High Plains Massacre

by Jon Sharpe

  “It was the spook,” Private Benjamin said.

  “How would you like another smack?” Fargo said. He shoved Benjamin aside and squatted next to Wright. He reached into the grave, too. The earth was cool and dank to his touch. “This was done in the past half hour or so.” Otherwise, the dirt would be drier and warmer.

  “While we were off chasing that white thing,” Bear River Tom guessed.

  “Have your men conduct a search,” Fargo said. “Use torches.”

  The color had drained from Wright’s face but he nodded and briskly issued commands.

  “Why steal the body?” Bear River Tom wondered when they were alone.

  “To scare us.”

  “It’s working,” Bear River Tom said. “I’m scared as hell.”

  “Think of tits,” Fargo couldn’t believe he heard himself saying. “That should calm you.”

  “If it can’t, nothing will.”

  They joined in the search, both of them with brands. Fargo examined the ground around the grave but couldn’t find drag marks. “Whoever took it carried him.”

  “Why aren’t there tracks?”

  That was a good question. The scattered earth from the mound showed their own tracks and those of the troopers clear as day, but no others.

  Fargo moved toward the granite bluffs and raised his brand as high as he could, seeking the telltale dark mouth of a cave. He did it on a hunch that didn’t pay off.

  “You ask me,” Bear River Tom said, “the colonel should have sent fifty bluebellies instead of this pack of infants.”

  “The Sioux, remember?”

  “Even so. There’s not enough of us to deal with something like this.”

  They were a solemn group when they reassembled at the campfire.

  “Not a sign of the body anywhere,” Lieutenant Wright reported.

  “Of course there isn’t,” Private Benjamin whispered to the others but they all heard him. “It was the spook, I tell you.”

  “Go guard the horses,” Lieutenant Wright said.

  Fargo had a lot to ponder. He stayed up long after Tom and the soldiers had turned in.

  The wind had died. The gulch was as quiet as a cemetery. Around them, the mountains were another matter. Predator and prey were caught up in the nocturnal dance of death. The cry of a doe told of a meat eater’s success, a snarl of frustration that a bobcat had missed a kill.

  It was pushing one o’clock when Fargo went into the cabin. Stretching out, he tried to sleep. His mind was racing so fast, it was a losing proposition. Toward morning fatigue did what he couldn’t.

  The new dawn came much too soon. Fargo was aware of being shaken, and of Bear River Tom chuckling.

  “Up and at ’em, pard. It’s not like you to let the sun rise before you do.”

  Fargo felt sluggish. He went to the stream, stripped off his shirt, and splashed cold water on his face and chest until he was shivering and awake.

  A trooper by the name of Arvil was preparing breakfast. “We’re having flapjacks,” he announced as Fargo came up. “But it will take a while.”

  “We’re in no hurry,” Lieutenant Wright said.

  Fargo was. The sooner he resumed his hunt, the sooner they would learn the fate of the missing settlers.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Private Davenport said, “but has anyone seen Private Benjamin?”

  “He stood guard over the horses last night,” Wright reminded him.

  “But where is he now, sir?”

  The horses weren’t a stone’s throw away. Several were dozing, the Ovaro among them. But there was no Benjamin.

  “Don’t tell me he deserted his post?” Lieutenant Wright said angrily. “He’ll wind up in the stockade if he’s not careful.”

  Fargo spied a splash of color and beckoned to Tom. They went to the string and there in the dust between two of the horses lay Private Benjamin’s hat. Fargo picked it up and held it where Wright could see it. “The stockade is the least of his worries.”

  A frantic search ensued. Every cabin, every tent. Along the stream, along the granite bluff.

  “He’s vanished, just like the settlers,” Lieutenant Wright summed up the result when they regrouped at the fire.

  Fargo saw fear on nearly every face. He didn’t blame them. The empty grave, the killing of the horse and now Benjamin disappearing, was enough to scare anyone. That made him think of the white thing in the trees and the moans.

