The tall man turned and regarded him intently but not unkindly. He acted more amused than anything else. “This?” He held out the ax.
“That,” Fargo confirmed.
“It would be foolish of me to drop my only weapon while a complete stranger holds a gun on me, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You don’t have any choice.”
“I beg to differ. I can go on chopping, or I can invite you in for some refreshment. I have lemonade. It’s not cold, but it will slake your thirst.”
“Drop it,” Fargo repeated, mystified by the man’s behavior.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” The backwoodsman chuckled. He had an easygoing manner about him. “I pride myself on being an excellent judge of character, and you are not the kind to kill someone in cold blood.”
“You take awful chances,” Fargo said.
“We take risks our whole lives. Day in and day out we must choose between a course that is safe and a course that is less so. But we can’t take the safe course if the safe course is not the right one.”
The man spoke so earnestly. Fargo studied him anew; his face was bony and angular, the nose prominent, the ears large, but then the man’s head was large, too, large and craggy and stamped with character born of experience. It also mirrored an indefinable hint of sadness. One look at him, and Fargo could not imagine him slaughtering an innocent family. He lowered his Colt.
A smile touched the tall man’s lips. “You’re not going to kill me, then?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Fargo said. “I don’t savvy any of this. Why do they want you dead? Who are you?”
“You don’t know?” The man placed the head of his ax on the ground and leaned on the handle. “But why should you, unless you have heard me speak, or seen a likeness in a newspaper?” He gestured at the cabin. “My place is a carefully guarded secret. I like to get away by myself from time to time, to go back to my roots, as it were, to spend my evenings reading Shakespeare or the Bible.” He paused, then bluntly asked, “Who is it wants me dead?”
“They call themselves the Secessionist League—” Fargo began.
The backwoodsman held up a bony hand. “We will finish this discussion inside. I would be remiss as a host if I did not offer you that refreshment.” Without awaiting a reply, he swung the ax to his shoulder and strode toward the cabin.
More perplexed than ever, Fargo twirled his Colt into his holster and followed. There was no hitch rail, but there were several pegs in the front wall for hanging tools and whatnot, and Fargo looped the reins around one of them. The cabin was a single room, sparsely furnished, with the bed over against the rear wall. There was a table with a lantern on it, and a rocking chair. A bookcase was the only other furniture. A black pot hung on a tripod in the fireplace.
“Would you like some of my lemonade? Or I can make coffee or tea.”
“I’m not all that thirsty.” Fargo stayed in the doorway so he could watch the woods, and the trail. “I don’t see a gun anywhere.”
The man was about to place his ax on the table. Patting it, he said, “I’ve carried one of these since I was knee-high to a calf. It is the best tool a man can own.”
“You can’t drop an enemy at a hundred yards with an ax,” Fargo replied.
“I would rather persuade an enemy than slay him. Alive, a man has worth and can contribute to the common good. Dead, he is of no use to anyone.” He set the ax down. “But I am willing to concede there are times when that is impossible. Times when an enemy leaves us no recourse but to resort to violence.” The sadness in his face became more pronounced. “You have slain quite a few, I take it?”
“More than my share,” Fargo confessed. “But I never go hunting trouble. Somehow, it just seems to find me.”
The backwoodsman grinned. “In that we are much alike. But with the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attends us, we can overcome any difficulty.” He moved to the counter, where a half-empty pitcher of lemonade sat beside a bucket of water. “I am being remiss. I will have your water in a jiffy.”
“There’s no hurry. I’m not going anywhere.” Not until Fargo got to the bottom of the mystery. “You still haven’t told me your name.” He gave his own.
“How unusual. I seem to recall it from somewhere. What is it that you do for a living, if I may ask?” The man poured water into a glass.
“I work as a scout,” Fargo disclosed. “I also guide wagon trains now and then. Sometimes I’m hired as a tracker.”
“I see.” The man brought the glass over. “Did the Secessionist League hire you to track me?”
“To track
“Then whoever you tracked is out there right now, spying on us?”
“That would be my guess, yes,” Fargo said. “The League wants you dead. They concocted a story about a killer called the Sangamon River Monster and hired me to find him. But all I really am to them is a scapegoat. They intend to murder you and have me take the blame.”
“Why you?”
“If I knew that, I’d be a happy man,” Fargo said sourly.
“Perhaps I can venture a guess.” The backwoodsman leaned back against the table and folded his arms across his chest. “The nation is on the verge of a conflict that will dwarf all others. We are about to be put to the test of whether right truly makes right. There are those who seek to dissolve the Union. To them, I am their greatest enemy, and they will stop at nothing to destroy me.”
“Who the hell are you?” Fargo snapped. The man smiled, and then it hit Fargo—the obvious answer, the only answer, the answer that explained everything the Secessionist League had done. He should have seen it sooner, but it never would have occurred to him that the person everyone was talking about, the person who had the newspapers in a tizzy, the person who was roundly cursed and despised by those who believed the South should be permitted to do as it pleased without interference from the North, the person who was the talk of the country, had a small cabin way off in the deep woods where he went every now and again to be alone. “Abe Lincoln!” he blurted, and took a step back.
“I am he,” Abraham Lincoln said. “Honest Abe, many call me. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. But I am afraid that my presence has placed you in peril. That man hiding out there—”
“Is not the only one we have to worry about.” Fargo cut him off. The others would show up soon, Draypool and Harding and their pack of killers. Their scheme was simple, yet devious. He had been lured like a lamb to the slaughter, to the doorstep of Lincoln’s cabin, and now the League would close in and dispose of the two of them and arrange things so he appeared to be responsible. The League, and the South, would not be blamed. But that still did not explain why they chose
“How many are we up against?” Lincoln asked.
“Ten, counting the one outside,” Fargo said.
“Too many. You might be harmed.” Lincoln picked up his ax. “If we can make it across the river, I will summon help. Captain Frank Colter and five soldiers have been assigned to protect me, but I would not let them come to the cabin.”
“Colter, did you say?” So Fargo had been right; Colter and Sloane were government men. “We have to get you out of here. We’ll ride double on my horse.”
“There is only the one trail in and out,” Lincoln said. “We should cut through the woods and avoid them.”
A nicker from the Ovaro and an answering whinny from off in the trees told Fargo it was too late.
The assassins had arrived.
16
Abraham Lincoln started to walk past Fargo to the door. “I will distract them and you can slip into the woods.
