Badlands Bloodsport

4

The two frightened Englishmen raced their horses at a gallop for the remaining few miles to camp. Fargo slewed around in the saddle to watch for pursuers, but none were visible.

“Maybe they won’t come after us,” Derek said hopefully. “We should have spotted them by now. Their horses weren’t that far away.”

“Maybe the sun will set in the east first,” Fargo said. “Plains warriors don’t just jump on their mounts and give chase like a white man’s posse. Killing is a serious business to them, and they’ll want to make sure their medicine is strong. They’ll paint and dance first—they know damn well we can’t get very far.”

“How long will that take?” Skeets demanded.

“Not long. This isn’t a full-bore war, it’s a vengeance quest. They won’t have their sacred Medicine Arrows with them, and it’s likely their shaman is back at the main camp, so it’ll be a simple deal. Maybe an hour or two.”

“Too bad it ain’t later. Savages won’t attack after dark, eh?”

“That’s bunkum. Plenty of tribes, like the Comanches and Apaches, prefer to attack at night. But the Cheyennes are one of the most superstitious tribes, and they won’t leave their clan circles at night.”

Fargo didn’t bother to add, “But they will fight like demons from sunup to sundown.” Soon the camp circle loomed into view as they topped a low rise, and minutes later Montoya and Slappy hurried forward to greet Fargo. The three women, too, heard the riders approach and emerged from their tent.

“Mr. Fargo!” exclaimed Rebecca Singleton, Ericka’s younger sister—a willowy blonde with the most fetching sapphire-blue eyes Fargo had ever seen. She gingerly removed his hat. “La! The back of your head is matted with blood! What happened?”

Fargo grinned and hooked a thumb toward Derek. “Oh, the hangman there took a freak to conk me on the cabeza. I’ll settle that score later—that is, if we survive the Indian attacks that will soon be coming.”

Normally Fargo went out of his way to shield women from the hard facts of frontier emergencies. Such gallantry was impossible now, however—these women had to know what they were up against, and they had to get the truth with the bark still on it.

Lord Blackford and Sylvester Aldritch hurried forward. “I say, Fargo,” Blackford fussed, “why the dickens are you trying to scare the women?”

“You ain’t the ramrod here anymore, Blackford,” Fargo said in a tone that brooked no defiance. “You’re going to do what I tell you to do, and that goes for you, too, Aldritch. Any son of a bitch who tries to gainsay me will be picking lead out of his liver.”

Quickly, Fargo described the morning’s events and the imminent danger they all faced.

“Surely, Fargo,” Aldritch interposed in his special Fargo tone, “you’re being melodramatic? I have studied American Indians, and all this business about their implacable honor and so forth is highly exaggerated. When a death is clearly accidental, they are open to negotiations. A horse, perhaps, a rifle or two, some sugar and coffee and bright cloth might—”

“Gov’nor,” Skeets interrupted him, “we aren’t selling Manhattan. Fargo ain’t cutting it thin. Me and Derek saw these redskins explode when I shot that savage inside the robe. Blimey! You never heard such a racket of bloodcurdling cries. They mean to put paid to it, all right, but not with cheap trinkets. They want our scalps.”

Aldritch scowled. “Our scalps? You’re the bloody fool who ignited all this. Why shouldn’t we just turn you over to the savages?”

“Sylvester,” Ericka spoke up firmly, “this is no job for a city merchant. We hired Mr. Fargo for his expertise. Now let us avail ourselves of it.”

“Your mouth is loose, Aldritch,” Slappy tossed in. “Way too damn loose. You ’mind me of them yappin’ lapdogs what’re scared of mice. You ain’t got no choice in the matter, toff. Me and Montoya are with Fargo, and if he’s too busy to kill you, we ain’t.”

Aldritch’s neck swelled and his face turned brick red, but he wisely said nothing.

Fargo grinned. “All right, Slappy, lower your hammer. Our war with England ended long ago. Folks, listen. Why would we sacrifice Skeets, our best marksman? It would do no good—white skins are a tribe to the red man, and this is now a tribal battle.”

“Good show, Fargo,” Skeets muttered, staring at Aldritch with homicidal eyes.

Fargo said, “My first choice, when there’s a clash with Indians, is to avoid weapons and use wit and wile. And later on we will try that because I guarandamntee this will not be just one battle—they’re going to be on us like ugly on a buzzard. But right now time is a bird, and the bird is on the wing. For this first skirmish we’ve got no choice but to toss lead. But we’re going to toss it carefully.”

Fargo pointed toward the southwest. “Our only hope is to make it to Fort Laramie. We’ll travel at night—fast—and fort up for the daytime attacks that are coming. The Cheyenne battle tactics are smarter than you might think. They know our guns are useless once we run out of ammo, and they’re going to do everything they can to make us use it up. Don’t panic in the heat of battle and shoot just to make noise—noise won’t scare them.

