Free The Trailsman 317 by Jon Sharpe Page A

did Mr. Binder get to?”
    â€œHe should be here in a bit,” Fargo said. He threw his saddle blanket on the Ovaro, then the saddle. After tightening the cinch, he shoved the Henry into the saddle scabbard, rolled up his own bedroll, and tied it on. He was about done when the undergrowth crackled and into the clearing huffed and puffed Binder.
    â€œDamn you! You had no call to leave me like that!”
    Fargo stepped to the mare. “Here,” he said, cupping his hands to give Mabel a boost. She placed her foot into his interlaced palms and swung lithely up. He followed suit, then lifted the Ovaro’s reins. “We will ride in single file. Stay close. Binder, you come last.”
    â€œSo I am the first one Skagg shoots? I can ride as good as any man. I should go first.”
    â€œSays the idiot who walked into a tree.” Fargo gigged the Ovaro to the north. Distant sounds told him Skagg was on his way. As the foliage closed about him, he looked back. Mabel smiled encouragement. Binder was swearing up a storm.
    The heavy timber was a challenge in broad daylight. At night it was doubly so. A blunder by a rider, a misstep by a horse, and the animal could end up with a broken leg. Although Fargo’s every instinct was to ride like hell, he went at a trot for a hundred yards, then slowed to a walk. When he was sure they had gone far enough to swing wide of Skagg’s Landing, he reined to the west.
    The woodland was an endless maze of shadow, leaves, and needles. Fargo stayed close to the river. Every now and again he heard the gurgle of the swiftly flowing water.
    The floor at this end of the valley was a series of rolling troughs, and whenever Fargo came to high ground he twisted in the saddle and sought some sign of their pursuers. There was none, which mystified him, and caused him more than a little unease.
    Along about four in the morning Mabel broke her long silence. “I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
    â€œWe must push on for as long as we are able,” Fargo said.
    â€œI understand. Don’t worry. I will hold up. I am eager to learn my brother’s fate.”
    â€œHe is lucky to have a sister who cares as much as you do.”
    â€œWhat a nice thing to say,” Mabel replied.
    Fargo thought of the lush body under her riding outfit, and said nothing.
    Dawn found them well up into the Sawatch Mountains. The imposing peaks seemed to brush the clouds. Virgin woodland, untouched by the hand of man, covered the slopes. Untamed, largely unexplored, it was the kind of country Fargo loved best. He could take civilization for only so long before he felt the impulse to seek out the haunts where man hardly ever set foot.
    Man’s world and the wild world. Fargo was at home in both. But where he liked man’s world for its entertainments, for whiskey, women, and cards, the wild world was in his blood. It was part of him. It was why he worked mostly as a scout, why he ventured where others feared to tread, why in some quarters he was known as the Trailsman.
    For the first hour after sunrise Fargo constantly checked their back trail. The result was always the same: nothing. As strange as it seemed, Malachi Skagg was not after them.
    That was good, but it was troubling. Good, in that their lives were not in immediate danger. Troubling, in that by rights Skaggs should want them dead. If he was not after them, then he was up to something else. But what?
    Fargo’s suspicions centered on Binder. The man claimed he wanted to be shed of Skagg. He claimed to need the one hundred dollars to tide him over in Denver. But it could be a trick. It could be Skagg had put him up to it. If so, their lives were in immediate danger from the very man who was supposedly helping them by guiding them to Chester Landry’s cabin.
    Fargo’s suspicion was why, shortly after sunrise, he switched places with Binder and had Binder take the lead while he brought up the rear. He