Fargo 20

by John Benteen

  Settling down, he hung the cartridge belt and .38 on the horn of the saddle he used for a pillow. The gun was another holdover from his service in the Philippines, had been standard issue until the Army had come up against the Moros on Mindanao. Those Moslem religious fanatics would hype themselves on drugs, bind their loins with excruciating tightness, and then, in religious fervor, run amok, and when they were like that a whole cylinder of .38’s wouldn’t stop them. So the Army had gone to the Colt .45 automatic, with its greater firepower and heavier bullet. Fargo, though, liked neither the automatic’s lack of accuracy nor its proneness to jam, and he’d stuck by the .38, but beefed up its killing power with hollow-point ammunition. A hollow-point ripped dreadful holes in flesh, had tremendous shock effect, and no matter where you hit a man with one, he was damned unlikely to keep coming after you. And a man in his business could afford to pass up no possible edge over an opponent.

  With the Colt and Batangas knife near at hand, he settled down to sleep, cradling the shotgun in his arms like a lover. As always, he slept lightly, alertly, like an animal; but nothing disturbed him, and by gray dawn he was awake, had breakfast, rode on. Presently he saw on the ridge above him the small, spired white church, where, at the battle of Wounded Knee, the Hotchkiss guns had been.

  Something, he could not say what, drew him up that ridge. He circled the pretty little church and then was in the burying ground behind it. Here, those Indians who accepted the Christian religion buried their dead in the Christian way—and here, too, was a long scar, grassed over, in the ground, and a cairn of stones. This was the mass grave in which nearly two hundred Sioux men, women and children had been dumped in the fight’s aftermath.

  Dismounted, the big man in khakis stood there for a while, hat tipped back, cigar in mouth. The wind up here blew hot, strong, incessantly. It seemed, somehow, looking at that grave, that he could understand Clyde Kills Twice a little better now. The man had seen the bodies with his own eyes; it was no wonder that bitterness gripped him so deeply. Which was no help to Fargo, but—

  “Mr. Fargo,” a voice said behind him.

  Fargo whirled, hand instinctively dropping to his gun, then slipping away from the .38’s butt as he saw the man standing there.

  “You are Mr. Fargo?” The man came forward, putting out a hand. “My name is Stokes, Jonathan Stokes.” His voice was soft, a little shy.

  Fargo stared at him, slowly extending his own hand. Stokes was in his early thirties, of medium height, slender, with thinning brown hair and thick-lensed glasses over blue eyes. Deeply suntanned, clad in neatly pressed khakis and laced-up boots, he nevertheless looked almost wispy, with an owlish, professional air. His hand was small, yet surprisingly hard.

  “I’m Fargo. How’d you know—”

  Stokes smiled, a little hesitantly. “Oh, I know almost everything that happens on the reservation. I’ve been here a long time now, on grants from Harvard University, studying the Sioux. I’m an anthropologist, you see.”

  “A which?”

  “A man whose study is the races and tribes of mankind and their customs. My specialty is the Oglala Sioux.” Again that hesitant smile. “I understand you had a run-in last night with Clyde Kills Twice.”

  “By God,” Fargo said, startled, “you do know a lot. How—?”

  “It would be hard to explain to an outsider. Let’s just say that when something happens on the reservation, nearly every Indian knows it pretty quickly. Moccasin telegraph, you could call it. You could say that I’ve been here so long that I’m wired into the moccasin telegraph.” He moved on past Fargo, stood there looking at the grave for a moment, shook his head. “What a sad thing, a useless atrocity. You know the story?”

  “I know it,” Fargo said, chewing thoughtfully on his cigar, curiosity aroused by this wispy, strange young man, but somehow liking him at once. Then he thought of something. “How’d you come up behind me without me hearin’ you? Damn few people can do that. You nearly got shot.”

  Stokes laughed. “Yes, I can understand that you’re jumpy. Maybe I should have made a little more noise. But I’ve lived with the Sioux so long that I guess I get around the way they do. Actually, I’d been watching you for about five minutes. Wanted to size you up.” His smile had faded now. “I understand you’re after the Badlands gang and that you need a guide into the Badlands.” Behind the thick-lensed glasses, the eyes turned strangely hard. “I sought you out to offer my services.”

