Hangtown Hellcat Read online

  “No, I don’t.” Fargo cut him off. “She’s up to something though.”

  “Huh. You’re just jealous ’cause she picked me first for the old slap ’n’ tickle. You heard her say there was character in my face.”

  “And rocks in your head. Keep your damn voice down, wouldja? Those ‘palace guards’ of hers can’t talk, but they can sure hear. And never mind the damn frippet—we gotta figure out how to wangle out of this deal without getting our wicks snuffed.”

  Fargo was already examining the whitewashed side wall, but it seemed solid as a revetment. He sniffed the air. “You can still smell castor oil. This room was used to store packs of beaver pelts, all right.”

  “Speaking of beaver—that Jenny is silky-satin, sure enough,” Buckshot said. “But holy Christ! She makes Tammany politics look like Sunday school. The hell’s she up to, Skye?”

  “I’ve never learned to read sign on the breast of a normal woman let alone a scheming hellcat like her. One thing’s certain sure: we need to clap the stopper on her.”

  Fargo’s tobacco hadn’t been taken. He lit one of his skinny Mexican cigars in the candle flame. “We can’t count on our horses staying put forever. And if we lose them, we lose our rifles—the only weapons we got left unless we find our short guns.”

  “Them sons-a-bitches took Patsy,” Buckshot snarled. “Skye, the hell is that pert skirt doing? First she tells us she wants us to kill them three sage rats for her. Then she tells them we’re gonna be ransomed and kilt.”

  “It’s a stumper. My guess is she’s hedging her bets. It could be she does want us to kill those ‘lieutenants’ of hers because she’s smart enough to know that she’s dancing on dynamite if she lets them live much longer. But this ransom deal—it was worked out too careful in her mind to just be a spur-of-the-moment lie.”

  “Yeah, that shines, don’t it?” Buckshot agreed. “That business just now about how her and us might come to ‘more agreeable terms’—you think mebbe she’s got us in mind to replace them other three as her top dirt workers?”

  “Yeah, I thought about that. It could be. A woman that beautiful is used to turning men into her lap dogs. If that’s her drift, we need to play along.”

  “What’s your size-up on McDade and them other two sidewinders?”

  “Butch is a hothead and a bully, and according to Jenny he’s a quick-draw artist, which makes him dangerous. Waldo Tate is only a threat if you turn your back to him. But I’ll warn you right now, old son—don’t underrate that Mexer or he’ll cut you to trap bait in a heartbeat. His six-gun’s just for show. It’s his blade that kills.”

  “Mister, we’re rowed way the hell up Salt River,” Buckshot said. “No horses, no guns or ammo, and it ain’t just these two bodyguards and them three snake-shits we gotta fret—this whole cockchafin’ gulch is filled with hard cases licking Jenny’s hand. And it’d be easier to tie down a bobcat with a piece of string than to figger her out.”

  “’Fraid so,” Fargo agreed. “She’s holding a candle for the devil, all right. Matter fact, she might even be his mistress.”

  * * *

  The two men sat on their pallets and played five-card draw for the next hour or so while they tried—fruitlessly—to figure a plan of action. Now and then El Burro or Norton poked his head in to check on them.

  “Both them dickless bastards give me the fidgets,” Buckshot said. “They’re itchin’ for a chance to point our toes to the sky.”

  Fargo nodded, slapping down a card. “They’re more dangerous than Butch and those other two.”

  The next time the curtains parted, however, Jasmine stepped into the room with El Burro behind her.

  “Mr. Brady,” she said, “Miss Lavoy wants to play mahjong now.”

  Buckshot sent Fargo a smug look as he scrambled to his feet. “If she wants to play, I’m her man. Looks like you gotta play solitaire now, Trailsman. Keep your chin up—might be your turn next.”

  Fargo was pleasantly surprised when Jasmine remained behind after Buckshot was herded off at gunpoint.

  She sent him a tentative smile. “I’m afraid your friend has the wrong idea.”

  “Wrong ideas are his trademark,” Fargo replied, adding, “I didn’t know I was allowed visitors.”

  “I’m not exactly a visitor,” she admitted. “I was ordered to come here.”

  “Oh.” Fargo’s soaring expectations took a sudden nosedive. With him it was always the woman’s choice. “Why?” he added.

