The Trailsman #294

Kane was big, clumsy, and slow. Fargo would have beaten him easily if a man hadn’t come into the saloon at that moment and walked right into Fargo’s back.

The man was drunk and staggering, and he grabbed at Fargo in an attempt to retain his balance. Failing at that, he wrapped his arms around Fargo and slid slowly down to the floor, mumbling incoherently.

By that time Kane was on his feet with his pistol in his hand. The other patrons in the saloon were scattering, some of them ducking under tables, others heading up the stairs in back. The piano player disappeared out a back door. The woman who’d been on Kane’s lap ran up the stairs at the back of the room, while the two men at the bar jumped over it and hid themselves behind it, along with the bartender.

Fargo was trying to get the muttering drunk off him, but the man clung to the Trailsman’s legs as if they were the only stable thing in the building. Instead of letting go, he tightened his grip, jerking on Fargo’s legs so that Fargo could do nothing to prevent himself from falling.

In a way, his fall was lucky because the two bullets that Kane fired flew harmlessly through the space where Fargo had stood and out into the street.

Fargo didn’t even have time to hope that Stink and the Bryans hadn’t been in the way of the shots because Kane was coming toward him where he lay, throwing tables aside and kicking chairs out of his way.

The drunk, who still had no idea what was going on, let go of Fargo’s legs and started crawling in Kane’s general direction. Kane tried to kick him out of the way, as he’d kicked the chairs, but the drunk wasn’t as easy to move. He crouched on the floor and stared up at Kane with a puzzled look.

Kane swung his foot up and kicked the man in the face. The man’s head snapped back and a bloody tooth landed on the floor beside Fargo, who now had his own pistol in his hand, though he wasn’t sure he’d be much good shooting from flat on the floor.

Maybe Kane didn’t want a fair fight, after all, Fargo thought. So he shot Kane in the foot.

Or tried to. All he succeeded in doing was shooting off the side of one of Kane’s boot soles.

Kane tilted to the side. He almost fell, but he managed to right himself. When he did, he took hold of his pistol with both hands and pointed it at Fargo’s head.

Fargo rolled over, came to his knees, and shot Kane in the chest while the man was still trying to follow the Trailsman with his pistol barrel.

Kane was dead but didn’t know it. He pulled the trigger of his pistol, but the bullet went into the floor somewhere far to Fargo’s left. Kane tried to raise the gun higher and get off another shot, but his strength was gone.

The pistol slipped from his limp fingers and hit the floor. It went off again, and this time the bullet twanged into a brass cuspidor by the bar. The cuspidor fell against the bar rail with a chiming sound and fell over, spilling its contents on the floor.

Fargo stood up, his pistol still at the ready. Kane turned his head back toward Fargo, but his eyes were glazing over, and Fargo didn’t think he could see anything.

Probably broke his nose, Fargo thought. Would have hurt like hell if he could have felt it.

Fargo went over to see if the drunk was all right. His mouth was bleeding, and several of his teeth were missing, but Fargo figured some of those had been gone for quite a while. And he didn’t seem to be feeling much pain. He was lying on his back, humming softly to himself—some church song, Fargo thought, but he wasn’t sure.

Gun smoke swirled around the room as people started coming out from behind tables. The bartender and the two men who’d hidden with him stuck their heads up over the top of the bar. When they saw that the shooting had stopped, they stood up all the way.

The woman Kane had been nuzzling came out of a room at the top of the stairs and stood at the railing. Looking down at Kane, she didn’t seem sorry to have lost a customer.

“Pure-dee case of self-defense,” the faro dealer said as he emerged from behind his overturned table. “Everybody here saw it.” He sounded almost happy.

“Never thought anybody’d get the best of that son of a bitch,” one of the faro players said. He sounded as happy as the dealer. “It’s about damn time.”

“Don’t guess anybody’ll be giving you any medals, stranger,” the bartender said, “but there ain’t a soul in Portland who’ll miss Custis Kane. You’ve done the whole town a favor.”

“Where to?” the bartender said. “You stick around, I’ll give you a drink on the house. Hell, I’ll give ever’body a drink on the house.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Fargo told him, “but I have to give somebody the bad news about Kane.”

Kane’s death might not mean much to many of the good citizens of Portland, or to many of the bad ones, either. To some of them it might even be a cause for celebration, but Fargo regretted having killed him. He certainly hadn’t intended it, but Kane hadn’t given him much choice.

For the Bryan brothers, Kane’s death could be nothing but bad news. Now any chance of getting him to testify against the judge, Orcutt, or Tomlin was eliminated.

Fargo went outside, took a deep breath of the cool night air, and saw that Hob and Sam were gone.

“They left soon as you went inside,” Stink said. “Didn’t wait around even to see if Kane was in there.” He paused. “Considering all those gunshots, I’m guessing he was.”

“Just as well. Didn’t anybody like the bastard. I was getting kinda worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry anymore, about me or Kane either one. Where’d the Bryans go?”

“They didn’t mention that little detail to me. Didn’t even say good-bye. If I wasn’t used to being treated so bad by people in this town, I might have got my feelings hurt.”

Fargo tried to figure it out. Why would the Bryans leave before even seeing what the result of his encounter with Kane might be? They hadn’t even cared enough to stay around and find out, which meant that they’d had something else in mind all along.

Fargo remembered how they’d had their heads together when they were riding ahead of him and Stink on the way to the saloon. They must have been discussing some kind of plan. So when they’d gotten to the saloon, they’d just been putting on an act. They’d pretended to let Fargo talk them into going along with his plan, but they’d never intended to do it.

They’d gotten him to go inside to face up to Kane, while they went off on their own. It hadn’t mattered to them if Kane had been killed or if Fargo had. They’d changed their plans completely.

“Well, if I was bent on getting even with the judge, I know what I might try. Can’t speak to what those Bryans might do, though. Them and me don’t think alike.”

“Let’s say I’m interested in hearing how you’d get even with the judge.”

“I’m not saying I’d do it. What I mean is, Hob and Sam might think that way.”

“Well, they figure that the judge and them others, including Kane, took away their money and their freedom and their brother. You got Kane for ’em, but that don’t help ’em any. They can’t get their money back, and it don’t seem likely they’ll get their freedom unless somebody talks. So what does that leave?”

Fargo knew that Stink had a point to make, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“It’s this,” Stink said when Fargo told him his problem. “About the only thing they can do to get even is take something from the judge. And they’d hurt Tomlin at the same time, just leaving Orcutt to deal with later.”

“I’m not saying they will. But if it was me? I might take the judge’s daughter.”