by Jon Sharpe
“Enough of that,” Deputy Gavin intervened.
Lynch Spicer was sitting on a log, sipping from his canteen. “Hey, sweet thing,” he called out to Bobbie Joe, and patted the log. “Why don’t you come over and sit by me so we can get better acquainted.”
“Why don’t I jump off a cliff while I am at it?” was her retort.
“What is wrong with me?” Lynch demanded. “I am the son of a judge. I have money. And all the girls say Iam easy on the eyes.”
“Stick with girls, boy,” Bobbie Joe said. “Me, I am a woman, and I happen to prefer men.”
Old Charley spat tobacco juice, then cackled. “A right friendly bunch we have here.”
Fargo did not see the humor. A posse that did not get along, a posse that was frayed at the edges, was more apt to be torn apart by the hardships it encountered.
Deputy Gavin was having similar thoughts because he walked over and remarked so only Fargo heard, “We are barely under way and already there is too much squabbling. I can see I am going to have to keep a tight rein on these misfits.”
“Send Foley and Lynch and Kleb back,” Fargo suggested. “It will still be four against four.”
“I would rather have an edge in numbers. The extra guns might make the difference.” The deputy regarded the pockmarked soil. “At least the trail is easy to follow.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way.”
It didn’t.
A few miles on, they came to a rocky slope. The prints disappeared. Fargo assumed the outlaws had climbed to the top and gone on from there but when he reached the crest, the ground was undisturbed. He had to go back down and rove in a wide circle until he discovered where Terrell and company had reined to the southwest. It cost them a half hour.
“They can’t give us the slip that easily,” Bobbie Joe commented.
By late afternoon they were deep in the heart of the untamed wilds. The lush woodland teemed with animal life. More times than Fargo cared to count he spooked deer that bounded off with their tails raised in alarm. Lesser creatures were everywhere. Once he spotted, far off, a large black shape that might be a bear. They would not perish for lack of meat.
It was about four o’clock when Fargo came to a clearing and abruptly drew rein. “Damn,” he said.
“Oh, hell,” Bobbie Joe breathed.
The others came up behind them, and Deputy Gavin asked, “Why have you stopped? It is still early yet.”
Fargo pointed. “See for yourself.”
It was a dress. Once it had been a pretty dress with a floral print, now it was smudged and stained and torn in so many places, it was practically in tatters.
“Dear Lord!” Deputy Gavin exclaimed. “That fits the description of the dress Lucille Sparks was wearing.”
Bobbie Joe reined her dun over to a mound of charred embers. “This is where they spent the night. One or all of them must have had their way with her.”
“The poor woman,” Old Charley said.
Dismounting, Deputy Gavin picked up what was left of the garment and examined it. “I can’t find any blood. But I want everyone to search for her body, just in case.”
They did not find one, though they spent over an hour at it, Kleb complaining the whole time that his back was hurting and his legs were hurting and even his feet were paining him.
Foley had taken all the grumbling he could. “You are worse than a woman.”
“Here now,” Bobbie Joe said. “You don’t hear me gripin’, do you?”
Kleb was flexing his legs and wincing. “I can’t help it if I don’t do as much riding as the rest of you. I haven’t been on a horse in so long, I forget the last time. It’s no wonder I am stiff and sore.”
“Enough about your pains,” Deputy Gavin said. “In two to three days you won’t feel a thing.”
“It will take that long for us to catch them?” Kleb asked, not sounding pleased.
“Longer, would be my guess,” Gavin said. “But we are not giving up this side of the grave. Mad Dog Terrell’s days of robbing and killing and taking women hostage are about over.”
“He didn’t take her as a hostage,” Old Charley commented. “He took her because he wanted her. That dress proves it.”
They pushed on. The deputy told Fargo to keep going until it was too dark to see the tracks. By then they were on a high bench dotted with stands of trees. It was too open for Fargo’s liking but Gavin called a halt for the night.
Indicating a cluster of trees close by, Fargo mentioned, “There would be better.”
“Why?”
