Jackson Powell had carefully surveyed the land around Buckskin Joe before setting up his latest camp in easily defended Last Stand Gulch, about one mile west of the bustling camp. The four carefully selected Missouri Pukes he had hired as bodyguards and dirt workers were incapable of loyalty, so he catered to their greed and paid them top wages. At his direction, the four thugs pretended to be “mining surveyors” looking for good slopes to wash with the giant hoses called dictators. No man with an ounce of sense could look at these hard cases and believe that, but neither would a sensible man call them liars.
Although Gus Latimer was the most infamous killer of the bunch, he was too lazy and indifferent—at times even peculiar—to ramrod the men. That job fell to Ozark Bill Brassfield, whose vicious temper and hard, pale-ice eyes could keep even the most savage owl hoots in line.
About the same time that Inez Holman was praising Powell as a true gentleman, he called the first meeting of his mercenaries. They congregated in front of Powell’s huge tent, passing around a bottle of top-shelf Irish whiskey he had provided.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his suave baritone, “you must exert yourselves. There’s a mort of work to be done, but you are just the crew for the job. And you will be well compensated. In addition to the wages we’ve agreed upon, there will be a generous bonus upon completion.”
“Completion of what, ezactly?” asked Philander Brace of Sedalia. Tall and stringbean thin, he had lost an eye in the Kansas Troubles but remained an expert with the blacksnake whip tucked into his sash.
Powell tugged at his neat spade beard, choosing his words carefully. “Let’s just say that I represent a consortium from back East—a group of investors whose names are not important to us. Recently they sent a mining geologist to this area to study the lay of the land. He determined that Buckskin Joe has several major gold-bearing veins running in or near it.”
“Is that the same gold the sourdoughs are pulling out of the creeks?” Latimer asked in his lazy way. He stood with his back leaning against a pine tree, cleaning his fingernails with a horseshoe nail.
“No indeed, Gus. That’s just proof the veins are nearby. I’m talking about deep-rock gold that will have to be mined with steam drills and slushier buckets. But these prospectors have claimed some of the land that lies over the veins. And right now territorial law recognizes those claims so long as a man doesn’t stop working them for more than three days in a row.”
The four thugs listening in the fading sunlight looked at each other and grinned.
“Well, now,” said Franklin “the Strangler” Perley from St. Louis. He was bald and powerfully built, with a livid white scar across his left cheek. His strong, huge hands could swiftly throttle a man to death or snap his neck like a wishbone in seconds. “Sounds like some bedroll killin’.”
Powell shook his head. “It’s not open season like it was in the Black Hills or down in Silver City. The dough guts in Congress have ordered the army to investigate killings—killings by white men, I mean. If a few sourdoughs should be found scalped and mutilated, however, that’s just Indian trouble.”
“They’re pesticatin’ sons a’ bitches, all right,” Philander said, and the rest laughed.
“I said a few killings,” Powell qualified. “We’ll try applying mentality first. I have a spotter in the camp. This person knows all the prospectors and which ones have the most lucrative claims. I will offer them shares in Transmontane Enterprises in trade for their diggings. The ones who won’t come to terms will receive a visit from some of you boys. If . . . vigorous persuasion won’t work, you know what to do. And bear in mind that you don’t have to kill a man to keep him laid up for three days.”
“All that sounds good to me, Mr. Powell,” Latimer spoke up. “I’ve hired on with you before and never regretted it. But what about Skye Fargo? You know he’s in these parts, huh?”
Powell nodded. “Indeed, Gus, I do. And he is a force to be reckoned with.”
“He’s a rip-staver, right enough,” Franklin Perley said. “That son of a bitch will row us up Salt River if we ain’t careful. I was out in Santa Fe when he kilt all four of the Butcher Boys Gang. Covered one in honey and let ants eat him to death.”
“I never underrate an enemy, Franklin,” Powell assured his minion. “With luck, a little venture I completed today with Inez Holman will drive her family out of the ice business. Fargo is a drifter. If he loses his job, he’ll have no incentive to stay around here. He’s a bunch-quitter by nature.”
“Fargo has a nasty habit of doing the unpredictable,” Latimer persisted. “Me and Bill had a little parley with him today in Buckskin Joe. I got me the impression he might be planning to stick, not quit.”
“Surely, Gus, you don’t believe he would draw down on you? I don’t know one sane man who would.”
