Six-Gun Gallows (7 page)

“It's too far north for me, Skye,” he finally replied. “But I got more bad news. When you was at Fort Leavenworth, do you 'member hearin' 'bout General Hoffman and that blowhard senator?”

Fargo nodded. Brigadier General Daniel Hoffman, and an escort of twelve crack soldiers, were to accompany Missouri Senator James Drummond on a fact-finding mission for the Kansas-Pacific Railroad's proposed transcontinental route. Drummond was a notorious “katydid booster,” adept at gaining federal money for projects out West.

“Well, the same jaspers spreadin' the lies about you claim the entire party has dropped off the earth,” Jules explained. “No mirror signals for a week now.”

“Let me guess,” Fargo put in. “I led an attack on them.”

Jules nodded. “Ain't it the drizzlin' shits? That's what some around here are sayin'.”

Fargo began to feel the first glimmers of enlightenment. “Why didn't I grab hold of that sooner? Jules, that proposed K-P route is just north of here.”

Old Jules nodded. “You got a better think piece than me, Skye. I still can't read the sign—can't even
find
it.”

“Me either, but I'll work this trail out. Jules, I see some of the butternuts around Sublette. I suspect some others are wearing regular clothes to disguise their motives. Are they camped near here?”

“Hell, they must me, but I can't tell you where. I steer wide of them sons of bitches.”

Just then Dub and Nate staggered out of the trading post loaded down with gunnysacks filled with supplies.

“Boys,” Fargo said, “haul that stuff back to your ma and Krissy.”

“You ain't coming?” Dub asked.

Fargo shook his head. “I got work to do around here, and I best do it quick. Besides, why should you two get the crappy end of the stick? I'm the one they're after. You boys should be safe riding home, but keep your guns to hand, and remember everything I taught you on the trail.”

“Hell, we was hoping to side you,” Nate said. “We like the crappy end of the stick.”

“You still feel that way after everything you've seen here?”

“More than ever,” Dub said. “Pa taught us it's better to die for a just cause than to live for nothing.”

Old Jules chuckled. “Hell, these tads is game, Skye. Swear 'em in.”

“And we proved to you that we can shoot,” Nate added.

“For a fact you can, and I admit I'll need help—I see that now. Come on back, but don't ride into the settlement. Pitch a cold camp along the creek east of Sublette. I'll find you.”

Dub flashed his gap-toothed grin. “Maybe ‘work' ain't all you got to do around here.” He handed Fargo a folded sheet of foolscap. “That pretty gal with the nice thing-a-ma-bobs asked me to give you this.”

Fargo unfolded it and frowned at the rough spelling. Haltingly, he read it out loud, “ ‘Meet me just after dark at the cottonwood grove north of the trading post.' ” It was signed, “Rosario.”

“Fargo, you always was one to be combin' pussy hair out of your teeth,” Old Jules roweled him. “Good-lookin' wimmin flock to you like flies to syrup, you fortune-kissed son of a bitch.”

But Fargo's frown deepened until there was a crease between his eyebrows. “All that glitters is not gold, Jules. This gal Rosario has got something on her mind besides a quick poke.”

Old Jules rode out of Sublette soon after the McCallister boys, and Fargo found himself alone in a rough and dangerous settlement—a place crawling with scurvy-ridden toughs eager to kill him.

Nonetheless, he had no plans to lie low. He had learned, from hard experience, to take trouble by the horns. If a man cringed in the shadows his enemies were emboldened. So he moved about the place freely and openly, letting no man stare him down.

Not everyone, he soon noticed, seemed hostile toward him. Several men greeted him cheerfully, and Fargo supposed they had either not heard the rumors about him or didn't know who he was. Or, perhaps even better, they set no store by the lies because they mistrusted the source. Who that mysterious source was had become the hard nub of Fargo's problem, but getting information out of the locals was proving harder than finding ducks in the desert.

At the east end of the rough settlement Fargo spotted an open-fronted shed with a shingle advertising haircuts, tooth extraction, and hot baths. Hobbling the Ovaro right out front in plain sight, he started inside.

