12
It was addressed simply to “Pike,” which hinted that Gideon and Driscoll must have been on friendly terms. Fargo folded it back up, slid it into a pocket, and hauled the mortal remains of Pike Driscoll into the grave. He covered the body with several inches of dirt, tamped the dirt down, and added a few rocks and branches to deter coyotes and the like.
For a few moments Fargo stood gazing at the earthen mounds. Six dead men in two days. The killer had a lot to answer for. He turned and went to the horses and added Driscoll’s to the string. The extra animals would slow him down but he was only a couple of days out of Lewiston.
The rest of the morning was peaceful. Fargo reached the crest and wound down the north slope. Along about noon he stopped at a stream so the horses could slake their thirst. While they rested, he sat with his back to a pine and unfolded the letter from Gideon Zared to Pike Driscoll.
Before I get to what I am about to say, I must ask you not to show this to my father. If you do, he will be furious. And not just with me.
We have known each other for seven years now. That is a long time. Granted, you are in my father’s employ, but we have always been friends. Or at least friendly. Last Christmas I had my sister give you a stuffed goose in return for the small favors you have done. Do you remember?
Those favors have meant a lot, Pike. You have not informed on me to my father when I have been with Tabor. I hate having to sneak behind my father’s back but he leaves me no choice. You know how he feels about her. He has forbidden me to see her, as you are aware. But how can I not see the woman I care for more than I care for life itself?
Fargo stopped reading. The younger Zared sounded like a love-smitten calf. But what did the father have against the boy’s fiancée?
I have also slipped you money from time to time. A fifty here. A hundred there. Money well spent, since every minute I spend with Tabor is precious.
Now I am prepared to pay you more. A lot more. Five thousand dollars, nearly all I have in this world. There was a time when my father lavished money on me, but he stopped when I took up with Tabor.
I mention that only to impress on you that if I had more, I would offer you more. Still, five thousand is nothing to sneeze at. And it is yours, all yours, if you will do me one last favor. The greatest favor of all.
I intend to run off with her, Pike. To take her as far and as fast from my father as I possibly can, never to return.
But I constantly have bodyguards with me, and the others have not been as kindly disposed toward us as you have. They would tell on me in an instant.
Again Fargo stopped reading. Of all the ways to describe Pike Driscoll, “kindly” was not one of them. He wondered if Driscoll had duped the boy into thinking he cared about Gideon and Tabor when all Driscoll really cared about was the money Gideon gave him.
I need to meet with Tabor in private several times between now and the end of the month. If you can arrange to be my bodyguard on certain days, I can accomplish this without my father suspecting.
But there is more.
I need several days’ head start.
I know my father well. I know how his devious mind works. Once he finds I am missing, he will send his bodyguards out to find me. Eluding them will be difficult unless we work things out so my father does not realize what I am up to until it is too late for him to stop me.
What do you say? Five thousand dollars, and it is all yours with no one the wiser. It is not as if I am asking you to betray my father’s trust in anything that might harm him.
I am in love, Pike. I do not mind admitting that. It is love that prompts me to defy my father. It is for love’s sake that I am willing to give up all that will be bequeathed to me. If you have ever been in love, then I need say no more. If you have not, or if you think me foolish, I need only mention once more that which will make a tidy nest egg for you.
Five thousand dollars.
Please give me your answer tonight after supper. I could not bear the suspense much longer.
Respectfully
Underneath was Gideon’s signature. Fargo reread the letter, then folded it and placed it in his pocket.
A host of new questions needed to be answered. Had Benjamin Zared lied about his son and the others going after gold? Or was that what Gideon told his father to gain the time he needed to escape? And how was it Benjamin had forbidden Gideon to see Tabor if Gideon and Tabor were engaged? What was true and what were lies? The whole affair was a web of deception.
Not to mention, one of the scouts was on a killing spree. Normally Fargo was more than a match for anyone in the wild. But this time he was up against someone whose skills rivaled his own.
Rising, Fargo stretched and stepped to the Ovaro. As he forked leather, a premonition seized him: a feeling that the dangers he had endured so far were nothing compared to those ahead; a sense that the worst was yet to come.
“I’m getting as bad as an old spinster,” Fargo joked to the pinto. But death was no laughing matter, and before the situation was all sorted out, a lot more people might share the fate of Driscoll and the other bodyguards.
That night Fargo kindled a fire in a dry wash where he was out of the wind and out of the sight of unfriendly eyes. He slept with the Henry in the crook of an elbow. Before daylight he pushed on. By ten, clouds covered the sky, harbingers of rain later in the day. Shortly past eleven he came to a grassy tract, and there, made the day before, were tracks left by the killer’s mount.
