North Country Cutthroats

by Jon Sharpe

  “I mean…” Fargo cleared his throat. “They’re probably holed up somewhere warm, licking their wounds…no bother to us at all. I have a feelin’ they might’ve even decided they’re in the wrong line of work entirely.”

  Mrs. Tribble frowned, eyes slitting in their doughy sockets. “Oh. Yes…I see.…” Placated, she swung around, took her husband’s arm, and ambled off toward the shanty.

  Mrs. Otis poked her head out of the stage, and Fargo took her mittened hand in his own. She gave him a cunning smile as she stepped down from the coach, her brown eyes smoky in the quickly fading light. “You think fast for the brawny type.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  She stepped down in front of him, gazing up at him boldly. “That’s how I meant it.”

  “Come along, dear,” the lieutenant said, taking her arm. “It’s too cold to stand around making small talk with the hired help.”

  The pretty blonde’s coquettish eyes lingered on Fargo, coolly but obviously taking his measure, before she turned away and let her husband lead her off toward the house.

  “She is married, you swine.” Fargo turned to see Irina Roskov crouched in the open stage door. When he took her extended hand and set her gently down in the snow beside him, she smiled brazenly, showing her fine, white teeth. “I, on the other hand, am not!”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Fargo said.

  “Hey, little lady,” said the market hunter with the eye patch, R. J. Boone, as he swayed drunkenly in the open stage door. The vapor puffing around his head smelled like the refuse from a distillery’s smokestack. “What’s he got that I ain’t got?”

  “For one thing, he ain’t had two pints of Red Dog!” laughed his partner, Charley Mays, giving Boone a brusque shove from behind.

  Boone flew out of the stage door and fell in the snow at Fargo’s feet. Mays came out behind him, slipped on the iron step, and fell across his partner’s legs. Laughing, the men rolled in the snow for a time, exchanging halfhearted punches, before helping each other stand. Arm in arm, they slogged off toward the shanty, leaning as though in the lee of a stiff wind.

  “Anything I can’t stand,” said the Dakota Kid, climbing carefully out of the carriage, his breath, too, rife with the smell of raw whiskey, “it’s grown men who can’t hold their liquor.” He stopped and tipped his hat to Irina. “I do apologize, ma’am, but it is Christmas.…”

  With that he turned and, swaying slightly at the hips, lifted his right boot, carefully set it down, then the left, and continued the process until he’d disappeared inside the shanty.

  Fargo held his arm out to Irina. “Shall we?”

  She smiled and cut her brown eyes around cautiously as she hooked her wrist through his arm. “Yes.”

  “There you go again,” the Trailsman said, leading the girl to the shanty, the low-slung form of which was quickly fading as the night deepened, the lamplit windows growing brighter. “You keep lookin’ around like a cat at a dog dance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’re you lookin’ for? What’re you afraid of?”

  “Me? Afraid?” She glanced up at him, shocked. “Never!”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say.” As he opened the heavy timbered door, it was he who glanced around the frozen yard, prompted by the girl’s obvious fear and his own wariness of getting a bad case of back trouble caused by whomever had tried to drill him in Brule City.

  Chances that the man had followed him out here were a thousand to one. But, of course, the odds were dependent on how bad he was hurt and how determined he was.

  Fargo doubted the would-be stage robbers would attempt another attack. No doubt disgruntled range riders prompted by empty bellies to an act of desperation, they were likely licking their wounds in some drafty prairie line shack and deciding there were worse ways to make a living than brush-popping yearling calves from snowdrifts.

  “You get yourself warm,” Fargo told Irina. “I’m gonna haul in the luggage.”

  “You won’t be long?”

  “Five minutes.”

  Fargo went out, reluctant to leave the shanty’s delectable heat flavored with the smell of burning ash and oak. He and Grizzly hauled the passengers’ gear into the house, then back-and-bellied the strongbox into a tack room at the back of the barn—with Grizzly hooting and making eyes at the three chubby women tending the horses. The girls—all sisters, Fargo could tell, with the same general builds and facial features, and the same stocky plumpness underneath their coldweather gear—snorted and rolled their eyes, seemingly accustomed to the jahoo’s brazen administrations.

