The Wildcatters Read online

  The East Texas oilfields came in with a boom. Rivers of money gushed from the ground. Along with the money came the speculators, the wheelers and dealers – and the killers.

  Fargo followed the money and excitement clear across Texas. Trouble is Fargo’s business – other people’s trouble. They know him from Alaska to Panama and the smart ones get out of his way. The ones who aren’t so smart get a gun barrel laid across the nose, or if Fargo’s short on time, they get killed. Fargo kills, but he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a job. And he’s good at it.

  THE WILDCATTERS

  FARGO 8

  By John Benteen

  First published by Belmont Tower in 1970

  Copyright © 1970, 2015 by Benjamin L. Haas

  First Smashwords Edition: August 2015

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book ~*~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Chapter One

  The oil brought them like vultures to a carcass. Its raw, strong reek smelled like money, and they came flocking: roughnecks, drillers, tool dressers, torpedo men and all the other hard-drinking, hard-working people who made their living coaxing black gold out of the ground. And, along with them, the real beasts and birds of prey who fed on them: the gamblers, bootleggers, whores and con men; the lease speculators and the promoters; the robbers and the gunmen.

  Fargo came, too, as much a vulture as any, scenting profit, scenting good business for a man of his trade, which was fighting.

  By then, the road was impassable for automobiles or trucks; churned to a mire, it bogged down everything but mule-drawn wagons or saddle horses. In Tulsa, Fargo bought a tall sorrel with one white stocking and a blazed face, and he rode this to the new town, the boomtown, the oil town they called Golconda.

  He went cross-country, parallel with the road, across the rolling land of central Oklahoma. He passed the miserable cabins of Cherokee and Osage, where shapeless red women and naked red children stared in wonder at the tall man on the tall horse, the man with the hard, ugly scarred face, hair prematurely snow-white beneath the old, battered, broad-brimmed cavalry hat, a Winchester carbine in a saddle scabbard, a rope slung cowboy fashion on the saddle pommel.

  He was worth staring at: a man in his late thirties, in white shirt, neat tie, corduroy jacket (it masked a shoulder-holstered pistol), whipcord pants, and cavalry boots. Unlike Indians or range men, he rode a cavalry seat, back straight, knees bent; and even to the casual eye he seemed to radiate pent-up violence, danger. If they had known, those onlookers, what was in the big trunk cleverly rigged on the pack mule at the end of a lead rope, they would have been even surer in their judgment of him.

  As it was, the other vultures swarming toward Golconda gave him a wide berth. No con men descended on him; hard-faced highwaymen looked twice at him and went to seek easier prey. Only the women, the whores, packed into buckboards, democrats and mud wagons, followed him hungrily with their eyes when his route brought him close to the terrible, wheel-churned road. And the only time he stopped or paid more than passing attention to any of his fellow travelers was when one of those women called his name.

  “Fargo! Hey, Neal Fargo!”

  Fargo reined in, turned his horse, stared at the surrey bogged to its hubs in the mud of the swarming road. It held five girls, all painted and dressed in frills. The woman who had called him clutched the reins: tall, blonde, lovely, despite a certain hardness around her red-painted mouth. The two small scrub mustangs hitched to the surrey were half-wild, tossing their heads against pressure on the bit, refusing to pull.

  Fargo grinned, then spurred the sorrel toward the vehicle. Instinctively he swept off the campaign hat. “Tess. Tess Kendall. Hell, I thought you were in El Paso.”

  “No more, the money’s here. Only these goddamned jug-heads don’t seem to know how to haul a wagon. Here I am with a load of girls just itching to go to work, and time’s money, and nobody’ll even stop to help us.”

  Fargo chuckled. “Maybe you haven’t made ’em the right deal. You’re bound for Golconda, eh?” He looked her up and down, taking in the full breasts beneath taut fabric, the narrow waist, the flaring hips. They had been lovers once, for a short time, two years before in the El Paso of 1913, just before Fargo had gone to revolution-torn Mexico on a most dangerous and profitable enterprise—and for a while afterward, until the money he had made was spent, and he’d gone in search of another score. It amused him that they were so much alike that Golconda had drawn them both at the same time for the same reason.

