by Jon Sharpe
“I am sort of amazed, myself,” Fargo confessed. He could count the number of times he had declined a lady’s favors on one hand and have fingers left over.
Bobbie Joe tugged on a whang. “Later, then, when this is over.”
“That would suit me fine,” Fargo said. He could use a week in Springfield to recuperate. With her as company, his stay would be that much more pleasant.
“I am sorry I helped get you into this mess,” Bobbie Joe said. “I honestly thought I was in love.”
“We have been through that already.” Fargo turned to go but again she snatched at his sleeve. “What now?”
“In case one of us doesn’t make it,” Bobbie Joe said, and melted against him, her mouth hungrily seeking his, her tongue a velvet harbinger of her passion.
Fargo became lost in the kiss, in the feel of her warm, lush body, in the stirring below his belt. After a bit he reluctantly pried her off, saying huskily, “Save that for after, remember?”
“You can count on it.”
The cave mouth was quiet save for the crackling of the fire. Old Charley was over by the opening, peering toward the bend. He heard them come out of the tunnel and smiled.
“No sign of them yet.”
“It is a shame that deputy had to die,” Bobbie Joe commented out of the blue. “For a law dog he wasn’t half bad.”
Fargo hunkered to put coffee on to brew. It would help keep them awake. He was surprised it was taking Mad Dog so long to catch up, and wondered if possibly the outlaws were waiting for dawn to break. He mentioned it to Bobbie Joe.
“Could be you are right. That handsome bastard is nothin’ if not unpredictable.”
“You almost sound like you still care for him,” Fargo remarked, hoping that was not the case.
“Not on your life,” Bobbie Joe bitterly responded. “I learned at an early age not to stick my hand in a fire twice. Before, I used to daydream of him and me together. Now I dream of emptyin’ this pistol into his miserable hide.” She squatted across the fire. “But don’t you worry. I will share it with you.”
“Share what?” Fargo idly asked while filling the pot with water.
“The reward.”
Fargo looked up.
“Didn’t you know? There is three thousand dollars on Mad Dog’s head. Not that anyone has ever been all that anxious to collect. A few of my kin talked about tryin’ that time at the lake but I talked them out of it.” Bobbie Joe sighed. “If I only knew then what I know now.”
The money made no difference to Fargo.
“To me it does. It has been in the back of my mind all along,” Bobbie Joe confessed. “Three thousand dollars is more than anyone in my family has ever had. Hell, it is more than all of us have had, put together. I could buy me some nice things. A dress, maybe, for wearin’ to town, and some dishes for my ma, and a new rifle for my pa.”
“Don’t get to thinking of the money when it comes time to shoot,” Fargo cautioned.
“Oh, don’t worry. I am not a simpleton like Mattox. I do not put the cart before the horse.”
Fargo hoped not. Vengeance was one thing, greed another. It made people careless, and careless made them dead.
“What is the most money you have ever had?” Bobbie Joe asked.
Fargo had to think about it. “Close to fifty thousand dollars once,” he recollected. “In a high-stakes poker game.”
“Good Lord! What did you do with it?”
“I lost every cent on the very next hand.”
“How could you throw that much money away?” Bobbie Joe marveled. “To me it is a fortune.”
“I thought my full house would win me another fifty thousand,” Fargo related. “But the other gent had four of a kind.”
“You should have quit while you were ahead.”
Fargo grinned. If it were that easy, he would have been rich long ago. “Sit in on a few games and then you can talk.”
Bobbie Joe lapsed into silence. But it did not last long. “I wonder where that bitch got to.”
“She isn’t much better off than we are,” Fargo observed. But he had been wondering the same thing, himself.
“If you ask me, she snuck back to her brother. She is on his side in this, and she will do whatever she can to see us dead.”
Fargo hated to admit it but Bobbie Joe might be right. For all of Lucy’s insistence on doing what was right, her love for her brother had proven thicker than her morals. “I will go stand watch so Old Charley can rest,” he proposed, and rose to do so.
That was when a rifle boomed out in the gorge.
