by Jon Sharpe
“I work as a scout sometimes,” Fargo said.
“Well, I’ll be. The last famous person I met was old Jim Bridger. They say he could track an ant over solid rock. Are you that good?”
“Not quite,” Fargo said dryly.
Deputy Gavin chuckled. “At least you are honest. I’ll tell you what. I will try my best to get you on your way as soon as I can.”
“I appreciate that.”
They parted on a friendly note.
Fargo did not have a room for the night. He had left his personal effects with the liveryman, so the stable was his next stop. For a dollar, the man agreed to let him sleep in the hayloft. Fargo spread out his bedroll, placed his holster at his side, and was soon asleep. At the crack of dawn, as was his habit, he awoke. But for once he did not get up. Since he had nowhere to be and nothing to do, he rolled over and went back to sleep.
A ruckus down below woke him a second time. Yawning and stretching, Fargo slowly sat up. Judging by the sunlight flooding the stable through the open double doors, he figured it had to be the middle of the morning, or later. Jamming his hat on his head, he moved to the edge of the loft. Below, several men were hurriedly saddling horses. He was mildly surprised to see that Deputy Tom Gavin was one of them. “Morning, Deputy.”
Gavin glanced up, and blinked. “I’ll be damned. I was looking all over for you earlier, and here you are.”
“Why?” Fargo asked, hoping it did not mean he would be delayed in leaving Springfield.
“It has to do with Miss Sparks,” Deputy Gavin said.
“What about her? She told me she was leaving on the eastbound stage this morning,” Fargo recollected.
“She did,” Gavin confirmed. “She was one of six passengers. The stage was a little past Dawson’s Corners, which is about six miles from Springfield as the crow flies, when it happened.”
“When what happened?” Fargo prompted when the lawman stopped.
Gavin’s features hardened. “Outlaws. The Terrell gang, as they are called. Their leader is Mad Dog Terrell. Name a crime, they have done it. Robbery, murder, rustling, arson.”
Fearing the worst, Fargo said, “Did they kill everyone?”
“No. They downed a tree across the road. When the stage stopped, they closed in. The shotgun tried to resist and was shot. The driver threw up his arms but they shot him anyway. They were after the strongbox.”
“The passengers?” Fargo prompted.
“They were forced at gunpoint to climb out and hand over their valuables,” Deputy Gavin related. “One passenger refused to give up a gold-plated watch and was shot in the foot. Another was clubbed.”
“Lucille?”
Deputy Gavin’s jaw muscles twitched. “They took her with them. Mad Dog Terrell told the other passengers that she was their guarantee. That if anyone came after them, he would slit her throat.”
“Hell,” Fargo said.
Deputy Gavin gestured. “I have organized a posse and we are about to head out. You are welcome to join us. More than welcome since word has it you are one of the best trackers alive. What do you say?”
In his mind’s eye Fargo pictured Lucille Sparks, recalling her warmth and friendliness and ready smile. “You can count me in.”
They rode out twenty minutes later.
The posse was made up of six men, counting Fargo. Deputy Gavin introduced them.
There was Lynch Spicer, the son of a judge. He favored expensive tailored clothes. His saddle and saddlebags had seen little use, and he rode with a stiff posture that suggested he was more at home in a chair than in the saddle. He had brown hair and green eyes.
Kleb was a bank clerk. His derby and suit were as plain as the man himself. His only distinguishing trait was a short brown mustache, which he kept meticulously trimmed.
A freighter named Foley was also along. Big-boned and brawny, his homespun shirt and pants showed a lot of wear and tear. He had a bushy beard and a sour disposition.
That left Old Charley. None of the others ever called him Charley; it was always Old Charley. His white hair had something to do with it. So did his many wrinkles. But there was nothing old about the lively gleam in his eyes or in the way he moved and swung onto a horse. Old Charley had lived on the frontier nearly all his life, and like Fargo, he wore buckskins, only his had seen a lot more wear and tear. He was fond of tobacco and chewed a wad nonstop.
