Hangtown Hellcat

by Jon Sharpe

  Fargo took two quick steps backward then shot forward, leaping off the floor and aiming a savage kick at Lem’s by now purple face. Fargo kicked through, not at, sending yellow stumps of broken teeth spraying like buckshot. He had the satisfaction of hearing the pig-man’s neck snap loudly as his head rocketed up and back, shattering the neck vertebrae.

  The Bucket of Blood went as silent as a courtroom just before a verdict. The bullyboy flopped onto his back, twitched a few times like a gut-hooked fish, and gave up the ghost in a ghastly death rattle like pebbles caught in a sluice gate.

  “What a sockdologer!” somebody said. “Why, Lem’s dead as a dried herring!”

  “This bearded buckaroo is savage as a meat ax!” another man chimed in, his tone admiring.

  There was no real camaraderie in this bunch, only a respect for raw power. Every man in the place stared at Fargo—even El Burro and Norton—visibly impressed. The closest man quickly hopped back out of range of Fargo’s lethal legs.

  Fargo met Jenny’s bewitching brown eyes. Her nostrils flared, her breathing quickening as if she were sexually aroused.

  “Well,” she said. “Well, well, well.”

  11

  The five of them picked their way back to Jenny’s house through the gumbo of mud, Jenny silent and contemplative. As they neared the western end of the gulch, she finally spoke up.

  “That little demonstration in the saloon, Mr. Fargo, was impressive. But after all, there’s never been any doubt that you can be a ruthless killer. The pertinent question is—can you also be a cold-blooded murderer if conditions warrant?”

  Again Fargo suspected he was being tested, and bending to her demands too quickly could spell doom for him and Buckshot.

  “You act like murder can’t be avoided,” he replied. “I don’t see the need of it. Why cut off your arm at the elbow just to cure a hangnail?”

  She whirled toward him. “Oh, why don’t you just say it, Pastor Fargo? ‘Money is the siren’s song that saps our wills!’”

  His swollen lips twitched into a lopsided grin. “I doubt if a cyclone could sap your will.”

  “Murder is just a means to an end. I just rub you the wrong way, don’t I? It’s all right for a man to figure percentages and angles, to murder, even, but not a woman.”

  “I don’t mind the percentages and angles—nor the curves,” he added, his startling blue eyes raking over her. “I just don’t like low-down crimes like kidnapping and murder. ‘Means to an end’—get off your high horse, lady. You’re trying to turn shit into strawberries.”

  Fargo had deliberately pushed her. The glint in her angry eyes was hard-edged and lethal. “You will remove that reproach or Burro shall remove your organs.”

  “I apologize,” Fargo said. “All I’m saying is that there’s smarter and safer ways to get rich.”

  For the moment, at least, she seemed mollified. “For the record, I have never personally ordered a murder—of any person worthy of life, that is. What my minions do is often beyond my control. I told you it’s difficult to find good help.”

  Fargo and Buckshot avoided looking at each other this time, but both were thinking the same thing: that infant slowly dying in the gulch was in her direct control. And when all the prisoners were murdered, that would be her decision, too.

  They returned to the house and Fargo’s and Buckshot’s hands were untied. They were allowed to wash the blood from their faces at the kitchen pump before they were again banished under guard to “Jenny’s jail” as Buckshot had taken to calling it.

  “You been playing this deal smart, Fargo,” Buckshot said. “That pretty she-devil figures you’re circling the bait and close to taking the hook.”

  Fargo was not as sanguine. “I’m not so sure, old son. She suspects we’re sailing under false colors. Even worse, I’m thinking that woman ain’t just criminal—she might be outright insane. She’s got the gold fever even worse than some of those forty-niners I saw in the Sierra.”

  Buckshot rubbed his chin. “Yeah, mebbe you struck a lode there. Did you see that look in her eyes when you done for that cockroach in the saloon—most women woulda been all-overish uncomfortable seeing a sight like that. Mister, that gal took to it like all possessed. Might be she’s crazy as a loon.”

