by Sharpe, Jon
The sky lightened as the two men trudged into town, selecting a narrow alley that ran between wooden warehouses.
Old Billy paused to peer through a window of one of the buildings.
“The hell you up to?” Fargo called back over his shoulder.
“I wunner if there’s any cheerwater inside. I’m dry as a year-old cow chip.”
“This is Salt Lake City, you muttonhead, not San Francisco.”
Old Billy’s tongue brushed his wind-cracked lips. “Well, where do we get a bottle?”
Fargo waved this off and hurried forward. “You’re building a pimple into a peak. Plenty of time later to worry about a bottle.”
“Huh! Easy to say for them as ain’t got the tormentin’ thirst on ’em.”
Fargo wasn’t even listening now—he had reached the end of the alley and spotted Mica’s livery across the wide, wagon-rutted street.
He saw no guards or any other signs of life, just a wagon yard and a feed store beyond the livery barn. Just as he stepped into the street, however, a pack of yellow curs emerged from behind the feed store.
Fargo froze in place, knowing movement would catch their eyes more than shape. He knew it was the dogs’ incredible sense of smell that was his worst enemy, and fortunately he stood in a crosswind—a wind, however, that could shift at any moment. He raised a hand behind him to halt Old Billy.
The curs, following their leader, padded down the middle of the street in the ghostly half-light. Fargo knew they’d spot him if they didn’t smell him first. He was still considering how to play this when Old Billy edged his white-streaked head around the corner of the building just enough to see the danger.
His hand moved to his sash and removed the bolos. In a trice he cocked back his right arm, gave a hard, rotating toss. Fargo watched the round, leather-wrapped stones twirl at blurring speed into the midst of the pack. Billy had no intention of bringing down any of the dogs—only of scattering them, and scatter like ninepins they did. The bolos skimmed along the ground, frightening them and parting them like the Red Sea. The pack subdivided into two and raced off without even a whimper.
“Good work, old campaigner,” Fargo praised. “You’re a good man to take along.”
Old Bill retrieved his bolos, and the two men slipped into Mica’s livery.
“Be you friend or foe?” a rasping voice demanded from halfway down the stalls. “A load of double aught is pointed right atcha.”
“Lower your hammers, Mica,” Fargo called back. “It’s just me and Old Billy. We’re here to fetch our mounts.”
“I heerd that ruckus last night, Trailsman. How many fresh souls did you send to heaven?”
“Truth to tell,” Fargo replied, “I didn’t send any nor did Old Billy. One owlhoot did get in the way of a bullet, though, and it’s good odds he took the south fork into hell.”
Mica, pulling up his gallowses, emerged from the stall where he’d been sleeping. “Where’s my horses? Kilt?”
“Naw, they’re fine.” Fargo explained where they’d been left and why. “You’ll be paid for the extra trouble, old-timer.”
“You’ll find a bag of oats outside the Ovaro’s stall. Both your hosses has been fed up good.”
Fargo and Old Billy quickly tacked their horses in the meager light. Mica spread a piece of cheesecloth on a workbench. “Likely you two sons of trouble are low on eats, and sure as glory you can’t stock up around these diggin’s.”
The two men interrupted their labors to watch him pack the cloth with beans, hardtack, and dried fruit.
“Mica, we’re beholden,” Fargo said.
“Damn my eyes,” Old Billy said, staring at the food. “I wouldn’t mind getting outside of some grub right now. I’m so hungry my backbone is scraping against my ribs.”
“Push that thought from your mind,” Fargo told him as he slipped the bit into the Ovaro’s mouth. “We’ll grab some chuck when we’re well shed of this town.”
“How ’bout that jug of yours, Mica?” Old Billy said. “Mind if I take a sup of mash?”
“Huh! Now you want somethin’ from me you’re polite as pie. Help yourself—it’s in that tool cubby beside the harness board.”
“Gradual on that,” Fargo snapped when Old Billy set the jug on his shoulder and took several deep, sweeping slugs. “I want you sober when we bust out of town. Lead will fly.”
“Damn straight it will,” Old Billy retorted when he saw that Fargo was changing into his buckskins. “I reckon you want to get us killed?”
