Northwoods Nightmare Read online

  Fargo bucked in an effort to heave Strath off, but the killer clung on. Hissing, Strath threw all his weight into forcing the tips of his knives into Fargo’s neck.

  Water lapped at Fargo’s ears. He drove his knee into Strath, once, twice, three times. At the third blow Strath let out a howl, wrenched loose, and jumped up and back.

  Fargo kicked him in the groin.

  “Bastard!” Strath staggered toward the bank but didn’t make it. He fell to one knee.

  In a blur, Fargo drew his Colt. He swept upright, swinging as he rose, and clubbed Strath across the temple. That was all it took. Grabbing hold of Strath’s shirt, Fargo hauled him out of the water.

  “Well done.”

  Fargo glanced up.

  Cosmo, wearing a heavy robe, stood at the top of the bank. “Sounds woke me and I came out to see what it was.”

  “He tried to kill me,” Fargo said, breathing heavily.

  “I’m glad he failed. It would be difficult to find another guide of your caliber.”

  “That’s all I matter to you?”

  “No, that is how you matter to Theodore. To me you don’t matter at all.” Cosmo put his hands in the robe’s pockets. “This is most distressing. It will upset Theodore, and I’ve already told you how I feel about upsetting him.”

  “He’ll be upset even more when I pistol-whip his son.”

  “Allen? Whatever for?”

  “I suspect he put Strath up to this.” Fargo started up the bank. “He has to answer for it.”

  “Let me help.” Cosmo bent and offered his hand.

  Not entirely trusting him, Fargo took hold. He had felt some strong grips in his time but few as strong as Cosmo’s. The man pulled him up with ridiculous ease.

  “There. Now we can talk.”

  Fargo’s buckskins were dripping wet. He took off his hat and shook it. “About what?”

  “I prefer that you don’t confront Allen just now. We’ll bind Strath and turn him over to the British authorities. I’ll inform Theodore that Strath was trying to steal from you, and when you caught him, he tried to knife you.”

  “No.”

  “What do you have to lose by cooperating? I only want to spare Theodore the pain of having his youngest son charged with attempted murder. Isn’t it enough that his oldest son is missing?”

  “The answer is still no.”

  “Don’t be so hasty. You see, the sounds that woke me were those of you and Miss Havard having your little discussion. If you agree about Allen, in return, I won’t inform Mrs. Havard that you are trying your utmost to seduce her daughter. Were she to find out, she would undoubtedly keep Angeline on a tight leash and not let you anywhere near her.”

  “You fight dirty.”

  “I thought you would see things my way.”

  5

  Fargo had two reasons for giving in. The first was that he couldn’t prove Allen Havard was behind Strath’s attack. He would bide his time, and when he did have the proof, he’d do what he had to. In the meantime Strath had to ride under guard with his ankles bound.

  Cosmo told Theodore Havard that Fargo had caught Strath going through the packs with the aim of “pilfering,” as Cosmo called it, and when Fargo confronted him, Strath whipped out his knives. At least one person didn’t believe the story.

  The next morning they had been under way half an hour when McKern brought his mount up alongside the Ovaro.

  “That butler sure is slick. If we run out of whale oil for the lanterns, we can fill the lanterns with him.”

  “Figured it out, have you?”

  “See these gray hairs? I didn’t get them by being stupid. And remember, I saw Strath talking to Allen.”

  Above them an eagle soared on outstretched wings. In the woods a jay screeched.

  “So are you going to tell me how it really happened?” McKern asked.

  “You’ve never heard of pilfering before?”

  “Pilfering, my ass. Where I come from, folks call things what they are. Stealing. Robbing. Even thieving. Only a fancy pants like that butler or whatever he is would call it pilfering.”

  “Now, now, remember your station.”

  “Station?” McKern repeated, and roared. “You did that good. If you had the money to go with a stuck-up nose, you could make something of yourself.”

  “I like cards and women too much. Any money I make doesn’t stick around long.”