  “She…well, she said she wants a ‘full report’ on you.”

  Fargo studied the pretty girl in the dancing candlelight. She was barefoot and wore a yellow gingham dress that showcased her narrow waist and flaring hips. Her hair was a spun-gold waterfall tumbling in waves over her shoulders. Even in this soft lighting her eyes were a sparkling emerald green. It had been far too long since Fargo had been with a woman, and heat stirred in his loins like the tickling brush of wing tips.

  “What kind of report?” he pressed her.

  “Mainly, she told me, on your…‘prowess in the sack,’ I think she put it.”

  “She should find out for herself instead of ordering you to do it. C’mon in and sit down.”

  “That Jenny Lavoy is—well, she’s not quite right in her upper story,” Jasmine said as she folded down onto the pallet beside Fargo and smoothed her dress with both hands.

  “You mean she’s insane?”

  “No, not exactly that, I don’t s’pose. She’s very intelligent and she don’t seem to do crazy sorta things. But there’s stuff she tells me—you know, about men and bedroom matters?—that would make a horse blush. She’s not interested in doing things the normal way that men and women do them.”

  This intelligence intrigued Fargo. “I don’t mean to embarrass you, Jasmine, but could you chew that a little finer?”

  “Well…see, she’s got this strange book with pictures of men and women, you know, doing it. But some of the things they’re up to—why, it’s hard to imagine how anybody even thought them up. Not that some of them ain’t, you know, exciting. There’s this one…well, I’d rather not say. But I think she’s got you in mind for trying it, Mr. Fargo.”

  “Skye,” he corrected her, even more intrigued but unwilling to put her on the spot. “So you’re a prisoner just like me?”

  “Not exactly like you. I can wander around the house and go out in the yard. I cook and wash for her and them two freakish bodyguards. She’s holding me for ransom from my folks back in Iowa. There’s five other prisoners down in the gulch. She don’t treat me too bad, Mr. Far—I mean, Skye. But I don’t believe for one blessed minute that she plans to let any of us live.”

  “That’s my read on her, too,” Fargo said. “And that means none of us has a damn thing to lose by trying to escape.”

  “I’ll try to help if I can. But I’m all at sea about what to do. She’s already told me I’ll be killed the first time I break her rules. That is, I’ll be killed after all them men in the gulch have their use of me first.”

  “Don’t stick your neck out. But keep your eyes and ears open and try to learn what they did with our weapons.”

  Jasmine’s shoulder was touching Fargo’s arm, and the clean woman smell of her tantalized him like hell thirst. He made an effort to even out his breathing. He said, “I heard you and her talking about how Butch McDade killed your husband.”

  “Yes, I’m a widow at twenty-three. Me and Jim left Ohio to join my brother and his wife in Oregon to start a lumber mill. We didn’t have the money to outfit for a wagon train, but there was new Overland and Butterfield stage routes. We saved up for two stagecoach tickets—laws, they was expensive—but McDade and his bunch jumped us west of Fort Laramie.”

  It felt, to a hopeful Fargo, like Jasmine was leaning against him more.

  “Skye?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I know it must sound shameless, me being a new widow and all. But I was glad when Miss Lavoy sent me in here. As soon as I saw yo
u today, I felt the man hunger in me. See, me and Jim used to do it all the time—sometimes all night long. And I got use to wanting it all the time. I got nothing on under my dress.”

  “That’s all I need to hear,” Fargo said.

  Her dress looped up the front. Fargo opened the bodice and eagerly cupped her firm loaves. The nipples instantly stiffened against his palms.

  “Mine ain’t as big as Jenny Lavoy’s,” she said low in his ear, her breath warm and soft on his face and neck. “But I ain’t no member of the itty-bitty titty club, neither.”

  “They’re perfect,” Fargo assured her, bending down to suck and nibble first one, then the other. The hard but pliant nipples were like mint-flavored gumdrops in his mouth.

  After only a minute of this they were both panting like dogs in August. Fargo stretched her out on the pallet and pushed the dress up and over her hips. Her blond bush was soft as corn silk. She opened her thighs wide, egging Fargo on as she revealed the nooks, crannies, and chamois-soft folds of her sex.

  “Skye, I’m hot as a branding iron,” she said, her tone pleading.

