California Crackdown Read Online Free PDF Page B

smiling. “I think the pleasure is all mine.”
    “Anything to keep you around a little longer,” Anne said, laughing.
    “Oh, I might be here awhile,” Fargo said. Then, before she could ask, he said, “Long story. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner. Give me thirty minutes to clean off a week’s worth of trail dust for such wonderful company.”
    She half climbed up on the bar again and kissed his cheek for the second time. “I’ll be in the dining room. Don’t keep a girl waiting too long. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
    Then she winked and turned and headed for the back room.
    Fargo watched her go, his mind filled with memories of all their nights together.
    “She’s quite a woman,” Reg said.
    “You’ve known her for a while then?”
    “Tried to get her to marry me—that’s how well I’ve known her.” Then he smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. Those days are long behind me. Mostly just my daydreams more than anything else. To her I’ve never been more than a friend. Sort of like a big brother. But you”— he smiled—“all she does is talk about you. Skye this and Skye that. She has her own daydreams when it comes to you.”
    “Well, I’ve had a few about her too.”
    “You don’t strike me as the settling-down kind.”
    “No. I’m not. But once in a while she makes it very tempting. All these years go by and I still think of her. Then I run into her—”
    Reg had to move down the bar to serve a pair of new customers. He was a burly, quiet gent, one of those men whose presence had a calming effect on people. A real asset in the bartending business, especially given the nature of Western saloons, where fights were as common as beers. Fargo imagined that when a brawl broke out Reg had two weapons—the ball bat behind the bar and his own assertive presence.
    When Reg came back, he said, “You’ve probably noticed we’ve got a lot of crazy people running around these streets of ours.”
    “Gold?”
    Reg nodded. “Sort of ugly what gold does to people. You take a nice, decent feller everybody trusts— he gets a little gold and suddenly he sees everybody as his enemy. He’s got to protect the gold. I’ve seen it over and over. Works the same way from the other side too. You have two friends and one of them gets a strike and the other doesn’t. The one without the strike gets jealous. A lot of time—and I’ve seen this happen too—he gets so jealous that some night he’s all drunked up and he kills his old friend in cold blood. That’s the kind of effect gold has on people.”
    “And then you’ve got one mine owner trying to take over another mine owner.”
    “That’s what’s going on around here. Already been a lot of men killed. The more gold, the more killing.” He laughed. “That’s why I’m happy to stay behind the bar here and mind my own business.”
    Reg had to serve a few more customers. Fargo looked around the place. Lamps were lowered over poker tables. A man in a funny little hat and red sleeve garters was sitting down to play the piano. Three men at one table were rolling dice.
    Boomtown. You’d find men here from Europe, from Asia. All trying to get rich. Reg was right. Otherwise decent, reasonable, realistic men would leave their homes and families to come west to search for gold. And when they got out here, something happened to them. They changed, no longer decent, reasonable, or realistic. Too many of them changed into hungry wolves.
    Reg came back. “This probably sounds kind of crazy, giving advice to the Trailsman. But this is one of those towns where it’s hard to know who to trust. I want Anne to be happy. I doubt she’ll get you to the altar but she’s got a chance as long as nobody turns you into a corpse. So just watch yourself. I don’t want to see that little gal disappointed.”
    This time when Reg went down the bar, there was an air of sadness about him. Fargo figured that despite his earlier words, the man was still painfully in