Rocky Mountain Revenge

by Jon Sharpe

  Fargo spun and bolted out and was over to the Ovaro and in the saddle and out the gate with Thunderhoof and the mare hard behind him before a silhouette filled the doorway. Again the revolver cracked but he was bent low and heard the slug buzz over his head.

  He rode far enough that the Appaloosas wouldn’t take a stray bullet.

  Taking a picket pin from his saddlebags, he made sure that Thunderhoof and the mare wouldn’t stray off.

  The house was fully engulfed. Sheets of flame jumped high into the night sky, the wood spitting and hissing like a tormented cat. Only about half of the bunkhouse had burned but the flames were crawling across the roof.

  Fargo jogged back. He rounded the corral and stopped at the rear door.

  The cowboy who had shot at him was at the front. Two men were approaching from the house, the glow lighting them as bright as day; it was Clarence Bell and Griff Jackson.

  The foreman stared at the burning bunkhouse and then hollered at the cowboy in the stable, “Where are those damn horses?”

  “They’re all gone!”

  Fargo went around the corner and along the outside wall.

  Clarence Bell looked ready to burst a blood vessel. He was gesturing and swearing and railing at Jackson and Hank and one other man, blaming them for what he had brought down on their heads.

  With a tremendous crash a roof timber in the house buckled, taking a third of the roof with it. The flames leaped higher than ever. From out of them flew hundreds of tiny fireflies, rising on the currents.

  The four men out front came toward the stable. Bell shook a fist and blistered the air with oaths. Griff Jackson was a mad bull without anyone to gore. The two punchers appeared bewildered by it all.

  Fargo stepped past the corner. They didn’t notice him at first. Not until he coughed.

  Hank pointed and blurted, “It’s him! It’s Fargo!”

  All of them turned. Griff Jackson’s hand poised over his Smith and Wesson but he didn’t draw. He glanced at his employer.

  Clarence Bell was a mouse enraged. He shook a bony fist and called out.

  “You dare!”

  “Any last words?”

  Bell took a step, his face so red it was a wonder he didn’t have blood coming out of his eyes and nose. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”

  “Looked in a mirror lately?”

  The rancher gestured at the house and then at the bunkhouse. “My ranch is everything to me and you are doing your best to destroy it. I want you dead so much I can taste it.”

  “I’m flattered.” Fargo was watching Griff Jackson and Hank and the other cowboy. They were coiled to explode the instant their boss gave the word.

  “I had it all worked out. You were to bring me the Appaloosas and I would become the only white Appaloosa breeder on the continent.” Bell seemed to be talking more to himself than to Fargo. “I’d charge more than the Arabs do for their Arabians. Between the Appaloosas and my cows I would become rich. More money than I ever dreamed of.”

  “This was all about greed?”

  Bell’s head snapped up. “What else is there besides money? Wealth is all that matters. With it you are a prince. You can have anything you want. Without it you’re nothing.”

  “Some people think there’s more to life.”

  “Simpletons. Those who don’t have money always look down their noses at those who do. They are fools, and worse. Secretly, they envy men like me. Men who take what they want and have no qualms about how they take it.”

  “Says the gent who cheated me and the Nez Perce and is to blame for the death of my friend.”

  “You keep harping on that. He was an Indian, for God’s sake. A gnat. A worthless husk of red skin. How many centuries have his kind had this land and what have they done with it? Nothing. They live in tents made of animal hide and go around with bows and arrows. Compare that to what we’ve done. The world will be no worse off without them.”

  Fargo had listened to enough. He set himself. The time had come to end it.

  “All this gab of yours about wealth and worthless. This isn’t about any of that. This is about you and me and here and now.”

  “I’m not armed,” Bell said.

  “Neither was Small Badger when your men shot him in the back.”

  Hank was shifting his weight from one leg to the other and the fingers of his gun hand were twitching. Fargo had pegged him as the one to break, and now Hank took a step and growled, “Enough, damn it. Let’s get this over with. I owe this bastard for the knot on my head.”

