by Jon Sharpe
He laughed. ‘‘I thought you’d never ask.’’
4
She was a good horsewoman.
But she wasn’t much fun to follow.
Alexis Lund had left the mansion at seven o’clock. It was now nearing nine, and so far she had stopped at a small café and sat in a chair outside a blacksmith’s shop where inside one of her horse’s shoes was being replaced.
Fargo had stayed at a discreet distance, walking his Ovaro off road whenever possible. Alexis was in no hurry and only twice did she make her pinto do much more than simply walk.
She wore a tan silk blouse and brown butternuts. Her hair was pulled back into a chignon. Not a single man she passed failed to stop and look at her. The sunlight limned her in gold, goddesslike.
Fargo knew it was too early to make any judgment about her. There was always the possibility that Serena was wrong about her. That something about Lund had changed her, made her the faithful woman she might have longed to become. Living was a strange business and people, sometimes the worst of them, surprised you.
After she was finished at the blacksmith’s, Alexis turned her pinto toward the river. This time the horse moved at a trot and finally into a run.
The speed of the horse made him decide that Serena’s suspicions were probably correct. Alexis was going somewhere that really meant something to her. Either she was late for an appointment or she was headed toward a meeting that made her blood race.
They were soon in the foothills. There were animals in addition to the usual cows and horses. In the course of the ride Fargo saw moose and elk; a bear lay on a ledge of rock watching the road in the distance. There was a comic aspect to this; he could have been an old gent. All he needed was a corncob pipe.
Alexis turned abruptly away from the trail and headed behind a chain of tall, plump boulders that lay on a steep incline. She disappeared.
For the first time today Fargo knew he had to be careful. This was where he could be caught following her. He had no idea what lay behind the boulders. He even thought that she might be on to him and had ducked in here as part of a trap. She was a smart woman.
Taking his Ovaro behind the boulders would be too dangerous. He led the stallion over to a grassy area and ground-tied him. Then, drawing his Colt, he made his way toward the boulders. When he reached the bottom rock, he took off his hat and dropped it to the ground. He needed to peek around the boulder, and the hat would give him away for sure.
He steadied himself and leaned forward for a quick look. Alexis Lund stood on a low hill in the arms of a man. Their kiss was passionate. The man ran his hands up and down her body. And she clung to him almost savagely.
Behind them he could see a cabin, a well-tended structure with smoke curling out of the chimney and chickens walking around frantically.
He needed only one more detail. The identity of the man. He probably wouldn’t know his name but he could at least get a useful description of him. Right now all he could see was that the man had long dark hair. His hands looked swarthy against the tan of her blouse.
But it still wasn’t good enough for Fargo. He needed a closer observation of the man. Two big problems.How would he get up the slope here without being seen? And could he even make it up there before the two inevitably went inside the shack? He could wait them out but what if the man stayed behind in the shack afterward and she came down the slope? There’d be no place for him to hide.
The man combed his fingers into her hair and their embrace became even more desperate, urgent. Then they parted and she laughed with such great sexual joy she sounded half insane. She put her hand in his and they angled themselves toward the cabin.
She started to pull him up the grassy incline. The man took his first real step. He limped on his right leg. Perceptibly. Fargo wondered if the man had simply gotten a charley horse. But as the man continued to walk, Fargo saw the shoe on his right leg was built up, the way shoes were for people who’d been born with one leg shorter than the other.
Fargo had the mark of identification he needed.
‘‘What the hell’d you do to this man?’’ old Doc Standish said to Sheriff Harve Tyndale.
‘‘Is he dead?’’
‘‘Damned near, thanks to you.’’
They were in one of the eight cells situated in back of the front office of the sheriff’s department. A man lay on his back on one of the thin cots. The man and the cot alike showed bright splatters of blood. The man was around thirty, and chunky. His breathing came in painful gasps—almost asthmatic sounding— and his head had so many knots, bumps, and contusions that the small, bald Doc Standish hadn’t been able to count them all.
