Hangtown Hellcat (24 page)

When playing poker Fargo trusted everybody—but he always cut the cards.

With this ragtag group of desperados he took no chances. He stood outside the corral and paid off each man as he rode out. Directly above them, commanding an excellent line of fire, stood Buckshot, El Burro, and Norton, all grim-faced and armed with rifles.

“Fargo,” one of the snowbirds said as he pocketed his money and hit leather, “my name is Chilly Davis. I’m a no-’count son of a bitch and always will be. I prefer the outlaw life to bustin’ sod like my pap did. But I’ve never murdered a man in my life, and I deliberately shot wide when we was chasing you and your pard a week ago. Before I took a sudden freak to desert the army, I was in Colonel Helzer’s unit when you was chief of scouts at Fort Union. I ain’t the only ex-soldier among us who rates you mighty damn high.”

Fargo reached up to shake his hand when he extended it from the saddle.

“’Preciate that, Chilly. It’s live and let live with me until it becomes kill or be killed. I’m glad you men decided to ease out of this deal. If you insist on riding the owlhoot trail, then at least stop the damn kidnapping. Go after the railroads and mining operations and such, not the innocents who are just struggling to get by.”

Chilly pondered that and nodded. “Yeah. Little Britches is a mighty fine-looking woman, but her heart is cold as last night’s mashed potatoes. We was all sorta…I dunno, under her spell, you might say. You think maybe she’s learned a lesson out of all this?”

Fargo snorted. “I wouldn’t bet a plugged peso on it.”

Fargo’s next priority, after the last man had ridden out, was to retrieve the Ovaro and Buckshot’s grulla. He saddled an outlaw horse and headed for the draw, his stomach a knot of apprehension. It had been a day and a half since he had checked on the horses, too damn long to leave spirited stallions on a tether.

Even before he rode into the hidden draw, he heard the Ovaro whiffle in greeting. Fargo rode into view of the horses, then abruptly reined in.

“Well, I’ll be shot and shanghaied,” he muttered as he took in the scene.

Both horses were complacently grazing the last of the lush grass they could reach. Two dead gray wolves were drawing flies in the grass, their skulls caved in.

“Ain’t you two some pumpkins?” he praised as he swung down. The Ovaro bumped Fargo’s chest with his nose, glad to see him. Neither horse had a scratch on him. Those wolves, Fargo thought, should have looked elsewhere for their supper.

He fed each of them a little grain, deciding to water them after the short ride back. He tacked both mounts and put the grulla and the outlaw horse on a lead line, then swung up and over. The Ovaro, impatient to race the wind, fought the bit all the way.

When Fargo returned, El Burro and Norton were busy loading a buckboard Jenny had kept in the corral. Buckshot and Tim Landry, the young father who had just been rescued, had already tacked five horses for the trail and tied the rest on a line.

“Mr. Fargo,” Landry said with heartfelt feeling as Fargo lit down, “I ain’t got the words to tell you and Buckshot how beholden all of us are. Without you two we didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance. If that Jenny Lavoy was a man, I’d baste her bacon for what she done to us. She didn’t have any plans for returning us once ransoms were paid—I heard her men talking about it. She saw little Sarah suffering bad and didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“How is the little girl?” Fargo asked.

Landry perked up. “Why, she already looks better since she’s had some milk. She even giggled some this morning.
Pretty soon Katherine will get her strength back and be able to nurse the baby proper on ma’s milk.”

“I already rigged up a soft backboard for the baby,” Buckshot said. “We’ll go turnabout and carry her just like a papoose. Jasmine’s just finished making a little sun bonnet for her.”

“Where do you think the six of us should go?” Landry asked. “Fort Laramie?”

Fargo shook his head. “Nix on that. It’s too far to the east and you folks would be on your own. I got a better plan. It will delay your arrival in Oregon, but at least you’ll be headed west again. I want all six of you to join Ed Creighton’s work crew and stick with us to Fort Bridger in Utah. With the money Jenny paid you, you’ll be able to afford the stage fare from there. Mormon soldiers escort all the stage runs, so you’ll be well protected.”

