Nevada Vipers' Nest Read Free

sleigh ride, Fargo. I asked if you seen a woman anywhere around here.”
    â€œHe’s telling the God’s honest truth.” Sitch spoke up. “I got here about ten minutes before Fargo. I didn’t even know his name before you fellows brought it up.”
    â€œThat’s a lulu,” Scully snapped. “Maybe you two birds will sing a little more when we fit both of you with a California collar.”
    â€œYou’re just gonna string us up?” Sitch protested. “No evidence, no lawyer, no nothing—just your say-so that we did it?”
    â€œOh, it’ll be real legal-like,” Leroy said, flashing his green teeth when he smirked. “You boys will get a miners’ trial back at Rough and Ready. And, see, we won’t exactly be stringing you
up
. ’Steada boosting you branchward, we’ll toss the rope around your neck and then drag-hang you behind your own horses.”
    Fargo knew more than he cared to about the rope justice of territorial vigilantes and miners’ courts. It would just be an occasion to get drunk before he and Sitch were murdered in cold blood in a deliberate travesty of justice. Fargo knew of one occasion where a mule was appointed counsel for the defense. This trail had taken a mighty ominous turn, and unless they could pull a rabbit out of a hat, Fargo could see no way to wangle out of this mess.
    â€œSpeaking of horses,” Romer said, admiring the Ovaro, “that’s one humdinger of a stallion, boys. Us three will have to draw lots for it.”
    â€œThat sorrel ain’t no slouch, neither,” Leroy said.
    â€œNever mind that shit right now,” Iron Mike snapped. “Get them two horses necked together so these mad-dog killers can’t make a break for it when we take ’em back to camp.”
    â€œI’m just a mite curious,” Fargo cut in. “You three are claiming to be outraged by this crime, but you aren’t even going to make sure these folks are buried?”
    â€œ
Now
you’re a Christian, huh?” Scully retorted. “But since you brought it up—you two killed ’em, so you’ll bury ’em right now. But try just one parlor trick, Fargo, and you two will end up as buzzard shit.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    The silver-mining camp called Rough and Ready was a tented berg of the type Fargo had seen dotting the Far West. It sprawled out fanwise from the dilapidated headframe of the mine. These men were not gravel-pan prospectors working independently—silver ore had to be mined from veins in the earth, and this group had formed a profit-sharing cooperative.
    Fargo had heard, however, that so far there was damn little profit to share, and the ragtag appearance of the miners and their camp suggested that their rags-to-riches dream was far more rags than riches.
    And just as Fargo had suspected, the miners’ trial, held that evening when the workday was finished, was just another kangaroo court of the type typifying the western frontier. Iron Mike Scully acted as both prosecutor and judge, and the dozen or so red sashes flanking him put the brakes on any real dissent from the sixty or so assembled miners—especially since the red sashes toted the most formidable weapons in camp.
    â€œThere you got it, boys!” Iron Mike shouted after summing up his version of events. “We caught these two skunk-bit coyotes red-handed robbing the corpses. This bearded buckaroo here actually had the nerve to put his crimes on me, Romer and Leroy. The hog-stupid son of a bitch had no idea that all of us here in camp were the ones who sent for Clement Hightower to give us a hand. Now him and his whole family have gone to glory, thanks to these two murderers!”
    At this intelligence, Fargo and Sitch exchanged a surprised glance. Scully and his two lickspittles had said nothing about this earlier.
    The two prisoners were trussed tightly to adjacent trees,