California Crackdown Read online

  “I don’t want no advice from you!”

  The few drinkers who hadn’t been watching the card game now swung their attention to the man holding the gun on the cardplayers. They also paid attention to Davis. He now stood no more than six feet in back of the gunny, his own Colt drawn.

  “I don’t want trouble, mister. I’m the marshal here and as anybody’ll tell you, I don’t enjoy shootin’ people. Now I just want you to turn around slow and easy and hand me your gun without me having to kill you to get it.”

  The gunny’s shoulders and head jerked at Davis’s words. His broad back, covered in an expensive white shirt—getting a better grade of gunnies in town, the lawman noted wryly—hunched some and his elbow rose. He was getting ready to turn on Davis and fire.

  But the marshal, despite rheumatism, arthritis, and advancing age, moved with surprising speed. In four quick steps he was standing within inches of the gunny. Just as the man started to turn, Davis slammed his Colt into the back of the gunny’s head. He was still a powerful man. The gunny stayed conscious long enough to spin half around. But by then the lawman’s fist had exploded on the side of the man’s face. The gun dropped to the floor and the man followed seconds later.

  “We sure do appreciate it, Marshal,” the bald card-player said. Even though he’d sounded calm when the gun was on him, his voice now sounded shaky. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. Sometimes a man didn’t get scared until afterward.

  “Just doin’ my job, boys. But you could do me a favor by cartin’ this one over to the jail and throwin’ him into a cell. There’ll be a deputy there to help you.”

  “Hell, yes, we will,” the bald one said. He glanced down at the unconscious gunny. “Be our pleasure, matter of fact.”

  The other players voiced agreement.

  Davis went back to the bar. Irish shoved a glass of beer at him.

  “Thanks for letting me know about him,” Davis said. “At least that’s one less I have to worry about.”

  Irish scanned the place, making sure that business was getting back to normal. Didn’t want to lose any money just because a gunny raised a little hell. Then his eyes returned to Davis. “It’s the damned gold shipments. No easier way to make money than to hire some gunnies to hijack the gold.”

  “Yeah, and no easier way to take over somebody else’s mine than by stealing all their profits.” He took a deep swig of beer. Irish knew who he was talking about. Nothing more needed to be said.

  “I’m your first stop?”

  “Yep. Now I check out the other saloons and hotels. They’re not all as cooperative as you. Easiest way to deal with gunnies is to get to them before they can do anything. But to do that I need people to keep an eye out. Most folks just don’t want to be bothered.”

  “Or they’re afraid.”

  Davis sighed. “Yeah, I guess I forgot about poor old Millard.”

  Ab Millard had run a saloon a block down Main Street. He’d sent a runner telling the lawman that a drifter who looked a lot like a gunny was doing some drinking and bragging in his saloon. Davis showed up and arrested the man without incident. He held him for five days, then sent him packing without any guns or weapons. Unfortunately, this particular gunny held a grudge. Three days after his release, now armed, he snuck back into town and killed poor Ab for cooperating with Davis.

  “Glad you killed that little bastard when you caught him, Marshal,” Irish said bitterly. “If you hadn’t, I would’ve.”

  And Davis reckoned he would have at that.

  “Thank the heavens you were with us today,” Walt said to Fargo as he and two others piled the bodies on a tarp on top of the gold boxes in the wagon. Fargo and another man had already rounded up the robbers’ horses. It looked like Cain was not only going to get his gold into Sacramento, he was going to gain some nice horses for his stable.

  “You men would have done all right against these idiots,” Fargo said as he dismounted. Then he turned to Cain. “You recognize any of this gear or the horses?”

  Cain shook his head. “None of it, but they don’t go with these men. At least the four miners.”

  “Noticed that, huh?”

  Cain laughed. “Yeah. Don’t miss a detail, do I?”

  Fargo glanced around at the other guards. “Anyone recognize any of these jokers or the horses?”

  One of the guards said he might know one of the men, but he wasn’t sure. He thought he’d seen him in town, and he more than likely worked for another mine in the Placerville area. He didn’t know which one though.

