by Jon Sharpe
Backwoods Bloodbath
( The Trailsman - 300 )
Jon Sharpe
BUSTED
Fargo glared. There was only so much abuse he would take. “Don’t lay a hand on me again.”
“Or what?” Phil mockingly demanded.
“Or this.” Fargo hit him. He swept his right fist up from below his waist and planted it solidly on the cocky idiot’s jaw.
The blow jolted Phil onto his heels. He staggered and fell to one knee. His companion sprang to help and paid for his eagerness with a punch to the gut that doubled him over.
Thinking that was enough, Fargo swiveled to run after Draypool and the man in the dark suit, but he had taken only two steps when iron fingers locked onto his wrist and he was spun around a second time.
“I will bust you, mister!” Phil raged. Blood trickled from the left corner of his mouth, and bloodlust was in his eyes. He drew back his other hand, his fist balled. “Bust you good!”
The Colt was in Fargo’s hand before any of them could blink. “Bust this,” he said, and slammed the barrel against Phil’s temple.
The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
The backwoods of Illinois, 1860—
where treachery lurks behind every tree
and a nation’s fate hangs in the balance.
Prologue
The moonless night was warm and muggy. The woods fringing a farm ten miles west of Charleston, South Carolina, were as black as ink. Through those woods glided five furtive forms. They were thankful for the shroud of darkness as they neared the barn and the old stone farmhouse.
Captain Frank Colter was the leader of the five. Colter wore civilian clothes, not his uniform, as did the sergeant and three privates under his command. He was armed with a pair of short-barreled Colt revolvers, concealed under his jacket. A career soldier, Colter headed a small but special unit that reported directly to General Ira Braddock. The unit existed for one purpose and one purpose only: to ferret out insurrectionists.
Now, as Frank Colter came to a willow and hunkered behind it to survey the outbuildings, he wondered if the information he had received was genuine or if he and his men were walking into a trap.
Sentiment against the United States government was at a fever pitch and rising. A number of Southern states openly talked of seceding if the North did not give in to their demands. General Braddock had told Colter that secret arms deals with foreign powers were being brokered. Equally disturbing were reports of covert groups and societies that had sprung up in the past year or so—groups and societies whose sole purpose was to foment rebellion and bring about the overthrow of the United States government by any means necessary.
The Secessionist League was one of those groups. It was rumored to have more than two hundred members across the country, among them powerful politicians and rich businessmen. Their names were kept secret, but the army had identified a handful of the members.
So far, the League had been content to send letters to the newspapers adding its voice to those demanding that the South break away from the North and form a separate government, but there were rumors, disturbing snippets picked up here and there, that the Secessionist League was plotting a diabolical act that would rock the nation.
Captain Frank Colter had been assigned to discover who the League’s members were and learn what they were up to. An informer had claimed that certain top members of the League were at that very moment meeting at the farmhouse to work out the final details of their plot. The information cost two hundred dollars, but Colter considered it money well spent if it turned out to be true.
Colter was about to raise his arm to signal his men to fan out when a cough snapped his gaze to a stocky form by the barn. A man with a rifle was at the far corner, intently watching the woods on both sides.
Colter’s thin lips compressed in a grim smile. The informer had not lied. Farmers did not post sentries to guard their cows. Shifting, he whispered his orders to Sergeant Pearson, who in turn relayed them to the others. As silently as stalking wolves, the four soldiers moved into position.
Captain Colter had allowed them five minutes. Then the Secessionist League would be in for an unwelcome surprise.
Colter had never thought he would live to see the day when American turned against American, when brother plotted to destroy brother. He came from a family with a tradition of proudly serving their country. His father and grandfather had been army officers, serving the Stars and Stripes with distinction. He was following in their honored footsteps.
It troubled Colter, troubled him deeply, that so many were willing to destroy the hard-won fruits of independence. Granted, no government was perfect, and there were problems. But with time and patience the two sides could work out their differences. Certain vested interests, though, did not want the differences worked out. They wanted discord. They wanted conflict. They wanted, unbelievably enough, war.
Colter was a soldier, but he had always believed that war should be an act of last resort. He would rather the two sides sat at a table and negotiated for years if need be, but that was not going to happen. He was too much of a realist to deny that the well-spring of hatred on both sides could end only one way.
Still, Colter would do what he could to delay that day as long as possible. To that end, he cat-footed from under the drooping boughs of the willow to a pile of freshly cut hay twenty yards from the barn.
He wished he had thought to bring a knife. He looked around but did not see a suitable rock. Resigned to clubbing the sentry with his revolver, he rose in a crouch and slid past the hay, placing each boot with care.
The sentry, with his back to Colter, was humming “Oh! Susanna.” He had set the stock of a Sharps rifle on the ground and was leaning on the barrel. Suddenly he raised the rifle, but he was only stretching. He smothered a yawn, then set the stock on the ground again.
