by Jon Sharpe
“Tom and I are pretty sure it does.”
“You’ve looked into it?”
Queeg shrugged wide shoulders. “As I said earlier, there are a couple of things Tom doesn’t want to know about. One of them’s Skeleton Key.”
“Maybe he’ll have to now, with two new kidnappings on his hands.”
“Yeah,” Queeg said thoughtfully, “maybe it’s time now to really find out what the hell’s going on.”
The door opened and Buck Larson came in. Shock showed on his face when he saw the Trailsman. But only for a moment. He was enough of a professional to hide his feelings promptly and well.
“Say, I hope you didn’t think I was following you this afternoon,” Larson said.
“Perish the thought,” Fargo said.
Larson caught the sarcasm and smiled. “I mean, I could see where you might think I was following you. But actually—”
“—actually, you were just making sure that I was having a good time and that the citizens of this fair burg were showing me the proper respect.”
“Why, damned if that’s not exactly, right, Mr. Fargo. Exactly. I just wanted to make sure that everybody here was friendly to you.”
“They were very friendly,” Fargo said, “except for the two men who came to my room and kidnapped the girl I happened to be with.”
Queeg said, “You know anything about that, Buck?”
Larson looked trapped. “Why, uh, no. Why would I know something about a thing like that? If I’d known about it, Queeg, I’d be trying to find the girl right now.”
The door burst open and Larson was spared from saying anything more for the moment. A youngster, sheathed in sweat and out of breath rushed in and asked, “Is it true?”
He’d barely finished getting the words out before the office was filled with more kids.
“Is what true?” Queeg said, amused with the kids.
“Is the Trailsman really in town?”
Queeg laughed. “Well, Tommy, he’s not only in town. He’s right in this very office.”
And it was then that Tommy’s gaze roved over to the big man with the lake-blue eyes.
“Holy horses,” Tommy said. He looked at his friends. “This here man is the Trailsman. Is that true, mister?”
While Fargo was busy meeting his public—if only half the stories of his derring-do were true—Larson used the time to slip out of the office behind the boys.
Neither Fargo nor Queeg tried to stop him. By that time, Fargo had decided to do his own investigating. Friendly as Queeg seemed to be, Fargo was no longer sure if there was anybody in this whole town he could trust.
“Maybe I’ll go talk to Noah Tillman sometime,” Fargo said.
“If you do,” Queeg smiled, “talk loud. He hates to admit it but he’s real hard of hearing.”
The slender black man in the work shirt and overalls took the feed bag off of Fargo’s stallion and said, “You’re in kind of a hurry.” It was a statement, not a question.
The interior of the livery was three or four degrees cooler than outside. The lumber of the place—like the earthen floor and timber—were saturated with the sweet-sour odors of road apples and horse urine. Blue-tail flies gorged themselves on the freshest of the road apples.
“That I am.” Fargo described the two men who’d kidnapped Daisy. “You seen anybody like that around?”
For an instant there was recognition in his eyes, but the man said, “Hard to say. Could be a lot of folks. So many here for the celebration tomorrow, I mean.”
“You sure about that?”
After setting the feed bag on a hook and leading the stallion out of the stall, the livery man said, “There’re three colored folks they let live right here in town, mister. The rest live up around the river bend. I’m one of the three they let have a nice little house right on the edge of town. They do right by me and my whole family. And I appreciate that.”
Fargo heard what was being said. “Appreciate it enough to stay out of trouble is what you’re saying.”
“That’s right, mister. And trouble means never getting involved with anybody who’s got it in for old Noah.”
“This involve Noah, does it?”
“I didn’t say that, mister.”
“All right, you didn’t say it.”
“What I did say is that you owe me for another day and night if you’re comin’ back here.”
Fargo paid him.
As he was saddling his horse, Fargo heard several light steps behind him. The liveryman. “For the most part, this is a nice town. They say down South the colored aren’t treated so well. But I went up North for a couple of weeks to visit my cousin and I’ll tell you somethin’. I’m treated a lot better down here than he is up there. And that’s the truth.”
