Backwoods Bloodbath

by Jon Sharpe

  “That’s strange,” said the first man. “There was a trapper and mountain man by that name. The Comanches killed him. Was he a relation of yours?”

  “No,” Fargo answered. “Now suppose you fess up to who you are and why you are following us.”

  “Us?” the second man repeated. He was stockier than the other, with a bulbous nose and a jutting chin.

  “Cover him,” the first man said. “I want a good look at his face.” Squatting, he poked a stick in the embers, added kindling, and blew softly on the tiny flames that flared until he had rekindled the fire. “Now then,” he said. Rising, he gripped Fargo by the arm and turned him from side to side, studying him.

  Fargo repaid the favor and discovered it was the man in the dark suit who had shadowed Draypool back to Draypool’s hotel. The one the desk clerk called Frank Colter.

  As if in confirmation, the other man asked, “Do you know this tall drink of water, Frank?”

  “I can’t say as I do, Jim,” Colter said. “But I would swear I should. Something about him is familiar.”

  Jim wagged his revolver. “What is your connection to the League, mister?”

  “The what?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Jim snapped. “By your own admission you are a friend of Arthur Draypool’s. That alone is enough to incriminate you.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about,” Fargo said. He was losing his patience, and his temper. He never liked being held at gunpoint.

  “Sure you don’t,” Jim scoffed. “That’s why you snuck up on us intending to murder us in our sleep. We’re not stupid.”

  “No, we are not,” Frank Colter interjected. “We will go easier on you if you admit the truth. Otherwise, we must take whatever steps we deem necessary.”

  “I still don’t know what you are talking about,” Fargo said.

  Jim took a half step nearer. “Let me work on him. He won’t be so smug after I break a few fingers or bust a few teeth.”

  Fargo tensed his legs. He would be damned if he would just stand there while they beat on him.

  “There will be none of that,” Frank Colter said. “Only as a last resort will we do anything drastic.”

  “As you wish, sir,” Jim said with great reluctance. “But you know as well as I do what’s at stake. If you ask me, stooping to their level is only fair.”

  Colter nodded at Fargo. “I’m only offering him a chance to be reasonable. First the carrot, then the stick.”

  Jim glowered, a keg of powder fit to explode. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he thumbed back the hammer of his revolver. “Say the word and I’ll start with his legs and work my way up until he confesses. We must find out what they are up to before it is too late.”

  “What who is up to?” Fargo asked.

  “It won’t work,” Jim scoffed. “Pretend all you want, but we know that you know, and you know that we know you know.”

  Fargo’s patience snapped. “Were you born an idiot or did you have to work at it?” Without warning, Jim swung the revolver at his head. Instinctively, he ducked, but he was not quite quick enough. The barrel clipped him across the temple, not hard enough to knock him out but with sufficient force to drop him to his knees. The world spun chaotically.

  “You damned traitor!” Jim snarled, and raised his revolver to do it again.

  “Enough!” Frank Colter sprang and seized the other’s wrist. “Damn it, Sloane! You will do as I tell you.” He held on until Jim Sloane lowered his arm, then said, “I should have brought Pearson along. He knows how to control his temper.”

  “But the rumors,” Sloane said. “The consequences.”

  “That’s no excuse. We will not stoop to their level, as you put it, so long as I am in charge. Do you understand?”

  Fargo’s head had stopped spinning but was pounding with pain. A moist sensation spread down his cheek. He touched his fingers to his temple. Blood was trickling from a small gash.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Sloane apologized to Colter. “I just don’t want to see a hundred years count for nothing because—”

  A twig snapped loudly in the nearby woods. Fargo glanced up just as a shot boomed and saw the slug catch Jim Sloane high in the right shoulder. The impact jarred Sloane backward. Instantly, Frank Colter spun and fired into the woods, only to be answered with a hail of lead. Colter was hit in the leg, and he, too, staggered, but he did not fall. Suddenly turning, he looped his free arm around Jim Sloane and, limping feverishly, propelled the two of them toward the vegetation. More shots split the night, but they made it to cover.

