Read Online Wyoming Winterkill by Jon Sharpe - Free Book Online

break it.”
    â€œShe’ll be awful mad.”
    Fargo examined the ropes that had bound her. The wily bitch had burned through them, probably right before he woke up. That was the scent he’d noticed. He should have realized it sooner.
    â€œShe might try to kill you again,” Jessie mentioned.
    Not if Fargo could help it. He got a rope and cut new pieces and tied her wrists and ankles and added loops around her thighs for good measure. He gagged her, too.
    â€œHow will she ride like that?” Jessie wondered.
    â€œYou ask a lot of questions.”
    â€œMy grandma used to say I do that because I’m only ten. Didn’t you ask questions when you were my age?”
    â€œI don’t remember.”
    â€œHow can anyone forget being ten?”
    â€œThere are times when I drink so much, I can’t remember what I did the night before,” Fargo said. Fortunately, they were few and far between.
    â€œYou drink liquor?”
    â€œI don’t drink tea.”
    â€œGrandma said that liquor is bad for you. She’d catch Grandpa taking a drink now and then and scold him worse than she scolded me when I snuck sugar.”
    â€œSome women don’t let a man have any fun.”
    â€œThat’s not true. My grandma let Grandpa have all the fun he wanted. He could play checkers and horseshoes and sometimes he’d play hide and seek with me.”
    â€œShe let him do all that?” Fargo asked as he lifted Margaret and carried her to the sorrel.
    â€œGrandma used to say you have to give a man some play in his leash.”
    Fargo snorted.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour grandma was some lady.”
    â€œThe best in the world,” Jessie said softly, and her features clouded.
    Fargo tossed Margaret on belly-down. He’d saved a last length of rope and slid it under and tied her hands to her ankles.
    â€œWon’t that be uncomfortable?” Jessie asked.
    Fargo smiled. “Uncomfortable as hell.” Between that and her jaw she’d be miserable.
    Presently they were under way.
    Jessie looped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his back. “What will happen to me when we get to the fort?”
    â€œI’ll turn you over to Colonel Harrington. His wife is there. She’ll likely look after you.”
    â€œWill they let me live with them?”
    Fargo hadn’t thought of that. The Harringtons had never had kids of their own and were in their early fifties. “I can’t rightly say.”
    â€œWhat will you do?”
    â€œGo after Fletcher.”
    â€œBecause of what he did to my grandparents?”
    â€œAnd what he tried to do to me.”
    Jessie looked up. “You’re not the forgiving sort, as Grandma used to say.”
    â€œI’m sure as hell not,” Fargo said.

10
    Fort Laramie got its start as a trading post. When the army felt the need to establish a military presence as a bastion against hostiles and to watch over those traveling the Oregon Trail, the government bought the trading post. Some of the buildings were replaced, new ones added, and fortifications erected.
    Located on the west bank of the Laramie River not far from its junction with the North Platte, the fort was an important stopping-off point for those headed west.
    Fargo had been there more in the spring and summer than in the winter. It was unusual for him to see it mantled in snow, looking stark and bleak in the gloom of an overcast sky.
    The snow had stopped falling but it could start again at any time.
    A score of wagons was in a giant circle and half a dozen fires had been lit.
    People bundled against the cold were coming and going.
    The gates were open. Sentries on the ramparts kept an eye on the countryside.
    Glances were cast at Fargo and Jessie. Gasps and whispers broke out at the sight of Margaret trussed up like a hog for slaughter.
    A soldier on the rampart above the gate bellowed for the officer of the guard.
    Fargo was relieved