Badlands Bloodsport

Jessica finally showed up, and Fargo knew what was coming. The woman who had solemnly declared she was not “demonstrative” had been recklessly loud and didn’t realize how far sound carried on the plains. Now she noticed that every man in the party was staring at her. Some, like Slappy and Skeets, were grinning wickedly. Others, like Derek the Terrible and Aldritch, stared with open malevolence and jealousy.

“Tell me, Montoya,” Slappy said with feigned innocence, “have you rubbed any pearls lately?”

Jessica blushed to her hair roots while the other two women turned modestly away—both smiling. Montoya, who was too polite and reserved to embarrass a woman, stayed silent. But Skeets pitched in.

“Ebenezer, that last meal you cooked was first-rate, eh? Why, I’ve never been filled up like this.”

Jessica gave a little cry of mortified distress and, catching up her skirts, hurried toward the mud wagon.

“I say, Skeets,” Lord Blackford said in a tone of mild disapproval.

However, Ericka and Rebecca both turned to watch Fargo with speculative eyes for a few moments before returning to the coach.

7

The collective mood of Fargo’s charges grew somber and awed as the odd caravan edged into the startling terrain of the Badlands. Basalt turrets thrust up as high as several hundred feet, surrounded by mesas so badly eroded they appeared to have been half devoured by some starving giant. The ground they crossed was barren and badly cracked from the summer sun.

Fargo knew they had lost the defensive edge provided by the wide-open plains. Although he had not spotted smoke signals or mirror flashes being sent between the Sioux and the Cheyenne, that didn’t mean the Sioux hadn’t spotted them on their own. And with countless ridges in the Badlands, an ambush would be easier than rolling off a log.

Montoya must have been thinking along the same lines. When Fargo rode back from a forward scout, Montoya hailed him from the board seat of the fodder wagon.

“Fargo, which would be worse—to be taken by Sioux or Cheyennes?”

“Hell, you know both tribes are death to the Devil. But the Black Hills are close by, and the Sioux are fit to be tied over the army’s failure to drive white prospectors out.”

Montoya nodded. “Yes, and the Cheyennes have a more personal grudge with us. It will go hard either way, verdad?”

“The way you say.”

Fargo had decided to keep a rear guard out now, and he could see Skeets on his big sorrel about three hundred yards back. Slappy, not too happy about it, was driving the “Quality coach” as he sarcastically termed it. But Derek the Terrible was the man Fargo kept a wary eye on. Ever since Fargo and Jessica had taken their little walk, there was a homicidal cast to his big, blunt face.

Fargo watched the low, gliding swoop of an eagle, wondering what prey it could be hunting in this desolate waste. At one time deer, antelope, wild turkey, and smaller game had crisscrossed the Badlands—Fargo had found their petrified footprints. But most of the water had mysteriously dried up, and now even the familiar buzzards wheeling in the sky were rarely spotted.

“Fargo!” Slappy called out, and the Trailsman gigged his stallion forward. Slappy pointed to a little side canyon. Fargo saw the crumbling remains of a canvas-covered bone shaker, the boards weathered a deep gray and the canvas reduced to rag tatters.

Fargo dismounted and tossed the reins forward, walking closer. He felt the hair on his nape stiffen when he spotted the four skeletons in the bed of the wagon, two adults and two children, both little girls in the scant remains of pinafores. Every last bit of flesh had either rotted away or been picked clean by carrion birds.

He heard the scrape of footsteps as the rest joined him.

Ericka, bravely making herself look, asked, “Why are they here, Mr. Fargo? This is not part of a settlement trail, is it?”

Fargo expelled a long sigh, his eyes misting slightly at the sight of the smaller skeletons. “Tell you the truth, Lady Blackford, I doubt if they intended to be here at all. There’s scoundrels all over the West selling phony maps promising ‘shortcuts.’ They show rivers and lakes and grass where there’s only wasteland. Too many of these pilgrims don’t study up before they head out.”

Some of these fledgling Americans, Fargo knew, had got an idea fixed in their minds, an idea that had quickly become the national dream: that somewhere out West there was a piece of earth that meant personal fulfillment. Some were finding it, and others were ending up like this.

“This could be us,” Rebecca suddenly said, as if just realizing the danger they faced. “Mr. Fargo, is it true that wild Indians value female scalps more because of their longer hair?”

Fargo reluctantly nodded. He could have been gallant and lied, but for their own sake these women needed to square with the harsh facts.