by Sharpe, Jon
“Do you mean serious by nature, sweet britches? No . . . no, I would say that I’m quite gay, in the main. But I am a strapping big lad, and you know how we big fellows are happy by nature, having little to prove and all. And, of course, I’m hopeful that you, too, will shuck your clothing if Miss Barton will.”
This was the first time Fargo had ever seen the actress look positively stupid.
“Now see here, fellow,” Ashton interceded. “Keep a civil tongue in your head. That’s quite enough of that.”
“Is it, Latin man? Wouldn’t you like to see her naked? Both of them?”
“That’s not the—”
“You, stargazer?” Booger demanded of Malachi Feldman, whose embarrassed silence confessed for him.
Booger turned toward Brandenburg. “And you, holy man? No pious swamp gas, catfish. Don’t you wunner what they look like stripped buck?”
“Sir, every man has his animal nature—”
“Ha-ho!” Booger exclaimed, looking at Kathleen. “The truth knocks him sick and silly. It’s unanimous, America’s Sweetheart. We who are about to die beseech you—strip.”
Even in the firelight Fargo could tell her face was flaming. “You impertinent scoundrel!”
“Scoundrel, is it? You are the most beautiful woman in America. How am I a scoundrel for merely giving voice to a desire that every red-blooded man with a cod feels? What can be the harm?”
“Sew up your lips, Booger,” Fargo snapped. “It was a nice try. But now you’re humiliating the lady.”
“Pah! You’re the one who hinted you’d be under her petticoats before we reach Santa Fe—‘the cat sits by the gopher hole,’ you said.”
Kathleen stared at Fargo, then back at Booger. “Apparently,” she said, her tone brittle as skim ice, “I am trapped between the Scylla of arrogance and the Charybdis of vulgarity.”
Booger looked to Fargo for a translation, but the Trailsman could only shrug.
“Sit down, Booger,” Fargo said. “You flap your gums too much. You’re an honest man but you don’t have to say every damn thing that comes to your mind.”
“It’s the tormentin’ itch, Fargo,” Booger said sadly as he plopped down beside his friend. “The tormentin’ itch.” He leaned closer and whispered: “But as I promised you in El Paso: we will see her naked. Old Booger has his tricks.”
There was an awkward silence after this bizarre farce. Fargo formed balls of cornmeal and water and tossed them into the hot ashes of the campfire to bake—corn dodgers for tomorrow’s breakfast.
While he thus busied himself he listened to the reassuring insect hum, rising and falling like a person breathing. The indigo sky overhead was silver-peppered with a vast explosion of stars. To protect his night vision Fargo avoided gazing into the fire as the others were doing.
Instead, he watched the shape-changing shadows beyond the glow of the blood-orange flames. In this ancient land of Coronado, where foolish men chased golden chimeras called El Dorado and Cibola, Fargo always felt it—danger, yes, always, but also the ancient mystery and enchantment of New Mexico, where entire civilizations flourished and died centuries before the Mayflower was ever built.
Trixie’s voice suddenly stirred him from his torpor like a slap to his face. “Well,” she said, heading toward the coach, “I ain’t about to waste that nice little creek. I’m gonna have me a bath. You coming, Miss Barton?”
The actress glowered at Booger. “After that lustful soliloquy we just heard? I should think not. I may add clothing, not take any off.”
Trixie rummaged in the boot of the Concord, then returned carrying a towel and a twisted knot of lye soap. Her eyes met Fargo’s. “Suit yourself. Me, I can’t wait to get out of these clothes. I just hope none of them Apaches sneak up on me—and me all alone back there.”
Booger dug an elbow into Fargo’s ribs. “Push-push.”
“You go on and get in the water, Trixie,” Fargo said. “I’ll be along directly to make sure you’re all right.”
“How gallant, Sir Lancelot,” Kathleen barbed.
“Oh, he lances a lot,” Booger quipped, trying to keep his voice low and failing as usual.
“Yes,” Kathleen agreed. “This will be his second . . . tournament in three days. Pity, isn’t it, Mr. Fargo, that you’ll have to wait until Santa Fe for any new conquests?”
“Oh, but the cat sits by the gopher hole,” Booger reminded her.
