Arkansas Assault (2 page)

“Down off the horse—after you pitch that six-gun and that rifle down here first.”

Adams shook his head in mock grief again. “Awful thing that you don’t trust me, Fargo.”

Fargo used his Colt to put a bullet right through the highest point of Adams’s battered, greasy old hat. The hat didn’t sail off, just slanted to the right on Adams’s large head.

“Nice shootin’, Fargo.”

“The Colt first. Then the Henry.”

When Adams moved his right hand too quickly toward his holster, Fargo put another bullet close to him, about half an inch from Adams’s gun hand. “Slow and easy, Adams. Don’t give me any excuse to kill you. Because I’ll take it.”

“I was just doin’ what you told me, Fargo.” You couldn’t see his sneer now but you could certainly hear it in his voice.

Fargo watched him carefully.

Adams slid the Colt from the holster, dangled it daintily by its handle, and then dropped it into the sun-baked dust of the road. He looked as if he’d been handling a piece of feces. Giving in to the Trailsman was obviously not good for the bounty hunter’s pride.

“Now the rifle.”

“You’re a hard man, Fargo.” Mocking him, of course.

“Just throw it down, Adams.”

And then it happened.

Fargo had to give the man credit. He was able to drop the rifle to the dusty road with one hand while at the same time, with the other hand, draw a small revolver from the folds of his buckskin.

Adams got the first shot off, dropping from his horse an instant later.

Fargo threw himself to the ground. There wasn’t time to get back behind the pines. He rolled away from Adams’s horse just as Adams started firing at him. Adams was down on one knee, getting his shots away from under the belly of his animal.

“Looks like I’m givin’ the orders now, Fargo.”

He clipped off two more shots, making Fargo roll behind some brush on the roadside. The tangled growth gave Fargo the only cover he could find. “Give up now, Adams. Go in peaceful.”

“Hell, man, you’re gonna be dead in a couple minutes. I’ll be taking you in. To an undertaker.”

Adams must have believed his own bragging because he now stepped out in front of his horse and aimed his six-shooter right at the brush where Fargo was hiding. He squeezed off his shot.

To a bystander, this moment would have looked awfully damned odd. Here it was Adams who’d done the shooting. But it was also Adams who, an instant later, clutched his chest as a flower-shaped redness appeared on the front of his buckskin shirt. And then he struck a pose like a bad dancer, his limbs all seeming to point in different directions. His small revolver tumbled from his hand, which, like the rest of his body, remained in this awkward position for another long moment. And then the huge man collapsed, the ground trembling as his body met it with real force and speed.

Not much doubt that Jeb Adams was dead.

Fargo had fired at the exact instant Adams had. Adams’s gun made more noise than Fargo’s, so an observer would have heard only Adams’s shot. The difference between the two shots was that Fargo’s had hit home, right in the heart. Adams’s had gone wild.

Fargo picked himself up, dusted himself off, went over and hunched down next to the corpse. He checked wrist and neck pulse points to be sure the man was really dead.

Getting him up on his horse’s back wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just the considerable weight. It was the form death had twisted Adams into. He was hard to get a hold of. But finally the Trailsman was able to carry him to the horse and throw him across the saddle. Fargo took a couple of deep breaths, and flicked away some gnats who’d been dining on his sweat.

He went through the dead man’s saddlebags.

Adams had a couple of dozen WANTED posters. If the reward had been increased on a particular man, he’d noted that in pencil at the bottom of the poster. There was a notarized letter informing Adams that his divorce had gone through. According to a second letter in the same envelope—a bitter letter from Adams’s ex-wife—Adams had been a terrible husband, a worse father, and a man who had embarrassed and humiliated her in every way possible, including a “tryst” with a woman down the street. The letter was from St. Louis and was two years old.

