by Jon Sharpe
“You little urchin!” Valeria cried. “Can’t you people raise your children any better than that?”
The drum grew louder. Fargo stared straight ahead as a tall, blond silhouette and a stooped, stocky figure approached through the willows, flanked by braves carrying torches, the hide lodges lifting conical shadows behind them.
Lieutenant Duke, wearing nothing but a loincloth, a red bandage on his upper right arm, moccasins, and a hide thong around his head, grabbed a torch from a brave, held it aloft, his eyes fluttering, trancelike, as he sang in the ethereal, ceremonial tones of the Assiniboine. His tattooed breasts were hideously scarred from the sun dance ceremony.
Light, sparking embers, and shadows danced bizarrely.
Beside Duke, clad in warbonnet and buffalo robe, the regal Iron Shirt thumped the drum in his hands, taking little march-dancing steps, rising on the balls of his feet, as he and Duke drew up to the ring of branches mounded about the cottonwood post.
The pair stopped in front of the ring of wood piled haphazardly around the stake, about ten feet in front of Fargo. Both men locked gazes with the Trailsman. Iron Shirt’s tobacco brown eyes were glazed with solemn religious fervor. Lieutenant Duke’s blue eyes, above small lightning bolts of chokecherry die on the nubs of his sunburned cheeks, owned as much zeal as Iron Shirt’s, but the white man’s zeal was sheathed in raw, blind insanity.
The man should have been locked up in the funny house. Instead, here he was, having thrown in with one of the most powerful war chiefs on the Great Plains, exacerbating Iron Shirt’s hatred for the whites. In addition, he’d convinced Iron Shirt that he had a direct link to the Assiniboine war gods, and could lead him in war.
As Duke and Iron Shirt sang, Duke’s features garish in the light as he waved the torch, the Trailsman spied the princess he’d coupled with last night, standing about ten feet to Lieutenant Duke’s right.
Beside her stood the gray-haired crone who had whipped Valeria’s bare bottom. On the other side of the crone stood another, heartbreakingly pretty Indian girl—obviously the princess’s sister though slightly taller, her belly rounded with child.
Duke’s child, judging how the girl stared at the crazed white man with gooey, proprietary admiration.
The princess who’d shared Fargo’s robes last night held a fox cloak around her shoulders, her hair glistening in the firelight. She must have sensed his stare. She turned toward him, gazed at him obliquely, then quickly turned to the two men leading the ceremony, drawing her cloak tighter about her shoulders and shaking her head haughtily.
Fargo turned back to Duke and Iron Shirt still singing and waving the torch and thumping the drum while the throng sang and danced and the children laughed and the dogs barked.
Fargo clamped his jaws and shouted, “Just get on with it, you long-winded sonso’bitches!”
As if to comply with the Trailsman’s wishes, Duke moved to his right, Fargo’s left, and touched his torch to the dry wood. The brittle brush instantly caught fire, glowing, sparking, and smoking.
The wind pushed the smoke toward the stake, making Fargo’s eyes sting. Valeria coughed and swung her head from side to side.
Still singing, Duke walked past Fargo, to Fargo’s right, and touched the torch to the brush at the west end of the ring. He danced back toward Iron Shirt, singing, dancing, and waving the torch, his blue eyes flashing the religious zeal of the unequivocally mad, and reclaimed his position beside Iron Shirt.
As the flames began leaping up from the wood on either side of Fargo, the Trailsman coughed and blinked his burning eyes. The heat pushed against him, sweat gushing from his pores and dribbling down his chest and arms. He heard Valeria coughing behind him, felt her fighting against her stays.
He glanced at Iron Shirt. The old chief held Fargo’s gaze with an enraged one of his own, lifting his right fist, clenching it furiously.
The war chief’s expression tightened, and the anger in his eyes was replaced by a vague surprise. Through the undulating heat waves, Fargo saw a black circle in the middle of the old man’s chest.
The Trailsman blinked. Had the circle been there before—some talisman or war marking?
As though wondering the same thing, Iron Shirt glanced down, stumbling straight back and dropping his drum at his feet. He looked up again, brown eyes glazing, and the report of a high-caliber rifle echoed above the crowd’s din.
