Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (3 page)

Fargo did look. Her pretty face was stained by two grapecolored bruises, one eye nearly swollen shut. Dot pulled her skirt up to show neat swathes of bandages on her thighs.

“No need to pull my skirt up for him,” the girl spat out. “He's already done that.”

“Ginny,” Doc Atkins said, “that's impossible. Fargo has been playing cards with me and three other men for the past four hours. Before that, I saw him shoeing his horse.”

“Then he's got a twin brother, Doc,” Ginny insisted. “One who wears the same buckskins with old blood on the fringes. And the same hat and beard—and wears a walnut-handle gun and carries a big knife in his boot. You ever seen twins like that?”

Fargo took his hat off and flipped it aside, placing his hands on his knees and leaning closer to the girl. She pulled back.

“Ginny,” he said, “I know you're upset, and who could blame you? But take a good look at me—for a full minute just study my face.”

Clearly she didn't want to, but neither could she tear her eyes from this handsome man with the calm, compelling manner. Silently, seriously, she scrutinized him.

“The hair,” he finally said. “Is it exactly like your attacker's?”

She looked uncertain. “Well . . . his
did
seem to have a bit more curl in it. And just maybe it was a little darker.”

“The eyes?”

She squinted. “They was blue but . . . more like a slate blue. Yours look the color of lake water.”

“The mouth and beard?”

“The beard was just the same, short and brown and real thick. But the mouth . . . it was meaner somehow, I think.”

“What about his build, hon?” Dot coaxed.

“Well . . .” She ran her gaze up and down his length. “He was just as tall, I 'spose. But this man's shoulders look a little wider.”

“Are you still sure,” Doc Atkins said, “that this is the man who attacked you?”

“I . . . when I take a fast look, yes. But when I go part by part, I can't swear to it.”

She sent Fargo a tentative smile. “This man is decent. You can see it in him. The other is the lowest trash though he knows how to hide it.”

“Did you hear his voice?” Fargo asked.

She nodded. “It was nice, like yours. Until he got mean.”

Fargo retrieved his hat and straightened up. “One last favor, Ginny. In a bit I'll be riding out with my partner. We'll need to know exactly where this attack took place. And may we stop back here so you can take a good look at my horse? I want to know how the two size up.”

“Yes. You're going after him, aren'tcha, Mr. Fargo?”

Fargo nodded once. “That I am. I've got a job to do, but I've got a hunch his trail will cross mine.”

She looked satisfied. “I've read stuff about you. Kill the son of a bitch.”

Fargo's lips twitched into a grin. “He made the call, Ginny. Now it's root hog or die.”

 

With a huge yellow sun starting to wester, Fargo and Old Billy tacked their horses for the trail. Fargo cast an uneasy eye at the knot of men starting to gather around the big livery barn.

“Word's got out about Ginny,” Fargo muttered as he tossed on saddle and pad. “Doc Atkins must be taking our side or they'd have collared us by now.”

“Doc Atkins, my sweet aunt,” Old Billy shot back as he fastened his golden Appaloosa's bridle latch. “These clabber-lipped pilgrims know me and you are death to the devil.
Let
the milk-kneed boardwalkers try to arrest me—there'll be new widows and orphans aplenty.”

Fargo's strong white teeth flashed through his beard as he cinched the girth. “Billy, you smell like a whorehouse at low tide and there's nothing but rough sides to your tongue. But I'd rather have you siding me than a whole troop of cavalry.”

“This from a man who needed to be saved from a woman. Christ, Fargo, do children bully you, too?”

Fargo swung up onto the hurricane deck and wheeled the Ovaro around. Some of the faces were growing uglier as a few drunk gentiles worked them into a white-hot fever.

Fargo jerked the Henry from his saddle boot and jacked a round into the chamber. “If any of you boys are feeling froggy,” he invited, “go ahead and jump.”

Billy followed suit, pulling out his Greener 12-gauge express gun. “My name is Old Billy Williams,” he announced in his rasping voice, “I'm strong as horseradish and I like to kill—goddamn if I don't. I double hog-tie
dare
any of you to make a play. Ain't one of you spineless sons of bitches fit to wipe my ass, and I can send twenty of you across the mountains quick as a hungry man can eat a biscuit.”

