“How you can blame that on me, I fail to see.”
Fargo stared at him.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
From the west scuttled the thunderhead. The wind grew stronger, so strong it pushed at Fargo’s hat. The scent of rain was heavy in the air. Flashes of lightning lit the roiling clouds and now and then a bolt streaked to earth.
Tibbit sat with his back to the boulder and began reloading his revolver.
“That was a glorious charge, wasn’t it? I only wish so many hadn’t turned tail.”
“They were the smart ones,” Fargo said.
“How can you say that? You, of all people?” Tibbit started to insert a cartridge the wrong way and reversed it so it slid into the chamber. “The Ghoul must be brought to bay for his misdeeds and today is the day we do it.”
“He has uncommon luck.”
“Why?”
Fargo nodded at the ever darkening heavens.
“The storm will help us as much as him. We can sneak up on him under cover of the rain and capture him.”
“You hope.”
“Must you always dwell on the worst that can happen?” Tibbit finished reloading and cocked the six-shooter. Cupping his other hand to his mouth, he hollered down, “Men, listen to me! As soon as the rain starts we are going up after him. I’ll give a yell. That will be the signal. Stay close together, and each man watch the other’s back.” He grinned at Fargo. “How was that?”
“The Ghoul heard that, too.”
“So? We outnumber him. He’s had the better of us so far but now we’ll get the better of him.” Tibbit chuckled and rubbed his badge with his sleeve. “I do so love this job.”
“You’re a wonderment,” Fargo said.
“Thank you.”
Wet drops struck Fargo’s face. Lightning crackled, close enough to illuminate half the mesa, and the thunder that followed buffeted his eardrums. When it faded he said, “Do you know a man named Timothy?”
“Tim Bainbridge? Yes. I know him well. He came to Haven about four months ago. He works as a clerk. He has a pretty young wife and a new baby. They are a fine family.”
“When you get back break the news to her and her baby that her husband was shot in the face.”
“Why would you say a thing like that?” Tibbit demanded. “Of course I’ll tell her. But why?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
“You know,” Marshal Tibbit said, “I am beginning to regret asking you for help. You prick at me like an itch I can’t scratch.”
“Someone has to,” Fargo said.
“You make it sound as if I can’t do anything.”
“You can sell corsets.”
“You chew a bone to death. Do you know that? When we get back I would be grateful if you would pack up and leave.”
“When I’m damn good and ready.”
More drops fell, large cold drops, and then the sky opened up and down came the deluge. The wind howled. The lightning was near continuous, the thunder near constant.
Fargo darted around the boulder and climbed. He barely heard Tibbit yell for him to stop. The flashes of lightning lit the terrain but the rain was so heavy the Ghoul would have to be ten feet away to spot him. At the next boulder he paused. Bellowing told him Tibbit and the rest of the posse had started up after him. He resumed his ascent.
The wind howled and keened. The footing became treacherous. Twice Fargo slipped and went down on one knee. He kept a firm grip on the Henry. The slope steepened and he used his free hand for extra purchase. He was soon soaked to the skin and had to repeatedly wipe his sleeve across his face to keep the rain out of his eyes.
A shot cracked. Not from above but from below. A nervous posse member, Fargo reckoned. He hoped the man hadn’t been shooting at him.
Up and up and up he went, the wind pummeling him. He almost lost his hat but snatched it in time to jam it back on. He lowered his head against the rain and pistoned higher and suddenly the ground seemed to fall away under him and he tripped and nearly fell. Crouching, he tried to make sense of it and realized he had come to a flat shelf, invisible from below. The next bolt of lightning showed that it went a good long way in both directions and for forty or fifty feet in.
Pulling his hat brim as low as it could go to ward off the rain, Fargo slowly advanced. He had a hunch this was where the Ghoul had been firing from. He went maybe twenty feet when he saw what he took to be a boulder about as big as a watermelon. A bolt from above blazed the shelf white with light and in the glare he saw that it wasn’t a boulder at all.
Fargo crouched and bent lower and his skin crawled as if with a thousand ants.
It was a woman’s head. Most of the flesh had long since rotted and her skin had withered. Her hair was plastered to what was left of her face and down over the sides of her skull. She had died with her mouth agape in a twisted scream.
Fargo gripped the hair and turned the head so the face was to the ground. Wiping his hand on his pants, he edged forward. More lightning revealed a cliff that he took to be solid stone until he discerned the black maw of what might be a cave.
The Ghoul’s lair, Fargo suspected. He wedged the Henry’s stock to his shoulder. Staying low, he moved each foot with care. He was at the cave opening when his foot bumped something. He glanced down and his skin did more crawling. The thing he had bumped was a withered hand, possibly from the same woman.
Fargo looked up just as lightning streaked the firmament. A dozen feet in stood a figure.
There was only one person it could be.
Fargo had found the Ghoul.
18
Fargo trained the Henry on the center of the figure and curled his finger around the trigger. Another instant and he would have fired. But something about the figure gave him pause. He waited for the next bolt to light up the shelf, and when it did, he slowly straightened. As wary as a cougar, he moved into the cave.
It smelled of food odors and woodsmoke and human sweat. He was close enough now that the next flash confirmed what he thought he had seen—the figure had long flowing hair and its arms and legs were outspread. More bolts revealed more details: the blackened embers of a fire; a mess of blankets; a shovel and an ax; the haunch of a deer; a lantern, and beside it a box of lucifers. Hunkering, he soon had the lantern lit.
In its glow Fargo saw the figure clearly. She was young, barely twenty, and as naked as the day she had been born. Her wrists and ankles were bound to poles imbedded in the cave floor. Her head hung low, her hair half over her face, and her eyes were closed. Either she was unconscious or she was dead. A gag suggested the former.
Fargo raised the lantern higher. The cave went back another ten feet and ended at a rock wall. Lying over near the right wall were female undergarments and a pair of shoes. The woman’s, he suspected. He went up to her, set the lantern down, and lightly touched a finger to her throat. There was a pulse, weak but steady. He was lowering his hand when her eyelids fluttered and her eyes slowly opened. They were dull and vacant.
“Are you Myrtle Spencer?”
At the sound of his voice she stiffened and stark terror wiped away the dullness. She mewed in fear and weakly tugged at the ropes. Her wrists and ankles, he saw, were caked with dried blood.
“It’s all right. I’m here to help you.”
The woman stopped mewing and blinked. Tears started to flow and she quaked from head to toe.
“Where is the man who did this to you?” Fargo asked. “Where is the Ghoul?”
The woman went on quaking. Her tears went on flowing.
Fargo set down the Henry and drew the Arkansas toothpick from his ankle sheath. “I’ll have you down in a moment.” He cut the rope on her right ankle and then on her left, careful not to cut her. Rising, he sliced the rope on her left wrist and she sagged and would have collapsed if he hadn’t hooked an arm around her to support her. She was still quaking. He cut the rope on her right wrist and she fell against him. With great care he carried her to the blankets and went to lay her on them.