  Griff Jackson took a step. “We do it together. The three of us at the same time. He might be as good as they say but he can’t get all three of us. Not all three he can’t.”

  “Who wants to be first?” Fargo taunted.

  “Me,” Hank said, and drew. He jerked his six-shooter cleanly but it was only half out when Fargo’s Colt boomed and Hank dived out of the way.

  Griff Jackson was quicker. He drew and fired only a heartbeat slower than Fargo and the only reason he missed was that Fargo was in motion, throwing himself past the corner of the stable.

  Fargo had stood next to it on purpose. He glanced out and lead smacked the edge, nearly taking his eye out. Jackson and the other cowboy were backing into the stable, covering Bell.

  Fargo turned and ran to the rear. He climbed over the rails into the corral and edged to the back door. Crouching, he peered in.

  A lantern lit the front of the stable. The back was in shadow.

  Bell and his foreman and hands were nowhere to be seen.

  Fargo glided in and over toward the first stall. As he cleared the doorway a revolver spoke. He answered, and then he had the stall between him and them.

  He began to replace the two cartridges.

  From somewhere at the front of the stable came a mocking laugh. “I just realized, scout. After we kill you I’ll find the Appaloosas and take them to Denver. I have a friend there. He’ll let me keep them on his ranch. I’ll lie low until I’m sure the Nez Perce aren’t looking for me.” He laughed again. “I can still achieve my dream.”

  Fargo was tired of Bell’s constant jabber. He cocked the Colt and poked his head past the stall and nearly had his hat blown off.

  Now it was Hank who laughed. “Show yourself again, mister. I won’t miss a second time.”

  Fargo took a couple of steps back, then launched himself up and over into the next stall. Someone fired and the wood resounded to a loud thump. He landed on his shoulder and rolled up onto his knees.

  “Stay calm, men,” Clarence Bell advised them. “So long as we keep our wits about us, we’ll come out on top.”

  “Wits, hell,” Hank said. “All I want is a clear shot.”

  “You do as Mr. Bell tells you,” Griff Jackson said. “Or by God you’ll answer to me.”

  They were careless, this bunch. Fargo now had a good idea where the three of them were. The only one he was unsure about was the other cowboy. He felt along the bottom of the stall for something to throw but all that was there was straw.

  “Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Denver,” Clarence Bell prattled. “The Nez Perce might come here in force once the chief’s son doesn’t return. I can’t fight an entire tribe.”

  Across the aisle something moved. Fargo threw himself flat as flame stabbed the dark. He replied, once, twice, three times, and a figure reared clutching its chest, and toppled.

  Fargo reloaded.

  “Did you get him, Myers?” Bell called out.

  “I think Myers is dead,” Hank said.

  Fargo crawled around the stall and into the next. He raised high enough to see over. Several stalls down a head appeared. He snapped off a shot and was rewarded with a shriek and the crash of a body.

  “Hank?” Bell shouted.

  “Better be quiet, sir,” Jackson warned. “There’s just the two of us now.”

  Fargo darted across the aisle. Farther down the foreman burst from a stall, fanning the Remington. F
argo fanned the Colt. His shoulder stung, and then Griff Jackson was doubled over and firing into the dirt. Fargo fired again and Jackson pitched onto his face and was still.

  Fargo had only one cartridge left in the cylinder. He moved down the center aisle and from the ink under the hayloft charged Clarence Bell holding a pitchfork aloft. Fargo let him get so close that Bell grinned, thinking he had him. Then Fargo shot him in the mouth.

  Burning the stable down was easy.

  Burying Small Badger was hard.

  Fargo stood over the grave and said simply, “I’m sorry.”

  Ten days later Gray Bear stepped out of his lodge at the blush of dawn to find Fargo waiting. Fargo handed him the lead rope to Thunderhoof and the mare and gave him all the money.

  Gray Bear looked at him questioningly.

  Fargo told him in sign. The hurt and the sorrow that came into the stricken father’s eyes tore at his insides. He climbed on the Ovaro and rode from the village.

  Gray Bear didn’t try to stop him.

