by Jon Sharpe
“You see, Lieutenant Duke spent a lot of time with a band of Assiniboine camped on the far side of Squaw Creek. Now, that’s against regulations, and most of this is hearsay, but rumor has it he married the daughter of Chief Iron Shirt. Iron Shirt took a liking to the lieutenant, even though Duke was obviously crazier than a pack of wild lobos on the night of the first full moon. Or maybe because he was crazy. The Injuns often take craziness for wisdom, don’t you know?”
Fargo nodded. He’d been around Indians enough to know that men and women whom white folks would normally lock up in a funny farm were often given special privileges amongst the natives. Many were respected for their “crazy wisdom” and insight into the “ether regions.” Some tribal leaders had been known to call upon these people for advice on hunting or battle strategies or to cast spells on their enemies.
“To make a long story short,” Prairie Dog continued, “Lieutenant Duke and Iron Shirt have been seen riding together with a whole passel of painted warriors. Apparently, somehow, Lieutenant Duke—in his crazy, mixed-up mind—decided the Indians oughta be killin’ the whites. And, somehow, he got the Blackfeet to throw in with the Assiniboine to do just that.”
“Two tribes that normally fight each other,” Fargo said, daring another sip of the rotgut whiskey. “You reckon the major’s attempt to trot Duke off to a nuthouse turned him against the entire army?”
“And the poor white settlers and trappers in these parts,” Prairie Dog said. “Possible.” He chased the whiskey with the beer, draining his schooner in three long chugs, then plunked the glass back down on the table. “Now, ain’t this a fine sichy-ation?”
“You have any idea what the major intends to do about it?”
Prairie Dog grinned. “No. But I got a feelin’ it’s gonna involve you, Mr. Trailsman, sir.” He slid his chair back. “Now, if you’ll excuse this rancid old hide, I’m due over to Lieutenant Donovan’s office to see about puttin’ a huntin’ expedition together. One that won’t lose its hair and other sundry body parts. We have enough food for a few more days, but sooner or later we’re gonna need meat.”
Fargo lifted his beer glass. “I reckon I’ll have a bath and a shave. Bathhouse still by sud’s row?”
“It is. And don’t forget to see Captain Thomas for your ‘debriefing.’”
“Hell,” Fargo grunted, donning his hat and rising. “I’m between contracts. If the captain wants to debrief me, he can come looking for me. I’m gonna take a good long bath and a nap before heading over to the major’s this evening.” He paused beside Prairie Dog in the store’s open doorway, looking out at the sun-washed parade ground. “You’ll be there?”
“Ain’t been invited yet, but I probably will be. Howard’s probably gonna try to throw me in with you, for no more pay than what I’m gettin’ now!” Prairie Dog cursed, descended the porch steps, and sauntered off across the parade ground where a dozen soldiers marched, the sun reflecting off their rifles and sabers.
Fargo enjoyed a long, hot bath in the bathhouse at the south end of the fort. Through the room’s single window, he watched the three stout wash ladies—the wives of noncoms—stirring kettles of boiling uniforms over ash wood fires while telling bawdy stories they didn’t think anyone could overhear, and laughing with salty abandon.
After the bath, he sacked out in a bunk at the back of the sutler’s store—just a storeroom cluttered with barrels, crates, and flour sacks—but far enough from the fort’s fray that he slept soundly until the light angling through the window was the salmon hue of late afternoon. Desultory voices rose from the saloon on the other side of the wall—the voices of officers finally freed from their duty and seeking distraction from the Indian trouble in the saloon’s questionable liquor.
Fargo stepped into fresh buckskins, donned his hat, and, leaving his rifle and saddlebags in the care of the sutler, headed off to Major Howard’s cabin on the north side of the parade ground. The two-story structure sat about halfway down the row of officers’ cabins, and could be distinguished from the others by its larger size and grand fieldstone hearth abutting the east end. It also had a broader porch and a brick-lined path leading from the front porch, around a welltended thicket of prairie rosebushes and chrysanthemums, to a two-seater privy out back.