  No help at all.

  But it made sense that Cain and his men didn’t know the robbers. The Placerville area had exploded in size to a small city, and the men working in each mine tended to stay together and drink together and not mix much with others from other mines. The mine owners liked it that way as well and tended to demand as much loyalty out of their men as they dared.

  What Fargo wanted to know was how men from another mine knew when Cain was planning an ore shipment into town. There was a leak in Cain’s organization, and Fargo intended to plug it, more than likely with lead. But bringing up that subject standing in the hot sun with dead bodies in the wagon and guards listening didn’t seem like a good idea.

  Fargo had the wagon wait twenty minutes before starting back up to give himself time to scout ahead. But he didn’t find any problems, and they reached Sacramento just before sunset.

  They dropped the bodies off with the undertaker and reported in to the marshal, then took care of the gold ore. After that, Cain got rooms for his men in a boarding house on the edge of town and stabled all the horses together. Cain and Fargo had to take rooms in a cheap hotel because the expensive hotel was all booked up.

  Fargo’s room was being cleaned when he reached it. He saw a slim but shapely bottom clothed in blue gingham as a young woman was bent over the bed tugging the covers into place. When she heard him and faced him, he saw she had the freckle-faced prettiness of a lot of pioneer girls.

  “I’m just about done here,” she said in a sweet little voice.

  “No hurry,” Fargo said. “It’s a pleasure to watch you work.”

  She blushed but then allowed herself a tiny smile. “Well, that’s not a very polite thing to say, but I appreciate it.”

  Fargo dumped his saddlebags in a corner and surveyed the room. Not that there was much to see. One cheap hotel room was the same as another no matter where you were. Bed, chair, bureau, washbasin, pitcher. It was a step up from a prison cell and a step down from where respectable folks stayed. At that he had to laugh at himself. That was one of the few things he’d never been called—respectable.

  “My name’s Fargo. What’s yours?” he asked her as she moved to dust off the bureau.

  “Sally DeWitt. My uncle owns this hotel.”

  The sunlight streaming through the window made her reddish blond hair glow. The deep blue eyes glowed too. He watched the rise and fall of her fetching breasts. He felt himself stir in a pleasant way.

  He crossed the room to the bed. He sat down and began to pull his boots off. He was pleased to see her come over to him. “Here, I can get those off for you.”

  “Part of the service?”

  This time she didn’t blush. This time, unspoken, she’d clearly decided that she was as intrigued with him as he was with her.

  “I do this for just about everybody, actually. My uncle says guests come back if we kind of coddle them a bit.”

  He stuck his right leg out and she pulled his boot off. She was close enough that he could smell the natural perfumes of her body, of her hair. It was difficult to keep from grabbing her.

  Left foot. She leaned over, slid his boot off. But this time, whether by accident or design, she lost her balance momentarily and started to pitch forward.

  Right into Fargo’s arms. He held her there for a moment. Her face was so close, her lips so ripe, he didn’t want to let her go. She must have shared the same feeling because she gently pushed him back on the b
ed, her open mouth on his even before his spine touched the covers.

  She was no innocent, which pleased him. She quickly found the buttons on his trousers and brought forth the stern proof of his desire. She put her lips to it and made him twist and gasp in pleasure. No innocent at all. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  He rolled on his side so that while she was bringing him to even greater need, he was able to unbutton the back side of her dress. As he’d suspected, she was naked beneath. Now it was his turn to push her flat on the bed. Her turn to twist and gasp in pleasure as his mouth found the pink nubs of her nipples and his fingers found the hot dampness of her sex. Her hips began to wriggle as his finger found her most sensitive spot. Her breath came in warm bursts. He wanted to move his face down her body but she stopped him moments later. Her own fingers found him, made him even more needful of her. She guided him up into her, giving a small cry when he was fully in her. A cry of both pleasure and pain because of his size.

  They made love as if they were participating in an intricate dance, tiny, expert thrusts and touches and shifting positions. The dance became increasingly frenzied, his hands clutching her buttocks, her fingers clawing his back with such urgency that it was as if she wanted his entire body inside her.

