South Pass Snakepit Read online

  Fargo was still lying down when a pack of big, slavering, yellow- furred curs exploded through the double doors that someone had opened. Trained as man- killers, they shot straight toward Fargo, snarling viciously. Speed was critical and he snatched up his Colt, willing himself to remain calm and lethal.

  The curs were a blur of speed, hard targets, and Fargo used six shots to kill three. But the remaining three were on him now, too late for the Henry, and Fargo plucked the Arkansas toothpick from his boot, driving it deep into the guts of a fourth. While he was thus occupied, one of the two remaining beasts drove its fangs deep into Fargo’s left calf muscle, a fiery pain that made him swear aloud.

  Another drove for Fargo’s throat, but the Trailsman knocked it aside with a forearm block. Suddenly a shotgun roared once, twice, and both dogs were blown to bloody shreds. Fargo whirled toward the side door—Jake Headley had run from his shanty out back.

  Wincing from the pain of his bite, Fargo said, “Jake, you saved my bacon. There were about two curs too many.”

  “This stinks to high heaven” Jake replied. “Them dogs didn’t get loose—and somebody opened them front doors. Now I understand why Jack Slade’s been over there makin’ them curs attack buckskin clothes stuffed with grass.”

  “Yeah? There’s food for thought.”

  Fargo limped into the tack room and fished in one of his saddle pockets, emerging with a bottle of carbolic acid. “Jake, would you pour this for me?”

  Fargo handed the liveryman the bottle, hiked up his trouser leg, and lay facedown in the straw. Jake bathed his wound with the carbolic.

  “Hear ’em?” Jake said. “Slade had a dozen dogs in that pen and the rest are howlin’ to get in on the fun.”

  Fargo stood up and grabbed his Henry. “Oh, they’re all going to the fandango. And Slade will be joining them.”

  “Angel Hanchon takes a hand in making them dogs mean,” Jake said. “And I saw him over there earlier. Take a care—he’s a sneaky bastard with a set on him.”

  “So I hear. Jake, you may not be a play-the-crowd man like Philly, but I admire the hell right out of you. Thanks for stepping in. I’ll drag those dead curs out later.”

  Cautiously, Fargo moved out into the dark moon shadows, eyes and ears alert and his Henry at the ready. The clamor of barking dogs grew frenzied as he crossed closer to the pen. As if to accommodate him, all six remaining curs were lined up at the wire, fangs bared.

  Fargo killed all of them so quickly that only two even started to run.

  “All right, Slade,” he said softly, “send me the bill.”

  His thoughts rough and uncharitable, he had just started back across the street when a gun spoke its piece. From the corner of his eye Fargo spotted a spear tip of muzzle flash from the shape-shifting shadows nearby.

  Normally Fargo might have covered down. But tonight he was in no mood for defensive action. Showing a gambler’s nerve, levering and firing, he moved rapidly toward the spot where he’d seen the muzzle flash.

  His opponent was no coward either. Both men blazed away, an exchange of hot lead that lasted perhaps ten seconds. Bullets snapped past Fargo, one tugging his shirt as it passed through the folds. Then, abruptly, Fargo’s opponent loosed a bray of pain that turned into the agonized scream of a gut-shot victim struck fatally.

  Fargo spotted a body writhing in the dirt. A few steps closer and he recognized the ugly features of Angel Hanchon in the moonlight.

  “You showed some cojones just now,” Fargo told him, “so I’m gonna end it quick.”

  He drilled a bullet through Hanchon’s forehead, and now the camp was so quiet Fargo could hear the insects hum.

  But more killers lurked, and Fargo knew this descent into hell was far from over.

  Too wound up to return to sleep, Fargo hauled the dead dogs behind the livery and buried them. Then he put his back to a wall and spent the remaining time until sunrise cleaning and reloading his guns. He also took a whetstone to his knife, honing both edges until they were razor sharp. Shortly after breakfast he walked over to the boardinghouse.

  O’Malley answered the door. “I told you he was still alive,” he told Avram triumphantly.

  “And I didn’t believe you,” Avram admitted, staring in wonderment at the Trailsman. “Jesus, Fargo, it sounded like Armageddon out there—dogs barking, bullets flying, shotguns blasting. There must have been thirty or forty shots fired.”

