Badlands Bloodsport

13

Touch the Clouds felt guilt gnawing at his belly. A secret guilt he had spoken of to no other brave. Now he looked across the fire at Swift Canoe, the Cheyenne brave who had trailed the white skins and spied on them until the war party from Crying Woman Creek had caught up with them.

“Tell me a thing, brother,” he said. “Are you eager to kill Son of Light?”

Swift Canoe, a closemouthed warrior who kept his feelings close to his heart, said nothing for several heartbeats. Then: “Truly I am not, brother. The Crow, the Lakota, the Arapahoe—their women sing his deeds. In the desolate country the yellow eyes call the Indian Territory, did he not help the Cherokees defeat a band of paleface murderers who stole their lands? True, he kills red men, but always honorably in fair battles. How many times has he stopped the bluecoat pony soldiers from killing Cheyenne women and children? He is a hard man, but honorable in his way.”

Touch the Clouds nodded. “As you say. I believe he has medicine—powerful medicine. And I fear that killing him could bring the worst hurt in the world onto our tribe.”

Swift Canoe remained silent now, gazing into the crackling, sawing flames. Behind the two braves, a dull orange ball of sun was easing toward the western horizon. About half of the scattered pony herd had been captured, and the rest of the braves were out walking down more.

“And yet,” Swift Canoe suddenly resumed, “did he not just kill another brave and scatter our ponies to the Four Directions?”

A smile briefly touched the grim seam of Touch the Cloud’s lips. “True. And it was done exactly as you or I might have done it. He thinks like a red man. As for the one whose name may not be mentioned—it is clear he tried to kill Fargo first. You saw where we found his lance.”

“It was not murder,” Swift Canoe agreed. “But now another Cheyenne warrior will never bounce his children on his knee.”

Touch the Clouds grunted affirmation. Still, the inward guilt gnawed at him like sharp incisors.

“I did not speak up for Fargo strongly enough at council. True, I reported that he is trying to keep these fools from the Land of the Grandmother Queen away from Uncle Pte, the buffalo. But I condemned him for his failure when it was clear he was tricked. We do not condemn a Cheyenne to severe punishment for failure—only for deliberate treachery.”

Swift Canoe averted his eyes, clearly uncomfortable. “Perhaps,” he suggested tactfully, “your time among the white skins has understandably softened your heart toward them.”

“Say you so? Tell me, was my heart soft toward them at the battle of Antelope Falls? Or at Eagle Rock? You were there. You saw me count first coup both times and take more paleface scalps than any other brave.”

“I saw it,” Swift Canoe agreed. “Your heart was a stone with no soft place in it.”

“As you say. Only Cheyenne blood sings in my veins. But there are things unseen in this world, law-ways not given by men but by Maiyun, the Great Supernatural. I tell you, buck, it is not affection but fearful respect that makes me say this: I am afraid that if we kill Son of Light, we may bring dark disaster onto our tribe.”

This was a serious matter, well argued, and every Cheyenne admired a good speaker. Swift Canoe mulled all this over for several minutes in silence.

“This should have been spoken at council,” he finally said. “Yellow Bear, River of Winds, and the other elders could have turned it over to examine all its faces. But, brother, you were there—the stones have spoken. Afterward, River of Winds threw the pointing bones, and they affirmed the vote. We are bound by Hunt Law and now by tribal council. What can you possibly propose?”

Touch the Clouds considered all this, his strong hawk nose and fierce dark eyes turned in profile as he watched another brave, Cries Yi-ee-a, lead in two more mustangs. They had enough to resume their fight, but with a smaller string.

“I thought perhaps,” he finally said, “that we might send in a messenger under a truce flag. We could privately tell Son of Light that we have no fight with him and allow him to ride off. The rest we kill as Hunt Law demands—they are the ones who violated it.”

