Colorado Clash (7 page)

Fargo was surprised by how quickly O’Malley turned and hurried away. His face had been scarlet with humiliation. He was a beaten man and he walked slumped over, as if he might pitch forward.

“He didn’t have that coming.”

“Oh, my Lord, Mr. Fargo. You weren’t taken in by him, were you?”

Fargo could tell that the dapper Mr. Parrish had decided that the Trailsman might not be as impressive as he’d always heard. Skye Fargo being taken in by a drunken reporter who was on his last legs?

“I don’t know that I was taken in. But you didn’t need to treat him like a dog you wanted to get rid of.”

The man put a fine hand on the lapel of his suit coat as if he were addressing an audience. “On my own behalf let me say that I’m his last resort. Nobody else would hire him let alone pay him for the little actual work he gets done. And I don’t appreciate being called to task for how I deal with one of my employees, especially by somebody who apparently doesn’t understand the circumstances. Good day to you, sir.”

He stormed away. He’d be one hell of a man to work for. And once more Fargo felt a little sorry for O’Malley.

“Is Bob Thomas here?”

The mannish middle-aged woman in the flannel shirt raised her wide face to consider Fargo’s question. She didn’t appear to be taken with him at all. “Who’s asking?”

“Name’s Fargo.”

“Oh. Heard about you. Why’re you looking for Bob?”

“Need to ask him some questions.”

“About what?”

The one-room office of The River Shipping Company was contained in a long crude structure made of logs. There was no back wall as such. Instead there was a loading dock. That was now piled high with boxes and crates of various sizes. From down near the shore Fargo could hear the voices of men talking and laughing as they loaded cargo.

“That would be between Thomas and me, ma’am.”

“You know who I am?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“I’m his mother.”

“I see.”

“I hired him after Lenihan fired him. My boy never stole anything.”

“I need to talk to him directly, ma’am.”

“If you’re here about the night when he smashed the stage line window—well, that’s something he shouldn’t have done, even if Lenihan did fire him just because he was jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Sure. My boy Bob, all the ladies like him. Young, old, don’t matter. He told me she was makin’ eyes at him. And he didn’t start that fire, neither, in the back room after he was fired.”

“I didn’t hear about the fire.”

“Well, he didn’t do it.”

Sure he didn’t, Fargo thought. The little son of a bitch is a regular angel. “I need to talk to him.”

The Thomas woman pushed up from her desk and said, “He’s tired of people suspecting him of things.” Then she walked to the dock and bellowed, “Bobby, honey, come up here, please. Man wants to talk to you.”

She trundled back in, resumed her position behind her desk. “Cain probably sent you.”

“I’m helping him. But he didn’t send me.”

“You a Pinkerton?”

“No, ma’am. But Cain seems to think I am.” His humor was wasted on her.

For somebody who was loading cargo, Bob Thomas looked damned clean and shiny. He wore a fancy blue shirt, fancy blue trousers and fancy soft leather boots into which he’d tucked his fancy trousers. He had curly black hair, angry blue eyes and the kind of face some women like and all men want to damage as quickly as possible.

“Bobby’s the foreman. Every job they put him on in this town they make him work like some kind of Mex or something. But I’m using him the way he should be used.”

“Who the hell is this guy, Ma?”

“Now, Bobby, he just wants to ask you a few questions.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to answer a few questions.”

“Now, Bobby.”

“I bet Cain sent you.”

“Could be,” Fargo said. “But you’re making this a lot more difficult than it needs to be.”

“Wait a minute,” Thomas said. “I heard about you. You’re the Trailsman or some damned name like that.”

“Names don’t matter. I just want to know why you were seen a couple of nights before the robbery talking to the three boys who stuck up the stage.”

“That’s a damn lie!”

“I’ve got two witnesses who’ll swear to it in court.”

For the first time Bobby looked to his mother for help. Fargo figured she’d probably been helping him out of situations like this all his spoiled life. “I want to get back to work, Ma.”

