Badlands Bloodsport

12

The moment Fargo and Slappy returned to camp, the Trailsman called the others around him while Slappy began hitching the teams. He explained about the raid on the herd and the fact that it had bought them some time to escape toward Fort Laramie, but only if they traveled to the limits of their endurance.

“Exactly how much time?” Aldritch demanded.

“How long is a piece of string?” Fargo retorted. “We ain’t dealing with a three-minute egg here. These braves been running down horses for centuries. With luck we’ll gain maybe a day, a day and a half.”

“And without luck?”

Fargo lifted a shoulder, irritated equally by the merchant’s mocking tone and the way his fleshy lips pursed in the firelight. “Without luck they might break taboo and chouse enough horses back to their camp in time for a sunrise strike. One of those feather-heads could be eating your warm liver for breakfast.”

“I say, Fargo, that’s needlessly graphic,” Lord Blackford reproved. “You’re frightening the ladies, quite.”

“Fargo is quite frightening with his mouth, true enough, Your Lordship,” Derek put in. “But not so courageous at making a fist.”

Fargo appeared to ignore the barb, but filed it away in memory with all the other nails in this hangman’s coffin. “We can’t waste this opportunity, folks. Instead of laying over, we’re going to take one-hour rest breaks only when we have to. Slappy will whip up some grub that we can eat on the go. Those Cheyennes will eventually walk down their horses, and they’ll be coming after us even harder than before.”

The wind gusted hard, almost laying the fire down flat. Fargo didn’t voice it, but he feared a blizzard might be making up. Cheyenne mounts were small, but good snow ponies. And it wouldn’t take all that much snow to stop these conveyances in their tracks.

He was fairly sure that no braves would have trailed him on those few remaining ponies, not after dark, but Fargo hadn’t survived so long in hostile country by assuming the best view of things. He walked back down their trail for about three hundred yards and climbed onto a huge boulder to see better. The dark, eerie silhouettes of the twisted landscape stretched on over a vast and silent expanse.

“Do you see any Indians?” came Rebecca’s clear, pleasant voice from behind him.

“Nary a one, pretty lady,” he assured her, sliding down to join her. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

She laughed. “I shan’t be coy—there’s no time for that. You saw me earlier when I was bathing, didn’t you?”

“Sure did,” he admitted. “And since we’re being honest—you wanted me to see you, right?”

“Most assuredly. Did you like what you saw?”

“Is Paris a city? You took my breath away.”

“Hmm . . . that means you were appreciative. But were you aroused?”

Fargo had a hunch she wanted to be shocked, so he played it. “Rebecca, I got so hard it hurt.”

“Oh my!” She cast her eyes modestly toward the ground.

“Now, if I offended you—”

“No, I daresay I like it. English men of my class are very reserved about matters sensual, and I desire frankness—at least, I do with you. May I ask another frank question—one many women are curious about but never ask?”

“Please do.”

“What, exactly, does it feel like when a man . . . achieves climax?”

“Achieves?” Fargo repeated, chuckling. “Oh, prob’ly like it is for the woman, I guess. It’s not easy to shape it into words. Tell you the truth, at the moment it happens I’m not able to think about it—you might say that pleasure takes over the mind. Not just the simple pleasure of good food or a hot bath—it’s a pleasure all by itself, and describing it is like trying to describe the taste of water.”

“Yes, then it is much the same for a woman. Do you . . . do you suppose we might find out together?”

Fargo chuckled. “Oh, for me that question was answered when you let me see you bathing.”

“Are you aroused right now?”

Fargo guided her hand to the hard furrow in his buckskins. It pulsated in her fingers.

“Oh, splendid!” she marveled, giving him a squeeze. “And the sheer size of it! Perhaps I shall pull him out right—”

“Rebecca! What in the dickens are you doing there?”

Sylvester Aldritch came puffing up to join them. “Did I see you touching this peasant’s . . . his . . .”

“She was curious to know what buckskin feels like,” Fargo supplied. “So I invited her to touch mine.”

“I can’t express shock that Jessica would fling up her skirts for this man,” Aldritch lectured. “After all, they’re both of the common class. But your sister carries a noble title. If you have . . . country matters on your mind, at least cavort with a man who is worthy of you.”

“Would that be a man like you?” Fargo asked.

“Of course. I’m one of the richest men in England.”

“Well, there’s a good chance you’re going to become one of the deadest men in America. So get over your little peeve, poncy man, and think about how you might stay alive. What goes on between me and this lady ain’t none of your picnic, and if you butt in on us one more time you’ll be wearing your ass for a hat.”

* * *

With Fargo pushing them hard, the Blackford party pressed on toward the southwest and the safety of Fort Laramie. Knowing the Cheyenne war party under Touch the Clouds would soon return with a vengeance, Fargo was reluctant to stop for anything but “necessary trips” by the ladies.

By noon of the fourth day after Skeets shot the herd guard, the English travelers were in a scratchy mood, especially Derek the Terrible, Sylvester Aldritch, and Lord Blackford. Skeets drove the royals, Derek the mud wagon, and Slappy the fodder wagon. Fargo played the stern ramrod, forcing all of them to push their teams hard. He had noticed dark clouds piling up like boulders on the northern horizon, and in this crisp weather they foretold a blizzard, not thunderstorms.

