Badlands Bloodsport

At this point, wary by now of the white skins’ deadly thunder sticks, the braves were keeping their distance. All except one brave wearing a bone breastplate and waving a red-streamered lance. Crying “Yii—ee—yah!” over and over, he galloped his claybank in straight from the south.

Slappy could see him from his position. “Is that red son chewin’ peyote? Don’t ’pear to me he means to haul back.”

Fargo jacked one of his few remaining rounds into the chamber of the Henry and threw the rifle into his shoulder socket. “There’s always one firebrand in the group who claims first coup. We’ll see how fired up he is without a mount.”

But the warriors had no intention of leaving Smiling Wolf unprotected. Even as Fargo centered his notch on the claybank’s chest, a flurry of arrows rained in on the defenders, one of them skewering Fargo’s hat and snatching it off his head. Slappy unleashed a string of curses when another arrow raked his left shoulder.

“Happens that arrow point was smeared in pig shit,” he said through grim lips. “I’ll be playing poker in hell before this day is done.”

Fargo, however, remained steady in the traces. He squeezed off a precious round, and the claybank went down in midstride, tumbling hard and sending its rider catapulting. With impressive agility the Cheyenne leaped to his feet and stood his ground, taunting the palefaces.

“Fargo,” Slappy said, rubbing his bleeding shoulder, “you palaver some Cheyenne. What’s that crazy buck saying?”

“He’s asking, do we see him? Do we see how brave he is? Do we see that he is not afraid? He’s telling us to take our best shot. He shits on death.”

“By gad,” Lord Blackford said, “that is courage, what?”

“Likely it’s peyote,” Slappy insisted.

“The earl got it right,” Fargo said. “It’s courage. This will earn him a coup feather.”

Touch the Clouds bravely swooped in on his buckskin and took the warrior up behind him. By now more braves were darting in closer. It wasn’t necessary anymore for Fargo to call the shots, since the warriors were widely scattered, but Fargo stuck to the plan to impose firing discipline.

“Earl!” Fargo called out. “If you’ve got a bead, drop a horse.”

The English nobleman remembered Fargo’s instructions. After sliding a round into the breech, he worked the bolt to chamber it. Fargo heard him draw a deep breath and expel it slowly while he centered the crosshairs. A moment later the German rifle cracked loudly, and Fargo was surprised when the stuffy and staid Lord Blackford actually let out a whoop.

“Smashing! It wasn’t the buffalo I hoped to shoot, but I dropped the horse without hurting the rider. Jolly good show, what?”

“Damn jolly,” Fargo agreed, and even Slappy grunted affirmation.

“Slappy!” Fargo called next. “Got targets?”

“Does a hound have fleas?”

“Drop a horse, old son.”

The Big Fifty spoke its piece, and Fargo only had to glance left to see a coal-black mustang stagger, then collapse. The rider was soon caught up behind another brave. But at a piercing signal from Touch the Clouds’s eagle-bone whistle, another volley of flint-tipped arrows thwacked in. Fargo almost grinned when he heard Derek scream something through his gag. So long as he didn’t bleed out too soon. . . .

Fargo took a chance and squirted out from under the fodder wagon to check the west flank. Several braves were moving in toward the mud wagon. Realizing this called for more drastic action, Fargo dropped to the kneeling-offhand position and shot one of the braves through the chest. The other two wheeled their ponies and fled.

Fargo heard more bowstrings thwap, and that famous “ultimate arrow” of lurid frontier fiction barely missed him as he scrambled back under the fodder wagon.

“Earl,” he called out, “they’re massed to the north. Drop another horse.”

Blackford chambered another round and snicked the bolt home. The precision rifle knocked his right side back a few inches. “I only wounded this one, but its hindquarters are down and its rider has jumped off.”

“That’s four horses out of the fight,” Fargo said. “Slappy, trim your flank.”

The Big Fifty roared again, and Slappy whooped. “Make that five, Trailsman! We’re doin’ the hurt dance on these bucks!”

Fargo’s next shot—his last bullet for the Henry—made it six downed mounts, and that was the tipping point for Touch the Clouds. At a shrill signal from his whistle, the braves—all but Touch the Clouds now riding double—faded back out of range.

“I don’t like this,” Fargo told his companions. “With that many braves riding the rump, they ought to be flat-out retreating so they can make council on a new plan. But they’re all grouping on the north flank.”

“Ain’t like Injins to make a massed attack,” Slappy said.

“That’s rare,” Fargo agreed. After a few moments he cursed sharply. “It’s our horses. They’re going to stay out of rifle range and do an arrow drop.”

“A what?” Blackford said.