“Get down off your horse.”
“Guess you didn’t hear me about my cousin Bobby Wayne.”
“I’m not worried about Bobby Wayne. I’m taking you to the next town on.”
“That’d be Tillman, I think. They’ve got quite a Fourth of July celebration there, I’m told. In fact, that’s where I’m headed now. Old friend of mine—did a lot of work for him in my time—he offered me a job. I’m thinkin’ about takin’ it. Thought I’d get some cash pulled together before I got there. That’s where you came in, Fargo. You’ve got a nice price on your head.”
“Down off the horse—after you pitch that six-gun and that rifle down here first.”
Adams shook his head in mock grief again. “Awful thing that you don’t trust me, Fargo.”
Fargo used his Colt to put a bullet right through the highest point of Adams’s battered, greasy old hat. The hat didn’t sail off, just slanted to the right on Adams’s large head.
“Nice shootin’, Fargo.”
“The Colt first. Then the Henry.”
When Adams moved his right hand too quickly toward his holster, Fargo put another bullet close to him, about half an inch from Adams’s gun hand. “Slow and easy, Adams. Don’t give me any excuse to kill you. Because I’ll take it.”
“I was just doin’ what you told me, Fargo.” You couldn’t see his sneer now but you could certainly hear it in his voice.
Fargo watched him carefully.
Adams slid the Colt from the holster, dangled it daintily by its handle, and then dropped it into the sun-baked dust of the road. He looked as if he’d been handling a piece of feces. Giving in to the Trailsman was obviously not good for the bounty hunter’s pride.
“Now the rifle.”
“You’re a hard man, Fargo.” Mocking him, of course.
“Just throw it down, Adams.”
And then it happened.
Fargo had to give the man credit. He was able to drop the rifle to the dusty road with one hand while at the same time, with the other hand, draw a small revolver from the folds of his buckskin.
Adams got the first shot off, dropping from his horse an instant later.
Fargo threw himself to the ground. There wasn’t time to get back behind the pines. He rolled away from Adams’s horse just as Adams started firing at him. Adams was down on one knee, getting his shots away from under the belly of his animal.
“Looks like I’m givin’ the orders now, Fargo.”
He clipped off two more shots, making Fargo roll behind some brush on the roadside. The tangled growth gave Fargo the only cover he could find. “Give up now, Adams. Go in peaceful.”
“Hell, man, you’re gonna be dead in a couple minutes. I’ll be taking you in. To an undertaker.”
Adams must have believed his own bragging because he now stepped out in front of his horse and aimed his six-shooter right at the brush where Fargo was hiding. He squeezed off his shot.
To a bystander, this moment would have looked awfully damned odd. Here it was Adams who’d done the shooting. But it was also Adams who, an instant later, clutched his chest as a flower-shaped redness appeared on the front of his buckskin shirt. And then he struck a pose like a bad dancer, his limbs all seeming to point in different directions. His small revolver tumbled from his hand, which, like the rest of his body, remained in this awkward position for another long moment. And then the huge man collapsed, the ground trembling as his body met it with real force and speed.
Not much doubt that Jeb Adams was dead.
Fargo had fired at the exact instant Adams had. Adams’s gun made more noise than Fargo’s, so an observer would have heard only Adams’s shot. The difference between the two shots was that Fargo’s had hit home, right in the heart. Adams’s had gone wild.
Fargo picked himself up, dusted himself off, went over and hunched down next to the corpse. He checked wrist and neck pulse points to be sure the man was really dead.
Getting him up on his horse’s back wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just the considerable weight. It was the form death had twisted Adams into. He was hard to get a hold of. But finally the Trailsman was able to carry him to the horse and throw him across the saddle. Fargo took a couple of deep breaths, and flicked away some gnats who’d been dining on his sweat.
He went through the dead man’s saddlebags.
Adams had a couple of dozen WANTED posters. If the reward had been increased on a particular man, he’d noted that in pencil at the bottom of the poster. There was a notarized letter informing Adams that his divorce had gone through. According to a second letter in the same envelope—a bitter letter from Adams’s ex-wife—Adams had been a terrible husband, a worse father, and a man who had embarrassed and humiliated her in every way possible, including a “tryst” with a woman down the street. The letter was from St. Louis and was two years old.
There was another letter from a man named Noah Tillman. It read:
I hope this finds you well, Jeb. Though I’m troubled by a damned skin rash from time to time, I’m doing pretty well. My empire is making more money than ever. I say this knowing that it sounds as if I’m bragging. But hell, it’s the truth. And you helped make it that way. Those two “eliminations” you did for me were important.
You were also helpful in setting up my little project on Skeleton Key. That’s why I’m sending you this letter. I hope you’ll be able to join me this July 4th. I’ll take you to the Key and show you how to have some real fun.
I don’t think there’s anything like it in these United States, In fact, I’m sure there isn’t.
I hope to see you then.
The brief letter told Fargo that Adams had been doing two jobs at once—tracking Fargo and traveling to his rich friend’s place. The word “eliminations” clued Fargo in that Jeb Adams had probably been a hired killer as well as a bounty hunter. This Noah Tillman had apparently been a customer. Rich men frequently needed to have business rivals killed. Hired killing was a lucrative business if you were good at it. And Fargo didn’t doubt that Adams had been damned good at it.
Fargo jammed the letter from Noah Tillman in his pocket. He’d have a surprise for this Noah Tillman. Jeb Adams was going to show up, all right.
Dead.
2
Tillman, Arkansas was bigger than Fargo had expected. Thirty-five hundred souls resided here according to the WELCOME sign on the north edge of town. A clean blue river, new, if modest, homes, two full blocks of merchant buildings, two churches, a schoolhouse, and a courthouse lent the town an air of prosperity and friendliness.
The folks here knew how to celebrate the Fourth of July, too. Everywhere he looked, Fargo saw bunting and signs that proclaimed the special day. And the red, white, and blue colors weren’t limited to storefronts and posters, either. Lots of folks wore red, white, and blue ribbons pinned to their shirt pockets. There was even an old swayback with a red, white, and blue blanket thrown over it.
Fargo naturally drew attention. A dead man is bound to attract almost as much attention as a naked lady. Kids, codgers, businessmen, farmers all paused in their activities to watch the rough-hewn man on the big stallion trail in another horse with a corpse slung across it. Even the short trip in the scorching sun had made Jeb Adams’s body a mite smelly. Flies loved him. A couple of old people waved at him. He wasn’t sure why. They probably weren’t, either. They were just so used to waving—the custom of this friendly part of the country—that they did it out of habit.
Fargo didn’t need to ask where the sheriff’s office was. A wide, one-storied, whitewashed building had signs saying SHERIFF on both the side and the front. He lashed the reins of his stallion to a hitching post and walked inside.