Fargo took in wide emerald green eyes with thick lashes that could flutter most men into total submission. She had flawless skin like creamy lotion, a figure that would tempt a saint to impure thoughts—and Fargo was no saint.
However, the Trailsman was forced to shift his attention to her companion, whose right hand was inching toward his vest. The man was compact and well-groomed, in his forties, with distinguished silver streaks in his hair, a neat line of silver mustache, and shrewd, intelligent eyes that missed nothing.
His hand moved another inch and Fargo said mildly, “Don’t miscalculate yourself, mister. Just because I’m smiling politely don’t mean I won’t kill you if you skin that hideout gun. Real slow, toss it down.”
“Now see here!” he protested in a suave baritone, his accent as phony as the woman’s. “I am merely checking the time. See?”
Under Fargo’s close scrutiny he slid a watch from the fob pocket of his silk vest and thumbed back the cover. “Mon Dieu! We are indeed tardy for our appointment, Arlette. Sir, my daughter and I have a crucial engagement and must resume our journey.”
Fargo laughed. “Damn straight you must. The sheriff of Plum Creek is hard as sacked salt. Maybe you’ve heard of the Kansas troubles? This whole region is known for hemp socials, and ‘trials’ take place a few minutes before the hanging. Even for genteel bank robbers like you. True, even here they won’t hang a woman, but you will decorate a cottonwood.”
“Bank robbers! How preposterous! We employ neither masks nor guns, the tools of that nefarious trade.”
“If it chops wood,” Fargo assured him, “you can call it an ax. You talk like a book, mister, and I don’t trust flowery men. Now shuck out that hideout gun, nice and easy.”
The girl calling herself Arlette tossed back her pretty head and laughed, showing Fargo even little teeth white as pearls. “You, sir, are in my bad books,” she coquetted.
Fargo knew it was just a desperate bid to distract him so her companion could get the drop on him. Fargo’s Colt leaped into his fist. The loud click, when he thumb-cocked it, made both grifters go a shade paler.
“Cottontail, you can play that bank manager like a piano, but I know women like he knows ledgers. Now, mister, hand it over, and don’t try a fox play or I’ll let daylight through you. That’s something I’d surely hate to do, by the way.”
The man’s veneer of cool composure now cracked completely. Scowling, he handed Fargo a two-shot derringer with a folding knife under the barrels.
“Now,” Fargo added, “hand over that buckskin pouch that’s on the seat between you.”
“Sir,” the man protested, his face going red with anger, “yours is the manner of a man who holds the high ground and all the escape trails. If we stole this money, as you boldly assert, how are you any different from us? Clearly you intend to steal it for yourself.”
“The hell you jabbering about?” Fargo said, growing impatient—he thought he spotted dust puffs from the direction of town. “You’re lucky I’m letting you two ride on instead of turning you over to the law. Now hand over that swag and get going before I change my mind.”
“You hairy brute!” Arlette flung at him. “Neanderthal! Picking on gentlemen and ladies must be your specialty!”
Fargo laughed again, glancing inside the pouch before tucking it into a saddle pannier. He tapped both bullets out of the derringer and tossed it into the surrey.
“No need to get on your high horse, missy,” he said. “All I steal are kisses. By the way—both of you seem to be losing your French accents.”
Arlette blushed to her very earlobes as the man, suddenly cursing out Fargo like a dockworker, removed the whip from the surrey’s socket and lashed the team into motion.
Fargo headed back toward Plum Creek and quickly realized his mistake—the bank robbery had been discovered almost immediately because that was definitely a posse thundering right at him. He had figured to return the stolen money before the alarm was raised. Banks never reported a robbery if they could recover the money without publicity.
Possibly, a witness had seen him leave town in a hurry. The Plum Creek sheriff, Hinton Davis, had kept a wary eye on Fargo last night, and Fargo saw him pocketing payoffs from the town’s few remaining sporting gals. He didn’t strike the Trailsman as a by-the-books lawman. And the “good citizens” with him right now, Fargo realized with a sinking heart, looked more like a hemp committee than a posse. He recognized several scurvy-ridden toughs who had been in the saloon last night.
“Well, old campaigner,” Fargo said to the Ovaro, “looks like I put our bacon in the fire again.”
The moment he fell silent, still trying to decide what to do, the whipcrack of a rifle sent ice into Fargo’s veins. That first shot hissed wide, but within seconds more bullets hummed like blowflies past his ears, some so close he felt the tickle of wind-rip.
The moment of stunned immobility passed in a blink, and the will to live instinctively asserted itself. He still had a full magazine in his sixteen-shot Henry, and six beans in the wheel of his walnut-gripped Colt. This was no time, however, to make a stand. That jackleg posse was coming at him like the devil beating bark, and clearly they had no plans to arrest him. Nor was Fargo willing to kill any of them—after all, it was his legal duty to report, or stop, the bank theft, not let it play out for his amusement.
“Fargo, you damned knucklehead,” he cursed himself as he clawed the buckskin pouch from his pannier, “I hope you enjoyed your little diversion.”
However, he didn’t toss down the pouch as he’d intended. Fargo knew that Davis and his minions would give up the chase quickly once they had the money. The initial excitement would be over, and they were townies. However, Fargo also believed this bunch would split the swag, not return it to the bank. He would send it back to Plum Creek by express rider first chance he got.
Fargo reined the Ovaro around, kicked him up to a gallop, and lowered his profile in the saddle. Fearing for the two grifters, he veered off the road and led the vengeful pursuers toward more rugged terrain, bullets thumping the ground all around him.