by Sharpe, Jon
“Hop your horses and clear out,” Fargo told them. “We’ll take your weapons inside, and you can collect them tomorrow. If you show up here while I’m still around, I’ll kill you for cause.”
“Before you ride out,” added a voice from the doorway of the station, “haul that body down the road a piece so I don’t have to sniff the stink. Let the buzzards bury the blowhard son of a bitch.”
Fargo swung down, looking at a pear-shaped, bald-headed man in a filthy apron. “Junebug Kellar. Glad to see the citizen’s committee here didn’t douse your light.”
“They threatened to if I shouted a warning. Skye goldang Fargo . . . I haven’t seen you since the hogs ate the twins. Chappie, you been getting into a heap of trouble lately.”
“Somebody else is doing all the work, Junebug. I just reap the benefits.”
Junebug looked askance at Fargo’s haberdashery. “Christ, that’s the kind of shirt you see in nightmares. And if them pants was any tighter your voice would change.”
“I like them, Pa,” said a lilting female voice from behind Junebug.
Fargo watched a stunning young redhead, in a worn print dress so thin it fit like a second skin, ease around her father and into the doorway. Either she didn’t like undergarments or she couldn’t get any out here because Fargo could see all of her ample charms—everything from her supple calves to the two spots where her nipples dinted the fabric of her dress.
“Skye,” Junebug said, “this is my girl, Jasmine—the one you know as little Jasmine. She’s a mite bigger now.”
“I see that,” Fargo said, barely able to lift his eyes from her swelling bosom.
With Billy and his Greener supervising, the three would-be hangmen were hauling the body of Zachary Horten well down the trail.
“Mr. Fargo,” Jasmine chirped, giving him a teasing look from lidded eyes, “I thought you had a beard.”
“I did,” he said ruefully, rubbing his stubbled chin. “That’s before I became a desperado.”
“You look fine without one,” she assured him.
“You best take a care, Skye,” Junebug spoke up. “The whole damn territory is boiling over. This is the second rope posse that’s been in here to ask about you.”
“How ’bout Mormon soldiers?”
“Ain’t seen hide nor hair of any in weeks. They been busy with Ute uprisings around Camp Floyd.”
“It does beat all,” Jasmine chimed in, “that men who beat the tar out of their women every day get so high and mighty all of a sudden. Maybe they got some other reason for wanting to kill Mr. Fargo—one their women could explain.”
Her eyes traveled his length—quite a journey. “Pa’s right about them clothes. But the man inside them is mighty easy to look at. Now I seen him, Pa, I know you’re right. This is no fella who’d ever need to . . . force a woman.”
“You’re right on that score, sugar britches,” called out Old Billy as he watched the trio of vigilantes ride off. “Women flock to him like flies to honey. But he has to get rough with barnyard animals.”
Junebug chortled and Fargo grinned at the vulgar lout. Jasmine was too busy playing kissy-face with Fargo to even notice Old Billy. At the moment Fargo regretted that—in these molded-on pants his arousal was obvious. Casually, he brought his hat down over his crotch.
Old Billy hadn’t missed the concealment. “She might be impressed, Fargo, but Sir Richard ain’t.”
“Who’s Sir Richard?” asked a confused Jasmine.
“Oh, this gent I know,” Old Billy replied, barely keeping a straight face. “You could call him a mite cocky.”
“Sorry if we chased away your business,” Fargo said as he followed the owner and his daughter into the dark, hot, smoky interior. Old dry-goods boxes served as chairs, but somewhere Junebug had scrounged up an old billiard table. It sported bullet holes and patched felt.
Junebug snorted. “Business? All that bunch ever done was swill whiskey on account and never pay me. Only reason they come is to ogle Jasmine.”
“And pinch me,” she added. “But I won’t . . . get friendly with any man who ain’t got nice teeth. Strong and white like yours, Mr. Fargo.”
Junebug waved his daughter silent. “Honey, I told you before, you’re of age and I don’t begrudge your little flirtations. But wait till your daddy ain’t around. And you can call him Skye—me and him go way the hell back.”
