Death Valley Vengeance Read online

  “Slauson is dead!” Fargo called. “So is your wife! I’m sorry, Bradley!”

  For a long moment, there was silence. Then Bradley asked, “What happened?”

  “Sharon killed Slauson, then died from wounds she received in the fighting earlier. Slauson was trying to kill all of us, including her.”

  “She turned on him?” Bradley laughed loudly, and it was an ugly sound. “How fitting that they killed each other. They deserved such a fate.”

  Fargo didn’t say anything.

  “What about pretty little Julia?” Bradley asked. “She must be out here somewhere.”

  “I don’t know anything about her,” Fargo said. “Don’t know where she is.”

  “You’re lying, mister,” Bradley shot back. “I’ve got a hunch you’re the man who brought her out here. I’m a little disappointed not to get my hands on Slauson and his whore, but if you give me Julia, the rest of you can ride away from here. I’ve no quarrel with you.”

  Fargo remembered what Sharon had said about Bradley’s cruelty. If the man couldn’t have his revenge on his former partner and his wife, he was willing to settle for his partner’s daughter. Fargo didn’t know what hellish plans Bradley might have for Julia, but he wasn’t just going to turn her over to him.

  He was about to say as much when she spoke up from behind him. “Let me go, Skye,” she said. “Maybe he’ll leave the rest of you alone.”

  Fargo turned his head to look at her. He hadn’t noticed her coming from farther up the canyon because he had been concentrating on the exchange with Bradley.

  “I told you to stay back where it’s safe,” he said.

  “I came out when the shooting was over.” She glanced toward her father’s bloody, sprawled form, and Fargo saw the pain in her eyes. Despite everything Slauson had done, Julia mourned him anyway. Some bonds could never be broken.

  “Go on back,” Fargo said gently.

  Julia shook her head. “I know Will. I can persuade him to let the rest of you go.”

  “And what will he do to you if he gets his hands on you?”

  Her chin came up. “I don’t care. Some of . . . all this . . . is my fault. If I hadn’t come running out here to Death Valley . . . if I hadn’t gotten you and everyone else involved in Will’s vendetta . . .”

  Frank Jordan spoke up. “There’s an old saying, miss, about how if wishes were horses, beggars might ride. I take that to mean that there’s no use in worrying about what might have been.”

  “You should listen to Frank, ma’am,” Gypsum put in. “He’s a mighty smart man.”

  “That’s right,” Chuckwalla added. “I figured that out mighty fast, and all I did was spend a night with these boys on my way back from Blackwater.”

  “Miss Julia,” Mac said, “if this hombre here”—he gestured toward Fargo—“will let us have our guns back, we’ll fight for you, sure enough. Won’t we, boys?”

  The other two outlaws nodded and muttered their agreement.

  Julia looked at Fargo and asked, “What do you think, Skye?”

  Before Fargo could answer, Will Bradley called from outside the canyon, “I’m tired of waiting! We’re coming in, and if Julia Slauson is there, we’re taking her!”

  Fargo nodded at Mac and the other outlaws. “Pick up your guns, men. The ball’s back on.”

  They grabbed their weapons and scattered, spreading out among the rocks. Fargo didn’t know how many hired guns Bradley had, but from what Mac had said, the odds would be pretty even this time. Julia was armed as well, and Fargo knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use the pistol in her hand.

  He took her with him and crouched behind a different boulder from the one where Sharon’s body lay, though he could still see her from the corner of his eye. As he heard the steady clip-clop of hoofbeats, Fargo eased his head around the big rock to take a look. He saw two men riding into the mouth of the canyon. One was a roughly dressed, hard-faced gunman.

  The other was younger and wore a town suit, though it was covered with trail dust at the moment. He was lean and handsome, with his black hat shoved back on his head, revealing thick, dark, curly hair. Even at this distance, Fargo could see the arrogance on his face. He knew he was looking at Will Bradley.

  “Last chance,” Bradley called as he reined in. “Give me Julia.”

