Nevada Vipers' Nest Read Online Free PDF

to get the town stirred up agin you by claiming you killed women and kids. Happens that don’t work, they’ll give you a lead bath.”
    â€œFar as stirring the town up against me, you just said the boardwalkers can’t stomach them. They don’t have a shred of proof, just their say-so. As to killing me, even in the territories it’s a serious business to kill a deputy sheriff.”
    Sitch choked and spat out a mouthful of coffee. Duffy’s shoulders began to shake as he laughed silently. “You, a deputy sheriff? Fargo, you’re planning to stir up the shit agin, ain’tcha?”
    Fargo assumed a look of cherubic innocence. “With me it’s live and let live—until it’s time to kill or be killed. I’m a lovable cuss. And speaking of lovable—Carson City is where the females are. I’m starting to get amorous thoughts when I spot a knothole.”
    â€œI do wish you luck, Skye,” Duffy said, tossing out the dregs of Fargo’s river-mud coffee. “But I best skedaddle. That bunch back at camp might soon have their horses rounded up. You boys best light a shuck, too—this place ain’t that far from Rough and Ready.”
    â€œI doubt if those cockroaches could track a buffalo herd through a mud wallow,” Fargo said. “Look, Duffy, after what Scully and his bootlicks did to me yesterday, I got my mind set on either killing them or running them off. Might be you could hang around these parts a bit, join up again with your pards at the camp.”
    Duffy shook his head, looking suddenly embarrassed. “See, Skye, it ain’t just Scully and them that’s put jackrabbits in my socks. There’s . . . things happening in Carson Valley. Things that give me the fantods.”
    Fargo’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “The hell you talking about, old son?”
    â€œYou heard about what happened in this valley back in fifty-eight, right? How Paiutes wiped out a preacher and a bunch of church missionaries bound from the Humboldt River to Old Sac?”
    Fargo nodded. “Sure. It started that half-assed legend about how this is now the ‘Valley of Death’ for any white intruders. Some claptrap about how there’s ‘wandering dead’ going around sucking the blood of the living in hopes they can come back to life. But, Duffy, you don’t believe that foolishness?”
    â€œI didn’t when I come here, Skye. But now . . . I ain’t so sure. I ain’t the first to scat, neither. Plenty of other miners has pulled up stakes. But I ain’t talking no more about it—it’s bad cess.”
    Fargo knew that Duffy was stubborn as a rented mule, and he didn’t try to press the matter. But it piqued his curiosity—clearly the topic had unstrung Duffy’s nerves, and Fargo didn’t know him to be a superstitious man.
    Duffy tacked his horse. “I thank both you gents for the stake. Mayhap we’ll meet down the trail somewheres.”
    â€œHow ’bout a shot of bust-head for the road?” Sitch suggested, pulling a stirrup cup and a flask from a saddle pocket.
    The three men shared a drink, and Duffy pointed his bridle west toward the towering ermine-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
    â€œSo he believes this is a haunted valley,” Sitch remarked. “He doesn’t strike me as the type who goes in for spirit knockings and such.”
    â€œHard to know about a man when it comes to such things,” Fargo said, his crop-bearded face thoughtful. “A man can have enough guts to fill a smokehouse when it comes to facing real danger, but then shrivel up like fried bacon when he hears about ghosts and such. Well, this is where we part ways, Sitch. Where you headed?”
    â€œI was hoping you’d change your mind about me siding you for a time.”
    â€œNo soap. It’s nothing personal—you’re a likable enough cuss. But