by Jon Sharpe
For me. Fargo glanced at Buckshot, who nodded to show he had heard. So that was the gait—everybody in the gulch was feeding at the same trough, and this was their linchpin, all right. Nor had either man missed the fateful word “Hangtown.”
Fargo inserted the muzzle of his Colt between the overlapping curtains and began to nudge one aside. Suddenly he felt a blow like a mule kick to his head, saw a bright orange starburst, and his world shut down to black oblivion.
* * *
Fargo drifted in and out of patchy fog trying to claw his way back to the surface of awareness. He could hear voices, but not words. Finally his quivering eyelids twitched open.
His head throbbed like a Pawnee war drum, and when he tried to move, pain jolted through him. He was seated in a comfortable chair, his short gun, ammo belt, and Arkansas toothpick missing. The first thing he registered was a pleasant room featuring red plush furniture with fancy knotted fringes.
And then four sets of eyes watching him as if he were a piece of curiosa in a museum.
“Well,” the brunette beauty greeted him, “Skye Fargo—a prince among knaves. Poor as Job’s turkey but so utterly handsome.”
There was a groan to his left as Buckshot began to regain awareness.
“You’re both quite lucky,” the brunette told Fargo in her musical voice. “El Burro and Norton are quite protective of me, and normally they would have decapitated you on the spot with their machetes. But I suspected you might be…visiting soon. So I gave them orders to simply incapacitate you so we might visit.”
Wincing, Fargo sat up a little straighter. The pain in his head far surpassed his worst cheap-whiskey hangover.
“I do appreciate that, Miss Lavoy.”
“So you know my name? May I inquire how you learned it?”
Fargo was still groggy, but not stupid enough to admit he had spied on her while she bathed. “Well, I heard this blond lass here call you Miss Lavoy. I don’t know your front name.”
“It’s Jennifer although I prefer Jenny. The denizens of Hangtown have dubbed me Little Britches, a name I detest but tolerate. ‘The Trailsman,’ however, is a very fine nickname.”
Fargo took her pleasing measure from the white columbine petals in her hair to the fancy side-lacing silk shoes.
“You look sweet as a scrubbed angel,” he told her. “But I’d wager your halo is a bit tarnished.”
“Be careful,” she warned him. “You may have noticed the power balance is against you.”
Buckshot groaned again and opened his eyes. The doe-eyed blonde named Jasmine watched Fargo with compassion and concern; in sharp contrast, El Burro and Norton seemed on the verge of eating his warm liver.
The pedestal table beside Fargo’s chair held a big pottery bowl of water with rose petals floating in it. Jenny saw him staring at it.
“I like nice things,” she informed him. “This furniture was stolen from a freight caravan. Sadly, some disappointed customer in Santa Fe will never receive his special order.”
“We can’t always get what we want,” Fargo said philosophically.
“Oh, I plan to. This situation in Hangtown is merely a stepping-stone for me. You, however, seem to be in quite a pickle. Indeed, this may well turn out to be the end of the trail for a man who has travelled many.”
“You might say fortune hasn’t kissed me lately,” he agreed, evoking a laugh from her.
“No one can fault your stoicism,” she approved.
“I’m just curious,” Fargo said. “Why did you expect me to be visiting?”
“Because most men run to type. Mr. Fargo, I know what manner of man you are said to be—and your celebrated skill at tracking. So when I learned that my unholy trinity, as I call my three uncouth lieutenants, had attacked your work crew and killed a man, it seemed a logical assumption that you would eventually find our little spa here in the gulch.”
She paused before adding in a tone of naughty innuendo, “I knew that you would try to stick your oar in my boat, so to speak.”
Fargo almost replied that he couldn’t think of a nicer place to stick it. But El Burro had both hands on the butts of his Colt Navy revolvers and seemed to be praying for the slightest excuse to unlimber.
“You’re right,” Fargo said. “It was the attack that brought us down here.”
“Who the hell took Patsy?” Buckshot interjected.
Jenny shifted her bewitching brown eyes to the speaker. “And who is your half-breed companion?”
“Buckshot Brady, ma’am,” Buckshot replied. “Fargo likes to take me along so he won’t die alone.”