‘‘I guess he must’ve fallen down.’’
Harve Tyndale was six-three, weighed two-twenty, and had been a bare-knuckle fighter for a few years in and around Denver and Cheyenne. He took an unseemly—hell, unholy—delight in beating prisoners to the point where four or five a year died ‘‘under mysterious circumstances,’’ as the judge always insistedwhen ruling that a given inquest was over and no further inquiry was needed.
Doc Standish had worked boomtowns before. Law enforcement in raw, rich towns was always merciless. And actually seeing a man pounded into a stupor, even a coma, by the likes of Tyndale and his deputies had never bothered Standish much until his third son, Nick, had left home and moved to Denver, where he was constantly in and out of trouble thanks to a taste for cheap whiskey and cheaper women. A year ago he had decided to pay his twenty-year-old son a surprise visit. He’d found him in the Denver municipal jail. Nick had come along by accident late in the lives of Myrtle and Doc Standish. Myrtle had developed what was to Doc an unwholesome relationship with the boy. When he so much as bruised a knee she became hysterical. She was overprotective to a degree that their friends found amusing and he found disgusting. Imagine what she’d think seeing her boy in a dank, shadowy cell with his head split open, his right eye closed, and three of his front teeth missing. For the first time Standish realized that he’d been a participant in this kind of inexcusable violence for many years. He’d paid the boy’s bail, taken him to a hotel room, and stayed in Denver until the boy could stand up without being dizzy, hold down food, and not have a headache that felt as if it was cleaving his skull in half.
He’d returned to Reliance unable to patch up the near dead without at least complaining to Tyndale and his men about their unnecessary treatment of prisoners.
‘‘This man needs to be brought to my office right away. He’ll have to stay in one of the beds there for at least two days.’’
‘‘I can’t spare the man to guard him.’’
Standish, who had a neat white beard and a trim sixty-six-year-old body, said, ‘‘Then you’ll have a corpse in the cell by sundown.’’
‘‘I’ve had corpses in my cells before, Doc.’’
Standish, who was a mere five-seven, turned on Tyndale with the ferocity of an angry dog. He even poked him in the chest. ‘‘I want this man brought to my office right now. Do you understand me, Tyndale?’’
He could see that Tyndale was prepared to make a joke of the moment—a silly-ass little medical man trying to intimidate a man like Tyndale—but then he checked himself. Doc had a lot of friends in Reliance. A lot more friends than Tyndale did. And the election was coming up. Lund fielded both slates—both opponents were his men, bought and paid for—but he gave the voters a choice of which bought-and-paid-for man most appealed to them. And it was well known that Lund wanted to get rid of Tyndale. He’d served his purpose. He’d tamed the town, a violent man being necessary for the task. The town still had its share of troubles but these days Tyndale still reacted as he had when he’d first come here, and murder was commonplace. Tyndale was well aware that Lund wanted him gone.
‘‘You got a bug up your ass today or somethin’, Doc?’’
‘‘Yes, I do, Tyndale. I get tired of seeing men like these. What he’d do, get drunk and say something to one of your deputies? Or one of you
r deputies was bored so he decided to push him into a fight? Or somebody had a grudge against this man so he talked your deputy into beating him?’’
Tyndale saw there was no use arguing. ‘‘I’ll have him brought over, Doc.’’
Standish didn’t move. He seemed to be studying Tyndale’s face, as if there were a secret there that he wanted to know. ‘‘I’ll be honest with you, Tyndale. I’ll be glad when you’re gone.’’
Tyndale grabbed his arm. ‘‘Don’t talk to me that way, damn you.’’
‘‘Take your hand off me.’’
Tyndale withdrew his hand. Forced himself to calm down. ‘‘I’ll try and watch myself in the future, Doc. How’s that?’’
‘‘That go for your deputies, too?’’
‘‘I’ll see that it does.’’
