Beyond Squaw Creek (2 page)

The Ovaro was not only the fastest horse Fargo had ever ridden, but it had plenty of bottom, too. More bottom than the Indians' mustangs, obviously, because Fargo and Valeria Howard gradually pulled away from their pursuers, until the braves' gunshots sounded little louder than snapping twigs, and the thunder of their ponies was like the distant passing of a fleeting summer storm.

When they'd ridden a good four miles beyond the scene of the attack, Fargo pulled the horse off the old traders' trail he'd been following, and into a cut between high, chalky buttes. A light breeze rose, and the Ovaro lifted its head, sniffing and softly nickering. Fargo turned the horse to look behind, tipping his hat against the sun.

About a half mile straight east of the traders' trail, six or seven Indians were walking their horses along the base of a jog of curving hogbacks, riding slowly away from Fargo and Valeria. Their leader wore a buffalo headdress. They were armed with either bows and arrows or carbines. Hatchets swung from their belts. A couple of the young braves held war lances adorned with tribal feathers.

Judging by the tribal feathers and designs painted on their faces and horses, these braves were Assiniboine, not Blackfeet, like those behind Fargo.

Valeria Howard shivered on the saddle before the Trailsman. “Oh, God…”

Fargo studied the riders until they'd disappeared down the other side of a distant slope.
Oh, God
was right. They were surrounded by Indians.

Fargo turned the Ovaro and galloped west between the buttes.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked, craning her neck to peer over Fargo's shoulder.

“The pinto needs water. There's a spring around here.” Fargo glanced behind, and seeing no redskins on his trail, checked the sweat-lathered Ovaro down to a walk. “About two prairie swells farther west is a trading post and stage station. We'll stop there for the night.”

Crossing her bare arms over her pale breasts, the girl looked up at him. Her face was dust streaked, and weed seeds clung to her mussed, russet-colored hair. There was a fearful trill in her voice. “But we could make Fort Clark in a couple of hours!”

“If we kept moving as fast as we've
been
moving, we could make the fort about three hours after good dark. But the horse is tired. And we don't want to be out here after dark.”

Valeria looked around warily, at the eroded butte faces and breeze-ruffled buffalo grass, at the dry, chalky wash meandering through the gray-brown grass tall enough to conceal a crawling Indian. “Father is going to be worried.” She swung her gaze back to Fargo, eyes sharp. “How could you let this happen? You were supposed to be
watching
for Indians! That's why Father
hired
you!”

“You're alive, aren't you? Still have your topknot.”

Fargo reined the horse into a hollow at the base of a high butte. Water bubbled up from the butte's base, around sand and mossy, pitted boulders, and emanated a vague sulfur smell. Cattails grew along the spring's perimeter, and meadowlarks rode the swaying weed tips, a few lighting as the Ovaro drew up and Fargo slipped off the horse's back.

He dropped the pinto's reins and reached up to help the girl down. She'd forgotten to cover her breasts as she stared into the distance, her face drawn with worry. Fargo couldn't help letting his gaze linger over the softly rounded, pink-tipped orbs, no less enticing for being rimed with trail dust and belonging to a rather haughty debutante.

She glanced down at him, saw where his eyes were, and gasped. Quickly, she drew the frayed strips of her torn blouse closed. “Isn't there something besides staring at my breasts you should be doing, Mr. Fargo? Perhaps making sure we're not attacked
again
by those
savages
!”

Fargo wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her roughly out of the saddle, evoking another gasp.

“I reckon,” he said, setting her on the ground, glancing again at the pale orbs peeking out between the insufficient flaps of cloth. She smelled sweet, like talcum and lilacs, in spite of the ordeal. “But it won't be near as much fun.”

He opened one of his saddlebags and rummaged around before pulling out a shirt sewn from flannel trade cloth, with badger teeth for buttons. He tossed the shirt to the girl. “Why don't you put that on so I can concentrate on my job?”

“Oh, I suppose the Indians surprised you because of
me
!” she said, turning her back and flapping out the overlarge shirt in front of her.

Fargo grabbed his spyglass out of his saddlebags and began climbing the slope rising east of the spring.

The girl called behind him, “You don't have something a little smaller?”

Halfway up the slope, Fargo stopped and turned toward her. She remained standing with her naked back to him, holding the shirt up to inspect it.

“I wasn't packing for you!” As he continued climbing, he glanced over his shoulder and said quietly, “Get a drink. We'll be movin' out in two minutes.”

“Uncouth bastard,” she grumbled behind him.