By then Colter had only ten more feet to go. He was about to straighten when a movement beyond the man alerted him to a second sentry near the farmhouse. The second one was pacing back and forth near the porch, military fashion. Lamplight spilling through a window lent the man’s face a pale hue.
Tucking at the knees, Captain Colter froze. Where there were two sentries there might be more. He had to trust in his men to spot them and deal with them. If not . . . He refused to even think they would fail. Too much was at stake. Whatever the Secessionist League was plotting, it would put the antislavery faction to rout. Or so his informant had been told by a League member who talked too much while under the influence of too much ale.
The sentry by the barn started to turn. Instantly, Captain Colter flattened. The man came slowly toward him, but it was obvious by his relaxed posture that he was unaware anyone was near.
Colter tensed his legs, placed his left hand on the ground, and waited. Another six or seven steps and the sentry would be close enough. Colter glanced past him just as two dark silhouettes materialized out of the night and pounced on the man pacing in front of the porch. They overwhelmed him so quickly he had no chance to cry out.
Even so, the sentry by the barn he
ard something. Jerking his Sharps up, he spun and called out, “Jeb? What was that?”
Colter was in motion before the question was out of the sentry’s mouth. He swept his right arm in an arc, smashing the Colt against the man’s temple and felling him like a poled ox. Colter struck the prone figure again, as a precaution, then picked up the Sharps, carried it to a patch of high weeds, and hid it.
Sergeant Pearson and Private Fiske were standing over the second sentry, their revolvers glinting dully. Judging by the disjointed heap, the sentry would not awaken for many hours.
“Those were the only two, sir,” Pearson whispered. He had blond hair, cut short, and the predatory air of a hawk.
Shadows moved on either side of the farmhouse. The rest of Colter’s men were taking their positions.
Motioning to Pearson, Captain Colter crept to the porch. One of the steps creaked loudly when he put his weight on it. He imitated a post, but there were no shouts of alarm. No one came to the door or peered out. Encouraged, he stalked to a window and crouched. The curtains were drawn, but an inch-wide gap enabled Colter to see into a parlor. At a circular table sat six men. Well-to-do men, by the looks of them. Leaders of the Secessionist League, according to his informant.
A tingle of excitement rippled through Colter. This was the closest he had come to nabbing those at the top. With them in custody, he stood to learn a great deal, not the least of which would be the details of their plot.
A white-haired gentleman in a white suit was addressing the others. Colter placed an ear to the pane, but he could not quite hear what the man was saying. He saw the white-haired man take a sheet of paper from a pocket and unfold it.
Time to move in, Colter decided, then abruptly stiffened. Six men were at the table, but there were seven chairs. The seventh, on the other side, was empty. Was one of the conspirators missing? Colter wondered. He received his answer when the front door unexpectedly opened and out stepped the seventh man, a nattily dressed broomstick with a pencil-thin mustache who was saying over his shoulder, “. . . fetch them from my saddlebags. I won’t be but a minute.”
The broomstick closed the door and turned to go down the steps. His eyes fell on Colter. For a few moments the man was transfixed with shock. Then he glanced toward where the sentry should be and saw Sergeant Pearson and Private Fiske awaiting the command to close in.
The broomstick threw back his head to shout a warning.
Captain Colter was on him in a twinkling, driving his fist into the man’s gut. Breath whooshed from the broomstick’s lungs as he doubled over in agony. Colter slugged him again, on the jaw. Normally that was enough to drop a foe, but the man was tougher than he seemed. On his elbows and knees, dribbling spittle and wheezing for breath, he let out with a high-pitched keen: “Federals!”
How he knew, Captain Colter couldn’t say. The next moment the man’s right hand rose. In it he clutched a derringer.
The boom of Sergeant Pearson’s revolver heralded a shriek and a fervid curse as the broomstick, severely wounded, scrabbled toward the front door to get back inside. He pointed the derringer at Colter and hissed, “Damn you Yankees all to hell!”
Colter shot him through the head. As the body crumpled, shouts broke out inside. The League members were in an uproar. The curtains parted, and the white-haired man in the white suit took one look at Colter, whirled, and ran.
“Is the back door covered?” Captain Colter shouted. Pearson replied that it was.
Colter sprang to the door as the window he had been standing next to dissolved under a hail of lead. He flung the door open and beheld a League member, aiming a revolver, midway down a narrow hall. Colter darted aside as the muzzle spat lead and smoke. He heard Private Fiske cry out sharply.
More shots erupted from the rear of the farmhouse, laced with yells and oaths. After that, silence fell.
Captain Colter risked a peek inside. The hallway was empty now, but a commotion farther back suggested the conspirators were up to something.
A boot scuffed the porch, and Sergeant Pearson bounded to the other side of the doorway. His back to the wall, he whispered, “Fiske was wounded in the arm, but it’s not serious, sir.”
“We have them boxed in,” Colter declared with a confidence he did not feel. His men had the doors covered, but there were not enough of them to cover all the ground-floor windows as well.
