by Jon Sharpe
Fargo, chewing with evident gusto, said, “Are you gonna eat that last biscuit?”
O’Malley laughed. “I don’t think Fargo’s overly impressed by trick shots, Avram.”
“Oh, I don’t take him lightly,” Fargo said. “But I never overrate a bullyboy.”
“These bullyboys work in a pack,” Avram reminded him.
“Good,” Fargo said. “I prefer to have all my ducks in a row.”
Fargo lingered over a tin cup of coffee until the last boarder had tossed his plate into the wreck pan—a tub of soapy water near the door—and left. Then he crossed to the window.
“Miss Snyder?” he called through.
Fargo could see her in the kitchen, cutting out biscuit rounds with a tin can. She looked at him, her pretty, flour-smudged face wary. “Yes, Mr. Fargo?”
“Might I have a word with you?”
“You’re welcome to speak through the window.”
“Well . . . I’d prefer to speak privately.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, considering it. “Mr. Fargo, you are a handsome and rugged- looking man. But I’m not interested—”
“It’s nothing like that,” he cut her off. “Honest. I came to South Pass in quest of information, and I’m talking to as many people as possible who might be able to help. I won’t take much of your time.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “Let me unlock the kitchen door.”
A few moments later the door meowed open, and Fargo got his first good look at Lily Snyder. Her figure was trim in a blue broadcloth skirt and a crisp white shirtwaist, her clothing protected by a stained apron.
“I must work while we talk, Mr. Fargo,” she apologized as he followed her into the savory-smelling kitchen. “Otherwise I’ll fall behind.”
“Nobody helps you?”
“Mr. Danford says he can’t afford a helper.”
Fargo glanced around. Corncobs soaking in a bucket of coal oil provided cooking fuel. A calico curtain stretched across a lariat divided her apparently cramped living quarters from the kitchen.
Avoiding Fargo’s scrutiny, she put a joint of cooked meat in a crock and poured hot lard over it to preserve it.
“You work hard,” Fargo said. “How many boarders do you cook for?”
“Lately the house is full, so about fifteen. Sixteen counting Mr. Danford.”
“No offense, Miss Snyder, but you don’t strike me as the kind of woman cut out for this work.”
“It’s temporary.”
“I hope so. This is no safe place for a man let alone a woman.”
“Mr. Fargo, you gave me to understand that you were seeking some kind of information. Did you mean about me?”
“Not directly, ma’am, but it could be related. May I ask why you’re here? I assume you were headed west along the Oregon Trail?”
“Yes, and if you must know, I’m stranded here. I’m from Monroe County, Michigan, and I was hired by the Indian Bureau to teach at the Modoc reservation in California. But I’m not married, and some of the wives on the wagon train became jealous of me, and the family I was traveling with was forced to leave me here.”
“Which explains,” Fargo said, “why you’re said to be under Philly Denton’s protection?”
Her cheeks flamed scarlet. “What are you implying?”
“Not a blessed thing, Miss Snyder. You might say Mr. Denton and I will soon be locking horns, and I’m learning what I can about the man.”
“Well... I know his ‘protection,’ as you call it, compromises me. In the eyes of some, I’m Denton’s ‘side woman.’ ”
“I’ve heard nothing of the sort,” Fargo insisted. “All I hear is that no man, including Denton, has made any progress with you.”
A little smile dimpled her chin. “Thank you. That’s quite true. But I must accept Denton’s protection, Mr. Fargo. Around here the gutter filth rape a woman and call it ‘man’s devilment.’ ”
For the first time Fargo noticed a doorway at the back of the kitchen. What caught his eye was the sheer number of thick boards nailed across it from top to bottom. And though nails were so scarce out west that they were sometimes used for money, each board bristled with nails.
Lily’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I must return to work. Are there any more questions?”
“I’m almost finished. Miss Snyder, were you here about a year ago—between, say, September and the dead of winter?”
She nodded. “Why?”
“There was a large party, thirteen travelers, a well-off clan from Indiana going to join a family member in San Francisco. They disappeared somewhere along the Oregon Trail, and I think this is the most likely spot.”
