Wyoming Winterkill

by Jon Sharpe

  “The colonel sent you after us,” Fletcher said.

  “You won’t believe this,” Fargo said, “but we found you by accident.”

  “Can we set down this firewood?” Margaret asked, hefting her burden.

  “No.”

  Out of the pines came Jules and Captain Griffin and Sergeant Petrie and the five soldiers. Petrie promptly drew his sidearm and ordered his men to do the same.

  “Now you can set the firewood down,” Fargo said. He walked around behind them and relieved Fletcher of his six-shooter and Margaret of a Smith & Wesson she’d acquired somewhere.

  Fletcher was boiling mad and trying hard to contain himself. “I thought we’d gotten clean away.”

  “Of all the places in the world,” Fargo said, “why in hell did you come way up here?”

  “To join up with Blackjack Tar,” Margaret said. “Why else?”

  “You killed our other friends,” Fletcher said.

  Jules said, “Blackjack Tar ain’t anyone’s friend. He’s as liable to kill you as anything.”

  “Blackjack would never harm a hair on our heads,” Margaret declared.

  “And why’s that, missy?” Jules asked.

  “Because I’m his sister.”

  15

  Margaret Tar. Fargo would never have suspected that. It explained a lot.

  Evening was setting. The snow had tapered to flurries. Fletcher and Margaret sat with their hands bound behind their backs, Fletcher still simmering, Margaret acting as if it was perfectly natural for her to be covered by two of the troopers.

  “This is a stroke of luck,” Sergeant Petrie commented as the coffeepot was being passed around. “I should send them back under guard in the morning.”

  “We take them with us,” Fargo said.

  The sergeant shook his head. “They killed Trooper Hayes. They have to answer for it.”

  “We don’t split up.”

  Petrie stared at the pair and tapped his tin cup with a thick finger. “My orders are to escort you to the Coarse wagon train and assist you in getting them down the mountains to safety. I can do that with three men as well as five.”

  “And if her brother shows up?” Jules said with a nod at Margaret. “Three of you ain’t hardly enough.”

  “Two less won’t make that much of a difference,” Petrie argued.

  Fargo was dead set against it. “I’d take it as a favor if you didn’t.”

  Captain Griffin settled the matter by saying, “We’ll do as he wants, Sergeant, and that’s final.”

  “Yes, sir,” Petrie said unhappily.

  Margaret had listened to every word and was grinning.

  “What’s so funny, girlie?” Jules asked.

  “I’m not no girl. I’m a full-grown woman,” she shot back. “And what’s funny is what my brother will do when he gets hold of you. He won’t like you taking me prisoner. He won’t like it at all.”

  Petrie said to Griffin, “All the more reason for me to send them to the fort. Blackjack Tar won’t know they’ve been taken into custody.”

  “That’s a good point,” Margaret said. “You should listen to him, Captain.”

  Fargo was puzzled. It made no sense for her to want to be taken to Fort Laramie. They wouldn’t hang her. Woman were rarely hanged. But she’d likely spend a good many years behind bars.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Jules said to Fletcher. “You haven’t given your two cents.”

  “I get the chance,” Fletcher growled, “I’ll kill every last one of you.”

  “That’s what I like to see,” Jules said. “Brotherly love.”

  Fargo snorted.

  “You won’t think it’s so hilarious when you meet my brother,” Margaret boasted. “You’ll die slow and horrible and begging for mercy.”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Captain Griffin said. “It’s not fit for a lady.”

  Margaret Tar laughed. “Who the hell are you talking to? I haven’t ever been a lady. I drink like a man and cuss like a man and kill like a man. And yes, I screw like a man, too.”

  “Such language,” Jules said.

  Margaret winked at Fargo. “Tell them how I am. Tell them how it really is.”

  “She’s a bitch,” Fargo said.

  “And proud of it,” Margaret said, her eyes twin points of vicious glee. “I liked killing that old granny and that old man. I like killing, period.”

