Massacre River (A Neal Fargo Western) #5 Read online

  “General Luna? He was one of the early commanders in the Insurrection. He’s dead.”

  “True. But someone else—there is no way of telling who—has taken his name for the sentiment it arouses among the patriotic Tagalogs and will soon commence at least guerrilla warfare against Americans. Thus, you see, Mr. Fargo, this three hundred mile journey of yours will not be simple. You may have no trouble at all, of course. But you may also have to run a gauntlet of bandits, revolutionists and headhunters. My daughter is very precious to me. Perhaps you understand now why I have scoured the Philippines and the United States for the one man to whom I could entrust her on this journey to her new husband.”

  ~*~

  Fargo arose, began to pace the room with that lithe, pantherish gait. “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t the bridegroom come south? Why can’t they be married in Manila?”

  “Then the dangers merely multiply. He would have the risky trip south; then both of them the journey north once more.”

  “By ship. From the coast. It should be a lot simpler by ship.”

  “Even more dangerous. The Moros are famous pirates, seafarers. Even now, as part of their warfare against the Americans, they harass the coastline, True, your Navy guards the coast, but your ships cannot be everywhere. This is not true of the Moros. In their light craft, they strike and are gone before anyone even knows of their presence. And believe me, Mr. Fargo, I would rather my daughter fell into the hands of the headhunters of the north than into those of the Moros. If you know anything of those terrible people at all, you know they are unsurpassed in their cruelty toward anyone not of the Moslem faith.”

  Fargo nodded. The revolver under his coat was reminder of that. It was a pistol that had been standard Army issue until the Army had encountered the Moros. But those fanatical Mohammedans, crazed with drugs and religious fervor, had frequently gone juramentado, had run amok like mad dogs, slaying anything and everything that moved in their paths. When they were in such a state, their vitality had been astonishing; sometimes an entire cylinder of .38 slugs would not stop a crazed, blood-mad Moro; and so the Army had gone to the .45 Colt Automatic, with its heavier slug, additional rounds, and greater stopping power. Fargo, however, preferred the accuracy and reliability of the .38 revolver; and not even a Moro could come on with a .38 slug in his head. Fargo had sent more than one to Islamic paradise that way and, in confidence in his own expert marksmanship, still carried the old-style gun.

  “No,” Ching went on, “I would not like to see my daughter end up in a Moro harem, or, even worse, tortured to death to provide entertainment for Moro children. The journey must be made by land. And then, of course, there is the money that must be transported.”

  “The money?”

  “Yes. It will be a considerable sum. Her marriage portion, to begin with. Better than fifty thousand dollars in silver. In addition, her husband requires additional capital for his trading operation. So, you see, Mr. Fargo, besides my daughter, you will be responsible for transporting over one hundred thousand American dollars in silver and gold to the north.” Ching sipped from his glass. “As you can imagine, such a sum would draw bandits and revolutionaries like flies to honey. Besides, there is the value of my daughter herself.”

  Fargo stared. “What do you mean?”

  “I am a wealthy man. That is a fact known in the islands. The oldest, dearly beloved daughter of a wealthy man is a valuable piece of merchandise, Mr. Fargo. Can you imagine how much could be extorted from me in ransom if she should fall into the wrong hands?” His face was very grave. “Now, sir, do you understand the magnitude of the job I am asking you to undertake? I am prepared to pay you fifteen thousand dollars to accomplish it. You will receive half before leaving Manila, the other half upon my daughter’s safe arrival at her future husband’s compound in the mountains. I await your decision, sir.”

  ~*~

  The servant had left the bottle on the desk. Fargo went to it, poured more whiskey into his glass. It was not that he wanted another drink, but he had to consider the ramifications of this. Not the job itself; it was a fighting job, one of risk; and that had been his meat for years. Price was what was on his mind. He had dealt with Chinese before. If Ching had offered fifteen thousand, it meant he was prepared to pay more.

  Fargo took a sip of bourbon. “It sounds fairly interesting,” he said casually. “But I wouldn’t touch it for a penny less than thirty thousand.”