There was another letter from a man named Noah Tillman. It read:

The brief letter told Fargo that Adams had been doing two jobs at once—tracking Fargo and traveling to his rich friend’s place. The word “eliminations” clued Fargo in that Jeb Adams had probably been a hired killer as well as a bounty hunter. This Noah Tillman had apparently been a customer. Rich men frequently needed to have business rivals killed. Hired killing was a lucrative business if you were good at it. And Fargo didn’t doubt that Adams had been
damned
good at it.

Fargo jammed the letter from Noah Tillman in his pocket. He’d have a surprise for this Noah Tillman. Jeb Adams was going to show up, all right.

Dead.

 

 

Tillman, Arkansas was bigger than Fargo had expected. Thirty-five hundred souls resided here according to the WELCOME sign on the north edge of town. A clean blue river, new, if modest, homes, two full blocks of merchant buildings, two churches, a schoolhouse, and a courthouse lent the town an air of prosperity and friendliness.

The folks here knew how to celebrate the Fourth of July, too. Everywhere he looked, Fargo saw bunting and signs that proclaimed the special day. And the red, white, and blue colors weren’t limited to storefronts and posters, either. Lots of folks wore red, white, and blue ribbons pinned to their shirt pockets. There was even an old swayback with a red, white, and blue blanket thrown over it.

Fargo naturally drew attention. A dead man is bound to attract almost as much attention as a naked lady. Kids, codgers, businessmen, farmers all paused in their activities to watch the rough-hewn man on the big stallion trail in another horse with a corpse slung across it. Even the short trip in the scorching sun had made Jeb Adams’s body a mite smelly. Flies loved him. A couple of old people waved at him. He wasn’t sure why. They probably weren’t, either. They were just so used to waving—the custom of this friendly part of the country—that they did it out of habit.

Fargo didn’t need to ask where the sheriff’s office was. A wide, one-storied, whitewashed building had signs saying SHERIFF on both the side and the front. He lashed the reins of his stallion to a hitching post and walked inside.

He didn’t have to do much explaining of the basic problem. A portly man wearing a leather vest that bore a deputy’s badge was standing at a front window. He had quick, friendly brown eyes. “Looks like you’ve attracted just about as many people as our parade will.”

He put forth his hand and said, “Queeg is my name. Mike Queeg. I can take down all the information and offload your friend out there. But the sheriff’s in court right now, testifying in a case.”

“His name is what?”

“Tillman. Same as the town.”

“Let me guess. His father owns the town.”

Queeg grinned. “You’re half right. Noah owns the town all right. And that’s only right. Whether you like him or not, he built this damned place. He cleared some of the land himself, that’s how far back he goes. In fact, there’s a painting of Noah in the courthouse. Shows him chopping down trees when he was in his early twenties.”

“You said I was half right.”

“Tom—he’s the sheriff—he’s the stepson. He was adopted after the fact.”

“People like having the town boss’s stepson as sheriff?”

“I know what you’re saying, mister. But that isn’t the way it works here. Tom ran for office fair and square. The first time, he lost, as a matter of fact. And Noah and Tom don’t get along all that well. Noah expected Tom to do his bidding. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Tom’s a straight shooter with a real sense of right and wrong. He’s even thrown some of Noah’s hired hands in jail from time to time. They get out of hand, Tom doesn’t treat them any different from anybody else. He may have Noah’s name, but he makes it pretty obvious that there’s no Tillman blood flowing through his veins.” Then, “Say, you didn’t tell me your name.”

“Fargo.”

“Fargo? Are you foolin’ me?
Skye
Fargo? The Trailsman?”

“You going to arrest me? That’s what the guy slung across his horse was trying to do. Somebody trumped up a murder charge against me in Wyoming. He was trying to collect on it. He was doing double duty, hoping to finish me off before he got to your town. Noah Tillman had sent him a letter inviting him.”

Queeg whistled. “You sure got a way of comin’ into a town, Fargo. You bring a dead man who’s here because Noah invited him.” He smiled. “You should work for a circus. One of those advance fellas they send out to let everybody know the circus is coming. It’s one hell of a way to introduce yourself.” He nodded outside. “You know what his name was?”

