Hangtown Hellcat (15 page)

Fargo lifted a shoulder, clamping his teeth around his first retort. He had to walk a fine line here because this woman had a potent mind. He needed to come off as reluctant but flexible.

“You don’t really plan to turn them loose, do you?”

“How can I? They know too much.”

“Well, I don’t care too much about the men, Miss Lavoy. But kidnapping and murdering women and children doesn’t set too well with me.”

“It’s not my first choice, Mr. Fargo, but they bring in the most money.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But kidnapping is too risky for the profit. If the crapsheets get into a boil over it, you could have a smart chance of trouble on your hands. There’s quicker, easier ways to make a lot more money without all the national outrage.”

“Such as…?”

“Well, like heisting mining company payrolls. There’s several big operations just south of here in the Front Range. They usually have a light guard, and the public doesn’t give a damn if the big bugs in silk toppers get robbed.”

She watched Fargo with keen interest. “I see. Have you ever robbed one?”

“No, but I’ve been sorely tempted.”

By now they had stepped into the smoky, stinking interior of the Bucket of Blood. Fargo realized most of the denizens of Hangtown were here, packed in like maggots in cheese—perhaps thirty men. They included Butch McDade
and Lupe Cruz, leaning against the plank bar while they exercised their livers.

“Well, now,” an obviously pleased McDade said, looking at the battered and swollen maps of the two prisoners. “This is more like it. Why’n’t you just have them two geldings of yours finish the job, Little Britches? Better yet, let Lupe here slit their entrails open.”

“They’re money in our pockets, Butch, so long as they’re alive.”

A big, florid-faced bully wearing a filthy shirt sewn from old feed sacks moved in closer, lips twisted in scorn as he studied Fargo. “So this here’s the big crusader, huh? The big man, brought down by a little chit of a girl no bigger’n a minute. Pull up your skirt, Nancy, and try to look brave.”

Laughter and jeers exploded throughout the tent.

“And glom this half-breed gazabo siding him,” the loudmouth taunted. “Why, they must be a couple of them gal-boys you hear tell of. Tell me, Fargo, which one pitches and which one catches?”

More laughter and hoots. “Give him a facer, Lem!” somebody shouted.

“Believe I’ll do just that,” Lem answered, doubling up a fist the size of a Virginia ham. “Nobody misses a slice off a cut loaf, huh? One more punch won’t matter none.”

“Burro,” Jenny said quietly, “you better—”

“Never mind,” Fargo cut in. “I’ll handle this one. Burro, Norton, just keep your eyes on Lupe and Butch—they might try to kill Jenny.”

Fargo’s real concern was for himself and Buckshot, but he knew the bodyguards didn’t give a tinker’s damn about either of them. The thug named Lem cocked back his arm and took a step closer to Fargo.

That was the move Fargo had been counting on. His muscle-corded right leg shot up as fast as an arrow leaving the bow. There was a solid thud of impact when the toe of his boot landed exactly on bead, smashing Lem’s family jewels.

Lem’s face drained of color as if he’d been leeched. He dropped to his knees, making sucking-drain noises, and clutched his crotch. But Fargo wasn’t about to let it go at that.
A homicidal rage had been seething beneath the surface since that earlier beating while his hands were tied. Besides, he had two crucial goals to accomplish: convincing these filthy jackals that the legend of Skye Fargo was in fact a real man to be feared; and convincing Jenny Lavoy that she should hitch her star to his wagon, not Butch McDade’s.

Fargo took two quick steps backward then shot forward, leaping off the floor and aiming a savage kick at Lem’s by now purple face. Fargo kicked
through
, not at, sending yellow stumps of broken teeth spraying like buckshot. He had the satisfaction of hearing the pig-man’s neck snap loudly as his head rocketed up and back, shattering the neck vertebrae.

The Bucket of Blood went as silent as a courtroom just before a verdict. The bullyboy flopped onto his back, twitched a few times like a gut-hooked fish, and gave up the ghost in a ghastly death rattle like pebbles caught in a sluice gate.

“What a sockdologer!” somebody said. “Why, Lem’s dead as a dried herring!”

“This bearded buckaroo is savage as a meat ax!” another man chimed in, his tone admiring.

There was no real camaraderie in this bunch, only a respect for raw power. Every man in the place stared at Fargo—even El Burro and Norton—visibly impressed. The closest man quickly hopped back out of range of Fargo’s lethal legs.

Fargo met Jenny’s bewitching brown eyes. Her nostrils flared, her breathing quickening as if she were sexually aroused.

“Well,” she said. “Well, well,
well
.”

11

The five of them picked their way back to Jenny’s house through the gumbo of mud, Jenny silent and contemplative. As they neared the western end of the gulch, she finally spoke up.

“That little demonstration in the saloon, Mr. Fargo, was impressive. But after all, there’s never been any doubt that you can be a ruthless killer. The pertinent question is—can you also be a cold-blooded murderer if conditions warrant?”

Again Fargo suspected he was being tested, and bending to her demands too quickly could spell doom for him and Buckshot.

“You act like murder can’t be avoided,” he replied. “I don’t see the need of it. Why cut off your arm at the elbow just to cure a hangnail?”

She whirled toward him. “Oh, why don’t you just say it, Pastor Fargo? ‘Money is the siren’s song that saps our wills!’”

His swollen lips twitched into a lopsided grin. “I doubt if a cyclone could sap your will.”

“Murder is just a means to an end. I just rub you the wrong way, don’t I? It’s all right for a man to figure percentages and angles, to murder, even, but not a woman.”

“I don’t mind the percentages and angles—nor the curves,” he added, his startling blue eyes raking over her. “I just don’t like low-down crimes like kidnapping and murder. ‘Means to an end’—get off your high horse, lady. You’re trying to turn shit into strawberries.”