20
Fargo saw the grisly result. He was looking at Old Charley when the rifle boomed, and he saw the old frontiersman jerk to the impact of a heavy caliber slug even as part of Charley’s forehead exploded, spattering the cave wall with gore. The old man died never knowing what killed him, the lifeless husk oozing to the cave floor and twitching before becoming still.
Fargo ran toward the cave mouth. The shot had come from the direction they had entered the gorge, not from the direction of the bend and the cleft. But that couldn’t be, unless, as he now suspected, there was another way down.
Fargo poked his head out for a quick look-see. Almost instantly a rifle spanged and lead whined off the rock inches from his face, stinging his cheek with slivers.
“I almost had you, mon ami! You did not lean out as far as the old man. Do so, and I will try to do better.”
The Cajun. Fargo gazed at the crumpled figure, and frowned.
Bobbie Joe sidled up, armed with the revolver. “How did DePue get down there without the old man spottin’ him?”
Fargo shared his idea that there was more than one route down from the top of the gorge. “Go over and watch the other side. But put out the fire first.” It was the light from the campfire that had made a perfect target of Old Charley. Ironically, the very light they had counted on to enable them to pick off the outlaws.
Nodding, the hill girl hurried off.
Fargo faced the opening and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Where are your pards, DePue? Did Mad Dog and Mattox run off and leave you?”
From up the gorge, from the bend where the supplies were stacked, came a rumbling laugh. “We are not yellow, mister! We stick by our friends! As you and that girl will soon find out.”
So there it was, Fargo reflected. They were boxed in. DePue to one side, Mattox to the other. Mad Dog and Lucy were unaccounted for but they were likely nearby. He decided to find out exactly where. “Let me talk to your boss,” he hollered.
Silence greeted the request, until Mattox broke it with, “He is busy at the moment. But in about ten minutes you can do all the talking to him you want.”
As if that were a joke of some kind, DePue laughed merrily.
Fargo swore. They were up to something. But what? He inched to the edge and risked another peek, exposing one eye. No shots rang out. He glimpsed a form crouched beside a boulder, but he did not have a clear shot.
The light in the cave was extinguished as Bobbie Joe doused the fire with the contents of the coffeepot. Smoke swirled, spreading rapidly and filling the air with its acrid scent and the odor of the coffee grounds.
An inky veil claimed the gorge.
DePue loved to hear himself talk. “That won’t help you, sot. You are ours to kill as we please!”
The devil of it was, Fargo could tell the Cajun believed it was true. He whispered across the cave mouth to Bobbie Joe. “If you hear anything, anything at all, let me know.”
“It is quiet over here,” she responded. “Too quiet, to my likin’.”
Fargo leaned against the wall. All they could do now was wait. He figured they would be safe until daybreak. Whatever Mad Dog had in mind, the outlaws would need light to see by.
Then DePue started up again. “Why so silent, mon ami? Can it be you know the end that awaits you? Mad Dog is most mad. You have gotten the better of him, and no one has ever done that before. But do not flatter yourself tha
t you will have the better of him much longer. He has plans for you. It might be better if you were to put a gun to your mouth and blow your brains out. You will suffer a lot less, eh?”
Fargo did not respond.
“Come on, talk to DePue. What harm can it do? I am not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
Unexpectedly, Mattox chimed in from near the bend. “That’s right. What harm can a little talking do? How about you, girl? Nothing to say?”
“Go to hell,” Bobbie Joe yelled.
The gorge echoed to their sadistic glee. Both outlaws laughed long and loud. Much too long and much too loud, Fargo thought, and suddenly he snapped upright, every sense alert. They were doing it on purpose, DePue and Mattox. They were making as much noise as they could, and there could only be one reason.
Fargo spun toward the rear of the cave. Crouching, he crept along the wall. It had dawned on him that there might be a way of reaching the tunnel from above. He had never been to the end of the tunnel, only as far as the nook where he found his weapons.
DePue would not shut up. “Are you listening, girl? After Mad Dog is done with you, he is giving you to Mattox and me. He and I drew lots and I get you first. We will have a great time together, ma chère. I promise you.”
