by Jon Sharpe
“Tell you the straight, that acid tongue doesn’t help your disposition any,” Fargo retorted. “Why don’t we—”
Just then the Ovaro nickered, sidestepping nervously. Fargo swallowed his sentence without finishing it, remembering the vigilante across the plaza. Fargo spotted him just as a rifle somewhere above the plaza spoke its piece, the sound whip-cracking through the lazy air.
He felt the wind-rip when a lethally close bullet snapped past his face and chewed into the baked mud of the plaza, only inches from a shocked Amy. Fargo saw her leap like a butt-shot dog, then foolishly freeze in place instead of seeking cover.
The shooter opened up in earnest, a hammering racket of gunfire. Fargo hated to do it, but rounds were peppering them nineteen-to-the-dozen, and his experienced eye told him it was Amy the shooter was after, not him—yet, fear froze her in place like a pillar of salt. So Fargo, hunched low in the saddle, planted his left boot on her chest and gave a mighty shove.
The thrust catapulted her backwards and out of immediate danger, but now the hidden shooter opened up with a vengeance on Fargo. A round whacked into his saddle, another tugged his hat off. By now, however, Fargo had followed the bullets back to their source—the bell tower of San Antonio church.
It was a job best suited for the Henry, but fractional seconds counted now, and Fargo knew his belt gun would be faster. Quicker than eyesight, he filled his hand with blue steel. Just then, up in the bell tower, he spotted the familiar glint of sunlight on skin. The Colt leaped three times in his hand. His last shot made the bell ring.
At first, when all fell silent, Fargo figured the would-be murderer had fled. Abruptly, a straw-haired man with a chiseled face and shoulders broad as a yoke appeared in the opening of the tower for a moment. Fargo thumb-cocked his Colt, ready to put sunlight through him. Before he could fire, the man suddenly plummeted to the plaza like a sack of dirt, impaling himself on the iron spikes of the church fence.
“Gone to hunt the white buffalo,” Fargo muttered, leathering his six-gun. A second later a woman’s shrill, piercing scream startled the yapping dogs silent.