Fargo had deliberately pushed her. The glint in her angry eyes was hard-edged and lethal. “You will remove that reproach or Burro shall remove your organs.”

“I apologize,” Fargo said. “All I’m saying is that there’s smarter and safer ways to get rich.”

For the moment, at least, she seemed mollified. “For the record, I have never personally ordered a murder—of any person worthy of life, that is. What my minions do is often beyond my control. I told you it’s difficult to find good help.”

Fargo and Buckshot avoided looking at each other this time, but both were thinking the same thing: that infant slowly dying in the gulch was in her direct control. And when all the prisoners were murdered, that would be her decision, too.

They returned to the house and Fargo’s and Buckshot’s hands were untied. They were allowed to wash the blood from their faces at the kitchen pump before they were again banished under guard to “Jenny’s jail” as Buckshot had taken to calling it.

“You been playing this deal smart, Fargo,” Buckshot said. “That pretty she-devil figures you’re circling the bait and close to taking the hook.”

Fargo was not as sanguine. “I’m not so sure, old son. She suspects we’re sailing under false colors. Even worse, I’m thinking that woman ain’t just criminal—she might be outright insane. She’s got the gold fever even worse than some of those forty-niners I saw in the Sierra.”

Buckshot rubbed his chin. “Yeah, mebbe you struck a lode there. Did you see that look in her eyes when you done for that cockroach in the saloon—most women woulda been all-overish uncomfortable seeing a sight like that. Mister,
that
gal took to it like all possessed. Might be she’s crazy as a loon.”

Fargo nodded. “Sometimes crazy people are smart as a steel trap. I found that out when I locked horns with Terrible Jack Slade in Virginia City on the Comstock. Buckshot, this little lass is trouble and nothing but. I’m doing my damnedest to make her think me and you might do to take along, but she’s a pretty powder keg that could go up on us at any second.”

Toward the middle of the afternoon Norton herded the two men into the kitchen for a tasty meal of bacon, fried potatoes, and Boston brown bread. When Jasmine reached for Fargo’s coffee cup to refill it, she dropped a small piece of folded paper under the edge of his plate. It was a bold
move, under the watchful eyes of El Burro and Norton, but Fargo managed to palm it without being seen.

Back in the room, keeping a careful eye on the arched doorway, Fargo unfolded it and read it to Buckshot in a whisper, “Guns under Jenny’s bed, last room on right as you face gulch.”

Fargo popped the note into his mouth and chewed and swallowed it. “That’s good to know,” he said after he forced the nasty lump down. “But we can’t get to the damn things without being shot to rag tatters.”

Fargo fell silent for a long time, his mind turning their present fix over and over to study all of its facets.

“I might have an idea,” he finally told Buckshot. “It’s thin, but it’s all I can think of. We really do need to tend to our horses, right?”

“If we still
got
horses.”

Fargo explained the plan to Buckshot, who looked dubious but nodded slowly when Fargo had finished.

“Mebbe it could work,” he said. “But if it don’t, me and you might end up singing the high notes, if you take my drift?”

“I take it, old campaigner. But if it does work, we might kill two birds with one stone. I druther roll the dice on a slim chance than sit around on my duff waiting for her to decide if I live or die.”

*   *   *

Fargo made sure his hat was in his hand when he entered the parlor, flanked by the ever-vigilant El Burro and Norton. Jenny sat on the red plush sofa, leafing through a book with colorful illustrations.

“Jasmine tells me you wish to speak with me,” Jenny greeted him, adding an enigmatic smile. “Please have a seat, Mr. Fargo.”

Fargo dropped into a comfortable chair and balanced his hat on one thigh. “Yes, ma’am. It’s about our horses—Buckshot’s and mine, I mean.”

“Yes, I wondered about that. Over the years I’ve read various things about this remarkable…black stallion, is it?”

“Actually, a black-and-white Ovaro stallion.”

“I realize that newspaper writers have a penchant for
‘coloring up’ the facts, but they make him sound like a winged Pegasus. I understand you’re quite fond of him.”

“I’m not sure what a winged Pegasus is,” Fargo admitted. “As for fond—well, he’s just a horse, after all. But a damn good horse. The fastest I’ve ever seen, and the endurance of a doorknob. There’s no end to his bottom.”

“Endurance, is it?” She sent him a sly smile. “According to Jasmine, that description fits you. At any rate, where is this horse?”

“Well, you can probably understand why I didn’t leave him too near the gulch. He’s hidden about a mile away along with Buckshot’s grulla—that’s a smoky bluish-gray horse and a stallion like mine. We left what water we could but horses are big drinkers. And we brought grain with us, but horses won’t eat grain off the ground—by now they’ve prob’ly cropped off most of the grass they can reach.”

“I see. And, of course, you can’t bring them into Hangtown, so obviously you want my permission to go feed and water them.”

Fargo nodded. “I know it might sound like I’m trying to pull a fast one, but those horses are on loose tethers, and being stallions and all, they just might light out.”

She studied him for a full minute, her Mona Lisa smile making his scalp sweat. This serenity was more unnerving—he preferred it when she was all horns and rattles.

“Your request makes sense,” she finally said. “And you must realize that only one of you can go. If that one decides to flee, the other will be killed.”

Fargo nodded. “I assume that.”

“As well you should. I don’t really fear an escape under those terms. Whatever moral ambiguities either of you harbor, leaving a good friend to die is not an option, is it?”

Fargo shook his head. “If you have two pails, that’s enough water to hold them for a while longer. And I can grain them from my hat and move them to a new patch of graze.”