Badlands Bloodsport

9

Fargo had long admired the Cheyenne warriors for their battle tactics, tactics so effective that, so far, the U.S. Army had fared poorly in the field against them. And once again those tactics were on full display.

The braves, already aware of the white skins’ excellent rifles and marksmanship, maintained their distance and relied on their ponies’ great speed. In relays they raced north and south past the defensive position, displaying their astonishing skill with the bow and arrow.

The warriors controlled their mounts with their knees only, freeing both hands. Clutching a handful of arrows in their left hands, they strung and fired with incredible speed and accuracy at a full gallop. The sharp crack of trade rifles punctuated the war cries and nonstop, high-pitched, unnerving yipping. Somewhere they had acquired an army bugle, and one of the braves blasted away on it.

“There’s that feather-head called Touch the Clouds!” Slappy shouted. “He’s still wearing the medicine horns!”

Fargo had already spotted him. He rode up and down egging on the other warriors. By long-standing battle tradition he stayed well back—if the medicine brave was killed, the battle must immediately end and the braves retreat. No Cheyenne fought without strong medicine.

“I can tag him, Fargo,” Skeets called from up on the coach, where the flurry of arrows had him pressed into the luggage well.

“Let him go for now,” Fargo called back. “It would pull our bacon out of the fire for today, but it could bring the whole Cheyenne Nation down on us later.”

So far the beleaguered Blackford party had not been able to fire on the attackers because of the deadly fusillade of flint-tipped arrows. By now the conveyances looked like porcupines. Fargo took up a prone position under the mud wagon and led a speeding brave with his Henry. The rifle kicked into Fargo’s shoulder, and the brave was wiped off his horse.

Moments later Skeets’s Big Fifty boomed, and a warrior’s head exploded in a pebbly mess.

“Bound for the Happy Hunting Grounds!” Slappy exulted.

Fargo, however, saw little to celebrate. He could hear Derek banging away to little effect, wasting more ammo. And Montoya was in serious trouble with the horses. One had already been killed, and the rest were so panicked by the din of battle that their eyes were showing all white—meaning they were frightened beyond all control.

“Montoya!” Fargo shouted when the wrangler bravely exposed himself to fire in order to reinforce the rope corral restraining the horses. “Cover down! Cover down, damn it!”

Fargo’s last word had just crossed his lips when an arrow punched into Montoya’s neck and drove halfway out the other side, pushing bloody gobbets of flesh with it. Montoya dropped to his knees choking on his own blood, his face a frozen mask of pain. Fargo cursed and scuttled out from under the wagon into a blur of arrows. By the time he reached Montoya, however, the man was dead.

Before Fargo could return to his position, a Big Fifty sounded from just behind him, and there was a sharp tug at Fargo’s buckskin shirt. He whirled around. Skeets was busy drawing a bead from atop the coach, but Derek, crouched between the coach and the mud wagon, was staring at Fargo with a deadpan face.

“You stepped into my aim,” Derek shouted above the clamor of battle. “You need to watch that, Fargo.”

For a moment Fargo felt the murderous impulse to irrigate the hangman’s guts. But a few seconds later he realized there was a slight chance it was the truth—he had been in motion and could have stepped into the line of fire. Then again, the world might grow honest, too.

There was no luxury to worry about it at the moment. Even a hobbled horse could move around, and these were about to expose themselves flush to those Cheyenne arrows. Fargo barely made it under the mud wagon without being skewered.

“Skeets!” he bellowed to their best marksman. “Never mind the ammo hoarding, start dropping them fast! We’re about to lose the horses!”

Even a tenderfoot from England knew what that meant in this vast, unsettled region. Skeets and Fargo opened up with a vengeance, killing two more braves and seriously wounding a third. Touch the Clouds, who was personally responsible at council for every battle casualty, did as Fargo hoped and sounded retreat on his eagle-bone whistle.

“Cease fire!” Fargo shouted, allowing the braves to collect their dead before they thundered off, still defiantly yipping.

He waited a few minutes, then tossed his saddle and bridle on the Ovaro and rode cautiously to the east, making sure this wasn’t a fake retreat. When he was satisfied the warriors would not return immediately, he rode back to camp.

“We made a good show of it, eh?” Lord Blackford greeted him jubilantly. “Think they’ve supped full of us?”