  Fargo headed back to the lodge after Grizzly gave him a wink and a lusty chuckle. He would help the girls put the horses to bed and see if he couldn’t snag a kiss or two.

  Hearing a startled cry behind him, and the smack of a mittened hand against a hard jaw, Fargo tramped into the shanty. He quickly closed the door behind him, fighting back the cold, and stomped snow from his boots. He was promptly handed a hot mug of green tea by a stocky, blond, mustached gent of late middle age, who introduced himself as Homer Rinski, manager of the swing station.

  Rinski, a jolly immigrant in a knitted red vest, baggy green duck trousers, and high-topped mule-eared boots, went around the earthen-floored room administering to the needs of the half-frozen stage passengers, assuring them his wife, Hildegarde, would be laying out a hearty meal shortly.

  “And, since it is Christmas Eve,” he bellowed, standing before a roaring iron stove and popping the cork on the stone jug in his arms, “we shall all indulge in a libation or two in celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus!” He cackled, showing his small, tobacco-stained teeth between the long strands of his red-blond mustache, and began adding a jigger of liquor to the mugs eagerly stretched before him.

  Fargo snorted as he put his back to the wall and sipped the tea. With all that had happened, he’d forgotten about it being Christmas. He was neither too old nor too jaded not to feel a sudden, festive warmth and lightness wash over him. And he didn’t think it was all inspired by the liquor Rinski added to his tea, either.

  The steam wafting up from his mug smelled of fresh-cut grass and roses. The liquor must have been distilled from chokecherries, the brambles of which lined nearly every prairie ravine. That and the heat radiating from the big stove gradually leeched the cold from Fargo’s bones.

  Fargo was feeling downright dreamy and about ready to shrug out of his coat when the roadhouse door opened, and two of the three females who’d tended the team came in, chuckling and shivering and shrugging out of their heavy fur coats and caps. They were big, stout girls—heavy-busted and round-hipped, with thick, dark blond hair curling about their shoulders and pale, cold, rosy cheeks. Their homespun blouses were buttoned to their throats. Heavy wool skirts fluttered about their stubby legs.

  They didn’t dally in the main room; as soon as they were out of their coats, they trotted back into the kitchen to help with the meal.

  When Rinski had finished seeing to the passengers’ needs, and they’d all taken seats on the rough-hewn couches and chairs situated around the stove and a spindly cottonwood poking up from a milk bucket filled with sand which served as a Christmas tree, the stationmaster took a seat at Fargo’s table. He sipped from his own steaming mug.

  Adding a little more liquor to Fargo’s, he said, “You’re new, huh? Where’s Tweed?”

  “The missus blew him out of his privy.”

  “Ahh,” Rinski said knowingly. “She found out about him and the Indian girl he was always bragging about.”

  When Fargo said that that was about the size of it, Rinski clucked and shook his head. “Very bad business, that. Always hell to pay.”

  “I believe her name was Ella.”

  Rinski laughed, looked around to make sure no one else was listening, then leaned over the table toward Fargo. “The joke’s on old Tweed in spades. He didn’t know that Ella and Grizzly Olaffson…” He made a circle with his
thumb and forefinger, poking the index finger of his other hand in and out of the hole.

  “You’re shittin’! That old son of a bitch!”

  Rinski cackled, shaking his head and gritting his teeth delightedly. Suddenly sobering, he looked around the room. Apparently not finding who or what he was looking for in the main room, he got up and stomped into the kitchen.

  He reappeared a moment later, looking perplexed, muttering in German. He plucked a buffalo coat off a wall peg, shrugged into the coat, and pulled on a fox hat. He grabbed an old revolver off a shelf, checked to make sure it was loaded, then stuffed the hogleg in a big coat pocket and headed out the door, slamming it behind him as a frigid blast of air washed over the room and nearly blew the lamps out.

  Fargo stared at the door. What the hell was that all about?

  7

  The Trailsman decided that whatever had prompted Homer Rinski to grab his pistol and leave the shanty’s womblike warmth was the man’s business and none of Fargo’s own. He probably would have followed the stationmaster had the weather been nicer, but since his bones were still frozen, his hands and feet numb, he shrugged out of his coat, sat alone at a table, and began rolling a quirley from his makings sack.