He turned to Fargo. “You’re in sore need of a bath. And I got some duds that might fit you—nothing too fancy-fine, but hell, least you won’t look like a circus juggler.”
“’Preciate it. How’s your tarantula juice?”
“Never mind that, you damn criminal,” Old Billy cut in. “I’ll test the who-shot-john while you get that bath. Happens you hear gunfire up here, fill your hand and fill it quick.”
11
“C’mon,” Jasmine told him, taking Fargo’s hand, “I’ll show you where everything is.”
Fargo could see where everything was, all right, and he liked the placement just fine. As she tugged him toward a lean-to off the back of the station, he watched her tight buttocks undulate against the thin dress like two melons shifting in a sack.
Just outside the lean-to was a flat-iron stove. A bucket next to it was stuffed with corncobs soaking in coal oil. She banged open the door of the stove and threw some cobs in.
Fargo peeked down the front of her dress as she bent down and got an eye-filling peek at her creamy, plum-tipped tits.
“Like ’em?” she asked as she struck a phosphor on the stove and flipped it onto the fuel.
“You know I do. What red-blooded man wouldn’t?”
She tossed back her head and laughed. “Pa’s right. All men want the same thing.”
Fargo began hauling water from a nearby cistern. “What’s wrong with that? Don’t women want the same thing, too?”
“Of course we do. But men just go right at it like bulls to a red rag. Women have a different style.”
“Oh?” Fargo said with mock innocence as he poured a pail of water into the larger heating pan on the stove. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She laughed again and slugged him on the arm. “No need to play the preacher, Mr. Fargo—I mean, Skye. Pa tells me you been with more women than a midwife.”
“The only one that counts,” he assured her, “is the one you’re with now.”
“And tomorrow she’s a memory, right?”
“A memory for life,” he assured her, although in fact only the best of the best became that.
Soon the water was hot and Fargo hauled it to the washtub in the lean-to, pouring it in.
“There’s lye soap on that shelf beside you,” she said, “and a scrap of towel. I’m gonna go dig up them duds pa mentioned.”
He unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it beside the tub. As he stripped out of the odious clothing and eased into the water, Fargo wasn’t sure there was any fire behind Jasmine’s smoke. He had indeed been with many women, and it wasn’t always the ones who acted most forward who were quick to drop their linen. Besides, the idea of tupping a gal with her father only a few feet away didn’t appeal to him—and that barren landscape outside hardly offered a leafy bower as love nest.
He could hear Old Billy’s voice rising and getting more belligerent—the damn piker was getting drunk on free liquor. Fargo had to lather his sweaty, oily hair twice before it felt clean. He dunked his head to rinse it, and when he sat up cold steel kissed his left temple.
“Shit,” he said calmly, waiting for the bright-orange starburst inside his skull that signaled the end of the trail.
“Bang,” Jasmine said, tittering. “You’re dead.”
“Why, you little vixen!”
Fargo grabbed the weapon from her and set it aside, then pulled her into the tub dress and all. He began smacking her soundly on that Georgia-peach ass, hard, resounding slaps that made her cry out in protest and wiggle like a puppy.
“Whale her a few for me, Skye!” Junebug shouted. “I’ve
spared the rod too long with that sassy brat!”
Jasmine suddenly stopped squirming as her hand found Fargo’s shaft. “Here’s a rod we don’t need to spare. Land o’Goshen, Skye, why’s it so big and hard?”
“Same reason that spanking was so long—I liked what I was feeling.”
“You prob’ly like these, too, huh?”
Sloshing water over the brim of the tub, she shimmied until her dress was down to her hips. Fargo was duly impressed with the two puffy loaves with cocoa rings circling the protuberant nipples.
“I can’t decide if I really like them until I sample them,” he assured her, bending his sopping head down to take one of the nipples into his mouth. He sucked and kissed it, throwing in a few nibbles for good measure. Undaunted by the crowd in the tub, she sighed and wiggled her butt.
“Yeah, I like ’em,” he finally reported.
She still had his turgid manhood gripped in her hand. When she tipped it back, Fargo’s length made it easily clear the water.
