BATTER UP
Fargo walked on to Chatterly’s. He opened the gate and went to the steps and up them to the front door. He didn’t bother to knock but walked on in and made for the kitchen.
He was almost to the parlor when Harvey Stansfield stepped out in front of him. Harvey was holding a new ax handle. In the parlor stood McNee and Dugan with ax handles of their own.
“Hell,” Fargo said.
“We have you now, you son of a bitch,” Harvey declared.
“Were you born stupid or do you work at it?”
Harvey roared like a shot bear and raised the handle like a club. A near-maniacal expression came over him and he swung at Fargo’s head. . . .
The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
1
Skye Fargo was snapped out of a sound sleep by a whinny from the Ovaro.
He rose onto his elbows and gazed about his camp. The fire had nearly gone out; only a few embers glowed red. Overhead, a legion of stars sparkled like gems.
Inky shadows shrouded the surrounding woods. He glanced at the Ovaro.
“What did you do that for?”
The stallion seldom whinnied without cause. Fargo went on looking and listening and when nothing happened he rolled onto his side and pulled his blanket up.
They were high on the Mogollon Plateau in wild country, and it was early autumn. At that time of year the night air was chill.
No sooner did Fargo close his eyes than a far-off drumming caused him to open them again. He sat up, put his hat on, and rose. A big man, broad of shoulder and narrow of waist, he wore buckskins and boots and had a red bandanna around his neck. Bending, Fargo plucked his gun belt from the ground and strapped it on.
The drumming grew louder. Fargo stepped away from the embers to the edge of the trees so he was in darkness and put his hand on his Colt. It paid to be cautious where night riders were concerned. He reckoned there must have been half a dozen or more and he was proven right when eight riders came along the rutted dirt track that was called a road in these parts, and drew rein at the clearing’s edge.
“Lookee here,” a man declared.
“A horse,” another said.
They reined into the clearing. One man dismounted and stepped to where Fargo’s saddle and blankets lay. “Someone was sleeping here but they’re gone.”
“No,” Fargo said. “They’re not.” He showed himself, demanding, “Who are you and what do you want?”
The man who had dismounted swooped his hand to his revolver but before he could clear leather Fargo slicked the Colt and trained it on him. They all heard the click of the hammer.
“Try to jerk that six-shooter and you’re dead,” Fargo warned.
“Hold on, Harvey,” said one of those on horseback. “Let’s not provoke him. We could be mistaken.”
“Take your hand off that six-shooter,” Fargo said.
The man called Harvey scowled but complied.
Fargo kept his Colt on the would-be quick draw artist and came closer. He had thought maybe they were cowboys but several wore suits and bowlers or derbies and others wore store-bought shirts and britches or homespun.
Townsmen and farmers, he reckoned. “What the hell is this about?”
“As if you don’t know,” said Harvey.
“I wouldn’t rile me more than you have,” Fargo told him.
Harvey was almost as tall as Fargo and a lot thicker through the middle. He wore a bowler atop curly hair that framed a square block of a face with a nose as big as a cucumber. His suit included a vest from which a gold watch chain dangled. “I don’t like some saddle tramp telling me what to do.”
“Harvey, please,” said the rider who had spoken before. “Let me handle this, will you?”
“Sure, Tom,” Harvey said. “Kiss his ass, why don’t you?”
The rider kneed his horse a little closer. “I’m sorry, mister, to barge in on you like this, but it’s a matter of life and death. My name is Tom Wilson. We’re all of us from Haven.”
Fargo recollected a town by that name. Several had sprung up in the past few years in the deep valleys that penetrated the Mogollon Plateau. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re hunting for a missing girl,” Wilson said. “A young woman, actually. She’s nineteen years old. Her name is Myrtle Spencer and she was wearing a blue dress when she was seen last.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
The man called Harvey growled, “As if you don’t know, you son of a bitch. Where is she?”
“Harvey,” Wilson said. “You’re not helping matters.”
“I don’t care.” Harvey gestured angrily at Fargo. “I say we make him tell us what he did with her. And if he won’t tell, then we string him up.”
“I don’t know any Myrtle Spencer,” Fargo said.
Two other riders were edging their hands toward holsters. They were trying to be sneaky about it but they were as obvious as a charging buffalo.
Fargo took another step and extended the Colt so the muzzle gouged Harvey’s brow. “I won’t say this again. Tell your friends to sit real still while we sort this out or I will by-God splatter your brains.”
Harvey stiffened. He glared at Fargo, then said, “You heard him, boys. Don’t try anything. We’ll hear what the bastard has to say.”
Wilson turned to the other two. “Dugan. McNee. You’re not helping matters. Let me do the talking and you behave yourselves.” He smiled at Fargo. “My apologies, mister. But we’re high-strung over that missing girl. She’s as sweet as can be and we would hate for anything to happen to her.”
