Colorado Clash

LOOKING FORWARD!

The following is the opening

section of the next novel in the exciting

Trailsman series from Signet:

THE TRAILSMAN #335 RIVERBOAT RAMPAGE

The Missouri River, 1860—

the Big Muddy will run red with blood

when Skye Fargo rides a riverboat to Hell.

Raucous shouting attracted the attention of the big man in buckskins. He looked toward the docks and saw a large group of people gathered around something, blocking his sight of whatever it was. Skye Fargo gave a mental shrug and pointed the big, black-and-white Ovaro stallion toward his destination, a waterfront tavern called Red Mike’s.

Then somebody in the crowd behind him let out a whoop and yelled, “Kill him, Owen! Bash the dummy’s brains out!”

That prompted a burst of laughter, and somebody else shouted, “He can’t do that! The dummy ain’t got no brains!”

Fargo reined the Ovaro to a halt. His mouth quirked at the irony.

Then he turned the stallion around and headed back toward the commotion at the docks.

With his buckskins, close-cropped dark beard, and broad-brimmed Stetson, Fargo looked like the veteran frontiersman he was. A long-barreled Colt .44 rode in a holster at his hip, and tucked into a sheath strapped to his right calf was a heavy-bladed Arkansas Toothpick. The butt of a Henry repeater stuck up from a saddle boot. Plenty of men out here went armed. With Skye Fargo, it was like the weapons were part of his body.

He reined in again. Now that he was closer, he could see over the heads of the crowd. The shouting men formed a circle around a couple of hombres who were fighting.

Or rather, one of the men was fighting. The other had his thick, muscular arms raised and his head hunched down as far as it would go between his massive shoulders. He just stood there, absorbing the punishment that his opponent dealt out. The look on his face was one of dull confusion, as if he couldn’t understand why the other man was hitting him.

The man doing the punching was big, too, and dressed like one of the dockworkers. He had a thatch of dark hair and a mustache that curled up on the ends. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up over brawny forearms. The hamlike fists at the ends of those arms shot out again and again, thudding into the body of the younger man.

The spectators kept up their whooping and hollering as they made bets on the outcome. Fargo watched and saw that most of the action seemed to be going through a slender young man who stood to one side, a bowler hat pushed back on his curly, light brown hair. Fargo’s lake blue eyes narrowed as his gaze went back and forth between that young man and the one the dockworker was thrashing.

Fargo thought he saw a family resemblance between the two youngsters. Unless he missed his guess, they were brothers.

The massacre—you couldn’t really call it a fight—continued for long minutes. The dockworker’s fists had opened up several cuts around his opponent’s eyes. Blood smeared the young man’s face.

One of the spectators cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Finish him off, Owen! This is gettin’ boring!”

Grinning, Owen cocked his fists and angled in, poised for the knockout.

The youngster in the bowler hat reached up and tugged on the brim.

The young man who’d been getting pounded finally threw a punch, a slow, ponderous roundhouse right. At least, the blow appeared slow and ponderous at first. But somehow it made its way past Owen’s suddenly frantic attempt to block it and exploded on the dockworker’s jaw. A collective “Oh!” of shock came from the crowd as Owen went up in the air, his feet rising several inches off the ground before he came crashing back down on the ground. He twitched a couple of times and then lay still, with his eyes rolled back in their sockets.

Silence reigned over the crowd now.

The youngster in the bowler hat rushed over to his brother. “Are you all right, Denny?” he asked anxiously. “Did he hurt you?”

“Nuh . . . no, I reckon I’m all right, Cord,” Denny said. “Did I hurt that fella? I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted him to stop whalin’ on me.”

Tears began to run from Denny’s eyes and down his moon face.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him!” he wailed.

One of the spectators stepped forward and said, “Uh, that’s all right, young fella. Don’t worry about it. Owen’s kind of a mean son of a bitch anyway. He’s the one who picked a fight with you.”

Denny kept blubbering. Cord reached around his shoulders, or tried to, anyway, and started to lead him away. The crowd parted to let them through.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Cord murmured to his brother. “Everybody knows you didn’t mean to hurt anybody, Denny.”

That just made Denny cry harder. Cord patted him on the back, which was as wide and sturdy as a stone wall.

“Hey, young fella!” one of the spectators called. “You forgot about your money.”

Cord looked back, evidently confused. “Money? Oh!” His expression cleared. “The bets.”

“Yeah.” The man stepped forward and crammed some greenbacks in Cord’s hand. “I don’t welsh on my bets. That brother o’ yours got damned lucky when he landed that punch, but that don’t matter. He still won, so I’m payin’ off.”

“Me, too,” another man said. One by one, all the members of the crowd who had bet against Denny gathered around Cord and handed money to him.

“I feel bad about taking this,” Cord protested. “Like that fella said, Denny just got lucky. I never dreamed he’d win. The only reason I backed him was family pride, you know. A man can’t bet against his own brother.”

“No, sir, he sure can’t,” one of the men agreed. “You should take that brother of yours and get him a good meal. Maybe some licorice candy. That’ll make him feel better.”

“You know, I think it just might,” Cord said. “Thank you.”

One of the spectators nudged another and said, “Let’s drag Owen over to the water trough and dunk his head. That ought to wake him up.”

“Yeah,” agreed the other man. He turned to Cord and Denny. “Mister, you and your brother best get on out of here. Owen ain’t gonna be happy when he wakes up. He can be a real son of a bitch when he’s mad.”

“Just like an old grizzly bear,” another man said.

Cord nodded. “Thanks. We’ll do that. Come on, Denny.”

He led Denny down the street, away from the docks. Still seated on the Ovaro at the edge of the crowd, Fargo watched them go.

Then, after a moment, he walked the stallion after them.

Cord and Denny turned a corner, and as soon as they were out of sight of the docks, Cord tugged on his brother’s sleeve and started moving faster. Fargo trailed them until they reached a run-down saloon several blocks from the waterfront. They went inside.

Fargo started to turn and ride away, but his curiosity got the better of him. He swung down from the saddle, looped the Ovaro’s reins around the hitch rail in front of the saloon, and followed the two youngsters inside. . . .