Fargo dropped down against the bluff, doffed his hat, and telescoped the spyglass. He'd no sooner trained the glass on their back trail between the two ridges than his back tensed and his gut filled with bile.

Shadows of galloping riders undulated across the grassy southern slopes of the shallow canyon. A few beats later, the Indians he'd spied a little while earlier appeared around a bend, the brave in the buffalo headdress riding point, batting his moccasined heels against the ribs of his chuffing, galloping paint.

Behind Fargo, the Ovaro snorted loudly. Down the canyon galloping hooves rumbled.

“What's the matter with—?” The girl stopped as Fargo slammed the end of the spyglass against his palm, reducing it, then grabbed his hat and began scrambling down the slope, leaping rocks and tufts of sage and silverthorn.

“Mount up!”

“What is it?”

Fargo hit the bottom of the canyon running, grabbed the girl around the waist, and heaved her back onto the pinto. “Mount
up
!”

He grabbed the reins, tossed the spyglass into the saddlebags, then leaped up behind the girl who jerked her head around, whimpering, as the thud of hooves rose from down the canyon.

“Hold on!”

Fargo reined the horse away from the spring and into the crease. Immediately, shrill whoops and yowls rose on his left, above the thuds of the pounding hooves.

Fargo turned the pinto westward along the crease, then gave the horse its head. The Ovaro stretched out, bounding through the hock-high grass as the Indians' enraged whoops and yowls grew behind it, the cacophony punctuated by sporadic gunfire.

“How did they
find
us?” the girl cried, the tails of the long shirt whipping out around her.

“The breeze switched.” Fargo glanced back to see the half dozen Indians bolting toward them, the broad chests of their paints and pintos and Appaloosas glistening in the afternoon sunlight, the braves' yells echoing around the buttes. “They must've smelled your perfume.”

“Why didn't you…?”

“Sorry, honey,” Fargo growled. “I can't control the wind!”

He glanced behind once more. Whooping like a crazed warlock, the lead warrior held up a feathered war lance dyed red, green, and black, his medicine pouch and necklaces dancing along his broad, muscular chest. The brave's right cheek appeared covered with a strawberry birthmark beneath the swirling lines of war paint.

“That looks like the son of Iron Shirt,” Fargo muttered darkly as he turned forward, flinching at an arrow sailing across his left shoulder.

Arrows sliced the air above and around them, and a rifle barked, a slug spanging off a rock only a few feet right of the galloping pinto. Ahead, the crease between the buttes curved right, then narrowed to a couple of yards.

“Take the reins!” Fargo yelled above the thunder of the Ovaro's slicing, grinding hooves, shoving the ribbons into the girl's hands.

Valeria shot him a wary glance.

“Keep riding. When you clear these buttes, stop and wait for me atop that flat-topped bluff in the distance.”

Stiffly, her cheeks pale with terror, the girl took the reins reluctantly, as though they were on fire, and stared warily down at the lunging horse. “What're you going to
do
?”

Fargo shucked his Henry rifle, cocked it one-handed. “I'm gonna clean those wolves off our trail!”

Throwing both arms out for balance, Fargo hopped straight back along the horse's rocking hips.

He glanced behind. The Indians were out of sight beyond the bend in the crease, but they wouldn't be for long.

Fargo threw himself straight back off the Ovaro's rump, hitting the ground flat-footed. Propelled by the horse's momentum, he rolled through the grass, managing to hold on to the rifle. As he began to slow, his right knee nipped a rock along the trail, and he gritted his teeth.

Cursing, he rolled off his shoulder and shot a look up the trail. The horse and the girl galloped away from him, the girl glancing over her shoulder, red hair bouncing along her back.

Fargo waved her on, then threw himself off the trail. As the whoops and hooffalls grew louder behind him, he scrambled up the steeply shelving butte on his left.

He doffed his hat and lifted a look over the butte's shoulder. At the same time, the Indian with the headdress and birthmark—Iron Shirt's oldest son, sure enough—dashed around the bend on his fleet-footed paint, the other five howling braves pushing in close around him so all six could squeeze through the narrow corridor.

The Trailsman pushed himself straight up to the crest of the butte shoulder and, on one knee, snapped the Henry to his cheek. Iron Shirt's son—Blaze Face—glanced up as his paint approached the gap before him.

The warrior's spotted face blanched and his lower jaw dropped a half second before Fargo blew him out of his saddle, sending the headdress flying. Fargo jacked another round into the chamber and fired, and continued firing until all six horses were galloping through the gap without riders, or, as in the case of a small-boned Appy, kicking its rider along under its scissoring hooves.

As gun smoke billowed around Fargo's head, he turned to look up trail. The last rider rolled through the crease and piled up against a boulder.