“It’s possible, but I rarely leave this house, so I wouldn’t likely have seen them. I presume you’ve been hired to find them?”
Fargo nodded, his gaze again slanting toward that overly reinforced door. “I hope you’ll keep that fact dark.”
“Of course I will. Common troubles will usually knit men, Mr. Fargo, but this is a camp divided. Every man is in it to win it—for himself. For the Lord’s sake, for your sake, be careful.”
Fargo started to leave, then stopped and turned to look at her again. “By the way—does the name Jessica Sykes mean anything to you?”
Her face suddenly closed like a vault door. “Nothing. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Fargo, I have much work to do.”
“Yeah, I see I’m getting too nosy now,” Fargo admitted. “But if you ever need my help, you only need to ask.”
As he walked next door to Jake Headley’s livery, Fargo turned the problem of Lily Snyder back and forth in his mind, studying all of its facets. He was sure she knew something, but how much? And why was she holding back? The obvious answer was that she was afraid, and around here what woman wouldn’t be?
“Morning, Jake,” he called, spotting the big man working his bellows. “I see you stalled my horse.”
“Yep. He’s been grained and watered, too.”
“Yesterday I noticed his rear offside shoe is clicking. It must be loose. Can I borrow a shoeing hammer and reset it?”
“Only take a minute. I’ll do it. Is that stallion a biter or kicker?”
“Not if I’m around.”
While Jake pulled the shoe, Fargo again thought about Lily. It’s temporary she had said of her job. But if she wanted out of Sweetwater Valley, a year seemed like a long delay.
“Jake,” Fargo said, “can mail be sent and received from South Pass?”
“Ain’t igzacly as reg’lar as the equinox, but we get some mail now and then.”
Fargo glanced around the combination livery and smithy. “Some of these planks look like they came from wagons.”
Jake nodded. “Over the years some of the pilgrims tried to get down into the valley off the pass. Some made it but lotta times the brakes didn’t hold.”
“What happens to the pilgrims?”
Jake stopped hammering, turning his big, bland face toward Fargo. “Some get stove up or killed in the crashes. Them with kids eventually make a caravan and head back east. A few are still in this camp. And some others . . . well, ask Philly Denton and his gun- throwers. Them’s the only ones know for certain-sure.”
“I mean to,” Fargo said.
Jake grunted as he stood up. “I was crossin’ the Rockies when they was still known as the Stonies. Even with all the tribes greased for war, I never seen killin’ like the bloodlettin’ in this valley. Shoe’s tight now. Bad shoeing lames more horses than anything else.”
Fargo thanked him and tacked the Ovaro, leading him outside into a cool, sunny morning. He made a final test of the cinch, then turned the stirrup and stepped up and over. Even before he could gig the stallion forward, however, the pack of vicious dogs penned up across the street let loose with an explosion of barking that spooked the Ovaro, making him sidestep nervously.
“Steady on, old paint,” Fargo soothed, tightening the reins. “
Those curs seem to have it in for me.”
They rode out onto the flat valley floor. A quick-moving target was difficult to hit, so Fargo put the Ovaro to a long, swinging lope, Fargo’s favorite gait because his stallion could hold it for hours.
Terraced hills rose from the far edges of the valley, the soaring mountain peaks beyond them an ermine white against the deep blue sky. Sage dotted the area, and the Ovaro seemed to revel in its nose-tickling tang. As puffy white billows of cloud sailed across the sun, the sage deepened from gray to purple.
None of the natural beauty of western Wyoming, however, lulled Fargo from his vigilance. His crimped eyes stayed in constant motion, and he kept reining left or right to throw off the bead of any assassin’s rifle.
Yesterday he had spotted a winding trail leading up into the hills to the west. He headed straight for it, reining the Ovaro back to a trot when the ground started to slope upward.
They rode through tight clusters of pine, Fargo keeping his Colt to hand with the riding thong off the hammer. As the winding trail rose higher, the trees thinned in stretches, and Fargo could see distant mountain gorges with white water frothing through them.
