Badlands Bloodsport

Fargo expelled a long sigh. Wet-nursing ignorant tenderfoots was no burden—not at the rate he was being paid. But Blackford and his associate, Sylvester Aldritch, were headstrong fools who couldn’t grasp that titles and wealth cut no ice on the American frontier, where Death was democratic. Fargo trained his lake-blue eyes on the smug toff.

“Earl”—Fargo couldn’t bring himself to call any man “my lord”—“you’ve got to see this thing for what it is, not how it’s spun in books. These ain’t the cracker-and-molasses, Christianized Indians you folks saw down in Santa Fe. I’m talking about the Cheyenne Nation, some of the best horse soldiers in the whole damn world. These are no boys to fool with. Maybe they are noble, but they’ll kill you deader than last Christmas.”

Blackford made a deprecatory motion with his hand. “Surely you exaggerate. Why, some coffee and bright baubles—”

Fargo shook his head emphatically. “When the Cheyenne go after buffalo, they’re strictly governed by the ancient Hunt Law. Hunt Law says that all white men carry the stink that drives off the buffalo forever. If they spot palefaces too near a hunt, they’re bound to kill them.”

“By all means, Lord Blackford,” spoke up a refined and sarcastic voice behind Fargo, “best to attend to our sturdy western type. They say the number of savages he has slain rivals the number of women he has bedded.”

Fargo glanced toward the camp and saw Sylvester Aldritch ambling toward them, a tall, balding, muttonchopped man perhaps ten years younger than Blackford. The wealthy merchant from Dover wore a monocle, carried a crop, and had fleshy lips that were constantly pursed in an ironic smile when he spoke to, or of, Skye Fargo.

“Why, just gaze on this rugged face and manly physique,” Aldritch said as he drew up beside them. “True, he’s never read Milton or Diderot, but what’s that to the matter? Why, he towers over six feet in height, he’s broad in the shoulders, narrow in the hips, clad in fringed buckskins, and hard as sacked salt. Why, man, he’s a crop-bearded god! Every bit the savage stallion his horse is.”

“I say, old bean,” Blackford protested weakly. “That’s laying it on rather thick.”

Aldritch ignored him, enjoying himself immensely. “And observe that quaintly named Arkansas toothpick in his boot. It has eviscerated many a fearsome foe—or so one reads. All three women in our party are in grave danger, Lord Blackford, for I’ve seen them all casting inviting smiles at him. Moths to the flame.”

“My wife has done no such thing,” Blackford interposed.

“Say you so? Ericka, too, has read about him in books with lurid covers. From ‘the Rio to the Tetons’ his escapades—romantic and otherwise—are the stuff of pub lore. These fanciful writers assure us that Fargo has spent so much time alone he doesn’t think like the majority. Why, he doesn’t ford rivers, he walks across them! And ever the honorable man.”

Aldritch’s tone especially ridiculed the word “honorable.”

In fact, Fargo was now within his rights if he killed the pompous ass. On the frontier a man’s good friends could insult him, but for a hostile acquaintance to impugn his honor meant that one of them had to die. However, Fargo tended to rile cool, and killing Aldritch would be like killing a woman or a simpleton.

“Are you finished,” Fargo asked him, “or should I get you a stump?”

“Find us a few buffalo, Fargo, there’s a good chap. That is all we ask of your limited intellect. Millions of them roaming the American West, yet the stuff of legends cannot find us even one? I’m forced to conclude that you’ve been deliberately sandbagging on this trip.”

The accusation was in large measure true, and Fargo bore the charge in stoic silence. The buffalo were being slaughtered needlessly in ever-increasing numbers, and Fargo knew he couldn’t stop the folly. Buffalo hiders, rendering outfits, merchant suppliers who took nothing but the tongues from the carcass—delicacies back East when pickled in brine—and “sportsmen” like these would soon send Great Shaggy into mystic chords of memory.

Aldritch opened his fleshy mouth to say something else. But he suddenly fell silent, warned off by Fargo’s hard, cold stare.

Fargo walked off without a word, angling toward a small fire in the center of camp. It was about two by the sun, and he had ridden out earlier on an empty belly. It was autumn in the Dakota country, one of those days when it was warm enough until a breeze blew. There was frost on his blanket roll when he turned out at dawn, and the howling blizzards and crusted snow were not far off.

“Saved some stew for you, long shanks,” the cook, Slappy Hollister, greeted him. He wore a slouched beaver hat, and his grizzled beard showed more salt than pepper. “That is, if you got any stomach for it after jawin’ with them high-toned crumpet nibblers. That son of a bitch Aldritch . . . quicksand would spit him back up. I don’t know how you can take his guff. And Blackford, that soft-handed pus gut. Kiss my hairy white ass, m’lord.”