Jim stood. “What’s happening? Where are you going?”
Fargo stared one last time down at the Brant compound. “I think I know what they’re waiting for and I need to make sure both things don’t get here.”
With that, he turned and headed off down the hill at a steady run, trying to keep his fear in check, trying to push the image of Anne tied up and beaten from his mind. After what he had done to Sarah Brant, he couldn’t imagine what those two would do with Anne if they got her inside that building down there.
“When will you be back?” Jim shouted after him.
“As soon as I can,” Fargo shouted back.
As soon as he made sure Anne was safe. But his gut told him that he was already too late.
He rode the Ovaro hard and fast down the Placerville road, keeping his head low as he slashed past wagons and other riders.
In record time, he reached the telegraph office in Sacramento and had them wire an urgent message to Anne at her hotel in San Francisco. He paid extra to have the message run to her and a response brought back as quickly as possible.
While he waited, he headed for Marshal Davis’s office. He usually liked to go it alone and didn’t often feel he needed help, but right now he did. If Anne had been taken, he didn’t care how many people helped him get her back. All that was important was that she was safe.
“Fargo,” Marshal Davis said, smiling as Fargo entered the office. “Glad to see you’re still alive and kicking.”
“I do my best,” Fargo said.
“I hear it’s a real hornet’s nest up there right now. Even the Placerville sheriff is staying out of the way.”
“It might get worse before it gets better if I can’t get something stopped here real quick.”
He explained to the marshal everything that had happened so far, then told him the two reasons why he was in town.
“You think they’ll go after her?” Marshal Davis asked.
“I’m getting to know how Henry Brant thinks. He needs me out of the way to get the Sharon’s Dream gold. And people around Placerville have seen me with Anne, so he knows she means something to me. He’ll go after that leverage on me. That’s why I had her leave town in the first place, but my guess is he had her followed, or had someone track her down.”
“Makes sense,” the marshal said, grabbing his hat and heading for the door. “Let’s go see if you have a telegram back yet.”
As they entered the office, the telegram came in, and it was exactly what Fargo had feared the most. Anne had checked out suddenly this morning.
Fargo stared at the telegram, trying to control the twisting dread in his stomach, then handed the slip of paper to the marshal.
“She wouldn’t do that,” Fargo said.
The marshal nodded, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “First train in from San Francisco is in twenty minutes. That would be the quickest way to bring her in. Otherwise it would take a good day of riding around the bay. Let me round up some deputies and we’ll meet it. They won’t suspect we’re coming.”
Fargo nodded his thanks. “You might want to have as many men as you can get. Brant has reinforcements coming in as well. Gunhands. My guess is many of them are wanted men. They all might be coming in together.”
“Meet you at the train station,” Marshal Davis said and headed out the door at a fast trot.
Fargo stared for a moment longer at the telegram, then flipped it back on the counter.
Cain dead, his son dead, now Anne taken. How much worse could this get?
He decided he didn’t want an answer to that question.
11
He found a place against the stone wall of the train station, right in the middle, his back to a door into a luggage area. The door had a window in it head-high for people to see in or out as they went through.
The train was starting to pull in as the marshal arrived, spreading out his men along the platform. There were enough other people on the platform that the marshal’s men blended in pretty well.
Fargo stepped back inside the door to the luggage area. No point in taking a chance that someone on the train would recognize him before they got off. His only chance against professional gunhands with this many people around was to catch them by surprise.
That was also the only way to make sure Anne got away safely.
Steam from the locomotive flooded the platform as it passed, its wheels grinding as it braked slowly to a stop.
Fargo noticed that the marshal also had men moving along the tracks to the area where the baggage and animal cars would stop, moving casually as if nothing was wrong. Fargo was impressed. In a very short time he had talked to his deputies and had them trained for the situation. The marshal was even more competent than Fargo had thought.
Fargo stared through the tiny door window at the windows of the first passenger car as it eased slowly past him.
No Anne. More than likely she would be in one of the cars surrounded by five or six men.
The five passenger cars slowly ground to a very noisy halt in front of Fargo, the middle one not more than twenty paces from him through the growing crowd.
So far, he hadn’t seen Anne in any of the first three cars.
He stepped from the door as the people inside the cars stood and started to get off. He kept his hat pulled down and his shoulders hunched to avoid being recognized.
It was from the fourth car that a man carrying a leather rifle pouch got off and looked around, scanning the crowd before stepping to the platform.
Mick Rule.
Fargo knew that face very well. He had hoped to never have a run-in with the man. He was fast and deadly with a gun, almost as deadly as Fargo was.
Rule was also wanted in three states. He had robbed banks, killed guards and lawmen, and was known to work with a dozen other men. It was no wonder Henry Brant had been waiting. It was no wonder Sarah Brant hadn’t left as Fargo had told her to do. With Rule and his men headed their way, they could control not only Sharon’s Dream, but more than likely a lot of Placerville.
Two more men got off behind Rule, followed by Anne. Fargo’s jaw clenched as he saw how she was being shoved around.
The marshal and his men had seen Rule as well, but were still holding their positions, hoping to let some of the crowd thin.
Fargo didn’t much care about the crowd.
But he did care about getting Anne out of the way of those men unharmed, and that meant waiting for the right time to attack.
Eight men total climbed off the train and moved out of the way, shoving Anne along with them.
She looked angry. Damned angry. He had seen that look on her face only once before, the day she found out two of her most trusted men were working to take over her ranch.
The outlaws stood for a moment in a small circle on the platform, talking, waiting for something as the crowd started to climb onto the train. It would be only a moment before the marshal and his men would stand out like sore thumbs to the outlaws.
He had only six shots in his Colt. If he made the play, he was going to have to hope the marshal and his men took care of at least two of the outlaws. Otherwise he was going to end up very dead right here on this train platform.
Fargo took a deep breath and stepped toward the men, his Colt heavy in his hand at his side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the marshal nod and step toward the group as well.