Fargo sensed that the man had something more to say but he stopped speaking and turned and walked away. “I wish you luck, mister.”
“Thanks.”
The liveryman grinned. “You understand why I can’t tell you that I saw a wagon like the one you described headed north out of town?”
Fargo grinned back. “Yeah, I understand.”
5
Having served as a scout for the U.S. Cavalry from time to time, Fargo could read trail with the best of them. In this case, he was following buckboard wheels, which was less difficult. Every wheel had a peculiarity to it. Some sort of mark that made it distinctive.
The alley behind a hotel is generally a busy place. There were a number of wagon wheel markings to read. Fargo took the one that had left the clearest impression and started following it. He tracked it out of the alley and into the street, where it remained the clearest impression. Meaning that this was the wagon that had been parked most recently behind the hotel most likely belonging to the kidnappers.
The wheel mark was easy enough to see among the others. It had picked up a small nail somewhere along the way, the weight of the wagon sufficient to embed the nail into the wooden wheel.
When he got to the dusty, baking street, Fargo found that the tracks led north, just as the liveryman had said.
Getting out of town wasn’t easy. The main street was packed with people loading displays on flatbed wagons for the parade. The Tillman name was on virtually every one of them.
People were standing on some of the wagons. They were practicing for the parade tomorrow and were in costume. Their attire told the story of the great Tillman family, which Fargo found about as fascinating as watching ants scurry down a sidewalk for a couple of hours.
The pageant used six wagons for the entire boring story to be told. How the Tillmans—a fat man gussied up in fake mountain clothing—had first pioneered this land. How the Tillmans—a skinny man sporting a peace officer’s badge the size of a baseball mitt—had brought law and order to this place that had once been a roost for robbers. How the Tillmans—a pregnant woman surrounded by four screaming three-year-olds—had brought civilization to the local Indians, as depicted by a white man with a walleye and some kind of red goop on his face. He wore a headband and a single feather. And three other equally spellbinding floats. Maybe the locals would find this sort of event fun. Fargo would prefer a lady, a bottle, and a nice firm bed.
Liz Turner wiped a sleeve across her classically beautiful face and fed more sheets into her Washington Hand Press, the same printing machine that she and her late husband had lugged across three states and two territories while looking for the right place to settle.
Tillman, Arkansas wasn’t her ideal settling place but for the moment she didn’t have any choice. One wintry morning two years ago, her husband, Richard, had been shot in the back while coming to work. He had been working on a story about the place Noah Tillman owned—and would let nobody but a few of his gunnys on to—Skeleton Key. Not even Sheriff Tom Tillman had been on Skeleton Key. Liz was more than a little prejudiced where Tom was concerned. She’d been carrying on a very secret affair with him for more than eight months.
She wanted to find her husba
nd’s killer, but for now, the day she needed to get the weekly Clarion out, there was no time to dote on her memories of Richard, or to follow up on the strange rumors about the island. There was just Henry, her fourteen-year-old apprentice, who alternated working the press and picking his nose, and herself. She spent the time feeding paper into the sturdy press and checking every fifth page as it was printed, making sure everything in the hand-set columns stayed where it belonged. The Clarion didn’t have any of the sparkle or sizzle of the bigger town newspapers, but she took pride in how neat it looked.
She inhaled deeply of the scent of printer’s ink. To her the odor was more satisfying than the sweetest perfume. She loved the newspaper business. She’d grown up an orphan on the streets of Baltimore, nothing more than an urchin. So many young ones like that died of disease or hunger or at the hands of perverts. Somehow, she had triumphed. Somehow.
She glanced at Henry. His finger was up his nose. He extricated it quickly and then wiped said finger on his corduroys.
“Henry,” she said, “I’m just afraid you’re going to get that finger permanently stuck up there someday.”
Henry grinned. “My whole family picks like I do.”
“Never invite me to one of your family reunions, Henry.”