“Say! That plan’s a humdinger, all right. But…will Mr. Creighton be willing to take six of us under his wing—and with a little baby and all?”

Fargo chuckled. “You needn’t fret being unwelcome. Half the men on his crew are young fathers with little tads of their own, and they
will
spoil that little girl.”

“They’ll all be happy as pigs in mud to have Jasmine around, too,” Buckshot added slyly.

Fargo grinned. “Yeah, might even catch her a husband. As for Big Ed, he’s a gruff old rooster at times, but the milk of human kindness flows in his veins, and he’ll insist you folks stay with them. He’ll prob’ly try to hire you on, though, Tim. You look like a sturdy fellow and he’s short on workers. The job ain’t so hard and the wages are fair.”

“Then I’m his man—I was a rail-splitter back in Iowa, and hard work is the street I live on.”

“Well, isn’t this a cozy little scene?” came a sarcastic voice from the doorway behind them.

Fargo turned around and felt his face drain cold—Jenny stood in the doorway with her over-and-under hideout gun aimed at him.

“Fargo, do you realize how much you’ve cost me? I can barely rub two nickels together, thanks to your forced settlement with the outlaws and these prisoners. Almost a year of
hard work and careful planning, all up in smoke, thanks to your sanctimonious meddling.”

“Why, you treacherous little hussy,” Buckshot said, anger spiking his voice.

Fargo, however, looked closely into those fetching brown eyes and spotted a mischievous twinkle. He laughed.

“Ease off the trigger, old bird dog,” he told Buckshot, who was on the verge of swinging Patsy up. “No need to get your pennies in a bunch—she’s just playing the larks with us.”

“Save your breath to cool your porridge, you damn fool! Playing the larks, huh? Is that why that shooter of hers is aimed right at your cod?”

“She’s not that stupid,” Fargo said even as Jenny grinned wickedly and dropped the weapon into a skirt pocket. “If she meant to burn us down, she’d have the Burro and Norton backing her play—and she’d use a gun with more than two bullets in it.”

“Yes, I just wanted to see Fargo squirm,” she admitted. “I hate to say it, but I’m grateful to you two trail bummers. My situation here was untenable, and you’ve saved my life if not my treasure.”

“‘Untenable.’” Buckshot spat the word out as if it had a nasty taste. “You and them damn thirty-five-cent words.”

“Decided where you three are going?” Fargo asked her.

“Yes, due south to Santa Fe. I hear there’s an abundance of rich men there with money to burn, so I’m going to help them burn it.”

Tim Landry had been biting his tongue. “Well, I for one hope Indians scalp and torture all three of you along the way. You are an evil woman.”

She glanced at him with little interest. “Yes, I certainly am,” she replied demurely. “That’s why I sleep between silk sheets while you huddle under horse blankets.”

“Never mind all that,” Fargo snapped. “Tim, I made a deal with her and I have to keep my word and let her go. Let’s get horsed and clear out of here before we
all
get an Indian haircut. I’d wager a war party is headed this way after that fire last night.”

“One moment, Mr. Fargo,” Jenny said. “Mr. Landry has
raised the subject of simmering resentments—you promised Burro that you were going to kill him for beating you while your hands were tied. Do you still mean that?”

Fargo glanced at the big mestizo. “Nah. I was a mite steamed at the time. You don’t kill a man for hitting you, I reckon. I’ll settle for this.”

Fargo bridged the gap in three quick paces and threw a hard right punch to El Burro’s face. A moment later, Fargo was hopping around in a little circle, clutching his right hand and cursing like a stable sergeant.

“Son of a
bitch
! Did I miss and hit the house?”

This display threw Buckshot into stitches. He laughed so hard he had to grab the buckboard to steady himself. “Fargo, you consarn idiot! The mighty Trailsman…why’n’t you piss into the wind while you’re at it?”

