Apache Ambush

Stein sniffed as if he smelled a foul odor. ‘‘I was not born yesterday. No woman does what you are doing for a complete stranger. I repeat. What makes him so damn special?’’

‘‘He is something you can never be.’’

‘‘And what would that be?’’

Tilly did not reply.

‘‘I asked you a question,’’ Stein growled, taking another half step. He raised the rifle as if to bash her across the face with the stock. ‘‘Answer me, damn you, and answer me now.’’

‘‘It is simple,’’ Tilly said. ‘‘He knows how to treat a lady and you do not.’’ She paused. ‘‘He is not scum and you are.’’

Cursing viciously and lunging at her, Stein hiked his rifle higher. ‘‘That is the last time you will belittle me.’’

Fargo had been hoping he would come closer; now he was within arm’s reach. ‘‘I reckon it is only fair.’’

Stein glanced at him in confusion. ‘‘What is?’’

‘‘You snuck up behind me when I was arguing with her, and now you are arguing with her and I have had the time I need.’’

‘‘Time for what?’’ Stein demanded.

‘‘For this,’’ Fargo said, and surged out of his crouch with his knife arm spearing up and around in an arc that ended with the double-edged blade buried to the hilt in Stein’s chest.

George Stein bleated like a stricken ram and staggered back. The toothpick came out, and with it a scarlet torrent. He made no attempt to level his rifle, but stumbled against a tree. ‘‘What have you done to me?’’

‘‘What have you done?’’ Fargo amended. He felt no sympathy. The fool had brought it down on his own head.

The rifle clattered at Stein’s feet. He placed a hand to his wound and drew it away dark with blood. ‘‘Oh, God.’’ Turning toward Tilly, he held out his dripping hand. ‘‘All I wanted was some company.’’

‘‘You will have plenty of company in hell,’’ Fargo said, and stabbed him again, in the heart.

Stein threw back his head and gasped. He tried to speak but all that came out was blood. He started to quake and fell to his knees. Clutching wildly at thin air, he gurgled. Froth dribbled from his mouth. It was the last sound he uttered. Going as rigid as a ramrod, he pitched onto his face, convulsed and was still.

‘‘That was ugly,’’ Tilly said.

‘‘It was him or me and I was damned if it was going to be me.’’ Fargo wiped the toothpick clean on Stein’s shirt and replaced it in his ankle sheath. Reclaiming his Colt, he shoved it into its holster. ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said, offering his arm.

‘‘What about the body?’’

‘‘Is there an undertaker in Hot Springs?’’

‘‘If there is, he is keeping himself well hid. The town is not big enough. Give us four or five years.’’

Fargo had half a mind to treat the coyotes and other scavengers to a feast. But he had seen a few children earlier. It would not do to have them come across a rotting body. ‘‘Is there someone who will bury your late admirer for, say, a dollar?’’ That was all he was willing to pay.

‘‘I bet I can find you someone for half that,’’ Tilly said. ‘‘Money is hard to come by in these parts. There are not many jobs to be had.’’

Hot Springs was unnaturally quiet, the street still empty. Heads were poking out the saloon door, and when Fargo and Tilly appeared, shouts broke out and men came streaming through the batwings.

The prospector’s death was the most exciting thing to happen in Hot Springs in a coon’s age. Most of the hamlet’s populace came out to view the body and to tell what they were doing when the shots rang out. A few bragged that they heard Stein’s death rattle. One man even claimed to have witnessed the stabbing, but since he lived at the other end of the street and was toting a half-empty bottle of red-eye, no one believed him.

Fargo wanted nothing to do with the shenanigans. He roosted in his chair at the corner table in the saloon and renewed his assault on his own bottle. He had never been one of those who took delight in viewing violence or its aftermath. When he came on a wrecked wagon or an overturned buckboard, he was not the kind to stand and gawk. Spilled blood did not hold the warped fascination for him that it held for so many.

Fargo had seen too much blood spilling to regard it as entertainment. Life on the frontier was savage and hard, especially for those who dared venture into country few whites if any had ever set foot in. The mountains and prairies were the killing grounds for hostiles and renegades who had no qualms about murdering every innocent they came across.

The tally of wounded or dead Fargo had come across, or helped send to the other side, would fill a city the size of Santa Fe. To him the violence was as much a part of the frontier as the mountains and the prairies themselves.

Fargo had the saloon to himself. Even the man who owned it and his wife had gone to see the body. Tilly was off finding someone to do the burying. He was on his third chug, the bottle upended over his mouth, when the batwings parted and in came the last two people he wanted to see. Smacking the bottle down, he said gruffly, ‘‘Go away.’’