The Trailsman #354

Fargo had watched the sisters slip into the doorway on the left side of the landing. He walked in without knocking and froze midstep at the sight before him. Somehow Smooth Bore and Tit Bit had stripped naked in mere moments and now lay side by side in the big brass bed. Both women had skin like honey poured in sunlight and both were eagerly cosseting their love nests in anticipation of Fargo’s skillful ministrations.

Fargo looked at two of the finest tarts he had ever devoured. Smooth Bore, with her copper red ringlets and a pair of the most impressive loaves Fargo had ever encountered; Tit Bit, with pillowfanned dark hair, baby-blanket blue eyes, and the shaggy dark mons bush that excited Fargo with its promise of primitive lust and unbridled appetite.

He shot the bar latch home and propped his rifle against a wall, dropping his shell belt. By now all the female pulchritude had Fargo aroused, a fact that didn’t escape Smooth Bore’s notice.

“Strip buck,” Smooth Bore repeated, more breathless this time. “Don’t just open your fly like you usually do. We want the whole solid slab of manflesh.”

Fargo complied somewhat awkwardly, for he always felt vulnerable to enemy attacks when naked—and especially when barefoot. But these two randy firebrands had him champing at the bit, and he fumbled out of his boots and buckskins. As he stripped he asked them, “So how do we play this hand? How ’bout one girl at a time while the other watches?”

“Oh, poof!” Smooth Bore countered. “A man always finishes quick the first time. That means the second girl will get it longer. No, we’re doing it just like us three done in San Francisco, only this time I get to sit on your peeder while Bit straddles your face.”

“I’ll watch you two screw for a while,” Tit Bit decided. “That’ll get me all het up for a nice ride—God, look at that tree limb, Sis.”

Fargo kicked out of his trousers, his aroused staff jumping with each heartbeat. Fargo had been in the wilds for weeks, and seeing these two beauties naked was like finding a banquet. He squeezed in between them and shuddered with tingling pleasure when Tit Bit licked his shaft.

“Gosh dang you’re hard,” she marveled. “A buffalo would be proud of that boner. He’s gonna explode, Smooth Bore. You best hold on when this stallion gets to bucking.”

Smooth Bore sat up, straddled Fargo, and guided his length into her, shuddering and crying out. Fargo was soon bucking like an angry mustang, driving into her over and over and forcing her to orgasmic cries and moans. Unable to sit back long, Tit Bit swung one shapely leg over Fargo’s face and lowered the warm rubyfruit lips of her sex onto his mouth. He found her lust-swollen pearl already protruding from its hood of chamois-soft skin and flicked it rapidly with the end of his tongue.

“Skye, you merciless bastard!” she screamed after a minute or so of this, a climax suddenly welling inside her. “Oh, you damn bull, that’s so nice!”

Tit Bit climaxed so violently that she fell off the bed, and Fargo was glad of it because now it was him and Smooth Bore on a runaway train with an overheated boiler. Her tight little valentine had vise-grip muscles that milked him hard, insistently, sending jolts of pleasure pulsing through him.

Smooth Bore began hard, fast plunges on his man gland and peaked so hard that her sister, eagerly watching, had to catch her—especially when Fargo, his duty to the girls done, took his own heaving pleasure in several powerful, conclusive thrusts. His release was so energetic that he broke a bed board and the mattress caved under them.

Smooth Bore, still lying on the concaved mattress, wrapped a hand around Fargo’s semitumescent staff. “Lord, it ought to be its own county.”

Fargo finally mustered enough strength to squirm out of the cave-in and start pulling on his clothes. “Ladies, it was a pure-dee pleasure.”

When Fargo returned to his friends, a troupe of jugglers, acrobats, and magicians was performing on the stage along the back wall.

“You can still walk?” Snake River Dan greeted him. “After them two worked you over, I figgered we’d have to gather you up with a rake.”

“Yeah, Nash Booth likes her, too,” Jimmy said drily. “You’ll notice all three of his ‘associates’ are with him now. They never miss this show.”

“Let’s just walk over and kill the sons a bitches right damn now,” Dan said on an impulse. “C’mon! Hell, they tried to snuff Fargo’s wick—turnabout is fair play. Four Kentucky pills to the melon and it’s all over.”

