Beartooth Incident by Jon Sharpe Page B

choice.”
    “You’re safe now,” Fargo said, and began carefully cutting the rope around her wrists.
    “I wish that were true. But Cud Sten will be here soon. Tull was a friend of his. He won’t like this one bit. And he won’t care that you were defending yourself.”
    “Who says he has to find out?”
    “You mean bury the body where Cud will never find it? That still leaves Tull’s horse. I’d take it up into the mountains and leave it in a box canyon I know of—only with all the snow, it would starve.”
    “We can say the horse showed up by itself,” Fargo suggested. “Then we’ll show him the dead wolves and let him add two and two himself.”
    Mary smiled. “It just might work. So long as Cud doesn’t catch on that you were the one the wolves nearly tore apart.”
    “So long as I don’t go around naked, he won’t suspect.”
    Her cheeks flushed pink and she gave a light cough. “You can wear some of Frank’s clothes. You’re taller than he was, so they might not fit all that well, but it’s the best we can do.”
    The rope finally parted and Fargo gave the toothpick to her. He was on the brink of collapse. With difficulty, he stood and moved to the stove. The pot of chicken soup was cold but he didn’t care. He took a ladle from a hook and carried the pot and the ladle and the Colt to the table. Setting the Colt down, he ate as one starved.
    “You’d better chew that or you’ll make yourself sick,” Mary cautioned, coming over. She had cut Nelly free and Nelly was doing the same for her brother. “I can heat it if you’d like.”
    “No,” Fargo said with his mouth crammed.
    “Would you care for some coffee? I don’t have much left but I’ll put a pot on to brew.”
    Fargo was tempted but the coffee might keep him up and he needed sleep as much as he needed anything. “Maybe in the morning.”
    The children crossed to their mother and she draped her arms over their shoulders.
    “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Fargo told them. He meant it. Kids and horses—he didn’t like to see either suffer.
    Nelly shrugged. “It was no worse than that day we watched the grizzly eat our pa.”
    “I’d like to see you shoot him again,” Jayce said. “He was mean to my ma. He had it coming.”
    Mary knelt and took hold of her son’s hands. “Now who is being mean? No one ever deserves to die.”
    Fargo disagreed, and ladled more soup into his mouth to keep from saying so.
    “But you’re right in one respect,” Mary went on. “Sometimes the only way to deal with men like Mr. Tull is to do what no one should ever have to do.”
    Fargo had lost count of the number of times he’d had to do it. The frontier was chock-full of Tulls. They came in all sizes and guises, and they all had one trait in common: They were heartless bastards who didn’t care who they hurt.
    “Now why don’t the two of you scoot to bed while I take care of Mr. Tull?” Mary hugged and kissed first Nelly and then Jayce, and they headed for a door on the other side of the room.
    “I’ll help you,” Fargo offered.
    “You’ll do no such thing. It would only make you worse.” Mary stared down at the body. “It shouldn’t be all that hard for me to drag him outside. In the morning I’ll bury him if I can find a spot of ground soft enough.”
    Fargo hadn’t thought of that. What with the cold and the snow, the ground would be rock hard. “That was a nice talk you gave your boy.”
    “You think so? He’s young yet. He doesn’t need to know the truth.”
    Puzzled, Fargo asked, “Which truth are we talking about?”
    “Tull did deserve that bullet. He was as vicious as those wolves. The wolves, though, had an excuse. They were hungry. Tull was just a miserable son of a bitch who would have done the world a favor if he’d been stillborn.”
    The shock of her language took a few seconds to wear off so that Fargo could say, “And here I reckoned you were one of those weak sisters who sticks her head in the