“Mr. Fargo, if Bobby here says it’s a lie—”

“Excuse us a minute, ma’am.” In a single motion Fargo grabbed a handful of Thomas’ fancy blue shirt and shoved him out the door. “Bobby and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The air was cooler coming off the river. The birdsong was different, too. Down on the cargo ship men moved back and forth like ants carrying their loads. Fargo pushed Thomas off the dock so that he fell two feet and landed on his bottom. He tried to scramble up but Fargo was already beside him. “Now you’re going to answer my questions, sonny boy, or I’m going to break a few bones and then your ma will really have to start taking care of you.”

Thomas glared up from where he still sat on his bottom. “You don’t have any right—”

“What about the two witnesses who saw you with—”

Thomas snapped, “I told you that’s a lie! Two nights before the robbery I wasn’t even in town!”

Thomas was right. It was a lie. The Pinkertons Fargo had helped showed him how accusing somebody of something false could sometimes trick them into admitting something true.

“Then it was some other night.”

He didn’t need to say anything, Bobby Thomas. It was right there on his face. So he had gotten together with the three boys.

“What night was it?”

“No night. I told you.”

“Get up.”

“What?”

“Get up.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Get up and find out.”

“You’re going to hit me, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and I’m going to keep on hitting you until you tell the truth. There are three boys dead. Plus an Englishman and a stagecoach driver. And maybe you know something about it.”

“You don’t hurt him!” Ma Thomas was now on the dock above them.

“She’s got a shotgun, Fargo, and she knows how to use it.”

“Well, she’d better start shooting then. Now get up!”

“Oh, shit,” Thomas said. He frowned and shook his head. “I saw them one night. Two nights in fact. But I didn’t have anything to do with the robbery.”

“Why’d you see them?”

“The fire. I wanted them to help me.” He made a face. “Can I get up now?”

“Get up.”

“And you won’t hit me?”

“Not if you’re telling the truth.”

Thomas wasn’t nimble. He had to thrash around to get up. When he was upright he said, “Well, that’s damn nice. Look at my pants!” He started brushing them.

His ma shouted again, “Don’t you hurt him!”

“Tell her to shut up.”

“She’s my ma.”

“Tell her.” Fargo made it as menacing as possible.

“Shut up, Ma, and go back inside!”

“Well that’s a fine howdy-do! You tell your own ma to shut up! See if I fix you squash the way you like it again anytime soon!”

Fargo was surprised that Thomas—who had to be twenty-five or so—didn’t look embarrassed by any of this. A regular lady-killer tied tight to his mother’s apron strings.

“The fire. Tell me about it.”

“You going to tell Cain?”

“Not unless he asks me about it. Nobody was hurt, were they?”

“No.” He actually sounded humble. “It was a stupid thing to do. I was just mad at Lenihan and mad at the three boys.”

“Why were you mad at them?”

“They wouldn’t help me with the fire. Which made me mad because I knew they were going to do something. They kept smiling at each other, the way you do when you’ve got a secret. Then all of a sudden they wanted me to leave. They got real nervous. I think somebody was coming.”

“You didn’t have any idea who?”

“No. And when I said something about it they got mad. Real mad. They damn near threw me on my horse they wanted to get rid of me so bad.”

Fargo decided he was telling the truth, enough of it anyway. From what he’d seen of Thomas it was no wonder the boys hadn’t wanted to get hooked up with him. Mama’s boy. A dress-up boy for the ladies. Not somebody you’d want along on a robbery.

Thomas said, “Look at this grass stain on the side of my pants.”

Fargo was well shut of him. He walked quickly back up to the office and Ma Thomas.

“I seen you throw him down.” She still had the shotgun. It was pointed right at Fargo’s chest.

“Maybe it’s time you start throwing him down, Mrs. Thomas. He’s awful old for you to still be doing his fighting.”

She muttered something to his back as he left. He assumed she wasn’t wishing him good luck.

 

Fargo had heard the worst of them called “deadfalls.” And that was, in fact, what they were. Just as a deadfall was a trap for a large animal, the worst kind of saloon was also a trap. In San Francisco there were dozens of the places. A man could go into one, get drunk and wake up and find himself on a freighter bound for the China seas. All it took was for one of the saloon girls to put something in your drink and you might never be heard from again. And if the violence didn’t get you the venereal disease did. A man who survived twenty-four hours on the Barbary Coast was lucky indeed. And it was in saloons like this one that the worst of the worst was found.

