by Sharpe, Jon
Fargo warily hunkered at arm’s length. “You would if you were foaming at the mouth.”
“What are you tryin’ to say? That I have rabies and I didn’t know it?”
“You have something,” Fargo said. He’d never heard of a rabies victim as far gone as Sawyer had been recovering enough to hold a conversation.
“I don’t savvy,” Sawyer said. He bent his head and looked down at himself. “Good God. There’s blood all over me. How can this be?”
“I just told you.”
“I don’t have rabies,” Sawyer said. “If I did, don’t you think I’d know it?”
“Not if it came on you sudden,” Fargo said. “Think back. Were you bit by a wild animal a while ago?”
“Hell no,” Sawyer said. “I’d never let a wild critter get close enough.”
“When you were sleeping, maybe?” Fargo said. “A coon that snuck into your cabin.”
“No, I tell you I might be old but I ain’t stupid. An animal hasn’t bit me in so long, I can’t remember when.”
“You killed all of yours.”
Sawyer tried to sit up and sank down with groan. “What was that again?”
“Your dog. Your mule. Your chickens,” Fargo said. “You killed every last one. I saw them with my own eyes when I took Dr. Jackson out to your cabin.”
“Doc Jackson?” Sawyer said. “I’m not one of her patients. Why would she come way out to my place?”
“I reckon she thought it was the right thing to do,” Fargo answered.
Sawyer closed his eyes. His body quaked and his limbs shook in a fit that lasted several minutes. When it was over, he lay limp and caked with sweat. “I reckon you’re right. I am sick.”
“I can take you to the doc’s if you think you can hold out,” Fargo said. He didn’t mention that he’d have to bind and gag him.
“Would it do me any good?”
Fargo was honest with him. “I don’t know.”
Sawyer gazed in confusion at the sky. “If only I could make sense of this.”
“Do you remember biting Abigail McWhertle?”
“The hell you say.”
“She ran around foaming at the mouth too until her cousins drowned her.”
“They murdered her?”
“Her and her folks. Timmy Wilson came down with it and he’s dead too.”
“I knew young Tim. He was in town when I . . .” Sawyer shuddered anew and closed his eyes. His breathing grew shallow, his chest hardly moved.
Fargo sensed the old man was close to death’s door. “If you could remember what bit you.”
“Nothin’ did, damn it. How many times do I have to say the same thing?” Sawyer gnawed his lower lip. “Let me think on this some.”
“Don’t take too long,” Fargo advised. He took a chance and gripped the old man’s wrist. The arm was skin and bone. He found a pulse; it was weak and fluttering.
Several minutes went by and Sawyer didn’t move or speak.
Just when Fargo thought the old man would never speak again, Sawyer fooled him and opened his eyes.
“Listen, mister. I’ve done thought about it and thought about it and I think I have the answer.”
“Tell me.”
“Bend down. It takes too much out of me to try and talk loud.”
Fargo would rather stick his head in a grizzly’s maw but he bent until his ear was inches from the old man’s mouth. He tried not to think of the consequences should Sawyer begin foaming again and take a bite out of him. The stink of the man’s breath was abominable. He held his own and said, “I’m listening.”
In a ragged whisper, his voice fading at times, Sawyer imparted his information.
“Son of a bitch,” Fargo said when the old man finished. “I had my suspicions.” He placed his hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. “Dr. Jackson needs to know. I’ll hoist you up on my saddle and we’ll light a shuck.”
Sawyer’s eyes were intent on the sky.
“Did you hear me?” Fargo said. When he got no answer, he felt for a pulse again. There wasn’t any. He closed the old man’s eyelids and said, “Damn.”
Fargo took the time to scoop a shallow grave. He piled rocks and tree limbs on the mound of dirt to discourage scavengers, and forked leather. He was through burning barns. He had something more important to do.
It was evening when the lights of Ketchum Falls sparkled like so many fireflies. With the McWhertles out to get him, he didn’t dare show himself on the main street. He stuck to the back ways.