“Dan, you got to remember I’m a U.S. deputy marshal,” Jimmy protested. “You’re inciting to murder.”

“All right, stay here and sip your beer, badge-toter. Me and the hungry pecker will do it. Ready, Fargo?”

“Put a stopper on your gob,” Fargo snapped. “I prefer legal killing. Right now I’m in bad odor with both Ephraim Cole and Septimus Dunwiddie—and that’s just the way I like it. It means we will be hugging with Booth and his fellow cockroaches. No need to go blasting away in a saloon and kill innocent customers.”

“That’s medicine,” Dan agreed. “Them entertainers don’t deserve to get shot. I’ve gone kill-crazy in my old age.”

“But you were right,” Fargo added. “The best way to handle this deal is to strike back quick and hard. I still require more proof before I shoot to kill, but we can at least send in our card.”

“Don’t forget,” Jimmy said, “we’re still under Territorial governance here, not martial law. We can’t break the law—not the big ones, anyhow.”

Fargo waved this concern aside. “Nothing like that. Nash and his bunch like giving out nasty surprises, so we’ll take a spoke from their wheel. You can sit this one out, Marshal—me and Dan can wangle this one later today.”

The old trapper loosed a string of curses. “Fargo, you are the most world-beatingest man I ever knew. You was upstairs just now and got you some pussy—two women, mind you—and do your pards get a little? Nary a lick. But comes time to die a dog’s death, you’re ready to go equal shares with us.”

“I ain’t got you killed yet, have I? Pipe down. That tongue of yours has been salted in a pickling jar.”

Fargo watched Jimmy absently pull a bit of rope from his shirt pocket and work it in his fingers—a habit he repeated often. “What’s the rope for?” Fargo asked.

Jimmy shrugged. “This was cut off a rope that was used to hang a man. A sheriff near Stockton told me it’s good luck.”

Fargo studied Jimmy closer. The young man looked crestfallen and preoccupied. Something was weighing on him and he was keeping it to himself.

Jimmy’s freckled, sunburned face looked startled. “Yeah. Found a note pinned to the jailhouse door. Told me to clear out now or I’ll be gunned down.”

Fargo surprised him by grinning. “Good. That means the medicine’s taking hold. Far as the note—you’re in no more danger just because a threat is written down.”

The threat that entered the saloon just then, however, was not written down—it walked into the Wicked Sisters with burning black eyes and a hell-and-damnation ferocity that silenced the place. The magician onstage retreated so quickly that he tripped over his own cape and crashed onto a table, collapsing it.

Terrible Jack Slade, clearly drunk, searched the saloon, spotted Fargo, and crossed unsteadily toward his table.

Fargo averted his gaze from Slade’s hideous necklace of shriveled, blackened human ears. “Oh, keeping up the strut, Jack, keeping up the strut.”

“I saw those vile twats who own this cesspool crawling all over you yesterday. Harken and heed, Trailsman: a woman has seven openings in her body, and the devil can enter any of them.”

“Long as he waits his turn,” Fargo quipped. “Say, what’s all this stirring-and-to-do about midnight next Wednesday?”

Slade’s handsome face suddenly looked coy, and he lowered his voice confidentially. “Life is a disease, Fargo, and the only cure is death.”

Slade tipped his bowler hat and headed back into the billiards room. Snake River Dan tapped his temple with an index finger. “Room for rent, if you take my drift. He’s just babbling crazy talk.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I ain’t so sure. This talk now ain’t his usual line. I think he’s got something planned.”

“He’s insane but dangerous,” Fargo agreed. “Maybe even more dangerous than those four hired killers over there measuring us for a coffin.”

After describing where Fargo would find the place where Nash Booth and his three minions stayed, Jimmy left the Wicked Sisters to make his rounds. Fargo and Snake River Dan found a place called the Bluebush Café on Center Street serving eggs—at the ungodly price of fifty cents apiece—and stoked their bellies with a piping-hot meal.

“You know,” Fargo said as they hoofed it toward the livery, “most people out here don’t change their behavior until there’s a disaster. It’s smarter to head off the disaster, and Jimmy sees that. He’s right as rain about the bad sanitation killing more people than bullets do.”