After the doc left, Tyndale went over to his desk, sat down, pulled out the pint bottle, and had himself a good hard belt. The hell of it was he liked this town. He had everything arranged. He had certain privileges at the saloons, the whorehouses, the outlaw hideouts in the hills, even at church. On Sundays he was an usher at church. He could see his old man smirking about that. His old man never had any time for people who put on airs, and he’d considered church ushers among the worst of them. Whenever the old lady would drag him to Mass the old man would bitch for days afterward about the ushers, saying they were sissies and ass-kissers and sickening spectacles of manhood.
Yeah, the old man would laugh his ass off if he was still alive and knew that his boy was an usher.
Tyndale had another drink.
For a moment there he’d forgotten his election troubles. But now they were back. It was too late to win voters over with promises. Farnham, his opponent, was already promising everything under the sun. Plus Tyndale had the suspicion that the gentry was behind Farnham. He was young and good-looking, and he’d gone through eighth grade, a point he alluded to in his speeches. He characterized Tyndale as a hairy barbarian who had done a good job of cleaning out riffraff because he was riffraff himself and thus knew how to handle them. But now that Reliance was becoming a real town with a real town council and a real school and a real future . . . Well, there wasn’t any room in a town like that for riffraff, was there?
What he needed, Tyndale knew, was to do something that would impress the voters so much that they would see him for the capable lawman he was—so capable in fact that they would forget or at least overlook his overly enthusiastic jailhouse procedures. They would compare Tyndale to Farnham at that moment and see that there was really no contest here. Experience and maturity versus pretty words and a young face. And no experience. And no maturity.
What was it he could do? Nothing came to mind.
But something had better damned soon come to mind. The election might be two months away but if the doc was any indication, a whole lot of voters had already made up their minds.
All the way back to the mansion Fargo felt a growing resentment for having been dragged into Lund’s personal affairs. This wasn’t Fargo’s kind of work. Now he’d have to face a man and tell him that his wife was being unfaithful. And then he’d have to see the impact of his words on the man’s daughter. Serena had not only been a most nubile partner in bed, but he also liked her. She wasn’t anything like most of the young, wealthy girls he’d met over the years. She had a sense of humor about herself and she loved her father in a simple, unfettered way, not just because he was a powerful man.
The mansion gleamed as the sun climbed to noon. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter of the grounds in military fashion. At the front entrance—the only entrance—two armed guards noted the coming and going of every human, vehicle, and horse that passed beneath the tall stone arch.
Fargo nodded to the guards as he rode his Ovaro up the winding road toward the massive house, its turrets and spires like something out of an adventure book. He dismounted, walked his stallion over to the stable, and rewarded him for a good day’s work. He could have done all this later. But right now he would do anything to avoid going into the mansion and telling Lund what he’d seen.
He was just leaving the stable when Serena rode up. Her outfit today was a yellow sweater with a green silk scarf, tight jeans, and leather boots that came up to her knees. Her mount was sleek and the color of chestnuts. She dropped from the saddle and walked her horse over to the stable door.
‘‘I take it you’ll be gracing us with your presence at dinner tonight, Skye.’’
‘‘Maybe.’’
A man came from inside the stable and took her horse. She joined Fargo on his way to the house, shedding her leather gloves as they walked.
‘‘Any particular reason you’re so quiet, Skye?’’
‘‘Just sort of tired, I guess.’’
For a time they let the birds and the wind make the sounds and then Serena burst out: ‘‘You found out something, didn’t you?’’
‘‘Huh-uh.’’
She stopped him and took his arm. ‘‘You followed her and she met somebody, didn’t she?’’ She was childishly excited.
‘‘I need to talk to your father before I say anything. He’s the one who hired me.’’
They neared the house but she steered away to the right, toward the large white gazebo that lay like a shrine to summer in the center of an open space.
‘‘You’re kidnapping me,’’ he laughed.
‘‘You’re damned right I am.’’
