Badlands Bloodsport

7

The collective mood of Fargo’s charges grew somber and awed as the odd caravan edged into the startling terrain of the Badlands. Basalt turrets thrust up as high as several hundred feet, surrounded by mesas so badly eroded they appeared to have been half devoured by some starving giant. The ground they crossed was barren and badly cracked from the summer sun.

Fargo knew they had lost the defensive edge provided by the wide-open plains. Although he had not spotted smoke signals or mirror flashes being sent between the Sioux and the Cheyenne, that didn’t mean the Sioux hadn’t spotted them on their own. And with countless ridges in the Badlands, an ambush would be easier than rolling off a log.

Montoya must have been thinking along the same lines. When Fargo rode back from a forward scout, Montoya hailed him from the board seat of the fodder wagon.

“Fargo, which would be worse—to be taken by Sioux or Cheyennes?”

“Hell, you know both tribes are death to the Devil. But the Black Hills are close by, and the Sioux are fit to be tied over the army’s failure to drive white prospectors out.”

Montoya nodded. “Yes, and the Cheyennes have a more personal grudge with us. It will go hard either way, verdad?”

“The way you say.”

Fargo had decided to keep a rear guard out now, and he could see Skeets on his big sorrel about three hundred yards back. Slappy, not too happy about it, was driving the “Quality coach” as he sarcastically termed it. But Derek the Terrible was the man Fargo kept a wary eye on. Ever since Fargo and Jessica had taken their little walk, there was a homicidal cast to his big, blunt face.

Fargo watched the low, gliding swoop of an eagle, wondering what prey it could be hunting in this desolate waste. At one time deer, antelope, wild turkey, and smaller game had crisscrossed the Badlands—Fargo had found their petrified footprints. But most of the water had mysteriously dried up, and now even the familiar buzzards wheeling in the sky were rarely spotted.

“Fargo!” Slappy called out, and the Trailsman gigged his stallion forward. Slappy pointed to a little side canyon. Fargo saw the crumbling remains of a canvas-covered bone shaker, the boards weathered a deep gray and the canvas reduced to rag tatters.

Fargo dismounted and tossed the reins forward, walking closer. He felt the hair on his nape stiffen when he spotted the four skeletons in the bed of the wagon, two adults and two children, both little girls in the scant remains of pinafores. Every last bit of flesh had either rotted away or been picked clean by carrion birds.

He heard the scrape of footsteps as the rest joined him.

Ericka, bravely making herself look, asked, “Why are they here, Mr. Fargo? This is not part of a settlement trail, is it?”

Fargo expelled a long sigh, his eyes misting slightly at the sight of the smaller skeletons. “Tell you the truth, Lady Blackford, I doubt if they intended to be here at all. There’s scoundrels all over the West selling phony maps promising ‘shortcuts.’ They show rivers and lakes and grass where there’s only wasteland. Too many of these pilgrims don’t study up before they head out.”

Some of these fledgling Americans, Fargo knew, had got an idea fixed in their minds, an idea that had quickly become the national dream: that somewhere out West there was a piece of earth that meant personal fulfillment. Some were finding it, and others were ending up like this.

“This could be us,” Rebecca suddenly said, as if just realizing the danger they faced. “Mr. Fargo, is it true that wild Indians value female scalps more because of their longer hair?”

Fargo reluctantly nodded. He could have been gallant and lied, but for their own sake these women needed to square with the harsh facts.

“Old Sylvester here ain’t got much to worry about,” Slappy piped up. “He’s goin’ bald. But they might slice off them-air muttonchops, use ’em for fly swishers.”

“Sew up your lips,” Fargo snapped. “Nobody’s getting scalped if we pull together and play this thing smart.”

But as Fargo forked leather and headed forward again for another scout, he felt the dreaded goose tickle on the back of his neck—they’d better play it damn smart, because bad trouble would soon be on their trail, and Fargo knew full well the implacable wrath and astounding skill of Cheyenne warriors.

* * *

“Fathers and brothers!” Touch the Clouds spoke up. “You know me! It is true that I was once taken slave by the yellow eyes as a child and learned their tongue. But did I not escape and return to my people? And when did I ever hide in my tepee when the war cry sounded? How many times have I cut short my hair for our dead? Unlike the hair-faces, who speak to the Indian from both sides of their mouths, I speak one way always. Have ears for my words!!”