Fargo scrambled down the butte and ran up to the warrior, who lay against the boulder spotted with the young man's blood. Several broken ribs poked through his bloody sides. The brave kicked miserably, arching his back and groaning.

The Trailsman racked a fresh shell into the Henry's breech and held the barrel two inches from the brave's right eye. “Why are you raiding?” he demanded in Sioux, hoping he had the right dialect.

The brave shook the hair from his eyes and spat several curses which, in good Indian style, insulted not only the Trailsman's mother and sisters but his female cousins, as well. The brave had opened his mouth to launch another tirade, when he tensed suddenly.

Apparently, one of the broken ribs had pierced his heart. He flung his head back with an audible smack against the ground, gave another couple of kicks, and lay still, eyes glazed with death.

The Trailsman cursed in the Indian's tongue, then, knowing the gunfire might have been heard by other warriors, turned away from the dead brave and jogged up the trail, thumbing fresh shells from his cartridge belt into the Henry's loading tube.

He hadn't walked far before the girl and the pinto rose up from behind a grassy, breeze-brushed knoll. The pinto snorted and trotted forward, nearly running Fargo over before swerving sideways, stopping, snorting again, and shaking its glistening black mane, relieved to find that the Trailsman had survived the Indians. The golden late-afternoon sunshine made the strip of white between the horse's fore and hindquarters glow. It made the girl's red hair shimmer like sunset hues reflected off a high mountain lake.

“I thought I told you to wait on that bluff yonder,” Fargo snapped at her, sliding his Henry into the saddle sheath.

She stared down at him, glowing red hair dancing around her head. “I was worried about you.”

“Well, don't be,” Fargo snapped, grabbing the reins out of her hands and swinging up into the saddle. “Just do what I tell you!”

“Fine, then,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, the overlarge tunic billowing out around them. “Just
fine
!”

Fargo turned the pinto around, heeled it west. The girl, nearly tossed from the saddle as the horse leaped forward, gave a startled cry and lunged for the horn.

When Fargo and Valeria Howard had ridden for another twenty minutes, it wasn't more Indians they found themselves shadowed by, but a mass of swollen purple clouds driven toward them by a knife-edged wind.

The prairie hogbacks turned lemon yellow. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. The sudden gale shepherded tumbleweeds across the short brown grass and thrashed the scattered cottonwoods and oaks. Prairie dogs squealed and ran for their burrows.

“Shit!” Fargo said, turning his head forward and tipping his hat brim low.

Ahead, he could make out the brown smudge of the old trading post nestled between hogbacks about a half mile away, smoke skeining from its large fieldstone chimney.

“Hold on!” he yelled above the howling wind and rumbling thunder, clucking the Ovaro into another ground-eating lope.

They hadn't galloped thirty yards before the storm converged on them, rain pouring out of the dark clouds, driven slantwise by the wind. Fargo and the girl hunkered low in the saddle as the Ovaro galloped over one rise and down another, hooves splashing through puddles, the wind-whipped rain pummeling the Trailsman's shoulders and pasting his buckskin tunic against his back and sluicing off the broad brim of his high-crowned hat.

As they galloped over the last rise, the trading post/ stage station appeared before them, nestled in a broad hollow and fronted by a creek sheathed in cattails. It was a broad, tall, barnlike building of stout logs with a low, brush-roofed stable attached to the side. The post's windows were shuttered, and the stable doors were closed, but wan lamplight seeped out through gaps between the logs and through the rifle slits in the front doors and shutters.

Lightning flashed and thunder clapped as the Ovaro splashed across the creek, which broiled with muddy, fast-moving water, and lunged up the opposite bank. It galloped past the stone well house and into the yard that had become a rain-pelted slough, and skidded to a slipping, sliding halt before the stable.

Three tarp-covered freight wagons sat nearby, wagon tongues drooping, the tarp groaning and flapping in the wind.

Fargo slipped out of the pinto's saddle, lost his footing in the soggy mud, and nearly fell before regaining his balance and drawing the stable doors open. He led the pinto into the stable's murky, musty shadows rife with the smell of hay and ammonia. A couple of horses, hidden in the shadows, loosed frightened whinnies and kicked their stall partitions, frightened by the storm as well as the intruders. In the stable's far recesses, a cat growled angrily.

Fargo lifted Valeria Howard out of the saddle. Soaked, she weighed a good ten pounds more than she had when he'd put her there. Her red hair hung straight down her back, and she crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, shivering.