“Scandalous,” the preacher muttered. “And with wild savages all around us.”
More awkward silence as the fire snapped and sparked. Soon a strong and pleasing voice—Trixie breaking out into trilling song as she bathed—reached them from the creek behind the trees:
French girls flirt with bold élan,
German girls cry, Danke schoen!
British gulls round their o’s,
American gals cry, “Buy me clothes!”
Fargo was surprised to see this vigorous sally actually bring a twitch of smile to Kathleen’s disdainful lips.
Skirts hitched up on spreading frame,
Petticoats are bright as flame,
Dainty high-heeled boots proclaim,
Fast Young Ladies!
“Why, she’s really quite good,” Kathleen murmured. “Truly talented.”
She was indeed, Fargo thought. But Booger was right about the “tormentin’ itch,” and Fargo had been feeling it in spades ever since Trixie had whispered in his ear, back at San Marcial, “My naughty parts been tingling. I hope I’m next.” He suspected her “talent” was varied.
Fargo threw the dregs of his coffee into the sand and stood up. “Guess I’ll take a look around,” he remarked casually.
“Yes, for after all you’re drawing wages to protect us,” Kathleen goaded, and Booger giggled like a half-wit.
* * *
Fargo did make a slow, vigilant circle of the campsite before going back to the creek. Generous moon wash, assisted by the brilliance of a heaven of stars, limned the arid landscape in an eerie, blue-white reflection. Rather than trying to spot Apaches—a bootless effort—he studied the ground for any tracks. All he found, however, were Trixie’s prints and old tracks made by animals going to drink.
Fargo spotted Trixie as he rounded the circle of juniper trees, and his heart started pounding like fists on a drum. She stood in water up to her thighs, her ivory nudeness gleaming in the moonlight as she sudsed those firm, high-riding tits. When she stooped to rinse them off, turning halfway around to set her soap on the creek bank, her taut little Georgia-peach ass flexed even tighter.
“Damn, girl,” Fargo called to her as he approached, “if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes.”
She whirled to watch him approach, walking stiffly from the force of his arousal. Her blond hair was done up in lovelocks with small curls water-plastered to her temples. But Fargo’s eyes kept returning to those “gorgeous jahoobies” Booger worshipped with a passion—the sight of her there in the water egged on his lust, the erotic contrast posed by that delicate, thin frame supporting such huge globes.
“I wondered when you’d get here,” she said breathlessly, taking a few steps toward him. Those exciting tits swayed with real ocean motion, huge, heavy swells. “C’mon in.”
Fargo grounded his Henry, shucked his shell belt, and waded into the cool water. Trixie cupped her tits as if offering them to him and Fargo was in no dickering mood. He crouched and took first one, then the other nipple into his hungry mouth, licking and sucking them stiff.
She urged him on in a voice melodic as waltzing violins. “Nibble a little too, wouldja, Skye? Just little fish nibbles? That gets me so—ohh, yes, like that!”
By now Fargo was hot as a branding iron, and his man gland was straining for release. That’s exactly what Trixie had in mind, too, as she fumbled his fly op
en and went down on her knees.
“That damn Booger won’t give us much time ’fore he sneaks down here,” she whispered, “so I’m gonna do what I been wantin’ to since I seen your hard pizzle.”
Tight, wet heat flowed over Fargo’s length as she took as much of him as she could into her eager mouth. Her head pistoned back and forth, faster and faster, fueled by the fire of lust raging inside her. The way she tightened her lips and cheeks on him—grip and release, grip and release—made Fargo feel as if his manhood were sheathed in a snug velvet glove that had come to life.
It didn’t take much of this treatment before Fargo felt himself swelling drumhead tight. He suddenly groaned like a man in pain, erupting over and over until his weak legs folded and he collapsed to his knees in the water, dazed and panting.
“Before you leave Santa Fe, Skye,” her hot whisper tickled his ear, “can I feel that big, beautiful thing inside me?”
“Hell, yes,” he replied, “unless we can wangle a way to do it sooner. Matter fact”—he guided her hand downward—“feels like he’s already angry again. Why’n’t we—”
Just then, however, Fargo heard the long, ululating howl of a coyote, ending on a series of yipping barks.