  “You’re not alone. I spend money like a cloud spends rain. But, hey, you could always do butlering. There must be good money in that, the way Cosmo dresses. And you’d make a fine one, the words you spout.”

  “The day I wait on someone hand and foot is the day I’m fit to blow my brains out.”

  “The trouble with you, sonny, is you ain’t been citified.”

  “I hope to God I never am.”

  McKern let a minute go by before he said, “So listen. You want me to keep an eye on Allen from here on out? On the sly. There’s no telling what he might try next.”

  “Rabbits don’t scare me any, but maybe you better.” Fargo wasn’t eager for a knife in the back.

  “The thing to remember about rabbits is that they’ll bite when they’re cornered.”

  “I’m obliged.”

  “Think nothing of it. Or if you insist, buy me a bottle of red-eye when this is over and we’ll call it even.”

  “Deal.” Fargo raised his reins. “I’m going to scout ahead. I should be back by noon. Keep a watch until I get back.”

  “You can count on me, hoss.”

  Fargo was glad to get away. He trotted for a while and then slowed to a walk. The trail they were following, one of several used during the gold rush days, was easy to follow.

  About ten in the morning Fargo topped a rise. Off to his right was a slope sprinkled with talus. And climbing ponderously up it was the lord of the Rockies: a grizzly.

  Fargo was glad the griz was going in the other direction. From the way it was sniffing and nosing about, he reckoned it was after marmots. His hunch was confirmed when the griz came to a dark spot that must be a hole and commenced scooping out great wads of earth with its immense paws. Dirt and rocks flew. A cloud of dust rose.

  The bear’s massive head half disappeared.

  Then came a faint squeal. The grizzly drew its head out and shook it from side to side. Clamped in its iron jaws was the marmot, limp in death.

  “Life in a nutshell,” Fargo said, and clucked to the Ovaro.

  Shortly after Fargo spied some elk in a high meadow. Later still, high on a rocky crag, he saw splashes of brown that might be mountain sheep.

  This was Fargo’s kind of country. Raw, ripe with life, ruled by the natural law of fang and claw. He could see himself one day, when he was on in years, building a cabin and living out what was left of his life in a place like this. To him it was as close to heaven as anywhere could be.

  By now he was half a mile above the valley floor, climbing toward the pass. He wasn’t expecting to encounter anyone. So when he went around a bend and spied four men sitting by the side of the trail, it was an unwanted surprise.

  Fargo put his hand on his Colt. He liked to think he was a good judge of men, and his judgment told him the four might be trouble. They were scruffy and dirty and had unkempt beards. More important, each man was an armory. Their horses were cropping grass or resting.

  Fargo drew rein a good ten feet out.

  A block of muscle with an anvil jaw stood. His smile lacked two upper teeth. “Morning, mister,” he said amiably enough. “Glorious day, ain’t it?”

  “Not for marmots,” Fargo said.

  The man cocked his head. “I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, but never you mind. I’m called Bucktooth on account of I don’t have any.”

  Fargo didn’t offer his own handle.

  “These here are my pards,” Bucktooth said with a sweep of his arm. “We’re on our way back to the States and stopped to rest a spell.”

  “You don’t say.” Fa
rgo gave them the benefit of the doubt—for the moment.

  “We came up here a few years ago thinking to strike it rich, but we never did,” Bucktooth revealed. “It’s not right how some folks strike it and others don’t. Life just ain’t fair.”

  “I know a marmot who would agree if he was still breathing.”

  Bucktooth’s brow puckered. “There you go again with the marmots. You’re not addlepated, are you?”

  “Not last I took stock, no.”

  “You sure don’t look addlepated. But then, you never can tell about people by how they look.”

  Fargo was studying the others without being obvious. Two were smirking as if they shared a secret. The third gnawed nonstop on his lower lip. They were sloppy, this bunch. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “How’s that, mister?” Bucktooth asked while moving a step so he was between Fargo and his three friends.

  “Nothing.”

  Bucktooth’s brow lines deepened. “You sure do puzzle me. But I’d like to ask you a question, if that’s all right.”

  “Asking is free.”

