And now Fargo was going after the suspect, planning to do the world and himself a favor—by killing the son of a bitch.
19
A haze of smoke lay over the interior of the Gold Mine, dirty yellow in the seamy light of the lanterns and Rochester lamps. The men drank and laughed and the saloon girls circulated, making up to men old enough to be their fathers and in some cases their grandfathers. The merry piano music seemed an insult to the cold, somber mountain darkness. Cards were dealt and slapped down. Men trekked out to the latrines dug in back and trekked back blowing into their hands for warmth. Fargo observed all this over the top of the batwings. He stood outside. If anybody had noticed him they hadn’t let on.
But they would notice him very soon now.
He pushed through the batwings, leaving the fresh air for the sour smells of beer and smoke and sweat and the stray stark jabs of windblown latrine odors carried on the winds.
Nobody paid him any attention. Not when he was just standing there. Not even when he drew his Colt and pointed it directly at the back of Pete Rule who was standing at the bar having a good time with a couple of cronies. But when the colored piano player finished a song, Fargo spoke up loud enough for the girls and their customers upstairs to hear.
Then everybody noticed.
“Rule, I want you to put your gun down on the bar and slide it up toward the door. Then I want you to turn around and face me while I tell everybody how you killed those three boys and how you killed O’Malley, too, because he figured out you were behind it.”
“Hell, Skye, are you drunk? I thought we were friends.”
Rule’s attempt to make light of the situation would have been more believable if his voice hadn’t been shaking so bad.
“You heard what I said, Rule. Your gun on the bar and right now. Unless you want to try and draw on me.”
“You sure you know what the hell you’re talking about, Mr. Fargo?” the bartender said. “Pete here was the one who figured out that Cain was behind the robbery.”
“That’s right. Cain was behind the robbery. But not the killings. Rule did those so he could set up Ned Lenihan. He thought that if Lenihan was out of the way he could start courting Amy Peters.”
The bartender wasn’t the only one who laughed. Half the drinkers joined in. It was harsh, contemptuous laughter. Laughter that said that the idea that Pete Rule would ever have a chance with Amy Peters was downright embarrassing.
Rule still hadn’t turned around.
“You hear that, Rule?” Fargo snapped. “You killed four people for nothing. Amy wouldn’t ever have anything to do with somebody like you. Especially if she ever found out that you broke into her house and stole some of her things. That’s pretty humiliating I’d think, Rule. But you did it.” Fargo wasn’t usually cruel but he knew what he wanted and cruelty was the quickest way to get it. “You want to tell everybody here what you did with her clothes? You built a little shrine to her, didn’t you? Sit there at night and stare at the photographs of her you stole? What kind of a man would do that? Not the kind of man Amy would ever have anything to do with.”
His mind and his gun were ready to kill Rule. Eager to kill Rule. But the sound Rule made shocked Fargo and probably shocked everybody else in the saloon. A tortured sob. And hands not going to his gun but to his face. Covering up his shame. Fargo could see only his back but the way his shoulders seemed to collapse and the way Rule seemed to fold in half told the Trailsman that there would be no gunplay now. Fargo’s harsh words had destroyed Rule almost as effectively as bullets would have. In other circumstances Fargo might have felt sorry for the man. But no, not ever, not this man.
The men Rule had been laughing with moved away from him as if they’d suddenly learned that he was a plague carrier. The bartender stared at him as if he had just seen the boogeyman he’d heard about all his life. A frozen silence lay on the air.
“I need your gun on the bar, Rule. Now.”
Slowly, Rule turned toward him. It was as if he hadn’t heard Fargo’s command. He didn’t make any move toward his gun at all. Even from this distance Fargo could see the tears that streaked the man’s face and the gaze that saw beyond Fargo, saw some other realm that only Pete Rule knew.
“I loved her, Fargo.”
And then he did it. Even in that instant, even as he fired, Fargo realized that he was helping Rule do what Rule didn’t have nerve enough to do alone. As Rule’s right hand dropped to his six-shooter and his fingers closed on the handle, Fargo shot him three times in the chest. The crack of the gun was louder than any piano music could ever be and the stench of gunfire stronger even than the stench of the latrine out back.
There was no dramatic death. Rule was thoroughly dead by the time his head cracked against the floor. There was a brief spasm running down the legs and into the feet. Blood began seeping into Rule’s shirt.
The bartender said, “Well, I guess we have a lot to thank you for, Mr. Fargo. You sure figured this out for us.”
“O’Malley figured it out. Not me.” Fargo holstered his gun and started to turn back to the batwings.
“What the hell’re we going to do for a sheriff now?” the bartender said.
“That’s your problem,” Fargo said. “I was going to wait till dawn to get out of this town but I’m not going to wait any longer.”
He pushed through the batwings and out into the clarity and beauty of the mountain-shadowed night.
Ten minutes later he was saddling up his big Ovaro stallion. And five minutes after that he was passing the WELCOME TO CAWTHORNE sign.
LOOKING FORWARD!
The following is the opening
section of the next novel in the exciting
Trailsman series from Signet:
THE TRAILSMAN #335 RIVERBOAT RAMPAGE
The Missouri River, 1860—
the Big Muddy will run red with blood
when Skye Fargo rides a riverboat to Hell.
Raucous shouting attracted the attention of the big man in buckskins. He looked toward the docks and saw a large group of people gathered around something, blocking his sight of whatever it was. Skye Fargo gave a mental shrug and pointed the big, black-and-white Ovaro stallion toward his destination, a waterfront tavern called Red Mike’s.
Then somebody in the crowd behind him let out a whoop and yelled, “Kill him, Owen! Bash the dummy’s brains out!”
That prompted a burst of laughter, and somebody else shouted, “He can’t do that! The dummy ain’t got no brains!”
Fargo reined the Ovaro to a halt. His mouth quirked at the irony.
Then he turned the stallion around and headed back toward the commotion at the docks.
With his buckskins, close-cropped dark beard, and broad-brimmed Stetson, Fargo looked like the veteran frontiersman he was. A long-barreled Colt .44 rode in a holster at his hip, and tucked into a sheath strapped to his right calf was a heavy-bladed Arkansas Toothpick. The butt of a Henry repeater stuck up from a saddle boot. Plenty of men out here went armed. With Skye Fargo, it was like the weapons were part of his body.
He reined in again. Now that he was closer, he could see over the heads of the crowd. The shouting men formed a circle around a couple of hombres who were fighting.