She dragged him up the three steps and inside the white gazebo. In the summer this would be festooned with flowers and colorful lanterns. It was less romantic this afternoon, what with one of the big collies who roamed the grounds having had a formidable bowel movement only a few feet away from the gazebo itself.
‘‘Who was she with?’’
‘‘You know a man with a built-up shoe?’’
‘‘Oh, God, Skye. That’s Carstairs. The painter. He’s from New York. He came out here to do a series of paintings for a museum back there.’’
‘‘Well, she rode up into the hills and met him.’’
‘‘Yes, he has a cabin up there.’’
He described what he’d seen.
At first she’d sounded pleased about what he’d been able to discover, but as he talked he watched her pleasure change to dread. She had reached the same realization that he had. Maybe the titillation of it all was amusing but the amusement stopped when she realized what this would do to her father when Fargo gave him his report. Alexis was his life. He might have suspected her of being unfaithful, but suspecting was far different from knowing.
‘‘Poor Dad.’’
‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘I wonder what he’ll do.’’
‘‘I don’t intend to stick around and find out.’’
‘‘You’re leaving?’’
‘‘Soon as I talk to your father, I’m mounting up and riding away.’’
‘‘But why?’’
‘‘Because this isn’t my kind of work. I have to go in there and tell him that his wife is being untrue to him. What the hell kind of job is that?’’
‘‘There you are, Serena.’’
The voice came clear and strong in the late afternoon. The master of the house. Lund came striding across the grounds in a brown leather jacket and white shirt and brown trousers. His white Stetson caught the fading streams of sunlight.
‘‘Maria’s looking for you in the kitchen. She’s making that pot roast we like so much. But she said she needs you to help her.’’
‘‘I showed her how to season it a little better.’’
‘‘Well, then you’d better get in there.’’
Fargo could feel the other man’s tension. The story about the cook needing Serena might possibly be a lie. But when Lund saw Fargo he wanted to talk to him immediately and alone. A fib was permissible.
Serena glanced from her father to Skye. Dread filled her lovely eyes. She could almost feel the pain that would be visited upon her father. She said, ‘‘I’ll be in the hous
e.’’
‘‘Thank you,’’ Lund said.
They watched her leave, watched her walk up to the house, then watched the doorway she’d entered. Fargo didn’t want to talk and Lund didn’t want to listen. But neither man had a choice.
‘‘I’m pretty good at reading faces, Fargo.’’
‘‘Oh?’’
‘‘And I can tell you’ve got some bad news for me.’’
Fargo wanted to get on his horse and ride away without having to tell the man that his wife was indeed seeing somebody else on the side.
‘‘You want to sit in the gazebo?’’
‘‘Just get to it, Fargo.’’ Then: ‘‘Who is it?’’
Fargo sighed. ‘‘I didn’t want this job.’’
‘‘Damn it, Fargo. You obviously saw her with somebody today. I want to know his name.’’
‘‘A man with a short leg. Carstairs is his name, I guess.’’
‘‘Carstairs? A cripple?’’
For a powerful man like Lund this had to be particularly devastating news. Not only was his wife’s lover not wealthy but he was not a whole man, either. And what an unmanly calling—painting on canvas every day.
‘‘Carstairs? You’re sure?’’
Fargo described the day following her and how it had culminated at the cabin. When he finished, he realized that his words hadn’t stoked Lund’s anger. They seemed to have made him weary instead. He looked his true age now, a sad older man.
Barely whispering, he said, ‘‘I trusted her. I trusted her completely.’’
‘‘I’m sorry.’’
‘‘I’ve always sensed that Serena didn’t trust her but I thought she might be jealous. She’s used to having all my attention, especially since her mother died. But obviously Serena was right.’’
Fargo almost said that maybe there was some other explanation but he caught himself in time. What a stupid thing to say. What the hell other explanation could there be?
Lund focused on him. ‘‘You want to get as far away from this thing as you can, don’t you?’’