“You or your friend in the tree?”
In answer to his question, the man in the tree fired three quick shots close enough to the big Ovaro stallion to make it mighty nervous.
“I’m sure neither you nor your horse really wants to find out which of us is the better shot, mister. Now head back to town.”
With two Winchesters trained on him, Fargo knew there was no point in playing hero. He had no doubt that they were working up to killing him. Trespassing, they’d say. Tried to reason with him, they’d say. Then he went for his gun, they’d say. He didn’t give us no choice, they’d say.
“And here I was hoping for a nice, friendly visit,” Fargo said.
“You haul your ass back to town and right now, trouble-maker,” said the man in the tree, a disembodied voice in the gathering gloom.
“Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” Fargo said to the gunny in front of him.
“You ain’t got no choice at all, mister.”
The best way to make sure they’d think he was heading back to town was to make one more try to see Noah Tillman.
“Would you at least tell him a Mr. Fargo is here?”
“We got a list, mister. The people who get in to see Mr. Tillman every day. And you ain’t on that list.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. Now you get outta here.”
So Fargo did the only thing he could. Turned his stallion around and rode slowly away. A long, glum ride back to town. At least that’s what he wanted them to think.
By the time Fargo had found a place to sneak on to the ranch, a half-moon hung in the sky like a tilted gold teardrop. There were enough stars to give you a jolt, a sense of the whole vast universe that nobody could comprehend.
Fargo hid behind a copse of cottonwoods for two passes of the sentry. He timed them out. He would have approximately ten minutes to get on to the property and into the house.
The dog was also a problem, a handsome German shepherd that also walked the rough mile-long tract of this particular sentry section. The dog would be more of a threat because of its bark. Even if he eluded the handsome creature, the dog would alert both the sentry and the people in the house. Another sentry, maybe two, would join the dog.
He could shoot the dog but that, too, would attract attention. What he had to do was distract the dog’s attention.
He ground-hitched his stallion and walked a quarter-mile to a wood as dark, yet moon-splashed, as any in a midnight ghost story. He spent only minutes before luckily finding a dying deer. He never killed needlessly. This animal was diseased, crying deep in its long, elegant throat, eyes rimed shut with crust.
He took out his knife and attempted to end its life quickly and painlessly. The elderly deer spasmed, made a faint noise, trembled for only a few seconds, and then sank into death. He slung it over his shoulder and walked back to his place in the cottonwoods.
He waited for the sentry to pass by again. He ran up an eighth of a mile with the deer, ducked beneath the barbed wire and pushed the body into plain sight.
He quickly vanished back into the shadows and ran back to the cottonwoods.
The dog picked up the scent almost immediately, running toward it with curiosity and clear joy.
Fargo dove for the barbed wire, belly-crawled beneath the fence, and jumped to his feet once he’d cleared the way.
He didn’t even pause to see what the dog was doing. No time. He broke into a sprint that within a few minutes brought him to the grand mansion itself. The place resembled one of the English manor houses you always saw in pictures of the British countryside where the gentry lazed away their days fox hunting and having sex with the maids.
He knelt behind a large well. A guard with a shotgun stood in front of the side entrance, silhouetted against lamplight from inside.
One more obstacle to remove before he got inside and confronted Noah Tillman.
He fell back, rooting around on the shadowy earth until he found a rock of sufficient weight. Fargo had played in his share of throwing games, even pitched a little baseball in his time—strictly amateur stuff but a hell of a lot of fun—and he hoped his arm was up to the task tonight. There was no other way he could take the guard out. Rushing him would cost Fargo his life. And trying to sneak up on him would probably mean the same thing.
There was a large cottonwood just to the east of the side entrance, one that overlooked two picnic tables. It would be a long throw but this was the only cover he could find. As with the German shepherd, he’d have only one chance.
He hoped he knew what the hell he was doing.
On the ride back from what he hoped would be his last appointment of the day, Sheriff Tom Tillman thought about how tired he got of doing his stepfather’s bidding.
It was now a few minutes after seven and he was just now getting back to his office from an incident he’d been forced to oversee. He wouldn’t have dared sent a deputy because the incident had involved one of the local grandees who, if Tom had not shown up, would have complained to old Noah about how Tom should have handled this himself.
And then old Noah would rag on Tom’s ass for an hour or two. Noah was just like Tom. He believed in strict control of his life. No surprises. The thing was, Noah had all of the money and most of the power and so when it came to a showdown between the two, Noah always won.
Tonight’s incident had involved the grandee’s drunken son holding a knife to his wife. The grandee didn’t want anybody else to know about this, so he’d summoned Tom out there and Tom spent three hours trying to talk reason to the son. He insisted that his wife had been unfaithful. She insisted that the son was the unfaithful one. The problem was that the son had a butcher knife big enough to carve up a jungle elephant and was holding it to the slender, white throat of his fetching young wife, about whom Tom had had many fanciful fantasies himself.
Finally, Tom threw a bottle of expensive bourbon against the east wall of the bedroom they were all in. This distracted the drunken son just enough for Tom to jump him, wrench his wrist so hard he had to drop the knife, and then knock the stupid bastard unconscious with a single and impressive punch.
The young wife fell not into the arms of the grandee but into the arms of the lawman. The way she moved against him ignited his loins and made him think that maybe his fantasies about her may someday come true.
The grandee was all gratitude and praise. And Tom was fittingly modest.
But as he rode back to town—he always checked in at the office before going home for the evening—the fantasy of the fetching wife began to fade, he started thinking about the man Fargo. The man seemed honest and, unless he was the killer, didn’t have any reason to lie about the dead girl or her supposedly missing brother.
He’d never really discussed this with the old man. The travelers who turned up “missing” over the years. What was done with them. Why old Noah wanted them in the first place. Even if he’d asked, the old man wouldn’t have told him. To Noah, Tom was both stepson and employee. And most of the time he treated Tom more like employee than son. Noah’s brother Aaron—a drunken wastrel, according to most folks, but the best friend Tom had at the ranch—seemed to know something about these missing people, but would shut up when Noah scowled at him.
The way Noah seemed to feel was that he’d set Tom up as sheriff, built a nice house for him in town, made sure he married into a respectable family, and then urged Tom to begin having a brood of kids that stretched from here to sundown. Aaron often came to Tom’s house to see the kids. He got along well with Tom’s wife, too.
That was what he needed to do now. Get Uncle Aaron, as Tom had always called him, alone somewhere so they could talk without the threat of Noah walking in on them.
What the hell was going on here, anyway?