  Irina Roskov stepped out away from the stove around which most of the passengers were gathered. She set her tea mug down on Fargo’s table and sat across from him.

  Fargo noticed that Mrs. Otis, sitting at a table with her husband and the Tribbles, was looking toward him over her steaming tea mug, her thin brows stitched pensively. Fargo turned back to Irina as the Russian girl placed a hand on his wrist and looked directly into his eyes.

  “It is a cold night. You will keep me warm?”

  Fargo snorted at the girl’s boldness. He glanced once more at Mrs. Otis—she was still staring at him, a vague challenge or admonishment in her gaze as she flicked her eyes between Fargo and Irina. “I reckon,” the Trailsman said, clearing his throat, “it wouldn’t be right to not—”

  A muffled snap sounded outside, almost inaudible above the din of the conversations around Fargo, the crackling of the wood in the stove, and the ruffle of playing cards. No one else had seemed to notice it, including Irina, who frowned at him curiously.

  There was another faint snap and an even fainter yell.

  “Wait here.” Fargo stood and, with Irina scowling at him, pulled on his coat and hat, then headed outside, pulling the door closed behind him.

  The cold grabbed him like a giant fist, sucking the air from his lungs. Shivering, he looked around and jerked his shoulders as a man’s deep-throated, angry shout rose from the direction of the barn, followed closely by a pistol pop.

  A girl screamed, “Papa!”

  Fargo grabbed his .44 from under his coat, ran across the yard, and heaved one of the barn’s two doors open as the pistol popped again, sounding like a lightning bolt between the barn’s stout walls and flashing in the shadows that shunted this way and that by lanterns hanging from posts and beams.

  Fargo stepped into the barn, shuffled left, away from the half open door behind, and pressed his back to the wall. Down the alley before him, a girl crouched against a stall—pale and naked and sobbing, extending one hand toward Homer Rinski. The stationmaster stood about ten feet in front of her, aiming his old hogleg into an empty stable.

  “I’ll teach you this time, you horny old bastard!” the man shouted in his thick German accent, the pistol snapping and sparking, causing the horses in the rear shadows to jostle and prance and kick their stall partitions.

  The girl clapped her hands to her ears and cried, “Stop, Papa!” Her heavy breasts bulged between her elbows, above her thick, raised knees.

  Then Fargo saw that the stable wasn’t empty. A tall, pale, bearded figure—with shoulders like porcelain yokes—darted up from the floor and threw a long, white leg over a stall partition, bolting toward Fargo’s end of the barn.

  It was Grizzly Olaffson, as naked as the day he was born.

  His voice boomed under the low ceiling beams. “Listen to yer girl, goddamn it, Rinski, ya crazy son of a bitch!” He lunged forward, hair flying, torso jerking down as his right foot caught the partition, tripping him. The stumble saved his life, for the pistol barked and flashed once more, the slug chewing slivers out of the wall directly behind where Grizzly’s bearlike head had just been.

  “Rinski!” Fargo shouted.

  Hay and straw rustled, and thuds sounded in the stall in which Grizzly had fallen. Grizzly shouted, voice cracking with terror, “Skye, take the gun from the crazy sonofabitch!”

  Rinski strode up to the stall. The girl bolted toward him, sobbing, “Papa, no!” Her bare feet slid in the cold straw, so it didn’t take much for the stocky German to fling her aside. As she fell heavily, yowling and howling like a lightning-addled calf, her father aimed the Colt over the stall’s front wall, angling down.

  “Rinski, put it down!” Fargo barked as he strode down the alley.

  “No, Homer—please!” Grizzly barked as he scrambled up against the barn wall, holding his thick arms in front of his head as if to shield himself from the bullets.

  Pop!

  The bullet plunked dust and slivers from a log over the naked jahoo’s left shoulder. As Grizzly bellowed and flung himself right and down against the wall, Fargo closed his hand over the stationmaster’s old Colt and ripped it out of his hands.

  Rinski bellowed in German, then swung toward the Trailsman, red-faced with fury. “I caught him fuckin’ Astrid, goddamn it, and he gotta pay!”

