Badlands Bloodsport

21

“Well, I’ll be et for a tater!” Slappy exclaimed. “They ain’t notchin’ their bows agin! Why, them red sons a’ bitches must be outta arrows.”

“Out or damn low,” Fargo agreed, watching the braves mount and ride to the east. “And I’m thinking they’re out of black powder for their rifles.”

“Does this mean they’ll give up the fight?” Blackford asked hopefully.

“They can’t. They’re bound by Hunt Law to kill us. By their way of looking at it, if we escape their entire tribe is cursed with bad fortune. No, this is one situation where they’ll die to the last man. And don’t forget, there’s still thirteen braves and who knows how many horses?”

“A Cheyenne don’t need arrows to join the battle.” Slappy chipped in. “They got battle-axes, war hatchets and lances. And them obsidian knives that cut right down to vitals quick as a blink.”

The three men crawled out from under the wagon. Fargo made sure the warriors weren’t doubling back before he called the women out. He lifted the saddles off Derek, who had escaped injury. The prisoner, his face still chalky with fear, tried to say something through his gag. Fargo dismissed him with a grunt.

“Slappy,” he said, “lemme see that shoulder.”

The arrow had rent the fabric as it grazed Slappy, and Fargo had only to separate the flaps of homespun. “Clean as a whistle,” he pronounced. “That arrow wasn’t smeared, and the point didn’t slice far. Your clover was deep that time, old son.”

Slappy threw out his skinny chest. “Luck, my lily-white. God don’t want me, and Satan’s afraid I’ll take over.”

“Uh-huh, you’re a real bravo, all right. Just slap some alum on it—there’s a can in my saddle pockets. Now let’s go see the real butcher’s bill.”

They rounded the fodder wagon to check on the horses. A weight lifted from Fargo’s chest when he verified that the Ovaro was unscathed. But three horses, including Lord Blackford’s fine chestnut, would have to be put down.

“Is it truly necessary?” the nobleman fretted. “It’s only a wound to the rump, and he’s a magnificent animal, now, isn’t he?”

“Worth a blue ribbon,” Fargo agreed regretfully. “But the point went in at least two inches, and it was smeared. You can see dung in the wound. His blood will putrefy and he’ll die hard.”

Lord Blackford sighed. “Blast the luck! Well, if there’s no help for it . . . I have my pin-fire pistol with two bullets. I’ll lead him off a distance and shoot him.”

“Sorry, Earl. I hate to pile on the agony, but you’ll have to let me throat-slash him. We just might need those bullets.”

The two team horses were down and blowing pink froth. Fargo had no choice but to kill them where they lay.

“Ladies, walk off a piece and cover your ears,” he said. “You’re not going to like what you hear.”

Fargo gave them a few minutes, then slid the Arkansas toothpick from his boot sheath and dispatched the two horses as quickly as he could. Immediately, an eerie trumpeting noise sounded as the horses’ huge lungs collapsed in death, blowing air through the neck slashes like powerful bellows. His lips set hard, Fargo loosened the hobbles on the chestnut, led him off fifty yards or so, and repeated the distasteful slaughter. He jabbed his knife into the ground a few times to clean the blade.

“There’s plenty of men who require killing,” he told Slappy when he returned. “And I don’t lose sleep when I pop ’em over. But I never yet met a larcenous horse. Counting those six Indian scrubs, this makes nine horses we killed today. I sure-God wish I woulda passed up this job. You got any of that wagon-yard whiskey left?”

Slappy grinned. “There’s medicine! I ain’t never tasted bad whiskey, nor seen an ugly woman.”

“Then you ain’t been wide upon the world.”

Slappy produced a bottle from his saddlebag, and both men knocked back a strong jolt. Fargo grimaced as the potent, strychnine-laced liquor burned a hot line to his gut.

“Care for a snort, Earl?” Slappy asked Lord Blackford. “It goes down pretty smooth if you put your fist through a wall.”

“Thank you, no. That look on Fargo’s face when he swallowed it unnerved me. I’m the cognac type. What we all truly need right now is fresh meat.”

“You’re gonna get it,” Slappy promised. “I’m gonna rough-gut your chestnut and carve us all out some steaks.”

Blackford paled. “I can’t eat my own horse!”

“Oh, you’ll eat it when you smell me frying it up with some wild onion. Horse meat is good fixin’s. Sells higher ’n beef in the big cities.”

The women had walked back to join them. Fargo trained his field glass in the direction the Cheyennes had ridden.

“Will they be back soon, Skye?” Jessica asked.

“’Fraid so. They don’t want us any closer to that fort. But I figure they won’t try another attack. They can’t know how low we are on ammunition.”

“But if they won’t attack,” Ericka joined in, “what threat can they be?”

“I’m guessing they mean to stake us out from a distance. They know we’re likely out of water. And they can see that our horses are done in. They’ll hem us and only attack if we try to walk out.”

