Apache Ambush

Fargo’s lake blue eyes narrowed as he sat his Ovaro stallion and scanned the situation more carefully. For the past two months he’d been working for a Mr. Andrew Lund, the wealthiest man in this part of the Territory. Not only did Lund own the two largest gold mines, he also owned the largest stagecoach line. Fargo’s job was to travel the trouble routes and see if he could stop the robbers who’d been making Lund’s life hell. Fargo had been forced to do some killing but so far there had been significant improvement in the safety of the routes. His biggest regret was that despite his efforts, two drivers and a passenger had been killed in one part of the Territory while Fargo had been pulled away to sack a gang in the other.

Fargo knew the man and wife who ran this station for Lund. They were in their sixties, had been farmers until they got too old and too weary to fight off Indians any longer, and ran the cleanest station with the best food anywhere in the entire Lund organization.

Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t Indians. Indians weren’t quiet unless they were lying in wait. Plus, one of the Indians would have been rounding up the horses in the corral, running them off if not stealing them.

To the west of the station was a line of scrub pine. At the moment a couple of deer were sampling the grass carpeting the thin area of forest.

Fargo walked his Ovaro over to the trees, hiding it in a separate copse of pines. He ran to the denser spread of trees and began working his way in morning shadow to the area behind the station. The scent of pine was sweet and the forest creatures inquisitive as this giant made his way through their kingdom.

Nothing moved in back of the adobe-sided station, either. Empty crates were stacked on one side of the rear door, the other side was empty. There was a window on the empty side.

Fargo moved carefully, crouching down, Colt drawn and ready, working his way to the window on the back wall. The only sounds were those of the soughing mountain winds, the cries of a soaring hawk, and the creaking of pine limbs when the wind came hard.

He ducked below the window, preparing himself for surprise. He might well ease himself up to peer inside and find himself staring at another human being. A damned unfriendly one.

He inched himself up to the window. No face awaited him. What he saw was self-explanatory. In the center of the station four passengers stood together while three masked gunmen went through their bags. A fourth gunman stood to the side, holding a sawed-off shotgun on them.

Fargo didn’t see Lem Cantwell, the station manager, at first, but as his eyes searched the large central room inside they spotted a snakelike line of red on the stone floor and traced the line all the way to the bloody whitehaired head of an older man. With a dark, ragged hole the size of a baseball on the left side of his head, there was no doubt that he was dead. Fargo didn’t see Pauline, Lem’s wife. Had the bastards killed her, too?

The first thing he had to do was check his anger. Much as he wanted to go bursting in there now, he’d probably only get himself killed and help nobody.

He forced himself to focus on the job at hand and not the Cantwells.

He crouched down again and duckwalked over to the side of the door. He stood up, slid his hand over to the doorknob and gently began turning it back and forth.

The conversation inside went on without interruption. One of the passengers was a pretty girl and so naturally at least two of the bastards were talking about how they were going to rape her when they were done robbing everybody. A third robber kept threatening the passengers to turn over everything valuable they had on them. He said that anybody caught holding out would be killed. But surely by now the passengers knew that they were to be killed no matter what they said or did.

Nobody had heard Fargo twisting the doorknob back and forth.

He twisted faster, harder, until one of them said: ‘‘What the hell’s that?’’

By now the girl was crying so hard that hearing the doorknob turn was even more difficult. But between her sobs one of the men said: ‘‘It’s the back door.’’

‘‘The back door?’’ another robber said. ‘‘Who the hell’d be coming in the back door?’’ Then: ‘‘Lou, you go find out.’’

‘‘Cover me,’’ Lou said. ‘‘This is strange.’’

Fargo gave the knob a final twist. Then he pressed himself flat against the adobe and waited. The chinking sound of Lou’s spurs grew louder the closer he got to the door.

Fargo knew he had only seconds to act.

The door opened, and the brim of a filthy white Stetson poked out of the doorframe. Fargo slapped the hat off Lou’s head and just as Lou turned to see who his assailant was—bringing his gun up—Fargo brought his own revolver down so hard on Lou’s skull that the scrawny man dropped without another sound. Fargo started dragging him away just as he hit the ground.