Badlands Bloodsport

“Leached it with ashes?” Blackford repeated dubiously.

“’At’s right, Your Percyship. Ashes from a tanner’s furnace.”

But Skeets had already tied in to his hoecake and pronounced it “smashing.” Soon even Aldritch was complimenting the cook. Fargo, however, brought the mood down with his announcement that he was collecting all the canteens and water flasks.

“It’ll be poured into one vessel,” he said. “I’ll say when it’s time to drink, and everybody will get the same amount. I’m hoping there’s water ahead, but if not, only strict rationing will see us through.”

The women accepted this with stoic patience. Blackford and Aldritch complained but turned over their canteens, as did a scowling Skeets. Derek the Terrible, however, refused. “I’ll bloody well drink when I want to, Fargo. You act like you’re ten inches taller than God.”

Quicker than eyesight Fargo’s walnut-grip Colt appeared in his right hand. Everyone clearly heard it when he thumbed back the hammer to full cock. “All right, hangman, have a drink.”

Derek’s face twisted into a mask of hatred. “Any bloke can act rough with a gun in his paw. Care to try knocking me about with your fists?”

“Oh, we’ll hug, bully boy, assuming we live long enough. But we have women to escort safely to Fort Laramie first. You’ll be getting plenty of fight soon enough.”

Derek sneered. “A bit of the old gallantry, eh, to paper over the yellow?”

However, he tossed Fargo his canteen.

“Derek,” Slappy said, “you just turned your tongue into a shovel when you called Fargo a coward. That tongue just buried you.”

“To quote a quaint frontier phrase: He’s all gurgle and no guts. I’ll pound him to paste.”

“Uh-huh, course you will, John Bull.”

“Stow the chin-wag,” Fargo snapped. “You stags can clash later. Right now let’s raise dust.”

Skeets again dropped back as rear guard while Slappy drove the fancy coach and Derek the mud wagon with Montoya driving the fodder wagon and the horses on a lead line from the tailgate. Moon-wash was generous and the stars like brilliant points of fire. But the caravan was held to a slow pace by the profusion of rocks strewn across the flat, cracked earth. If even one iron tire was wrenched loose from a wheel, they’d be laid up for hours repairing it.

Fargo scouted ahead, as usual, but spent most of his time rolling rocks and boulders out of the little-used army supply trail he himself had established years earlier. He was relieved when he failed to find any sign that the Lakota Sioux had been in this region recently. If they were sticking to the Black Hills, that might be one less tribe to contend with.

“Fargo,” Aldritch called out a window when Fargo dropped back to check with Skeets, “how can you be so certain the Cheyenne will be coming after us? It’s been more than a day now and we haven’t been molested.”

“On the frontier, Mr. Aldritch, you have to go by experience, not what’s ‘certain.’ No creature is more notional than an Indian, and might be you’re right—they won’t attack us. But I wouldn’t bet a plugged peso on that, and if I won’t bet a peso, I sure’s hell won’t bet the lives of the women.”

“There’s his ‘gallantry’ again,” Derek called derisively from the box of the mud wagon. “It’s all a blasted show to impress the ladies.”

Rebecca poked her pretty head out of a window and looked back at Derek. “And it’s working, too.”

“Yes, you’ve all gone loopy over him. I don’t doubt you’ll cry for him when I clout him sick and silly.”

“Mr. Fargo,” Ericka said, “won’t you please ride closer? Right snug next to our coach? Rebecca and I wish to verify something Jessica said.”

Fargo touched his hat and edged the Ovaro close to the japanned coach. Both women reached out and felt his upper right arm.

“My stars!” Rebecca exclaimed. “Muscles hard as rock!”

“Muscles,” Aldritch repeated in his special Fargo tone. “The badge of the laboring classes. You won’t find a true gentleman sporting muscles.”

“Then certainly you are a true gentleman,” Rebecca shot back, still feeling Fargo’s arm.

“I say,” Lord Blackford spoke up, “must you two pet Fargo as if he were a lapdog? This is unseemly in women of the better class.”

“Oh, forgive me, Percival,” Ericka said with exaggerated innocence, causing Slappy sputtering fits of mirth. “I did not mean to stain your family escutcheon.”

Fargo didn’t know that last word, and he didn’t wait around for a definition. The outline of Elephant Butte was rolling into view, and he crossed his fingers as he rode forward to check for water.

He veered off the narrow trail and threaded his way through a maze of boulders, letting the Ovaro set his own pace and course. At the base of the huge butte, he relied on a mind map to steer him toward a niche in the rock, and there it was—a small seep spring bubbling up from an underground aquifer.

One huge weight, at least, was lifted from Fargo’s chest. But he suspected that at dawn tomorrow the fighting Cheyennes would attack out of the rising sun, and their faces would be streaked in black—the color of death.

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