Nevada Vipers' Nest (17 page)

“Damn it,” Fargo cursed when he woke up.

Despite his almost instinctual habit of rising with the sun when he was on the trail, he had overslept this morning by at least two hours. He kicked Sitch awake.

“Stir your stumps, mooncalf. We've got to clear out of here.”

Fargo took his bearings. This little clump of juniper and jack pine was a tiny island in a vast surrounding area of scant-grown hills dotted with little growth besides scrub cottonwood and mesquite.

Sitch shook off the last cobwebs of sleep and rose unsteadily to his feet. “Christ, my mouth feels like the last cracker at the bottom of the barrel.”

He grabbed his empty canteen and headed toward the little stream. Fargo heard him curse again.

“This damn water is muddy, Fargo! We can't drink this.”

“It was good enough for the horses. Just drink it and tack that sorrel. I want to get out of here.”

“Well, I'm not a horse. This water—”

“The hell is your major problem?” Fargo snapped, crossing in long strides toward the stream. “Dip your cup in that water then hand me your bandanna.”

Fargo folded the bandanna over the mouth of the cup. “This will trap the bigger particles of dirt when you pour it into your canteen. Now drink it and quit bellyaching. We slept too damn late and we need to make tracks. This is a piss-poor defensive position.”

Fargo whistled the Ovaro in and was centering his saddle when he glanced to the east and saw it: a yellow-brown dust cloud billowing toward them from behind the surrounding hills.

Sitch followed his gaze and then paled. “Indians?”

Fargo shook his head. “Not likely. They tend to ride in single file to keep the dust down. This is a group of palefaces riding in a wide file—and since there's no soldiers patrolling this area, I'd say it's the red sashes looking for us.”

Fargo pulled his field glasses from a saddlebag and studied the area out before them.

“It's sashes, all right. More than I realized Scully controlled, and they're sweeping right toward our position. At least a dozen.”

“But how could they know we're here?”

“They don't. It's just our bad luck and my stupidity for sleeping too long. They can't know we're here because they're not even close to the trail we left to get here.”

“Maybe they had a rider patrolling and he spotted our horses earlier this morning,” Sitch suggested.

Fargo shook his head, lowering the glasses. “A rider couldn't have spotted them through the trees unless he rode right up on them. My stallion wouldn't let a man get that close without waking me up. They decided to sweep the surrounding country to find us, and this just happens to be the direction they picked. I can tell by the way they've fanned out that they're searching, not attacking.”

“Well, you told me a man always wants the element of surprise on his side. You're mighty handy with that Henry of yours. Why not just start picking them off?”

“That's not the worst plan in the world,” Fargo conceded. “But it's not the best, either. I couldn't possibly wipe that many out of the saddle before they covered down. And then they'd know right where we are. Every man I see has a long gun, and at least some of them are likely good marksmen.”

“Then why don't we just run like hell? We've got a jump on them.”

“That's not the worst plan, either. My Ovaro can outrun his shadow. But that sorrel of yours is only middling. If they spot us, they'll run you down.”

“So how
do
we get the hell out of this fix? Or should we just sit and play a harp?”

“When you can't surprise or mystify your enemy, you mislead him. I know these frontier bullyboys. They're only ‘brave' when victory is assured. They'll dump the blanket quick if they think they're heading right toward Indians.”

As Sitch opened his mouth to ask yet another damn fool question, Fargo cut him off with a curt order. “Just shut up and do what I tell you. We'll need a big fire, and there's plenty of dry wood lying around here. Gather it up fast. Then get me a big pile of green boughs. We're gonna make Indian smoke. Here, take this.”

Fargo handed Sitch his Arkansas toothpick. While Sitch gathered wood and cut boughs, Fargo removed a handful of crumbled bark from a saddle pocket and used small sticks to get a fire started. He carefully laid the larger pieces of wood over it until a good fire was blazing.

“They're close, Fargo,” Sitch said with a nervous quaver to his voice. “I can make out Scully now.”

