“Unless she got in the way of money Fargo figures is his,” Falcon said.
“Well, I’ll be damn,” Sheriff Meeker said. “I never thought of that.”
“Fargo is from Mesquite, isn’t he? So, if he came into town recently, someone might have seen him who recognized him?”
“If he came into town and somebody saw him, yes, they would have recognized him,” Meeker admitted.
“Then, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll ask a few questions around town to see what I can find out.”
“No,” Sheriff Meeker said. “No, I don’t mind at all. If fact, I’ll go with you and help you out. If people see me with you, why, they might be a little more willin’ to talk to you.”
“Good idea,” Falcon agreed.
The two men started at the saloon. Falcon, who had eaten nothing but trail food for the last several days, had a meal of spiced beef, beans, and rolled tortillas. He sat at a table in the back of the room while Meeker, with great fanfare, called people over, one at a time, to ask if any of them had seen Fargo Ford.
“Yeah, I seen him a few days ago,” one of the men said.
“You seen him, Billy?” Sheriff Meeker asked.
“Yes.”
“Come on over here. Billy Cates, this here is my friend Falcon MacCallister,” Sheriff Meeker said. “I reckon you have heard of Falcon MacCallister, haven’t you?”
“I reckon I have,” Billy answered.
“Where did you see him?” Falcon asked, looking up from his meal.
“He come in here with three other men. They was all talkin’ to Frederica and Ava, but I don’t know what they was talkin’ about. I was too far away to hear ’em.”
“Did he say anything to you?” Falcon asked.
“To me? No, sir.” Billy Cates cleared his throat. “Look, this here ain’t somethin’ I’m very proud of, but I used to ride some with Ford. Me’n Ponci Elliot and Les Wilson. But that was a long time ago and I’ve been on the up and up ever since then. Why, you can ask the sheriff about that.”
“Billy’s tellin’ you the truth,” Sheriff Meeker said. “He’s rode the straight and narrow for a long time now.”
“I believe him,” Falcon said.
Billy looked relieved. “If you want, I’ll send Frederica and Ava over so’s you can talk to them. Maybe they can tell you what they was talkin’ about.”
A moment later the two bar girls stood in front of the table looking with admiration at the tall, handsome man who was asking so many questions.
“I know nothing about them,” Frederica said. “I know only that they asked for Suzie.”
“Suzie?”
“Fargo Ford’s sister,” Sheriff Meeker said.
“Oh, yes, I remember the sign in front of the coffin.” At the mention of the coffin, Frederica and Ava suddenly remembered that Suzie was dead, and both of them made the sign of the cross very quickly.
“Thank you, ladies, you have both been very helpful,” Falcon said.
After learning that Fargo Ford had been in town recently, Falcon spent the rest of the day talking to everyone who knew him in order to get as good a picture as he could get of the man’s habits. By nightfall, he had gathered enough information to give him an educated guess on the best way to track him down.
Falcon took a room in the hotel, spending the night in bed, his first night in bed in several nights.
It was still dark when Falcon left town the next morning. When the sun came up and the undertaker came up front to close the caskets of the two bodies, he noticed that Ponci Elliot was wearing a hat. That seemed strange. He hadn’t put a hat on Ponci’s head. He wondered where the hat came from.
Removing the hat, he gasped.
Ponci had been scalped.
CHAPTER 21
“It stinks in here,” Dagen complained as he, Monroe, Casey, and Fargo looked through the cave where Ponci had done his self-amputation to see if they could find the money.
“You can put up with a little stink,” Fargo said.
“A little stink? We could be up to our bottom lip in shit and it wouldn’t stink anymore,” Dagen said.
The others laughed.
“What the hell are we lookin’ for?” Monroe asked.
“What are we looking for? We’re looking for the money,” Fargo replied.
“Yeah, I know that. But is it in a bag or what?”
“It could be,” Fargo said. “But like as not it’s ...” He stopped in mid-sentence, then leaned over and started tossing a few rocks aside.
“Have you found something?” Casey asked.
Fargo pulled out a set of saddlebags, then opened the flap and looked inside. A broad smile spread across his face.
“Here it is, boys.”
“Is the money there?” Dagen asked.
“It’s here.”
“Let’s divide it up,” Dagen said.
“Not here.”
Dagen looked at the other two men and, sensing that they were behind him, he looked back at Fargo. Fargo was holding the saddlebags and looking down inside. He didn’t notice that Dagen had pulled his gun.
“Yeah, let’s do it here,” Dagen said.
“I’m in charge here,” Fargo said. “And I’ll decide when and where we divide the money.”
Dagen pulled the trigger and the gun flashed and boomed loudly inside the cave. A little puff of dust flew up from the front of Fargo’s shirt and his eyes opened wide in pain and surprise. He dropped the saddlebags and put his hand over the wound.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You killed me.”
“Yeah,” Dagen said easily. He pulled the trigger a second time, and Fargo went down.
Monroe and Casey looked on with shock.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Casey asked.
“Because I don’t believe the son of a bitch had any intention of dividing up that money,” Dagen said. “I think he was planning on just stringin’ us along for a while, then, first chance he got, he was going to run out on us.”
“When do you plan on dividing the money?” Monroe asked.
“Right now,” Dagen said. He smiled. “That is, as soon as we get out of this stink.”
Leaving Fargo dead inside the cave, the three bandits walked outside into the bright sunlight. Dagen took a deep breath.
“Damn, it feels good to be able to breathe again,” he said.
“Yeah,” Monroe said. “I don’t know how much longer I could’ve stayed in there.”
“Ha,” Casey said. “If you think it stinks in there now, what’s it goin’ to be like when ole Fargo gets ripe?”
“Ain’t goin’ to be that much worse,” Dagen said. “Fargo always did have a stink about him anyhow.”
The others laughed, even though they knew that they probably smelled just as bad.
Dagen dumped the money out onto the ground; then the three men squatted down around it and began counting it out. It totaled fourteen thousand, two hundred dollars.
“Looks to me like it’s a couple hundred dollars short,” Monroe said.
“Ponci must’ve taken some of it,” Dagen said.
“Maybe, but don’t forget, Fargo had some too. We ought to go back in and see how much he has,” Casey suggested.
“You want it, you can go in and get it,” Dagen said, picking up his share of the money. “I doubt he has a hundred dollars on him, and for me, it ain’t worth goin’ back into that stink for no more’n thirty dollars, which is about what we would each get.”
“Yeah,” Casey said as he stuck the money inside his shirt. “Yeah, that’s what I think too. So, where do we go now?”
“Anywhere we want to go,” Dagen said. “We don’t even have to stay together no more if we don’t want to.”
“Yeah,” Monroe said. “But till we get back to town it might be better if we stayed together.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve heard talk of some renegade Indians. I don’t want to run into any all by myself.”
“Monroe’s right,” Casey said. “I say we stay together till we get back to Sassabi Flat.”