Fargo snorted. “Don’t even bother trying to defend him. You just make me all the madder. So shut up now or I’ll give you that tanning I told you about.”
Something in his voice convinced her he was serious. She finally shut up.
8
As Hank, Kip, Walt, and Jim watched, Fargo released Sarah Brant from the tarp, using his foot to roll her over and over on the stable floor.
She came out dazed and clearly hurting.
She froze, lying on her back, her eyes wide, panting through her nose and mouth.
Then Fargo roughly stood her up. “Now hold still.” She nodded and he cut the ties that held her feet, then the ropes around her wrists. She did as she was told and held still, so he didn’t nick her at all, which was a slight disappointment to him.
He spun her around and nudged her into the boarded-up stall that would be her prison for the near future.
“Perfect,” Fargo said, and slammed the door closed as the men behind him laughed. “Make sure that’s secure, and no matter how much she screams, don’t open it.”
Walt stepped forward and, with a smile, slammed down the bar that held the door tightly shut. “She’s going nowhere.”
They could hear her screaming, but the sound seemed faint as it came through the thick wood.
Right now, Fargo knew Cain would be laughing.
Kip shook his head. “You know, for the weeks that I worked for that bitch, I could only dream something like this would happen. Thank you.” He turned to the rest. “I’m a damn good shot. I’ll fight every step of the way with you for free just to repay you for that show.”
“Welcome aboard,” Hank said, stepping forward and shaking Kip’s hand. “We’re going to need you.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Fargo said. “We’ve cut off one head of the snake. One more head and this war just might fizzle before it really starts.”
“We can only hope,” Walt said.
Fargo pointed to the door. “Two men at all times on guard duty, and two outside on the other side of the stall wall.”
All four of them nodded and Fargo left, heading for his Ovaro. It was still early afternoon and the sun was beating down on the dirt and rocks. There was still time to take care of the next business, if he could do it. And if he could, this might end quickly. If not, a lot of men were going to die.
Twenty minutes later, he had his horse safely in a stable in town and was headed for the Benson Saloon. Fargo had been told that Brant spent his afternoons there drinking and playing poker.
Fargo planned on breaking that game up. He needed to get a read on Brant, to see if he was really the one in charge, or if his daughter had been pulling all the strings. And maybe, if Brant had only one or two guards with him, get Brant to pull a gun on him. Even though he wanted to, Fargo figured he couldn’t very well just kill the man in cold blood. It needed to be a fair fight. Otherwise, Brant was just going to have to live a few hours longer.
As Fargo walked through the batwings and into the slightly cooler air of the Benson Saloon, a silence fell over the room. A half dozen hands moved slowly closer to the butts of their guns.
In that instant, Fargo calculated his chances. He’d be an easy target for several professional gunfighters. The thing was to be bold. And to be quick. Gaze locked with gaze as he met the eyes of the gunnies watching him. A few of the men smirked, but most just tried to get a sense of him. How quick, how good. Sometimes reputations got inflated. A good number of so-called gunnies found themselves crumpling to the ground at the hand of some local laborer they’d pushed a little too far in a saloon just like this one.
Fargo knew that one of them was going to try him. As he took a couple of steps toward the man he assumed was Henry Brant, he kept his eyes fixed on the hands of the gunfighters watching him. The bartender, a thickset bald man, had a sneer for him.
And then it happened. He saw the move only peripherally but that was enough. He went into a crouch and when the short, swarthy man had managed to pull his Colt about halfway out of its holster, Fargo fired.
The man screamed. His gun fell to the floor with a heavy, dead sound. He held his good hand over his bad one, the way a man does when something has burned him. He knew a good number of curses.
“This is your lucky day,” Fargo said. “I probably should have killed you. But I’ll let somebody else do that for me. You won’t be doing any fast draws with that hand. Not again you won’t.”
A tall man with a fierce black beard looked as if he was about to draw down on Fargo. Fargo’s hand hovered above his own gun. “You won’t have the same luck your friend did. I’ll kill you on the spot. So you better think it over.”
The man didn’t like being cowed this way. But he obviously had only two choices. Take the humiliation that would come from backing down or fight Fargo. And he was wise enough to know that however many gunfights he’d survived in the past, his luck was about to run out. All of a sudden humiliation didn’t sound so bad. He pulled his hand away from his gun.
The saloon girl sitting nearby in a soiled red dress obviously liked what she saw. Her ruby lips quirked in an inviting smile. She couldn’t be sure if Fargo saw it.
It seemed everyone in the room knew who he was, and everyone in the room seemed to be on the other side. Ten men, plus the bartender.
He’d made it this far. Now he had to get down to business.
At a poker table in the corner, a silver-haired man looked up from his cards and laughed. He looked powerful and very much in control of the room.
Henry Brant. There could be no doubt. And by the looks of this room, it was clear that Henry Brant paid the wages of every man here. He was far more powerful than his daughter.
“Well, well, it seems we have a famous guest in our presence. Fargo, what task brings you to us this fine afternoon? I heard you had moved in with that bunch at Cain’s old mine.”
Fargo stayed close to the batwings. If more guns cleared leather, his only hope was to dive backward and out the door. But before he did, he’d make sure to put a shot or two into Brant.
“I just wanted to meet the man who ordered the killing of my friend Cain Parker and his son.”
A number of hands around the room edged even closer to their guns, but Brant just laughed, holding his hands up in the air in front of him to calm the men. “I had nothing to do with those unfortunate deaths, I can assure you.”
Fargo said nothing in return. He just let Brant’s laugh die off into silence.
Finally, Brant sat a little more upright in his chair and glanced at the cards in front of him. “Now that we have that cleared up, do you mind? You’re interrupting my afternoon poker game.”
“Not at all,” Fargo said, moving one step closer to the door without turning his back on the room. “I just like to know what a man’s face looks like before I kill him. You’ll never know when I’ll be there, Brant. Cain Parker was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. But you do. Very soon.”
With that, Fargo stepped backward out of the door and to one side just in case anyone got the bright idea to shoot out the batwings at him.
Fargo walked down the street and around the block. He quickly ducked into a hotel lobby and up the staircase to the second floor. He knew that a window at the end of the upstairs hall looked out over the street in front of the Benson Saloon, and that’s exactly where he wanted to be to see what happened next. He figured he wasn’t going to have long to wait.
He was right. Ten minutes later, Brant came out, surrounded by six men.
The white-haired man looked nervous, glancing constantly up and down the busy street as they moved to their horses tied at the hitching posts in front of the saloon. A moment later, Brant and his men were headed out of town at full gallop. More than likely, there wouldn’t be another poker game in the Benson real soon. And that was just fine by Fargo.
And Fargo had delivered the message to Brant that he had wanted to deliver. A man like him, afraid for his life, often made poor decisions. Fargo was counting on Brant to make more than his share of bad ones. And when
