California Crackdown tt-324 Page 15

  “My guess is that somewhere in that house,” Fargo said, “or in here, is his land deed and claim for this mine. Better we find it and other personal papers to make the transfer easier.”

  “Good idea,” Jim said.

  Walt had moved over to the opening of the mine and had taken a lamp off the hook. “This is well built and all the trailing was taken down the hill. Let’s find out why.” With that, Walt lit the lamp and started into the mine.

  “Stop!” Fargo shouted to Walt. “Don’t move a muscle.”

  Walt froze about ten steps inside the mine entrance like a statue in a city park. “You want to tell me why?”

  “If Brant’s gold is back there, if this mine was dug to hold his gold, which I’m guessing it was, he’s going to have it rigged to kill anyone who shouldn’t go in there.”

  “Shit,” Walt said softly.

  Fargo and Jim and Hank all grabbed and lit lamps.

  With four lamps, the inside of the mine looked like it was outside on a bright, sunny day. And Fargo had been right. Two steps in front of Walt was a trip string about ankle-high off the ground.

  Fargo moved up to it and pointed to the string, following it back into the wall to two shotguns dug into and hidden in the rock wall.

  “Now, that is just nasty,” Jim said.

  “Everyone move back,” Fargo said, putting his lantern on the ground just short of the string. “Hank, Walt, get bridles on those horses and get them out of here. This is going to be loud.”

  When they were ready, Fargo grabbed Henry Brant’s coat from where Jim had tossed it over a stable railing. He wadded it up into a ball and, standing in the mine entrance, he tossed the coat at the string, then ducked back to cover his head and face from any sprayed rocks or buckshot.

  The sound of the two shotgun explosions filling the mine made his ears ring.

  Walt’s face was white as he stared into the swirling dust of the mine. “Fargo, let me say one more time, thank you.”

  Fargo patted the big kid on the shoulder. A moment later a half dozen men came running into the stable to make sure they were all right.

  They had to wait for the dust to settle before they dared try going into the mine again, so Fargo went out and sat on the front porch of the white house, staring at the rock cliffs around him while the men worked to dig the grave a hundred paces away and pile up the personal belongings of the Brants and Kip. The sun still hadn’t reached the canyon floor and more than likely when it did, it would stick around for only a short time.

  After the grave was finished, four men brought the body of Henry Brant down the stairs and tossed him in the deep, narrow hole.

  The thud of his body hitting the bottom of the six-foot drop drained some more of the anger from Fargo. Maybe there was something to be said for attending a funeral after all.

  Next they brought the body of Kip, wrapped in the rug that had been beside the bed in his room. They tossed him in facedown.

  Last they brought Sarah Brant down wrapped in the bloody sheet and blankets that had been on the bed. They tossed her faceup on top of Kip. Then a couple of men dumped some lye on the bodies and started filling in the hole.

  Fargo sat there, saying nothing, as the hole filled and then five or six men moved a few large, boulder-sized rocks on top of it, leaving nothing showing but some disturbed ground.

  “Good enough,” Fargo said, feeling satisfied that Cain was now avenged. He was going to miss his friend, but at least his killers had been given their just reward. He stood and said to the other men: “Let’s go see if the mine is cleared out.”

  It was, and they found no more traps along the way.

  In a wide area fifty paces back into the cool mountainside, wooden cases were stacked along both walls.

  Jim yanked off the top of one and stared.

  Walt yanked off the top of another and stared at it in the same way.

  Hank counted the cases, his voice getting louder and louder as he went along.

  There were two hundred and eighty-six cases of gold ore, just waiting to be taken to Sacramento to be sold and processed. More money than Fargo wanted to ever think about.

  Fargo smiled. Not only had the people who worked for Cain gotten a very good deal by getting Sharon’s Dream when he died, but by defending it they had also gotten very rich very quickly.

  “Why would Brant do this?” Walt asked, moving from one stack to another, touching each top box.

