Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (13 page)

“Shit-oh-dear,” Old Billy muttered. “We was so busy flap-jawin' I forgot to break out Patsy.”

“This won't be a wit-and-wile situation,” Fargo muttered back. “Look for the main chance, Old Billy, then spark your powder.”

The two men reined in, dust swirling around them in the hot wind.

“Don't stop there,” said a toothless chawbacon dressed in butternut homespun. “Climb off them hosses and lead 'em in.”

Both men ignored the order. Old Billy hunched forward in the saddle, trying to see better in the blowing dust. “Horten? Zachary Horten, is that you?”

“A-huh,” Horten replied in his High South twang, keeping his close-set eyes narrowed on Fargo. “You're free to ride on, Old Billy. Ain't nobody said a word agin you. It's Skye Fargo here what faces a reckonin'.”

“Fargo! Hell, I got shed of him miles back. This here is Frank Scully.”

Horten shook his head. “Best be careful, Billy, or we
will
have a score to settle with you for sidin' with a rapist and woman-killer.”

The man beside Horten, a hatchet-faced
mestizo
in a rawwool serape, spoke up. “Word came from Echo Canyon, Fargo, that you shaved your beard and got new clothes.”

“Yeah, shit-for-brains,” spoke up a third man, gawking at the shirt. “You'd a been less conspicuous in your buckskins than in that nigger-woman blouse.”

“Man ain't got no taste,” Old Billy muttered to Fargo.

“Light down,” Horten ordered again, wagging the barrel of his New Haven Arms rifle. “First, Fargo, we're gonna learn you that wimmin is respected in the Utah Territory. After that, you'll dance on air. Then me and the boys here will draw cards to see who gets that fine horse of yours.”

“That's all I was waiting to hear,” Fargo said quietly.

“How's that?”

“I wanted it to be legal,” Fargo explained, “so I waited until you threatened my life.”

Quicker than eyesight, Fargo filled his fist with blue steel. The Colt bucked in his hand and a neat hole opened in the center of Horten's forehead. Blood blossomed out, splashing into the parched earth with a sound like a horse pissing. Fargo's reflexive speed, and the sudden fact of death in their midst, froze the other three men like statues of salt.

By the time the other three were able to blink again, Old Billy had his Greener unsheathed and at the ready. “Drop'em, boys,” he ordered in his gravelly voice. “If the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers couldn't spill my guts, you three bald-headed baboons sure as hell won't, neither.”

Facing this double threat, all three complied instantly.

Old Billy laughed so hard he was forced to slap his thigh. “Fargo, these needle-dick bug-humpers won't never learn territorial law. Back in the States they got that ‘duty to retreat' law if a man's life is threatened. Out here, a threat ain't no different than the attempt. This fool ain't the first to turn his tongue into a shovel and bury hisself with it.”

“Hop your horses and clear out,” Fargo told them. “We'll take your weapons inside, and you can collect them tomorrow. If you show up here while I'm still around, I'll kill you for cause.”

“Before you ride out,” added a voice from the doorway of the station, “haul that body down the road a piece so I don't have to sniff the stink. Let the buzzards bury the blowhard son of a bitch.”

Fargo swung down, looking at a pear-shaped, bald-headed man in a filthy apron. “Junebug Kellar. Glad to see the citizen's committee here didn't douse your light.”

“They threatened to if I shouted a warning. Skye goldang Fargo . . . I haven't seen you since the hogs ate the twins. Chappie, you been getting into a heap of trouble lately.”

“Somebody else is doing all the work, Junebug. I just reap the benefits.”

Junebug looked askance at Fargo's haberdashery. “Christ, that's the kind of shirt you see in nightmares. And if them pants was any tighter your voice would change.”

“I
like
them, Pa,” said a lilting female voice from behind Junebug.

Fargo watched a stunning young redhead, in a worn print dress so thin it fit like a second skin, ease around her father and into the doorway. Either she didn't like undergarments or she couldn't get any out here because Fargo could see all of her ample charms—everything from her supple calves to the two spots where her nipples dinted the fabric of her dress.

