Badlands Bloodsport

20

When the day’s new sun made its first salmon-pink streaks on the eastern horizon, Fargo called out, “All right, folks, this is as far as we go.”

His breath ghosting in the crisp air, Fargo instructed Ericka and Rebecca to light down from the mud wagon.

“Jessica, set your brake and hop down. Slappy, after we unhitch and hobble all the horses, bring the mud wagon around so the rear end is nosed up against the back of the fodder wagon. It’s poor shakes, but that’ll have to be our breastworks.”

“What about the hangman?”

“Just leave him where he is. The feather-heads will never see him from the distance I plan to keep them.”

“Well, hell, so long as he’s protected,” Slappy said sarcastically. “Fargo, you beat all. Why’ncha just powder his butt and tuck him in?”

“I already told you my plans for him. Just do what I told you and stow the guff.”

After the horses were unhitched and bunched tightly behind the two conveyances—a precaution that Fargo knew would be useless if the Cheyennes went into a circular attack on these open plains—he took Blackford and Slappy aside.

“I did have you gather all those rocks in case we need to use them as weapons,” he admitted. “But mainly it’s on account of the women. These braves know all about them and by now they don’t give a tinker’s damn about taking prisoners—they’ll just want to kill them and take those female trophy scalps. So after we get all three of them under the mud wagon, we’re going to wall up the opening between the ground and the bottom of the wagon with rocks.”

“That’s using your think-piece.” Slappy approved. “A Cheyenne brave can thread an arrow between the bark and the sap.”

The men piled the weapons—two Big Fifties, the German hunting rifle, the shotgun—under the fodder wagon. Blackford’s fancy scoped rifle was useless, for he had broken the firing pin from too much dry-firing.

Fargo checked the slant of the sun. It was well above the horizon now, and time was wasting. He took a cheap mirror out of one of his saddle pockets.

“Ladies, which one of you has the biggest mirror?” he inquired.

Rebecca reached into the mud wagon and produced a fancy mirror set in tortoiseshell. “But what good is it, Skye? The sun is well behind us and the fort is in front of us.”

“The sun can be moved around like a herd of cattle,” Fargo assured her. “Trade mirrors with me.”

Fargo placed Rebecca facing east while he stood in front of her facing west. “Let me know when you’re reflecting off this mirror.”

It took her a minute to get the hang of it, but soon she exclaimed, “There! I’ve got you!”

For the next ten minutes Fargo flashed mirror signals to the fort before time urgency forced him to give up. “If there’s a sober soldier in the sentry box, he couldn’t’ve missed that. Nothing reflects on the plains, not in steady flashes.”

Fargo knelt down and placed his ear just above the ground.

“I say,” Blackford piped up, “in the shilling shockers the frontier chaps press their ears against the ground.”

“That’s ink-slinger ignorance,” Slappy retorted. “All you’ll hear then is your own heart beating in your ear.”

“Ah. Yes, that makes perfect sense.”

Fargo frowned and waved both of them silent. After listening for a minute, he placed three fingertips in the grass.

“We made damn little progress during the night,” he fretted. “They’re closer than I thought.”

He broke out his field glass and soon made out the attacking line, dark, distorted shapes against the background of the dull yellow sun. They galloped with an inexorable sense of purpose that made Fargo’s scalp tighten.

“Fourteen of them,” he finally said. “Some have one mustang on their string, others none. So both of you remember—aim for horses. I hate like hell to do it, but they make a bigger target, and that means we can keep the warriors farther out. And expect them to go into a circle—this terrain is perfect for it.”

He turned toward the women. They were making a brave show of it, but fear was starched into their features. “All right, ladies, under the mud wagon. We’re going to wall you in on both sides, but it’s for your own safety.”

By the time the women were walled in, Fargo could make out the attacking braves with his naked eye. He fretted about the exposed horses—the Ovaro was hobbled in the middle of the tight cluster, but they would all be easy targets once the braves circled around to the north.

“All right, gents,” he said in a tone of grim determination. “You both know we’re wanting for ammunition, so no nervous trigger fingers. Every shot has to score. If we can knock enough horses out from under them, they’ll be forced to double up and pull back. They might have remounts kept in reserve, and they might not. We’ll just have to play the cards we’re dealt. And, Earl, it’s brass, right?”

“Right you are, Fargo. My wife is under that wagon.”

“I ain’t got no woman,” Slappy said, “and I double-damn guarantee you I want to live as much as any married feller.”

“Perhaps you have more to live for, at that,” Blackford said in a rare quip for him. All three men laughed.

“One last thing,” Fargo said. “Target clumping. That’s a serious problem when men are low on ammo and more than one of them shoot at the same target without meaning to, wasting bullets. So I’m going to call the shots. Wait until you hear your name before you bust a cap.”