  Fargo knew the feeling well after his long erotic drought. On his knees between her straddled legs, he dropped his buckskin trousers. His blue-veiner was iron hard and leaped with each heartbeat that sent hot blood surging into it.

  Her emerald eyes widened at the sight of it. “Oh, my lands! I ain’t seen too many peeders, but—but I didn’t know they got that big.”

  “Don’t forget, hon—it’s angry right now, and it’s you making it big. Now let’s take care of this.”

  The inside of her thighs were glistening with her desire. Fargo slipped both hands under her taut butt and adjusted her to the perfect angle. He nudged just his purple-swollen tip into her nether portal and rubbed it rapidly back and forth on her clitty until she shivered and writhed at the cascading waves of pleasure.

  “All of it!” she begged. “Fill me up with it!”

  One flex of his ass sent Fargo’s shaft sinking deep, parting the tight but flexible walls of her cunny like water before a ship’s prow. Both of them gasped at the explosive pleasure, greater than any other Fargo knew, that engulfed them in mindless, wordless, animal ecstasy.

  “Hard, Skye!” the little vixen encouraged him, her words a husky moan. “Give it to me hard and fast!”

  Her words were fuel to the fire as Fargo turned into a piston of pleasure, driving in and out in a frenzy of lust that scootched the pallet across the floor. Whimpering and crying out, she locked her slender, shapely legs behind his back and flexed her love muscle over and over, amplifying his pleasure and encouraging Fargo to long, hard, fast strokes until hell wouldn’t have it again.

  Once, twice, a third time she cried out as repeated climaxes drove her to the brink of passing out from pleasure overload. Fargo held off as long as possible until the hot, tingling tickle in his groin erupted like a howitzer blast. His reservoir of pent-up lust was so great that he needed at least a dozen after-spasms to spend himself.

  They both collapsed, their breathing ragged and uneven for a full minute. It was even longer before their mindless daze slowly wore off like a drug.

  “I ain’t never had it like that, Skye,” she finally managed. “I’m gonna be sore for a while, but it’ll be a nice kind of sore.”

  “And now you make your report to Jenny.”

  “I’ll tell the truth, but I can tell you right now she won’t believe it. No woman would.”

  * * *

  The dilapidated clapboard shack in the middle of Hangtown was a far cry from Jenny Lavoy’s comfortable home at the far end of the gulch. It had a rammed-earth floor with an old Franklin stove hunkering in the middle of the only room. A skunk-oil lamp with a rag wick sat atop a table made from a wagon tailgate nailed to two sawhorses. Three crude shakedowns crawling with cockroaches completed the furnishings.

  Butch McDade sat at the table, his face dour as he poured himself another jolt glass of red-eye and tossed it back fast. Then he slammed the glass back to the table.

  “Shit, piss, and corruption!” he growled. “See how it is, Lupe? That’s Skye Fargo, the biggest pussy hound in the West, up there right now with our meat!”

  Lupe Cruz, occupied in running a whetstone over the Toledo steel of his blade, nodded. “This Fargo, he could seduce a Vestal Virgin, uh?”

  “Just the other night,” McDade fumed, “she was telling me and you how she was close to picking one of us for her reg’lar night man. Then that strutting peacock Fargo has to ruin the whole shivaree. Somehow we got to get shut of that lanky bastard.”

  Waldo Tate sat on his shakedown, nervously snapping the wheel of one spur with his finger. Butch slammed his fist into the table so hard that the whiskey bottle jumped.

  “Blast you, Waldo! Leave that fuckin’ spur alone or I’ll ram it down your gullet! Goddamn you are a nervous son of a bitch.”

  “I need me a pipe, is all.”

  “Never mind them tar balls. You’re the one with the good think piece on him. How do we get Fargo outta that house and locked up in the guardhouse with the others before he takes Little Britches and Jasmine from us?”

  Waldo shook his head in disgust. “Butch, you’re tough as a two-bit steak, but you don’t know from nothing where Jenny is concerned.”

  “The hell you mean?”

  “Why’n’t you quit hot-jawing about poon for a minute and think about the real danger Fargo represents?”

  “You got a chicken bone caught in your throat? Speak your piece.”