Fargo felt his chin. “Here’s how I figure it. My beard is starting to come back in, and I’m riding the Ovaro again. So why not quit cowering behind summer names and be Fargo again? I want my toothpick back in my boot and my Henry in the scabbard, too. Let these plug-ugly sons of bucks know just who’s sending them across the River Jordan.”
“By God!” Old Billy approved. “It made sense at first to disguise yourself, but hell, you done milked that grift.”
“Skye Fargo rides agin,” Old Mica chimed in. “It gives me the fantods, Trailsman, to see you wearing reach-me-downs. Buckskins is your natch’ral gait.”
Fargo felt the soft hide against his skin and had to agree. He accepted the food from Mica and stuffed it into a saddle pocket. Then he stuck his head out the livery door and looked carefully all around just as the sun broke over the eastern flats.
“All clear right now,” he told Old Billy. “We’re going out the same way we sneaked in—through alleys and between buildings. If it stays quiet we’ll go slow. If we ride into a shit storm we’ll pound our horses. If somebody tosses lead at us, don’t bother to fire back—killing a Mormon won’t win us any jewels in paradise.”
Fargo led the Ovaro out into the paddock. Before he forked leather he pressed a gold eagle into Mica’s gnarled hand.
“H’ar now!” the old salt protested. “You don’t owe me no ten dollars, Fargo.”
Old Billy stared with covetous eyes at the gold coin. “Christ Jesus, Fargo! He’s right.”
“Both you jays pipe down,” Fargo said. “Billy, keep your eyes to all sides. As the story goes, there was a young Mormon woman attacked by Skye Fargo. And woe betide any shit-heel trail tramp siding him.”
Fargo could feel his stallion quivering with the desire to run full throttle in the early morning chill. He kept shortening the reins to control the Ovaro’s head. The two mounts walked slowly and quietly through a maze of alleys. Twice the men reined in as they reached wide, creosote-oiled streets. After a careful check they gigged their horses quickly across the streets.
By now the dull red orb of the sun was well above the horizon, and the streets of Salt Lake City were beginning to fill and thicken. One more street lay ahead, and Fargo heaved a sigh of relief. That sigh, however, quickly snagged in the back of his throat when they reached the street and glanced right. He spotted a line of huge, lumbering wagons with high wheels and long double-teams of mules.
“Freight caravan,” he told Old Billy. “Ten, twelve wagons. We’ll have to fade back into the alley until they pass.”
He pulled straight back on the reins and the well-trained Ovaro pranced backward into the obscuring shadows between two rows of homes.
“This’ll take a while,” Fargo fretted, listening to the bullwhackers snapping their long blacksnake whips and cursing like stable sergeants. “By the time we get across we’re bound to be spotted. Well, leastways we’ll be out in the open and we can give our mounts their head.”
Old Billy said nothing. Curious, Fargo gave him an over-the-shoulder glance and found the Indian fighter staring intently through a window on a level with his face.
“The hell are you doing?” Fargo demanded. But Old Billy clearly didn’t even hear him. Eyes unblinking, his breathing hoarse and quick, he continued to stare through the window.
Fargo wheeled the Ovaro around and rode up beside his mesmerized partner. “Get away from that window,” he ordered sternly. “You want somebody to spot you and raise the hue and cry?”
“Fargo,” Old Billy croaked hoarsely, “stand off or I’ll shoot you. Never come between a dog and his meat.”
Fargo glanced inside and felt his heart give a jump. Two young women, obviously twin sisters, lay on their backs asleep in a big brass bed. Evidently they had pulled off their nightclothes to take advantage of the cooler temperature. Blood throbbing in his ears and palms, Fargo took in their long russet hair, full, sensuous lips, and smooth marble skin. Their breasts—as identical as their faces—were full, heavy, and pendant with nipples the color of fruit wine.
The deltas of hair between their legs were dark and mysterious, inviting a man’s imagination to think about the warm dampness tucked just behind those silken portals. Fargo did think about it, and almost simultaneously both men were forced to adjust themselves in the saddle. Fargo thought about his recent conquests in Echo Canyon and at Kellar’s Station. Both women were delightful, but he had not supped full enough.
