by Jon Sharpe
Baxter fell to his knees in front of her, clutched her lifeless body to him, and began to cry. His back shook as the agonized sobs racked his entire body.
‘‘Holy hell,’’ Higgins muttered as he climbed to his feet. He shook his head at the grim tableau. Then he looked at Fargo and said, ‘‘Thanks for knocking me out of the way. I reckon Dirkson really would’ve killed us both if he could.’’
Fargo nodded as he slipped his Colt back in its holster. ‘‘Yes, he would have.’’ Then he looked at Baxter and thought that Higgins was only half right. Baxter had survived, but for a long time, maybe the rest of his days, he would be spending his time in hell—the hell of what his wife had done, and how her life had ended.
But there was nothing holy about it.
Another half hour had passed by the time Fargo made the weary climb up the stairs of the Excelsior House to his room on the second floor. In that time the undertaker had been summoned to the Baxter mansion, and Fargo had found Lawrence Kiley and told him everything that had happened.
‘‘It wouldn’t surprise me if Baxter pulled out and left this part of the country to you,’’ Fargo had said. ‘‘He probably won’t want to stay around here. Too many reminders of his wife.’’
Kiley shook his head. ‘‘I wanted to beat the son of a bitch . . . but not this way. I wouldn’t wish something like that on my worst competitor.’’
Fargo agreed. Life had plenty of tricks up its sleeve—and they were seldom good ones.
He went to the door of Isabel’s room and knocked softly on it. He had made a promise to her earlier in the evening, and he intended to keep it.
Her voice came from the other side of the door. ‘‘Skye?’’
‘‘That’s right.’’
‘‘It’s unlocked.’’
Fargo twisted the knob and went in. He stopped short when he saw Isabel. She stood beside the bed, nude, but the expression on her face wasn’t one of invitation.
It was fear, pure and simple, and the man who stood behind her with an arm around her neck was the cause of it.
He was around thirty and handsome, with sleek dark hair. What Fargo could see of his suit told him that it was expensive.
‘‘Cutler,’’ Fargo said.
The man smirked at him. ‘‘That’s right, you bastard. The husband of this slut you’ve been bedding.’’
Fargo heard a faint sound behind him and felt the cold ring of a gun barrel press against the back of his neck. He said, ‘‘I’d be willing to bet this hombre behind me only has one eye.’’
A gravelly voice said, ‘‘You’d be right about that, mister, but I can still see good enough to blow your damn brains out. Don’t you forget it, neither.’’
Fargo stood very still, not wanting the one-eyed man to get trigger-happy. He said, ‘‘What happens now?’’
‘‘Now you watch while Gibson and I both give this bitch what she needs,’’ Cutler said, ‘‘and then we’re going to kill you. After that, Isabel will go back to New Orleans with me and be a proper wife to me from now on.’’
‘‘You really are crazy as a loon, aren’t you?’’ Fargo muttered.
Cutler’s handsome face contorted with rage. ‘‘She’s mine to do with as I want! No one has the right to interfere with that.’’
‘‘Gideon,’’ Isabel said, her voice having to strain to get past the arm he had pressed across her throat. ‘‘Gideon, I’ll never belong to you. No matter what you do to me. You might as well kill me, too.’’
‘‘Oh, no,’’ Cutler purred. ‘‘You’re not getting off that easy, my dear. You shouldn’t have run away from me. You have to be punished for that.’’
‘‘Gideon . . .’’ Isabel drew a deep breath. ‘‘Go to hell.’’
And with that, she lowered her head with a jerk and sunk her teeth hard into his arm.
Cutler cried out in pain, and at the same instant, Fargo went down, twisting away from the gun, diving toward the floor. The gun roared as Gibson pulled the trigger. Fargo felt the sting of burning grains of powder as they hit the back of his neck, but the bullet missed.
Fargo swept a leg around, knocking Gibson’s legs out from under him. As the one-eyed man fell, Fargo’s hand closed around the handle of the Arkansas toothpick and plucked the big knife from its sheath. He rolled and brought the knife up, drove the blade down into Gibson’s chest as the man sprawled on the floor. Gibson gasped in pain, arched his back, and kicked his legs, then sagged down again.
