New Mexico Madman (9781101612644) (16 page)

Senora Armijo came out from the kitchen carrying a huge serving tray. She began to set out steaming bowls of tamales and
menudo
.

“Francisco!” Booger called out. “C'mere a minute.”

The station master crossed reluctantly to the table. He started a smile and then abandoned the effort, trapped by Fargo's and Booger's stares. “Yes?”

“Is there something you need to tell us?” Fargo said mildly.

Clearly Armijo was gnawing himself inside over something. “
Nada
, senor,” he replied, his face sweating profusely.

Booger ripped the corn husk off a tamale. He was about to pop the entire thing into his mouth when Fargo suddenly slapped it out of his hand.

“H'ar now, you little runt! How'd you like to wear your ass for a hat?”

Fargo stared at Margarita, who was on the verge of tears. “The food is poisoned, isn't it?”

She nodded, and now the tears did come like a dam bursting. At this intelligence, every face at the table went a few shades paler.

“Only your food and Booger's has been poisoned, Senor Fargo,” Armijo confessed, his face crumpling into a mask of abject misery. “With hemlock. God forgive me!”

“Settle down and have a seat,” Fargo said. “Some gringo came here with the poison, right? Told you he'd kill your family if you didn't cooperate?”

“
Preciso
. This is the truth,
lo
juro
—I swear it! He said
mis
hijos
would be killed if I did not do this thing. We are
Mexicanos
, Senor Fargo—the gringo law does not protect us. And out here,
pues
, there
is
no law.”

Fargo nodded. “You did it out of fear for your family. I'd likely do the same thing in your place. You have my word, Francisco—no one is going to hurt your boys. Now tell me—did you know the man?”

Armijo shook his head. “Never did I see him before. He was a man perhaps your age wearing fine clothing. His head was—
como se dice?—
with little hair.”

“Bald?”

“Yes, this. A face a man quickly forgets.”

“It doesn't matter—they're all one. Margarita, I'm famished—are you
sure
only these two plates are poisoned?”

“
Claro.
Pick any plate and I will eat from it.”

“I believe you. Toss this stuff and knock us up some safe grub, wouldja? The rest of you go ahead and eat.”

“Senor Fargo,” Armijo said, producing a yellow telegram flimsy from his pocket. “This
telegrapho
was brought today by a messenger from the new
estacion
de
telegrafiar
at Cerrillos.”

“It's from Addison Steele in El Paso,” Fargo said, unfolding it and reading it aloud. “‘Have identified possible Lomax informer at this end. Judd Moates, Assistant Division Manager, was reported by Commerce Bank after depositing one thousand dollars. Moates has not confessed but cannot explain such a large sum of money. Other Overland employees may be compromised.'”

Fargo loosed a fluming sigh. “This might have been useful ten days ago when we were wondering if Lomax knew what stage Kathleen was taking. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse escapes.”

“Aye,” Booger said, staring toward Ashton. “And seeing's how Lomax knew which run she was on, nothing stopped him from placing a man on it.”

“Nothing at all,” Ashton agreed. “And it's clear both of you suspect me.”

“Let's just say we have an eye on you,” Fargo said. “And on everyone else.”

“Even me?” Trixie said.

Fargo grinned. “Even you, dear heart.”

Domingo was not a layover station. With a fresh relay they would travel on that night to Cochiti Lake, the last full station before Santa Fe, where they would spend the last night of this treacherous journey. All that remained, after Cochiti Lake, was a swing station at Burro Bluff.

But Fargo knew damn well—with tomorrow being the fateful deadline of June nineteenth—that the worst trouble in the world awaited them, and the longest miles still lay ahead.

16

Blood Mesa, a red rock table pockmarked with tiny caves, was located ten miles west of Santa Fe, its southern face only about two hundred yards from the Overland stage road. Eons of exposure to the harsh elements had darkened the rock to the exact shade of dried blood and earned it its name. Shortly after dark on the night of June eighteenth, Zack Lomax and his lackey Olney Lucas pitched a cold camp in the lee of the mesa's northern face.

“The horses are hid real good in a barranca close by,” Olney reported, returning to the fire. “You can't see them from the road.”

“Good,” Lomax said. “Build me a smoke.”

Lomax had not relaxed since their arrival. He rocked from his heels to his toes, too wrought up to remain still.

“We won't know until tomorrow what happened at Domingo,” he repeated yet again. “Did you have the impression this Armijo would do as ordered?”

“He seemed scared, all right, when I brought his kids into it. It bothers me, though, that he wouldn't accept any money.”

“Yes, damn it! You can't trust a man like that. But you know how these Mexicans are about their families.”

