Valley of Skulls (Fargo Book 6) Read online

  Fargo took his cigar from his mouth. “What do you mean, examples?”

  Before Stoneman could answer, the girl, Nancy, stood up from the fire, came forward. “I’ll tell you what he means. He ...”

  “Shut up,” Stoneman said.

  “No.” There was anger in her voice. “You wouldn’t listen. We tried to stop you and you wouldn’t listen and ...” She whirled to face Fargo, and now he knew the reason for that roving eye of hers. Whatever she had felt about Stoneman before they had come here, in this place she had seen him plain with the veneer stripped off. And now she doubted; she did not like what he had revealed of himself. “When they refused to work on the temple, he horsewhipped two of them! When they still held out ...” her voice shook “... he shot another one. And when that didn’t move them, he … hanged one.”

  “Hanged one?” Fargo’s voice rasped as he stared at Stoneman.

  “Hell, it got the job done! They cleared the Temple, didn’t they? It’s the only treatment they understand; it’s how they deal with them in the monterias, the way my old man used to deal with them when he was fighting down here!”

  “Oh, yes, it got the job done!” said Nancy fiercely. “Got it done so well they all just left one night. We went to sleep; the next morning they were gone, every one!”

  Fargo felt a sudden coldness. “When was that?”

  “Not long ago. A week ...”

  Darnley let out a long breath, already understanding. He got to his feet, turned to Stoneman. “You stupid shit,” he said brutally, voice ringing with disgust. “Don’t you know they’ll be back?”

  Stoneman blinked, face reddening. He sprang up. “Now, listen, you ...”

  Darnley smiled coldly, dropped one big hand to a holstered Colt. “You listen. The Maya. They’re a pinched-off bit of a noble race, run to seed, true. But that doesn’t mean they have no guts. You desecrate a temple they held sacred, you horsewhip some, kill some more—do you think they’ll take that lying down? Not bloody likely!” He threw out his other hand in a sweeping gesture. “They’re out there now in that jungle somewhere, waiting for their chance. They’d probably have been on you before if those Mexicans hadn’t come, attacked you. When the bandits didn’t do the job, they’ll see that it’s done themselves. And now we’ll have to fight them all the way across that damned jungle ...” He turned away contemptuously. “Fargo, I’m doubling the guard.”

  “Good idea,” Fargo said. While Darnley called over one of his lieutenants, snapped orders, he went on. “Now, listen, all of you. My job—and Darnley’s is—is to get you out of here in one piece with whatever we can take. That means that from now on, I’m in charge. If anything happens to me, then Darnley takes over. I’ll give the orders and there’d better be no questions asked. If there are—” His eyes met Stoneman’s, locked with them.

  Stoneman shook his head. “My father hired you. He’s paying the freight. You take orders from me.”

  Fargo grinned coldly. “I take exactly one order from you. My deal with your old man was that you were to have the say on what we haul out. When you’ve done that, you’re finished. You do what I say from then on, or I might give you a little dose of what you gave the Maya.”

  For a moment, then, the stone enclosure was silent. Crisscrossed with bandoliers, their brass cartridges gleaming in the firelight, draped with shotgun and Winchester, Fargo stood loosely, legs wide-spread. If Stoneman made a move, he thought, a little gun whipping would be well in order. Might as well show him who was boss from the first. Fargo half hoped Stoneman would make a move; something about the man set his teeth on edge; to work him over with the Colt barrel would be a pleasure.

  Then Stoneman yielded; his eyes shuttled away. “I’ll discuss this with my father when we get out, don’t you think I won’t.”

  Fargo laughed softly. “Talk to him ’til you’re blue in the face, I don’t care.” Then he was all business again, gray eyes hard as rock. “Now. We start loading first thing in the morning. We’re pulling out as fast as we can. Six of those mules we need for grub, supplies. That leaves eighteen to haul the stuff from here. Some of these we’re gonna lose on the way. So you two—” he looked from Stoneman to Telford—“had better pick and choose what’s more important.”

  “The stelae ...” Telford began eagerly. Stoneman cut in, face flushed.

  “The hell with the stelae,” he said bluntly. “You know what we’re hauling. It’ll take six mules to pull it.”