  “Some people don’t trust banks; some don’t trust coin or paper money either,” Fargo said. “Brant was rich as long as this was here. Now I understand why he built such a nice house up here.”

  “He wanted to stay comfortably close to his money,” Hank said.

  “Just like putting it under his mattress,” Fargo said, laughing.

  Two hours later, while the sun was still high overhead, Fargo climbed on his big Ovaro and headed back into town. They had found Brant’s deed to the mine and his personal papers. Jim said he could copy the signature easily, so tomorrow morning they would appear in front of a judge with a paper stating that Brant was signing over all interest in his mine and all his property to the men and women who owned Sharon’s Dream.

  And the official story was that Fargo chased Brant and his daughter off in the middle of the night, letting them live only if they signed the paper.

  No one would believe that, of course, but there would be no one to challenge it, and the bodies were so well hidden, Fargo wondered if the devil himself would run across them.

  Again, he went into the Wallace through the saloon batwings. Anne Dowling looked up at him and smiled. She came around the bar and in front of a dozen men playing poker, kissed him hard and long.

  When she broke it off, she got a round of applause from the men and some somewhat off-color remarks. She just smiled at the men in the room and took Fargo by the hand and led him into her office, where without a word she kissed him hard and long once again.

  When she finally pushed back, he said, “Now, ma’am, I sure hope you don’t greet all your customers like that. You’re apt to wear out those lips.”

  She laughed and kissed him again. Then she said, “I can see in your eyes that it’s over.”

  “You can?” he asked.

  “Skye Fargo, I can read you like a professional poker player reads a rube. The anger is gone. You want to tell me about it?”

  “Long story,” he said. “How about over a steak? It feels like I haven’t eaten for a week.”

  “Sounds great to me,” she said.

  “Tonight, though, I’m buying.”

  With him escorting her, they went through the bar, into the hotel, and then into the dining room, where by the time the dessert was served, he had told her everything that had happened since he’d left her bed that morning.

  “A mine full of boxes of gold ore?” she asked. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “Nope, not kidding. But I need a favor from you again.”

  “Anything,” she said, squeezing his hand.

  “I need you to arrange that same judge tomorrow to transfer the ownership.” He told her what Jim was doing in Henry Brant’s handwriting.

  She laughed. “I’ll set it up in the morning. I’m sure there won’t be a problem. And I think everyone in town will be happy the explosions have stopped so we can all get some sleep.” Then suddenly she looked serious and a little sad. “When are you heading out on the trail again?”

  They both knew he would leave. Any thought of staying in one place too long made him feel like he was living in the bottom of that box canyon with walls trapping him. But this time he smiled at her question instead of ignoring it.

  “Sharon’s Dream has hired me to guard all their shipments to Sacramento. And after what they found in that canyon, and their normal production, I’m going to be around for a while yet.”

  Again her face lit up and her green eyes sparkled. “Then we have some time together?”

  “We have some time,” he sa
id, smiling.

  “Well, I suggest we make the most of it, then. I’ll be right back.”

  He sat, sipping the last of his drink. He had lost one old friend, but gotten closer to another old friend. Sometimes the balance in life was just that way.

  Anne came back across the dining room toward him, smiling.

  She noticed that his glass was empty and motioned for the waiter to bring him another. Then she sat down.

  “What did you need to do?”

  She touched his hand and smiled. “I figure that if I get another drink in you, I might be able to convince you to come back to my room and crawl in that wonderful bathtub of mine with me once again. So I had it filled.”

  “You expect me to take two baths in the same week?” He laughed, looking into those sparkling green eyes. “Are you trying to turn me into a gentleman or something?”

  She smiled at that, then reached forward and kissed him softly, then whispered, “I just like it when you watch me bathe.”

  He swallowed hard, remembering the last time they had been in that tub together. “And how long will it take them to fill the tub?”

  She laughed. “About one drink’s worth of time.”

  “I can drink real fast.”

  LOOKING FORWARD!

