Bayou Trackdown (19 page)

Namo called out that he was done so Fargo went in. He offered to bring a second bowl but the Cajun declined.

“It might make me sick. I need sleep more than anything. As it is, I can’t hold my head up.”

“Then don’t.” Fargo backed out. “If you need anything, anything at all, give a holler.”

“You will make some woman a fine husband one day.”

“Go to hell.”

Namo chuckled.

The storm was finally slackening. The lightning strikes were fewer and the boom of thunder less.

Fargo looked out the window. As best he could tell, by some miracle the pirogue was still tied to the landing. On an impulse he went to the door, removed the bar, and opened it. Drops wet his face. Wind fanned his cheeks. Everything was drenched—the ground, the thickets, the trees.

Silhouetted as he was in the doorway, Fargo only stood there a few seconds. Just long enough to scan the vicinity. Then he stepped back and started to close the door.

That was when he heard it, from out of the willows, the bleat of a small animal. A bleat he had heard on several occasions now. The bleat of a rabbit tied to a stake.

Fargo slammed the door and replaced the bar. It wouldn’t be long. He took to pacing until he noticed an axe in the corner. He placed it on the table. He added a butcher knife and a meat cleaver. Casting about for more weapons, his gaze alighted on the wood bin. Several of the logs were thin enough that they sparked an idea. He selected three, sat at the chair, and used the butcher knife to whittle. When he had three sharp points, he placed them next to the axe.

Was there anything else he could use? A lantern suggested an idea. He lit it and turned the wick low and placed the lantern in the middle of the table, not for the extra light but as a possible weapon.

There was nothing else, not unless Fargo counted table knives in a drawer, and a broom.

The cries of the rabbit seemed louder.

The rain had stopped and the wind had died.

Fargo went to the window. Remembering the Mad Indian’s bow, he was careful not to show himself. The night was still and silent save for the bait. He was about to turn away when another cry, from out of the dark heart of the swamp, caused his pulse to quicken.

The razorback had heard the rabbit.

It was on its way.

Fargo tried to swallow in a mouth gone suddenly dry. He crossed to the bedroom. Namo was sound asleep. Loathe to disturb him, Fargo closed the bedroom door. The cabin walls were thick enough that Namo should be safe. Not even the boar could break them down. Still, on second thought, Fargo left the door open a crack.

A squeal sounded uncomfortably near.

Fargo hefted the Sharps and moved to the window. It was the weak spot, the cabin’s Achilles heel. Would the razorback sense that? He backed up until he bumped against the table. It would be soon. He could feel it in his bones. He heard a cackle, and the loudest squeal yet.

The side of the cabin was struck a resounding blow. Dust particles gleamed, sifting slowly to the floor.

Fargo wedged the heavy Sharps to his shoulder and thumbed back the hammer. More blows thudded, each closer to the window than the last. The razorback squealed in baffled rage. It wanted in but Namo had built too well. The walls were too sturdy.

Suddenly its porcine face filled the window, its tusks curved like twin sabers. Its dark eyes glowed red.

Fargo knew it saw him. He fired and the glass pane dissolved in a shower of shards. Blood spurted, and in a twinkling the boar was gone, squealing and screeching.

Fargo fed in a new cartridge and set himself. “Don’t keep me waiting, you bastard.”

It didn’t.

With an ear-splitting squeal the razorback slammed into the window. What was left of the glass showered down and the frame buckled. Fargo fired, reloaded, raised the rifle to fire again.

The boar was stuck! Its head was wedged fast.

Fargo squeezed off another shot. He should have killed it; he had the thing dead to rights. But the razorback, in its wild thrashing, moved its head just as he fired and the slug intended for the creature’s brain-pan cored a shoulder instead. The razorback was beside itself. Wood cracked and splintered as the window gave way. But the opening still wasn’t wide enough. The razorback couldn’t get inside. Squealing in frustration, it bounded into the night.

Fargo girded for the next onslaught. He stayed focused on the window. That was the only reason he caught the blur of motion and sprang aside with a hair to spare. A feather shaft imbedded itself next to the fireplace, quivering.

The Mad Indian cackled.

