Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (4 page)

Landry was a compact, powerfully built man who could wrestle a seventeen-hand horse to the ground. His eyes were as black and fathomless as obsidian.

“Don't mention no goddamn calaboose,” drawled Harlan Perry, a big, raw-boned man who hailed from the hollows of Tennessee. “Ain't no son of a bitch born of woman ever hauling me to prison again.”

“Ease off,” Landry said. “We got away clean, didn't we? And if Deets earns his pay, Fargo will soon get a taste of what we ate. Remember, boys, under Mormon law no man can be executed without a year or two in prison for ‘penance.' Ain't that the shits?”

As he often did, Landry fell silent and stared at his folded hands atop the table. Their leader, the other two had learned long ago, was a brooder with an explosive temper that made him kill without warning. But when he murdered a federal paymaster in west Texas for taking too long to throw a strongbox down, the U.S. Army hired Skye Fargo to track down the gang.

As if plucking the thoughts from Landry's head, the third man at the table, Orrin Trapp, spoke up. “Of all the swinging dicks in the West, it just had to be Fargo they put on our dust.”

“Yeah,” Landry said, his face twisted and bitter. “But that son of a bitch is bound for hell.”

Fargo had dogged the trio into the rugged Big Bend country near the Rio Grande and trapped them in a rock canyon. In the ensuing shootout, Fargo's Henry sent a .54 caliber slug smashing into the head of Butch's kid brother, Ralston, spraying his brains all over Butch and unnerving the rest. Believing they faced a well-armed posse of Texas Rangers, Butch surrendered.

The three survivors spent the next five years at hard labor in a federal prison in Sedalia, Missouri. But with the help of crooked guards they engineered their escape. And now Butch had made turnabout the mission of his life—gunning Fargo down would be too merciful. With the help of Mormon law and James “Deets” Gramlich, Butch meant to put Fargo in prison before he faced the gallows.

Orrin didn't look too convinced. He had a vulpine face with mistrustful eyes constantly darting like minnows. They stayed in motion now, watching the dozen or so patrons in the dingy watering hole.

“I don't trust this son of a bitch Deets,” he complained to Landry. “All that high-blown talk of his. He uses them thirty-five-cent words a man's never heard before. I got no use for a man what talks like a book.”

“Katy Christ!” Butch swore at his minion. “Orrin, don't you never look a man in the eye when you talk at him? It unstrings my damn nerves.”

However, there was no real venom behind his words. Orrin was an expert with a knife, especially the wide-bladed Spanish dag he carried behind his red sash—Butch had watched him slice a man's torso open at twenty paces, a useful skill when guns weren't practical.

“I don't trust Deets either,” Butch admitted. “But so long as we keep supplying him with yeller boys, he'll walk his chalk. Matter of fact, could be he earned his pay already up at Fort Bridger. We'll know soon enough.”

“I sorta cotton to Deets,” Harlan Perry chimed in. “And I like the plan you cooked up, Butch. Thanks to the newspapers, everybody knows exactly where Fargo is going to be—tracking the route of the Pony Express. We know exactly where he is, but he don't know from beans where we are. Hell, prob'ly don't even know yet that we busted out.”

Butch nodded, grinning with self-satisfaction. “Now you're whistling, Harlan. And that ain't the half of it—
we
don't even have to bust a cap at Fargo and neither does Deets. That slick son of a bitch
is
Fargo now. Won't be long, the worm will turn, boys.”

Landry grabbed the bottle and took a sweeping-deep slug from it. “Mark my words—Fargo will rot in a Mormon prison and then dance on air. And we get to watch the whole thing like it was a play—a play just for us.”

 

By the time a bloodred sun blazed its last and disappeared below the horizon, Fargo and Old Billy had pitched camp in the lee of a knoll about fifteen miles south of Fort Bridger. Despite the furnace-hot days it was only early spring, and temperatures varied as much as forty degrees from day to night. The men had dug a fire pit and circled it with rocks, building a fire of dead juniper wood.

