Nevada Vipers' Nest (14 page)

This area was crawling with rattlesnakes. There were plenty of harmless snakes, too, but at the moment Fargo was literally in no position to find out. The slightest movement to grab either his gun or the toothpick in his boot would trigger a bite, and on his knees like this, the bite would be high up and closer to the heart—greatly increasing the chances of death if it was a rattler.

Fargo knew exactly why the snake had halted, and now sweat was pouring freely from under his hatband. The reptile was flicking its tongue rapidly to gather odor particles and identify this new object. There were only two outcomes possible: it would strike or it would flee. His only option was to remain as still as a marble statue and await his fate.

Seconds seemed to become hours and Fargo hoped his suddenly racing pulse wouldn't be detected by the snake. If it was a rattler and it chose to bite him, it would almost certainly be in a spot Fargo couldn't get at to suck out the poison.

He held his breath until it felt as if his lungs would burst, wondering if this was the night when he had finally reached the end of his trail. Then relief washed over him when the weight moved across his legs and the snake slithered away to his right.

By now the three killers in the clearing had kicked dirt over their ground fire and smothered the flames in the deep pit by throwing a coat over it. They slipped the hobbles off their horses and rode out in the direction of Rough and Ready.

Fargo headed back toward the Ovaro, Scully's incriminating remark burning into his thoughts like a hot branding iron:
I'm wondering now if we shouldn't've let Hightower live.

That was all Fargo needed to hear. He was already working out a plan. Tomorrow he would ride into Carson City and talk to Sheriff Vance. This deal the Trailsman was caught up in would have to be fought just like a war: one battle at a time. But unlike a war, he had to win every battle, and right now the odds were heavily stacked against him.

Fargo kicked Sitch McDougall awake while the sun was still a bloodred blush on the eastern horizon.

“What the hell?” Sitch complained, rubbing the rough crumbs of sleep from the corners of his eyes. “Another hour of sleep wouldn't hurt.”

“It could hurt real bad,” Fargo said, “if we get caught out in the open like this. We'll need to find a more secure campsite. But for now tuck some grub into your belly and then tack your horse. We're riding back into Carson City.”

“We just left,” Sitch pointed out as he struggled to get his boots on. “Why didn't we just stay at the livery again?”

“I'm making the medicine, remember? And you're taking it. Just do what I tell you.”

“All right, but what about the hot coffee and corn dodgers you said we were gonna have this morning?”

“The wood's too wet, dunderhead.”

Sitch had been sound asleep when Fargo returned to camp the night before. Now, while the two men had a quick meal of hardtack and dried fruit, Fargo filled him in on the revealing conversation he had overheard at the clearing as well as the source of the “ghost lights.”

“And I heard Scully confirm that the sashes massacred the Hightower family,” Fargo concluded. “I never really doubted it, but it's good to hear it from the horse's mouth.”

“Sure. But why are we going back into town?” Sitch pressed.

“My word about all this haunted-valley hogwash isn't worth a plugged peso, that's why. I need to take witnesses out to that clearing.”

After a rushed meal both men saddled their mounts. Even this early, Fargo could feel the gathering heat—the day was going to be a scorcher. Before he put the saddle blanket on, he unrolled a gunny sack to put under it.

“What's that for?” Sitch asked.

“It's cooler than the wool blanket.”

Fargo had also copied Mexicans and equipped his saddle with a hair girth about five inches wide to avoid chafing his stallion. Sitch watched him cinch it.

“You sure do seem to coddle that horse,” he remarked.

“Balls. A horse, like a gun, is a tool. You don't ‘coddle' a gun when you keep it clean and oiled—you want to make sure it saves your life when you need it.”

Sitch nodded. “Sure. I'm remembering all this, Fargo. I've already learned enough from you to fill up a book.”

Fargo snorted but let that pass without comment. The two men hopped their horses and headed east toward Carson City.

They found the sheriff sleeping in one of the cells. Fargo woke him up and described everything he had seen and heard in the clearing the night before, although he didn't connect the missing Dora Hightower to the new saloon singer.

“So Scully admitted it?” Vance said, swinging his feet out onto the floor and wrestling his boots on. “Came right out and said they done the massacre?”

“Yeah, but it means nothing without a second witness. My word against his.”

“It means plenty to me though. I believe every word you said.”

“Speaking of witnesses—I need at least two to ride back out there with me, Sheriff,” Fargo concluded. “Your word alone won't be enough—there's too many here in town who already think you shouldn't have pinned that badge on me. We need somebody who's likely to be believed.”

Sheriff Vance nodded, stood up and stretched, then buckled on his gun belt.

