Arkansas Assault Read Online Free PDF Page A

mark was easy enough to see among the others. It had picked up a small nail somewhere along the way, the weight of the wagon sufficient to embed the nail into the wooden wheel.
    When he got to the dusty, baking street, Fargo found that the tracks led north, just as the liveryman had said.
    Getting out of town wasn’t easy. The main street was packed with people loading displays on flatbed wagons for the parade. The Tillman name was on virtually every one of them.
    People were standing on some of the wagons. They were practicing for the parade tomorrow and were in costume. Their attire told the story of the great Tillman family, which Fargo found about as fascinating as watching ants scurry down a sidewalk for a couple of hours.
    The pageant used six wagons for the entire boring story to be told. How the Tillmans—a fat man gussied up in fake mountain clothing—had first pioneered this land. How the Tillmans—a skinny man sporting a peace officer’s badge the size of a baseball mitt—had brought law and order to this place that had once been a roost for robbers. How the Tillmans—a pregnant woman surrounded by four screaming three-year-olds—had brought civilization to the local Indians, as depicted by a white man with a walleye and some kind of red goop on his face. He wore a headband and a single feather. And three other equally spellbinding floats. Maybe the locals would find this sort of event fun. Fargo would prefer a lady, a bottle, and a nice firm bed.
     
    Liz Turner wiped a sleeve across her classically beautiful face and fed more sheets into her Washington Hand Press, the same printing machine that she and her late husband had lugged across three states and two territories while looking for the right place to settle.
    Tillman, Arkansas wasn’t her ideal settling place but for the moment she didn’t have any choice. One wintry morning two years ago, her husband, Richard, had been shot in the back while coming to work. He had been working on a story about the place Noah Tillman owned—and would let nobody but a few of his gunnys on to—Skeleton Key. Not even Sheriff Tom Tillman had been on Skeleton Key. Liz was more than a little prejudiced where Tom was concerned. She’d been carrying on a very secret affair with him for more than eight months.
    She wanted to find her husband’s killer, but for now, the day she needed to get the weekly Clarion out, there was no time to dote on her memories of Richard, or to follow up on the strange rumors about the island. There was just Henry, her fourteen-year-old apprentice, who alternated working the press and picking his nose, and herself. She spent the time feeding paper into the sturdy press and checking every fifth page as it was printed, making sure everything in the hand-set columns stayed where it belonged. The Clarion didn’t have any of the sparkle or sizzle of the bigger town newspapers, but she took pride in how neat it looked.
    She inhaled deeply of the scent of printer’s ink. To her the odor was more satisfying than the sweetest perfume. She loved the newspaper business. She’d grown up an orphan on the streets of Baltimore, nothing more than an urchin. So many young ones like that died of disease or hunger or at the hands of perverts. Somehow, she had triumphed. Somehow.
    She glanced at Henry. His finger was up his nose. He extricated it quickly and then wiped said finger on his corduroys.
    “Henry,” she said, “I’m just afraid you’re going to get that finger permanently stuck up there someday.”
    Henry grinned. “My whole family picks like I do.”
    “Never invite me to one of your family reunions, Henry.”
    They were both laughing about that one when the front door opened and Mike “Red” Grogan came to the long front desk where they took orders for printing (printing jobs earned them a lot more than the newspaper) and advertisements. Red was a spoiled rich kid but unlike most of the spoiled rich kids around here, he wasn’t a snob