Beyond Squaw Creek (15 page)

The young soldier whom Duke had staked out, spread eagle to the sun, turned his shaggy head left and right and up and down, glancing around, terrified. His blue, yellow-striped uniform pants were threadbare. He wore no tunic, just a torn undershirt and one suspender. Blood glistened from the shallow cuts on his arms, thighs, and belly and from the cuts and bruises on his red-bearded face.

Beyond the young soldier, Duke was running straight west through the brush, toward where a steel dust mustang stood eyeing the man warily. Duke had lost his hat, and his yellow hair swung wildly across his broad, sun-bronzed back.

Fargo jogged around the staked soldier, wincing at the stabbing pain of the arrow in his shoulder, and raised the .36. Aiming quickly as Duke leaped onto the steel dust's back, he squeezed the trigger.

Dust puffed behind the horse's swishing tail.

The horse lunged forward, nearly throwing Duke backward. Clutching the rope reins, Duke glanced at Fargo, then grabbed the steel dust's dancing mane as the horse broke into a ground-eating gallop, heading west.

Fargo drew a bead on the man's bare back, squeezed the trigger, but the hammer pinged on an empty chamber.

Cursing, Fargo wheeled and ran back toward the ravine.

Behind him, the soldier shouted, “Hey, cut me loose, mister!”

“Hold on, soldier!”

The Trailsman pulled the Schuetzen out of the ravine by its barrel, ran back past the writhing, cursing soldier, making sure the muzzle-loader was ready for firing. He dropped to a knee, snugged the Schuetzen's deep-curved, silver-fitted butt-plate to his shoulder, raised the rear leaf site, and sighted down the long, polished barrel.

Duke was a good two hundred yards away and dwindling into the distance, horse and rider bounding up a gradual rise.

Fargo adjusted the sites for the distance, snugged his cheek to the stock. Quivering from the pain in his left shoulder, he lowered the rifle, took a deep breath, fought the pain from his consciousness, and raised the rifle once more.

He had time for only one shot. If he missed, Duke would be out of range by the time Fargo could ram another ball down the rifle's barrel.

The Trailsman lined up the front and rear sights on Duke's back, barely the size of a moth wing from this distance, and dwindling with each passing second. Holding his breath, relaxing against the lightning searing his shoulder, he held the rifle still, and took up the slack in his trigger finger.

Ka-boom!

The Schuetzen's butt-plate slammed against his right shoulder, though he felt it more in the one from which the arrow protruded. He lowered the rifle, blinked against the wafting powder smoke.

One, two, three seconds passed.

Duke continued galloping up the rise. He turned his head slightly as the rifle's blast reached his ears, then threw up his right arm in the Assiniboine victory wave, and turned forward.

Fargo gritted his teeth. “Shit!”

Less than ten feet from the crest of the distant rise, nearly four hundred yards away, Duke's head jerked suddenly forward, both arms flying straight out from his body. The lieutenant sagged down toward the lunging horse's right shoulder, then, as the horse crested the rise, buck-kicking fearfully, rolled off the steel dust's side, hit the ground on his right shoulder, tumbled head over heels, and slammed against a boulder. As the horse crested the rise and disappeared down the other side, Lieutenant Duke fell in a heap at the base of the rock, unmoving.

Hooves thudded to Fargo's right, and he turned to see a brave gallop straight past him toward the rise. “Yem-seen!” the warrior cried, crouched over his bloody midsection, ramming his moccasined heels against the lunging pinto's flanks.

Fargo let the heavy Schuetzen sag to the ground, then fell back on his heels, pain and nausea overwhelming him. He kept his eyes on the wounded brave until, having inspected Duke's body, the brave continued shouting incoherently as he crested the rise and disappeared in the direction of the Indian village.

“You get him?”

Fargo turned. The young bearded soldier regarded him desperately, face etched with pain.

Fargo nodded as he gained his feet, groaning, and plucked a tomahawk from the belt of one of the dead warriors. He'd no sooner chopped the soldier's limbs free of the buried stakes than he turned, cast one more glance in the direction of the dead lieutenant, and passed out.

Fargo had no idea how long he was out before he opened his eyes and found himself staring at a woman's deep cleavage—the breasts pushing up from a wine red corset edged with white lace. The deep gap between the pale, lightly freckled breasts rose and fell slowly, moved toward Fargo slightly, and then a woman's voice said, “How do the stitches look, Doctor?”

From Fargo's left a man said, “They seem to be holding fine, and no sign of infection yet.”

There was the sound of a cork being popped from a bottle, and then Fargo's left shoulder was set ablaze. He jerked and lifted his head, sucking air through his teeth.

“Skye,” Valeria said, gently pushing him back down on the bed. “No sudden movements, or you'll tear the sutures!”