  “Closer to thirty than forty,” Fargo estimated. “Not that I had time to count.”

  “And you’re limping. You caught a bullet in the leg?”

  “Nah, a set of dog teeth. But twelve yellow curs will never wake us up again, and Angel Hanchon is eating breakfast in hell.”

  Avram whistled sharply. “You exterminated all of Slade’s dogs? Hell, he spent more time training them than he does bullying his string of whores. You’ll be hearing from him.”

  “Slade or Hanchon set those damn mutts on me, and I’m hanged if I’m letting it happen again. What are you scratching down there, Professor?”

  O’Malley sat at the crude table, dipping a steel nib into a pot of ink. “I’m making notes on frontier types found in gold-strike camps. But I’ve never been near one. Have you?”

  “Yeah, but I try to steer wide of gold diggings. Murder means less than spider leavings, and there’s fifty ways to die before breakfast—if you can find any breakfast. Speaking of that, let’s go get ours.”

  The three men queued up at the serving window, waiting for Jessica to dish them up eggs and scrapple. Fargo made sure the men around him were familiar faces, then kept a vigilant eye on the door.

  “Fargo,” O’Malley said, screwing the cap on his flask, “I will also include a chapter on Western Indians in my book. I intend to argue that the Shining Times will soon be over for them—more and more are answering roll calls on the reservations. Would you concur?”

  Avram snorted. “Christ sakes, Professor, would you rather have them marry white women and practice law in our cities? You Indian lovers are a queer lot. They’re savages.”

  The two men argued bitterly while Fargo shuffled closer to the window. His view of Jessica was blocked by the man ahead of him. But Fargo could see beyond her to the solidly boarded-up door, and this time, as he stared at it, the fine hairs on the back of his neck stiffened.

  Fargo told himself he was being foolish—he was not one for premonitions, “the third eye” and such. But that door had troubled him from his first glimpse of it.

  “Good morning, Mr. Fargo,” Jessica greeted him with brisk cheerfulness. “I’m very happy to see you after all that ruckus last night.”

  Fargo gazed into those forget- me-not eyes and a face of finely sculpted beauty. “Yeah, it’s good to see you, too.”

  At least the botched poisoning attempt yesterday had not caused Philly to make her a prisoner somewhere else. But as Jessica handed him his plate, she mouthed the word, “Note.” Fargo trapped it under his plate and went to sit down. Before his two friends could join him, he read it quickly:Be careful—they’re watching me close. Denton suspicious about failure of poisoning plot. Suspects you’re here to rescue me.

  “I see Lily gave you a radiant smile,” O’Malley said as he sat beside Fargo on the long bench.

  “So today she’s Lily,” Fargo said. “But last night, when you were shellacked, you suggested that name was bosh.”

  “Everything’s bosh when he’s drunk,” Avram said, taking a seat. “He’ll deny that the sun rises in the east.”

  Fargo suddenly dropped his fork and cleared leather. Jack Slade, Clay Munro, and a couple other hard cases Fargo had seen hanging around the camp came through the door with a grim sense of purpose in their faces. Fargo held his muzzle center of mass on Slade’s chest.

  “Fargo,” Slade called out in a take-charge voice, “we’re the South Pass Vigilance Committee.”

  Fargo laughed. “Vigilance Committee? No doubt sent by Judge Moneybags over at the Palace. What’s your dicker?
”

  “We’re here to arrest you for killing Angel Hanchon and my dogs.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” O’Malley whispered. “There’s going to be gunplay.”

  “Swallow your gizzard,” Fargo muttered. In a louder voice he said, “Hell yes, I killed them. Thirteen curs total, one with a goiter the size of Paul Bunyan’s pizzle.”

  The room erupted in laughter.

  “Easy with those hands, junior,” Fargo warned Munro. “I’m hair trigger this morning.”

  “Keep your hands away from your holsters,” Slade snapped at the rest. “He’s got that barking iron aimed at me.”

  “We can kill him,” Munro urged the others. “All we got to do is draw together.”

  Fargo’s face set itself hard. “You want killing, junior? Hell, that’s right up my road. Ask Jesse or Ben or Angel—or the dozen curs that were put down last night. After I drill Slade, the next pill is yours.”