  Bucktooth pointed down the mountain at the line of riders and pack animals. “You’re with them, I take it? By your buckskins, I’d say you must be their guide.”

  Fargo nodded.

  Pleased at his deduction, Bucktooth grinned. “We’ve been watching awhile. They’re still a ways off yet, so we can’t be sure, but I’d swear that a couple of them are female.”

  Again Fargo nodded.

  “Well, what do you know? There’s not a heap of females in these parts. Yale’s got some, and Spuzzum, maybe a few in Boston Bar, and I don’t know how many up to Lytton. But generally the menfolk outnumber the womenfolk ten to one.”

  Fargo didn’t say anything. West of the Mississippi River that was normal. He shifted slightly to try to see what the three men behind Bucktooth were doing.

  “Anyway, I figure there must be fifteen to twenty in your party. Is that about right?”

  “More or less.”

  “They’ll be a while getting here,” Bucktooth said, more to himself than to Fargo. “So we have plenty of time.”

  “For what?”

  “This.” Bucktooth moved to one side.

  Fargo found himself staring down the muzzles of several pistols. Pretending to be shocked, he said, “What are you up to?”

  “See if you can guess,” Bucktooth sarcastically prompted.

  “You aim to rob us? Just the four of you?”

  “We are good at it, if I say so my own self,” Bucktooth boasted. “Two or three volleys and we’ll drop most of your friends. The rest will panic and run around like chickens with their heads chopped off. They’ll be easy. Then your horses and everything else you own will be ours.”

  Fargo couldn’t get over how casual they were about it. “The British won’t like it much.”

  “The Brits?” Bucktooth repeated, and laughed. “Their law ain’t like our law, where we’d have a whole posse after us. Their law is one measly sheriff and maybe a helper or two. By the time he takes up our trail, we’ll be on the coast.”

  “You’ve been doing this a while, I take it,” Fargo stalled. He leaned forward so his holster was close to his right hand.

  “Since fifty-nine,” Bucktooth admitted. “It’s too much work to go after gold the honest way, so we started taking it from those who didn’t mind breaking their backs. We’ve been at it since.”

  “Honest work has one advantage.”

  “What, besides a sore back?”

  “It doesn’t get you hanged.”

  Bucktooth laughed. “Why sweat for it when it’s there for the taking?” He put his hands on his hips. “You won’t believe this, but I sort of like you. It’s a shame we have to buck you out in gore like the rest.”

  One of the others asked, “Shouldn’t we get to it?”

  “And have them hear the shot below?” Bucktooth shook his head. “Use your head, Wiggins. We’ll keep him here with us so when they come over that rise, they’ll think we’re peaceable. Let them get nice and close before we open up on them. They won’t stand a prayer.”

  “You think of everything,” Fargo said.

  Bucktooth beamed at his friends. “Did you hear? Haven’t I been saying that all along? You gents should put more trust in me.”

  “All except one thing,” Fargo amended.

  “Eh?” Bucktooth glanced up.” I have this all thought out. Don’t tell me I don’t.”

  “You don’t.”

  Bucktooth’s features hardened. “Where did I make a mistake?”

  “How do I explain this?” Fargo thoughtfully scratched his chin with his left hand while easing forward another inch so his right hand brushed his Colt. “Earlier I saw a marmot—”

  “Oh Lord,” Bucktooth interrupted. “Not the marmots again.”

  “It was snug and safe in its burrow until a griz came along, dug it out, and ate it.”

  “What does that have to do with me and my pards? We’re not marmots, you dimwit.”

  “But you think that because you have me covered, you’re as safe as that marmot thought he was. But the grizzly got in so close, there was nothing the marmot could do.”

  “You’re no griz.”

  “But I’m close,” Fargo said.

  “So what?”

  “You let me ride up, thinking I was like most anyone else. But you’ve made the same mistake that marmot made.”

  “Lordy, if I hear one more word about marmots, I’m liable to throw a fit. But I’ll humor you. Is there a point to this?”