  Fargo saw his Colt on the ground. Shaking his head to clear a few lingering tendrils of dizziness, he scooped it up. Footsteps pounded, and a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” Arthur Draypool asked with legitimate concern. He held a smoking short-barreled Remington. “What in God’s name are you doing out here by yourself? What did you hope to accomplish?” He did not wait for an answer but motioned instead to the frock-coated pair who had materialized on either side of him. “After them! They must not escape!”

  Like hounds unleashed on fleeing inmates, Avril and Zeck bounded into the forest in pursuit.

  “No,” Fargo said, slowly rising. His legs would not quite work as they should. Apparently he had been slugged harder than he’d thought. “I want them alive. I want to talk to them.”

  “They are highwaymen,” Draypool said. “They would have killed you had we not come looking for you.”

  Fargo was willing to wager his last dollar that whatever Colter and Sloane were, they weren’t common robbers. Colter, in particular, impressed him as someone with a strong sense of honor.

  “I couldn’t sleep and was tossing and turning,” Draypool said. “Then I noticed you were missing. I must say, I was shocked. You should have told us that you were going off alone.”

  “I don’t need nursemaids,” Fargo said gruffly. His momentary weakness had passed and he pushed past the Illinoisan, his teeth clenched against the pounding in his head.

  “Wait!” Draypool cried, snatching at his sleeve. “Let my men take care of it. That’s what I pay them for.”

  Fargo paid him no heed. He plunged into the woods, paused for only a second to listen, then raced toward the sound of crackling brush. A shot stabbed the dark with flame and smoke. Another answered.

  Fargo ran as fast as he dared. He cupped a hand to his mouth to shout for Avril and Zeck not to harm Colter or Sloane, but he did not call out. They wouldn’t listen. They answered only to Draypool. To stop them, he must catch up, which proved easier to contemplate than to effect.

  More shots were exchanged up ahead. It was impossible to tell who was doing the shooting.

  From somewhere behind Fargo, Arthur Draypool shouted for him to wait, adding, “You could hurt yourself stumbling around in the dark!”

  Fargo was insulted. He was a frontiersman. He had lived in the wild for more years than Draypool and his hired guns combined.

  Another blast rocked the night. On its heels rose an outcry of pain, which was promptly smothered.

  Indigo shapes moved a hundred feet away. To avoid being shot by mistake, Fargo halved his speed and bent low. Presently he stopped. The woods were as silent as a cemetery.

  “Fargo, please!” Draypool bleated in the distance. “Where are you?”

  Fargo warily advanced. Another flurry of man-made thunder caused him to drop flat. It was well he did. Slugs buzzed overhead. One clipped a leaf that gravity zigzagged onto his hand. He glimpsed more movement, but the source was gone before he could identify it.

  A minute of quiet passed. Rising partway, Fargo skirted a log. To the east three shots crackled. A thicket barred his way and he angled to the left to go around. A sound stopped him, a low groan bit off short. He crept closer to the thicket and spied a figure sprawled at its base.

  Jim Sloane lay on his back, his arms outflung. His hat was missing, his jacket open, revealing dark stains
on his shirt. He gave a slight start when Fargo hunkered at his elbow, then blinked and croaked, “You again! Go ahead. Finish me off, you miserable bastard.”

  Fargo whispered so no one else would hear. “Why were Colter and you following Arthur Draypool?”

  “As if you don’t know,” Sloane spat out. It cost him a fit of coughing that brought flecks of blood to the corners of his mouth.

  “If I did I wouldn’t ask.”

  “Let me die in peace, damn you. But remember one thing, mister. You won’t win. We won’t let you.”

  Fargo scanned their vicinity but did not spot anyone else. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”

  Sloane tried to respond but succumbed to more coughing. When he could finally speak, he rasped,

  “Have your fun. But the government is on to you and the rest of the League. We won’t let you light the fuse.”

  More puzzled than ever, Fargo said, “What League? What fuse? You don’t make sense.”

  Instead of answering, Sloane laughed bitterly, a laugh nipped by an upwelling of dark rivulets from between his lips. “Damn!” he gurgled. “I’m not long for this world.”

