Nevada Vipers' Nest (10 page)

“Yeah, that shines,” Romer said. “But we got no proof she's got a map, or even that Clement Hightower ever made one. He said he knew where the vein is, but he never claimed to have no map.”

“We got no proof your mother doesn't fuck Indians, either,” Scully snapped. “But do you figure she does? Boys, I was up on the Comstock when Clancy Munro showed me a clipping from an old newspaper, and it said Hightower did map out where that vein is. We tossed that wagon and every damn one of the bodies, and there was no map.”

“There's a map,” Leroy agreed. “And now Fargo knows we're looking for a woman on account we asked him about her. If he's half as smart as he seems to be, he'll track down that skirt and them two will parley. Hell, he could be in cahoots with her now.”

“Sure as sun in the morning,” Iron Mike agreed. “Which means he might get that map eventually. And you was stupid enough to yell out my name during the attack. If that bitch heard it, that's all Fargo will need to settle our hash. We got to find her and get that map, but unless we point Fargo's toes to the sky first, it won't be of no use to us when we're feeding worms.”

The bottle made its way back around to Scully, who again took it down by a couple of inches. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then loosed another string of curses.

“You know, boys, I'm starting to regret that we didn't go along with the original agreement 'steada killing that family. But that damn profit-sharing agreement he was gonna make us sign gave half the profits to him. I figured, hell, why not just get the map, scare these other stupid rubes outta the valley, and then us three could sell the whole kit and caboodle to one of them big, wha'd'ya call it, consortiums. But it looks like I opened a can of worms.”

At the next campfire, voices rose in argument.

“Hear that?” Scully said. “More of them dirt pushers fighting about whether or not to pull out. At least that part of the plan is panning out. Won't be long now and there won't be enough left to keep this mining operation going. Then us three will be sitting in the catbird seat.”

Romer chuckled. “This next little show I got planned will cap the climax. Half of 'em that's left are so scairt now they won't go into the woods alone after dark to take a shit.”

“You're doing a good job on that,” Scully allowed. “But Skye Fargo ain't the type to be scared off by haints. So we best figure out how to kill that bastard, and quick.”

Fargo and Sitch McDougall rolled out of their blankets at sunrise before Carson City came to life for the day.

“Tack that sorrel and hop your horse,” Fargo ordered. “We're riding out to take a squint around.”

“A squint around where?” Sitch demanded, alarm spiking his voice. “Not back to that damn mining camp?”

“Not quite
to
it, no. Those queer lights the night before, and that damned hellacious scream last night, came from the same area. I want to take a look around.”

“But how could you possibly pinpoint them? Lights and sound bounce around all over the place.”

“Did I use the word ‘pinpoint,' chowderhead? I make mind maps of every area I spend time in,” Fargo explained after warming the bit so the Ovaro would take it without rebelling. “I got a good general idea where to look. If you really want to survive on the frontier like you claim, you'd best get chummy with geography. Memorize landmarks and terrain features, and try to map out things in your head like escape routes and ambush points.”

“It all makes sense, Fargo, but how does a man learn all that?”

“Not in college,” Fargo assured him. “You learn quick or you die quick. And even if you learn all of it, death is always as real as a man riding beside you.”

“So why do you take the risk? A clever fellow like you could get on fine back in the States.”

“Maybe because I don't cotton to the idea of paying taxes on the meat I eat.”

“I don't either, but I just cheat the tax man.”

“Just sew up your lips and get horsed.”

“All right, but what about breakfast?”

Fargo cinched the girth and inspected the latigos. “We'll eat in town when we get back.”

The two men rode out bearing northwest, patches of jack pine and juniper to their left, the already glaring alkali flats on their right. Desert nights were chilly in autumn, but the day had already heated up until the brittle air seemed to radiate from a giant furnace. Even this early, heat shimmers had begun to distort their view of the desert horizon. Closer to hand, Fargo watched a yellow-gray coyote slink off through a dry wash.

“Shouldn't we ride in the tree cover?” Sitch inquired at one point.

“That's usually the best idea, yeah. But right now I want to see what kind of prints I might find around here. Besides, those drunken sots at Rough and Ready roll out late with a hangover. The only thing we need to fret is red aborigines.”

Ten minutes later they rode upon a large scattering of dung. Fargo reined in.

“All right, Daniel Boone,” he said, “read the ground around here and tell me what you see.”

“Well, plenty of horseshit. And I can see that the hoofprints weren't made by shod horses.”

“All right, but that leaves you two possibilities. It's a herd of wild mustangs or a bunch of Indians. How do you tell which?”

Sitch shook his head. “Flip a coin, I guess.”