“Need a tooth pulled, mister?” said a high-voiced man who was all of five feet tall. He was busy shooing off flies with a feather swisher. “Only two dollars, and I use laudanum.”

“Just a hot bath,” Fargo said, removing his hat and whipping the dust off it.

“Yessir. Cost you four bits, soap and towel included.”

While the diminutive man poured hot water into a wooden tub, Fargo pulled off his shirt.

“Land love us!” the proprietor exclaimed, staring at Fargo's muscle-ridged torso. “Those are bullet holes and knife scars, ain't they?”

“Mostly. That pretty purple one in the middle was made by a Cheyenne lance point.”

“I've given quite a few men scars myself,” the man boasted. “That's why I had to scratch ‘shaves' off my sign.”

Fargo laughed, eyes cutting out front to check on his horse.

“Say,” the man said in his near-feminine voice. “I know you! You're Mr. Skye Fargo. The hombre they call the Trailsman. I'm Dusty Jones.”

Fargo unbuckled his shell belt and draped it over the edge of the tub. “Pleased to meetcha, Dusty. I take it you've heard about my ‘massacre,' too?”

“That's a load of whale snot. Mr. Fargo, when you talk like a girl and stand knee-high to a burro, like I do, you ain't welcome among men. And when you ain't welcome, you think for yourself. No, I first heard of you five, six years ago. In a story in the
New York Herald
by a Miss—Miss—”

“McKenna,” Fargo supplied, his lips twitching into a smile as he remembered her. “Beautiful woman.”

“Sure, that's her name. This lady wrote a sockdologer of a story about how you saved her and a bunch of orphans out in the Dakota land. That lady called you a ‘knight in buckskins.' ”

Fargo looked embarrassed. “Yeah, well, she can really slather it on.”

“Maybe so, but a knight in buckskins don't attack defenseless people.”

Fargo finished stripping and eased into the hot water. “ 'Preciate that, Dusty. But tell me—who do you think got that massacre story started?”

“Likely one of the border ruffians, to put the blame off them. Except they like to be called ‘Butternut Guerrillas.' ”

“Yeah, and I prefer John the Baptist.” Fargo sudsed his hair and beard with strong lye soap. “Any idea who leads this local bunch?”

“Mr. Fargo, that gang is one pile of turds I try not to step into. There's one fellow with an eye patch, seems to swagger it around and give orders. Don't know his name. And there's some big bastard with long hair tied off in a knot—he seems to be some kind of topkick.”

The Ovaro snorted, and Fargo swiped soap from his eyes, drawing his Colt. But it was only a curious old hound, sniffing at the pinto.

“Any idea where they camp?” Fargo asked.

“No, sir, I'd sooner know the entrance to hell. But they stay somewhere close because they come and go freely.”

Fargo finished his bath, dried off with a scrap of rough towel, and dressed. The little man gave him a quick brushing with a whisk broom.

“Thanks, Dusty,” Fargo said, slipping him a silver dollar. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fargo. I won't part with this one—you touched it, so it must be lucky.”

“Lucky? If I was you,” Fargo advised as he headed out the front of the shed, “I'd spend the damn thing mighty quick.”

 

The afternoon sun was throwing long shadows, and Fargo had an unpleasant duty before keeping his tryst with the pretty mixed-breed Rosario—first came a visit to the Quaker camp.

He trotted the stallion next to the creek, making sure his Henry was loosened in its saddle scabbard. An ambush could come at any moment, and in his present mood he welcomed the possibility. He considered the border ruffians among the lowest trash on the frontier, and anytime they chose to open the ball, he was ready to waltz.

The Quaker women and children had camped at an elbow bend in the creek. As Fargo rode up, their mistrustful, fearful glances stabbed at his guts. Obviously they, too, had heard from Dame Rumor.

He found Esther Emmerick stirring a three-legged cooking pot over a campfire. The unwelcome glance she gave him persuaded Fargo to remain in the saddle.

“Mrs. Emmerick.” He touched the brim of his hat. “How you folks getting on?”

“We're surviving, Lord willing.”

“Have you made any plans yet?”

“If we have, Mr. Fargo, we certainly won't disclose them to thee.”