“It’s a queer deal with him, Mr. Powell. You’re right as rain, he ain’t no draw-shoot killer—not compared to me, anyhow. If I get the chance, I’ll perforate his liver. But that cunning bastard knows fifty ways to kill a man before breakfast, and he’s got balls of steel. He’s trouble—trouble to the fifth power.”
Powell accepted the bottle and tipped it back. “I admire your attitude, Gus. A worthy adversary should be respected. But Fargo has one Achilles’ heel. Pudendum.”
“Poo-what-em?” Philander demanded.
“Quim, poontang, pussy, cunny, the nether lips, the belly mouth, the tunnel of love, the crack of doom—I believe the old Anglo-Saxon word is cunt. I know a courtesan in San Francisco who calls it her valentine.”
The men laughed, impressed at Powell’s litany.
“We all love poon,” Ozark Bill said. “But what’s an Achilles’ heel?”
“A weakness, Billy, a fatal weakness. Of course all men love the rut, but with Fargo it rates right up there with vital needs such as air and water. If all else fails, there is a woman so fetching she will become Fargo’s siren song—especially as she is on my payroll already.”
At this revelation Brassfield’s face clouded with sudden anger. “Hold on, here. You ain’t saying . . .”
He trailed off, looking around at all the curious faces watching him.
“Nothing,” he muttered.
But the scowl on his big, bluff face said it was something, all right. Something he would be taking up with Skye goddamn Fargo.
* * *
“I’m telling all of you,” Inez Holman insisted as she and Susan cleared away the supper dishes, “Mr. Perry promised we will reap tenfold profits on our investment as soon as the . . . the . . .”
“Dictators,” Fargo supplied.
“His very word. As soon as the dictators begin to wash away the topsoil and rock.”
Fargo stood near the door shaking his head in wonder. Inez had gone to a women’s college in Ohio and no doubt read more books than he had ever seen in his life. But it was a load of books piled on the back of an ass.
“You are mighty mistaken, Inez,” he insisted. “Ike Perry is just one of his summer names. This Jackson Powell is six sorts of trouble. He concentrates on the far West where law is sparse, gold plentiful, and government officials easy to buy off. You were swindled.”
“That’s our college girl,” said Dave, who was slumped in his chair and staring at his folded hands. “Anybody who talks like a book is a gentleman to her.”
Inez ignored her husband and aimed a quelling stare at Fargo. “Of course you wouldn’t like a man like Mr. Perry. He’s cultivated and successful. You are a backwoods brawler and womanizer who will spend the rest of his no doubt brief life sleeping on the ground and working for wages like some Chinese coulee.”
“Now, just a consarn minute,” Dave objected. “You’ve no call to insult Skye. He—”
“The truth is not an insult! Oh, I know Mr. Fargo is a brave and capable man. Nonetheless, he is a mudsill—an uneducated man and itinerant worker who lives on wages. Why, Indians wear buckskins!”
Steve and Jess had worked off their laughing fit and returned indoors. “Uneducated?” Steve repeated. “Mr. Fargo? That’s tarnal stupidity, Inez. He’s spent his entire life learning things we’ve never even heard of.”
“I’ll tell the world,” Dave chimed in. “Why, in the month he’s been here I’ve learned more about horses and tracking and scouting than I learned in four years in the cavalry.”
Inez sniffed. “Well, after all, you were not an officer. And I never said Mr. Fargo was no-account. But he has no right to judge his social betters. Can he quote Dr. Johnson or Chaucer? Can he distinguish between a trochee and a spondee? Has he read Sir Walter Scott?”
Fargo grinned. “I can read after a fashion, ma’am, and I’ve heard of this Chaucer fellow. But I never met the Trochees or the Spondees—weren’t they feuding clans in Arkansas?”
All three Holman brothers and Susan burst into laughter. Inez flushed a very fetching pink and flounced into the slope-off kitchen.
“She acts awful high and mighty, Skye,” Dave said apologetically. “But don’t pay it no mind—believe it or not, in her own stubborn way she likes you.”
“I like her, too, and her insults roll right off my back.”
“She also knows you’re right about this Powell,” Dave added. “She’s just too damn proud to admit it. She’ll cry all night over what she did.”
Seeing the talk turn to business—men’s domain—Susan said, “If you boys will excuse me, I think I’ll stretch my limbs.”
She caught Fargo’s eye as she said this.
“Don’t wander too far, sis,” Dave warned. “It’ll be dark soon.”