“Do as the young lady says, Mr. Fargo.” The doctor whom Fargo had seen earlier—tall, older, with iron gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, pince-nez glasses perched on his broad, pitted nose—rose from a straight-back chair on Fargo's left. He dropped a bottle in a leather grip. “That's a nasty arrow wound, and I had to stitch both sides—a good thirty sutures, all told.”

“Ah, shit,” Fargo rasped, feeling the deep, burning ache in his upper left chest. He glanced around the long room, both walls of which were lined with a dozen or so beds, most of them filled. Fort Clark's infirmary. “How long before I'm back on my feet?”

“At least a week. The arrow didn't hit anything vital, but it tore you up pretty good. The soldiers got you here about fifteen minutes before you would have bled to death.” The doctor snapped the grip closed, donned a ratty beaver hat, nodded at Valeria standing on the right side of Fargo's bed, and began moving down the long alley between the beds, toward the open front door.

Fargo turned to Valeria. Except for a little sunburn and a few small abrasions on her cheeks, she looked as fresh as the day he'd first met her at the steamboat docks in Mandan. “How long I been here?”

“Two days. Don't you remember riding in with the soldiers? The guards said you looked like a dead man riding through those gates. You no sooner told them where they'd find me and Mr. Charley than you passed out.” Valeria sat down beside him, smoothed his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, and gazed softly into his eyes. “Can I get you anything?”

Fargo glanced down at her bosom pushing against his shoulder and, in spite of the fire in his chest, felt the old, stubborn twitch in his loins.

“I mean, within reason!” she scolded, whispering so the men around them couldn't hear.

Fargo felt his mouth corners quirk a grin, and then he glanced around the room once more, where a couple of uniformed men stood or sat beside the white-sheeted lumps of their wounded comrades. “Prairie Dog make it?”

“Of course, I made it, you idiot!”

Fargo turned to see Prairie Dog Charley occupying the bed left of his, lying belly down and looking for all the world like an old, bald, grizzled bear under the white hospital sheets and green wool blankets. Propped on his elbows, he was studying the miniature chess set on the bed before him. “And I wanna know how come you got my dear sweet Brunhilda so damn scratched up! Christ almighty, son, you know how much grease it's gonna take to bring out her shine again?”

Mention of the Schuetzen reminded Fargo of Duke.

“Am I dreaming, or did your dear Brunhilda really blow out the crazy lieutenant's lamp?”

Fingering a pawn and wincing as he adjusted his position in the bed, Prairie Dog nodded. “He's cold-er'n a grave digger's ass and snugglin' with the snakes right outside these very walls. A patrol hauled him back—or what was left of him after the coyotes had their say.”

The old scout chuckled. “And the old major…uh, excuse me, Miss…
Major Howard
knew what he was talkin' about. Killin' that crazy officer seems to have taken the starch out of the Injuns' shorts. The patrol that came back this mornin' said they saw no Injun sign, and the village beyond Squaw Creek was plum
gone.
Vanished. All that's left are some tracks, ashes, and circles of dead grass where the lodges stood.”

“How 'bout the soldiers that helped you spring me and Valeria?”

Prairie Dog cursed and shook his head. “Only two made it—the boy you found staked out by Duke and another holed up in a coulee. Iron Shirt's boys ran the other two down, killed 'em. The boy you found, though, is already back on light wood-cutting duty.”

Fargo glanced at Valeria. “Your old man?”

She smiled. “His arrow wound wasn't as bad as yours, and he didn't lose as much blood, so he should be on his feet in a day or two. He's sent couriers out with requests for more men to garrison Fort Clark and to rebuild Fort William.”

“Lost nearly a third of our own garrison in that last attack,” Prairie Dog growled.

“Figured as much.” Fargo groaned as fresh pain stabbed him. “Did the doc leave any whiskey hereabouts? I sure could use a shot.”

“He didn't leave any,” Prairie Dog said, reaching under his bed. “But I got some.”

“With as much blood as you both lost?” Valeria cried, rushing around the bed and plucking the corked brown bottle from the old trapper's hand. “I should say not!”

She shook her head like an admonishing schoolmarm, shifting her gaze between both beds, holding the bottle as though it were an evil talisman. “I'll just hold on to this for six or seven days or when the doctor thinks you're ready for spirituous liquid. Now, you both need to rest. I'll be back in a couple of hours to check on you.”

Both Fargo and Prairie Dog watched her bottom sway behind the long, green skirt as she stalked off toward the door, holding the whiskey bottle before her with both hands. Her sunset red hair spilled down her back in swirling curls.

“Ain't right—takin' a man's whiskey,” Fargo complained.

“Nope,” Prairie Dog said. “But it's hard to argue with a girl that fills out a set o' frillies like that. I wish my memory wasn't as bad as my hearing and my eyesight, and I could remember how she looked without no clothes on!”

“I'd remind you,” Fargo said, fatigue washing over him. He lay his head back on the pillow, crossed his hands on his belly, and smiled at the image behind his eyelids. “But I'm afraid you'd have a stroke.”