Six-Gun Gallows (6 page)

Fargo drew his Colt and palmed the wheel to check his loads.

“All right, boys,” he said. “Whoever's watching us knows we're riding in, and I've seen some mirror signals. Keep your weapons close to hand. Here's how we play it. I ride in front. Nate rides about twenty paces behind me and keeps his eyes on both flanks. Dub, you're rearguard about twenty paces behind your bother. Keep looking behind us.”

Fargo holstered his short iron. “If anybody draws a bead on any of us, plug him. But stay frosty—everybody is likely armed down there, and we don't want to kill a man just because he shifts his rifle. Savvy that?”

Both boys nodded, looking nervous but determined. As they rode in along a rutted trail, Fargo realized the lone trading post had evolved into a rough-and-tumble settlement.
Very
rough: there were no raw-lumber boardwalks, no jailhouse, no hotel, no church or school, no tie-rails even. Chinese vendors in floppy blue blouses pushed wooden carts, hawking buffalo tongues pickled in brine, honeycombs, and sacks of ginger snaps.

Fargo, who had wandered nearly every trail in the West, recognized a few of the hostile faces watching them ride in, but nobody he'd buy a drink for.

“Hell and damnation!” Nate said. “Is this Sodom or Gomorrah, Mr. Fargo?”

“Never mind the gawking. Just consider it a hellhole filled with enemies. This is a good time to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”

Fargo spotted a crude sign that said SALOON AND EATS. No frame building with slatted bat wings here, just a large tent with three sides and an open front. Inside, men stood at narrow counters, eating and drinking.

“Let's stoke our bellies before we hit the trading post,” he said. “At least it'll be easy to see our horses.”

The three men reined in, swung down, and hobbled their mounts. The interior was a thick blue haze of smoke. Some men pretended to ignore them, others aimed hostile stares.

“It makes no sense,” Fargo muttered to his companions. “It's like they have a score to settle.”

Fargo spotted a bunch of buffalo hiders in their characteristic bloodstained, greasy rags. “Stop staring at them, Nate,” he warned. “Hiders are a rough crowd, especially when they see a man ride in on a farm nag.”

The only item on the menu was beef and biscuits, so Fargo ordered three plates.

“Fresh out,” replied a balding barkeep in sleeve garters and a string tie.

Fargo could see the Chinese cook behind him, stirring a pot. The Trailsman knew this was a make or break moment: these frontier vermin were listening to every word, and if Fargo didn't crack the whip now, he and the brothers might not make it out alive.

“Lissenup, you dough-belly peckerwood, and lissenup good: I don't chew my cabbage twice. Now, you rustle up that grub pronto or I'll wear your guts for garters.”

The barkeep paled. Fargo watched his eyes slant toward the left side of the tent. A heavyset thug, whose hand-tooled holster was tied down with a rawhide whang, shook his head no.

Without hesitation, Fargo pushed his way over and confronted the man. Fargo rested his palm on the butt of his Colt.

“Who in the hell are you to decide if I eat or not, cockchafer?” he demanded.

“Fuck you, buckskins. You ain't—”

Fargo backhanded him so hard that the man staggered backward. He cursed, his right hand twitching toward his big dragoon pistol.

Quicker than eyesight Fargo's Colt leaped into his fist. “Don't miscalculate yourself, mister. You're about one eyeblink away from crossing the River Jordan. Now toss down that hog leg and light a shuck out of here before I ventilate your guts.”

Suddenly losing his bravado, the thug did as ordered. This time, when Fargo returned to the crude plank bar, no one met his eye. And three plates of steaming food were waiting.

“Damn, Mr. Fargo,” Dub said, “you sure put the shawl on that son of a bitch. But how's come everybody around here acts like you raped their mothers?”

Fargo sopped up some pot liquor with a biscuit. “I'm hanged if I know, boy. But I got a feeling we'll find out quick enough.”

“Three beers,” Fargo ordered when the trio had finished eating. “And draw 'em nappy.”

The bartender pretended not to hear. Fargo had just made his point with the thug, and didn't want to overplay his hand. So this time his tone was less threatening.

“You best clean your ears, bottles. I ordered three beers. I don't care who told you to give me the frosty mitt—you've got more to fear from me than from him.”