Fargo knew that wasn't an empty boast. Like most Indian fighters who worked alone, Old Billy was a walking arsenal. Besides the Greener for close-in work, he toted around a seven-shot Spencer carbine. For more personal encounters he wore a fancy repeater made by Brasher of London with ivory grips and a folding knife under the barrel. When it was do or die, he resorted to the double-bladed Cherokee hatchet in his legging sash.

“Williams, the hell you doing takin' the part of a rapist?” demanded a surly, anonymous voice.

“Rape?” Fargo laughed. “There's Mormon soldiers here. You think they'd let me ride out if I raped a woman? Sell your ass, you damn fool.”

A few of the men nodded at this logic and drifted off. Fargo and Billy gigged their horses in the direction of the gentile camp.

“Fargo, this hombre that looks like you is trouble,” Old Billy opined. “We need to find the bastard and irrigate his guts.”

“God's truth, old son. But we also signed a contract with a tight deadline. There's a good piece of country ahead of us yet before we reach Sacramento—the hardest piece, too.”

“Uh-huh. You think this Pony Express will ever show color?”

Fargo snorted, making the Ovaro prick up his ears. “It was never meant to. I talked to William Russell and Alexander Majors myself back in St. Louis. They admitted the whole thing will sink in less than a year.”

“Christ! Then why take it out of the gate?”

“You know how it is out West. The competition for freighting contracts is fierce. At one time Russell, Majors, and Waddell had the whole range to themselves. Now Overland, Creighton, and other haulers are cutting off much of the grass. The Pony is creating plenty of hoopla, and they're hoping to be the big men on the totem pole once more.”

Billy shook his head in disgust. “It's like wasting water to make it rain. Well, long as we get
our
shiners.”

By now they'd trotted their mounts to the front of the Kreeger tent.

“Mrs. Kreeger,” Fargo called as he swung down, holding the reins. “Is Ginny up to coming outside?”

“We're on our way, Mr. Fargo.”

“That Dot Kreeger is a fine specimen of woman flesh,” Billy muttered from the saddle. “You gonna trim her, Fargo?”

“Pleasant as that might be,” Fargo replied, “all I want right now is to show this place my dust.”

The two women emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight.

“Lord,” Old Billy whispered, “yoke the two of 'em and we'll work as a team.”

“I have good ears, sir,” Dorothy Kreeger said.

“Beg pardon, ma'am,” Old Billy said. “I'll launder my talk.”

“Better yet,” Fargo told him, “don't talk at all, you chucklehead.”

He turned to Ginny, who was leaning on her mother. “Is this the same horse you saw earlier? Take your time and look close.”

She did, hobbling around the Ovaro for a complete study.

“Well, they sure do look powerful similar,” she finally said. “The color is just right, and so is the saddle. The markings . . . you know how it is with a paint. I can't swear those are alike.”

“How 'bout size and shape?” Fargo pressed.

Ginny looked some more. “The two seem as tall. But this horse seems to have more muscle in its . . .”

She pointed.

“Haunches?” Fargo supplied.

“Yes. And this one seems deeper in its chest.”

Fargo nodded. “Now, where's the exact spot where you were attacked, Ginny?”

She pointed. “I went out the south gate. There's irrigated fields out there for about a mile. The last two are hayfields divided by the only trail. I was at the edge of the left field when he rode up.”

“Was he coming from camp or toward it?”

“Toward it.”

Fargo thanked both women and forked leather. As the two men headed for the gate, he realized he had jumped over a snake this time: He had a bulletproof alibi in the form of that poker game.

Next time, Fargo realized, he wouldn't likely be so lucky. And “justice,” in the lawless Far West, was usually more swift than certain.

Fargo and Old Billy rode the narrow lane side by side through the irrigated fields, Mormon field hands watching them from lidded gazes.

“Word got out fast,” Billy remarked. “Looks like you're totin' the no-good label, Fargo.”

The Trailsman was relaxed in the saddle but vigilant, his sun-slitted gaze missing nothing.