Fargo had to remember he was up against two adversaries, not just one. He squatted, hoping the crazed warrior would show himself.

There was another thud. The front wall, this time. Twice more the razorback slammed into the cabin. And then the inevitable happened—the boar rammed into the door. The bar held but the jamb cracked. The beast struck the door again, nearly tearing it off its hinges.

The heavy bar held but it wouldn’t for long. Fargo trained the Sharps on the center of the door. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the window, too, and when a thin figure filled it, an arrow notched to a sinew string, he threw himself flat. The string twanged and the shaft whizzed over his head.

Simultaneously, the living engine of destruction attacked the door. Again the bar held but cracks appeared.

The Mad Indian sprang out of sight.

Fargo swung the Sharps from the door to the window and back again. Hooves drummed, and the door burst as the window had done, bits and slivers flying. Part of the bar flew past Fargo’s head. He took swift aim and fired.

The razorback was framed in the opening. At the shot, its dark eyes locked on Fargo and it hurtled toward him, squealing and tucking its chin to rake with its tusks. Fargo threw himself to the right and the boar pounded past. He inadvertently put his back to the window, and a chill rippled down his spine at a cackle from the Mad Indian.

Fargo didn’t look; he scrambled toward the table. An arrow with a discolored bone tip thunked into the floorboards inches from his arm.

Letting go of the Sharps, Fargo rolled, palming the Colt as he turned. The Mad Indian was at the window, nocking another arrow. Flat on his back, Fargo fanned off two swift shots and was rewarded with a yelp. The Mad Indian disappeared.

Across the room, the razorback had wheeled to come at him again but its hooves were finding slick purchase on the smooth boards.

Fargo fanned two shots so quickly they sounded as one. Then he was under the table and the boar was pounding past but as it went by it hooked the table with a tusk and upended it. Fargo felt a pain across his shoulders. The table had landed on top of him. Shoving it off, he gained his knees. The axe was only a few feet away. He grabbed it up, and stood.

The razorback came at him yet again, squealing, its beady eyes ablaze. Its tusks swept up and in.

Fargo sidestepped. He put all he had into swinging the axe and the edge bit deep into the razorback’s neck. He tried to jerk it free but the handle was torn from his grasp.

Once more the boar wheeled. It paused, wheezing, blood misting from the new wound.

At Fargo’s feet lay the meat cleaver and one of the logs he had sharpened. He scooped them up.

The razorback stood there, glaring. In the confines of the cabin it seemed enormous beyond belief.

The boar tensed to spring forward.

And that was when the bedroom door opened. Namo Heuse, caked in sweat, blanket over his shoulders, blinked and said in dazed confusion, “Fargo? I thought I heard a noise.”

The razorback spun.

And Fargo flew, taking the gamble of his life. He stabbed the stake into the razorback’s eye. Out of instinct the razorback jerked away, and collided with the wall. It stumbled, then righted itself just as Fargo brought the meat cleaver down. Again and again and again Fargo swung. His life was in the balance.

The terror of the Atchafalaya squealed. With the axe sticking from its neck and the stake jutting from its eyes, it took a step toward him—and died. The crash of its great body rattled dishes in the cupboard.

“You did it!” Namo marveled.

Fargo dashed to the Sharps. Reloading on the fly, he raced out the front door and around the corner. But he needn’t have worried.

The stick figure in the mud was as still as death could make it, the eyes, even in oblivion, twin mirrors of madness.

Namo appeared at the window. “Is he—?”

“He is.”

“Then it’s over? It’s really and truly over?”

“Except for getting you to the healer in the settlement.” Suddenly so weary he could barely stand, Fargo leaned against the cabin.

“There’s no rush, my friend. The meal and the rest did wonders. I think my fever broke. We can wait until daylight.”

Fargo smiled for the first time in days. “I can use some rest myself. And something more to eat.”

Namo Heuse glanced over his shoulder. “How would you like roast boar?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sound of gunfire ripped through the furnace-hot desert air, but the lone, crop-bearded rider astride a black-and-white pinto stallion ignored it. One or two shots, the rider mused idly, usually meant celebration fire, just drunks hurrahing the town. Three or more often meant somebody was six feet closer to hell.

