Badlands Bloodsport

A profound void filled the lodge after River of Winds fell silent. Yellow Bear took a coyote-fur pouch from behind his blanket. It was filled with sixty agates—thirty white and thirty black.

“We will vote,” he said. “Now the stones will speak for us.”

The pouch was passed from man to man, each brave hiding his stone. When it was returned to Yellow Bear, he spilled the thirty remaining stones onto the buffalo robe he sat upon.

“Thirty black stones,” he announced. “The tribe has spoken with one voice. A war party will ride out immediately.”

He looked at Touch the Clouds. “Pick twenty of our best fighters. Make sure each man takes three good horses from his string, and pick three men good at handling horses to take charge of them. May the Day Maker ride with you.”

“I have ears, Father. But what of Son of Light?”

Yellow Bear did not hesitate. “You will have no choice. If he has decided to guide these whites, stupid or not, his sense of honor will make him protect them. That was his foolish choice, not ours. All of them must be killed, Son of Light among them. And killing him will be the hardest thing you have ever done.”

8

By late afternoon on the day after Skeets took his foolish, fatal shot, Fargo was convinced the Cheyenne warriors were not yet on their trail. He called a two-hour halt to rest before the long night’s journey. “Sleep” was out of the question for everyone except Slappy, who crawled under the japanned coach and immediately commenced to snoring.

“Is that the sound of a sawmill or a boar in rut?” Montoya asked Fargo. The wind was cold, the sun bright, and the two men were resting with their heads on their saddles in the scant shade of an eroded mesa.

“Slappy hates to worry,” Fargo replied. “So when there’s trouble afoot, he falls right to sleep. I say let a man go the gait he chooses. Not a bad idea when you con it over.”

“Perhaps, but how many men can do it?”

“Not many,” Fargo agreed. “And a good thing, too, or who’d be awake when the fandango comes?”

“On this delightful subject of trouble—the water cask for the horses is bone dry.”

Fargo adjusted his hat over his eyes. The wind suddenly shrieked and he shivered. A nighttime snowstorm was not out of the question.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “And drinking water is down to short rations. Derek and Skeets been guzzling out of their canteens, and the women are lighting into me on account they want a bath. These high fellows make for piss-poor pioneers.”

Montoya’s voice turned sly. “As you say. But Rebecca and Ericka have been asking Jessica about your little walk into the sand hills. You know how it is with women—they pretend to such modesty around men, but among themselves—ay, caramba!”

Fargo’s lips eased into a grin. “God love ’em.”

“Why? He has you for that.”

After a pause Montoya’s tone turned serious again. “You said there is water in the Badlands?”

“That’s not carved in stone, old son. I know a place up ahead called Elephant Butte on army maps. Three years back, I found good water there. But this summer has dried the Badlands to jerky, and I ain’t certain it’s there.”

Montoya mulled that over in silence. Then: “And if it is not?”

“I figure we’re at least four days from Fort Laramie. Maybe longer. I went without water once for three days, and it damn near killed me. We’re going to be under steady attack from Cheyennes, and without water . . .”

Fargo didn’t bother to elaborate. Nor did he mention that he had survived only because he forced himself to drink his own piss—something he couldn’t see the Quality doing, especially the women.

“What you are saying,” Montoya suggested, “is that we—all of us here—will look like those settlers back in that rotting wagon.”

“Except that all of our parts won’t be in one place. Cheyennes like to hack off legs and gouge out eyes—they believe vanquished enemies will enter the afterlife with all their mutilations.”

“Does Slappy know all this?”

“Sure he does. He was a fair-to-middling Indian fighter in his day.”

“And still he is asleep? Fargo, I confess I am a coward. I will not sleep, and I will turn my gun loose on myself before I submit to such—how you say?—barbarism.”

“That’s not cowardly,” Fargo disagreed. “But it’s not smart to think about it. I’ve seen soldiers so scared of being captured by redskins that they shot themselves right when the feather-heads were retreating. You should always expect to win, Montoya.”

Sometime while Fargo was fitfully dozing, Slappy stirred his stumps and rustled up a meal. “Grub pile!” he shouted, his gravelly voice eliciting several curses.

“Folks, for you as expects oysters and ice cream, the chuck ain’t so fancy as it was when we commenced this trip,” he announced when everyone had gathered. “I’d give a fist-sized nugget for that frosted cake I made in New Mex. I’ve got out of meal and salt and them airtights of peaches and tomatoes. But I bought a burlap bag of roasted corn in Santa Fe, then leached it with ashes into hominy. I pounded that into johnnycake meal.”