  Fargo brought the stallion to a gallop. Clarence Bell had been right about one thing. Denver was the place to go. It had enough saloons and bawdy houses that he could stay drunk for a month.

  LOOKING FORWARD! The following is the opening section of the next novel in the exciting Trailsman series from Signet:

  THE TRAILSMAN #343 TEXAS HELLIONS

  Texas, 1860—amid the dust and the fury rides

  the Trailsman . . .

  Skye Fargo first saw the three men when he came out of the Dallas House. They were coming down the street, two white men and a black man, dressed in clothes that would cost most people a year’s wages. The black man towered over his companions by a good foot and a half and had a body half as wide as a buckboard. They walked past him and went into the hotel and he bent his boots to the nearest saloon, a watering hole with a sign out front that read BULL BY THE HORNS. Grinning, Fargo went in.

  The barkeep was heavyset and bald and showed yellow teeth when he smiled.

  “What will it be, mister?”

  Fargo took out his poke and opened it. The pitiful few coins he had left brought a frown. He would love a bottle and a night of poker and a warm dove on his lap but that was for those who had money to spare and he sure as hell didn’t.

  “One drink will have to do.”

  The bartender poured two-fingers’ worth and slid the glass across. “If you are looking for work there’s plenty to be had. Dallas is growing like a weed.”

  “Sure is,” Fargo agreed. As frontier towns went, Dallas was downright prosperous. “I saw some men marching in the street earlier,” he mentioned.

  “That would be the militia. All this talk of secession has everyone worked up. Some think it will be war. What do you think?”

  Fargo sipped and sighed as the coffin varnish burned his gullet. “I don’t hardly give a damn.”

  “You haven’t picked a side? Down here if you’re not for the South you could be tarred and feathered.”

  “I would like to see someone try.” Fargo took another slow slip.

  “Bold talk,” the barkeep said.

  Fargo looked at him. The man blinked, then coughed as if he had something in his throat.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just making talk, is all.”

  “I like to drink in peace.”

  The bartender raised his hands, palms out, and showed his yellow teeth again. “Sure thing.” He started to turn, then stopped. “Looks to me like you won’t get the chance, though.”

  Fargo shifted toward the batwings.

  The three men he had seen outside the hotel were coming toward him, the two whites in the lead. The wide brims of their hats shadowed their faces and their eyes. The youngest, who wasn’t much over twenty and had a thin mustache and no chin to speak of, stopped and said, “You’re that scout, aren’t you?”

  Fargo switched the glass to his left hand and leaned his left elbow on the bar. He lowered his right hand until it brushed his Colt. “Which scout would that be?”

  “What do you mean which?”

  “There are plenty to go around,” Fargo said. “There’s Jim Bridger. There’s Kit Carson. There’s Walker and Colter and others. Which scout did you have in mind?”

  The young man glanced at his companion, who also had a thin mustache but could boast a fair chin, and then frowned. “Are you poking fun? You know damn well who I mean. Skye Fargo. The man my pa sent for.”

  “You would be?”

  “Emery Broxton. This here is my brother, Thad. Pa sent us to fetch you to the house.”

  “Your friend there?” Fargo asked, with a nod at the black.

  Emery glanced over his shoulder, and snorted. “Friend? Hell, that’s just one of our slaves. We call him Chaku. He comes from Africa. He’s nothing.”

  “Looks like something to me,” Fargo said.

  “Now I know you must be poking fun. Since when do blacks matter? And how did we get on this, anyhow? Come along. We shouldn’t keep Pa waiting.”

  “I’m not done with my drink yet.” Fargo had only a sip left but he could make it two sips if he tried.

  “Hell. Finish and we can be on our way.”

  “They say patience is a virtue.”

  Emery fidgeted. “You sure as hell are trying mine. All you’ve done is prick at me, and for no reason.”

  “I always have a reason,” Fargo said. He sipped and had enough left for one more.

  Thad chose that moment to say, “We’re getting off on the wrong foot, here. My pa sent for you because we need you. We need you bad.”