  “You—?” Then Fargo shook his head. “Mr. Stokes, I appreciate it, but ... ”

  “But I don’t look like the kind of man you’d want to have along on such an expedition. Not a cut-throat or a fightin’ man, is that it?”

  “Well, you don’t exactly stack up as one. I gather you’re some kind of scientist—”

  “You gather correctly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d be useless to you. I told you. I’ve lived with the Sioux a long time. Over six years now, and I’ve learned their ways—not only from the younger ones like Kills Twice, but from the old ones, the men in their seventies and eighties who were the best plainsmen in the world in their time. That’s my business, you see—to learn everything they know and preserve it for posterity. They’ve taught me well.” There was a sudden crackle in his mild voice. “For instance, a few minutes ago, I could have put an arrow right between your shoulder blades and you’d never have known what hit you. If you doubt me, I can challenge you to a little game of soldier and Indian, and I’ll play the Indian. I’ll use arrows, and you can use your pistol and your rifle. I wouldn’t want to hurt you, but I’ll bet you anything you want to bet that I could disappear down there, given a two-minute start—” he gestured at the slope “—and put an arrow through your leg before you ever saw or heard me. Want to try it?”

  Fargo took the cigar from his mouth. “No thanks,” he said. “When I use live ammunition, I don’t play games. But, all right, Stokes, keep on talking. You’ve got me interested now. You say you know the Badlands?”

  “Like the back of my hand. Every summer for the past six years, I’ve served as interpreter for the crews of paleontologists Harvard sends out to the Badlands to dig for fossils—they’re a treasure trove of old dinosaur bones, you know. And I’ve hunted them with the Indians, too, and know all the Indian tricks of staying alive in there in this kind of weather—which isn’t easy for a white man. The moccasin telegraph tells me that you’re going in there, against that bunch of villains and hardcases who’ve gathered there. And if you do, I want to go along. Anyhow, without me, you haven’t got a chance.”

  “You think that, eh?”

  “I know it.”

  Fargo looked at him with narrowed eyes. “And just what’s your stake in all this? What makes you so damned eager to go in there against that bunch and maybe get your head shot off?”

  Stokes looked at him a moment, then gestured. “My cabin’s right down there on Wounded Knee Creek. My horse is behind the church. Suppose I get it and we’ll ride on down. I can show you better than I can explain.”

  Neal Fargo hitched at his shotgun.

  “Okay. Get it. Then we’ll ride on down.”

  Jonathan Stokes’ horse was an Indian pony, bigger and better than most. The saddle, Fargo saw, was Sioux style, too, a small rack, stirrupless, draped with a blanket; the bridle was a rope wrapped around the horse’s lower jaw. But there was a carbine slung on one side of the saddle and on the other was a strung, re-curved bow and a quiver full of arrows. Stokes mounted nimbly, lithely, from the right, Indian-style.

  “You’ve gone native, all right,” Fargo said, coming up on his own horse. “Surprised you’re not wearin’ a war bonnet and breech clout.”

  “I have both at home, but I look pretty silly in them.” Stokes smiled, reined his mount around, and they rode down the ridge, past the trading post, along a wagon road, then splashed across the little creek and halted before a two-room cabin made of peeled pine logs and chinked with clay. “My home and office,” Stokes said,
and dismounted, looping the jaw-bridle around a hitch-rack’s rail. He removed the bow from the saddle, deftly unstrung it. “It weakens them when they’re left strung needlessly. Please come in, Mr. Fargo.” He opened the leather-hinged cabin door.

  Warily, Fargo swung down, entered, pausing just inside the door to look around, hand on the Colt. There was no one else in here, though, and he moved on, Stokes following. The room was more like a museum than a place to live; its walls were covered with Sioux regalia—headdresses, war shields, ornate buckskin clothing of both men and women; tomahawks and war clubs. Whatever space was not taken up by these was crammed with books and papers, neatly and methodically arranged on homemade shelves. Only the bed in one corner, the table in the center of the room, were clear. “Most of what I collect, I send East,” Stokes said. “These are just a few items I’ve kept for myself. Now, you wanted to know what my stake was in going with you to the Badlands. Very well, I’ll show you ...”