  Slade glanced around the room. “You other men gonna just sit there? You got guns—do your duty.”

  “Do your own dirty wake, Slade,” a voice spoke up. “We ain’t on Denton’s payroll.”

  “Yeah,” chimed in another. “Ain’t our fault Katy likes to play slap ’n’ tickle with Fargo. That’s Phlly’s headache.”

  “There’s plenty of skeletons scattered around this valley,” Fargo said. “And clear evidence of murder. You ‘vigilante’ boys ever looked into that?”

  Munro sneered. “You don’t like it, whip dick, dust your hocks.”

  Fargo wagged the barrel of his Colt. “I’m keeping accounts on you, junior, and you’ll pay dear for every insult. Now hit the breeze, boys—I’m in no mood for a parley.”

  The men siding Slade and Munro hustled outside, Slade on their heels. Munro lingered to scowl at Fargo. “You’re a gone-up case, Fargo.”

  “Are you threatening my life?” Fargo said calmly.

  Clay, no doubt recalling the incident with Jesse Jones, left without another word. Fargo let the hammer down but kept his six-shooter on the table beside his plate.

  “Fargo,” Avram said, “you now have clear title to hell.”

  “I had that the first day I rode into this valley, magic man.” Avram studied Fargo’s frowning face. “The shoe is pinching, eh? After last night, and everything else that’s happened, you could come a cropper at any time.”

  “These hounds been on me long enough,” Fargo admitted. “But Clay and Slade are just spokes in the wheel. Philly is the hub.”

  “And you’ll get him,” O’Malley insisted, “one way or another. Fargo, you’re the type who would wink into a gun barrel.”

  “Guts ain’t the issue,” Avram said. “I’ve never met a braver man than Fargo. The problem is the odds stacked against him. The game is not worth the candle.”

  “Maybe not to the soft- handed celluloid collars like you,” Fargo replied. “Especially since you’ve wanted me gone since I got here. But you don’t even know what the game is, slick. So why don’t you just stay out of the mix?”

  After breakfast Fargo rode out to explore more of the paths radiating out from the floor of the valley into the surrounding hills. The first few paths revealed nothing, but halfway up the next one he again encountered evidence of vile murder.

  A charred area showed where another wagon—probably stripped first of its canvas and usable wood—had been burned. Again he found a badly scorched grease pail. But despite a thorough search, this time he found no skeletons. Either the pilgrims had been taken prisoner—and perhaps ransomed—or the killers had begun to hide the evidence better.

  Fargo had decided to write up a report and submit it to the U.S. Army. All the evidence he could gather: locations of skeletons and burned-out wagons, Jessica’s testimony, and a signed statement he planned on obtaining from a key witness. He had made a map of the area, and he was marking relevant locations as he rode. His main task, he realized, was to get Jessica and her brother safely out of here. But Fargo was damned if these murdering scuts—assuming any remained when he was done with them—and their horrific crimes would go unreported.

  He turned up onto a new path, just wide enough for a prairie schooner, and almost immediately detected wagon ruts. Over time blown sand had obscured the ruts, but Fargo’s hawk eyes spotted where the wagon had been driven into the tree cover. He swung down and tossed the reins forward.

  He barely glanced at the sickeningly familiar, by now, charred ground. He began a thorough search of the area, poking into hollow trees, looking behind logs, kicking up mats of pine needles.

  Then, searching behind a tangled deadfall, he struck a grisly bonanza.

  Fargo picked up a child’s badly weathered cloth doll, stained with blood. And lying beside it were five skeletons, two adults and three children. The smallest child could not have been more than four years old—yet all five had been shot in the head.

  Never one to slop over, Fargo nonetheless had to struggle to keep his emotions in check. Philly Denton’s words came back to goad him: Your problem, Fargo, is that you lack a large-scale ambition.

  “I have one now,” Fargo promised the dead. “First I’m gonna find proof he did this. Then I’m gonna make sure the son of a bitch dies a hard death.”

  Fargo returned to the livery by late afternoon and noticed something that put him on guard—the big double doors were closed. Normally Jake left them open until later so the place had fresh air and to vent smoke from the forge.