  Ching’s eyes lit with the love of haggling. “You must understand that I could not pay so much. I will have to bear the expense of an immense armed escort which you shall have to recruit.”

  “I’m not going to recruit any armed escort. I may hire one or two men to go with me, no more. What do you want me to do, signal to everybody on Luzon that I’m hauling valuable goods?” He smiled faintly. “Bandits, revolutionaries, headhunters. No, Mr. Ching. Thirty thousand is my price.”

  “Mr. Fargo! You’re asking me to pay you a hundred dollars a mile!”

  “If this new territory your daughter’s husband is developing is profitable, I reckon it’ll be worth it to you. To spread out the business, have a family connection—”

  “I could, perhaps, pay you twenty. Certainly no more.”

  Fargo grinned coldly. “That might not pay for my cartridges, Mr. Ching. Besides, everybody knows how helpless Chinese women are. Those bound feet and all—”

  “My daughter is not helpless. Nor does she have bound feet. She, too, has been educated in England; she’s completely Westernized. I daresay she can ride a horse as well as you. For that matter, even use a gun; she has been on grouse shoots in Scotland.”

  Fargo rolled his cigar across his mouth. “In that case, I might come down to twenty-five thousand.” The cold grin persisted. “With you paying all expenses, of course.”

  “Quite impossible. Really—”

  Fargo stood up, shrugged. “Well, I understand they need people like me at the Benguet mine. I can always—”

  Ching let out a gusty sigh. “Very well, Mr. Fargo. Twenty-five thousand. And I pay expenses. For that, you guarantee to deliver my daughter and the money safely to Chea Swen-tai, her future husband, and return with his receipt for all in a special code we have between us. You will receive ten thousand dollars prior to departure and fifteen when you return with the receipt.”

  “Right,” Fargo said. He looked at Ching with narrowed eyes, grinning wolfishly. “As a matter of fact, what makes you think I won’t run off with your daughter and the money both?”

  “I don’t think a man who has the trust of Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States, would do that. If you did, you could be assured that you would never be able to return to your homeland, Mr. Fargo. You are a professional fighting man. I think that what you hire out to do, you will do. I am prepared to take that risk, for it is the least risk of all in this enterprise. You should—” He broke off as the door opened, turned in his chair. “Yes?” Then he stood up. “Mr. Fargo,” he said. “May I present my daughter? Miss Jade Ching, Mr. Neal Fargo. My dear, here is the man who shall take you to your husband.”

  ~*~

  Fargo stared.

  The girl was Westernized, all right, but that did not lessen the exotic impact of her beauty.

  The brocade dress she wore would have been suitable for an English drawing room at high tea. It molded itself to a body small but ripe, clinging to perfectly proportioned breasts, firm and high, a tiny waist, hips with a voluptuous woman-curve. Her hair was raven black, gleaming with blue highlights, and cut short for 1914, a year in which American women wore their hair very long. Her face was oval, inset with huge, black, enchantingly slanted eyes; her nose was small, her mouth large, red and sensual. Her skin was flawless, of the color of aged ivory. She looked at Fargo and he looked back; and in that instant something arced between them; there was a kindling in those enormous black eyes; for just an instant, the tip of a pink tongue moved across her lips, moistening them, then withdrew. She came for
ward in the long dress as if she were floating, small and yet exquisitely lovely, and Fargo towered over her as he took the hand she put out.

  “Miss Ching,” said Fargo.

  “Mr. Fargo.” Her voice was almost a whisper, touched with the same English accent that her father’s bore. “So you are the one with whom I am to make the perilous journey.”

  “Yes, my dear,” said Jonathan Ching. “The terms have been arranged.”

  “I shall look forward to traveling with you, Mr. Fargo. You appear very capable. When shall we start for the north?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two days, maybe a week. It will take some time for me to make the arrangements.” Her hand was small, firm, and unless he was mistaken, seemed to linger in his. It was finally his initiative that released it. “Are you in a hurry to get to your husband?”

  She looked at Jonathan Ching. “My father is quite anxious that I reach him as soon as possible.”

  Something in her voice made Fargo frown. “And you?”

