Badlands Bloodsport

3

After the rest had retired to their tents, Fargo, Montoya, and Slappy finished off the day’s coffee.

“That Lady Blackford is a plumb good sort,” Slappy opined. “But that little speech she just made about you Fargo—that knocked me into a cocked hat.”

“The way you say,” Fargo agreed. “I’m after thinking it was a warning to me.”

“Skeets and Derek are murderers,” Montoya asserted. “I have seen their kind often in Santa Fe. A man cannot have a sporting brawl with this kind—especially Derek. We call them kill-fighters in Mexico—no sense of humor or sport in them.”

Fargo, his back against his saddle, nodded. “Jessica is right—Aldritch hired them for the dirtiest of the dirt work. The only difference between him and his bully boys is that he can afford to hire the killings out.”

“And what about this earl, Blackford?” Montoya asked. “He is friends with Aldritch. Is he one of the murderers also?”

“I been studying on that,” Fargo replied. “Blackford ain’t really friends with Aldritch. Aldritch has loaned him big sums, and it looks to me like Blackford can’t scrape up the legem pone to pay him back. So Aldritch has got his eye on Blackford’s sister-in-law—and Rebecca is mighty easy to look at.”

“All three of these gals are a huckleberry above a persimmon,” Slappy pronounced. “I been tryin’ to wangle a way to see ’em naked, but they keep that foldin’ bathtub of theirs inside the tent when they wash. When they go out for necessary trips at night, the other two keeps watch.”

Montoya snorted. “Vaya, loco! What could you hope to see when a woman relieves herself? They do not undress for this.”

“Nah, but there’s somethin’ sorter excitin’ ’bout watching a woman voiding. Most especial, women of the Quality. Hell, I growed up thinking rich women don’t do that like the rest of us.”

Fargo looked at Montoya and both men shook their heads.

Montoya suddenly tossed out the dregs of his cup. “Damn! You could cut a plug off of this coffee!”

“Fat lot you Mexers know—Christ, you ruin it with brown sugar. Coffee ain’t ready till it’ll float a horseshoe. Ain’t that the straight, Fargo?”

“Right as rain,” Fargo said absently, watching one of the men—he couldn’t tell who in the darkness—leave the tent and disappear in the shadows beyond the edge of camp. Ericka Blackford’s words snapped in his memory like burning twigs: “I confess I have always wanted to see an evil man killed for his crimes.”

“I must allow, Slappy,” Montoya said, “that you are a fine cook. And you did good work rigging the fodder wagon.”

Slappy had nailed a chuck box—a stout cupboard—onto the back of the wagon and reinforced it to withstand tough terrain. He had also rigged a cooney—a cowhide sling—for sticks, “prairie coal” or buffalo chips, and kindling to tide them on the treeless plains.

“I’m a damn fine cook,” Slappy boasted. “And I warned them limeys I only know how to cook American. Lookit tonight: I served up beef, biscuits, potatoes, gravy, and apple pie for desert. And Blackford, His Nibs, asks where was the greens? The greens? And where was the spun truck, only he calls it ‘vegetables.’ Well, I’m dogged and gone if we got any vegetables besides potatoes and onions. Greens. Hell, is he a sheep?”

“I like the eats just fine,” Fargo assured him. “Beats jerky and ditch water.”

“Uh-huh, well, you won’t like it much longer. We’ve got out of meal and salt. And won’t be long before we’re out of water.”

“There’s water close by,” Fargo assured him. “Just watch where the birds fly early in the morning. Carlos, give me a hand.”

Fargo crossed to the tongue of the fodder wagon and lifted it.

“What is this for?” Carlos asked him.

“Blackford told me he lost his compass somewhere. We’re heading out early tomorrow, and there’s nothing on these plains to get our bearings by. So we’ll point this tongue at the North Star. That way we can set out toward the southwest and know we’re going right.”

“What is to the southwest?”

