Valley of Skulls (Fargo Book 6) Read online

  “I’ll serve it,” Fargo said. “I can serve any gun that was ever made and serve it right. I won’t blow it up.”

  “I refuse! I won’t let you!”

  Fargo looked at him for a long minute. Then his hand moved. But no one could see the movement; it was too swift for that. One instant it was at his side; the next, it was out front, the .38 Colt in it centered on Ned Stoneman.

  “Listen,” Fargo said. “This thing is full of hollow-points. If one of them hits you, it’ll tear you wide open. My patience is at an end, Stoneman. The next time you try to give me orders—tell me what to do and what not—I’m going to kill you.” His tone left no doubt that he meant exactly what he said.

  Stoneman turned pale; his jaw clamped shut. Then the gun was back in Fargo’s holster as swiftly as it had come. “I think we understand each other,” he said coolly. “Now, let’s get to work.”

  Work. That was what it was … hard, back-breaking labor. They cursed and sweated, Darnley’s men, Fargo riding them mercilessly, as they slid the huge tube of gold on runners of mahogany down the great pyramid, mounted it on the mahogany carriage Stoneman had already made. That the carriage was a good job Fargo grudgingly admitted, except the rims of the wheels sliced from rounds of great mahogany trunks were too narrow, and that was going to cause trouble in soft ground.

  Still, with the wooden trunion bar in place, the gun was nicely mounted. There was a sort of trail that could be spiked in to stabilize while firing ... if it came to that. Cans of blasting powder, coils of fuse, and big bags of rock fragments were packed on the mules that pulled it. The earliest cannons ever made, Fargo knew, had fired stone projectiles. At close range they could be deadly. A load of rocks fired from the Golden Gun at fifty yards or less would spray like canister or grape, be effective against personnel. Moreover, the gun’s roar itself was a factor in their favor: Fargo knew from experience how men hesitated before the sound of artillery.

  There were three strong carts for stelae. They were loaded with the precious slabs and their mules hitched up; the remaining animals were packed with food and ammunition. Fargo backed off, looked at the pack train as it strung itself out ready for departure. It was a hell of an outfit to get through jungle, across rivers and past swamps—slow as molasses and awkward as two left feet. And a millstone around a man’s neck when the time came to fight. Still, he had hired out to get it to Belize; and he would do his damndest.

  The Indian macheteros took their place at the column’s head. Directly behind them came the Golden Gun. Darnley’s men were strung out on either flank, Darnley commanding a strong rear guard. The archeologist and Stoneman would ride the carts or walk beside them when the going was too rough for the mules to pull their added weight. Fargo would take the lead beside the cannon.

  He saw that everything was ready. He raised his hand high, then brought it down sharply. “Move out!” he roared.

  Whips cracked; a mule brayed. The animals strained into harness. The Golden Gun began to roll. Fargo took one look backward at the lost city, the pyramid, the temple of the Valley of Skulls. Then, with long strides, he took his place in line and the train rolled into the jungle.

  ~*~

  The first two days were pure hell. After that, it got worse.

  Inch by inch, foot by foot, they fought their way through a green Purgatory, building a road for the vehicles as they went, hacking down cane and vines, corduroying the ground with logs when it turned soft. Then, when the wheels sank in and the cannon and carts mired, they threw their weight against them and adding their strengths to that of the struggling mules to work them free. Meanwhile, the heat was stifling, the insects ferocious. Indians were out there in the jungle, watching.

  On the fourth day, they had struck a sort of narrow trail that made the going easier. Now Fargo walked ahead of the macheteros, shotgun cradled in his arm, his eyes scanning ceaselessly the ground before him and the jungle that lay ahead. He was so intent on this that Nancy Telford was at his elbow before he realized it. “Fargo,” she said.

  He held up, looked at her. “Don’t ever come up behind me that way again,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” She frowned. “I just wanted to walk with you. I … can’t stand being close to Ned. Why’re you so jumpy? The going’s easier now.”

  “That’s why I’m jumpy. A trail means men can come and go. There’ll be other trails feeding into it. When there wasn’t any path, we were hard to get at. But we can be got at now. You’d better drop back to the rear.”

  “No. I want to stay with you. Please.” Whether by accident or design—he did not know—she leaned against him and her breast touched him briefly, solidly. His mouth twisted.