“Carlos,” Fargo said, turning to Montoya, “they’ll try to shoot the horses, especially the team horses. I want double hobbles on those animals, and I want them bunched tight. Put the team horses in the middle. And speaking of horses . . .”

Fargo turned to Aldritch’s hired men. “Skeets and Derek, use those Big Fifty rifles to keep the attackers out of easy range. But don’t shoot any braves—just kill their horses.”

“Why mollycoddle them?” Blackford demanded. “You claim they’re out to slaughter us, now, aren’t they?”

“The way you say. Cheyennes expect to lose horses in battle—they don’t take it personally, and they keep up to twenty mustangs on their string. But they already have a grievance against us for killing that herd spy. By their view of it, we’re only digging our own graves deeper every time we kill another brave.”

“Skye,” Jessica spoke up, her voice tight with nervousness, “what about us women? Will these savages . . . I mean, will they . . . ?”

“They might,” Fargo said bluntly. “You’re all damn fine-looking women.”

“Then I wish we were ugly,” Rebecca chimed in.

“Don’t matter much, ma’am,” Slappy said. “Either way, they will kill you. On a vengeance raid, the only whites a Cheyenne will spare is the little kids. They take them into the tribe and raise ’em up as Injins.”

“Slappy’s right,” Fargo said, “but you ladies needn’t act like it’s bound to happen. If we all play this thing right, we’ll wangle out of it. Slappy!”

“Yo!”

“Help these ladies wiggle under the big coach. I want you down there with them.”

Slappy’s moon face broke into a lecherous grin. “It’s hard duty, but I’ll bear it somehow.”

“Skeets, climb on top of the coach, but make sure you stay flat as you can in the luggage well. Derek, I want you on top of the mud wagon. The rest of us men are going to shelter as best we can behind the wagons or coach.”

The Ovaro suddenly whickered, and Fargo knelt to feel the ground. “Snap into it, everybody! Here they come with blood in their eyes!”

* * *

The Cheyenne braves appeared over the grassy ridge to the north, riding in a line at wide intervals. Fargo estimated slightly over twenty warriors, about half armed with single-shot trade rifles of poor quality.

However, each man also had a powerful bow made of osage wood and strung with sinew. Their fox-skin quivers were stuffed with flint-tipped arrows; these were fletched with crow feathers, and Fargo knew a Cheyenne warrior could string and launch ten arrows in the time it took a white adversary to charge his rifle. Most braves also carried a red-streamered lance—red being the color of bravery—and steel-bladed war hatchets probably acquired at frontier trading posts.

Slappy called out from under the japanned coach: “That buck out front is wearing the medicine horns, Fargo. That must be the he-bear, huh?”

“That’s Touch the Clouds,” Fargo replied above the yipping din of the attackers, recognizing his buckskin mustang. “He’s got the heavy coup stick, so he’ll be expected to stand out in the battle. We’ve got to avoid killing him or the rest will row us up Salt River. But keep a close eye on him.”

“Damn shootin’ I will,” Slappy replied.

“Fargo, their line is starting to break,” a nervous Skeets called out from the top of the coach. “Are they going to squeeze us in a pincers?”

“That’s a paleface tactic. What they’re doing is forming into a big circle, their favorite battle formation. They’ll start far out, whirling faster and faster and closing in the circle tighter. But we’re going to discourage that by popping over their horses.”

“Por Dios, they are moving quickly,” Montoya complained from his position behind the fodder wagon.

“Just make sure to lead ’em by a half bubble or so,” Fargo told him.

By now the Cheyenne warriors had formed their wide circle and begun whirling around the beleaguered camp. A few braves fired their trade rifles, to poor effect, but the first deadly arrows were fwipping in with astonishing accuracy. One caught Skeet’s horse in the rump, and the injured animal raised a cry that iced Fargo’s blood.

“Skeets!” he shouted. “Think you can give them turnabout for that horse?”

“I jolly well can!”

Only a few seconds later the Big Fifty spoke its piece, and a grullo or blue-tinted mustang of Spanish descent collapsed into the grass, tossing its rider ass-over-applecart. The brave rose unsteadily to his feet, shook his head, then extended his hand until another rider took him up tandem.

The women cheered and Fargo scowled. “Slappy, make those ladies put their faces down and cover their heads with their arms! This ain’t no nine-pins match. Those braves will be aiming under that coach.”

Just then, as if timed to underscore Fargo’s warning, a flurry of arrows rattled into the coach—one could have struck the women if a wheel hadn’t deflected it. One of the women uttered a squeal of alarm, and Fargo couldn’t help a cynical grin—by God, they’d cover down now.