“I see. So your religion allows you to hate a man on the basis of a fake rumor?”

“I did not say I hate thee.”

“Mrs. Emmerick, look at me.”

Reluctantly, she did so.

“Do you honest-to-God believe that I led that raid?”

“The Friends do not take oaths on the Lord's name.”

“All right,” Fargo said, “do you really believe it?”

Esther studied him closely. “I see a gun on thy hip, another in thy saddle, and a knife in thy boot. Thou are a man who consorts with violence constantly.”

“Yes, ma'am, all true. But you're taking the long way around the barn. Do you believe I led that raid?”

This time her tired, suffering eyes studied only his face.

“No,” she finally replied, her face softening. “Thou are a tough, sometimes even hard, man who has surely killed many souls. But thou are no murderer—I see the decency and kindness in thine eyes.”

“Well, you're right that I'm no murderer. I'll settle for that. I know you folks set no store by vengeance, but I mean to get to the bottom of this.”

“As thou said, Mr. Fargo, the Friends are not vindictive. We will turn the other cheek.”

“Fine, but I won't. If murderers go unchecked, no one will be safe. There's no law out here yet, and soldiers are stretched way too thin.”

She shook her head. “Vigilantes are not the answer.”

“They are when there's no one else. You know, last I heard, the Old Testament was still part of the Bible. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Anyhow, let's not butt heads over it. Do you feel safe here?”

“The men around here are mostly riffraff,” she replied, “but they're leaving us in peace—for now. We have hired a guide and will be returning to Pennsylvania as soon as he has purchased supplies.”

Fargo nodded. “Good. This is no country for peaceful people—not yet, anyhow.”

“There we can agree, young man. But our men—or at least their bodies—will dwell on these lonely plains forever, their grave unmarked.”

Fargo knew better. That grave had been shallow, and by now predators and buzzards—or perhaps even roving Indians—had exposed, even mutilated, the bodies. They would end up above-ground as piles of bleached bones, the skulls turned into castles for worms and beetles. But he kept that grisly thought to himself and simply bade Esther farewell.

 

As Fargo rode back toward the trading post, the problem of his rendezvous with Rosario began niggling at him again.

Her purpose eluded him. He had always found the game of seduction easy, but rarely had a woman offered the favor of her body upon first glance at him—and without learning his name or at least exchanging a word of conversation.

From the beginning he had suspected a trap of some kind, one meant to send Skye Fargo to his ancestors. But how deeply involved was the girl? Why she would even be in a death trap like Sublette was a mystery. Was she a willing participant in this plot, or being strong-armed by the jayhawkers—as women out West often were?

“Orphans and bachelors preferred,” Fargo muttered grimly. “No Quakers need apply.”

He still had about an hour before the sun went down, and Fargo felt a stirring of hunger. He flagged down a street vendor and purchased a few roast beef sandwiches wrapped in cheesecloth. He ate one as he headed north from the trading post. The longhorn beef was tough as shoe leather and full of gristle, and the bread stale, but he choked it down with plenty of water.

In the gathering dusk he could see a big cottonwood grove about a half mile ahead, the one Rosario must have meant. He was still a little early, so Fargo reined in and stood up in the stirrups, searching all around him. He could spot no tails, nor any sign of the girl. Which must mean everyone was already waiting in the grove—the trap was set.

A bloodred sun blazed for a final moment in the west, then seemed to be swallowed by the endless blue-black plains. Fargo swung down and tethered the Ovaro in the lush graze. Then he untied the cantle straps and unrolled his blanket, wrapping it around his head.

He waited perhaps twenty minutes, letting his eyes adjust to total darkness. When he removed the blanket, his night vision was remarkably sharp—as he rode closer to the grove, he could make out separate limbs and see well back into the trees.

Fargo rode slowly around the grove, eyes slanted downward. In the silvery moonlight, he found signs of two riders. He knew they had been here recently because the crushed grass had barely begun to spring back up.

After a minute or two spent following the trail, Fargo came across two horses hobbled near a rill just past the grove. He moved the Ovaro into the concealment of the trees, then returned to the hobbled mounts.