South Pass Snakepit Read online

  Fargo nodded. “I figure he made his decision about me last night.”

  “So do I. From now on his killers will be on you like heat rash.”

  “Matter fact,” Fargo said as he headed toward the back door, “they struck this morning. But I’m still here, pretty lady, and just diddled his mistress. So don’t dance on my grave just yet.”

  Fargo returned to the livery and stripped the leather from his stallion, giving him a brisk rubdown and watering him before stalling him. He found his rented room empty and took a quick bucket bath, beating the trail dust off his hat and clothing. After sitting at the table to clean, oil, and reload his Henry, he headed down the middle of the camp street toward the Buffalo Palace.

  Fargo pushed open the slatted batwings and glanced round. It was evidently old-home week: Professor O’Malley sat at a table by himself, nursing shots of red-eye from a bottle—he must have exhausted his supply of bourbon. His once-elegant frock coat was so rumpled it looked like a saddle blanket, and with his melancholy frown and tall plug hat, he was a dead ringer for an undertaker.

  Avram Nash, keeping up a steady patter, moved among the tables, his deft hands producing coins from men’s ears or pulling their watches from inside their own hats. Jack Slade, Clay Munro, Ben Thompkins and Angel Hanchon all occupied a table at the rear of the saloon, drinking and gambling. There was no sign of Philly Denton, but Katy occupied her usual chair behind the faro rig. She saw Fargo stroll inside but studiously—wisely, he thought—ignored him.

  Munro scraped back his chair, stood up, made a show of adjusting his two-gun rig, and headed toward Fargo. The hubbub in the Palace ceased as if on cue, and chairs scraped the floor as men removed themselves from the line of fire.

  “You still ain’t rolled your blankets yet, buckskin boy?” he demanded of Fargo.

  “Nope. I just might settle here for a while, junior.”

  “Sure, put down roots. You’re a trapper, uh? We can use a rat catcher around here.” Munro glanced around the saloon until a few men laughed at his supposed cleverness.

  “That’s just what I’m after,” Fargo assured him. “Rats. I can sniff one in a pile of garbage. But there’ll be no trapping, junior. I mean to kill every one of them.”

  “Don’t call me junior, squaw man.”

  “All right. How ’bout cockchafer instead? Or maybe chicken fucker?”

  The saloon erupted in laughter as Munro’s face turned brick red. “Swallow back them words, Fargo!”

  “I’ll swallow a cat’s tail first, you bushwhacking, white-livered coward. You and your fellow mange-pots only made one mistake when you ambushed me this morning—you missed. It’s a mistake you’re going to regret. Now either make your play or get away from me—you’re breathing my air.”

  Fargo went into a slight crouch and Munro backed down, returning to his table. Katy looked a swift warning at Fargo before again pretending he wasn’t there.

  “Got a drink for a saloon rowdy?” Fargo greeted O’Malley.

  “Poke those long legs under the table,” the little man replied, sliding the bottle toward Fargo. “Fargo, I thought I was self-destructive. Have you taken leave of your senses? You can’t come into the lion’s den and stomp on his tail.”

  “Hell’s fire I can’t. Jesus!” Fargo slid the bottle back, wincing after a swallow. “How can you drink this Indian burner?”

  “I’ve had months of practice.”

  Avram Nash crossed over to their table and took a seat. “Fargo, I enjoyed watching you geld Clay Munro. But don’t forget: around here, the noose comes before the gavel.”

  “Gavel? What gavel? There ain’t even a circuit judge this far west,” Fargo retorted, keeping a steady gaze on that table of cutthroats in the back. “Way I see it, I’m the new sheriff in these parts since nobody else wants the job.”

  Avram shrugged. “On a more pleasant topic—how’d it go with Lily this morning?”

  “So-so. Remember, I wasn’t courting her, just asking about the locals.”

  “Professor O’Malley says you’re looking for a missing payroll. Why would she know anything?”

  Fargo grinned. “Yeah, that’s what she said. Tell you the truth, I just wanted a closer look at her.”

  Nash wagged a finger at Fargo. “You sly dog. But I’ll warn you—I’m not giving up on that little buttercup myself.”

  O’Malley snorted. “Pah! That well’s empty, Avram. Now Katy, she’s a dancer. But Lily’s got Methodist feet.”

