“Non!”

Jacques had seen the revolver.

Fargo scooped it up. The grips molded to his palm and he thumbed back the hammer.

Jacques raised the knife to slash.

Fargo fired as Jacques leaped at him, fired as Jacques twisted to the impact, fired as Jacques sought to sink the knife in his neck, fired as Jacques swayed and fired as Jacques tottered and fired the last cartridge in the cylinder into Jacques’s forehead.

“Noooooo!”

The wail was torn from Julienne. Roland was down, and she started toward Fargo, blood dripping from both her knives.

Fargo whirled, the Remington held low. He figured she hadn’t counted the shots because she spun and bolted into the trees. He didn’t hesitate. He went after her.

Samantha shouted his name but Fargo didn’t slow. Julienne wasn’t the kind to forgive and forget. If he didn’t catch her here and now, if he didn’t end it, she would come after him later and exact her vengeance at a time and place of her choosing.

But God, she was fast. Fargo had been in a footrace once against some of the fastest runners in the country, including an Apache girl famed for her speed, and Julienne was every whit their equal. He kept her in sight but it took all he had. She flew through the vegetation as if she had wings on her feet. She looked back once and only once, and did a strange thing; she smiled.

Fargo concentrated on running and nothing but running. He avoided a pine and vaulted a stump and lost a few yards.

Up ahead were a cluster of big oaks. Julienne streaked in among them—and disappeared.

Fargo reached the oaks and stopped. There wasn’t much undergrowth. He figured she had ducked behind a trunk and was waiting to ambush him. Warily, he advanced, holding the Remington by the barrel. He passed several trees without seeing sign of her.

A sound overhead caused Fargo to glance up. Julienne had just launched herself from a tree limb. He dodged but wasn’t quite quick enough and felt a stinging sensation in his right shoulder. She had cut him. He whirled toward her as she alighted in a crouch. He swung the revolver like a club.

With incredible swiftness, Julienne dodged. Before Fargo could draw his arm back, a knife flashed and blood welled. She had cut him again. He retreated a few steps and she came after him.

“For what you did to Jacques I will kill you piece by piece. You will be a long time dying.”

“Big talk, bitch,” Fargo said to goad her. He watched her knives, only her knives. When the left blade swept at him he was ready and skipped aside. The other knife flicked at his neck but he slipped out of reach.

“You are uncommonly quick, monsieur.”

“Your brother said the same thing shortly before I blew him to hell.”

Julienne’s features hardened. Her eyes were smoldering volcanoes. She came in fast and she came in low, windmilling both blades, a human threshing machine bent on his destruction.

Fargo backpedaled. He ducked. He weaved and turned, always a hairsbreadth from harm. But he couldn’t keep it up. Sooner or later she would bring him down.

The tip of a knife narrowly missed Fargo’s throat. The keen edge of the other caught his wrist.

Fargo drew back as if in pain and again she came after him. He wanted her to. He cocked his arm as if to club her with the revolver and when she jerked back he threw it with all his strength and hit her full in the face. She cried out and blood sprayed; then Fargo had her by the wrists and she was twisting and pulling to break free and he was trying to hurl her to the ground.

Fargo had seldom encountered a woman so strong. He locked a foot behind her leg and sought to trip her. With amazing agility Julienne hopped over his leg and her right foot rose and caught him on the side of the head. His ear flared with agony. She hopped again and this time kicked him in the side of the neck.

A part of Fargo admired her skill. She was one of the toughest fighters he had ever tangled with. He tried to pin her arms but she was as slippery as a wet eel. She kicked him in the leg, in the ribs.

Fargo was losing. He was bleeding and tired and growing weak. But she wasn’t the only one who could kick. He buried his boot in her gut and she doubled over. With a wrench, he tore the knife from her right hand, reversed his grip, and as she straightened, sank the blade to the hilt in her eye.

Julienne arched her back and her mouth parted. Incredulity widened her other eye; then she oozed to the ground and lay quaking before she subsided and was still.

“Damn,” Fargo said.

Tom Clyborn had been stabbed in the lungs. He lingered two days in a bed at the hunting lodge attended by a doctor from Hannibal. His last words, Samantha told Fargo, were a question. “All I ever wanted in life was to be rich. Was that too much to ask?” He had laughed bitterly, and died.

Roland’s arm was in a sling. Broken in two places, the doctor said. He was battered and bandaged and would be a long while healing but he would live.

The sheriff took Theodore Pickleman into custody. The lawyer had tried to run off after Fargo shot Jacques but Sam snatched up a rock and beaned him with it.

As for the chest that cost so many their lives, Fargo went to the creek the next day with a shovel and Samantha and began poking around the willow trees that lined the near bank.

“Why the willows?”

“Don’t you remember what Pickleman told us your father said to him?” Fargo reminded her. It had stuck in his craw and he finally figured out why.

“Something about whoever found the chest wouldn’t have any cause to weep—” Sam stopped. “A weeping willow! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I could be wrong.”

He wasn’t. The earth near the sixth willow they came to had recently been disturbed. Fargo dug down a few inches and there it was: a small wooden chest with a folded sheet of paper inside. He let Sam take the paper out. She unfolded it, and frowned.

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“This cost me three brothers and a sister.” Sam’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ll have the last laugh on Father, though. I’m sharing everything equally with Roland.”

“Good for you.”

Sam shook herself. Grinning, she put her hand on his. “There’s something I’d like to share with you if you don’t mind coming up to my bedroom. Are you interested, kind sir?”

“What do you think?” Fargo laughed and smacked her on the fanny.

LOOKING FORWARD!

The following is the opening

section of the next novel in the exciting

Trailsman series from Signet:

THE TRAILSMAN #341 SIERRA SIX-GUNS

California, 1859—A storm is coming to Kill Creek.

Skye Fargo liked the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were miles high. They were remote. Lush forest covered the lower slopes, snow capped the high peaks.

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