Valeria Howard answered Fargo’s knock on the door and regarded him coolly, holding the door only two feet wide, as though she weren’t sure she would let him in. She glanced quickly behind her, then tipped her head forward, and whispered, “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
Fargo grinned and dropped his eyes to her bosom heaving behind a delightfully low-cut dinner dress. The ample breasts were pushed up and out, to thrilling effect. The ribbon choker on her neck, adorned with an ivory cameo resting just beneath the small mole on her neck, complemented the outfit nicely. Her rich, red hair was piled in a loose bun atop her head. Reacting to his bald appraisal, a blush rose in her finely tapered cheeks.
He wanted to grab her, tear her hair free of its bun, lift her skirts, and kiss that wide, delectable mouth.
Instead, he grunted and shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He returned his eyes to hers. “You were one hell of a romp—and I’d put you high on my list of the best I’ve had—but it wasn’t anything I’d squawk about. Now, can I come in, or do you wanna send a plate out to the porch?”
Green eyes flashing angrily, she stepped back and jerked the door wide. “Do come in, Mr. Fargo!”
The Trailsman gave his boots an obligatory scrape on the porch boards, doffed his hat, and stepped over the threshold. He found himself in the cabin’s simple, rustic but comfortable kitchen, which was warm from the ticking iron range against the far wall, and rife with the smell of roasting meat.
A stout, gray-haired woman in a bonnet and apron stood at a table slicing a steaming bread loaf—another noncom’s wife, probably, working as the major’s housekeeper. Fargo had heard that the major’s own wife, Valeria’s mother, had years ago died from a fever back east. Valeria had been educated at the best boarding and finishing schools. She’d come to Fort Howard to spend the summer with her father before traveling with wealthy friends overseas.
“The men are in the parlor,” Valeria curtly announced, staring up at Fargo icily. “Dinner will be served shortly.”
“Obliged,” Fargo said, nodding at the housekeeper who’d looked up from her work to greet the newcomer with a wan smile.
Hooking his hat on a rack, Fargo turned through a door in the kitchen’s left wall, and entered the nattily-appointed parlor where four men—Major Howard, Prairie Dog Charley, and two crisply dressed officers—stood in a tight clump before a red divan and a ticking wall clock. There was a thick throw rug on the floor beneath their boots. Beyond them, through an open door, lay the dining room in which a long table stood draped with oilcloth and china place settings.
“Ah, Mr. Fargo,” the Major said, halting his hushed conversation midsentence. “How good of you to join us.”
The others turned toward the Trailsman, including Prairie Dog Charley, all holding glasses quarter filled with whiskey or brandy, and smoldering cigars. Prairie Dog gave Fargo a furtive wink.
“Do come in and meet Captain Rudolph Thomas and Lieutenant Andrew Ryan. Gentlemen, meet Skye Fargo, commonly referred to as the Trailsman.”
Fargo shook hands first with Ryan—a slender, prematurely balding man in his late twenties—and then Thomas, who quirked his upswept mustache in a stiff smile as he said, “Ah, yes, the Trailsman. We were to meet earlier for your debriefing, Mr. Fargo, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Thomas was also in his late twenties—short and pale and bespectacled, with a flawless uniform and a smattering of red pimples across his cheekbones. He and Ryan were obviously West Point lads. They’d come west to bludgeon the savage redskins, but now, realizing they’d had no idea what they’d gotten themselves into nor of the Indians’ fighting abilities and furor, were soiling their trousers hourly. T
heir faces were stiff, smiles taut, eyes glassy.
“Sorry, Captain,” Fargo grunted, releasing the man’s hand. “There wasn’t much to debrief. We were ambushed, everyone in our party dead but myself and Miss Howard. I had a bath and took a nap in the sutler’s storeroom.”
Prairie Dog chuckled as he lifted his glass to his bearded mouth.
Turning away to fill a goblet from a cut-glass decanter, Major Howard said, “The sutler’s storeroom? Mr. Fargo, we’ve humble accommodations, to be sure, but we can certainly put you up better than that!”
Fargo hiked a shoulder as he accepted the glass. “I like bein’ out of the way.” He sipped the whiskey, which was better than that in the sutler’s saloon. “Prairie Dog here filled me in on the Indian trouble, Major. I know from being out there myself that you’re pretty well surrounded. Any ideas about how you’re gonna get yourself out of this bailiwick?”