Aware of the urgency, they pushed their horses as hard as they dared, slowing at intervals so the lathered animals could catch their wind. As it was, the sun was well up in the sky when their destination hove into view.
Fargo had been through the hamlet before but never stopped there. It consisted of a tavern and several cabins situated at a fork in the road. The owner of the tavern, he had heard, was named Dawson, hence Dawson’s Corners.
The stage was parked in front of the tavern. A small knot of people were standing about and were quick to gather around the posse. Deputy Gavin shouldered his way inside, leaving Fargo and the others near the hitch rail. Fargo was debating whether to follow him when a hand plucked at his sleeve.
“I am right pleased to have you along, hoss,” Old Charley remarked. “These other simpletons don’t know the first thing about tracking and such.”
“I heard that, old man,” Lynch Spicer said. “Watch who you are calling a lunkhead.”
“Now, now, sonny.” Old Charley grinned. “Just because your pappy is a judge, don’t go putting on airs. Old I might be but I can still lick a pup like you any day of the week.”
“Can you lick me?” demanded Foley, the freighter, and balled his big fists. “Because if you insult me again, you will have to.”
Kleb had removed his derby and was wiping a handkerchief across his balding pate. “Please, gentlemen. Let’s not have any bickering. We are in this together, whether we want to be or not.”
“How is that?” Fargo asked.
It was Old Charley who answered. “Deputy Gavin came running out of his office and pointing at anyone who happened to be near him, saying you and you and you, follow me. When I asked him what for, he told me I was part of his posse.”
“The nerve of him,” Lynch Spicer complained. “I have better things to do than go traipsing off after some miscreants.”
“Miscre-what?” Old Charley said, and tittered. “Hell, boy, why do you always use those fifty-cent words?”
“You could have refused,” Fargo said to Spicer.
Lynch snorted and shook his head. “You don’t know my father, Judge Thaddeus Spicer. If he found out I shirked my civic duty, he would withhold my allowance for a month to punish me.”
“And young Mr. Spicer needs that money for the ladies and the gaming tables,” Old Charley teased. “If his pappy ever tightened the purse strings, this boy wouldn’t know what to do with himself.”
“You go to hell,” Lynch said.
Old Charley cackled. “That’s the trouble with this world. Too many folks take offense when they shouldn’t.”
“The trouble with this world,” Foley interjected, “is jackasses like you who reckon they can go around insulting folks and not have those they insult get riled.”
Kleb, in the act of placing his derby back on his head, said loudly, “Here we go again. Can’t you please get along?”
“I might have to be here but I don’t have to like it—or you,” Lynch Spicer declared.
“You and me feel the same, papa’s boy,” Foley said.
Lynch bristled and straightened. “Don’t call me that.”
“Or what?” Foley taunted. “You will throw a tantrum? Because if you lift a hand to me, I will by God break it off.”
“Wonderful,” Kleb muttered. “This is just wonderful.”
Fargo was inclined to agree. As a posse they would make a great bunch of barroom brawlers. Disgusted, he turned to go in the tavern. A man with his arm in a sling was just coming out, and at sight of him, the man broke into a grin.
“Skye Fargo, as I live and brea
the!”
Fargo shook the callused hand thrust at him. “Ben Weaver, you ornery cuss. How have you been?” Weaver had been driving stages for as long as Fargo could remember. Not quite as ancient as Old Charley, Weaver’s features were bronzed by constant exposure to the sun and seamed from the elements.
“I was doing right fine until Mad Dog Terrell went and shot me.” Weaver indicated his wounded shoulder. “Damn him to hell, anyway. I didn’t give him cause.” He glanced at the men by the hitch rail. “Say, are you part of the posse that is going out after those polecats?”
Fargo nodded.
“That gal must have been born under a lucky star,” Weaver said. “With you along they are as good as caught.”
Fargo did not see anything lucky about being in the clutches of cutthroats. “What can you tell me about Terrell and those with him?”