“Like I said before, Earl, Plains Indians pull back when casualties start to mount up. By their way of seeing it, too much death at one time and place can put a hoodoo on them. But they’ll be back today, and they’ll keep coming back until our scalps are dangling from their coup sticks. Our only chance is to get to Fort Laramie.”

“How far away is it?”

“We could make it in three nights. The real problem is reloads. That trading post on the South Platte burned to the ground just before we got there—the food we can stretch, and now we have enough water if we’re careful. But I’m down to my last magazine load for the Henry and only ten spare cartridges for my Colt. You folks didn’t stock up enough before you left Santa Fe, and now we’re all in a rum place.”

“But what about this famous ‘wit and wile’ you ballyhooed?” Aldritch asked, his tone heavy with sarcasm. “Besting the primitive savages with the white man’s superior intellect? Or is your intellect only good for bedazzling big-bosomed maids?”

“Rot in hell, you scheming dry-as-dust!” Jessica snapped, her nerves already stretched tight as a drumhead by the attack. “You are so frightfully useless that Skye had to place you with the women!”

“Skye, is it now?” Derek the Terrible piped up. “You slattern! Pointing your heels to the sky for a common drifter wrapped in buckskins. Ain’t you the fancy lady, though? Lady Rub My Pearl.”

Fargo raised a weary hand to stop all this, his eyes slanting toward Montoya’s body. “You’re right, Aldritch. So far I’ve come a cropper on the wit-and-wile deal. You better hope like hell, though, that it ain’t just the line of blather you think it is because it’s priddy near all we got left.”

* * *

Fargo ordered Skeets back to sentry duty, then supervised a rearrangement of the conveyances to better protect the horses. Only then did he turn to the unpleasant task of burying Montoya.

Slappy joined him at the shallow grave. “Why, hell, he wa’n all that bad for a Mexer. Had him a few queer ideas, but hell, who don’t? Fargo, do you know he swore by the idea that birds migrate to the moon every winter? I caught him shootin’ at it one night, thinking a dead bird would drop at his feet.”

Fargo grinned. “Yeah, that’s Montoya straight enough. I came to his livery one day and caught him giving top-shelf whiskey, from his hat, to a fine white pacer. He insisted the viceroy of Sonora had died and come back as this horse. And everybody knew the viceroy drank only the best.”

Slappy glanced around and then lowered his voice. “Speaking of dead men . . . ’at fucker Derek tried to let daylight through you today. I seen it. He done it quick, and he missed on account you was moving fast toward cover. He can’t abide the fact that Jessica done the deed with you but prac’ly pukes at sight of him.”

Fargo studied Slappy closely. “You don’t like him, either. Are you flat-out sure he was aiming for me? I did cross his line of fire.”

Slappy rubbed his scruffy, grizzled chin whiskers. “Well, if you’re settin’ up as a damn Philadelphia lawyer—naw, I couldn’t rightly swear to it. That’s how I seen it, though.”

“Yeah,” Fargo said thoughtfully. “Same here.”

“He’s a worthless son of a bitch. If you don’t plant him, I will. Now, Skeets—he pulls his freight ever since he shot that herd spy.”

“We’d be in deep sheep dip without him,” Fargo admitted.

Fargo tossed the shovel aside and the two men lifted Montoya into his final resting place—an unmarked cavity in the heart of the desolate Badlands. Fargo was surprised when the rest of the party walked over to join them.

“He was a kind man,” Jessica said. “He treated all of us women with respect.”

“Yes, and he had the features of a noble face,” Ericka put in. “I’m glad now that I sketched it. It will be immortalized in my book of frontier America sketches.”

“If we ever leave this godforsaken country alive,” Aldritch said. He then felt compelled to add, “This Mexican—was his name Garcia?—wasn’t so bad as dark-skinned types go.”

Rebecca Singleton aimed a contemptuous glance at Aldritch. “I’m sure Mr. Garcia would treasure your unstinting praise.”

“He died bloody hard,” Derek summed up. “Choking in his own blood. Cor! I could hear him above all that blasted racket.”

“Thank you, pious mourners,” Fargo barbed as he began filling the grave. He hadn’t bothered with boulders to protect it from predators—there were none around.

Fargo instructed everyone to catch an hour or so of sleep and rode down their back trail to watch for the next attack. He had selected rough terrain that made attack from any direction but the northeast impossible on horseback. Fargo swept the desolate landscape with his field glass but spotted nothing in motion except the occasional dust devil.

