by Sharpe, Jon
They were about ready to turn in when the lawman cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you’re right.”
“About?” Fargo said.
“Me. I’m not cut out for this job. The outlaws had the run of the territory until you came along. And I haven’t done much since except count bodies.”
Fargo surprised himself by saying, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“No,” Cripdin said. “I should head back east and take up clerking. It’s a hell of a lot safer, and the hours are good.”
“And you have a better chance of living to old age,” Fargo brought up.
“There’s that.”
They reached Meridian along about eight the next morn-
ing and drew rein at the north end of Main Street.
“What the hell?” Cripdin blurted.
Not a single soul was in sight. The street was empty from end to end. All the doors and every window was shut and not a sound came from any of the homes or businesses.
“It’s like a damned ghost town,” Cripdin said. “Where is everybody?”
They hadn’t gone a block when a door opened and a couple rushed from a house.
“Marshal!” the man hollered. “You should have seen them!”
“It was Cord Blasingame and that breed,” the woman said. “They rode in here as brazen as anything.”
A flood of townsmen poured from everywhere. They surrounded the marshal, many talking at once.
Fargo was ignored. He hung back and heard enough to get the gist. The two outlaws had appeared with the rising of the sun. The few people out and about had scattered, spreading the word as they went. No one raised a finger, or a gun, as Blasingame and Niyan rode up the middle of the street to the house Glenda rented. No one tried to stop them from going on. No one rushed to help when Glenda was dragged out and thrown on a horse the breed took from in front of the general store. No one intervened when the outlaws left with Glenda and Jennifer.
Fargo’s disgust was boundless. He circled the crowd and trotted to the south. He figured the outlaws weren’t more than an hour ahead, if that.
It was pushing noon when he saw buzzards. They hadn’t descended to feast yet.
She was still alive but there was nothing he could do. The breed had staked her out and gone to work.
Her eyes had been gouged from their sockets but she could hear without ears and she turned her head slightly and croaked, “Who’s there?”
“Me,” Fargo said. He dropped to a knee and said softly, “Damn.”
“Save her,” Glenda begged.
“I’ll try.”
“He’s given her to the breed. Can you believe it? She tried to stop them from hurting me. She hit him, and he got mad and said he doesn’t care anymore. He said his old life is dead to him, and gave her to Niyan.”
Fargo felt his jaw muscles twitch.
Glenda sobbed and tried to sniffle but she didn’t have a nose. “Oh God. It won’t be long, will it?”
“No,” Fargo said.
“It’s all my fault. I should have left well enough be. But I couldn’t take that he left me. It ate at me.” She shuddered and gasped and arched. “Oh!” she cried. “This is my end.”
It was.
Fargo left her there. He hadn’t gone a mile when he came on Jennifer, fully clothed, her hands on her bosom, looking as sweet and pretty as ever except that her throat had been slit from ear to ear. He left her, too.
Blasingame and the breed had made off to the southeast.
Fargo had a hunch they were leaving the territory. He had other ideas.
Either they were overconfident or they didn’t think anyone was after them. They stopped before sundown and got a fire going.
Fargo drew rein well back and waited for dark to fall. He wouldn’t chance their slipping away. It had to end. It had to end here.
An owl was hooting when Fargo commenced a silent stalk. He stayed on his belly most of the way, making no more sound than an Apache would. Twice he froze when the breed looked in his direction.
He stopped shy of the firelight. He could drop them then and there but he wanted them to know it was him.
Blasingame was pouring coffee into a tin cup. He leaned back against his saddle and after a long silence said, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
The breed was honing his knife. He grunted without looking up. There was a dark stain on his shirt that hadn’t been there before.
“I know she stabbed you, but still,” Blasingame said.
“She grab knife,” Niyan said. “I not expect.”
“She was mad about her mother,” Blasingame said. “I can’t blame her for that.”
“I do what you say to do.”
“And you did a good job,” Blasingame complimented him. “I was glad to see Glenda suffer after all she cost me.”
“Her suffer a lot,” Niyan said, and grinned.
Fargo stepped into the light, his hand on his Colt. “Remember me?”
Cord Blasingame froze but not Niyan. The breed whipped his arm back to throw the knife and Fargo drew and shot him in the chest. Niyan fell onto his back but scrambled right back up and lunged for his Spencer. Fargo shot him in the head.
Blasingame still hadn’t moved. He stared at the body and said, “Well, now. I never imagined anyone could take him so easy.”
Fargo trained the Colt as he went over and picked up Niyan’s knife. He came around the fire and squatted in front of Blasingame.
