10
“I don’t know how he’s still alive,” Maya Boatman said. “After all he’s been through.”
“He’s starting to come back a little, though.”
“My grandfather had an expression, ‘You couldn’t kill him with a pickax and a six-shooter.’ I think Fargo must be like that.”
“They’re going to hang his friend this afternoon, aren’t they?”
“Unless he can figure out some way to stop them. And in his condition—”
Fargo made a sound. Exactly what the sound was, neither the woman nor the girl knew. Was it a sound he made consciously? Was it simply the muttering of dream sleep?
They both stood by the bed where he lay. Maya reached down and touched his forehead. “His fever’s broke.”
She tried hard not to think of her dead brother. Much as she’d disliked—even hated—him at times, he’d tried to come to her rescue. Both he and the deputy had thought she was dead. Not only did Andy prove himself to be a bastard at the end, but he wasn’t worth a damn when it came to taking a person’s pulse. When her brother came back and got into the fight with the deputy, she was struggling back to consciousness and witnessed the whole thing.
Now, she felt pretty good. Better than Fargo, apparently.
For his part, Fargo also had his struggles. The time of Curt Cates’s hanging stayed in his mind. He knew his friend to be innocent. He couldn’t let him die.
He began the long swim up through the murky fathoms of injury, poison, lost memory, and pain. That was the noise he’d made a few moments ago—the noise of bone-weariness meeting the noise of determination. Curt had once saved his life. No way could he do any less for Curt now.
He got his eyes opened and said, “Where am I?”
Maya Boatman leaned into his eyesight. “In good hands, Skye.”
“How’d I get out of that cellar?”
Another familiar face leaned into his frame of reference. “I helped you, Skye,” Darcy said.
“I’m most appreciative to you two ladies.”
Young Darcy obviously liked being called a “lady.”
“Now I’ve got to get up and get going.”
“You can’t do that, Skye,” Maya said.
“Sure I can. And I’m going to.”
“But why?” Darcy said. “Burrell’ll kill you. If my father doesn’t first. They’re all looking for you, Skye. They—hate you.”
“I owe Curt Cates my life. I can’t run out on him now. Besides, I need to talk to that undertaker.”
“Stan Thayer?” Maya said. “What for?”
“He’s the only one I haven’t talked to, not looking to kill me, that had a look at both bodies.”
“You’re not really thinking of going into town, are you?” Darcy asked.
“I don’t have any choice. That’s where Thayer is.”
“But Darcy’s right. They’ll shoot you on sight.”
Fargo didn’t listen to them. Couldn’t afford to. He had to convince himself he was strong enough and wily enough to do what he needed to do. So he blocked out the negative opinions, and somehow managed to steel himself enough to sit up without screaming. Headache pounded, snakebite had left him chilly and weak. But he needed to sit up so dammit he sat up.
“You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” Maya said.
She was probably right, Fargo thought. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep right on going. “I’d appreciate some food and a little whiskey if I could get it.”
“Skye, you’re not going to—”
“Please,” he said. “We’re almost out of time. Now I need some food.”
Beef and a boiled potato was served to him at a small table five minutes later. He ate like a starving animal. He didn’t worry about table manners at this point.
Fargo startled the two females by surging up from the table where he’d picked his plate clean. Before either woman or girl could get a hand on him, Fargo had found his holster, his Colt, and his boots, and was getting himself ready to lurch out the door and take care of business.
First Maya implored him not to go. Then Darcy took over. All the time they did their imploring, Fargo was checking his Colt, his gun belt, his sight. He kept splashing his face with cold water from a jug. They could see him trembling—the aftermath of the long and searing fever—but he knew he needed to feel even chillier if he was to come truly awake.
By this time, they’d given up trying to talk him out of it. All they could do was pray silently that the Lord would be with him and that he’d succeed in what he was trying to do. Unlikely as that was.
Sheriff Burrell had used the bank key on only one other occasion.
A drunk had reported seeing a moving light inside the bank just after midnight. The night deputy knew that a bank key was kept somewhere in the sheriff’s office but he wasn’t sure where. He risked waking Burrell up. Burrell was gracious. He saw how nervous the deputy was. Burrell went to the office and got the key. Then he went in the back door of the bank while the deputy and the drunk stood watch outside. The bank was empty. The drunk had been imagining the light. Burrell could have gotten mad but he didn’t. The bank was the single most important business in town. Most businesses kept their money there. If the bank ever got cleaned out—
That was the thing, Burrell thought, opening the special false-bottomed drawer in his desk. He’d come down early to the office. They’d hit the bank later this evening. He wanted to make sure the key was still there—even more, he wanted to make sure that he’d thought this through sufficiently.
