by Jon Sharpe
Hannibal Rising
( The Trailsman - 340 )
Jon Sharpe
When he is hired to take part in a deadly game that pits predator against prey in an attempt to determine which of the Clyborns will inherit their late father's fortune, the Trailsman must keep his wits about him if he wants to be the hunter, not the hunted.
LEGWORK
The man’s teeth flashed white and he thrust his blade up and in.
Fargo’s boot was already rising. He caught the would-be assassin between the legs and the knife stopped inches from his chest as the man gasped and staggered back, his thighs pinched together from the pain.
Suddenly the woman holding him let go and a knife glinted in her hand.
“I will kill you myself.”
She had a slight accent that at the moment Fargo couldn’t afford to give much thought. He barely avoided a stab at his throat. Pivoting, he went for his Colt again, only to have the woman do the most incredible thing: she leaped high into the air and kicked him with her right foot, catching him across the jaw. . . .
The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
Deep in the Missouri backwoods, 1861—where hate and greed pit brother against brother and sister against sister.
1
There were only two things in life Skye Fargo liked as much as a good card game. One was a willing filly and the other was the warm feeling in his gut from good whiskey. At the moment he was enjoying all three. As the locals in Missouri might say, he was in hog heaven.
Fargo was on the steamboat Yancy, a side-wheeler plying its way up the broad Mississippi River toward the small town of Hannibal. He had sat in on a poker game early that afternoon and now it was ten at night and he was on a winning streak that he hoped would continue a good long while. Perched on his lap was a dove called Sweetpea and at his elbow sat a half-empty bottle of the best whiskey the Yancy served.
Fargo took another swallow, smacked his lips in satisfaction, and then lightly smacked Sweetpea on her rounded backside. “Stick with me, gal, and this will be a night you won’t forget.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Sweetpea giggled and fluttered her long eyelashes. She had a full bosom and a slim waist and lips as red and full as ripe strawberries. Her hair was a lustrous burgundy and hung to her shoulders in curls.
Fargo smacked her again, harder. That giggle of hers irritated him. It had a nasal quality, as if she were giggling out her nose instead of her mouth, and made him think of a goose being strangled. She did it a lot. Her voluptuous body more than made up for the annoyance, but if she giggled less he would be happier. And it wasn’t as if she was the only irritation. The other was a man named Baxter, a weasel with a needle-thin mustache and a derby who fancied himself a professional gambler and had been needling the other players the whole day. Fargo was growing tired of being needled.
“Are you going to bet or sit there fondling that cow?” Baxter now demanded.
Sweetpea stiffened. “Here now. There’s no call for insults.”
“Tell that to that slab of muscle you’ve attached yourself to,” the gambler replied. “If everyone put on the same show he does when he goes to bet, poker games would last weeks.”
The three other players shifted uneasily in their chairs. They had grown tired of his carping, too.
Fargo sat perfectly still. He was a big man, broad of shoulder, and he packed more hard muscle on his frame than most. It came from the life he led. His buckskins marked him for what he was—a frontiersman. He also wore a white hat nearly brown with dust, a red bandanna around his throat, and boots that had seen a lot of wear. On his hip was a Colt, in a hidden sheath in his boot an Arkansas toothpick. He kept his beard neatly trimmed and had what a lady once described as “the most piercing lake blue eyes this side of creation.” Now he raised those eyes to meet the gambler’s and the lake blue became glacier cold. “For such a little runt you sure do run off at the mouth.”
Now it was Baxter who stiffened. He wore a frock coat that might conceal all sorts of things and during the game had held his left forearm on the table in a way that suggested to Fargo he had something up his sleeve. A hideout, most likely. “I don’t like that kind of talk.”
“Then you shouldn’t go around insulting folks.” Fargo added chips to the pot. “I raise you, you little peckerwood.”
Baxter grew red in the face. He was short, not much over five feet, and about as wide as a broom handle. “Keep it up.”
Fargo gripped Sweetpea by the arm and pulled her off his lap. She frowned but didn’t object. Standing, he lowered his hand so it brushed his Colt. “I am tired of your guff. Shut up or show you have sand.”
The other players pushed back their chairs.
Baxter glowered. He glanced at Fargo’s Colt and shifted slightly so his left arm was pointed at Fargo. “You don’t want to rile me.”
“I’m plumb scared.”
“I mean it. Ask anyone here. I have a reputation.”
“Makes two of us.”
“Is that so? Just who the hell are you, anyway? I’ve said my name but I don’t recollect you ever saying yours.”
“It’s Skye Fargo.”
The gambler blinked and started to smirk as if he thought it was a jest; then he gave a start and the red in his cheeks drained to a pasty chalk. “I think I’ve heard of you.”
“Could be,” Fargo allowed. The damn newspapers were always writing about him.
Another player said, “I sure have. You’re the one who killed those outlaws a while back. The ones that robbed that stage. I read where you went up against twenty of them armed with just your bowie and your pistols.”