  Fargo nodded. “Sometimes crazy people are smart as a steel trap. I found that out when I locked horns with Terrible Jack Slade in Virginia City on the Comstock. Buckshot, this little lass is trouble and nothing but. I’m doing my damnedest to make her think me and you might do to take along, but she’s a pretty powder keg that could go up on us at any second.”

  Toward the middle of the afternoon Norton herded the two men into the kitchen for a tasty meal of bacon, fried potatoes, and Boston brown bread. When Jasmine reached for Fargo’s coffee cup to refill it, she dropped a small piece of folded paper under the edge of his plate. It was a bold move, under the watchful eyes of El Burro and Norton, but Fargo managed to palm it without being seen.

  Back in the room, keeping a careful eye on the arched doorway, Fargo unfolded it and read it to Buckshot in a whisper, “Guns under Jenny’s bed, last room on right as you face gulch.”

  Fargo popped the note into his mouth and chewed and swallowed it. “That’s good to know,” he said after he forced the nasty lump down. “But we can’t get to the damn things without being shot to rag tatters.”

  Fargo fell silent for a long time, his mind turning their present fix over and over to study all of its facets.

  “I might have an idea,” he finally told Buckshot. “It’s thin, but it’s all I can think of. We really do need to tend to our horses, right?”

  “If we still got horses.”

  Fargo explained the plan to Buckshot, who looked dubious but nodded slowly when Fargo had finished.

  “Mebbe it could work,” he said. “But if it don’t, me and you might end up singing the high notes, if you take my drift?”

  “I take it, old campaigner. But if it does work, we might kill two birds with one stone. I druther roll the dice on a slim chance than sit around on my duff waiting for her to decide if I live or die.”

  * * *

  Fargo made sure his hat was in his hand when he entered the parlor, flanked by the ever-vigilant El Burro and Norton. Jenny sat on the red plush sofa, leafing through a book with colorful illustrations.

  “Jasmine tells me you wish to speak with me,” Jenny greeted him, adding an enigmatic smile. “Please have a seat, Mr. Fargo.”

  Fargo dropped into a comfortable chair and balanced his hat on one thigh. “Yes, ma’am. It’s about our horses—Buckshot’s and mine, I mean.”

  “Yes, I wondered about that. Over the years I’ve read various things about this remarkable…black stallion, is it?”

  “Actually, a black-and-white Ovaro stallion.”

  “I realize that newspaper writers have a penchant for ‘coloring up’ the facts, but they make him sound like a winged Pegasus. I understand you’re quite fond of him.”

  “I’m not sure what a winged Pegasus is,” Fargo admitted. “As for fond—well, he’s just a horse, after all. But a damn good horse. The fastest I’ve ever seen, and the endurance of a doorknob. There’s no end to his bottom.”

  “Endurance, is it?” She sent him a sly smile. “According to Jasmine, that description fits you. At any rate, where is this horse?”

  “Well, you can probably understand why I didn’t leave him too near the gulch. He’s hidden about a mile away along with Buckshot’s grulla—that’s a smoky bluish-gray horse and a stallion like mine. We left what water we could but horses are big drinkers. And we brought grain with us, but horses won’t eat grain off the ground—by now they’ve prob’ly cropped off most of the grass they can reach.”

  “I see. And, of course, you can’t bring them into Hangtown, so obviously you want my permission to go feed and water them.”

  Fargo nodded. “I know it might sound like I’m trying to pull a fast one, but those horses are on loose te
thers, and being stallions and all, they just might light out.”

  She studied him for a full minute, her Mona Lisa smile making his scalp sweat. This serenity was more unnerving—he preferred it when she was all horns and rattles.

  “Your request makes sense,” she finally said. “And you must realize that only one of you can go. If that one decides to flee, the other will be killed.”

  Fargo nodded. “I assume that.”

  “As well you should. I don’t really fear an escape under those terms. Whatever moral ambiguities either of you harbor, leaving a good friend to die is not an option, is it?”

  Fargo shook his head. “If you have two pails, that’s enough water to hold them for a while longer. And I can grain them from my hat and move them to a new patch of graze.”

  “Yes, but you’re leaving something out, aren’t you? Something important.”