Fargo rolled over and came up on one knee as he drew his gun. Isabel and Cutler were wrestling near the window. Cutler got a hand free and slammed a punch into her face. The blow knocked her sprawling back on the bed. Snarling, Cutler reached under his coat and pulled a pistol from a hidden holster.
Fargo fired before Cutler could bring the gun to bear on either him or Isabel. The Colt roared, and Cutler was flung backward by the heavy bullet that smashed into his body. He crashed through the window and fell over the sill onto the balcony outside. A groan came from him, trailing off into nothingness.
A glance toward the bed told Fargo that Isabel was stunned but otherwise all right. He went to the broken window and looked out. Cutler lay on his back. Enough light came from inside the room for Fargo to see that his eyes were open and staring and devoid of life.
Isabel touched his shoulder. ‘‘Skye . . .’’
Fargo turned, slipping iron into leather. He put his arms around her nude, shuddering form and drew her close against him. ‘‘It’s over,’’ he told her in a half whisper. ‘‘You won’t ever have to go back there.’’
He would stay until Isabel had recovered some from everything that had happened, he told himself. He would even do what he could to help Captain Russell get the Bayou Princess afloat again, if that was possible. If not, he figured Lawrence Kiley might be willing to invest in a new riverboat. Soon enough, a stern-wheeler would be steaming up the bayou with Cap’n Andy at the helm and Isabel playing poker in the salon.
And when that day came, Fargo and the Ovaro would be headed west again, leaving these piney woods behind for the mountains and plains that called out to them, back to the big open sky and the wild frontier that was truly their home.
LOOKING FORWARD! The following is the opening section of the next novel in the exciting Trailsman series from Signet:
THE TRAILSMAN #314 NORTH COUNTRY CUTTHROATS
Dakota Territory, 1860—a Russian beauty with a price on her head, and a storm-ravaged Christmas trimmed with lead . . .
Skye Fargo looked up toward the stable’s sashed, frosted window for just an instant, but it was long enough to see the silhouette of a bearded face crowned with a heavy fur hat staring in at him.
He glanced away, and by the time he glanced back, the figure was gone. An instant later, the Trailsman, as Fargo was known on the frontier, had reached inside his buckskin mackinaw and filled his hand with his Colt .44.
The Ovaro stallion, for whom he’d just finished forking a thick bed of fresh straw against the brittle high-plains cold, nickered and swished his tail at the Trailsman’s sudden movement . . . and possibly at the sound and smell of a man outside the barn’s chinked log walls.
‘‘Easy, boy,’’ Fargo grumbled, patting the horse’s neck.
He wheeled, pushed through the stable door, turned down the wick of the barn’s single lit lamp, and felt his way through the heavy shadows toward the small side door near the window. His breath was visible in the cold darkness. He drew the door open quickly, waited a count, then, aiming the Colt straight out in front of him, stepped outside. He looked around, swinging the revolver back and forth before him, finger taut against the trigger.
He was alone.
Nothing but horse apples lying in frozen clumps amid the corral’s deep, hoof-pocked snow, furred flakes dancing on the wind under a slate gray sky . . . and fresh footprints in the snow beneath the window to the right of the open door.
The prints arced around from the rear of the barn to the window, t
hen retreated the same way—two separate trails made by one set of soft-soled boots or moccasins. Squinting against the brittle slice of the wind blowing snow against his face, Fargo followed the tracks along the side of the barn. At the barn’s rear corner, he ducked through the corral slats, stopped, and frowned.
The retreating set of tracks moved out from the rear of the barn to an unused springhouse sheathed in snow and brush about thirty yards away. The trail, slowly filling in with drifting snow, disappeared around the shake-roofed shed’s right side.
The snow sifted. The wind moaned around the buildings of the village behind Fargo, catching the springhouse’s half-open door with rustling thumps. In the snow-muffled distance, a dog barked.
Fargo adjusted his grip on the .44’s walnut handle, his hand turning cold inside his elkskin gloves. His pulse quickened. The tracks could very well lead him into a trap, but he had little choice but to follow and hope his hearing and reactions were keener than those of his stalker. Retiring to the lodge knowing a predator was hunting him would make for a lousy night’s rest and merely postpone the trouble.
Tipping his broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat against the wind and shrugging low in his mackinaw—the temperature was falling quickly as the sun dropped, the steely sky turning darker—he moved forward, placing his boots inside the prints of his stalker. The man’s feet were two sizes larger than Fargo’s.