He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find along this trail. But he wanted to scout this entire area, including all the paths leading into the hills from behind the camp. Fargo expected things to come to a head, and given the number of guns against him, close knowledge of the terrain might be his last hope.
A rill trickled into a pool beside the trail. The Ovaro stretched out his neck to drink, but Fargo hauled back on the reins.
“Let it go, old campaigner. See all those stunted willows? Means bad water.”
Fargo gigged his horse well past the bad water, then reined in and swung down, pouring canteen water into his hat. “Just a sup to tide you. Won’t be long, you can fill your belly.”
By now they were so high into the foothills that the Ovaro had to stop every minute or so to blow, and Fargo felt pressure in his ears. The trees thinned again and he stopped for a minute to gaze toward South Pass, visible just above him. The season was over now, except for the inevitable, foolish stragglers, but the migration decade of the 1850s topped anything Fargo had ever seen. And only a tiny fraction stopped anywhere short of the Pacific West—most right here in Sweetwater Valley.
He could almost see the pilgrims up in that wide saddle now, and in fact he had seen them arrive at the end of the trail. They showed up with wind-cracked lips, sunburned skin, and a high risk of permanent eye damage from blowing grit. But for most it was worth it.
But Lily Snyder had not completed the journey, and Fargo found her excuse a little thin. Other attractive, unmarried females had made the transmontane trek without being chased off by jealous wives. And Lily hardly seemed like the flirtatious type. Even harder to swallow—why would she remain in this camp for a year?
Fargo forced his mind back to the present. The sad whisper of wind in the pines seemed like a melancholy omen. Through the trees with their sun- shot leaves he spotted the Wind River Range, closer now, sliced with gullies on their lower slopes. Then, abruptly, Fargo broke into the clear.
“No damn good,” he said to the world in general, taking a long look around.
From this position on the trail, Fargo could see huge boulders choking the head of an adjacent canyon. It was an excellent ambush point, and he debated proceeding. Just then, however, the Ovaro’s ears pricked forward, and the Trailsman knew he was up against it.
He reined around to head back just as a withering volley of rifle fire erupted from the boulders. Bullets snapped past his head, one whiffing through the Ovaro’s mane. Fargo didn’t need to thump the stallion’s flanks—the bullet-savvy pinto fled into the screening timber behind them. Even now the fire was unrelenting, rounds chunking into tree trunks and snapping off branches.
Fargo could have kept up his escape down the trail, but it was his habit to give as good as he got, and those boulders offered a perfect opportunity. Bullets still peppering the trees, he hauled back on the reins, slid his Henry from its saddle scabbard, then wrapped an arm around the Ovaro’s neck and pulled down. The well-trained stallion lay flat, reducing his target profile. Duckwalking to stay low, Fargo moved to the tree line and studied the jumbled boulders.
Black powder produced plenty of smoke, and Fargo spotted several puffs marking the locations of the shooters. Although he couldn’t actually spot the ambushers, Fargo knew those boulders were perfect to set up multiple ricochets.
Levering the Henry, Fargo quickly emptied the sixteen-shot magazine, shooting just beneath the puffs. The whine of ricochets rose almost to a scream as bullet after bullet searched the nooks and crannies. By the time his magazine was half empty, all fire from the ambushers had ceased. And when his hammer finally fell on an empty chamber, Fargo could hear them in headlong retreat, out of sight beyond the boulders.
A grin touched Fargo’s powder-blackened face. If not quite a victory, at least he had turned shit into strawberries. But his clover had been deep this time, and at the daunting thought of all that lay ahead, his grin slowly faded like a snowflake melting on a river.
6
Fargo returned to camp from a different direction than he’d ridden out, staying behind its eastern border on a low ridge. Behind the Buffalo Palace he spotted four clapboard cribs he’d missed last night, with a steady flow of male clientele visiting the soiled doves. Fargo resolved to visit them himself. Sporting girls picked up plenty of information.
The narrow ridge curved around the grassy bench that held Philly Denton’s house. Fargo watched the nattily dressed man emerge from the house and head toward the Palace—perhaps to get a report from his killers.