“Jeb Adams.”

Queeg’s eyes and mouth narrowed. “He’s been here before and he was a bad one. Couple of people got killed over some land Noah wanted. But Tom didn’t follow up on it. I don’t think he was scared to go after Noah. I think he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that Noah could be behind two murders. He doesn’t have any illusions about Noah—Noah does what Noah needs to, no holds barred—it’s just that Noah and his wife took him in when he was only three. Tom just couldn’t face up to what Noah had done.”

“Was Adams around here long?”

“A month maybe. Raised a lot of hell here in town. Busted up one of the pleasure houses one night. Scared the hell out of all the girls. He was one mean sonofabitch.”

“In the letter, Noah thanked him for helping out with something called ‘Skeleton Key.’ That mean anything to you?”

“It sure does, Fargo. That’s the only other thing Tom won’t look into where Noah’s concerned.” He hitched up his holster and said, “But let’s get that body in here before it rots in that damned sun of ours. I’ll tell you about Skeleton Key later.”

 

Fargo spent a short time walking around the town and having himself another breakfast of steak, eggs, and potatoes. Banners inside and out proclaimed FOURTH OF JULY FEVER! A small marching band was practicing on a dusty side street. And boys and girls of every age set off fire-crackers and sparklers. He even saw three or four ladies wearing dresses made up of the stars and stripes. They weren’t kidding about having a “fever.” It seemed to have infected damned near everybody in town, the way the streets were crowded with hometown folks and visitors alike.

Fargo had spent enough time in towns and cities to know when he was being followed. A lanky man in a dark three-piece suit, way too hot for this boiling day, had stayed on Fargo’s trail ever since Fargo had left the café. Being that the only person he had talked to at any length was Queeg, Fargo wondered why the sheriff’s department had found it necessary to put a tail on him.

He decided to have some fun with the lanky man. Fargo would walk real fast and then abruptly stop. He repeated this often enough to have the lanky man so out of sorts, he damned near walked past him. Once, Fargo ducked into an alley, hid in the shade of a blacksmith’s shop, and watched as the lanky man hurried past, looking confused and frantic. Sure wouldn’t want to go back to Queeg and tell him he’d managed to lose Fargo, now, would he?

A block later, Fargo was following the lanky man. When the man turned around, apparently sensing that Fargo was behind him. Fargo waved and smiled before taking off again, quick enough to shake the lanky man for good this time.

 

 

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir.”

This, or words like it, were spoken by room clerks in three of the hotels neighboring each other. Seems people in all the surrounding small towns came to Tillman for the Fourth. Every available room had already been rented.

At the next place, the clerk said, “This is on the top floor and ordinarily it’s a storage room. But we fixed it up nice as we could ’cause we figured somebody’d probably take it.”

“And that would be me.” He paid the man and yawned again. He’d originally decided to ride straight through. But now he decided he needed some good sleep in a real bed before he started looking for the best place to cast his line.

Fargo carried his saddlebags up to the top floor, on the way pausing a couple of times to appreciate the loveliness of the women who were coming down the stairs. He remembered the livery man’s remark about Tillman having a “higher class of women.” Apparently the man hadn’t been kidding.

Just before he entered his room, he saw a Mexican chambermaid, slight but fetching, watching him from down the hall. They exchanged smiles. He liked Mexicans, and while every group had its bad apples, he especially liked Mexican women.

The room was small but the bed was firm and the bedclothes clean. They’d fixed up a table with a wash basin, pitcher, and a couple of fresh towels. There was a spittoon, two ashtrays, a pile of magazines, and a pint of rye whiskey, this being some kind of reward for taking the room. There was also a window filled with blue sky—and somebody hiding in the closet.

The hider wasn’t an experienced burglar. Made too much noise. Moved around way too much. But that, Fargo figured, didn’t preclude the hider from having a gun and taking everything in Fargo’s saddlebags. He felt sure that the hotel hadn’t included the hider as the same sort of surprise the pint of rye had been.