by Jon Sharpe
Lucille’s smile dripped sarcasm. “You give me too much credit. You do that quite well without any help from me or anyone else.”
“Enough!” Koons barked. “I have put up with all I am going to. Stay out of my way or take buckshot. It is up to you.” So saying, he took a step to the right so he had a clear shot at Fargo. “Any last words, mister, before I blow you to kingdom come?”
2
By rights Fargo should have died then and there.
But Harve Koons, in his drunken state, had not pulled the hammers back. When he squeezed the triggers, nothing happened. “What the hell?” he roared, and went to remedy his oversight.
Fargo started to bring the Colt up. He needed to be sure, needed to have the first shot be the last shot. But before the barrel cleared the edge of the table, Lucille Sparks threw herself at Koons. Grabbing the shotgun, she pushed it to one side.
“No, you don’t! I won’t let you kill him!”
It was just as well the shotgun was not cocked. Had it been, it might have gone off when she jerked on it, doing to her as Koons intended to do to Fargo. But she did gain Fargo the few seconds he needed to dart over and swing his Colt at Koons’s temple. His intent was to knock the man out. But just then Koons yanked on the shotgun in an effort to wrest it from Lucille, and in doing so, caused her to stumble—directly into Fargo.
Fargo nearly fell. He tried to straighten but Lucille was clinging to him and her weight sent them stumbling against the table. Swearing, Fargo pushed free of her and spun. The hardwood stock of the shotgun caught him in the gut and he doubled over. The next instant he was staring into its muzzles.
“I have you now!” Koons crowed. But he still had not drawn back the hammers.
Surging erect, Fargo hit him across the right temple, the left temple, and then on the crown of the head. This time when Koons went down, he stayed down.
“Thank God!” the waitress declared.
Fargo sank into a chair. His stomach was a ball of agony. He rested his forearms on his knees and breathed in great gulps until the pain faded. Then, standing and snatching up the shotgun, he thrust it at the waitress. “Take this and hide it in the kitchen.”
“But—” the woman began. Something in his eyes silenced her. Nodding, she gingerly grasped it with both hands and hurried toward the back.
Lucille nudged Koons with a toe. “What do we do with this lump of arrogance? Turn him over to Marshal Lewis?”
“He makes a fine rug,” Fargo said. But he slid his hands under Koons and dragged him to another table, then hoisted Koons into a chair and placed his head on his arms to give the impression he was asleep. “Let’s forget about him and have that coffee.”
Instead of sitting across from him, as she had done before, Lucille came and sat next to him. Her elbow brushed his as she leaned forward and said, “That was a bit too much excitement for my taste. Maybe it is a good thing I am heading back to Ohio in the morning.”
“What?” This was news to Fargo.
“Didn’t I tell you? My parents have been begging me to go back and see them.” Lucille shrugged. “I might as well. My personal business here did not turn out as I had hoped.” Almost as an afterthought she added, “I leave on the stage at eight.”
Fargo hid his disappointment. It was unlikely she would want to stay up half the night when she had to get up early. But he was putting the cart before the horse. “I am sorry to hear that. I was hoping to get better acquainted.”
Lucille grinned and looked away. “Yes, it is a shame. I would not mind getting to know you better.”
They spent the next hour sipping coffee and talking about everything under the sun. She did most of the talking. Fargo listened and nodded and inserted a word here and there, but mostly he admired her luscious lips and her ripe body and the fragrance of her perfume.
Toward the end of the hour Harve Koons groaned and stirred.
“Just a moment,” Fargo said to Lucille. Walking over, he drew his Colt and brought the barrel slashing down. It had the desired effect.
“Oh, my. Did you have to?”
“Do you want him to cause us more trouble?”
Lucille admitted she did not. They finished, paid and walked out. Fargo was pleasantly pleased when she slipped her arm through his. The warm feel of her body made him all the more hungry for her company.
“I must say, I have had a nice time, all things considered. You are quite the gentleman.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I was thinking,” Fargo said, and winked.
