they are. And anyway, I wanted you to have a decent meal before you left town. We owe you a lot. Lynching is bad enough but lynching the wrong man is something a lot of towns never get over.”
“Well, Pete Rule finally told the truth. He should have done it a lot earlier.”
“At least he did it.”
“I’m just sorry Helen Hardesty had to die. She died because of me. Those damned Raines brothers are the ones who should’ve been lynched.”
She touched his face with silken fingers, the subtle scent of her perfume a perfect match for her graceful beauty. “You’re getting yourself all worked up again, Skye. You need to relax.”
He smiled. “You have any idea of how you could relax me?”
“Well, I’m only nineteen but I think if I put my mind to it I could come up with something.”
“You have anything particular in mind?”
She eased herself close to him, let her fingers fall from his face to tease his burgeoning manhood in the crotch of his pants. He gave a little start, pleasure spreading through his body like fine wine. Then her mouth was on his and she was finding his tongue with her own. By now he had filled his right hand with one of her breasts and he was easing her back on the long couch so that their bodies could fit together. Her robe rode up on her long, firm thighs so Fargo had no problem stirring the hot, moist center of her. She began to strain against him, wanting him inside her, her mouth filling his with warm wine-soaked gasps of pleasure and anticipation.
He obliged her first, his expert tongue tasting the elixir of her youthful beauty, her responding with cries, sobs and even a scream when her mind burst into a fireworks display of fleshly joy.
She helped him shed his pants so that she could hold his massive ramrod and guide it into her. “Oh, God, Skye, you’re huge.” She laughed about it. “I’ll have to mark this date on my calendar.”
But then she was serious again, spreading herself beneath him so that he could blaze a path up inside her that would fulfill the crazed need they both felt.
She got her slender, perfect legs over his shoulders and grabbed his buttocks. He grabbed hers. They were wet with her own juices. And then they embarked on their long journey, taking and giving by turns, the scents and sensations of their passion the only reality for either of them.
The expensive couch was never going to be the same as they pounded and slammed their way to mutual ecstasy, his mouth on her nipple only making her luxuriate all the more in the endless orgasms she was enjoying.
Then, as all things must, their coupling came to an end. Because the couch was so confining, Fargo let himself slide to the floor. He lay back against the couch and rooted around in his clothes for his makings.
Just as he was lighting his smoke, she joined him. She pleased him with her clean, young laugh. “You may have spoiled me for life.”
“I doubt that.”
She took his cigarette from his hand and put it to her own lips. She inhaled deeply then erupted in a coughing fit.
He took the cigarette from her when she was still hacking. “Little girls shouldn’t smoke.”
“I’ll get the hang of those things one of these days.” Then: “There’s more wine.”
“I’d better pass. I need to get up real early. I’m going to be out of here by dawn.”
“It’s not that late.”
“It’s that late if I want to get a full day’s travel in. I’ve got friends waiting for me. And besides, I’ve got one more stop to make tonight.”
Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “It’d better not be another woman.”
“Oh, no. It’s O’Malley.”
“O’Malley,” she said. “He’s sort of a joke around here. But I’ve always felt sorry for him.”
“Same here. He was so fired up about this whole thing but I didn’t see him anywhere around tonight. Did you?”
“Come to think of it, no, I didn’t. And he’s usually around at everything that goes on. He takes that little notebook from his back pocket and starts scribbling. I always josh him and tell him I’ll buy him a bigger one for his next birthday. But he calls it his lucky notebook. I don’t think you could pry it out of his hand if you had a gun to his head.”
Fargo was tugging his clothes on as she spoke. She was wonderfully, gloriously naked as she stood up and came to him. And not self-conscious about it in any way. “I don’t suppose you’ll be stopping through here again anytime soon.”
He took her in his arms. She was so fresh, eager. The temptation to change his mind, to stay came surging through him until he remembered O’Malley. Strange about him not being around tonight. Very strange.
He forced his arms to shed her and strode to the door before he changed his mind.
“I guess I could come back through this way when I’m done seeing my friends.”
That great girlish laugh. “You’d better. Or I’ll come looking for you.”
He went out into the cold harsh night. It was like being banished from Eden.
18
The lobby of O’Malley’s hotel bore a sign on an easel noting: RENT BY WEEK, MONTH, YEAR. The Mountainaire had probably been a simple two-story hotel in reasonably good repair a few years earlier. But now there were three other better designed and better constructed hotels. In order to keep its doors open The Mountainaire had likely had to turn itself into a boardinghouse of sorts.
Located at the opposite end of the main street and thus reasonably far away from the celebrating going on in the saloons, the hotel was quiet enough to let the night clerk doze off with a newspaper over his face. Fargo guessed he was the room clerk because he had a large ring of keys on the arm of the lobby sofa where he slept. He must have been a light sleeper, though, Fargo reasoned, because about the time Fargo reached the desk, the newspaper was torn away from the face and the face looked startled. A heavyset man with an unruly red mustache jumped to his feet as if he were standing to military attention.
“Yessir, evening, sir. Business was slow so I—”
“Don’t blame you at all. I’d probably do the same thing. I’m looking for Mr. O’Malley. You seen him tonight?”
The clerk, starting to neatly fold the newspaper, said, “Come to think of it, I haven’t. Of course I was so caught up in all the excitement—I was standing out on the porch—he might’ve slipped out without my seeing him. There was quite a crowd on our steps. Our roomers didn’t want to get too close to the shooting and such. Things can go wrong with a crowd like that.”
“What’s his room number?”
The clerk told him. “I can get you the key if you’d like—Mr. Fargo.” He smiled. “I don’t have to worry about a man with your reputation now, do I?”
Three minutes later Fargo stood outside O’Malley’s door. The hallway was filled with the noises of sleep— snoring, coughing, muttering. Fargo pressed his ear to the door, heard nothing. With one hand he inserted the key and turned it. With the other he slowly drew his Colt. One of the rules of survival was never enter a strange, dark room unarmed.
The door wasn’t even half opened before he recognized the stench. He eased his way inside and closed the door carefully behind him. The only light was spill from the window, silver light outlining the ancient bulky furniture. And the ancient bulky Irisher sprawled in death on the floor. Fargo recalled the timbre and bullshit majesty of the voice. And the almost childish hope and enthusiasm of words. O’Malley would come back, that was O’Malley’s theme. O’Malley would be not just good again, he would be great again.
Poor bastard. Poor drunken bastard.
He crossed the room to the man, found the lantern, struck a lucifer. Light bloomed in the room.
There was nothing to be done for O’Malley, of course. When he left, Fargo would notify Pete Rule and have him get somebody to carry the body down so Sarah Friese or one of her assistants could pick it up. The undertaking business was having a very profitable night.
The lantern was on the edge of the desk and the sputtering flame illuminated several pieces of blank paper.