“I say, Fargo,” Derek called down from the box, “we’d all like to tuck some hot food into our bellies. Why not call a halt so Ebenezer can make some of that johnnycake of his? These saleratus biscuits are bloody poison.”

Fargo shook his head. “Eating ain’t the main mile right now. We want those warriors as far behind us as we can put ’em.”

“How do you put it? Oh yes—‘I see now which way the wind sets.’ The truth is, you’re a hero in the shilling shockers but a sodding coward in real life. Afraid to fight me and so afraid of savages you won’t even let us have a decent morsel. And to think a lass as comely as Jessica let you tup her.”

Fargo glanced up at the hangman with his direct, penetrating gaze. He smiled his lips-only smile. “You dug your own grave, old chap, the first time you insulted me. Feel free to pile on some more—it’s all one now.”

Derek flashed his black and broken teeth. “Cor! Why, I’m so frightened I’ve just pissed me blooming trousers! Dame Rumor has it you’re sniffing around Rebecca now, looking for some more cunny. When you’ve run through the women, will you mount the mares?”

Slappy, driving close behind the mud wagon, had overheard this. “Tell you the straight, Derek,” he said, “I’ve got a yen for you. When you feel two hands on your shoulders, that’s me right behind you.”

“You filthy sodomite,” Derek growled as Fargo grinned and rode forward to the coach.

Rebecca’s pretty face flashed out at him. “I heard my name. What is that monster Derek saying about me now?”

“Just something he picked up from a spiteful man,” Fargo said, blue eyes boring into Aldritch.

“What is your opinion of this, Mr. Fargo?” Ericka asked him, passing one of her sketch pads out the window.

Fargo whistled in admiration. “Say, that’s fine work.”

It was a pen-and-ink sketch of Touch the Clouds astride his war horse, lance raised high, the medicine horns making him look especially fierce.

“But how did you get this pose?” Fargo asked. “I never saw him slow down once.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “I committed all the details to memory and drew it afterward. I used ink because there were too many details for charcoal. The quills in his moccasins, for example, and the bead embroidery on his . . . chaps?”

“Leggings,” Fargo corrected her.

“And might I ask, what are these small pouches each brave wears on his sash?”

“Medicine bundles. Whites call ’em medicine bags. Each clan has its own totem—claws, eagle feathers, shells, and such—they believe gives them power.”

Fargo studied the drawing intently. “I wonder what he’d say if he could see this.”

“Would that be after he scalps us or before?” Aldritch said in his usual ironic tone.

“I’m not certain he would believe it,” Ericka Blackford answered Fargo. “You see, this is representational art. Plains Indian art is primitive and symbolic without dimension or perspective—most know nothing of modern Western art and have never even seen it.”

Fargo pulled on the short hair of his beard, digesting this. “Do you mean . . . a Cheyenne might think this was big medicine, powerful magic?”

“Why, I never thought of it in those terms, but yes, perhaps that is so. I read an account of a Sioux chieftain who was shown a portrait of his wife painted by a French artist. He flew into hysterics believing his wife had been trapped in the canvas.”

“Hmm,” was all Fargo said.

“Speaking of the Sioux,” Skeets called down from the leather-covered seat, “are we still in their territory?”

“We’re edging out of it,” Fargo replied, “but the Lakota range wide. This cold weather is on our side, though. If they don’t have a score to settle, they prefer to be in warm lodges when the snow comes.”

“Is it coming?” Jessica asked, poking her auburn-curled head out of a window.

“Hard to say right now. There’s a blow making up to the north, but it could veer in any direction.”

“Will the Cheyenne pursue us through snow?”

“Right now they’d follow us into the white man’s hell carrying a parfleche full of firecrackers.”

“How many more days,” she persisted, “before we reach Fort Laramie?”

“At this pace,” Fargo said, “about two days. But I expect the Cheyenne war party to be nipping at our heels before then.”

“And what is your next bit of wit and wile, Fargo?” Lord Blackford asked. “We’re deuced low on ammunition, what?”

Fargo was acutely aware of that. He was down to five loads in his Colt and only seven in his Henry. Even counting the women’s muff guns—good only at close range—they would make a poor showing in the next attack.

“I’m still working on the wit and wile part,” Fargo replied. “But the next time we spell the horses, we’re going to stock up on rocks.”

“Rocks!” Aldritch and Blackford exclaimed in chorus. Aldritch added, “Have you gone utterly mad, Fargo?”

“Opinions vary on that. Sure, rocks. Derek and Skeets are brawny men, and me and Slappy have good arms. You gents may have to toss a few yourselves. You might be surprised what good weapons rocks can be.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Aldritch huffed. “Preposterous rubbish! I’m damned if I will fight like some denizen of biblical days.”

“Suit yourself,” Fargo said. “You’ll change your tune in a puffin’ hurry if those warriors capture you, but by then it’ll be too late—way too late.”