  “You’re not in your right mind,” Captain Griffin remarked.

  “Wretch,” Margaret said. “Thinking everyone should think as you do. Some of us won’t be chained by rules and such.”

  “Now you’re talking nonsense,” Captain Griffin said. “No one has put chains on you.”

  Margaret bent toward him. “I could tell you things that would curl your hair. You wouldn’t—”

  “Enough,” Fletcher said. She looked at him and he said, “I mean it.”

  Fargo was impressed that she listened. “I was wondering which of you is worse. Now I know.”

  “I don’t listen to him out of fear,” Margaret said. “I do it out of love.”

  “Hell,” Jules said. “I doubt you know the meaning of the word.”

  “Why? Because I kill and steal?”

  “I said enough,” Fletcher warned her.

  “And you want to take these two with us?” Sergeant Petrie said to Griffin. “With all due respect, sir, we’ll have to watch them every second. At least two of my men will have them under constant guard. We might as well send them to the fort.”

  “No is no. Not another word,” Captain Griffin said.

  Margaret stared intently at Fargo. “So tell me, handsome. How does it feel to be chasing your tail?”

  “How do you mean?” Fargo asked.

  Fletcher turned on her, glowering. “Damn it to hell. Give it away and your brother will take a bullwhip to you, sister or not.”

  “Blackjack would never lay a finger on me,” Margaret said. “Besides, a gal has to have her fun.”

  “That’s all you ever want to do.”

  “Now, now,” Margaret said.

  “Rabid coyotes,” Jules said. “The pair of them.”

  Fargo wasn’t so sure. They were hiding something. He couldn’t imagine what. “Both of you are done talking for a while.”

  “Or what?” Margaret rejoined. “You’ll pistol-whip us? You would, wouldn’t you? The good captain wouldn’t, me being a lady and all. But you, you’re more like us than you’ll own up to.”

  Fargo put his hand on his Colt and smirked and had the satisfaction of seeing her blanch.

  “I reckon I’ll sleep with one eye open tonight,” Jules remarked.

  “You don’t need to worry,” Sergeant Petrie said. “We’ll tie their legs and gag them until morning. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “I broke out of your guardhouse, didn’t I?” Margaret boasted.

  “With his help,” Petrie said with a gesture at Fletcher. “This time he’ll be as trussed up as you.”

  “Gloat while you can,” Margaret said. “But you don’t know everything.”

  “For the last goddamn time,” Fletcher said, “shut the hell up.”

  The snow finally stopped but the wind picked up. Once the sun was swallowed by the mountains, the temperature plummeted.

  Fargo didn’t object when the troopers added wood to make the fire larger and warmer. He doubted any hostiles were abroad. Not in that weather.

  Jules Vallee draped a blanket over his slim shoulders and pulled it tight around him. “You get my age, the cold bothers you more.”

  “My brother will see to it you don’t get any older,” Margaret predicted.

  “About him,” Jules said. “What made him how he is? You, too, for that matter? How can you go around killing folks
and not give a damn?”

  “Why should we?” Margaret replied. “They’re strangers. They’re nothing to us.”

  “They’re people, for God’s sake.”

  Margaret looked at him in scorn. “You want to understand us—is that it? We have to have a reason so you can sleep better at night.”

  “It’s not natural,” Jules said.

  “Tell me, old man,” Margaret said. “I hear tell you were a trapper once. One of the best of the beaver men. How many of them did you kill?”

  “Beaver?” Jules shrugged. “I never counted ’em. In the early years, before most of the streams were trapped out, I probably caught three to four hundred a year. My best year was close to five.”

  “So all told,” Margaret said, “you killed thousands of beavers in your time.”

  “I reckon. So what?”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “Why would I? I was earning a living, same as a lot of men. And they were beaver. They were no more to us than the deer we eat for supper or the buffalo we shot.”

  “There you have it,” Margaret said.