The Trail’s End probably didn’t qualify as a real deadfall but it would do until the real thing came along. After riding out to see Bob Thomas, Fargo had swung back to Cawthorne to look up a man named Frank Nolan. He was the brother of Ted Nolan, the second of the three young men to be killed.

Tom Cain wanted Fargo to carry things out the way a Pinkerton would so Fargo got Cain to write down the names of people Fargo could talk to about the dead men and how they’d spent their final days.

The Trail’s End was long and narrow and lighted only by lanterns placed along the bar and at tables. Though it was barely midmorning, drunkards could be seen passed out along the bar and at one of the tables. Judging by the stench, the place could have doubled as a latrine. In the smoky lantern light, Fargo approached the crude plank bar and the beefy bald man with the black eye patch. The man’s wide face reflected his displeasure with Fargo. People like the Trailsman didn’t belong here. They could be law and they could most certainly be trouble.

“You lost, stranger?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Well, I think you are.”

“Nice place you got here.”

“Nobody asked you to come.”

“Looking for somebody.”

Eyepatch smiled. “Well, if it’s anybody respectable, you sure won’t find him here.”

“His name is Frank Nolan.”

Eyepatch’s gaze flicked to the table where the man was passed out. “Never heard of him.”

Fargo tossed a coin on the bar. “Beer and a shot.”

Eyepatch smirked. “Cold day in hell when I serve you a damn thing.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means I don’t like your looks. Means I don’t like you standin’ in front of me.” He leaned forward and gave Fargo a shove.

Fargo’s move was almost invisible in the shadows. He grabbed the man’s right arm and twisted it with enough force to lift him up off his feet and hunched over the bar.

“Shit!” Eyepatch cried.

But Fargo didn’t relent. He kept on turning the arm slowly back on itself. One of the drunkards at the bar managed to raise his head from his stupor and focus long enough to understand what was happening. And what was happening made him grin. “Looks like you met your match, Earl.” Then he nudged the man slumped over to his right.

The man’s head was lost beneath a wide sombrero. The enormous hat began its ascension and finally a small dark Mexican face could be seen. The face was suddenly lit by a huge smile. “Earl, man, you be in trouble.”

Done with him, Fargo flung the man back against the wall, rattling the six bottles of rotgut that rested on a raw two-by-four.

“There wasn’t any reason for this,” Fargo said. “All I wanted was a beer and a shot.”

Rubbing his arm, wincing in pain, burning with shame, Eyepatch obviously thought of saying something. But then immediately realized that Fargo might just come over the bar and start it up all over again.

“I’ll take that beer and shot now.”

Cursing, moving in and out of the flickering light of the lanterns, Eyepatch got Fargo what he wanted. He slammed them down hard on the bar. Fargo pitched the coin at him, grabbed his alcohol and then strode over to the table where Frank Nolan was just now sitting up and crawling out of his liquid hibernation.

He was a round little man with frightened eyes and a bad complexion. At one time his shirt had been white probably but not anymore.

“Eyepatch holds grudges, mister.”

“So do I.”

“I heard you askin’ for me. How come?”

“Your brother.”

“Oh.” He was hound-dog sad suddenly. “Near to broke my ma’s heart. She’ll never get over it.”

“My name’s Fargo. I’m working with Sheriff Cain. We’re trying to find out who killed your brother and the two others and why.”

Nolan sat back in his chair. The move put him in deep shadow. He was almost a disembodied voice. “Glad Tom Cain’s getting some help. He kinda let everybody down.”

“How so?”

“Well, he didn’t have no luck catchin’ any of the stagecoach robbers who killed that Englishman and driver. He’s usually pretty good at huntin’ people down. And then right on top of it he hasn’t had any luck finding out who killed my brother and them others. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt but a lot of people are sayin’ maybe he’s too old now. And maybe he’s good with a gun but nothing else. The Denver paper’s always got stories about detectives finding killers and maybe that’s what we need here. I hate to see the town turn against him but with three of them dead—”