“Well, there's Otis Mumford. He puts out the
Carson City Messenger
, our weekly newspaper. But he ain't like that crooked bunch that does the
Territorial Enterprise
up in Virginia City.”

“Otis Mumford, huh?” Fargo mulled that. He had read an issue of the
Messenger
while eating in a café, and it was far less flamboyant and sensational than the Virginia City newspaper. “Can he ride?”

“After a fashion,” Cyrus Vance replied. “He's only got a buggy, but it's pulled by a combination horse that old Peatross broke to saddle or traces. The trouble is, he ain't exactly what you'd call a courageous fellow. Then again, he don't care one whit for them red sashes. He's attacked them in print, and that takes some courage. I reckon that's why Scully's men had to ride to Virginia City to get that pack of lies in print. But I don't figure Otis would be too keen to ride that close to Rough and Ready. Still . . .”

The sheriff rubbed his stomach and belched as he conned it over. “Still, he does dearly love a good story and he's what you might call a crusader. You boys wait here while I go talk to him. I'll have to pick up some milk from Ma Kunkle, too. My gut feels like there's a bonfire inside it.”

Twenty minutes later the sheriff returned with Otis Mumford in tow. The newspaperman had a craggy, nut-brown face so emaciated that the flesh was drawn knuckle-tight over his prominent cheekbones. Silver-white hair flowed around his head like a wild mane.

“Mr. Fargo,” he said after the two men were introduced, “I never for one moment believed that ridiculous broadsheet claiming you massacred the Hightower family. I suspected Scully and his fellow criminals from the moment I heard about it. Proving this ‘haunted valley' nonsense won't exculpate you from that charge, of course.”

“It won't,” Fargo agreed, forced to guess what “exculpate” meant. “But it should start people thinking and put some heat on that greasy sack outfit. I 'preciate you agreeing to ride out with us. You gents ready?”

Mumford was obviously a timid man, and Fargo saw his Adam's apple bob hard as he swallowed nervously. But he gamely nodded. “It's my duty as a newspaperman.”

They waited while the sheriff, his face wrinkled in disgust, took down two glasses of milk. Fargo stayed alert for trouble on the ride out, but it proved uneventful. He showed both men the megaphone, the bellows, the fire pit and shinnied up the tree to retrieve the magic lantern.

“Well, damn my eyes,” Vance said. “It still don't explain them blood-sucked corpses, though.”

“Nothing to explain,” Fargo replied. “They were just more murder victims. Look here—”

Fargo pulled a sharp awl from a saddle pocket. He often used it with buckskin string to repair his boots, clothing and tack.

“You knock a man unconscious,” he explained, “and then run anything with a sharp point like this into the jugular twice so it looks like bites. If you've ever seen a man whose throat was sliced, you know they turn chalk white when they bleed out.”

“I'm convinced, Mr. Fargo,” Mumford said sincerely. “But I have to report that it was you who found all this, and I assume you know what that means?”

“Yeah, that I did all the haunting crap myself.”

“I can vouch that he didn't,” Sheriff Vance put in. “This has been going on steady for months. I know for a fact, from army telegrams, that Fargo has spent the last three months as an express messenger between Fort Churchill and Camp Floyd. The army logs in the time that every message is sent and received. He couldn't possibly have been doing all this spooky shit in Carson Valley and carrying out his duties at the same time.”

“Excellent,” Mumford said. “But that leaves one other possible accusation that must be eliminated—the possibility that Mr. Fargo planted all of this evidence, which of course I don't believe. But I have an obligation to—”

“I notice you're not one for reading sign, Mr. Mumford,” Fargo cut him off. “Look around you. Notice how packed flat the ground is. Look at all the different boot prints and hoofprints. Look over there at the edge of the clearing where they hobble their mounts—look at all the droppings. Some are fresh, others are so old they're like baked clay.”

“Just so,” the journalist said, clearly satisfied. “The moment we get back to town I'm going to put my printer's devil to work setting the type. There'll be a special edition out this very day with broadsheets all over town.”

“I'm wondering,” Sheriff Vance said. “Should we destroy all this equipment now? Or should I keep it as evidence?”

“I'd keep it in your office,” Sitch suggested. “It would take them time to replace it, especially the magic lantern. If the haunting stops right after Mr. Mumford's newspaper story, that'll just make it more obvious that the story is accurate. And if by some chance this deal gets brought before that circuit judge you mentioned, the evidence might help.”

The sheriff cast a speculative glance at the horse thief and card cheat. “Ask a crook to catch a crook, huh? Son, if you ever go straight you might make a good lawman.”

“My digestion is bad enough, Sheriff, and I see how yours has become. If I'm going to risk my life, it'll have to be for better profit than thirty dollars a month.”

