The Cutting Kind by Jon Sharpe

Author:Jon Sharpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

There was a fire, bright and hot. All around it was darkness.

Fargo was lying close to the fire, and he wondered if he’d gone to hell because he knew for damned sure he was dead—just about had to be.

Or maybe not. Hell didn’t have horses in it, and he heard a horse somewhere nearby. He lay on his back, his face turned toward the fire, and felt its warmth on his cheeks. He tried to turn his head to see the horse.

“Don’t be stirrin’ around too much, Fargo,” someone said.

Fargo knew that voice. It didn’t belong to the Devil. “Walker?” Fargo said.

His voice wasn’t much more than a croak, and he realized then how much he was hurting. His whole body was a lump of pain. Being dead might have been better.

“You got yourself shot,” Walker said, and Fargo remembered what had happened.

He tried to tell Walker about Pris and Van Cleef, but he found that he couldn’t.

“No use tryin’ to talk,” Walker said. “You’re in a hell of a mess, no other way to put it. You got two bullets in you, one in the shoulder, and one in the side. I expect you’d be dead now if it hadn’t been so cold and if you hadn’t been wearin’ that buffalo robe. Thing is, I’m gonna have to get them bullets out of you. It’s damn sure gonna hurt.”

Fargo croaked a response.

“I saw what happened to Gant and Keller,” Walker said, as if he understood what Fargo had tried to say. “Three other fellas, too. It was Van Cleef that got ’em. Couldn’t have been nobody else, not considerin’ what was done to ’em. Somebody was with Van Cleef. I saw the tracks. Was it that woman?”

“Yes,” Fargo said, or tried to say. The pain that gripped him wouldn’t let the word past his teeth.

“I figgered it was her,” Walker said.

He walked into Fargo’s view and hunkered down by the fire.

“You’ll be needin’ a drink,” he said. “I carry a little something in case of emergencies.”

He raised Fargo’s head. Even that slight movement sent shocks of pain through his back and chest.

“Hurts, don’t it?” Walker said. “Drink this.”

He tilted a long-necked bottle to Fargo’s mouth, and the Trailsman managed to take a couple of swallows of bad whiskey. It burned going down his throat, but Fargo never felt it hit his stomach.

“Now we have to get to the hard work,” Walker said.

He disappeared for a second, then came back and knelt down by the fire. He reached into it and pulled out a knife with a blade that was glowing as hot and as red as the flames. Walker held up the knife and looked at it.

“Guess that oughta do it,” he said. “You’re a pretty strong fella, Fargo. I hope you’re up to this. Come to that, I hope I’m up to it. I ain’t dug a bullet out of anybody in near-about twenty years.”

He uncovered Fargo and said, “Gonna have to roll you over. If that don’t kill you, we’ll see what I can do about those bullets.

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