Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) (6 page)

Why Utah?

Because, his racing mind answered his own question, under Mormon law lynchings were illegal and strictly punished, as was vigilante action. Criminals, even those bound for the gallows, served one to two years in prison as “penitents” to save their souls. And Mormon prisons meant backbreaking labor, cold stone floors for beds, and weevil-infested bread and stale water for nourishment. And unlike back east, bust-outs were unheard of.

Somebody, Fargo realized, bore him a grudge beyond all grudges. And so far at least one innocent person was dead, another raped and slashed up, in the sick quest for revenge. If he didn't bring this to a screeching whoa mighty damn quick, even a disguise wouldn't save him.

Fargo shaved, nicking himself numerous times because of his unfamiliarity with a razor. For good measure he pulled the curved skinning knife from Billy's saddle and hacked off handfuls of his hair, bringing it up around his ears.

Fargo felt his new-shorn face and frowned. “Christ, feels like a baby's ass,” he muttered, considering his beloved beard one more casualty of the “deadly double” killer.

The horses had received rough treatment during this latest job, so he stripped the Appaloosa down to the neck leather and gave it a good rubdown and currying. After that he broke down and cleaned all of his weapons, even whetting his Arkansas toothpick on a flat stone.

As promised, Old Billy returned well before sunset with a parcel tied to the saddle.

At his first sight of Fargo the old Indian fighter started to draw his fancy sidearm. Then, his discolored face registering shock, he sputtered with laughter and almost slid from the saddle.

“Fargo, is that you? Hoss, you look like one a them whatchacallits—a cherub! I'm embarrassed to cut a fart around you.”

“I look different, don't I?”

“Different? I'll tell the world! You could be a preacher or mayhap one a them singers on a riverboat.”

“Stick a sock in it,” Fargo snapped as Old Billy lit down. “Let me see them duds you got me.”

Old Billy assumed a look of exaggerated innocence. “Now remember, pard, Echo Canyon ain't exactly the Ladies' Mile. They only got one mercantile, and the offerings is mighty skimpy.”

Fargo broke the string with his teeth and tore off the wrapping paper. He shook out a new shirt and stared, speechless: It was a bright canary yellow with gaudy blue piping down the front.

“Fella claimed it's all the rage back in the States,” Old Billy reported, barely managing a straight face. “Mighty popular for cider parties and such.”

Fargo loosed a string of curses. “You cantankerous son of a bitch! The whole point is
not
to draw attention to myself. This thing will make a blind man take notice. You did this on purpose.”

Old Billy flung his arms wide. “Do you believe for one blessed minute that anybody on God's green earth would expect to find Skye Fargo in
that
war shirt?”

Fargo was still steamed, but it was a good point. “What about the trousers?”

“Sturdy corduroy.”

Fargo shook them out, lips curling in disgust at the very idea of wearing store-bought clothing. “Christ, Billy, I can see they're way too small. The bottoms will barely reach my boots.”

Old Billy shrugged, barely meeting his eye. “All they had, son. All they had.”

“You're a damn liar. These look to be exactly your size, not mine.”

“Now that's a libel on me. But so what if it's maybe true? You'll just be getting yourself killed soon, and hell, that corduroy wears good. Somebody oughter get the use of 'em.”

Fargo gave up and started stripping out of his buckskins. “Did the Ovaro cause you any trouble in Echo Canyon?”

“A few men tossed some curious looks my way. But when they seen the ugly cuss riding him . . . it's just like you said. I saw a few other black-and-white pintos there.”

“The killer could own one of them. See any other stallions ?”

“Not so's you'd notice, but hell, I didn't crawl under 'em to see if they was cut. There's news, though. A woman driving a four-in-hand rode in before me. Young woman, I hear, and a looker. Says her husband was murdered on the freight road by you.”

Fargo, busy wrestling with the button loops on the shirt, glanced up. “She still there?”

Old Billy nodded. “She's joined a small group of pilgrims at the north end of the canyon. Name's Louise Tipton. According to one old biddy I heard talking at the mercantile, she won't swear it was you.”