Fargo said nothing to this “circuit judge” business, but he had a different form of justice in mind. Scully and his cronies had not only intended to hang him, they had beaten him when he was tied up. And far worse, they had slaughtered an innocent family, parents and young daughters alike.

I'm wondering now if we shouldn't've let Hightower live.
Scully's words picked at Fargo's memory like a burr under a saddle as the men mounted up. The only law now would be gun law, and Fargo intended to be judge, jury and executioner.

•   •   •

Otis Mumford was as good as his word. By late afternoon broadsheets were plastered up all over town, the lead headline blaring in huge print:

“HAUNTED VALLEY” PROVED A HOAX!!!

Citizens had gathered in clumps all over town to read it. Fargo had already read it. Although Mumford was forced to cite Fargo as the original discoverer of the evidence in the clearing, he made it clear that Mumford himself and the sheriff had witnessed it and mentioned the overwhelming proof that Fargo couldn't have done it—and that signs in the clearing proved a group of men had been gathering there for some time.

Mumford, more ethical than his reckless and crooked newspaper peers in Virginia City, did not overtly mention the names of Mike Scully, Romer Stanton and Leroy Jackman even though Fargo had caught them red-handed. He did, however, remind the public that the chief result of the phony haunting was to drive away silver miners who did not wear red sashes. He also suggested that the haunting might well be tied into the massacre of the Hightower family.

Fargo was no fool and realized the newspaperman had placed himself in jeopardy. He and Sitch stopped by Mumford's little cubbyhole office to thank him for his courage.

“I talked to the sheriff,” Fargo said. “He agrees with me that you should bunk with him for a few days just to play it safe. I guarantee you it won't be that long before you'll have nothing to worry about with Scully.”

Relief swept over Mumford's emaciated face. “I will indeed do that, Mr. Fargo. As you of course already know, the Pony Express went bankrupt just last month—not coincidentally, just as the transcontinental telegraph was completed. Even though we still don't have any railroads west of the Missouri River, Carson City is now linked to the Associated Press telegraphic dispatch system. I sent this story out to the entire country. There's been the usual sensational interest in this haunted valley nonsense, and I'm certain newspapers all over the States will pick up this story. I've no doubt Scully will be outraged even though he's not directly accused.”

“Outraged,” Fargo agreed, “and maybe just a little bit nervous, too. But this thing has to be brought to a head. You just make sure you stick with the sheriff—he may have a weak stomach, but he's a former Texas Ranger and recommendations don't come much higher than that.”

“Are we riding out to set up our next camp?” Sitch inquired as the two men emerged back outside on the boardwalk.

“What did I tell you yesterday?” Fargo snapped.

“Oh. Yeah, that's right. We don't make camp until after dark. And it's still a couple hours until sundown.”

“Long as we got time to kill, might's well do it in the Sawdust Corner.”

“Ahh . . . you're gonna arrange another tryst with that buxom brunette, huh?”

Fargo grinned at the memory of Libby Snyder and that loudly rustling cornhusk mattress. “Pleasant as that would surely be, old son, it's a pretty blonde I'll be working on—and not to get under her petticoats.”

The moment the two men entered, Fargo's eyes moved quick as lassos, watching every part of the saloon for trouble. But if anything, the hostility toward him and Sitch seemed to have lessened. A few men still glowered at them, but most simply ignored the pair. Fargo liked being ignored—liked it just fine.

Otis Mumford's news story, Fargo surmised. Even though it had nothing directly to do with Fargo's supposed cold-blooded murder of an innocent family, it had gotten a few men thinking about the red sashes and exactly what they might be up to.

Bob Skinner greeted the two men at the bar. He drew a beer for Fargo. Then he looked at Sitch, grinned broadly, and proffered a bottle of Very Old Pale, his best whiskey stock.

“Essence of lockjaw?” he asked the whip master.

“What, at six bits a pop? Surely you jest, bar dog?”

“On the house—take the whole bottle. That whip show you put on last night got my customers so excited they ordered extra drinks.”

“Nix on the entire bottle,” Fargo cut in. “He can have two jolts, Bob, and that's it. If you let him get snockered, you might be killing him.”

“Now I got a nursemaid,” Sitch grumbled.

“Anyhow,” Bob said, “if Fargo doesn't get you killed, son, I'll hire you on anytime. Ten bucks a week and found, and you can have as many free whacks as you want at the doves topside.”

Fargo glanced at Sitch and scowled. “You little shit. I've never had a job offer like that.”

Bob placed both hands atop the bar and leaned closer to Fargo. “Listen . . . I had a little talk with Belle about you. I don't know that it did much good, but I suggest you have another dance with her.”