Belinda’s house was quiet. A few lights were on and her shadow moved across a second floor window.
The gate in the picket fence squeaked when Fargo opened it. He led the Ovaro in and closed the gate and went to the back steps. He knocked and waited but she didn’t come so he knocked louder. When she still didn’t appear, he tried the latch. The door wasn’t locked. Entering, he called out, “Belinda?” He didn’t get an answer.
Fargo closed the door and crossed the kitchen and went along the hall to the foot of the stairs. “Belinda?” he hollered again.
“Up here.” Her voice was muffled.
Fargo went up them three at a stride and stopped at the landing. “Are you in your bedroom?”
The door across from her bedroom opened and out stepped Clyde McWhertle with a rifle in his hands. “No,” he smirked. “She’s not.”
After him came two others with rifles.
“Where’s Belinda?” Fargo demanded.
“Belinda, is it?” Clyde said, and tapped on her bedroom door. “Come on out and show him.”
A middle-aged woman emerged. She smirked as broadly as Clyde.
“This is my cousin, Felicia. She’s the one answered you and made you think she was the doc.”
“Did I do good, cousin?” she asked.
“You did good,” Clyde praised her.
Fargo repeated his question. “Where’s Belinda Jackson?”
“The doc is bein’ took care of,” Clyde said. “As for you, Orville reckoned you’d show here sooner or later so he sent me and these others. We’ve been waitin’ most of the day.”
Footsteps below alerted Fargo to others of the clan who had been hiding in the parlor and elsewhere.
“Pretty clever, our cousin Orville,” Felicia crowed.
“He’s powerful mad at you, mister,” a man behind Clyde said. “You burnin’ down his barn and all.”
“And mine, I hear,” Clyde said venomously. “My missus and young’uns are out there now. She was worried you’d burn down our house, too.”
“His burnin’ days are over,” Felicia declared.
“All his days are over,” the same man said.
Fargo wanted to kick himself for walking right into their trap. “What did you mean by Belinda being taken care of?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Felicia mocked him, and laughed.
“Exactly what I said,” Clyde replied. “She’s bein’ took care of by Charlie Dogood.”
Without thinking Fargo started to turn, only to have several muzzles trained on his chest.
“I wouldn’t be hasty,” Clyde said.
“We shouldn’t be talkin’ like this,” one of the men remarked. “Orville warned you how sneaky he is. We’re supposed to hog-tie him and take him to Orville’s.”
“Fetch a rope,” Clyde said.
A McWhertle down the stairs nodded and made for the front door.
Felicia regarded Fargo like a cat might a canary. “It beats me why you didn’t fan the breeze when you had the chance. Are you and the doc foolin’ around together? Is that why you’re so anxious to help her? The little hen.”
“I’d rather fool around with her any day than a cow like you,” Fargo said to get her goat, and it worked.
Felicia colored. Raising her hand to slap him, she stepped in front of Clyde.
“Felicia, don’t,” Clyde warned.
Fargo punched her. He drove his fist into her gut and shoved her against Clyde and the other two an
d all three lost their balance and stumbled.
Down the stairs a woman yelled too late, “Look out!”
Springing past Felicia before anyone could shoot, Fargo darted into Belinda’s bedroom and slammed the door. Dashing to a chair, he wedged it against the door. “Anyone tries to come in,” he shouted, drawing his Colt, “will take lead.”
To his surprise, Clyde McWhertle laughed. “Mister, you’re stupid as can be. Have you looked out the window?”
Fargo edged over and risked a peek. More of them were out in front, another seven or eight.
“You see our kinfolk out there?” Clyde yelled.
“I see them.”
Clyde laughed merrily. “How does it feel to be trapped?”
25
Skye Fargo did a strange thing, a thing that if Clyde McWhertle had seen, he wouldn’t understand. Fargo smiled.
Then he went to the door but stayed to one side in case they fired through it. “Where did Dogood take Dr. Jackson?”
On the other side Clyde snickered. “We’ve got you surrounded and that’s what you want to know?”