  “Damn it,” he said, “you do what I say.”

  She hesitated. “Very well,” she said at last, and fell back. Fargo moved on ahead, more swiftly now. His whole being was focused, concentrated, on reading sign. In the dim, stifling murk of the rain forest, he brought to bear every ounce of experience gained over hard years of combat. Even so, he almost walked into the ambush.

  It was his ears that saved him.

  At this time of day, except for the occasional riffling of a rare breeze, the animals drowsed in refuge from the heat; the leaves hung down limply as if exhausted; only the omnipresent insects buzzed and whirred. By habit, Fargo stopped every few yards to listen, far enough ahead of the wagon train now so that its sounds did not interfere with his reconnaissance. Now, coming to a point where the narrow trail made a sharp, right-angle turn, he halted, cocked his head. Such a place was one of maximum danger. A man who knew his business would hit a long outfit like this just as its center swung around the curve, when the front was separated from the rear.

  So he stood there a long time with head cocked, breath held. Then he caught the sound, faint, brief: the slosh of water. It lasted only a half-second, but that was long enough for him to hear and identify it; and he knew that someone up ahead and around the bend lay in wait and had just shifted position. What he had heard was water moving in a half-empty canteen.

  Instantly, he seemed to relax. He knew he was being watched; probably guns were trained on him. But whoever lay hidden up there would not want to fire prematurely, tip his hand. Given no reason to do so, he—or they—would wait until they were sure of their prey.

  Fargo tilted back his hat, took out a bandana, mopped his forehead. He slung the shotgun, sighed, sat down at the trail’s edge, took out a cigarette, lit it. There was time, plenty of it; the train was far behind, coming at a snail’s pace.

  He smoked the cigarette through, as if tired and unconcerned and grateful for the break. His ears were straining, but there was no other sound.

  All the same, he knew what he had heard. When the cigarette was finished, he arose a little stiffly. He took a leisurely swallow from his canteen, wiped his mouth, and then ambled back down the trail toward the train. The path jogged again; he stepped behind the wall of brush at its bend. Then, like a ghost, he faded into the jungle.

  Vines, cane, briars, underbrush: a solid wall through which it seemed not even a snake could pass. Certainly whoever lay up there would not expect a white man, a gringo, to come through it so swiftly, deftly and soundlessly. But Fargo was an old hand at this: he found holes where there were no holes, twisted, turned, edged sideways, crawled, and worked his way back toward the origin of that sound with astonishing speed. He was sweating and bloody from a hundred scratches when he halted behind a hung fallen log, the rotted carcass of a jungle giant, crawling with ants and other biting insects that made him grimace as they nipped and stung him. But he endured that pain and made no attempt to fight them off. Instead, cautiously, head low, he peered around the log’s butt end; and then he saw them.

  On this side of the trail, at least, there were fifteen. Probably as many more across the way. They lay posted at the trail’s edge in groups of five, screened by the jungle wall, each group ten yards apart. Their rifles were at the ready and there were pistols at their belts
, and he judged that they were the capos, the foremen, and their crews of gunmen from some monteria. They had caught wind of the Golden Cannon, and had let the timber-cutting go while they formed a gang to take it. They were tough and hard and jungle-wise, and they had made only that one mistake. Either they should have kept their canteens full enough not to slosh, or abandoned them altogether.

  Fargo grinned, like a hunting wolf.

  Then he turned around, went back the way he came. Because he had already found a passage, he made much better time.

  Then he had rejoined the train, catching it a hundred yards down-trail from the ambush. He made no attempt to halt it, but he strode rapidly along it toward its rear, and Darnley saw him coming and met him. “What’s up?”

  Fargo told him. Darnley grinned coldly. “All right. We’ll take the bastards from the rear.”

  “Can’t. Jungle’s too thick. Couldn’t get around behind them.”

  “What, then?”

  Fargo jerked his head, and Darnley’s grin widened. The Golden Gun traveled fully charged; at every halt, Fargo himself checked its load. Not too much blasting powder; the gun was not designed to take much strain. Some wadding, then a load of rocks, more wadding. Improvised and rude, but the powder was dry and it would fire.

