Trailsman #360 : Texas Lead Slingers (9781101544860) (20 page)

Garvin Oster smiled. “I wanted to see you one last time, girl. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was.”

“Sorry?” Roselyn said, and uttered a peculiar little high-pitched laugh.

“I'm sorry things didn't work out,” Oster said. “Your ma was lookin' forward to us bein' together. It was important to her, not livin' a lie anymore.”

Her face twisting in anger, Roselyn came out of the wallow. “What about what was important to me?”

“She loved you, girl,” Oster said.

“I don't love her. Not anymore. Not after what she put me through.”

“You don't mean that. She was tryin' to set things right. You can't hold that against her.”

Roselyn's face began twitching. She laughed again, a laugh so strange and piercing, it brought a look of confusion to Garvin Oster.

“What in the world is the matter with you?”

Roselyn went on laughing and twitching. Suddenly she whirled, snatched Fargo's Colt from his holster, and ran at Oster. Fargo tried to grab her but she was too quick. The next moment she jammed the Colt's muzzle against Oster's mouth, nearly knocking him down. “Fuck you!” she screamed, and shot him. The back of Oster's head exploded and he rocked onto his boot heels, his eyes wide in amazement.

Fargo started to reach for her but lowered his arm.

Roselyn was crying and laughing at the same time. “What's the matter with me?” she screeched. “I'll show you what's the matter with me.” She shot Oster in the chest. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. “You're what's the matter with me,” she shrieked, and shot him in the groin. “You, you, you,” she cried, and with each “you”, the Colt blasted anew. She thumbed the hammer and squeezed the trigger once more; there was a click. She went on thumbing and squeezing: click, click, click, click. Fargo came around and took the Colt. She didn't resist. She stood staring at the bulk at their feet.

“I killed him.”

“You sure as hell did.”

“I didn't mean to.”

“You sure as hell did,” Fargo said again.

Roselyn sniffled and said, “Yes, I suppose I did. And do you know what? It felt good.”

“Careful, girl,” Fargo said, smiling, “or you'll turn out like me.”

“Oh, God,” Roselyn said.

 

 

“Gentlemen,” announced the young drummer from Pennsylvania, “there seems to be something a mite queer about this game.”

An ominous silence followed his remark. The other four poker players, including Skye Fargo, swiveled their heads to stare at him.

“No offense intended,” the salesman hastened to add.

“Well, plenty taken, you mouthy jackanapes,” growled Billy Williams, who was assisting Fargo on a scouting mission for the much-ballyhooed Pony Express, due to be launched next year. He scowled darkly and scraped his chair back to clear his gun hand.

“H'ar now!” cautioned Red Robinson from behind the crude plank bar. The burly, redheaded Irishman owned the only saloon—actually just a primitive grog shop—permitted at Fort Bridger by the Mormon Council in Salt Lake City. “Stay your hand, Old Billy. This ain't Laredo. These soldiers in the Mormon Battalion are no boys to mess with. The last gentile who cracked a cap in this pukehole spent three months in the stockade.”

“Come down off your hind legs, Old Billy,” Fargo threw in, strong white teeth flashing through his neatly cropped beard as he grinned. “Mr. Brubaker here didn't accuse any of us. He simply pointed out there's something a mite queer about the game.”

“That's what the lawyers call tantamount to an accusation,” chimed in Lemuel Atkins, a Mormon doctor at Fort Bridger who often violated the social order to indulge his love of pasteboard thrills with gentiles, the Mormon word for anyone outside their religion.

“Tanny mount, my hinder,” the hotheaded Billy fumed. “Let's kill the young pup with a knife, then, and go snooks on his money. He's called all of us cheaters, ain't he?”

“Not quite,” said the fifth player at the table, Sy Munro, an outfitter for pilgrims passing through Fort Bridger on their way to the Sierra gold fields and coast settlements. He wore new range clothes and a clean neckerchief. “I'd say he just implied it.”

“Imply a cat's tail!” protested Old Billy. “You heard the doc—it was tanny mount! The snivelin' little scrote called every last one of us cheaters.”

