Beyond Squaw Creek

3

When Fargo and Valeria Howard had ridden for another twenty minutes, it wasn’t more Indians they found themselves shadowed by, but a mass of swollen purple clouds driven toward them by a knife-edged wind.

The prairie hogbacks turned lemon yellow. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. The sudden gale shepherded tumbleweeds across the short brown grass and thrashed the scattered cottonwoods and oaks. Prairie dogs squealed and ran for their burrows.

“Shit!” Fargo said, turning his head forward and tipping his hat brim low.

Ahead, he could make out the brown smudge of the old trading post nestled between hogbacks about a half mile away, smoke skeining from its large fieldstone chimney.

“Hold on!” he yelled above the howling wind and rumbling thunder, clucking the Ovaro into another ground-eating lope.

They hadn’t galloped thirty yards before the storm converged on them, rain pouring out of the dark clouds, driven slantwise by the wind. Fargo and the girl hunkered low in the saddle as the Ovaro galloped over one rise and down another, hooves splashing through puddles, the wind-whipped rain pummeling the Trailsman’s shoulders and pasting his buckskin tunic against his back and sluicing off the broad brim of his high-crowned hat.

As they galloped over the last rise, the trading post/ stage station appeared before them, nestled in a broad hollow and fronted by a creek sheathed in cattails. It was a broad, tall, barnlike building of stout logs with a low, brush-roofed stable attached to the side. The post’s windows were shuttered, and the stable doors were closed, but wan lamplight seeped out through gaps between the logs and through the rifle slits in the front doors and shutters.

Lightning flashed and thunder clapped as the Ovaro splashed across the creek, which broiled with muddy, fast-moving water, and lunged up the opposite bank. It galloped past the stone well house and into the yard that had become a rain-pelted slough, and skidded to a slipping, sliding halt before the stable.

Three tarp-covered freight wagons sat nearby, wagon tongues drooping, the tarp groaning and flapping in the wind.

Fargo slipped out of the pinto’s saddle, lost his footing in the soggy mud, and nearly fell before regaining his balance and drawing the stable doors open. He led the pinto into the stable’s murky, musty shadows rife with the smell of hay and ammonia. A couple of horses, hidden in the shadows, loosed frightened whinnies and kicked their stall partitions, frightened by the storm as well as the intruders. In the stable’s far recesses, a cat growled angrily.

Fargo lifted Valeria Howard out of the saddle. Soaked, she weighed a good ten pounds more than she had when he’d put her there. Her red hair hung straight down her back, and she crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, shivering.

“I’ll get you into the lodge!” he yelled above the wind pummeling the doors and stout log walls, making the rafters creak. He ran his hand down the pinto’s sleek, wet neck. “You stay, boy. I’ll be back to bed you down.”

He ushered her through the stable doors, led her by the hand along the front of the stable to the porch. She gave a cry as water streamed off the sagging porch roof and down her back.

“Could I be any more miserable?” she said, shivering, hugging herself, as Fargo led her up the porch steps.

He rapped on the stout log door. Almost immediately, a rifle barrel pushed through one of the two slots in the door’s vertical half logs. Behind the door, a man’s voice squawked, “Friend or foe, red man or white?”

Fargo glanced at the round musket barrel sliding around in the slot, and at the rheumy blue eye peeking out the hole from inside.

“It’s Skye Fargo, Smiley. Open up!”

The musket barrel wobbled around, twitched, and receded into the cabin. A thump sounded from inside, followed by the scrape of a locking bar. The door opened a foot, and a round, bald head poked out, blue eyes wide with caution. When the eyes found Fargo, the old man’s lower jaw dropped.

“Skye Fargo! Well, I’ll be skinned! Get on in here outta the damp, ya crazy coon!”

The old man threw the door wide and stepped back inside the cabin. Fargo followed him in, drawing the girl along behind him.

Old Smiley Bristo stood just inside the door, flexing his snakeskin spats and grinning broadly, toothlessly up at the Trailsman towering over him. His breath was fetid with yeasty beer, whiskey, and tobacco. “What the hell brings you up to this country, Skye? How long’s it been, anyways…?”

The old man’s voice trailed off as his drink-bleary gaze slid to the girl stepping up beside Fargo. “Well, I’ll be hanged,” he said, voiced hushed with awe, raking an index finger through his silvery patch beard. “You got a woman with ya.”