“He’s a right decent sort,” Dan agreed. “It’s rare to meet an honest man. Still a mite green, is all. And around here, that could soon make him deader than a can of corned beef. Don’t help none that you come down like thunder on Dunwiddie and galled Cole.”

They swung into the livery yard, Fargo’s vigilant eyes missing nothing. Dan removed his slouch hat and swiped the stringy, greasy hair from his eyes. “C’mon, Fargo, give. What’s your plan?”

Fargo grabbed his high-cantled saddle from a rack and lugged it to the Ovaro’s stall. “Tell you the straight, old roadster, I don’t exactly have one yet. We’ll have to reconnoiter first. Maybe do some horseback thinking.”

Fargo cinched the girth and checked his latigos. “Sometimes there’s no other choice. Right now we’re like a snake trying to get started on loose sand. We can’t just deal summary justice without proof or Jimmy takes it in the tail—he hired me, don’t forget, and has to answer for my actions. So we’ll provoke the local roaches until they react and it’s legal to kill them.”

Fargo glanced across to the stall occupied by Dan’s dish-faced skewbald, jaw dropping in astonishment at what he saw. “Old man, are you giving that animal whiskey?”

“Mescal, to chew it fine. Just a few sips from my hat. This worthless Indian scrub is wild for it. We both do better work with a bracer.”

“No wonder that broom tail has a crooked gait. But wait until he can’t get the hootch—a horse with the jimjams ain’t a pretty sight.”

The two men led their mounts into the yard and forked leather, heading west on Center Street. It was late afternoon, a westering sun balanced like a bloodred coin on the Sierra Nevada, and the street and plank-board walks filled and thickened with carousers.

Jimmy had explained that Booth and his gang lived in a mine building behind the Schofield, once used as a powder magazine—and the probable reason, Fargo concluded, why they commandeered it for themselves.

“I don’t—I got no crystal ball and I don’t live in their pockets. But they’re night riders, remember? Night’s coming on, and Jimmy told me those four take no meals in town. If you were a hardworking, murdering scum of a night rider, wouldn’t you get outside of some grub before riding out?”

The two horsebackers cleared town and trotted their mounts down the winding slope. Dan made a last check of his powder loads while Fargo flicked the riding thong off the hammer of his Colt.

As the tinny clamor of Virginia City faded behind them, Fargo heard the hissing, clanging racket of the mines below growing louder. But it was silent in the grainy twilight of the road except for the dull clopping of their horses’ hooves and the light clinking of bit rings. It was the kind of eerie silence Fargo knew from previous encounters—a silence that grew more and more unnatural until it exploded in a kill cry.

The tree cover on their right turned into a wide swath of timber-denuded land, wood used to brace the stopes of several hard-rock mines. Looking at the vast, ugly sprawl of the Schofield mining site, much of which resembled bomb rubble, Fargo felt a strong stirring of nostalgia for the pristine West he had once trailed through, a place blissfully free of eastern capital and ruin. Strong will, optimism, and blind ignorance—all causing a foolish underestimation of the dangers and damage to the land and the tribes.

“Goldang ugly, ain’t it?” Dan asked, as if reading Fargo’s thoughts. “And them hydraulic operations is washing away half of the Sierra range. Big mountains turned into hummocks.”

“It comes straight from hell, all right,” Fargo said. “Still, it also involves pluck and grit, and I have to admire that much.”

The two men stayed behind long piles of ore tailings and circled around the mine. A large meadow of timothy and clover, deliberately spared to provide graze for dray animals, separated the old powder magazine from the Schofield’s big headframe.

“Mebbe you was right, Trailsman,” Dan said. “I count four horses in that rope corral. Sore-used, too.”

“Doesn’t mean the scum buckets are here,” Fargo reminded him. “Hell, that place is a strong box.”

He noted the thick double-planked walls, loopholes later added for rifles, with narrow air vents instead of windows. “A good blockade in a shooting scrape.”

But Fargo saw other, more favorable details. The only door was hinged to swing outward, and old barrels stacked on one side of the square building made it easy to climb onto the roof. Most important, the men had added a stovepipe chimney for a cooking stove, and puffs of smoke drifted from it now.

