Nevada Vipers' Nest (2 page)

Fargo watched three men emerge from behind the huge granite boulders that rimmed Carson Valley, their horses walking slowly closer.

“What's those red sashes tied to their belts?” McDougall muttered. “Are they lawmen?”

“Jackleg lawmen,” Fargo replied in a low voice. “They call themselves regulators—most are vigilante trash. Likely they rule the roost at the silver-mining camp near here, place called Rough and Ready.”

“Shut your damn fish traps,” ordered the man who had just spoken. “It's too late now for you murdering shit heels to get your story straight. We caught you red-handed.”

The speaker was a muscular, big-framed man with long greasy hair tied into a knot. He wore a necklace made of grizzly claws. More ominously, he also wore a pair of ivory-handled Navy Colts, one aimed at Fargo. He swung down and approached closer on foot. Fargo noticed how his eyes seemed to trap a man like lance points.

“Listen up real good, buckskins. Real slow like, unbuckle that gun belt. And even slower, shuck that Arkansas toothpick from your boot and lay it next to the gun. Soon as you got that done, move away from the weapons. Before you try any fox play, you best take a good gander at the hardware aimed at you.”

Fargo already had. One of the regulators siding the leader held an old Hawken rifle. Although now considered a relic of the mountain-man era, the formidable weapon was capable of dropping a buffalo at a thousand yards. Fargo had once seen a half-ounce ball fired from a Hawken remove half of a man's head.

The other regulator held a Sharps fifty in the crook of his left arm.

The leader's head swiveled toward Sitch McDougall. “And you with the hangdog face—toss down that harmonica gun or you'll be sucking wind.”

Both men complied.

“Romer,” the leader ordered the man with the Sharps fifty, “ground your long gun and search both these murdering bastards for hideout guns.”

Fargo pegged the man called Romer as the sneakiest of the trio. He was ferret-faced with swift-as-minnow eyes, coarse-grained skin and broken teeth stained the color of licorice spit.

“They're both clean, Iron Mike,” he said a minute later after patting both men down.

“Well, believe you me, assholes,” Iron Mike told his prisoners, “both of you murderers will soon stretch hemp.”

“I ain't never seen anything to equal it, Mike,” said the third man, a skinny rake with green-rimmed teeth and gums the color of raw liver. He spoke in a hillman's twang. “May I be eternally damned if I have. Let's burn 'em where they stand.”

Now Fargo spoke up for the first time since the trio had arrived. “You boys are mighty mistaken. Check our weapons—they ain't been fired recently. And look how tacky that blood is. These folks were killed sometime during the night.”

“Don't blow smoke up my ass, woman killer,” Iron Mike shot back. “You two killed them last night, all right. And you raped that woman and done for both the kids. But you couldn't see good enough to rob 'em thorough-like in the dark. So you come back this morning to finish the job.”

“Yeah,” green teeth pitched in, “and you cleaned your weapons afore you come back. Innocent as scrubbed angels, huh?”

“You boys seem to have it all worked out,” Fargo said. “Real convenient-like. But you still got one big problem. Look at those bullet holes, and look at how that man's heart is practically blown clear out of his chest. Neither one of us has weapons with that large a caliber. But I notice you three have.”

Iron Mike moved with surprising speed for such a big man. He stepped closer and brought a vicious backhand across Fargo's lips, splitting them open.

“Iron Mike Scully takes no sass but sarsaparilla, mister. Who the hell are you?”

Fargo was not in the habit of giving information, only eliciting it from others.

“Look it up in the almanac,” he replied.

“Every deck has its joker,” Scully replied. This time he shot his ham-sized fist hard into Fargo's gut, doubling him up for at least ten seconds as he struggled to get his breath back.

“You got starch in your collar,” Scully said. “I'll give you that much. Leroy,” he called to Green Teeth, “this one rides the stallion. Go through his saddlebags and see if there's anything to identify him.”

Iron Mike Scully tipped his head in McDougall's direction. “Why would a hard case like you be pards with a damn pasty-faced barber's clerk like him? Or is he your gal-boy?”

“According to your big idea, I raped the woman. So why would I need a gal-boy?”