  Waldo stood up and began nervously circling the shack like a puma on the prowl. “That story she fed us about ransoming Fargo and then killing him and going equal shares with us—did you swallow it?”

  “Hell, you did. You said it was a good plan.”

  Waldo shook his head impatiently. “I had to, Butch. You were standing there raising a stink, and both them bodyguards had their barking irons out. I was scared she’d order them to burn us down on the spot.”

  “Well, why ain’t it a good plan?”

  “Butch, do you need it carved on wood and shoved up your ass? Don’t you take my drift? She might go through with the ransom plan, all right—that bitch doesn’t miss a trick where profit is concerned. But she doesn’t have to kill Fargo. She might have bigger plans for him.”

  Lupe Cruz, quicker on the mental trigger than Butch, suddenly stopped honing his blade and watched Waldo intently.

  “Damn you, Waldo,” Butch said in a low, dangerous voice, “either you quit taking the long way around the barn or I irrigate your guts.”

  “I’m telling you there’s at least an even chance she means to deal Fargo in and have him kill us. Butch, that little hussy could sell a six-gun to a Quaker, and Fargo is no psalm-singer. Christ, he’s a hard killer and tough as boar bristles. Do you know any man who would turn down top-shelf quiff and easy money?”

  Butch poured himself another jolt but forgot to drink it as he mulled Waldo’s words. “So you think that’s what’s on the spit? She means to throw in with Fargo and haze us out? Kill us, even?”

  “No,” Waldo corrected him. “I said there’s an even chance. How can you tell with Little Britches?”

  “She’s a ladina,” Lupe put in. “A sly one. So is Fargo. The two of them together, ay Caramba!”

  Butch frowned. “I don’t like to shit where I eat. So far Little Britches has been generous in splitting up the swag.”

  “She’s not the problem,” Waldo insisted. “It’s Fargo coming to Hangtown that upset the cart, right? Lupe’s right—Little Britches is a sly bitch, but without Fargo to give her ideas, she’ll have to string along with us. She’s got nobody else, and without us to control them, the rest of the men would be all over her like white on rice.”

  McDade slowly nodded, seeing the truth of this. “Yeah. The rest of the men in Hangtown ain’t worth a cup of cold piss without us to control ’em.”

  “Now you’re snapping wise,” Waldo approved. “That bitch has
a mind like a steel trap, but she’s still only a woman.”

  “So you see how it is, boys,” McDade said. “Never mind saving Fargo for any ransom plan—as quick as we can, we got to close his account for good.”

  10

  Fargo, worn out after his pleasant interlude with Jasmine, was just entering the Land of Nod when a hot string of curses jolted him awake.

  “The hell’s your beef?” he snapped at Buckshot, who had just returned to the room.

  “That crazy, highfalutin bitch, that’s what. And me thinking she wanted to play bury the picket pin.”

  Fargo chuckled. “There’s a saying among poker players: If you look around the table and can’t find the chump, it’s probably you.”

  “Sing it, brother. All she done was prod me with questions mostly ’bout you. That high-hatting little bitch.”

  Fargo rose up on one elbow. “Keep your voice down. What questions?”

  “Was you really a ‘knight in buckskins’ like some of them ink slingers say. Did you ever break the law, do you bitch about being poor, do you ever talk ’bout what you’d do if you ever come into money, have you ever outright murdered anybody, shit like that.”

  “Hunh. How’d you play it?”

  Buckshot yanked his boots off, still muttering curses. “Just like me and you planned it. I told her the newspaper stories was swamp gas. I said me and you done some smuggling and how we sold guns to warpath Injins and such. And if she asks you, you gunned down a sheriff in Arkansas after he caught you selling whiskey to Choctaws.”

  “Sounds like you laid it on pretty thick, hoss.”

  “At least pretend I ain’t a soft brain. I told her the sheriff was crooked as cat shit, and how you was mostly a straight arrow but now and then you got bucked off the straight and narrow path when temptation got the best of you—’specially when a comely lass was in the mix.”

  “Well, she’s mighty sharp,” Fargo said. “Maybe she saw right through you and maybe she didn’t. Anyhow, it’s a good sign for us that she asked all those questions—sounds like she’s thinking about cutting us into her operation. Or maybe it was all a smoke screen just to keep us guessing. Did she feel you out, too?”