Badlands Bloodsport

Fargo noticed, with approval, that Montoya and Derek were following orders: Conserve ammo if you can’t shoot for score. Blackford and Aldritch had crawled into the fancy coach and were huddling on the floor. Right now it was mostly Skeets—with Fargo tossing off a shot now and then—who was holding the braves at bay.

But the Cheyenne braves had figured this out, too. They were making it hot for the paleface marksman atop the coach, blurring the air around him with deadly arrows. He was forced to cower down.

Fargo, hunched behind an offside corner of the mud wagon, atop which Derek was hunkered, had fought Plains warriors enough to suspect something was coming. An arrow zipped past his right cheek so close that the crow feather burned him.

“Bloody Christ, Fargo!” Derek yelled down. “I’m about to be skewered up here!”

“Work some resin into your spine!” Fargo snapped. “You think you can traipse around the West, aggravating dangerous Indians, and not pay a price? This is just the opening hand, old son. Now look sharp—I think they’re about to make a move.”

Fargo’s instincts were right. With Skeets forced to cover down, Touch the Clouds broke from the circle and rushed the camp on his buckskin. He brandished nothing but his flat coup stick.

“Everybody hold your powder!” Fargo bellowed. “This is the heap-big subchief!”

Expecting to be fired on, Touch the Clouds went into the riding position perfected by the Cheyenne tribe: Keeping only one leg slung over the mustang’s back, he slid most of his body down, hanging on only to a fistful of mane.

Fargo stood his ground, knowing what was coming. Touch the Clouds thundered closer to him, sliding back up onto his horse only at the last moment. Fargo felt a hard whack when the stick landed across his shoulders. Thus the war leader had successfully counted coup—touching an enemy without killing him. Plains Indians regarded this as the highest form of bravery.

But Fargo also knew, as the yipping brave escaped, that the gesture meant Touch the Clouds would kill him next time.

“What in bleeding Christ,” Derek shouted, “was that all about?”

“Never mind,” Fargo said, ducking a flurry of arrows. “Skeets can’t raise his head. Let’s see if we can drop a couple more horses and send these sunburned raiders packing.”

Fargo took up a kneeling-offhand position, tossed the Henry into his shoulder socket, and felt it kick when he fired. He tagged a mustang, all right, a splashy claybank marked like the Ovaro. But this time Fargo drew a deuce—the rider flew somersaulting forward and appeared to break his neck on impact.

Derek’s Sharps barked and he missed, but Fargo’s last shot had ended the Indian attack for that day. The tribe already had four men riding double and a dead or wounded brave to haul off. Touch the Clouds blew a shrill eagle-bone whistle and the rest faded quickly to the west.

“Slappy!” Fargo called out. “Anybody under the coach hit?”

“Naw! But these gals ain’t lookin’ too chirpy!”

“Skeets!”

“An arrow nicked my left arm, but my coat took most of it.”

“Montoya!”

“I escaped, but two horses are wounded.”

“Think we can doctor ’em up?” Fargo asked, watching Slappy help the shaken women out from under the coach.

“I have patched worse,” the former liveryman assured him.

Fargo tossed open a door of the fancy coach. Aldritch and Blackford were still cowering, faces white as new linen. “Are the bleeders gone?” Blackford demanded in a quivering voice.

Fargo shook his head in disgust. “Yeah, you two bravos can come out now.”

“We survived it, Sylvester,” Blackford gloated as he struggled up from the floor, stiff kneecaps popping. “Fargo painted it black indeed, but we withstood it. We can now return to England as heroes—we survived an attack by wild Indians! I am going to prepare a lecture for Professor Moore’s lyceum.”

Montoya and Slappy stood near Fargo. All three men exchanged incredulous looks. It was just Blackford’s usual line of blather, but coming at this time it seemed incredible beyond belief.

“Earl,” Fargo said, “what is wrong with you and what doctor told you so? This today was no real attack. It was just the opening bid in a long game to come. Those braves were just probing us, finding out about our manpower, firepower, and such. So you’re going back to England a hero, huh? Fine and dandy, but you got mighty slim odds of ever returning to England at all, and that’s a hard-cash fact.”

5

The odd little caravan wended its way slowly across the Great Plains, guided by Fargo and the generous, silvery light of a full moon in a star-shot dome of sky. Fargo always tried to avoid nighttime travel, for it was too easy for a horse to break its ankle in a gopher hole or injure a hoof on a jagged rock. But if he had to ride at night, let it be the plains, where a man could look farther and see less of anything but land and sky.