  Those eyes met his, and he had to exert a certain amount of willpower to keep from almost falling into them. Suddenly he realized that this was going to be a far more taxing job than he had imagined.

  “It makes no difference to me,” she said. “After all, I have never seen my future husband.”

  Jonathan Ching drew himself upright. “My dear,” he said, an edge of anger roughening his voice. “That has no bearing on anything.”

  “No. Of course not.” Jade Ching’s voice was level, still a whisper. “I yearn for my bridegroom, of course. Father, please excuse the interruption. Mr. Fargo, if you will forgive me ...”

  She turned and went out. Fargo did not miss the motion of her hips under the dress.

  Jonathan Ching let out a long breath. “Perhaps my daughter is too Westernized. While in school in England she was infected with certain values not in line with Chinese tradition.”

  “You mean like wanting to be in love with the man she marries,” Fargo heard himself say.

  Ching’s voice was harsh. “I think my daughter’s beliefs are none of your concern, Mr. Fargo.”

  “She’s never seen him, though.”

  “No. Of course not. But both our families are of old Hong Kong extraction. He has been carefully selected and will make her an excellent husband, just as she will be a fine first wife for him.”

  Fargo frowned. “First wife?”

  “Of course. He will have others, and concubines. But she will be Number One.” Ching’s eyes met Fargo’s for a moment, then shuttled away. He sat down at his desk again. “Don’t be deceived. Mr. Fargo. Our relationship with the West, the English in particular, goes back fifty years, more. And we are very adaptable. It has been more profitable for us to assume Western ways. But we are still Chinese. This marriage was arranged in Hong Kong, before either of the parties to it was born. It is entirely suitable. You have no need to question it. You are engaged, at a very high price, to deliver two commodities to Chea Swen-tai in Northern Luzon. One is a hundred thousand dollars in specie and the other is my daughter. To deliver them safely: that is all you need concern yourself with.”

  Fargo grinned slowly, like a wolf. “I don’t intend to concern myself with anything else, Mr. Ching.”

  “Then good. When shall you start?”

  “When I’m ready. I’ll let you know.”

  Ching did not look pleased. But he said, “Very well, Mr. Fargo. But do not linger overlong. Every day counts. With every company of soldiers sent south to fight the Moros, the bandits grow bolder and the revolutionaries stronger. And the risks increase.”

  “I always figure the risks,” Fargo said. “That’s why I’m in no hurry. Good day, Mr. Ching.” And he picked up the battered cavalry hat, clapped it on his head, and went out.

  Chapter Three

  Intramuros. It was the walled inner city of Manila, built by Spaniards, a fortress within whose towering fortifications existed a whole, separate city. Fargo entered it through the Parian Gate, his carromato clattering over the bridge that spanned the recently drained moat.

  The two-wheeled taxi, pulled by a bony, tiny horse, took him to his hotel of yellowed stucco with a red tile roof. Fargo paid the man in Philippine pesos and went upstairs, to a room stifling with tropic heat. There he took off his shirt, tossed his hat aside, and had another drink from a bottle on the dresser. Then he reached under the bed and pulled out the trunk.

  He set it on the bed, unlocked the special lock, and opened it. Now that he had a job, it was time to inspect his fighting gear.

  First, he removed from the trunk a Winchester .30-30 carbine, in an ornately carved leather scabbard. He drew the gun from its sheath, inspected it minutely for any signs of rust or corrosion, and then, with a patch and a can of oil from a cleaning kit, touched up its coating of lubrication. He knew how the moisture of the Pacific could eat through the best protective coating. Satisfied that the weapon was in perfect working order, he laid it aside.

