“Damn it, stop that! I told you, it ain’t here!”
“You, Dagen, jerk the cover offen their bed. I want to have a look.”
“I’m naked, Fargo,” Suzie said. “Are you going to let all these men see your own sister naked?”
“Hell, it ain’t like you ain’t never been seen naked before,” Fargo responded with a sneer. “Back when you first started whorin’, I used to charge my friends a nickel to see you getting your legs spread.”
“You are a crazy bastard,” Suzie said.
“Dagen, jerk the cover offen that bed like I told you to!”
“Sure enough, Fargo,” Dagen said as he reached down to grab the top of the blanket. He smiled at Suzie. “Fact is, I’m goin’ to enjoy this,” he said.
Dagen jerked the cover off and as Suzie said, she was naked. Dagen and the others stared at her as she tried, without success, to cover her breasts with one arm, and the little dark spade of pubic hair with her other.
“Sum’ bitch,” Dagen said. “She wasn’t tellin’ no lie. She was naked, all right.”
Ponci was naked as well.
“Holy shit,” Fargo said as he looked at the discolored stump of Ponci’s mangled leg. “You really did cut off your own leg, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
The money wasn’t under the bedcovers.
“Where’s the money?”
“I hid it,” Ponci said.
“You hid it? Under the bed?” Fargo walked over to Suzie’s side of the bed, then leaned down to look underneath.
That was when Suzie made her move. “Fargo! You son of a bitch!” she shouted as she made a grab for Fargo’s gun. “Get the hell out of here!”
Fargo jerked back from her, and as he did, he automatically pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Suzie in the face, just under her left eye, and she fell back on the bed dead.
The muzzle flash lit up the little room, and the gun blast was so loud that it left everyone’s ears ringing.
“Suzie!” Ponci shouted. “Suzie!”
He examined her, but by the way her head was thrown back and her eyes were open but sightless, he knew she was dead.
“Son of a bitch! You just killed your own sister,” Ponci said, shocked by what he had just seen.
“Yeah, well, the bitch had no business going for my gun,” he said. “Now I’m going to ask you just one more time. Where at is the money?”
“I hid it,” Ponci said.
“Where did you hide it?”
“If I tell you that, you won’t have any reason to keep me alive.”
“I don’t have any reason to keep you alive anyway,” Fargo said. He cocked his pistol. “Now, you got until I count to three to tell me where you hid that money, or I’ll kill you dead right here and we’ll just go steal some more money somewhere else.”
Ponci glared at him.
“One,” Fargo started.
“I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
“Two.”
Fargo cocked the pistol and aimed it directly at Ponci’s head. Ponci started quivering.
“All right, all right, I’ll tell you,” Ponci said. “I buried it in a cave back between here and—”
That was as far as Ponci got before Fargo shot him. The bullet crashed into Ponci’s chest, and the black hole that appeared just over his heart started pumping blood. Because he was naked, his wound was clearly visible, and Ponci reached down to try and staunch the flow of blood. Bright crimson spilled through his fingers, and he looked up in surprise.
“You said if I told you, you wouldn’t shoot,” Ponci muttered, his words strained.
“I also said I would count to three,” Fargo told him. “I lied both times.”
With Chetopa and his band of followers taken care of, Falcon was now able to turn his attention to Fargo Ford. He had learned from Sheriff Ferrell that at least two of the men in the gang, Fargo Ford and Ponci Elliot, were from Mesquite, so that seemed to be the logical place for him to start.
It was mid-morning when Falcon rode into Mesquite, and as he came into town, he saw a crowd of people gathered around the front of the hardware store. Dismounting at the saloon, Falcon tied off his horse and started into the saloon. Then he heard something from the crowd that got his attention.
“This here was Fargo Ford’s sister. I wouldn’t want to be the person that done this when he finds out about it.”
Falcon turned away from the saloon then, and walked across the street to see what everyone was looking at. That was when he saw the two coffins that were propped up just behind the front window of the hardware