The major flushed slightly as he glanced at the other two officers. They and Prairie Dog stood before Fargo in a loose semicircle. Returning his gaze to the tall Trailsman standing before them in smoke-stained buckskins and with a no-nonsense scowl on his rugged features, the major chuckled. “You like getting to the point, don’t you? Well, shall we have a seat, gentlemen? I’d been going to save this part of the conversation until after we’d dined, but since Mr. Fargo would like to skin the cat now, let’s skin it now.”
Fargo sat in a bullhorn rocking chair near the front window. When the lieutenant, the captain, and Prairie Dog had taken seats around him, the major refilled their glasses and sat in a cowhide chair to Fargo’s right. He jerked his gold-buttoned tunic down sharply, cleared his throat, and propped a low-heeled cavalry boot on a knee.
Since Prairie Dog had already briefed Fargo on the situation, Howard merely summarized the trouble from the start of the uprising to present, adding nothing Fargo didn’t already know, including his suspicions about the insane Lieutenant Duke.
“Which leads me to the reason I’d like to extend your contract, Mr. Fargo,” the major said, puffing his stogie, a sheepish cast entering his eyes as he shifted his gaze to the two other officers.
The major paused as if for dramatic effect, and Fargo frowned impatiently. He could occasionally tolerate coyness in a woman, but not in a man. “And that is…?”
Howard returned his gaze to Fargo, flinched slightly at the coldness in the Trailsman’s stare, and nervously flicked ashes into the stone tray on his chair arm. “We’d like you to hunt him down and kill him.”
Fargo was genuinely shocked. “Kill him?” He’d thought the man was going to ask him to try and run the Indians’ gauntlet and seek help from an outlying fort, possibly Fort Buford or from one of the fledgling Canadian outposts on the other side of the border. “It seems to me, from what I’ve heard so far of this Lieutenant Duke’s relationship with Iron Shirt and the rest of his band, the last thing you’d want to do is martyr the man.”
“We’ve discussed the matter thoroughly, Mr. Fargo,” interjected Captain Thomas, adjusting his spectacles. “Believe me, we do not take the matter lightly.”
“We considered the possibility of sending you through the Indians’ lines for help,” added Lieutenant Ryan. “The problem is…and as you doubtless know…the Indians have no lines. We’ve sent four men to tackle the same job…”
“And all four were sent back,” Prairie Dog piped up when the lieutenant’s voice began to quiver and fade, his cheeks blanching. “At least, their heads and hearts were sent back, dangling from their saddle horns.”
Now, that was a bit of information the old cuss had been holding on to.
“I don’t guarantee I’d make it, but I made it here, and I know the country,” Fargo said. “If I traveled at night…”
“Even if you made it through,” Howard said, “the help you sought wouldn’t make it here in time. The Indians have been moving closer to the fort every day. At night, their council fires are quite visible in the hills beyond Squaw Creek. I’m guessing that in two, maybe three—”
The major paused when Valeria poked her head in the door. “Gentlemen, dinner will be served.”
When the girl withdrew into the kitchen, Howard shuttled his glance to Fargo and the others, brows ridged with annoyance and enervation. “Shall we save the rest of the conversation for after dinner, gentlemen…?”
Fargo set his glass on the decanter’s silver tray and followed the others into the dining room. The meal was medallions of venison with wild onions, potatoes and gravy, fresh bread, and spinach from the fort’s garden.
The food was good and rib-sticking, but Fargo was bored with the falsely-jovial dinner conversation and forced small talk. The men, including Prairie Dog, obviously had their minds on the Indians. All except Lieutenant Ryan, that was. The young soldier, obviously smitten by Valeria, offered several embarrassing questions about her schooling and travels and the possibility of their having mutual acquaintances back east, while his nearsighted gaze raked her opulent bosom. Valeria answered the questions politely, picking at her food and flicking her own oblique gazes across the table at the Trailsman, doing little to encourage the randy young officer’s pursuit.
After dessert of canned peach pie and coffee, the girl excused herself to help the cook, Mildred, clear the table and wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. Major Howard poured Fargo and the other men a fresh glass before retaking his chair with a sigh, and regarding the Trailsman with gravity from across the table. Pensively, he tapped the rim of his glass.
The others sat in their chairs like statues.