A fraction of a second later, there rose the buoyant bugling of a cavalry horn.
15
As the peal of the bugle cut across the night, evoking a collective grunt from the Indian revelers, Lieutenant Duke turned to Iron Shirt. The chief raised his hands toward the bullet hole in his chest, and dropped to his knees.
The crone standing between the two pretty princesses to Fargo’s left began shrieking like a witch with wolves on her heels. At the same time, rifles popped above the fierce attack cadence of the growing bugle cry.
The gunfire rose from the buttes above the river, as well as from the flats straight east, and the Indians—women, children, old warriors, and young braves—began scattering south and west. Several of the armed braves loosed war cries, looking around wildly while raising their feathered lances. A half dozen others gathered around Iron Shirt now lying belly down in front of the fire.
Coughing and blinking against the smoke and leaping flames around him, Fargo turned to see Lieutenant Duke running toward the lodges, shouting orders for the others to grab their weapons and hold back the blue army hordes.
Behind Fargo, Valeria gasped and groaned at the wafting smoke and leaping flames.
Rifles and pistols popped from the direction of the river. Hooves thudded in the east. Several braves threw war lances or loosed arrows; several more dropped as slugs plunked into their chests or bellies. The others, taken by surprise, and unprepared for battle, followed the brunt of the crowd south and west through the willows and cottonwoods, fleeing enemy fire.
As one lone, stubborn brave loosed an arrow eastward before clutching his neck and dropping, the hoof thumps rose from that direction, and a horseback rider appeared, galloping into the sphere of tossing firelight. The Trailsman’s saddled pinto followed the bearded, buckskin-clad rider, led by its reins, its tail high, eyes flashing.
Fargo blinked through the smoke and flames stabbing up in front of him as Prairie Dog Charley drew his dun to a halt before the fire and, tossing a brass bugle out of his hands, leaped out of the saddle like a kid half his age. He ran up to the fire, slitting his eyes in their doughy sockets, regarding the fire warily.
“Forget it!” Fargo shouted. “You’ll never make it through the flames, Dog. Do us a favor and give us each a bullet!”
“I didn’t go to all this trouble fer nuthin’, God-blast it!”
Looking around, Prairie Dog grabbed a fallen lance and began thrusting it into the flames, shoveling aside the burning logs and branches. He leaped back as flames shot out at him, soot and sweat bathing his round, bearded face, then bolted forward once more to continue carving a path through the conflagration.
Flames leaped up around the Trailsman’s bare legs, and he winced at the burn, the smoke now funneling up his nostrils like thick pepper, searing his eyes and lungs.
Behind him, Valeria coughed and sobbed. “Oh, God,” she cried. “I’m burning!”
“Not if I have anything to say about it, honey!”
Prairie Dog threw down the lance, grabbed the big bowie off his left hip and, bellowing like a wild man, leaped through the slim corridor he’d carved in the dancing flames. Eyes slitted, coughing, he hacked at the rope coiled around the pole, starting at the top and working down.
When he’d cut through the bottommost coil, he yelled, “There!” and grabbed the girl’s right arm. As he pulled her back through the corridor sheathed in flames, Fargo pushed away from the stake, ripping the severed ropes away from his body.
He turned to follow Prairie Dog and Valeria, but the flames closed the corridor, erasing Prairie Dog’
s buckskin-clad back. Peering left, he saw a slight break in the flames and, roaring like a lion about to lunge for freedom, dove through the thickening wall of fire and coiling black smoke.
He hit the ground outside the fire ring, worms of smoke curling up from his shoulders, feeling like a charred shank of venison, smelling the fetor of his own charred hair and eyebrows. He’d fallen just right of Iron Shirt’s slumped form. Shaking his head and blinking the smoke from his watering eyes, he bounded up onto his heels and looked around.
To his left, Prairie Dog had dropped to a knee, extending his Colt revolver. Flames lanced from the barrel as the Colt barked and leaped in his hand. Amidst the willows, a shadow fell, but more braves were dancing around in the brush, no doubt having retrieved their rifles and bows.
Spying his own Henry repeater lying over the slumped form of the warrior in the wolf-hide tunic, Fargo leaped forward, grabbed the rifle, and dodged an arrow that plunked into the fire behind him. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and fired three times at the dancing shadows, one of which flew backward while the others scattered, howling.