  “Have what?”

  “That’s exactly what people are to my brother and me. They’re deer. They’re buffalo. They’re beaver. Doing them in is no different to us than killing animals is to you.”

  “You’re”—Jules seemed to search for the right way to say it—“sick in the head.”

  “By how you think. Not by how we think.”

  One of the troopers covering them said, “Can we shut her up now, Sarge?”

  “Good idea, Benton. Tie their legs and gag them. And if they give you trouble, no need to be nice about it.”

  “You’ll get yours, blue belly,” Fletcher said.

  Fargo was grateful for the silence but it didn’t last long. He had gotten up to arch his back and stretch his legs when a shot cracked in the distance and echoed off the peaks, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

  “Someone’s shooting.” A soldier stated the obvious.

  “At this time of night?” Petrie said.

  “Maybe it’s the pilgrims,” another trooper said.

  “Could be it’s Blackjack Tar,” Jules put in.

  If it wasn’t for the snow, Fargo would saddle the Ovaro and scout around. But at night he would be asking for a fall and risk the Ovaro breaking a leg.

  “By tomorrow night we should be at the wagons,” Jules said. “The morning after at the latest if something holds us up.”

  “Like Blackjack Tar,” Private Benton said.

  “He shows his face, I’ll put a slug in it,” Sergeant Petrie said.

  Fargo saw Margaret glare at him, then glance over at her saddle. It was next to Fletcher’s and had been left untended. On an impulse he went over, hunkered, and opened her saddlebags.

  Almost immediately Margaret started making angry sounds and made as if to wriggle toward him.

  “What’s gotten into her?” Jules wondered.

  The first saddlebag was crammed with money and jewelry: rings, necklaces, bracelets, several pocket watches, an ivory stickpin, and more. A poke bulged with coins and there was a wad of paper money.

  One of the soldiers whistled. “Will you look at it all.”

  “Ill-gotten gains,” Jules said.

  “Evidence,” Captain Griffin said. “I’m confiscating it and turning it over to Colonel Harrington.”

  Fargo reached into the second saddlebag and pulled out a cloth bundle wrapped with twine. He set it down, undid the twine, and opened the cloth. Inside were a dozen or more irregular patches of . . . something.

  “What are those?” Sergeant Petrie asked.

  The old trapper bent down, and stiffened. “God help us,” he said. “That’s human skin.”

  16

  Captain Griffin, thinking it was a joke, snorted and said, “You expect us to believe that?”

  “I’m telling you,” Jules said. “I’ve cured more hides than you can count. Not just beaver. And I saw some cured human skin once.” He pointed at the collection. “It looked just like these.”

  A couple of the troopers appeared fit to be sick.

  Fargo went around the fire and undid Margaret Tar’s gag. “I knew a lady once who collected buttons,” he said. “And another who collected silver spoons.”

  Margaret laughed.

  “I knew a gent who collected books and another who collected knives.”

  “My brother collects skin,” Margaret said.

  “They’re not yours?” Jules asked.

  “I like to hold them and run my hands over them so he let me have a few.”

  “A few?” Captain Griffin said, horrified.

  “Look at you,” Margaret said. “All you blue bellies. Pale as bedsheets. And you call yourselves fighting men? Hell, you’re a bunch of babies.”

  Fargo held the gag out. “Open,” he said.

  “I will not.”

  “Then I’ll club you and do it anyhow.”

  Sheer hate twisted her face as Margaret spat, “I can’t wait for my brother to start in on you. I’m going to ask him to take his time and make you cry and blubber like some do.”

  “Wishful thinking,” Fargo said. “Now open wide.” She glared but she didn’t try to bite his fingers off. He retied the gag tighter than it had to be.

  “Human skin,” Sergeant Petrie said. “The tales they tell about Blackjack Tar must be true.”

  “Don’t let it get to you,” Captain Griffin advised. “He’s a man like any other.”