  Telford bit his lip. “But, Ned, the stelae are immensely valuable. Every one that we can haul ought to be brought out. The interests of science ...”

  “I don’t care about the interests of science!” Stoneman snapped. “I’m here to protect the interests of Ned Stoneman, Senior! You know what the bargain was, Telford! Don’t try to weasel out of it now.”

  The archeologist stood tensely. “Ned,” he pleaded, “be reasonable. When I dealt with your father we all assumed that there’d be no trouble getting mules to haul out everything we found! We didn’t know we couldn’t go the short, easy way back, through Chiapas. We didn’t know revolution would break out again! We didn’t know either that we’d find such immensely valuable stelae, something to revolutionize the whole history of the New World! For God’s sake, man ... I know the other thing is valuable. But when you come right down to it, it’s just curiosity. These stone tablets ...”

  Stoneman spat into the fire. “Save your breath, Nelson. Fargo told you the terms of the deal he made with my old man. I pick what’s to go and nobody else has a say. And I say we take the other thing. You can haul what stelae you can on any mules left over. But on the way, if we lose animals, we’ll dump your damned rocks if we have to to save the other thing; it comes first!”

  Telford’s face twisted, almost as if he were about to cry. Then he relaxed, accepted. “Very well. As you say. Remember, though, the agreement I made with your father. Really, all this belongs to the Museum at Mexico City. But since things are so unstable, we take it all to the Smithsonian and they hold it in trust until Mexico has a legitimate government again and can be trusted to accept and care for it.”

  “You can do that with your stelae,” Stoneman said. “The other, though, goes to Ned Stoneman, Senior, for his private collection.”

  Telford’s face went blank. “That was not in the agreement.”

  “Maybe you didn’t understand the agreement. You do business with my old man, you’d better damned well make sure you understand everything he says. If you don’t, you’re out of luck.”

  “But ...” Telford chopped the air with his hand in a gesture of frustration. “Ned …”

  The girl stepped forward. She had combed her hair; it gleamed sleek and coppery in the firelight. Her eyes blazed. “Ned,” she said tautly, “do you know what you mean by what you’re saying? We ... we had something once, but you’re killing it. You’ve killed a little bit of it every day we’ve been here; and now you’re just ...” her voice broke. “You’re just wiping the rest of it out.”

  Stoneman looked at her steadily. “I can’t help that,” he said in a voice utterly toneless and indifferent. He gestured toward the temple. “I came here to get something and take it back to my father. That’s more important to me than anything. You understand? Anything!”

  Her breasts rose and fell beneath the tight shirt. “Yes,” she said at last, thinly. “I understand now. When we met in Madrid, you used me. You made love to me to find out what my father had learned from the old codex. You didn’t care about me. You cared ... all you cared about was that.” And she pointed to the temple, too. “All you ever wanted, really, was the Golden Gun!”

  The Golden Gun: those words spilled out into silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, the shriek of jungle animals. Darnley made a noise in his throat, looked at Fargo in triumph. Stoneman’s face contorted; Fargo tensed. For a moment it seemed he’d lash out at her. Then he relaxed, grinned almost mockingly. “All right, you spilled the beans, didn’t you? Well, no ma
tter. They would have seen it in the morning.”

  “You have found the Golden Gun?” Fargo snapped.

  “You know about it, eh?” Stoneman turned to him.

  “I know about it.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, we found it. This was where they made their last stand, those old Spaniards. From that temple up there, the sacred place. How the hell they got it up there I don’t know, but we dug it out from under pile after pile of skulls. It was a good place for a last stand—until they ran out of gunpowder.”

  Fargo looked toward the vast, imposing bulk of the pyramid. “It’s up there now?”

  “Clean as a pin, just like the day it was cast. I’ve had a carriage made for it. Tomorrow we’ll bring it down and mount it. And it goes out with us.” His eyes glittered. “Do you understand? No matter what or who we have to leave behind, the Golden Gun goes out!”

  Fargo nodded. “That’s up to you, under my agreement with your father.”