The nervous barkeep met his eye. “I b'lieve that's so, stranger. Three barley pops it is, nappy.”

“Can't we have whiskey?” Dub complained in a low voice.

“Pipe down, you jay. The whiskey, in roach pits like this, doubles as undertaker's fluid.”

“Yeah, but me and Nate ain't never—”

“Just enjoy your beer and keep your eyes to all sides. Case you haven't noticed, there's draw-shoot killers in this bunch. And they're on the featheredge of shooting us to trap bait.”

The mugs of beer came, and Fargo was surprised to find it cold—somebody around here must have harvested winter ice and stored it in a sawdust pit. He laid some coins on the counter.

“On the house,” the barkeep said. “I got a feeling I've been misinformed about you.”

“How so?”

The barkeep shook his head. “Rather not say. It could have consequences for me, if you take my drift. But it wouldn't be the first slander spread around here.”

The barkeep was obviously scared and Fargo didn't push it. Just then he recognized the Ovaro's trouble whicker and glanced outside. A furtive-looking man with a soup-strainer mustache stood between Fargo's pinto and Nate's big dobbin.

The moment he reached for the offside saddlebag, Fargo cleared leather and shot him through the hand. The would-be thief howled and took off on foot. In a heartbeat, Dub and Nate bolted from the tent saloon and tackled him. Fargo followed them into the filthy street.

“Jesus Christ, mister, you shot my goddamn hand!” the man howled.

“That's because I knew you weren't stealing my horse,” Fargo replied. “Or I'd've shot your noggin. What are you after in my saddle pockets?”

“Not a damn thing. I was just admiring your fine pinto.”

“Admire a cat's tail, you lying bastard. Tell me, is your boss a border ruffian, or does he just pay them to do his dirt work?”

“Mister, you're fishing in the wrong pond. I got no boss.”

Fargo's face hardened until it looked chiseled in granite. “Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. Now talk out.”

“Look, I'll tell you the straight—I was tryin' to get into your saddlebag. I just wanted food, is all.”

“You look well fed to me.”

“Mister, my hand hurts to beat hell. Let me go or kill me.”

Fargo didn't like the attention they were getting from inside, nor their vulnerable position in the street.

“Let him up, boys. We'll get to the bottom of this. Dub, that's a Colt Navy he's toting. Empty the wheel—you can use the bullets.”

“Katy Christ, Mr. Fargo,” Dub said after the man hurried off. “How's come you got so many enemies around here?”

“Damned if I know,” Fargo admitted. “Why am I so handsome? I can tell you this much: I've yet to meet one man in Sublette I'd trust to hold my horse.”

 

Fargo and the McCallister boys rode to the big log trading post, the only structure in the settlement with a tie rail and water trough out front. Fargo loosened the Ovaro's girth and dropped the bridle so the stallion could drink.

“Those big horses of yours,” he told the brothers, “will be perfect for hauling the goods back to your farm. Make sure you get gunnysacks you can tie off.”

The interior of the building was a strange combination of smells: new leather, harsh tobacco, male sweat, and the salt tang of cured meat. A space had been cleared just inside the door for a faro game now in progress. At least a dozen men sat on nail kegs and vegetable cans, eyes glued to the female case tender.

Fargo did a double take himself. The lovely Mexican-Indian girl had copper-tinted skin and high, pronounced cheekbones. Her white peasant blouse bared both slim shoulders and a generous glimpse of full breasts like rising loaves.

Nate spoke up too loudly, and every head turned in their direction. “Is that poker they're playing, Mr. Fargo?”

The room erupted in contemptuous laughter.

“No, mooncalf,” barbed a man in filthy fringed buckskins. “It's tiddlywinks.”

“The kid's fresh off the tit,” joined in someone else. “Don't even know gee from haw.”

Nate blushed crimson to his earlobes. “The hell'd I say?” he muttered to Fargo.

Fargo was on the verge of slapping the kid. It was hard to inspire fear in your enemies, he realized, when you were sided by ignorant shave-tails.

“Just keep your lips sewed shut in places like this,” he muttered back. “That's a faro game, not poker. No man ignorant of cards need bother going west. It's as bad as not being able to handle a horse.”