“Skye,” Junebug said, “this is my girl, Jasmine—the one you know as little Jasmine. She's a mite bigger now.”

“I see that,” Fargo said, barely able to lift his eyes from her swelling bosom.

With Billy and his Greener supervising, the three would-be hangmen were hauling the body of Zachary Horten well down the trail.

“Mr. Fargo,” Jasmine chirped, giving him a teasing look from lidded eyes, “I thought you had a beard.”

“I did,” he said ruefully, rubbing his stubbled chin. “That's before I became a desperado.”

“You look fine without one,” she assured him.

“You best take a care, Skye,” Junebug spoke up. “The whole damn territory is boiling over. This is the second rope posse that's been in here to ask about you.”

“How 'bout Mormon soldiers?”

“Ain't seen hide nor hair of any in weeks. They been busy with Ute uprisings around Camp Floyd.”

“It does beat all,” Jasmine chimed in, “that men who beat the tar out of their women every day get so high and mighty all of a sudden. Maybe they got some other reason for wanting to kill Mr. Fargo—one their women could explain.”

Her eyes traveled his length—quite a journey. “Pa's right about them clothes. But the man inside them is mighty easy to look at. Now I seen him, Pa, I know you're right. This is no fella who'd ever need to . . . force a woman.”

“You're right on that score, sugar britches,” called out Old Billy as he watched the trio of vigilantes ride off. “Women flock to him like flies to honey. But he has to get rough with barnyard animals.”

Junebug chortled and Fargo grinned at the vulgar lout. Jasmine was too busy playing kissy-face with Fargo to even notice Old Billy. At the moment Fargo regretted that—in these molded-on pants his arousal was obvious. Casually, he brought his hat down over his crotch.

Old Billy hadn't missed the concealment. “She might be impressed, Fargo, but Sir Richard ain't.”

“Who's Sir Richard?” asked a confused Jasmine.

“Oh, this gent I know,” Old Billy replied, barely keeping a straight face. “You could call him a mite cocky.”

“Sorry if we chased away your business,” Fargo said as he followed the owner and his daughter into the dark, hot, smoky interior. Old dry-goods boxes served as chairs, but somewhere Junebug had scrounged up an old billiard table. It sported bullet holes and patched felt.

Junebug snorted. “Business? All that bunch ever done was swill whiskey on account and never pay me. Only reason they come is to ogle Jasmine.”

“And pinch me,” she added. “But I won't . . . get friendly with any man who ain't got nice teeth. Strong and white like yours, Mr. Fargo.”

Junebug waved his daughter silent. “Honey, I told you before, you're of age and I don't begrudge your little flirtations. But wait till your daddy ain't around. And you can call him Skye—me and him go way the hell back.”

He turned to Fargo. “You're in sore need of a bath. And I got some duds that might fit you—nothing too fancy-fine, but hell, least you won't look like a circus juggler.”

“'Preciate it. How's your tarantula juice?”

“Never mind that, you damn criminal,” Old Billy cut in. “I'll test the who-shot-john while you get that bath. Happens you hear gunfire up here, fill your hand and fill it quick.”

“C'mon,” Jasmine told him, taking Fargo's hand, “I'll show you where everything is.”

Fargo could see where everything was, all right, and he liked the placement just fine. As she tugged him toward a lean-to off the back of the station, he watched her tight buttocks undulate against the thin dress like two melons shifting in a sack.

Just outside the lean-to was a flat-iron stove. A bucket next to it was stuffed with corncobs soaking in coal oil. She banged open the door of the stove and threw some cobs in.

Fargo peeked down the front of her dress as she bent down and got an eye-filling peek at her creamy, plum-tipped tits.

“Like 'em?” she asked as she struck a phosphor on the stove and flipped it onto the fuel.

“You know I do. What red-blooded man wouldn't?”

She tossed back her head and laughed. “Pa's right. All men want the same thing.”

Fargo began hauling water from a nearby cistern. “What's wrong with that? Don't women want the same thing, too?”

“Of course we do. But men just go right at it like bulls to a red rag. Women have a different style.”

“Oh?” Fargo said with mock innocence as he poured a pail of water into the larger heating pan on the stove. “I hadn't noticed.”