“Less chance of them spotting our fire. They are bound to be watching their back trail.” Fargo well knew how a campfire could be seen for miles in the dark of night.
“I doubt that it makes much difference,” Deputy Gavin responded. “They are bound to be expecting someone to come after them. But we will do what you want.”
Fargo kindled the fire himself, and kept it small. He put coffee on to brew, leaned back against his saddle, and let himself relax for the first time that day.
Kleb was watching him from across the fire. “Are you just going to sit there? The deputy said we are to live off the land. Shouldn’t you be off hunting?”
“It is too late in the day to hunt,” Gavin answered before Fargo could. “Tomorrow he will. Tonight we will have to go without.”
“Wonderful,” Kleb muttered.
Old Charley had spread his blanket and opened a saddlebag. Taking out a packet of jerky, he tossed a piece to the townsman. “Here, you infant. I dried and salted the venison myself.”
“I don’t much like deer meat,” Kleb said, his face scrunched in distaste.
“Then go hungry, you damned nuisance.”
Deputy Gavin cleared his throat. “We must work harder to get along or this will turn into an ordeal.”
“It already is,” Kleb said, looking fit to cry. “Why you chose me for your posse, I will never know.”
“You were handy, the same as the rest, and I did not have a lot of time to spare looking for someone better suited,” Deputy Gavin justified his decision. “But don’t worry. The next time I need to gather a posse, you are the last person I will ask.”
“Thank God,” Kleb said.
Fargo was waiting for steam to rise out of the coffeepot. He was tired of the bickering, and it had been only one day. If things went on as they were, in a week they would be at each other’s throats.
“You are awful quiet,” Bobbie Joe commented. She had her blankets near his, and was on her back with her saddle for a pillow. The firelight playing over her enticing body and smooth complexion made her that much more lovely.
“I am not part chipmunk like some I could mention,” Fargo said without thinking, and received a scowl from Kleb.
Lynch Spicer was on his knees, arranging his blankets. Smiling at Bobbie Joe, he crooked a finger. “Why don’t you join me, pretty thing? We can keep each other warm.”
“Why don’t you stick your pistol in your mouth and save me the bother?” Bobbie Joe rejoined.
Foley chuckled, Kleb smirked, and Lynch Spicer colored with anger. “You are downright uppity for hill trash.”
“Why, you miserable peckerwood.” Bobbie Joe started to come up out of her blankets but Deputy Gavin motioned her back down.
“Enough! I won’t say this again. Unless you have something pleasant to say, and this applies to all of you, keep your mouths shut.”
Old Charley bit off some jerky and merrily chomped. “That’s what I like about this world. It is swimming in brotherly love.”
“What I said applies to you, too,” Deputy Gavin said. “You will get along whether you want to or not.”
Fargo toyed with the notion of sneaking off in the middle of the night and pushing on alone. With a little luck, he could end it that much sooner and be on his way west. Then the coffeepot burped, and he extended an arm to slide it a little closer to the fire.
That was when the night exploded with gunfire.
At the first shot Kleb cried out and nearly pitched into the fire, falling so close to it that his arm was licked by flames.
Bedlam erupted. Nearly everyone yelled and either froze in astonishment or bolted for cover.
A second shot kicked up dirt near Deputy Gavin.
“Away from the fire!” Fargo hollered while scrambling backward out of the light. The instant the dark enveloped him, he pushed into a crouch and drew his Colt.
A third shot cracked from out of the night but everyone had scattered except Kleb, who lay sprawled motionless.
This time Fargo saw the muzzle flash, and fired. It would be luck more than anything if he brought the bushwhacker down, but he wanted to buy precious seconds for the others to reach safety. He moved after he shot, darting to the left toward a stand of trees. He was almost to them when a figure reared in front of him. Instinctively, he leveled the Colt.
“Don’t shoot! It’s me!” Lynch Spicer squeaked. The whites of his eyes were showing. He had his revolver out and was waving it about as if he were swatting flies. “What do we do? Where did the others get to?”