  “Listen to me,” Fargo said. “Draypool has hired me to track down a killer called the Sangamon River Monster. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “Now who is not making any sense?” Sloane weakly rejoined. “Who ever heard of a monster in this day and age?”

  “It’s a man who mutilates and murders whole families,” Fargo explained. “In the Sangamon River region near Springfield.”

  Sloane blanched as pale as a sheet. His eyes swiveled and fixed on Fargo’s face. “What did you say?”

  Fargo repeated it, elaborating with, “Draypool and some others want to end the bloodshed. That’s why they hired me.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “What?” Fargo asked, unsure of whether the man was agitated by the information or had gone stark pale due to his wounds.

  “Those devils! It’s so simple!” Quaking violently, Sloane raised his head and feebly clawed at Fargo’s leg. “He has to be warned! Get word to—”

  “To who?” Fargo prompted.

  Jim Sloane went rigid. Tears streamed from his eyes as his mouth worked soundlessly. Abruptly going limp, he slumped onto his back and exhaled.

  Fargo felt for a pulse but there was none. He heard Draypool huff and puff up behind him, but he did not turn.

  “Is that one dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good riddance. Let’s hope Avril and Zeck do the same with the other.”

  7

  Fargo said very little to Arthur Draypool over the next several days. He did not tell Draypool what Sloane had told him. Better he kept the information to himself until he found out what was going on.

  Avril and Zeck had seen to Sloane’s burial after they returned from chasing Frank Colter. Colter got away, which secretly pleased Fargo. He offered to help dig Sloane’s grave but Draypool would not hear of it. “Menial chores are why I have Mr. Avril and Mr. Zeck in my employ.”

  As the pair in frock coats busied themselves with broken branches, scooping out earth, Fargo searched Sloane’s pockets. He hoped to find something that would tell him who Sloane had been and what Sloane and Colter were up to, but all he found was thirty dollars, a folding knife, and a compass.

  In an effort to justify the shooting, Arthur Draypool had gone on and on about the dangers of traveling in that part of Missouri. “Scoundrels are everywhere. It shouldn’t surprise you that two of them were following us. No doubt at the first opportunity they planned to relieve us of our valuables, if not our lives.”

  That was three nights ago. Over the subsequent days, Fargo racked his brain for an excuse to bow out. All he had to do was walk up to Draypool and flatly refuse to go another mile. But he could not bring himself to do it. Part of the reason was that he had agreed to do the job, and while his promise was not carved in granite, he never went back on his word if he could help it.

  Curiosity was also a factor. Colter and Sloane had given the impression that Draypool was up to no good. The idea seemed preposterous. Fargo could not for the life of him figure out what Draypool hoped to gain by deceiving him. Why go to so much trouble to track him down and offer him so much money if the whole arrangement was underhanded?

  For the time being Fargo was content to go along. But he was no man’s fool, and he stayed alert for gleanings of Draypool’s true intentions.

  The day came when they crossed the border into Illinois. Fargo reckoned they would push on to the next town and rest there for the night. But to his surprise, after only a few miles, Arthur Draypool turned off the main road and down a long lane that brought them to a stately farmhouse. It reminded Fargo of mansions he had seen in the deep South. Scores of workers, nearly all of them black, were busy at various tasks.

  “I hope you won’t mind if we stop early tonight,” Draypool commented. “I thought it might do to treat you to some Illinois hospitality.”

  Apparently word of their coming had preceded them, for four people were waiting on a broad porch. For farmers, the four were dressed in remarkably nice clothes. A craggy-faced man with a bushy mustache came down the steps to greet them, declaring, “Arthur! What a pleasure to see you again!”

  “Permit me to introduce Clyde Mayfair,” Draypool said while shaking their host’s hand. “He and I go back a long ways.”

  “I should say so!” Mayfair exclaimed. “We grew up in South Carolina not twenty miles from one another.” He went to say more, seemed to change his mind, and instead gestured at the trio coming down the steps behind him. “This is my wife, Margaret, my son, Jace, and my daughter, Priscilla.”