“Where?”
“We aim to be shed of her, permanent, so Charlie took her where no one would suspect.”
“Where?” Fargo asked again.
“That’s for us to know and you to figure out,” Clyde taunted. “Now then. Why don’t you be smart and surrender? Throw out your smoke wagon and we promise not to shoot.”
“Why would I do that?” Fargo said, “when I have you where I want you?”
“You have us?” Clyde said, and cackled. “Mister, if I had any doubts before, I don’t now. You’re plumb loco.”
“Let me hear you drop your rifles and there won’t be any blood spilled,” Fargo said. As he did, he quietly moved the chair he had propped against the door.
“We outnumber you fifteen to one and you’re askin’ us to surrender?” Clyde laughed. “You know what I might do? Just for the fun of it? Since you saw fit to burn down my barn and a bunch of others, I’m thinkin’ it would be, what do they call it, poetical justice if I burned down the doc’s house with you inside. How would that be?”
“There’s a flaw in your brainstorm,” Fargo said.
“I’m all ears,” Clyde replied.
“No,” Fargo said, “you’re all stupid.” He threw open the door and caught them flat-footed with their rifle barrels pointed at the floor.
Clyde swore and tried to bring his rifle up and Fargo shot him in the face. He drove his shoulder into Felicia, slamming her against the wall. He punched a man in the jaw and kicked another in the knee. Then he was at the landing and looked back as another McWhertle whipped a rifle to his shoulder. He shot the man in the chest.
At the bottom of the stairs were three more. Two had rifles. He was halfway down when he had to put lead into one and he was almost to the bottom when he had to shoot the other.
A woman shrieked and tried to grab him and he gave her the same he would give a man: a solid right to the chin.
The hall to the kitchen was clear but the kitchen wasn’t and as he burst into it, two men were rising from the table. He moved so fast he was on them before they could lift their rifles. He smashed the Colt against the ear of one and punched the other in the throat.
The back door wasn’t bolted. As he flew into the night shouts and curses broke out. He reached the Ovaro and swung on.
Reining toward the front, he galloped the length of the house. Only a few McWhertles were in the front yard. The rest had run inside when they heard the shooting. A beefy man elevated a shot-gun and Fargo shot him. Another raised a rifle and Fargo shot him. A woman pulled a pocket pistol from a purse and he shot her.
Then the Ovaro was in the street and Fargo reined toward the center of town. He figured they would be less likely to shoot at him with townsfolk around but he was wrong.
Fireflies flared in the dark and the boom of thunder was near constant. Lead whistled and sizzled. Fortunately the dark caused them to misjudge their aim, or else they were just piss-poor shots.
At a junction Fargo reined right. At the next he reined left. There were fewer lights and few people and no one fired at him. He headed out of Ketchum Falls on the road that would eventually end at Old Man Sawyer’s. At that hour there were few travelers and he had the road to himself. He looked back a few times but didn’t see pursuit.
Fargo slowed to spare the stallion. He had made it out alive but the McWhertles would want to change that. They wouldn’t be content with tarring and feathering. They’d be out for blood. Which suited him just fine. He had held back for too long. It came of not being a coldhearted killer. He needed to be provoked; he needed to have his life in peril.
Where many would be beside themselves having to shoot or be shot at, Fargo was used to it. He was used to life on the frontier, where survival went to the quick and the strong. He was used to enemies like the Apaches, who never asked for mercy, or gave it. He was used to Sioux and Blackfeet on the warpath and out to lift his scalp unless he sent them into their hereafter.
Fargo remembered to reload. He didn’t rightly know why he had gone this way, other than a vague feeling that he should.
It was only when the orchard hove out of the night that he had a sense of where his intuition had brought him. He reined up the lane and went through the apple trees and stopped when he set eyes on the farmhouse. Lights were on.
The patent medicine man’s van was parked in front.
Fargo stopped and alighted. He left the stallion in shadow and cat-footed to the van. The team was dozing. One pricked its ears but neither whinnied. He went up the steps to the porch.