  Telford let out a despairing sigh. Fargo looked at him, smiled. “Relax, Dr. Telford. It ain’t all that bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This. Any stelae we leave here are safe. Neither the Indians nor the bandits give a cuss about ’em; to them they’re just so much rock. They’ve lain here hundreds of years already; they’ll last a while longer if you cache ’em properly. Then, when things have quieted down, you can come back for them. But the gun—that’s another matter. Stoneman’s right in this; this is the last chance to get it out. Leave it behind and the vultures will snatch it up and melt it down before you can snap your fingers. Then it’ll be gone—forever.”

  Telford nodded slowly, resignedly. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Very well. I won’t protest further. The gun goes with first priority. But we’ve got to get out some stelae, the most important.”

  “We’ll do the best we can,” Fargo said. “We’ll ...” He broke off, listening, head cocked. Then he looked at Darnley. “You hear that?”

  Stoneman blinked, as Darnley nodded grimly. “I don’t hear anything,” Stoneman said.

  Fargo unslung the shotgun. “That’s just it.” All at once the jungle, so loud, so full of life, had gone dead quiet. No monkeys chattered or whooped; no nightbirds screeched.

  Darnley dropped his hand to his Colts. “Well,” he said, “they’re out there!”

  “Who?” Stoneman’s voice was hoarse.

  “Your little friends,” answered the Englishman. “The ones with debts to collect from you. The Maya, Stoneman—the Indians.”

  Stoneman stood frozen for a moment. Then he snatched up his Springfield rifle. “All right,” he grated. “Let the bastards come! We beat the Mexicans, we’ll teach them a lesson, too!”

  “Put that Goddamned gun down!” Fargo snapped.

  Stoneman shook his head angrily. “No! Do you think I’m afraid of them—?”

  Fargo laughed coldly. “You’d sure as hell better be. You’re the one they want. If they get hold of you, it’ll take you a long time to die.” Then his face was grim. “Maybe the best thing to do would be to give you to them as a peace offering. Then they’d go away and leave us.”

  “You wouldn’t...” Stoneman paled.

  “I might, if push came to shove,” said Fargo tersely. “How many Indians did you have working here, Telford?”

  “Nearly fifty.”

  “All from the same village?”

  “No. From several.”

  “Then we’ve got trouble,” Fargo said. “My guess is there’s more than a hundred, maybe two hundred of them out there. They’re normally pretty peaceful people, but there’s only so much even they will take.”

  “So what the hell? We’ve got nearly fifty guns. They won’t come in against all that. If they did, we could cut them down like flies.”

  “Here, yes,” said Fargo. “In the open. But we’re not going to be hauling that gun and the rest through the open, Stoneman. We’re going to be taking it through the jungle.” He pointed. “Their jungle.” His mouth twisted.

  “They’re not Ladinos, Stoneman—mestizos, half-castes who’re as afraid of the jungle as any white man. They’re forest Indians, born and bred here. They can hunt us all along the trail and pick us off one by one with poisoned arrows. We’d never even see anything to shoot at.”

  “Then what do we do?” For the first time, Stoneman’s voice shook a little.

  “We parley with them. That Golden Gun. You say you’ve cleaned it up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bore, touch-hole, all? It could be fired?”

  “Fired?” Stoneman said blankly.

  “Damn it, that’s what it was made for, wasn’t it?” Fargo went to the corner of the room, threw back the big tarp that covered supplies. He made a sound of satisfaction as he saw the cans of blasting powder, the coil fuse. “Darnley.”

  The big Englishman was beside him in a moment. “Right, Fargo.”

  Fargo handed him two cans of powder, a rope of fuse. “Climb the pyramid, up in the temple. Get to that gun. Remember, it wasn’t made to hold modern powder, so don’t use too big a load. Charge it, wad it, no projectile of any kind, and give a yell when you’re ready. Fire four times, once in each direction. Take men with you to help turn the gun; plenty of men.” He began to strip off his bandoliers, laid aside his own weapons. “All right, Stoneman, I want money. Gold, hard cash. You must have brought in plenty with you to pay the workers.”

  “Now, wait a minute. You’re not going to pay those lousy animals tribute …”

  “I’m going to pay ’em compensation for the men you killed, men who were supporting families. I hope that will calm them down. Then, if everything goes right, I’m going to scare the living hell out of ’em.”