  Put it all together and there was only one conclusion. Someone was trying to scare them off. But why? That, too, was pretty obvious. To keep them from finding out what happened to the settlers.

  “I’ll be heading out as soon as we’re done breakfast,” he told them.

  “By your lonesome?” Bear River Tom said. “With all that’s going on, you should take me along to watch your back.”

  Fargo would like that but he had a greater worry, namely, the young troopers. They were so rattled, they weren’t thinking straight. “I want you to stay here.”

  Tom looked at the troopers, and sighed. “I should give up scouting and open a home for infants. Do you still have that bottle? I need a drink.”

  “What we need,” Lieutenant Wright said, “is an answer to all these mysteries.”

  “We sure as hell do,” Fargo agreed, and with more than a little luck, by the end of the day he would have it.

  19

  He’d already searched the far end of the gulch. He’d already searched the forest across the stream. Today he decided to try along the granite heights.

  There was a lot of granite in the Black Hills. It broke through the surface in the form of cliffs and bluffs and spirelike protrusions that sometimes rose hundreds of feet into the air.

  Fargo started at the mouth of the gulch and scoured the towering heights. He hoped to find a way up. Noon found him at the far end, without success.

  Damn, it was frustrating, he reflected. He had a sense that he’d missed something. That if he put his mind to the problem, the answer would leap out at him. He tried but it didn’t, which only frustrated him more.

  The sun was directly overhead when he made for the stream to let the Ovaro drink. In a grassy glade at the water’s edge he drew rein and swung down. He hadn’t had much sleep, and God, he was tired. He yawned and stretched and sat with his back to a juniper to ponder his problem.

  It took a while for the sound he was hearing to break through his concentration. It came and it went, a hissing like that he’d once heard when he was at the Pacific coast and watched breakers roll into shore. It came from upstream.

  About the fifth or sixth time, Fargo raised his head and said, “What the hell?”

  It bore investigating. Taking the reins, he led the Ovaro.

  He’d assumed that the water flowed down from higher up and on out the gulch. But he hadn’t gone twenty yards when he discovered he was mistaken.

  The stream was like the Rogue River in Oregon Country and a few other waterways. It didn’t carry runoff down from a mountaintop. It flowed up out of the ground.

  A dark cavity opened in the earth before him.

  Now and again the water splashed against partially submerged boulders and made that hissing sound.

  On either side was flat granite. Wide enough, Fargo noted, for a horse and rider. Hell, it was wide enough for a wagon.

  He peered into the hole but couldn’t see much. It appeared to incline gradually down but there might be an abrupt drop-off.

  No one in their right mind would go into a hole like that but Fargo had another of his hunches. He tied the Ovaro to a spruce and gathered kindling and enough broken limbs for a fire. He also found a short, stout piece that he set aside.

  He hated to cut his blanket but he had nothing else to use. He wrapped the strips around one end of the stout piece and knotted them so they wouldn’t sl
ide off.

  When he put his makeshift torch to the fire, it caught right away.

  Fargo moved to the hole. He didn’t have a lot of time. Ten minutes at the most, and his torch would go out. Quickly, he descended, holding it in front of him so if there was a drop-off, he wouldn’t go over the edge.

  It was eerie, what with darkness all around and the water lapping at his boots. He hadn’t gone far when he realized the sides had opened out and he was about to enter a cavern or underground chamber. He went a little farther and the truth dawned. It wasn’t a cavern. It was a tunnel, created by the rushing water back when a lot more of it issued out of the earth.

  His torch flickered in a gust of air, and he debated going deeper.

  A new sound gave him pause, a faint chink-chink-chink, like that of metal striking rock. Cocking his head, he tried to figure out what it was.

  The torch flickered again, and this time not from any breeze. It was going out.

  Reluctantly, Fargo retraced his steps. He wasn’t quite to the surface when the last tiny finger of flame died in a puff of smoke, plunging him in pitch-black. A few more steps, though, and he was awash in daylight from above.