  “I’m bound for Golconda,” Tess answered him, “if I can ever get this blasted rig out of the mud. Give us a hand, will you?”

  Fargo’s white brows went up above cold gray eyes. “What’s in it for me?”

  “You know damn well what’s in it for you,” Tess chuckled. Her eyes met his for a moment, and he saw her breasts swell, threatening to push out of the lowcut neckline of the fancy dress.

  “Under those circumstances ...” Neal Fargo’s grin was like a wolf’s. He unlatched the rope at his saddle horn, shook out a loop. He tossed it over the dashboard of the surrey. “When I pull, let those hammerheads have it hard on the ass.”

  “Right.” Tess brandished a whip. Fargo turned the sorrel, spurred it. The woman slashed the mustangs; one reared and pawed, the other lunged forward. Then all three horses were pulling together, and the surrey sucked free of the mire.

  When it was rolling once more, Fargo eased slack through the hondo, reeled in the rope without dismounting, and fell in beside the surrey.

  “I’ll ride with you; it’s not far. Maybe five miles.”

  “Thanks.” Then she turned to the girls behind her. “All right, you sluts. Keep your eyes off him, he’s my private property.” She slashed the mustangs with the whip and they surged forward, Sure that they would pull, Tess settled back on the seat. “You’re the last man I expected to see here.”

  “Oil’s money. You know me.”

  “Yeah, I should have guessed. They say this is the biggest strike since Spindletop. You got anything in mind, or you just gonna play it by ear?”

  Fargo looked toward the horizon. “By ear. What the hell. An oil boomtown, the money runs like oil itself. It’ll be there. I’ll get my hands on some of it somehow.”

  “You always do. My God, when I think of the fortunes you’ve made and spent—”

  “Hell, that’s what money’s for—spending. The way I live, I’ve got no old age, no point in saving.”

  Tess’s face clouded for a moment. “That’s the way we all live. But what happens to us if we do get old?”

  “You make your living on your back,” Fargo said. “I make mine with guns. You don’t live by guns unless somebody’s shooting at you. I ain’t worried about old age. I make it until tomorrow, I’m satisfied. Come on, now, shake up those broomtails. Like you said, time’s money—especially in an oil town.”

  Two hours later, they crested a ridge, saw It spread out below them—Golconda, a town which two months ago, had not even existed. Now, down there on the flat, rough board buildings were crammed together on a muddy street; above them reared countless oil derricks, lacy fingers pointing toward the sky. Far
go reined in, staring at the close-packed traffic along the road, his eyes practiced, expert. This was not the first oil town he had seen. But, he judged immediately, it was likely to be the toughest.

  He was a man who had been around. Born in New Mexico, his parents had been killed by Apaches; foster parents had taken him in, primarily to have another hand on the ranch. But while still a child, he had tired of the hard work and short rations, had run off. Since then, he’d punched cows, cut tall timber, fought in the Spanish-American War with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, served a hitch in the cavalry in the Philippines, been a professional prizefighter, worked to the Sabine Pass oilfields, prospected in Alaska, made a fair living as a professional gambler, once even served a term as bouncer in a Louisiana whorehouse. But, a genius with guns, a man to whom the handling of weapons came as naturally as breathing, he’d made his real money as a fighting man. There was always somewhere a professional fighting man could hire out: Central American revolutions, the troubles in Mexico, even in the Philippines, which were still shaky and unsteady under American rule. He had fought almost everywhere there was a fight going on, for the love of fighting, and for the love of money. It was the thing he was best at, had a natural talent for, and it was this that kept him alive and hard. Fighting had, in fact, become Fargo’s whole life.

  Now, staring down at Golconda, he felt a surge of excitement run through him. This was a rank town. This was his meat.

  He put the sorrel in motion and Tess Kendall, in the surrey, followed.

  As they went down the hill, Fargo said: “You got any contact in Golconda?”