“We have to talk to her,” Fargo resolved as he struggled mightily to get the cords over his hips. “She might've noticed something Ginny Kreeger didn't.”

“Speaking of noticing things,” Old Billy said, breaking into a fit of sputtering laughter, “them cords fit you like them tights in the Romeo and Juliet days. The gals are gonna
notice
you just fine, Trailsman.”

“Hey, where's my money?” Fargo demanded. “I gave you twenty dollars. These pathetic rags didn't cost near that much.”

Old Billy glanced at his boots. “Now, I told you prices is high in the canyon.”

Fargo gave a long, fuming sigh. “You damn liar. Billy, what the hell do you
do
with all the money you beg, borrow, and steal? You won't pay for a drink, you never go to the whores, and you leave a card game the moment you lose a dime.”

“Don't push it, Fargo. It's none of your beeswax.”

Fargo surrendered with a shrug and practiced walking in his skintight pants. “The name's not Fargo anymore, savvy? My name is Frank Scully, and you're Jim Lawson. We're both hunters by trade and we're headed out to the Sierra gold camps to hire out. Got all that?”

Old Billy nodded. “Them's the same summer names we used back in Kansas when we busted that smuggling ring.”

“They were good luck then, and I'm hoping they will be now. Let's wait another half hour and then ride to Echo Canyon. I want to make sure it's dark before I arrive in this clown outfit.”

 

Echo Canyon was small and deep with sheer vertical walls of striated rock. It provided easy access, on its west side, because of a brisk-flowing creek. A raging river aeons ago, it had carved out a path through the rock. The clean, cold water and shade trees had begun drawing pilgrims back in the 1840s.

With pilgrims, however, came merchants, gamblers, and owlhoots. With only the law of the gun to maintain order, bullyboys and professional gunmen holed up there, often on the dodge from Mormon law. Three of them—Butch Landry, Orrin Trapp, and Harlan Perry—had selected a campsite near the entrance to the canyon. Nobody rode in or out without their knowledge.

“Deets done it up good today,” Landry told his companions as he poked at the fire with a stick to stir it up. “Killed some cooper named Mitt and then raped his wife.”

“Now, see, that's the part I don't get,” Orrin said. “I seen the woman when she rode in, and she's some pumpkins. You could hang a shelf on her tits. And here we are,
paying
Deets for gettin' under her petticoats.”

Landry snorted. “Orrin, what's wrong with you and what doctor told you so? The quiff don't matter—it's getting the blame put on Fargo. And word's all over the canyon how Fargo done the dirty deeds. The woman named him.”

Orrin's fox face looked even sharper in the dancing firelight. His eyes darted everywhere except toward the man he was speaking to. “To chew it fine, Butch, she named him but said she wasn't sure it was him.”

“Hell, in a place like this that's good enough evidence. Won't nobody care about Mormon law—they'll cut him down the moment he shows up. We can't have that.”

“Maybe he won't show up,” suggested the third man, Harlan Perry. “We didn't find the son of a bitch all that predictable when he corralled us.”

A long silence followed this truism.

“He'll show,” Butch predicted confidently. “He made a point out of talking to the first woman Deets attacked, that Ginny somebody up at Fort Bridger. He'll want to palaver with this one, too.”

“I don't know,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “This plan of yours, Butch—it seems a mite too fancy.”

“You wouldn't say that if Fargo killed
your
kid brother.”

“Well, if you wanna see him suffer before he dies, we'll just strip him of his weapons and I'll beat the bastard into pudding.”

The others knew this was no hollow boast. The huge Tennessean had once fought bare-fisted for the U.S Navy until he got drunk and beat a sailor to death for snoring. Perry preferred to beat his enemies rather than shoot them—beat them until they were crippled or dead.

“Harlan ain't no schoolmaster,” Orrin put in, “but I think he's talking horse sense. Of course we need to plant Fargo and get revenge for Ralston. But this scheme of yours—it's eating up time we could spend pulling jobs. And I don't trust Deets—that fucker is tricky as a redheaded woman. Let's just ambush Fargo and shoot him to rag tatters.”