  Once out of the hole, Fargo stood scratching his chin. He could make more torches but they might not be enough to see him through to the far end and he’d be left in total darkness.

  Fargo looked up. Above the hole, a forested slope rose to more granite. It was a steep climb but he would like to see what was on the other side of the mountain.

  He turned and walked to the Ovaro and was reaching for the saddle horn when he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, dropping his hand to his Colt, and thought he saw a two-legged form gliding away from him.

  Fargo broke into a run. Whoever it was, they were heading up the gulch toward the settlement, and the troopers.

  He moved as silently as an Apache. So did the man he was pursuing. He moved more swiftly than most, too, just to keep up.

  Not until the last bend before the settlement did Fargo get a good look at who he was following, when his quarry stopped.

  It was the small man with the eye patch and the scar, the same deadly Metis who had tried twice now to kill him.

  Crouching, Fargo closed in. He was near enough to shoot but he wanted the man alive. Unexpectedly, the Metis began climbing a tree. Fargo flattened. He wondered what the man was up to and it hit him that if the man climbed high enough, he could see past the bend to the settlement.

  Smiling grimly, Fargo crawled. The small man had blundered. What went up must come down, and he would be waiting.

  The man’s agility was amazing. He leaped from limb to high limb, his body tucked tight. At one point he hooked his knees and performed a half flip that brought him to the next branch.

  Fargo had never seen the like. He couldn’t do that, and most people considered him uncommonly fit.

  The man was well up now. He stopped, placed a hand above his good eye to shield it from the glare of the sun, and stood like a rock for several minutes.

  It gave Fargo plenty of time to reach a small thicket and secrete himself.

  High above, the small man lowered his arm and said something in French. His speed descending was twice what it had been climbing.

  To Fargo it seemed that one second the man was sixty feet above him and the next he dropped lithely to earth.

  Fargo coiled to spring. He expected the Metis to turn toward the settlement, and the moment that happened, he’d pounce. But to his considerable consternation, the man turned toward the thicket.

  “You can come out, monsieur.”

  Fargo wasn’t about to. He suspected that he had waltzed into an ambush, and he would be damned if he’d make it easy for them.

  “I know you are there,” the one-eyed man said. “Just as I know you have been following me.”

  And here Fargo had been so sure he’d gone unnoticed.

  “If you do not come out I will be angry with you,” the one-eyed man said, “and believe me when I say that the last thing you want is to make Jacques Grevy mad. Those who do always wind up dead.”

  20

  To stay hidden served no purpose. And besides, there were no signs of any others.

  Fargo stood, his hand on his Colt. “Do you blow kisses to yourself in every mirror you see?”

  Jacques Grevy laughed. “You suggest I am not humble enough? But humility is for the weak, not the strong.”

  “Is that so?” Fargo was puzzled by how calm this Grevy was, given that he had his six-shooter and Grevy had only a knife.

  “Très certainement. You have seen for yourself, have you not, that some men are sheep and some men are wolves? You and I, my friend, we are wolves.”

  “I have a few good pards,” Fargo said, “and you’re not one of them.”

  “Such rancor,” Grevy said. “You should be flattered I treat you as an equal.”

  “What I am,” Fargo said, “is pissed that you tried to kill me.”

  “And now you will try to kill me, oui?”

  “First some answers,” Fargo said. “Why did you try? What do you have to do with the settlers who have gone missing? What did you do with a soldier by the name of Benjamin? And was it you who killed our packhorse?”

  “So many questions,” Grevy said. “Let’s see. In the order in which you asked, I tried to kill you because it is wise, as you Americans say, to nip something in the bud. The settlers? Wouldn’t you like to know. As for the rest, think of it as a game we play with three peanut shells and a peanut. You put the peanut under one of the shells and move them around and have someone try to guess which shell it is under.”

  “That made no damn sense.”

