He’d been right about that. Over the long, eventful years he had learned to trust his instincts, and they had seldom betrayed him.
The atmosphere inside the cantina was close and smoky despite the open door. Not much air stirred tonight. Half a dozen men stood at the bar, drinking, while another half dozen were scattered at the rough tables. In one corner, an old man strummed a guitar. His blind eyes gazed out at the room, and what they saw, only he knew.
The massive man behind the bar had a wild tangle of black hair and a jutting beard. His dark eyes lit up as he noticed Fargo. ‘‘Skye! Welcome,
mi amigo
, welcome!’’ His gaze moved to the girl beside Fargo, and his bushy eyebrows rose in appreciation.
Fargo holstered his gun and headed for one of the empty tables, signaling to Pablo to bring drinks. He held a chair for the girl, then sat down opposite her. In the smoky light from the cantina’s lamps, he saw that she was older than he had taken her for, around twenty years old, more of a young woman than a girl.
And although she was dressed in a long, colorfully embroidered skirt and a low-cut, short-sleeved white blouse that left her shoulders bare, the sort of outfit that the Mexican girls here in Los Angeles wore, she was not Mexican. Her clothes and her long dark hair had made her appear otherwise in the dim light outside.
But her eyes were light blue and her skin was fair and creamy. Her heritage might be pure Spanish, but there was no indio blood in her. Fargo wondered if she belonged to one of the old Californio families, the Spaniards who had ruled California before it became part of the United States ten years earlier.
‘‘Thank you,’’ she said in unaccented English. ‘‘I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t helped me.’’
‘‘Nothing good, I’d wager,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘I reckon introductions are in order. My name is Skye Fargo.’’
‘‘I’m Belinda Grayson,’’ she introduced herself. Not Spanish at all. She frowned and went on. ‘‘Your name seems familiar, Mr. Fargo. I believe my father may have mentioned you. Do you know him? Arthur Grayson?’’
Fargo shook his head. ‘‘Afraid not.’’ He didn’t mention that he was well-known in some circles west of the Mississippi. He wouldn’t be surprised if Belinda’s father had heard of him.
Pablo brought mugs of coffee flavored with dark chocolate over to the table and set them in front of Fargo and Belinda. ‘‘I did not know you were visiting our humble pueblo, Skye,’’ the burly proprietor of the cantina said. ‘‘But as always, I am glad to see you.’’
‘‘The feeling’s mutual, Pablo,’’ Fargo told him. ‘‘How’s Juanita?’’
Pablo grinned and made a rounded motion over his belly, indicating that his wife was with child again.
Fargo chuckled. ‘‘How many does this make?’’
‘‘This will be the eighth little
nino
,’’ Pablo said with pride in his voice. He grew more serious as he went on. ‘‘You are here on business?’’
Fargo nodded. ‘‘I’m supposed to meet a man named Stoddard.’’
Across the table, Belinda had been sipping her coffee.But at Fargo’s mention of the name, she gasped and said, ‘‘You know Hiram Stoddard?’’
‘‘Never laid eyes on the man,’’ Fargo answered. ‘‘Why? Is there something wrong with him?’’
‘‘Those men who were after me outside . . . they work for Stoddard.’’
Fargo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her. He knew she was telling the truth. She was too surprised to be lying.
‘‘Why are you supposed to meet him?’’ she went on.
‘‘Some men would say that’s none of your business, Miss Grayson.’’
Pablo withdrew to the bar with a worried frown on his face. He must have sensed the sudden tension at the table, and he didn’t like it.
‘‘I don’t mean to be impolite,’’ Belinda said. ‘‘It’s just that you helped me—’’
‘‘I would have helped any woman who was in trouble,’’ Fargo said.
‘‘And my father and Mr. Stoddard are enemies,’’ she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘‘That’s why those men were after me. I’m sure of it. They were going to capture me and hold me hostage until my father agreed to give up the plans for his stagecoach line.’’
Fargo began to have a glimmering of what was going on. He had thought that the men were after Belinda simply because she was a pretty girl and they wanted to have some fun with her. Their actions could have been motivated by more than that, though.
‘‘Your father and Stoddard are both trying to establish stagecoach lines that will follow the Old Mission Trail along the coast to northern California,’’ Fargo guessed.
