Cupping a hand to his mouth, Fargo hollered, ‘‘Hallo the camp! We would like to come in!’’
The stripling leaped to his feet, fumbling with a rifle. As he leveled it the woman darted behind him and peeked out past his shoulder.
‘‘Who are you? What do you want?’’ her protector challenged in a tone thick with poorly disguised fear.
‘‘We are friendly,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘We will come in with our hands empty if you will promise not to shoot.’’ Fright made for twitchy trigger fingers.
The young woman whispered something and the stripling nodded. ‘‘All right! But keep your hands where I can see them!’’
Fargo set the Henry down and nodded at Stack, who reluctantly put down his rifle.
‘‘Here we come! Go easy on that trigger!’’
Arms well out from his sides, Fargo climbed into the circle of firelight. Stack came with him, and Stack did not look happy.
‘‘That is far enough!’’ The stripling wagged his rifle for emphasis. ‘‘What is it you want?’’
Fargo did not mince words. ‘‘What the hell are you doing here?’’ he gruffly demanded.
The brunette gasped and her peach-fuzz defender hardened with anger.
‘‘I will thank you not to use that kind of language in front of my wife. And why we are here is none of your affair.’’
‘‘Listen to me, boy,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘These are the Mimbres Mountains. They get their name from the Mimbres Apaches, who think the only good white is a dead white. And they don’t give a hoot if the white is male or female.’’
‘‘Watch your tongue, sir,’’ the stripling snapped. ‘‘Reckless talk like that will scare Harriet.’’
The brunette tugged at her husband’s sleeve and said, ‘‘That is all right, Howard. I think he is just warning us to be careful.’’
‘‘Howard and Harriet?’’ Stack said, and laughed.
‘‘Here now,’’ Howard said, his anger tempered by puzzlement. ‘‘What strikes your funny bone?’’
Stack minced even fewer words than Fargo did. ‘‘You are a damned fool, boy, to bring that girl up here. You are a worse fool for being by yourselves and not with a wagon train.’’
‘‘I have this,’’ Howard said, extending his rifle. ‘‘And I will keep the fire going all night to keep any hostiles at bay.’’
‘‘I take it back, boy,’’ Stack said. ‘‘You are worse than a fool. You are a jackass.’’ Lowering his arms, he wheeled and said to Fargo, ‘‘You can try and talk some sense into them if you want. I will fetch the horses. I did not like leaving them untended.’’
‘‘Hold on, there!’’ Howard commanded, but Stack strode into the dark and was gone.
‘‘That was unspeakably rude,’’ Harriet said.
Fargo came to Stack’s defense, saying, ‘‘He was trying to get you to understand. You are in Apache country.’’
‘‘As if we don’t know that,’’ Howard said. ‘‘But we have come all the way from Santa Fe without spotting a single redskin.’’
‘‘You won’t see any until they are ready to be seen,’’ Fargo said.
‘‘Oh, please. You sound like that old man in Santa Fe who warned us not to come.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you listen?’’
‘‘To what? His tall tales about Apaches being able to move about like ghosts? To his claim that they can run all day and not tire, or hide so well they are invisible?’’ Howard shook his head. ‘‘I stopped believing in ogres when I was six.’’
Harriet threw in, ‘‘We have read about the big strikes up to Silver Lode and we aim to have a claim of our own.’’
‘‘All the silver ore in the world is not worth your lives.’’
‘‘I wish you would stop,’’ Howard said. ‘‘In a week or so we will reach Silver Lode and everything will be fine.’’
Harriet nodded enthusiastically. ‘‘They say that Silver Lode will be as big as New Orleans in no time.’’
‘‘Oh, hell,’’ Fargo said. People said that about most every new camp and the people were nearly always wrong. Most strikes petered out within a year and the camps and towns they gave birth to withered and died.
Stepping from behind her husband, Harriet said, ‘‘It is kind of you to be so concerned. But I have complete confidence in Howard. The Apaches do not worry me.’’
‘‘They are not the only ones you have to watch out for. There is a killer on the loose, a renegade called Fraco. If he spots your fire he will treat you to more than a warning.’’
‘‘He doesn’t scare me,’’ Howard boasted.
‘‘You wouldn’t stand a prayer, boy.’’
‘‘I am a man, thank you.’’
Fargo tried one last time. ‘‘I am with a freight train bound for Silver Lode. Why not join up with us? It will take you longer to get there but you will be safer.’’
‘‘No, thanks,’’ Howard said.
Fargo looked at Harriet.
‘‘No, thank you. The sooner we reach Silver Lode, the sooner we can afford all the things I want to buy.’’
She made it sound as if striking it rich was as easy as lacing a boot.
Fargo touched his hat brim. ‘‘I have said my piece. Good luck to you.’’ They would need it.
He retrieved the Henry and started down. There was no reasoning with some folks. Those two thought they knew it all and had an answer for everything. Experience could teach them how ignorant they were, and sometimes that experience came at great cost.
With a shake of his head Fargo dismissed them from his mind. He must stay alert or he might be the one learning a lesson.
The night had gone quiet. The wind was still. Fargo had the illusion he was walking through a great emptiness and that he was the only living thing in all the void.
He had descended about three hundred feet when a scream shattered the illusion, a scream of mortal terror torn from a female throat. It was followed by the blast of a rifle.
Fargo whirled.
Another scream rose to the high peaks, a cry that Fargo would remember on dark and lonely nights. It was all the fear in the human soul given substance in sound. It was the height of pure fright and the depths of darkest despair.
His legs churning, Fargo flew toward the campfire. He hoped against hope he would not find what he was bound to find, and mentally cursed all fools and know-it-alls.
The fire still crackled. The flames still blazed bright. They revealed that the horses were still there. And so was a body, sprawled in a grotesque mockery of the life that once animated it.
Howard was on his back in the center of a spreading crimson pool. His throat had been slit. Slit so violently, and so deeply, his head was attached by a few shreds of skin.
Fargo looked for sign of the wife but she was nowhere to be seen. ‘‘Harriet?’’ he shouted.
The answer came in the form of another scream from somewhere above.
14
Fargo swore, and flew on up the slope. Some men would not have gone to her rescue. Some would have said that she and her fool of a husband brought their fate down on their own heads. Some would not have gone because their spines were tinged yellow.
Fargo was no coward. As for foolishness, he had done a few things over the years that made him question whether he had a lick of common sense. But the real reason Fargo went bounding up that slope to save a woman whose last name he did not even know was that he suspected the party responsible for slaying her husband and abducting her was the man he was after.
It could be Apaches. But Apaches usually holed up at night.
Odds were, it was Fraco.
The dark was a soup of shadow and menace. Fargo stayed alert for boulders and anything else he might collide with. Soon he was in among a scattering of evergreen shrubs.