“All your coins got two heads on them,” Fargo barbed. “If all this dung was in a large pile that would mean a herd of wild mustangs because they always stop as a group to relieve themselves. These riders are Indians because they keep their mounts on the move while they crap, and you can see the droppings are scattered in a line.”

“Say, that's good to know.” Sitch sent a nervous glance around them. “Are these fresh prints?”

“Nope. If you look close you'll see how the edges have crumbled and sand has started to blow into them. You can also tell that they were running their horses—the prints will be between seven and ten feet apart, and these are at least nine. They were in a hurry to get someplace.”

“Likely to slaughter white men. I've heard the Paiutes in this territory are bloodthirsty savages.”

“Yeah,” Fargo shot back, “unlike the white curs who slaughtered those women and kids, huh?”

“We don't know for sure it was the red sashes who did that.”

“Did I say
which
white curs? It wasn't bronze john who filled them folks full of big-caliber rounds. Besides, the only tribes I know of that will kill kids that small are the Apaches and Comanches—most Indians take little kids into the tribe and raise them as Indians.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you're an Indian lover,” Sitch remarked as the two men gigged their horses into motion again.

“Sure I am. I've ‘loved' more Indians into their graves than you're likely to ever see. But you can lay a lot of the trouble with Paiutes at the feet of these white whiskey peddlers. That Indian burner they supply them ain't just cheap whiskey—it's usually laced with strychnine and makes a man crazy wild, not just drunk. I took a jolt of it once and started shooting at the moon.”

Fargo led them into the scattered tree cover now as they edged closer to the camp. They slowed their horses to a walk, and the only sound was the dusty twang of grasshoppers and the eerie singsong of cicadas.

“We're close now to where those lights and that scream came from,” he muttered to Sitch. “Hush down and keep a sharp eye out.”

Fargo rode in slow circles, narrowing the circumference with each revolution. After about twenty minutes:

“Here's medicine,” he announced with satisfaction, swinging down and tossing the reins forward.

They had discovered a small clearing, about thirty feet across, packed down with the prints of iron-shod horses and men wearing boots. Whiskey bottles and cigarette butts littered the area. Most curious, to Fargo, was the deep, narrow fire pit that had been dug in the center of the clearing—far deeper than needed to merely suppress the glow of flames. Fargo beat the bushes for a few minutes.

“Here's your ‘otherworld' scream,” he said. He pulled out a wooden megaphone of the type sometimes used by auctioneers and politicians giving stump speeches to large crowds.

“That definitely explains why it was so loud and traveled so far,” Sitch said. “But the man who did the screaming had some gruesome talent.”

“It was a variation of the Texas yell,” Fargo said.

“The who?”

“The Texas yell. Texans came up with it for fighting Mexican soldiers, and later the Texas Rangers had a version of it they used to unnerve Comanches and Kiowas when they were closing in on them. I didn't place it at first, but that's what it was.”

“Still doesn't explain those strange lights,” Sitch pointed out.

“Nope. But if this scream was made by men working a scam, the lights were too. Hold on—here's something else.”

Fargo rummaged into a pile of dead leaves and pulled out an accordion-folded bellows of the type used by blacksmiths to stoke a fire hotter.

“The hell?” Sitch said.

Fargo mulled these discoveries for a minute, glancing at the fire pit. “It's got something to do with that fire pit and whatever's causing those floating lights.”

“What about corpses drained white of their blood?”

“If you pierce a man's jugular,” Fargo said, “without killing him first, the heart will pump out enough blood before he dies to make it look like he was sucked dry of blood.”

“Scully and his bunch?”

“I'd bet my horse on it,” Fargo said. “But right now we can't prove it. That doesn't bother me half as much as trying to figure out the why of it.”

Fargo hid the megaphone and bellows back where he'd found them.

“Why are you leaving them here?” Sitch demanded. “Shouldn't we at least destroy them?”

“Use your noodle, jughead. Look, we have to pick cotton before we can make cloth. If we take this stuff, or wreck it, these sage rats will move to another spot. And we want witnesses to see this stuff. First, though, I'm coming back here after dark to spy on them while they make those lights. I got a hunch how they might be doing it.”

Fargo gazed around the area for perhaps another thirty seconds, his brow wrinkled in concentration. Then he took up the reins and forked leather. He tugged rein and started down their backtrail.

“Proving who did it, and why, will have to wait for now,” he told Sitch. “First we ride back to Carson City and get outside of some hot grub. And then I'm going to annoy the hell out of a very pretty lady.”

•   •   •

The two men left their horses at Peatross's feed stable and then grabbed a quick meal of eggs and side meat. While Sitch roamed the town looking for any more incriminating broadsheets, Fargo headed toward the Sawdust Corner.