Belinda nodded. ‘‘That’s right. They’ve clashed before,in other places, over other business deals.’’ She sighed. ‘‘They’re mortal enemies, I suppose you could say. But my father is an honorable man, while Mr. Stoddard would stop at nothing to get what he wants.’’
That was the way she saw it, anyway, Fargo thought. The story might be very different if Stoddard were the one telling it.
On the other hand, the man called Elam had treated Belinda roughly, and Fargo had no doubt that the other three would have, too. They had looked like the sorts who wouldn’t draw the line at abusing a woman.
If Stoddard had varmints like that working for him, then Fargo didn’t have a very high opinion of the man. He figured that, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t want to take any job Stoddard offered him.
But along with a letter, Stoddard had sent him a hundred dollars to come here to Los Angeles and meet with him to discuss employment, and Fargo had taken the money. He would have to talk to Stoddard face-to-face and then make up his mind what he was going to do. If he didn’t accept Stoddard’s proposal, he would return what was left of the hundred bucks. That was the only fair way to handle things.
Meanwhile, he asked Belinda, ‘‘Are you sure those hombres weren’t after you for . . . other reasons?’’
She blushed, and her face was even prettier as the warm pink tinge crept across it. ‘‘I suppose that’s possible,’’ she admitted. ‘‘But they know who I am, and I just don’t believe it was their idea to come after me. I think Mr. Stoddard sent them.’’
‘‘What were you doing on the street at this time of night?’’
At that blunt question, her chin came up with a hint of defiance and stubbornness. ‘‘I’m accustomed to walking where I please, when I please.’’
‘‘Maybe so,’’ Fargo said, ‘‘but out here on the frontierthat can be dangerous. We’re not back wherever it is you come from.’’
‘‘I assure you, there are dangers there, too.’’
Fargo didn’t doubt it. But he hadn’t gotten an answer to his question, either, so he continued giving her a steady stare as he waited.
‘‘I was just trying to get a breath of fresh air,’’ she said after a moment. ‘‘My hotel room was stifling.’’
His nod encompassed the clothes she wore. ‘‘What’s with the getup?’’
‘‘The way these Spanish and Mexican girls dress is very comfortable,’’ Belinda said. ‘‘I bought these clothes at the market the other day and wanted to try them. Besides, they look good, don’t you think?’’
Fargo thought they looked very good indeed. The shoulders left bare by the blouse were smooth, inviting a man’s touch. And the neckline of the garment was low enough so that the twin swells of her firm young breasts showed above it, along with the upper part of the dark valley between them. That cleft made a man think about what it would feel like to put his face in it and run his tongue over her heated skin.
‘‘You look good enough that I’d better walk you back to your hotel,’’ Fargo said, ‘‘just so nobody else who’s out and about tonight will be tempted.’’
She smiled and asked, ‘‘What about you, Mr. Fargo? Are you tempted?’’
She was a natural-born flirt, he thought, and she had read what was in his mind without any trouble at all. He growled, ‘‘I’ve had saddles older than you.’’
Hurt by the words, she blinked her eyes and frowned at him.
He drank the last of his coffee and got to his feet. ‘‘Come on.’’
‘‘Maybe I don’t want to go with you,’’ she said.
‘‘You’d be a fool not to. Up to you.’’
She glanced through the cantina’s open doorway at the dark night outside, and he saw the irritation she felt toward him warring with her nervousness. The nervousness won.
‘‘All right,’’ she said as she stood up.
As they walked out, Fargo called to Pablo, ‘‘I’ll be back later, amigo.’’
‘‘A room will be waiting for you when you return, Skye,’’ Pablo promised.
Fargo and Belinda walked down the street without touching. Los Angeles was a small pueblo, but it was growing. In the eight years since California had become a state, quite a few Anglo settlers had moved in to join the Spanish and Mexican citizens who had populated the place since the founding of Mission San Gabriel, just east of the pueblo that had grown up nearby. The buildings had all been made of adobe at first, but now there were a fair number of frame structures, including the two-story hotel where Belinda and her father were staying.
That was the same hotel where Fargo was supposed to meet Hiram Stoddard, he noted. He supposed the enmity between Stoddard and Grayson didn’t keep them from staying in the same hostelry, especially since it was the most comfortable lodging in town.