  As the girl scrambled to her feet and ran, stumbling and mewling in horror and embarrassment, toward the tack room in the barn’s rear shadows, Fargo stepped back, clutching Rinski’s smoking hogleg by his side. “I understand the sentiment there, Homer. I’ve felt the impulse to ventilate the son of a bitch myself, a time or two. But since I don’t want to drive the stage and ride shotgun, cooler heads’ll have to prevail.”

  He glanced into the stall to see Grizzly peering cautiously, fearfully, over the front wall, one knobby hand clamped over the top of the wall before him.

  “As far as him diddlin’ your daughter—maybe you oughta take it up with her,” Fargo said, canting his head toward the barn’s rear, where a door slammed loudly, muffling the girl’s sobs. “Appears to me she’s as naked as he is, and plenty willing. While the big son of a bitch might be many things, most of them bad, he’s not a rapist.”

  Fargo turned to Grizzly. “Get your clothes on, you stupid bastard. And Rinski, if you can’t see fit to forgive him, at least let him be for the sake of me, the passengers, and Christmas.”

  Rinski glared at Grizzly, only the driver’s frightened eyes and mussed, silver-streaked hair showing above the stall.

  “Make sure he don’t have another piece on him,” the driver told Fargo.

  “I don’t got no other piece,” Rinski growled. “A few years ago, when my aim was better, I wouldn’t have needed no other gun!”

  In the darkness at the end of the barn alley, the tack room door squawked. A pale oval appeared in the shadows. Rinski turned toward it. “Astrid, get inside and help your mother with the supper.” He waved his arm broadly. “Go on! Skedaddle!”

  The girl stepped cautiously out of the tack room, holding a blanket coat taut around her shoulders. She’d dressed and donned a beaver cap, her mussed blond hair hanging in her eyes. She stepped around her father as though around a coiled rattler, then jogged to the door and outside, where her snow-crunching footfalls receded into the distance.

  “Don’t be too hard on the girl, Homer,” Grizzly said, rubbing his arms and shivering as he opened the stall door and began backing away toward the tack room. He stopped suddenly, threw his arms wide and spread his legs, showing off his big, hairy, apelike body. “There ain’t too many women ever been able to resist this!”

  Rinski wheeled to the Trailsman, bunching his lips and shaking his hand. “Goddamn it, give me your pistol!”

  “Don’t you dare, Skye!�
�� Grizzly turned and gave a rafter-rocking whoop as he sprinted into the tack room and slammed the door behind him.

  Surprisingly, there was no more lead or even loud words exchanged by Homer Rinksi and Grizzly Olaffson for the rest of the evening. Upon leaving the barn and heading into the warmth of the station house, the two apparently agreed to bury the hatchet—at least for the time being.

  Tables and benches were pushed together and supper was served, and the hearty portions of roast buffalo, cellar potatoes, canned beets, and rich, brown gravy went down in relative silence, as did the dessert of canned strawberry pie with fresh whipped cream. Fargo sat wedged between Mrs. Otis and Irina Roskov. Both women nudged their warm thighs against his, making him feel—with the near-oppressive heat radiating from the stoves as well as the heat from Rinski’s strong tonsil paint—more than a tad claustrophobic. On the other side of Mrs. Otis, the lieutenant continued sniffling and sneezing into his handkerchief.

  Fargo looked up a few times to see Grizzly ogling Astrid lustily, and most times she looked blandly away, though once her shiny blue eyes crinkled and she covered a laugh with a feigned choke, hiding her face in her napkin.

  After supper, the women retired with Rinski’s barrel-shaped wife, Hildegarde, to the hide-covered couches and stuffed armchairs near the stove, where they chatted or knitted or, in Mrs. Rinski’s case, darned socks, while the men remained at the tables near the front door. Pots and pans clattered from the kitchen where the beefy daughters were doing the dishes. The Dakota Kid challenged the men to poker, and the Trailsman, with little else to do until bedtime, threw in with the others, fanning the cards in his finally pliable hands.

  At nine o’clock, more tea was served, with ample portions of Rinski’s coffin varnish. The stocky German clapped his hands and called everyone’s attention to the fact that it was Christmas Eve and, it being such, he felt compelled to read the Christmas story from the Bible. Fargo hadn’t gone to church in years. In fact, the closest he’d been to a religious ceremony was one in which the Sioux had nearly burned him at the stake.