Range War (9781101559215) Read Free

wait a minute,” Fargo said.
    â€œ Te matare , gringo,” the man with the knife said.
    â€œParar!” a voice shouted, and from out of the throng came an old man. Slightly stooped from age, he nonetheless had a powerful build and a commanding presence. He wore a red cap and sported a bushy mustache as white as his hair. The others parted to make way. He came to the Ovaro and gripped Ramon’s hair and raised the head to see the wound. Sorrow etched his seamed features when he faced Fargo. “Habla usted español?”
    â€œ Si, ” Fargo answered. “But I’m better at English.”
    â€œEnglish it will be, then,” the old man said with no trace of an accent. “I am Porfiro, the leader here.”
    â€œSkye Fargo.”
    Porfiro motioned at Ramon. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe lies,” Delicia said angrily.
    â€œYou have proof he lies?” Porfiro asked.
    â€œI went up to take food to Ramon,” Delicia said. “Instead I found his body, as you see it. Then I heard a horse coming down the mountain. I hid, and this man came out of the trees and went to the body.”
    â€œThat is your proof?”
    â€œHe is one of them, I tell you,” Delicia declared, her rifle still trained on Fargo.
    â€œOne of who?” Fargo said.
    Porfiro appraised him from hat to boots. “I think not,” he said. “Look at how he dresses.”
    â€œ Excusa? ” Delicia said.
    Raising his voice, Porfiro said in Spanish, “Look at him, all of you. Look at what he wears. Buckskins. These are the clothes of a hunter or a scout. They are not the clothes of our enemies.”
    â€œYou can not judge by that,” the man with the knife said.
    Porfiro turned to Fargo. “Do you understand what I told them? Am I right?”
    â€œI’ve done a lot of scouting for the army,” Fargo said. He worked at other jobs, too, from time to time, but a scout described him as well as anything.
    â€œSee?” Porfiro addressed the others.
    â€œAnd you are willing to take his word?” demanded a woman almost as old as he was.
    â€œIf he is one of them, he would lie to save himself,” a man in a poncho said.
    â€œOne of who?” Fargo again asked.
    It was the old woman who answered him. “The invaders.”
    She gazed off down the Hermanos Valley. “For hundreds of years our people have grazed our sheep here, from when these mountains and this valley were part of the Imperial Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain. We graze them and shear them and take our wool to market, and we are happy and content.” Her gaze became a glare. “But now they have come. From the south, from Texas. With their cows and their guns. And they say that they are going to graze their cattle and we must leave.” She raised a gnarled fist and shook it. “Us! Leave! When my father and mother grazed their sheep here, and their father and mother before them, and theirs before them.”
    Her outburst caused a ripple of muttering and hard looks cast at Fargo.
    â€œI don’t care what Porfiro says,” said the man with the knife. “We should kill this one and send him back to his friends as a warning.” And with that, he reached for Fargo’s throat.

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    Porfiro swatted the knife aside, stepped between them, and folded his arms across his chest. “To hurt him you must first hurt me. Are you willing to do that, my grandson?”
    â€œCarlos, no!” the old woman exclaimed.
    Two other men, advanced in years but robust and vigorous, moved protectively to either side of Porfiro, and the one on the right said, “Listen to your grandmother, boy.”
    â€œPorfiro is our leader,” said the other. “Harm him and you will be an outcast.”
    Carlos glanced from one to the other and then at his grandmother. “You old ones always stick together, eh?”
    â€œWe have our laws,