“Should I call on them to surrender, sir?” Sergeant Pearson asked.
“I will,” Captain Colter said. Raising his voice, he identified himself, adding, “My men have the house surrounded. You would be well advised to throw down your arms and come out with your hands over your heads!”
“Go to hell!” came a taunt in a distinct Southern drawl.
“Northern trash!” another cried defiantly.
Sergeant Pearson glanced at Colter. “Just give the order, sir, and we will rush them.”
But Colter did no such thing. There was no telling how many League members were inside. There might be more that he had not seen.
Glass tinkled, and an upstairs window burst outward. A rifle spat, but its target, Private Fiske, had gone to ground behind a rosebush.
“Maybe we should burn them out, sir,” Sergeant Pearson proposed.
“We want them alive if possible—remember?” Captain Colter said. The key phrase was “if possible.” Clearing his throat, he yelled, “You, in the house! Can you hear me in there?”
After a bit, someone—Colter suspected it was the white-haired gentleman—responded, “We can hear you just fine. What do you want?”
“To avoid bloodshed,” Captain Colter said. “Give yourselves up and I promise no harm will come to you.”
A cold chuckle greeted the offer. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? But mark my words. You will not get your hands on a single one of us. We will gladly die rather than let you take us.”
Colter had been afraid of that. Fanatics and politics made for a rabid mix. Somehow he must convince them that they should deny their loyalty to a cause they valued more than life itself.
“Did you hear me?” the man demanded when Colter did not answer soon enough to suit him.
“I believe you,” Colter shouted. “But don’t do anything rash! We can talk this out!”
“Like hell!”
A minute passed. Then every window on the ground floor abruptly crashed into shards. Chairs had been hurled against them. Through the windows scrambled the occupants. Shots were exchanged. Shouts added to the bedlam.
Colter had been right. There were more than six, and they were making a frantic break for the woods. He ran to the end of the porch in time to see several fleeing shadows. One man turned and fired. Colter returned lead for lead. The man missed. Colter did not.
The white suit gave Colter a clue who it was. Vaulting over the rail, Colter ran and covered him. “Don’t try anything.”
The white-haired man coughed and spat blood. His eyes opened and could not seem to focus, but finally they did. His face twisted in a hateful grimace. “You have murdered me, you son of a bitch.”
“What are you planning?” Captain Colter asked. “What is the Secessionist League up to?”
A contemptuous laugh gurgled from the man’s throat and with it, a copious amount of blood. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? For me to turn traitor against the cause I believe in?” He had more to say, but a violent coughing fit interfered.
Colter squatted and took hold of the man’s shoulders. “Don’t die on me, damn it! I need to know.”
A smirk curled the man’s mouth. “It’s too late for me. I feel my life ebbing. But maybe I will give you a clue.”
Suspecting the clue would be worthless, Captain Colter said, “I’m listening.”
“We don’t have far to go,” the man said, and cackled as if it were the funniest utterance ever made. More blood flowed from both his mouth and his nose. He choked. He sputtered. Then he was still.
“Is he gone?” Sergeant Pearson asked.
&n
bsp; “Yes.”
“What was that he said about not having far to go?”
“I wish to heaven I knew,” Captain Colter said in frustration. The raid had not worked out as planned. He was no closer to the truth, and countless lives were at stake. He summed up his sentiments with a simple “Damn.”
1
Skye Fargo was having one of those nights when Lady Luck sat on his shoulder. He had won two hundred dollars at poker, bucked the tiger at faro and won sixty-seven dollars more, and was now back at the poker table facing a stack of chips in the pot that promised to add five hundred to his poke if he won.
The only thing better than a winning streak was a willing woman, and Fargo’s luck had held in that regard, too. A dove by the name of Saucy had taken a shine to him earlier that night when he strolled in through the batwings. She was like a she-bear drawn to honey—and he was the honey.
Miss Saucy McBride was quite an eyeful. Red hair cascaded in curls to bare white shoulders as smooth as alabaster. She had an oval face distinguished by full, upturned lips that appeared as succulent as ripe cherries. A scarlet dress clung to her full figure as if painted on. But it was her eyes that most interested Fargo—hazel pools of desire mixed with a healthy sense of humor.
At the moment, Saucy was perched on Fargo’s lap with one arm around his neck and the other resting on his thigh. She was making small circles on his leg with the tips of her fingers. Fargo wanted to throw her to the sawdust-covered floor and have her right there, but there was the matter of winning the five hundred dollars.
Four other players were at the same table. One had already folded. Another was a mousey store clerk who bet only when he had a sure hand, which always turned out to be an especially good one.
The third player, a chunky bank teller partial to cheap, foul-smelling cigars, played like a bull in a china shop. He bet practically every hand and bluffed as often as he held good cards. There was no predicting him, although Fargo had noticed that the last two times the teller had bluffed, he removed his cigar from his mouth and tapped it in the ashtray before betting.