Skeets’s powerful hunting gun cracked again and another mustang folded to the ground, sliding hard. Fargo, too, had his Henry at the ready, but good shots did not present themselves. The distance—perhaps two hundred yards—was no problem, but leading the fast-moving ponies was. Every time Fargo dragged his muzzle left, the notch sight fell on yet another horse in the confused melee.

Finally he squeezed off a round and a third mustang was down. The Cheyennes, not expecting such marksmanship, doubled the number of arrows streaking in. Another horse was hit, and only the tight hobbles kept them from bolting.

Fargo noticed, with approval, that Montoya and Derek were following orders: Conserve ammo if you can’t shoot for score. Blackford and Aldritch had crawled into the fancy coach and were huddling on the floor. Right now it was mostly Skeets—with Fargo tossing off a shot now and then—who was holding the braves at bay.

But the Cheyenne braves had figured this out, too. They were making it hot for the paleface marksman atop the coach, blurring the air around him with deadly arrows. He was forced to cower down.

Fargo, hunched behind an offside corner of the mud wagon, atop which Derek was hunkered, had fought Plains warriors enough to suspect something was coming. An arrow zipped past his right cheek so close that the crow feather burned him.

“Bloody Christ, Fargo!” Derek yelled down. “I’m about to be skewered up here!”

“Work some resin into your spine!” Fargo snapped. “You think you can traipse around the West, aggravating dangerous Indians, and not pay a price? This is just the opening hand, old son. Now look sharp—I think they’re about to make a move.”

Fargo’s instincts were right. With Skeets forced to cover down, Touch the Clouds broke from the circle and rushed the camp on his buckskin. He brandished nothing but his flat coup stick.

“Everybody hold your powder!” Fargo bellowed. “This is the heap-big subchief!”

Expecting to be fired on, Touch the Clouds went into the riding position perfected by the Cheyenne tribe: Keeping only one leg slung over the mustang’s back, he slid most of his body down, hanging on only to a fistful of mane.

Fargo stood his ground, knowing what was coming. Touch the Clouds thundered closer to him, sliding back up onto his horse only at the last moment. Fargo felt a hard whack when the stick landed across his shoulders. Thus the war leader had successfully counted coup—touching an enemy without killing him. Plains Indians regarded this as the highest form of bravery.

But Fargo also knew, as the yipping brave escaped, that the gesture meant Touch the Clouds would kill him next time.

“What in bleeding Christ,” Derek shouted, “was that all about?”

“Never mind,” Fargo said, ducking a flurry of arrows. “Skeets can’t raise his head. Let’s see if we can drop a couple more horses and send these sunburned raiders packing.”

Fargo took up a kneeling-offhand position, tossed the Henry into his shoulder socket, and felt it kick when he fired. He tagged a mustang, all right, a splashy claybank marked like the Ovaro. But this time Fargo drew a deuce—the rider flew somersaulting forward and appeared to break his neck on impact.

Derek’s Sharps barked and he missed, but Fargo’s last shot had ended the Indian attack for that day. The tribe already had four men riding double and a dead or wounded brave to haul off. Touch the Clouds blew a shrill eagle-bone whistle and the rest faded quickly to the west.

“Slappy!” Fargo called out. “Anybody under the coach hit?”

“Naw! But these gals ain’t lookin’ too chirpy!”

“Skeets!”

“An arrow nicked my left arm, but my coat took most of it.”

“Montoya!”

“I escaped, but two horses are wounded.”

“Think we can doctor ’em up?” Fargo asked, watching Slappy help the shaken women out from under the coach.

“I have patched worse,” the former liveryman assured him.

Fargo tossed open a door of the fancy coach. Aldritch and Blackford were still cowering, faces white as new linen. “Are the bleeders gone?” Blackford demanded in a quivering voice.

Fargo shook his head in disgust. “Yeah, you two bravos can come out now.”

“We survived it, Sylvester,” Blackford gloated as he struggled up from the floor, stiff kneecaps popping. “Fargo painted it black indeed, but we withstood it. We can now return to England as heroes—we survived an attack by wild Indians! I am going to prepare a lecture for Professor Moore’s lyceum.”

Montoya and Slappy stood near Fargo. All three men exchanged incredulous looks. It was just Blackford’s usual line of blather, but coming at this time it seemed incredible beyond belief.

“Earl,” Fargo said, “what is wrong with you and what doctor told you so? This today was no real attack. It was just the opening bid in a long game to come. Those braves were just probing us, finding out about our manpower, firepower, and such. So you’re going back to England a hero, huh? Fine and dandy, but you got mighty slim odds of ever returning to England at all, and that’s a hard-cash fact.”