“We’ll tether the horses here,” Fargo said. “I hate to do it, but we better muzzle ’em with our belts. Those louts can’t hear anything in the house, but if one comes outside he could hear a whinny.”

When they were set to cross the clearing, Fargo explained his plan to Snake River Dan, who grinned his approval. Fargo left his Henry in its scabbard, freeing his hands to climb. They bent low at the waist and sped toward the partial cover of the corral. But Fargo’s plan suddenly suffered a wrench when the door swung open and Chilly Davis emerged into the fading sunlight.

Fargo cursed the luck. Grass was sparse in this meadow and barely high enough to cover a shoe. But Davis didn’t glance toward them. He ducked into the corral, and Fargo saw he carried a horseshoe and a shoeing hammer.

Davis led a nervous but docile gelding, a dark cream with black mane and tail, into better light and began pulling the rear offside shoe.

Dan, one eye asquint, got a closer look at the horses. His face wrinkled in disgust. “I never seen anything to equal it. A man can’t call himself a Westerner and treat horseflesh like that. Great balls of fire look at Booth’s ginger.”

Fargo picked his teeth with a weed as he studied the flatwithered horse. The flanks were galled by girth sores and gaping saddle sores, and ugly lumps of scar tissue showed where the gelding had been spurred deep in the shoulders.

Both men lay flat waiting for Davis to finish his task. Dan annoyed Fargo by sucking on a piece of sassafras candy close to Fargo’s ear. Dan was nearly toothless and made liquid slapping noises that sounded disgusting to Fargo. Just as he opened his mouth to complain, Davis headed back into the dwelling.

“All right,” Fargo said, “you know your part. Work fast. If they spot us and stay inside, no point in us making a stand—they’re well forted up. Just light a shuck for your horse.”

Fargo burst toward the stack of barrels while Dan headed for a pile of kindling beside the door. In less than a minute the old frontiersman had wedged the door shut tight with wood chips. Fargo, meantime, had gained the roof and was cat-footing toward the chimney.

“Listen, Booth,” Sam Watson said, “we got that nancy boy Cole banging our ears about how we gotta be more ‘tactful,’ and we got Dunwiddie telling us we’re hauling back on the reins too much. Let them lily-white silk cravats haul the hard freight just once.”

“Brother, you ain’t just birding,” chimed in Willard Jones. He and Watson sat at a crude deal table dipping soda biscuits into the pot liquor from a beef stew. “Cole acting all biggity like his shit don’t stink. Them perfumed poncy men are pulling in a bonanza, and all we get is the hind tit.”

Nash Booth sat on a nearby nail keg rolling a quirly. The scornful twist of his mouth made him look predatory and ruthless. “Both you little bitches need to reach inside your britches and see if you’re men. Christ, all you do is whine.”

“Don’t queer the deal,” Booth said, his dead-button eyes unnerving. “Let Cole and Dunwiddie parade their fancy duds and play the big bugs. When the time is right, we’ll settle accounts with both of them. For now, though, it’s Fargo we got to worry about.”

“Horseshit, lame brain. Fargo hangs on like a tick until his enemies are destroyed. He can track better than a Messy Apache, shoot better than a Texas Ranger, and he can sink that Arkansas toothpick into a man’s heart at thirty paces. If we fail to plant him, I’ll guarantee it—our cake is dough.”

“Boys, if I’m joking I’m choking. Fargo is a mighty potent force. Either we put the quietus on him, and quick, or for us it’s the knot for sure.”

Booth, too, felt a hair-trigger contempt for both Cole and Dunwiddie, but they were money in his pocket and that was all that mattered—for the moment. Fargo, however, was a different pair of shoes altogether. Booth licked his quirly, twisted the ends, and struck a match on his rough rawhide vest, leaning into the flame. His dead gaze settled on Watson and Davis.

“And you two stumblebums . . . letting Fargo queer our grab on the Gramlich claim. Valiant as Essex lions, you are.”

Watson, juice dribbling down his chin, scowled. “Ease off, why’n’cha? You just got done sounding off on how dangerous this crusader is. Now you’re pissing and moaning on account Fargo bollixed up the Gramlich deal for us. You can’t have it both ways.”

“It’s this goddamn oven heat,” Booth snapped. “Do you have to cook at the hottest part of the day? We’re on the edge of a desert and this place is a closed box.”