“Think I’ll return the favor,” she told him breathlessly, her hair fanning out in the water as she lowered her heartshaped lips onto him and began bobbing for apples. The part she couldn’t get into her mouth she gripped with a thumb and forefinger, forming a tight cinch and pumping her hand up and down.
Fargo squirmed at the hot, tight, liquid pleasure pouring over his man gland. He interlaced his fingers in her thick hair and guided her as she got up a head of steam, fire on fire to the fuel inside him. The explosion began as a hot glow in his groin, a glow that turned into a tickling prickle that pulsed between his balls and his shaft.
She felt him growing iron hard in her mouth and moaned with excitement. Her head was bobbing as quick as a steam piston, her hand moving with a blur of speed. The pleasure in his staff finally reached its peak and Fargo exploded with a mighty gasp, hips bucking a dozen times before he made his conclusive thrust. Then he collapsed into the water like a rag puppet.
“My stars and garters!” she exclaimed through the delirium of his pleasure. “You ain’t gone soft one bit! ’Pears I’ll have to straddle you and tame that hungry beast.”
Fargo was helping her mount him when Old Billy’s sly voice roared out, “Fargo, you’re burning daylight! You’ve soaped your ears enough. Them three shit-kickers we sent packing will come back with a mob. The longer we tarry here, the more danger we put Junebug and Jasmine in. Time to light a shuck out of here.”
“Tell that old stain face to piss up a rope,” Jasmine pleaded.
“He’s right,” Fargo said reluctantly. “He’s always right at the wrong times.”
“Ain’t no fair,” she pouted. “We didn’t even get to screw. I’ll have a bellyache all night.”
Fargo lifted her out of the tub, her wet dress clinging like a can label, and climbed out behind her. “I don’t like it either, cupcake. You are one fine specimen of woman.”
This cheered her up a bit. Fargo dried off with a rough, thin towel, then looked at the clothes she handed him: a pair of worn but clean kersey trousers and a cotton pullover shirt.
“Nothing fancy,” she said, “but lots better than them ridiculous rags you got on.”
“The way you say,” Fargo replied gratefully, pulling them on. “Fit better, too.”
“Kind of a shame,” she teased him, glancing at the looserfitting trousers. “Least them others didn’t leave much to a gal’s imagination.”
“Fargo, you skunk-bit coyote!” Old Billy’s gravelly voice roared. “This ain’t no foofaraw house! If you ain’t horsed in one minute, I’ll come back there and shoot you to doll stuffings!”
The vast Mormon region formerly known as Deseret had become the Utah Territory in 1850. The Mormons had been forced to endure some gentiles as government officers, but the Saints still controlled the city and made sure there were few attractions to draw the lower elements. Destitute travelers, especially women and children, were generously assisted, but saloons were almost nonexistent, and fornication was strictly forbidden by law so that soiled doves were never spotted on the wide streets.
There were, however, clean camps provided for outlanders on the edge of the sprawling city. Riding hard from Echo Canyon, swinging well south to avoid Skye Fargo and his dangerous friend, Butch Landry’s gang reached one of these camps on the evening of the day Fargo had visited Kellar’s Station.
“Butch,” Orrin Trapp carped, kicking at the fire, “I ain’t never seen the like of these Mormons! The men all got them beards that look like half a doughnut, and the women—Christ ! Buncha sour-pussed old biddies that look like their assholes are screwed on too tight. Hell, I kept gettin’ ’em mixed up with the oxen they got all over this town.”
“Never mind that,” Butch snapped. “Didja find a bottle?”
“Are you shittin’? Every Jack shall have his Jill before you find any strong water in this town. I found one saloon, but all they had was beer and sarsaparilla.”
“See how it is?” Butch stewed. “When it comes to women, these Mormon men run a whole string just for theirselves. But can a bachelor passing through town find a saloon with gals topside? Hypocritical sons of bitches.”
He spat into the fire and heaved a long sigh. “Well, good chance Fargo will be in this area by tomorrow. If Deets does his job good—and he has so far—we won’t need to be here all that long. Just long enough to see Fargo clamped into chains and tossed into prison. Trials ain’t delayed around here, boys, and the lawyers are all Mormons. When we know the hanging date, we’ll come back for that, too. Maybe even piss on Fargo’s grave.”