Swift Canoe shook his head. “I, too, wish this could happen because clearly the tribe has no great appetite to kill Fargo. But, brother, you know what manner of man Son of Light is. He knew these people were fools when he agreed to join them, and he will never desert them any more than he would murder our women and children. He is bound by honor and his soul belongs to no one but himself and the Day Maker.”

Touch the Clouds knew that all this was true the moment it was spoken. He nodded agreement. “As you say. But it will not be my weapon that kills him unless I am forced to it.”

“Nor mine. But Smiling Wolf and some of the other hotheads are with us, and they are hungry for glory.”

Touch the Clouds knew his duty as a war leader, and now his face lost all doubt, etching itself in hard lines. “On the one side is my belief—only a belief—that Son of Light has big medicine. On the other side are two laws—Hunt Law and council decree—ordering that all must die. The elders have spoken, the stones have spoken. When Sister Sun first peeks into the sky, we will ride hard and fast, and we will overtake these whites and fulfill our bloody mission.”

* * *

Just after sunset Fargo called for the first real rest of the day.

“Two hours and only two hours,” he called out. “I calculate that our red friends will be mounting up at first light, and they’ll ride like the wind. Before you men grab some shut-eye, gather up some more rocks.”

Derek the Terrible stood up, stretched mightily, and clambered off the coach. “Fargo, are you off your noodle? All these blasted rocks are just weighing down the conveyances.”

“You’re right as rain,” Fargo agreed, swinging his trail-sore ass out of the saddle and landing stiffly. “But I was with a squad of soldiers during a Cheyenne raid on the Rosebud when the soldiers overheated their carbines and the copper-jacketed rounds started sticking in the ejector ports. We had plenty of rocks to hand, and all it took was a few good hits to the head to send those braves packing.”

Derek began watering the horses from a pail. “Fargo, you are a queer blighter. The ink slingers rate you aces high with that Henry of yours, and now we’re faced with a row and all you can suggest is gathering up rocks. P’r’aps we should just make sour faces and scare them away.”

Slappy had wandered forward. “Listen to London lips here! Happens you got a plan for firing weapons without loads, trot ’er out, blowhard. Ain’t Fargo’s fault that trading post was burnt down—nor that you clabber-lipped greenhorns laid in art doodads and fancy wine but no ammo.”

“Kibosh it, Slappy,” Fargo muttered. Out loud he said, “I was kinda counting on you, Derek, if it does come down to rocks. You’ve got a set of shoulders on you like a yoke, and lifting all them sandbags has put muscles on your muscles. I ’magine you could toss a rock hard enough to split an Indian skull like an eggshell.”

Derek straightened up to stare suspiciously at Fargo. “Sucking up to me, eh?”

“No. In fact, I still mean to kill you. It’s just plain truth. I assume you want to help the rest get through? National loyalty and all that?”

“For England, eh? All right, I’ll collect some bloody rocks. It might be a bit of sport, at that. But if we make it to this fort, Fargo, I expect you to knuckle up. And the last blow I deliver will stop your pump for good, I promise that.”

“Deal,” Fargo agreed. “The soldiers can wager on it. They’re starved for entertainment.”

“Oh, those blokes will get plenty. Fargo, a necklace from your teeth will earn credit at any pub in England.”

“I say, Fargo,” Blackford spoke up from the coach. “When would you suppose the savages might be upon us?”

“On that point I got nothing you can take to the bank, Earl. I’m hoping it took at least the better part of this day for them to round up enough mustangs.”

“If your surmise is correct, they shall set out tomorrow at sunrise?”

Fargo took off his hat and shook the dust out of it. The autumn wind sliced through his sweaty clothing and made him shiver. “Yeah, sunrise.”

“How many miles would you estimate we’ve come,” Ericka chimed in, “since their horses were turned loose?”

“So far, about thirty. By sunrise, maybe thirty-five or a little more. But we’ll be adding more as the day wears on.”