  The following is the opening

  section from the next novel in the exciting

  Trailsman series from Signet:

  THE TRAILSMAN #325 SEMINOLE SHOWDOWN

  Indian Territory, 1860—

  where a trail of tears leads Skye Fargo

  into a showdown with deadly danger.

  “Don’t move, mister, or I’ll blow your damn brains out.”

  The big man in buckskins stood absolutely still. A touch of amusement lurked in his lake blue eyes as he asked, “What about my hands? Do you want me to put my hands up?”

  “Uh . . . yeah, that’d be good, I reckon. Put your hands up.”

  Skye Fargo lifted his hands to shoulder level. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his wide mouth, nestled in the close-cropped dark beard. But he was wary at the same time, because even though he could tell from the voice that the person who had threatened him was undoubtedly young and probably inexperienced,a bullet fired by such a person could still take his life.

  “You want to be careful with that gun, whatever it is,” Fargo advised. “Don’t let your finger rest on the trigger, or you’re liable to shoot before you really mean to. And I don’t think either of us wants that.”

  “You just let me worry about when I shoot. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “A friend,” Fargo answered. “I’m looking for Billy Buzzard.”

  That brought a sharply indrawn breath from the youngster behind him. “You’re a friend of Billy’s?”

  “That’s right. We rode together a while back, doing some scouting for the army.”

  “Oh, my God. You’re him. You’re the Trailsman.”

  Fargo had to grin at the tone of awe in the kid’s voice. That was one of the advantages—or drawbacks, depending on how you wanted to look at it—of having a reputation.

  “Some call me that,” he admitted. “But my name is Skye Fargo.”

  “You wouldn’t be lyin’ to me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then, I, uh, I reckon you can put your hands down, Mr. Fargo. I’m sorry I pointed this here—”

  The sudden roar of a shot drowned out whatever the boy had been about to say.

  Fargo felt as much as heard the wind rip of the bullet’s passage close beside his right ear. He whirled around, thinking that the boy had accidentally pulled the trigger, just as Fargo had warned him he might.

  He caught a glimpse of the youngster’s face, though, which looked even more surprised than Fargo expected, and the next second another shot blasted somewhere nearby. A narrow branch leaped from a tree, cut off by the bullet.

  Fargo lunged at the kid, knocking him off his feet and sending the boy’s rifle flying. He rolled next to a deadfall and shoved the boy against it.

  “Stay here, and keep your head down!” he ordered. A third shot sounded, knocking bark off the trunk of the fallen tree. That shot allowed Fargo to pinpoint the source of the ambush, because he saw powder smoke spurt from some brush atop a low bluff about twenty yards away.

  Fargo’s Henry rifle rode in a saddle sheath strapped to the magnificent black-and-white Ovaro stallion he’d left a short distance back up the gulch. Armed only with a heavy Colt revolver, Fargo knew he’d have to get closer to the bushwhacker to do any good with the handgun. He crawled along the deadfall, keeping the thick trunk between him and the rifleman on the bluff.

  He had expected trouble as soon as he realized a short time earlier that someone was following him as he rode through these rugged, thickly wooded hills. Whoever was on his trail, though, made so much racket that Fargo had soon decided it couldn’t be anybody too well versed in the ways of the frontier. Growing impatient with being the prey instead of the hunter, he had dismounted and started up a rocky defile on foot, in hopes of drawing his pursuer in after him.

  The trick had worked, sort of. Fargo had figured to get the drop on whomever was trailing him and find out what was going on. He wasn’t surprised to discover it was a kid, a boy about sixteen from the looks of him.

  But then somebody else had opened fire on both of them, and now Fargo had to deal with that problem.

  He reached the end of the log and took off his wide-brimmed brown hat, setting it aside for the moment. Carefully, he edged his head around the log and peered up at the bluff. No more shots had sounded, and the brush didn’t move or rustle. Fargo’s instincts told him that the bushwhacker was still up there, though.