  “That marmot didn’t count on something coming along that was strong enough to dig it out of the ground. And you and your lunkhead pards didn’t count on someone coming along who can draw and empty his six-gun in the time it takes you to blink.”

  “Oh, hell. You don’t scare us none. We’re not slouches ourselves,” Bucktooth said smugly.

  “It’s the practice,” Fargo said.

  “The what?”

  “More hours than you can count. More lead than would fill a Conestoga.”

  “Brag and more brag,” Bucktooth said, but uncertainty tinged his tone and he glanced sharply at Fargo’s holster. “Damn me. I should have taken that smoke wagon of yours right off.”

  “Yes, you should have.”

  One of the men covering Fargo gave a loud snort. “What the hell is this? If he so much as twitches, we’ll put windows in his noggin. Just have him drop that lead chucker, and do it quick.”

  Bucktooth looked Fargo in the eyes and seemed to shiver slightly. “Damn me. They say it likely as not happens when you least expect.”

  “What does?” one of the others asked.

  “I didn’t count on dying today,” Bucktooth said rather sadly. And he went for his revolver.

  Fargo drew and slammed off two shots, one for each of the men covering him. He shot them in the head so it only took one shot each, and even as they fell and the blasts had yet to echo off the surrounding slopes, he swiveled and shot the third man high in the sternum and swiveled again and pointed the Colt at Bucktooth, who only had his six-shooter half out.

  Bucktooth froze, his face twisted in a sickly grimace. “Hell in a basket. You’re no bluff.” His throat bobbed. “What if I raise my hands and let you turn me over to the Brits?”

  “How many others have you done this to?”

  “Huh? What kind of question is that? I’ve never counted them. Thirty or forty, I reckon. What difference does it make?”

  “None at all,” Fargo said, and shot him between the eyes.

  6

  “You can’t just go around shooting people whenever you feel like it,” Edith Havard complained.

  “It was either that or let them shoot you.” Fargo had waited for the rest and now they were done with the burying and he was ready to ride on, but Edith insisted on bending his ear.

  “Surely there was a better way to handle the situation.”

  “You’re right.
The best way would have been to let them shoot you and then shoot them.”

  “I’m only saying.”

  “You’re bitching, lady, is what you’re doing.” Fargo wheeled and walked to the Ovaro. He was reaching for the saddle horn when Theodore Havard caught up with him.

  “A word before you go, if you please, Mr. Fargo.”

  Fargo turned. Cosmo was with Theodore and Allen had followed them but stayed well back. “Your wife had it coming.”

  “Oh, it’s not about her. I don’t care what she does.”

  “We’re wasting daylight.”

  “It’s about Mr. Strath,” Theodore said.

  “I can shoot him, too.”

  “Honestly. Your attitude toward gunning down the populace is much too cavalier.”

  “When someone is asking for lead to the head, I oblige.”

  Theodore looked at Cosmo and then over his shoulder at his son. “We’re straying from the point.” He coughed for no reason. “Mr. Strath denies he tried to steal anything.”

  Fargo glanced at Cosmo, who would make a good poker player; the butler’s face was a blank slate. “What did you expect?”

  “My son believes a mistake has been made. He doubts very much that Mr. Strath would resort to common thievery.”

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Your son is a jackass.” The saddle creaked as Fargo swung on. He slid his other boot into the stirrup. “As your guide I have the final say. That was one of the things you agreed to, if you’ll recollect.”

  “Yes, I remember. But what if you misjudged the man’s intent?”

  “Strath stays tied until we come across a sheriff or someone else who can take him off our hands.”

  “And that’s your final word?”

  Fargo reined around and tapped his spurs. If they could get over the pass before nightfall, tomorrow they would have easy going for the most part. Or as easy as the rugged British Columbian mountains ever got.

  Tangling with the outlaws had reminded Fargo how dangerous this country was. He rode warily, his hand nearly always on his Colt.

  The British were doing what they could but the few sheriffs weren’t enough to handle the scores of killers and cutthroats. There was talk, Fargo had heard, of organizing some sort of police force, but nothing had come of it.