Seven Devils Slaughter

by Jon Sharpe

  Fargo saw no sign that anyone had witnessed his arrival. Removing his hat and gunbelt, he placed them on her table.

  “Frankly, I wasn’t expecting to ever set eyes on you again, handsome,” Mabel said, sitting on the four-poster bed. Her gown parted. Under it she swore absolutely nothing at all. Her upturned nipples, her flat stomach and creamy thighs were enough to make a man’s throat go dry.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch your death of cold?” Fargo said, going over and standing in front of her.

  “What I’d like to catch,” Mabel bantered, reaching for his belt, “is that redwood of yours.” She eagerly unfastened his pants and hitched them down around his knees. After a few more moments, she had his member exposed. “My, oh my,” she said, stroking its hardening length. “I believe I’m falling in love.”

  Laughing, Fargo entwined his fingers in her hair. “Is talking all that mouth of yours is good for?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Fargo stiffened as an incredibly moist sensation enveloped him. Involuntarily, he gasped and pulled her closer. Raw pleasure rippled up his backbone, and he grew iron-hard. He caressed her hair and ran one hand down to the middle of her back.

  Mabel was a master. Some women were too rough. Some were too timid. But she had a light, delicate touch, and went about arousing him with an enthusiasm and expertise that was as remarkable as it was enjoyable.

  Fargo closed his eyes and let her have her way. The silken feel of her tongue sliding up and down was delicious beyond measure. When she cupped him, lower still, he came close to exploding then and there, but he was able to cap his inner volcano a while yet.

  Mabel groaned deep in her throat and one of her hands slid around to the small of his back. Her velvety fingers massaged back and forth and up and down.

  Fargo’s fatigue evaporated away. He was adrift in sensation, in the feel and smell of her. In due course he eased her onto her back on the quilt. Smiling languidly, Mabel crooked a smooth leg. He feasted on the shapely swell of her satiny thigh and the hint of her charms deeper within.

  “You’re looking at me like someone who is half-starved for cherry pie and I’m the pie,” Mabel joked.

  Fargo sculpted his body to hers. She cooed and yielded, her arms rising to encircle his neck. Her breasts cushioned his chest, her hips pillowed his. He kissed her ears, her earlobes, and both sides of her neck. He licked a path from her jaw down across her scented chest to the wonderful swell of her twin melons.

  “Oh, my,” Mabel said huskily. “You’re not the only one who is half-starved!”

  Fargo’s mouth found her left nipple. At the contact she arched her spine and her hips pumped upward. He tweaked it between his teeth, careful not to nip too hard, then lathered the aureola with his tongue. Mabel’s fingers locked in his hair and she panted in rising passion. Covering her other breast with his hand, he kneaded it like a sculptor would knead clay. Before long she was breathing fire on the nape of his neck while her fingers explored his torso.

  “You make me wish—” Mabel began, but she stopped and didn’t say. Her painted nails scraped his shoulders and dug into his well-muscled arms. “Do me harder,” she whispered. “I like it rough sometimes.”

  Fargo squeezed her right breast, hard, and she groaned loud enough to be heard in Oregon. Her entire body was hot to the touch and she was rubbing her nether mound up and down his leg. Soft, full lips fused to his neck, and her tongue swirled around and around. She hiked at his shirt and soon had it above his shoulders. He shrugged out of it with a flip of his head. Mabel pulled his boots off, then did the same favor with his pants.

  Fargo stroked her luxurious hair. He expected her to stand up and embrace him, but she delighted him by planting a series of tiny kisses from his right knee, up across his inner leg, to the junction of his thighs.

  By then Mabel’s breasts were engorged, her nipples like tacks, and when Fargo pinched one she came six inches up off the bed, her nails digging deep into his biceps.

  “Do that again, lover.”

  Fargo did, and again she reacted in the same way. He kissed her ear and inserted his tongue. It had the effect of making her shiver as if she were cold, when nothing could be further from the truth. Her puckered mouth resembled a pair of burning coals.

  It would be nice to spend all night making love, but Fargo had Heddy Tinsdale, Suzanne Maxwell, and who-knew-how-many-other women to think of. At dawn he would ride on. For once he was looking forward to getting done with lovemaking so he could enjoy a few hours of shut-eye.