  Fargo looked over at her and nodded. She flashed him a brief smile, then shouted in a loud, clear voice, “Go to hell, Will!”

  Bradley’s face twisted in anger. He jerked a gun from a holster on his hip and spurred forward, shooting as he came.

  Fargo drew a bead on Bradley and was ready to calmly blast him out of the saddle, but before he could pull the trigger a bullet whipped over his shoulder and smacked into the boulder beside his head, spraying rock dust in his eyes. As Fargo blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, he heard more shots coming from above and behind them.

  Bradley had taken a trick out of Slauson’s repertoire and sent some of his gunmen into the hills above the canyon. Fargo twisted and rolled onto his back, bringing up the Colt. He spotted a man darting along a ledge and pulled the trigger. The revolver bucked against his hand as it roared. The gunman folded up in the middle and pitched forward off the ledge, bouncing off the canyon wall a couple of times before he landed in a heap on the ground.

  The thunder of gunshots filled the canyon and echoed back from its walls. Fargo picked off another of the bushwhackers. He rolled again as Bradley and the other horsebacker galloped past. Bradley twisted in the saddle and fired. The bullet burned along the outside of Fargo’s upper left arm. He gritted his teeth against the pain and squeezed off another shot, but Bradley jerked his horse to the side at that moment and Fargo’s bullet missed.

  Chuckwalla went down as a bullet knocked a chunk of meat off his thigh. Gypsum lunged out from behind a rock and tackled the other gunman on horseback, pulling him down from the saddle and throwing his arms around him in a bone-crushing, backbreaking bear hug. Frank Jordan fired at the men on the rocks above the canyon, as did Mac and the other two outlaws. One of the owlhoots staggered back and fell, the front of his shirt turning red with blood.

  Fargo scrambled to his feet. It was hard to see through the clouds of gun smoke that filled the canyon, but he saw Mac go down, falling to his knees but still firing, not letting go of his gun until he pitched forward on his face. The third outlaw was wounded, too, and pulled himself up for one final shot before collapsing.

  But the bushwhackers were falling, too, and after a moment only one man seemed to be firing from the hillside. Chuckwalla had pulled himself into a sitting position and reloaded his old single-shot rifle. He blazed away just as Jordan fired again, and the last of Bradley’s hired guns rolled out from behind the rock where he had been crouched, drilled cleanly through the head and chest.

  That left just Will Bradley, and with an incoherent cry of rage, he spurred toward Fargo and Julia. Fargo stood up and tried to thrust Julia behind him with his wounded arm, but she slipped away. She stood beside him and lifted her gun.

  She and Fargo both fired at the same time. So did Bradley.

  Bradley’s bullet went between them and splattered off the rock behind them. But the slugs fired by Fargo and Julia drove into Bradley’s chest and smashed him back off the horse, flinging him out of the saddle like a giant hand had swatted him. He landed on his back and skidded a few inches over the sandy canyon floor, then came to a stop with his arms and legs outflung. His chest rose once as he gasped in a final breath, then fell and didn’t rise again.

  “You’re hurt, Skye,” Julia said as she clutched his arm.

  “I’ll live,” Fargo assured her.

  That was more than the dozens of bodies scattered around the canyon could claim. Fargo had to wonder if Death Valley had ever witnessed such a scene of carnage before.

  This morning, at least, the place sure as hell had lived up to its name.

  Mac and the other two outlaws who had joined forces with the canyon’s defenders
at the last were all dead. Fargo dug graves for them, along with one for Sharon.

  The bodies of Slauson, Bradley, and the rest of the slain outlaws and gunmen went into a ravine up in the hills. Fargo used his shovel to dig around a loose slope of gravel until it collapsed, slid down into the ravine, and covered the corpses.

  His left arm was stiff and sore from the bullet burn, but he cleaned the minor wound and bound it up and knew he would be fine. Chuckwalla, Gypsum, and Frank Jordan all had assorted creases and flesh wounds. Julia was kept busy that morning tending to the prospectors’ injuries.