Fargo quickly piled the green boughs on, and almost immediately a thick black smoke rose into the morning air. He grabbed his blanket and used it to cover and uncover the billowing smoke.

“What are you signaling?” Sitch asked.

“Prob'ly nothing. I can't read Indian smoke signals, and I don't know one white man who can. But that includes those rat bastards closing in on us.”

Fargo's prediction was borne out. The moment the vigilantes band spotted the smoke, they reined in to confer quickly. After less than thirty seconds they reversed their dust and pounded their saddles back toward the east.

“You called it right, Fargo!” Sitch exalted. “They're tearing off like hounds with their asses on fire!”

“Yeah, and we best be the next ones to light out,” Fargo said.

“Light out to where?”

“Carson City. I've got to talk to Sheriff Vance about this deal. Dora is reasonably safe now, Sitch, but what about the other girls at the Sawdust Corner? Won't take the sashes long to figure out Belle Star is gone, and they're going to figure Libby or one of the others knows where she is. I want some security in that saloon.”

Fargo glanced at Sitch's saddlebags and then at Sitch, a sly grin on his face.

“Wait a minute here, Fargo,” Sitch protested. “I don't like that scheming look on your face.”

“Look, knucklehead, the girls aren't just vulnerable at the saloon. Scully's sewer rats must also know about Ma Kunkle's boardinghouse. So this is where your skills come in.”

“Just an everlovin' minute here, I'm not—”

“There, there, that's a tough old soldier,” Fargo cut him off. “This will be right up your road.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“I'll tell you after we ride out. There's Bannocks, Shoshones and Paiutes all around this area, and by now some of them must have seen this smoke. It likely makes no sense to any of them, but red aborigines are curious and they
will
be riding this way to puzzle this thing out. I'd just as soon tangle with a she-grizz protecting her cubs—all three of those tribes take special delight in torturing a white man to death, so hop your horse and hop it quick.”

•   •   •

Fargo, who always tried to think one step ahead of his enemy, assumed Scully's regulators would know by now that Fargo had thrashed and tied up one of their spies last night.

But he also assumed they would still be watching for him in town. He didn't want them to know that Sitch would soon be in Carson City, so about two miles outside of town he told his companion to wait in a cluster of boulders surrounded by scrub pine.

Fargo remained vigilant as he loped the Ovaro toward town, slowing the stallion to a long trot as he approached the western outskirts. Not sure whether Scully's men had orders to kill or to capture, Fargo carefully studied all the good ambush spots. He paid scant attention to a big hay wagon that rolled away from a feed store at his approach.

The wagon rattled closer, driven by a man in dirty coveralls. The man's floppy hat was pulled low against a bright sun and left the rest of his face in deep shadow. There was nothing unusual about this, and the clay pipe stuck in his teeth further reinforced the familiar image of a poor dirt-scratcher. Fargo knew that a few hardscrabble farms now dotted Carson Valley, providing beef, pork and produce to the thriving boomtown and Virginia City just to the north.

But the rifle on the seat beside the driver caught Fargo's attention—a long-barreled Hawken, hardly the weapon of choice for a farmer.

A Hawken gun
, warned a voice somewhere just beneath the level of conscious awareness.
Just like Leroy Jackman carries.

This thought brought Fargo's focus sharply on the farmer. Danger showed in the lower half of a man's face, the half Fargo could just make out in the shadowed visage. The sudden, determined set of the man's jaw was sickeningly familiar to Fargo.

Fargo's previous thoughts scattered like frightened birds and his mind focused down to nothing but survival. The fine hairs on his nape stiffened, and everything that happened after that took only seconds, but seemed to be slowed down to dream time, as if he were moving underwater and he had become both participant and observer.

“Now!” the driver shouted, tugging rein to swerve the wagon closer to Fargo.

The hay parted to reveal two brawny arms and an ax handle that arced toward Fargo's head in a blur of speed. Because of the split-second warning from his senses, Fargo managed to bring his left arm up to absorb some of the blow. But the impact was still forceful enough to knock him from the saddle as an orange starburst exploded inside his skull.

