by Jon Sharpe
“If I can.”
“Why?”
“That’s easy,” Alice said. “He wasn’t long for this world anyway. And he wanted us to go. You heard him.”
“Still,” Fargo said.
Carmody was in a pit of misery. “He was my friend. I’ll never forgive you, Alice. Not ever.”
“We’re alive,” Alice said. “We wouldn’t be if we’d stuck with him.”
“That’s awful cold,” Carmody criticized. “You killed him to save your hide.”
“Our hides,” Alice corrected her. “And I’d do it again.”
Fargo would never have guessed she had it in her. She seemed so innocent, so . . . sweet. “We need to ride, ladies.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Alice said. To Carmody she said, “Your friend is dead. Get over it.” And she smacked her legs against her mount.
Caromody followed.
Fargo stayed at her side. They held to a trot for half a mile or more, until Fargo called out to Alice that she was pushing too hard.
“I don’t care,” she hollered back. “It’s not my horse.”
“You’ll care if you ride it into the ground and Mako gets his hands on you.”
“All right, all right,” Alice said, slowing.
“She’s something, that one,” Carmody remarked.
“How long did she have left on her sentence?” Fargo wondered.
“Fifteen years.”
“That long?” Fargo said, and joked, “What did she do? Kill someone?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Carmody said. “Little Alice murdered two men. And she admits it, too.”
13
It bothered him.
Fargo had taken it for granted that most of the people who ended up in Fairplay’s “barracks” didn’t deserve to be there. He figured that Stoddard and Mako had done to them as they did to him.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
They couldn’t trump up a pair of murders.
He realized he might have freed someone who should rightfully be behind bars.
And it bothered him.
They rode until noon. That there was no pursuit surprised him.
Their horses needed rest. So did they. The country was more wooded, and he called a halt in a grove of trees that bordered the road. With his back to an oak and the Henry across his lap, he watched the way they had come.
Carmody curled on her side and closed her eyes to nap.
As for freckled Alice Thorn, she hunkered, facing them, and idly plucked blades of grass.
“You don’t want to sleep?” Fargo said.
She shook her head.
“It’s been a rough night.”
“All we did was ride.”
“You killed a man,” Fargo reminded her.
“I put him out of his misery,” Alice said. “Same as I’d do for any critter.”
“Is that what you did to the two people I hear you murdered?”
“No,” Alice said, continuing to pluck grass. “They deserved it.”
“Mind if I ask how?”
“They tried to have their way with me.”
“Did you know them?”
Showing no emotion whatsoever, Alice said, “I’m from east Texas. I was on my way to San Antonio by stage. I have kin there. An aunt. The vermin I killed were on the stage, too. Louts, the pair of them. Kept ogling me. Kept making remarks. I told them to shut their mouths, but they wouldn’t listen. One said as how they weren’t afraid of a sweet little thing like me.” She uttered an icy laugh.
Fargo waited.
“Anyhow, we stopped in Fairplay,” Alice resumed. “It was evening. I got out to stretch my legs, and the louts went to a saloon. The stage was supposed to head out again in an hour. I was sitting out behind the stage office, minding my own business, when they jumped me. Tried to rip off my britches so they could have a poke.”
“And?” Fargo prompted.
“What do you think? I had a knife in my boot. I slit the one’s throat.”
Again he had to prompt her. “The other one?”
“I stuck the blade in his balls. He flopped and shrieked until I cut off his pecker and stuffed it down his throat to shut him up.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“They both were. I didn’t know it but the owner of the stage line saw me out the window and told the marshal. Next thing, Mako arrested me and took me before that no-account judge. I told them how it was self-defense, but that Stoddard fella said I was a menace to the community and sentenced me to eighteen years.”
Fargo remembered what Carmody had told him. “You’ve been a prisoner for three years?”
Alice nodded grimly. “Years I can never get back.”
“You’re free now,” Fargo said.
“Thanks to you, and I’m obliged. But being free ain’t enough.”
“How do you mean?”
She didn’t reply, and Fargo didn’t press it. He believed her account.
Anywhere else but Fairplay, she’d have been acquitted.
Taking off his hat, Fargo leaned back. Save for the chirping of some sparrows, the woods were quiet. The serenity and the heat got to him. He became drowsy. Twice he closed his eyes and snapped them open again. The third time, he dozed off.
He’d been up all night and it caught up to him. He slept so soundly that when a jay squawked, he sat up, startled, and looked around in alarm.
The first thing he noticed was that, judging by the sun, he’d slept a couple of hours. The second thing was that his Henry wasn’t in his lap. The third thing was that Alice wasn’t hunkered across from him.
Fargo glanced around and discovered something else. Alice’s bay was missing, too. “What the hell?” he blurted. Jamming his hat on, he pushed to his feet. “Alice?” he called out.
Carmody stirred and rose on an elbow. Yawning, she said, “What’s the ruckus about?”
“Your friend left and took my rifle with her.”
“That sounds like something Alice would do,” Carmody said, sitting up. “She’s a tough one, that girl.”