Prairie Dog continued firing eastward as Fargo sprang toward him and the horses dancing on the other side of the fire. Valeria hunkered behind a willow, knees covering her breasts, hands clamped to her ears.
“Let’s get the hell outta here!” Fargo grabbed Valeria and tossed her onto the Ovaro’s back.
As he snapped up the sagging reins, Prairie Dog triggered a final shot and wheeled toward his own mount. “But I was just startin’ to have fun!”
Fargo looked around as he swung up into the saddle, hearing another arrow whistle past him and evoking a shriek from the girl. “Where’s your soldiers?”
“They lit out!” Prairie Dog bellowed, swinging heavily into his own saddle. “There was only four of ’em in the first place though we tried like hell to sound like a whole company!”
As Fargo reined the Ovaro into the brush lining the stream, holding the Henry in one hand and wincing as his bare balls ground against the saddle horn, he turned toward Prairie Dog galloping off the pinto’s left flank. “Why the hell didn’t you kill Duke, for chrissakes?”
Both horses plunged into the water as the warriors’ enraged shrieks rose behind them, arrows slicing the air and tearing into the weeds. “I was aimin’ fer Duke but pinked old Iron Shirt instead! I told ya—!”
“I know,” Fargo yelled as the horses gained the opposite bank and angled toward a natural trough in the butte facing them, “your old eyes ain’t worth shit in the dark!” He cursed loudly as a rifle barked in the direction of the villages, the slugs tearing into the weedy, chalky butte face.
“You ungrateful nub!” the old scout bellowed, his tack squawking as he followed Fargo up the butte. “I shoulda just rescued the girl and left you to burn, damn your nekkid hide!”
Valeria clutched the Trailsman snugly around the waist as the Ovaro lunged up and over the lip of the butte. Blowing, it continued over the top and lunged down the other side, the whistling of the arrows and hammering of the rifles dying behind them, the enraged calls of the Indians fading on the night breeze.
Fargo was so relieved to be free of the Indians’ fire that he didn’t even feel ridiculous, straddling the pinto buck naked, the Henry repeater resting across his saddle bows, the naked girl clinging to his back. The cool night breeze felt keenly refreshing against his sunburned, fire-scorched skin.
He nor the girl nor Prairie Dog said anything as they galloped north of the Indians’ camp, tracing a serpentine route through the buttes. The Indians had seemingly been so startled by Prairie Dog’s attack that they were slow to mount their horses and form a pursuit party.
Fargo didn’t hear or see anyone behind them, but he didn’t take any chances. He didn’t slow the pinto until he’d slipped into a dry creek bed carved between high, grassy buttes stippled with burr oaks, sage, and occasional cedars, with here and there a rocky shelf protruding from a hill shoulder. He didn’t stop the horse until he’d followed an offshooting gully into a narrow, rocky defile cloaked by aspens, pines, and large, mossy boulders.
He dropped to the ground, the sage and tough grama grass feeling like broken glass under the scorched soles of his feet. He turned as Prairie Dog drew his own horse up behind the Ovaro, the old scout crouched slightly in his saddle.
“We’ll rest here, then continue north,” Fargo said, reaching up to grab Valeria around the waist. Too weary for modesty, she did nothing to cover herself. Her full, pale breasts were soot-streaked. “I wanna get good and clear of the camp before I circle back for Lieutenant Duke.”
Fargo set the girl on the ground, then reached for the bedroll tied behind his saddle. Behind him, Prairie Dog remained mounted, leaning forward, leather hat tipped low over his forehead. “You two are gonna have to ride on without me.”
The scout’s gravelly voice was tight, and he was breathing hard. He snaked his right arm across his belly, trying feebly to reach around behind his back. He gave up the motion and reached behind with his left hand instead, lifting his head abruptly and showing his large, yellowing teeth through a sharp wince. “I reckon I turned pincushion for one of those red savages’ arrows.”
Fargo cursed. “Sit tight.”
