say anything about you.”
Fargo had to submit to the indignity of having his Colt and Henry taken. He also had to stand there helpless as the Ovaro, still saddled, was led off to be put with the other horses.
“In case you have any notions about sneaking off,” Martha said smugly.
The only notion Fargo had right that moment was to chuck her off a cliff, but there wasn’t one handy. With those shotguns trained on him, he settled for stepping to the rear wheel and sinking down with his back to the spokes.
“That’s not so bad, is it?” Martha said in a tone that suggested he was the same age as her Billy.
“Lady, you don’t know what bad is,” Fargo said, and let it go at that. Lester and Martha left, leaving one of the men with a shotgun to guard him. Fuming, he plucked at the grass. He didn’t look up when familiar feet appeared.
“I’m sorry. I tried to get them not to do this to you. I practically begged. But they refused.”
“Do you know what a thunderstorm is?” Fargo asked.
“Of course, silly. Why?”
“Because one is about to break, and when it does, all hell will break with it.”
15
Fargo didn’t eat much supper. He wasn’t in the mood. He chewed a few pieces of venison and poked at the carrots, but that was it. He did drink coffee. A lot of coffee.
After they ate, the farmers gathered as they ordinarily did, and the man who played the fiddle soon had some dancing while the rest looked on and talked and laughed.
The farmer assigned as Fargo’s guard looked on, too. His back to Fargo, he was particularly interested in one woman. His wife, as Fargo recalled, who danced a couple of times with another man. Each time, his guard looked fit to burst a vein.
By then it was dark enough.
Fargo palmed a fist-sized rock he had noticed earlier. He made sure no one was looking toward the Winston wagon, then slowly rose and struck his guard over the back of the head. Fargo didn’t hit him hard enough to kill him, but he wasn’t gentle about it, either.
Catching the man before he could fall, Fargo eased him to the ground and placed him against the rear wheel, making it appear the man was sleeping with his hands in his lap. Then, staying well out of the firelight, Fargo headed for the wagon where the farmers had put his Colt and Henry. Both were lying in plain sight.
Now that he was rearmed, Fargo half hoped someone would try to stop him. But no one did. The Ovaro, still saddled, was with the other horses. He shoved the Henry into the scabbard and swung up. At a walk he headed for the valley mouth, but he soon broke into a trot.
He looked back only once. The fiddle still twanged and gay figures swirled. He thought he saw Billy staring in his direction. Not that it mattered. They couldn’t catch him.
Fargo rode to the Payette River. He let the Ovaro drink, then paralleled the river. When he had gone far enough, he entered the forest. He went only a short way and climbed down.
A cold camp had to suffice. He couldn’t track at night. He would wait until first light and head out again.
Gore and Rinson hadn’t returned to the valley. But the farmers weren’t alarmed. Lester Winston told Fargo that Gore had mentioned they would be gone however long it took them to find the war party and drive the Nez Perce off. Lester, of course, believed him.
Not Fargo. He had been skeptical about Gore from the beginning. Yes, a lot of trappers were fond of the mountains, and yes, some of them dearly missed the old days. But no one would do as Gore had done and come from back East into country overrun by hostiles. Not unless there was more to it.
Some folks might say Fargo was too cynical. That he didn’t trust people enough. But he’d learned the hard way that trusting too freely could get a man killed. It was akin to going up to a grizzly with open arms and a smile and expect the bear to be as friendly as a puppy.
Fargo suspected that Gore was up to something. Gore had another motive for coming back to the mountains. Exactly how the farmers fit in, Fargo wasn’t sure yet. But it didn’t bode well that Gore and Rinson left just one man to protect them and had gone off.
His saddle for a pillow, a canopy of glittering stars above, Fargo listened to the howls of wolves and once, close by, the cry of a fox. He soon dozed off and wasn’t intruded on by man or beast. Up at the break of day, he went to the river and found what he was looking for—the tracks of Gore and the rest, heading deeper into the wilds.
But no tracks of any Nez Perce.
Gore wasn’t chasing a war party. He was up to something else, and it was high time Fargo found out what.
In the distance reared a mountain, one among many, its peak a jagged outcropping that thrust at the sky like a spear about to draw blood. It was there the tracks led.
It was pushing noon when Fargo drew rein at the edge of some trees. Beyond was a narrow canyon that split the mountain like a wound. And from out of the canyon came the ping of metal on rock.
Fargo was about to venture into the open when movement warned him to stay put.
A man was keeping watch. He was behind a large boulder, but he came out and squinted up at the sun, acting bored.
Fargo slid down and tied the Ovaro. With the Henry in his left hand he sank onto his belly and snaked from cover to cover until he was near enough to the boulder to hear the man mutter.
Fargo crawled past the boulder to the slope to the top of the canyon. Suddenly hooves clattered. He quickly pressed flat.
“About time you got here,” the man standing guard said.
“Don’t start,” the new arrival replied.
“You were supposed to relieve me an hour ago, Larson. Where the hell have you been?”
“He had me working the vein. I have blisters from using that damn pickax. But he won’t let us stop. He says we have to get it all as quick as we can.”
“He’s Injun shy.”
“I can’t blame him there. Not if you’ve ever seen what these red devils do. I’m not hankering to have my eyes gouged out and my tongue cut off.”
“They have no idea we’re here. Everything is going just as we planned.”
“As he planned, you mean,” Larson said. “I’ve got to hand it to him. Everything has worked out just as he said it would, except for that Fargo character sticking his nose in.”
“Hell, we didn’t need those plow-pushers. We went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“Would you rather carry it all out on your back, Barnes? They have their use.”
A saddle creaked as Larson dismounted, then creaked again as Barnes climbed on.
“Any sign of anything?”
“Not unless you count bugs and a hawk. I tell you, we’re worried over nothing.”
“Sure, Barnes. Sure.”
Hooves clattered, and Larson was alone.
Fargo crawled higher. Brush and boulders allowed enough cover for him to soon be well above the canyon floor. Removing his hat, he risked a look.
Larson was leaning against the boulder and staring off down the mountain. In the other direction, the canyon bent at a sharp angle. From beyond that bend came the ping of pickaxes.
Fargo jammed his hat back on and resumed crawling. When he was high enough to see past the bend, he inched to the edge. And there they were. Gore, Rinson, Slag, Perkins and the other so-called protectors, working hard in the hot sun, chipping away at the real reason Gore came back to the Rockies after all these years.
From what Fargo could see of the vein, it was scores of yards long and inches wide. Gold, mixed with quartz, the yellow bright where the sun struck it. Enough ore to make a prospector’s mouth water. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth for whoever got it out.