  “Don’t be a fool! We can hole up in the temple, it’s sacred to them, they’re scared to death of it, won’t go near it. That’s why I had to force them ...”

  “Oh, sure. We could hole up there. We wouldn’t be the first, either, would we? Remember the Spaniards? You want to wind up like them?” Fargo unbuckled his cartridge belt. “Give me the damned money. And all the tobacco you’ve got in camp, you must have had a supply for them.”

  “We’ve got plenty,” Nancy Telford said quickly. “But—” Her voice trembled. “Fargo, you’re not going out there unarmed, to try to talk with them?”

  “I’m going to make a stab at it,” Fargo said. He turned, giving Darnley more instructions. “Twenty minutes,” he said. “You got it? Exactly twenty minutes. Get on the bit; you’ve got no time to lose. The money, Stoneman—”

  Reluctantly, Stoneman unbuckled a money belt from beneath his shirt, handed it to Fargo. “They’ll kill you and take the whole damn thing—”

  “Don’t judge other people by yourself,” Fargo said thinly. “They’ve got a grudge to settle, yes. If it can be settled to their satisfaction, they’ll keep their word. If it can’t … Well, if they come at you, fight like hell.” He threw the belt over his shoulder. Then, with no weapon but the Batangas knife, he turned to go, seizing up a long brand from the fire to use as a torch.

  “Fargo,” Nancy Telford said.

  He glanced at her. “Yes?”

  Her eyes shone. “Be careful.”

  “Always am,” he said, then went out.

  What the others did not realize, Fargo thought as he walked across the silent clearing through the shadows of the ruined buildings, was that the jungle out there was full of Indians—not just these, but hundreds, thousands, more along their line of march. The killing of two had brought two hundred in a quest for vengeance; those two hundred could conceivably be killed, but then two thousand would seek to avenge them. No; this had to be tried first, if it were not to be a running fight they could not afford or hope to win all across the Lacandon, hampered by a ton of gold and more hundreds of pounds of stone.

  He checked his watch, quickened his pace. Timing was important, all important. He loped across the clearing, holding the torch high and knew the Indians would see it moving
toward them and wonder at it. When he reached the clearing’s edge, he slowed, held up the torch in his left hand, and raised his right high, palm out, in the signal for peace.

  Ahead of him loomed the forest wall, night-shrouded, black, impenetrable, utterly silent. The torchlight cast a yellow, flickering glow on the thick greenery of the jungle. Within that growth, behind that wall, nothing moved, made sound, or stirred. And yet, they were there; undoubtedly they were there.

  Now, very slowly he went forward, eyes searching the rim of forest. His whole body was tense; it would be no trick at all for gun or arrow fired from cover to kill him. Curiously, he felt no fear; he thought he knew the Indians too well. He was a stranger to them and came in peace; they had no grudge against him and they would at least talk to him—he hoped.

  He knew none of their dialects—or not more than a few words—but he was fluent in Spanish. Of course, some of them must speak it; surely the headman who had dealt with Telford and Stoneman. He stopped ten feet out of the jungle. Then he called out boldly and steadily in Spanish: “Friends. Maya. Lacandon. I come in peace to talk.”

  No answer. The night seemed to hold its breath. Nothing stirred.

  But he could feel them in there, in the jungle; sensed, with an instinct like an animal’s, their presence. “My name is Fargo. I would talk with the leader of the Maya.”

  Again a wait. Then, for the first time, there was the audible stir of life within the brush. Fargo held the torch high, right hand up. “I am unarmed. I would talk.”

  Time was ticking away. And time was precious. Everything had to go exactly right. Damn it, he thought—Then the answer came.

  “I am called Sabino,” the voice said in rusty Spanish. “I am headman of my tribe. I would talk with the man called Fargo.” Shadows moved along the jungle wall. Then they were there. Five of them, some in loin cloths, two in dirty whites. Sabino was one of these, stepping forward, a man of middle age, thick, stocky, and impressive. He carried an ancient muzzle-loading musket, its pan primed, hammer cocked, and flint ready, and the bore of the thing was pointed at Fargo’s belly. The others were armed with guns of equal antiquity. They ranged around Fargo; he saw other movement in the jungle and knew that he had underestimated the number of Indians out there; the place swarmed with them.