He jerked the blankets of his bedroll free of their leather ties, quickly wrapped them over the girl’s shoulders, and hurried back to Prairie Dog. A fletched arrow protruded from the scout’s back, just beneath his left shoulder blade. Blood stained his buckskin tunic, forming a long, glistening swath straight down from the shaft. The head was probably buried about five inches deep in Prairie Dog’s back.
Fargo reached up, wrapped his right hand around the scout’s broad upper arm. “You stopped one, all right. Get down here—let’s have a look.”
“Shit!” Prairie Dog groused as he climbed slowly out of the saddle, half leaning on the Trailsman.
Fargo led him over to a low rocky shelf flanked by a small piñon, and eased him into a sitting position. Prairie Dog looked Fargo up and down and chuckled.
“Sorry, Skye, but it’s kinda hard to take you serious without any clothes on. Why don’t you at least try to hide that well-used dong of yourn. Shit, them red savages even hide their private parts!”
“Shut your trap,” Fargo said, pulling the man slightly forward so he could inspect his back.
The girl moved between the horses, holding the blanket tight about her shoulders and frowning down at Prairie Dog. “Does it hurt bad, Mr. Charley?”
“Hell.” Prairie Dog gritted his teeth as he leaned over his knees. “I been stung worse by horse fli—achh! Goddamnit, Skye, what the hell you tryin’ to do to me?”
Fargo had nudged the arrow slightly with his right index finger, to see how firmly the tip was set. “Horse flies, huh?” He made a face. “Looks to me like that point is resting against a rib. No way to push it through or pull it out.”
“Ah, Lordy—no, I reckon not.” Prairie Dog rocked forward, then back. “You’re gonna have to leave me while you two go on north. Don’t worry—I got a bottle of whiskey and my sweet Brunhilda.”
“I’m not gonna leave you, you old bastard.”
Fargo walked over to his saddlebags, withdrew a whiskey bottle and tossed it to the old scout, who caught it one-handed, wincing, then grinned and popped the cork. He began tipping the neck to his mouth, glanced at the girl sheepishly, stopped, and offered the bottle to her.
When she shook her head, staring down at him with a pained, concerned expression, he chuckled, relieved, and threw back a shot. He raised the bottle to check the level. “With the bottle I got in my own pouches, that’ll do me till tomorrow, anyways. You go on, Skye. Those Injuns’ll be scourin’ this country in no time…’ specially since I ventilated old Iron Shirt.”
Fargo had no intention of leaving his old friend here alone to die. He fished a bundle of spare clothes from his saddlebags and, untying the leather thong knotted around the bundle, turned to Prairie Dog, frowning. “What about
those shooters in your attack party?”
“They’re what’s left of a lost patrol out of Fort William. They’d been seventeen men, and now they’re only four—a sergeant, a corporal, and two privates. A tough, canny crew if I ever seen one. I come upon ’em night before last, when I outrun those Injuns foggin’ our asses.
“They were holed up in an old prospector’s sod shanty. Didn’t have a single horse amongst ’em, and they were shot up somethin’ awful. One had even lost his hand. But they still had the bark on, and some ammunition, and they all wanted a go at those Injuns—even if it was a last one.
“We all agreed to split up after our so-called attack. The soldier boys—them that made it—are probably circling back to their soddy. I told ’em I’d send help when I could find help my ownself.”
“You had me fooled.” Fargo had pulled on a pair of long underwear and was stepping into his spare buckskin breeches. “I thought for sure you were a whole company.”
“I reckon my buglin’ helped.” Prairie Dog tossed back another drink. “I was a bugle boy for C company back in Illinois, when we was fightin’ the…”
He let his voice trail off, lowering the bottle and lifting his head to peer along the black ridge rising before him. Fargo had heard the distant thump of a half dozen sets of horse hooves and the muffled, guttural strains of Indian talk. The hooffalls grew slightly louder in the west before gradually dwindling as the Indians, skirting the canyon, continued north.
Then there was only the sigh of the wind in the brush along the ridges and the solitary cry of a nighthawk.
“They’ll be kickin’ around here all night,” Prairie Dog growled. “You two best split the wind, head back to the fort, and don’t stop till you get there.”
Fargo continued dressing. The only garments for which he didn’t have spares were his hat and boots. He’d have to go bareheaded, but he found a threadbare set of old moccasins at the bottom of one of his saddle pouches.
