Hangtown Hellcat (22 page)

“How will we get it in her? We have no pap boat.”

“I have a gravy boat with a long spout,” Jenny said. “If you’re careful, that will work.”

Fargo looked at the small child’s pale, sickly face in the glow of the hallway candles. The young mother’s dirty face was drawn and lined deep with worry. Then he stared at Jenny.

“Ain’t you proud?” he said, his voice heavy with disgust. “You knew that little girl needed milk, her ma said so. Yet you never offered it.”

Her face hardened against him. “Go to hell, Pastor Fargo. I forgot it was there. I don’t rake through those supplies every day.”

Fargo turned away and looked at Buckshot. “Well, I didn’t get you killed that time out, old son. Let’s grab a couple cans of coal oil and see if I don’t have better luck this time. We got a brush fire to start, and the way that wind’s kicking up, it oughta be a humdinger.”

16

Despite recent rains the thick brush ringing the gulch was dry from the hot, parched summer months and made for excellent tinder. Fargo and Buckshot fashioned two crude torches by breaking a broom handle in half and tying rags to the ends.

“When we finish up splashing the brush,” Fargo said, “be sure to save a little coal oil to soak your rag. We’ll start at this end laying down the oil, then start at the other end lighting it. Even drunk as those shit-heels are by now, they’ll notice the flames quick enough. So we want to be moving toward the house, not away from it.”

The two men had hauled five-gallon cans of coal oil into the hallway and had just finished making the torches. Jasmine was feeding the freed prisoners in the kitchen. Earlier El Burro had successfully assembled the Parrot artillery rifle, and now it rested on its tripod near the front door, leaving just enough space in the hallway to squeeze around it.

“I been cogitatin’,” Buckshot said. “Why’n’t we splash that powder magazine while we’re at it, set it ablaze? The sooner the better—won’t be long and they’ll try to blow us to smithereens. Mebbe even tonight.”

“Yeah, I thought about that, too,” Fargo said. “But fire might take too long and give them time to save the powder.” His gaze shifted toward the Parrot. “I got a better idea for that magazine.”

“I still don’t understand,” Jenny cut in after listening to them, “why it’s worth the risk of getting shot to burn down the brush.”

“Because this is a gulch. We’re trapped in the back of a box without a lid,” Fargo replied.

“Back of a…? Do you mind speaking plainly instead of in Chinese riddles?”

“Pardon me all to hell,” Fargo said sarcastically. “God knows
you’re
a plain speaker, Miss ‘Unconventional Predilections.’”

“T’hell with that skirt,” Buckshot put in. “Ain’t none of her beeswax. This is men’s business we’re talking. Top of all that, she’s the hellcat what started all this.”

“Simmer down,” Fargo warned, seeing El Burro’s eyes start to snap sparks. “It’s too dead to skin now. Let’s just all get out of here in one piece.”

He added more patiently, “Jenny, you know how it is with these louts. Most of them are easy-go killers, but when it boils down to a hard fight they’re all gurgle and no guts. Taking down that excellent brush cover forces them into the open—forces them to fight or show yellow. I say they’ll show yellow.”

She thought it over. “Yes, I take your point. Well hidden in that brush they could prevent us from escaping the ‘box’ you mentioned. And it would make a siege more difficult for them because they have to get close to the edges to fire on us.”

“Which also makes it more likely that McDade’s toad-eaters will go puny on him. And less likely that you’ll decide to use this place again since it’s no longer hidden.”

“Well, you needn’t worry about that—I’ll be grateful to escape this place. But don’t be too certain,” Jenny cautioned, “that the men will be easy to scare off. You see, I have the lion’s share of the money…the swag, as Butch loves to call it. Nor are they eager to leave the safety of Hangtown. As squalid as it is, they prefer it to the dangerous, itinerant existence of outlaw fugitives on the run.”

“Yeah, well we’ll see about all that money you’re hoarding,” Fargo said.

Her eyes shot daggers at him. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

“Let’s stow the chin-wag,” Buckshot snapped. “Them scurvy-ridden sons-a-bitches could move on us any damn time now.”

“When the two men we just rescued finish eating,” Fargo
told Jenny as he grabbed a can of coal oil, “give them each a rifle. Cover both doors, and if anybody tries to bust through, make it hot for ’em.”

Fargo cautiously cracked the back door open and peered out into the moonlit night. Norton had finished digging a rifle pit, but it was empty.

“Norton,” he called out, “it’s Fargo. If you’re on the roof, come to the back edge. But stay low so’s you don’t skyline yourself.”

A moment later the guard’s face appeared.

“See any movement along the rim of the gulch?” Fargo asked.

Norton shook his head.

“All right. We’re gonna fire up the brush now. Climb on down and hand these cans up to us.”

Safely up on the western rim of the gulch, Buckshot took the southern flank, Fargo the northern. The Trailsman watched for sentries as he hurried along the rim dispensing the coal oil. As he approached the eastern end, above the gallows, he could see orange-glowing cigarettes marking at least three sentries around the corral.

Fargo soaked his torch and huddled low to block the wind as he struck a phosphor to life. The torch flamed up and he began hurrying back toward the house, touching off the dry brush as he moved. The strong gusts quickly fanned the flames. Moments later the opposite rim erupted in flames too.

“Christ, boys, lookit!” one of the sentries shouted. “The brush is going up!”

Fargo was perhaps halfway back to the house when the rataplan of pursuing hooves sounded behind him. The bright flames made him an easy target, and rifles and six-guns opened up behind him, crackling almost like the flames.

However, those same flames also brightly illuminated the outlaws. Fargo turned, dropped to a kneeling offhand position, and put the Henry through its well-oiled paces, working the lever rapidly and chucking a deadly hail of lead at men and horses.