Fargo and Belinda went up the three steps to the porch that ran along the front of the hotel. He paused and said, ‘‘I reckon you’ll be all right now.’’
‘‘Aren’t you coming in?’’ she asked. ‘‘Mr. Stoddard is staying here, I believe.’’
‘‘I’ll talk to him later. Right now I want to tend to my horse.’’ He had left the magnificent black-and-white Ovaro stallion tied at a hitch rail down the street, not far from the cantina. Pablo had a stable and a corral out back where pilgrims who rented the rooms in the rear of the cantina could leave their mounts. Fargo intended to see to it that the Ovaro was unsaddled, rubbed down, and given grain and water before he dealt with the rest of the business that had brought him to Los Angeles.
‘‘All right. Thank you again, Mr. Fargo.’’
He tugged on the brim of his hat. ‘‘You’re welcome, Miss Grayson. Good night.’’
She went inside the hotel. Fargo waited until she had closed the door behind her before he turned away.
Across the street, Colt flame bloomed in the darkness, and Fargo heard the wind rip of a bullet as it tore through the air next to his ear.
2
As the slug splintered wood somewhere behind him, Fargo threw himself to the right, lunging off the porch so that the light through the hotel’s front windows wouldn’t make him a better target. By the time his boots hit the dirt of the street, his gun was in his hand.
More muzzle flashes gouted from the shadows across the street. Fargo ducked behind a two-wheeled mule cart that someone had left there after unhitching the mule. It didn’t provide much cover but was better than nothing.
Lead came out of the night, searching for him, thudding into the cart. He crouched low, thrust his Colt around the corner of the cart, and triggered three fast shots toward the dark alley mouth where the gunmen lurked. Someone yelled in pain, telling Fargo that he had winged one of them, at the least.
They spilled from the alley: dark, running figures that split up, two going right, two going left. They wanted to circle around him, get him in a cross fire. Fargo knew that as well as he knew his own name.
He couldn’t afford to let that happen, so he tracked the men sprinting to the right and fired the two rounds he had remaining in the Colt’s cylinder. Hitting a running man in bad light was no easy task, but one of the bushwhackers yelped and tumbled off his feet. He rolled over a couple of times and then lay still.
But the other one kept running and ducked behind a water trough.
Fargo bit back a curse as he started to reload. Now he would have them coming at him from two sides. If they had done that to start with, they probably would have gotten him with their first volley. They had overestimated their gun skill, though, all four of them opening up at him from the alley across the street.
Fargo’s eyes were sharper than those of most men, but even he couldn’t see in the dark. He glanced to the left and saw no sign of the men who had gone that way. They were hiding somewhere in the shadows. He would have to rely on his other senses to warn him of their approach. As he finished reloading the Colt, putting six in the wheel this time instead of the customary five, he kept his eyes on the water trough where the third man had taken cover.
A flurry of shots came from Fargo’s left, chipping away at the framework of the cart. No doubt thinking that Fargo would be distracted by that, the man behind the water trough leaped up and tried to dash across the street, so he would be on the same side as his quarry.
Fargo ignored the other threat for the moment, lined his sights on the running man, and squeezed the trigger. As the Colt roared, the man went backward as if he had been punched in the chest by a giant fist.
As soon as Fargo saw the man start to go down and knew he had scored a clean hit, he twisted around and flattened himself on the ground. The other two men had reached the boardwalk on this side of the street and now charged toward him, the guns in their fists spewing lead. Fargo took aim and fired three times, fast.
One of the attackers spun around and staggered into the street like he was doing a crazy dance. The other man stumbled but stayed on his feet, lurching to the side and disappearing. Fargo figured he had ducked into a recessed doorway, or even a narrow space between buildings.
The man in the street jerked the trigger of his gun again, but the barrel pointed down now. The bullet thudded into the dirt in front of him. He dropped the gun, clutched at his midsection, then doubled over and collapsed.
That made three men lying in the street with Fargo’s lead in them. He didn’t know where the fourth man had gone, but no more shots rang out.
Curious yells sounded, though, as several men appeared on the street and hurried toward the hotel to see what all the shooting was about. Men came out of the hotel, too, and as Fargo glanced in that direction, he thought he caught a glimpse of Belinda Grayson casting a worried look through the front window. She had to be wondering if the shots had been directed at him.