The word “woman” had no sooner escaped the oldster’s lips than the half dozen men sitting at the tables in the room’s smoky shadows, right of the long plank bar running along the room’s left wall, swiveled toward Fargo and the girl. The Trailsman’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the room’s shadows, which were shunted to and fro by hanging oil lamps and the cracking fire in the giant fieldstone hearth. But one look at the shirt clinging like a second skin to Valeria’s full breasts, nipples jutting from behind the soaked wool, told him what their eyes had found.

Valeria, apparently, had also become aware of the men’s scrutiny. Shyly, she turned her back to the men, and cast Fargo an uneasy sidelong glance.

“The lady would like a room and a hot bath,” Fargo said. “Some dry clothes, if you got any.”

His eyes glued to the girl, Smiley opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when a low voice rumbled from a table near the fire. “Shee-it, she need her back washed, too?”

Chuckles washed up from the webbing smoke and jostling shadows, heads jerking.

The girl sidled up close to Fargo as the old man said, his voice hushed as before, “I usually give the ladies from the stage the Chicago room upstairs, between New York and Abilene, as the curtains is pink and the mattress is goose feathers, plucked and stuffed myself. I’ll heat some water pronto. And I’ll rustle up a shirt and britches though I don’t have much in the way of female frillies.” He glanced shyly at the girl with a truckling bow. “Are you hungry, miss? I got a nice stew on the fire—the kidneys of a sow griz I just shot yesterday. The boys has already had some, and nobody’s been sick so far!”

Valeria splayed her hand on her chest and cleared her throat. “The food sounds delightful, but I think just the room and the bath will do for now.”

“I’ll show the lady to her room, Smiley,” Fargo said, taking the girl’s arm, “if you wanna get started on the water.”

When the old man nodded and turned toward the curtained door behind the bar, Fargo began leading the girl toward the stairs at the back of the room. The girl stopped and turned toward the old man. “Oh, Mr…. uh…Smiley,” she said haltingly. “I was wondering if there was…a…lock on the door?”

Again, snickers and chuckles rose from amongst the tables, chairs creaking.

Smiley turned at the curtained doorway, frowning as though he wasn’t sure he understood. “Why…no, ma’am. No locks. Never seen no need for none.”

Fargo forced a smile and continued leading the girl between the bar and the tables. As he walked, his eyes adjusted well enough that he could make out a few of the bearded faces turned toward them, recognizing a couple of burly mule skinners from Canada and a gambler from Council Bluffs.

At the back of the room, he and Valeria mounted the creaky stairs. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure none of the men, still staring after them, was leveling a gun at him or preparing to toss a knife at his back. At the top of the stairs, he loosed a relieved breath and led Valeria along the dim hall, the girl starting at the thunder cracking outside and making dust sift from the rafters.

All the doors bore wooden plaques into which the names of American cities had been burned, most misspelled. He stopped before the one labeled CHIKAGO, and threw it open.

“Home sweet home,” Fargo said, turning away.

She grabbed his arm. “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

Fargo dropped his eyes to her shirt. “You want me to stay and help you out of your wet duds?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped, balling the front of the dripping shirt in her fist, the shirt making a slight sucking sound as she pulled it away from her skin. She glanced down the dim hall, lightning flashing in the room’s single window, thunder shaking the floor and rattling a picture hanging on the wall near the door. “You saw the way those men were staring at me.”

“Can’t say as I blame ’em.” The Trailsman peeled the girl’s hand off his arm and started down the hall. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve tended my horse and grabbed a bottle.”

“Mr. Fargo?” she said, her voice trembling.

With a sigh, he turned back to her once more.

She moved toward him, placed her hands on his arms as she stared up with beseeching eyes, digging her fingers into his biceps. “I’m frightened. I know it’s not proper but…will you stay with me tonight? In…my room, I mean.”

Fargo grinned down at her.

She frowned indignantly, dropped her hands, and put a little steel into her quivering voice. “You can stop smiling. I am certainly not inviting you into my bed, sir!”

Fargo wrapped his arms around her waist and drew him to her brusquely. She gasped as he lowered his head and closed his mouth over hers. At first, she was as stiff as a fence post in his arms, but in seconds she began to soften. He probed her upper lip with his tongue, slipped it inside her mouth. Immediately, as though catching herself, she gave an angry grunt, placed her hands against his chest, and pushed away from him.

Her chest heaving, she scowled up at him, and slapped him hard across the face.

He smiled, drew her to him once more. Again she gasped as he pressed his lips to hers. This time, she didn’t fight him.