  Then her legs were up over his shoulders and he was riding both of them home. Deeper and deeper he drove as she clung to him with a desperation that bordered on madness. And then he felt her entire body lurch with great, profound, overwhelming pleasure as she began thrashing left, thrashing right in completion. And he was only thirty seconds right behind her.

  They lay, temporarily exhausted, on the bed in silence until Fargo said: “I can see why your guests keep coming back.”

  “You’re the only guest I’ve ever done it with. The others are—” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. Fargo had seen for himself the shabby drinkers and broken-down criminal types who were sitting in the lobby when he came in.

  She touched him, found he was getting ready for more. “Darn.”

  “What?”

  “I have to get back to work.”

  “You couldn’t just—”

  “Afraid not. If my uncle doesn’t see me for fifteen minutes, he comes looking for me. And this would be a little awkward.” She grinned and kissed him on the nose.

  Then, with amazing speed and grace, she got up off the bed and into her clothes.

  “You tell your uncle I’ll definitely come back,” Fargo said as she opened the door. She left him with a girlish giggle.

  Since last time Fargo had been there, Sacramento had settled into the feeling of a large city. It was nestled along the edge of the Sacramento River and the place often had the smell of the river floating among the buildings. Not only were there a lot of two-story buildings now, but many were made of stone and brick instead of wood. The town was starting to gain a level of respectability, even with the thousands of miners who poured in and out of the area every day.

  He was particularly interested in a gilded, imposing hotel called the Gold Strike. A liveried coachman helped a rich lady from a hansom cab. A doorman in a foppish military coat gave instructions to a Negro worker. A fat man in a cape, dark suit, and spats stood on the front steps looking around imperiously as if he owned all he saw.

  It had been a long time since Fargo had seen a hotel like this one. He decided to go inside.

  The lobby of the Gold Strike had a high ceiling, plush furniture that Fargo thought looked uncomfortable, and a carved-wood banister that ran up a grand staircase to the right of the front desk. Fargo glanced up the steps to see a stunning woman in an emerald linen dress descend the stairs.

  She had freshly scrubbed skin that glowed almost pink, dark eyes, pitch-black hair, and a body that shouted to be looked at, especially with her bosom pressed upward by the tightness of the dress.

  And did she know how to move, taking every step down the staircase slowly as if showing off her features to a crowd, even though Fargo knew he was the only one looking.

  He didn’t mind being an audience of one. He could appreciate a woman’s beauty just as much as the next man, and this woman had beauty to spare. So he just stared, letting the faint click of her heels on the staircase lull him into her charms.

  She smiled at him as she neared the bottom of the steps, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. That was enough to send his warning bells ringing and snap him out of the enjoyment of watching a beautiful woman.

  He had always believed that the real beauty in a woman was in her eyes. Sure, beautiful bodies helped, but what showed in the eyes was what mattered.

  He was still watching her when he heard a familiar voice behind him. “I was right behind you in the street. You and that cleaning gal made a lot of noise.” Cain’s grizzled laugh spoke of tobacco and whiskey.

  As the woman neared them, she glanced at Cain and seemed to stutter in her perfect stride just slightly. She recovered quickly, but her eyes seemed to take on a level of anger Fargo wanted nothing to do with, even though her overall expression never changed. The woman would be deadly in a poker game if you didn’t have a read on her and had fallen for her ample, mostly exposed charms.

  At that moment Cain glanced up. “Miss Brant,” he said, nodding slightly.

  Fargo could tell that his old friend had no love for this woman. Hatred seemed to come closer to the emotion dripping from his words.

  “Mr. Parker,” she said, nodding and stopping beside the desk, staying one step up on the staircase as if to keep the upper hand in the conversation. “It is a surprise to see you here.”

  Cain said nothing, ignoring her and turning to Fargo. He cursed under his breath loudly enough for the woman to hear him. Then Cain walked away.