“Christ Jesus!” Leroy called out from beside the Ovaro. “I found an army contract, boys. Buckskins here is an express rider for the army.”

“You sure don't set up like no army messenger rider to me,” Scully told Fargo. “I say both you jaspers are on the dodge. Fess up, mister. You two're range bums turned killer, uh?”

“Holy mother-lovin' shit!” Leroy added. “If you believe this here piece of paper, his name is Skye Fargo!”

“That s'pose to mean something?” Scully demanded. “I ain't never heard the name.”

“I have,” Romer, the ferret face, put in. “He's the drifter they call the Trailsman. He's been writ up big in the crapsheets. They say he's left a trail of nameless graves from the Rio to the Tetons.”

“That don't cut no ice with me,” Scully said. “Them ink slingers are little old ladies of both sexes. These two cockchafers have killed women and kids, and they
will
dance on air for it.”

Scully pulled a smoker's bible from his vest pocket. He crimped a paper and shook some tobacco into it from a little sack, then quirled the ends and licked it. He lit a lucifer match on his tooth and fired up the smoke. When he looked at Fargo, his goading smile failed to include the corners of his mouth.

“All right, newspaper hero,” he said, his voice caustic as acid, “where's the woman?”

Fargo nodded toward the dead woman. “Laying right there ten feet from you.”

This earned Fargo several hard cuffs. “Bottle it, fucker!” Scully growled. “I'm talking about a younger woman. What did you do with her? You musta at least seen her.”

“I ain't got the foggiest notion in hell what you're talking about,” Fargo lied. “I rode in here only a few minutes before you three did.”

“Quit taking me for a sleigh ride, Fargo. I asked if you seen a woman anywhere around here.”

“He's telling the God's honest truth.” Sitch spoke up. “I got here about ten minutes before Fargo. I didn't even know his name before you fellows brought it up.”

“That's a lulu,” Scully snapped. “Maybe you two birds will sing a little more when we fit both of you with a California collar.”

“You're just gonna string us up?” Sitch protested. “No evidence, no lawyer, no nothing—just your say-so that we did it?”

“Oh, it'll be real legal-like,” Leroy said, flashing his green teeth when he smirked. “You boys will get a miners' trial back at Rough and Ready. And, see, we won't exactly be stringing you
up
. 'Steada boosting you branchward, we'll toss the rope around your neck and then drag-hang you behind your own horses.”

Fargo knew more than he cared to about the rope justice of territorial vigilantes and miners' courts. It would just be an occasion to get drunk before he and Sitch were murdered in cold blood in a deliberate travesty of justice. Fargo knew of one occasion where a mule was appointed counsel for the defense. This trail had taken a mighty ominous turn, and unless they could pull a rabbit out of a hat, Fargo could see no way to wangle out of this mess.

“Speaking of horses,” Romer said, admiring the Ovaro, “that's one humdinger of a stallion, boys. Us three will have to draw lots for it.”

“That sorrel ain't no slouch, neither,” Leroy said.

“Never mind that shit right now,” Iron Mike snapped. “Get them two horses necked together so these mad-dog killers can't make a break for it when we take 'em back to camp.”

“I'm just a mite curious,” Fargo cut in. “You three are claiming to be outraged by this crime, but you aren't even going to make sure these folks are buried?”

“
Now
you're a Christian, huh?” Scully retorted. “But since you brought it up—you two killed 'em, so you'll bury 'em right now. But try just one parlor trick, Fargo, and you two will end up as buzzard shit.”

•   •   •

The silver-mining camp called Rough and Ready was a tented berg of the type Fargo had seen dotting the Far West. It sprawled out fanwise from the dilapidated headframe of the mine. These men were not gravel-pan prospectors working independently—silver ore had to be mined from veins in the earth, and this group had formed a profit-sharing cooperative.

Fargo had heard, however, that so far there was damn little profit to share, and the ragtag appearance of the miners and their camp suggested that their rags-to-riches dream was far more rags than riches.

And just as Fargo had suspected, the miners' trial, held that evening when the workday was finished, was just another kangaroo court of the type typifying the western frontier. Iron Mike Scully acted as both prosecutor and judge, and the dozen or so red sashes flanking him put the brakes on any real dissent from the sixty or so assembled miners—especially since the red sashes toted the most formidable weapons in camp.

