Colorado Carnage by Jon Sharpe

Author:Jon Sharpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

15

Fargo rarely boasted. When he said he was going to bring hell down on the devious bastards from Lodestone, he meant it. For now, he reined in the direction of the road. “We’ll be in the saddle a couple of hours,” he informed Hortense.

“What on earth for?”

Fargo didn’t answer. She would find out soon enough.

“I don’t know as I like this side of you,” Hortense remarked. “You’re not friendly all of a sudden.”

“Tell me more about Gladiola’s plan to take over Silver Creek.”

Hortense rested her chin on his shoulder. “She didn’t confide everything to me. Mostly, she connived with Quilby and Thomas.”

“What do you know?”

“Well, let’s see. Their idea called for Quilby to run for mayor in Silver Creek’s next election. Once he won, he’d give Gladiola free rein to—”

“Hold on,” Fargo broke in. “What made him think he’d win? Silver Creek has a couple of hundred people.”

“Yes, but a lot of them are women and children, and women don’t have the right to vote. Only a small number of men even bother to.”

“How small?”

“Quilby had Thomas do a study, and they found that in the last election, the one that made Pike mayor, forty-seven votes were cast and only twenty-five of them for Pike. The rest went to his opponent.”

Fargo listened with interest. For someone who claimed she didn’t know much, Hortense knew a lot.

“You might have noticed there are twenty-two men with our wagon train. Every last one has pledged to vote for Quilby. He’s counting on getting votes from some in Silver Creek, too. He figures that will be enough for him to win. And once he’s mayor, and with Arthur Thomas and maybe a couple of others on the town council, he can do as he pleases. He’ll let Gladiola open a new whorehouse, and he’ll open a couple of saloons, and before you knew it, Silver Creek would be Lodestone all over again.”

Fargo had to admit the plan just might work. Or would have, if word hadn’t reached Silver Creek. “How did Pike find out about it?”

“No one rightly knows,” Hortense said. “Gladiola suspects there’s what she calls a traitor in our midst. She tried her damnedest to find out who it was but couldn’t.”

“One last question,” Fargo said. “Why me?”

“Why did they pick you to send for instead of someone else? I heard Quilby say it was because you’re halfway famous. Him and Gladiola reckoned that by having you along, it would . . . What was the word he used? Oh, now I remember. It would deter Pike and them from trying to stop us. Didn’t work though, did it?”

Fargo had never heard anything like it in all his born days. Then again, as the saying went, politics was a dirty business. There was a reason no one could trust a politician as far as they could throw them. Many were only interested in filling their own pokes.

“Part of me is sorry they brought you into it,” Hortense said.

“Only part of you?”

“The part that you made love to liked it a lot.

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