  Emery nodded. “Folks say you are the best scout around. Better than Bridger and Carson and . . .” He paused. “Who else was it you said? Walker and some other fellow?”

  “If it’s the best you want then you want Bridger,” Fargo said. “He’s been around longer and knows more than me. Carson would be second best. Walker knows California better and there’s a mountain man knows every tree in the central Rockies but I’ve been more places than both of them so we’re about tied for third best.”

  “You’re poking fun again, aren’t you?”

  “Only saying how things are.” Fargo savored his last sip. He set the glass down and addressed the black. “What part of Africa?”

  Emery made a sound like a goose being strangled. “What the hell are you talking to him for? Didn’t you hear me? He’s a slave, for God’s sake. It’s us you have dealings with.”

  “Please, Mr. Fargo,” Thad said diplomatically. “Let us take you to our pa. He’ll explain everything.”

  Emery said, “I’m not so sure sending for you was a good notion. I think you just did that to get my goat.”

  “You’re not as dumb as you look,” Fargo replied.

  A red tinge crept from Emery’s collar to his brow. He balled his fists and took a step. “I won’t be insulted.”

  “Then you shouldn’t open your mouth.”

  Emery swore and swung.

  For Fargo it was like dodging molasses. He sidestepped and drove his left fist into the younger Broxton’s gut. Not with all his strength but hard enough that Emery staggered back and lost his balance and would have fallen if Chaku hadn’t caught him.

  “Here now! Enough of that,” Thad hollered.

  Emery wrenched free of Chaku and straightened, snarling, “Let go, damn you. I don’t need no darky helping me.” He raised his fists and advanced but Thad stepped in front of him.

  “No.”

  “Out of the way. You saw what he did. I’ll beat him black and blue and kick his ribs in.”

  “Look at him,” Thad said.

  “What?”

  Thad gripped his brother by the shoulder and pointed at Fargo. “Look at him, damn you. Really look at him.”

  Emery did, and some of the red faded.

  “You have to able to tell when a man is dangerous and when he’s not,” Thad said. “This one is as dangerous as they come. You try him and he’ll kill you, little brother, and he will d
o it as slick as you please.”

  Fargo smiled at Thad. “I reckon you got all the brains.”

  Thad started to laugh but choked it off and said to Emery, “Listen to me. Forget it. We need him. Whether he is first best or second best or third best is not the issue. He can do it where we can’t.”

  “He made me out to be a fool.”

  “We can’t afford one of your tantrums,” Thad said. “Think of Adam and Evie. Think of how much they mean to us.”

  “She has hair like corn silk.”

  “Damn it.” Thad gripped his brother by the shirt. “Do you want me to tell Pa? Do you honestly want him mad at you?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s over.” Thad turned to Fargo. “I’m sorry. He’s young and headstrong. And you did prod him.”

  “A little,” Fargo conceded.

  “If you would be so kind, we’d like to escort you to our home. It’s out the south road a ways. We can be there by supper if we leave now.”

  “I could stand to fill my belly.” Fargo let them go out ahead of him. He nodded at Chaku as the big black went to follow the brothers and Chaku gave him a peculiar look. Fargo caught up and remarked, “You don’t say much, do you?”

  Chaku didn’t say anything.

  “Is it that you don’t speak the white tongue all that well?”

  “I speak it good enough.”

  Fargo chuckled. “That you do.” He offered his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Chaku stared at Fargo’s hand and then at Fargo. “Why you talk to me? Why you treat me like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you give any kind of damn. I am no one to you. So why you be so friendly?”

  “Mother’s milk,” Fargo said.

  “I had mother. I not friendly as you.”

  “You have cause not to be. You were taken from your land and dragged over here. I’d like to hear about that sometime.”

  “Why?”

  “I was born curious.”

  “You have big nose, white man. But I do not talk on my past.”

  “Never?”

  “Ever.”

  Emery and Thad were making for the stable. Emery abruptly stopped and turned and put his hands on his hips. “What the hell is the matter with you? Why are you talking to a slave?”