STUPID GREENHORNS
The maid turned to leave, but Fargo stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Speaking of Derek and Skeets, I haven’t seen them since I rode in. Where are they?”
“They left camp sometime this morning.”
Fargo felt cold needle points on the back of his neck. “Which direction?”
She pointed north—toward the buffalo and the Cheyennes.
“Christ,” Fargo muttered under his breath. Then: “Did they take their buffalo guns?”
“Yes, the long ones that make a frightful racket. They said you”—she faltered, then soldiered on—“you couldn’t locate your own ‘arse’ in a hall of mirrors. They said they would find the buffalo and show Jonathan Yankee how it’s done.”
A cold current of doom moved down Fargo’s spine, and he paled slightly above his beard.
“Is that bad?” Jessica asked.
“Bad? Sweetheart, brackish water is bad. Weevils in your hardtack are bad. This could spell the worst hurt in the world—the massacre of every one of us.”
The TRAILSMAN
#369
BADLANDS BLOODSPORT
by
Jon Sharpe
The Trailsman
Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.
The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.
Badlands, Dakota Territory, 1861—where Cheyenne Hunt Law traps Fargo between white men who kill for sport and red men who kill for vengeance.
1
“Mr. Fargo, I confess I am somewhat bewildered. Are you working for me or for the bison?”
Skye Fargo, busy rubbing down his pinto stallion with an old feed sack, turned around to confront his current employer. Lord Blackford, Earl of Pencebrook in the Midlands of England, snapped his silver snuffbox shut and stared at his hireling from accusing eyes—all he required, Fargo thought, was a powdered wig and a gavel.
“Care to chew that a little finer?” Fargo said in his mild way. “I never sat on the benches at Oxford.”
“Oh, do not become the rustic chawbacon with me, Fargo,” Blackford said pettishly. “Carlos Montoya told us you were the scout and guide par excellence of the American West. Indeed, one reads of your exploits even in the British penny press. That is why we sent word to you. But after considerable expense to kit ourselves out, it’s been fifteen days, sir, and we’ve yet to even sight a buffalo. And how can we when you lead us to—to—”
Blackford ran out of words to express his indignation and tossed out one plump arm to indicate the barren landscape surrounding them like a page from the Devil’s sketchbook. This region in the southwest Dakota Territory was marked by roughly eroded ridges, peaks, and mesas.
“The Badlands, aptly named,” he continued in an imperious tone. “Why in the name of all things holy would buffalo herds migrate to such an arid region? I suppose in America, ducks frequent the desert?”
The faint shadow of a smile briefly touched Fargo’s lips. He had been wondering how long His Nibs and his party would take to begin suspecting the Trailsman’s real motive in hiring on to guide these upper-crust “sportsmen.”
“Buffalo are mighty stupid,” Fargo replied. “You can shoot one dead, drop it in the grass, and the one next to it will go on grazing. I was in St. Louis when a herd stampeded the city.”
Blackford scowled darkly. He was a big, soft-bellied man around fifty with dark pouches like bruises under his eyes. He wore a frogged-velvet frock coat. Between his vest and coat he wore a small pin-fire revolver in an armpit holster. He rocked from his heels to his toes a few times, mud-colored eyes watching Fargo like a cat on a rat.
“Drop it in the grass, you say? Fargo, I daresay—there is no grass around here except burnt wire. It does not require an Oxford education to know that no grass means no buffalo, now, does it? So, now that we’re here, what do you suggest that we do—sit and play a harp?”
“I don’t know about the harp, but it’s not a smart idea to sit. There is a small herd—a few hundred head—just north of here. Plenty of grass, too. Trouble is, there’s also a Cheyenne hunting party after them. I suggest we dust our hocks to the south and look for another herd.”
At this intelligence Lord Blackford’s dour visage perked up. “Ah? Real Indians, what? By the horn spoons, sir, I’ve always wanted to see a wild Indian. Bronze John, Rousseau’s Noble Savage. Perhaps we could observe their hunt? My wife is a fine sketch artist.”
Fargo expelled a long sigh. Wet-nursing ignorant tenderfoots was no burden—not at the rate he was being paid. But Blackford and his associate, Sylvester Aldritch, were headstrong fools who couldn’t grasp that titles and wealth cut no ice on the American frontier, where Death was democratic. Fargo trained his lake-blue eyes on the smug toff.
“Earl”—Fargo couldn’t bring himself to call any man “my lord”—“you’ve got to see this thing for what it is, not how it’s spun in books. These ain’t the cracker-and-molasses, Christianized Indians you folks saw down in Santa Fe. I’m talking about the Cheyenne Nation, some of the best horse soldiers in the whole damn world. These are no boys to fool with. Maybe they are noble, but they’ll kill you deader than last Christmas.”
Blackford made a deprecatory motion with his hand. “Surely you exaggerate. Why, some coffee and bright baubles—”
Fargo shook his head emphatically. “When the Cheyenne go after buffalo, they’re strictly governed by the ancient Hunt Law. Hunt Law says that all white men carry the stink that drives off the buffalo forever. If they spot palefaces too near a hunt, they’re bound to kill them.”
“By all means, Lord Blackford,” spoke up a refined and sarcastic voice behind Fargo, “best to attend to our sturdy western type. They say the number of savages he has slain rivals the number of women he has bedded.”
Fargo glanced toward the camp and saw Sylvester Aldritch ambling toward them, a tall, balding, muttonchopped man perhaps ten years younger than Blackford. The wealthy merchant from Dover wore a monocle, carried a crop, and had fleshy lips that were constantly pursed in an ironic smile when he spoke to, or of, Skye Fargo.
“Why, just gaze on this rugged face and manly physique,” Aldritch said as he drew up beside them. “True, he’s never read Milton or Diderot, but what’s that to the matter? Why, he towers over six feet in height, he’s broad in the shoulders, narrow in the hips, clad in fringed buckskins, and hard as sacked salt. Why, man, he’s a crop-bearded god! Every bit the savage stallion his horse is.”
“I say, old bean,” Blackford protested weakly. “That’s laying it on rather thick.”