  Fargo had anticipated this and he answered forthrightly, “You mean my rifle.”

  “Yes, this famous repeating rifle that one ‘loads on Sunday and fires all year.’”

  “All week,” he corrected her from a grin.

  “Never mind. The main point is that I want you to bring it back with you, Mr. Fargo.”

  He nodded.

  “You’ll knock when you return and wait outside for Jasmine’s instructions about how to surrender that weapon, is that also clear?”

  “Very clear.”

  Those bewitching brown eyes narrowed to slits. “Now…what else are you failing to mention?”

  Damn the luck, Fargo thought. He was hoping that acquiring Buckshot’s double-ten would throw her off. But obviously she had obtained a very detailed account of the shootout three days ago. This woman talked like a book and didn’t miss a trick.

  “You must mean Buckshot’s rifle?”

  “Indeed I do, and coyness is not becoming in a man, Mr. Fargo. I’m disappointed in you. I hoped we were starting to have a meeting of the minds.”

  El Burro’s hand slid toward his curved machete. Clearly he didn’t like it when Jenny was disappointed. Fargo felt his back break out in cool sweat.

  “All due respect, Miss Lavoy, but the fact that I didn’t mention that rifle doesn’t mean I had any plans for it.”

  She studied him for another thirty seconds in silence. “No, it doesn’t,” she finally conceded. “But you should have mentioned it. I assume you’d like to go sometime after sunset?”

  He nodded. “I should only need a couple of hours if even that.”

  “Well, if we do eventually reach a meeting of the minds, obviously I would want you and Mr. Brady to have excellent horses. I like this idea of seizing mining company payrolls. On the other hand, I’ve come to realize you are a formidable intellect and a worthy foe. It makes perfect sense that you are worried about your horses. But I also fear you are fundamentally decent, and thus, beyond my ability to corrupt and control you.”

  “A woman as beautiful as you,” Fargo said, “shouldn’t underrate her ability where men are concerned.”

  The sincere compliment was a gamble, but it seemed to transform her manner.

  “This book I’m perusing,” she told him, “is called the Kama Sutra. It’s a Sanskrit guide to erotic pleasures. Have you ever heard of it?”

  He shook his head. She patted the empty cushion beside her. “Come. This section is called ‘Positions of Ecstasy.’ I’d like to show it to you.”

  Fargo sat down beside her, drinking in the exotic smell of her perfume. She flipped slowly through the graphically illustrated pages, carefully watching his face.

  “Well?” she demanded after showing him several pages.

  Fargo shrugged. “Nice pictures, but I didn’t learn anything new, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You mean, none of this shocks or offends you?”

  “Nah. It’s pretty old hat.”

  “You don’t mean to say you’ve actually…employed all of these positions?”

  Fargo grinned. “I’d say enjoyed, not employed.”

  “Even this one?” She pointed to one where the man and woman looked like two snakes swallowing each other.

  Fargo nodded. “Yeah. It put a kink in my neck, though.”

  “I never would have thought…” Her voice trailed off on a note of wonder. “Well, perhaps you will do.”

  “What for, may I ask?”

  “There’s one page I’m not showing you yet. It’s not so much a position as a…well, a rare technique and a longtime fantasy of mine. I’m afraid, however, that you might balk—I assure you, it’s new even to your apparently vast experience.”

  “Don’t count me out just yet,” Fargo said. “With me it’s always the woman’s choice.”

  “We’ll see about that. Talk is cheap. As for your request about your horses—I’ve decided to let you go. But first, look at me.”

  Fargo did, staring into that classically beautiful face whose eyes probed him to his core. Those intrusive, knowing eyes searched deep into his, seeking the secret bastion of his very soul.

  “You’re up to something,” she finally decided. “You’re very clever and a good dissembler, but I can see it. You’ve met your match in me, Skye Fargo. ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’ Hope, Mr. Fargo, will get you and your friend killed.”

  * * *

  An hour after sundown Fargo set out. Under Burro’s watchful eye Buckshot was permitted outside long enough to hand the pails up to Fargo at the lip of the shallow gulch. The thick ring of protective brush forced him to work the pails through one at a time.