“Quiet!” Fargo snapped, and flattened to listen and probe the night. He began reloading, the darkness forcing him to do it by touch alone.
Lynch dropped next to him, whispering, “Did you see what happened to Kleb? I was looking right at him. It was horrible, just horrible. I’ve never seen anyone killed before.”
“You will be next if you don’t shut up,” Fargo warned, but he might as well have saved his breath.
“I can’t believe they shot him like that. No warning, no nothing. What kind of men are we dealing with?”
“Bad men,” Fargo answered. “Men who kill for the hell of it. Men who rob and rape and do as they please.” He thought he saw movement off to the left. “You knew all that when we rode out of Springfield.”
Lynch was staring at the prone form by the fire. “Knowing it and actually seeing somebody killed are two different things.” His face had become as pale as a sheet. “I don’t know if I can do this. Honest to God I don’t.”
“Take it up with Gavin later. Right now you need to stay calm and not let out a peep.”
Spicer fell quiet.
Fargo strained his ears but all he heard was the rustle of the breeze in the trees overhead. The killer had not fired again, so either by some miracle his own shot had scored or the man had lit a shuck.
Time crawled on a snail’s belly. Fargo was about to rise and prowl in search of the shooter when a female voice was raised in the direction the shots came from.
“It is all right! He is gone!”
Fargo rose and made for the fire. Old Charley appeared, then Foley. Despite Bobbie Joe’s yell, they moved as if walking on eggshells, their revolvers in their hands.
Careful not to step in the scarlet pool, Fargo rolled Kleb over. The slug had caught the clerk in the throat. Some of his blood had spread into the fire and the flames were giving off a loud hiss. A pungent odor filled the air.
“I told you it was horrible,” Lynch Spicer said.
Old Charley spat tobacco. “At least he went quick. I doubt he knew what hit him.”
“You almost make it sound like a good way to die,” Lynch complained.
“Hell, boy,” Old Charley replied. “Good or bad has nothing to do with it. Dead is dead.”
Bobbie Joe Jentry materialized out of the darkness. To Fargo she said, “I think you scared him off. I heard him run away and then the sound of hooves.”
Fargo selected the unlit end of a burning brand and raised it aloft. “We will have a look.”
Unnoticed, Deputy Gavin had been silently staring at the body. Now he stepped forward, saying, “I will tend to the burying.”
“Shouldn’t we take him back to Springfield and plant him proper?” Lynch Spicer asked. “It doesn’t seem right to dig a hole in the middle of nowhere and drop him in it.”
“He doesn’t have any family that I know of,” Gavin said, “and I can’t spare anyone to tote him back.” He bent and gripped Kleb’s ankles. “Someone give me a hand.”
Both Old Charley and Foley moved to help. Lynch Spicer stared, a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.
Fargo shucked his Henry from his saddle scabbard, then gestured at Bobbie Joe and fell into step beside her. She did not say anything until they were out of earshot of the others.
“That Spicer boy is startin’ to worry me. He is as high-strung as a cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs. It wouldn’t surprise me any if he proves worthless if we have to swap lead with Mad Dog’s bunch.”
“Like you said earlier, he is a boy in a man’s clothes.”
“Are you defendin’ him?”
“No,” Fargo replied. “But I don’t hold it against him that he is not used to blood and killing. He has been coddled all his life.”
“The poor infant.”
“That is harsh,” Fargo said.
“I have no use for city folk,” Bobbie Joe said in contempt. “Them and their prissy ways.”
“Not everyone likes the backwoods.”
“It is more than that. Take them out of the city and they are helpless. Not one in a hundred can fend for himself. Only a few know how to hunt. Most can’t butcher an animal or skin it or find water or even tell north from south and east from west.”
Fargo did not say anything. She had a point, to a point.
“If a law were passed tomorrow that everyone had to make their own clothes, most city folk would have to traipse around naked. Left alone out here, they would starve. If that isn’t worthless, I don’t know what is.”