When he pulled away, she stared up at him, her eyes soft, lips parted, the clinging shirt outlining each full breast clearly as she threw her shoulders back, the beautiful orbs rising and falling like barrels on a storm-tossed sea.

“We’ll discuss the sleeping arrangements later,” Fargo said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see to my horse.”

As he stepped back away from her, she stumbled toward him, regained her balance, and stared up at him, wide green eyes like two glowing agates in the shadows. His pants feeling frustratingly tight, Fargo tipped his soggy hat to her, turned away, and tramped off down the hall. He could feel the girl’s eyes branding his back until he turned and descended the stairs, boots clomping on the scarred cottonwood planks, spurs chinging, the storm booming around him, rain pelting the roof.

The room hushed as Fargo crossed the main hall toward the bar, heads turning to stare at him from the smoky shadows. The air was so thick with the smell of leather, cigarette and wood smoke, and the spicy aromas of the bear kidney stew that there seemed hardly any oxygen.

Smiley stood at the bar, laying out a game of solitaire, a half-filled beer mug near his left arm. He looked up as the Trailsman approached.

“I’m heating water for the girl’s bath. You look like you could use a drink.”

“Whiskey,” Fargo said. “Give me the stuff without the snake venom.”

“Shit,” Smiley chuckled, reaching under the bar and setting a brown bottle onto the planks. “It’s all snake venom, Skye. You been through here enough times to know that!”

The oldster grabbed a shot glass off a nearby pyramid, popped the bottle’s cork, and splashed the murky brown fluid into the glass. “Where did you find little miss, if you don’t mind me askin’. I been in these parts long enough to know she didn’t come from any of the settlements around here.”

“Major Howard’s daughter.” The Trailsman sipped the whiskey. It did indeed taste like snake venom with two parts gunpowder to one part coal oil and a whole lot of chili pepper. When it had scraped about all the skin from his throat it was going to, he held the glass up to look at it. “I and about nine soldiers were takin’ her to Fort Clark when Blackfeet attacked. Wiped out the whole party except me and her.”

“The Blackfeet been on the prod of late.”

Fargo glanced up at the old man leaning toward him on his elbows. “Them and the Assiniboine?”

“Sure as smelly water in a whore’s boudoir.” Smiley pronounced that last “boydee-are.” He shook his grizzled head and took a swig of beer. “You’d swear they all be usin’ prickly pears to wipe their asses. They took out three cabins just north of here, a ranch out west, and a tradin’ post up on the south fork of Misery Creek.”

He nodded at the two burly, buckskin-clad men playing poker in front of the fire, both with fat stogies wedged in their mouths. “The mule skinners said a howlin’ group of the red-niggers done burned one of them new settlements on the Cannonball!”

Fargo didn’t like the debris floating around inside his whiskey glass, but he’d tasted worse and it was tempering the chill in his bones. “They leave you alone?”

“Hell, they don’t come near me,” Smiley said, refilling Fargo’s glass. “This place is stout as a stockade. Besides, they like my hooch and trade cloth.”

Fargo reached for his refilled glass. A hide pouch flew over his left shoulder and clattered onto the bar planks before him. A couple of gold coins dribbled out of the neck onto the bar.

The Trailsman turned slowly toward the room. One of the mule skinners, Pierre Bardot, stood with one stovepipe boot perched on his chair. He was a couple of inches taller than the Trailsman, which put him close to seven feet. He wore a black sombrero thronged beneath his chin, curly red hair tufting out around it. His tattooed arms were thick as fence posts, his red-brown eyes small as trade beads.

“For the woman,” said Bardot in his faint French accent, giving a self-important nod.

The mule skinner’s partner, a Scandinavian named Hallbing—a one-eyed blond with a knife scar along his bearded right cheek—lounged back in his chair, one brawny arm draped over the chair back. He grinned at Fargo, showing his small, cracked, tobacco-stained teeth, his lone eye narrowed.

Lightning flashed in the windows. Thunder rocked the room.

Fargo glanced at the gold coins, turned back to the man who’d tossed the pouch. “Don’t tempt me,” he drawled, turning back toward his glass.

Something whistled through the air over Fargo’s right shoulder. The rusty-bladed, bone-handled knife plunked into the bar planks before the money sack, six inches from Fargo’s left hand. The vibrating handle sang like a mouth harp.

When the song faded, the mule skinner’s voice rumbled like thunder in Fargo’s ear. “Take it or leave it.”