“Say,” Orrin piped up, “when Fargo goes to prison, we need to visit him—just so he’ll know who done him in before he stretches hemp.”
Landry laughed long and hard. “Orrin, you struck a lode there! Ain’t a damn thing he can do about it by then. But wait . . . that might not be a smart play seeing as how we’re all wanted, too.”
“We’ll send in a note after we’re long gone,” Orrin suggested. “We won’t spell it out plain—just something to let him know it was us that cooked his goose to a cinder.”
The men quieted down as a Mormon constable rode past on a big sorrel, casting a suspicious glance in their direction. The camps were free, firewood provided, but any violation of the rules and they’d get the boot.
“Brigham Young’s lick-finger,” Orrin muttered.
“Bluenoses all,” Butch agreed. “But we dursn’t get pinched—these law-and-order bastards run files on every wanted man in the territory. I prefer a bullet to the brain over going back to prison.”
Harlan Perry, squatting by the fire and gnawing on a cold biscuit, spoke up. “How’s Deets gonna nab a young girl in a place like this? Hell, everybody stares at any outsider and I didn’t see no gals walking the streets except prune-faced biddies.”
“He won’t do it here in the city,” Butch replied. “North of here, still in Salt Lake Valley near the lake, there’s this settlement called Mormon Station. It’s for tending crops in the valley. Deets says it ain’t much more than a double handful of cabins strung along an irrigation canal.”
“But that lake is salt water,” Orrin said.
“Yeah, but they got a snowmelt reservoir up there. That’s how’s come they got all they rye and wheat fields. Anyhow, Deets has already been through there and met a little gal named Rebecca who don’t exactly live by the Book of Mormon, if you take my drift. He figures he can lure her out—him disguised as Fargo, of course—and cut up rough—rough enough that Mormon law will throw a net around the real Fargo.”
“But if he kills her,” Orrin put in, “how will anybody know Fargo done it?”
“He don’t need to kill her. Rape is a hanging offense around here. But he’s gonna cut her up so bad that she’ll have to talk out.”
“Hell, that’s all right, I s’pose,” Harlan said. “I mean, Butch, it was your brother Fargo killed, and he put all of us in prison to boot, so t’hell with him. But I sure will be glad to get shed of a
ll this skulkin’ around and get back to the States—we got all that gold and we ain’t hardly had no chance to spend it.”
“You and me have hitched our thoughts to the same post,” Butch said. “Money is like manure—it works best when you spread it around. And just as soon as Fargo has started his one or two years of penitence, we’ll point our bridles due east. Saint Louis, maybe, or hell, maybe even go west to San Francisco. That way the trip will be shorter when Fargo gets jerked to Jesus.”
“What about Deets?” Orrin said quietly.
Butch searched for his foxlike features in the yelloworange firelight. “How’s that?”
“Deets. What happens with him at the end of the trail?”
“Why, we square up with him. What else?”
“That’s cussed stupidity,” Orrin said bluntly. “That theater fop is shiftier than a creased buck. The moment he gets his last yeller boy from us, he could turn around and collect the reward on us.”
“How?” Harlan demanded. “Lookit all the crimes he done for us.”
“Besides,” Butch said, “how can he work a double-cross on us when he’s wanted for murder himself? Killed a gal beloved all over San Francisco—all on account she wouldn’t let him court and spark her. So it’s a standoff between us and him.”
“Maybe so,” Orrin conceded, “but I say we just kill the son of a bitch. He knows too much. Besides, we not only save the final payment, we’re likely to find most of the gold we paid him so far. I don’t like that high-hatting bastard. Thinks his shit don’t stink just because he can rattle off Shakespeare. Hell, any gal-boy can read a book and get it off by heart.”
“Deets ain’t no gal-boy,” Butch said with conviction. “He’s all grit and a yard wide. Still, I think Orrin is on to a scent. When you send a man as famous as Skye Fargo to the gallows, it ain’t smart to have a man like Deets running around knowing about it. What if he makes a deathbed confession ?”