Free Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) by Jon Sharpe Page A

replied. “We’re ahead of schedule already, and besides, I told you we’re gonna keep on with the job. We just won’t let on that’s what we’re doing or who we are. If a posse stops us, we’re just hunters riding west to the goldfields.”
    Fargo brought the horses in even closer for the night, giving each of them a hatful of crushed barley. He stood first watch as the fire died down to embers and Old Billy snored with a sawmill racket. Fargo kept his Colt to hand and changed locations frequently, listening to the night. All was quiet, however, except for the snuffling of horses and the occasional drunken laugh from a distant campsite. Now and then something slithered in the brush, but Fargo’s frontierhoned hearing could tell a snake or foraging animal from a human footfall.
    Fargo was about to kick Old Billy awake when a gunshot erupted from the circle of wagons across the way, seeming especially loud in the late-night stillness.
    Old Billy, who always slept on his weapons, sat up instantly. “Up and on the line, Fargo!” he called out, kneecaps popping as he came to his feet, Greener cradled in the crook of his left arm.
    â€œNix on that Fargo business,” Fargo whispered. “The name is Frank Scully.”
    â€œUnh. The hell’s going on?”
    Normally Fargo would not worry overly much about a single gunshot in a place like Echo Canyon. With all the cheap 40-rod and Indian burner flowing in these places, one or two shots often signaled celebration and went ignored. But this one was already more ominous—a hubbub of voices boiled up from the direction of the pilgrim camp, and figures carrying lanterns were all congregating on one prairie schooner.
    â€œC’mon,” he told Billy. “There’s a game afoot, but stay back in the shadows. I got a hunch it’s more bad news for Skye Fargo.”
    â€œAnd the stupid son of a bitch siding him,” Old Billy muttered, falling in behind Fargo.
    They joined the stream of curiosity seekers headed across the narrow canyon. A few persons carried lanterns or torches, and Fargo edged away from the wavering penumbra of light.
    â€œHell,” Old Billy rasped in his ear, “they won’t recognize you in this light—your hat throws your face in shadow anyhow.”
    â€œIt’s not my face I’m worried about—it’s this damn shirt you bought. It’s finally dawned on me that, seeing as how you bought it here, somebody else has seen it at the mercantile. And they might start wondering why the new stranger had to buy a shirt. Especially a puke rag like this.”
    â€œAnything I can do to get you killed,” Billy shot back, grinning wickedly.
    The two men pressed close to the knot of people outside the wagon. Fargo watched a tall, elderly man with a full white beard and a monocle step out onto the box holding a lantern.
    â€œLadies and gentlemen,” he announced in a voice surprisingly strong and clear for his apparent age, “I have sad tidings to impart. Mrs. Louise Tipton has taken her own life by means of a pistol shot.”
    Outraged and shocked voices erupted. The man Fargo assumed was Dr. Jacoby raised his free hand to silence the crowd.
    â€œIn some measure,” he continued with the crisp enunciation and voice projection that Fargo associated with stage actors, “I feel I am partly responsible for this tragedy. As many of you know, the late Louise Tipton was my patient. I was standing careful vigil over her, fearing just this contingency.”
    â€œThe hell’s a contingency?” Old Billy whispered. Fargo elbowed him silent.
    â€œI searched the wagon for weapons,” Jacoby continued, “and kept this poor, suffering creature in my constant view. But of course nature calls all of us, and as she appeared to be sound asleep after I gave her laudanum, I stepped off into the bushes for only a moment. She must have been feigning sleep,