Apache Ambush

Stack blinked. ‘‘What the hell are you up to?’’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘‘Let me guess. You are trying to provoke me. You want me good and mad so I will shoot you or hit you. But it won’t work. I am not ten years old. Cranmeyer will not catch on that something is wrong.’’

‘‘He already has,’’ Fargo said, and nodded.

Krupp was riding toward them, all six feet plus and two hundred pounds or more of him. His right hand rested on the butt of his Colt, and he kept glancing from Fargo to Stack and back again. Ten feet from them he drew rein. ‘‘What is going on here?’’ he demanded.

‘‘Why didn’t Cranmeyer come with you?’’ Stack asked.

‘‘I told him not to,’’ Krupp said.

‘‘You told him?’’ Stack said. ‘‘Since when do you give him orders? He is the boss.’’

‘‘You forget I am the captain of his freight train. I see to it that no harm comes to him.’’

‘‘Oh, you do, do you?’’ Stack sounded amused.

Krupp nodded. ‘‘Because I am big, some folks seem to think that must mean I am slow. But I am not slow. I just don’t say a lot. I keep my own peace.’’

Fargo wanted to warn him. But Stack was holding the pearl-handled Remington close to his leg, and all Stack had to do was angle the barrel and squeeze the trigger.

‘‘What are you getting at?’’ the killer snapped at the captain.

‘‘I give the orders and I ask the questions,’’ Krupp said. ‘‘And I will ask you again. What is going on here?’’

‘‘This is a good spot to noon,’’ Stack said. ‘‘We have been waiting for you, is all.’’

‘‘Why is your six-shooter out?’’

Stack shrugged. ‘‘This is Apache country. A man doesn’t need any more reason than that, does he?’’

‘‘I suppose not.’’ Krupp started to wheel his bay but stopped with the animal broadside to them. His right arm, Fargo noticed, was screened by his body. ‘‘What about the other one?’’

‘‘Eh?’’ Stack said.

‘‘Fargo’s six-shooter,’’ Krupp said. ‘‘His holster is empty. What happened to his revolver?’’

Fargo almost told him that an Apache had taken it, but Stack responded first.

‘‘How the hell should I know? You ask a lot of damn fool questions.’’ Stack looked toward the woods that hid Jefferson Grind and his men, then at the seemingly open ground that hid Fraco and the Mimbres Apaches. ‘‘Holler to Cranmeyer and tell him to bring the wagons up.’’

‘‘Did you know I was in the army?’’ Krupp asked.

It was Stack’s day for saying, ‘‘What?’’

‘‘I was in the army before I came to work for Mr. Cranmeyer. A sergeant in the infantry.’’ Krupp smiled in fond recollection. ‘‘I liked military life, liked it a lot.’’

‘‘I do not care,’’ Stack said.

‘‘You will in a minute,’’ Krupp assured him. ‘‘You see, Mr. Cranmeyer needed a captain for his freight trains. He needed someone who can organize things so they run smoothly. Someone used to giving orders. Someone who can handle men and drill them the way the army does.’’

‘‘And he picked you? How wonderful,’’ Stack said with deliberate scorn. ‘‘But what does any of that have to do with anything?’’

‘‘I make a good captain because I was a good sergeant, ’’ Krupp said. ‘‘I was good with the men under me. I learned which ones I could depend on and which ones I couldn’t. Which ones I could trust and which ones were liable to turn tail in a fight.’’ He paused. ‘‘I have never trusted you. Not from the moment you hired on with us until now.’’

Stack grew rigid with wariness. ‘‘Why bring that up all of a sudden?’’ he asked suspiciously.

‘‘I want you to understand,’’ Krupp said.

‘‘Understand what?’’ Stack impatiently snapped.

‘‘I want you to understand that you did not pull the wool over my eyes,’’ Krupp said. ‘‘I want you to understand why I killed you.’’ And with that, his right hand rose and in it was his Colt.

Stack was ungodly quick. He leveled the Remington and snapped off a shot first.

Krupp jerked, and fired. He had been hit but he got off a shot and he did not shoot for the chest as Stack had done; he shot Stack in the head. Even as he squeezed the trigger he slapped those big legs of his against his bay and bawled, ‘‘Ride, Fargo! Ride!’’

Fargo did not need encouragement. A bellow of rage had risen from the trees and the earth was sprouting Apaches as if they were cornstalks. He used his spurs and bent low and was glad he had when an arrow cleaved the air above him. Only then did he realize that Cranmeyer and the men who had been with him were nowhere to been seen. They had gone back down the ridge. The first wagon was still there, parked so it blocked the road, but the driver and the wagon guard were not in it.

Jefferson Grind and his hired killers were charging from the trees, Grind conspicuous by his straw hat, but they were too far off to keep Fargo and Krupp from getting away.

Not so the Apaches. There had to be twenty warriors on either side, dirt and dust cascading from their bronzed bodies as they rose from concealment. Several were close enough to stop them, and bounded to do so. Others let fly with arrows. Rifles belched lead and smoke.