Thirty Cheyenne headmen filled the hide-covered council lodge erected on the bank of Crying Woman Creek. Touch the Clouds had already privately informed Chief Yellow Bear of the extraordinary events that had interrupted the buffalo hunt one sleep earlier. An emergency meeting had been called to discuss it with the subchiefs and clan leaders who held voting power.

“Every brave here has seen your coup stick,” Yellow Bear responded. “The women sing of your deeds in their sewing lodge. Now speak words that we may pick up and examine.”

Carefully and accurately, Touch the Clouds reported all of it: how the two white men from the Land of the Grandmother Queen had killed “he who may not be mentioned”—by strict custom he did not name the dead herd spy, Little Horse—and scattered the herd far to the west. He described the attack on the white camp, the loss of a second brave, and how Touch the Clouds had counted coup on Son of Light.

“These two hair-faces who killed he who may not be mentioned,” Yellow Bear said. “Do you believe they knew they were shooting a man?”

“No, Father. They are stupid men and probably thought they were shooting a small buffalo. They were at a great distance from the herd.”

Smiling Wolf, a hotheaded brave from the Antelope Eaters Clan, shot to his feet. “Fathers and brothers, this does not matter! We all know the Hunt Law is strict on this point. Any white man who interferes with the hunt places the white stink on all the buffalo across the plains. Only vengeance will lift the stink. If we fail to lift it, the entire tribe will starve!”

The lodge erupted in shouts and argument. Yellow Bear folded his arms until it was quiet.

“Touch the Clouds,” he said, “I have heard of this Son of Light, whom the whites call Fargo. Did he try to kill you when you counted coup on him?”

“No, Father, and clearly he ordered his people to shoot for horses, not braves. I believe he spoke straight-arrow when he promised me he was trying to keep these ignorant men away from the herd. But he failed. And even if he means to respect our hunt, is he not leading these butchers to other herds? It is true that Smiling Wolf is quick to rise on his hind legs, yet he is right: If we do not avenge the Hunt Law violation and lift the stink, our women and children and elders will starve!”

An elderly brave with sixty winters behind him, River of Winds, sat just to Yellow Bear’s right at the head of the lodge. His flowing white mane of hair encircled a face as weathered and wrinkled as an old apple core. The custodian of the tribe’s four sacred Medicine Arrows, his advice was highly prized. Yellow Bear looked at him now.

“There was a time,” the Arrow Keeper said, “when I thought the white men were just another small tribe, one we might share our ranges with. But east of Great Waters, they have spread like locusts and driven the red men to worthless lands. They have exterminated entire tribes with the yellow vomit and the pox, diseases we never suffered before they came. And their strong water—it makes women of our men, destroying the warrior ways as they crave this drink brewed by the Wendigo.”

River of Winds paused to glance outside the lodge, where grieving women were bathing two bodies. Even now two new funeral scaffolds were being erected. His voice suddenly grew stronger.

“Only through the tribe do we live on! If the tribe succumbs, then so, too, does the collective memory of every Cheyenne. Our Winter Count records our past deeds, but it will die also. I wish no harm to Son of Light—in many ways he is like us. Nor do I counsel lightly for the taking of blood—even paleface blood. They are fools who wrap their feet in leather and spur horses, but in their wrath for revenge against the red man they are fearsome. Yet I fear we are bound by tribal law. Only through the tribe can we live on, so we must save the tribe. I have spoken. Now let younger men turn my words to deeds.”

A profound void filled the lodge after River of Winds fell silent. Yellow Bear took a coyote-fur pouch from behind his blanket. It was filled with sixty agates—thirty white and thirty black.

“We will vote,” he said. “Now the stones will speak for us.”

The pouch was passed from man to man, each brave hiding his stone. When it was returned to Yellow Bear, he spilled the thirty remaining stones onto the buffalo robe he sat upon.

“Thirty black stones,” he announced. “The tribe has spoken with one voice. A war party will ride out immediately.”

He looked at Touch the Clouds. “Pick twenty of our best fighters. Make sure each man takes three good horses from his string, and pick three men good at handling horses to take charge of them. May the Day Maker ride with you.”

“I have ears, Father. But what of Son of Light?”

Yellow Bear did not hesitate. “You will have no choice. If he has decided to guide these whites, stupid or not, his sense of honor will make him protect them. That was his foolish choice, not ours. All of them must be killed, Son of Light among them. And killing him will be the hardest thing you have ever done.”