“Oh, my.” Lucille grinned. “Direct and to the point. But I am afraid I don’t have all my packing done. I really must get ready to leave in the morning. I hope you won’t hold it against me.”
Fargo was twitching below his belt but it had not reached that point yet. He shook his head.
Her boardinghouse was three blocks from the public square. At the gate to a picket fence she held out her hand and smiled. “I thank you again for an enjoyable evening. Perhaps we will meet again one day.”
Fargo waited until she was on the porch and out of earshot before he summed up his sentiments. “Damn.” She had put him in the mood for a frolic under the sheets, but it was not meant to be. Turning on a boot heel, he hastened to Bassiter’s. The night was young yet. With a little luck he might find a filly who shared his mood. He was almost to the saloon when somewhere behind him a horse whinnied and a man irately bellowed, “Watch where you are going, mister! My horse nearly stepped on you.”
Turning, Fargo scanned the street. Two riders, well apart, were coming toward him. He deduced that it was the second rider, half a block away, who had bellowed, and when the horse was almost abreast of him he motioned and said, “Mind my asking what that was all about back there?”
The man had a look of a farmer on his way home. He scowled and replied, “Some damn fool was stalking around with a shotgun. He scooted off when I hollered.” With a nod he rode on.
Fargo scanned the street. It had to be Koons. The jackass did not know when to leave well enough alone.
Perhaps a dozen people were moving about. None were Koons, but he could be anywhere, watching from the shadows.
Fargo made too easy a target out in the open. He backpedaled into a gap between the saloon and the building next to it, and palmed his Colt. For long minutes he probed every shadow and doorway. He debated staying put until impatience brought Koons into the open, and decided to hell with it. He was not going to hide like some prairie dog in its burrow. Keeping his eyes on the street, he sidled to the batwings and shouldered on through, twirling the Colt into its holster as he entered.
A blast of sound greeted him: loud voices, lusty laughter, the clink of glasses and the tinkle of chips. A gray-white cloud created by cigar and pipe smoke wreathed the ceiling, its tendrils writhing like snakes. Fargo threaded toward the bar, relaxing a bit more with each stride. Koons could not get a shot at him in there, not without dropping two or three bystanders, and he figured not even Koons was that crazy.
The first glass of whiskey was liquid fire. The second went down smooth. Fargo had the bartender fill his glass a third time and then roved among the tables. He had forty-three dollars in his poke. It wasn’t much but it would stake him to a poker game.
An empty chair beckoned. Fargo was in it and sliding his poke from under his buckskin shirt when he noticed a nearby window. Since it faced the public square, which was thronged with people, he deemed it safe to go on sitting there. But he kept an eye on it, just the same.
A half hour later Fargo was over twenty dollars to the better. Three jacks helped. So did a straight. He folded the next hand, then was dealt two kings. He asked for three cards and was given a couple of queens. Two pair was not a great hand but it was good enough to raise. He was so intent on his hand that he did not look up when someone at the next table said, “What in hell does that yack think he is doing?”
The man across from Fargo called his raise. Fargo watched his face, tryin
g to determine if the man was bluffing or had cards worth backing, when another comment caught his attention.
“I don’t like how he is waving that shotgun.”
Fargo glanced up. Half the people near him were gazing toward the window. Just outside stood a bloodied and battered Harve Koons. Koons looked as if he had been stomped by a bronc. He was peering intently into the saloon, glancing this way and that.
At the same instant that Fargo saw Koons, Koons saw him. Instantly Koons jerked the shotgun to his shoulder. Fargo had underestimated how badly Koons wanted revenge. Witnesses or no witnesses, Harve Koons intended to blow him to hell and back.
“Get down!” a player bawled to no one in particular. “That loon is fixing to shoot!”
Dozens of men dived for the floor. Fargo was one of them. He shoved back his chair and flung himself flat under the table just as the shotgun went off. Glass shattered with a loud crash. A man screamed, and the top of the table drummed to multiple impacts that made Fargo think of hail on a cabin roof. Only this was not hail. It was buckshot.
