The next morning the parson rode out to visit an elderly woman and her husband. The woman was sickly and the parson paid daily visits to bolster her spirits. Their cabin was less than a quarter of a mile from Gold Creek. He knew something was wrong when he saw that the door hung by a hinge. Clutching his Bible, the parson made bold to poke his head in. He promptly drew it out again, and retched.
Yet another town meeting was called. Enough was enough, everyone agreed. The way things were going, pretty soon the grizzly would be breaking into homes in town. Something had to be done.
Gold Creek was prosperous. They had six hundred dollars in the treasury but they didn’t think that was enough. They took up a collection that brought the total to a thousand. The mayor thought that was piddling. They needed the best and the best didn’t come cheap. He reminded them of how many had lost their lives, and how many more might lose theirs, and called on everyone to do their civic duty and donate as much as they could afford. He also threatened to close the saloons until he had a large enough sum to suit him.
A week later the flyers went out. They were sent to newspapers far and wide, announcing that a five- thousand-dollar bounty had been placed on the grizzly that was terrorizing Gold Creek.
They even gave the bear a name.
They called it Brain Eater.
Skye Fargo came up the trail from Fort Flathead. He swung around Flathead Lake and followed Swann River to the mountains. Instead of crossing over Maria Pass to the other side of the divide, he took the trail that led north and in a few days reached Gold Creek.
From a distance it looked like any other boomtown except that most of the buildings were made from logs. At the south end stood an exception, a church with a steeple. There were a few houses, too, that boasted of the prosperity of their owners.
Flowing past the town from the north was the ribbon of water that accounted for much of Gold Creek’s wealth.
Fargo gigged the Ovaro down the mountain. A big man, he wore buckskins and a red bandanna. A Colt was strapped around his waist and the stock of a rifle jutted from his saddle scabbard. His lake blue eyes missed little as he passed outlying cabins and shacks and entered the town.
He was pleased to see so many saloons—six, by his count. It suggested to him that like many frontier settlements, the people of Gold Creek revered the Lord on Sunday and raised holy hell the rest of the week.
A portly man in a bowler was crossing the street and nodded as he went by.
“Ask you a question, mister,” Fargo said, drawing rein.
The man had florid cheeks and ferret eyes. He stopped and looked Fargo up and down and said, “Another one, by God.”
“Another what?” Fargo said, not sure he liked the man’s tone.
“Another fool after that damn griz,” the man said. “Or am I mistaken?”
“It’s not dead yet?” Fargo wanted to know. He’d hate to think he had come all this way for nothing.
The man snorted. “Mister, that bear is Satan incarnate. You ask me, the bullet hasn’t been made that will bring him low.”
Fargo bent and patted the stock of his rifle. “I aim to give it a try.”
“You and fifty others. Our town is crawling with bear hunters, thanks to that flyer we never should have sent out. My name is Petty, by the way. Theodore Petty. I own the general store. I also happen to be the mayor.”
“You don’t want the hunters here?”
“At first I did. I put five hundred dollars toward the bounty, thinking it was for the best. Had I known the kind of people it would bring I wouldn’t have done it. But enough idle chat. My advice to you is to turn around and leave. Five of the hunters have already died and you could be the sixth.”
“The griz has killed five more?”
“Actually, the total is eleven. But no. Only two of them were hunters. Another was killed in a drunken fight in a saloon and two more had a falling-out over how they were going to split the five thousand dollars and shot themselves dead.” Petty touched his bowler’s brim. “Good day to you, sir.”
Fargo digested the news as he rode to a hitch rail in front of one of the saloons and dismounted. Tying off the reins, he stretched. The saloon was called the Sluice. He pushed on the batwings. Although it was barely noon the place was crowded. He bellied up to the bar and paid for a bottle. Since he couldn’t find an empty chair, he went back out and sat on an upended crate and savored his first swallow of red-eye in more than a week.
“Well now, what have we here?”
Fargo cocked an eye over the bottle at a young woman in a gay yellow dress, holding a yellow parasol. Brunette curls fanned from under a matching yellow bonnet. She was appraising him as a horse buyer might a stud stallion. “Didn’t your ma ever warn you about talking to strange men?”
“She did, indeed,” the woman said. “But I always make exceptions for handsome men, and God Almighty, you are one handsome son of a bitch.”
Fargo laughed and introduced himself.
“I’m Fanny Jellico,” she said with a twirl of her parasol. “Let me guess. You’re here after Brain Eater?”
Nodding, Fargo said, “You too, I take it?”
Now it was Fanny who laughed. She leaned her back to the wall, closed her parasol, and surveyed the busy street. “It’s become a circus. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since we’ve got more business than we can handle but it’s almost as dangerous in town as it is out there in the woods with the bear.”
“We?” Fargo said.
“Me and a bunch of girls came all the way from Denver,” Fanny explained. “It was Madame Basque’s doing. She runs a sporting house. When she saw that flyer she knew there was money to be made. So she loaded eight of us into a wagon and here we are.”
“That’s a long way to come.”
“Maybe so,” Fanny said. “But we’re making money hand over thigh.”
Fargo chuckled. “The marshal and the parson don’t mind?”
“There isn’t any law,” Fanny revealed. “The town never got around to appointing one. As for the parson”— she gazed down the street at the church, then looked at Fargo and winked—“he’s as friendly as can be.”
“I hear there’s been a knifing and a shooting.”
“Hell, there have been twenty or more just since we came,” Fanny said. “The hunters spend more time fighting amongst themselves than they do hunting the bear. And I use the word ‘hunter’ loosely. Some of them couldn’t find their own ass if they were told where it is.”
Fargo was beginning to understand why Theodore Petty resented the influx of bounty seekers. Gold Creek had gone from a run-of-the-mill mountain town to a wild-and-woolly pit of violence and carnal desire. Just the kind of place he liked most.
“If you’re interested in a good time, you might look me up at the Three Deuces. Madame Basque made an arrangement where we use the rooms in the back. I’m there from six until midnight most every night.”
“I might just do that.”
Fanny brazenly traced the outline of his jaw with a finger. “I might just let you have me at a discount, as good-looking as you are.”
The next instant the front window exploded with a tremendous crash. Fargo sprang to his feet and simultaneously Fanny screamed and threw herself against him. Both watched a man tumble to a stop in the street and lie half dazed.
Through the shattered window strode a colossus. Seven feet tall if he was an inch, he wore a buffalo robe and a floppy hat. Tucked under his belt was an armory: two pistols, two knives, and a hatchet. He walked over to the man in the street and declared, “Get up and get your due.”
The man rolled over. Buckskins clad his wiry frame. He was getting on in years and had hair as white as snow. He had a lot of wrinkles, too. Propping himself on his elbows, he wiped a sleeve across his mouth, smearing the blood that dribbled over his lower lip. “You shouldn’t ought to have done that, Moose.”
“You say mean things, you should expect it,” the man-mountain declared.
Fargo pried Fanny’s fingers from his arm. “Hold this,” he said, and gave her the bottle. Moving out from under the overhang, he headed toward the old man. “Rooster Strimm,” he said. “It’s been a coon’s age.”
Rooster blinked and grinned. “Why, look who it is. Ain’t seen you since Green River.”
