South Pass Snakepit Read online

  Fargo snatched the letter from him. “Rudy, you got enough mouth for three lips, know that?”

  Fargo stepped outside, warm in a sheepskin coat, and broke the wax seal.

  Greetings, Skye:

  When you arrived in San Francisco, you expressed bitter disappointment over not killing Philly Denton. But, in fact, you have. Because Denton and his cronies thought you, Jessica, and Michael died in the rockslide, they had no reason to leave the Sweetwater Valley.

  I sent the remarkably detailed maps and report you gave me to the commander at Fort Laramie. Combined with Michael and Jessica’s depositions, and Orville Danford’s statement, Colonel Durning personally led a delegation to the valley. Your locations map, especially that infernal room of skeletons, left the soldiers speechless with outrage. Denton was “drag-hanged” behind a cavalry horse, and reportedly it took him five agonizing minutes to die. Besides Denton, five accomplices were tried and executed by firing squad.

  Fargo looked up, elation humming in his blood. All his work had been worth it, after all, and his promise to the hallowed dead belatedly kept. He read Mumford’s final paragraph.

  On a different matter: My daughter seems inordinately fond of talking about her knight in buckskins, and while I can’t blame her, Lothario, I also have my suspicions. But she’s a grown woman now, and after what you went through to save her and Michael (and bring me back from the dead), my paternal concerns are “pee doodles” as you might say. I’ve never known of you to ignore a willing woman, so why start with Jessica?

  God bless and keep you, Skye Fargo—to my mind, a man can have no greater name than the Trailsman.

  With respect, affection, and eternal gratitude,

  Cornelius Mumford

  “Why, hel-lo there, rugged courier with the lake blue eyes.”

  Fargo glanced up and recognized a slim, saucy redhead tart named Suzanne, a shopgirl who worked across the street from the post office and liked to flirt with him.

  “Hello yourself, you green-eyed temptress.”

  She giggled. “Must you leave right now with the mail? You promised to teach me how to ice fish, remember?”

  Fargo took in ripe- fruit lips and a sensuous mouth. “Well, now, with a good horse a fellow can make up for a late start.”

  “I live with my aunt in a cozy little cottage on Blackford’s Pond. Except... Auntie will be in Modesto until this weekend, and I’m all alone. How ’bout it? I’ve got the bait.”

  Even in her wool coat, Fargo could see the tight swells of her bosom. “Darlin’, you said a mouthful.”

  “Will you provide the . . . pole?”

  “It’s the least I can do,” Fargo said, helping her onto his horse.

  Her arms encircled him when he forked leather, one hand exploring under cover of his coat. She gasped. “Correction. It’s the most you can do. Let’s ride fast.”

  LOOKING FORWARD!

  The following is the opening section of the next novel in the exciting Trailsman series from Signet:

  TRAILSMAN #346 ARKANSAS AMBUSH

  Arkansas, 1860—where the Trailsman finds himself in hot water in more ways than one.

  Skye Fargo, the man some called the Trailsman, didn’t have trails or tracking on his mind. As his magnificent black-and-white Ovaro stallion picked its way through the towering pines, Fargo thought about Angelique Leblanc with her tumbling black hair, her startling blue eyes, and her other assets, which were considerable.

  The big man in buckskins grinned. If he kept this up, he’d be writing poems about her.

  Angelique was the kind of woman who could turn a man’s thinking in that direction, all right, but before Fargo had a chance to go any further with his imaginings, he heard gunshots. His lake blue eyes narrowed as the heavy boom of a Henry rifle like the one Fargo himself carried was followed by a volley of shots that sounded like they came from a revolver, maybe a couple of revolvers. The Henry boomed twice more, and then it was quiet.

  A lot quieter than it had been, in fact. All the sounds of the woods had stopped. No squirrels chattered, no birds sang. Even the humming of the insects died away.

  Fargo leaned back in the saddle. The ruckus was none of his business. He told himself to ignore it and keep on riding. He had an appointment with Angelique in Hot Springs, and he wasn’t going to let anything keep him from it.

  A rifle crash broke the silence. Pistol shots echoed it.

  The Ovaro stopped, its ears perked.

  “Damn,” Fargo said. “Somebody’s in trouble for sure.”

  It wasn’t Fargo’s trouble, but trouble, anybody’s trouble, always seemed to call to him. He tugged the reins to the left and urged the Ovaro in the direction of the shots.

  After Fargo had ridden about a quarter of a mile, the trees thinned out and the forest opened onto a wide clearing. Across the clearing rose a wooded hill.

  On Fargo’s side of the clearing, a man hunkered down behind a deadfall. His horse lay in the clearing, not far away. As Fargo sat and watched, a bullet from the rifle knocked a big chunk of wood from the deadfall. The man rose up and fired a couple of pistol shots in the direction of the rifle, then dropped back down as pistol shots came from the hill.

  The pistols weren’t about to do any damage, Fargo thought. The range was just too great. The rifle was the only thing to worry about.