On the one hand, this would give him the opportunity he’d been wanting to cut Hap free. It was a terrible thing to think about your own flesh and blood, but Hap was bad in every way you could measure a person. And even if he came back after spending all the money, it would at least give Burrell a year or two’s peace of mind.
The key was there.
He took a deep breath, sighed it out.
This thing could go wrong so many ways. He tried to force these thoughts from his mind but it wasn’t easy. So many ways it could go wrong. . . .
“Quiet night.”
Burrell looked up at the new kid deputy, the assistant to the night deputy. Now why couldn’t he have a son like this kid? Perry was his name. Tim Perry. He was everything Hap wasn’t—hard-working, polite, wanting to make his mark in life. He was only nineteen but he was a substitute usher at the Methodist church and he played the accordion at barn dances. If he drank, it wasn’t much and it wasn’t often. Even the prisoners liked him, which was pretty funny when you thought about it. Were prisoners supposed to like deputies?
“Yep, it is a quiet night, Tim.”
“You seem sort of quiet tonight, too, Sheriff, you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”
That was another thing about Tim Perry. He made a point of reading your moods. Of knowing just how to approach you, just how to handle you when you were having a bad day or a bad night. Hap didn’t give a damn what your mood was. If he wanted something, he tormented you till he got it, and the hell with whatever mood you happened to be in.
“Oh, just thinking about the past, I guess.”
“Yeah, I do that a lot, too.”
Burrell smiled. “You do? You haven’t got that much past to look back on.”
“Sure, I do. I had a good time growing up. Hard work; my pa lost his arm, remember, when I was seven, so I had to kind of pick up the slack around the farm. But there was plenty of time for fishin’ and huntin’ and things like that. I’ve got a lot of good memories.”
Burrell literally ached to hear such words tumble from Hap’s mouth. A little gratitude for the things Burrell had always given him; a little sentimentality about growing up in Burrell’s house; a little fondness for the time he’d spent under Burrell’s roof. But no, there’d never be any of that with Hap.
“Where’s Coburn tonight?”
Tim Perry tapped his nose. “Bad head cold. You should hear him. Sounds like a foghorn. He’s pretty sick. But that’s no problem. I’ll take his half of the businesses, too.”
The night deputies divided up their duties, chief among which was checking to see that all the doors were locked on the town’s various businesses. People who had a gripe against the sheriff’s office always said that the lazy bums didn’t do much of anything except walk around and rattle a few doorknobs. Well, what they didn’t seem to realize was that that was among the most important duties a lawman could have. Preserving the well-being of a town’s businesses. Because businesses moved on. No business wanted to stay in a place where the law wasn’t any use. You see a man whose store has been robbed three or four times, you see a very unhappy citizen, one who just might consider leaving town and setting up somewhere else.
So, dammit, every single night, twice a night in fact, the night deputy and his assistant walked their rounds. And if there was even the slightest hint of trouble, they took care of it.
“He’s sick an awful lot lately, Tim.”
They both knew what kind of “sick” he was. Bottle sick. Though neither of them wanted to say it because Coburn had a wandering wife he didn’t know how to deal with any way short of alcohol. The trouble was, Burrell had carried him about as long as he could afford to. Pity could extend only so far. Then you had to start worrying about how the man’s performance was affecting his job. It sure wasn’t doing Coburn or the sheriff’s office any good, the way Coburn was always “sick” these days.
“I’m sure he’ll be fine real soon,” Tim said confidently.
That was another thing Burrell liked about the kid. Loyalty. He’d had plenty of opportunity to run the night deputy down—maybe even to hint that he wanted his job. But he didn’t. Never said a bad word about Coburn. Quite the contrary. Always stuck up for him whenever Burrell said that maybe he needed to “talk” to Coburn.
Tim nodded and said, “Well, I’d better go make those rounds.”
Sometimes, Stan Thayer liked to have a little fun with them, the corpses. He’d put on too much makeup and make them look spooky, or he’d put a dress on a man, or he’d make a woman look like a saloon gal. The truth was, after about corpse one thousand, the work got pretty routine. Even the smells did, too. Oh, the dead still smelled, especially the newly dead, but it was the same old smells over and over.
