Free Nevada Vipers' Nest by Jon Sharpe Page B

I’ll be there.”
    â€œMy shift ends at eight tonight. I don’t think I can wait another day.”
    This was a hot little firecracker, just the kind Fargo liked. “I’ll be there,” he promised. “Now quit pressing into me so tight, or I’m going to be embarrassed when I cross back to the bar.”
    Libby gave him a teasing laugh. “One thing for sure—if it’s as big as it feels, there’s no way you’re going to hide it.”
    Belle’s song ended to thunderous applause and cheers. As Fargo started back across the sawdust-covered floor, he sent a cross-shoulder glance toward the stage. Belle Star was watching him and quickly averted her gaze when he met her eyes.
    Interesting, Fargo thought. Mighty damn interesting.

8
    â€œThat pretty little brunette,” Sitch remarked as the two men emerged from the Sawdust Corner onto the bustling boardwalk, “looked like she was climbing all over you.”
    â€œWe hit it off pretty good,” Fargo said absently, his crimped eyes carefully surveying the town. “Take a gander across the street at the fellow plastering up a broadsheet on the front of the dance hall. He look familiar to you?”
    â€œHe does at that,” Sitch replied. “Wasn’t he one of the faces we saw a couple nights ago when the sashes had us prisoners?”
    â€œThat’s all I needed to hear,” Fargo replied, strolling purposefully across the wide thoroughfare, dodging a big freight wagon.
    But the man was apparently being more vigilant than Fargo realized. He was only halfway across the street when the stranger suddenly jerked back his handgun and opened fire at the Trailsman.
    Fargo bent low and lunged to one side, shucking out his Colt. But as the would-be murderer escaped, Fargo cursed his luck—the opposite boardwalk, too, was bustling and crowded, and he couldn’t risk a return shot.
    The man ducked down a side street, Fargo doggedly pursuing at a full run. The moment he turned the corner, another shot snapped past his ear. This street was nearly empty of citizens and Fargo returned fire. For the next ten or fifteen seconds a running gun battle ensued until Fargo’s last bullet sent the man crashing face-first to the ground. When Fargo caught up to him, the thug’s toes were scratching the dirt in death agony. He was already dead when Fargo turned him around for a closer look.
    â€œDamn it to hell,” Fargo muttered. He had been aiming to wound. But his slug had caught the man just left of his spine, tearing through the heart. There went any chance to beat some truth out of him.
    By long habit Fargo thumbed reloads into the wheel of his six-gun before he did anything else. Then he leathered his shooter, tugged the body out of the street, and returned to look at the broadsheet, where a crowd had already gathered around Sitch. Sheriff Cyrus Vance, too, was reading the sheet.
    â€œWe’re in a world of shit now,” Sitch muttered to Fargo. “Those jackals out at Rough and Ready worked mighty quick. They must’ve paid off the newspaper.”
    The broadsheet was a summary of headlines from that day’s
Territorial
Enterprise
, published in nearby Virginia City and the most widely circulated newspaper in the Nevada Territory. Fargo read the glaring, large-print headline:
    SKYE FARGO RED-HANDED MURDERER???
    The story ballyhooed the massacre of the Hightower family in the typical sensational writing of that era’s newspapers, substituting “eyewitness” accounts for any verified facts without identifying those witnesses. The story did not outright accuse Fargo and “his nefarious companion” of murder. But it did note that the two men were stripping the corpses when “heroic champions of law and order captured them after a bloody frolic during which hundreds of rounds were expended.”
    And in a touch sure to enflame frontier passions, it was broadly