Outlaw Trackdown (19 page)

LOOKING FORWARD!

The following is the opening

section of the next novel in the exciting

Trailsman series from Signet:

TRAILSMAN #390 DEVIL'S DEN

Devil's Den, Northwest Arkansas, 1860—where Fargo locks horns with a pack of savage killers in a deadly corner of Ozark country.

Fargo hadn't intended to knock Deputy Sheriff Harney Roscoe through the wall of the Hog's Breath saloon. It just happened to be a thin wall and a solid haymaker.

Wood cracked, splinters flew, and Roscoe did a backward Virginia reel, stumbling across the boardwalk and landing flat on his back in the wagon-rutted main street of Busted Flush, Arkansas.

Fargo stepped through the newly created exit just as Roscoe, his pasty face swollen and bleeding, slapped at his holster.

Fargo's walnut-gripped Colt formed a blur from holster to hand.

“If you even
sneeze
,” Fargo warned in a deceptively soft tone, “you'll never hear the gesundheit.”

A menacing, metallic click sounded on Fargo's left.

“All right, Skye,” said an amiable voice, “toss that lead-chucker down.”

Fargo did as ordered and glanced to his left. Sheriff Dub Gillycuddy, a big Colt's Dragoon filling his hand, stood grinning at him.

“Trailsman,” he said, leathering the big gun, “most jaspers are content to just raise hell—you always have to
tilt
it a few inches. All right, what's the larceny this time?”

“Hell, I didn't start it, Dub. I was in a friendly game of pasteboards when Roscoe here horned in and declared table stakes. When I told him it was strictly a two-dollar limit, he took exception.”

“Uh-huh. And who tossed the first punch?”

“Well,” Fargo admitted, “that would be me. But only after Deputy Roscoe tried to jerk me outta my chair.”

The sheriff glanced at his vanquished deputy. “Is that the straight, Harney?”

But just then Roscoe made a sucking noise like a plugged drain and passed out.

Sheriff Gillycuddy studied his badly mauled deputy for a few moments, noting the split and swelling lips, bloodied nose, and blue-black left eye already puffing up like a hot biscuit.

“Hell's fire, Fargo! If you'd beat on him any longer, I'd have to pick him up with a blotter.”

“The son of a bitch bit me, Dub. I can't abide that in a sporting fight, not from a man.”

A portly, balding man in a filthy apron stepped through the hole in the wall. “Sheriff,
look
at what Fargo done to my place!”

“Actually,” Fargo pointed out, “it was Roscoe who went through the wall.”

“At the end of
your
fist! Somebody owes me—”

Gillycuddy raised a hand to silence the sputtering barkeep. The sheriff was a handsome, avuncular man in his early fifties whose easygoing manner and broad-minded tolerance kept getting him elected although the law-and-order faction wondered how his monthly rent could be twice his salary.

“Just hold your horses, Silas. Who started this catawampus?”

“I can't rightly say. But Fargo seemed peaceful enough before Harney showed up.”

The sheriff cast another glance toward his supine deputy. “Hell, there ain't nothing but bone twixt his jug handles and he's always on the scrap. I'll 'low as how it wasn't likely you, Skye, who started the dustup. But I couldn't just let you shoot my deputy. He's also the town dogcatcher and hog reeve.”

“But my wall!” Silas protested. “That hole—”

“The town fund will pay for it,” Gillycuddy cut him off. “Skye, I'm gonna have to toss you in the pokey for one night. And there'll be a five-dollar fine for disturbing the peace. Here, lend a hand. . . .”

Fargo and the sheriff dragged Roscoe up onto the relative safety of the boardwalk. As the two men crossed the wide street toward the jailhouse Fargo spoke up.

“Dub, I don't mind a night in the calaboose. But as to that five-dollar fine . . . there's a reason I was playing a limit game.”

“Light in the pockets, huh? Sorry, old son. If you can't post the pony, it's a dollar a day in jail.”

Fargo shrugged. The tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped frontiersman was clad in fringed buckskins and wore a dusty white hat with a bullet hole in the crown. A close-cropped beard and lake-blue eyes set off his weather-bronzed face.

“Is the food any better,” he asked, “since last time you jugged me?”

“The eats are tolerable if you pick the weevils out. But I only got the one cell, and I'm 'fraid you're gonna have to share it with the most foul-tempered Injin I ever met up with.”