“Gun or blade? Do I get a choice?” Blasingame grinned as if it were funny.
“No,” Fargo said.
“I wish she hadn’t sent for you.”
“Makes two of us.” Fargo slashed, just once. The blade bit deep and blood poured.
Cord Blasingame tried to speak but all that came out of his mouth were scarlet bubbles.
Fargo didn’t stay. The night wind was cool and refreshing on his face, and promised something better over the horizon.
And, God, he needed a drink.
LOOKING FORWARD!
The following is the opening
section of the next novel in the exciting
Trailsman series from Signet:
TRAILSMAN #378
WYOMING WINTERKILL
The Rocky Mountains in the winter, 1861—where the cold and snow . . . and hot lead . . . made for an early grave.
Wyoming in the winter wasn’t for the faint of heart.
Once it turned cold it stayed cold. Not the kind of cold back east, where a man could throw on a heavy coat and forget about it. This was a biting cold that froze the marrow. The wind made it worse. The temperature might be ten degrees; the wind made it seem like it was fifty below.
Skye Fargo supposed he should be used to it. He’d been through Wyoming enough times. But even bundled as he was in a heavy bearskin coat over his buckskins, he was cold as hell.
He’d tied his bandanna over his hat and knotted it under his chin so the wind couldn’t whip it from his head. He could see his breath, and the Ovaro’s. Each inhale seared his lungs with ice so that the simple act of breathing hurt.
Given his druthers, Fargo would rather be anywhere than where he was. But he’d signed on to scout for the army for a spell and the army wanted him to go to Fort Laramie. By his best reckoning he was five days out.
The sky was an ominous gray. Thick clouds pregnant with the promise of snow had yet to unleash their burden.
A winter storm was brewing, and if Fargo was any judge, it would be a bitch.
He hadn’t stuck to the main trail. He wanted to get to the fort as quickly as he could so he was cutting overland.
He came to a tributary of the Platte and a crossing he remembered, and drew rein in surprise. He didn’t
remember a trading post being there. Yet one was on the other side, a long, low building with a crude sign that proclaimed it was run by one George Wilbur and he paid top prices for prime plews. At the bottom, in small letters, it mentioned simply WHISKEY.
Fargo had no great hankering to stop. But half a bottle would warm his innards and ward off the cold for a while when he resumed his ride.
Three horses were at the hitch rail. They looked miserable and he didn’t blame them. Only a poor excuse for a human being would leave their animals out in the cold. Especially when around to the side was a lean-to. He dismounted and led the stallion in out of the worst of the wind.
Rubbing his hands, Fargo breathed on his fingers to warm them. When he had some feeling, he shucked his Henry from the saddle scabbard, cradled it in the crook of his left elbow, and walked around to the front door. Before he entered he opened his bearskin coat and slid his right hand underneath and rested it on his Colt.
The rawhide hinges protested with loud creaks.
Welcome warmth washed over him. A fire blazed in a stone fireplace, a pile of wood heaped high beside it.
At the moment a woman of thirty or so was bent over, adding some. She looked around.
So did everyone else.
The place was about what Fargo expected. Log walls, the chinks filled with clay. Rafters overhead. A bar and four tables.
Three men were playing cards; the owners of the horses at the hitch rail, Fargo guessed.
Behind the bar a man in an apron was wiping glasses. He had thick sideburns and a bristly mustache and dark eyes that glittered.
For Fargo, it was distrust at first sight.
The three men didn’t inspire brotherly love, either. They were unkempt, their clothes shabby, their coats not much better. Their eyes glittered, too, like wolves sizing up prey.
Fargo wanted that drink. He crossed to the bar and set the Henry down with a loud thunk and swept his coat clear of his holster.
“How do, mister,” the barman said. “Cold, ain’t it?”
“A bottle,” Fargo said. “Monongahela.”
“Sure thing.” The man turned to a shelf lined with bottles and picked one that hadn’t been opened. “I’m George Wilbur, by the way.”
“Good for you.”
Wilbur opened the bottle and set it down.
As Fargo reached for it he caught his reflection in a dusty mirror. His beard needed a trim and his blue eyes had a piercing intensity that he was told made some uncomfortable. He raised the bottle, admired the amber liquor, and took a long swallow that burned warmth clear to his toes.
“I sell good drinking whiskey,” Wilbur boasted.