The Trailsman crossed the space between the springhouse and the barn quickly and, keeping an eye on his flank, followed the tracks along the side of the small building, the tall, dead brush grabbing at his buckskins. He stopped at the back corner. He edged a look around to the back. The tracks continued to the other side.
Fargo cursed, blinked furry snowflakes from his eyelashes, glanced behind him once more, and stole forward, following the large tracks wide of a dead lilac snugging the springhouse’s rear wall. He stopped suddenly. The tracks traced a semicircle around the rear wall, disappearing behind the far side.
Ring Around the Rosy, was it?
A soft thump sounded on his left flank. Fargo spun, crouching and cocking the Colt’s hammer, then extending the pistol straight out from his shoulder. A lilac branch bounced under the weight of snow fallen from the edge of the roof above, some still sifting on the wind, glistening dully in the wan, fading light.
Fargo turned again, continued following the large-footed tracks along the side of the springhouse, moving slowly, turning complete circles to keep a sharp eye skinned on his backtrail. Stopping at the building’s front corner, he wasn’t surprised to find the tracks continuing around the front to the other side.
He cursed under his breath, glanced behind him, then took one step around the springhouse’s front corner.
A shadow moved in the tail of his right eye.
He froze, heart hammering.
He began to wheel around, bringing up the .44, but he hadn’t turned more than six inches before huge arms snaked around him, pinning his own arms to his sides.
A deep, drumming guffaw sounded, hammering the Trailsman’s eardrums, as the big arms wrenched the air from his lungs and, pinning his revolver barrel down against his side, lifted him a good two feet off the ground.
‘‘The ole griz done sprung his trap on ya, Fargo!’’ The big man behind him guffawed again, squeezing the Trailsman against him so hard that Fargo couldn’t suck a breath. ‘‘Whaddaya think about that?’’
‘‘Grizzly, you son of a bitch!’’ Fargo rasped, trying to peel one of the big man’s hands loose with his own free one. ‘‘If you don’t put me down, I’m gonna drill a bullet through one of your clodhoppers!’’
The arm opened.
Fargo dropped straight down and, slipping in the snow, nearly fell as he turned to stare up into the face of the appropriately named Grizzly Olaffson. Actually, if Fargo remembered right, the man’s first name was Oscar. He had been born in Norway, and his name had changed to Grizzly once he’d crossed the Mississippi nearly forty years ago.
He and Fargo had once competed for scouting work among the wagon train captains hauling their emigrant charges from St. Louis to points west and, occasionally, south into Mexico. Fargo and Grizzly had not only fought together in the waterfront saloons of St. Louis and St. Joseph, but, occasionally—when a woman or a dispute over a card game was involved— each other.
Both had the fist and knife scars to prove it.
‘‘Ha-ha!’’ Grizzly bellowed, the flaps of his wolf-pelt hat dancing untied about his gray-bearded cheeks. His head was the size of a pumpkin, his shoulders were as wide as the axle of a freight wagon, and he had a good four inches on the Trailsman, all six feet eight of his rugged bulk bedecked in an ankle-length bear coat and high-topped moccasins sewn from a wolverine hide. ‘‘You oughta be more careful, lettin’ a man sneak up on ya like that. I coulda been a Sioux lookin’ fer a nice cinnamon scalp like yourn for sweepin’ out my lodge!’’
‘‘You crazy bastard.’’ Fargo holstered the Colt.
‘‘Merry Christmas to you, too!’’
‘‘What the hell are you doin’ here, anyway? I thought you’d shacked up in the Rockies with a Ute woman.’’
‘‘Ah, shit, that was two squaws and a dance hall girl ago! Hell, I live up here now. Drive the stage between Brule City and Devil’s Lake year-round. Beats scout-in’, trappin, and buffalo huntin’, and the pay’s enough to keep me in whores and cee-gars.’’
‘‘You drive the stage for Craw Bascomb?’’
‘‘That’s right.’’
‘‘I’m your new shotgun rider.’’
‘‘I know. Craw told me. He’s been grinnin’ like a jackass eatin’ cactus ever since you sent word back to the fort you’d take the job. He can’t believe his luck, gettin’ the great Trailsman his ownself to work the line for him.’’