“What tribe?”

“Ahh, I b'lieve he's a half-breed Choctaw. That red son smells like a bear's cave.”

“Jumped the rez?” Fargo meant the sprawling Indian Territory that began only about ten miles west of this rugged corner of the Ozark region.

“I s'pose, but his English is mighty good—or at least his cussin' is. I'm about to shoot that hot-jawing son of a buck. Won't give me his name, but he don't hesitate to give me the rough side of his tongue.”

The sheriff suddenly laughed. “Why, that blanket ass is plumb loco. His damn saddlebags was stuffed with tossed-out envelopes he took when the post office took out their trash. Won't tell me why.”

Fargo's growing nubbin of suspicion hardened into a certainty. “Now this Choctaw . . . is he heavyset with a string of bright-painted magic pebbles around his neck?”

Gillycuddy's head snapped toward Fargo. “You know him?”

“He goes by the name of Cranky Man. He saved my life once a few miles from here near Lead Hill.”

“Cranky Man, huh? Well, mister, he is that. I mighta guessed you'd be chummy with a reprobate like him. The hell's he want with all them envelopes?”

“He can't read so he thinks there's big magic in white man's handwriting. First time I ever saw him he was stealing old army contracts from one of my saddle pockets.”

“Yeah? Well, that Indian wasn't born—he was squeezed out of a bar rag. When I arrested him he was drunker'n the lords of Creation. All he's done since, when he ain't cussin' me out, is demand liquor. Claims his religion requires him to drink.”

Gillycuddy pulled up in front of the jailhouse door. “Le'me have that toothpick in your boot. And where's your Henry?”

“Locked up at Drake's livery,” Fargo replied, reluctantly surrendering his Arkansas toothpick. “I want a chit for these weapons.”

The sheriff grunted and led the way into a cubbyhole office with wanted dodgers plastered to the walls and a battered kneehole desk. Fargo immediately spotted Cranky Man in the cramped cell, sitting on one of two army cots and picking his teeth with a match. He saw Fargo and did a double take.

“Skye Fargo! Hell, I figured you were pegged out by now.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Last time I saw you, you said you were headed back to Mississippi.”

“I say a lot of things I don't do.” Cranky Man aimed a malevolent glance at the sheriff. “Won't matter now. If these peckerwoods have their way, I'm gonna be the guest of honor at a hemp social.”

Gillycuddy stuffed Fargo's knife and gun in a drawer and banged it shut. “That's a lie on stilts, savage. I'm holding you until a tumbleweed wagon rolls through town and hauls your worthless, flea-bit ass back to the Nations where Andy Jackson, in his infinite wisdom, sent you.”

“Fuck him and fuck you, starman,” the Choctaw shot back. “You and your whole cockeyed town can kiss my red ass.”

Fargo bit back a grin as he watched the sheriff's normally mellow features suffuse with purple anger.

“You just keep pushing me, chief. You couldn't lick snot off your upper lip, so don't be playing top dog around me.”

“Who'd you kill?” Cranky Man asked Fargo when the sheriff admitted him into the cell.

“A little misunderstanding with a deputy,” Fargo replied, sitting on the empty cot.

The Choctaw had clearly fallen on hard times. Beggar's-lice leaped from his clothing, and the weathered grooves of his face had deepened. His beaded moccasins were frayed and torn, and some of the beadwork was missing from his deerskin shirt.

“Got any Indian burner?” Cranky Man asked hopefully.

“Nope.”

Cranky Man swore. “What I wouldn't give right now to be a fish in an ocean of whiskey.”

A buckboard rattled to a stop outside and Sheriff Gillycuddy glanced out the window. If a voice could frown, his did now. “Stand by for a blast. Here comes Marcella and Malinda Scott.”

Fargo perked up at the mention of females. “Sisters or mother and daughter?”

“Sisters, and they're both lookers. They moved here from someplace in Ohio to take over the Ozark West Transfer Line. This was after old Tubby Scott, their uncle, turned up dead. He left the business to them, but all they've done is bollix it up but good. It ain't no job for calicos.”

“Tubby Scott,” Fargo repeated. “Yeah, I recall hearing about him—Orrin Scott. Made his pile hauling mail and freight between Fayetteville and Van Buren.”

The sheriff nodded. “Until he was found dead one morning in the crapper behind the station house. His neck was snapped so hard his head flopped around like it was attached to a rubber tether.”

