Badlands Bloodsport

“I see. Breathe, relax, aim, slack, squeeze. Jolly good, Fargo. I shall endeavor my utmost.”

Fargo grunted. “If that means you’ll do your best, that’s all I can ask.”

The Trailsman dropped back to check with Slappy. “How they hangin’, old roadster?”

“Fargo, both these teams is drag-footed. They’re ’bout a cunt hair away from foundering.”

“Mr. Hollister!” Lady Blackford’s voice objected from inside the mud wagon. “I thought you promised to ‘launder your talk’ around the ladies?”

“God dawg, pardon me all to perdition, ma’am. I was baptized, but the water must not a’ been hot ’nough on account it didn’t take. “

Fargo lowered his voice. “It won’t be long before all the horses get a rest. We’ll be forting up at sunrise, and that’s as far as we’re going. With luck we’ll survive their first attack and make them fade back before the second.”

“Uh-huh. And when them red lubbers jump us the second time, we’ll be down to three six-shooters, some prissy muff guns, and them fuc—I mean, all them rocks we gathered up.”

“That’s not holy writ,” Fargo replied. “Sometimes it’s best to quarter the wind than to charge right into it.”

“Happens you got a plan, long shanks, why keep it dark from me?”

“Because you’re ugly as a mud fence,” Fargo replied in a cheerful voice.

“What in tarnal blazes does that have to do with it?”

“Not a damn thing,” Fargo admitted as he gigged the Ovaro back toward the fodder wagon. “Well, Jessica, is your passenger giving you any trouble?”

“Mum’s the word, Skye. But he’s much heavier than Lord Blackford and a frightful burden to the horses. They won’t even pick up their heads anymore, and you can hear how terrible their breathing sounds—much like a leaky bellows.”

“It’s no way to treat horses,” Fargo said. “If we could have exerted them in broken doses, they’d be in good shape. Usually my stallion has a belly full of bedsprings, but right now he’s got no bottom left. But we got no choice—we need to get as close to Fort Laramie as possible.”

“But you said they may very well not see your mirror signals, so how could they help us?”

Fargo leaned low from the saddle and checked the knots binding Derek. “Even if they see the signals, I doubt that they could form up and reach us in time. But these horses are already stale and will founder, and if we manage to survive the Indian attacks, we’ll all have to hoof it—at least thirty miles—to safety. Without water. That’s why we need to be as close as we can get if we want to wriggle off the hook.”

Jessica sighed audibly. “In England, the American West has become a great fairy tale filled with noble red men and great, shaggy buffaloes. Everyone is keen to see it. And now we may all die here, mightn’t we?”

“It’s do or die,” Fargo admitted, “so let’s all just make sure we do.”

20

When the day’s new sun made its first salmon-pink streaks on the eastern horizon, Fargo called out, “All right, folks, this is as far as we go.”

His breath ghosting in the crisp air, Fargo instructed Ericka and Rebecca to light down from the mud wagon.

“Jessica, set your brake and hop down. Slappy, after we unhitch and hobble all the horses, bring the mud wagon around so the rear end is nosed up against the back of the fodder wagon. It’s poor shakes, but that’ll have to be our breastworks.”

“What about the hangman?”

“Just leave him where he is. The feather-heads will never see him from the distance I plan to keep them.”

“Well, hell, so long as he’s protected,” Slappy said sarcastically. “Fargo, you beat all. Why’ncha just powder his butt and tuck him in?”

“I already told you my plans for him. Just do what I told you and stow the guff.”

After the horses were unhitched and bunched tightly behind the two conveyances—a precaution that Fargo knew would be useless if the Cheyennes went into a circular attack on these open plains—he took Blackford and Slappy aside.

“I did have you gather all those rocks in case we need to use them as weapons,” he admitted. “But mainly it’s on account of the women. These braves know all about them and by now they don’t give a tinker’s damn about taking prisoners—they’ll just want to kill them and take those female trophy scalps. So after we get all three of them under the mud wagon, we’re going to wall up the opening between the ground and the bottom of the wagon with rocks.”

“That’s using your think-piece.” Slappy approved. “A Cheyenne brave can thread an arrow between the bark and the sap.”

The men piled the weapons—two Big Fifties, the German hunting rifle, the shotgun—under the fodder wagon. Blackford’s fancy scoped rifle was useless, for he had broken the firing pin from too much dry-firing.

Fargo checked the slant of the sun. It was well above the horizon now, and time was wasting. He took a cheap mirror out of one of his saddle pockets.

“Ladies, which one of you has the biggest mirror?” he inquired.

Rebecca reached into the mud wagon and produced a fancy mirror set in tortoiseshell. “But what good is it, Skye? The sun is well behind us and the fort is in front of us.”