  But Mabel had other ideas. She wasn’t in a rush, and when he slid between her legs and went to align his member with her moist core, she gave a little scrunch of her hips that prevented him from coupling until she was good and ready.

  Fine, Fargo thought. There were other ways to stoke a woman’s furnace. Melding his mouth to a nipple, he slid a hand down over her short, crinkly hairs, to her moist slit. He brushed his middle finger across it and for a moment thought she would buck him clear across the room. Rubbing her engorged knob, he was rewarded with a throaty purr.

  “Ohhh, that makes my head swim!”

  “What about this?” Fargo plunged his finger into her womanhood. Mabel gasped, then sank her teeth into his right shoulder deep enough to draw blood. He plunged his finger in again and again, settling into a rhythm her hips rose to match. Her left hand found his pole and did to him as he was doing to her.

  For the longest while the two of them mutually stimulated each other. A familiar knot formed in Fargo’s loins and grew rapidly in size. Her sensual ministrations had him trembling on the brink when he drew his finger out of her wet tunnel, gripped her by the shoulders, and rolled her onto her side so her back was against his chest.

  “What are you up to, naughty man?”

  In reply, Fargo slid the bulging end of his manhood between her molten thighs. Tensing his hips, he lanced up into her.

  “Aaaaaiiiiiieeeeeee!” The cry torn from Mabel’s throat rose to the ceiling, and she arched herself against him. “Yes! Yes!”

  Reaching around in front of her, Fargo cupped both swollen globes. He kneaded them while pounding into her, each upward thrust of his hips enough to lift her a few inches off the quilt. Meanwhile, his mouth lathered her neck and shoulders. They rocked in unison, two bodies pumping as one.

  The room filled with their heavy breathing, punctuated intermittently by Mabel’s soft mews.

  “Oh! Oh! I could do this forever!”

  So could Fargo. He was in complete control now. Maybe it was fifteen minutes later, maybe it was twenty, when his throat grew parched and his groin twitched, sure signs of imminent release. He was able to hold off a while yet, long enough to reach down and stroke Mabel where it would have the most effect.

  “Ahhh!” Mabel shook from head to toe and wriggled her bottom in fevered excitement. “I’m almost there!”

  One more stroke was all it took. Mabel threw back her head and let out with the loudest groan yet as her body erupted in a paroxysm of release. He felt her inner walls contract around his manhood. And that brought on his own explosion. He lanced into her, nearly driving her up off the bed, and at each thrust she shuddered and moaned. Under them the four-poster bed bumped and shook as if in the grip of an earthquake.

  Fargo reached the pinnacle, and held her close. Together they gradually coasted down from the summit of pure ecstasy back to the sweat-caked here-and-now. Together they lay sucking in deep breaths while tiny stabs of delight pulsed through them.

  “You do things to me no other man ever has,” Mabel breathed.

  Fargo returned the praise with some of his own. “You have great tits.”

  Mabel laughed and rubbed herself against him. “Another thing I like about you is how much fun you are. Most men have the sense of humor of a tree stump.”

  “You don’t say,” Fargo said, and gave her bottom a pinch.

  Yelping in mock pain, Mabel disengaged herself and turned around so they were f
ace to face and chest to chest. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and toyed with a strand of his hair. “You haven’t said what brought you back here? Was it me?”

  Careful how he answered, Fargo said, “You’re enough to tempt any man, but I’m after the Swills. They’ve been abducting women from wagon trains. No telling how many, but someone has to put a stop to it.”

  Mabel raised her head. “Abducting women? Are you serious? I’ve always thought those miserable so-and-so’s weren’t worth a pile of outhouse fertilizer. I want to hear all the details.”

  Fargo left nothing out. After he finished, he inquired, “How far is it to their homestead?”

  “I wouldn’t know, handsome,” Mabel said. “I’ve never been into the Seven Devils Mountains. Nor has anyone else that I know of. The Swills aren’t exactly the friendliest folks around. Except for when they come in to drink or buy supplies, they keep pretty much to themselves. And they’ve made it plain they don’t cotton to unwanted visitors.”

