Fargo also found out that she was spending her nights on a cot in the sewing room. He objected, and suggested they switch and she take her bed back.
Sally would not hear of it. “You are under my care, and my guest, and I would be a poor nurse and a worse host if I put you in my sewing room. You will recover more quickly with a nice, comfortable bed to sleep in.”
When Fargo still insisted it did not feel right, she put her hands on her shapely hips and her emerald eyes blazed.
“I will not hear of it and that is final. Besides, I have an ulterior motive. You are one of the few allies I have in my fight to stop Big Mike Durn from ruining the lives of more maidens.”
“What about the rest of the tribe?” Fargo asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is not just the women. Durn is luring a lot of Indian men into his saloon, plying them with liquor, and putting them in debt to him.” Fargo paused. “Then there is his loco notion of one day running the whole territory.”
“He has made no secret of his ambition,” Sally said. “It explains why he is always stirring everyone up against the idea of a reservation, and why he is doing all he can to cause trouble between the whites and the Flatheads and other tribes.”
Insight hit Fargo with the force of a physical blow. “Durn wants an all-out war.”
“That would be my guess, yes. If he can incite the Indians into going on the warpath, the government might decide a reservation is a bad idea.”
“Then Durn can take all the Indian land for his own.” Fargo marveled that he had not seen it sooner.
“With that much land, he will, in effect, run the territory, just as he has been claiming.”
Fargo sat back. It all made perfect, horrifying sense. And Mike Durn did not care one whit that the loss of life on both sides would be frightfully high. “Why haven’t you reported this?”
“To who, exactly? We have no marshal. We have no sheriff. The only person in Polson with any authority is, ironically, Durn himself.”
“The army can take a hand when a civilian stirs up an uprising,” Fargo pointed out.
“Do you realize how far the nearest fort is? It would take me weeks to get there. And all I have are suspicions. I have no proof. Without that, what good would the army be?”
“They would send someone to investigate,” Fargo said. Which Colonel Travis had done on the strength of a few rumors. If she had gone, Travis would have sent a whole company.
“Maybe I should have,” Sally begrudged him. “But I doubt I would have made it out of Mission Valley. Durn has me watched day and night. Were I to rent a wagon, he would find out and want to know where I was going.” She shook her head. “No. I am fighting Durn as ably as I know how. Which is to do some stirring up of my own. A lot of people don’t like the way he treats the Indians. Especially how he is turning innocent maidens into doves. I fight fire with fire in the hope that if enough people see him for what he is, his scheme will fail.”
Fargo conceded that made sense.
“But even there Durn has outfoxed me,” Sally brought up. “He has been bringing in a lot of men, vermin who do whatever he wants. By now there are almost as many of his people as there are those who were here before Durn came. And more of his kind show up every day.”
Fargo saw where she was leading. It wouldn’t be long before Durn had enough backers to virtually do as he pleased. The realization sobered him. There was no time for him to go to Colonel Travis, not when it might take the colonel weeks to prevail on Washington to act. The army’s wheels of command turned exceedingly slowly. By the time soldiers were sent, Indians and whites could be slaughtering one another. All it would take was one massacre for the newspapers to whip their readers into a red-hating frenzy, with dire consequences for the Flatheads and others.
Fargo had to act, and act soon. But there was not much he could do, the condition he was in. Three more days went by. Days of frustration, and growing impatience. Fargo had Sally ask around to learn if Birds Landing had been caught; apparently, she had gotten away.
The next morning, Fargo was in the kitchen fixing coffee when the back door unexpectedly opened and in strolled Big Mike Durn. Fargo instinctively reached for his Colt and frowned when his hand brushed his empty holster. “This is a surprise.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Mike Durn said. Leaving the door open, he walked to the table and pulled out a chair. “I have a vested interest in Miss Brook.”
“Sally is in her store.” Through the open door Fargo glimpsed Kutler, Tork, and Grunge.
“It is not her I came to talk to,” Durn informed him. “It is you.”
Fargo leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “Me?”
“Surely you did not think I was unaware you were here? I know everything that goes on in Polson. Everything,” Durn stressed.
“It must be nice to be God.”
“It is,” Durn said with a smug grin. “I am a generous god, too. I permitted you to stay so you could recover and be fit to travel.”
“Permitted?”
“No one does anything in Polson without my say-so,” Durn bragged. “But enough about me. Now that you are on your feet, the time has come for you to move on.”
“What if I don’t want to go anywhere?” Fargo said.
“You do not have a choice. By tomorrow morning you will be gone. Say, by ten o’clock. One minute past ten, and if you are still here, well—” Durn did not finish the threat.
“You want me out of your hair,” Fargo said.
“I want you away from Sally,” Durn corrected him. “She can be a headache, but I have designs on the lady. The two of you living here doesn’t sit well with me.”
“Are you jealous?”
“What do I have to be jealous about?” Durn snapped. “If I thought for a second that you and her had—” Again he stopped, and indulged in a sinister smile.
“What about my Colt?”
“What about it? I gave it to one of my men. Hoyt is his name. He lost his fording a river a week ago.”
“And my rifle?”
“The Henry? I took a fancy to that myself. It is up in my room.”
“I want them back,” Fargo told him.
“Is there no end to your pigheadedness?” Mike Durn leaned toward him. “You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you. And I am not about to give you a gun that you might use against me. Count your blessings that you are getting out of Polson with your hide intact.”
But was he? Fargo wondered. He would not put it past Durn to have him ambushed on the trail. “Anything else?” he asked when the would-be lord of the territory did not get up and go.
“You impressed me the other night in the saloon. I have never seen anyone take the punishment you did.”
“Go to hell. You made it happen.”
Durn ignored the comment. “I doubt anyone in my employ could endure half of what you did. You are tough. Damned tough. Which is why I am willing to let you stay in Polson provided you abide by two conditions.”
Fargo was genuinely surprised. “Two seconds ago you wanted me out of here. Now I can stay?”
“The first condition is that you do not so much as speak to Sally Brook, ever. The second is that you come to work for me.”