Bayou Trackdown (20 page)

“Mr. Fargo?” she asked again.

Fargo opened his mouth to reply, but as he got a better look at her, he was struck dumb by this sensuous vision. The Trailsman was no novice when it came to rating woman flesh, and he figured this one was at the top of the heap—far as her looks, anyway. Horn combs held her long, russet hair neatly in place, and her figure showed to curving perfection in a pinch-waisted gown of emerald green silk and lace.

“Mr. Skye Fargo?” she repeated, stopping beside the Ovaro and shading her eyes with one hand to look up at him.

In the seductive style of Santa Fe women, kohl had been artfully applied to lengthen her eyebrows, shade the lids, and extend the outer corners of the eyes. Fargo felt sudden loin warmth and was forced to discreetly shift in the saddle. He was rarely woman starved, but he often got plenty hungry.

“Excuse my bad parlor manners, miss,” Fargo hastened to say, tipping his hat. “Yes, I’m Skye Fargo. May I ask how you know me?”

“Mr. Fargo, you’re too modest. Any Western school child can tell you about the fearless Trailsman.”

Fargo grinned, strong white teeth flashing through his beard. “School child? Well, if that includes you, maybe I’ll get an education, Miss . . . ?”

“Oh, forgive me. I’m Amy Hanchon. My father, he . . .”

She faltered and Fargo waited patiently. The bell of San Antonio sounded the hour, three p.m. Wagon teams constantly brought in loads of merchant stock, and now a dozen or so wagons were parked in the plaza as the teamsters slept. Fargo spotted at least one vigilante in the shadow of the east plaza, watching him with eyes fatal as a snake.

“My father,” she soldiered on bravely, knuckling away a sudden tear, “is Daniel Hanchon. Reverend Daniel Hanchon. He is . . . was also a silver miner with political aspirations. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Mr. Fargo, would you consider working for me?”

Fargo reluctantly pried his eyes away from the creamy white swells of her bosoms, thrust high by tight stays.

“First of all, Amy, I’m curious. Even if you have heard some backcountry lore about me, how could you recognize me riding past your house? I don’t pose for portraits.”

“Because of the
Tucson Intelligencer
, our newspaper. You see, I tried to place a notice for the services of hired guns. The editor was sympathetic, but he was afraid to do it.”

Her pretty face tightened with bitterness. “He’s afraid of Henry Lutz and that despicable goon of his, Crawley Lake. Every ‘man’ in this region spits when Lutz says to hawk.”

Fargo slanted a glance toward the vigilante in the shadows. He was looking north toward the huge church. Fargo felt a warning tingle in his scalp. Very soon he would regret not heeding it.

“Henry Lutz,” he repeated. “Would that be Bearcat Lutz?”

“Yes! You know him?”

Fargo shook his head. “Know of him, is all. I hear he’s the self-appointed head of the Tucson Committee for Public Safety. Anyhow, you were saying the newspaper editor was scared?”

“Yes, because I’m daring to defy Lutz. But the editor heard you were headed to Tucson to take a job with the Butterfield Overland. He said every newspaperman west of the Mississippi has heard of you.”

“Yeah, I’ve been blessed all to hell,” Fargo said from a deadpan. “But you’re taking the long way around the barn, Amy. What’s your dicker with Lutz?”

“He’s my father’s chief business rival. They are also bitter political rivals, each with a faction supporting them for Territorial Governor. Lutz is a cold-blooded murderer, but my father is the local Methodist minister, and even Lutz is afraid to openly murder a man of God. So he used his ‘authority’ as head of the vigilantes and arrested my father on a trumped-up charge of rape. He even paid a young Mexican girl, his own whore—I mean, mistress—to testify at the so-called miners’ court.”

“You’re sure there’s no truth to the charge?”

Red spots of anger leaped into her cheeks. “It’s pure buncombe!”

“It’s rough business, falling into the hands of stranglers,” Fargo allowed, using the common southwest word for vigilantes. “But you need law, not me.”

She placed her hands lightly on her hips. “What law? I doubt you know the half about Henry Lutz. Don’t think my father is sitting in jail, Mr. Fargo. Lutz and his lick-spittles are arresting almost any man who drifts into Tucson, accusing them of peddling whiskey to the Apaches.”

“That’s an easy pitch right now,” Fargo said. “Apaches have wiped out every white settlement except this one.”

