Flathead Fury

20

Whoops of glee and laughter greeted Dawson’s demise. If any of Mike Durn’s men objected to one of their own dying, they did not let on out of fear that what happened to Dawson could happen to them. As for the rest of the onlookers, it was wonderful fun. One of the women commented on how she wished there had been more blood. A man remarked that Dawson had not screamed nearly as much as he thought Dawson would.

Fargo was more interested in Sally. She was quaking like an aspen leaf, her fists clenched so hard her knuckles were white. When he touched her shoulder, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Leaning over, he said in her ear, “You must stay calm.”

“How, in God’s name? I am not you. You have probably witnessed things like this before.”

Fargo had. Animal attacks were common in the wild, and the wilds were his home. But that was not the issue. “I need you to be brave,” he stressed.

“You ask the impossible,” Sally said, shaking her head. “I will pass out when Durn pushes us in, and that will be that.”

“Try not to,” Fargo urged.

“But I want to,” Sally said. “I would rather be unconscious when that thing pounces. I won’t feel the pain. I won’t experience the horror.”

“It is not as hopeless as you think,” Fargo said. Then, making sure Durn had his back to them, and that neither Kutler nor Tork were listening, he whispered, “I have my knife.”

“So?” Sally said. “What good will it do us? You might as well throw pebbles at it.”

“Trust me,” Fargo said. “I know what I am doing. I have a plan.” A crazy plan, a plan fraught with peril, a plan that could as easily get him killed as anything, but a plan, nonetheless.

“Do we make a break for it before they throw us in?”

“No.” Fargo doubted they would reach the tunnel.

“Oh! You intend to kill Durn! And then we can escape in the confusion.” Sally grinned, thinking she had figured it out.

“There will be confusion, yes,” Fargo said. But not for the reason she expected.

Sally put her lips to his ear, her breath warm on the lobe. “When do we make our break?”

“After they throw us into the pit.”

“After?” Sally blinked. “Are you insane? Once we are in that pit, we are as good as dead.”

“Listen to me,” Fargo said, and gently squeezed her arm to soothe her. “When we go over the side, try to land on your feet. Stay close to me and keep your back to the wall. I will take care of the rest.”

“If only I could believe that.”

Fargo leaned closer. “There is one thing more you can do,” he said, and told her what it was.

Sally drew back, her wide eyes fixed on his. “You are insane.”

“It will work,” Fargo promised.

“Listen to yourself. It is a wolverine, not a dog or a cat. And ten feet is awful high.”

“I am counting on the wolverine to help,” Fargo said. “And remember, it doesn’t weigh more than sixty pounds.”

“That is plenty enough,” Sally said.

Then there was no more time to talk. Durn’s men seized them and hauled them to the edge but did not, as yet, hurl them over.

Mike Durn had some crowing to do. He raised his arms. “Friends! Now for some real fun! Two at once, and one of them a white woman!”

Not one of the faces ringing the pit was sympathetic to their plight. Which made it easier for Fargo; he had no qualms about what he was about to unleash on them.

“You squaws over there!” Durn said. “Pay attention! This could be you if you don’t do as I say!” He stepped around behind Fargo and Sally and placed a hand on their backs between their shoulder blades. “And so it ends.”

“Remember,” Fargo said to her.

Mike Durn paused. “Remember what?”

“That you are a miserable son of a bitch who will get what he has coming to him,” Fargo predicted.

Always quick to anger, Durn swore and shoved.

Fargo didn’t resist. He kept his legs under him as he dropped, his arms out from his sides. Beside him, Sally screamed, her fingers plucking at his sleeve. He came down hard on his boot heels and pitched backward. He thrust his hands behind him and came up against the wall. From above came liquor-spawned hoots and cries of derision as he turned and nearly tripped over Sally, who was on her knees, staring straight ahead with her features frozen in shock.

The wolverine was slinking toward them.

“Get up!” Fargo commanded, and yanked her off the ground. “Remember what I told you.”

Sally numbly nodded, saying in dread, “I don’t know if I can.”

“If you can’t we are dead.” Fargo would give a good account of himself with the toothpick, but he had no illusions about the outcome.

Its blunt snout thrust out, the wolverine slowly advanced. It kept glancing from Sally to Fargo and back again as if it could not make up its mind which one it would attack first.

“Be brave!” Fargo cautioned. He sidled away from her, his back to the pit wall.

The wolverine stopped. Its muzzle and face were spattered red with Dawson’s blood and a strip of pink flesh hung by a shred from its bottom teeth. Snarling, the beast snapped at the air.

Sally whimpered and made as if to press back into the wall. “I can’t do this!”

Fargo did not respond. It was essential the wolverine focus on her and only on her.

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!” Sally wailed.

The wolverine had taken a step. Now it took another, its head low to the ground the way a bear’s would be when a bear was about to attack. It glanced once at Fargo, apparently decided he did not pose a threat, and continued toward terror-struck Sally.

The cries from on high were at a fever pitch. The onlookers were thirsting for more blood to be spilled. They reveled in the prospect of witnessing another gory death—so long as it was not their own.

Fargo halted and glanced up. Mike Durn and Kutler were whooping as loud as everyone else. But not Tork. The little man was still, his brow knit. Evidently Tork suspected he was up to something.

The wolverine crouched and growled, about to charge.

Coiling his legs, Fargo did the last thing anyone expected. He rushed at the wolverine. The instant he exploded into motion, Sally did what she was supposed to do—she screamed at the top of her lungs to keep the wolverine’s attention on her.

It worked.