  “How do you do, sir?” the wife said. Her hair was graying and she had a plump body that jiggled when she moved.

  “A pleasure, sir.” Jace gave a courtly bow. He was in his twenties, and the spitting image of his sire.

  Fargo was more interested in the daughter. Tall and willowy, Priscilla Mayfair filled out her dress in the shape of an hourglass—a rather tight dress for a farm girl, cut low in front to accent her cleavage and snug at the thighs to accent something else. She offered her hand with a graceful flourish.

  “I do declare. Aren’t you a handsome devil!”

  Grinning, Fargo imitated the son’s bow and kissed the back of her hand. Only she was aware that he pressed the tip of his tongue to her skin. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Not half as pleased as I am,” Priscilla said, her lovely green eyes twinkling. She did not resent the liberty he had taken. Quite the contrary.

  “Why don’t we all go inside?” Clyde Mayfair proposed. “I will have refreshments brought.”

  Fargo shucked his Henry from the saddle scabbard, untied his saddlebags, and followed Draypool and their hosts indoors.

  A butler and two maids, all of them black, snapped to attention as if they were soldiers on a parade ground. Clyde Mayfair had one of the maids take Fargo’s personal effects upstairs. Then he said, “Follow me, gentlemen,” and led the way to a sitting room.

  The house was a model of elegance. Mayfair was no simple farmer. He had money, lots of it, and he was lavish in spending it. Fargo found himself in a plush chair across from a giant window that afforded a sweeping vista of the thousands of acres Mayfair owned. The butler brought him a cup of coffee on a sterling silver tray. The cup itself was of the best china.

  Draypool sank into another chair with a contented sigh. The maid gave him a glass of brandy, which he sniffed, then sipped, savoring it as if it was liquid gold.

  “You have no idea, Clyde, how wonderful it is to be back among civilized society.”

  “Had a rough time, did you, Arthur?” Margaret Mayfair asked.

  “You have no idea. I cannot describe it in mixed company,” Draypool assured her. “Suffice it to say that everything you have heard about the frontier is true. It is overrun with barbarians who
have no appreciation for the niceties of life.”

  Fargo almost laughed. If Draypool thought Kansas City was wild and woolly, he should visit a few prairie towns or some of the mining camps up in the Rockies. Compared to them, Kansas City was as tame as Paris or London.

  “How sad.” Margaret Mayfair sniffed. “People these days have lost all sense of decorum. It comes from bad breeding.”

  Clyde glanced sharply at Fargo, then cleared his throat and said, “Yes, my dear. I wholeheartedly agree. But we don’t want to bore our guest with a discussion about the decline and fall of American culture.”

  “It would bore me,” Priscilla remarked, drawing a barbed look from her mother. “We hear it nearly every day.”

  “That will be quite enough, young lady,” Margaret chided. “When I was your age I would never have presumed to be so impertinent.”

  “When you were my age,” Priscilla said sweetly, “you were as straitlaced as your corset, Mother, and nothing has changed.”

  Clyde flushed and started to rise, but caught himself. “That will be enough, young lady. Must you constantly bait your mother and I over trifles?”

  “My apologies, Father,” Priscilla said with mock sincerity. “I meant no disrespect. But we have talked about it endlessly, and it does so bore me.”

  Bestowing an embarrassed smile on Fargo, Clyde said, “Please excuse my daughter’s antics. We spoiled her growing up, I’m afraid, and her maturity has suffered as a result.”

  Now it was Priscilla who colored and clenched her small hands into fists. “There you go again. Carping on my presumed flaws. But I do not have to sit here and listen.” She began to rise.

  “Sit back down!” Clyde’s command had the same effect as the crack of a bullwhip; his daughter flinched, and did as she was told.

  Arthur Draypool was nervously running his hands along the polished arms of his chair. “Perhaps we have come at an awkward time and should take our leave.”

  “Nonsense,” Clyde said. “Parents must keep their offspring in line. I am sure our other guest does not think less of us.”