“Good . . . god . . . damn,” Old Billy muttered hoarsely. “Whoever said you can’t tell a Mormon’s women from his oxen is full of shit up to his ears. Fargo, you’ve screwed prac’ly every woman on the continent and much of their livestock. How’s them two rate?”
“Blue ribbons,” Fargo replied, tearing his eyes away reluctantly. “Now move clear, Old Billy. The charge against me in these parts is raping, cutting, and killing women. How will things stand if we get caught ogling these two?”
Old Billy nodded, enjoying one last look. “That rings right.’Sides, it ain’t much pleasure staring at women that comely and knowing I can’t bull ’em. It’s like staring at another man’s money knowing I’ll never spend it.”
The men nudged their mounts a few feet away. Old Billy shivered. “I gotta haul my freight to a whore first chance I get. I’ll think on them two dumplings and then ride that soiled dove until she smokes and throws off sparks. I never seen—”
The sudden, loud thump of a window sash being thrown open interrupted Old Billy. Fargo slewed quickly around in his saddle and felt his face drain cold: A stout Mormon matron in a flannel nightgown and nightcap aimed a scattergun at the two men in the alley.
“I’ll teach you heathen outlanders to rape my daughters!” she said in a homicidal voice as her finger wrapped the trigger.
Fargo did some quick horseback thinking. They were mere eyeblinks away from disaster, and even the Ovaro couldn’t get ahead of buckshot. Nor could he and Old Billy pull down on the woman in time. Even if they could, she was too angry to be deterred, and they could hardly shoot her—they had, after all, been peeping at her girls through the window.
There was only one option, and weak though it was, Fargo chose it.
“Left fender!” he barked at Old Billy. “Pull foot!”
Old Billy had been in enough close-in scrapes to instantly understand. Both men, borrowing a trick from Plains Indian warriors, slumped down the left side of their saddles, putting their horses between the most vital parts of their anatomy and the outraged woman with the scattergun. Simultaneously, they thumped their mounts into motion.
But even as their horses leaped, both barrels of the scattergun exploded behind them. A stinging fire raced up the arm Fargo was holding the saddle horn with as well as the exposed right leg he could not jerk from the stirrup in time. The Ovaro, too, had taken some of the load and shot into the wide street heedless of the freight caravan.
Despite the pain like a hundred snakebites, Fargo silently rejoiced—he had been hind-ended enough to recognize rock salt when he felt it, a painful but nonlethal load. However, the outraged woman wasn’t done with these gentile criminals yet.
“Skye Fargo!” she screeched out the open window. “It’s Skye Fargo! Him and that purple-faced monkey tried to outrage my girls! Help!”
The teamsters and bullwhackers were outlanders and in no hurry to take up any Mormon cause. They gaped, slack-jawed with astonishment, as the two riders streaked across the street, causing several startled mules to rear in the traces. But enough armed Mormons were in the street and heard the woman’s cry.
Rifles and handguns cracked behind them as the fleeing pair broke onto the white-salt desert flat, rating their horses at a full run. Plumes of sand kicked up around them as bullets sought their vitals.
“Fargo!” Billy roared from just behind him. “My ass feels like it’s been panther-chewed! Damn you to hell anyway!”
“You’re the jackass who stared through the window first,” Fargo replied without turning around. “But it’s too dead to skin now. We got another problem: Won’t be long and there’ll be a posse dogging us all the way to Bingham Canyon. It’s still cool now, so push that Appaloosa hard, old son. Unless we open out a big lead now, we’ll be picking lead out of our livers.”
19
Captain Saunders Lee called for a ten-minute rest. He lit down from his big, dust-coated cavalry sorrel and held the reins as he surveyed the bleak terrain surrounding the Mormon soldiers. The men had lost their bearings in the last dust storm and he searched for any landmark that might help to orient them.
The brutal afternoon sun coaxed out a thick layer of sweat that mixed with the dust coating his skin, forming an irritating paste under the collar of his tunic. He was filthy, hungry, thirsty, and worn down to the nub—even the wet heat of tropical Mexico had not been as torturous as this bone-dry desert air that evaporated a man’s piss before it hit the ground.