He had allowed the women one pail of water each for a quick “whore’s bath” as Slappy termed it. Fargo was making sure no Cheyenne braves were flanking their position on foot when the pleasing form of Rebecca suddenly filled the lenses of his spyglasses. The slender blonde had walked about forty feet away from camp and ducked behind a rock tumble to bathe.

Fargo felt his breathing quicken as she pulled her floral-print dress over her head, completely naked beneath it. Her pointy breasts were large for such a slender girl, the nipples a delicate pink. Fargo had always been a bush man and gazed approvingly at the V of silky blond hair that pointed toward the delightful mystery tucked away at the apex of her thighs—slender but perfectly shaped thighs that streamed into supple calves and well-turned ankles.

Fargo had to shift in the saddle at this wondrous sight. Rebecca dipped a cloth into the pail, briskly rubbed it with a twist of lye soap, then began sudsing her sculpted tits. When those blue eyes like gems looked directly at Fargo, he knew she could easily see him. But when her lips eased into a teasing smile, he was damned if he would look away.

She washed her flat, creamy stomach, rinsed, and then sat on a boulder and opened her thighs wide, still watching Fargo. His rigid manhood ached and pulsed now as he gazed at the nooks and crannies and folds of her sex. It was soon clear that she was more than “washing” as she rubbed herself vigorously, the pink tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips. Her eyes closed to slits, her hand moved faster, and suddenly Fargo saw her entire body shudder as she took herself over.

“Girl, it’s gonna happen,” Fargo promised her in a husky voice, and the Ovaro pricked up his ears. “You don’t let a man see that and figure he’ll just take it in stride.”

Rebecca dried herself off, dressed, and Fargo reluctantly shifted his eyes forward again. These gals born under the Union Jack, he told himself, were more wanton than he’d expected. But in his experience most women kicked over the traces when they were far from home—things they’d never do at home were fair game in a foreign country. Even Ericka Blackford, Her Ladyship with her husband at her side, flirted shamelessly with Fargo.

All this led Fargo to a sobering reality: that made three men who were jealous of him, and at least one was shooting mad. Make it two, then, because come hell or high water, after what Fargo had witnessed just now, he would make the two-backed beast with the fetching Rebecca.

Fargo, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion, wheeled the Ovaro and gigged him back toward camp. Slappy was busy rustling up a spot of grub.

“Any trouble brewing up?” he asked Fargo.

“I didn’t spot anything, but you can count on trouble, old son.”

“It’s only midday. Them red Arabs are fond to foolishness of follow-on attacks.”

Fargo nodded. “Can you hitch these teams?” he asked.

“Used to, I couldn’t tell a singletree from a tug chain. But I helped Montoya a few times and I reckon I can puzzle it out.”

“All right. Montoya was a good hand with horseflesh. I guess the two of us will have to take over the wrangling. Those Brits are all right at jumping a horse over a four-railer, but they let their grooms handle ’em.”

Slappy, busy stirring the cornmeal mush, spoke without raising his voice. “Fargo, glom your back trail.”

Fargo glanced over his shoulder. Derek the Terrible was watching him from atop the fancy coach. Although his muzzle wasn’t pointed toward Fargo, his Sharps rested across his forearms.

Fargo said, “Something on your mind?”

“Oh, there’s always something on my mind,” Derek assured him. “But you can’t hang a bloke for his thoughts, eh?”

“Seems like you would know, hangman,” Fargo replied.

“Aye, Derek the Terrible was a fine hangman,” he boasted to Fargo. “I sent more than a thousand filthy buggers across the Thames, I did. And when I hanged them they stayed hanged. Nobody flopping around like a chicken with its head lopped off.”

“Nothing wrong with taking pride in your work,” Fargo conceded. “But you’re not the executioner anymore.”

Derek flashed blackened teeth in a hideous smirk. “To quote the tupper of maids, opinions vary on that.”

Fargo shook his head. “No, they don’t. Not while I’m the ramrod here.”

Derek had opened his mouth to speak when Slappy cut in. He pointed northeast. “Look, Fargo!”

Fargo looked toward the horizon and saw a yellow-brown dust cloud billowing up. Since there was no wind, it could only mean one thing.

“Best push that mush aside,” he told Slappy, “and wake everybody up. Here they come again, and they’re bound to have a surprise for us.”