The Ovaro reared as Fargo flopped into the street. For an eternally long few seconds, Fargo balanced between consciousness and dark oblivion, the life force at some primordial level within him warning that if he passed out all was lost.

Still dazed, he managed to knock the riding thong from his Colt and shuck it from the saddle even as a looped rope settled over his upper body and began to drag him behind the wagon. Fargo shot toward the arms projecting from the hay and heard a yelp of pain as the rope was dropped. The driver whipped the team up even as several weapons opened up, peppering the street all around Fargo with bullets.

Fargo returned several shots into the hay, aiming toward muzzle flash, and a man tumbled out into the street, blood pumping from a bullet hole in his neck. That was all Fargo registered before his head, feeling as if it weighed a ton, suddenly dropped to the ground and the world swirled around him, a loud ringing like hammering on an anvil filling his skull.

A voice seemed to be calling him from the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Fargo!

Fargo!

“Fargo! Wake up, son!”

Sheriff Cyrus Vance's voice jarred Fargo back to awareness. “Thank God. I figured you for a goner, Trailsman.”

Fargo blinked a few times to get the day in focus again.

“I hustled out as soon as I heard the shooting fray,” Vance said. “Can you sit up?”

Fargo's headed throbbed like an abscessed tooth. He saw the sheriff's worried face looking down at him.

“Give me a hand,” Fargo replied. “I'm still a little woozy.”

“I don't wonder, judging from that swelling on your forehead. I'll fetch my horse from the feed stable—that wagon can't put on much speed.”

“Nix on that,” Fargo managed as the sheriff helped him to his feet. “That's a damn battle wagon, Cyrus. You'd just be digging your own grave.”

The pain was still so sharp that Fargo almost reeled, but he stayed on his feet. He pulled the rope off him.

Sheriff Vance glanced at the body in the street, hands still clutched around the end of the rope. “Well, one man in town is sure fond of you, Fargo—Dave Rohr, the undertaker. Business has picked up considerable since you rode into these parts.”

Vance toed a splatter of fresh blood that trailed behind the wagon. “You've killed one and wounded at least one more. I'd wager they left town wiser if not better men. C'mon, let's get you to a doctor.”

“No need,” Fargo said. “Just help me onto my horse. I need to palaver a little with you.”

They returned to the sheriff's office and Fargo gratefully sank into a chair in front of the lawman's desk. Otis Mumford was snoring from one of the jail cells, having followed Fargo's advice to bunk with the sheriff.

“Fargo,” Vance remarked as he settled into his swivel chair, “you got the endurance of a doorknob.”

Fargo gingerly touched the big knot on his forehead. “Well, damn straight I've got the doorknob, at least. But now I know Scully doesn't want me killed—just captured. Even when they shot at me from the wagon, it was just to suppress my fire—their bullets were deliberately aimed wide of me.”

“You know,” the sheriff said, removing his hat to whack at flies with it, “I discovered more of your handiwork this morning when I made my early rounds. You dislocated that peckerhead's jaw last night. Doc Templeton snapped it back into joint, and that sash howled like a dog in the hot moons. What, did you hit him with a sledgehammer?”

“Wish I had,” Fargo replied. “My right hand's been giving me jip since I hit him.”

Fargo noticed a bowl in front of the sheriff filled with some unappetizing-looking concoction. He nodded toward it. “I hope that ain't your breakfast.”

“You hope wrong. I call it graveyard soup—milk with pieces of bread broken into it. One of the ‘solid foods' my stomach can handle. And this vile-smelling brew in the mug is comfrey tea—Ma Kunkle swears it's good for dyspepsia, but it tastes like burro piss. But never mind. . . .”

The sheriff scowled at the bowl and pushed it aside. “I'm more interested right now in something you just said. Why would they want to capture you?”

Fargo knew that he had to bring the sheriff into this deal—all the way in.

