Death Devil (9781101559666) (23 page)

Again Fargo hesitated. Again it proved costly.

Clementine's mouth dipped. Belinda's eyes went wide and she cried out.

Seizing Clementine by the shoulders, Fargo tore her off and shoved her away. He was too late.

A fist-sized chunk of flesh had been torn from Belinda's throat. Belinda's mouth moved but all that came out were mews of despair.

Screeching demonically, Clementine pushed to her hands and knees. Her mouth was red with Belinda's blood and pink bits of flesh were stuck in her teeth.

Fargo shot her in the throat. She hissed and reared to come at him and he shot her in the chest. She staggered, recovered, and sprang. He shot her smack between the eyes and she crumpled and lay in a quivering pile.

Belinda gurgled his name.

Sinking to a knee, Fargo clasped her hand. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do. She knew, and gave him a look of understanding and sympathy. “Damn you,” he said.

Belinda tried to speak but all that came from her throat was a red mist. Her mouth parted, she arched her back, and was gone.

Fargo knelt there a while. Finally he stood and stepped over to Clementine and emptied the Colt into her face. When the hammer clicked on empty he went into the parlor and sat on the settee and reloaded. His hands shook a little but by the time the last cartridge was in the cylinder and he had twirled the Colt into his holster they were steady again. He went out and found the toothpick and slid it into his ankle sheath.

Taking a lamp, Fargo searched the barn. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he went to a shed near the back of the house. In it were the tools he needed: a shovel and a pick.

He dug for half an hour. No shallow grave for Belinda; he dug it good and deep and laid her out with care, crossing her arms over her chest and closing her eyes.

As for Clementine, he dragged her out by her heels and tossed her in the hog pen. He thought about doing the same with Charles T. Dogood.

Fargo needed a drink. He went to the kitchen and had to open every cupboard before he found a half-empty bottle of Monongahela. The burning as it went down felt good. He smacked his lips and shook himself and went out to the front porch and sat in the rocking chair.

The serenity of the night was like a punch to the gut. Fargo rocked and drank and rocked and drank and little by little the horror drained out of him. He was feeling halfway restored when the creak and rattle of a wagon warned him he would soon have company.

Fargo stayed in the rocking chair. He had a notion who it was and he hoped he was right. With Belinda gone he no longer had to hold back.

A firefly appeared, the light wobbling with the roll of the wheels. It was a buckboard and it came on fast to the orchard and up the lane. Orville and Mabel were in the seat. Orville stood and hauled on the reins to bring the team to a stop. He grabbed a rifle and jumped down.

“What about me?” Mabel said. “Aren't you goin' to help me off?”

“I thought you liked to do everythin' your own self,” Orville said angrily. He slowed as he came to the Ovaro. “Look who's here.”

“We'll put an end to him,” Mabel said.

Orville strode past the van and up the steps and barreled into the house without a glance to either side.

“Consarn you,” Mabel said. She hurried in after him, and she didn't glance at the rocking chair, either.

Fargo resumed his drinking and rocking.

“Are they in the kitchen?” Mabel hollered.

“No,” Orville shouted from the back of the house.

“They must be upstairs, then. Come on.”

Orville's heavy boots clomped and Mabel let out a strident, “Charlie!” They made a lot of noise going from room to room. Presently his boots thumped along the hall and the screen door slammed open and Orville strode out. He was holding the rifle by the stock with the barrel across his shoulder. “I don't understand it,” he said. “The van is here and Charlie is up in that room dead as hell but where did Clementine get to?”

“She has to be here somewhere,” Mabel said, emerging and standing next to him. She looked around and saw Fargo and froze. “Orville?” she said softly.

“What now?”

“Be real careful.”

Orville glanced at her and then in the direction she was staring and he started to lower the rifle but must have thought better of it because he stopped and said, “You.”

“Me,” Fargo said, and took another swallow.

“We heard about what you did in town. Shot six of our kin dead.”

“Was that all?”