  The vast indigo velvet sky was peppered silver with stars, and a cool, steady breeze made Fargo grateful to be free again, albeit only temporarily. He was suffering from cooped-up fever in the small, windowless room and longed to be spreading his blankets again to the backdrop of humming cicadas and the sweet serenade of the western wind.

  Jenny Lavoy was absolutely right, he told himself as he carefully hauled the pails across the open, rock-strewn terrain—he was on the wrong side of the “power balance” and he didn’t like it one damn bit. The plan he had in mind was reckless and fraught with difficulties. But desperate situations called for desperate remedies. So far he and Buckshot were simply barking at a knot—sometimes even the wrong action was better than no action at all.

  All hope abandon, ye who enter here. Jenny Lavoy’s smug tone, as she spoke those words, now brought a flush of anger to Fargo’s face. She was telling him to either submit to the rudder or crash on the rocks.

  “Screw you, bitch,” he muttered into the wind. “I’ll take the rocks any day.”

  As he approached the grassy draw where they’d tethered their horses, apprehension filled him like a bucket under a tap. If those two high-spirited stallions had literally pulled up stakes and lit out for parts unknown, he and Buckshot were even more hopelessly trapped in a world of hurt. Their only option then would be outlaw horses, assuming they could acquire any.

  A welcoming whicker from the Ovaro, who had caught his scent on the wind, tugged Fargo’s lips into a smile.

  He topped the low ridge above the draw and spotted both horses in the silver-white moonlight.

  “You two are a sight for sore eyes,” he greeted them.

  Fargo let each horse drink half a pail of water and poured the rest into the little oilskin-lined cistern. He opened the bag of crushed barley lying beside his saddle and held it up so each horse got a good feed. Then he pulled their pickets and moved them into lush grass where they could still reach the water.

  Fargo spent a few minutes scratching each mount on the withers and talking to them gently to calm their nervousness.

  “Stick it out a bit longer, old campaigner,” he told his Ovaro. “I know you want to run and stretch out the kinks.”

  Fargo slid the Henry and the North & Savage from their boots, rigging the slings and hanging them around both his shoulders. He would surrender them, all right—Buckshot’s life was forfeit if he didn’t.

  But there was one re
maining weapon Jenny “Little Britches” Lavoy could not know about, and it was probably his and Buckshot’s last, desperate chance.

  Fargo unbuckled a saddle pocket and pulled out the French Lefaucheux six-shot pinfire revolver. The ornately detailed weapon was beautiful and included a foldaway knife blade under the barrel. Fargo had accepted it, during a riverboat poker game in New Orleans, in lieu of a cash bet.

  Unfortunately, pinfire cartridges were hard to come by nowadays and there were only two in the wheel. Even worse, they were made of paper and hadn’t been replaced in years. There was a good chance the powder had clumped by now and wouldn’t ignite, nor could Fargo afford to waste one testing them.

  At least the knife blade was sturdy and well mounted, he noted, examining it in the moonlight. Compared to the huge blade of his confiscated Arkansas toothpick, it was poor shakes as a fighting knife. Against formidable men like El Burro and Norton—especially El Burro—he would have to make the very first thrust count for score.

  But the biggest risk of all, Fargo realized, would be hiding and then retrieving the pinfire revolver. He would certainly never get through the door with it tonight.

  “Pile on the agony,” he muttered as he tucked the revolver into his belt and set out toward the gulch.

  At the lip of the gulch he stretched out and let each rifle slide down to the bottom, followed by the pails. Then he scrabbled down and looked carefully around to see if one of the guards was lurking to spy on him. Spotting no one, he left everything else where it was and hurried around to the back of the rickety wooden privy.

  Waiting for wind gusts to cover the noise, Fargo grabbed the end of one of the weathered gray planks and tugged it until the sharpened wooden peg, used instead of nails, gave way. He pushed the board back flush with the rest of them and laid the pinfire on the ground. If one of the guards found it before he retrieved it, Jenny Lavoy’s wrath might prove deadly—to him.