Butch slowly shook his head. “You two just can't see it. You got no sense of what they call poetic justice.”

One of the horses snuffled in the dark and Butch glanced that way quickly.

“Poetic justice?” Orrin repeated. “You wanna chew that a little finer?”

“Hearken and heed. Now, Skye Fargo ain't no scrubbed angel, right? He's a brawler and a womanizer, and he's got his name writ on the walls of plenty of frontier jails. But bone deep, he's a gentleman. One inkslinger called him a knight in buckskins. Serious crime ain't his gait. He'll look the other way when it comes to bootlegging or confidence games, but woe betide the murderer or rapist who crosses his path.”

“All right,” Orrin said, “so he's a crusader. What of it?”

“That's my point, chucklehead. If we just kill him the way you and Harlan want to, he dies a crusader. And out West legends grow taller than weeds. Doing it my way, we don't just kill Fargo—we kill the legend. And legends live a lot longer than men.”

A column of sparks rose out of the fire, and all three men watched it.

“All that shines right to me,” Harlan finally said. “Kill the legend with the man.”

“I like it too,” Orrin put in. “But I still don't trust Deets. That jasper ain't showing all his cards. You oughter left him back in Placerville.”

“I think he's a weasel dick,” Harlan agreed. “That son of a bitch would shoot a nun for her gold tooth.”

“Deets is a one-man outfit,” Butch conceded. “He's in it to win it—for himself. But as long as we keep his pocket full of rocks, he'll dance to our tune. Later, when Fargo is rotting in a Mormon prison and headed for a hanging, we'll solve the problem of Deets. We—”

“Shush it!” Orrin cut in. “Listen.”

Above the soughing of wind and the brawling of water, they could hear hoof clops approaching along the solid rock bordering the creek. Riders were entering the canyon.

“Harlan,” Butch said, his tone urgent. “Grab the pail and make like you're getting water. There's a full moon tonight; you should get a good look at their faces. But just in case one of them is Fargo, don't give him a good look at you.”

The big man hurried toward the creek. Along the opposite wall of the canyon perhaps a dozen big fires burned—the camp where the pilgrims had congregated to protect each other until they got out of Echo Canyon.

“Stupid sons of bitches,” Butch said, spitting into the fire. “Thought they had it bad back in the States—rent was too high, jobs scarce, or maybe they got sick of scratching in the dirt for a few potatoes. Nobody told them about red savages, bone-dry deserts, rattlesnakes, or mountain fever.”

“Or hombres like us,” Orrin added.

Both men laughed. They knew that, out West, a man was just a face with a name. Nobody cared about his history—and nobody cared much about his future either. On the frontier few things were cheaper than a man's life.

“Speaking of pilgrims,” Orrin said, “you heard any more about that Louise Tipton?”

“Nary a word. Yancy Johnson, that big Swede who shoes horses and mends harnesses, says she won't come out of her wagon. Don't seem likely Fargo will coax her out, if he's foolish enough to try.”

“If he shows his face in this canyon by day, Butch,” Orrin pointed out, “we'll never see him in prison
or
on a gallows.”

“He knows that. Fargo's got a mind like a steel trap. Our job is to make sure he
doesn't
get killed here or anyplace else. It has to be Mormon soldiers or a Mormon posse that take him.”

A shadow approached and then Harlan Perry's rawboned features were limned in the firelight.

“Well?” Butch demanded.

“Neither one of them was Fargo,” Perry responded. “One was the stranger who rode in earlier today—about Orrin's size. He's riding a black-and-white pinto stallion, all right, but it ain't Fargo. Neither was the other one. He was shaved smooth with short hair and wearing a shirt that would make a horse blush. He's riding an Appaloosa.”

Butch pondered all this. “The second man,” he said, “wide shoulders?”

Harlan scratched his chin. “Reckon I didn't notice.”

“Tall?”

“Now you mention it, he sat pretty high in the saddle.”

Butch brooded over all this for a full minute. “I don't like it, boys. A pinto, all right. But a stallion? I say we best find out where these two put down for the night.”

Both men stripped the horses and rubbed them down with burlap, then led them to the creek and let them tank up.