Fargo had only six feet to cover, and then he was behind the wolverine. Wrapping a hand around each hind leg, he wrenched them off the ground. At the contact the wolverine twisted and bit at him and sought to reach him with its claws. But Fargo had already started to spin, and as he turned, the wolverine’s front legs came off the ground, too.

Fifty pounds was no feather but it was nowhere near the heaviest Fargo could lift. He swung the enraged glutton in a circle, and kept on swinging. Faster and faster, straining harder and harder, he whirled like a top, his shoulders bearing the strain, his whipcord body taut.

Some of those above broke into laughter. They did not divine his purpose.

The wolverine was trying with all its feral might to get at Fargo’s hands but could not reach them. Its rage was boundless.

Came the moment toward which Fargo had been building. He was swinging the wolverine as fast as he could, its body as high off the ground as he could raise it without losing his balance. On his next swing, he powered the beast’s bulk higher still and let go at the apex of his swing. The wolverine shot toward the rim.

The result was everything Fargo hoped for.

The creature did not quite reach the top and started to fall back, but it was so near that it caught hold of the earthen wall with its long claws and by furiously pumping all four legs, clawed its way up and out.

For a few heartbeats the tableau was frozen as the astonished onlookers and the enraged wolverine were eye to eye. Then the wolverine did what wolverines were famed for doing—it went berserk. With the closest to a roar Fargo heard it utter, the beast was in among the throng, slashing and tearing in a whirlwind of slaughter. Women and many of the men screamed and screeched and fled in panic, pushing and shoving one another in their bid to escape.

Fargo lost sight of Mike Durn in the melee. He ran to Sally and took her hand. “It worked! Come on!” he shouted to be heard above the bedlam.

“But how will we get out of this hole?” she wanted to know.

For an answer, Fargo pulled her toward the cage.

Above them the carnage continued, the wolverine slaying and maiming with dervish abandon. Here and there a few men had the presence of mind to try and use a gun but could not shoot for the press of bodies. One man did squeeze off a shot, but the slug meant for the wolverine instead blew a hole in the thigh of another man who went down in the wolverine’s path and was promptly dispatched with a raking swipe of its claws.

What happened next, with all the pushing and shoving, was inevitable. Two men came hurtling over the edge and fell hard to the bottom. Fargo reached them before they could rise. Both wore revolvers, which he snatched from their holsters. As he straightened, a rifle thundered and lead splatted the dirt.

Fargo glanced up.

Smoke was curling from the muzzle of Tork’s Sharps. The little man swore and swooped a hand to his hip.

Fargo fired both revolvers.

The impact jolted Tork back a step. He stared at the twin holes in his chest, then down at Fargo, and said something that was drowned out by the pandemonium. Dropping the Sharps, he oozed into a heap.

Fargo turned. The two men who had fallen into the pit were starting to get up. He dissuaded them with a wag of the pistols. Then, motioning to Sally, he ran to the cage. “Wait until I am out, then climb on top.”

Wedging the revolvers under his belt, Fargo clambered up. The cage was sturdily built to prevent the wolverine from breaking out and easily bore his weight. Since it was four feet high, once he straightened, it was simplicity itself for him to jump and catch hold of the rim.

The chamber had gone quiet save for whimpers and moans and a sucking sound. From the tunnel came screams and curses mixed with the snarls and growls of the wolverine.

Fargo pulled himself up so he could see over the edge. He counted seven sprawled forms: one a woman lying in a spreading scarlet pool, another a man whose torn throat bubbled and frothed.

Digging his toes into the dirt wall, Fargo levered up and out. He promptly drew one of the revolvers, and turned, but the two men in the pit had behaved themselves and were standing well back from Sally.

Lying flat, Fargo offered his other hand to her. She had already climbed on the cage, and it was the work of a moment for him to pull her up beside him.

“We did it! We actually did it!” Sally happily marveled. Then she noticed the dead and dying, and sobered. “What now?”

“You stay here. I have some killing to do.”

Fargo made for the tunnel. The wolverine had lived up to its reputation, and then some; he stepped over body after body. A few had been trampled in the panic and did not bear a single scratch or bite mark.

The iron door with the grille hung partly open. Fargo was almost past it when a slight sound caused him to spin.

Kutler was almost on him, the bowie raised to stab.

Fargo fired, stepped back as Kutler sliced at his neck, fanned a second shot, stepped back again as Kutler speared at his stomach, and fanned yet a third.

Each jarred Kutler, the last keeling him against the door. He never said a word. He simply smiled a wistful sort of smile, the bowie fell from fingers too weak to hold it, and he melted, his eyes already glazing.

Fargo went faster. It seemed to take forever to climb the stairwell. In the narrow confines, with each step jammed by the panicked herd of humanity fighting to reach the top, the wolverine had wreaked havoc.

Only two bodies were in the hall. Fargo cautiously peered out the back door and glimpsed a hairy form loping toward the distant mountains.

Behind Fargo, a revolver crashed. Lead bit into the jamb as Fargo whirled and responded in kind. At the other end of the hall, Big Mike Durn staggered but fired again.

Fargo dropped the revolver he had emptied and drew the other one. He slammed shot after shot, emptying the second six-shooter into Durn’s chest and face.

The man who would be lord and master of Flathead country died on his feet, pink fluid oozing from a hole between his eyes.

Then Sally was there, hugging him. Fargo draped an arm across her slender shoulders and started toward the saloon. “I can use a drink. How about you?”

An impish grin curled those luscious lips. “I have a better idea. Let’s take a bottle to my place and make more use of that bed of mine.”

Fargo grinned. “Woman, you are a hussy at heart.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Smacking her on the fanny, Fargo chuckled. “What do you think?”