Lonigan (Ss) (1988) Page 6

  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.

  For 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. “Well 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. Fa
rgo’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.

  Ambush 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.

  He mounted again and taking a cutoff through the mountains, rode into Sulphur Springs.

  From there he sent two messages, then strolled over to the livery stable. While he watered the mustang, he talked idly with the graybeard who worked around. “Got ary a buckboard for hire?” he asked.

  “Yep! Only one, though. Young feller come in here few days ago and borrowed one.

  Hired her for a week. Pair of grays. Had some business over to Black Rock, I reckon.

  Somethin’ about a ranch.”

  “Didn’t say who he was, did he?”

  “Nope. Wasn’t very talkin’. Yank, by the sound of him. But he could handle them horses!

  Had him an old-time gun. One of them Patersons like the Rangers used years ago.”

  Chapter 2 Saloon Brawl.

  A raw, cold wind blew over the desert when he rode down the mountains and skirted the wastelands, heading home. Th was a light in his windows when he neared the cabin.

  Slipp from his horse, he crept across to the nearest window. What saw inside brought a slow grin to his lips.

  When his mustang was stabled he went up and pushed door open.

  “Howdy!” he said, grinning. “How’s Texas?”

  Two men sprang to their feet, then seeing his face, he began to grin.

  “Con! By all that’s holy! Glad to see you, boss!”

  Bernie Quill, a slim youngster with a reckless face and b’ eyes, shoved the plate of ham and eggs at Fargo.

  “Set, and give us the lowdown. We come up here for a fig Now don’t tell us you’ve wound it all up!”

  Briefly, he explained. Jose Morales rolled a cigarette a listened carefully.

  “Then, senor,” he said at last, “we do not know who fight?”

  “That’s about it,” Fargo agreed. “Tex cashed in before I talked to him. Who killed him, I don’t know. Putney and Gon were probably in the gang, but they are dead. Still, I got some ideas.

  “This place is in a notch of mountain, and Kilgore r control of twenty thousand acres of good grazing land north the mountains. The Bar M and Lazy S control almost eve thing south of the mountains except the townsite of Bh Rock.

  “Tex come in here and found the pass that leads through the mountains from Black Rock.

  Those mountains look like a goat couldn’t cross, but there’s this one pass.

  So moved in and took all the land north of the mountains over the Springer Hills.

  The joke on the Lazy S and Bar M was that most of the rain falls north of the mountains.

  “The Bar M is owned by an eastern syndicate, but all they ask is returns. The Lazy S is owned by Springer Bob Wakeman, old-timer, who made his and went back east to live. The Bar M is managed by Art Brenner, the Lazy S by Butch Mogelo.”

  “Butch Mogelo?” Quill’s eyes narrowed. “Is he the hombre that killed Bill Priest down in Uvalde?”

  “Same one,” Fargo agreed. “Art Brenner is a big, handsome fellow, and from all I can figure out, a pretty smooth operator. I couldn’t tie Putney or Gomez to either of them.”

  Yet the mention of Bob Wakeman’s name started some pulse of memory throbbing. Something that wouldn’t quite boil up into his consciousness was working in his mind. Springer Bob had been a friend of Fargo’s back in the old trail-herding days. Once they had fought Comanches together down in the Nation. Con had been a boy of seventeen then, but doing a mans work. And had been for nearly four years.

  Con got up when his supper was finished. “Morales, you come along with me.” He glanced at Quill, grinning. “You stick around. And don’t look so durned sour! You got as good a chance of having trouble as we do! I’m expectin’ somebody to show up here.

  So keep your eyes open.”

  Two hours later Con Fargo walked up on the porch of the hotel and glanced around.

  The town was quiet enough. Jose Morales, per instructions, was tying his horse to the hitching rail down the street. They had come to town as strangers to each other.

  Fargo stepped inside, just in time to hear laughter and then a polite, smooth voice.

  “Yes, of course, Miss Wakeman,” the voice said. “Tomorrow would be a good day to see the ranch-if it clears up a little. With all this snow, you know-” the words trailed off as he saw Con.

  It was Art Brenner, but Con Fargo was not looking at him. He was looking past the tall foreman of the Bar M at the girl. And she was looking at him.

  She was tall, with a graceful figure and a pretty mouth, a mouth losing its laughter now under his intent gaze. There was something hauntingly familiar in that face. Something he could not place—

  Of course! It was the resemblance to her father!

  “Howdy, Brenner,” he said, ignoring the big man’s coldness. “Did I hear you address the lady as Miss Wakeman?”

  “That’s right. ” Brenner’s voice was crisp and sharp. “Now that you’ve learned that, you can move a
long. Miss Wakeman has no desire to meet killers and gunmen!”

  “Oh, but I do!” she protested suddenly. “I want to meet everyone out here! And haven’t you already said it was necessary to have gunmen working for you and for us?”

  Brenner’s face reddened and Con stifled a chuckle as he stepped forward.

  “Since Mr. Brenner doesn’t want to introduce me, Miss Wakeman,” he said gently, his eyes smiling, “my name is Con Fargo.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why, of course! I remember. You’re in the big picture Daddy had over his desk! The picture of one of his cattle drives. Your name was on it. But I’d never have recognized you now. “

  “I’ve changed some. Maybe it’s getting older that matters.” He could see the cool, quick appraisal in the girl’s eyes, and something told him this girl was no fainting or helpless miss. She was, something told him, a daughter of her father.

  “It will be nice having an old friend of Dad’s near us,” she said sincerely.

  “Fargo’s scarcely a friend,” Brenner interrupted. His eyes were cold. “He’s the one who settled on that land I told you we’d need. The land your father wanted so badly!”

  “Oh, he is? But Mr. Brenner, I don’t remember him ever saying anything about it!”

  Brenner smiled easily. “Well, he probably didn’t talk business with a young girl.

  He told us.”

  Con sensed instantly that Brenner had said the wrong thing. Audrey Wakeman, he recalled her name now, was not the kind of a girl who liked being considered helpless.

  “The land we settled on was considered inaccessible until we settled there,” Fargo said quietly. “Your father would have had no trouble with us.”

  “You said we?” Audrey said quickly. “Your wife?”

  “My partner, Tex Kilgore. I’m not married.” Then he said quietly, “Nor do I have a partner now. He was besieged in his cabin and murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Kilgore took land he had no right to!” Brenner protested sharply. “He was no better than an outlaw!”

  “He took land as it has always been taken in the West,” Fargo said bluntly. “Tex Kilgore has a record that will stand beside any man’s. Beside yours, Brenner! He was an honest man and fought the cause of the law wherever it went.”