The door swung open to admit the prettiest whirling dervish Fargo had seen in some time. She flounced toward Gillycuddy's desk in a froufrou of rustling skirts.

“Sheriff,” she demanded, “
what
are you going to do about Anslowe Deacon?”

Gillycuddy raised both hands like a priest blessing his flock. “Sheathe your horns, lady. You're pretty as a speckled pony, Miss Marcella, but you always rare up like a she-grizz with cubs.”

Fargo sized up Marcella Scott with appreciative eyes. She had a startlingly pretty oval face with a high-bridged nose and green eyes blazing with indignation. Strawberry-blond hair framed her face in a mass of ringlets.

“How pretty I am is nothing to the matter! If I were a man you'd take me more seriously!”

The sheriff shrugged indifferently. “No need to be so snippety. It ain't my fault if Deacon runs a better short line than you do. That's competition for you.”

“Competition? The man is a murdering criminal!”

The door opened again and a second breathtaking beauty—Malinda Scott, Fargo assumed—glided in much more demurely. She was shapely and petite with sun-streaked auburn hair barely controlled by tortoiseshell combs. Her lacquered straw hat featured a brightly dyed ostrich feather and gay “follow me lads” ribbons.

“Well, now, as to
criminals
,” the sheriff told Marcella, “you're the one who's out of jail on bail, not Deacon. And bail can be revoked easy in Fayetteville.”

“I did
not
steal Truella Brubaker's bracelet! I told you it was among the items taken from a locked desk in the station office—yet another crime you've done nothing about.”

Malinda, who hadn't spoken a word yet, spotted Fargo and gave him a wide smile that threatened to crack her rosy cheeks.

“Yeah, well, I told you that's Fayetteville jurisdiction. And about them stolen items—there was something else besides that bracelet that you're agitated as all get-out about, Miss Marcella. Why'n't you put your cards on the table? I will help you, but I have to know what I'm looking for.”

Fargo watched the imperious beauty blush. “Never mind that. Anslowe Deacon is a vicious criminal and you know it! You just lack the will and courage to do anything about it.”

Gillycuddy let out a weary sigh and caught Fargo's eye. “You know, Trailsman, like they say—a pretty girl is a malady.”

For the first time Marcella noticed Fargo with frowning disapproval. “The Trailsman? I've heard my workers mention that name. Are you Skye Fargo?”

“I am in this case,” Fargo assured her, doffing his hat.

“And a criminal, I see.”

“Oh, he's more or less law-abiding until he goes off on a bust,” the sheriff vouchsafed. “I've never locked him up for anything worse than brawling. And once for—ahh—violating the Sunday blue laws.”

“What you mean is that he fornicated on the Sabbath?”

“I wasn't Bible raised,” Fargo offered in his own defense.

“Look at it this way, lady,” Cranky Man piped up. “Every time you whiteskins break one of them Ten Commandments of yours, you still got nine left.”

“Yes, well I'm sure you two ruffians manage to break all ten in one day.”

“Usually by noon,” Fargo assured her.

Marcella studied Fargo in silence for perhaps ten seconds. “Well, right now I
need
a ruffian. Are you interested in a job?”

“Oh, let's
do
hire him, Sis,” Malinda spoke up in a lilting, musical voice she must have worked on. “He's the most handsome, rugged man I've ever seen.”

“You'll have to forgive my sister, Fargo,” Marcella said, anger spiking her voice. “I won't call her a painted cat, but only because she doesn't charge money.”

“Do tell?” Fargo said, raking his eyes over the comely lass.

“If I was paid what I'm worth,” Malinda put in to spite her sister, “I'd be richer than the Queen of Sheba.”

“Well, now,” Fargo said, “what a delightful girl.”

Cranky Man snorted and Marcella slapped her sister. Malinda smiled at Fargo.

“Fargo, you best con this over good,” the sheriff warned. “There's considerable stink brewing around here, all right, and it ain't all blowing off that Choctaw. I know how you are about women, but these two pert skirts will get you killed.”

The acid-tongued Marcella whirled on the lawman. “Nobody asked you, buttinsky! If you'd do your job I wouldn't need to hire someone.”

“I'll take the job,” Fargo told her, “whatever it is. But only if you hire on Cranky Man here, too. He's not as worthless as he looks.”