  He pulled out the drawer of the table, took from it a photograph, and handed it to Fargo. “That’s why,” he said, in a voice strangely edged.

  The girl in the picture was an Indian, dressed in long, flowing, fringed buckskin. Not even the loose drapery of the clothing could conceal the ripe beauty of her figure, and her face, framed by long black braids, was young, round, innocent, wide-eyed and smiling. Fargo looked up. “Pretty,” he said.

  “She was,” Stokes said thickly. “I hope she still is. If she’s alive, that is.” His thin hands clenched and unclenched. “Her name is Mary Running Deer. She graduated from the Mission School, and she worked with me as my assistant. We ... fell in love, planned to be married. But about two weeks ago, she disappeared, on her way to the main agency at Pine Ridge—simply vanished. No trace of her’s been seen since.”

  He took the picture, looked at it a moment, laid it on the table. “All I’ve been able to find out,” he said, “is that somewhere on the road to Pine Ridge she met a white man. She was seen talking to him. After that—nothing. I’ve tracked, and so have some of my Indian friends. But by the time she was missed, the sign was cold. All we could make out was that instead of going to Pine Ridge, she had left the road with another rider—presumably that white man. I know she didn’t go voluntarily.”

  “Kidnapped?”

  “Yes. And I’m pretty sure I know by whom.”

  “About two weeks ago,” Fargo said, “I’m told that Clyde Kills Twice had a visitor, a white man.”

  “Yes, a big blond one—the same man that was seen on the road with Mary. And I can’t prove it, but I think he was the leader of the Badlands gang. Kills Twice is tied in with them.”

  “I figured that,” Fargo said.

  “Every Indian on the Reservation knows it—but not a white man. The Indians keep their mouths shut about each other’s business. I reported her missing to the Army and to the Indian police and they just shrugged—what’s one squaw more or less? I tried to tell them about the Badlands gang, and they wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t their responsibility. I went to Rapid City, to the sheriff there. You can imagine how much concern he had for the fate of one Indian squaw. His theory was that she’d run off with another buck. But she’s in there, Fargo—in the Badlands. I only hope and pray they haven’t killed her. What else they might have done to her, I don’t want to think about—but it doesn’t matter, as long as they haven’t killed her.”

  Fargo said: “Did you tell them about Kills Twice—about the conspiracy for an uprising?”

  “No. I didn’t dare. If I had, my throat would have been slit fifteen minutes after I was back here at Wounded Knee. But you’re right; there is a conspiracy, and Kills Twice is in the middle of it; he’s the key man. The word I have is that they will deliver guns to him and he’ll spread ’em out to the other die-hards. Then, when the Badlands people give the signal, they’ll start raising hell. It’s madness, of course, pure madness; they can’t get away with it. But people like Kills Twice don’t care; their grudges run so deep.”

  He paused, breathing hard. “I’ve been going almost crazy. I was on the verge of going in there after her myself—alone. Then I heard about you through the moccasin telegraph, and—” His eyes raked up and down Fargo, glittering behind the spectacles with a light that was almost insane. “And if you’re going in there, I’m going with you. And I guarantee to pay my way.”

  Fargo sucked in a breath. “Maybe. I’ve already got fifty cavalry horses and some money to bring out of there. I didn’t figure on having to bother with a woman, too.”

  “I tell you, I’ll pay my way! I may not be a big muscle-man like you, but ... wait a minute! You watch!” He dug into the desk again, brought out a holstered Smith and Wesson Russian-model .44 revolver, drew it from its scabbard. Striding to the cabin doorway, he dug in his pocket, pulled out a half dollar, tossed it in the air. The .44 roared twice, the first shot missed; the second sent the coin spinning. Stokes turned. “You see? I can use a pistol, a rifle or a bow with equal accuracy. And I know every trail in the Badlands. You can go in there without me, but you won’t come out alive.”

  Fargo nodded. “That was fair shooting. Only you shouldn’t have missed the first one. Anyhow, there’s a lot more to somethin’ like this than bein’ able to hit a half dollar in the air. You ever killed a man?”