Fargo raised a hand to still them. “I see where this trail is headed—how long will it take them to reach us? Well, those tough little Cheyenne mustangs have had their nostrils slit for extra wind, and they can cover up to forty, maybe fifty, miles a day in this terrain. If all my calculations are correct, they shouldn’t reach us any time before sunset tomorrow. If so, that means another whole day without a fight. But it’s nip and tuck, and we need to be ready.”

The women had climbed out to stretch their legs before trying to catch a little sleep. Rebecca looked at Fargo with a slight flush to her cheeks—a flush Fargo had seen often before.

“Mr. Fargo,” she said, “I would like to gather a few rock samples before we resume our journey. Would you be willing to accompany me?”

Ericka and Jessica overheard this, but the two women only exchanged knowing smiles. Aldritch, however, came shooting out of the coach like an artillery round.

“I’ll go with you, my dear,” he insisted as if only he had rights in the matter.

“No, thank you,” she said archly. “This is the wild frontier, and I’d prefer someone capable of protecting me.”

“Yes, by God, I know what you prefer,” he snarled, his face twisted in rage. “If this coarse mudsill lived in England, he’d be selling filthy pictures on Grub Street and wallowing with charwomen. What’s next for you, Rebecca, a Cockney butcher?”

Fargo literally swept him aside with one sinewy arm.

“Lord Blackford!” Aldritch squawked like a schoolyard prissy. “Your sister is ‘walking out’ with Fargo, just as he did with Jessica!”

“I say, Sylvester,” Blackford replied awkwardly, “the girl’s of age, after all, which isn’t always true for your . . . conquests.”

Slappy chuckled. “Why not woo her with a piece of candy, Bald-ritch?”

“You disgusting, ignorant lout,” Aldritch fumed at Slappy. “Look at you—dressed in filthy rags, tobacco stains on your chin, and you break wind in front of ladies. The lowest hod carrier in England is a nobleman compared to you.”

“In America,” Fargo advised him as he took Rebecca’s arm, “it’s always a bad idea to insult the cook. Might be some extra nourishment in your food.”

To emphasize this point, Slappy hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat it inches from Aldritch’s right boot. “There’s your supper, silk cravat.”

“Caulk up, you scurvy-ridden whoreson!” Derek growled. “That silk cravat is paying your wages.”

“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, hangman,” Slappy fired back. “I ain’t paid to take guff from no son of a bitch.”

“Whack the cork, old son,” Fargo advised his friend quietly. “There’ll be time to settle accounts.”

Aldritch looked at Fargo, shook his head in disgust, and returned to the coach.

As the sun blazed, then cast its last feeble rays above the horizon, Fargo led Rebecca toward a ring of rock pinnacles a couple of hundred yards from the conveyances. Her thick blond hair was unrestrained in the popular new “American style,” brushed back behind her shoulders and forming waves down her back.

“You really collecting samples?” Fargo teased her.

“Only one, I hope—you.”

Fargo had a brief picture of the bath she’d taken in front of him and the way she rubbed herself between her legs while watching him with moist, swollen lips. Wanton, taunting, lusting . . . he had a rock sample for her, all right, forcing his buckskin trousers out in a rigid pup tent.

“It’s going to be cold,” he warned her.

“Oh, judging from all that keening and crying out that Jessica did, I believe you’ll keep me warm.”

They entered the ring of pinnacles and found soft ground. Without a word Rebecca pulled her loose cotton dress over her head and stood before him naked, her body willowy but voluptuous. The brisk, cold wind immediately stiffened her pink nipples and formed rings of tight BBs around them.

“I knew we’d have to hurry,” she told him, “and I didn’t want to waste time with clothing.”

While she unbuckled Fargo’s shell belt, he cupped her tits and swirled his thumbs around the nipples. He ran one hand down the satin plane of her stomach and into the blond corn silk above her slit. A few more inches and he was cosseting her hot, ready quim, coaxing little cries of pleasure from her.

“You know just how to touch a woman’s little button,” she said breathlessly. “Most men poke at it hard as if it were made of iron.”