Women screamed. Men cried out or cursed. Everyone was scrambling for cover.
From under the table, Fargo saw a man thrashing about in pain, one hand on a shoulder oozing blood. The man had been between him and the window and had caught part of the blast meant for Fargo.
Fargo had his Colt out. A thump warned him that Koons had jumped over the sill and was in the saloon. His hunch was confirmed the next moment when Koons bellowed.
“Drop that, barkeep, or die where you stand!” Apparently the bartender obeyed, because Koons then roared,
“Now listen, all of you! I am here for one man and one man only! Stay out of my way or die!”
From over near the far wall came a shout. “You have gone loco, Koons! You will be hung for this!”
“Do you see my face?” Harve Koons raged. “I want the son of a bitch who did this to me! I want him dead and I will have him dead!”
Fargo had not counted on anything like this. When most men were beaten to a pulp, they slunk off to lick their wounds. Not Koons. The beating had brought on a killing madness. Fargo had seen it before. Once, when he was scouting for the army, the patrol he was guiding encountered a Sioux war party. In the clash that ensued, a soldier took an arrow in the shoulder. It drove him mad. The trooper rushed in among the startled Sioux, wielding his empty rifle like a club and laying about him like a lunatic.
“Stand up, you bastard!” Koons shouted. “Stand up and take your medicine!”
Fargo was not about to do any such thing. On his elbows and knees he swiftly crawled past a couple of chairs and under the next table.
“I know where you are!” Koons yelled, his voice sounding closer. “I know exactly where you are! Hiding won’t do you any good!”
A .12-gauge was the next best thing to a cannon. All firearms were deadly but a shotgun, specifically a .12-gauge loaded with buckshot, was considered the most deadly of all. So deadly, in fact, that there was a popular saying on the frontier to the effect that “buckshot meant burying.”
“I won’t tell you again! I will count to three and then the dance will commence.”
Fargo crawled toward yet another table, passing several men and a woman frozen in fear.
“One!”
“Harve, don’t do this!” someone urged.
“Two!”
“Let the rest of these people leave!” a woman shouted. “It’s the fellow you are after that you want, not the rest of us.”
Koons was distracted from his count. “No one is going anywhere! Anyone tries and they die!”
“You have gone loco,” said the same man as before. “God help you. The marshal will be here any second.”
“Marshal Lewis is out of town, George!” Koons snarled. “Now shut the hell up or you will be next.”
By then Fargo had passed a third table and was wriggling like an eel toward a fourth. He had circled as he crawled so that by now he should be somewhere on Koons’s left.
“Where was I?” Koons said aloud to himself. “Oh, yeah. I remember.” He paused. “Two!”
Fargo did not want more bystanders to take lead meant for him. Accordingly, he heaved up, the Colt at his waist, and fanned off a shot the moment he saw Koons, who happened to look in his general direction just as he rose. He saw Koons jerk to the impact of the slug but it was not enough to drop him.
Harve Koons swung the shotgun in Fargo’s direction and unleashed both barrels.
Fargo dropped down a heartbeat before Koons fired. A sizeable chunk of tabletop exploded into bits and pieces, showering him with slivers. He rolled toward another table, or tried to, and collided with a man lying between them. He tried to push the man aside but the man would not budge.
“Where did you get to?”
Koons was coming toward him, undoubtedly reloading as he came. Taking a gamble, Fargo pushed upright, hoping to snap off a shot before Koons could reload. But Koons already had.
Harve Koons sneered in savage glee. That sneer bought Fargo the split-second warning he needed to throw himself flat a fraction of a second before the shotgun went off.
A chair next to Fargo was blown apart. A man screamed. A woman cried out.
Now! Fargo thought, before Koons could reload yet again. He surged to his feet. Harve Koons was frantically extracting a spent shell. Lightning-swift, Fargo banged off three shots. They slammed Koons back, a look of astonishment replacing the rage. A fourth shot drilled Koons through the forehead and snapped his head half around. A fifth was unnecessary but Fargo wanted to be sure.