Fargo grunted. He undid his bandanna and retied it around his neck. The bottle in one hand and his Henry in the other, he walked over near the fireplace and pulled a chair away from a table. He sat so he was partly facing the fire and could keep an eye on the rest of the room’s occupants. Leaning his rifle against the chair, he placed the bottle in his lap and held his hands out to the flames.
The woman added another log. She had brown hair and a pear-shaped face that wouldn’t be so plain if she gussied up. Her homespun dress couldn’t hide her ample bosom and long legs. She gave him a nice smile and turned away.
George Wilbur came over. “Don’t say much, do you, friend?”
“Not in this life or any other,” Fargo said.
“Eh?”
“Are we friends?”
“Oh,” Wilbur said. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “I’m just making small talk.”
Fargo looked at him.
Wilbur gestured. “We don’t get many folks stopping by, is all.”
“Makes this a damn stupid spot to build a trading post.”
“I make enough to get by and that’s what counts,” Wilbur said.
Fargo treated himself to another swallow.
“We’ve got eats if you’re hungry,” Wilbur said. “The woman here will cook for you. Fifty cents, and all you can eat.”
When Fargo didn’t say anything, Wilbur coughed and turned and went back behind the bar.
The woman was poking through the wood box. Without looking at him she said quietly, “I’m not a bad cook if I say so myself.”
Fargo took another chug.
“My husband, Clyde, got knifed by an Injun when he went out to use the privy and I sort of got stuck here.”
“A war party attacked the trading post?” Fargo asked out of mild interest.
“No,” the woman said. “There was just the one redskin.”
“Only one?”
The woman nodded at the three men playing cards. “That’s what they said. One of them is a tracker. He showed me a few scrape marks and told me they were moccasin tracks.”
About to take another swallow, Fargo paused with the bottle half tilted. “When was this?”
“Oh, it must have been three weeks ago, or better. About the time the weather turned cold.”
“Hell,” Fargo said.
The woman turned. “Something the matter?”
“What’s your handle?”
“My what?”
“Your name,” Fargo said. “And where are you from?”
“Oh. My name is Margaret. Margaret Atwood. I’m from Ohio. My husband and I were on our way to Oregon Country and we got separated from the wagon train and were pretty much lost when we found this place, thank goodness.”
“I didn’t see a wagon when I rode up.”
“Oh. Mr. Wilbur sold it. Seeing as how Clyde was dead, I didn’t want to go on to Oregon by my lonesome. So he was kind enough to find a buyer and give me half the money.”
“Half?”
“Well, he had to go to a lot of bother. His friends there had to ride to the Oregon Trail and wait for the next wagon train to come along and ask if anyone wanted to buy ours and when no one did they had to wait around for the next.”
“Mr. Wilbur was damned generous.”
“That’s what he said.” Margaret grew sad and bowed her head. “I didn’t much care, to tell you the truth. With Clyde gone life didn’t hardly seem worth living.”
Fargo glanced at Wilbur, polishing glasses again, and at the three wolves playing cards. “Son of a bitch.”
“Is it me or do you cuss a lot?”
“How many others have stopped here since you came?” Fargo asked.
Margaret knit her brow. “Let me see. There was that traveling parson on his mule. And a drummer. And another wagon with an older couple. They were lost, and Mr. Fletcher”—she pointed at the tallest of the card players—“he’s the tracker, he offered to guide them to Fort Laramie. He and his friends were gone about two days.”
“Hell,” Fargo said again. He told himself it was none of his affair. He didn’t know the old couple and he didn’t know her.
“Their granddaughter was the sweetest little girl,” Margaret remarked.
“How’s that again?”
“The old couple. They had their granddaughter with them. Sally, her name was. Her folks got killed in a fire and her grandparents were taking her to live with an uncle who’d settled in the Willamette Valley.”
“How old?”
“Sally? She was ten.”
The whiskey in Fargo’s gut turned bitter.
“Why do you look as if you want to bite someone’s head off?”
“Did I hear something about food?”
“Venison,” Margaret said with a bob of her chin. “Fletcher shot a buck this morning so the meat is as fresh as can be. I’ll whip up potatoes and there are carrots in the root cellar. Would that do?”
“Throw in coffee and you have a deal.”
Margaret brightened and stood. “That’s fine. And you help me in th
e bargain.”
“I do?”
“Wilbur gives me five cents for every meal I cook for him.”
“That much?”
“He’s a generous man.”
“It’s good you’re happy,” Fargo said.
“I’m lucky to have the work,” Margaret replied. “Now you stay put. It shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes or so.”
“No hurry,” Fargo said. He had some prodding to do first, and it might end in gunplay.