“He wears a top hat?”
“Wait’ll you see his cape,” Rule laughed.
The buckboard pulled up. Silver steam poured from the nostrils of the horses pulling the vehicle. Rule hadn’t been joking about the cape. Fargo still couldn’t get a look at the man’s face as he stepped down from the buckboard.
“Looks like you’ve got some business, Charlie. They found the Byrnes boy.”
Friese stepped into the light cast from inside the sheriff’s office and lifted off his top hat. Shining shoulder- length red hair swung free and a full feminine mouth opened and said, “It’s Sarah, Pete. My dad’s down with the gout again.” Her body was as rich with female promise as her face. Slender but sumptuous at the same time.
“You wearin’ your dad’s outfit now?”
“People don’t take me seriously if I don’t. They think I’m just some nineteen-year-old who doesn’t know anything. People are used to Dad’s getup. He scares them a little bit. He likes it, too. He’s always laughing about it.” She touched a hand to the Ovaro’s neck. “What a beautiful horse. I’m just sorry he had to bring Clete home. Poor Karen and her mother. They were praying he wouldn’t be dead.” Her emerald eyes settled on Fargo. “Where did you find him?”
Fargo told her.
“Same as the other two. I wish we knew who was doing this.” An ivory hand appeared beneath an edge of the cape. “Sarah Friese.”
“You ever heard of the Trailsman?” Rule said.
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s who you’re shaking hands with.”
She smiled. “Dad’ll be sorry he wasn’t here. Are you just passing through, Mr. Fargo?”
“I hope so.” Fargo nodded to the buckboard. “Now I imagine we need to get the body on the buckboard.”
“I’d appreciate the help.”
With Fargo and Rule working together, Clete Byrnes’ corpse presented no difficulty. Fargo untied him and they carried him to the back of the buckboard and set him inside.
A larger crowd had gathered. This one remained twenty yards away. One of the onlookers carried a torch. A few lanterns blazed in the gloom.
Before climbing up on the seat again, Sarah Friese said, “I hope I see you before you leave, Mr. Fargo.” She wasn’t coy. She was straightforward and Fargo liked that. She was interested in his company and he was certainly interested in hers.
“I’d like that, too.”
When she was seated and the reins gathered in her hands, she glanced down at Rule. “Sheriff Cain is going to catch a whole lot of hell for this, Pete. My dad said that at church the other night the minister said maybe the sheriff just wasn’t up to the job of finding out who killed these boys. That’s not the kind of talk you usually hear from a minister. Not our minister, anyway.”
“He doesn’t like it any better than anybody else does, Sarah. You know that. And besides—” He hesitated. “Well, we’re working on something. That’s all I’ll say for now.”
“I have faith in the sheriff, Pete, but a lot of people think he may need to call in some help on this.”
She turned the buckboard around expertly and headed back down the street. The crowd parted for her. A few of the drunker ones ran alongside the buckboard trying to get a look at the dead man.
Rule waved Fargo into the office. Fargo started rolling a cigarette for himself.
“Appreciate your help with this. A lot of people would have just left him there.”
Fargo shrugged. “Guess I’d appreciate it if somebody’d bring me into town if it was me. Seemed the decent thing to do, is all.”
“I reckon that’s why you’ve got such a good reputation, Mr. Fargo.”
Fargo smiled. “In some quarters, maybe. But there are plenty of people who’d like to get their guns on me.” He scratched a lucifer against the sole of his boot and lighted his cigarette. “No leads on the killer yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Lawmen have been known to bring in the Pinkertons.”
Rule took a corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and a sack of pipe tobacco from the desk top. “Not this sheriff. He’s real independent. Some people like that, some don’t. I was a drunk when he found me. Couldn’t hold a job. He helped me give up John Barleycorn and become a deputy. So I’ve got no complaints.”
Fargo went to the door. Then remembered something. He took the button from his pocket and carried it back to Rule. “This mean anything to you?”
Rule gave him an odd look. “Lady’s button, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Found it near Clete Byrnes’ body.”
Rule shook his head. “Hmm, never seen anything like it before.”
Fargo put the button back in his pocket. “Think I’ll find the livery and then get myself some beer,” he said. “You got a decent hotel here?”
“The Royale’s good. And pretty cheap. Sheriff’ll want to talk to you.”
“I won’t be hard to find.”
Fargo walked out into the chill mountain night, mounted up and eased down the street toward the livery stable.
Welcome to Cawthorne, he thought.
Hearing footsteps behind him, Fargo turned, his hand dropping to his gun. In the dim lamplight of the street, he saw a chunky man in a city suit and derby scurrying after him. Fargo faced him, keeping his hand near his holster. Fargo had just come from the livery stable.
“You want something?”
“Just to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Why about the body, what else?” Then the man doffed his hat and Fargo saw a face that time and alcohol had not treated kindly. “I’m Barney O’Malley. I’m the reporter for the
Sure as hell not what I want to get into anyway, Fargo thought. Talking to some damned newspaperman who’ll just distort what I have to say.
O’Malley, fleshy of body as well as face, whipped out a small notebook from his back pocket and said, “So let me ask you a few questions.”
“That’s a pretty small notebook. Fits right in your back pocket.”
“It’s my lucky notebook.” He said this without irony.
His lucky notebook, Fargo thought. The thing looked like something a schoolchild would use. Only the black leather cover gave it an adult aspect. And how lucky could it be? This man was obviously a shabby drunkard. He needed a lot more luck than this notebook had given him.
“How about I ask you a few questions?”
“What?”
“Don’t you have something better to do than bother me?
That’s question number one. And question number two is how can you write in the dark like this?”
O’Malley lived up to his Irish name. He blasted Fargo right back, his words carrying the distinctive aroma of cheap whiskey on the night air. “First of all, who the hell else would I bother? You brought Clete Byrnes in, didn’t you? And second of all, you’re talking to a real reporter, mister. I’ve worked for papers in Chicago and St. Lou and Denver. I’m no hayseed scribbler.”
“And I bet the bottle got you fired from every one of them.”
O’Malley, who looked more and more like an overstuffed leprechaun the longer Fargo watched him, came right back. “Alcohol is my heritage. Alcohol is my energy. Alcohol is my truth. And if the editors of this world can’t understand that then I feel sorry for them. They’re missing out on some of the best journalism being done this side of the Mississippi River.”
Despite himself Fargo was amused by the man. He certainly didn’t back down. “So what do you want to