“You can go to hell, too!” Bobbie Joe retorted.
“Not before I have savored your fine body,” DePue shouted. “I will do things to you that no one has ever done. The French are great lovers, and half my blood is French.”
“The other half must be that brown stuff that oozes out your ears and mouth,” Bobbie Joe rejoined.
Fargo was near the tunnel. He could barely make it out, a patch of ink framed by the slightly lighter ink of the cave wall. He was about to enter it when from somewhere above the cave there came a yell.
“Now! Do it now!”
It sounded like Lucy Sparks. Fargo shifted toward the cave mouth just as rifles thundered in the gorge. Bobbie Joe’s revolver answered them. He started to run to her aid when boots scuffed to his rear. Too late, he realized he had been right about the tunnel. Out of it hurtled a two-legged battering ram. A shoulder caught him low across the back and he was smashed flat, the Henry pinned under his chest. A knee gouged between his shoulder blades. Before he could throw his attacker off, a gun muzzle was jammed against the nape of his neck.
“One twitch and you are dead,” Mad Dog Terrell warned.
From the front of the cave came a shout from Mattox. “Her six-shooter is empty! Rush her before she can reload!”
Feet pounded, Bobbie Joe swore, and a brief commotion ended with DePue exclaiming, “We have done it, my friend! We have her!”
“Get the fire going!” Mad Dog ordered. “Then yell up to my sister that she can come down.” He did not move until the cave filled with light. Then he slowly raised his knee and stepped to one side, his revolver rock steady in his hand. “Turn over but don’t touch your hardware.”
Fargo rolled onto his back. His disgust with himself at being caught flat-footed was not helped by Terrell’s smirk.
“I figured you didn’t know there is a back way into the cave, or that I could get around down here blindfolded if I had to. But I never expected it to be this easy.”
“Rub salt in the wound,” Fargo said.
Mad Dog laughed his eerie laugh. “Here comes your friend. The question now is whether to kill you outright or do you nice and slow.”
Bobbie Joe was being propelled by Mattox who had her left arm bent behind her back. He was smiling; she was scowling in fury. A bruise on her chin and another above her left eye testified to the struggle she had put up.
“This one sure is a wildcat,” Mattox declared. “She tried to scratch my eyes out.” Bloody lines on one cheek showed she had almost done it.
“Have her take a seat,” Mad Dog said.
Without warning Mattox hooked a boot around Bobbie Joe’s ankle and flung her to the cave floor. She winced as she hit, then rolled onto her side and glared up at him.
“I will kill you before this is done.”
“Sure you will,” Mattox responded, chuckling. “If you can do it from the grave.”
“Ignore her and relieve Fargo of his artillery,” Mad Dog instructed.
The giant dutifully picked up the Henry and snatched the Colt from Fargo’s holster and stepped back. “Can I have this rifle of his after we are done with them? It’s awful shiny,” he said, admiring the brass receiver.
Fargo waited for Mad Dog to remind Mattox about the Arkansas toothpick but both appeared to have forgotten it.
Just then DePue joined them, his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. “Your sister is on her way down.”
“Good.” Mad Dog visibly relaxed. To Fargo he said, “All the trouble you went to, huh? What did it get you except right back where you started?”
Fargo did not answer.
“It got Yoas dead,” Bobbie Joe said. “If not for your stinkin’ sister, it would have gotten you dead, too.”
Mad Dog never changed expression. He was smiling, and he went on smiling as he stepped over to her and brutally struck her across the head with the barrel of his revolver. Blood spurted, and she groaned and slumped. He drew back the revolver to strike her again, but didn’t. Instead he snarled, “For that I will do you first.”
Fargo slowly sat up. He half expected one of the outlaws to shove him back down but they didn’t. Placing his arms over his knees so his hands dangled close to his ankles, he asked, “What happens to your sister when the rest of the world finds out she is related to you?”
Mad Dog tore his fierce gaze from Bobbie Joe. “The only two who know are you and this bitch, and pretty soon neither of you will be in any shape to tell anyone.”
“People are bound to find out eventually,” Fargo persisted. “They will hate her because of what you have done.”
