Beyond Squaw Creek

2

The Ovaro was not only the fastest horse Fargo had ever ridden, but it had plenty of bottom, too. More bottom than the Indians’ mustangs, obviously, because Fargo and Valeria Howard gradually pulled away from their pursuers, until the braves’ gunshots sounded little louder than snapping twigs, and the thunder of their ponies was like the distant passing of a fleeting summer storm.

When they’d ridden a good four miles beyond the scene of the attack, Fargo pulled the horse off the old traders’ trail he’d been following, and into a cut between high, chalky buttes. A light breeze rose, and the Ovaro lifted its head, sniffing and softly nickering. Fargo turned the horse to look behind, tipping his hat against the sun.

About a half mile straight east of the traders’ trail, six or seven Indians were walking their horses along the base of a jog of curving hogbacks, riding slowly away from Fargo and Valeria. Their leader wore a buffalo headdress. They were armed with either bows and arrows or carbines. Hatchets swung from their belts. A couple of the young braves held war lances adorned with tribal feathers.

Judging by the tribal feathers and designs painted on their faces and horses, these braves were Assiniboine, not Blackfeet, like those behind Fargo.

Valeria Howard shivered on the saddle before the Trailsman. “Oh, God…”

Fargo studied the riders until they’d disappeared down the other side of a distant slope. Oh, God was right. They were surrounded by Indians.

Fargo turned the Ovaro and galloped west between the buttes.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked, craning her neck to peer over Fargo’s shoulder.

“The pinto needs water. There’s a spring around here.” Fargo glanced behind, and seeing no redskins on his trail, checked the sweat-lathered Ovaro down to a walk. “About two prairie swells farther west is a trading post and stage station. We’ll stop there for the night.”

Crossing her bare arms over her pale breasts, the girl looked up at him. Her face was dust streaked, and weed seeds clung to her mussed, russet-colored hair. There was a fearful trill in her voice. “But we could make Fort Clark in a couple of hours!”

“If we kept moving as fast as we’ve been moving, we could make the fort about three hours after good dark. But the horse is tired. And we don’t want to be out here after dark.”

Valeria looked around warily, at the eroded butte faces and breeze-ruffled buffalo grass, at the dry, chalky wash meandering through the gray-brown grass tall enough to conceal a crawling Indian. “Father is going to be worried.” She swung her gaze back to Fargo, eyes sharp. “How could you let this happen? You were supposed to be watching for Indians! That’s why Father hired you!”

“You’re alive, aren’t you? Still have your topknot.”

Fargo reined the horse into a hollow at the base of a high butte. Water bubbled up from the butte’s base, around sand and mossy, pitted boulders, and emanated a vague sulfur smell. Cattails grew along the spring’s perimeter, and meadowlarks rode the swaying weed tips, a few lighting as the Ovaro drew up and Fargo slipped off the horse’s back.

He dropped the pinto’s reins and reached up to help the girl down. She’d forgotten to cover her breasts as she stared into the distance, her face drawn with worry. Fargo couldn’t help letting his gaze linger over the softly rounded, pink-tipped orbs, no less enticing for being rimed with trail dust and belonging to a rather haughty debutante.

She glanced down at him, saw where his eyes were, and gasped. Quickly, she drew the frayed strips of her torn blouse closed. “Isn’t there something besides staring at my breasts you should be doing, Mr. Fargo? Perhaps making sure we’re not attacked again by those savages!”

Fargo wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her roughly out of the saddle, evoking another gasp.

“I reckon,” he said, setting her on the ground, glancing again at the pale orbs peeking out between the insufficient flaps of cloth. She smelled sweet, like talcum and lilacs, in spite of the ordeal. “But it won’t be near as much fun.”

He opened one of his saddlebags and rummaged around before pulling out a shirt sewn from flannel trade cloth, with badger teeth for buttons. He tossed the shirt to the girl. “Why don’t you put that on so I can concentrate on my job?”

“Oh, I suppose the Indians surprised you because of me!” she said, turning her back and flapping out the overlarge shirt in front of her.

Fargo grabbed his spyglass out of his saddlebags and began climbing the slope rising east of the spring.

The girl called behind him, “You don’t have something a little smaller?”

Halfway up the slope, Fargo stopped and turned toward her. She remained standing with her naked back to him, holding the shirt up to inspect it.

“I wasn’t packing for you!” As he continued climbing, he glanced over his shoulder and said quietly, “Get a drink. We’ll be movin’ out in two minutes.”

“Uncouth bastard,” she grumbled behind him.

Fargo dropped down against the bluff, doffed his hat, and telescoped the spyglass. He’d no sooner trained the glass on their back trail between the two ridges than his back tensed and his gut filled with bile.

Shadows of galloping riders undulated across the grassy southern slopes of the shallow canyon. A few beats later, the Indians he’d spied a little while earlier appeared around a bend, the brave in the buffalo headdress riding point, batting his moccasined heels against the ribs of his chuffing, galloping paint.

Behind Fargo, the Ovaro snorted loudly. Down the canyon galloping hooves rumbled.

“What’s the matter with—?” The girl stopped as Fargo slammed the end of the spyglass against his palm, reducing it, then grabbed his hat and began scrambling down the slope, leaping rocks and tufts of sage and silverthorn.

“Mount up!”

“What is it?”

Fargo hit the bottom of the canyon running, grabbed the girl around the waist, and heaved her back onto the pinto. “Mount up!”

He grabbed the reins, tossed the spyglass into the saddlebags, then leaped up behind the girl who jerked her head around, whimpering, as the thud of hooves rose from down the canyon.

“Hold on!”