They were both laughing about that one when the front door opened and Mike “Red” Grogan came to the long front desk where they took orders for printing (printing jobs earned them a lot more than the newspaper) and advertisements. Red was a spoiled rich kid but unlike most of the spoiled rich kids around here, he wasn’t a snob and he wasn’t mean. He used any excuse to come in here and see Liz. Lord, he had this terrible crush on her. She knew that she was still attractive at age thirty-two. She had that pretty face and a shape that had held its shapeliness and she laughed in such a soft, gentle way that she could charm a drunken grizzly bear.
She just wished Mike was about fifteen years older. For her sake and his.
“Hi,” he said, immediately blushing.
He almost never had a good excuse to visit the newspaper office. In fact, most of his excuses were embarrassingly bad, usually revolving around how we wanted to learn the newspaper business and be a journalist someday. Right. His father would send him east to school—his father had graduated from Dartmouth and never let you forget it—and then, like his old man, Mike would go into banking. The family owned fourteen banks in the state. By the time Mike took the reins, that number would probably be in the vicinity of twenty. Nobody sane would turn down a job like that to work and starve at a newspaper.
“I might have a story for you.”
She had to admit, this surprised her. This was the first time he’d ever offered her a story lead. But before she got too excited, she had to remember that this was a kid who practically swooned every time he saw her on the street. And who would say anything to justify stopping by the newspaper office.
“A story?”
He leaned forward to stage whisper his response. “Fella named Fargo over at the Royalton Hotel told me that two gunnys broke into his room and kidnapped a girl he was with.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Now, did this really happen, Red?”
“It sure did. And not very long ago, either.”
“And his name is Fargo.”
“That’s right. Big fella. Tough looking.”
“I’ve heard of him,” she said. “He’s tough all right.” Liz smiled. Couldn’t help it. By anybody’s standard, Mike here had brought her one hell of a good newspaper story. She reached over and patted his hand, knowing that he was probably going to faint if she held it there very long. “You may just become a reporter yet, Red.”
6
On a sunny day like this, it was hard to imagine a more beautiful land than the Ozark Plateau. Ragged mountain tops gleaming in the light, deep forests filled with game, and streams that gleamed clean and pure, perfect for the fishing the Trailsman wanted to do.
The tracks remained clear, the impression of the wheel with the nail in it clear as a beacon, no matter how many other tracks tried to obscure it.
He’d gone maybe a mile down the red clay road, the land falling away here and there on the plateau to reveal deep gorges, when his hat went sailing off thanks to a bullet.
Fargo acted instinctively, and just in time to avoid the second bullet that immediately followed the first. He dropped down on the side of his horse so the shooter couldn’t see his head or torso, reining the horse over to a copse of pine trees several yards off of the trail.
There he yanked his Sharps from its scabbard, rolled away from the horse to a point behind the pines, and jerked up to his feet so that he could return fire.
The shooter was good but not that good. He pumped several more shots at Fargo, each one nicking at the pine behind which the Trailsman hid. But none scored a bulls-eye.
The shooter was hiding behind his own copse of pines on the other side of the road. Fargo did a little shooting of his own. He wanted to force some return fire so he knew exactly where the shooter was. They could sit here all day firing at each other and not accomplish a damned thing. Fargo wanted to know who the shooter was and what he wanted. Did he have anything to do with the kidnapping? If he didn’t, what could he have against Fargo? The Trailsman hadn’t really met anybody else except the livery man. Since the shooter didn’t seemed inclined to decisive action, Fargo took it upon himself to bring this little adventure to a close.
He pitched himself back up on his stallion, loaded up his Sharps, and started riding hard directly toward the pines that hid the shooter. But he rode in an aggravating zigzag fashion. Aggravating to the shooter because it made Fargo harder to hit.
Fargo pumped bullet after bullet into the shooter’s hiding place, making it difficult for the shooter to get off any clean shots of his own, unless he wanted to take the chance of standing up and taking a couple pieces of lead in his brain for his trouble.