  Avram glanced at Fargo. “On the subject of Katy—she was late for the faro game today. And when she finally showed up, she looked happier than a pig in shit. Why was that, Fargo?”

  “Hell, how long is a piece of string?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Philly was here when she came in late, and he didn’t look too happy about it.”

  “That upsets me all to hell,” Fargo said.

  “You know, this handsome army officer once took a shine to her. He was found with a ‘perforated’ liver and a picket pin through his balls.”

  “I wonder which came first,” Fargo speculated. “Me, I’d want the liver.”

  “Seriously, Fargo, if you are putting the horns on Denton, your goose is cooked to a cinder.”

  “Now see here,” O’Malley interrupted. “Horns and a goose in the same sentence? That’s a mixed metaphor.”

  “Blow it out your bunghole, you pedantic old fool.” Avram slid his chair back and stood up. “Well, back to the salt mines. Fargo, with all due respect—if I were you, I’d slip out in the dead of night. There’s too many killers notching their sights on you.”

  Fargo kept speculative eyes on Avram as he returned to his strolling magic act. “You know, Professor, Avram sure does seem to have plenty of concern for my well-being—or for seeing me leave Sweetwater Valley, anyhow. You’ve known him a while. What’s the deal with him?”

  “Avram?” O’Malley poured himself another shot. “Through blandishments and cunning he has wormed his way into the circle of power, such as it is. I wouldn’t call him harmless, but except for his confession about shooting a judge, which may be a spurious claim, I’ve seen no evidence he’s a serious blackguard. Mainly he has ‘I’ troubles—he’s the type who believes that when he dies the world will cease to exist.”

  “That’s on the money,” Fargo agreed quietly. “So why is he so concerned to see me hightail it?”

  O’Malley was too deep into his cups to notice Fargo’s question. “We’ve had more excitement today, Fargo, besides your clash of stags with Clay. Freighters spotted Sioux warriors at the north end of the valley.”

  “How many?”

  “A small war party.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Even large groups of Indians rarely attack a settlement—they aren’t willing to take high casualties, and there’s too many firearms in a settlement. Besides, I thought Denton bought a private treaty with the Sioux?”

  O’Malley nodded. “Still . . . we see more redskins around here than we do soldiers.”

  “Look, I’ve done plenty of contract work for the army. They’re good at dress parades, but poor shakes as Indian fighters. I scouted for them last year near Powder River. They got into a long skirmish with a band of Teton Sioux and used twenty-five thousand rounds to kill twenty- five Indians. These blowhards calling for total extermination got no idea how much it would cost.”

  Fargo suddenly recalled an earlier resolution. “Professor, do you know any of the soiled doves in camp?”

  O’Malley’s glazed eyes looked more alert. “Fargo, you scamp. So you’re not doing the black deed with Katy?”

  “Of course not,” Fargo lied. “I never pay for quiff, either. I want information. Which of the sporting girls is most . . . talkative?”

  “Despite my age,” O’Malley admitted, his face a proud smirk, “I . . . know all four of them in the Old Testament sense. The gal you want is Dottie. She’s the favorite ‘camp pump’ as Avram calls her. But she’s a very likable girl. Dottie works out o
f the last crib behind the saloon.”

  “Save me a place,” Fargo said, unfolding his length from the chair and heading outside. Four sets of malevolent eyes watched him, but no one followed.

  The area behind the saloon was a bowl-shaped swale. Duck boards had been laid down in the mud and water. Fargo heard the furtive sounds of lust from one of the rickety cribs, but Dottie’s seemed quiet.

  “Dottie? You busy?” Fargo called through the blanket that served as a door.

  “C’mon in, honey,” a scratchy female voice called out. “I can get busy in a hurry,”

  A single tallow candle in a tin can revealed the wretched squalor inside. A heavyset, heavily rouged woman wearing only a man’s flannel shirt, unbuttoned, sat on a filthy pallet.

  “Well, now,” she said, eyeing the new arrival. “How ’bout I make the first one free? Once you feel how Dottie’s love muscles work, you’ll be back for more.”

  “I just bet I would,” Fargo said. When she spread her legs wide, inviting him to get started, Fargo’s arousal was instant. A woman was a woman . . . but he reminded himself how easy it would be to get killed back here while he was in the throes of lust.

