Badlands Bloodsport

“As you say. I would know a thing—why are you watching the herd?”

Fargo guessed that Touch the Clouds did not yet know about the two reckless intruders about to bring down hell on the Great Plains. Lying was a grave sin to a Cheyenne, so Fargo chose his words carefully. “I want to make sure that no white men are nearby.”

Touch the Clouds lowered his rifle and scowled. “You are nearby. Are there more yellow eyes with you?”

The first white men the Cheyenne had ever seen were mountain men with bad jaundice—yellow eyes.

“There could be,” Fargo hedged. “I am being paid to scout for some hunters from the Land of the Grandmother Queen. But secretly I have steered them away from the buffalo so far. Now they are impatient.”

“Impatient to die a hard death? Do you know our Hunt Law?”

Fargo nodded, his face now clammy with sweat. Those two beef eaters could squeeze off at any time now, and the third shot would be a .33-caliber ball punching into Fargo’s lights.

“You have stayed downwind,” the Cheyenne said, “and you are not close enough for your stink to ruin the hunt. Therefore I have no cause to kill you. But place my words in your sash that you may examine them later—any white hunters caught near our herds will watch us feed their own guts to our dogs.”

He paused, eyes as hard and black as obsidian boring into Fargo. “These hunters you speak of—to them, killing Uncle Pte is merely a child’s game. For us, however, the buffalo is everything: food, shelter, clothing. Its sinews give us thread, its bones our awls. If Uncle Pte smells the white man’s stink, he may never return to this range. Have ears for these words: Ride away now, Son of Light, and stay away.”

Touch the Clouds emphasized his point by pointing his rifle due south, the direction from which Fargo had ridden. At the moment Fargo had no intention to do otherwise. Those two British thugs could spark their powder at any moment, and Fargo wanted to be on a fast horse riding hell-for-leather when they did.

But they didn’t. Fargo listened, the Ovaro eating up the landscape at a long lope, but there was no powerful concussion from a Big Fifty. Maybe they had changed their minds or—Fargo perked up at the thought—maybe the Cheyenne had closed a net around them.

With a brass-colored sun setting in the west, Fargo opened his stallion out to a gallop.

 * * * 

Derek and Skeets had still not returned by the time Fargo rode into camp. Day was bleeding into night, and soon the full moon would be bright enough to make shadows. As usual, the Quality, as Slappy sarcastically called the Blackfords, Rebecca, and Sylvester Aldritch, were playing cards and having tea in the largest tent.

Slappy had built up a good fire to ward off the evening chill. Fargo moved close enough to feel the heat as he stripped the leather from the Ovaro and began rubbing him down.

“What’s the grift?” Slappy demanded as he poured Fargo a can of coffee.

“It’s a damn mare’s nest,” Fargo replied. “I’d say we’re all about two shakes away from an Indian haircut.”

He explained the scene with Derek and Skeets, then the ominous encounter with Touch the Clouds.

“He cut me some slack this time,” Fargo said, “but if a paleface butts in one more time, we’ll all be crossing the River Jordan. I don’t know what the hell those two louts are up to—with luck the Cheyenne are using their teeth for dice by now. But one thing is certain sure: If we don’t haze this bunch of fools out of here, they’ll be trying to get at that herd.”

Carlos Montoya turned up the collar of his sheepskin coat and shook his head in discouragement. “They will leave only at gunpoint. Blackford and Aldritch want to kill a buffalo with a desire like hell thirst. Fargo, they think you have made up this Hunt Law matter to stop them because you do not like the English.”

“These English women are right out of the top drawer,” Fargo replied. “All three of them. But these four men ain’t worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell.”

Slappy glanced carefully around. “What I say, this ain’t no time to be lally-gaggin’ around here. What if them two cockchafers was caught by a buncha pissed-off bucks? Them red sons will hie after the main gather, too, and that means us. I say we just grab leather and leave these tea-sippin’ fools right here.”

Montoya’s deep-creased face looked shocked in the sawing flames. “And just abandon the women? Even an Apache is not that cruel.”

“Yeah, I forgot. Hell, Fargo ain’t even tapped into that stuff yet.”

Slappy reached into a pile of wood and pulled out a corked bottle. “Time for a spot of the giant killer, boys.”

He took a sweeping-deep slug, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and belched. “That’s the boy you don’t wanna give the slip to.”

He handed it to Fargo, who knocked back a jolt and felt the cheap liquor fire up a boiler in his stomach. He handed it to Montoya, who took a fastidious sip.

“H’ar, now!” Slappy disapproved. “Sancho, when it comes to drinkin’ whiskey, it’s better to go down hard than to hedge.”