Badlands Bloodsport

“Bad? Sweetheart, brackish water is bad. Weevils in your hardtack are bad. This could spell the worst hurt in the world—the massacre of every one of us.”

2

Fargo, moving with piston precision, tacked the Ovaro and swung up onto the hurricane deck. He reined around toward the camp circle and spoke to Slappy and Montoya from the saddle.

“Get ready for a set-to, boys. There’s Cheyenne hunters just north of us, and they’re under Hunt Law. If these two thick-skulled limeys find that herd and fire on it, they could lead the braves right back to our camp.”

“Christ on a crutch!” Slappy swore, for he was well acquainted with Plains warriors and their strict codes.

“Make the circle tighter,” Fargo directed, “and bunch the horses in tight as you can before you hobble ’em. Show the women how to use the guns. If trouble comes, put the females under the coaches, not inside. And, boys . . .”

Fargo glanced around and lowered his voice. “You know the unwritten order for Indian attacks—if it goes bad and all hope is lost, do not let the women be captured.”

With these ominous words, Fargo wheeled the Ovaro and raced to the north.

“I say, Fargo!” Blackford shouted as he passed. “What’s all this ruckus?”

Fargo waved him off and opened his stallion out to a lope, then a gallop. Although the broken and eroded terrain of the Badlands marked the land to his west and south, to the north it was a vast, rolling sea of grass pockmarked with sandy knolls and occasional stands of stunted growth.

He kept up the hard pace, reining back to a trot now and then to breathe the Ovaro. Fargo didn’t bother looking for tracks made by the Brits’ horses—gusting winds scoured the ground, and the time it would take him to cut sign, much less hold their trail, was too costly.

He topped a long ridge, a wind gust almost snatching away his hat, and broke out his army field glass. There was a natural tank straight ahead that had attracted the small herd he spotted yesterday. He focused the glass and soon saw the buffalo grazing in small clumps. He spotted no Cheyennes today but assumed they were out there. For hundreds of years they had perfected the art of sneaking close to Uncle Pte—the buffalo.

Great Shaggy’s eyes were weak, but his sense of smell powerful, so Fargo made sure he remained downwind of the herd. He traversed all of the wide-open terrain before him, desperate to spot Skeets and Derek before they triggered a plains vendetta. Both men were drunkards and he consoled himself with the thought that they might have missed this spot altogether.

But the goose tickle on the back of his neck suggested otherwise. Nervous sweat trickled out from his thick hair, but the wind dried it almost instantly. He swung the field glass to the west and immediately felt his pulse quicken.

A dry lake bed formed a grassy bowl in that direction, and a prominent headland jutted out over it. Two horses were hobbled back from the edge, and standing beside them, sharing a bottle, were Brady “Skeets” Stanton and Derek “the Terrible” Wilder.

Even at this great distance Fargo couldn’t fail to recognize Stanton’s lipless grin and flap holster. And bluff-faced Wilder stood now as he often did in camp—both feet planted wide and his thumbs hooked into his shell belt. Arrogant, domineering, the kind of man who had to geld every man around him. Fargo knew that a hugging match with this former hangman was inevitable—assuming the Cheyenne didn’t kill them both first.

He spotted their buffalo guns—two Sharps Big Fifties with scopes—lying in the grass. The distance from the headland to the herd was at least fifteen hundred yards, an unlikely shot even for a professional hunter. But maybe not for sharpshooter Skeets.

Don’t fire those weapons, Fargo urged them silently. Those big-cracking thunder sticks were loud enough to wake snakes and would scatter the herd to hell an’ gone, ruining the Cheyenne hunt—and if white men were spotted, woe betide any paleface in the region. Once the Cheyenne got blood in their eyes, only the unborn were innocent.

Derek Wilder headed toward his horse, and hope surged in Fargo’s breast—maybe they were giving it up as a bad job. Then Fargo saw the hangman pull a marksman’s bipod from a saddle pocket.

“Pigheaded sons of bitches,” he muttered.

Fargo reined the Ovaro around hard and suddenly felt as if he’d been hit but not quite dropped. A tall Cheyenne brave in a breechclout and a long war bonnet sat his buffalo-hide saddle right behind Fargo, a British trade rifle aimed at the white man.

“You are Son of Light,” he greeted Fargo in heavily accented English. “The brave hair-face named Fargo who saved Navajo children from slave traders. The man who kills red men but does not murder them—or so the old grandmothers sing.”

“And you,” Fargo said after a moment’s thought, “must be Touch the Clouds, the warrior who was taken slave as a child by white fur trappers. I see your coup stick is heavy with eagle-tail feathers.”