The Trailsman #388 by Jon Sharpe

dropping the India rubber balls to free his grip. “Only one more time will I say it, dried-up old bitch. Will I kill him?”
    Maria forced herself to look at those hands, and the sharp smell of urine filled the room when her bladder emptied itself.
    â€œBefore that howl falls silent,” she whispered hoarsely, “the blue-eyed one will be dead.”

8
    Fargo figured he had already called enough attention to himself in El Paso for one day. He decided to let things simmer down there while he returned to Tierra Seca.
    Before he left the city he purchased a copy of the
El
Paso
Beacon
and scoured it for any mention of the sudden channel shifting of the Rio Grande. He was relieved when he discovered nothing, yet he also realized it was only a matter of time before all hell might break loose.
    Fargo’s main stake in this deal was personal. Three murderous pieces of human garbage were determined to kill him as soon as possible and had already tried three times. Fargo intended to balance that ledger with lead. But every day that passed without exposing this brazen plot increased other dangers.
    The mining kingpin who was almost certainly behind this land grab would not likely wait very long before he began exploiting those ridges. Even if Mexican officials had been bribed into silence, Mexico was a hotbed of simmering resentments and peasant armies, and international violence could erupt at any time. The grand scheme of history didn’t much concern Fargo. But this mare’s nest had been thrust upon him and now he hoped to at least thrust it into the jurisdiction where it properly belonged: the U.S. Army.
    Fargo had worked under various contracts with the frontier army, off and on, for many years. He knew that, with the rare exception of battlefield commissions, virtually every officer was a West Point man—and the main subject of study at West Point was combat engineering.
    Fargo was confident that if one of these officers studied the area where the Rio Grande had been rerouted, he would quickly determine that a man-made blast had caused it, not Mother Nature. And a second carefully shaped blast could restore the Rio to its natural course.
    However, Fargo was equally convinced that the army would not make such an inspection unless Fargo could give Colonel Evans enough concrete evidence to justify the order. And one key to that evidence, despite the clear threat to Fargo’s life, was the borderland roach pit of Tierra Seca.
    He rode in late in the afternoon of his fourth day in the border country. The place languished in the furnace heat, the air so hot that each brittle breath felt like molten glass. Again, as a vigilant Fargo trotted the Ovaro into the settlement, he studied the ridges on the Mexican side of the river.
    They were almost the exact height and formation as the silver-bearing ridges downstream where the blasting had occurred. Would the greedy kingpin repeat his operation here, too? If so, this time it could be a bloody enterprise—Tierra Seca and the Phalanx commune hugged the American bank of the Rio Grande tightly.
    Fargo spotted the beauty Rosario Velasquez the moment he entered the cantina. The place was nearly deserted and she sat at one of the crude tables by herself, braiding her hair.
    â€œ
Una
copa
, Senor Fargo?” Antonio Two Moons greeted him.
    â€œ
Dos
copas
,” Fargo replied, planking his money.
    He carried the two wooden cups of pulque to Rosario’s table. “Mind if I join you, pretty lady?”
    â€œ
Claro.
I always welcome handsome men. A woman sees very few in
la
cola
del
mundo
.”
    â€œYou lost me on the Spanish.”
    â€œIt means ‘the tail end of the world.’ But that is a polite translation.”
    Fargo grinned and set a cup in front of her, seating himself only after managing to shoehorn his long legs under the table.
    â€œAnd a man sees very few beauties like you in these parts,” he countered.
    Her dangerous