  Fargo remembered saying the same thing to the captain back at the fort.

  “No man I know would do such a thing, sir,” Private Benton said.

  “Apaches do worse,” Sergeant Petrie said, and nodded at the bundle. “We should burn those.”

  “Aren’t they, what did the captain call it, evidence?” Jules asked.

  “It’s evidence we can do without,” Captain Griffin said in disgust. “It’s hideous. Barbaric.” He stared pointedly at Margaret. “Only a sick person could do such a thing.”

  It made no difference to Fargo but he could tell the soldiers were spooked. With a shrug, he dropped the bundle into the flames. The cloth sputtered and caught and soon a new odor filled the air.

  “God,” a trooper said, and covered his nose and mouth.

  Margaret laughed through her gag. She thought it was hysterical.

  Not an hour later everyone turned in.

  Fargo was glad. He took the first watch and sat sipping coffee and savoring the quiet.

  Once he heard a wolf but other than that the wilds were unnaturally still. Most times of the year there’d be coyotes yipping and maybe a fox would call out or a mountain lion would scream.

  Not tonight.

  Fargo thought about Jacob Coarse. No one with a lick of sense would take a passel of inexperienced men and women and their children up into the Rockies in the middle of winter. It made him wonder how long Coarse had been guiding wagon trains.

  Along about midnight Fargo woke Petrie. He was still wide awake and figured it would take a while to drift off. Yet he’d hardly closed his eyes and he was under and slept soundly until his inner clock woke him at the crack of the new day.

  It was cold as hell.

  The troopers stamped their feet and held their hands to the fire to get their circulation going.

  Jules nipped from a flask.

  Fargo removed the gags from the prisoners and untied their feet so they could stand and stamp, too.

  Fletcher was in a foul mood. “I’ll remember you for this,” he grumbled.

  “There won’t be anything left to remember after my brother gets through with him,” Margaret said with sadistic glee.

  “Did you two want something to eat or would you rather go hungry all day?” Far
go asked. That shut them up until after breakfast.

  With Jules in the lead and on the lookout for landmarks, they pressed on. The old trapper talked to himself as they went, saying things like, “I remember that peak.” Or, “I recollect that switchback.”

  Fargo remembered the shot from the night before and kept watch for hoofprints.

  Twice they came on wolf sign, enough to suggest a pack was in the area. Late in the morning they found where a lone elk had plowed through the snow.

  At noon Fargo called a halt. Their animals needed the rest. He took pemmican from his saddlebags and bit and chewed while contemplating the white expanse spread before them. Some would call it a wonderland. He called it white death.

  Margaret walked over, a trooper a few steps behind with his revolver out.

  “Aren’t you going to share?” she asked, indicating the pemmican.

  “Not with you.”

  “You are one mean son of a bitch. Have your fun while you can.”

  “That works both ways.” Fargo bit off another piece and made a show of chewing.

  Instead of becoming angry, Margaret grinned. “You won’t believe this but I like you.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “I’m serious. You’re almost as mean as me and my brother. I admire that.”

  “Coming from anyone else I’d be flattered.”

  “Be nice.”

  Fargo snorted.

  “What do you have against us? Sure, we kill folks, but otherwise we’re not as terrible as people make us out to be.”

  “Where to start?” Fargo said. “How about your brother and his skin collection?”

  Margaret shrugged. “He likes skin. There are things you like a lot. Whiskey, as I recall. And you sure as hell are fond of coffee. You drink it by the gallon.”

  Fargo stared at her. So did the trooper.

  “What?” Margaret said.

  “If you can’t see it,” Fargo said, “you have blinders on.”

  “There are lines people shouldn’t cross, lady,” the trooper said.

  “Lines other people make up,” Margaret said. “My brother and me do pretty much as we please.”

  “I can’t wait to meet him,” Fargo said.

  “Admit it,” Margaret said. “You’re as scared of him as everyone else.”