  By the middle of the day, though, she and Fargo were ready to ride for Blackwater. Fargo had been up to the spring at the head of the canyon and filled their canteens.

  “You boys can do your prospecting in peace,” Fargo told the men as he and Julia mounted their horses. “Nobody will bother you now.”

  “Thanks to you, Fargo,” Chuckwalla said as he leaned on his rifle and used it as a makeshift crutch.

  Fargo shook his head. He didn’t want any credit for cleaning up Slauson’s gang. “That’s just the way things worked out,” he said. He lifted a hand in farewell as he wheeled the Ovaro and headed north. Julia fell in alongside him.

  “What about my wagon?” she asked as they rode.

  “It’s still at Furnace Creek. I reckon you can find some men in Blackwater to go down there and bring it back for you.”

  “There are a bunch of horses running loose, too,” she said, referring to the mounts that had belonged to the outlaws and to Will Bradley’s men. “I was thinking that I might try to round them up, sell them, and give the money to Chuckwalla and Frank and Gypsum.” She hesitated for a second. “I could use some help with all that, Skye.”

  Fargo shook his head. “Not me. I’m ready to move on.”

  “I think I understand. Once I’m done here, I never want to see Death Valley again.”

  Fargo didn’t say anything. He was sure that at some point down the path, the trails he followed would bring him back to this harsh, desolate, yet oddly beautiful land.

  But not anytime soon. Right now he was anxious to see the high country again, to take a deep breath of clean mountain air, and to listen to the music of a cold, fast-flowing stream filled with nice fat trout. A few weeks of that would clear out all the bad memories that might otherwise linger.

  “You can at least say a proper good-bye to me before you go, can’t you?” Julia asked, almost as if she had read his mind.

  As he thought about her smooth, supple body and all the delights it held, Fargo smiled.

  Those trout could wait a few more days for him to get there, he reckoned.

  LOOKING FORWARD!

  The following is the opening

  section from the next novel in the

  exciting Trailsman series from Signet:

  THE TRAILSMAN #280

  TEXAS TART

  Texas, 1861. A stolen fortune, a prison where the

  guards are more dangerous than the inmates,

  and a beautiful woman more dangerous than both.

  The man with the lake-blue eyes sat his Ovaro stallion and stared down the slope at the campfire. A lone man squatted there, drinking coffee from a tin cup.

  The time was near midnight on a lonely stretch of Texas prairie where, if you were lucky, you spotted a few adobe huts from time to time, and maybe a corral or two made of ocotillo canes. A man had to be hardy to live here. The local Indians were peaceful, but not the wandering war parties of the Apaches. They didn’t like Mexicans any more than they liked whites.

  The quarter moon helped hide the Trailsman and his Ovaro behind a copse of jack pines. The moon was pale and ragged gray rain clouds dragged across it. While this was the land where cattle was king, this section of the Rio Grande valley produced rich quantities of onions, spinach, carrots, and many fruits as well.

  Skye Fargo was a man of experience. Take campfires—inviting as they always looked to a saddle-weary soul like Fargo—you could never be sure what you were getting into.

  Fargo touched his holstered Colt as if for luck, and kneed his horse down the grassy slope toward the fire. Hot coffee would taste mighty good on a chill April night.

  Hearing Fargo approach, the campfire man stood up and peered into the darkness. “And who would that be?” he said, his right hand dropping to his own gun.

  “Somebody who’d appreciate a little bit of fire and a cup of coffee.”

  “You mind puttin’ your hands up when you come into the campsite here?”

  Fargo laughed. “Been on this horse so long, I could use the exercise.”

  The man’s caution was reassuring. He was as leery of Fargo as Fargo was of him.

  Fargo, his face now painted with the red and gold of the campfire, eased himself into the small circle where the man had set his saddle, his saddlebags, and his rife. He held a Navy Colt.

  “Sorry to be so suspicious,” the man said.

  He was tall, angular, with a sharply boned face and nervous dark eyes. He huddled deep inside his sheepskin.

  Fargo climbed down from the stallion.