Fargo reined the horse away from the spring and into the crease. Immediately, shrill whoops and yowls rose on his left, above the thuds of the pounding hooves.

Fargo turned the pinto westward along the crease, then gave the horse its head. The Ovaro stretched out, bounding through the hock-high grass as the Indians’ enraged whoops and yowls grew behind it, the cacophony punctuated by sporadic gunfire.

“How did they find us?” the girl cried, the tails of the long shirt whipping out around her.

“The breeze switched.” Fargo glanced back to see the half dozen Indians bolting toward them, the broad chests of their paints and pintos and Appaloosas glistening in the afternoon sunlight, the braves’ yells echoing around the buttes. “They must’ve smelled your perfume.”

“Why didn’t you…?”

“Sorry, honey,” Fargo growled. “I can’t control the wind!”

He glanced behind once more. Whooping like a crazed warlock, the lead warrior held up a feathered war lance dyed red, green, and black, his medicine pouch and necklaces dancing along his broad, muscular chest. The brave’s right cheek appeared covered with a strawberry birthmark beneath the swirling lines of war paint.

“That looks like the son of Iron Shirt,” Fargo muttered darkly as he turned forward, flinching at an arrow sailing across his left shoulder.

Arrows sliced the air above and around them, and a rifle barked, a slug spanging off a rock only a few feet right of the galloping pinto. Ahead, the crease between the buttes curved right, then narrowed to a couple of yards.

“Take the reins!” Fargo yelled above the thunder of the Ovaro’s slicing, grinding hooves, shoving the ribbons into the girl’s hands.

Valeria shot him a wary glance.

“Keep riding. When you clear these buttes, stop and wait for me atop that flat-topped bluff in the distance.”

Stiffly, her cheeks pale with terror, the girl took the reins reluctantly, as though they were on fire, and stared warily down at the lunging horse. “What’re you going to do?”

Fargo shucked his Henry rifle, cocked it one-handed. “I’m gonna clean those wolves off our trail!”

Throwing both arms out for balance, Fargo hopped straight back along the horse’s rocking hips.

He glanced behind. The Indians were out of sight beyond the bend in the crease, but they wouldn’t be for long.

Fargo threw himself straight back off the Ovaro’s rump, hitting the ground flat-footed. Propelled by the horse’s momentum, he rolled through the grass, managing to hold on to the rifle. As he began to slow, his right knee nipped a rock along the trail, and he gritted his teeth.

Cursing, he rolled off his shoulder and shot a look up the trail. The horse and the girl galloped away from him, the girl glancing over her shoulder, red hair bouncing along her back.

Fargo waved her on, then threw himself off the trail. As the whoops and hooffalls grew louder behind him, he scrambled up the steeply shelving butte on his left.

He doffed his hat and lifted a look over the butte’s shoulder. At the same time, the Indian with the headdress and birthmark—Iron Shirt’s oldest son, sure enough—dashed around the bend on his fleet-footed paint, the other five howling braves pushing in close around him so all six could squeeze through the narrow corridor.

The Trailsman pushed himself straight up to the crest of the butte shoulder and, on one knee, snapped the Henry to his cheek. Iron Shirt’s son—Blaze Face—glanced up as his paint approached the gap before him.

The warrior’s spotted face blanched and his lower jaw dropped a half second before Fargo blew him out of his saddle, sending the headdress flying. Fargo jacked another round into the chamber and fired, and continued firing until all six horses were galloping through the gap without riders, or, as in the case of a small-boned Appy, kicking its rider along under its scissoring hooves.

As gun smoke billowed around Fargo’s head, he turned to look up trail. The last rider rolled through the crease and piled up against a boulder.

Fargo scrambled down the butte and ran up to the warrior, who lay against the boulder spotted with the young man’s blood. Several broken ribs poked through his bloody sides. The brave kicked miserably, arching his back and groaning.

The Trailsman racked a fresh shell into the Henry’s breech and held the barrel two inches from the brave’s right eye. “Why are you raiding?” he demanded in Sioux, hoping he had the right dialect.

The brave shook the hair from his eyes and spat several curses which, in good Indian style, insulted not only the Trailsman’s mother and sisters but his female cousins, as well. The brave had opened his mouth to launch another tirade, when he tensed suddenly.

Apparently, one of the broken ribs had pierced his heart. He flung his head back with an audible smack against the ground, gave another couple of kicks, and lay still, eyes glazed with death.

The Trailsman cursed in the Indian’s tongue, then, knowing the gunfire might have been heard by other warriors, turned away from the dead brave and jogged up the trail, thumbing fresh shells from his cartridge belt into the Henry’s loading tube.

He hadn’t walked far before the girl and the pinto rose up from behind a grassy, breeze-brushed knoll. The pinto snorted and trotted forward, nearly running Fargo over before swerving sideways, stopping, snorting again, and shaking its glistening black mane, relieved to find that the Trailsman had survived the Indians. The golden late-afternoon sunshine made the strip of white between the horse’s fore and hindquarters glow. It made the girl’s red hair shimmer like sunset hues reflected off a high mountain lake.

“I thought I told you to wait on that bluff yonder,” Fargo snapped at her, sliding his Henry into the saddle sheath.

She stared down at him, glowing red hair dancing around her head. “I was worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be,” Fargo snapped, grabbing the reins out of her hands and swinging up into the saddle. “Just do what I tell you!”

“Fine, then,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, the overlarge tunic billowing out around them. “Just fine!”

Fargo turned the pinto around, heeled it west. The girl, nearly tossed from the saddle as the horse leaped forward, gave a startled cry and lunged for the horn.