“Why are you bringing this up?” Mad Dog barked.
“That is what I would like to know,” said Lucy Sparks, walking out of the tunnel with a torch held over her head. “What do you care what people think of me?”
Fargo shifted toward her, his right arm sliding down his leg. He made it seem perfectly natural so none of them would suspect. “I used to care. But after tonight you can’t claim to be innocent. You helped them. Twice.”
“I told you,” Lucy said curtly. “He is my brother and I will not let any harm come to him.”
“Even if it means he harms a lot of others?” Fargo said in disgust. “All the lives he takes will be on your head.”
Mad Dog’s face twitched in anger. “Quit talking to her like that. She is the one person in this world who cares for me.”
“I care for you,” Mattox said.
Fargo could feel the slight bulge of the ankle sheath under his pants. He slid his fingertips lower. “Is that how she excuses your bloodletting, Bruce? When you think about it, she is no better than you are. Scum, Bobbie Joe called you, and scum you are. You and your sister, both.”
Mad Dog trembled from head to foot and his mouth worked but no sounds came out. But he did not do what Fargo wanted him to do, so Fargo gave him more cause.
“And to think, I was going to sleep with her. Thank God I didn’t. If she spread her legs for me now, I would spit on them.”
A piercing howl of rage burst from the throat of Mad Dog Terrell. Incensed, he leaped at Fargo and raised his revolver to do to Fargo as he had done to Bobbie Joe. But in leaping, he came between Fargo and the other two outlaws.
It could not have worked out better. Fargo surged upright, his hand sweeping up and out, and the firelight gleamed on the cold steel of his toothpick. By rights he should have sheared it into Mad Dog’s chest. But Lucy cried, “No!” and, springing, grabbed his wrist just as Mad Dog brought his revolver smashing down. The blow intended for Fargo’s head caught her on the head, instead, and she crumpled like so much paper.
Fargo sidestepped to stab Terrell but Mad Dog dropped next to his sister, wailing, “Lucy!”
Mattox stood flat-footed, gaping in surprise.
But DePue was going for his pistol. Fargo lunged, sinking the double-edged blade to the hilt in the Cajun’s throat, and then sliced from side to side. The jugular was severed. Blood sprayed as Fargo spun to confront Mattox. The giant had recovered his wits, and dropping the Henry and the Colt, spread his arms wide to catch Fargo in a bear hug.
Fargo stabbed him. The toothpick glanced off a rib and had no more effect than a real toothpick would, except that Mattox roared with rage and swung a giant fist at Fargo’s face. Fargo ducked, twisted, and stabbed Mattox again, in the gut this time. Again, Mattox did not seem to notice. Backpedaling, Fargo managed a couple of steps when Mattox was on him. Those gigantic arms of his wrapped tight around Fargo’s torso and Fargo was bodily lifted from the floor.
“I will snap your spine!” Mattox bellowed, pink spittle flecking his lips.
Fargo’s arms were pinned but he could still move his forearms. He did the only thing he could; he stabbed the giant in the groin, not once but several times.
Mattox felt that. He screeched and let go and staggered, staring down at a spreading dark stain. Cupping himself, he fell to his knees, which put his throat within easy reach. A single swipe of the razor-sharp blade, and Mattox’s throat was the same as DePue’s.
Fargo whirled.
Mad Dog was cradling his sister’s head in his lap. He looked up, saw the others were down, and jerked his revolver, roaring, “Die! Die! Die!”
In a blur Fargo lanced the toothpick into Terrell’s right eye, thrusting it into the socket as far as it would go.
Mad Dog arched his back and opened his mouth, and broke out in convulsions. His revolver went off, the muzzle inches from his sister’s face. Gradually his quaking subsided and he slumped over her body, a red ring spreading from under them.
Fargo scooped up his Colt but it was not needed. Mattox and DePue lay in spreading pools of their own.
Bobbie Joe moaned.
Kneeling beside her, Fargo examined her wound. She had a nasty gash but she would heal. He touched her cheek, and her eyes opened and found his.
“Are they—?”