“We’re going after her,” Fargo said, and turned toward their horses.
“What for?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She stole my rifle.”
“And she’ll likely have it with her when we catch up,” Carmody said. “We rush off in this heat, we’ll only have to stop again in a couple of hours. Why not rest until it cools down?”
All Fargo could think of was his rifle. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“You won’t,” Carmody said. “There’s only the one road.” She patted the ground. “Have a seat. We can pass the time together.”
Her hooded eyes, and the playful manner in which she puckered her lips, gave him pause.
“Well?” Carmody teased. “Are you just going to stand there?”
Fargo checked to the east. There wasn’t a rider in sight. Not even a tendril of dust. He looked at Carmody, at her loose hair and her full lips, at the swell of her shirt and the curve of her thighs. “You pick a damn strange time.”
“Do you know how long it’s been? I’m not a nun or a schoolmarm.”
Fargo realized how little he knew about her. “What were you before Stoddard got hold of you?”
“I was a dove,” Carmody said. “I worked in saloons.”
“The hell you say.”
“I came to Fairplay with my best friend, Jugs. We were about broke, so we hired on at the Tumbleweed. Wasn’t long before a clerk at the general store took a shine to me and wanted a tumble for money.” Carmody shook her head sadly. “I took him up on it and the marshal found out and arrested me.”
“How did he find out?”
“That damned clerk. He bragged to his friends and one of them went to Mako. It seems if
you turn somebody in, you get paid.”
“That sounds like Stoddard’s doing.”
“Let’s forget about that bastard for a while.” Brazenly reaching up, Carmody cupped him. “Come on. You know you want to.”
“Damn it,” Fargo said, but he didn’t move.
Carmody grinned and squeezed, and rubbed, and suddenly he was as hard as iron. “Oh my. Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to.”
Fargo couldn’t answer for the lump in his throat. To hell with it, he thought, and sank to his knees.
“I must not look very pretty at the moment,” Carmody said, while with her other hand she plucked at her shirt. “Sorry about these clothes. They make the men wear stripes, but us women get store-bought duds.”
Fargo checked the road to town again. Nothing. A quick one wouldn’t hurt, he reckoned, and cupped both her breasts.
Carmody stiffened and gasped and threw back her head. “Oh God. It’s been so long.”
Fargo felt a shiver run through her. “You weren’t joshing about wanting it.”
“You have no idea,” Carmody said.
The next instant her lips were fastened to his. She didn’t so much kiss him as try to suck his mouth into hers.
Reaching behind her, Fargo cupped her bottom. In response she thrust her body at his and ground her nether mound against his hardness.
Fargo went to unbutton her shirt, but again she took the initiative and near frantically unfastened his gun belt so she could tug his buckskin shirt out and slide her hands underneath.
“Goodness,” she exclaimed. “You’re all muscles.”
“The biggest is between my legs.”
“So I noticed.” Carmody grinned and renewed her stroking.
Covering her mouth with his, Fargo got her shirt open. Her breasts were warm and firm. When he pinched a nipple, she sank her teeth into his shoulder.
Fargo winced, and pinched her, hard. It set her hips to moving in circles and she panted like a bellows.
“God in heaven, how I want you,” Carmody husked into his ear.
Easing her down, Fargo stretched out and went to peel her pants off, but once again she couldn’t wait. She pushed his hand away and did it herself.
The lust in her eyes, her full, pouty lips, the peaks of her tits, and those smooth, creamy legs below her thatch set his blood to burning.
His hands were everywhere, as were hers. She scratched. She bit. She incited him with pain as much as pleasure.
She liked it rough, and he obliged.
There came the moment when he was poised between her legs, his hands on her hips. She looked into his eyes and said throatily, “Do it.”
Fargo rammed up and in.
She cried out, clamped her legs around him, and rode him as if he were a bronc and she were his saddle.
They went at it furious and fast until their mutual explosion brought them half up off the ground.
“Oh!” Carmody gushed. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
All Fargo did was growl.
Afterward, he lay on top of her, both of them wet with sweat, her breasts cushioning his chest, her lips pressed to his throat.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I needed that.”
Fargo was about to say that he did, too, when their idyllic moment was brought to an end by the boom of a gunshot.
14
The shot came from off to the east, which puzzled Fargo. He wondered if it was the posse. Maybe signaling. But to whom? Rising, he began to put himself back together.
“Who could that be?” Carmody asked, imitating him.
“Just about anyone.”
They climbed on their mounts and moved to the road. In both directions it was empty.
“I don’t see anyone,” Carmody said. “Let’s keep going. The last thing I want is for Marshal Mako to get his hands on me again.”
Fargo recollected the incident he’d witnessed through the window. “How did he treat you?”
“Most of the time he was decent enough. But now and then I’d catch him looking at me as if . . .” Carmody stopped.
“As if what?”
“I don’t rightly know.” She shrugged. “As if he had something in mind I’d rather not think about.”
“You don’t mean—?”
