Aldritch ignored him, enjoying himself immensely. “And observe that quaintly named Arkansas toothpick in his boot. It has eviscerated many a fearsome foe—or so one reads. All three women in our party are in grave danger, Lord Blackford, for I’ve seen them all casting inviting smiles at him. Moths to the flame.”
“My wife has done no such thing,” Blackford interposed.
“Say you so? Ericka, too, has read about him in books with lurid covers. From ‘the Rio to the Tetons’ his escapades—romantic and otherwise—are the stuff of pub lore. These fanciful writers assure us that Fargo has spent so much time alone he doesn’t think like the majority. Why, he doesn’t ford rivers, he walks across them! And ever the honorable man.”
Aldritch’s tone especially ridiculed the word “honorable.”
In fact, Fargo was now within his rights if he killed the pompous ass. On the frontier a man’s good friends could insult him, but for a hostile acquaintance to impugn his honor meant that one of them had to die. However, Fargo tended to rile cool, and killing Aldritch would be like killing a woman or a simpleton.
“Are you finished,” Fargo asked him, “or should I get you a stump?”
“Find us a few buffalo, Fargo, there’s a good chap. That is all we ask of your limited intellect. Millions of them roaming the American West, yet the stuff of legends cannot find us even one? I’m forced to conclude that you’ve been deliberately sandbagging on this trip.”
The accusation was in large measure true, and Fargo bore the charge in stoic silence. The buffalo were being slaughtered needlessly in ever-increasing numbers, and Fargo knew he couldn’t stop the folly. Buffalo hiders, rendering outfits, merchant suppliers who took nothing but the tongues from the carcass—delicacies back East when pickled in brine—and “sportsmen” like these would soon send Great Shaggy into mystic chords of memory.
Aldritch opened his fleshy mouth to say something else. But he suddenly fell silent, warned off by Fargo’s hard, cold stare.
Fargo walked off without a word, angling toward a small fire in the center of camp. It was about two by the sun, and he had ridden out earlier on an empty belly. It was autumn in the Dakota country, one of those days when it was warm enough until a breeze blew. There was frost on his blanket roll when he turned out at dawn, and the howling blizzards and crusted snow were not far off.
“Saved some stew for you, long shanks,” the cook, Slappy Hollister, greeted him. He wore a slouched beaver hat, and his grizzled beard showed more salt than pepper. “That is, if you got any stomach for it after jawin’ with them high-toned crumpet nibblers. That son of a bitch Aldritch . . . quicksand would spit him back up. I don’t know how you can take his guff. And Blackford, that soft-handed pus gut. Kiss my hairy white ass, m’lord.”
Carlos Montoya, the wrangler and driver of the fodder wagon, sat near the fire nursing a tin can of coffee. Fargo caught his eye and both men grinned.
“Truly, Fargo,” Montoya said, “I regret sending this bunch after you. There’s a sweet outfit, eh? But when my livery stable burned to the ground, I could not pass up the money. And when I saw the women . . . ay, Chihuahua! I thought, give Fargo his meat.”
The camp circle was formed by two large tents, a fodder wagon, and two conveyances, one a fancy japanned coach with brass fixtures for Blackford, his young wife, Ericka, and her sister, Rebecca Singleton, a willowy young blonde with sapphire-blue eyes. The rest of the party—Aldritch, his two insolent “retainers,” and a lady’s maid for the Blackford party—rode in a doorless coach known as a mud wagon.
Just as Montoya finished praising the women, Jessica Tanner, the auburn-curled maid, emerged from one of the tents.
“My dick just moved,” Slappy said in a reverent tone. “Won’tcha look at the catheads on that wench! She ain’t no stable filly, eh, Carlos?”
“No, that lass is a pacer—smooth riding over a long haul. And she has set her cap for Fargo—her nightcap.”
Fargo agreed with this assessment, being experienced in the ways of willing women. And he had tried his damnedest to get Jessica off into the brush. Her bursting bodice, ripe-fruit lips, and pretty, coquettish face would stir even a dead man to life. But one of Aldritch’s two hired thugs had the same idea and hovered around her like a fly to syrup.
Jessica approached the men, flashing Fargo a come-hither smile. “Cook,” she said to Slappy, still watching Fargo, “would you please heat some water? Lady Blackford and her sister wish to bathe.”
Slappy’s moon face looked astonished. “Agin? Why, the Quality just had ’em a bath last week! Ain’t healthy to wash up more’n a couple times a year.”
“Don’t be daft.” Jessica’s emerald-green eyes sparkled in Fargo’s direction. “Rich British women take comfort in frequent baths. The warm water is . . . stimulating.”
Montoya was smoking a thin black Mexican cigar. At these words he almost coughed it out of his mouth.
“Stimulatin’, huh?” Slappy said, winking at Fargo as he hustled to fill a kettle from a goatskin of water. “Mebbe British men ain’t doin’ their job in that department.”
Jessica sent Fargo a coy smile. “They do tend to shirk, rather. And p’r’aps American men, too, are remiss?”
“Remiss?” Montoya repeated. “What does this word mean, ‘remiss’?”
“Let it go,” Fargo spoke up, strong white teeth flashing through his beard at Jessica. “Maybe American men can’t get past the British guard.”
Jessica’s cerise lips twisted into a frown. “Oh, God’s blood! You mean Skeets and Derek the Terrible. The pride of Cheapside,” she pronounced sarcastically. “As common as your uncle Bill, now, aren’t they?”
“Yeah? Well, I got my belly full of them two.” Slappy chimed in as he stoked the fire hotter. “Both of ’em, struttin’ around like they was cock o’ the dung heap. Them London airs don’t go here in Zeb Pike’s West.”
Jessica’s pretty face set itself in a warning frown. Her words were intended for all three men.
“Bethink yourself, Mr. Hollister. When I called them common, I meant only their manners. Sylvester Aldritch is a calculating man, and he hired the right two men indeed—for his purposes. Faith! Skeets was a champion marksman in the army—they say he can shoot the eyes out of a sparrow at two hundred yards.”
“He will prove quite useful,” Montoya said from a poker face, “when we are attacked by sparrows.”
“You mock, Mr. Montoya, but save your breath to cool your porridge. You jolly well know the human head is a far larger target than a sparrow’s. As for Derek, he is a former hangman at Tyburn Gate and a renowned pugilist around the London docks. Once he flies into a rage—well, God’s blood! He will give you the clouting of your life. Sometimes he does not stop when a man is beaten—only when he is dead. That’s how he earned the moniker Derek the Terrible.”
“This word, ‘pugilist,’” Montoya said in a perplexed tone, “what does it mean to say? And moniker, what—”
“Jessica!” rang out an impatient voice from the nearest tent. “You mustn’t tarry to gossip, dear!”
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.”