Nevada Vipers' Nest

by Jon Sharpe

  Fargo cursed silently because he felt himself giving in against his better judgment. He suspected Sitch McDougall would be nothing but a millstone around his neck, but Fargo had never once turned his back on a man making a desperate appeal for help.

  “All right, damn it,” he said gruffly. “But I ain’t your damn sugar tit. I’ll put up with you for a spell, but you can flush all that cheap-novel foolishness out of your headgear right now. Was it one of my ‘miracle escapes’ that saved our bacon last night?”

  “Nope. It was Duffy Beckman.”

  “Right. I can be killed like any other man, and that means you die with me. We got a rough piece of work ahead of us, mister, and I’d wager you’re going to regret you ever asked for a share of it. And one more thing . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t keep that whip in your saddlebag—put it behind your belt. It’s your best weapon, and a weapon is useless if it isn’t right to hand when you need it. And I guarandamntee—you will be needing it.”

  5

  The two horsebackers bore southeast, Fargo leading them well away from the stage road to Carson City.

  “Are you really serious about trying to become a deputy?” Sitch asked.

  “Serious as a gutshot.”

  “But I read somewhere that you refuse to swear oaths?”

  “I don’t swear loyalty oaths to any government,” Fargo corrected him. “Swearing to uphold the law is another matter.”

  “Yeah,” Sitch persisted, “but do you really plan to uphold it?”

  “Insofar as I can. Out here in the Territories you sometimes have to make up the law as you go along. Anyhow, this Sheriff Vance might just tell me to go to hell.”

  The terrain around them varied widely, often dominated by barrancas, ravines that sliced the land unevenly.

  “Stop fighting that horse,” Fargo ordered the frontier novice. “Give it its head when he wants it, let him sniff the ground. Horses need to do that in new territory so they can settle down. And don’t sit so damn stiff on the saddle—sit in it, and learn to ease into the horse’s gait or your ass will blister until you can’t sit down.”

  “That woman you saw,” Sitch remarked a few minutes later, “I wonder if she made it to Carson City. And I can’t help wondering why Scully made it a point to press you about her.”

  “Same here,” Fargo said. “All we can do is look for her. What I can’t figure is who killed Clement Hightower and his family, and why. From what Duffy told us, it wouldn’t make sense for the red sashes to do it. They needed him to find this big vein of silver, assuming there is one.”

  “Yeah, but they were sure in a puffing hurry to pin it on us. Seems to me that’s what you’d do if you were eager to wash the blood off your own hands.”

  Fargo glanced at Sitch. “You’re not stupid about everything, are you? I guess criminal minds think alike. And have you been wondering about this haunted valley deal and what it would take to scare miners so bad they just up and left like Duffy’s doing?”

  “You think it’s all tied in?”

  “I don’t think it, but I wonder about it.”

  They rode for a few more minutes in silence, Fargo’s sun-slitted eyes in constant motion.

  “Here’s a good one for you,” Sitch said. “There’s this little kid, see, and he’s got this collie dog he loves to dickens. Well, that collie keeps wandering over to the neighboring farm and scattering the chickens all to hell. Finally the farmer gets sick of this and takes a shot at the dog.

  “Well, the collie manages to crawl back home before it dies. The kid’s madder than a wet hen and goes into town to fetch the sheriff back to look at the dog. The lawman stoops down and takes a good look at the wound. ‘Hmm,’ he says, ‘rectum.’ ‘Wrecked him, hell!’ the kid screams back. ‘The son of a bitch killed him!’”

  Sitch laughed with gusto at his own joke. Fargo’s lips twitched in what might or might not have been a grin.

  “Hell,” Sitch protested, “that’s a ripsnorter. You must not know what a rectum is.”