  The man walked over and offered his hand. “Curtis Devol. Was a ranch hand till yesterday.” He smiled. “Got a little too drunk in town the night before. Guess I told the boss what I thought of him. Guess it wasn’t too pretty.” He nodded to the fire. “Help yourself to the coffee. There’re a couple biscuits left, too.”

  “Obliged. My name’s Fargo, by the way. Skye Fargo.”

  Devol’s eyes narrowed. “That name’s familiar somehow.” He shrugged. “Coffee’s all yours, mister.”

  Fargo went back to his horse and dragged out his own tin cup. He haunched down to pick up the coffeepot. “So where you headed now?”

  Devol stood above him on the other side of the fire. “Driftin’, I guess. Don’t have a skill or a trade. Wish I did. My brother’s a blacksmith over to Abilene. Makes himself a right nice bit of money.”

  Devol wasn’t kidding about lacking a skill—at least as an actor. The way his gaze suddenly flicked to the right, the way his jaws bulged in apprehension, the way his body gave an involuntary start—Fargo didn’t know what to expect for sure but he had a pretty good idea. He spun around on his haunches, hurled the coffeepot and its scalding contents up into the face of the man behind him, and then jerked to his feet, filling his hand with his Colt and blasting the revolver from Curtis Devol’s gun hand.

  The coffee-drenched man screamed and covered his face with his hands. Fargo stepped over to him and yanked the revolver from his hand, pitching it far into the shallow woods to the east. Fargo could see that the coffee had left the other man’s face welted and violently scalded.

  Devol was favoring his hand.

  “Take your friend down to the creek there,” Fargo said to Devol. “Let him soak his face in the water for a while.”

  He walked back to his Ovaro and mounted up. “I ever see either of you again, you’re dead. You would’ve robbed me and killed me tonight and that ain’t anything I’m likely to forget.”

  He rode back up the slope and disappeared into the night. He could hear the scalded man’s sobs for a long time.

  The town of Cross Peak was named because of the way two angled rock outcroppings looked like crossed swords when approached from the northeast. It was a shopping hub and railroad dispatch center for this part of Texas. The mayor, who had been an Easterner until six years ago, had decided to show these hicks how to build a civilized town. And damned if his intentions weren’t impressive to look at.

  Fargo couldn’t recall ever seeing such a clean city. Three long blocks of stores, all kept freshly painted with board sidewalks running in the front and carefully raked streets dividing west side from east side. The people seemed friendlier here, too, as if the mayor had mandated that along with his orders about keeping everything clean and orderly.

  The town was so friendly, in fact, that each of the four hotels had attractive young women standing at the entrances
and beckoning Fargo to come over. He passed up the chance to meet the first three women but the fourth, a brunette in a yellow cotton dress that made her look downright festive, just couldn’t be passed by.

  He hauled his saddlebags up to the girl. “This town is so friendly, a fella could get downright suspicious.”

  She laughed, throwing her head back and revealing a long elegant neck. Bountiful breasts pressed against the yellow cotton. “Guess you haven’t heard about the hotel war.”

  “What hotel war?”

  “Right here. That’s why the girls are standing out front. See if we can pick up business. There’re just too many hotels for a town this size. Two of them have to go.”

  “Well, a pretty girl is a good way to get customers.”

  She leaned toward Fargo and said, “You ask for Room Sixteen. I’ll be in there waiting.”

  “Is this part of the service?”

  She winked. “Just every once in a while. When the spirit moves me, let’s say.”

  Fargo checked into the hotel, asking for Room Sixteen. The desk clerk winked at him. Fargo was always annoyed by people who winked.

  He found his room well-kept, with fresh sheets on the bed, a fresh flower in a narrow vase next to a washbasin uncorrupted by rust, and a selection of six magazines for his reading pleasure. There was a nice hooked rug on the floor and an even nicer rocking chair next to the window.

  But nicest of all was the brunette waiting in bed for him. “I’ll bet you’re tired.”

  “I am. But I expect there are ways I can be revived.”