  Fargo nudged the blanket aside to make sure all was clear.

  “What’s a matter, honey?” Dottie teased him. “Big fellow like you, with such a big . . . gun, afraid to get caught with Dottie?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Fargo said, “Philly Denton’s gun-throwers are looking to stitch my back full of holes.”

  “On the square?”

  “On the square.”

  “Now I like you even better, mister. Do you mean you came here to hide?”

  Fargo shook his head. “I came here to ask you some questions.”

  “Look, Mr. . . .”

  “Fargo.”

  “Look, Mr. Fargo, you hafta know how it is with us whores. Men want us around when they’re randy, but once they finish the rut they don’t want us to be seen. Us girls can’t even go out into the camp. That brain-sick bastard Jack Slade owns us. He brings food and water. In the winter, when it gets too cold for the precious customers, we work out of a heated tent.”

  “I know. But you manage to hear a lot.” Fargo pulled a quarter eagle out of his pocket and held it in the candlelight.

  “Five dollars! Christ, Mr. Fargo, a poke or a suck only costs ten bits.”

  Again Fargo lifted the flap. “Dottie, how long you been in this camp?”

  “Most two years now.”

  “Do you know the name Sykes? Especially Jessica Sykes?”

  Her eyes, heavy with black kohl, fled from his. “Like I said, when you’re a whore, all you know is other whores. The men who top you are all named John.”

  Fargo could see that she was scared. “Dottie, anything you tell me is in strict confidence. What do you know about Lily Snyder?”

  “What everybody knows—she’s the cook at Orville Danford’s boardinghouse.”

  “I think you know more, Dottie. Like, f’rinstance, why she would be lying to me about not knowing Jessica Sykes. Lily knows that name.”

  Dottie looked at the gold piece in Fargo’s hand. “Maybe Lily can’t say nothin’, Mr. Fargo. Just maybe somebody she loves will get killed if she does. Now, that’s all I’m saying, even if you shoot me.”

  Fargo grinned and flipped the quarter eagle onto the filthy pallet. “You just said plenty.”

  “Please, Mr. Fargo, if it gets noised about that I told you, Denton’s dirt workers might cut my throat. Nobody worries about a dead whore, especially around here.”

  Fargo bent down and bussed her cheek. “All women deserve special protection, Dottie, no matter their station in life. What you told me is in strict confidence. If any of Denton’s thugs saw me coming back here, it was for the usual reason, savvy?”

  “I wish it was. I saw how big you was when I got you hard. I’d pay you to feel that big pizzle inside me.”

  “Talk like that,” Fargo said as he pushed the blanket aside, “just might bring me back.”

  7

  When he went back inside the Palace, Fargo didn’t like the determined looks on the faces of the four killers at the back table. A decision had been reached during his absence, and he knew trouble was on the spit.

  “There’s room at the bar,” he told O’Malley. “Let’s move. I want the use of that fancy mirror.”

  Fargo ordered a beer while O’Malley continued to nurse his bottle.

  “Did you glean anything useful back there?” O’Malley asked.

  “Nah. Whores have learned to cinch their lips, and you can’t blame ’em. I am still curious about you, though.”

  “How so?”

  “For starters, how the hell do you survive? There’s room and board, plenty of booze all the time, sometimes top- shelf. After all, you’re not exactly a favorite son around here, and you can’t be getting remittance money with the mail so irregular.”

  “Isn’t this what you call nosing a man’s back trail?”

  “It is,” Fargo admitted, keeping his eyes trained on the bronze-framed mirror. “But I’m being paid to do it, and you might say the greater good is at stake. And when the hell do you write this book of yours? You talk like a book, but I never see you writing.”

  O’Malley tapped his temple. “Right now it’s all up here. Writers call it gathering material.”

  “Do you ever smell what you’re shoveling?”

  “What about you, Fargo? You come here with some cock-and-bull story about a missing brother. Then it’s a missing payroll. Honesty cuts both ways, my friend.”

  “Honesty?” Fargo’s tone ridiculed the word. “I’m at war, little man, and the first rule of warfare is always surprise, confuse, and mystify your enemies. My lies are meant to do just that. What’s the purpose of yours?”