The favorite signal of Apaches prowling in the dark.
“Get dressed quick,” Fargo told her. “Our fun is going to have to wait.”
* * *
June fifteenth dawned hot and still, a breezeless morning with an ominous feel to it that set Fargo’s teeth on edge. He had slept very little the night before, even when Booger spelled him in two-hour rotations. But the expected attack did not come.
A full night’s rest, with grain and plenty of water, had put some fettle back in the horses. Booger’s whip was already cracking soon after sunrise.
“We can get this rig to La Joya by noon,” Booger predicted, “unless Red John takes a fancy to hit us sooner.”
Fargo studied the terrain through his field glasses. This stretch, between the Rio Grande to the west and the Los Pinos mountains to the east, was mostly desolate and flat, wiry patches of palomilla and the occasional cholla cactus the only terrain features. But it was also crisscrossed by deep arroyos, desert ditches formed over centuries by sudden downpours. For raiding Indians these provided a hidden network of attack trails that kept them below the horizon until just before an attack.
“It won’t be beer and skittles after La Joya, either,” Fargo pointed out. “Red Sash and his Jicarilla renegades could hit us anytime between here and just south of Albuquerque. That’s why I’d just as soon have the frolic now. Lomax’s yellow dogs will be on our spoor again soon enough, and I’m for shaking these Apaches off us now.”
“The hell you bawlin’ about?” Booger demanded. “You got pussy last night. Old Booger’s gonna die with a dry dick. Gerlong!” he shouted at the team, tickling the leaders with his whip.
Hundreds of miles of stagecoach driving without relief showed clearly in Booger’s slack, exhausted face and cracked lips. The unrelenting Southwest sun, the swirling billows of eye-galling dust, even the constant fatigue of controlling the reins exacted a harsh toll and would have left most drivers prostrate by now.
“I don’t like this,” Fargo said a few minutes later, watching a point about two miles to the northeast. “We got no wind, but there’s a dust haze coming at us. I can’t spot any riders though.”
“Arroyos,” Booger said grimly, snatching his North & Savage from its buckskin sheath. “Them Apaches can move around like moles.”
“Get set for a dustup!” Fargo called down to the passengers. “Stay below the windows. If any fire arrows hit the coach, it’s up to you men to jerk ’em out if you can reach ’em.”
“Moses on the mountain!” Booger exclaimed. “Here they are to open the ball!”
The desiccated earth suddenly seemed to be spitting out Apaches as they debouched from an arroyo only a mile or so east of the stage. Fargo recognized the distinctive red headbands of the Apache and, as they rode closer, the deep chests and powerfully muscled arms that set them apart from the rest of the mostly slender-limbed Plains warriors. Most had rifles raised high in one hand, a few others red-streamered lances or iron-bladed battle axes traded from the slave-trading Comancheros.
“I was right,” Fargo said. “I count twenty. Some are riding big cavalry sorrels, some mustangs. Doesn’t look like they plan to charge right off. The one with the copper brassards on his arms must be Red Sash—he’s carrying the medicine shield.”
“Them mother-humpin’ Apaches like to play with their food,” Booger said. “They’ll likely pace us for a time to scare the snot outta the passengers and unstring our nerves. All the time, they squeeze in gradual like, then—whoop!—they’ll commence to shrieking and attack us full bore.”
“That’s the way of it,” Fargo agreed. “But they expect me to be armed with the usual express gun. They don’t know we got Mr. Henry’s magazine repeater on board, the gun you load on Sunday and fire all week. To hell with waiting for the attack, old son. Soon’s they close in a few hundred yards closer, I plan to start kissing the mistress.”
Fargo rolled atop the coach and took up a spread-legged prone position. He kept his Henry down out of sight, instead deliberately letting the sawed-off double-ten show.
Dust spiraled up as the Apaches gradually reined their mounts closer, riding in a long skirmish line that would form into a flying wedge once they attacked—unlike most tribes, the adaptable Apaches emulated the tactics of their American and Mexican enemies.
“Can’t this coach go any faster?” the preacher shouted out the window. “God bless us, they’re getting closer!”