“I'll get you into the lodge!” he yelled above the wind pummeling the doors and stout log walls, making the rafters creak. He ran his hand down the pinto's sleek, wet neck. “You stay, boy. I'll be back to bed you down.”

He ushered her through the stable doors, led her by the hand along the front of the stable to the porch. She gave a cry as water streamed off the sagging porch roof and down her back.

“Could I be any more miserable?” she said, shivering, hugging herself, as Fargo led her up the porch steps.

He rapped on the stout log door. Almost immediately, a rifle barrel pushed through one of the two slots in the door's vertical half logs. Behind the door, a man's voice squawked, “Friend or foe, red man or white?”

Fargo glanced at the round musket barrel sliding around in the slot, and at the rheumy blue eye peeking out the hole from inside.

“It's Skye Fargo, Smiley. Open up!”

The musket barrel wobbled around, twitched, and receded into the cabin. A thump sounded from inside, followed by the scrape of a locking bar. The door opened a foot, and a round, bald head poked out, blue eyes wide with caution. When the eyes found Fargo, the old man's lower jaw dropped.

“Skye Fargo! Well, I'll be skinned! Get on in here outta the damp, ya crazy coon!”

The old man threw the door wide and stepped back inside the cabin. Fargo followed him in, drawing the girl along behind him.

Old Smiley Bristo stood just inside the door, flexing his snakeskin spats and grinning broadly, toothlessly up at the Trailsman towering over him. His breath was fetid with yeasty beer, whiskey, and tobacco. “What the hell brings you up to this country, Skye? How long's it been, anyways…?”

The old man's voice trailed off as his drink-bleary gaze slid to the girl stepping up beside Fargo. “Well, I'll be hanged,” he said, voiced hushed with awe, raking an index finger through his silvery patch beard. “You got a
woman
with ya.”

The word “woman” had no sooner escaped the oldster's lips than the half dozen men sitting at the tables in the room's smoky shadows, right of the long plank bar running along the room's left wall, swiveled toward Fargo and the girl. The Trailsman's eyes had not yet adjusted to the room's shadows, which were shunted to and fro by hanging oil lamps and the cracking fire in the giant fieldstone hearth. But one look at the shirt clinging like a second skin to Valeria's full breasts, nipples jutting from behind the soaked wool, told him what their eyes had found.

Valeria, apparently, had also become aware of the men's scrutiny. Shyly, she turned her back to the men, and cast Fargo an uneasy sidelong glance.

“The lady would like a room and a hot bath,” Fargo said. “Some dry clothes, if you got any.”

His eyes glued to the girl, Smiley opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when a low voice rumbled from a table near the fire. “Shee-it, she need her back washed, too?”

Chuckles washed up from the webbing smoke and jostling shadows, heads jerking.

The girl sidled up close to Fargo as the old man said, his voice hushed as before, “I usually give the ladies from the stage the Chicago room upstairs, between New York and Abilene, as the curtains is pink and the mattress is goose feathers, plucked and stuffed myself. I'll heat some water pronto. And I'll rustle up a shirt and britches though I don't have much in the way of female frillies.” He glanced shyly at the girl with a truckling bow. “Are you hungry, miss? I got a nice stew on the fire—the kidneys of a sow griz I just shot yesterday. The boys has already had some, and nobody's been sick so far!”

Valeria splayed her hand on her chest and cleared her throat. “The food sounds delightful, but I think just the room and the bath will do for now.”

“I'll show the lady to her room, Smiley,” Fargo said, taking the girl's arm, “if you wanna get started on the water.”

When the old man nodded and turned toward the curtained door behind the bar, Fargo began leading the girl toward the stairs at the back of the room. The girl stopped and turned toward the old man. “Oh, Mr…. uh…Smiley,” she said haltingly. “I was wondering if there was…a…
lock
on the door?”

Again, snickers and chuckles rose from amongst the tables, chairs creaking.

Smiley turned at the curtained doorway, frowning as though he wasn't sure he understood. “Why…no, ma'am. No locks. Never seen no need for none.”

Fargo forced a smile and continued leading the girl between the bar and the tables. As he walked, his eyes adjusted well enough that he could make out a few of the bearded faces turned toward them, recognizing a couple of burly mule skinners from Canada and a gambler from Council Bluffs.

At the back of the room, he and Valeria mounted the creaky stairs. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure none of the men, still staring after them, was leveling a gun at him or preparing to toss a knife at his back. At the top of the stairs, he loosed a relieved breath and led Valeria along the dim hall, the girl starting at the thunder cracking outside and making dust sift from the rafters.

All the doors bore wooden plaques into which the names of American cities had been burned, most misspelled. He stopped before the one labeled
CHIKAGO
, and threw it open.

