by Jon Sharpe
“As a matter of fact I am.”
Amy Peters was slumped on the bench in front of Cain’s desk. Cain and Rule stood on either side of the door, rifles in their hands. Not until he was closer to Amy did he notice the fresh bruise on her cheek.
“What happened to Amy?” Fargo said as soon as he saw the injury.
Cain and Rule glanced at each other.
“I got angry out there trying to calm them down,” Cain said. “I backhanded her because she was just adding to the pressure.”
Fargo walked over to Amy. She sat up. He reached under her chin and tilted her face toward him so he could see the bruise better.
He stood less than three inches from Cain and said, “Why don’t you try and backhand me and see what happens?”
“It was a mistake, all right? This is a dangerous situation.”
The only warning that Fargo got was Amy’s scream. That was the last sound he heard after Parsons’ six-shooter slammed across the back of his skull and drove him to the floor.
“Here’s some water.”
Fargo opened his eyes to see Ned Lenihan standing over him with a tin cup in his hand. The stench told Fargo where he was. A cell.
“They must have knocked you out. They brought you back here. Parsons and Cain. I guess they figured you’d get in the way when they let the crowd come in and get me.”
“Thanks.” Fargo accepted the cup. He sat up on the edge of the cot and drank it down. Inside his skull a knife sawed through his brain.
The mob had broken into a chant. “Hand him over now!”
Lenihan had a pale, shaken look to him. He moved with great effort. He returned to his own cot and sat down and put his face in his hands. “It’s going to happen. They’re going to hang me. And I didn’t do it, Fargo. I really didn’t.”
“I believe you, Lenihan.”
“Cain’s waited all this time to pay me back for Amy. He acted like I’d stolen her from him. He’s crazy when it comes to this. Insane, I mean.”
The door separating the front office from the jail cells opened. Pete Rule said, “I’ll make sure they’re not up to anything.”
“What the hell are they going to be up to?” Cain said. “Neither of them has a gun.”
“You’re forgetting who Fargo is.”
Rule strode to the cell. He faced the two men and put a finger to his lips, signaling silence. Then he reached inside his shirt and pulled out a Colt. He waved for Fargo to come to the cell door. He whispered, “A lot of this is my fault. I should’ve told you the truth. Cain’s behind all this. He set up the robbery with the boys. He took all the money. I heard him talking to one of them right after the stickup.”
Fargo didn’t know who he wanted to kill first. Cain for the robbery and the killings or Rule for letting it get this far.
But it was Rule who slipped the six-shooter through the bars and let Fargo take it. Better late than never. At least he was making up for it now.
More whispering. “I’m going up front. I’ll leave the door open slightly. You can get the drop on them.”
“What the hell are you doing back there?” Cain shouted. “I need you up here.”
True enough, the roar of the mob was now almost deafening. Men were hurling things at the front of the office. Fargo heard glass shatter. He reasoned that they were minutes away from Cain throwing open the door and letting them take Lenihan. He’d make a show of it. He’d give a good law-and-order speech that nobody would hear for the din. But at least he could boast after the hanging that he’d made his plea.
Rule unlocked the cell door quietly then hurried up front. As promised, he left the door open slightly.
Gun in hand, Fargo said, “You stay here. I’ll take care of Cain and Parsons and then come back.”
“I could help.”
“No. Stay here. I’ll move faster alone.”
Fargo slipped out of the cell and started moving carefully toward the door. He had no specific plan. He had to see where everybody was positioned before he could make a move.
The angle the door afforded him wasn’t helpful at first. He heard them talking under the din of the mob but he couldn’t see anybody, not even Rule.
He had to battle his own impatience. All this grief caused by Cain.
Hurry up, you son of a bitch. Move across the floor so I can see you.
A long minute and a half dragged by before Fargo saw the back of Parsons’ head. Now he could move. He jerked the door open and said, “If you move, Parsons, I’ll shoot you in the back.”
