New Mexico Madman (9781101612644) Read Online Free PDF

song.”
    â€œAhem!” Addison Steele cleared his throat nervously and cast an I-told-you-so look at Fargo. Trixie and the astrological doctor were frozen in shock. Lansford Ashton, however, Fargo noticed, seemed to be enjoying this farce immensely.
    â€œBill,” Steele suggested, “perhaps we should start boarding the passengers now. And there are trunks to strap down on the roof of the coach. Also, Fargo will want to go outside with you and fill you in on some details.”
    â€œWe seem to be one passenger short,” Ashton remarked. “Certainly we cannot leave without our important personage?”
    Fargo eyed the coolly confident man speculatively. But as if Ashton were a herald, Ambrose Jenkins stepped into the depot with a stunningly beautiful woman on his arm—one so stunning that the depot went as silent as a classroom after a hard question. Even Booger McTeague was struck speechless, a rare event.
    It was Ashton who broke the silence. “As I live and breathe—that fairest flower of all the fields, ladies and gentlemen, is Kathleen Barton, America’s Sweetheart.”
    * * *
    About one hundred yards north of the Overland Stage line’s El Paso depot, Cleo Hastings knelt before a fourth-story window in the Frontier Hotel. The notch sight of his Sharps carbine was centered on Skye Fargo’s back.
    â€œGod-
damn
it, Russ! I’m telling you, man, I can pop Fargo over right
now
!
Now
, buddy, before he even climbs up onto that box. That’s our job, ain’t it? Just one twitch, Russ, and he’s bucked out.”
    Russ Alcott and Spider Winslowe sat at a table cutting cards for a dime a go. Alcott glanced toward the window and shook his head in disgust.
    â€œCleo, you dumb cockchafer, you ain’t got the brains God gave a pissant. Pull that smoke pole in before somebody spots it.”
    â€œBut why, damn it!” Cleo looked back over his right shoulder, his face imploring. He was a thickset man with a huge soup-strainer mustache and a pockmarked face. “You think I can’t make the shot, hanh?”
    Alcott kept his voice level only with an effort. “Now see, this here is why I’m the wheel and you’re just a pip-squeak cog. Sure, my damn grandmother could make that shot. But I told you to pull that rifle back inside, and I don’t chew my cabbage twice.”
    â€œLike hell I will! We kill him now and it’s did. Lomax pays us the rest of our money, and we ain’t gotta lock horns with Fargo up the trail. I’m popping that son of a bitch over
now
.”
    Cleo was still curling his finger around the trigger when two menacing, metallic clicks behind him raised the fine hairs on his nape. He looked around and stared into the unblinking eyes of Russ’ and Spider’s six-guns.
    â€œGo ahead and pull that trigger,” Alcott said in a voice dry as husks scraping in an old cornfield. “Pull it, and you’ll buck out a second after Fargo.”
    Cleo, looking as if he’d been drained by leeches, slowly pulled his carbine inside and laid it on the plank floor.
    â€œCleo,” Russ said as if talking to a child, “a man don’t wade into the water until he knows how deep it is. Now you tell me—what happens as soon as you kill Fargo in that wagon yard? What happens to the bitch before you can get another cap on that nib and get back on bead?”
    â€œShe . . . why, I reckon they’d hustle her back inside, huh?”
    â€œAtta boy, now you’re whistling. And after she sees Fargo’s guts fly out all over her pretty dress, you think she’ll hop on that coach and just head north, pretty as you please?”
    Hastings thought about it, then shook his head. “Nah. She might never go to Santa Fe at all. And then Lomax don’t pay us.”
    â€œThat ain’t all, jughead,” Spider cut in. He had thinning red hair and a crooked nose broken in two