Both men carried goatskins of water lashed to their mounts, and they watered their horses from their hats, tying on feedbags of crushed barley—graze was sporadic in northeastern Utah and would get even scarcer. Fargo would use his letter of credit from William Russell to buy more grain and other supplies in Salt Lake City.

“That's mighty fancy scribblin',” Old Billy remarked, watching over Fargo's shoulder. “You ain't had no schooling, Fargo. Where'd you learn to make maps?”

Fargo finished making a curving contour line to pinpoint the last line-station location they had selected, some three miles back. He worked on a piece of broken plank spread across his thighs, sturdy topographical paper flattened against it.

“It's no proper map,” he admitted. “I've scouted for the Topographical Corps so many times I picked up some tricks.”

“Them there wavy lines you're making—how come they alla sudden go flat in the back?”

“That's to indicate a cliff they can use for protection on one side. And this grid line here shows that embankment we looked at—it can be used as one wall for the station and the livery barn. That's two directions they don't have to worry about being attacked from.”

Old Billy poured more coffee from the blue enameled pot sitting near the fire. “Fargo, they hired the right man when they signed you on. You been bustin' your hump to find the safest locations for these line stations.”

“That's my job.” Fargo looked up at Billy in the flickering firelight. “I don't like this, Billy. I don't like it at all.”

“Don't like what? The money, the food, or my company?”

“No, you numbskull,
this
. All these damn line stations spread out ten to fifteen miles apart in the middle of Robin Hood's barn.”

“Why, what's your dicker in it? You yourself said the best protection these young, scrawny riders will have is their size and their fresh horses. How they gonna have fresh horses without plenty of line stations?”

“It's not the riders,” Fargo protested, “who'll have the most to worry about. They'll be galloping the whole time. But the stations have to be manned—cooks, wranglers, likely a stationmaster. They'll be sitting ducks for warpath Indians and road gangs. Soldiers and law dogs are scarce as hen's teeth out here.”

Billy nodded. “I take your point. But it's none of our mix, Fargo. We got our own spectac'lar dangers to lock horns with. You can't mollycoddle the next man out West. It's every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”

“Most of that bluster is right,” Fargo agreed, “except the ‘every man for himself' part. I s'pose you were only looking out for yourself when Dot Kreeger got blood in her eyes and damn near aired me out?”

“Why, hell yes. I flipped the bolos around her on account if she done for you, I'd be out of a good job. I can't make maps nor scout like you.”

“Yeah, I forgot about that, you heartless bastard.” Fargo returned to his location-and-contour map. But four words kept echoing in memory and dancing across his map:

Old Billy must have been thinking the same thing. “Fargo, you think this yahoo what attacked Ginny actually looks like you, or is he got up to look like you?”

“It would pain me, Billy, to think another man shared these good looks.”

Old Billy snorted. “A bunch of
females
are good-looking. You are a vain son of a bitch. I've seen that looking-glass in your saddle pocket.”

“If I was as ugly as you, I'd avoid mirrors, too.”

“I
like
being ugly. It scares Injuns, and I don't have no jealous husbands trying to hind-end me with buckshot just because their woman looks at me. Say . . . speaking of good-looking females, that Dot Kreeger and her girl is both easy to look at. Happens I had my choice, I'd park my boots under the old lady's bed. She's built like a Lancaster wagon.”

Fargo had to agree. She was built so fetchingly, in fact, that he was convinced she was wearing a corset. But she had been naked under that dress.

“Let's change the subject,” Fargo suggested. “I'm womanstarved lately.”

“All right, then. I take it you noticed them featherheads watching us from a distance while we looked over that last line-station location?”

Fargo nodded. “Utes, right?”

“Utes. You can always tell them far off on account they got no topknot and they always stand sideways to whatever they're watching.”

Fargo stretched his back. “Couldn't've been a war party or they would have attacked us.”

“Nah. The Mormons have pacified them with all sorts of presents and such. Still, they bear watching. There's renegade bands around.”

“Damn straight,” Fargo said. “I tangled with a couple of them in the Salt Desert.”

