“If that’s so, how come no one else has gone after the gold before now?” Badger wanted to know.
“You know how people are. Most townsmen are too scared of hostiles to stray far from town. The farmers can’t take the time away from their crops and livestock. Others are just too lazy.”
“Are they ever. They expect the gold to jump into their pockets.”
“Not everyone has as much grit as you,” Fargo told him.
“I have grit?”
“You’re out here in the middle of nowhere all by your lonesome. It takes a brave man to do what you do.”
“I suppose it does at that.” Badger grinned. “I never thought of it like that but being a gold hound ain’t for cowards.”
By then they were in the mesa’s shadow. Badger stopped and said in earnest, “Meeting you was the luckiest day of my life.”
Fargo almost felt bad deceiving him.
“Now where is this landmark?” Badger turned toward the mesa. “Point it out.”
Fargo scanned the upper reaches. He had his choice of several prominent features. “Do you see that cleft near the top?”
“It reminds me of Andy Jackson’s chin.”
The remark was so ridiculous that Fargo laughed. “Wells found the nuggets somewhere below it.”
Badger beamed happily. “At last. This is the one I’ve waited my whole life for. I can feel it in my bones.” He looked at Fargo. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
The old prospector’s face exploded in a shower of blood and gore and his body arched as taut as a bowstring.
Fargo was in motion as the boom of the shot rolled across the wasteland. He spun and vaulted into the saddle. There in the open, he and the Ovaro were easy targets. He could try to reach the mesa but the rifleman was bound to drop the stallion before they got there and maybe put a slug into him, besides. The only other cover was closer. Reining around, he jabbed his spurs and galloped to the small basin the burro had been concealed in. He went down on the fly as another shot thundered, the slug passing within a whisker of his head. At the bottom he drew rein and swung down. The top of the mesa was visible but he didn’t think the shooter was that high up. Still, to be safe, he resorted to a trick he’d taught the stallion—he pulled on the bridle and pushed at a front leg until the Ovaro sank onto its side. He stretched out next to it, his head propped in his hand.
There was another shot, just the one, and a squeal followed by a thud and the clatter of pots, pans and tools.
Fargo took off his hat, set it down, and crabbed to the rim. Unless the man on the mesa had a telescope it was unlikely he would spot him. He dared a peek.
Gladys lay near her dead master. The slug had cored her head and scattered her brains over the hard rock. Her tongue poked from her mouth and a spreading pool of blood was already drawing flies.
Only one of Badger’s eyes was still in its socket and that eye was fixed on Fargo. “You should have told me everything at the start,” he said to it, and slid to the bottom and put his hat back on. He squinted at the sun. Plenty of daylight left but he wasn’t going anywhere. He eased onto his back and slid a hand under his head, and glowered at the world.
The sun crawled across the sky, scorching the earth and the basin and turning the rock into an oven. Fargo felt as if he were being baked alive. The heat got to the Ovaro, too, and twice the stallion tried to rise and each time he held it down and patted it and talked quietly until it settled down.
Fargo had seldom looked forward to a sundown as much as he did to this one. From the rim he watched the western horizon swallow it. The mesa’s shadow spread and was in turn swallowed by the darker shadow of advancing night. He didn’t move until the first stars sparkled. Then he brought the stallion up off the ground, mounted, and rode up and out the other side of the basin toward the gap through the cliffs.
It was pointless to search the mesa in the dark; the killer would be waiting for him. Fargo figured to rest up and return. He took his time, and by the position of the Big Dipper it was close to midnight when he reached Haven. The town was mostly dark and quiet, with only a few windows aglow. One of those was the parlor window in the boardinghouse. He stripped the Ovaro and went in, the Henry in one hand, his saddlebags over his shoulder. He expected Helsa to be asleep so he was surprised when he saw her in her long robe in the rocking chair, knitting.
She looked up. “Rough day, I take it?”
“I’ve had better.” Fargo set the saddlebags on the settee, wearily sat, and related the death of old Badger.
“That poor crazy man,” Helsa said. “And his burro too?”
“There’s more.” Fargo told her about the charnel pit and regretted it when tears filled her eyes.
“You say you saw the remains of men as well as women? One of them must have been my James.”
Fargo hadn’t thought of that, and inwardly cursed.
Helsa touched her robe sleeve to the corners of her eyes and composed herself. “The others puzzle me, though. We know of the four women who have disappeared. James would make five. But you saw nine skulls. Who were the other four?”
Fargo shrugged. “Travelers, maybe. Indians. Other prospectors. Who knows?”
“The killer does.” Helsa folded up her knitting. “I’d imagine you’ll inform Marshal Tibbit in the morning and lead a posse to the black mesa.”
“You imagine wrong.”
Helsa regarded Fargo as if he were a puzzle. “Why on earth not, may I ask?”
“He’s mine.”
“Oh, come now. You don’t want to see him hung? That is what would happen, you know. No jury would fail to convict him.”
“Maybe so,” Fargo said.
“But you still want to find him yourself and deal with him as you see fit? Why? Out of spite? For revenge?”
“Call it whatever you want.”
“Don’t be annoyed with me. I happen to like you. But if you go off alone again, maybe the next time you won’t come back. Maybe it’s the man on the mesa who kills you and not the other way around.”
“Could be,” Fargo conceded.
“You’re willing to gamble your life to settle a score?”
Fargo felt no need to answer that. He stood and reached for his saddlebags.
“Wait. You must be hungry. I made roast beef for supper and I can heat some up.” Helsa came out of the rocking chair and put her hand on his arm. “Please. Let me feed you. I promise to stop trying to persuade you that you’re making a mistake.”
“In that case,” Fargo said, and grinned.
Helsa had kept the stove warm so all she had do was add wood and soon the aroma of the beef and potatoes had Fargo’s empty stomach trying to eat itself. She also put coffee on. As she was placing a fork and knife at his elbow she commented, “I almost forgot. Marshal Tibbit has arrested Harvey Stansfield and his two friends.”
“Will wonders never cease?”
“I went straightaway to him after you left this morning and reported what they had done. He said enough was enough. He’s thrown them in jail. In the morning he is releasing them with the provision that they leave Haven and never return.”
“So that badge of his is good for something besides decorating his shirt,” Fargo said.
“That’s not quite fair. He does his best.”
Fargo let it drop. He had something else on his mind. “How long before the food is done?”
“Oh, five minutes, maybe a little more. Starving, are you?”
Fargo walked over behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her hard against him and cupped her breasts and she stiffened and gasped.
“In more ways than one.”