She let the gun belt drop and fumbled open his fly, releasing Fargo’s point man. Her jaw dropped in astonishment. “Oh, in my most torrid fantasies I’ve never tasted anything this big and gorgeous. I must now. Would that be shameless?”

“Absolutely shameless,” Fargo assured her. “Please do.”

She dropped graciously to her knees, holding his saber-curved, pulsating shaft in her left hand while her right wrapped his sac. For starters her moist pink tongue began to swirl around and around the sensitive glans, immediately shooting intense pulses of tickling pleasure all the way back to Fargo’s balls and groin. As she became more and more excited, her tongue made rapid lapping sounds like a kitten drinking milk.

Next she ran her tongue up and down the underside of his length, forcing Fargo to collapse to his own knees as his legs grew rubbery and wobbly. Rebecca folded down even lower so she wouldn’t lose a mouthful, and now she took as much of him as she could into her mouth and worked erotic magic on Fargo’s rock-hard blue-veiner. He reached down and found the chamois petals of her love nest, working a finger into her hole and rapidly plunging it in and out, making sure to brush her swollen nubbin.

She didn’t moan loudly like Jessica, but a series of sharp cries marked each of her climaxes, each cry an octave higher than the one before it. Fargo took each woman as he found her and didn’t complain, but he had a special fondness for girls like Rebecca—girls who quietly but intensely enjoyed the amorous dance and didn’t shout like French Quarter touts.

By now she was eagerly taking little nips with her eyeteeth, nips that hurt just right. Fargo’s breathing grew to hoarse panting, and he felt the familiar telltale tightening of pleasure in his groin. She felt him tensing in her mouth and began to hyperventilate in her excitement.

Faster, harder, her blond head shot back and forth while her teeth raked his underside, igniting pleasure so strong that the darkling surroundings blurred to a dreamscape. Her right hand gripped the part she couldn’t fit in her mouth and began pumping so hard that Fargo could no longer stem the tide. Shuddering wildly, he exploded, collapsing to the ground.

Only gradually he surfaced to awareness. The last daylight bled from the sky and a pale wafer of full moon took over.

“Was it just like you described it to me?” she asked him, smiling and running her fingers through his hair. “The moment that you . . . achieved, I mean?”

Fargo smiled back. “Popping off,” “achieving” . . . these British gals definitely had their own vocabulary for lust. He remembered a girl from Australia who called climax “zooming up.” Maybe he’d write a book about it someday.

“Just like I described it,” he assured her. “My mind was . . . zooming up.”

“Ah! I see you’ve been with an Aussie, too. You are an international lover.”

Fargo took a good look at her sleek, pale body. Even in the subdued light, her sapphire eyes gleamed like limpid pools. “Something else is zooming up, pretty lady, and I’d say it’s your turn now.”

He rolled into his favorite saddle and rode her hard for the next fifteen minutes or so, making her achieve nonstop in the gathering darkness. Afterward, both of them shivering as she wiggled into her dress, she asked, “Skye? Are we going to survive these Indian attacks?”

The honest answer—one he might have given a man—was “Our chances are slim to none.” But Fargo liked this young woman and her fine sister, Ericka, and sometimes honesty wasn’t the best policy.

“I’d give us an even chance,” he lied. Then he added truthfully, “We might have one good ace to play thanks to your sister.”

“My sister? Why, what an odd thing to say!”

Fargo started to reply, but just then Slappy’s rusty singing voice reached them from the trail:

“Oh, pray for the Ranger, you kindhearted stranger.

He has roamed the prairies for many a year;

He has kept the Comanches from off your ranches,

And guarded your homes o’er the far frontier.”

“Oh, to have a few of your famous Texas Rangers now,” Rebecca said wistfully.

“Just the tonic for what ails us,” Fargo agreed.

But there would be no Rangers. And Fargo knew, his heart sinking like a stone at the thought, that it didn’t matter how much he liked these three women from England—if Cheyenne victory became imminent, he would have to shoot all three of them in a bloody act of mercy.