  “It does if you are me.”

  Fargo flicked his wrist and the Colt was in his hand. “Drop your pigsticker.”

  “And if I do not, you will shoot me?”

  “In the balls.”

  “That is harsh, mon ami.”

  “I’m not your damn friend. And it’s no more harsh than some bastard trying to stab me in the back.”

  Their eyes locked.

  “Oui, I believe you would,” Grevy said. “Very well.”

  To Fargo’s surprise, the small man smiled and raised his arms over his head.

  “I submit.”

  Fargo remembered their fierce fight in the saloon and how tough this little man was. “What the hell are you up to?”

  “You have caught me. Do with me as you will.”

  “Drop the knife,” Fargo repeated. He figured that Grevy would pretend to, then either rush him or throw it at him. Instead, with precise slow care, using only two fingers, Grevy plucked the knife from its sheath and let it fall to the grass.

  “There. Do you feel safer?”

  Fargo bobbed his chin at the bend. “Walk ahead of me. Any tricks and I’ll put one in your spine.”

  “There are tricks and there are tricks,” Grevy said. “But here and now I will behave.”

  Fargo didn’t know what to make of him. But he wanted Wright and especially the troopers to see him with their own eyes.

  It was Bear River Tom who spotted them first and gave a holler that brought the soldiers on the run.

  “What do we have here?” Lieutenant Wright said.

  “The spook,” Fargo replied.

  The troopers exchanged glances and Private Davenport said, “He’s behind all the goings-on?”

  “Him and his friends,” Fargo guessed.

  Jacques Grevy gave a slight bow. “You are most astute, monsieur.”

  “You admit it?” Lieutenant Wright said. Stepping up, he grabbed the front of the small man’s shirt. “Where’s Private Benjamin? What have your people done with him?”

  “What people, sir?” Private Davenport asked.

  It was Grevy who answe
red. “Your kind calls us breeds, boy. Or half-breeds. They always say it with a sneer to show they disapprove. If they could, they would do to us as they have done to so many of the Indians who sometimes sire us, and wipe us out.”

  “You don’t look like no breed to me, mister,” Private Arvil said.

  “That is because I take more after my father than my mother, who was Cree. But I assure you my blood is as much red as white.”

  “Where’s Private Benjamin?” Lieutenant Wright again demanded.

  “Where he should be,” Grevy said.

  Wright poked him in the chest. “I’m warning you. You’ll tell us, one way or another.”

  “Will you torture me, perhaps?” Grevy asked in amusement.

  “I just might,” Lieutenant Wright said.

  Grevy shook his head and laughed. “We both know it is against the rules you live by. You can bluster but you can’t do the deed.”

  “How about me?” Fargo asked. “Can I do the deed?”

  A hint of concern creased Grevy’s scarred face. “You, yes. You have a hardness in you. You are a killer, like me.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” Fargo said.

  “Permit me to disagree. And grant me the respect I grant you. Yes, you would torture me. But I very much doubt I would say more than you would.”

  Fargo believed him.

  Wright asked, “Where do you want to keep him until we get to the bottom of this?”

  “In a cabin, bound hand and foot,” Fargo said.

  Wright was studying Grevy. “You know, his friends out there might be willing to swap him for Private Benjamin.”

  “I am not so important, I am afraid,” Grevy said.

  “You better hope you are, for your sake,” Lieutenant Wright said. He ordered Davenport and Arvil to take the prisoner to a cabin and tie him.

  “Send four of them,” Fargo said.

  “That many for one man? And a runt at that?”

  “Wolverines are smaller than bears,” Fargo said.

  “Oui,” Grevy said, and flattered himself by adding, “It is not the size but the fierceness, vous comprenez?”

  “I don’t speak French,” Lieutenant Wright said, “and you don’t look all that fierce to me.” He turned to two of the troopers. “Private Thomas and Private Reese, go along and cover him while Davenport and Arvil bind him.”