Howard said, “Mr. Fargo, it’s with a deep reluctance and a heavy heart that I’m ordering the assassination of one of my own men. Before he went crazy, Lieutenant Duke and I were very close. We played chess nearly every evening. He was a master of the game. He tended to idealize the Indians, seemed to fancy becoming one himself, but otherwise a sensible, likable young man.
“However, he has gone quite insane. And for some reason, he has become a shaman of sorts to Chief Iron Shirt, ostensibly encouraging the extermination of all whites from the region. I believe—and if I’m wrong I take full responsibility—that without him, Iron Shirt will pull his horns in, and he and his Blackfoot allies will disappear back into the hills beyond Squaw Creek, where they live when they’re not following the buffalo.”
Fargo glanced at Prairie Dog, who stared glumly down at his whiskey.
“I see your reasoning, Major.” Fargo flipped his spoon in the air. “And, while I’m no regulator—never been able to stomach the breed, in fact—I’ll take the job. But from what you’ve told me, I think there’s a real danger of turning the lieutenant into a martyr. We could rile those Injuns even more, paint this prairie red with white men’s blood for years to come.”
Lieutenant Ryan stared at Fargo, his spectacles reflecting the dancing candlelight. He looked as though he’d been slapped, but he nodded weakly. “It’s a risk we have to take. The major and I and Captain Thomas see no other options.”
Captain Thomas fingered a pimple on his left cheek, stifled a yawn. “Agreed.”
Major Howard sucked a fresh stogie. “As it happens, you may not have to assassinate him yourself.” He glanced at Prairie Dog, who turned the corners of his mouth down. “You may have seen Mr. Charley’s fancy, German-made rifle. Good from five hundred yards, the scout tells me.”
“Why did I have to go braggin’ about that piece?” Prairie Dog chuffed and turned to Fargo. “Well, there you have it. You’re the scout, Skye. I’m the assassin. If’n you can get me within range of Iron Shirt’s encampment. I’ve been all over this country east of the creek, but rarely west. Besides, while my eyes are eagle-sharp, the hearing in my left ear is goin’. Even if I knew the country, my poor hearing could cost me my hair not a mile from the fort.”
Fargo threw back his whiskey and set his glass on the oilcloth. “I appreciate the meal and the whiskey, Major, but I’m ready for bed.” He glanced at Prairie Dog. “Clean old Betsy tonight, and
let’s ride out a good two hours before first light tomorrow.”
“Throw down here, Mr. Fargo,” Major Howard offered. “I have an extra bedroom upstairs. It would be my honor.”
Fargo glanced at the ceiling and fought back a blush. Valeria would be rooming up there. No point in risking a bullet from the major in the middle of the night.
The Trailsman slid his chair back, rising. “The sutler’s cot’s right cozy.”
“Brunhilda.”
He glanced at Prairie Dog scowling up at him. “Huh?”
“The Schuetzen’s name is Brunhilda.” The old scout grinned. “German, don’t ya know? And don’t you worry—she’ll be cleaned, oiled, loaded, and ready to go!”
Chuckling, Fargo excused himself, and went into the kitchen. Valeria wasn’t there—only the housekeeper, singing softly to herself while shelving clean plates above the range.
Fargo thanked the woman for the good cooking and headed outside into the still prairie gloaming, the drum roll of “Twilight Tattoo” rising from the parade ground. He hitched his cartridge belt high on his hips and peered west.
Beyond the far stockade wall, the sky glowed umber though the sun had set an hour ago. His keen ears picked up the heartlike thump of war drums, barely audible above the nearer strains of “Tattoo.”
8
The Trailsman stepped off the major’s porch and began tramping west along the parade ground’s north edge. To his right, several men moved out of the officers’ quarters, some flanked by their wives, to peer pensively west, toward the flickering firelight and the eerie, primitive drum cadence.
On the south side of the parade ground, noncoms and enlisted men wandered out of their barracks, muttering curiously, some smoking or holding tin coffee cups, suspenders hanging off their shoulders, hair tussled by the warm spring breeze.
Fargo approached the stockade wall where soldiers were clumped along the shooting ledge, staring west and whispering. He climbed a ladder and moved left along the ledge, toward three young soldiers huddled together, speaking in low, enervated tones. One held a quirley to his lips as he and the others peered over the wall’s sharpened log tips.