“Caulk up, you white-livered, chicken-gutted psalm singer!” Booger shouted back. “Why’n’t you quit huggin’ that damn Bible and read us something from it? I like that part where Joseph ties his ass to a tree and proceeds to Bethlehem. Musta had India-rubber hinders in them days, huh?”
“You blaspheming bully! May you roast in hellfire!”
“And may you die of the runny shits, you horse-faced whelp of an unbaptized whore!”
Fargo laughed out loud, shaking his head. “Booger, you are some piece of work.”
“Upon my word, Fargo, that half-faced goat better pray he dies today. Happens he don’t, Old Booger will be wearing his guts for garters.”
Still Fargo waited, letting the Apaches close into better range. He wasn’t sure his strategy of sudden, quick, surprise kills would work with this tribe. Northern tribes believed in strict gods who placed great value on the holiness of an Indian’s life—thus most battle leaders called for retreat after the loss of one or two braves.
But the Apaches, tempered hard by their harsh environment and constant warfare to stay alive, believed in a more remote god called Great Ussen. Ussen was mainly seen as natural forces such as the power of motion in the wind. Thus, steep battle losses did not confer holy disfavor.
“All right!” Fargo called down to Booger. “I’m opening up on them. Stay frosty and shoot plumb. They’ll try to spread out and get to our left flank for a pincers. I want you to drop only horses, Booger. We can’t let them get close enough to kill our team.”
Fargo had to combine accuracy with speed and fully exploit the element of surprise. He dropped a bead on the last rider in the skirmish line, and the Henry kicked into his shoulder when he knocked him from the saddle. Rapidly firing and levering, he worked his way up the line. In the ten seconds or so that it took the Jicarillas to realize they were up against a dead aim with an excellent repeating rifle, Fargo had killed or wounded five Apaches.
Booger, meantime, had opened up with his North & Savage. His sitting, offhand position and slower weapon made him less effective, but he sent three horses buckling, further weakening Red Sash’s battle group before the surprised Apaches even got off a shot.
However, the battle-hardened warriors recovered quickly, and their excellent marksmanship made retribution swift and punishing. They opened fire with a vengeance, shrill war cries punctuating their coup de main.
“Here’s the fandango!” Fargo sang out cheerfully as a flurry of slugs and flint-tipped arrows peppered the coach.
A moving target was harder to hit, and Booger kept the coach in swift motion, alternately whipping the team and returning fire. Fargo, down to eleven loads in his Henry, fired more selectively. He hit fewer braves as the Apaches resorted to their defensive riding patterns and lowered their target profiles.
“Oh, Jesus, I’ve been shot!” Malachi Feldman’s voice screeched like a hog under the blade.
“Calm down, you hysterical fool!” Ashton shouted, and there was a hard slapping sound from the coach. “You’ve just been creased! Cover the women!”
“God preserve us!” the preacher’s voice added to the pandemonium.
A bullet thwacked into the coach, tossing splinters into Fargo’s face. He still had eight shots in the Henry’s tube magazine when a casing suddenly jammed in the ejector port. Knowing from experience it would take at least twenty seconds to carefully pry it out with the tip of his knife, and with several braves now in easy range and closing fast, Fargo cursed and tossed the weapon aside.
Booger was down to his dragoon pistol, the big weapon leaping in his fist. To keep the lead flying, Fargo shucked out his Colt and made six quick, successive snap-shots. Horses would have been easier targets, but he knew the Apaches probably had plenty of remounts. It was manpower he had to deplete to quell any future attacks, so Fargo targeted riders.
He and Booger wiped two more renegades from their sheepskin-pad saddles, but the Apache return fire was more deadly now, and suddenly the nearside swing horse slumped dead in the traces, dragging the coach to a stop.
Fargo knew they had reached the crisis point, and at first all seemed lost. Fargo had depleted his spare cylinder, too, and despite having killed or wounded more than half the attackers, he and Booger had no time to reload. A movement in the corner of his eye made Fargo glance toward the rear of the coach just in the nick of time to spot Red Sash with his knife cocked back to throw—in the desperate confusion, he had managed to ride around on the south flank and leap onto the coach.