“For one thing, Fort Laramie. We can stock up on the things Slappy needs. More important, it gets these English blowhards away from them Cheyennes. I heard Aldritch tell Derek and Skeets there was a fat bonus in it if they fetched back a couple buffalo hides. I don’t trust those two sons of bitches any farther than I could throw them.”

When the tongue was in place, Fargo helped Carlos water the horses from their hats. Besides Fargo’s Ovaro and the six team horses, there were handsome animals for the four Englishmen and a pretty little strawberry roan shared by the women.

Slappy wandered over to help with the night hobbles. “I ain’t never met any two horses could do the work of one mule. But a man can’t get fond of a mule.”

Carlos, a former hostler, agreed. “A mule needs less food and water and is more surefooted on mountain slopes.”

“All that’s true,” Fargo said, “but a mule doesn’t give a damn about its rider. A good horse will pull a man out of a scrape—mine has, plenty of times.”

The three men went to their blankets, spread near the fire. Carlos stabbed a bootjack behind his heel to pry off his boots. Fargo, however, only removed his in hotels—and with Touch the Clouds and his warriors nearby and uneasy, it was no time for a man to be groping for his boots.

Fargo’s Henry already lay near the blanket. He unbuckled his shell belt and laid it close by. Montoya broke open his shotgun, slid two shells into the chambers, and shut the breech.

“I do not fear Indians,” he told Fargo. “But I think Derek and Skeets may try to kill you.”

“Not just this minute,” Fargo suggested as he settled his head on his saddle. “Ericka is right, though. Them two have hated me since I signed on in Pueblo, and the pimple is building into a peak. It’s likely I’ll have to kill them both.”

The fire had burned low, and there wasn’t enough fuel to stoke it. A cold gust rushed in from the northern plains, making Fargo shiver. The last New Year out West had started with a January chinook—a warming wind from the southwest. Fargo knew that always spelled bad weather ahead for the plains.

“Early snow’s a-comin’,” Slappy said from his bedroll. “I’ve seed it snow so deep on these plains that the rabbits suffocated in their burrows. Oncet, near the Powder, I had to crawl into a hollow log for days. Had to tunnel out.”

Fargo believed every word. The roughest winter in his memory was up in northern Dakota Territory. During a long, paralyzing blizzard he saw abandoned horses eating tar paper from the walls of shacks. Even the Ovaro had been forced to eat tree bark and the wool of dead sheep.

“I’ve already told Blackford this hunt has gone on too long,” he said as he rolled onto his side. “But he’s death on shooting a damn buffalo. So we’ll head out tomorrow bearing south into warmer ranges, and might be we’ll spot a small herd. Whether we do or not, I’m dealing myself out at Fort Laramie.”

“Derek and Skeets won’t want to leave this herd nearby,” Montoya said in a sleepy voice.

Fargo grunted but said nothing.

* * *

A horse whiffled in the predawn chill and Fargo started awake. His right hand snaked toward his nearby gun belt.

“You won’t need that, Fargo,” said a quiet voice approaching him. “We have a bit of a sticky wicket in the ladies’ tent.”

Fargo sat up and made out the lipless face of Skeets Stanton in the grainy half light.

“They must be getting broad-minded,” Fargo remarked as he unfolded to his feet and stretched out the ground kinks. “I didn’t know you were sleeping there.”

“A snake got in somehow,” Skeets said. “We think it was a rattlesnake. It bit Rebecca on her leg. No one knows what to do about it.”

Fargo was suspicious, but the story was not. Rattlesnakes were common on the plains, and one might have been attracted to the heat of the tent.

“All right,” he said, heading toward the tents. “Just keep a few paces ahead of me.”

Skeets did. Fargo cast a quick glance around but didn’t spot Derek the Terrible lurking anywhere.

“How long ago was she bit?” Fargo asked.

“Not long. Jessica ran over and woke us immediately.”

“She should be all right, then. We’ll suck the poison out. A rattlesnake bite won’t usually kill an adult. With luck she’ll just be sick for a few hours.”