‘‘It’s just for the winter,’’ Fargo said, hunkering down in his coat and glancing at the sky. ‘‘I was planning on heading south but got trapped by that first big storm. Figure I might as well work as lay around the fort or the Brule City saloons.’’ He glanced at Grizzly staring down at him, looking for all the world like some fabled man-beast of the northern wild, his furs, heavy brows, and beard limned with the thickening snow. ‘‘It’s a pretty easy run, isn’t it?’’
‘‘Pshaw!’’ said Grizzly. ‘‘Ain’t nothin’ to it, if you can put up with a few chilblains. And bein’ on the trail over Christmas, of course. You just get here?’’
When Fargo said he had, Grizzly Olaffson laid a big mitten on his shoulder. ‘‘Come on over to the lodge. I’ll buy you a Christmas toddy and introduce you to ole Craw himself and the passengers headin’ out with us tomorrow. We got us a full load, but with those new skis I put on the coach, we’ll slide along slickern’ snot on a schoolmarm’s bell in mid-July!’’
‘‘Hold on.’’ Fargo stopped and turned to the big man, slitting an eye. ‘‘You got any more practical jokes up your sleeve, keep ’em there. Cold weather makes me jumpy.’’
Grizzly laughed and clamped his hand once more on Fargo’s shoulder, leading him back toward the barn. ‘‘I’ll mind my P’s and Q’s just for you, Skye!’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ Fargo grumbled, kicking the snow clumps. ‘‘Like hell you will.’’
He retrieved his Henry rifle and saddlebags from the barn, then followed Grizzly across Brule City’s main street to a two-story, stone-and-mortar, shake-roofed house sitting under a couple of stark, sprawling cottonwoods. The place was flanked by the Red River of the North. Sheathed in brush, diamond willows, and more towering cottonwoods, the river was little more than a giant gray snake twisting between its shallow banks.
Crows cawed in the snowy silence around the river.
Nearer Fargo and Grizzly Olaffson, a couple of horseback riders passed on the street, wrapped, bundled, and hunched against the cold. Otherwise, the wood or sod huts and the half dozen false-fronted business establishments of Brule City were quiet, hunkering down for another long, cold night, the night be
fore Christmas Eve—well below zero, no doubt, judging by the last several nights, though the snow might keep the mercury from dropping as obscenely as it had been. The frigid air was rife with the smell of burning wood and roasting meat.
Fargo thought of the Arizona sunshine he would have been enjoying with some dusky-skinned, half-dressed senorita had he not let himself get socked into the North Country in late December, and frustration was a coyote’s lonely wail inside him.
Grizzly pushed through the lodge’s front door, stomping snow from his boots, and Fargo followed him into the large room—a long bar on the left, tables and deep leather chairs and couches to the right, near a snapping fire in the big stone hearth. A buffalo trophy was mounted on the broad chimney over the hearth, the brown eyes reflecting the fire’s glow. A spindly Christmas tree—a small piñon pine—stood to one side of the fire, trimmed with about six candles and a couple of popcorn strings.
A plump half-breed girl, dressed in fur-trimmed buckskins, was serving food and drinks to the half dozen people gathered in the sunken dining area near the fire—stage passengers, probably. The room was too dark, lit only by the fire and a couple of candles, for Fargo to make out much more than silhouetted shapes of four men and two women besides the half-breed serving girl.
Opening his bear coat, Grizzly descended the four wooden steps to the sunken room, then climbed three more to the bar. ‘‘Craw Bascomb, look who I found skulkin’ around outside in the cold—Skye Fargo, his own self! Skye, meet Craw Bascomb. He runs the line when he ain’t ice fishin’ for bullheads out on the river, or diddlin’ the Injun whores over to Mrs. Sondrial’s place on Cottonwood Creek!’’
Grizzly threw his head back, his guffaws attracting all eyes in the room.
Sheathed Henry repeater in one hand, saddlebags draped over the opposite shoulder, Fargo mounted the steps to the broad bar. Behind the scarred oak planks stood a hard-faced, long-haired gent in a bloodstained apron. A couple of dressed sage hens lay on the bar before the owner of the Red River Stage Company, who tossed down the cleaver and swiped his right hand on his apron before extending it over the bar toward Fargo. A quick, churlish glance toward Grizzly Olaffson spoke volumes about the man’s disdain for his giant, overbearing driver.