Again the pretty blonde held Fargo’s eye. “I’ll just walk around the lake.”
Fargo recalled Steve’s words from earlier. Still waters run deep, Fargo. Susan is one a’ them free-love girls. Discreetly, he moved his hat over his crotch.
“So, how bad is the damage?” Fargo asked Dave after Susan had stepped outside.
Dave shrugged. “Losing one thousand dollars won’t put us under, I don’t reckon. The icehouse is full. But we might be eating poorly for a spell.”
“I’ve got two hundred put by,” Fargo said, “and no real use for it. But you realize, don’t you, Dave, that we can’t let this thing go?”
“Why? We can make the loss up.”
Fargo shook his head. “For one thing, out West you can’t let a man rook a woman. It’s just not tolerated. But the thing of it is, unless you fire me, it’s not over.”
Dave’s red eyebrows knit in confusion. “That’s too far north for me. Can you chew it a little finer?”
“Old son, Jackson Powell has gold coming out his bunghole. A thousand dollars is pee doodles to a sharper like him. He doesn’t need your money—he’s trying to drive you out of here.”
“Why?” Jess demanded. “Hell, all we do is fetch ice to the camps.”
Fargo nodded. “Right. And I work for you.”
“You?” Dave said. “It’s you he wants outta here?”
“Sure as sun in the morning. I ain’t been too kind to him over the years. I helped a few sourdoughs drive him out of the Sierra when he was about to make a killing. And I damn near shot him in Silver City, but a panther jumped me and he skedaddled. I’m bad cess for him, and unless you fire me, he and his shit-jobbers won’t let up.”
“I’ll be earmarked and hog-tied before I fire you,” Dave said stubbornly.
“Good, because I got a personal score to settle with that crooked bastard. ’Bout a year ago Powell bought off an army commander in the Department of Dakota. He took a bunch of his usual hired guns into the Black Hills illegally to sack a Lakota burial ground—Indian souvenirs are all the rage in Boston and Philadelphia and sell for a fortune. I happened to be guiding an army patrol through the Black Hills at the same time, looking for trespassers.”
“Oh, Christ,” Dave muttered, “I read about this.”
“Yeah, it was all over the crap sheets. A bunch of Teton Sioux under the hothead Running Antelope found that burial ground, and they were all horns and rattles. They swooped down on my patrol, ten to one, and it was the devil’s own work. Ten troopers were slaughtered in a running battle, including my old poker buddy Sergeant Jay McKinney. This is my chance to balance the ledger.”
Fargo looked at all three men in turn. “I can quit this job. But I know Jackson. If I come after him on my own, he’ll come after you to haze me off. I’d rather be with you so we can fight together.”
“I owe it to the army,” Dave declared. “And you’re pure-dee right, Trailsman—I can’t stand by with my thumb up my sitter while some murdering son of a bitch slickers my wife.”
“I knew trouble would follow Skye Fargo,” Steve said, his tone obviously one of delight. “Say, Jess, we’re gonna side the Trailsman in a fight!”
“That suits me right down to the ground,” Jess replied. “I been waitin’ to take my Springfield down off the wall.”
Fargo had more to say on this score, but just then he remembered that Susan was “stretching her limbs.” He clapped his hat on and started for the door. Just then, however, Inez emerged from the kitchen. “Mr. Fargo?” she said formally, drawing herself up.
Fargo removed his hat. “Ma’am?”
“I wish to apologize for my recent remarks. I’m afraid I insulted you unfairly. I suspect you are right about Mr. Perry—I mean, this Jackson Powell. He presented an educated exterior, and I fell for his oily tongue.”
“I’m not exactly the sensitive type,” Fargo said, “but thank you.”
Fargo watched, his curiosity piqued, as Inez once again crossed to some crossed-stick shelves on the wall and picked up a felt-covered box. She caressed it lovingly. “This is the dream of my life,” she said on a tragic sigh.
“What?” Fargo asked from a deadpan. “The box?”
The Holman men strove mightily to keep from laughing as Inez bristled at Fargo’s flip remark. “No, you crude bumpkin,” she retorted, forgetting her apology. “What’s inside it.”
“Well, I’d sure like to see what’s inside it.”
“That’s my secret. It would be wasted on any of you men.”
“Like I told you, Skye,” Dave said, “give over. The world will grow honest before she shows us what’s in that consarn box.”
“I cannot abide a dang mystery,” Fargo complained, and a moment later he was gone.