Fargo met the Burro’s unfathomable dark eyes. The man was completely unfazed by the punch. For the first and only time, he gave Fargo a little twitch of a grin.

“Jenny,” Fargo said, still embarrassed, “call the others out of the house. It’s time to raise dust.”

The men helped Jasmine, Katherine Landry, and Louise Fredericks, the middle-aged matron from Boston, into their saddles. But one important task remained.

“Buckshot,” he said, “let’s load those last eleven artillery shells into the buckboard. Then we’re gonna drag the gun outside and tie it to the tailgate.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Jenny demanded. “These horses have enough weight to—”

“Simmer down,” Fargo interrupted her. “They’re only gonna drag it to the head of the gulch.”

Fargo watched El Burro swing into a fancy silver-trimmed Mexican saddle. He admired the strong-looking claybank the Burro had selected.

“That was Butch McDade’s horse,” Jenny explained, seeing Fargo admire it. “And the blood bay Norton’s riding was Lupe Cruz’s. I only hope they aren’t as mean and nasty as their former masters.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll gentle them,” Fargo quipped before he and Buckshot went back into the house.

Twenty minutes later, after the horses had tanked up at
the corral trough, the Parrot rifle sat on a little rise about fifty yards back from the entrance to the gulch.

“What are you doing, Skye?” a curious Jasmine asked as Fargo loaded the first exploding shell.

“Making sure nobody else is tempted to set up a robbers’ roost here,” Fargo said. “I’m damned if I want to clean it out again.”

Fargo yanked the lanyard and continued loading and firing repeatedly, walking the shells down both sides of the mud wallow. He sent the gallows, the corral, the Temple of Morpheus, the Bucket of Blood and the stone guardhouse into oblivion in a series of crack-booming explosions. The resulting fires quickly spread through the tar-paper shacks and shebangs.

“Hookey Walker!” Buckshot exclaimed. “Lookit all the damn rats escaping!”

Fargo had saved two shells for the solid limestone structure at the far end of the gulch. No doubt it had served its purpose well as a secure winter quarters for fur traders many years ago, but as Jenny Lavoy had proved in spades, it was also an ideal bastion for criminals.

The first shell only damaged the place; the second brought it crumbling in on itself in a huffing cloud of dust and debris.

“Oh, my beautiful furnishings,” Jenny lamented.

“Your beautiful
stolen
furnishings,” Fargo corrected her.

“Yes, Pastor Fargo,” she replied, but with no venom in her tone this time, “my stolen furnishings. But I did save one item.”

Smiling conspiratorially at him, she pivoted on the seat and lifted one corner of an eiderdown quilt covering the loaded buckboard. Fargo felt his lips tugging into a grin.

Her specially constructed basket, complete with the system of pulleys.

“Next time you drift into Santa Fe,” she added, “please look me up. I very much enjoyed…hanging around you.”

Fargo’s grin stretched itself wider. “I just might, at that. I got nothing against working under a woman.”

“I just couldn’t leave it behind. In all your vast amorous experience,” she asked him, “can you honestly say you recall anything more…unique?”

Fargo expelled a long sigh. By rights he ought to hate this woman with a white-hot intensity. The suffering she had caused was beyond calculation, and even now she was blithely unrepentant.

But some hard-to-define quality about Jenny Lavoy, a vital essence beyond language, made it impossible for him to hate her. He disliked these moments of moral ambiguity, but after all, he had doubtless done more than any other man to resist and control her. If human sympathy had its limits, so, too, did his capacity for judging women as harshly as he did men.

“No, lady,” he finally replied, “I cannot. You are definitely an American original.”

Fargo took one last gander at the smoking, flaming ruins of a literal rat’s nest that had almost become the end of his last trail. Then he shook off his pensive mood and looked at Buckshot.

“All right, old son, let’s fork leather and point our bridles north.”

LOOKING FORWARD!

The following is the opening

section of the next novel in the exciting

Trailsman
series from Signet:

TRAILSMAN #380
TEXAS TORNADO