They wriggled under the fodder wagon and Fargo distributed the weapons. He kept his Henry and one of the Big Fifties, handing the other to Slappy. The German bolt-action rifle and its few rounds went to Lord Blackford.

“What about that crowd leveler?” Slappy asked, nodding toward his twelve-gauge scattergun.

“I hope we don’t have to use it,” Fargo replied. “That and our six-shooters are the last line of defense if they close in on us tight.”

After a few moments of tense silence, Slappy said to Fargo in a subdued voice, “The primitive brain, huh?”

“What the devil is that?” Blackford asked sharply.

“It’s just more of Slappy’s foolishness,” Fargo interceded, gouging an elbow into Slappy’s side. “Just stay frosty and shoot plumb.”

* * *

Fargo had faced many skirmishes with Plains warriors and learned they fought very differently from the highly regimented U.S. Army. Even on the open plains, where attack plans were limited, they showed remarkable variation in their tactics. And what he saw shaping up now worried him.

“They’re scattering at wide intervals,” he reported to his companions, studying the attackers through his field glass. “It’s every brave for himself. They’re coming at us staggered, and from all directions. Earl, scoot to the other side so you’re firing to the north. Slappy, get next to the tongue and cover the east flank. I’ll cover the south.”

But Fargo worried about the unprotected west flank. The mud wagon blocked that direction.

A few minutes later the attackers were clearly visible with the naked eye.

“There’s the heap big chief on his buckskin,” Slappy said. “God’s garters! His coup feathers are trailin’ on the ground.”

“Yeah, that’s Touch the Clouds. Let him and his horse alone. With a lot of luck, I’ll need to make medicine with him before this day is out.”

At this point, wary by now of the white skins’ deadly thunder sticks, the braves were keeping their distance. All except one brave wearing a bone breastplate and waving a red-streamered lance. Crying “Yii—ee—yah!” over and over, he galloped his claybank in straight from the south.

Slappy could see him from his position. “Is that red son chewin’ peyote? Don’t ’pear to me he means to haul back.”

Fargo jacked one of his few remaining rounds into the chamber of the Henry and threw the rifle into his shoulder socket. “There’s always one firebrand in the group who claims first coup. We’ll see how fired up he is without a mount.”

But the warriors had no intention of leaving Smiling Wolf unprotected. Even as Fargo centered his notch on the claybank’s chest, a flurry of arrows rained in on the defenders, one of them skewering Fargo’s hat and snatching it off his head. Slappy unleashed a string of curses when another arrow raked his left shoulder.

“Happens that arrow point was smeared in pig shit,” he said through grim lips. “I’ll be playing poker in hell before this day is done.”

Fargo, however, remained steady in the traces. He squeezed off a precious round, and the claybank went down in midstride, tumbling hard and sending its rider catapulting. With impressive agility the Cheyenne leaped to his feet and stood his ground, taunting the palefaces.

“Fargo,” Slappy said, rubbing his bleeding shoulder, “you palaver some Cheyenne. What’s that crazy buck saying?”

“He’s asking, do we see him? Do we see how brave he is? Do we see that he is not afraid? He’s telling us to take our best shot. He shits on death.”

“By gad,” Lord Blackford said, “that is courage, what?”

“Likely it’s peyote,” Slappy insisted.

“The earl got it right,” Fargo said. “It’s courage. This will earn him a coup feather.”

Touch the Clouds bravely swooped in on his buckskin and took the warrior up behind him. By now more braves were darting in closer. It wasn’t necessary anymore for Fargo to call the shots, since the warriors were widely scattered, but Fargo stuck to the plan to impose firing discipline.

“Earl!” Fargo called out. “If you’ve got a bead, drop a horse.”

The English nobleman remembered Fargo’s instructions. After sliding a round into the breech, he worked the bolt to chamber it. Fargo heard him draw a deep breath and expel it slowly while he centered the crosshairs. A moment later the German rifle cracked loudly, and Fargo was surprised when the stuffy and staid Lord Blackford actually let out a whoop.

“Smashing! It wasn’t the buffalo I hoped to shoot, but I dropped the horse without hurting the rider. Jolly good show, what?”

“Damn jolly,” Fargo agreed, and even Slappy grunted affirmation.

“Slappy!” Fargo called next. “Got targets?”

“Does a hound have fleas?”

“Drop a horse, old son.”

The Big Fifty spoke its piece, and Fargo only had to glance left to see a coal-black mustang stagger, then collapse. The rider was soon caught up behind another brave. But at a piercing signal from Touch the Clouds’s eagle-bone whistle, another volley of flint-tipped arrows thwacked in. Fargo almost grinned when he heard Derek scream something through his gag. So long as he didn’t bleed out too soon. . . .