“Home sweet home,” Fargo said, turning away.

She grabbed his arm. “You're not going to leave me alone, are you?”

Fargo dropped his eyes to her shirt. “You want me to stay and help you out of your wet duds?”

“Don't be ridiculous!” she snapped, balling the front of the dripping shirt in her fist, the shirt making a slight sucking sound as she pulled it away from her skin. She glanced down the dim hall, lightning flashing in the room's single window, thunder shaking the floor and rattling a picture hanging on the wall near the door. “You saw the way those men were staring at me.”

“Can't say as I blame 'em.” The Trailsman peeled the girl's hand off his arm and started down the hall. “I'll be back as soon as I've tended my horse and grabbed a bottle.”

“Mr. Fargo?” she said, her voice trembling.

With a sigh, he turned back to her once more.

She moved toward him, placed her hands on his arms as she stared up with beseeching eyes, digging her fingers into his biceps. “I'm frightened. I know it's not proper but…will you stay with me tonight? In…my room, I mean.”

Fargo grinned down at her.

She frowned indignantly, dropped her hands, and put a little steel into her quivering voice. “You can stop smiling. I am certainly not inviting you into my bed, sir!”

Fargo wrapped his arms around her waist and drew him to her brusquely. She gasped as he lowered his head and closed his mouth over hers. At first, she was as stiff as a fence post in his arms, but in seconds she began to soften. He probed her upper lip with his tongue, slipped it inside her mouth. Immediately, as though catching herself, she gave an angry grunt, placed her hands against his chest, and pushed away from him.

Her chest heaving, she scowled up at him, and slapped him hard across the face.

He smiled, drew her to him once more. Again she gasped as he pressed his lips to hers. This time, she didn't fight him.

When he pulled away, she stared up at him, her eyes soft, lips parted, the clinging shirt outlining each full breast clearly as she threw her shoulders back, the beautiful orbs rising and falling like barrels on a storm-tossed sea.

“We'll discuss the sleeping arrangements later,” Fargo said. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll see to my horse.”

As he stepped back away from her, she stumbled toward him, regained her balance, and stared up at him, wide green eyes like two glowing agates in the shadows. His pants feeling frustratingly tight, Fargo tipped his soggy hat to her, turned away, and tramped off down the hall. He could feel the girl's eyes branding his back until he turned and descended the stairs, boots clomping on the scarred cottonwood planks, spurs chinging, the storm booming around him, rain pelting the roof.

The room hushed as Fargo crossed the main hall toward the bar, heads turning to stare at him from the smoky shadows. The air was so thick with the smell of leather, cigarette and wood smoke, and the spicy aromas of the bear kidney stew that there seemed hardly any oxygen.

Smiley stood at the bar, laying out a game of solitaire, a half-filled beer mug near his left arm. He looked up as the Trailsman approached.

“I'm heating water for the girl's bath. You look like you could use a drink.”

“Whiskey,” Fargo said. “Give me the stuff without the snake venom.”

“Shit,” Smiley chuckled, reaching under the bar and setting a brown bottle onto the planks. “It's
all
snake venom, Skye. You been through here enough times to know that!”

The oldster grabbed a shot glass off a nearby pyramid, popped the bottle's cork, and splashed the murky brown fluid into the glass. “Where did you find little miss, if you don't mind me askin'. I been in these parts long enough to know she didn't come from any of the settlements around here.”

“Major Howard's daughter.” The Trailsman sipped the whiskey. It did indeed taste like snake venom with two parts gunpowder to one part coal oil and a whole lot of chili pepper. When it had scraped about all the skin from his throat it was going to, he held the glass up to look at it. “I and about nine soldiers were takin' her to Fort Clark when Blackfeet attacked. Wiped out the whole party except me and her.”

“The Blackfeet been on the prod of late.”

Fargo glanced up at the old man leaning toward him on his elbows. “Them and the Assiniboine?”

“Sure as smelly water in a whore's boudoir.” Smiley pronounced that last “boydee-are.” He shook his grizzled head and took a swig of beer. “You'd swear they all be usin' prickly pears to wipe their asses. They took out three cabins just north of here, a ranch out west, and a tradin' post up on the south fork of Misery Creek.”

He nodded at the two burly, buckskin-clad men playing poker in front of the fire, both with fat stogies wedged in their mouths. “The mule skinners said a howlin' group of the red-niggers done burned one of them new settlements on the Cannonball!”

Fargo didn't like the debris floating around inside his whiskey glass, but he'd tasted worse and it was tempering the chill in his bones. “They leave you alone?”