High Country Horror

“There’s eighty dollars in here. All I have in the world. I’m offering it to you as payment.”

“For what?”

“I’ve been told you are a seasoned scout, and tough as rawhide. It could be that you’ll succeed where our feeble excuse for a lawman has so spectacularly failed. It could be you’ll catch whoever took my sweet Tamar.”

“I still don’t savvy what you want for your money.”

“It’s simple.” Susannah swiped at a gray bang and whispered, “I don’t want you to bring him in alive.”

“Ma’am?”

“Do I have to spell it out? If you catch him, kill him. Come see me after the deed is done and the eighty dollars is yours.”

All the years Fargo had been playing poker paid off; he didn’t let his emotions show. “You hate him that much?”

Susannah Griffith’s face contorted like a bobcat’s about to rend prey to the bone. “I hate him more than I hate anything. He took my Tamar. I’d kill him myself if I knew who it was. This way, you do it for both of us and no one is the wiser.”

“Except me.”

“Are you saying you have scruples?”

“I’m saying that if he’s unarmed or gives up or throws himself at my feet and begs me to spare him, I can’t earn your money.”

Susannah thought she understood. “In that case all you have to do is provoke him and claim it was self- defense. No one will hold it against you, and since it will be your word against his, no one can prove otherwise.”

“More good citizens than I know what to do with,” Fargo said.

“Will you or won’t you?”

“I will if I have to.”

“That’s not good enough. Yes or no?” Susannah demanded. When Fargo didn’t answer she grabbed his hand and shoved the purse in it. “Take the money now if that’s what it will take to persuade you. I want him dead, you hear me? I want him dead like my Tamar is dead.”

Fargo tried to give the purse back but she pushed it away.

“Listen,” Susannah said, and leaned in so that her lips practically brushed his ear. “I know something no one else does. Something I’ve never told my husband or the marshal. Something that might help you.”

“Why tell me and not anyone else?”

“Because it would drive my husband deeper into the bottle and I can’t trust Tibbit not to let the secret out.” Susannah bit her bottom lip. “It’s not the kind of thing you want to get around. It’s about Tamar. She—” Susannah stopped and closed her eyes and trembled as if she were cold, or deathly afraid.

“Here,” Fargo said. He guided her to a chair and eased her down. “Anything I can get you? Coffee? Water?”

“No.” Susannah bowed her head. “God, this is hard. I’ve kept it in so long and here I am confiding in a stranger.” She gripped his wrist, her nails digging deep. “I want your word. I want your solemn promise that this will be between you and me and no one else.”

“You have it.” Fargo had to admit he would like to learn what had upset her so deeply.

“My Tamar. She was the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet but she wasn’t—” Susannah groaned, took a deep breath, and said in a rush, “She wasn’t pure.”

“Pure?”

“You know.”

The revelation tore one of Fargo’s earlier hunches to shreds. He sat down across from her. “Your daughter slept around?”

Susannah’s head snapped up and she looked ready to bite him. “Goodness gracious, no. What do you take her for? What do you take me for? She didn’t sleep with a lot of men. Only one. She was in love, or thought she was. I caught her sneaking out one night and threatened to tell her pa if she didn’t tell me where she was off to.” Susannah put a hand over her eyes and her shoulders slumped. “I figured she was traipsing off to see one of the neighbor boys. But it was worse than that. A lot worse.”

“She was going to see a girl?”

Again Susannah’s head snapped up. “God Almighty, the things that come out of your mouth.”

“Then what?” Fargo asked. The answer hit him even as he asked the question.

“She was going to meet a man. A married man.”

Fargo stared.

“That’s right. My precious Tamar took up with a man who had a wife. The shame of it cut me to the quick.” Susannah gripped her chair as if afraid she would fall off. “I tried to make her see sense. I talked myself blue in the face but she refused to listen. She said that he loved her as much as she loved him and when the time was right he was going to leave his wife for her.”

One of the oldest lies around, Fargo reflected, and the girl had fallen for it.

“I tried to find out who the man was,” Susannah continued. “I asked and pried and snooped in her room but there was never a clue. All she would say was that he was handsome and a gentleman.” Susannah snorted in derision. “The vermin seduced my little baby and she called him a gentleman.”

“How long had she been seeing him?”

“Tamar wouldn’t say,” Susannah said. “She clamped up and gave me that look of hers that told me wild horses couldn’t drag it out of her. I was worried sick. ‘What if you become pregnant?’ I asked her. She said the man promised to leave his wife right away if that happened and they would go off together to live happily ever after. Her exact words. Happily ever after. What do you think of that?”

Fargo had learned long ago that people were as stupid as they wanted to be and nothing anyone could say could change them. “It’s too bad you couldn’t find out who it was.”

“I know. I know,” Susannah sadly agreed. “You can imagine my predicament. I was the only one who knew her secret. My husband went on with his daily routine, thinking everything was fine, and I didn’t dare confide in him. It would have destroyed him to think his pride and joy could stoop so low.”

“And then she disappeared,” Fargo said.

“Yes.” Susannah grimaced with inner hurt. “I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse but it did. She vanished. We searched and searched. Our neighbors helped and townsmen came and Marshal Tibbit organized them, the one thing he’s done right. But there was no trace of Tamar anywhere.” She looked at Fargo. Tears had formed at the corners of her eyes and were trickling down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to think. Was the married man to blame? Or was it whoever took the first girl, Felicity? And then when those other girls went missing—” She stopped and shook her head. “It’s all so confusing.”

“It seems to be,” Fargo said.

Susannah wiped her face with her sleeve. “Then I heard about you and here I am. Will you accept the money or not?”

“Not,” Fargo said, and slid the purse across to her.

“You do have scruples.”

“I’m not a paid assassin.”

“I just hate to think he might get away with it. That Tibbit will arrest him and he’ll go on trial and maybe they’ll put him in prison instead of being strung up by the neck as he should be.”

“I’ll do what needs doing,” Fargo said. Beyond that, he wasn’t willing to make a promise he might not be able to keep.

“If that’s how it has to be.” Susannah took the purse and slowly rose, a portrait in misery. “I had such high hopes.”

Fargo walked around and gently gripped her arms. When she raised her head he looked her in the eyes and said again, “I’ll do what needs doing. On that you can count.”

“Oh,” Susannah said, and then again, more happily, “Oh. I see. In that case you’re still welcome to the money.”

“No, thanks.” Fargo ushered her down the hall. As they came to the parlor Helsa met them and escorted