Fargo didn’t own a bowie. He wore one revolver, not two. And there had been four cutthroats, not twenty.
Baxter looked sick. He had broken out in a sweat and his fingers were twitching. “You’re that Fargo?”
Fargo didn’t answer.
The other players were staring at the gambler as they would a man about to step up on a gallows. Baxter’s throat bobbed and he coughed and said, “I didn’t know who you were when I said all those things.”
Fargo waited, his hand close to his Colt.
“I saw you look at my sleeve. I suppose you’ve guessed I have a derringer up it.”
Fargo waited.
“If I try to use it you’re liable to kill me.”
“You’ll be dead before it clears your sleeve,” Fargo broke his silence.
Baxter started to raise his other arm to his face as if to mop it with his sleeve but thought better of it. “Listen. How about if I say I’m sorry and we get on with the game? No hard feelings?”
“Say it.” Fargo had no real hankering to resort to gunplay. But he would be damned if he would take any more insults.
“What? Oh. All right. I apologize. Will that do?”
Fargo slowly sank into his chair. They all heard the breath Baxter let out. The other players slid their chairs to the table and Sweetpea pressed against Fargo’s leg and wriggled to show she would like to reclaim his lap. He let her but he shifted slightly so he had quick access to his Colt.
Baxter cleared his throat again. “I never met anyone famous before. Not unless you count a senator.”
Fargo refilled his glass and took another swallow. The whiskey tasted flat, and he frowned.
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing in this neck of the woods? Folks say you’re partial to the prairie country and the mountains.”
Fargo’s frown deepened. The gambler had gone from being one kind of nuisance to being another. “I am partial to not being pestered.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Baxter fell into a sulk. The other players were uneasy and it showed. For Fargo, the joy had gone out of the whiskey and now the game, and he was mad at himself for spoiling things. The next hand, he bet half his winnings on three kings and was beaten by a full house. He could take a hint. He announced he was calling it quits for the night.
Sweetpea stayed glued to his side as he cashed in his chips and watched him put the money in his poke and tuck the poke under his shirt. Beaming, she hooked her arm in his. “Does this mean we can go for a stroll? I would dearly love some fresh air.”
So would Fargo. The cigar and pipe smoke was thick enough to cut with a butter knife.
The hurricane deck was almost empty at that time of night. Over in a corner a couple were cheek to cheek. Another man and woman at the port rail were gazing at the myriad of stars that sparkled in the firmament.
Fargo strolled past them to the jackstaff. Thick coils of smoke belched from the smokestack aft of the deck and were borne away on the breeze. The throb of the steam engine never let up. He gazed down at the murky water and listened to the hiss of the bow as it cleaved the surface.
“I lost a good friend last week on the Celeste Holmes,” Sweetpea sadly remarked.
Fargo had heard about the disaster. A boiler blew and over sixty people were scalded to death. The Celeste limped on, only to run into a snag that ripped her open from bow to stern. According to the few survivors, the boat broke apart down the middle and a second explosion blew most of what was left, and nearly everyone still alive, to bits and pieces.
“They say that pretty near ten boats have gone down in the past couple of years.”
Fargo grunted.
Sweetpea bit her lip and twirled a curl with her finger. “I have nightmares about it happening to me.”
“If it scares you, why work on one?”
She shrugged. “Jobs are hard to come by. This one is easy and it pays well and I don’t have to sleep with a man unless I want to.”
Pulling her to him, Fargo cupped her fanny and grinned. “If you want to sleep with me I won’t fight you off.”
Giggling, Sweetpea pecked him on the chin. “I like you, handsome. You’re fun to be with and you treat a girl decent.”
“Only until I get her in bed.” Fargo nuzzled her neck and was rewarded with a coo of delight.
“Why can’t all men be as playful as you? Most only want to get the poke over with and be shed of the woman. Why is that?”
Fargo nipped an earlobe and was running the tip of his tongue from her ear to her mouth when the pat-pat-pat of rushing feet on the hardwood deck registered.
He reacted in instinct, and whirled.
There were two of them, a man and a woman. Steel glittered, and the man came at him with a knife.
Pushing Sweetpea out of harm’s way, Fargo dodged a cut that would have gutted him like a fish. He couldn’t see their faces all that well but he was sure he had never run into either of them before, which made their attempt to kill him all the more bewildering. Shaking off his surprise, he swooped his hand to his Colt but before he could clear leather the woman sprang with lightning speed and gripped his arm.
“I have him! Do it!”
The man’s teeth flashed white and he thrust his blade up and in.
Fargo’s boot was already rising. He caught the would-be assassin between the legs and the knife stopped inches from his chest as the man gasped and staggered back, his thighs pinched together from the pain.
Suddenly the woman holding him let go and a knife glinted in her hand.
“I will kill you myself.”
She had a slight accent that, at the moment, Fargo couldn’t afford to give much thought. He barely avoided a stab at his throat. Pivoting, he went for his Colt again, only to have the woman do the most incredible thing: she leaped high into the air and kicked him with her right foot, catching him across the jaw. Pain exploded as she skipped back out of reach.