  “Yeah. A man named Brasher. Tull Brasher. He’s a leaser, holds the rights to three sections, already got five producing wells and more to come. He’s the whip, the big dog, in Golconda. Knowing Tull, he’d be the big dog anywhere.”

  “He tipped you off, called you in, huh?”

  “That’s right. We’re old friends from Texas days. He got in touch with me. Among other things, he owns a blind tiger—Oklahoma’s dry, you know, but in an oil town nobody gives a damn. My girls will work the bar, take the Johns upstairs, I get what they make upstairs, he gets what they make downstairs.”

  Fargo looked at her. “What else does he get?”

  Again Tess gave her breathy chuckle. “Not what he was counting on. Not since you showed up.”

  “Maybe there’ll be trouble with him over that.”

  Tess looked back at him. “That’s your affair,” she said.

  Fargo only grinned.

  ~*~

  The main street of Golconda was wide, a boot-and-wheel-churned sea of mud, planks laid across here and there like bridges. On either side, it was lined with buildings thrown together in a hurry, warped boards, even logs, some half-wood, half-canvas. The plank sidewalks swarmed with people and, over all, towered the oil derricks; the town had sprung up right in the center of the field. Above the babble of voices, the whinnying of horses, the sputter of truck engines, there was the constant, rhythmic roar of the steam and gasoline engines that powered the drilling rigs, the pumps of the wells already in production.

  Fargo’s practiced eye appraised the derricks. Both sorts of rigs were in operation here, the old-fashioned cable-tool type in which the bit was raised and dropped repeatedly to force it deeper into the ground; the newer, more efficient rotary rigs in which the drill bit was twisted as if it were a gigantic auger. At least six or eight wells were already in production; twenty, thirty more were being drilled, jammed close together, cheek by jowl with each other and with the houses of the town. Farther out on the flat beyond, other towers thrust their skeletal frameworks toward the sky. Over all hung the rank, greasy smell of raw petroleum, the smell of money.

  “There it is.” Tess pointed with the stock of the whip. The unpainted board building was big, two stories high, smack in the center of town. A crudely painted sign above its swinging doors said: DRILLERS’ REST. She pulled the surrey up to the hitch rack, to which Fargo also swung the sorrel. Within seconds, a crowd had gathered, muddy, bearded, booted, overalled men staring hungrily at the girls in the surrey.

  Fargo swung down, boots squelching in the mud. He slogged to the surrey, where the women were looking down in dismay at the mire. “Okay, Tess, you first.” He got her under the arms, swung her off the seat as if she were a feather, put her down on the plank sidewalk. Then he turned to the other women.

  The first was a hard-faced brunette who was pretty enough, but twenty pounds too fat. Fargo’s muscles were equal to the task; he deposited her next to Tess and reached for another. Then he halted, almost froze, hands outstretched. It was the first time he’d had a good look at this girl, and he had never seen anything quite like her before.

  She could not possibly be over eighteen. Her hair was like clean corn silk, golden, fine, shimmering, hanging loose over her shoulders. Her face was triangular, wide cheekbones, almost pointed chin, her features clean carved and precisely, stunningly, lovely. Her body was slender, yet her breasts were full and round, her hips curved enticingly beneath the close-hugging fabric of her dress. She was amazingly beautiful; and yet it was not her beauty that made Fargo hesitate; it was the aura of innocence that seemed to surround her like a tangible mist, the look of fright at these rough surroundings in her wide, gray-blue eyes, She was as out of place in that flock of prostitutes as a lily in a patch of cactus; and she was even afraid of Fargo, as his big, scarred hands reached for her. Instinctively, she drew back.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m just gonna swing you over the mud—”

  “Go ahead, Maggie,” called Tess. “He won’t bite.”

  The girl stared at Fargo’s face. Tanned, weathered, bearing the scars of old wounds, it was, perhaps, enough to frighten any woman—and yet women had always found the strength, the hardness, the leashed ferocity in it fascinating. Now something swirled in the girl’s eyes, something unreadable. She drew in a deep breath, leaned forward to Fargo’s waiting grasp—and in that instant, Fargo was shoved aside, knocked to one knee in the mud, and the girl was jerked out of the surrey by another pair of hands.