“There you got it, boys!” Iron Mike shouted after summing up his version of events. “We caught these two skunk-bit coyotes red-handed robbing the corpses. This bearded buckaroo here actually had the nerve to put his crimes on me, Romer and Leroy. The hog-stupid son of a bitch had no idea that all of us here in camp were the ones who sent for Clement Hightower to give us a hand. Now him and his whole family have gone to glory, thanks to these two murderers!”

At this intelligence, Fargo and Sitch exchanged a surprised glance. Scully and his two lickspittles had said nothing about this earlier.

The two prisoners were trussed tightly to adjacent trees, and Scully had deliberately selected a spot pockmarked with ant beds. Unable to slap at the pests, both men were plagued by the fiery bites.

“Hold on here a minute, Iron Mike,” spoke up a tentative voice from the shadows.

A bonfire was burning in the middle of camp, casting lurid orange-yellow light on the assembled faces. Fargo watched a miner step forward into the brighter illumination. The Trailsman took in a slump-shouldered man with a strong hawk nose and a face lined deep like cracked leather. He looked vaguely familiar. But when Fargo spotted the nervous tic that kept the man's left eye winking half shut, he immediately recognized him.

“I know him,” Fargo muttered to Sitch. “His name's Duffy Beckman.”

“Well, you got a chicken bone caught in your throat?” Iron Mike demanded. “You got something to say, spit it out.”

“It's just . . . Well, see, I know Skye Fargo, Mike. There ain't no way in pluperfect hell he coulda done what you're saying.”

“You calling me a liar, Beckman?”

“'Course not,” Duffy hastened to say. “I just think you're honestly mistaken. See, I was out at the prospecting camp called Buckskin Joe, back in the Rockies, when Fargo led us in a fight against claim jumpers. Sure, he's a killer when he's pushed to it and a damn good one. But he
ain't
no goldang murderer, most especial of women and kids.”

“You like him, do you?”

“Well, I'm just saying he's a plumb good sort, is all.”

Iron Mike gave a snort of derision. “Well, now, boys, sounds like the winker here is in love. We best get him to a whore in Carson City quick.”

Plenty of men laughed at this, but Fargo noticed that others held silent. Now another voice spoke up from the flickering shadows.

“I ain't never met Fargo, Iron Mike. But I've heard this and that about him. I never heard of no stain on his name. Might be we should slow down here, maybe poke into this thing a little more.”

“Balls! I'm telling you flat-out we caught the son of a bitch picking over the bodies! Boys, plenty of men got them a newspaper reputation as ‘heroes,' but them weak sisters in the newspaper trade are turning shit into strawberries on account it sells more papers. Duffy claims Fargo helped put the kibosh on some claim jumpers and maybe he did. But Duffy also admits Fargo's a killer and a damn good one.”

Now Romer pitched into the game. “Boys, you didn't see it like me and Mike and Leroy done. That pretty woman and her innocent little girls, layin' there in the dirt like so much tossed-out trash! Women and little girls! Christ Almighty! Has it come to this—Western men defending the murderers of women and kids?”

This stirred the men up, and Iron Mike immediately took advantage of their strong emotions.

“Let's put it to the vote right now! All in favor of standing up for women and kids, sound off now!”

A loud chorus of assenting votes rose from the assembled miners.

“All who are opposed sound off!”

Fargo heard a few halfhearted no votes.

“That cinches it!” Iron Mike shouted triumphantly. “Tomorrow, just after sunup, we drag-hang these bastards.”

The meeting broke up and Scully crossed toward Fargo. He brought a hard straight-arm punch into Fargo's already bruised and swollen lips, slamming his head back into the tree.

“You heard it, Fargo. You two galoots will see your last sunrise tomorrow. How you like
them
apples, hero?”

Fargo tasted salt as the blood pooled in his mouth. “Not too much,” he admitted.

Iron Mike laughed before strolling away. Fargo had survived every manner of danger during his life on the frontier, including other seemingly hopeless situations where lesser men would have given up. But he didn't believe in miracles, and no matter how he sliced it, it seemed inevitable that tomorrow would indeed be his last glimpse of the sun.