The wind had howled and roared since their arrival, buffeting them even in the lee of the mesa, and Lomax finally gave up trying to light his cigarette.

“At any rate,” he added, “Ridley is far more predictable. He'd gut his own grandmother for a plugged peso, and I'm certain he'll pass the word along at Cochiti Lake station.”

“Speaking of that, boss,” Olney put in, “it's too late for me to spill the beans to anybody. Can't you tell me who you hired to ride the coach?”

“Yes, I suppose there's no risk now. Have you ever heard of a man named Clement Majors?”

Olney loosed a sharp whistle. “You don't mean the assassin they call ‘the Undertaker'?”

“Oh, don't I? Have you ever known me to do things on the cheap?”

“I'm impressed, boss. They say he's killed more than forty men and eluded lawmen from the Rio to the Tetons. The newspapers claim he's as savage as a meat axe.”

“A meat axe? That's drawing it mild. Later tonight he should know the final plan.”

“He better be as good as he's painted because Fargo definitely is. I never thought he'd make it so far.”

“I'm not at all surprised at Fargo's success,” Lomax said. “He's obviously one of those men who can concentrate the purpose of a group.”

Lomax began pacing around the fire. “Actually, that's one trait Fargo and I share in common. There's at least one more: We've both spent so much time alone that we don't think like the majority. That makes the bastard totally unpredictable.”

Lomax was silent for a full minute, anger roiling his guts as memory flexed a muscle and again put him back in San Francisco, one year ago, when all his ambitions for controlling California had suffered a miscarriage—all because of a haughty, stuck-up bitch who acted like her shit didn't stink.

“I'm going to balance the ledger, Olney, do you see that?” he demanded, his voice tightening an octave in his resentment. “One year tomorrow, and in all this time since that day I've had nothing else on my mind. She thought she was turning a bull into a steer, but she thought wrong. Tomorrow I'm going to gut that bitch—I'll carve her goddamn stone heart out of her chest and preserve it in brine!”

It irritated Olney when a man poured out his guts like this without shame. It was a sign of Lomax's obsession and insanity, this need to plough old ground over and over like the mindless repetition of a parrot. He considered Lomax a crazy, pigheaded son of a bitch and didn't care a rat's ass about his vendetta against some high-toned actress.

However, two hundred dollars a month, when most men were lucky to earn thirty, kept him loyal. But good salary or no, if the Undertaker didn't take control from Fargo by the time that Concord reached Blood Mesa late tomorrow, Olney was lighting a shuck out of the territory.

Lomax finally settled down on a rock in front of the fire. “It's like this Olney—a man with a mortal grudge has only two choices: either end it or mend it. And as of tonight, it's past mending.”

* * *

Fargo knew the fat was in the fire now, and he was taking no chances.

Although bone weary, he and Booger sacrificed any sleep that night. Both remained on sentry duty, one walking the grounds of Cochiti station while the other sat outside of the room where Kathleen and Trixie slept. Several times Fargo engaged the station master, Ridley Spencer, in conversation, trying to get a read on him. But the man had a face like a wooden Indian and was too taciturn—or wary—to draw out.

Fargo had ordered all the passengers to take no food or drink except from the pump outside. Ashton, Malachi and the preacher, beat out from their wild ride, had all curled up in blankets on pallets in the center of the main room. It troubled him that he couldn't keep a constant eye on them, but each time he checked, all three appeared to be enjoying the sleep of the just.

“Well, catfish,” Booger said when he joined Fargo just after sunrise, “quiet all damn night. That's bad medicine. 'Pears to me Lomax and his shit-jobbers plan to brace us on the last stage. And it's perfect country for killers.”

Fargo nodded, rising from his chair to stretch the kinks from his back. “The way you say. Lomax ain't about to show the white feather now—not after all he's put into this deal.”

“We ain't the only ones didn't sleep last night,” Booger said, nodding toward the door behind Fargo. “I heard sheets rustling in there, and don't seem likely it was Trixie. Her Nibs is scairt.”

“She's scared in her flesh but stout in her spirit. But it's not just her that needs to fret. Won't any of us be able to rest easy until Lomax is planted in the bone orchard.”

Booger scowled. “I'd lay odds there's at least one that ain't scairt. And damn your eyes, Fargo, you lanky yack! You know I am fond to foolishness of my eating 'baccy, and none to be had. Now you starve me of victuals. I say let's eat Feldman—the little piss squirt is useless and he'd make a crackerjack pot roast.”

Fargo grinned. “Take too long to cook him. Roust everybody out and let's raise dust. There's trouble ahead and I'm keen for sport.”

