Texas Tornado by Jon Sharpe

said.
    Carmody was in a pit of misery. “He was my friend. I’ll never forgive you, Alice. Not ever.”
    â€œWe’re alive,” Alice said. “We wouldn’t be if we’d stuck with him.”
    â€œThat’s awful cold,” Carmody criticized. “You killed him to save your hide.”
    â€œ
Our
hides,” Alice corrected her. “And I’d do it again.”
    Fargo would never have guessed she had it in her. She seemed so innocent, so . . . sweet. “We need to ride, ladies.”
    â€œYou’ll get no argument from me,” Alice said. To Carmody she said, “Your friend is dead. Get over it.” And she smacked her legs against her mount.
    Caromody followed.
    Fargo stayed at her side. They held to a trot for half a mile or more, until Fargo called out to Alice that she was pushing too hard.
    â€œI don’t care,” she hollered back. “It’s not my horse.”
    â€œYou’ll care if you ride it into the ground and Mako gets his hands on you.”
    â€œAll right, all right,” Alice said, slowing.
    â€œShe’s something, that one,” Carmody remarked.
    â€œHow long did she have left on her sentence?” Fargo wondered.
    â€œFifteen years.”
    â€œThat long?” Fargo said, and joked, “What did she do? Kill someone?”
    â€œDidn’t I tell you?” Carmody said. “Little Alice murdered two men. And she admits it, too.”

13
    It bothered him.
    Fargo had taken it for granted that most of the people who ended up in Fairplay’s “barracks” didn’t deserve to be there. He figured that Stoddard and Mako had done to them as they did to him.
    Now he wasn’t so sure.
    They couldn’t trump up a pair of murders.
    He realized he might have freed someone who should rightfully be behind bars.
    And it bothered him.
    They rode until noon. That there was no pursuit surprised him.
    Their horses needed rest. So did they. The country was more wooded, and he called a halt in a grove of trees that bordered the road. With his back to an oak and the Henry across his lap, he watched the way they had come.
    Carmody curled on her side and closed her eyes to nap.
    As for freckled Alice Thorn, she hunkered, facing them, and idly plucked blades of grass.
    â€œYou don’t want to sleep?” Fargo said.
    She shook her head.
    â€œIt’s been a rough night.”
    â€œAll we did was ride.”
    â€œYou killed a man,” Fargo reminded her.
    â€œI put him out of his misery,” Alice said. “Same as I’d do for any critter.”
    â€œIs that what you did to the two people I hear you murdered?”
    â€œNo,” Alice said, continuing to pluck grass. “They deserved it.”
    â€œMind if I ask how?”
    â€œThey tried to have their way with me.”
    â€œDid you know them?”
    Showing no emotion whatsoever, Alice said, “I’m from east Texas. I was on my way to San Antonio by stage. I have kin there. An aunt. The vermin I killed were on the stage, too. Louts, the pair of them. Kept ogling me. Kept making remarks. I told them to shut their mouths, but they wouldn’t listen. One said as how they weren’t afraid of a sweet little thing like me.” She uttered an icy laugh.
    Fargo waited.
    â€œAnyhow, we stopped in Fairplay,” Alice resumed. “It was evening. I got out to stretch my legs, and the louts went to a saloon. The stage was supposed to head out again in an hour. I was sitting out behind the stage office, minding my own business, when they jumped me. Tried to rip off my britches so they could have a poke.”
    â€œAnd?” Fargo prompted.
    â€œWhat do you think? I had a knife in my boot. I slit the one’s throat.”
    Again he had to prompt her. “The other one?”
    â€œI stuck the blade in his balls. He flopped and shrieked until I cut off his pecker and stuffed it down his throat to shut him