Weaver’s grin evaporated. “They are as ruthless a bunch as ever drew breath. For five or six years now they have been doing as they damn well please, killing and raping and whatnot. There are four of them.” He held up a finger as he mentioned each one. “A breed named Yoas, a gent out of New Orleans or thereabouts called DePue, a hard case with the handle of Mattox, and Mad Dog Terrell himself. His nickname says it all. He’s rabid, that one, vicious to the bone.” Weaver looked Fargo in the eyes. “You be careful, pard. Real careful. If you’re not, any one of those curly wolves will kill you dead as dead can be.”
4
Fargo expected the posse to head out right away, so he was considerably surprised when Deputy Gavin came out of the tavern to announce, “We will stay the night and leave first thing in the morning.”
Kleb, of all people, gave voice to Fargo’s thoughts. “What in God’s name for? Who knows what those vermin will do to that poor girl? We should mount up right this moment.”
“In the first place, I make the decisions, not you,” Deputy Gavin responded. “In the second place, we are waiting for another posse member who knows the country the outlaws are heading into. I sent a rider to fetch the man we need and he should be here by ten tonight at the very latest. It will be too dark to track by then, so we might as well wait until morning.”
“Why not go on anyway and have this other hombre catch up?” Foley rumbled.
“And risk having him not find us?” Deputy Gavin rejoined. “I repeat. He knows the country better than any of us. His family lived in the mountains to the south for years and only moved up this way about nine months ago.” Gavin looked at Fargo. “We can still use an expert tracker, though, so I hope you stay with us.”
Thinking of Lucille Sparks, Fargo replied, “I will stick until the finish.” He did not like to think of what that might be.
As the lawman went back inside, Lynch Spicer remarked, “I wonder who he has sent for.”
“I might have an idea,” Old Charley said. “There’s a family by the name of Jentry, a backwoods clan who used to live south of here. Could be he sent for one of them.”
“I bet that is it,” Ben Weaver agreed. “But it could be he sent that rider for nothing.”
“How do you mean?” Fargo asked.
“The Jentrys don’t like outsiders. They keep to themselves and like it that way.”
Fargo had met their kind before. Hill folk, as hard and as tough as the land they wrested a living from, they wanted nothing to do with the rest of the world. “Let’s hope whoever it is shows up.” Otherwise, they would waste precious time better spent dogging the Terrell gang.
“Well, since you aren’t going anywhere, how about if you let me buy you a drink and then take your money at cards?” Weaver proposed with a mischievous chuckle.
Old Charley piped up with, “Sounds fine to me. There is nothing I hate worse than sitting around doing nothing.”
Fargo was not fond of it himself. They went in to find the tavern busier than it would normally be. The stage passengers were still there, being questioned by Deputy Gavin, and the residents of Dawson’s Corners were there as well, along with a few local farmers.
Fargo selected a corner table and bellowed for a bottle. No sooner had he sat in a chair facing the door than perfume wreathed him in a fragrant cloud and a slender hand set a whiskey bottle in front of him.
“Anything else, handsome?”
Fargo looked up. She was tall, almost as tall as he was, with a lean, curvy build and long, willowy legs that seemed to go on forever under a form-hugging homespun dress and an apron. Her shoulder-length sandy hair contrasted nicely with her blue eyes. “You’re the bartender?”
“I will go you one better. I own the place. Ira Dawson, at your service.” She smiled as she said it, and placed her hand on his shoulder.
Was she staking a claim? Fargo wondered. “Somehow I had the idea it was run by a man.”
“It was, by my husband, until he up and died on me,” Ira said. “His heart gave way just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And him in the prime of his life and never sick a day.”
Old Charley stopped chomping on his tobacco to say, “That happens sometimes, ma’am. I’ve known folks who I would have sworn were fit as fiddles, yet they keeled over the same as some who have consumption. When it’s our time to go, the good Lord takes us whether we are healthy or not.”
“That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” Ben Weaver said. “Me, I have so many creaking joints and aches, it wouldn’t surprise me if this worn-out body of mine went any day now.”