“Glad to hear it, wanker,” said a voice right behind Fargo, but before he could spin around something crashed into the back of his head. Fargo saw a bright orange starburst on his eyelids; then his legs bellied and the ground rushed up to claim him.

Now time and place meant nothing to Fargo. He felt the vague sensation of being tossed around like a sack of meal, then of riding on horseback. At some point he landed hard on the ground, his injured head exploding with pain. Countless minutes and hours passed, and when his eyes finally flickered open, the sun was warm on his face.

His ankles were trussed tight, his hands tied tight at the small of his back. He had been dumped on the open plain with nothing but sky above him and grass all around. His head felt as if he’d been mule-kicked, and he could feel the blood matted in his thick hair. The ropes bit into him like hot wire.

“Fargo, you green-antlered fool,” he muttered. “Falling for the damsel-in-distress grift.”

He tried to work out of the ropes, but evidently Englishmen knew their knots. At least they hadn’t killed him, but Fargo felt a queasy churning in his guts when he realized what this must be all about.

Those two big-city churn-heads were after buffalo. The same buffalo herd the Cheyennes had claimed as their own. Fargo didn’t give a tinker’s damn what happened to those boys, but the enraged Indians might well turn their horses loose and follow them back to camp. No one would be spared, and those lush female scalps would be highly prized.

Something else occurred to Fargo, something that made his face drain cold. If those two British hooligans were killed, who would ever notice the Trailsman here in the middle of the vast Plains? For that matter, even if Derek and Skeets escaped, Fargo couldn’t assume they meant to free him.

“Pile on the agony,” he muttered.

This view from ground level of the great Dakota Plains made Fargo feel tiny and insignificant. The dearth of trees, save near water, always astonished newcomers. A few, in fact, mostly women, even went loco from the lack of any fixed reference points. Fargo had always found their vast openness a mixed blessing. No one could sneak up on you, true. But likewise, it was hard to hide your presence. A man with a Big Fifty could drop you from a thousand yards off.

All this looped through Fargo’s mind as he patiently, doggedly worked his hands, trying to loosen the rope around his wrists. It chafed and burned, adding to the misery of his throbbing head, but he had no alternative. His ankles were trussed tight as a tourniquet.

Fargo was still working at the rope, making no progress, when the first gray wolf appeared over a low ridge in front of him.

His face broke out in cold sweat as the lupine predator watched him from steady, unblinking eyes. Fargo knew it was rare for a lone wolf to attack a full-grown man—unless it sensed that man was helpless. And Fargo was definitely helpless.

He would look less helpless if he got off his ass, and Fargo relied on his strong midsection muscles as he struggled up onto his feet, wavering at first because he could not plant his feet wide. Just then three more wolves appeared over the ridge, and he felt his blood seem to stop and flow backward in his veins.

A pack. All bets were off now. Fargo had seen wolves in a pack attack and bring down mountain lions.

This is no time to go puny, the Trailsman rallied himself. All four wolves put their bellies low in the grass, slinking toward him silently. Fargo broke into a rousing chorus of a favorite bawdy tune in the West:

“Bang-bang Lu-lu,

Bang ’er every day,

Who’s gonna bang poor Lu-lu

When I get old and gray?”

The natural curiosity of the wolf made them stop and watch him with cocked heads. Fargo kept singing verses from “Lu-lu Girl,” but these animals were slat-ribbed and clearly starving. In a minute they were coming at him again, the leader baring yellow fangs two inches long.

Over the dangerous years on the frontier, Fargo had developed a special talent, at moments of extreme peril, for separating himself from the present moment, for becoming both participant and observer. The participant in him was rendered helpless by strong rope and therefore certain his long trail had finally ended. But the observer in him remained calm and analytical, ideas crowding through his mind.

There’s one animal in the West, that observer reminded him, who scares the living shit out of all others, and that’s the grizzly.