She studied him for a long moment. “Well, you’re getting a bit long in the tooth. But you look well knit, and there’s strong character in your face. If the famous Skye Fargo trusts you for dangerous work, that’s a high recommendation indeed.”
“Yeah, he’s a pip,” Buckshot said drily, shooting a murderous look at Fargo.
Jenny smiled at that, still watching him. “I heard all about the stand the two of you made, two days ago, against daunting odds. Yes indeed, I think both of you just might do…”
Buckshot brightened, jumping to conclusions. “Hell yes, we’ll do! You and Jasmine both won’t have no regrets.”
She laughed again. “My stars! You’re younger than you look.”
“Just might do for what?” Fargo asked.
“Good help is extremely hard to find in an operation like mine, Mr. Fargo. You’ll see what I mean in a few minutes. Norton, please go and fetch Butch McDade and his two companions.”
The silent, unequivocally ugly bodyguard, the smaller of the two, nodded and left.
“You two are going to meet the three men who attacked you,” Jenny Lavoy explained. “Their leader, and the second in command of this den of iniquity, is a raging bull named Butch McDade. He’s a muscular, cruelly handsome bully of limited intellect, but very dangerous nonetheless. He’s what is commonly called a gunslick—he has a lightning gun hand.”
“And he’s a common murderer!” Jasmine erupted. “He killed my husband in cold blood!”
Jenny ignored the emotional outburst. “There’s also Waldo Tate, the human rodent. He’s a cowardly back-shooter and spends much of his time in opium dreams. But he’s quite cunning and provides the brain that McDade is missing. The third man, and the most dangerous in my estimation, is Lupe Cruz.”
“Lupe Cruz?” Fargo interrupted. “I heard he was in these parts.”
“So you know him?”
“I know of him. He’s a blade-runner and rumored to be the best knife man that ever came out of Mexico. He hates Tejanos and he’ll kill any man from the Panhandle without cause. After he kills them he cuts off their ears and wears them around his neck. He used to raid the old San Antonio Trail into Chihuahua until Texas Rangers ran him off.”
“All true. He claims his sire was a grandee of Spain. But I happen to know that his scurvy-ridden father led a scalper army down in Sonora before he became a Comanchero slave trader in New Mexico Territory.”
“Sounds to me,” Fargo said, “like you keep some mighty unsavory company.”
Jenny’s dark eyes flashed indignation. “The phrase ‘keeping company,’ Mr. Fargo, is drifting close to an insult. Perhaps you’d like to revise that suggestive comment?”
She wore a dark calico skirt with a spanking-clean white shirtwaist. One hand dipped into a pocket of the skirt and emerged holding an over-and-under muff gun. It was aimed, Fargo noticed, at a spot he particularly cherished.
Sweat beaded on his scalp. “I misspoke, ma’am. I meant only that these men are on your payroll.”
“That’s better.”
She raised her aim and Fargo flinched violently when the derringer barked, sending his hat spinning off his head.
“I hope that will teach you,” she said demurely, “to remove your hat in the presence of a lady.”
Buckshot quickly snatched off his cavalry hat.
Jenny nodded toward the massive mestizo. “This ete
rnally silent gentleman is El Burro. He and Norton are my palace guard, and very effective at it. You see, they were both captured by Comanches. Their tongues were cut out and they were castrated. I rescued them in the desert and now they are intensely loyal—even Butch McDade and Lupe Cruz fear them. Not that either thug has anything to complain about—I throw plenty of scraps to them. Their interest in me is more…carnal.”
“I can understand that,” Fargo said politely, picking up his hat and examining the new hole in it.
“It is a rare man,” Jenny added, taking Fargo’s measure with approving eyes, “who enjoys my favors.”
“And a fortunate one, I’m sure,” Fargo encouraged her.
She met his remark with a mysterious smile. “Sanctuary mucho, as they say in Spanglish. But don’t presume on your good looks, Fargo. I’m a woman of…unconventional predilections.”
She lost Fargo on that last word, but he decided to let it go. He could still feel the warm crease where her bullet had parted his hair, and her apparent fondness for “alterated” men had turned him cautious.