The front door was half open.
Fargo slipped inside. With his back to a wall, he crept to the parlor. It was empty. He continued to the kitchen. It was empty.
Up on the second floor someone said something.
Fargo was halfway up the stairs when he heard the voice again. It came from Harold and Edna’s bedroom. He dropped into a crouch. It wouldn’t do to be careless. More than his life was at stake.
“. . . not how I wanted this to end,” Charlie T. Dogood was saying. “I was content to have you leave Coogan County. But no. You had to be stubborn. You had to exhibit your silly female pride.”
“I have as much right to be here as you do,” Belinda Jackson said.
“There you go again. You never listen, my dear. For how long now have the McWhertles been saying that they don’t want you in Ketchum Falls?”
“At your instigation,” Belinda said.
Dogood chuckled. “I’ll admit to a certain degree of manipulation, yes. But you can’t hardly blame me, can you, given that until you arrived, I was the preeminent medical authority in this county, if not in all of the Ozarks.”
Fargo stopped at the doorway.
Belinda was bound wrists and ankles and lay on her side on the floor. Dogood was perched on the edge of the bed. Two prone forms covered by sheets were behind him.
Harold and Edna, Fargo reckoned. He was about to barge in when Belinda spoke.
“A lot of people still look up to you as their healer. A lot still come to you for remedies.”
“A lot but not all,” Dogood said. “The first year you were here, my income dropped by a third.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Spare me your false sympathy. You took a lot of my business away from me, woman, and I resent it. I resent it no end.”
“You could have moved on,” Belinda said.
“Oh, you smug bitch,” Dogood said. “I was here first. I practiced my trade in these mountains for damn near fifteen years before you showed up. But I’m supposed to move on and you get to stay.”
“Charlie, we both know your so-called medicines are anything but. You concoct them out of whatever is handy.”
“You have no proof of that.”
“Ah, but I do,” Belinda said, and smiled. “I sent a couple of your remedies to a chemist. One was a bottle of your cure for female compla
ints. Would you like to see his report? Your so-called medicine was eighty percent grain alcohol and ten percent opium mixed with ginger and mineral oil.”
“Not bad,” Dogood said. “He got almost all of them.”
“Almost?”
“He missed the senna and turpentine.”
Belinda raised her head. “Senna is a laxative. I can understand using that. But turpentine? What medicinal use does that have?”
“None,” Dogood admitted, “other than to give it a little extra kick going down.”
“Oh, Dogood,” Belinda said.
“Don’t get on your medical high horse with me,” Charlie snapped. “A lot of my cures work and you damn well know it.”
“What they do is dull the patient’s suffering while the patient’s own body heals itself,” Belinda accused him. “You’re no miracle worker.”
“Neither are you, my dear.” Dogood sighed and stood. “And now look at what your stubbornness has brought us to.”
“Mine? What about your own?”
“I tried to be reasonable,” Dogood said. “I’ve asked you politely a hundred times to ply your doctoring somewhere else. But you’ve refused. And now this rabies business has taught me that the only way to get rid of you is to, well, to get rid of you.”
“You plan to kill me?”
“No, my dear. Your friend will.”
“Friend?” Belinda said. “Do you mean Mr. Fargo?”
“I do indeed. You see, he’s been running around setting McWhertle barns on fire. So no one will think twice if Harold’s barn goes up in flames”—Dogood paused—“and the fire happens to spread to this house.”
“You wouldn’t,” Belinda said.
“Can you think of a more perfect means? Everyone will think that Harold and Edna and Abby perished in the blaze. No one will suspect they were dead before the fire started.”
“And me? How will you explain that?”
“The noble Dr. Jackson perished trying to save her patients.” Dogood laughed.
“You’re despicable.”
“Now, now. Think of the adulation that will be heaped on you. Your sacrifice, your devotion, will be praised to high heaven. Your funeral should be well attended.”
“One last question,” Belinda said. “What about Fargo? What do you have planned for him?”