Then he lunged into the office, checking on Cain as he did so. Cain was sitting in his chair. He was in no position to draw and fire before Fargo could kill him.
“Get their guns, Pete,” Fargo said.
“Pete!” Cain said. Shock strained his voice and gaze. “Pete—you threw in with Fargo?”
“Yeah. And I told him who was behind the robbery, too. You’re behind this whole thing.”
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
But Fargo could see and hear the truth. For all his acting skills, Cain’s face revealed that Rule’s words were factual.
As Rule collected Parsons’ gun and bowie knife, Fargo faced Cain. “Take the Colt out and slide it across the desk.”
“I just wanted some money before I left town, Fargo. My time’s passed. It was just going to be a simple robbery. I didn’t plan for the driver or that Englishman to get killed.
One of the boys got scared and shot them accidentally. That’s what they told me and I believed them. I—”
He was pushing his Colt across the desk as he spoke. The gun was just about at the far edge of the desk when the door crashed. Wood shattered. The walls shook. A torch was hurled into the office through the battered center of the door. Two railroad ties bound together with leather straps collided with the door again, splintering it completely in two. Axes hacked away the rest and three crazed men stumbled through the door frame.
One of them surged forward. Fargo grabbed him. Turned him around. Jammed the barrel of his Colt against the man’s head.
“One more step and I kill him.”
“You can’t kill us all.”
“No, but I can kill him.” He had his arm around the man’s neck. He tightened his grip. “Tell your friends you don’t want to die.”
The two men raised their own guns but paused when they heard their friend’s gibbering. Fargo’s captive said, “He’ll do it. Just stay where you are!”
The problem for the two men—and for the captive—was the men behind them, trying to push their way through the shattered door into the sheriff’s office.
Fargo said, “Ned Lenihan is innocent. The man you want is sitting right at that desk. Sheriff Cain confessed just a minute ago.”
“Fargo! It’s not what you’re thinking!” Cain started to say.
From Fargo’s vantage point he couldn’t tell what Cain was doing. Pete Rule was covering the man.
And it was Pete Rule’s gun that cracked two times in the tumult of the screaming mob, the standoff between Fargo and the two men facing him and Amy’s sudden cry.
“I thought he was going for a gun.”
Fargo angled his head so that he could see Tom Cain fall facedown on his desk. One of his eyes had been shot out, his cheek running with blood. His forehead leaked blood too.
His face colliding with the desktop would have made a grim sound under ordinary circumstances. But all the clamor covered it.
Fargo released the man he was holding and threw him into his friends. “You people make me sick. Now get the hell out of here.” As he said this, he dug the deputy’s badge out of his pocket and pitched it on Rule’s desk. “It’s all yours, Pete. It’s up to you. I’m going to go get a lot of whiskey and get out of this town by dawn.”
“I’m sorry for all this, Fargo.”
Fargo glanced over at Lenihan who was holding Amy so tight they looked like one person. He didn’t blame him. Lenihan was lucky to be alive. “I’m ta
king Helen Hardesty’s body over to the mortuary. The Raines boys tried to kill me but they killed her instead. You’ll find their bodies out on her property. I’ll pay for Helen’s burial. The town doesn’t have to worry about it.”
“You don’t have to do that, Fargo.”
“Yeah,” Fargo said, “I do.”
“Mr. Fargo—” Amy said from the arms of Lenihan. “We owe you so much—”
Fargo turned then and walked over to Deputy Parsons. Before the man could protect himself Fargo slammed his right hand into his solar plexus and finished with a left hand to his jaw. Parsons crashed backward into a chair, filling the air with his curses.
Fargo was sick of it all. He just wanted to get the hell out of there.