  The man was probably crouched in the brush with his sights lined on the deadfall, just waiting for any sign of movement. That tension would have stretched his nerves taut by now. A grim smile touched Fargo’s mouth. He’d give the son of a bitch something to shoot at.

  He picked up his hat and sailed it at the bluff.

  Sure enough, a shot erupted from the brush. But it was aimed wildly at the flying hat, not at Fargo, who powered to his feet and sprinted toward the bluff. He triggered a couple of rounds in the direction of the bushwhacker, not worrying about hitting anything, just trying to come close enough to make the varmint duck instinctively for cover. That gave Fargo time to reach the base of the bluff.

  From that angle, the rifleman couldn’t draw a bead on Fargo, who holstered his Colt and started climbing. He used rocks and roots that protruded from the earth as handholds and footholds, and he needed only seconds to scale the dozen or so feet to the top of the bluff. He rolled over the edge and came to a stop on his belly, listening intently.

  The shots would have scared away all the birds and small animals in the area, so when the Trailsman’s keen ears picked up a faint rustling, he knew the bushwhacker had to be the one causing it. The man was trying to work his way closer to the edge of the bluff, maybe in hopes of being able to fire down at Fargo.

  Too late for that. Fargo was already at the top, and he came up on one knee and drew his gun in the same motion as a roughly dressed man pushed some branches aside and stepped into view, clutching a rifle.

  The man let out a surprised yelp at the sight of Fargo and jerked his weapon in the direction of the Trailsman. Fargo fired before the bushwhacker could get off a shot.

  However, the man had turned enough so that Fargo’s bullet slammed into the stock of the rifle he held, shattering it and knocking the gun out of the man’s hand. He shouted in pain and whipped around to plunge back into the brush before Fargo could ease back the Colt’s hammer and fire again.

  Fargo surged to his feet and went after the man, holstering his gun again as he did so. Branches clawed at him as he crashed through the brush. He could hear his quarry fleeing madly in front of him. The man was only a few steps ahead of Fargo when he broke out into the open again and lunged toward a horse tethered to a sapling.

  The bus
hwhacker jerked the reins free, got a foot in the stirrup, and had started to swing up into the saddle when Fargo launched a flying tackle at him. He crashed into the bushwhacker, and both men collided with the horse’s flank.

  The shooting probably had the animal pretty spooked to start with. Now it let out a shrill whinny of fear and reared up on its hind legs, pawing frantically at the air with its front hooves.

  One of those hooves smacked hard into Fargo’s left shoulder and knocked him back a step. His left arm went numb. At the same time, with strength born of desperation, the bushwhacker swung a knobby fist that connected solidly with Fargo’s jaw. For a second, sky-rockets went off behind the Trailsman’s eyes and blinded him.

  Fargo’s vision recovered in time for him to see a heavy-bladed knife slicing toward his face. He ducked under the slashing attack, lowered his head, and butted his opponent in the belly. The man’s breath whooshed out of his lungs as he doubled up and went over backward.

  Fargo leaped after him in an effort to pin the man to the ground, but the hombre threw a booted foot up in time to kick Fargo in the stomach with it and send him falling off to the side.

  Now they were both out of breath. Fargo rolled over and came up on his knees in time to see the bushwhacker grab a flapping stirrup on the skittish horse and use it to pull himself to his feet. The man still had hold of the knife. He flung it at Fargo, forcing the Trailsman to dive to the side to avoid the spinning blade.

  That gave the bushwhacker time enough to haul himself into the saddle and kick the horse’s flanks. He kept kicking as the horse broke into a gallop.

  Fargo pushed himself up and palmed the Colt from its holster, but as he brought the revolver up, he hesitated. He could shoot the horse, or he could shoot the bushwhacker in the back, and both of those things went against the grain for him. Grimacing, he climbed to his feet as the bushwhacker and his mount disappeared into a grove of trees.

  Fargo thought the chances of the varmint doubling back for another try were pretty slim. Once the initial attempt on Fargo’s life had gone sour, the rifleman seemed to want nothing more than to get away.