Fargo was directly behind the house when Katy Miller stepped out the rear door wearing a green silk wrapper that clung to her curvaceous body like bark to a tree. Her reddish blond hair was unrestrained and fell in waves over her shoulders.
Fargo reined in. Watching him with a provocative smile, she untied the wrapper and let it drop in a puddle around her feet. “So what if I’m Philly Denton’s concubine? The wool of a black sheep is just as warm. Like what you see, Fargo?”
The Trailsman surveyed her tantalizing breasts with their pointy nipples, her deep-flaring hips, flat, hard stomach and a silky triangle of mons hair just a shade darker than the hair on her head. He was forced to shift in the saddle.
“Yeah, I like it. And I’d like it even more if I could touch it.”
“I’m not the kind who teases—not with a man like you.”
Fargo gigged the Ovaro in even closer to the rear of the house and swung down, wrapping the reins around a tree limb. “I’ll take the bait, Katy. But if this is a trap, darlin’, you’ll be the first one I kill.”
Her laughter was musical. “Jealous Philly, bait a trap with me? If he ever caught me, I’d be dead anyway. But he’ll be gone at least an hour. Let’s take care of business, long-tall.”
Still naked as a wood nymph, she led Fargo back into the house, giving him an exceptional view of a taut, high-split derriere as smooth as a pearl.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Katy said. “I like Philly, especially his money, but he’s no savage in the sack. I also like to have my own little secrets. Skye, I have little reverence but even less guile.”
Fargo put his arms around her and pulled her so close he could feel her animal warmth. “I b’lieve the ‘little reverence’ part—the rest is likely a lie. But right now I don’t give a damn.”
Fargo gazed into those bewitching, smoke-tinted eyes and fluid, impulsive lips that dared men to kiss them—so he did. Suddenly Katy was panting like an overheated animal.
A horse trotted past out front, and Fargo stepped back, right hand dropping to his holster.
“So you’re just going to toss a match into the kerosene and run?” she complained. “Afraid of the heat?”
“Open my fly,” he invited her, “and see how afraid I am.”
She fished out his entire leng
th, her jaw dropping in astonishment. “Oh, sweet Jesus, that’s no little secret. Let’s do it on the bearskin rug, Fargo. Now.”
Fargo dropped his gun belt, swept her up, and carried her to a thick rug in front of the fireplace. He laid her down and then crouched over her to kiss, suck, and bite those pointy nipples. She mewled and purred, her smooth bottom squirming on the rug as pleasure washed over her.
While Fargo worked her tits, by now coaxing groans and cries of encouragement from her, Katy grabbed his shaft and slowly milked it in a tight fist, shooting jolts of tight, carnal pleasure through his aroused manhood.
“That’s it, faro lady,” he told her. “Now you’re gonna get it.”
“Give it to me, stallion!” she begged. “Drive it home, Fargo!”
For Fargo it was always the lady’s call. Her love nest was hot and ready, and he parted her pliable walls with a long thrust that buried his curved saber in her to the hilt. His hips worked hard and fast, driving his shaft into her so energetically that the rug was traveling across the floor.
“Yes, Fargo!” she cried in delirious pleasure. “Yes, yes, like . . . like that!”
She cried out as her first climax made her shudder, only the first in a long string like exploding firecrackers. Fargo held off as long as he could, but her sharp cries—and the sharp nails raking his back—finally defeated his willpower. He went into a frenzy of conclusive thrusts, exploding deep inside her.
Neither one of them moved for uncounted minutes, lying near the point of unconsciousness. Finally Fargo heaved himself to his feet and buckled on his gun belt. Katy watched him from the rug.
“No wonder so many men hate you, Fargo. You set a high standard all the way around.”
A wry smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “You’re pretty demanding, too.”
“Speaking of men hating you—what did you think of Philly when you met him last night?”
“He’s slicker than snot on a doorknob.”
“Yes. And he’s dangerous as a rattlesnake den. Let me warn you about Philly. He’s one to figure percentages and angles before he makes a decision. But once he makes it, he wastes no time.”