Utah Deadly Double (9781101558867) Read Online Free

latch. “These clabber-lipped pilgrims know me and you are death to the devil. Let the milk-kneed boardwalkers try to arrest me—there’ll be new widows and orphans aplenty.”
    Fargo’s strong white teeth flashed through his beard as he cinched the girth. “Billy, you smell like a whorehouse at low tide and there’s nothing but rough sides to your tongue. But I’d rather have you siding me than a whole troop of cavalry.”
    â€œThis from a man who needed to be saved from a woman. Christ, Fargo, do children bully you, too?”
    Fargo swung up onto the hurricane deck and wheeled the Ovaro around. Some of the faces were growing uglier as a few drunk gentiles worked them into a white-hot fever.
    Fargo jerked the Henry from his saddle boot and jacked a round into the chamber. “If any of you boys are feeling froggy,” he invited, “go ahead and jump.”
    Billy followed suit, pulling out his Greener 12-gauge express gun. “My name is Old Billy Williams,” he announced in his rasping voice, “I’m strong as horseradish and I like to kill—goddamn if I don’t. I double hog-tie dare any of you to make a play. Ain’t one of you spineless sons of bitches fit to wipe my ass, and I can send twenty of you across the mountains quick as a hungry man can eat a biscuit.”
    Fargo knew that wasn’t an empty boast. Like most Indian fighters who worked alone, Old Billy was a walking arsenal. Besides the Greener for close-in work, he toted around a seven-shot Spencer carbine. For more personal encounters he wore a fancy repeater made by Brasher of London with ivory grips and a folding knife under the barrel. When it was do or die, he resorted to the double-bladed Cherokee hatchet in his legging sash.
    â€œWilliams, the hell you doing takin’ the part of a rapist?” demanded a surly, anonymous voice.
    â€œRape?” Fargo laughed. “There’s Mormon soldiers here. You think they’d let me ride out if I raped a woman? Sell your ass, you damn fool.”
    A few of the men nodded at this logic and drifted off. Fargo and Billy gigged their horses in the direction of the gentile camp.
    â€œFargo, this hombre that looks like you is trouble,” Old Billy opined. “We need to find the bastard and irrigate his guts.”
    â€œGod’s truth, old son. But we also signed a contract with a tight deadline. There’s a good piece of country ahead of us yet before we reach Sacramento—the hardest piece, too.”
    â€œUh-huh. You think this Pony Express will ever show color?”
    Fargo snorted, making the Ovaro prick up his ears. “It was never meant to. I talked to William Russell and Alexander Majors myself back in St. Louis. They admitted the whole thing will sink in less than a year.”
    â€œChrist! Then why take it out of the gate?”
    â€œYou know how it is out West. The competition for freighting contracts is fierce. At one time Russell, Majors, and Waddell had the whole range to themselves. Now Overland, Creighton, and other haulers are cutting off much of the grass. The Pony is creating plenty of hoopla, and they’re hoping to be the big men on the totem pole once more.”
    Billy shook his head in disgust. “It’s like wasting water to make it rain. Well, long as we get our shiners.”
    By now they’d trotted their mounts to the front of the Kreeger tent.
    â€œMrs. Kreeger,” Fargo called as he swung down, holding the reins. “Is Ginny up to coming outside?”
    â€œWe’re on our way, Mr. Fargo.”
    â€œThat Dot Kreeger is a fine specimen of woman flesh,” Billy muttered from the saddle. “You gonna trim her, Fargo?”
    â€œPleasant as that might be,” Fargo replied, “all I want right now is to show this place my dust.”
    The two women emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight.
    â€œLord,” Old Billy whispered, “yoke the two