“City folk made that rifle you are holding and that revolver of yours,” Fargo noted. “Your knife, that belt with its brass buckle, and those boots of yours, too. You didn’t make any of them yourself.”
“I am not sayin’ there aren’t some things city folk are good for,” Bobbie Joe said. “I am sayin’ they are infants, like the judge’s boy. He should be sent back before he gets himself killed.”
She had another point. “I will talk to Gavin when we get back to camp,” Fargo said.
“You do that. I doubt he would listen to me, me bein’ a lowly female and all.”
“Do you sharpen that tongue of yours every morning or were you born with a dagger in your mouth?”
Bobbie Joe chuckled in delight. “I say my piece. If that is too sharp-tongued for some, they can plug their ears with wax.” She stopped and looked about. “This is about where I heard him.”
Several oaks loomed. Evidently the rifleman had crouched behind one of them. Fargo held the torch out and made a thorough sweep but his hopes were dashed. “No blood.”
“It must be the same jasper you told me took a shot at you last night,” Bobbie Joe speculated. “One of Mad Dog’s men, I reckon.”
“Could be,” Fargo allowed, although he was at a loss as to why the man tried to kill him back at Dawson’s Corners. “Maybe it was Mad Dog himself.”
“Not him. He’s not the sort to shoot from ambush. He likes to walk right up to you and look you in the eyes when he kills you. It is the one good trait he has.”
“You call that good?”
“Compared to his other traits, yes. He is not like you and me. He does not put any value at all on human life. He thinks we are no better than bugs, to be squashed when and where he wants. He killed his first man when he was ten. The owner of a general store, who wouldn’t let him have a foldin’ knife he had taken a shine to. So Mad Dog opened that knife and stabbed the man in the gut. Then as the man lay on the floor screamin’, Mad Dog walked out, laughin’, with the knife.”
“Suddenly you know a whole hell of a lot about Mad Dog Terrell and his past.”
“I told you. My family ran into him and his wild bunch once. We talked some around the campfire that night. I’m naturally the curious sort, so I asked him a lot of questions I probably shouldn’t have. But damn me if he didn’t answer them like a true gentlema
n.”
“What else did he say that I should know?”
Bobbie Joe shrugged. “Mostly it was personal stuff. About his pa, who drank himself to death when Mad Dog was six. About his ma, who beat him a lot until he got old enough to beat her back. About a cousin of his he loved, who refused to have anything to do with him.”
Fargo could see a man like Terrell, who spent most of his time on the run and did not get to spend much time with women, opening up to someone as pretty as Bobbie Joe. But something troubled him. “I can’t get over that he didn’t try to harm you or your family.”
“We didn’t give him cause to, and we didn’t have money or valuables of any kind.” Bobbie Joe paused. “Plus, like I told you, there were about twenty of us and only the four of them, and we all had guns.”
“Why didn’t you disarm Mad Dog and turn him over to the law?”
Bobbie Joe stared at him in mild shock. “Me and mine never go to the law. If someone wrongs us, we do as the Bible says. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Again, Fargo thought he understood. Most hill clans wanted nothing to do with the outside world.
“Mad Dog behaved himself that night,” Bobbie Joe had gone on. “He gave us no cause to think ill of him, even if we were inclined to hand him over, which we weren’t.”
Fargo turned. His torch was near to going out, and he began to retrace their steps, saying, “What about the men who ride with him? What can you tell me about them?”
“Mattox is big and dumb. Bigger even than Foley and likely twice as strong. He does what Mad Dog wants him to do, no questions asked. DePue is a Cajun or some such and fancies himself a treat for the ladies, but he is too oily for my taste. Yoas is a breed. I am not sure of the exact mix, but he is snake mean and gets a thrill out of snuffin’ life. You mentioned a dagger a while ago. Yoas carries one. Double-edged, with a silver hilt. He is a wizard with it. We watched him toss and twirl it like you would not believe. He can use it with either hand, the one as good as the other. They have a word for that but I’ll be hanged if I can ever remember what the word is.”
Fargo had to think some himself. “Ambidextrous.”