  That stood to reason, Fargo mused, since they wouldn’t want anyone to talk to the women they abducted.

  “But now that I think about it, I have wondered about a few things,” Mabel remarked. “Unlike the other settlers, the Swills never talk about their wives. You would almost think they didn’t have any women out there, but Ziegler, over to the general store, says the Swills buy ladies’ things from time to time.”

  “No one ever thought to question them?”

  “The Swills? They don’t like people who pry into their business. Mr. Ziegler asked Clancy once how old Clancy’s wife was, and Clancy pistol-whipped him into the dirt. Told Ziegler it was none of his damn business and he’d better keep his nose out of Swill affairs.”

  The store owner’s offer to hire Fargo to kill the Swills now made a lot more sense.

  “That’s not all,” Mabel said. “Most settlers bring their wives to the settlement fairly regular. But not the Swills. Never once in all the months I’ve been here have they ever brought their women in. I always thought it was damned peculiar, but I wasn’t about to say anything and have my head split open.”

  Fargo rolled onto his back and laced his hands behind his head. He had his work cut out for him. The Seven Devils Mountains were as rugged and inhospitable as any on the continent. But maybe, just maybe, locating the Swills wouldn’t be as difficult as he might suppose. They made frequent trips into Les Bois so there must be a trail leading right to their doorstep. Which prompted a question. “Do the Swills live together, do you know?”

  “From what I’ve gathered they have their own little community up there,” Mabel revealed. “Each with his own place. Even that snot-nosed brat, Billy. Their ma died back in Arkansas, but their pa is still alive. Pushing eighty, I hear. I’ve never seen him, either.”

  A thought occurred to Fargo that hadn’t earlier—one that could complicate things. “Do any of the Swills have kids?”

  “Not that anyone knows of,” Mabel said. “That, too, always struck me as strange. They all have wives but no sprouts?” She giggled. “You know how curious us females can be. I had to bite my tongue at times to keep from snooping. Good thing I did. I don’t mind admitting those Swills scare the living hell out of me.”

  Fargo closed his eyes and willed himself to relax. He needed sleep, needed it badly, but for long minutes it wouldn’t come. His mind raced. He couldn’t stop thinking about the missing women and what he might find back in the Seven Devils. Mabel fell asleep nestled on his chest, and he listened to her rhythmic breathing until it lulled him into dreamland. His slumber was thankfully undisturbed, and he awakened at the crack of dawn, reasonably refreshed and raring to go.

  No sooner did Fargo swing his legs over the side of the bed than Mabel stirred and propped herself up on one elbow, her eyes mere slits. “You’re fixing to leave already, handsome? Barnes never needs me until noon. Why not stick around?”

  “I can’t,” Fargo said. Not that he wouldn’t have liked to. Pecking her cheek, he swiftly dressed, donned his gunbelt and hat, and walked back over to the bed. “Thanks again for everything.”

  “You’ve got that backwards, big man. I’m the one who should be thanking you.” Mabel pulled him down and passionately glued her lips to his. She let her mouth linger, her hands roaming over this chest, until Fargo broke the kiss and stepped back.

  “I really must go.”

  Mabel sighed and lowered her cheek to the quilt. “I must be losing my touch. There was a time when there wasn’t a man alive who could resist my charms.”

  “Your charms are as potent as ever,” Fargo said. “But lives are at stake.”

  “Say no more. After what you told me last night, I can’t wait for the Swills to reap the whirlwind. Those poor gals! I wonder how many are still alive? If any?”

  There was Fargo’s main worry in a nutshell. The women might all be dead. It would explain what the Swills were doing with women’s jewelry. Then again, it could simply be that the Swills didn’t let their captives keep personal effects. He paused in the doorway. “Next time I make it to San Francisco, I’ll look you up.”

  Mabel grinned. “Don’t you dare! By then I’ll have hooked a well-to-do gentleman for my husband, and I don’t want anyone to raise his suspicions about what I did before he met me.”