“Time to tank up, old campaigner,” Skye Fargo told the stallion, reining in at a small spring just outside the siesta-prone, but dangerous, settlement of Tucson in south-central Arizona Territory.

Fargo had been feeling a case of the nervous fan-tods for the past twenty miles or so. With the bluecoat pony soldiers being pulled from nearby Camp Grant for the rumored war brewing back east, three dangerous tribes—Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache—were making life hell for everyone else out here.

Fargo dipped his dusty head into the cool spring water, then cupped handfuls and drank them. Next he dropped the Ovaro’s bridle and let him drink. More gunfire erupted from town, and Fargo thumbed back the rawhide riding thong from the hammer of his single-action Colt.

“Don’t go looking for your own grave,” he muttered, advice from a Ute warrior, up in the Mormon country, just before the Ute almost killed him. But when had the Trailsman, as some called Fargo, ever done the
safe
thing?

Fargo studied Tucson and the surrounding terrain from slitted eyes. He was a tall, rangy, sinew-tough man wearing buckskins and a wide-brimmed plainsman’s hat. His face was tanned hickory nut brown above the darker brown of his beard. Eyes the pure blue of a mountain lake stayed in constant motion.

Fargo didn’t like what he was seeing—and not seeing. In places sagebrush grew tall enough to hide a man, and as Fargo had ridden across the dreaded desert of southern Arizona Territory in the past few days, he had spotted rock mounds where victims of Indian attack had been buried—killed by Apaches, most likely.

But the view within the town limits was just as ominous. At first glance, all Fargo could see through blurry heat waves was the steeple of a massive San Antonio church at the head of the central plaza. A green expanse of barley land ringed the town, cultivation meeting the desert like a knife edge. Strips of cottonwood lined the little Santa Cruz River, which divided the narrow and fertile valley where the mining-supply center of Tucson was located.

None of that, however, impressed Fargo as much as the slumping body hanging from a cottonwood limb near the river. He couldn’t read the sign pinned to it, so he retrieved his brass binoculars from a saddle pocket.

“ ‘Jerked to Jesus,’ ” he read aloud, shaking his head in disgust.

There were no Rangers out here as had recently been formed in Texas, and not enough marshals to fill an outhouse. Fargo had been warned, before he left Fort Yuma, about Tucson’s notorious Committee for Public Safety. Furthermore, he vastly preferred the Arizona Territory as it looked farther north, a mostly unpopulated landscape of pine trees, granite cliffs, and air that didn’t cling in your lungs like molten glass.

But Fargo was a victim of events. He had recently lost a high-stakes match against a pretty redhead who ran a faro wheel, and a sorely needed job as a fast-messenger rider awaited him here.

Fargo snugged the bridle again, the Ovaro taking the bit easily, and swung up into leather. He took a moment to slide his sixteen-shot Henry rifle from its saddle scabbard and check the vulnerable tube magazine for dents. Then he spurred the Ovaro forward, aiming for the central plaza at the heart of town.

Not much had changed, Fargo quickly realized, since last time he’d ridden these unpaved, sun-drenched streets. Lumber was scarce in the region, and most of the buildings were of Indian-style puddled adobe with brush ramadas shading the doors. Not one hotel or store, but plenty of twenty-four-hour gambling houses. Fargo heard lilting Spanish everywhere. The place was still overrun with dogs, whose constant yapping made the Ovaro stutter-step nervously.

When Fargo’s eyes flicked to the rammed-earth sidewalks, the two-legged curs watching him from hooded glances bothered him even more. The local vigilantes were as obvious as bedbugs on a clean sheet, for they all carried double-ten scatterguns, barrels sawed off to ten inches.

“Mr. Fargo? Mr. Skye Fargo?”

At the sound of a musical female voice, Fargo tugged rein and slued around in the saddle. A young woman stood in the doorway of a two-story adobe house that fronted on the plaza. The room visible behind her seemed almost bare, but clean, darned curtains hung in the windows. Seeing him rein in, she began running toward him—and she jiggled impressively, Fargo noticed.