“If he did,” put in Fargo calmly, shifting a skinny Mexican cigar to the other side of his mouth, “he spoke straight-arrow. Matter fact, he's the only one at the table who
ain't
cheating. It's him ought to shoot us.”

Every jaw at the table dropped, including Lonny Brubaker's.

“Fargo,” warned Old Billy, “you
had
teeth when you got here.”

Fargo ignored his blustering partner, looking at the dumbfounded drummer. “Mr. Brubaker, have you ever heard of the cheater's table?”

“The . . . no, sir.”

“It's a custom that started on the Mississippi riverboats. When trade is slow for the professional gamblers, they get up a game among themselves to hone their cheating skills.”

“You mean I just happened along when one of those games was going on here?”

“We're not professionals,” Fargo conceded, “but we figured to have a little fun. Old Billy has been crimping cards, Sy smudging them with his cigar, and Doc Atkins has been dealing from every place
except
the top of the deck.”

“How 'bout you?”

Fargo grinned. “Every time the doc blew cigar smoke in your face, you turned in my direction and showed me your cards—which ain't cheating, by the way. Learn to cover your cards, son.”

Brubaker's smooth-shaven face looked astounded. “Well, I'm clemmed!”

“How much did you drop tonight?” Fargo added.

“Well, twelve dollars.”

Fargo counted out three silver dollars from his pile and slid them to Brubaker. “C'mon, boys,” he called to the others. “Time to post the pony.”

Old Billy loosed a string of epithets worthy of a stable sergeant. Fargo's partner on this Pony Express assignment was a homely cuss with a twice-broken nose and a large birthmark coloring the left side of his face reddish-purple. He was still in his thirties but had earned the moniker Old Billy because of his full mane of white-streaked hair—a legacy of nearly twenty years spent fighting some of the most bellicose tribes of the Southwest and Far West. His widespread reputation as an Indian fighter convinced Fargo to get him on the payroll.

“Fargo,” he said in a tone heavy with disgust, “the hell's got into you—religion?”

“No, Fargo's right,” Doc Atkins said as he counted out three dollars. “I never intended to keep the lad's money. Besides, though it's my own people, Red is correct—scratch a Mormon and you'll find a jailer. Best to take the peace road.”

“I don't give a damn what you weak sisters do,” Old Billy said stubbornly. “A man shouldn't step in something he can't wipe off, and that's what this clabber-lipped greenhorn done. What's next? We powder his butt and tuck him in? I ain't paying back one red cent.”

Fargo watched Old Billy with speculative eyes. “Yeah, I've noticed something peculiar about you. You won't spend money except to gamble and make more. Won't even pony up a dime for a beer. I've never seen a bachelor behave like that.”

Old Billy averted his eyes. “So I'm a damn miser. No law agin it.”

Fargo shook his head and counted another three dollars out of his own money. “Satan won't allow you into hell, Old Billy—afraid you'll take over.”

During this exchange no one had noticed when the cowhide flap that served as a door was suddenly thrust aside. The woman who stepped inside the smoky, dimly lit hovel had a pretty face that was creased from worry and suffering—a familiar sight on the frontier. No one noticed her in the murky shadows until the loud click of a mule-ear hammer being thumbed back seized their attention.

Suddenly all eyes were riveted on the steel-eyed woman with a German fowling piece in her hands. No great threat at a distance, up close like this it could shred a man's face—or his sex gear, Fargo thought, noticing she was aiming it right at him and below the belt. Sweat trickled out of his hairline.

“Why, Dot,” Lemuel Atkins said, “what in the—?”

“Put a stopper on your gob, Doc,” she snapped, never taking her fiery eyes off Fargo. “You with the buckskins and beard—is that your black-and-white pinto tethered outside?”

“It is, ma'am.”

“And be your name Fargo?”

The Trailsman nodded, not liking the determined set of her face nor the dangerous turn this trail was taking.

“Then I'm here to kill you, mister.”

Old Billy snickered. “See? Like I warned you, Fargo, never tell 'em you'll be right back. Some believe you.”

The woman swung the muzzle toward Old Billy. “Shut your filthy sewer, you prairie rat. This is an over-and-under gun, and both barrels shoot. All of you keep that in mind before you play the hero.”