  “’Course I do. It’s an asshole, and I’m riding beside one right now. Let me give you some unfriendly advice: keep your damn mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. You haven’t looked behind you once since we set out from camp. Always keep a close eye on your backtrail, especially in country with hostile tribes. Duffy mentioned that attack on the church people back in fifty-eight, but just last year was the Battle of Pyramid Lake.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “Paiutes killed almost eighty white men who got liquored up and decided to teach the Indians a lesson. They found out that you don’t want to cross that tribe. Paiutes have got two favorite ways to kill a whiteskin: bury him alive or burn him alive. I like a good joke as much as the next fellow, but only when I’m in a safe place. You cried about how you want to learn to survive out here, so you best start learning.”

  “Point taken,” Sitch said somberly. “I have been looking around me.”

  “Yeah, but when you’re scouting open country you don’t really want to look for anything special. Scan the wide view with your eyes focused to the middle distance, watching for movement or reflections, not shapes. Don’t focus on anything special—just let the country sort of roll up to your eyes. It takes a while, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Have you seen any sign of the red sashes?”

  “I’d say they’re beating the bushes for us, all right. I’ve seen dust puffs made by horses, likely Scully and his graveyard rats tossing a net out for us. Rein in for a minute.”

  Fargo removed his 7X army field glasses from a saddle pocket and took a closer look toward some of those puffs.

  “Yeah, he’s far out from us, but I can just make out Leroy. ’Member him, the one with the green teeth? We need to watch out for him—if he can use that Hawken rifle of his, he’s trouble plenty. A Hawken is single-shot, but it’s got twice the range of my Henry, and with that half-ounce ball it fires, even a hit to the arm will shock a man to death.”

  “Seems to me,” Sitch remarked, “that some of them will be covering the approaches closer to Carson City, too.”

  “Now you’re using your think piece. They’ll likely make it hot for us.”

  Fargo relaxed somewhat when they entered a forested expanse of ponderosa pine. Soon they reached a clear, wide, sand-bottom creek. When McDougall started to ride into it, Fargo whistled him back.

  “That’s a soft sand bottom. Dismount and water your horse first before you ford. Otherwise it’ll stop in the middle to drink and might become mired. A mired horse can panic and kill itself trying to get free.”

  “Man alive! I wish I could write all this down.”

  Fargo lit down, shaking his head in disgust. “I s’pose next you’ll be wanting a hornbook and a quill? Write it down in your head, you fool.”

  Both men forded the creek and soon broke over a low rise overlooking Carson City, still about a mile south but clearly visible. The problem was the wide-open expanse leading up to it.

  “That big clutch of boulders on the left will be trouble,” Fargo predicted. “Here’s how we’ll play this deal. I want you to ride out first. Hunker low in the saddle, bent over the horn, and thump that sorrel hard with your heels. Ki-yi him up to a headlong run. Make sure you keep your feet well into the stirrups because you’ll be bouncing hard up on the hurricane deck.”

  “Why me first?”

  “Because I’m the one they really want, and they’ll recognize my Ovaro right off. I’ll draw their fire off of you.”

  “Maybe they won’t be there.”

  “I hope so,” Fargo said, “but you don’t stay alive in Zeb Pike’s West by assuming the best. Now, make tracks and make ’em quick.”

  Fargo smacked the sorrel’s glossy rump hard. “Hee-yah!”

  The big seventeen-hand gelding s
hot off like an arrow from a bow. Fargo waited ten seconds, then speared his Henry from its boot and chambered a round. He pressured the Ovaro hard with his knees. The stallion, eager for a good run, laid back his ears and took off, quickly lengthening his stride.

  At first, when no gunfire erupted, Fargo wondered if he had guessed wrong. But after about a quarter mile, a harsh hammering of gunfire punctuated the rataplan of the Ovaro’s thundering hooves. The first few rounds were ranging shots; then the ambushers quickly got more accurate as they found their effective distance. One round passed so close to Fargo’s face he felt the wind-rip from it.

  Hanging on with his legs, Fargo took the reins in his teeth and swiveled slightly left in the saddle, setting the Henry into his shoulder socket. He could see gray-white powder smoke hazing the spot where the shooters had hidden among the boulders.