With the pack leader gathering himself to leap at Fargo and rip out his throat, the Trailsman made a last-ditch effort to save his life. He knew well the sound an aggressive grizzly made, a deep-chested sound halfway between a bark and a grunt.

“Woof!” Fargo roared deep from his belly. “Woof! Woof, woof!”

The leader whined, uncertain, and backed off a few steps. Fargo roared even louder and, as one, the pack turned and loped over the ridge.

Fargo felt his legs trembling at this close brush with death, and he sank down onto his knees. “What I wouldn’t give right now,” he said aloud, “for a saloon with sawdust on the floor and girls topside.” He could see himself at the bar, elbows propped and his hat slanted back so he could guzzle Old Orchard as if he were a pipe to hell.

He had survived that scrape, but how long could he last out here without food and water? He still had his six-shooter, but it was as useless as a match underwater. He couldn’t even get away from snakes or brush the red ants off him—he felt their fiery bites all over his legs.

If he did somehow survive this, he vowed, Derek the Terrible and Skeets Stanton would never again lay eyes on Merry Old England.

Just then Fargo detected vibrations through his knees—the fast rhythm of galloping horses. In a few minutes he detected the dark outlines of two riders bearing straight toward him. Soon he recognized Skeets and Derek, their faces alabaster with fright. They reached him and hauled back, their horses skidding in the grass.

Derek glanced back over his shoulder. “Christ, Fargo, you were right! There’s wild Indians back there, and they came bloody near killing us!”

Skeets jumped down and began hacking at Fargo’s ropes with a bowie knife. “We only got away because they didn’t have their mounts near to hand. They’re coming, though. At least twenty of them. Cor! Them sodding savages raised a cry like banshees when they spotted us.”

“You goddamn fools,” Fargo said. “Tell me you did not shoot a buffalo.”

The two men exchanged a guilty look.

“We fired, but we didn’t kill any bison,” Derek replied, although he was clearly stonewalling. “And the noise from our guns scattered the rest of the herd.”

“Tell it straight,” Fargo demanded. “You’re holding something back.”

“Fargo, it was an accident,” Skeets said, his words tumbling out fast in his nervousness. “It was just after sunup and the light was bad. I saw what I thought was a small buffalo. Remember, you told us how hard they are to skin, what? So I—”

Fargo, suddenly turning pale, held up a hand to stop him. “Oh, Christ. That buffalo turned out to be an Indian hiding under a buffalo robe, right?”

Both men nodded. Skeets demanded, “What in Hades was that red bugger up to?”

“He was a herd spy. Never mind now. We are all in one world of shit. Let’s get back to camp before they catch us in the open.”

Fargo’s ankles were free and Skeets went to work on his wrists. “So, why did you stop for me?” Fargo demanded. “You had me out of the way.”

“Bloke, we don’t want you out of the way,” Derek said. “Montoya and the cook are no Indian fighters. You’re the only one among us who knows about redskins.”

“Climb aboard,” Derek said, extending a hand. “The red peril can’t be far behind us.”

Fargo’s legs had gone to sleep while tied, and he limped awkwardly toward Derek’s horse. “I’ll help for the sake of the women. But I have an account to settle with you two.”

“We never intended to leave you here, Fargo,” Skeets pointed out. “We just didn’t want you interfering with us.”

Fargo swung up and over, the exertion making his head pound like a Tewa tom-tom, and wedged himself into the stiff English saddle behind Derek. “I’ll keep that in mind. But, gents, you just stirred up a hornet’s nest when you crossed the fighting Cheyenne. Did you kill the herd spy?”

“Most likely,” Skeets admitted. “I saw a human leg pop out of the robe when he dropped. I hit him with a fifty-caliber ball—that will shock a man to death no matter where it hits.”

Fargo nodded. “The Cheyenne are big on blood vengeance. War is all they’ve ever known, and their little boys start practicing for mortal combat around age four. If you think the Romans and the Vikings and George Washington gave you a hard time, wait until you square off against these warriors. I druther face all the devils in hell.”