“Aye, today you'll get my life over, eh? It's been your wish all along, you treacherous, evil son of a bitch. Well, at least old Booger got to see Her Nibs naked.”

The swift wagon, running behind a fresh team of Cleveland bays, pulled out a half hour later. Fargo again rode roving point on the Ovaro, roaming out ahead to scout for trouble but staying within sight of the coach. The terrain now was rugged and dangerous, the Overland route winding into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east, a major southern range of the Rockies. Pine trees grew in thick clusters, excellent nests for snipers.

Toward midmorning he looped back to ride alongside the Concord. “How long before we hit the swing station at Burro Bluff?” he asked Booger.

“Two hours.” Booger tried to spit on him, but without the weight of tobacco juice the wind blew it back onto his shirt. Booger cursed. “Damn you to hell, Fargo! No whiskey, no 'baccy, no eats—I oughter pound you to paste!”

“Old son, you hold a grudge until it hollers ‘mama.'”

Every time Fargo returned to the coach, he could feel the weight of Lansford Ashton's stare like a hand on his neck. The rest of the passengers seemed to be dazed, the cumulative result of a long, grueling stagecoach trip, gnawing hunger, and their near-death experience yesterday.

Again Fargo spurted ahead, tempting any shooters and fully aware that Russ Alcott and his partner were both expert marksmen. As the hours passed, however, without any eruption of violence, his apprehension increased. They could easily have opened up by now, and the fact that they hadn't hinted ominously of some major change in tactics. Fargo preferred the devil he knew over the one he didn't.

They reached Burro Bluff without incident. There had been no attacks on the horses here, further convincing Fargo that some new travail awaited them. Booger had hitched his thoughts to the same post.

“Christ on a crutch!” he groused as the swingman harnessed the new relay. “How's come they're waiting so damn long?”

Fargo shrugged one shoulder, eyes scanning the timbered slopes above the station. “It's always possible we wore 'em down. Maybe Lomax figured that poison would do for us back at Domingo.”

“You're talkin' out the back of your neck,” Booger scoffed. “We got hard ground ahead.”

“I expect so,” Fargo agreed. “As I recall, the stretch known as the Narrows is about an hour ahead of us.”

Booger nodded, his face grim. That five-mile stretch of trail, called
Los
Estrechos
by the Mexican locals, was a favorite lure to road agents of every stripe. It was a series of long, serpentine cut banks through solid granite bluffs—cut banks formed by eons of drainage from the cordillera of nearby mountains.

“Aye, the Narrows. A God-forgotten stretch where hell has been turned inside out. Once into it, catfish, there's no escape routes in any direction, not even on foot. And the mouse that has but one hole is quickly taken. With killers laying for us, I'd as lief smell a sheepherder's socks as ride the Narrows.”

“All right, folks!” Fargo called to the passengers. “Pile in. We got to git.”

“We're close now, right, Skye?” Trixie asked in a plaintive voice.

“Mighty close. The next stop is Santa Fe right around sunset.”

“Thank the Lord!” she said, her tone buoyant now. “There's been no trouble so far today.”

When Fargo met Kathleen's eyes, however, he saw that her thoughts matched his: it was too damn soon to tack up bunting. As Booger started to heave his bulk onto the box, Fargo stepped in close and put a hand on his shoulder. He lowered his voice.

“If anybody inside that coach is going to make some kind of a play,” he told his friend, “he has to do it quick now. I'm staying beside the coach until we hit the Narrows. Booger, it's up and on the line now for both of us. We couldn't see what those passengers were doing every minute back at Cochiti. I don't trust that station master, either. There's a damn good chance he relayed some kind of plan to one of them. We have to be ready for any damn thing.”

Booger nodded solemnly. “We have to watch for a pincers, that's the gait. A move from within the coach just as a shitstorm starts from outside. Catfish, if we are on the cusp of death, won't you at least ask Trixie if I might see her naked?
Our
asses are hanging in the wind, why shouldn't hers?”

Fargo burst out laughing. “You do measure corn by your own bushel, don't you? Never mind the foofaraw. We make it to Santa Fe, I promise you can screw yourself into a slight limp and I'll post the pony for it.”

“So? If I sacrifice the meat you'll buy me the mustard, hey? It's the bastards with pretty teeth I must watch for—they piss down my back and swear it's only raining.”

Still complaining bitterly, Booger climbed onto the box and cracked his whip, setting the team in motion. Fargo forked leather and rode alongside the coach.

Again Ashton met his eyes. “Getting a bit nervous, Fargo?”

Fargo's hard blue stare finally made Ashton avert his gaze.

“Nothing a quick, clean kill won't take care of, Mr. Ashton,” he finally replied.