“Still,” she added after studying him some more, “you just might come up to scratch. I certainly approve of what I’ve seen so far.”
Fargo heard scuffing footsteps in the hallway.
“Here come my trusty retainers,” Jenny said, her tone laced with sarcasm. “Don’t believe what you hear me tell them about my plans for you two—I’ll just be throwing a bone to the dogs.”
“Why do you want me and Buckshot to meet them?” Fargo hurried to ask.
“Because soon,” she replied, “I’m hoping you will kill them.”
* * *
The curtains parted and Fargo got his first look at the trio that had set events in motion four days ago with their attack on the work crew.
Jenny had done a good job of describing them: Butch McDade with his trouble-seeking eyes and scornful twist of mouth; Waldo Tate with the pointy face of a rat and the bright, burning eyes of a consumptive; and Lupe Cruz with his disgusting human-ear necklace and dead, soulless eyes like two bone chips.
“What the…?”
McDade’s voice trailed off and his eyes went smoky with rage when he recognized the two men in the chairs.
“I’m not too impressed with your competence, Butch,” Jenny teased him. “El Burro and Norton managed to do what you and half your men could not.”
“The hell is this, Little Britches?” he demanded as if he had a right to know. “They here for tea and biscuits?”
McDade was the blustering type, Fargo realized, who had to work himself up to the kill. It was Cruz, more taciturn and calculating, he watched the closest. He wore leather chivarra trousers, a low shako hat, and a rawhide vest. But Fargo was most interested in the Spanish dag with a cord-wrapped hilt and a wide blade—spade shaped and perfectly balanced for the quick toss—that protruded from his boot.
“No need to rise on your hind legs, Butch,” Jenny said in the soothing tone one uses with a dangerous horse. “I have a fertile mind when it comes to profiteering, and I assure you the situation is under control.”
“Then why ain’t these two cold as a wagon wheel? Them geldings of yours shoulda lopped off their heads by now.”
“Everything in its own time.”
Cruz saw Fargo watching him and flashed him a lips-only smile. “With this one, Senorita Lavoy,” he advised, “the only good time is now.”
“Nonsense, Lupe. He’s stripped of his weapons and a prisoner in Hangtown. A man can’t be more helpless than that—or more hopeless.”
McDade grunted and shifted his glance to Buckshot. “Who’s this piece of half-breed shit?”
“Ask your mother,” Buckshot piped up. “She knows me real good.”
McDade snarled and crossed toward Buckshot’s chair, right hand balling into a fist. Fargo shot one long leg out and tripped him. McDade crashed heavily to the floor. He sprang up cursing, but as he reached for the walnut-gripped Remington in his tied-down holster, loud, menacing clicks stopped him. El Burro and Norton held all four of the Colts aimed at him.
“This is not the Bucket of Blood,” Jenny scolded him as if he were a rambunctious schoolboy. “There’ll be no clash-of-stags roughhousing in my home.”
“What is this shit?” McDade demanded. “You’re the one said Fargo would dance on air if he was fool enough to enter Hangtown. Now here you are—putting me under the gun!”
“Miss Lavoy,” Fargo spoke up, “you must have dredged mighty deep to come up with this sweet outfit.”
Cruz grinned while McDade flushed with anger from his neck to his scalp. “You don’t come into this gulch swinging your eggs, buckskins!”
“Butch is right, Mr. Fargo,” Jenny warned. “Remember that power balance I warned you about. Right now your life is hanging by a thread.”
She looked at McDade again. “I’m not protecting Fargo, Butch. I’m protecting a valuable asset.”
“I don’t savvy.”
“Yes, you generally don’t. Did you yourself not call Fargo a newspaper darling?”
“Sure, on account he is. You’d think he was ten inches taller than God, the way they gush over him.”
Jenny nodded. “You’re making my argument for me. Wouldn’t you agree that Skye Fargo stories are good for newspaper circulation? And wouldn’t you also agree that the merchant capitalists who own the newspapers want to make money?”
“Hell, who don’t?”
“Exactly. Imagine millions of readers back east eagerly following the story about how a group of powerful, influential newspapers have agreed to pay a ransom to free their darling. A ransom of, say, ten thousand dollars—a paltry sum to them but a windfall for us.”
