When the old man nodded and turned toward the curtained door behind the bar, Fargo began leading the girl toward the stairs at the back of the room. The girl stopped and turned toward the old man. “Oh, Mr…. uh…Smiley,” she said haltingly. “I was wondering if there was…a…
Again, snickers and chuckles rose from amongst the tables, chairs creaking.
Smiley turned at the curtained doorway, frowning as though he wasn’t sure he understood. “Why…no, ma’am. No locks. Never seen no need for none.”
Fargo forced a smile and continued leading the girl between the bar and the tables. As he walked, his eyes adjusted well enough that he could make out a few of the bearded faces turned toward them, recognizing a couple of burly mule skinners from Canada and a gambler from Council Bluffs.
At the back of the room, he and Valeria mounted the creaky stairs. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure none of the men, still staring after them, was leveling a gun at him or preparing to toss a knife at his back. At the top of the stairs, he loosed a relieved breath and led Valeria along the dim hall, the girl starting at the thunder cracking outside and making dust sift from the rafters.
All the doors bore wooden plaques into which the names of American cities had been burned, most misspelled. He stopped before the one labeled CHIKAGO, and threw it open.
“Home sweet home,” Fargo said, turning away.
She grabbed his arm. “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”
Fargo dropped his eyes to her shirt. “You want me to stay and help you out of your wet duds?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped, balling the front of the dripping shirt in her fist, the shirt making a slight sucking sound as she pulled it away from her skin. She glanced down the dim hall, lightning flashing in the room’s single window, thunder shaking the floor and rattling a picture hanging on the wall near the door. “You saw the way those men were staring at me.”
“Can’t say as I blame ’em.” The Trailsman peeled the girl’s hand off his arm and started down the hall. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve tended my horse and grabbed a bottle.”
“Mr. Fargo?” she said, her voice trembling.
With a sigh, he turned back to her once more.
She moved toward him, placed her hands on his arms as she stared up with beseeching eyes, digging her fingers into his biceps. “I’m frightened. I know it’s not proper but…will you stay with me tonight? In…my room, I mean.”
Fargo grinned down at her.
She frowned indignantly, dropped her hands, and put a little steel into her quivering voice. “You can stop smiling. I am certainly not inviting you into my bed, sir!”
Fargo wrapped his arms around her waist and drew him to her brusquely. She gasped as he lowered his head and closed his mouth over hers. At first, she was as stiff as a fence post in his arms, but in seconds she began to soften. He probed her upper lip with his tongue, slipped it inside her mouth. Immediately, as though catching herself, she gave an angry grunt, placed her hands against his chest, and pushed away from him.
Her chest heaving, she scowled up at him, and slapped him hard across the face.
He smiled, drew her to him once more. Again she gasped as he pressed his lips to hers. This time, she didn’t fight him.
When he pulled away, she stared up at him, her eyes soft, lips parted, the clinging shirt outlining each full breast clearly as she threw her shoulders back, the beautiful orbs rising and falling like barrels on a storm-tossed sea.
“We’ll discuss the sleeping arrangements later,” Fargo said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see to my horse.”
As he stepped back away from her, she stumbled toward him, regained her balance, and stared up at him, wide green eyes like two glowing agates in the shadows. His pants feeling frustratingly tight, Fargo tipped his soggy hat to her, turned away, and tramped off down the hall. He could feel the girl’s eyes branding his back until he turned and descended the stairs, boots clomping on the scarred cottonwood planks, spurs chinging, the storm booming around him, rain pelting the roof.
The room hushed as Fargo crossed the main hall toward the bar, heads turning to stare at him from the smoky shadows. The air was so thick with the smell of leather, cigarette and wood smoke, and the spicy aromas of the bear kidney stew that there seemed hardly any oxygen.
Smiley stood at the bar, laying out a game of solitaire, a half-filled beer mug near his left arm. He looked up as the Trailsman approached.
“I’m heating water for the girl’s bath. You look like you could use a drink.”
“Whiskey,” Fargo said. “Give me the stuff without the snake venom.”
“Shit,” Smiley chuckled, reaching under the bar and setting a brown bottle onto the planks. “It’s
The oldster grabbed a shot glass off a nearby pyramid, popped the bottle’s cork, and splashed the murky brown fluid into the glass. “Where did you find little miss, if you don’t mind me askin’. I been in these parts long enough to know she didn’t come from any of the settlements around here.”
“Major Howard’s daughter.” The Trailsman sipped the whiskey. It did indeed taste like snake venom with two parts gunpowder to one part coal oil and a whole lot of chili pepper. When it had scraped about all the skin from his throat it was going to, he held the glass up to look at it. “I and about nine soldiers were takin’ her to Fort Clark when Blackfeet attacked. Wiped out the whole party except me and her.”
“The Blackfeet been on the prod of late.”
Fargo glanced up at the old man leaning toward him on his elbows. “Them and the Assiniboine?”
“Sure as smelly water in a whore’s boudoir.” Smiley pronounced that last “boydee-are.” He shook his grizzled head and took a swig of beer. “You’d swear they all be usin’ prickly pears to wipe their asses. They took out three cabins just north of here, a ranch out west, and a tradin’ post up on the south fork of Misery Creek.”
He nodded at the two burly, buckskin-clad men playing poker in front of the fire, both with fat stogies wedged in their mouths. “The mule skinners said a howlin’ group of the red-niggers done burned one of them new settlements on the Cannonball!”
Fargo didn’t like the debris floating around inside his whiskey glass, but he’d tasted worse and it was tempering the chill in his bones. “They leave you alone?”
“Hell, they don’t come near me,” Smiley said, refilling Fargo’s glass. “This place is stout as a stockade. Besides, they like my hooch and trade cloth.”
Fargo reached for his refilled glass. A hide pouch flew over his left shoulder and clattered onto the bar planks before him. A couple of gold coins dribbled out of the neck onto the bar.
The Trailsman turned slowly toward the room. One of the mule skinners, Pierre Bardot, stood with one stovepipe boot perched on his chair. He was a couple of inches taller than the Trailsman, which put him close to seven feet. He wore a black sombrero thronged beneath his chin, curly red hair tufting out around it. His tattooed arms were thick as fence posts, his red-brown eyes small as trade beads.
“For the woman,” said Bardot in his faint French accent, giving a self-important nod.
The mule skinner’s partner, a Scandinavian named Hallbing—a one-eyed blond with a knife scar along his bearded right cheek—lounged back in his chair, one brawny arm draped over the chair back. He grinned at Fargo, showing his small, cracked, tobacco-stained teeth, his lone eye narrowed.
Lightning flashed in the windows. Thunder rocked the room.
Fargo glanced at the gold coins, turned back to the man who’d tossed the pouch. “Don’t tempt me,” he drawled, turning back toward his glass.
Something whistled through the air over Fargo’s right shoulder. The rusty-bladed, bone-handled knife plunked into the bar planks before the money sack, six inches from Fargo’s left hand. The vibrating handle sang like a mouth harp.
When the song faded, the mule skinner’s voice rumbled like thunder in Fargo’s ear. “Take it or leave it.”