Fargo paralleled them. He hoped to learn more. Maybe the killer would drop something. It was a long shot, but if he could learn who the killer was, he could eliminate the one advantage the killer had.
Another sundown, another night under the stars. Fargo felt safe in making a fire in a clearing but he kept it small. He had shot a squirrel that afternoon and treated himself to squirrel stew and a pot of black coffee.
Fargo liked the wilds at night. He liked listening to the roars, snarls, shrieks, and sundry bestial cries. They were as ordinary to him as the clatter of buck-boards and wagons and the clomp of hooves were to city dwellers.
He slept soundly, but lightly, and for once he was up and in a crouch before the Ovaro nickered and stomped a hoof. Draping his blanket over the saddle to lend the impression he was curled under it, he was on his belly at the clearing’s edge when a darkling figure materialized on the other side. First one, then another, stalked toward his saddle.
The fire was out so they could not tell he wasn’t under the blanket. Nor could he make out more than their shapes and sizes. He centered the Henry on the one on the right and had his finger on the trigger when the man he was about to shoot stopped and addressed his blanket.
“Fargo? Are you awake?”
“It’s us. Billy Bob and Silky Mae,” said the sister.
Fargo could not have been more taken aback if it were President Lincoln. “Stand where you are,” he warned.
The Picketts spun and Silky Mae uttered a nervous laugh. “What are you doin’ over yonder? You sure are a tricky critter.”
“What do you want?” Fargo demanded. The last he knew, they were ready to skin him alive.
“Is this any way to greet folks?” Billy Bob asked.
“We’re not lookin’ to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” Silky Mae said. “If we were, we’d have come in quiet-like.”
“What do you want?” Fargo repeated.
“To jaw a spell,” Billy Bob said. “To set things right. We figured out why you were so mad at us.”
“It was the rattler, wasn’t it?” Silky Mae asked. “Someone stuck it in your room and you thought it was us.”
“But it wasn’t,” Billy Bob took up when his sister paused. “We would never have stuck a dead snake in your room. That’s plain childish.”
“The snake was alive. Someone left it thinking it would bite me. Didn’t you see its tail?” Fargo said.
“It’s tail?” from Silky Mae. “It was the head I noticed, crushed to goo like it was.”
“Whoever done the deed, it wasn’t us,” Billy Bob reasserted. “We just wanted you to know.”
“And that there are no hard feelin’s over what you did,” Silky Mae said. “Heck, we would be riled if someone did that to us.”
“True enough.” Billy Bob nodded. “And we’re not the kind to hold a grudge.”
“You live by the feud, remember?” Fargo reminded them.
“That’s different,” Silky Mae said. “A feud is pure hate. It’s a life for a life, not a snake for a snake.” She laughed merrily.
So did her brother. “Why, we would have to be plumb addlepated to want to kill someone over a dead snake and a little roughhouse.”
“And we’re not addlepated,” Silky Mae said.
Damned if Fargo didn’t believe them. But accomplished liars were always believable even when they told the baldest of lies. Still, they had come up on his camp making no effort at stealth. “One of you get the fire going.”
“I will.” Silky Mae hunkered and poked at the embers. She added kindling and branches and puffed until the kindling caught, all within a span of no more than thirty seconds. She was good, this back-woodswoman. “There,” she said as the flames rapidly flared.
Fargo came into the circle of light, lowered the Henry, and noticed they had their pistols but nothing else. “Do you always go around at night without your rifles?”
“We didn’t want you shootin’ us by mistake,” Billy Bob said. “A man sees a couple of varmints comin’ toward him in the dark with long guns, he’s liable to shoot first and find out who they were after they stop breathin’.”
“We’re not idiots,” Silky Mae said. “Some folks always think we are, us bein’ from the South and talkin’ like we do and all.”
Billy Bob chuckled. “To us, it’s the Yankees who talk funny. Why, half of ’em talk like they have marbles in their mouths.”
“Especially the Yankees from Boston,” Silky Mae said. “You ever heard ’em? Their voice boxes are up in their noses. They talk like this.” She pinched her nose and said, “I say, you bounder, you.”
Despite himself, Fargo grinned. “How about some coffee?”
“That would be fine,” Billy Bob said, “but first we’d like to fetch our horses. I don’t cotton to leavin’ ’em out there in the dark untended. Who knows what might come along?”
Fargo watched them cross the clearing. The moment they were out of sight, he backed into the shadows, just to be on the safe side. Maybe they were telling the truth, maybe they weren’t. It was not worth a bullet from an ambush to find out.
