Badlands Bloodsport

“I’m a damn fine cook,” Slappy boasted. “And I warned them limeys I only know how to cook American. Lookit tonight: I served up beef, biscuits, potatoes, gravy, and apple pie for desert. And Blackford, His Nibs, asks where was the greens? The greens? And where was the spun truck, only he calls it ‘vegetables.’ Well, I’m dogged and gone if we got any vegetables besides potatoes and onions. Greens. Hell, is he a sheep?”

“I like the eats just fine,” Fargo assured him. “Beats jerky and ditch water.”

“Uh-huh, well, you won’t like it much longer. We’ve got out of meal and salt. And won’t be long before we’re out of water.”

“There’s water close by,” Fargo assured him. “Just watch where the birds fly early in the morning. Carlos, give me a hand.”

Fargo crossed to the tongue of the fodder wagon and lifted it.

“What is this for?” Carlos asked him.

“Blackford told me he lost his compass somewhere. We’re heading out early tomorrow, and there’s nothing on these plains to get our bearings by. So we’ll point this tongue at the North Star. That way we can set out toward the southwest and know we’re going right.”

“What is to the southwest?”

“For one thing, Fort Laramie. We can stock up on the things Slappy needs. More important, it gets these English blowhards away from them Cheyennes. I heard Aldritch tell Derek and Skeets there was a fat bonus in it if they fetched back a couple buffalo hides. I don’t trust those two sons of bitches any farther than I could throw them.”

When the tongue was in place, Fargo helped Carlos water the horses from their hats. Besides Fargo’s Ovaro and the six team horses, there were handsome animals for the four Englishmen and a pretty little strawberry roan shared by the women.

Slappy wandered over to help with the night hobbles. “I ain’t never met any two horses could do the work of one mule. But a man can’t get fond of a mule.”

Carlos, a former hostler, agreed. “A mule needs less food and water and is more surefooted on mountain slopes.”

“All that’s true,” Fargo said, “but a mule doesn’t give a damn about its rider. A good horse will pull a man out of a scrape—mine has, plenty of times.”

The three men went to their blankets, spread near the fire. Carlos stabbed a bootjack behind his heel to pry off his boots. Fargo, however, only removed his in hotels—and with Touch the Clouds and his warriors nearby and uneasy, it was no time for a man to be groping for his boots.

Fargo’s Henry already lay near the blanket. He unbuckled his shell belt and laid it close by. Montoya broke open his shotgun, slid two shells into the chambers, and shut the breech.

“I do not fear Indians,” he told Fargo. “But I think Derek and Skeets may try to kill you.”

“Not just this minute,” Fargo suggested as he settled his head on his saddle. “Ericka is right, though. Them two have hated me since I signed on in Pueblo, and the pimple is building into a peak. It’s likely I’ll have to kill them both.”

The fire had burned low, and there wasn’t enough fuel to stoke it. A cold gust rushed in from the northern plains, making Fargo shiver. The last New Year out West had started with a January chinook—a warming wind from the southwest. Fargo knew that always spelled bad weather ahead for the plains.

“Early snow’s a-comin’,” Slappy said from his bedroll. “I’ve seed it snow so deep on these plains that the rabbits suffocated in their burrows. Oncet, near the Powder, I had to crawl into a hollow log for days. Had to tunnel out.”

Fargo believed every word. The roughest winter in his memory was up in northern Dakota Territory. During a long, paralyzing blizzard he saw abandoned horses eating tar paper from the walls of shacks. Even the Ovaro had been forced to eat tree bark and the wool of dead sheep.

“I’ve already told Blackford this hunt has gone on too long,” he said as he rolled onto his side. “But he’s death on shooting a damn buffalo. So we’ll head out tomorrow bearing south into warmer ranges, and might be we’ll spot a small herd. Whether we do or not, I’m dealing myself out at Fort Laramie.”

“Derek and Skeets won’t want to leave this herd nearby,” Montoya said in a sleepy voice.

Fargo grunted but said nothing.

 * * * 

A horse whiffled in the predawn chill and Fargo started awake. His right hand snaked toward his nearby gun belt.

“You won’t need that, Fargo,” said a quiet voice approaching him. “We have a bit of a sticky wicket in the ladies’ tent.”

Fargo sat up and made out the lipless face of Skeets Stanton in the grainy half light.

“They must be getting broad-minded,” Fargo remarked as he unfolded to his feet and stretched out the ground kinks. “I didn’t know you were sleeping there.”

“A snake got in somehow,” Skeets said. “We think it was a rattlesnake. It bit Rebecca on her leg. No one knows what to do about it.”

Fargo was suspicious, but the story was not. Rattlesnakes were common on the plains, and one might have been attracted to the heat of the tent.

“All right,” he said, heading toward the tents. “Just keep a few paces ahead of me.”