  O’Malley listed slightly as alcoholic vapors warped his sense of balance. Fargo saw Ben Thompkins—the back-shooting specialist—take an extra-long belt from a bottle of whiskey, as if nerving himself up.

  “Perhaps, in my own way, my purpose is the same as yours. I’m at war, too.”

  Fargo sighed. “I get the impression that most folks I’ve met around here are sailing under false colors. You, Avram, Lily.”

  “Skye Fargo is on that list, too.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna beat the truth out of you. But whatever you’re up to, I recommend you give it up as a bad job. Best do it pretty pronto, too. You’d be easy meat for this bunch.”

  Just then Ben Thompkins stood up, and Fargo elbowed O’Malley farther to the left. It all happened in a heartbeat: Thompkins cleared leather, and Fargo’s Colt leaped into his hand. Never turning around, using only the mirror to aim, Fargo fired once over his left shoulder.

  Thompkins fell in a lifeless heap, blood spuming from his bullet-ruptured head. Fargo watched Clay Munro’s jaw go slack with surprise. The saloon went as silent as a classroom after a tough question.

  “Fargo, you murdering son of a bitch!” Slade roared out as all three remaining thugs came to their feet. But none cleared leather—Fargo’s still-smoking six-gun was leveled on them.

  “Murder, my sweet aunt,” Dakota gainsaid. “I saw the whole thing, and it was an even draw. In fact, Ben filled his hand first.”

  Slade tried a different tact. “Fargo, that’s two of Philly’s men you’ve gunned down in two days. I’d put this valley behind me in a puffin’ hurry.”

  “I don’t live in your pocket, Slade.”

  “I’m Denton’s ramrod, so every man in this camp lives in my pocket.”

  “Must not be much else inside your pants then—if you take my drift.”

  Hoots of laughter followed this and Slade’s sandstone-carving face flushed beet red.

  Dakota was still visibly impressed. “That gets my money,” he marveled. “One second, Ben’s back there watching Fargo drink. Next rattle out of the box, he’s got his shooter out. Ben got the drop on him, but Fargo popped him over before he could jerk the trigger. Done it
in the mirror and never turned around. I ain’t never seen the like in all my born days.”

  “Shut your gob, bottles,” Clay Munro snapped.

  “S’matter, junior?” Fargo taunted. “You got a patent on that mirror trick?”

  Clay stared at Fargo with eyes like molten metal. The Trailsman leathered his shooter. “Go ahead, oyster can. Let’s double my winnings.”

  “He can’t get all of us, boys,” Munro said, trying to rally his comrades.

  “I’ll get at least two of you,” Fargo promised calmly. “Go ahead—pull ’em back.”

  “No!” exclaimed Angel Hanchon to his comrades, his face pale as chalk. “You seen what he just done. Let’s vamoose.”

  “You’re goin’ up, mister,” Clay promised Fargo. “Bank on it.”

  After the trio stalked out, O’Malley ran to stand guard at the batwings. Katy watched Fargo with a look of astonished wonder. Avram Nash, still pale, walked over to Fargo.

  “What in the name of bleeding Christ are you trying to do, Fargo?”

  “What? I should just let some peckerwood son of a bitch drill me in the back?”

  “Well, at least leave the saloon. Denton will be savage as a meat axe when he hears about this.”

  Katy had overheard. Before Fargo could reply, she did for him. “So what, Avram? Let Philly stew in his own juices.”

  That evening Lily prepared a simple but tasty supper of fried grits and side meat. Hating to do it, but worried about the Ovaro’s vulnerability after today’s fracas in the saloon, Fargo walked over to the livery and instructed Jake Headley to stall the pinto day and night.

  When he returned to the room, Avram and O’Malley were indulging their favorite pastime: bickering.

  “You’re calling me a liar?” Avram demanded as Fargo walked in.

  “No. Just suggesting you have a talent for . . . extemporaneous prevarication.”

  “All right, then. I accept your apology.”

  Fargo laughed. “You two are a reg’lar Punch and Judy show.”

  “The Professor claims this will be a real town,” Avram said, “when it gets its first church. I say a burg ain’t a town until it has a brass-rail saloon with girls topside, not just ugly crib girls out back.”