Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (2 page)

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 hayfields 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 draghanged 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 ‘secondhand' 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.”

Fargo shrugged helplessly. “All I can tell you, ma'am, is that I'm innocent. Shouldn't we at least go talk to your daughter before you shoot me?”

She considered this for a few moments, and Fargo thought she was wavering. Then her face set itself hard and she shook her head no.

Her finger slipped inside the trigger guard and curled around the trigger. “No,” she said, her voice implacable. “I'm going to kill you now before I go weak-kneed.”

Fargo had not been fooled by Old Billy's remarks egging Dorothy on to kill the Trailsman. He had sided the veteran Indian fighter long enough to know how his mind worked. Those remarks were intended to make her think Old Billy would be the last man to try saving Fargo. In fact, he was the first.

Even as the distraught woman weighed the decision to pull the trigger, Old Billy slid the bolos from his sash unseen. Made of two small lead balls with a short stretch of rope melted into the lead to connect them, bolos were excellent for silently dropping men or animals.

Billy's arm shot out swift as a snake's tongue, and the bolos wrapped hard around Dorothy's ankles, upending her like a ninepin. The fowling piece went off straight up in the air, blowing a hole in the thatch roof. Fargo rocketed out of his chair and caught the woman in both arms before she hit the rammed-earth floor.

He kicked the gun away and started to help her to her feet. She surprised him by breaking into hard, wracking sobs, clinging tight to him. Fargo knew she had hit her breaking point. The recent loss of her husband, this vicious attack on her daughter, and now the two of them alone in a hard, unforgiving land—even a strong man could break in this pitiless country of sterile mountains and jagged canyons and endless purple sage, not to mention some of the most warlike Indians in America.

Nonetheless, Fargo still had a man's animal nature, and this woman was still young enough to feel mighty good through her thin calico dress. He realized she was absolutely buck naked under it, her pliant nipples prodding into his chest as she sobbed. His right hand cupped her hip and he felt the deep-sweeping curve. It had been a while for Fargo, and he was forced to discreetly shift his position on the floor to accommodate his arousal.

Finally she pulled away and stared into Fargo's lake blue eyes.

“It wasn't you,” she said, sniffing. “It couldn't have been. As impossible as it seems, it wasn't you.”

“I'm glad you've come round to the truth,” Fargo told her. “But if it wasn't for Old Billy, I'd be deader than a Paiute grave. And you might have killed Lonny Brubaker, too.”

“Hell, that's his fault,” Old Billy put in. “Damn fool acting like Lancelot.”

Fargo helped the still-shaking woman to her feet. She looked at Doc Atkins. “Are you going to turn me over to the Mormon constable?”

“Why bother? You won't find any place in the West that will jug a woman for anything. You just settle your nerves, Dot. You've had a lot heaped on you.”

“Hell,” said Billy, who had the anti-Mormon complex, “just send her to Old Brigham in Salt Lake City. That randy old goat has filled two houses with his wives. Might as well add one that ain't ugly as a mud fence.”

Atkins narrowed his eyes. “That kind of talk on Mormon soil will get you a taste of the cowhide.”

He shifted his gaze to Dorothy. “What about Ginny's wounds? Were they treated?”

She swiped at her eyes and nodded. “I took care of them. I was a nurse back in Arkansas.”

Sy Munro pushed to his feet. “Dot, I think we need to talk with Ginny, don't you? Fargo didn't commit this outrage, so we need to find out who did.”

The woman nodded. “But do all of you need to come? After what she's been through, she doesn't need a passel of men staring at her.”

“Makes sense,” Sy agreed. “How 'bout just Fargo and Doc Atkins? Fargo should go so she can get a close-up look at him.”

“Send Lancelot, too,” Old Billy tossed in, inclining his head toward Lonny Brubaker. “Maybe he can heal her with a kiss.”

The three of them headed outside into the hot glare of early-afternoon sunshine. Fort Bridger, located in the extreme northeastern corner of the Utah Territory, was an outpost of Salt Lake City, a stage-relay station, and an important rescue station for Mormons and gentiles alike. Despite its pike-log fence and guard towers, it was not a military fort except for a small detachment of soldiers from the battle-tested Mormon Battalion, first formed in 1846 as volunteers for the bloody war with Mexico.

“My tent is over behind the feed stables,” Dot told the men. “It ain't much to look at.”

Not much around here was, Fargo thought, even as a harsh gust of wind blew in from the surrounding alkali plain and brought stinging sand with it. The Mormon side of the compound looked a bit more settled, with some plank dwellings and livestock. But the area reserved for gentiles looked more transitory: a motley sprawl of tents, clapboard shebangs, and crude lean-tos made from wagon canvas. A group of men were pitching horseshoes, arm-wrestling, placing small bets on footraces—anything to alleviate the boredom of a desolate way station.

Dot watched Fargo take all of it in as they walked, leaning forward against the wind. “It's a mite dreary, ain't it?”

“Matter of perspective, ma'am. I could show you a buffalo camp called Hog's Breath, back in central Kansas, that makes this place look like St. Louis.”

“I do admire the mountains,” she added. “They rise up forever.”

She meant the rugged Wasatch Range that ran north and south of Fort Bridger. Fargo admired them, too, despite their steep, sterile slopes. Their granite spires wore wispy capes of cloud.

Dot stopped in front of a worn tent that had been patched with leather flaps and sinew. “I best go in first,” she told the two men. “Ginny's liable to throw a conniption fit if I just barge in there with Mr. Fargo.”

She stepped inside and the Doc looked at Fargo. “Hell of a thing, Skye. I'll have to report this, you know. Too many women and girls here.”

Fargo nodded. “No way around it.”

“But I'd rather not do it while you're still here. A lot of the Mormons don't know you, and you know how it is when a woman's been outraged—even a gentile. Weren't you and Billy planning on riding out toward Echo Springs in the morning?”

Again Fargo nodded.

“Pathfinding for the Pony?” Atkins used the popular name for the highly sensationalized Pony Express, the latest publicity gimmick of the cash-starved freighting empire of Russell, Majors & Waddell.

Fargo heard a young woman's voice rising in protest from within the darkness of the tent.

“Not actual pathfinding,” he told Doc Atkins. “The route has already been laid out. Me and Billy are scouting out locations for the line stations they'll need all along the route. They'll soon have to be built and peopled up if this overlandmail route is to kick off next year.”

Atkins shook his head. “Five dollars a letter—hell and damnation! Nobody has that kind of money but prospectors. Anyway, any chance you and Billy might dust your hocks out of here before tomorrow?”

“Good chance,” Fargo said, seeing which way the wind set. “First I want to talk with this girl. Something ain't quite jake here.”

“It's a poser, all right.”

“Gentlemen,” came Dot's voice, “come on in.”

Fargo had to pause just inside the fly of the tent to let his eyes adjust from the harsh glare outside. Dot lighted a coal-oil lantern and hung it from a hook on the center pole. The tent was crowded with bundles and carpetbags and overflowing crates. Fargo's gaze landed on a striking young woman lying on a blanket roll, staring at him fearfully. Her honey blond hair was fanned out around her head on the blankets.

“Hello, Ginny,” Doc Atkins said in a kind voice. “How are you feeling?”

She didn't answer, still staring at Fargo.

“Honey, this is Mr. Skye Fargo,” her mother said.

“I know who he is,” Ginny replied in a sullen voice. “I . . . met him earlier today.”

“Ginny,” Fargo assured her, “I've never seen you in my life.”

“Ain't
you
a bald-faced liar! Look what you done to me.”