Booth scowled at the simple beehive stove the others had rigged up. “You don’t need them hot embers now. Smother ’em with dirt.”

Fargo had already dropped a dozen cartridges, one by one, down the stovepipe chimney when he heard Booth’s order.

Irritation swept over Fargo. He chastised himself: Just a few minutes earlier and the show would have gone on.

“Ahh, I ain’t even eaten,” Fargo heard one of Booth’s underlings complain. “’Sides, I done it last time. It’s Sam’s turn.”

“Shit, piss, and corruption!” Booth roared like an incensed bull. “One of you cockchafers had best snuff them embers or I’ll snuff—”

A bullet detonated below, shocking Booth into silence. A second, a third round cracked off, slugs tearing into various parts of the building. By the time the fourth shot cooked off, full-blown panic gripped the men below. More rounds erupting all around them, somebody rushed the door and then cursed when it refused to budge. Fargo crept to the edge of the roof overlooking the door, waiting with his Colt to hand and his spare cylinder tucked behind his belt.

“Open the son of a bitch!” Nash Booth roared. “Open it, I said! We’re rag tatters if we stay in here!”

Fargo glanced toward the corral and frowned. Snake River Dan was supposed to be hunkered down behind the corral out of sight. But he had crept up to the front corner, partially exposed, and too late Fargo realized why.

He whistled sharply to get the old salt’s attention, signaling him to draw back. But Dan gave him a defiant grin and waved both Dragoon pistols.

It was too late anyway—the front door split open with a thumping, splintering sound, and burly Chilly Davis shot out into the yard, losing his footing. With the last rounds still cracking like whips inside the dwelling, the other three burst out, trampling Davis in their haste. The men sprinted toward the nearby Schofield, blindly wing-shooting with their revolvers as they ran.

Fargo had planned to set up a hot but nonlethal crossfire with Dan, but the old man had blood in his eye for Willard Jones. He was easy to spot in his yellow-corded cavalry hat. His face glowing with the revenge need, Dan suddenly leaped out into full view.

But Dan’s dramatic showdown turned into a farce when he fired both Colts and produced only the puny popping sound of the detonator caps—the powder loads had clumped.

Jones pivoted deftly and shucked out a barking iron, opening up on the old trapper at close range. Cursing, Fargo popped a round into Jones’ arm to send him running. But by now the others had spotted Fargo on the roof, and whistling lead thickened the air around him.

Thanks to Dan’s stupidity an easy raid had turned into a root-hog-or-die situation. Never one to get bogged down in an uneven shootout, Fargo opted to gamble rather than simply take what was dished out. He sat back on his legs and fanned the hammer, pausing only to insert the spare cylinder.

Fargo blew off two hats and the rest of his bullets chunked into the dirt at the gang’s feet. As he had hoped, the furious lead bath sent them racing to the mine. But not before Booth shouted, “You’ll get it in the neck, Fargo!”

“Now we’re up against it, Methuselah,” Fargo said in a grim tone as he climbed down, face powder-blackened. “You just had to brace Jones, didn’t you?”

“Plague take that son of a bitch! And you, too, Fargo! Hell, I nearbout had him killed till you stuck your oar in my boat.”

“Mebbe so, but christsakes, why did you just wing the scavenger ? You coulda tunneled through his brainpan at that range.”

“Much like a gelded horse, you just don’t get it, do you? This ain’t the time for killing shots.”

Dan turned solemnly emphatic. “The very sight of that jasper makes my blood go sour. I told you what he done to me. Would you let some criminal son of a bitch kill the Ovaro and get away with it?”

“Never mind Jones,” Fargo ordered in a tone he seldom used with friends. “Or did you throw in with me and Jimmy just so you could kill Jones?”

By now the two men had reached their horses. The Ovaro, long used to shooting scrapes, calmly greeted Fargo by nuzzling his shoulder. Fargo slid the Henry into its scabbard and knelt to untie the hobbles.

“All right, Dan,” he said quietly in the gathering darkness. “This is no time for mavericks. The odds are stacked against us in this town, and I got a bad feeling on this one. If you deliberately ruin our plans once again, I swear I’ll kill you for cause.”