  “Swing most of your men over to the left. Give me a detail on the right. When I fire, open up into the jungle with everything you’ve got.” He turned, went back up the line. Telford, Norris, Nancy and Stoneman were riding on the carts. “There’s going to be shooting,” Fargo said briefly and told them of the ambush in a few words. “The four of you keep down behind the stelae.”

  Whatever else he was, Stoneman was no coward. He lifted his rifle. “The hell I will—”

  “I told you to do what I say. I took money to bring you out of here.” Fargo’s hand dropped to his Colt. “But if I have to kill you myself, I will.”

  Stoneman’s face turned red, his eyes glittered, and he bit his lip. “All right,” he grunted and let the gun down.

  Fargo continued up the line. Some of Darnley’s men fell in behind him. The trail here was wide enough so that the macheteros loafed along, enjoying their rest. The gun was within fifty yards of the ambush now, its muzzle pointed backward. Fargo walked up beside the off leader of the mules. Without warning, he pulled the team around in the narrow trail. They brayed, plunged, crashed in the brush. The gun swung, and as its muzzle came into line, Fargo reached down to pull the clevis pin that connected it to the harnessed team. “Hold those mules!” he snapped to the teamster and the macheteros. He crouched behind the gun and snapped a match and put it to the short fuse already riding in the touchhole. It caught, hissed. At that instant a rifle fired from up ahead as an ambusher saw what had happened. The lead whined off the cannon tube and Fargo jumped back, crouched low, shotgun unslung, and then the Golden Gun went off.

  Its thunder shook the jungle, and the cloud of smoke it billowed made a fog. But, at close range, its charge of small rocks crashed into the jungle foliage and mowed it like a scythe. In there men screamed and yelled; at the same instant, Darnley’s Raiders opened up on the left, pumping fire at the bend’s outside curve.

  Taken by surprise, men boiled out of the jungle on both sides of the trail, firing as they came. Fargo’s mouth curled as he aimed the shotgun. The charge had flushed no more than eight or nine from the right; the rest of the fifteen had been put out of action by the gun.

  Then there was no time to think. They came on fast in that narrow space, and he fired the right barrel of the shotgun straight down the trail, like a ball sent down a bowling alley. The nine buckshot slammed men back with a brutal fist, and those behind fell over them. Fargo fired again, broke the shotgun, crammed in another pair of rounds, snapped it closed. A bullet caught the old campaign hat’s peak and whipped it off; another rasped by his ear so close he felt its wind. This time he cut loose with both barrels at once, and the cannon itself could have done no more damage. Chopped, slashed, by that lethal double load, more men went down, and the trail ahead was a writhing, twisting mass of bodies into which Darnley’s raiders poured their fire. But there were survivors, and they came on, brave men crazed with greed, the tough pistoleros of the logging camps. There was no time to load again; they jumped the corpses of their fellows and, before Fargo could fall back, they were on him. He turned the shotgun, butt first, in his left hand, drew his Colt with his right. A round, swarthy face, sweating, black-mustached, loomed before him, teeth bared; he saw a pistol-muzzle dead on him from three feet away. The upswung shotgun butt knocked it aside as it went off, and the bullet ripped Fargo’s cheek. Simultaneously, he fired the Colt. The hollow point hit full force into the pistolero’s face and the whole head disappeared. Fargo himself was sprayed with red and gray as the man dropped, but there was no time to flinch at that. He whirled, but too late; an arm clamped around his neck, squeezed. He rammed the short gun under that arm, muzzle against a flank, fired. Hot breath grunted in his ear; then the arm fell away, the knife blade in the other hand bouncing off the cartridges of his bandolier.

  Mules brayed and kicked; the whole trail seethed with combat; the jungle rang with gunfire, was pungent with powder smoke. Fargo caught a glimpse of Darnley, six-gun in each hand, firing to the right and left, saw two men go down. But Darnley’s men were taking casualties, too. One dropped kicking in the trail; the rearing, plunging mules that teamsters fought desperately to hold trampled him, and his scream faded quickly. Another yelled, dropped, clutching his stomach; a third toppled into the underbrush. Fargo saw a big man, a monteria capo, ten feet away, raising his rifle, lining it on Darnley. He fired the Colt from the hip and the hollow point tore out the small of the capo’s back and dropped him like a log.