  Fargo couldn’t tell exactly where the shots had come from. The shooters, and there must have been at least two of them, were concealed in the trees on the hill.

  It still wasn’t Fargo’s fight, but he didn’t like the uneven odds, and he didn’t like it that a man’s horse had been shot. He scratched his dark, short-trimmed beard.

  More shots shattered the quiet, and Fargo slid off the Ovaro, looped the reins around a tree branch, and slipped his Henry out of its saddle sheath. He could stay in the concealment of the trees until he was about twenty yards from the deadfall, so he decided to get a closer look at the proceedings.

  He made his way forward. There was no danger that he’d be heard. He could move through the woods as quietly as a panther, and the man was concentrating on the people on the hill. He wasn’t likely to think anybody’d be coming up behind him.

  Fargo stopped when he came to the last of the trees and stood behind the thickest one.

  “Don’t turn around,” he said in a normal voice.

  Fargo saw the man’s shoulders tighten, but he didn’t turn. That showed good sense.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man said without looking in Fargo’s direction. He didn’t raise his voice any more than Fargo had.

  “Just somebody passing by,” Fargo said. “Somebody who’s not gonna shoot you in the back. What’s going on here?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  The man was about to say more, but the rifle thundered twice from the trees across the clearing. Chunks of wood flew off the deadfall. This time the man didn’t return fire.

  “Somebody must not like you,” Fargo said when it was quiet again.

  “Bastards shot my horse. I don’t think they meant to, though. I think they meant to shoot me.”

  “Looks that way,” Fargo said. “You got any idea why?”

  “Hell, no. Didn’t I just say that?”

  Fargo didn’t blame the man for being mad. Now that he could see him better, Fargo could tell he was young. Probably inexperienced, too, else he wouldn’t have been wasting his bullets shooting at people he couldn’t see.

  “I was on the way to Hot Springs,” the man said. “I’m looking for my pa. When I came out of the trees into the clearing, that’s when the shooting started.”

  Could be robbers, Fargo thought. Plenty of them in the territory.

  “Who are you, anyway,” the man said. “Some damn vulture come to pick on the leavings?”

  “Like I said, just passing by. I’m on my way to Hot Springs, too.”

  “It’s a popular place. You gonna help me out or just stand back there and jaw at me?”

  “You sit
tight, and I’ll see what I can do,” Fargo said. He faded back into the trees.

  Fargo stopped at the Ovaro and slid the Henry back into the saddle boot. He patted the horse on the neck and started circling through the woods. If the man hidden at the deadfall wasn’t expecting anybody to come up at his back, then the men shooting at him likely weren’t thinking about anything like that, either. All Fargo had to do was get behind them by taking the long way around.

  He didn’t think there was any rush. The ambushers couldn’t shoot through the trunk of the fallen tree, but Fargo didn’t think they’d leave. They wouldn’t want the man to get away.

  As if to prove the truth of what Fargo was thinking, more rifle shots rattled the air to keep the man pinned down. Fargo didn’t hear any answering fire. The youngster wasn’t wasting his ammunition anymore.

  Fargo circled the clearing and went well up into the trees opposite the deadfall. He wanted to be sure he was behind the men with the rifle. When he thought he’d gone far enough, he stopped.

  It was early fall so it was warm in the trees, but not hot. It was early enough that the leaves hadn’t started falling. The morning sun filtered down through the trees and patterned the ground. The birds and squirrels were making racket again, having gotten used to the shooting.

  Fargo knew he was close to where he wanted to be, but he didn’t know exactly where the shooters were located, so he’d have to wait until they made some noise. He’d learned patience long ago, and he had time to wait rather than blunder into anything. He sat down at the base of a tree, leaned back, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He hadn’t quite dozed off when he heard shots.

  Fargo sat up straight to listen. The shots came from in front of him and a little to his right. He hadn’t been far off in his reckoning. He stood up and started to walk.

  After a while he could hear someone talking. He made his way a little closer. Two horses were tied to a low tree limb. Two men lay on the ground nearby, a low rise in front of them. They had a good view of the deadfall and the dead horse, but that was about all. The man hidden there was keeping well out of sight.

  Fargo loosened his big .44 in its holster. He didn’t want to show it and start a shooting match unless he had to. The men in front of him started to talk, and Fargo froze where he stood.

  “He ain’t taken a shot at us in a good half hour or more,” one of the men said. He wore a floppy brimmed hat, dirty pants, and a sweat-stained blue shirt. A Henry rifle lay beside him. “I say he’s dead.”

  “I don’t know why the hell you’d think any such of a thing.” The second man was dressed like the first, but his clothes were cleaner and his hat was in better shape. “He wasn’t dead the last time he poked his head up, and you damn sure didn’t hit him with that Henry of yours.”

  “Hell, Brady, he coulda been hit when the horse fell. Could be why it fell.”

  “Wasn’t hurt a bit, Paulie. He ran for that deadfall like his pants was on fire.”

  “Might’ve bled to death.”