Orville took a step to the right. “What happened to Charlie Dogood?”

“Someone mistook him for an apple.” Fargo chuckled at his little joke.

“It's not funny, damn you,” Orville said. “He's lyin' dead up there with his throat ripped out. Who did it?”

“Forget about him,” Mabel said. “What I want to know is where our daughter is. Someone told us Charlie brought her out here along with that no-good doc.”

“It's Dr. Jackson to you,” Fargo said. “And whoever told you, told you right.” He sipped and rolled the whiskey on his tongue. “Goes down smooth. Want some?”

Orville didn't know what to make of him. “Answer my wife. Where's Clementine? Who did that to Charlie? And where did that damn Belinda Jackson get to?”

“Which first?” Fargo said.

“Which what?”

“He means which question,” Mabel said. “And the answer is we want to know about our daughter the most.”

“All of this because of some water celery and mushrooms,” Fargo said. “It's a hell of a world.”

“What are you prattlin' about?” Mabel snapped.

“I'm answering your questions, bitch.”

Orville took a step but Mabel grabbed his arm and shook her head.

“Let's hear what he has to say first.”

Orville grunted.

“All that foaming at the mouth people have been doing?” Fargo said. “You have your good friend Dogood to thank. He mixed a poisonous plant with mushrooms and eighty-proof alcohol and opium. It's a wonder the first sip didn't kill them.”

“You're makin' that up,” Mabel said.

“I wish,” Fargo said. He was almost done with the bottle. He swirled the whiskey and took a last swallow.

“Even if what you say is true,” Mabel said, “it's not as if he did it on purpose, I bet.”

“Who tore out his throat like that?” Orville asked. “Was it Dr. Jackson?”

“Dogood wasn't treating Belinda for anything,” Fargo said. “It was Sawyer, Timmy, Abigail, and Clementine who drank the stuff.”

They looked at one another.

“Your precious girl,” Fargo said. “She had a cold so Dogood gave her a couple of bottles of his cure. It makes it fitting, I suppose, that she was the one who killed him.”

“Where is she now?” Orville said.

Fargo set the bottle on the porch and stood. “I fed her to the hogs.”

“You did what now?” Mabel said.

“If you hurry over, there might be some of her left.”

Orville glanced toward the hog pen and his features hardened. With a loud oath he swung his rifle level.

Fargo drew and shot him in the chest, three swift shots, one after the other.

“Orville!” Mabel cried, and tried to catch him but he was much too heavy and crashed to the porch, his rifle clattering.

Bending, she cradled his head. “Orville, speak to me. Tell me you ain't dead.”

“Dead as hell,” Fargo said. He walked around her to the steps.

“I hate you,” Mabel said. “I hate you more than anything. I should kill you my own self.”

“Did I mention that Dogood was poking your daughter? He seduced her years ago and she's been his secret lover ever since.”

“You're lying!”

Fargo remembered Mabel tarring Belinda, remembered her hitting Belinda, remembered her doing all she could to make Belinda's life miserable. “How does it feel to be the mother of a slut?”

Mabel threw back her head and screeched. She saw her husband's rifle and snatched it up. “I'm goin' to kill you, you son of a bitch.”

“No,” Fargo said, “you're not.” He shot her in the head, puffed on the smoke that rose from the end of the barrel, and walked to the Ovaro. Shoving the Colt into his holster, he forked leather. “Good riddance,” he said to the bodies on the porch.

A flick of the reins and a tap of his spurs and he rode off into the dark Ozark night.

 

 

 

“Fargo, I got a God fear that somebody is following us,” said Captain Jasper Dundee.

Skye Fargo, riding out ahead on the rock-strewn mountain trail, nodded. He was a tall man clad in buckskins, wide in the shoulders and narrow in the hips. “Been following us for the better part of two hours, I'd reckon.”

Dundee, a weathered campaign veteran of the U.S. Cavalry's Department of Dakota, slewed around in the saddle to study their back trail. “Redskins, you think?”