“Well, you 'member me telling you about that female witness who escaped from the massacre scene—the one I was searching for?”

The sheriff nodded and Fargo filled him in on everything: that Belle Star was really Dora Hightower, what Scully was almost surely after, and Dora's mysterious refusal to come forward and accuse Scully of the murder of her family—a refusal that had nothing to do with her fear of the vigilantes.

“Thanks for keeping me updated,” Sheriff Vance replied sarcastically when Fargo finished. “I hope the presence of a sheriff hasn't inconvenienced you. But, say, what could possibly keep a woman from bringing charges against a bunch of murderers who done that to her family?”

Fargo shrugged a shoulder. “Hell, might's well ask me who teaches kids to play hopscotch? She claims she has faith that I'll handle the matter better than the law can, and maybe she means that. But she couldn't have known about me right away, so what kept her silent so long?”

Vance nodded. “Yeah, and that business about how it would ruin her if she had to come forward—that don't make sense.”

“But here's the thing,” Fargo went on. “I'm worried about the rest of the gals at the Sawdust Corner. Seems to me Scully is hell-bent on getting whatever Dora Hightower has in that box. Good chance he'll turn to the others, or Bob Skinner, to find out where Dora is hiding out.”

“I take your drift,” Vance said. “You're wondering if I'd be willing to spend a lot more time at the saloon.”

Fargo nodded. “Seems to me a former Texas Ranger has to be a dead shot. And Bob's got a messenger gun under that bar that would make any man think twice. And he might be ugly as a mud fence, but he's got sand.”

“There's one problem: the dime-a-dance gals work in different shifts, and all of them board at Ma Kunkle's. I can't be two places at once.”

“Yeah, I been thinking about that, too. You know Ma Kunkle pretty good, right?”

“I don't stay there—I stay here in my office to keep down expenses. But I see her every day. She's a crusty old gal, but we're good friends.”

“I was counting on that,” Fargo said. “If you're willing to go along with me, I'll need you to talk to her.”

•   •   •

A few hours after sundown, two well-armed riders tied off their horses at the snorting post in front of Ma Kunkle's big two-story boardinghouse. Both men carried coils of rope.

As they headed toward the front porch, spurs chinging, one elbowed the other in the side.

“Lookit, Jeb,” he said, pointing toward a sign over the front door. A lantern hung on a nail clearly illuminated the sign:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT AT AND IF MISSED WILL BE PROSECUTED

“I'm shittin' my pants,” Jeb replied in a tone laced with derision. “Scully said she's an ornery old bitch, so we best find her first and tie her down. But don't leave no marks on her or any of the calicos, Lumpy. This town's already stirred up over what happened to the Hightower bunch.”

Both men cleared leather and stepped into a small front parlor that smelled of pleasant cooking odors. A few sticks of old furniture, none of it matching, were scattered around. Flames crackled in a small fieldstone fireplace. The parlor was empty except for a silver-haired, bespectacled man with a salt-and-pepper beard. He sat in a chintz-covered chair reading a clasp Bible by the light of a coal-oil lamp. He was dressed in clergy black and wore a cleric's collar.

“Well, ain't this the berries?” Jeb said. “A holy man. Tell you what, preacher: you can dog-ear that Bible all you want to, but it ain't worth one piece of juicy poon.”

The elderly preacher nervously pushed his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose. “Gentlemen, there's no need for those guns. This is a peaceful place.”

“Serve it on toast,” Lumpy growled. “We're lookin' for a woman—a blond-haired woman so beautiful, she could make a dead man come. Where is she?”

“Gentlemen, I truly do not know whom you speak of. I just arrived in town today and haven't even spent one night under this roof.”

Jeb shot a glance at Lumpy, who shook his head. Roughing up a preacher would be just as dangerous as hurting a woman. Lumpy holstered his gun and Jeb followed suit.

“All right,” Jeb said. “We ain't here to cause no trouble, preacher. The reason we had our guns out, see, we're lookin' for our sister, and she's being held by a bad hombre who's keeping her a sorta prisoner, you might say. Beats her and such.”