  And then, with astonishing suddenness, it was over. All at once the jungle was still again except for the braying of the mules and the groaning of wounded men among the corpses scattered all up and down the trail. Fargo looked around, gun still up; but there were no more targets. His eyes shuttled to the carts full of stelae; then he relaxed as he saw Nancy Telford, her father, and the man Norris raise their heads. But where was Stoneman?

  Then he appeared, too, stepping around a cart, rifle in his hand. At his feet, a pistolero lay twitching with a belly wound. Stoneman put the gun muzzle against his head, pulled the trigger.

  Fargo’s mouth thinned. Yeah, he thought bitterly. That would be a job to his taste. Finishing off the wounded ... All at once he was tired, a little shaky.

  Then Nancy Telford had run to him. “Fargo! Are you all right?” She seized his arm. “Your face—”

  “Just a bullet scratch.”

  “Thank God,” she whispered. “I was afraid … !”

  Down the trail, Stoneman’s rifle went off again and then once more. Nancy dabbed at the bleeding cut on Fargo’s cheek with a handkerchief and grimaced. “You know what he’s doing?”

  “Somebody has to. Let him. It’s something he’s good at.”

  “Yes.” Her voice rasped. “Oh, I hate him. I don’t know how I could ever have been such a fool. All he ever wanted of me anyhow was to use me to find out the hiding place of the cannon, bring us and his father together … Fargo—” Then she moved against him.

  “All right,” he said and put his arm around her, held her. “All right.” Over her shoulder, he saw Stoneman staring at them, saw him half raise the rifle. Instinctively, Fargo stiffened, but Stoneman lowered the gun again.

  Then Fargo released Nancy. “You go climb back on the cart. We’ve got no time to waste. We’ve got to move out again, right away.”

  “Yes.” She looked at him a moment. “But … Fargo. Watch Ned. You hear? Watch Ned.”

  “I will,” Fargo said. And he did, until Stoneman was back on the cart again and the wagon train rolled once more.

  Chapter Nine

  Below, Fargo could hear in darkness the river running. It was, he thought, a sound almost of salvation: the Belize, swollen by the autumn rains. They were in Briti
sh Honduras now; and this was the river that would take them back to civilization, back to the capital of the country where Stoneman’s yacht waited. Sitting in the darkness on the riverbank, shotgun cradled on his lap, he thought back over the past three weeks. He had made journeys in his time and taken risks, but never had he put in a harder, more dangerous twenty-one days than those just past.

  He had scars and wounds to show for them: the marks of battle. They had fought their way all across the neck of Guatemala, between Chiapas and this British colony. First, after the ambush by the men from the monteria, the revolutionaries, and they had been a different case entirely. Soldiers, well-armed, well-mounted, and they had swept down on the train in an open river valley where cover was scarce. But they had made one mistake; they had thought of the Golden Gun as loot, not artillery; and that had been their undoing. Its first charge had caught their bunched-up attack squarely with lethal force, mowing down men and horses in a ghastly pile. That had given Fargo, Darnley and the others the edge they needed for survival; but it had been a rough fight all the same. They had lost men, a lot of Darnley’s Raiders and Norris, Telford’s assistant, hit by a stray ricochet. The Mexicans had harassed them for miles before giving up. Almost before they were gone, the Guatemalan army came.

  They were less difficult to deal with. Back country Indians given ill-fitting uniforms and obsolete rifles, they fought only because they feared their officers more than the enemy. They knew that even if they got the Golden Gun, they’d get no share of loot. Fargo and Darnley, with rifles, had concentrated on the leaders: the captain, the lieutenant and the non-coms. Expert snipers as they were, there seemed no hiding place from their bullets, and the one surviving sergeant had broken and run after seeing his superiors picked off by slugs that seemingly came from nowhere.

  Then a skirmish with a tribe of poverty-stricken jungle Indians with obsolete muskets; the first thunder of the Golden Gun had put an end to that. Meanwhile, with all that fighting, the back-breaking labor of moving the loaded carts and the heavy cannon through jungle that was as much their enemy as the greedy, gun toting men who harassed them; and the jungle was an enemy unafraid of rifles, pistols, cannons; an enemy omnipresent and implacable, barring their way with brush and briars, sucking the wheels of the loaded carts and gun-carriage down into its bottomless mud, confronting them with flooded fords and swirling streams.