Fargo took a chance and squirted out from under the fodder wagon to check the west flank. Several braves were moving in toward the mud wagon. Realizing this called for more drastic action, Fargo dropped to the kneeling-offhand position and shot one of the braves through the chest. The other two wheeled their ponies and fled.

Fargo heard more bowstrings thwap, and that famous “ultimate arrow” of lurid frontier fiction barely missed him as he scrambled back under the fodder wagon.

“Earl,” he called out, “they’re massed to the north. Drop another horse.”

Blackford chambered another round and snicked the bolt home. The precision rifle knocked his right side back a few inches. “I only wounded this one, but its hindquarters are down and its rider has jumped off.”

“That’s four horses out of the fight,” Fargo said. “Slappy, trim your flank.”

The Big Fifty roared again, and Slappy whooped. “Make that five, Trailsman! We’re doin’ the hurt dance on these bucks!”

Fargo’s next shot—his last bullet for the Henry—made it six downed mounts, and that was the tipping point for Touch the Clouds. At a shrill signal from his whistle, the braves—all but Touch the Clouds now riding double—faded back out of range.

“I don’t like this,” Fargo told his companions. “With that many braves riding the rump, they ought to be flat-out retreating so they can make council on a new plan. But they’re all grouping on the north flank.”

“Ain’t like Injins to make a massed attack,” Slappy said.

“That’s rare,” Fargo agreed. After a few moments he cursed sharply. “It’s our horses. They’re going to stay out of rifle range and do an arrow drop.”

“A what?” Blackford said.

“Their bows have good range,” Fargo explained, “but at longer distances the arrow slows down and strikes the target with less force. The Cheyennes perfected the trick of shooting the arrows up into the sky at a curve—a falling arrow holds its speed and strikes harder. They practice for this and they can estimate distances better than a surveyor with a theodolite.”

“Yes,” Blackford said, “I see. It’s turnabout. We kill their horses, they kill ours.”

“No, I’d say it’s smart tactics, not revenge. They value horses, all right, but not what you’d call sentimental value. They know damn well that if we can hold on until nightfall, their taboos will force them into camp while we can head closer to the fort. They also figure that we must be worn down to the nub and if we have to ride shank’s mare we can’t get very far.”

“Who is this Shank?” Blackford asked, bewildered. “And how could all of us possibly ride one mare?”

Slappy made a farting noise with his lips. “Earl, shank’s mare means we’d have to walk.”

“Ladies!” Fargo called out. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Skye!” Rebecca’s strong but shaken voice answered.

“Are you all right?”

“Scared out of our wits but still unscathed. Have they gone?”

“’Fraid not, dear. Pretty quick now there’s going to be a big batch of arrows falling on our position. Two sides of the mud wagon are walled up, but make sure none of you are exposed at the front or back.”

“Don’t worry. We’re all huddled up like newborn kittens.”

By now the braves had all dismounted and were notching their bows. Fargo could make out his pinto’s black and white legs in the cluster of horses, but knew it was too late to move him. His faithful trail companion was now at serious risk, and Fargo knew he could not lose a better friend.

“Leastways,” Slappy said after a brief chuckle, “this could be the fittin’ end of Derek the Terrible. I don’t care what you got planned for that puke pail. I hope them red devils turn him into a porky-pine.”

Fargo swore. “I forgot all about that son of a bitch!”

“Fargo, are you off your head?” Slappy blurted out when Fargo quickly crawled out from under the safety of the fodder wagon. The Trailsman saw the braves aiming their bows heavenward even as he grabbed one of the English riding saddles and tossed it over Derek’s torso and stomach. He was tossing the second one over the terrified hangman’s head when Fargo saw the glint of arcing arrows catching the sun’s rays.

“Best I can do for you,” Fargo said as he dived back under cover just as the arrows plummeted in with deadly precision.

A piteous cry rose from the horses as several of the arrows struck their intended targets. Others punched through the roof of the mud wagon and the bed of the fodder wagon, one striking Fargo’s boot heel and penetrating slightly into the leather. It quivered a few moments, so great was its interrupted energy.

“Dropped ’em plumb,” Slappy said. “How many horses hit, Earl?”

“It’s deuced hard to say. Fargo’s fine stallion is still standing and I see no blood on him. However, I see two team horses down, and my chestnut is bleeding profusely from the rump.”

“Shit, piss, and corruption!” Slappy swore. “The next volley will likely row us all up Salt River.”

Fargo had faced down too many hard scrapes on the frontier to call himself an eternal optimist; he was, however, a hopeful realist, one who survived by dint of sheer strength, courage, and intelligence, one who expected to prevail so long as he exerted himself. Nonetheless, he feared Slappy was wrong—they were already up Salt River, deep into the white-foaming waters, and about to be dashed to death on the rocks.