17
The bourbon was good, the fireplace warmed the elegant living room and Sarah Friese was quietly erotic as she sat next to Fargo on the long brocaded couch. The first and second floors of the mortuary might be dedicated to death but the third floor was very much given over to life. One wall was filled with a built-in bookcase, the other walls were covered with expensive reproductions of paintings by the masters and a genuine Persian rug covered most of the shiny hardwood floor. West of this room was a dining area as fancy as that of a top-flight San Francisco hotel. This was where she’d served him the steak dinner she’d insisted on preparing for him in the shiny new kitchen.
For Fargo two hours up here had softened his harsh feelings toward the town itself. He’d left the sheriff’s office bitter and angry. He’d stayed pretty much the same way while Sarah worked on Helen Hardesty’s body and prepared her for burial. But the whiskey and the fire helped as he waited for Sarah to bathe and reappear in a deep blue robe that fit her so well that he could easily see she was naked beneath. Now, as she’d said, she was all Fargo’s.
He turned to her and smiled. “This is quite the place.”
“My flat. My father and mother live in a house nearby. I wanted my own life. I’m not quite as old-fashioned as they are. And anyway, I wanted you to have a decent meal before you left town. We owe you a lot. Lynching is bad enough but lynching the wrong man is something a lot of towns never get over.”
“Well, Pete Rule finally told the truth. He should have done it a lot earlier.”
“At least he did it.”
“I’m just sorry Helen Hardesty had to die. She died because of me. Those damned Raines brothers are the ones who should’ve been lynched.”
She touched his face with silken fingers, the subtle scent of her perfume a perfect match for her graceful beauty. “You’re getting yourself all worked up again, Skye. You need to relax.”
He smiled. “You have any idea of how you could relax me?”
“Well, I’m only nineteen but I think if I put my mind to it I could come up with something.”
“You have anything particular in mind?”
She eased herself close to him, let her fingers fall from his face to tease his burgeoning manhood in the crotch of his pants. He gave a little start, pleasure spreading through his body like fine wine. Then her mouth was on his and she was finding his tongue with her own. By now he had filled his right hand with one of her breasts and he was easing her back on the long couch so that their bodies could fit together. Her robe rode up on her long, firm thighs so Fargo had no problem stirring the hot, moist center of her. She began to strain against him, wanting him inside her, her mouth filling his with warm wine-soaked gasps of pleasure and anticipation.
He obliged her first, his expert tongue tasting the elixir of her youthful beauty, her responding with cries, sobs and even a scream when her mind burst into a fireworks display of fleshly joy.
She helped him shed his pants so that she could hold his massive ramrod and guide it into her. “Oh, God, Skye, you’re huge.” She laughed about it. “I’ll have to mark this date on my calendar.”
But then she was serious again, spreading herself beneath him so that he could blaze a path up inside her that would fulfill the crazed need they both felt.
She got her slender, perfect legs over his shoulders and grabbed his buttocks. He grabbed hers. They were wet with her own juices. And then they embarked on their long journey, taking and giving by turns, the scents and sensations of their passion the only reality for either of them.
The expensive couch was never going to be the same as they pounded and slammed their way to mutual ecstasy, his mouth on her nipple only making her luxuriate all the more in the endless orgasms she was enjoying.
Then, as all things must, their coupling came to an end. Because the couch was so confining, Fargo let himself slide to the floor. He lay back against the couch and rooted around in his clothes for his makings.
Just as he was lighting his smoke, she joined him. She pleased him with her clean, young laugh. “You may have spoiled me for life.”
“I doubt that.”
She took his cigarette from his hand and put it to her own lips. She inhaled deeply then erupted in a coughing fit.
He took the cigarette from her when she was still hacking. “Little girls shouldn’t smoke.”
“I’ll get the hang of those things one of these days.” Then: “There’s more wine.”
“I’d better pass. I need to get up real early. I’m going to be out of here by dawn.”
“It’s not that late.”
“It’s that late if I want to get a full day’s travel in. I’ve got friends waiting for me. And besides, I’ve got one more stop to make tonight.”
Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “It’d better not be another woman.”
“Oh, no. It’s O’Malley.”
