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    Fargo 08: The Wildcatters
    Fargo 08: The Wildcatters
    Fargo 08: The Wildcatters
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    Fargo 08: The Wildcatters

    By John Benteen

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    About this ebook

    The East Texas oilfields came in with a boom. Rivers of money gushed from the ground. Along with the money came the speculators, the wheelers and dealers – and the killers. Fargo followed the money and excitement clear across Texas. Trouble is Fargo’s business – other people’s trouble. They know him from Alaska to Panama and the smart ones get out of his way. The ones who aren’t so smart get a gun barrel laid across the nose, or if Fargo’s short on time, they get killed. Fargo kills, but he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a job. And he’s good at it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPiccadilly
    Release dateJul 30, 2015
    ISBN9781310856303
    Fargo 08: The Wildcatters
    Author

    John Benteen

    John Benteen was the pseudonym for Benjamin Leopold Haas born in Charlotte , North Carolina in 1926. In his entry for CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS, Ben told us he inherited his love of books from his German-born father, who would bid on hundreds of books at unclaimed freight auctions during the Depression. His imagination was also fired by the stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. “My father was a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres”, Ben wrote. “So I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.” A family friend, a black man named Ike who lived in a cabin in the woods, took him hunting and taught him to love and respect the guns that were the tools of that trade. All of these influences – seeing the world like a story from a good book or movie, heartfelt tales of the Civil War and the West, a love of weapons – register strongly in Ben’s own books. Dreaming about being a writer, 18-year-old Ben sold a story to a Western pulp magazine. He dropped out of college to support his family. He was self-educated. And then he was drafted, and sent to the Philippines. Ben served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946. Returning home, Ben went to work, married a Southern belle named Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh in 1950, lived in Charlotte and in Sumter in South Carolina , and then made Raleigh his home in 1959. Ben and his wife had three sons, Joel, Michael and John. Ben held various jobs until 1961, when he was working for a steel company. He had submitted a manuscript to Beacon Books, and an offer for more came just as he was laid off at the steel company. He became a full-time writer for the rest of his life. Ben wrote every day, every night. “I tried to write 5000 words or more everyday, scrupulous in maintaining authenticity”, Ben said. His son Joel later recalled, “My Mom learned to go to sleep to the sound of a typewriter”.

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      Book preview

      Fargo 08 - John Benteen

      The East Texas oilfields came in with a boom. Rivers of money gushed from the ground. Along with the money came the speculators, the wheelers and dealers – and the killers.

      Fargo followed the money and excitement clear across Texas. Trouble is Fargo’s business – other people’s trouble. They know him from Alaska to Panama and the smart ones get out of his way. The ones who aren’t so smart get a gun barrel laid across the nose, or if Fargo’s short on time, they get killed. Fargo kills, but he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a job. And he’s good at it.

      THE WILDCATTERS

      FARGO 8

      By John Benteen

      First published by Belmont Tower in 1970

      Copyright © 1970, 2015 by Benjamin L. Haas

      First Smashwords Edition: August 2015

      Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

      Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin

      This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book ~*~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

      Series Editor: Ben Bridges

      Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

      Chapter One

      The oil brought them like vultures to a carcass. Its raw, strong reek smelled like money, and they came flocking: roughnecks, drillers, tool dressers, torpedo men and all the other hard-drinking, hard-working people who made their living coaxing black gold out of the ground. And, along with them, the real beasts and birds of prey who fed on them: the gamblers, bootleggers, whores and con men; the lease speculators and the promoters; the robbers and the gunmen.

      Fargo came, too, as much a vulture as any, scenting profit, scenting good business for a man of his trade, which was fighting.

      By then, the road was impassable for automobiles or trucks; churned to a mire, it bogged down everything but mule-drawn wagons or saddle horses. In Tulsa, Fargo bought a tall sorrel with one white stocking and a blazed face, and he rode this to the new town, the boomtown, the oil town they called Golconda.

      He went cross-country, parallel with the road, across the rolling land of central Oklahoma. He passed the miserable cabins of Cherokee and Osage, where shapeless red women and naked red children stared in wonder at the tall man on the tall horse, the man with the hard, ugly scarred face, hair prematurely snow-white beneath the old, battered, broad-brimmed cavalry hat, a Winchester carbine in a saddle scabbard, a rope slung cowboy fashion on the saddle pommel.

      He was worth staring at: a man in his late thirties, in white shirt, neat tie, corduroy jacket (it masked a shoulder-holstered pistol), whipcord pants, and cavalry boots. Unlike Indians or range men, he rode a cavalry seat, back straight, knees bent; and even to the casual eye he seemed to radiate pent-up violence, danger. If they had known, those onlookers, what was in the big trunk cleverly rigged on the pack mule at the end of a lead rope, they would have been even surer in their judgment of him.

      As it was, the other vultures swarming toward Golconda gave him a wide berth. No con men descended on him; hard-faced highwaymen looked twice at him and went to seek easier prey. Only the women, the whores, packed into buckboards, democrats and mud wagons, followed him hungrily with their eyes when his route brought him close to the terrible, wheel-churned road. And the only time he stopped or paid more than passing attention to any of his fellow travelers was when one of those women called his name.

      Fargo! Hey, Neal Fargo!

      Fargo reined in, turned his horse, stared at the surrey bogged to its hubs in the mud of the swarming road. It held five girls, all painted and dressed in frills. The woman who had called him clutched the reins: tall, blonde, lovely, despite a certain hardness around her red-painted mouth. The two small scrub mustangs hitched to the surrey were half-wild, tossing their heads against pressure on the bit, refusing to pull.

      Fargo grinned, then spurred the sorrel toward the vehicle. Instinctively he swept off the campaign hat. Tess. Tess Kendall. Hell, I thought you were in El Paso.