The superb stallion responded magnificently. The zigzagging skill was something the stallion had taken to right away. He seemed to know instinctively how much this pleased his master.
A cry told the Trailsman that he’d hit his mark; a second cry told him that he’d not only wounded the shooter but maybe killed him, too.
Fargo ground-hitched his horse, jammed his Sharps back into its scabbard, pulled out his Colt, and set off in a crouch toward the pines.
The chatter of forest animals disturbed the silence while the sweet tang of pine scent filled the air. The jovial, masked faces of raccoons watched him from tree limbs. It would be nice to stop and appreciate all these wondrous natural gifts but for now the Trailsman couldn’t afford to.
A groan, human. The shooter. Not dead. Not yet. But he sounded very weak. Could be a ruse to draw Fargo closer but somehow Fargo didn’t think so. That moan revealed not only pain but fear of imminent death.
Fargo continued to sweep around the deep stand of pines so that he could come up behind the shooter.
The moan again. But it was more resolute this time. The shooter sounded near death.
Fargo took no chances.
He finished the rest of his attack with a few stealthy steps that brought him to two slanted pines beyond which he could see the colors of a man’s shirt. Red; checkered. The Mexican who’d been in his hotel room.
He came up behind the man but saw instantly that there was nothing to worry about now. The man was dead. Fargo had hit him twice in the chest.
Fargo made sure. He hunched down next to the man, raising a limp arm to check for a pulse. Nothing. No distant throb of a pulse in the neck, either. Fargo folded the man’s arms over his stomach, the way the undertaker would when it came time to bury him.
He stood up and that was when he saw the dog. Lonesome old boy, some kind of mixture of hound breeds. Nose to something he was sniffing with great interest.
When Fargo went over to take a look he saw the Mexican’s horse and a short shovel handle jammed into one of the saddlebags. What the hell would a
man pack a shovel for?
The hound glanced up at Fargo with the old, sad eyes so common to its lineage. It moved aside as Fargo walked closer to check things out.
Not too hard to figure out what had happened here. The girl named Daisy most likely lay in the shallow grave of red clay that stretched before him. He went back to the Mexican’s horse, grabbed the shovel and went to work. The earth, being freshly dug, and the grave being only quite shallow, Fargo didn’t have any trouble.
Pennies on the eyes. Her clothes intact. At least she didn’t appear to have been raped. One bullet in the forehead. Hadn’t been dead long. The bluish tinting of her pale skin just starting.
He got the bed roll from his stallion, laid the blanket out, and then went and got the girl. Hard to believe she’d been a passionate, intelligent woman just a short time ago. She’d so desperately wanted to find her brother Clem. She’d died not knowing what had become of him.
The questions he’d had in the hotel room came back. Who was the Mexican exactly? And Whitey? And what did they have to do with the disappearance of Daisy’s brother? And now, what made it necessary to kill her?
He rolled her up in the blanket, roped the blanket tight, and set it across the back of the horse. The top of her head and her ankles and feet stuck out of either end of the blanket roll. He held the reins with one hand and held the body down with the other. It was important to keep her from falling off. That was the least he could do to show his respect.
This time, the population of the town increasing with every minute because of the celebration tomorrow, Fargo had a huge audience for his entrance.
What man, woman, or child could resist watching a man on horseback bringing a dead woman into town? He had her covered from midnose down to dangling feet. But the blond hair and shapely ankles revealed that she’d been an attractive young woman.
He had to stop at several points so the crowd could part and let him pass through. Some people were offended, of course. A few others laughed, thinking this was part of some show. Dead young blondes apparently made for great comedy material. The kids, inevitably, were both scared and spellbound. They watched with solemn little eyes. For some, it was an introduction to death. Ducks died and cows died and horses died. But they’d never before seen a dead person. And for other kids, the dead blonde was a reminder of death they knew only too well—Mom dead of bad milk or Dad dead of a horse that fell on him, or a wee one dead of diphtheria.