In the sudden silence, someone coughed.
Relief washed over Fargo. He was about to lower his Colt when something hard was pressed against the nape of his neck and a gun hammer clicked.
“Move and you are dead, mister.”
3
Thinking it might be the bartender, Fargo froze. “I didn’t start this. You saw for yourself.”
“I just got here,” the man holding the cocked revolver said. “I want you to hand me your six-shooter. Do it nice and slow or you are liable to end up like Koons.”
Fargo balked at being disarmed. “Send for the law. Let them handle this.”
“I am the law,” the man revealed. “Deputy Sheriff Tom Gavin.”
A heavyset man in a bowler was rising off the floor. “He is telling the truth, Tom,” he said to the deputy. “Koons came crashing through the window like a mad bull.”
“Even so,” Deputy Gavin said, “I have my duty.”
A hand appeared at Fargo’s side, palm up.
“I will have your pistol, mister, and I will have it now.”
“You want it, it is yours,” Fargo said. For the most part he usually abided by the law. But he did not like giving the Colt up. With a sigh he started to raise his arms.
“No need for that,” Deputy Gavin said, “if you give me your word you will do as I say and not act up.”
“You have it,” Fargo said, and turned.
Deputy Gavin had black hair, a cleft chin, and a no-nonsense air about him. Surveying the aftermath, he said bitterly, “That damn fool Koons. Wait for me over by the door.”
“How about if I wait at the bar?” Fargo countered. “You are going to be a while.”
“That I am,” Gavin conceded. “Pour one for me. I will need it by the time I am done.”
It took over an hour. The sawbones was sent for to tend the wounded. The undertaker was summoned to cart off the body. Witnesses were quizzed. Upended tables and chairs were set right, and then the debris and the blood were cleaned up.
Through it all, Fargo leaned on an elbow and nursed a glass of whiskey. A few unfriendly glances were thrown his way, suggesting some thought he was partly to blame, but he ignored them. At one point the bartender came over and asked why Koons had been so intent on blowing him to hell and back. Normally, Fargo’s personal affairs were just that, but since the bartender was bound to tell all his customers, and in the process clear Farg
o of any blame, Fargo told him about his earlier encounters.
A few choice expletives burst from the barkeep. “He was always on the prod, that one.” He nodded at the wounded and the cleanup under way. “This was bound to happen sooner or later. I just wish to hell it hadn’t happened in my place.”
Deputy Gavin was in a somber mood when he led Fargo to the jail. As they were crossing the public square he offhandedly remarked, “Usually Marshal Lewis would handle this but he is taking a prisoner to St. Louis. The sheriff is down sick so that leaves me.”
In the office, Gavin bade Fargo sit and asked him to relate his side of events. “Lucy Sparks, you say?” Gavin said when Fargo finished. “I know Miss Sparks. A sweet gal. You wait here while I go have a talk with her.”
“Mind if I help myself to some coffee while you are gone?” Fargo asked, nodding at a pot on the stove in the corner.
“Help yourself,” Deputy Gavin said, “but I warn you. I made that batch, and it can float a horseshoe.”
Fargo had tasted worse. He drank three cups over the next hour, and then the door opened and a tired Deputy Gavin walked in. Fargo filled a tin cup for him and held it out.
“I’m obliged.” Gavin sat behind the desk and propped his boots on the edge. His brow puckered, he took a few sips. “You will be happy to hear that Miss Sparks confirms your story. As near as I can tell this is all on Koons. I have no grounds to hold you.”
“I can leave, then?”
“Yes and no. You can leave the jail but I must ask you to stick around town a day or two, in case there are more questions I need to ask.”
Fargo frowned.
“I am sorry. I am just doing my job.” Deputy Gavin paused. “While I was over talking to Miss Sparks, it hit me. Your name, that is. It is the kind of name people remember. You wouldn’t happen to be the same Skye Fargo who was in a shooting match here a while back, would you? The famous scout?”