The burly form of Sergeant Shoemaker trudged up beside him. “Are we lost, sir, or just ‘momentarily bewildered’?”
Saunders managed a slight grin at that one. “That’s enough guff from you, Sergeant. Follow my finger.”
He pointed east. The wind-driven grit made it difficult to open their eyes beyond mere slits.
“See how there seems to be a sheen of light out on the horizon?”
“Yessir. Glows like an angel’s halo.”
“That has to be Utah Lake. It’s fresh water and fresh water reflects more than salt water.”
Shoemaker nodded. “But Utah Lake sits right on the west flank of the Wasatch. Why can’t we see the mountains?”
“We will in an hour or so. But right now there’s an optical ruse going on. That’s all pure white sand over there with lots of quartz and mica in it. The sun is at a perfect angle to reflect it like a shield—the water glare can be seen but not the solid mountains.”
“Well, sir, so that’s why officers go to college. Optical ruse, huh?”
“College?” Saunders shot back. “I’d give four years at West Point to sleep on a shuck mattress tonight.”
“The men share your sentiments. Right now they’re keen to turn Skye Fargo’s guts into tepee ropes. You think he’s still around here?”
“Maybe, but it’s a damn long chance. Unless he foxed us and stayed in the city somehow. Fargo is the type to head toward the trouble, not away from it. All he can accomplish out here is drying himself to jerky.”
“Well then, Corporal Hudson is poorly, sir. Centipede got into his boot. Was you to declare a medical emergency we’d have to get him back to headquarters on the double.”
Saunders considered this. A centipede sting was hardly fatal, under normal circumstances, but could indeed kill a man in these grueling conditions. Besides, they’d been patrolling the desert for days with no sign of anyone but a few Indians.
“Let me make one last reconnoiter with the glasses,” he finally decided, unbuckling a saddle pocket and removing his binoculars. “Then we’ll head back.”
“That’s the gait, sir. You’ve got me half convinced that Fargo is innocent, so who wants to slap him in irons?”
Saunders raised his glasses and focused them out past the middle distance. He swept the empty, flat desert to the west, then north toward Great Salt Lake. He aimed them east toward Salt Lake City and then scanned slowly south toward the outlying settlement of Murray and, finally, Bingham Canyon.
“We’ve struck a lode,” he said abruptly.
Shoemaker tensed like a h
ound on point. “Fargo, sir?”
“It’s two men riding at breakneck speed. One’s wearing buckskins and riding a pinto stallion. The other man is astride a golden Appaloosa.”
“Sounds like Fargo and his chum, all right. If so, he’s back in his own clothes and riding his own horse.”
Saunders watched a little while longer, adjusting the focus. “Oh, I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut it’s Fargo and Old Billy, all right. About two miles behind them there’s a town posse.”
Shoemaker said, “Where they headed?”
“Has to be Bingham Canyon. It’s all hard mountains after that—mountains bristling with warpath Utes. Fargo knows that canyon well—ten years ago he scouted and mapped it for the City Council.”
Saunders’ entire mien changed as he shook off his weariness and looked suddenly alert. “Sergeant,” he said, lowering the glasses, “tell the men to prepare for contact phase. Quickly water the horses and make sure weapons are operating. Then mount up. But remember—no weapon is to be fired unless we’re fired upon. I want these men taken alive.”
“See anything?” Orrin Trapp asked in a voice tight with nervousness.
“Not a damn thing,” Butch Landry replied. “But it’s dusty as all git-out. If that cussed wind dies down we’ll be able to see better.”
Deets Gramlich, working his teeth with a hog-bristle toothbrush, stood behind both men. He pulled it from his mouth and said, “He’s coming, all right. Fargo isn’t called the Trailsman for nothing. Wind or no wind, dust or no dust, he’ll spot your trail and know where you headed.”
“Why put it on us?” Landry snarled. “Unless you miracled your ass here you musta left a trail.”
“I doubled around and came in from the West Mountains District. This was supposed to be our emergency fallback position, remember? Why didn’t the two of you just leave a trail of bread crumbs?”
“We told you how Fargo found us and had already killed Harlan,” Trapp replied in a low voice laced with menace. “We had no time for fancy parlor tricks.”