves thudded and Angeline came up next to him, her golden tresses cascading over her shoulders, a warm smile on her luscious lips.

“That was awful brave of you back there.”

“What was?” Fargo couldn't think of anything particularly courageous he had done. He was only doing what he was hired to do.

“That way you charged that bear. My heart was in my throat.”

“I didn't know you cared.”

Angeline blushed and looked away and then looked back again. “It's just that we can't afford to have anything happen to you. Cosmo says you are—what was the word he used? Oh, yes. Indispensable.”

“Cosmo said that?”

“I heard him with my own ears. He has heard a lot about you from somewhere. He says you are one of the best scouts alive, and that Father was fortunate to hire you.”

“Well, now.”

“Frankly, I'm glad you're along. You're one of the few I can talk to. Mr. Rohan stinks to high heaven. Mr. Strath is always undressing me with his eyes. The rest are too nervous around a woman. Except for Mr. McKern. He's a dear. Did you know he has six children and fourteen grandchildren? His wife passed on last year, the poor man.”

Fargo let her prattle. Strath wasn't the only one who liked to undress her with his eyes, and she had a nice voice, besides.

“Can I ask you something?” Angeline said.

“I've lost count.”

“What?”

“You were about to ask me how many women I've slept with,” Fargo said with a grin. “I've lost count.”