“Hero?” Old Billy repeated. “Lady, it's none of my mix. Fargo stepped into this and he can wipe it off.”

“Ma'am, I don't even know you,” Fargo said, his voice calmer than he felt.

Lemuel spoke up quickly. “Skye Fargo, this is Dorothy Kreeger. Her husband died of snakebite a hundred miles west of South Pass on their way to settle in San Francisco. She has a seventeen-year-old daughter, Ginny, and—”

“Oh, this randy stallion knows Ginny, all right,” Dot cut in. “In fact, he raped her not two hours ago in the hay fields just south of here. And then he beat her bloody and sliced up her limbs with that vicious knife in his boot.”

Dead silence followed her remark. All eyes turned to Fargo. On the frontier a woman's accusation carried more force than a man's.

“Ma'am,” Fargo said, “I don't call women liars, but I do call them mistaken. I'm sorry about your daughter, but I didn't have thing one to do with it. I've not met the lady.”

“I'd hardly expect you to sign a confession. That's why I'm going to shoot you. You men sitting close to Fargo—spread out. I've no call to shoot anyone but him.”

Red Robinson spoke up. “Dot, you're mighty mistaken. Two hours ago, you say? Couldn't a been Fargo—he's been right here playing poker for the past four hours.”

“That's right,” Doc Atkins chipped in. “Besides, I've known Fargo for years. He's the last man to commit a crime like that.”

“Oh, I'd expect all of you to take his part. He's the famous Trailsman and all men look up to him. You men are pack animals—what's my girl compared to the high-and-mighty Trailsman?”

“Dot, you got that bass ackwards,” Sy cut in. “This is the West. Why, President Buchanan himself would be drag-hanged for treating a female that way.”

“Lady,” spoke up Billy, barely suppressing a smirk, “Skye Fargo is a skunk-bit coyote, all right. Rotten as they come. I'd shoot the son of a buck.”

“Heathens and Mormons,” she said with bitter contempt. “Thinking this is all a big joke for your pleasure. My girl described her attacker, and this tall galoot fits the description right down to the ground. You, the young fellow closest to Fargo—get clear, I said, or you'll get the balance of these pellets.”

Fargo could see that Lonny Brubaker was so scared he'd turned fish-belly white. But he stubbornly shook his head.

“No, ma'am. Mr. Fargo is innocent. He was right here when you say your daughter was accosted.”

“Scootch over, Lonny,” Fargo said in a take-charge voice. “If Mrs. Kreeger is bound and determined to cut me down in cold blood, no use you getting plugged, too.”

“Hold off, Dot,” Doc Atkins implored. “Take a good, long look at Fargo. Does he really look like the kind of man who'd need to . . . ravish a woman?”

Dorothy did look at Fargo, long and hard. For the first time, a look of uncertainty crossed her features. “He's mighty rugged and handsome,” she admitted. “Well knit, too. I 'spect women flock to him like flies to sugar.”

Old Billy didn't like the turn this trail was taking. “Sure, lady, but you know, some men prefer to make it rough with a woman—gets 'em more het up. I'd shoot him.”

“I 'spect a man as ugly as you
has
to be rough,” she replied. “Only way you can get it.”

She looked speculatively at Fargo. “It's no secret that my Ginny likes men. I've heard all the jokes about how she's ‘second-hand' and her sheets are always wrinkled. And the Lord knows there's precious few males at Fort Bridger to catch a young girl's eye. A man like you wouldn't have to attack her—unless he was sick in the brain.”

“I don't dally with girls,” Fargo told her. “Only women. Mrs. Kreeger, I don't doubt Ginny's word. But I'm not the only man on the frontier who wears buckskins. And the black-and-white pinto is no rare horse.”

“No, but it is rare to see a white man riding a stallion. Mostly it's only Indians who don't cut their horses.”

Fargo nodded. “I can't gainsay that.”

“Can you gainsay that Arkansas toothpick in your boot or that brass-frame rifle in your saddle scabbard? What about the close-cropped beard and your black plainsman's hat? Ginny described all of it.”