Shortly, though, the Picketts were back, leading their mounts and a pack animal. Fargo gathered up an armful of limbs for the fire and strode into the open. “I reckon I should apologize,” he said. “When I found Silky Mae in my room, on her hands and knees by my bed, I figured she was the one who left the snake.”
The distaff Pickett squealed as if he had stuck her with a pin. “So that’s it! I’d heard somethin’ and was tryin’ to find what it was when you walked in on me. But I didn’t see no snake.”
It was possible, Fargo supposed, if the rattler had been far enough back under the bed. But then, if the Picketts were not to blame, who was?
“What a mix-up,” Silky Mae said. “That was real cute of you, leavin’ that critter under my pillow.”
“It’s water over the beaver dam,” Billy Bob said. “Let’s start fresh like we just met and go from there.”
“Fine by me.” Silky Mae smiled at Fargo. “I was powerful sad we had a fallin’ out. I’d like to get to know you better.”
Was it wishful thinking on Fargo’s part, or was there a hint of something more than friendliness in her expression and her comment? He squatted, set the Henry down, and opened the coffeepot to see how much was left. Plenty. He placed it on a flat rock to reheat, then sat back with his forearms over his knees. Both the Southerners were staring at him as if he were an exhibit at a county fair. “What?”
“You’re about the most famous person we ever met,” Billy Bob said, “if you don’t count Stephen Douglas when he was stumpin’ for president.”
“Politicians don’t count,” Silky Mae said. “They don’t hardly amount to a hill of beans, the whole lot of ’em.” To Fargo she said, “I suppose you heard about the secession?”
“Who hasn’t?” Fargo said. It had been in all the newspapers, and was all most people talked about. South Carolina had seceded from the Union in December of last year and since then other Southern states had done the same.
“All that fuss over negroes,” Billy Bob remarked. “There’s even been talk of goin’ to war.”
“Does your family own slaves?” Fargo asked.
“Us?” Silky Mae said, and squealed with mirth. “It takes money to buy slaves, in case you haven’t heard, and we can barely afford the clothes on our backs.”
“We’ve always been dirt poor,” Billy Bob said, “but that can change if we find Zared’s boy.”
“I still don’t much like workin’ for him,” Silky Mae said. “Him a damned Yankee, and all. And a snooty Yankee, besides.”
“His daughter ain’t no better,” her brother responded. “I never met a female who put on so many airs. You would think she walks on water, the way she looks down her nose at us.”
“I can suffer her airs for twenty thousand dollars,” Silky Mae said. “I can suffer all the airs in the world.”
Billy Bob leaned back and casually asked, “So have you seen hide or hair of that jasper without a nose or that Weaver fella?”
“No,” Fargo said, wishing he’d had a glimpse of the killer.
“Us neither,” Silky Mae said. “They lit out of Fort Hall ahead of us and we’ve been tryin’ to catch up ever since.”
“Of course, you lit out earlier than everybody,” Billy Bob mentioned. “Pretty sneaky, although I can’t say as I blame you.”
Silky Mae gave Fargo another of her enigmatic smiles. “The early bird gets the worth, brother. He was bein’ smart.”
“I’ve never been all that clever,” Billy Bob lamented. “Mostly, I chug through life like a steamboat with a busted boiler.”
“You do not,” Silky Mae said. “You can be as cagey as an old coon when you have to be.”
“So can you. And we have to be cagey now, with so much money at stake.”
“There are lives at stakes, too.” Fargo had never met two people who loved to flap their gums as much as these two. “The boy and his fiancée and his friend.”
“We’re not forgettin’ ’em,” Silky Mae said. “But we would be less than honest if we didn’t admit to bein’ more interested in the money than we are in whether we find them healthy and kickin’ or bleached bones.”
“They’re Yankees,” Billy Bob said, as if that were explanation enough.
“It’s not like we know ’em,” Silky Mae elaborated. “It would be different if they were friends or kin.”
Picking up a thin branch, Fargo broke it in half and added the two pieces to the fire. Then he checked the coffee. It would be a while yet.
“You don’t gab much, do you?” Silky Mae asked and, before he could answer, added, “But that’s all right. I like men who don’t bend a gal’s ear until it darn near falls off.”
Fargo could say the same about women but she might take it personally.
Billy Bob unexpectedly rose. “One of us has to strip the horses, sis. Since you did it last night, it’s my turn.”
“Bring me my saddlebags and bedroll if you would,” Silky Mae requested, and after he moved off, she said quietly to Fargo, “He’s not bad as brothers go. Most every gal I ever met has horror tales to tell of brothers who beat ’em or always sassed ’em or wanted to do things brothers and sisters shouldn’t do, but Billy Bob has always treated me decent.”