  “If you think so, why don’t you go have a look?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I ain’t the one that missed him and shot his horse.”

  Paulie hit the ground with his fist. “Dammit, I knew you’d say that. Wasn’t my fault. The damn horse stumbled.”

  “That ain’t the way I saw it. Horse didn’t stumble till you shot it.”

  “Well, it don’t matter how you saw it. One of us better go check on him. If we don’t kill him, we don’t get paid.”

  That was all Fargo needed to hear. The men weren’t robbers. They’d been hired to kill the downed rider for some reason. Fargo didn’t hold with that kind of doings. He pulled his pistol.

  “You two fellas keep your hands empty and roll over,” he said.

  The two men looked at each other and then over their shoulders at Fargo.

  “What if we don’t?” Brady said.

  He didn’t sound a bit scared. That wasn’t a good sign. When you have the drop on a man, he ought to be at least a little worried.

  “I guess I’ll have to shoot you in the back,” Fargo said. He motioned with the pistol. “Now roll over like I told you.”

  The men looked at each other again and shrugged. Then they rolled over on their backs.

  “Now sit up,” Fargo said.

  They did as he said, and Fargo told them to put their pistols on the ground by their feet. They looked at each other again.

  “Do it,” Fargo said.

  They both set their guns on the ground next to their feet, but still within easy reach.

  “Now kick ’em away from you,” Fargo said.

  They did that, too, but as they did it, Paulie snapped forward quick as a hungry mountain lion and lunged at him. Fargo slashed the side of his head with the .44, but Paulie still managed to get a hand on Fargo’s boot and give it a jerk before falling to the side.

  Fargo stumbled backward a step, and Brady jumped to his feet. In the same motion, he jerked off his hat and threw it in Fargo’s face. The Trailsman brushed the hat aside just as Brady charged into him and slammed his head into Fargo’s stomach.

  Had Fargo been prepared for the blow, he could have shrugged it off, but he was caught off guard. He fell back, and Brady landed heavily on him. He grabbed Fargo’s wrist and slammed it against a rock. Fargo dropped the .44, and Brady grabbed it.

  Fargo caught a handful of Brady’s hair and yanked his head hard to the left. Brady fell off Fargo, but he held on to the pistol.

  Fargo jumped up before Brady could get off a shot and kicked him in the face, smashing his lips and sending a tooth flying.

  Brady dropped the pistol and put his hands to his ruined face. He didn’t make a sound, but his shoulders shook as if he might be crying.

  Paulie scrabbled across the rocky ground and reached for the pistol. Fargo stomped his hand and felt bones give beneath his boot heel.

  Paulie screamed, and Fargo kicked him in the side of the head. He stopped screaming.

  Fargo picked up his pistol and brushed off the dirt and pine needles it had accumulated.

  “You two are mighty frisky,” he said. “I hope you’re not going to try anything else like that. I’d hate to have to kill you.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, but Fargo didn’t like setting himself up as judge and jury. There still might be more to what was going on here than he knew about.

  “You don’t have to kill us,” Brady said. He was a little hard to understand because of his smashed mouth. “Leave us be and we’ll just ride out of here.”

  That sounded all right to Fargo, but there was one little catch.

  “You can leave,” Fargo said, “but your guns stay here.”

  “Dammit, I need that Henry,” Paulie said.

  “You should’ve thought of that before you tried bushwhacking somebody with it.”

  “Maybe you got a point,” Paulie said. He struggled to his feet, cradling his hurt hand in the crook of his elbow. “I couldn’t shoot it anyway. I think you broke ever’ damn bone in my hand.”

  If he was expecting an apology, he didn’t get one.

  “Can I at least get my hat?” he said.

  “I’ll do that for you,” Fargo said.

  He walked over to where the hat lay, picked it up, and tossed it to Paulie, who reached for it but appeared unable to grasp it with his injured hand. He bent down for it, and Fargo saw too late that one of the pistols was nearby.

  Paulie was nothing if not game. He snapped up the pistol with his left hand and tried to trigger a shot.

  He didn’t even get his finger into the trigger guard before two bullets from Fargo’s .44 hit him dead center in his chest.

  Fargo turned through drifting gun smoke and saw Brady rolling toward his own pistol. Brady wrapped his fingers around the gun butt and twitched his arm around.

  Fargo shot him in the head. Brady’s head snapped to the side. He flopped over, firing his pistol even though he didn’t know it. He was a
lready dead when the bullet plowed the ground far away from where the Trailsman stood.

  Gun smoke stung Fargo’s nose, and he waved it away from his face. The two men lay still. It was too bad he’d had to kill them, but they didn’t seem inclined to give up. They must’ve needed the money they were to get for killing the man they’d ambushed. They weren’t cowardly, and there wasn’t any quit in them. Fargo had to give them credit for that.

  Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe they were more scared of somebody else than they were of Fargo. If so, that somebody must be really scary. It was something to think about.

  The Trailsman holstered his .44 and started across the clearing to let the man know he didn’t have to worry any more about being shot.