  Fargo filled his hand and rode once around the livery barn to make sure the outside was clear. He stopped near the doors and dismounted.

  “Jake?” he called out. “Are you in there?”

  No one answered, but Fargo’s excellent hearing detected something: A soft groan that could have been the wind in the eaves of the barn—or a man just barely conscious.

  Fargo swung a door open and dived inside, rolling hard and fast in case gunfire erupted. But no one opened fire, and at first he spotted nothing out of the ordinary. Then he saw a twisted, scarlet shape on Jake’s forge, and when Fargo realized what he was looking at, the discovery was like a hard slap to the face.

  Jake Headley, his bare back bristling with whip lacerations, had been tied to his own forge. He groaned at the pain as Fargo cut the ropes and laid him facedown on the dirt floor.

  “Who did this?” Fargo asked, already knowing.

  “Slade . . . and Munro,” Jake replied in a whisper, taking a sharp, hissing breath against the pain. “They . . . heard my shotgun last . . . night and know I helped you.”

  “Hang on, old son,” Fargo said. “I’ll doctor you.”

  Fargo led the Ovaro inside and quickly dug in his saddle-bags. He found a bottle of laudanum and had Jake swallow some for the pain. These cuts were too bloody and deep for bear grease right now, so Fargo removed a small sack of flour and sprinkled some into the wounds—flour absorbed blood and clotted the wounds at the same time.

  “They . . . said they woulda killed me,” Jake managed to gasp, “but I was . . . only blacksmith and livery in camp.”

  “Just lay still and let that laudanum work,” Fargo said. “I’ll be back to check on you. You got a good thrashing, but you’re a big, strong man, and you’ll come sassy.”

  Fargo stripped the leather from his stallion. “Sorry, boy,” he muttered. “Your rubdown and currycomb will have to wait. I got business at the Palace.”

  Fargo’s mood was one of controlled fury. He went back to the tack room and grabbed Jake’s whip, tucking it behind him in the waist of his trousers. Then, using the erosion gully behind the camp, he walked to the Buffalo Palace, emerging behind the building. Speed was of the essence—he meant to hit hard and fast before those jackals could react.

  Colt in hand, Fargo burst through the batwings and bore down on the back table. Jack Slade and Clay Munro, sluggish from drink, stared at the gun, then Fargo’s vengeful face.

  “I’ll warn you,” he said in a tone that brooked no defiance, “I’m shooting mad, so don’t buck me.
Throw down your six-guns and get out in the street, both of you.”

  “Look, Fargo,” Slade said, “I’m the cock of this dung heap, not you, so—”

  Without a word or a warning, Fargo shot Slade in his right arm, and he howled with pain. Clay started to stand, but Fargo swung his smoking muzzle onto the younger man.

  “You ain’t got the stones, junior. Now toss your guns and get out in that street or I’ll put a pill in you, too.”

  Slade was in too much pain to argue. Both men dropped their weapons on the table. Katy, busy with the faro rig, stared in open astonishment. Dakota looked pleased, as did most of the patrons.

  The moment Clay swung under the tie rail and into the street, Fargo buffaloed him hard with his Colt, knocking him out. A hard kick to the ass sent Slade sprawling. Fargo ripped the thug’s shirt off and produced the whip from behind his back.

  “You like peeling a man’s skin back?” Fargo demanded. “Well, here’s a few licks to show you what it feels like.”

  Putting plenty of sinewy muscle behind it, Fargo brought the blacksnake cracking across Slade’s back. Philly’s ramrod screeched with pain. Fargo gave him twenty vicious lashes, leaving his back a bloody mess and Slade prostrate in the street.

  By then Munro was stirring in the dirt. Fargo ripped his shirt off him and dealt out the same treatment, the whip cracking over and over. Fargo was breathing heavily by the time he finished.

  “Both you greasy sons of bitches better understand something,” he told them. “I’m making the medicine and you’re taking it. Soon’s you heal, you might want to light a shuck outta here. Because I guarandamntee you—both you pus buckets will end up in the same grave with those dogs.”

  13

  On the morning of his sixth day in Sweetwater Valley, Fargo found himself in temporary charge of Jake Headley’s livery. Jake himself was lying facedown in his bed, lacerated back exposed to the healing air.