The moment he slapped open the batwings, he felt hostile eyes on him. He had covered half the distance to the dance floor when a bullnecked man at one of the poker tables called out, “Hey, Deputy? How much do you get for a dead-baby pelt?”

Snickers and guffaws rippled through the saloon. Fargo veered toward the table and stared at the speaker until the man nervously averted his eyes.

“
You
appear to be full grown, you mouthy piece of shit,” Fargo said in a cool, level tone. “No need to take the long way around the barn—go ahead and call me a woman and child killer to my face. If you think that's what I am, then why mealymouth?”

“I got no dicker with you,” bull neck replied.

Fargo's penetrating blue gaze had hardened to a point that no man could mistake. “Well I got one with you. Now swallow back those words or step out into the street.”

“I take it back.”

Fargo's gaze swept the entire saloon. “I didn't ride into this town to offend any man. But any of you good old boys who are planning to stir up the shit against me had best cogitate real careful like. You'll soon be wearing new suits—the kind with no back in them.”

Libby Snyder left the dance floor and took Fargo's elbow, guiding him to one side.

“Skye, some of that red sash bunch came in here earlier. They took off the sashes, but I recognized them. They were studying all of the dance gals, and they had a special interest in Belle Star.”

“Did they talk to her?”

“No. They seemed nervous and kept watching the entrance—I think they were skittish about you coming in.”

Another angle occurred to Fargo. “How 'bout the soiled doves topside? Any new arrivals?”

Libby shook her head. “There's six sporting gals, and the newest one is Jenny Tolbert. She's been here over a month. But be careful if you go up there—some stranger went up there, and he still hasn't come down yet. I can't place him as one of the sashes, but he seemed to come in with the others.”

“How long ago did he go up?”

“It's been at least an hour, and very few men spend more than ten minutes if they're getting a poke.”

Fargo nodded, his lips forming a grim, determined slit. “What's he look like?”

“A thin, hard-looking man with these little pig eyes set way too close together. He's mostly bald but combs what hair he's got left over his dome to hide it.”

“Thanks, Libby,” Fargo said.

Fargo headed toward the stairway built against a side wall of the saloon. Saloon noise covered the creaking of the lumber steps, but Fargo ascended slowly, loosening his Colt in the holster.

As he approached the dimly lit landing, Fargo felt his scalp prickling in the familiar warning his body often sent to his brain. He shucked out his six-gun and took the last few steps on full alert.

There were three doors, numbered one through six, opening onto both sides of a narrow, dim hallway that smelled of beeswax and cheap perfume. But a seventh door at the far end of the hall wasn't numbered. There were no obvious signs of danger, but something definitely felt off-kilter. With a metallic click Fargo thumb-cocked his Colt.

Slowly he started down the hall, making sure each door was solidly closed. Behind the door numbered 2 he heard the artificial cries of ecstasy as a painted lady urged a john toward release.

Halfway down the hallway, with the unnumbered door looming closer, Fargo felt his pulse thudding hard in his palms. He had faced every manner of danger on the frontier, ranging from enraged grizzlies to sudden Indian attacks. And yet, one of his greatest fears remained closed doors. On one side was the known and visible, the world a man still controlled. On the other lay a different world—a world of potential, violent death. And only a thin slab of wood divided one from the other.

Fargo, heart surf-crashing in his ears, went down onto his knees on one side of the door. He took a deep breath, grabbed the glass knob, and flung the door open.

Even fully prepared for danger, Fargo flinched violently when a deafening racket of gunfire opened up only inches above his head. He fired two shots dead center on the shadowy form inside the room. Screams erupted from the rooms behind him as a body flopped heavily onto the floor beside him.

Fargo knocked the gun a few feet away from the man's hand and tugged him over just in time to watch the would-be killer's pig eyes lose their vital focus and then glaze over like glass when he gave up the ghost. Evidently one of Fargo's bullets had struck a major artery. In the shocked silence that followed the sudden outburst of gunfire, he could hear the obscene liquid-slapping sound of blood splashing onto the floor.

“Nice try,” Fargo muttered.

•   •   •

Fargo's visit to Belle Star was put on hold as he reported the killing in the Sawdust Corner to Sheriff Cyrus Vance.

“Fargo,” Vance said wearily as he filled a glass from the pitcher of milk on his desk, “that's two men you've killed right here in town since you pinned that star on and a third you beat senseless. Me and you both know that both killings were in self-defense. But it's starting to look, to some of these hotheads in town, like maybe you're killing the witnesses to your supposed massacre of the Hightowers.”

“I can't help that, Sheriff,” Fargo replied. “If I let all the assholes in town direct my actions, I'd be dead. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”