  “Come on, babe! You’re just what I been waitin’ for!”

  The man who’d grabbed her was tall, wide-shouldered, younger than Fargo and roughly handsome. He got Maggie in a bear hug, pulled her tight against him as she let out a squeal of dismay, and then, as he swung her over the mud, forced his mouth down on hers, grinding his lips. Holding her like that, kissing her hard, brutally, he carried her up onto the sidewalk.

  “Attaboy, Clay!” somebody yelled. “Show her how it’s done in Golconda.”

  Fargo came up out of the mud, one leg sodden with it. At the same instant, Tess Kendall strode forward, the buggy whip still in her hand. “Let that girl go, you big ape! She’s—”

  Clay did not even look up. Still holding Maggie with one hand, he shoved out with the other, pushed Tess so hard she went sprawling against the building front. She came back immediately, face twisted with fury. “Damn you!” The buggy whip whistled, splatted as it bit home in flesh. Tess flailed Clay across the shoulders. “That girl’s no ordinary whore, she’s not for your kind, turn her loose! You hear, turn her loose!”

  Under her assault, Clay released Maggie. The young girl staggered aside, eyes wide with terror, hand rubbing her mouth. Clay turned to Tess, as she swung the whip again. “Why, you bitch, hit me, will you?” His out-flung hand seized the whip, jerked it loose, flipped it, caught the stock. He raised the whip. “No oil-town tramp beats Clay Samson like a mule!”

  He brought the whip down hard, whistling. Tess screamed.

  But its lash never struck her. Fargo’s out-flung arm caught Samson’s on the downswing, deflected the blow. Then Fargo hit the man, a short, hard left that sent him spinning into the doorjamb of the Drillers’ Rest. Clay brought up hard against the wood, and in that instant the street was deathly quiet; only the constant sound of the drill-rig engines in the background could be heard.

  Fargo stood ther
e loosely, hands at his side, feet spread apart, facing the man. Clay straightened up, rubbing his chin. His eyes were the green of beer bottle glass and, right now, just as hard. His Stetson had been knocked off; the wind ruffled thick, black hair. A trickle of blood dribbled from one corner of his wide, full-lipped mouth. He wore range clothes, and Fargo had not missed the .45 Colt Peacemaker with the short barrel holstered on his right hip. Carefully, though, Clay was keeping his hand away from that.

  He stared at Fargo. “You hit me, buddy.”

  Fargo nodded. “Will probably do it again, unless you apologize to both these ladies.”

  “Ladies?” Clay’s lip curled. “These hog-ranch critters—?”

  Fargo sized him up. Big, tough, no oil man, a fighting man, that gun the tool of his trade. His fists, too, likely. Fargo felt a kind of pleasurable excitement mounting within him, like the bite of a drink of good whiskey. Usually he went out of his way to avoid trouble unless he was paid to handle it; but things had been too quiet too long. The prospect of action pleased him. He grinned.

  “Friend, you got a foul mouth. Lesson in manners is what you need.” He stepped forward in one long, easy stride. Clay sidestepped, weasel-quick, but not as quick as Fargo. Fargo’s right hand clamped Clay’s left arm, and in that instant Clay’s right shot down toward the Colt. But Fargo’s left hand was there first, in a movement of dazzling speed, whisking the weapon from its holster. Clay’s fingers closed on empty air and Fargo swung the gun, slamming Clay across the temple with its short, hard barrel.

  Clay’s head rocked around. Fargo jammed him up against the wall, hit him again, not hard enough to knock him out. “Apologize,” he grated. “Apologize, friend, or I’ll gun whip the scalp offa you!” Once more, he slapped Clay with the barrel.

  The man gasped, struggled uselessly in Fargo’s remorseless grip. His knees sagged. “Wait,” he panted. “Wait—”

  “No waitin’. Apologize.” Again the gun barrel swung.

  “All right ... all right, only don’t hit me no more.” Clay gasped the words. “I apologize. Sorry. Sorry ...”