“What about the mirror signals we sent earlier?” Rebecca said. “Somebody at Fort Laramie might have seen them.”

Fargo nodded. “Maybe. But I’ve scouted out of Fort Laramie, and it’s a bad-luck post. Gets the sorriest officers and men, and at any time half the troopers are dead drunk or hors de combat from dysentery. There’s times when they only got enough healthy men for post security and can’t even put a raggle-taggle detail in the field. I’m not counting on them.”

Fargo and Ericka exchanged a long look. She had guessed his desperate last-ditch plan. Lord Blackford saw this exchange and frowned.

“Fargo, either you and my wife are secretly courting or some game is afoot.”

Ericka smiled at her husband. “Oh, there is an unspoken secret between me and Mr. Fargo, Percival. But I assure you it’s not romantic, drat the luck.”

“Percival,” Slappy repeated, sputtering with laughter.

Blackford harrumphed. “Ericka, I daresay you were never this cheeky before.”

“Perhaps not. But then, I’ve never been this close to death before, either, now, have I?”

* * *

While Slappy took advantage of the lull in hostilities to butcher out meat and cook a meal, Fargo stood constant sentry. Field glass in hand, he traversed the plains in a constant circle, knowing the Cheyennes could attack from any direction.

He saw grama and buffalo grass as far as the eye could see, so high in places that it bent in rhythmic waves when the chilly wind gusted. No trees, no bushes, just “the broad frontier of the westward movement” as one ink slinger had aptly phrased it. What defined America, beyond the critical rainfall line of the hundredth meridian, was the lack of rivers—not only their great distance from one another, but the lethal fact that most of them dried up by summer’s end, spelling untold misery for ignorant pilgrims.

But Fargo knew, as he maintained his wary vigilance, that this country was hardly the Great American Desert marked on maps. The lack of trees did not discourage ground-nesting birds such as sharp-tailed grouse, scaled quail, and prairie chickens, which he spotted in abundance. And the huge dens of rattlesnakes found plentiful prey in the ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and pocket gophers. Fargo even spotted a jackrabbit as tall as his thigh.

“Any sign of danger yet?” Ericka’s voice startled him from behind.

“Nothing yet. But they won’t waste much time in returning.”

“I’ve guessed your plan, of course. I think it’s terribly clever. But can it work?”

“There’s a mort of ifs and ands to it, lady.”

Her fluid, impulsive lips eased into a smile, lighting up her weary face. “‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, the world would need no tinkers.’”

Fargo lowered the glass and grinned back at her. “Uh-huh. The first if is Touch the Clouds—can I lure him in to parley? If I can wangle that, what if he isn’t fooled? He spent a few years with those trappers before he got away—if they had any, whatchacallit, rep—represent—”

“Representational art.”

“Yeah. Anyhow, if they had any and he saw it, well, you’re too smart to need it spelled out.”

She sighed, brushing a renegade strand of hair from her eyes. Even exhaustion and fear could not blunt the classical beauty of her face.

“Yes. To employ your colorful parlance, I take your drift. Skye, why can there be no meeting of the minds between red men and whites? Oh, I’m no Pollyanna who thinks they can live side by side in harmony. But why must they try to exterminate each other?”

“I’ve puzzled that question out for most of my life. The best I can figure, the white man’s stick floats one way, the red man’s another. The paleface believes the land belongs to him. The land and nature must be whipped into submission. The Indian believes he belongs to the land. He believes it should be left as he finds it. Figures he has to live in harmony with nature and the seasons.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “And you are closer to the Indian’s perspective, are you not?”

“I tend that way, but I admit I’m a hypocrite. I like a fancy hotel now and then, and canned peaches, and good liquor. You can’t get things like that living like an Indian. Besides, they can be hypocrites, too. I’ve seen them chop down entire trees just to get a few nuts at the top, and some lazy tribes will run an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff just to slaughter a few. But it’s the land that matters most, and the white man is the biggest threat to it.”

Fargo made another slow rotation with his field glass. When he looked at Ericka again, she was watching him with a sparkle in her eyes.

“Something on your mind?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes, rather, but don’t get your hopes up—it’s not exactly what you think. I have a bit of a plan—if we survive this ordeal and if you’re agreeable.”

“I’m usually agreeable as all get-out with pretty ladies like you.”

She laughed. “Oh, I’ve noticed. But this . . . surprise I have in mind is quite different, I’m sure, from any request you’ve had hitherto from any woman.”

“I think I like where this trail is headed, but it’s a poser. What’s your surprise?”

She neatly sidestepped his question. “If I ask you here and now, you’ll likely refuse. I need to get you into a more . . . conducive setting.”

Slappy’s gravel-pan voice shouted, “Grub pile! Hot steak fresh off the hoof!”

“This was just getting interesting,” Fargo said.

“Yes,” she agreed, “wasn’t it?”