Badlands Bloodsport

“Mr. Fargo, I’ve known that human monster for years. I intensely dislike his employer, also, but I must tolerate Aldritch for my husband’s sake. Mr. Fargo, I’ve given this great thought. Derek didn’t murder Skeets simply for revenge.”

Fargo nodded. “I know. He killed him because he’s the best marksman among us. He also plans to kill me and Slappy next, then Aldritch and your husband.”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes, precisely. That leaves him free to rape all three of us women and leave us for the Indians while he escapes on your fine horse. Like most bullies he is an abject coward, and he has no intention of facing any more Indian attacks.”

“You’re as smart as you are pretty and talented.” Fargo flirted, evoking a smile from her. “I take it you’re confused?”

“I am, rather. Clearly you know his plans, so why didn’t you kill him for murdering Skeets?”

“Well, let’s just say he’s more useful to us alive than he is dead. Will that hold you for now?”

She smiled again. “Coming from you, yes.”

As she turned to leave, Fargo thought of something else. “Lady Blackford? Do you really think that your—your—what did you call your sketches? Repre-something?”

“Representational art?”

“There you go. Do you really think it could have a heap big effect on wild Indians who’ve never seen it?”

“Why, yes, undoubtedly. It’s been documented.”

Fargo nodded. “You take good care of your drawings, all right?”

For a moment understanding glimmered in her eyes. Then her jealous husband poked his head out of the coach and bellowed her name.

“It’s pretty thin,” Fargo muttered to himself as he stepped up into leather. “But rocks ain’t much better.”

16

The Blackford party pressed onward against a raw northwest wind that, at times, blurred the air with driving snow. Occasionally the primitive trail would hit open spots where pinnacles, buttes, and mesas did not obstruct the view, and Fargo could see the Great Plains rolling to the horizon like a dark, treeless carpet. He estimated that before sundown they should make their egress from the Dakota Badlands.

Which would hardly, he reminded himself, be a milestone worth celebrating. Yes, they’d be closer to Fort Laramie. But close didn’t matter a hill of beans when overcast skies prevented him from even sending mirror signals to the fort to alert a civilian-rescue detail. Those Cheyenne braves, blood-lusting and hungry for glory, would swoop down on the Blackford party like all wrath, and no man in this ill-fated expedition had more than a pocketful of ammunition with which to fight back.

“We have to survive one more shooting battle,” he told Slappy, speaking in a low voice so those in the coach couldn’t hear. “We’ve thinned them out considerable, but we need to plug a few more. The second attack on the plains will be the last we can survive, but only if we can thin them down in the first.”

Slappy cussed at the team, which was fighting the traces. He was discovering that a four-in-hand conveyance was far more trouble than a simple buckboard.

“I done like you said,” Slappy replied. “I got them fancy foreign rifles from Aldritch and His Percyship and tucked ’em in the fodder wagon with Skeets’s Big Fifty and sidearm. You know, Jessica told me all three of them gals got little muff guns. You want I should take them, too?”

Fargo shook his head. “Rebecca just told me today they all realize what they might have to use them for, and these English gals have got starch in their corsets—they’ll do what they have to if it comes to that.”

“You think it will come to that? Straight-arrow now.”

“Distinct possibility,” Fargo admitted. “But this ain’t no time and place for calamity howlers. It’s no sunny outlook, Slappy, but you’re straight-grain clear through and you got a set on you would shame a stallion. Let’s lay the cards out in the open: Aldritch and Blackford are poncy men and they’ll be as useless as tits on a boar hog. The women all got sand, all right, but they’d be poor shakes with a rifle, and we can’t waste the bullets. Ain’t no way we can wangle out of it: It’s gonna be me and you on those fire sticks.”

Slappy noticed that Fargo was keeping a wary eye on Derek the Terrible.

“What about the hangman?” Slappy asked. “I tried to get his Big Fifty and that fancy pearl-grip Remington, but he told me to ‘bugger off,’ whatever the hell that means.”

“Oh, Derek has been watching for his opportunity,” Fargo replied, his lips forming a grim, determined slit. “But I’m gonna put the kibosh on that right now. I’ve had my stomach full of that conniving, murdering bastard.”

Fargo nudged the Ovaro forward until he was riding alongside the japanned coach. Without a word he reached up and snatched the Sharps rifle from the seat beside Derek.

“You fuggin’ whelp!” Derek snarled, dropping the reins to shuck out his Remington. But Fargo was quicker. He tossed the rifle into his left hand and, quicker than eyesight, filled his right hand with blue steel.