She laughed again and slugged him on the arm. “No need to play the preacher, Mr. Fargo—I mean, Skye. Pa tells me you been with more women than a midwife.”

“The only one that counts,” he assured her, “is the one you're with now.”

“And tomorrow she's a memory, right?”

“A memory for life,” he assured her, although in fact only the best of the best became that.

Soon the water was hot and Fargo hauled it to the washtub in the lean-to, pouring it in.

“There's lye soap on that shelf beside you,” she said, “and a scrap of towel. I'm gonna go dig up them duds pa mentioned.”

He unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it beside the tub. As he stripped out of the odious clothing and eased into the water, Fargo wasn't sure there was any fire behind Jasmine's smoke. He had indeed been with many women, and it wasn't always the ones who acted most forward who were quick to drop their linen. Besides, the idea of tupping a gal with her father only a few feet away didn't appeal to him—and that barren landscape outside hardly offered a leafy bower as love nest.

He could hear Old Billy's voice rising and getting more belligerent—the damn piker was getting drunk on free liquor. Fargo had to lather his sweaty, oily hair twice before it felt clean. He dunked his head to rinse it, and when he sat up cold steel kissed his left temple.

“Shit,” he said calmly, waiting for the bright-orange starburst inside his skull that signaled the end of the trail.

“Bang,” Jasmine said, tittering. “You're dead.”

“Why, you little vixen!”

Fargo grabbed the weapon from her and set it aside, then pulled her into the tub dress and all. He began smacking her soundly on that Georgia-peach ass, hard, resounding slaps that made her cry out in protest and wiggle like a puppy.

“Whale her a few for me, Skye!” Junebug shouted. “I've spared the rod too long with that sassy brat!”

Jasmine suddenly stopped squirming as her hand found Fargo's shaft. “
Here's
a rod we don't need to spare. Land o'Goshen, Skye, why's it so big and hard?”

“Same reason that spanking was so long—I liked what I was feeling.”

“You prob'ly like these, too, huh?”

Sloshing water over the brim of the tub, she shimmied until her dress was down to her hips. Fargo was duly impressed with the two puffy loaves with cocoa rings circling the protuberant nipples.

“I can't decide if I really like them until I sample them,” he assured her, bending his sopping head down to take one of the nipples into his mouth. He sucked and kissed it, throwing in a few nibbles for good measure. Undaunted by the crowd in the tub, she sighed and wiggled her butt.

“Yeah, I like 'em,” he finally reported.

She still had his turgid manhood gripped in her hand. When she tipped it back, Fargo's length made it easily clear the water.

“Think I'll return the favor,” she told him breathlessly, her hair fanning out in the water as she lowered her heartshaped lips onto him and began bobbing for apples. The part she couldn't get into her mouth she gripped with a thumb and forefinger, forming a tight cinch and pumping her hand up and down.

Fargo squirmed at the hot, tight, liquid pleasure pouring over his man gland. He interlaced his fingers in her thick hair and guided her as she got up a head of steam, fire on fire to the fuel inside him. The explosion began as a hot glow in his groin, a glow that turned into a tickling prickle that pulsed between his balls and his shaft.

She felt him growing iron hard in her mouth and moaned with excitement. Her head was bobbing as quick as a steam piston, her hand moving with a blur of speed. The pleasure in his staff finally reached its peak and Fargo exploded with a mighty gasp, hips bucking a dozen times before he made his conclusive thrust. Then he collapsed into the water like a rag puppet.

“My stars and garters!” she exclaimed through the delirium of his pleasure. “You ain't gone soft one bit! 'Pears I'll have to straddle you and tame that hungry beast.”

Fargo was helping her mount him when Old Billy's sly voice roared out, “Fargo, you're burning daylight! You've soaped your ears enough. Them three shit-kickers we sent packing will come back with a mob. The longer we tarry here, the more danger we put Junebug and Jasmine in. Time to light a shuck out of here.”

“Tell that old stain face to piss up a rope,” Jasmine pleaded.

“He's right,” Fargo said reluctantly. “He's always right at the wrong times.”