“My goodness,” the preacher replied. “I do hope you will use no violence if you locate her.”

“Never mind the sermon. Where's the old woman—Ma Kunkle? She might be able to help us.”

“I believe she's in the kitchen at the end of the hallway. But I hope you won't—”

“Don't worry. We're only here to find our sister.”

Libby Snyder opened her door just then to go visit one of the girls in another room. She literally bumped into one of the two unshaven, hard-bitten men as they passed by in the hallway. She started to duck back into her room, but he caught her by the upper arm.

“Say, now!” he exclaimed, eyes undressing the pretty brunette. “What's cookin', good-lookin'? Look what we got here, Lumpy. Lookit the puffy loaves on this little heifer. Ma Kunkle can wait a bit.”

They pushed her back inside the room.

“Where's Belle Star's room?” the hard case demanded.

“She doesn't live at this boardinghouse.”

Jeb gave her a vicious backhand. “Pitch it to hell, bitch! I asked you where Belle Star's room is, and by God you'd better tell me.”

Libby struggled to break free. “I told you she doesn't live here. Last I heard from Bob Skinner, she just up and quit her job and left town.”

“So that's how you're gonna play it, huh? Say, Lumpy, we can't tell if the wood is good just by looking at the paint.”

With a hard tug he ripped the bodice off her dress. His face twisted into a mask of lust as he stared at the woman's tits. “Oh, hey! We ain't even gonna charge you a stud fee, sugar britches. Kick that door shut, Lumpy. Me and you are gonna—”

The sound of the sudden gunshots seemed incredibly loud inside the room. The back of Jeb's skull exploded, and Lumpy had twisted halfway around when the preacher fired his second shot, the bullet punching into Lumpy's right eye. The preacher fired a third time, this shot blowing a hole into the thug's forehead. He landed atop his dead companion, his bootheels scratching the rose-pattern carpet a few times as his nervous system registered its last reaction.

Sitch McDougall stood rooted, his Remington giving off blue wisps of smoke as his heart stomped against his ribs. Then his knees suddenly turned to water, and he was forced to brace himself with one hand on the doorframe as a paralyzing numbness came over him.

He had never killed a man in his life, and here he had just killed two. The penny dreadfuls never mentioned the sudden stench of feces and urine when a dead man's bowels and bladder released in death, or the oddly metallic odor of copious amounts of fresh blood.

Libby, covered in some of that blood, rushed to his side. “Sit down, Mr. McDougall,” she ordered, leading him toward a chair.

He didn't hear her, staring at the lifeless bodies as she pulled him toward the chair. Three quick shots and he had canceled two lives. He had no regrets, but he realized he had just crossed an epic divide. Every time he looked in a mirror to shave from now until the end of his days, the eyes of a killer would be staring back at him.

“Sitch!” Libby said loudly, trying to snap him out of his daze. “You were wonderful! I'm proud of you.”

He nodded woodenly but said nothing. He remembered something Fargo had said to him in camp a few nights ago:
Every killing has to mean something to you, has to always bother you a little no matter how justified it is. That's the difference between a killer and a murderer. Taking any human life has to matter.

Ma Kunkle had been working in the kitchen when the two intruders entered her house. She had finished cooking a slab of beef and had packed it into a tall crock. She was just pouring hot lard over it to preserve it when the shots rang out.

She grabbed the Colt Dragoon lying on the counter and hustled down the hallway toward Libby Snyder's room, where gray-white powder smoke hazed the hallway outside the door.

She peeked cautiously around the door, and then a satisfied smile divided her careworn face. Skye Fargo and the sheriff had been right.

She took in Sitch McDougall's chalk white face. He still clutched the Bible in his left hand. “You didn't kill two men, son. Just two filthy hyenas who are already burning in hell. I'm awful glad you were here.”

Sitch finally found his voice. “They were men, all right, Mrs. Kunkle. But just like Fargo puts it: They required killing.”