  Next he took out a shorter gun case of the softest chamois. His hard, brown face lit with a kind of glow as he opened this and drew from it a double-barreled Fox ten-gauge shotgun. Once designed as a fowling piece, its receiver was ornately engraved; and Fargo’s eyes flickered over the inscription worked into the pattern: To Neal Fargo, gratefully, from T. Roosevelt. His thin lips quirked as he remembered the assignment that had won him this gun. Then they straightened as he broke the weapon, checked the bores for any sign of corrosion. There was none; their open cylinders gleamed flawlessly. Once it had exceeded thirty inches in barrel length, this shotgun; but Fargo had sawed off a good part of that. What was left was a riot gun, capable of throwing nine or ten buckshot from a barrel, a weapon which, at short range, was incomparable in combat. The blast of lead flung by the pulling of both triggers simultaneously made a withering sleet against which nothing could stand. Fargo checked the sling he had attached to the weapon for length and then slung the Sterlingworth Fox muzzles down behind his right shoulder. He hooked his thumb in the sling. Then he twitched the thumb and the barrels came up under his arm. The gun was upside down, but with a weapon of this sort, that made no difference. His left hand shot across his body, tripped both triggers with simultaneous dry clicks. If anyone or anything had been in front of him and the gun had been loaded, flying lead would have cut the target in two.

  Fargo unslung the gun from his right shoulder, put it on his left, and repeated the drill. It went as smoothly. He had been born ambidextrous, capable of using his left hand for anything that his right could perform. It was a rare gift and, more than once, double-handedness had saved his life.

  The shotgun was his favorite weapon. He spent a long time touching up its lubrication. Then, he restored it to the chamois-skin case and put it with the Winchester.

  After that, he took out the bandoliers. Already, in this climate, their leather was beginning to show touches of green mold. He wiped that away meticulously: from the shoulder belt that held the snub-nosed rounds of the Winchester to the other belt that was crammed with fifty shells for the shotgun. Then there was the pistol belt and buscadero holster for the .38. It glittered with cartridges for the revolver, and each cartridge had been carefully worked on: the slugs they contained had been cut in crisscross fashion so they would expand on impact. Fargo chuckled. If the Army had specified that treatment of .38 cartridges, it would have saved itself a lot of expense. Not even a kill-crazy Moro could stand against that weight of lead when it hit

  He laid the pistol belt aside with the shoulder bandoliers and checked the boxes of ammunition in the bottom of the suitcase. Loads for his weapons was something he was fussy about; a man’s life—his— could depend on a single bullet. He loaded his own ammunition and carried an ample stock with him wherever he went.

  Then he lit a cigar. When it was going, his hand flashed around his back to his hip pocket. It came up holding a peculiar knife. Four inches of its glittering blade protruded from between the folded handles of buffalo horn that covered t
he other six inches of steel. Fargo snapped a catch, flipped his hand adeptly, and the hinged handles swung back to reveal the whole ten inches of cutting edge. This was a knife he had obtained here on Luzon during his cavalry days. Made in Batangas, it was incomparable: he could and had driven the razor-keen point of it through a silver dollar at a single blow without dulling or deformation: the knife-smiths in the southern part of Luzon were without peer. Holding the blade out in the level, dangerous manner of the experienced knife-fighter, he made a pass or two with his right hand, transferred to his left, slashed the air with equal adeptness, and then put the weapon, its water-buffalo handle segments once again folded over its blade, back into its special sheath in his hip pocket.

  So everything was all right. His weapons were in readiness. Fargo poured water into the basin on the washstand, scrubbed himself down, standing naked there in the hot room, and substituted tropical khakis from the trunk for the white linen suit. More comfortable now, he donned a light canvas brush jacket to mask the shoulder-holstered .38. Then he left the hotel and caught a trolley that would take him back to the heart of Manila.

  ~*~

  Along the way, staring out at the glittering surface of the bay beyond the seawall, then looking down at the dung-colored Pasig River beneath the trolley bridge, its slow-moving surface dotted with sampans on which people lived and bancas, the native dugout canoes that moved traffic back and forth, he felt a certain satisfaction at being back in the Philippines. He had always found the islands fascinating: from his first glimpse of them, vivid green against the amethyst of the Pacific, they had engendered a certain excitement in him. Sprawling over a thousand miles of ocean, populated by a hodge-podge of tribes, some savage, some civilized, and all dangerous to a white man, an American, he had understood that here at last was a place in which both opportunities and risks were unlimited. That was the land of place he liked.