“I told you. I don’t know. Probably not. One time a male prisoner tried to grope me, and Mako broke both his hands.”
“Tough hombre,” Fargo said.
“Dangerous hombre,” Carmody amended. “You can see it in his eyes. He’s vicious when he wants to be. But he has respect for the law.”
“Horatio Stoddard’s law.”
“I mentioned that to Mako once. I said it’s not right to say who can and can’t make love, and how much people can gamble, and things like that.”
“What did he say?”
“He agreed, if you can believe it. He stood there and flat out said some of the town’s laws are stupid. But it’s his job to enforce them anyway.”
“He’s not out to fleece folks?”
“Not him. The mayor, yes. Stoddard imposes fines that go into his bank account and gets all that free labor to work at his ranch.”
She would have gone on, but just then hooves drummed. They both started and straightened.
Out of the east flew a horse. Riderless, it came at a gallop and would have swept on by if Fargo hadn’t cut it off and grabbed its trailing reins to bring it to a halt.
The horse tossed its mane and stamped but didn’t attempt to break away.
Carmody came up and was the first to notice. “Say, what’s that all over the saddle?”
Fargo bent. It was blood. A lot of it. Larger patches near the saddle horn with smaller drops behind and lower down. “Whoever was on this was gut-shot.”
“How can you tell?”
“The pattern,” Fargo said. “I’ve seen it before.” He’d been in plenty of skirmishes with hostiles and seen a lot of troopers wounded by lead, arrows, and lances. Turning in the saddle, he peered east. “I’m going back.”
“What?” Carmody’s eyes widened. “We’re in the clear. We should push on.”
“I want to know who was shot.”
“Who cares, damn it?” Carmody said. “Besides, what about your precious rifle? We have to go after Alice, remember, and she went west.”
“Did she?” Fargo said. “I wonder.” He scanned the dirt road to the west. Puzzled, he dismounted and searched on foot. “I’ll be damned.”
“What now?”
“There aren’t any fresh tracks. She didn’t go west, after all.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“Not about tracks.” If there was one thing Fargo did better than just about anyone, it was read sign. It was why the army considered him one of the best scouts alive. He climbed back on the Ovaro, snagged the other animal’s reins, and wheeled to the east.
“This is dumb,” Carmody said. “We’re asking for trouble.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“Damn you,” she said, and did.
Fargo scoured for sign, becoming more puzzled the farther they went. After half a mile, he remarked, “She didn’t come this way, either.”
“What are you saying? Alice cut across country to the north or the south? She’d have to be dumber than you. We’re in the middle of Comanche territory, in case you’ve forgotten.”
The next moment Fargo spotted a body, belly down in the middle of the road. He tapped his spurs and was out of the saddle before the stallion stopped moving.
A pool of scarlet formed a body-sized halo. It was more—much more—than a human being could lose and go on breathing.
Fargo rolled it over.
The man was in his twenties and wore store-bought clothes. A derby lay nearby, upside down. The slug had entered
above his groin and left an exit wound close to his spine.
To Fargo’s surprise, the man’s eyelids fluttered and opened.
“God,” he said.
“Who did this?” Fargo asked.
The man seemed to struggle to focus. “One of you.”
“Like hell,” Carmody said. “Neither of us put lead in you, mister.”
“The other gal,” the man barely got out. “The one with brown hair and freckles.” He groaned and weakly placed a hand over his belly. “God, I hurt.”
“Brown hair and freckles?” Carmody repeated, incredulous. “Alice Thorn?”
“She shot me with no warning,” the townsman said. “From off in the grass.”
Fargo stepped to the edge of the road and discovered a flattened trail where a horse had emerged. He realized that Alice must have been paralleling the road the whole time. Which was why he didn’t find her tracks. It was clever. Very clever.
“I never saw her,” the townsman gasped. “I think she made her horse lie down and picked me off when I got close.”
Fargo came back over. “You’re with the posse?”
The man managed to nod. “They sent me on ahead. My horse was faster than theirs. I was to find you and get word back to them.” He closed his eyes and groaned louder. “God, now I’m cold. I’m not long for this world, am I?”
Carmody glanced at Fargo, and Fargo shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the townsman. “I never wanted anyone hurt.”
“Then you’re not like that other one,” the man said. “She stood over me and smiled and told me I got what I deserved.”
Carmody said, “You’re not our enemy. The mayor is. Him and his tin-star flunkies.”
“Your friend aims to kill them, too. Her and that shiny rifle of hers.”
Fargo frowned.
“How do you know?” Carmody asked, but the man didn’t seem to hear. Gently shaking his arm, she asked it again.
His eyes opened partway. Wearily, he said, “She told me, is how. She stood right there and said she intends to kill Mayor Stoddard and the marshal and everyone else who had a hand in putting her behind bars. She even aims to kill the mayor’s daughter.”
“Hell,” Fargo said.
The townsman shivered. “I asked her to put me out of my misery, but she refused. She said it was right I suffer. Me and all the rest she’s after.”