“O’Malley,” she said. “He’s sort of a joke around here. But I’ve always felt sorry for him.”
“Same here. He was so fired up about this whole thing but I didn’t see him anywhere around tonight. Did you?”
“Come to think of it, no, I didn’t. And he’s usually around at everything that goes on. He takes that little notebook from his back pocket and starts scribbling. I always josh him and tell him I’ll buy him a bigger one for his next birthday. But he calls it his lucky notebook. I don’t think you could pry it out of his hand if you had a gun to his head.”
Fargo was tugging his clothes on as she spoke. She was wonderfully, gloriously naked as she stood up and came to him. And not self-conscious about it in any way. “I don’t suppose you’ll be stopping through here again anytime soon.”
He took her in his arms. She was so fresh, eager. The temptation to change his mind, to stay came surging through him until he remembered O’Malley. Strange about him not being around tonight. Very strange.
He forced his arms to shed her and strode to the door before he changed his mind.
“I guess I could come back through this way when I’m done seeing my friends.”
That great girlish laugh. “You’d better. Or I’ll come looking for you.”
He went out into the cold harsh night. It was like being banished from Eden.
18
The lobby of O’Malley’s hotel bore a sign on an easel noting: RENT BY WEEK, MONTH, YEAR. The Mountainaire had probably been a simple two-story hotel in reasonably good repair a few years earlier. But now there were three other better designed and better constructed hotels. In order to keep its doors open The Mountainaire had likely had to turn itself into a boardinghouse of sorts.
Located at the opposite end of the main street and thus reasonably far away from the celebrating going on in the saloons, the hotel was quiet enough to let the night clerk doze off with a newspaper over his face. Fargo guessed he was the room clerk because he had a large ring of keys on the arm of the lobby sofa where he slept. He must have been a light sleeper, though, Fargo reasoned, because about the time Fargo reached the desk, the newspaper was torn away from the face and the face looked startled. A heavyset man with an unruly red mustache jumped to his feet as if he were standing to military attention.
“Yessir, evening, sir. Business was slow so I—”<
br />
“Don’t blame you at all. I’d probably do the same thing. I’m looking for Mr. O’Malley. You seen him tonight?”
The clerk, starting to neatly fold the newspaper, said, “Come to think of it, I haven’t. Of course I was so caught up in all the excitement—I was standing out on the porch—he might’ve slipped out without my seeing him. There was quite a crowd on our steps. Our roomers didn’t want to get too close to the shooting and such. Things can go wrong with a crowd like that.”
“What’s his room number?”
The clerk told him. “I can get you the key if you’d like—Mr. Fargo.” He smiled. “I don’t have to worry about a man with your reputation now, do I?”
Three minutes later Fargo stood outside O’Malley’s door. The hallway was filled with the noises of sleep—snoring, coughing, muttering. Fargo pressed his ear to the door, heard nothing. With one hand he inserted the key and turned it. With the other he slowly drew his Colt. One of the rules of survival was never enter a strange, dark room unarmed.
The door wasn’t even half opened before he recognized the stench. He eased his way inside and closed the door carefully behind him. The only light was spill from the window, silver light outlining the ancient bulky furniture. And the ancient bulky Irisher sprawled in death on the floor. Fargo recalled the timbre and bullshit majesty of the voice. And the almost childish hope and enthusiasm of words. O’Malley would come back, that was O’Malley’s theme. O’Malley would be not just good again, he would be great again.
Poor bastard. Poor drunken bastard.
He crossed the room to the man, found the lantern, struck a lucifer. Light bloomed in the room.
There was nothing to be done for O’Malley, of course. When he left, Fargo would notify Pete Rule and have him get somebody to carry the body down so Sarah Friese or one of her assistants could pick it up. The undertaking business was having a very profitable night.
The lantern was on the edge of the desk and the sputtering flame illuminated several pieces of blank paper. The ashtray told him that O’Malley had been working here and working hard. It overflowed with tobacco and cigarette butts.