McDade pulled on the point of his chin as her point sank home. Waldo Tate—McDade’s missing brain, according to Jenny—spoke up for the first time. Fargo noticed that an ugly carbuncle bulged one side of his neck.
“Little Britches is right, Butch. That ten thousand would earn the crapsheets ten times that much in profits. It’s smart business for them.”
“Maybe it would be at that,” he admitted. “But they ain’t like the families we’re shaking down. They’ll want proof Fargo is alive so they don’t look like fools if they’re hornswoggled.”
“And we’ll give it to them,” Jenny said. “We invite a photographer to meet us at someplace well away from here. He takes the photograph of Fargo back east and they deliver our money.”
“Now just hold your horses,” Butch said. “You mean we actually give them Fargo after we’re paid?”
“Don’t be dense. A dog returns to his own vomit, and Fargo will likewise come after us again. We’ll kill our bearded visitor and whoever delivers the ransom. There’s no effective law out here, and there’s a very nasty war on now—that means no military posse.”
Don’t believe what you hear me tell them—I’ll just be throwing a bone to the dogs. Jenny’s words from just a few minutes ago, Fargo realized, were as reliable as a wildcat bank. She probably did want him and Buckshot to eventually kill this “unholy trinity” as she called them—she knew outlaw men well enough to know they would sull at some point, raping and killing her. And why risk the lives of her loyal bodyguards in the effort to stop them?
But clearly she was a master at working both sides of the fence, and Fargo suspected she also intended to go through with the ransom plan. And she would indeed kill Fargo rather than hand him over and have to tangle with him again.
“Well, it ain’t the worst plan I ever heard,” Butch finally conceded.
“Good,” Jenny said. “We’ll work out the fine details later.”
“On your feet,” McDade ordered Fargo. “And don’t get cute on me. You too, ’breed.”
“Just what are you doing?” Jenny demanded.
“Wha’d’ya think? Taking them over to the guardhouse with the rest of the prisoners.”
Jenny shook her pretty head. “Out of the question. You and your…men will get drunk and kill th
em. They will be kept under guard here. I have hidden their weapons, and El Burro and Norton are fully capable of controlling them.”
Butch’s jaw slacked open. “Lady, are you shittin’ me?”
“I told you he’s a valuable asset.”
Fargo watched Butch and Cruz exchange a long look, two curs watching the new dog in town mount their bitch. “I’ll just bet he is,” Butch replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm and jealous resentment.
But when El Burro parted the curtains for them, all three sullen-faced men filed out.
“Well, boys,” Jenny said to Fargo and Buckshot, rubbing her palms briskly together to express her exuberance, “it looks like the fun is just beginning.”
9
Fargo and Buckshot were fed bowls of stew and then led into a nearly empty, windowless room right across the hall from the room where Norton and Burro slept. Jasmine had prepared two sleeping pallets for them and left a squat candle and a greasy deck of cards on an upended packing crate, the only “furnishings.”
“Mr. Fargo,” Jenny said from the arched doorway, “your reputation for hairbreadth escapes has preceded you. But either Norton or El Burro will be sitting in the hallway at all times. You’ll catch a weasel asleep before you surprise them. If either one of you so much as pokes his nose into the hall, you will be shot dead and strung up on the gallows. I trust that’s clearly understood?”
Fargo glanced up into El Burro’s clay-mask face and implacable eyes. The mestizo’s left hand—the one not filled with blue steel—stroked the sisal scabbard of his machete.
“You have a knack for making your terms very clear,” Fargo replied diplomatically.
“Good. If you gents behave yourselves, we may come to terms more agreeable to you. Mr. Brady, are you familiar with mahjong?”
“Ma Jong? I ain’t never heard of the lady.”
Jenny tossed back her head and laughed, revealing a lovely throat smooth as ivory. “It’s not a person, you benighted savage. It’s a Chinese game. Usually four persons play it, but later tonight I’ll send for you and teach you the game.”
“Christmas crackers!” Buckshot exclaimed when the two men were alone. “She’s gonna send for me, Skye! You don’t think—”