“You’re an exceptional lady,” Fargo commented.
“That’s a mighty big word for a mighty ordinary gal. I pull on my britches one leg at a time like everybody else.”
“Most women would rather wear dresses and live in town where it’s safe and peaceful,” Fargo mentioned.
“Was that an insult?” Silky Mae bristled. “So what if I don’t wear a dress? I’m every bit as female as any citified priss.”
“Sheathe your horns.” Fargo smiled. “I admire a woman who can hold her own out here.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve only known a few who can,” Fargo went on. “I respect them all highly—you included.”
A pink tinge crept into Silky Mae’s freckled cheeks. “I’m sorry. Men don’t generally say nice things about me unless they are drunk or they want to take my clothes off.”
“Well, I’m not drunk,” Fargo said.
Silky Mae laughed and slapped her leg. “Why, I do declare, if you’re not careful, I’ll think you are sparkin’ me.”
“I’m not looking for a wife,” Fargo set her straight.
“And I’m not hankerin’ after a husband, so we’re even. There’s too much of this world I ain’t seen, too much I ain’t done. A husband would only tie me down, saddle me with kids and such, and I’d never get to see anything.”
In that regard they were kindred souls, Fargo mused.
“My brother has promised that once this is over with, we can go on to the Pacific Ocean,” Silky Mae said excitedly. “I’ve been to the Atlantic once, back when I was thirteen, and it gave me goose bumps, all that water movin’ like it does, and the waves and all. They say the Pacific is just as big.”
“You are in for more goose bumps,” Fargo said.
“We might even go on to southern California,” Silky Mae waxed enthusiastic. “See some of those old Spanish missions, and lie on the shore in the sun like some do. That would be fun.”
Fargo smiled. In many respects, Silky Mae Pickett was a girl in a woman’s body—and a nice body, at that: pert and compact but full in all the right places.
“I envy you, travelin’ everywhere like you do. No roots to hold you, no ties that bind. Don’t get me wrong. I’m fond of my kin. My ma and pa are the best anyone could ask for. Ma is the gentlest soul alive, and she has the patience of a saint. That’s what comes of raisin’ fourteen kids, I reckon.”
Fargo whistled softly. Large families were common, particularly in the South, but fourteen was more than most women would stand for.
“Exactly.” Silky Mae grinned. “If I had that many, it would drive me to drink or an early grave, or both.”
“Your parents don’t mind you coming out here?”
“I’m old enough to do as I please. Besides, my folks raised us to stand on our own two feet, to make up our own minds about things and take the consequences.”
Steam was rising from the coffeepot but not enough to suit him, so Fargo slid it nearer the fire.
“That’s what life is all about,” Silky Mae said. “Consequences. You take this rich kid Gideon. He went off into the mountains after gold and now he’s disappeared. It’s the consequence of him being as dumb as a stump.”
“There is more to it than that.”
“Maybe so. But it doesn’t excuse what he did. He’s a city boy, and city boys are like fish out of water in the woods. I’ve yet to run into one who can ride a whole day without cryin’ about how his legs hurt, or who can butcher a buck or a rabbit without gettin’ green at the gills.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Fargo said.
“City folks are different from country folk. They’re softer. Weaker. And they do too damn much thinkin’. It comes from livin’ more in their heads than in the world around them, if that makes any kind of sense.”
Fargo conceded that it did. There was more to this Southern lass than one might suspect.
“Why, you’re just full of flattery,” Silky Mae teased. “I shouldn’t be surprised. From what I’ve heard and read, you have always have been partial to the ladies.” She snickered and winked.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear or read,” Fargo cautioned. “Half of it is lies and the other half exaggerations.”
“No one lied about you bein’ handsome,” Silky Mae said.
Mimicking her, Fargo bantered, “Be careful, or I’m liable to think you’re sparking me.”
“Maybe I am,” Silky Mae said coyly. “Maybe I find you as attractive as everyone says. Maybe, too, I’m doin’ more than sparkin’.”
“More?” Fargo said.
Silky Mae nodded. “Maybe I’m chatterin’ up a storm so as to distract you. Maybe it’s a trick to hold your attention while my brother sneaks on around behind you and puts a gun to your back.”
Fargo glanced toward the horses. He had completely forgotten about Billy Bob. Suddenly something hard gouged him in the spine.
“No sudden moves, if you please, unless you want to die. In which case I’ll be happy to oblige.”
Silky Mae giggled.