“I've locked horns with more than a couple,” Billy said. “I won't rate the Ute warrior as high as an Apache or Comanche, but they are six sorts of trouble. Mayhap we best do turnabout on guard tonight. I'll roust you when the pole star is high.”

Billy farted loudly. “Whoa! Did an angel speak? Kiss for ya, Fargo.”

Fargo laid his Henry beside his bedroll, unbuckled his gun belt, and crawled into his blanket, laying his head on his saddle. But as he waited for sleep to claim him, he thought back on the trouble so far. He and Billy had barely survived scrapes along the North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers as well as a set-to with Teton Sioux where the Green River and Mormon Trail met.

And the worst was yet to come in the vast Utah Territory's imposing mountains and deserts. Fargo watched the fiery explosion of stars overhead and thought about the fear in Ginny's eyes when he went inside that tent. No two ways about it, he thought—he would soon be trapped between a sawmill and a shootout.

On the morning after the incident at Fort Bridger, James “Deets” Gramlich sat his pinto stallion atop a long ridge overlooking the freight road to Salt Lake City. For a half hour he had been monitoring the slow progress of a sturdy four-in-hand prairie schooner headed due west from the direction of South Pass.

He had not seen it during his quick reconnoiter of Fort Bridger on the night before the attack on Ginny Kreeger—meaning they were probably well-stocked and didn't waste time cutting north to the fort. Or so Deets hoped. The less they knew, the better.

He pulled a small telescope from his saddlebag and got a better look at the man and woman on the leather-padded springboard seat. Deets loosed an appreciative whistle as he examined the woman. A crisp linen bonnet could not disguise her healthy mass of red curls nor the wing-shaped eyes and delicately carved cheekbones.

“General Taylor,” he announced to his horse, “Skye Fargo got lucky yesterday, but now the good fortune is all mine.”

Deets switched his view to the man driving the wagon and decided to play this real careful. The fellow looked strong and well-armed, wearing a brace of pistols—a smart idea out here. What the hell were they doing traveling alone—were they moon crazy? After the failure yesterday at Fort Bridger, Deets considered this turn in the trail a killer's cornucopia.

He took up the reins and wheeled around behind the ridge, deciding it would be best to meet the couple head-on. He spurred the black-and-white stallion to a lope, then to a gallop, not reining down toward the road until a sharp bend would hide him and his dust. He threaded his way through a tumble of boulders and hit the road traveling east.

By the time he had spotted them, they had pulled into a little juniper thicket to cook a meal and water the team. Deets slowed to a trot. Seeing a rider approach, the man stepped out to the road with his right palm resting on the butt of a Remington repeater.

Deets reined in and flashed a smile through his close-cropped beard. “Hallo, stranger. Mighty queer place to be traveling on your own.”

“For a fact,” the man agreed, eyeing him closely. “The party we were with up and decided, back at South Pass, to join a group on the Oregon Trail. But that would take us way the hell north of the Sierra goldfields. We've got one of Lansford Stratton's maps showing the southern route to the Humboldt River, so we struck out on our own.”

Damn fools, Deets gloated. He had sold a few of those worthless maps himself. They showed water holes and good graze west of Salt Lake City that didn't exist—just endless salt desert. These two were marked for carrion anyway—he'd be doing them a favor. But the woman, when he was done with her, would have to live.

“The name's Mitt Tipton,” the man volunteered, shading his eyes to see the rider better. “This here is my wife, Louise. We hail from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I'm a cooper by trade, and when I heard of the need for barrels in the goldfields, I figured I might as well start my own cooperage there.”

While he spoke, the man had been studying Deets with an attention the latter was beginning to enjoy. It was one of those your-name's-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue looks. Now Louise Tipton stepped forward, flashing a mouthful of pretty white teeth.

Deets said, “My name—”

“Is Skye Fargo,” she finished for him in an excited tone. “Mitt, recall that picture I showed you from
Putnam's Monthly
? This man's the spitting image.”

“Why, so he is! The buckskins, the black-and-white stallion, the beard—why, this is an honor, Mr. Fargo! Won't you light down and have some coffee and scrapple with us?”