“Exactly. The prisoners spend their nights in Lutz’s private prison, but from dawn until late night they work in his silver mine.”

She pointed to a blue-gray line of foothills about two miles north of town. “The prison is conveniently close to the mine. So long as a man can do the donkey work, he stays alive. When he finally breaks, he’s sentenced and executed. Locals are starting to call Tucson ‘Hangtown.’ My father is a strong man, but he’s no longer young.”

“I take it you want me to break him out?”

“Oh,
yes
! If he can be taken east where there’s law, Lutz can’t touch him. Will you do it, Mr. Fargo? Please . . . Skye?”

Fargo cursed silently. He’d rather buy ready-to-wear boots than lock horns with a criminal army. Besides, there was a contract with his name on it waiting at the Butterfield Overland office, a job that would mostly keep him away from the rattle and hullabaloo of cities.

“Lady,” he finally said, “looks to me like Bearcat has the whip hand while you’re trying to kick the dirt out from under your own feet. There’s still soldiers at Camp Grant.”

“Yes, but many are being called back east. And my father swears the commander is on Lutz’s payroll.”

“Even so, the plan you’re backing just gives stranglers all the ammo they need to make more arrests. These hemp-committee types are gutter filth, and they
will
hang a woman—after they’ve had their use of her.”

“That will surely happen,” she warned, “if you just ride away like it’s none of your business. You’re the Trailsman, a supposedly brave man who takes on lost causes and wins. They say you can sniff out a rat in a pile of garbage.”

“Well, ‘they’ make me out all wrong. I’m not the law, and I don’t go sniffing for rats—I prefer to avoid them. This Lutz sounds like a hard twist, all right, but you’ll need a badge toter to help you. Right now I plan to exercise my liver.”

Fargo tipped his hat and took up the slack in the reins. But before he could thump the Ovaro forward, Amy laughed bitterly.

“Oh, I see. Another sawdust Casanova,” she dismissed him. “It’s all lies about your courage. Devilment is all you men seek.”

Fargo grinned wide. “And I s’pose you’re purer than Caesar’s wife?”

“You’ve probably had her, too.” Amy stamped her foot in anger. “Perverse, arrogant, and uncouth,” she summed him up. A moment later, watching him, she added, “If your stupid grin grows any wider, you’ll rip your cheeks.”

“Tell you the straight, that acid tongue doesn’t help your disposition any,” Fargo retorted. “Why don’t we—”

Just then the Ovaro nickered, sidestepping nervously. Fargo swallowed his sentence without finishing it, remembering the vigilante across the plaza. Fargo spotted him just as a rifle somewhere above the plaza spoke its piece, the sound whip-cracking through the lazy air.

He felt the wind-rip when a lethally close bullet snapped past his face and chewed into the baked mud of the plaza, only inches from a shocked Amy. Fargo saw her leap like a butt-shot dog, then foolishly freeze in place instead of seeking cover.

The shooter opened up in earnest, a hammering racket of gunfire. Fargo hated to do it, but rounds were peppering them nineteen-to-the-dozen, and his experienced eye told him it was Amy the shooter was after, not him—yet, fear froze her in place like a pillar of salt. So Fargo, hunched low in the saddle, planted his left boot on her chest and gave a mighty shove.

The thrust catapulted her backwards and out of immediate danger, but now the hidden shooter opened up with a vengeance on Fargo. A round whacked into his saddle, another tugged his hat off. By now, however, Fargo had followed the bullets back to their source—the bell tower of San Antonio church.

It was a job best suited for the Henry, but fractional seconds counted now, and Fargo knew his belt gun would be faster. Quicker than eyesight, he filled his hand with blue steel. Just then, up in the bell tower, he spotted the familiar glint of sunlight on skin. The Colt leaped three times in his hand. His last shot made the bell ring.

At first, when all fell silent, Fargo figured the would-be murderer had fled. Abruptly, a straw-haired man with a chiseled face and shoulders broad as a yoke appeared in the opening of the tower for a moment. Fargo thumb-cocked his Colt, ready to put sunlight through him. Before he could fire, the man suddenly plummeted to the plaza like a sack of dirt, impaling himself on the iron spikes of the church fence.

“Gone to hunt the white buffalo,” Fargo muttered, leathering his six-gun. A second later a woman’s shrill, piercing scream startled the yapping dogs silent.