Ira Dawson had not taken her hand off Fargo. He smiled up at her and asked, “Do you serve eats as well as drink?”
“That I do, but not until supper time. Although for you I am willing to make an exception.”
“That’s hospitable of you.”
Ira’s fingers gently squeezed. “When I see someone I like, I can be as hospitable as can be.”
Old Charley snorted, and Ira turned on him.
“You will remember I am a lady, you old goat, or I will have you tossed out on your ear.”
“No offense intended, ma’am,” the old frontiersman assured her. “There was a time when I was as hospitable toward ladies as you are toward handsome gents. But that was ages ago, I am sorry to say, when I was young and good-looking. Nowadays, my wrinkles tend to scare the women off.”
“Either that, or those brown teeth of yours,” Ira said, and swished off toward the bar.
“Fine figure of a female, there,” Weaver commented. “But I was led to believe she has not shared her bed since her husband died.” He looked at Fargo. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Play innocent, why don’t you?” the stage driver bantered. “But I have known you a good long while, and I have seen how the females hop right in your lap. How do you do it? What is the secret?”
“He is young and he is handsome,” Old Charley said. “It is no great mystery why mares are attracted to stallions.”
“You don’t understand,” Ben Weaver said. “You have not been around him as often as I have. We could be in a place with a hundred other men, and the prettiest gal there will make a beeline for Fargo, here, before any of the others.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Fargo said.
“Not by much. Most men would give anything to have half the luck you do,” Weaver asserted.
“Back in my day the ladies loved to sit in my lap, too,” Old Charley claimed. “I helped things along by rubbing bear fat all over me.”
“Bear fat?” Weaver repeated in disbelief.
“Sure. A lot of Indians use it in their hair and the Indian girls all like it, so I rubbed it all over to give me twice the smell.”
“I don’t think bear fat would work with white women,” Weaver said. “Hog fat, maybe, since it’s kind of sweet smelling except when it has turned rancid.” He shifted toward Fargo and sniffed. “Is that your secret?”
“I like raccoon fat, myself,” Fargo said, trying to keep a straight face.
“If there is no fat handy, I recommend strawberry juice,” Old Charle
y suggested. “You crush the strawberries and smear the juice on your face so you smell just like one.”
“I never thought of that,” Ben Weaver said. “But doesn’t it make your face all pink?”
“Sure. But women like pink. The pinker you are, the more they can’t wait to get their lips on you.”
“You don’t say,” Weaver said.
Fargo laughed.
“What tickled your funny bone?” Old Charley asked.
“The only fat around here is the fat between certain ears.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent playing poker and drinking. The delay did not sit well with Fargo. At one point he went over to where Deputy Gavin was talking to a passenger who had been relieved of all his valuables. Fargo offered to go on alone and blaze a trail for them to follow.
“I like the idea,” Gavin admitted. “But there is always the chance we will miss the marks. You could wind up tangling with Terrell and his hellions all by your lonesome.”
“I don’t mind the odds.”
“I admire your grit but I would rather not run the risk.”
“It is my risk to take,” Fargo said, thinking of Lucille Sparks.
“True,” the deputy allowed. “But I will be held responsible if anything happens to you.”
Fargo spent another ten minutes trying to persuade him, to no avail. He went back to his whiskey and his cards, but he was not happy about it. The more he dwelled on the idea of Lucy in the hands of men who would have their way with her as quick as look at her, the less he liked sitting on his backside while the clock over the bar ticked away the time the posse was wasting. “All I can say,” he remarked late in the afternoon, “is that whoever Gavin sent for better be damn worth the wait.”
“I had me the same notion,” Old Charley mentioned. “My ma always said no dawdling in the outhouse, and I took it to heart.”
Kleb, who was sitting in on the game now, scratched his chin in puzzlement. “This is a tavern, not an outhouse. I don’t see how your mother’s words of wisdom apply.”
“You will when you are my age,” was Old Charley’s retort.