“I never take killers lightly,” Fargo said.
“You must be diligent in the hunt, merciless when you catch him,” Mayfair went on. “If you find your resolve waning, just think of all the poor people that fiend has murdered.”
The man had gall, lecturing him, Fargo reflected. He nodded and responded, “I know my job.”
Mayfair glanced at Draypool, then said, “I am certain you do. Yet Arthur tells me that you refuse to shoot the Monster on sight.”
“I made it plain I don’t kill for money. If that’s what he wants done, he should have hired someone else.”
“Please don’t be offended,” Clyde said. “Trackers of your caliber are as rare as hen’s teeth.”
“What about that Hiram Trask your son told me about?” Fargo asked.
It was Draypool who answered. “Trask never leaves the South, where he grew up. He is active mainly in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.”
“A true son of the South,” Jace Mayfair remarked.
Both Draypool and Jace’s father looked at him sharply, and Clyde Mayfair said, “In these trying times, one should not make such distinctions. They might be misunderstood.”
“What does he care?” Jace said testily, and bobbed his chin at Fargo. “How do you feel, exactly, about the coming conflict?”
“I haven’t thought about it much,” Fargo admitted. He tended to fight shy of politics. “But I don’t like the notion of one man owning another.”
“Slavery has been around for thousands of years,” Jace said. “It’s not as if the South invented it. Hell, there are Yankees who own slaves.”
Clyde Mayfair smacked the table hard. “I will thank you not to use such language in the presence of your mother and sister. As for slavery, it is hardly a fit topic for our morning meal.”
“I just wanted to know where he stood.” Jace was in a contrary mood. “Before long, Father, everyone will have to decide where they stand, whether they want to or not.”
Clyde smiled at Fargo. “You must excuse him. He’s young, and the young are always too headstrong for their own good.”
Priscilla set down her orange juice. “Why pick on Jace?” she said, coming to her brother’s defense.
“You’ve said the same things he just did many a time.”
“I repeat,” Clyde Mayfair sternly declared. “Slavery is not a fit topic for polite conversation.”
Fargo thought Mayfair was making a fuss over nothing, but he did not say anything, and the family finished the meal in strained silence. Draypool sent Avril and Zeck to bring the horses around, and refilled his teacup one last time.
“It will be a while before we eat this grand again,” Draypool said. “Please indulge me, Mr. Fargo, for a few minutes more.”
Fargo shrugged.
Clyde leaned his elbows on the table, then took them off at a disapproving stare from his wife. “Tell me about the Indians out your way. I am most curious. From all we hear, they are veritable savages, are they not?”
“Indians are people like us,” Fargo said, and added, without consciously meaning to, “The same as blacks or any others.”
Clyde reddened. “I beg to differ, sir. Indians are not just like us. They wear animal hides and live in squalor.”
“I wear animal hides,” Fargo said, touching his buckskin shirt, “and most nights I sleep on the ground wrapped in a blanket.”
“You didn’t sleep on the ground last night. Look around you, sir. You are seated in a sterling example of why we are superior in every way to every other race.”
Fargo decided he disliked Clyde Mayfair. He disliked him a lot. “Indians couldn’t pack up and move a house like this, and they move often, to be near buffalo and for other reasons.”
“You equivocate, sir. I am not an imbecile. Not all Indians follow the herds. Some live in villages year-round. Villages, need I remind you, ridden with filth and lice and barely fit for human habitation.”
“That’s enough,” Draypool said.
“I am only trying to make a point,” Clyde said to justify himself. “We are
Fargo had listened to enough. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’ll wait with the horses.” As he crossed the room to where he had deposited his saddlebags and rifle, Draypool gave an angry hiss.
“That was a mistake, Clyde. You should know better. Need I remind you of the trouble we have gone to, or what’s at stake?”
“Don’t lecture me.”
Fargo was spared the rest of their petty bickering. He strode down the front hall and out into the morning sun and blinked in the bright glare. Another muggy day was in store.
The Ovaro was saddled and waiting. Fargo slid the Henry into the scabbard and secured the saddlebags. The saddle creaked as he forked leather. An urge came over him to say to hell with the whole thing and head for the Rockies, but he stayed where he was, and shortly Draypool and the Mayfairs trickled out, the two men still squabbling.
“. . . is that we have to stand up for our own kind,” Clyde was saying. “It is our obligation, if you will.”
“There is a time and a place for everything,” Arthur said, “and this was neither.”
A servant held out the reins to his mount and Arthur took them and climbed stiffly on without so much as a thank-you.
Margaret came down the steps and smiled up at Fargo. “Men and their silly spats. Yet they constantly poke fun at us women.”
Priscilla sashayed to her mother’s side. “If you are ever back this way, be sure to stop by. You are always welcome to our hospitality.”
Her hidden meaning brought a grin to Fargo’s face. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
Arthur raised an arm as if it were a lance and exclaimed, “Onward with our quest, gentlemen!”
All that day they traveled hard. Draypool had a new urgency about him, which was puzzling to Fargo in light of their leisurely stay at the Mayfair farm. They left the main road and traveled to the northeast along byways and back ways that only someone completely familiar with the region would know. Zeck was that someone; he assumed the lead about noon. Toward evening, when Fargo asked how it was that Zeck knew every rutted track and path, the small man in black mentioned that he had grown up in the area.
And what an area it was! Fargo had seldom seen such lush woodland, verdant forest abundant with vegetation and wildlife, not at all like the arid timberland of the Rockies. For one thing, there were more leafy trees than pines, more maples and elms and willows and oaks than firs or spruces. For another, the undergrowth was a jungle compared to the sparse brush of the mountains. Green, green, everywhere, a profusion born of rich soil and that most precious of all nature’s gifts, water. The annual rainfall was many times that received by the land west of the Mississippi, creating countless waterways.
One of the largest in central Illinois was the Sangamon River. Draypool remarked to Fargo that the river flowed over two hundred and fifty miles. Rising in Champaign County, it eventually merged with the Illinois River, which, in turn, fed into the mighty Mississippi.
Draypool had been right about the extent of Illinois wilderness. Somehow Fargo had gotten it into his head that the state was all farmland and towns and cities, but such was not the case. The southern third was largely settled, and more and more people flocked to the north end of the state, and Chicago, every year. But the rest was pristine woodland, as wild and untamed as anything on the frontier.
Wildlife was everywhere. All kinds of birds, from tiny wrens and chickadees to catbirds and red-breasted robins to hungry hawks and turkey vultures. All kinds of small animals, from squirrels and raccoons and opossums to muskrats and even beavers. Predators, too, in the form of foxes and cougars and black bears.
That night they camped in the woods by a small stream. Avril shot a rabbit for supper and roasted it on a spit.
Draypool had been edgy all day, and now, as they were eating, he glanced at Fargo and said, “From here on out we must exercise extreme care. No one must learn what we are up to.”