  The woman ignored the snub as if expecting it. She put out her hand to Fargo. “Sarah Brant. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Fargo knew a seductive look in a woman when he saw one, and this woman had the look going like a lighthouse trying to light up a foggy night. He took her offered hand, not really enjoying the moistness of her skin. He nodded slightly while looking into the dark pools of her eyes. “Skye Fargo.”

  “The Trailsman?” she said, yanking her hand away like she’d touched a hot stove. Now the surprise at seeing Cain had turned to worry in those dark, soulless eyes.

  Fargo smiled. “Some people call me that. Some call me other names.”

  “Are you working for Cain now, Mr. Fargo?” she asked, her voice cold and low with clear disgust.

  “He’s my friend,” Fargo said. “My close friend.”

  Her fair skin seemed to pale even further. With only a glance at Cain, she stepped down off the staircase and headed for the front door, no longer moving slowly. The way she was stomping, her dress was going to be lucky to hold her bosom in place.

  “Nice meeting you, Miss Brant,” Fargo said to the back of her head and her swishing dress, holding his laughter until she slammed the front door behind her.

  Fargo turned back to his friend. “I see you have a way with women. Some history there?” Fargo knew that Cain’s wife, Sharon, had been dead for ten years now. The man deserved to move on, but he hoped not with a woman like that one.

  “That’s not a woman,” Cain said. “That’s pure rattlesnake, the daughter of Henry Brant, the owner of the mine around the ridge from Sharon’s Dream. And from what I hear, she’s my son’s fiancée.”

  Now it was Fargo’s turn to be surprised. “You haven’t been talking to Daniel?”

  The last time Fargo had seen Cain and Daniel, the kid had been maybe fifteen. He and his dad had been trying to get a mine started.

  “Not for six months, since he tangled up with that thing,” Cain said, nodding at the door where Sarah Brant had gone. “She poisoned him against me and Sharon’s Dream and now he’s working for the Brants.”

  “No wonder she was surprised to see you,” Fargo said.

  “She shouldn’t have been,” Cain said, shrugging. “Sh
e knows I stay in Sacramento after every gold shipment.” Then he said: “And her old man’s been hiring gunnies like Mick Rule to help him.”

  Mick Rule, Fargo thought. Gunnies didn’t come any meaner than Mick Rule. But Fargo said nothing as they headed back to their hotel. There was no doubt she had been genuinely surprised to see Cain. And that could mean only one thing. This time she hadn’t expected him to make it to Sacramento with his gold.

  Fargo wasn’t certain, but he had a hunch now which stable those horses had come from. And who had hired those men. But with Cain’s son working for them, he just wouldn’t let himself believe that yet.

  At least not until he had a little chat with Daniel.

  Daniel Parker sighted, then pitched his horseshoe. The shot was bad enough that the two men he was playing with laughed even while the shoe was in midair.

  Daniel swore, shook his head. Ned Hughes snorted. “You don’t have no concentration, kid. That’s your problem.”

  Bill Peck grinned. “It’s all that lovin’ he’s getting from the Brant woman. Can’t think of nothing else.”

  Hughes and Peck were some more of Brant’s hired guns. Every time things quieted down, they set up for horseshoes. Now they played in a patch of grass that ran between two birch trees. The Brant mine was down the hill. They always played for money but never for much, so Daniel joined in. He’d always considered himself good at the game but in recent days he’d played badly. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was Sarah and how much she’d changed him.

  And how much she’d confused him.

  His old man had never had money till lately. Like too many others in this state, his father could have turned outlaw. That was a much easier way to make money than honest labor. But the old man never did. And he spent his time with his son trying to persuade the boy to follow the same lawful path.

  “Hey, your throw again,” Hughes said. “Lessen you’re off with your lady somewhere.”

  Both Hughes and Peck laughed. But it was just joshing. No mean intent. A lot of the other gunnies made sarcastic remarks about how a beautiful woman like that could sure do a lot better than Daniel. He knew they were jealous but that didn’t make their comments any easier to take. Hughes and Peck were older. They seemed more tolerant of Daniel and his situation.