“Looks that way,” he agreed cheerfully. “But if I'm the King Rat, what's that make you for siding me?”

“What I've always been. A low-down, whiskey-suckin', mother-lovin' son of the sagebrush.”

“You only suck whiskey when somebody else planks their cash. What do you do with your money, save it for your trousseau?”

“Fargo, give over with all these questions about my money. You best put your brain toward this hombre that's raping and cutting women in your name. Word's bound to spread, you know. We could both end up with our tits in the wringer. I want to finish this job—the wages is damn good.”

Fargo conceded all this with a grim nod. “Yeah, that's the deal, all right. It's a mite curious, huh?”

Old Billy popped a horehound candy into his mouth. “Curious ? Fargo, a two-headed cow is curious. This here is downright baffling.”

Fargo nodded again but said nothing. He held the Ovaro to an easy trot in the wagon-rutted lane. Fort Bridger had been built here to take advantage of a natural plateau suited for cropland. But not far beyond the southern edge of the fields, the rugged Utah landscape took over. Hills, some threatening to become small mountains, were interspersed with wind-scrubbed knolls and lofty mesas. Purple sage formed a moving carpet with waves rolling through it when the wind gusted. The hills dotted with bluebonnets and daisies, the green expanses of buffalo grass, were well behind them now.

“This looks like the spot,” he said, drawing rein. “See where the hay was beat down? That's where our mystery man raped Ginny.”

“She says she was raped,” Billy gainsaid, lighting down and tossing his reins forward. “Wouldn't be the first gal that gave some fellow the go sign and then got in over her head.”

“Could be,” Fargo agreed. “But she sure as hell didn't give him the go sign to slice her up like a Sunday ham. Besides, I ain't worried so much about that. If she's telling the straight about this jasper's appearance and horse, I'm the one's in a world of shit.”

“Could be she
ain't
telling the straight,” Old Billy suggested as Fargo went down on his haunches to study the edge of the trail. “Hell, you're famous, Fargo, you old pussy hound. And life around this hole is about as exciting as a bucket of sheep dip. Could be that gal flopped in the hay with some trail tramp who cut her up and made tracks out of here. So she turned him into Skye Fargo to get some attention.”

Fargo bent his face even closer to a track that caught his eye. “Nah. Look at it with the bark still on it. Trouble follows me, and trouble follows you. This fellow is real enough, all right. But what's his play?”

Fargo reached into one of the prints and pinched the dirt. “A few hours old, is all. He didn't picket or hobble his mount, just left it half in the hay, half on the trail. His horse's rear offside shoe is a mite loose.”

Old Billy, better at cutting sign on Indians than whites, looked puzzled. “How the hell you know that?”

“Look at the print close—you can see it's smudged. A loose shoe will do that.”

Fargo began sifting carefully through the flattened hay, searching for clues. His patience paid off when his fingers extracted a small piece of foolscap folded once. He opened it up and read the four-word note before handing it to Old Billy.

“Fargo, you jughead, you know I can't read nor cipher. The hell's it say?”

Fargo glanced at it again. “ ‘Death's second self, Fargo.' ”

Old Billy's homely face puckered with confusion. “That's the whole shootin' match?”

Fargo nodded.

“It's too far north for me. The hell's it mean?”

Fargo heaved a weary sigh and glanced all around them. “It means Ginny was likely telling the truth. And you and me got trouble on our tail.”

 

In the western reaches of the Unitah Mountains, two days' ride northeast of Salt Lake City, lay the crude outpost of Echo Canyon. It was a place most pilgrims avoided, if possible. If not, they crossed their fingers, loaded their weapons, and stayed in groups for self-protection.

It was a double handful of tar-papered shacks and boasted neither hotel nor school nor church. However, there were four grog shops always doing a lively trade. In the most nefarious of these establishments, a trio of rough, unusually pale men sat nursing a bottle of wagon-yard whiskey.

“Well, boys,” said Butch Landry, wiping his lips on his sleeve and passing the bottle around, “by now Skye Fargo might be cooling his heels in a Mormon calaboose.”