Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (24 page)

“I'll be et fir a tater,” Old Billy muttered. “I'm murdered and didn't even know it.”

“If you're the real Fargo,” Saunders interceded, looking at the man on the ledge, “when's the last time we saw each other?”

“In Powder River country. We got into a little frolic with some Northern Cheyenne renegades. Lasted three days. We holed up in an old grizzly den.”

Saunders nodded. “That's the straight.”

“That was in the newspapers,” Fargo interceded. “Let's ask Mr. Fargo here something that wasn't. F'rinstance, what did we drink when our canteens were empty?”

The Fargo on the ledge didn't miss a beat. “Why, the captain and me ate snow.”

Saunders loosed a peal of derisive laughter. “In
July
?”

Grinning, the Mormon officer turned to Fargo. “Well, what did we drink?”

“We drank our own piss,” Fargo replied bluntly. “We damn near puked it up. But somehow we held it down and were able to hang on another day.”

“There you have it,” Saunders announced. “No newspaper knew about that.”

Fargo pointed at the criminal standing above them, whose face had turned to whey above the neat line of his beard. “I'd send a couple men topside, Captain. I wager you'll find two murdered men up in the Crow's Nest—Butch Landry and Orrin Trap. The third member of the gang was killed last night in the outlander camps—Harlan Perry. They hired this maggot to get even with me for landing them in prison. I expect you'll also find an actor's doodads up there: fake beards, wigs, and such truck.”

“An actor's doodads?” the constable suddenly exclaimed. “Great day in the morning! Men, I've got dodgers on this man. He's James Gramlich, alias Deets. Wanted in San Francisco for murdering an actress.”

“Good work, Fargo,” Deets said. “Drink
this
piss.”

The Colt was only halfway out of the holster when Fargo's shooter, quicker than thought, leaped into his fist. He drilled Deets through the biceps; an eyeblink later Old Billy's bolos twirled rapidly through the air and wrapped the killer tight around the ankles. He was upended and went down hard on his ass. Several soldiers swarmed him.

“Nice shooting, Skye,” Saunders congratulated him. “Thanks for not killing him.”

“Kill him?” Fargo echoed, leathering his six-gun. “Captain, surely you jest? How could I kill a man that handsome ?”

Twenty days after the events in Bingham Canyon, Skye Fargo and Old Billy Williams mapped the last line station for the Pony Express. The grueling Great Salt Desert and Sierra Madre Occidental lay behind them, and a pleasant ride through fertile fields and lush forest to the Pony Express office in Sacramento was crowned by drawing the balance of their pay.

“I s'pose you'll want me to buy your supper,” Fargo remarked as the two men trotted their mounts down Union Street in downtown Sacramento.

“I was countin' on that,” Old Billy admitted. “Hell, a steak is four bits in this Sodom. Six, happens you want trimmings.”

Fargo shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, you piker, you just drew damn near four hundred dollars! Do you plan on burying it?”

“I do,” Old Billy said from a deadpan face.

Fargo slanted a glance toward him. “That's straight goods?”

Old Billy nodded. “I bury any money I get. Got caches all over the West, from California to the Indian Territory.”

“How the hell do you remember where they are?”

Billy tapped his temple with an index finger. “Mind maps. I'm damned if I'll mark them down on a real map. I can't write anyhow.”

“But what the hell good are they? Money is like women—you get the most good out of them when you can touch them.”

“This way, no matter where I go I always got money close to hand.”

“But what good is it,” Fargo pressed, “if you don't spend any of it?”

“Consarn it, Fargo, if I spend it I won't have it. Damn but you are thick in the head.”

Fargo shook his head again and gave up. At the last trading post Old Billy had swapped an eagle-bone whistle for a plug of eating tobacco. Now he pulled it from his possibles bag and used his penknife to slice off a chaw. He parked it in his cheek and got it juicing good. Fargo knew what was coming and tried to suppress a grin.

“You say that oat-burner of yours is partic'lar about his ears?” Billy asked Fargo.

“He is that,” Fargo replied, barely keeping a straight face.

“Good thing it's you in the saddle,” Billy said, suddenly leaning sideways and loosing a brown streamer. The bulk of it splattered against the Ovaro's right ear.

The Ovaro gave a shrill whinny and went low, hunkering on his hocks. Old Billy roared with laughter, waiting to see the stallion chin the moon and toss Fargo ass over applecart.

Instead, the enraged horse snaked his powerful neck around and grabbed Old Billy's thick leather belt in his teeth. One whip of his head pulled the startled man from the saddle and tossed him fifteen feet to the left. Old Billy landed smack in a mud puddle. With an audible gulp he swallowed the tobacco in his mouth.

Fargo exploded with laughter and was forced to hold the saddle horn to keep from falling himself. Old Billy sat there sputtering, turning as purple as his birthmark.

“Fargo, you weasel-dick, chicken-plucking, sheep-humping dog from hell! That ain't no goddamn horse, it's a four-legged devil!”