Stan was at work in his basement when he heard the sound on the stairs. Who’d be coming here at this hour? And who’d be rude enough to just let himself in without knocking? He smiled. The one thing he didn’t have to worry about in his calling was getting robbed. You want a spleen? A glass eye? A bag of feces? He could just see the surprised face of the robber when such a bounty was offered.
Then who the hell is on the stairs? he thought as he saw the lantern on the edge of the table flicker.
Just as he was turning away from the table where he had a dead woman laid out so he could begin the process of putting her into her dress, he saw a dead man on the steps. The dead man was packing a Colt that was aimed right at Stan Thayer.
The dead man’s name was Skye Fargo. He was paler than the corpse Stan Thayer was working on at present. His eyes were just about as lifeless, too. The last time Stan Thayer had seen Fargo, the Trailsman had been a vital, imposing figure. No more. He moved slowly, as if he might suddenly drop. And the way his gun hand trembled, it was easy to see he didn’t have much strength in him.
He came into the room and looked around.
I’ll be in a room like this someday, Fargo thought. Some ghoul like Thayer’ll be working me up to make me look all new and shiny for the mourners. The ghoul’ll stuff me into a coffin so everybody can say how nice I look, and then somebody’ll announce that there’s some food and whiskey in the other room. And the whole thing’ll turn into a party.
If there was bitterness in his thoughts, it was quickly banished by the realization that he’d done the same thing himself. Tied one on at a good many funerals, forgetting all about the poor bastard in the coffin. It was probably only natural. You paid your respects and then you went on with life. That was about all you could do, Fargo thought, till it was your own time to have a ghoul start working you over.
“Looks like you brought me some business,” Thayer smiled. “Just climb in that coffin over there and I’ll fix you right up.”
“You know who killed those two girls.”
“I do?”
“Yes. And you’re going to tell me who it is.”
“Now how would I know something like that, Mr. Fargo? You’re not only weak, you’re delirious.”
Fargo spat on the floor. “Somebody got to you. How much did you get to keep your secret?”
“You’re a very cynical man, Mr. Fargo. I’m a simple undertaker. Nobody would pay me for anything except burying them and even then all their kin do is bitch about my charges.”
“How much they pay you?”
The ghoul was about to smile again but Fargo moved with such sudden and violent force that the sneer died stillborn on the undertaker’s lips.
Fargo slashed the gun down across the man’s face, knocking him back into the table where the dead woman lay. The dead woman went flying off the table and crashed onto the floor.
Fargo was moving close to the ghoul again when a voice from the stairs said, “Drop your gun, Mr. Fargo, or I’ll save the sheriff some trouble and kill you right here.”
The woman was short, stout, gray-haired. The way she squinted, you could tell she didn’t see all that well in this dim lantern light. You could see the long-buried girl trapped like a ghost in all that flesh and hard muscle. She’d probably been pretty once. But no more. In her flannel nightgown, she looked tough enough and mean enough to beat the hell out of Fargo and Thayer together.
“You don’t even think of hurtin’ my son any more,” she said. “Now drop that gun of yours.”
“He needs to tell me the truth,” Fargo said.
“And you need to drop your gun before I start puttin’ holes in you.”
He had only one chance and he took it. He flung his Colt directly at the lantern on the edge of Thayer’s worktable. The lantern smashed against the floor, chasing everything into heavy shadow.
Mrs. Thayer fired off two shots that were loud as thunder. They were just close enough that they sent Fargo to the floor.
He crawled around the table as she started her search for him. He crouched on the far side of the table.
“Where did he go?” the woman bellowed.
“I’m tryin’ to put this damned fire out!” Thayer snapped. Apparently the lantern had started two boxes ablaze. From his angle behind the table, Fargo could see Thayer’s boot kicking the boxes hard.
Fargo waited till the woman took four more steps, in the meantime groping the floor for his Colt, which he retrieved and jammed into his holster. With her fourth step, which brought her less than a foot away, he flung himself up to her.
The rifle boomed again, a startled shot fired at the ceiling.
The law—or what was left of it—would be coming for sure. Midnight gunfire at the mortuary was bound to attract attention.
He wrestled the rifle away from her, threw it across the room, and took off running. He had an idea. He just hoped it worked. If it didn’t, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything left to do.
Twenty minutes later, Stan Thayer did what Fargo hoped he would do. He came out the back door of the mortuary, went to the barn where he kept two horses and his funeral vehicles, saddled a mare, and headed out.
Fargo had no idea where he was going but that was all right. He figured it would be someplace interesting.
