Badlands Bloodsport

He aimed carefully, slowly squeezed the trigger, and felt the Henry buck hard into his shoulder. He knew his calculations had been sound when he heard the prolonged, high-pitched whine as the bullet caromed from boulder to boulder. To the braves hidden there, it must have sounded like a hail of lead opening up on them. A few moments later he heard the sound of two mustangs escaping down the back of the ridge.

“Jolly well done, Fargo!” Blackford called out as he escaped from the corpse inside, showing no gallantry to the ladies.

Rebecca and Ericka came out more slowly, their faces white as gypsum. The front of Ericka’s velvet traveling dress was sopping with blood.

“Poor Aldritch,” Blackford said. “But you warned him, Fargo.”

“Aye, he warned him,” Derek spat out with contempt. “P’r’aps two heartbeats before that arrow doused his wick. Hell, an alley mutt might have barked sooner.”

“I didn’t hear you bark,” Jessica countered. “Nor shout. You were up on the high seat.”

“You’ll all bark—in hell—before I do one blasted thing for any of you,” Derek declared. “His whore would take his side, now, wouldn’t she?”

“Mr. Fargo didn’t start this battle with the Indians,” Ericka declared, “and he’s the only one among us who knows what he’s doing. If the rest of us are to survive, we will follow his orders—Sylvester proves that.”

“Hear, hear,” Blackford said.

Fargo raised one hand to stop the bickering. “Save it for your memoirs, folks. I just got one question: Can we skip the grave this time? Time is pushing, and we’re down to scant rations—we don’t need the exertion. I say we just toss the body out and get moving. The world belongs to the living.”

Not even Derek opposed this idea. Sylvester Aldritch, Dover merchant, social climber, and enticer of young girls, was stripped of his valuables and unceremoniously pitched to the side of the trail, where he would soon lie frozen until the spring thaw and the arrival of hungry buzzards.

 * * * 

Fargo estimated they still had one hour before leaving the Badlands and emerging onto the open plains. The slate-colored sky began to clear, showing streaks of purple-blue, but the westering sun was still not bright enough to make mirror signals.

He dropped back to ride alongside the mud wagon, the butt-plate of his Henry resting along the top of his thigh.

“See anything?” Slappy asked him.

Fargo shook his head. “With the lead we had on them, there’s a good chance we won’t be jumped the moment we hit the plains. Even so, the attack will come soon. I just hope they don’t reach us before sundown. We can push all night while they huddle in camp—they’ll lose more time catching up to us again.”

“A’course, but these horses is dang near played out, Fargo. They ain’t tanked up on water in days, and these dribs and drabs from our hats is poor fixin’s. Hell, even your stallion is stutter-steppin’.”

Fargo’s face set itself like granite. “Tough shit. They’re just horses, even mine. If we have to kill ’em, so be it. A horse is a tool like any other, and we got a job to do, old roadster.”

Slappy nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s the way of it. It makes me ireful, Skye, to think how two stupid, green-antlered galoots put us in this sling by killing that Cheyenne herd spy. They stepped in it, and now the rest of us got to wipe it off.”

Fargo only nodded absently, for he took a longer view of it. He had learned long ago that life out West meant being a soldier—disciplined, courageous, at times even reckless and crazy-brave. Fools like Skeets and Derek were as common as cheatgrass and would always be around to muck things up. By Fargo’s view of it, any man who demands to live free must also expect to fight for the right to do so, and not just once but over and over, for the enemies of freedom were legion.

“And you take Baldritch and His Percyship,” Slappy grumbled on. “Matter fact, take all four of them tea-sippin’ men—not oncet did I ever see any of them sons a’ bitches takin’ a moment to glom the sights, not even the New Mexico Rockies. They just wanted to kill a couple buff so’s they could brag back in England what big hunters they was. Yessir, it makes me ireful.”

“Yeah, but they got the excuse that they’re foreigners. There’s a million men worse back in the States. All the West is to them is a profit ledger. They’re already taking off the timber, destroying the Sierra with their giant dictator hoses, and claiming railroad right-of-way across open land. Fences and factories, mines and sawmills, that’s their plan for the West. Even the damn squatters claim every raccoon that craps on their back forty. The shining times are damn near over, Slappy.”

“Uh-huh. But I have to admit, Fargo—right about now I wish all that cussed syphillization was here in the Badlands. Then none of us would be in danger of no Indian haircut.”

A brief seam of smile cracked Fargo’s tired, grimy face. “I’ll have to give you that. One steam whistle would send those Cheyenne braves packing with their tails twixt their legs.”