“I tried to warn you,” Fargo managed between fits of laughter. “My hand to God I did!”

Soon Billy, too, was suffering paroxysms of laughter. Passers-by stopped to stare at the two madmen. The laughter was infectious and before long everybody around them was laughing too. A sheriff's deputy hurried over to break it up but ended up laughing himself without even knowing why.

“Say,” he called to the Trailsman, “ain't you Skye Fargo?”

“I am,” the Trailsman replied, taking pleasure in saying it. “I really am.”

 

 

Out of the dark mountains rose a howl that made the man by the campfire sit up and take notice. Loud and fierce, it was unlike any howl he'd ever heard. It echoed off the high peaks and was swept away by the wind into the black pitch of the night.

Broad of shoulder and narrow at the hips, Skye Fargo wore buckskins and a white hat turned brown with dust. A red bandanna, boots, and a well-used Colt at his hip completed his attire. He held his tin cup in both hands and glanced at his Ovaro. “What the hell was that?”

Fargo made his living as a scout, among other things. He'd wandered the West from Canada to Mexico and from the muddy Mississippi River to the broad Pacific Ocean. In his travels he'd heard hundreds of howling wolves and yipping coyotes and not a few wailing dogs, but he'd never, ever, heard anything like the cry that just startled him. More bray than howl, it was the most savage cry he'd ever heard.

Fargo settled back and sipped some coffee. Whatever it was, the thing was a ways off. He leaned back on his saddle.

“In a week we'll be in Dallas. Oats and a warm stall for you and a fine filly and whiskey for me.”

The Ovaro had raised its head and pricked its ears at the howl. It looked at him and lowered its head to go back to dozing.

“Some company you are,” Fargo said, and chuckled. He drained the tin cup and set it down.

By the stars it was pushing midnight. Fargo intended to get a good rest and be up at the crack of dawn. He was deep in the Guadalupe Mountains, high on a stark ridge that overlooked the Hermanos Valley. A ring of boulders hid his fire from unfriendly eyes.

This was Apache country, and outlaws were as thick as fleas on an old hound.

Fargo laced his fingers on his chest and closed his eyes. He was on the cusp of slumber when a second howl brought him to his feet with his hand on his Colt.

The howl was a lot closer.

The Ovaro raised its head again. It sniffed and stomped a hoof, a sure sign it had caught the animal's scent and didn't like the smell.

Fargo circled the fire to the stallion's side. He wasn't overly worried. Wolves rarely attacked people, and despite the strangeness of the howl, it had to be a wolf. He waited for a repeat of the cry, and when more than five minutes went by and the night stayed quiet, he shrugged and returned to his blankets and the saddle.

“I'm getting jumpy,” he said to the Ovaro.

Pulling his hat brim low, Fargo made himself comfortable. He thought about the lady waiting for him in Dallas and the fine time they would have. She was an old acquaintance with a body as young and ripe as a fresh strawberry, and she loved to frolic under the sheets as much as he did. He couldn't wait.

Sleep claimed him. Fargo dreamed of Mattie and that body of hers. They were fit to bust a four-poster bed when another howl shattered the image. Instantly awake, he was out from under his blanket with the Colt in his hand before the howl died.

The short hairs at the nape of Fargo's neck pricked. The howl had been so close, he'd swear the thing was right on top of him.

The Ovaro was staring intently at a gap between two of the boulders.

Fargo sidled toward it. Warily, he peered out the opening, and broke out in gooseflesh.

A pair of eyes glared back at him. Huge eyes, like a wolf's, except that no wolf ever grew as large as the thing glaring at him. In the glow of the fire they blazed red like the eyes of a hell-spawned demon.

For all of ten seconds Fargo was riveted in disbelief. Then the red eyes blinked and the thing growled, and he shook himself and thumbed back the hammer. At the
click
the eyes vanished ; they were there and they were gone, and he thought he heard the scrape of pads on rock.

Breathless, Fargo backed to the Ovaro. The thing might be after the stallion.

As the minutes crawled on claws of tension, and silence reigned, he told himself the thing must be gone.

Fargo reclaimed his seat. He added fuel to the fire and refilled his battered tin cup. He'd wait awhile before turning in.

From time to time Fargo had heard tales of wild animals bigger than most. Up in the geyser country there once roamed a grizzly the size of a log cabin, or so the old trappers who had been there liked to say. The Dakotas told a story about a white buffalo twice the size of any that ever breathed. Up Canada way, several tribes claimed that deep in the woods there lived hairy giants.

Fargo never gave much credence to any of the accounts. Tall tales were just that, whether related by white men or red men. He didn't believe in giants and goblins. But those eyes he saw didn't belong to any ordinary-sized critter.

Fargo shrugged and put them from his mind. The thing had gone. The Ovaro was safe, and he should get some sleep. He put down the cup and eased back on his saddle, but it was a long while before he succumbed. The slightest noise woke him with a start.

Then came a noise that wasn't so slight: a scream torn from a human throat.