The moon had an ancient, sinister look to it tonight, the way it must’ve looked when Aztecs sacrificed their virgins to it. He’d heard a lecture on Aztecs once. They worshipped the moon, offering up thousands and thousands of human sacrifices to it over the span of their reign.
But it wasn’t Aztecs that made Fargo uneasy now. Maybe it was the hooting and crying of all the night creatures in the darkness. Maybe it was because Fargo was starting to freeze his balls off. It was cold enough that he could see his breath. The drop in temperature woke him up just fine, but between the arrogant look of the moon and the cold, he felt as if he was traveling across the surface of an alien world.
At one point, Thayer stopped suddenly, sat his saddle for a moment and then suddenly turned around. Was he aware of Fargo behind him? He must’ve been aware of something or somebody. He wouldn’t do this unless he was suspicious, would he?
But then Thayer seemed to satisfy himself that it had been only his imagination. Nobody was following him. Who would follow him at this time of night? Fargo? No, his mother had run him off and scared him off. He had to laugh about that one. People didn’t fear Thayer but they sure feared his mother. Hell, he feared her. You get her riled up the way Fargo had tonight and—
They reached a hill and—
And once again, Thayer turned around. This time, he seemed to have a sense of somebody on his trail for sure.
But then he urged his mare onward, over the hill, and down into the hollow where Curt Cates had his place.
But why the hell would Thayer go to Curt’s place? Fargo didn’t know that the two men were enemies, but he didn’t know they were friends, either. And even if they were friends, why would Thayer be stopping by in the middle of the night? The farmhouse was dark.
Fargo dropped off his stallion, ground-tied it, and then hurried to the crest of the hill where he hid behind a wide oak tree. Below, everything was cast into shadowy silvered relief.
Thayer tied his horse to a slim birch tree and walked up to the door. He walked without any hesitancy. A lot of self-confidence for a man here on such a late-night mission.
The knock was short, loud, somehow threatening even though it was lost to the steady wind that soughed the autumn trees.
He had to knock twice more before a lantern was turned up inside. Then there was another wait before the door was opened.
Serena Cates stood in her nightgown, holding her lantern high. The wind took their words. But Fargo didn’t need to hear what they were saying. Thayer’s actions said it all.
He slapped Serena across the face with a force that drove the young woman back into the house. He followed her inside, slammed the door. Even above the wind, Fargo could hear Serena’s cry. He had the sense that Thayer had slapped her again.
Fargo began his descent down the long, sloping hill. He remembered Thayer stopping twice to check his back trail. Was Thayer at one of the windows now, waiting to open fire as soon as he glimpsed Fargo?
Fargo extracted his Colt from its holster. He moved deep shadow to deep shadow, hoping this gave him sufficient cover. He half expected shots to come from the house at any moment.
Thayer’s horse whinnied as it scented Fargo. Fargo hunkered down behind a stack of wood.
Thayer appeared in the window. He glanced around. He had his gun in his hand. He stood there for some time, looking around.
Fargo was still wondering what the hell he was doing here in the first place. Strange enough that he’d call on Serena in the first place . . . but to call on her so late . . .
Thayer moved away from the window.
A scream. A tearing sound. Another scream. A slap so violent it sounded like a gunshot.
He didn’t wait, couldn’t.
He stood up and began to close the distance between himself and the farmhouse. He kept his Colt ready to fire. But it didn’t sound as if Thayer had much interest in him at the moment. It sounded, instead, as if Thayer had rape on his mind.
He crept to a side window and had his suspicion confirmed. But it wasn’t a rape. At least not now.
Serena was on her knees, servicing Thayer. The undertaker had ripped away the top of her nightgown so that her bountiful breasts were exposed from the light of the lantern perched on a nearby table. As she knelt there, her eyes were fixed on Thayer’s face. The gun he held angled close to the side of her head.
Fargo just hoped that Curt never had to find out about this . . .
Fargo eased himself around the house to the front door. There was only one thing to do now and that was to rush the place. Kick in the door and find out for sure what was going on here. Why would Serena have anything to do with a ghoul like Thayer?
But he hesitated. What if Thayer decided to kill Serena the moment he heard the door kicked in? Could Fargo kill him fast enough to save Serena? He doubted it.
Fargo wasn’t much for waiting. Patience was not high on the list of his virtues. Much as he wanted to charge inside, he didn’t want to get Serena killed, no matter how much she was betraying Curt.
He pressed his ear to the door. Thayer was making animal noises. Things were ending up. Fargo gave it a minute or so longer. Just when Thayer was enjoying his climax was the perfect time to—