Fargo collided with someone behind him. A squawk from Sweetpea told him who. Their legs became entangled and down they went. Dreading the sharp slice of steel into his ribs, Fargo shoved clear and rose to his knees. This time he got the Colt out—but there was no one to shoot.
The pair were fleeing across the hurricane deck, the woman helping the man, his arm over her shoulder. Another couple, the two who were admiring the stars, had come running over and were agape with astonishment.
Fargo gave chase. He lost sight of his quarry in the inky shadow of the overhang. He had his choice of right or left and went to the right, to the head of a passageway that ran nearly the entire length of the steamboat. Enough light filtered from the cabins and from the few lamps to reveal there wasn’t anyone within fifty feet. Quickly, he turned and flew to the head of the other passageway but the only person close enough was an elderly matron hobbling on a cane.
Fargo had lost them. He ran toward the matron, who drew back as if afraid he was going to attack her. “Did you see two people run past? A man and a woman?”
“The only person I’ve seen in a hurry is you.”
Fargo sprinted on but there was no sign of them. He couldn’t understand it. They hadn’t had time to get very far. He wondered if they had ducked into one of the forward cabins and retraced his steps, the matron shying away from him as if he were loco.
Around the corner came Sweetpea and the stargazers. Squealing with relief, Sweetpea threw herself at him and hugged him close.
“Skye! Thank goodness you’re all right! Who were they? Why were they trying to kill you?”
“I wish to hell I knew.”
The other couple, middle-aged and portly, were holding hands. “We couldn’t believe our eyes, Maude and me,” the man said.
The woman nodded. “Harold and I saw them run at you and that young man draw his knife.”
“You got a good look at them?”
“Only a glimpse. They were over in the corner. We thought they were lovers.”
Fargo remembered the couple standing cheek to cheek in the shadows. “Why did you say the man was young?” He hadn’t been able to tell much, as dark as it was.
“Just an impression I had,” Maude answered.
“Were they on the deck before you got there?”
“Now that I think about it,” Harold said, “no, they weren’t. They showed up just a bit before you did.”
Fargo rubbed his sore jaw and pondered. It made no damn sense.
“Maybe they saw you win big at the poker table and were out to help themselves to your poke,” Sweetpea said.
“Could be.” Fargo had a hunch there was more to it. The pair had been as fiercely intent as starved wolves out to bring down a bull elk.
“Let’s hope they don’t try again.”
“Oh my,” Maude declared. “Wouldn’t that be positively awful?”
2
Hannibal, Missouri wasn’t the sleepy settlement Fargo remembered. It had grown into a bustling town of about three thousand people. Two sawmills provided the lumber for the buildings and sold boatloads more downriver. The four slaughterhouses did the same. Some folks complained about the constant squeals of the hogs being butchered but they were few. To most, those squeals were money in the bank and Hannibal was all about money.
In addition to the sawmills and the slaughterhouses, there were over a dozen general stores—two that sold nothing but hardware—millineries for the ladies, not one but two newspapers, and churches galore. Hannibal had the railroad and a ste
amboat landing.
It also had, to Fargo’s mild surprise, plenty of saloons. From the landing he made straight for the first one he saw, leading the Ovaro by the reins. He’d paid extra to have the stallion brought upriver and he imagined it was as glad as he was to be off the steamboat and to be able to move about again. He looped the reins around a hitch rail and sauntered into a whiskey den that put saloons west of the Mississippi to shame. An ornate mirror ran the length of the back wall. Overhead hung a chandelier that tinkled whenever the front door was opened. The floor was swept clean, the bar polished to a shine. The bartender had muttonchops thick enough to hide in and wore a white shirt with gold suspenders.
Fargo paid for a bottle and retreated to a corner table. He filled his glass and gulped half, and smiled. He was about to gulp the rest when a two-legged mouse in a suit and bowler timidly approached and gave a slight bow. The man had small, deep-set eyes and no chin to speak of.
“Excuse me, but would you be Mr. Fargo?”
“Go away.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Skedaddle. Light a shuck. Leave me be. Scat. Take your pick but do it.” Fargo drained the glass.
“You’re a bit of a grump.”
Fargo refilled the glass and raised it. “Are you still here? You have nuisance written all over you and I want to relax a spell before I go see the gent who sent for me.”
“Ah, yes, well.” The mouse drew himself up and squared his sloped shoulders. “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Theodore Pickleman and I was . . .”
In the act of swallowing, Fargo started to laugh and snorted whiskey out his nose. “Damn. Look at what you made me do.” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Pickleman?”
“I am afraid so, yes. I’m a lawyer and I’ve been . . .”
Again Fargo cut him off. “I was right about you. If there are bigger nuisances than lawyers I have yet to meet them. Go away.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. You see, as I was saying, I represent the Clyborn family and I’m here at the request of the person who wants to hire you.”
