Nevada Vipers' Nest by Jon Sharpe

thing.”
    â€œDamn straight it would. Matter fact, she’s in more danger than I am. And Iron Mike Scully made a big deal out of asking me about a woman. That means him and his bunch of cutthroats are looking for her, too. If I don’t find and identify her before they do, she’s going to die hard. And Skye Fargo might not be far behind.”
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    At the same time that Fargo was disporting himself with Libby Snyder in Carson City, Iron Mike Scully was sharing a bottle of forty-rod at Rough and Ready with his chief lieutenants, Romer Stanton and Leroy Jackman.
    â€œI shoulda listened to you boys on day one,” Iron Mike said. “You both told me that Skye Fargo was death to the devil. First he busts out of here a-smokin’ and scatters our mounts to hell and back. Then he rides into an ambush and manages to pin down three men well hidden in boulders. Yesterday he beats Russ up so bad that he still can’t move from his bedroll. And then today he guns down Deadwood Dick, one of our best shots.”
    â€œOn top of all that,” Jackman said in his hillman’s twang, “he’s got hisself made a deputy goddamn sheriff.”
    â€œI still say we just leave the son of a bitch alone,” Romer put in. “He ain’t got the map, so screw him.”
    Iron Mike Scully spat into the fire, loosing a string of creative curses. “’Course he ain’t got the map, you thundering asshole! We searched him and that sad sack of shit with him, di’n’t we? We went through their saddlebags, too. Unless one of them shoved it up his bunghole, they didn’t have it. The problem with Fargo ain’t that he’s got the map.”
    Iron Mike took down at least two inches of whiskey and passed the bottle to Leroy.
    â€œThe problem, Romer, you ferret-faced idiot, is Fargo himself. Why do you think he pinned on that star? You think a newspaper hero like him is going to let the murder of Hightower and his family stand? Or that he’s just going to sit on his prat after we tried to hang him? He means to shoot us or hang us, and you can take that to the bank.”
    â€œYou think he seen the woman?” Leroy asked.
    â€œNow there I’m neither up the well nor down. By the time he rode in, she had plenty of time to vamoose. I wish we knew what the bitch looks like. But she had to be with that family. In his letter saying he was coming down to help us, Hightower named everybody in his family that was coming with him. And he definitely mentioned a sister named Dora. It was pitch-dark when we jumped them, she could easy have slipped out taking that map with her.”
    â€œWell, she didn’t go to Virginia City,” Romer pointed out. “We’ve had two boys up there watching the only road in, and they got there way before she could’ve. And even a woman ain’t stupid enough to flee into the desert east of us. Either she escaped toward the eastern slope of the Sierra or she’s holed up in Carson City.”
    â€œI just can’t see her running toward the Sierra,” Iron Mike said. “That’s mighty rough country and there ain’t nobody living on it but grizz bears and a few trappers. What prospectors are left are way the hell up near the summit. We got no choice but to assume she went to Carson City.”
    â€œYeah, that shines,” Romer said. “But we got no proof she’s got a map, or even that Clement Hightower ever made one. He said he knew where the vein is, but he never claimed to have no map.”
    â€œWe got no proof your mother doesn’t fuck Indians, either,” Scully snapped. “But do you figure she does? Boys, I was up on the Comstock when Clancy Munro showed me a clipping from an old newspaper, and it said Hightower did map out where that vein is. We tossed that wagon and every damn one of the bodies, and there was no map.”
    â€œThere’s a