  “Fair enough,” Fargo said, smiling. He quietly descended the stairs and went out the back door. The sun was rising as he entered the woods and gathered up the stallion’s reins. He rode northward, and once past the settlement searched for the well-worn trail he was sure would be there. It was, sure enough, and for the next half an hour Fargo held the Ovaro to a trot.

  Then the trail branched. The right fork bore straight into the heart of the Salmon River Range. The left fork led toward the Seven Devils Mountains where the Swill clan had their lair.

  No one knew exactly how the Seven Devils Mountains had earned their name. Old-timers claimed it had something to do with an ancient Indian legend about mysterious hairy giants the Indians battled at the dawn of time. Such legends were common but whites rarely put any stock in them.

  Fargo had no idea how far he had to travel. Mabel was of the opinion the Swills lived fifteen or twenty miles from the settlement, but Harry Barnes once mentioned to her it was more like fifty or sixty.

  The morning came and went and still Fargo saw no trace of habitation. The trail came to a ford across the Payette River, and once on the other side it pointed him toward the high southernmost peaks of the Seven Devils range. Peaks, interestingly enough, bordered by the Snake River to the west, and not all that far, as the crow flew, from the Oregon Trail.

  Fargo stopped for half an hour shortly after noon, then pushed on. The trail climbed gradually but steadily. By the middle of the afternoon he was miles into the Devils range and still had no sign of where the Swills dwelled. He passed through meadows of buttercup and columbine. He crossed valleys choked with elderberry. He rode through woodland tracts of lodgepole pines, ponderosa pines, red cedar, and spruce. And still the trail ushered him ever onward, ever higher.

  No other whites called the Seven Devils Mountains home. The range was too remote for even the most reclusive of backwoodsmen. But not the Swills, oddly enough. It made Fargo suspect they had deliberately picked the Seven Devils. They wanted more than privacy. They wanted to ensure no one ever disturbed them. They had something to hide, something no one from the outside world had suspected—until now.

  A bright gleam of sunlight ahead brought Fargo to an abrupt stop.

  The trail wound between rocky spires hemmed by impossibly steep slopes. It was a pass into the next valley, and dozens of feet up on the left-hand spire was a lookout. The man had just shifted position, and thanks to a flash of sunlight off of his rifle, Fargo spotted him before it was too late.

  Reining the Ovaro into cover, Fargo slid the Henry from its scabbard, tied the reins to a low limb, and stalked forward until he could see the lookout clearly. If it was a Swill, it was one he hadn’t met; a man in hi
s forties or so, with a bushy beard and a floppy hat. Seated in a notch in the rock, the lookout was puffing on a corncob pipe. How he got up there, Fargo couldn’t say.

  The man appeared bored. Since it was unlikely the Swills posted sentries day in and day out, Fargo imagined that Clancy Swill had taken the precaution because Clancy suspected he would track them down.

  Fargo stepped to a log and made himself comfortable. He cold afford to be patient. He had found their hideaway, and they weren’t going anywhere any time soon. Should they try, they had to make it past him.

  Picking the lookout off would be child’s play, but Fargo wasn’t inclined to announce his arrival. The man kept squinting up at the sun as if anxious for it to set.

  The afternoon waned. The lookout got his wish and the sun fled the sky for another twelve hours. Twilight spread across the Seven Devils Mountains. From the far side of the pass came a loud clanging. The lookout rose, smiling happily, and hastened out of sight around the spire.

  The instant the man was gone, Fargo rose and jogged toward the pass. He wanted a look before the last of the light faded. He left the Ovaro where it was. Stealth was called for, and as he neared the towering spires, he slowed.

  The lookout was nowhere on the spire or the adjoining slope.

  Fargo moved into the pass. Too late, he heard the scrape of leather soles on rocks. Too late, he turned and spied the lookout descending a narrow footpath bordering the left-hand spire, a path that hadn’t been visible from the trail until he was right on top of it. Fargo tried to backpedal, to get out of there before the man saw him, but the very next moment the lookout glanced up.

  “What the hell! Where did you come from?”

  “I’m a prospector,” Fargo said, hoping it would gain him the seconds he needed to get close enough to resort to the Arkansas toothpick. Smiling, he moved forward. “My horse threw me and I’ve been wandering through these mountains half the day.”