The lead rider caught a bullet in his leg and made the foolish mistake of reining left, too close to the snapping flames. His horse immediately panicked and bucked the rider into
the midst of the burning brush. He screamed in agony and managed to crawl out, hair and clothing flaming in macabre outline against the night.

That sent the other riders retreating away from the flames, but by now men had poured out of the saloon tent below and opened up blindly toward the flaming rims on both sides. Fargo heard Buckshot’s big North & Savage booming as he, too, made for the house.

The men firing from the street below couldn’t see Fargo behind the wall of flames, but so many had opened up that a few rounds whiffed in dangerously close to him. He and Buckshot reached the rim behind the house almost simultaneously.

“Still sassy, Buckshot?”

“Sassy as the first man breathed on by God! We done stepped on the hornets’ nest now, Skye. Them pukes are bilin’ mad.”

“Good. Pissed-off men let their emotions force them into stupid mistakes. Anyhow, we’re about to make ’em a lot madder. Norton, don’t shoot! Fargo and Buckshot coming in.”

They scrambled down and Fargo gave the hail again at the door to avoid being cut down when they entered the house.

“Get to the front door,” Fargo told Buckshot. “When I tell you, fling it open and duck aside. We’re gonna take out that powder magazine before those drunken sots organize a plan. Jenny, Jasmine, stand by to snuff the hallway candles.”

Fargo pulled open the loading gate at the rear of the Parrot, seated a one-pound exploding shell, closed the gate and gripped the elevation knob.

“Douse those candles!” he ordered. “Then everybody clear the hallway. Buckshot, soon as the light goes out open that door and cover down. After I pop off this round, shut it again.”

The moment Buckshot shoved the door open Fargo manhandled the gun’s tripod to get the muzzle in line with the log structure serving as powder magazine. Then he cranked the elevation knob a few clicks to bring the gun on bead.

He jerked the chain lanyard, the artillery rifle rocked back in its greased slide, and an earsplitting boom shook the
house. An eyeblink later the entire gulch lit up like broad daylight when the powder magazine detonated in a second explosion, a blast so loud it left Fargo’s ears ringing.

Buckshot leaped to shut the door. “Tumbledown Dick! That’s holding and squeezing, Fargo. Say! Why stop with one little love bite? We got eleven more shells—let’s just blow the whole goldang shootin’ match sky high, rats, nest, and all.”

“Does your mother know you’re out? Those horses in the corral are already spooked from the rim fires—it’s risky enough firing the one shell. We’re going to need some of those horses to get these folks to safety. And to tell it straight—slaughtering men wholesale—even outlaws—don’t set well with me.”

“Huh! You can kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out for aught I care.”

Fargo shook his head. “That risks the horses, too. If we push these men too hard and drive them out in a panic all at one time, they’ll either take all the horses or scatter the ones they don’t take. Use your noodle, old son.”

“Yeah, all that shines. But you’re the one said we need to take the fight to ’em hard and fast so’s they can’t organize a good plan. We got to end it or mend it, and it’s way past mending. So what do we do now—stand around with our thumbs up our sitters?”

“Nope. First we’re gonna cut off the head of the snake and see if that ends it.”

“Jenny’s right as rain ’bout you and Chinee riddles. The hell you talking about?”

“Butch McDade, jughead—who else? Earlier today I promised him a throw-down, remember? And I’m a man likes to keep his promises.”

*   *   *

On the morning of the ninth day after the attack on Ed Creighton’s work crew, smoke hazed Hangtown as the ruins of the powder magazine still smoldered along with the hot ashes where the brush once concealed the gulch.

A half dozen men had quietly slipped out during the night, and Butch McDade realized the fever had reached its crisis. The men’s faith in his leadership was crumbling fast,
and he knew that if he didn’t act quickly and decisively, his cake was dough.

Soon after sunrise a man was sent to gather the remaining outlaws for a meeting in the Bucket of Blood. As the disgruntled and hungover outlaws filed in, McDade and Waldo Tate conferred at one end of the plank bar.

“Butch, this deal looks bad,” Waldo said quietly. “More of the men will dust their hocks today if we don’t kill Fargo and that half-breed.”

“Where you been grazing?” Butch snapped, tossing back a jolt of Indian burner. “That’s old news. Tell me something useful, you rat-faced twat.”

Butch stood with his hands balled on his hips, his breathing ragged, his shoulders hunched as if to ward off wind. “Fargo’s clover is deep, that’s all,” he said as if trying to convince himself.

“Clover? Butch, you said the same thing yesterday when he gutted Lupe. Luck’s not got thing one to do with it—he’s not just some got-up, nickel-novel hero like you’ve been claiming. Lupe ain’t all of it. Look at what he’s done already to Hangtown in just one night, and how Fargo and that half-breed siding him escaped from us the first day we spotted them. The man is all he’s cracked up to be.”

“Yeah? Sounds like you wanna kiss his ass. I’m telling you he’s shit! You notice how he’s avoiding a call-down with me after that bluff of his yesterday?”

“Maybe he is sane enough to avoid a call-down with you, but he’s still got the whip hand.”

But Butch wasn’t listening. “It’s that goddamn, double-crossing Little Britches, Waldo! She used her little cunny to hook Fargo. She’s got most of the legem pone, and she’s splitting our share with Fargo.”

“Butch, never mind Little—”

“Never mind a cat’s tail, you little ferret! Go smoke you another tar ball and get some more big ideas like that knife fight.”

Butch stewed some more and his face turned choleric with rage. “It’s the bitch, I’m telling you! Acts like she’s one of the Quality—oh,
her
shit don’t stink! Well, mister, she gave Butch McDade the rough side of her tongue one time too
many. I’m gonna let every swinging dick in this gulch bull her, and then I’m gonna feed her liver to the dogs.”