      No more, the money’s here. Only these goddamned jug-heads don’t seem to know how to haul a wagon. Here I am with a load of girls just itching to go to work, and time’s money, and nobody’ll even stop to help us.

      Fargo chuckled. Maybe you haven’t made ’em the right deal. You’re bound for Golconda, eh? He looked her up and down, taking in the full breasts beneath taut fabric, the narrow waist, the flaring hips. They had been lovers once, for a short time, two years before in the El Paso of 1913, just before Fargo had gone to revolution-torn Mexico on a most dangerous and profitable enterprise—and for a while afterward, until the money he had made was spent, and he’d gone in search of another score. It amused him that they were so much alike that Golconda had drawn them both at the same time for the same reason.

      I’m bound for Golconda, Tess answered him, if I can ever get this blasted rig out of the mud. Give us a hand, will you?

      Fargo’s white brows went up above cold gray eyes. What’s in it for me?

      You know damn well what’s in it for you, Tess chuckled. Her eyes met his for a moment, and he saw her breasts swell, threatening to push out of the lowcut neckline of the fancy dress.

      Under those circumstances ... Neal Fargo’s grin was like a wolf’s. He unlatched the rope at his saddle horn, shook out a loop. He tossed it over the dashboard of the surrey. When I pull, let those hammerheads have it hard on the ass.

      Right. Tess brandished a whip. Fargo turned the sorrel, spurred it. The woman slashed the mustangs; one reared and pawed, the other lunged forward. Then all three horses were pulling together, and the surrey sucked free of the mire.

      When it was rolling once more, Fargo eased slack through the hondo, reeled in the rope without dismounting, and fell in beside the surrey.

      I’ll ride with you; it’s not far. Maybe five miles.

      Thanks. Then she turned to the girls behind her. All right, you sluts. Keep your eyes off him, he’s my private property. She slashed the mustangs with the whip and they surged forward, Sure that they would pull, Tess settled back on the seat. You’re the last man I expected to see here.

      Oil’s money. You know me.

      Yeah, I should have guessed. They say this is the biggest strike since Spindletop. You got anything in mind, or you just gonna play it by ear?

      Fargo looked toward the horizon. By ear. What the hell. An oil boomtown, the money runs like oil itself. It’ll be there. I’ll get my hands on some of it somehow.

      You always do. My God, when I think of the fortunes you’ve made and spent—

      Hell, that’s what money’s for—spending. The way I live, I’ve got no old age, no point in saving.

      Tess’s face clouded for a moment. "That’s the way we all live. But what happens to us if we do get old?"

      You make your living on your back, Fargo said. I make mine with guns. You don’t live by guns unless somebody’s shooting at you. I ain’t worried about old age. I make it until tomorrow, I’m satisfied. Come on, now, shake up those broomtails. Like you said, time’s money—especially in an oil town.

      Two hours later, they crested a ridge, saw It spread out below them—Golconda, a town which two months ago, had not even existed. Now, down there on the flat, rough board buildings were crammed together on a muddy street; above them reared countless oil derricks, lacy fingers pointing toward the sky. Fargo reined in, staring at the close-packed traffic along the road, his eyes practiced, expert. This was not the first oil town he had seen. But, he judged immediately, it was likely to be the toughest.

      He was a man who had been around. Born in New Mexico, his parents had been killed by Apaches; foster parents had taken him in, primarily to have another hand on the ranch. But while still a child, he had tired of the hard work and short rations, had run off. Since then, he’d punched cows, cut tall timber, fought in the Spanish-American War with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, served a hitch in the cavalry in the Philippines, been a professional prizefighter, worked to the Sabine Pass oilfields, prospected in Alaska, made a fair living as a professional gambler, once even served a term as bouncer in a Louisiana whorehouse. But, a genius with guns, a man to whom the handling of weapons came as naturally as breathing, he’d made his real money as a fighting man. There was always somewhere a professional fighting man could hire out: Central American revolutions, the troubles in Mexico, even in the Philippines, which were still shaky and unsteady under American rule. He had fought almost everywhere there was a fight going on, for the love of fighting, and for the love of money. It was the thing he was best at, had a natural talent for, and it was this that kept him alive and hard. Fighting had, in fact, become Fargo’s whole life.

      Now, staring down at Golconda, he felt a surge of excitement run through him. This was a rank town. This was his meat.

      He put the sorrel in motion and Tess Kendall, in the surrey, followed.

      As they went down the hill, Fargo said: You got any contact in Golconda?

      Yeah. A man named Brasher. Tull Brasher. He’s a leaser, holds the rights to three sections, already got five producing wells and more to come. He’s the whip, the big dog, in Golconda. Knowing Tull, he’d be the big dog anywhere.

      He tipped you off, called you in, huh?

      That’s right. We’re old friends from Texas days. He got in touch with me. Among other things, he owns a blind tiger—Oklahoma’s dry, you know, but in an oil town nobody gives a damn. My girls will work the bar, take the Johns upstairs, I get what they make upstairs, he gets what they make downstairs.

      Fargo looked at her. What else does he get?

      Again Tess gave her breathy chuckle. Not what he was counting on. Not since you showed up.

      Maybe there’ll be trouble with him over that.

      Tess looked back at him. That’s your affair, she said.

      Fargo only grinned.

      ~*~

      The main street of Golconda was wide, a boot-and-wheel-churned sea of mud, planks laid across here and there like bridges. On either side, it was lined with buildings thrown together in a hurry, warped boards, even logs, some half-wood, half-canvas. The plank sidewalks swarmed with people and, over all, towered the oil derricks; the town had sprung

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