Fargo shook his head. “You know how it is with the red aborigines, Jasp. When they take a notion to follow you, you won't know it until you hear the war whoop. No, these are white men.”

“That rings right to me, Trailsman. And seeing's how white men are scarce as hen's teeth this high up, it's a good chance these slinking coyotes are Dub Kreeger and his gang of deserters. Might even have their sights notched on us right now.”

Fargo whipped the dust from his hat and twisted around to grin at the officer. “Could be. Let's hope Army marksmanship training is as piss-poor as I believe it is.”

Fargo faced front again, his eyes crimped to slits in the brilliant, spun-gold sunshine of a summer day in the Rocky Mountains. Some of the fringes on his faded buckskins were crusted with old blood. His crop-bearded face was half in shadow under the broad brim of a white plainsman's hat.

The breathtaking view out ahead of them was familiar to Fargo, but he always gazed upon it as if seeing it for the first time. Many back in the States still believed the Rocky Mountains were a single wall rather than a series of parallel ranges. He could see them clearly now like ascending curtain folds, with the cloud-nestled spires of the imposing Bitterroot Range forming the final great barrier to human exploration.

“Think we'll ever tame 'em?” Dundee called out behind him. “These mountains, I mean.”

Fargo mulled that one. Two decades earlier Hudson's Bay Company men had swarmed this region until driven out by Nathaniel Wyeth's Rocky Mountain Fur Company. But the London dandies no longer craved beaver hats, and now the region was mostly populated by Indians, silver and gold miners, soldiers, and a few hearty independent trappers. Fargo considered this land bordering the rugged Canadian Rockies one of the most pristine and spectacular places in the West—but also in grave danger of being overrun by “cussed syphillization.”

“Tame them, no,” he finally replied. “Leastways I hope not. But unless the New York land hunters and the rest of them nickel-chasing fools back east are reined in, these mountains will be blasted into slag heaps by the miners and railroad barons.”

“Spoken like a true bunch-quitter,” Dundee said.

Something glinted from the slope above the pass.

“See that?” Dundee called forward.

Fargo nodded. “That wasn't quartz or mica, not this far up. Hell, our horses are blowing hard even at a walk. Knock your riding thong off, Jasp, and break out your carbine—we might have a set-to coming.”

“Suits me right down to the ground. I'd admire to ventilate Dub Kreeger's skull. I knew that crooked bastard back at Fort Robinson. Just another scheming snowbird—joined the army in fall to get out of the cold, then lit out at the first spring thaw. Only, he liberated three hundred dollars from the Widows and Orphans Fund before he and his greasy bootlicks left.”

“I heard he got himself arrested in the Black Hills?”

“That's the straight,” Dundee confirmed. “All four of 'em were in the stockade. They shoulda danced on air long ago. But they killed two guards and pulled a bust out. Made off with two cases of ammo, too. Lately they've taken to this high country and raiding on the new Overland route between South Pass and the Oregon Territory.”

Dundee paused to survey the slopes around them. “Damn fool idea, Fargo, this new Overland route.”

“Sure it is. But it was also a damn fool idea for the army to build the road that made it possible. All it did was stir up the feather-heads.”

“That's exactly what I told Colonel Halfpenny. There's no civilian law up here and damn few soldiers. Now there's three way-station men murdered, two Overland teamsters missing, a payroll missing, and God knows what happened to the three widows. And to cap the climax, Flathead Indian attacks have closed off the route and marooned Robert's Station.”

“Oh, there's law up here,” Fargo gainsaid. “Gun law. But I'm with you on all the rest. And sending one soldier into these mountains is dicey enough, if you take my drift.”

Dundee took it, all right. He and Fargo had been sent out of Fort Seeley to investigate the apparent heist of an army payroll as well as the fate of missing civilians. Seeley was a small garrison meant to protect prospectors in the Bitterroot Range. But a troop movement this high into the mountains could ignite a full-blown Indian war, especially with the Flathead tribe whose clan circles dotted this region.