“Will you teach us cards?” Dub asked.

“Yeah, if you rubes don't get me killed first. Christ, you two stick out like a Kansas City fire engine.”

“Ain't our fault we're young,” Dub said.

Fargo grinned. “A good point, and I'm caught upon it.”

Fargo noticed something odd. The men were staring daggers at him just like the men in the saloon had. But the fetching girl couldn't make it much more obvious that she approved of the new arrival. Never taking her smoldering dark eyes off him, she pulled one side of her blouse down an inch or so lower, revealing a chocolate-colored glimpse of the ring around her nipple.

“Say . . . look at the cat heads on her,” Dub whispered. “It ain't me and Nate she's looking at. I think she likes you, Mr. Fargo.”

“I wonder,” Fargo said absently. He was used to instant attention from women, but not usually anything quite this brazen in front of a crowd.

“Hey, Skye! The hell you doin' in these diggings?”

Fargo spotted a burly, full-bearded man in a long gray duster turning away from the front counter. He held two boxes of factory-pressed cartridges.

“Old Jules!” Fargo greeted his friend and one-time scouting partner. “Still above the horizon, I see.”

“Shit, an act of God can't kill this old hoss! I can drink more rotgut, screw more women, and kill more grizzlies with my bare hands than any swingin' dick on the continent!”

Old Jules shifted his glance to the boys. “The hell's on the spit? You corruptin' children now?”

Fargo definitely didn't like all the hostile stares. “Boys,” he muttered to the brothers, “go stock up with the money your ma gave you. Meet me outside.”

Fargo sent a high sign to Old Jules, who followed him outside.

“The hell you doin' this far south?” Old Jules demanded. “I heard tell you was up in the Nebraska Panhandle.”

“You might say I was delayed.”

Old Jules avoided his eyes after this remark, digging at a tick in his beard. “Uh-huh. That's what I hear.”

“The hell's that s'pose to mean?”

“Ahh . . .” The old scout drew out a flask from underneath his duster. “Cut the dust?”

“Nix on that. I want to know what you've heard.”

Old Jules swallowed a jolt and grimaced. “Damn! That panther piss could raise blood blisters on new leather.”

“Give, Jules.”

“Let's just say I don't believe a word I've heard. Matter fact, if I did, I'd a shot you on sight like a mad dog. But 'pears like everybody around here is banking yaller boys—and they'll do any damn thing to earn 'em 'cept honest work.”

“All right, you're creeping closer. Now if you wander near a point, feel free to make it.”

“Here's the long and short of it, Skye. They's a rumor around here 'bout how you dressed in butternut and led some jayhawkers or pukes—which bunch ain't clear—in an attack on some Quakers. Then, or so they say, you changed back into your reg'lar duds and pretended to help the Quakers so's you'd look innocent. It's all horseshit, but that's the story.”

“So that's the way of it,” Fargo said quietly. “Who started peddling this rumor?”

Old Jules shrugged his massive shoulders. “Hell, what comes after what's next? I just rode in this mornin' to stock up on ammo, hoss. I signed a contract with Overland to guide a caravan down the Santa Fe Trail. I'm headin' out right now to meet them at Raton Pass.”

“Tell me,” Fargo said, “have you ever heard of border ruffians this far west?”

“Don't make no sense. Their dicker is a border skirmish twixt the pro-slavers in Missouri and the abolitionists in the Kansas Territory. 'Course, that's mostly just lip deep—both bunches ain't nothin' but graveyard rats and don't care a jackstraw 'bout the coloreds. Still, this is a far piece west to ride when there ain't hardly anybody to rob.”

“Yeah, well, that's another stumper,” Fargo said. “Jules, I watched that attack on the Quakers, and the border riders hardly even bothered to steal anything. You ever heard of them passing up loot?”

“Yeah, in a pig's ass. Them butternuts would steal a dead fly from a blind spider.”

Fargo nodded. “So what was the point? I'd say they were paid to mount that raid. But why?”

Old Jules removed a plug of chewing tobacco from his pocket and sliced off a chaw with a small clasp knife. When he had it cheeked and juicing good, he spat an amber stream into the grass.