  Stokes hesitated. “Of course not,” he said reluctantly.

  “A half dollar don’t come after you with a gun. And when you hear lead around you the first time and you git buck fever and freeze up, you’re gone. So, maybe, is the man dependin’ on you.” Fargo paused, as Stokes’ face fell. “On the other hand,” he continued, “I ain’t got much choice, have I? I need a guide, and you’re it. Okay. I’m obliged for your help. You go along. But remember this: huntin’ men like those ain’t a science—it’s an art. This can get you killed.”

  Stokes drew himself up. “I’m not afraid of dying. But I want my girl back.”

  “We’ll do our best to git her for you. Now—have you got a map of the Badlands?”

  “Yes,” Stokes said eagerly. And suddenly he thrust out his hand. “Thanks, Fargo. That’s all I can say. Thanks.”

  Fargo took it. “Don’t thank me. You may curse the day you tied up with me. Now—let’s see that map.”

  ~*~

  They sprawled between the White and Cheyenne Rivers on the map drawn up by various Harvard expeditions; and, Stokes said, the late, famed—or infamous General Custer, upon first seeing them, had called them “hell with the fires out.” Eight hundred square miles, more or less, of the worst terrain in the world, bleak, wind-eroded, a fantasy. “You’ve never seen anything like ’em,” Stokes said.

  “I reckon I have,” Fargo said. “I’ve seen badlands before. Just not this set.”

  “Well, the worst part of these just rear up like a wall, and there are only a few passes into ’em. Long stretches where there’s nothing but erosion, no plant life of any kind; then here and there you’ll find a basin where there’s good grass; but there’s no really good water anywhere. Most of it’s so saturated with white clay that never settles naturally that it’s not drinkable for man nor beast.”

  “There’s got to be good water in there, or that outfit couldn’t stay there.”

  “They’ve learned a trick we picked up, too, on our expeditions. There’s a little alkali water that comes out of some of the shale. A bit of that mixed with white water—say half a bucket to a barrel—will settle it. Another way’s to slice up cactus and throw it in the white water; that’ll clear it enough for the animals to drink.”

  Fargo nodded. “All right. Wherever they are, they’ll be in one of the places that has some graze. You can’t feed horses on thin air. You know those places?”

  “I do,” Stokes said. “But first you have to cross passes over the wall to get to ’em. And nothing but narrow trails lead over those, and they can only be used in dry weather. Any rain at all, and they just turn to soap. The hell of it is, they can guard those passes and stand off an
army.”

  “We’re not an army,” Fargo said. “That’s one thing we’ve got going for us. All the same, we sure as hell just won’t be jogging in there on a pleasure trip. This is gonna take some outfittin’, and some preparation.”

  “Yes, especially since you can bet your life that they’ll know we’re coming. Kills Twice will already have word on the way. They’ll be watching all the passes with double alertness.”

  Fargo grunted. “I shoulda killed that Indian when I had the chance, but it’s too late now. All right, Stokes, get your gear together. We’re gonna be pullin’ out of here in a half hour.”

  Stokes raised his head eagerly. “To the Badlands?”

  “Never mind where. Go ahead while I take a look around.” He went outside and, standing cautiously in the shadow of the cabin, glassed the surrounding terrain. It was still possible that Kills Twice himself could come after him and try to stop him—or send someone. But he saw nothing to arouse his suspicions, which, he knew, meant nothing one way or the other. There could be a dozen Sioux out there and he wouldn’t see them.

  Fifteen minutes later, Stokes emerged, wearing the Smith & Wesson, carrying a bedroll and the bow which he tied on behind the saddle. Carefully, the younger man locked the cabin with a strong padlock, then mounted up. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Fargo swung up on his mount, reined it around. “First we head for the Agency. And we keep a sharp lookout. Come on.”

  He touched the horse with spurs, and Stokes galloped after. A mile, two, and they crested a ridge. There was horror in the archeologist’s voice when he blurted: “Fargo!”

  The big man turned in the saddle. Below, in the distance, smoke coiled upward over the bright glitter of flames. “Fargo, my collection, all my records, notes, books—my God, they’re burning up!” He cocked his heels to put the horse into a run.