  Now the Henry’s sixteen-round magazine became crucial as Fargo levered and fired, levered and fired, setting up a steady whine of ricochets as his bullets splatted into the boulders. He knew from grim experience that steady ricochets could be just as deadly as direct fire and even more unnerving. And his tactic proved a good one as the dry-gulchers suddenly ceased fire. Moments later Fargo heard the drumbeat of escaping hooves.

  Sitch McDougall, his face pale as new linen, waited for Fargo just past the edge of town. “Christ, they’d’ve turned you into a sieve if you hadn’t scared them off. I just can’t figure out why they’re so bent on killing us—or at least you. Is it because they fear you’ll turn the suspicion for that massacre on them?”

  “That’s a poser,” Fargo replied. “I don’t believe for one damn minute that bunch of demented jackals care a frog’s fat ass about that family. But they sure care about something, and I aim to find out what it is.”

  Fargo waited a minute to let the Henry’s long barrel cool down a bit before dropping it back into his saddle scabbard.

  “Well, we’ve met the welcoming committee,” he said, gigging the Ovaro forward. “Now let’s go meet the sheriff.”

  • • •

  Carson City, capital of the newly organized Nevada Territory, was a thriving boomtown with no bust in sight. It had become the main outfitting center for the Comstock Lode just to the north, where silver and gold strikes had produced millionaires who possessed more money than the entire U.S. Treasury. Fargo had passed through Carson City before and knew that half the population were floaters, many of them gamblers who kept a horse saddled close by.

  The impressive main street boasted solid buildings with raw-lumber false fronts and new boardwalks. It was also so thick with human and animal traffic that no one bothered to notice the two new arrivals as they trotted into town.

  “Jesus,” Sitch remarked, “are those men lying in front of the saloons dead?”

  “Just drunks tossed outside to sleep it off,” Fargo replied. “If they had any money when they were thrown out, they won’t have it when they wake up.”

  Several of the usual town loafers occupied a pine bench in front of the sheriff’s office, whittling and swapping lies. They scrutinized the two riders as they reined in and tied off at the snorting post.

  “Hey, buckskins,” one old codger called out, “where you settin’ your beaver traps—out in the desert?”

  “Best keep your mouth closed, Methuselah,” Fargo called back, “or those wooden teeth will fall out.”

  The two men strolled inside, and the first thing Fargo spotted was a sign on the back wall over the two empty jail cells:

  NEVER DO ANYTHING WRONG—WHEN SOMEBODY’S LOOKING.

  “Help you, gents?” said a man seated behind a kneehole desk and drinking a glass of milk.

  “Sheriff Vance?” Fargo asked.

  “Ever since birth. And who’s inquiring?”

  “My name is Fargo. This homely plug with me is Mitt McDougall.”

  “Fargo, is it? Would that be Skye Fargo, the jasper they call the Trailsman?”

  Fargo nodded, and the sheriff sat up a little straighter in his chair. Sheriff Cyrus Vance was thickset without running to fat, his rumpled hair shot through with streaks of silver. He had a weather-grooved face and tired eyes like raw wounds. A watery nose made him sniff constantly.

  “Well I’ll be hog-tied and earmarked. . . . I heard all that shooting outside of town a few minutes ago. Bein’s who you are, I take it you know something about it?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Pull up them two chairs, boys, and take a load off. I got the feeling this is going to be quite a story.”

  Fargo started at the beginning, the discovery of the massacred family a few miles north of the mining camp at Rough and Ready. He described the summary arrest and “trial” at the hands of the red sashes, the escape thanks to Duffy Beckman and the ambush just now.

  “So you boys tangled with Iron Mike Scully and his hyenas?” the sheriff remarked when Fargo had finished. “I don’t care shucks for the son of a buck, but he’s a potent force to be reckoned with. He’s two hundred pounds of hard, and them two fancy-grip Navy Colts of his ain’t just for show—he can draw so quick that he’s a day younger when he shoots.”

  Sitch’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t get that one,” he put in.

  The sheriff glanced at him and sniffed, then took a swig of his milk. “It’s just a manner of speaking, son. You know, you look a lot like a description I got yesterday of a horse thief up in Virginia City.”

  “All ugly men look alike, Sheriff. Besides, every man breaks the law if you follow him long enough.”

  Vance grinned. “Ain’t that the Gospel truth? But, say, did you steal that horse? It’s a big sorrel with two front white socks.”

  “I did,” Sitch fessed up boldly, startling Fargo and the sheriff. “It’s tied off out front right now.”

  “Well, Jesus! You don’t just swagger in to a sheriff’s office and brag about horse stealing. What kind of respect does that show my badge?”

  “Would it be more respectful, Sheriff, to lie to your face about it? Besides, it was a matter of life and death. There was a . . . mishap at a gambling table, and I was forced to exert myself in retreat or die of lead colic.”

  The sheriff stared at Fargo. “You know, Trailsman, a man is judged by the company he keeps. I’ve always had a good impression of you despite the fact that you’ve busted a few lawmen in the chops over the years.”

  “You might call this half-wit my hair shirt,” Fargo replied. “I’d be grateful if you lock him up for the crime he just confessed to.”

  The sheriff mulled this for about fifteen seconds, sipping more milk. Then he stared at Sitch. “Well, since you’re with Fargo, and I don’t want to see you hang . . . but I didn’t hear anything you said about that horse, y’unnerstan’? And you best mind your pints and quarts in my town, savvy?”

  Sitch pointed his chin toward the sign. “I will—when somebody’s looking.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” Fargo snapped, regretful that Vance hadn’t at least collared McDougall and tossed him into the calaboose for a time to teach him a lesson.

  Vance turned his attention to Fargo again. “Yeah, I just started a report about that massacre—one of the silver miners brought me word of it, and I’m planning to ride out there and poke around a little before I submit it. It’ll go nowhere, though, even with women and kids killed. We got a magistrate here in town, and a circuit judge rides in once a month. But there were no witnesses. Anyhow, don’t worry about Scully and that bunch accusing you—their word ain’t worth a busted trace chain.”

  There was one witness, all right, Fargo told himself—one covered with blood. But some instinct told him to keep that dark from the sheriff. However, the canny old bird seemed to read something in Fargo’s face.

  “You ain’t being cute on me, are you? Holding something back?”

  “Not a
thing,” Fargo lied effortlessly. “But I hope to turn something up.”

  This was the perfect moment to bring up the issue of swearing Fargo in as a deputy, but Fargo sensed the time wasn’t right.

  “This blasted valley,” the sheriff complained. “I’m commencing to wonder if it is haunted, after all—or at least cursed.”

  He drank some more milk, his face wrinkling at the taste.

  “You don’t seem to enjoy that very much,” Fargo noted.

  “I druther drink horse piss. But thank the Lord we got a few milk cows around here.”

  “Stomach problems?”

  “I’ll tell the world. Back in the forties I joined up with the Texas Rangers. I passed the shooting and riding tests with flying colors. But you know what finally done me in? Bad digestion. Those old boys ride hard for days straight, sometimes living on hardtack or even piñon nuts. My stomach just gave out on me, and it’s got worse since.”

  Fargo, who had a cast-iron stomach himself, was sympathetic. A man with weak digestion was better off in town. He knew of prospectors who had died of stomach ailments rather than give up their claims.

  Vance nodded toward the milk. “I have to drink five, six glasses a day just to keep the burning down. Bad food has killed more men out west than six-guns have.”

  The sheriff suddenly recalled something Fargo had said earlier. “Wha’d’you mean, you hope to turn something up?”

  This, Fargo realized, was the perfect opening.

  “Sheriff, me and McDougall here buried those four bodies. The woman was raped, and her and those two little girls were shot up so bad they looked like targets at a turkey shoot. Something stinks bad here, and those red sashes are mixed up in it.”

  “You think they did it?”

  “I can’t say that—yet. But they seem awful damn eager to kill me, and I can’t see the point of it. Trouble is, I’ve got no authority to do much about it, especially since you’re the sheriff hereabouts. So I’m wondering—would you consider swearing me in as a temporary deputy?”