by Jon Sharpe
Fargo was tightening the Ovaro’s cinch when the scent of lilacs wreathed him.
Rachel had a shawl over her shoulders and a bonnet on her head. “I’ve been thinking over what my mother said to us.”
“And?” Fargo prompted when she didn’t go on.
“I’m sorry she’s so upset. But I’m past the age where she can tell me what to do. I can do as I please and it pleases me to be with you.”
Fargo gave the cinch a final tug.
“As for people talking behind my back, that can’t be helped. If they want to think I’m a hussy, so be it. I know I’m not.”
“You’ll have to live with them after I’m gone.”
“So? Either they accept me as I am or they can go to Hades and I’ll go live in a city somewhere. I hear a woman can make it on her own if she’s willing to work hard.”
Fargo reached for the saddle horn but Rachel put a hand on his arm.
“I just don’t want you thinking it’s over between us because of Ma. It’s not, is it?”
“I’m not ready to leave just yet.”
“Good. Because I was hoping we can go for another stroll tonight after supper. Just the two of us.” Rachel smiled shyly. “I can’t help it if I can’t get enough of you.”
Amused, Fargo said, “A walk will be fine.” He had met women like her before. Once their passion was kindled, it became a roaring fire.
“One other thing,” Rachel said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Be careful today, will you?”
“Always.” Fargo caught Martha glaring at him. Smiling at her, her stepped into the stirrups.
A few farmers waved as he rode out. They appreciated the hunting he did since they didn’t have time to do it themselves. Suddenly Fargo came on Perkins, who was riding the perimeter. To his mild surprise, Perkins smiled.
“Morning.”
Fargo grunted.
“Good luck on your hunt. Maybe you can get an elk. One of these plow-pushers was saying as how he saw some at the far end of the valley yesterday.”
“I can’t make any promises.” Fargo had heard the same thing from Lester, and did, in fact, intend to go see if he could find them. “If you see Gore, tell him I might not be back until late.”
“He rode out a while ago.”
“Awful early,” Fargo remarked.
“You know how he is. I guess there’s a lot of country he’s hankering to see again.”
“Must be.” Fargo clucked to the Ovaro and didn’t look back. He scanned the valley for sign of Gore but the old man was long gone.
The elk had left plenty of tracks. They couldn’t help it, as huge and heavy as they were. Fargo followed them up a long slope to a low ridge half a mile up. He was intent on reading the sign as he neared a large boulder. By sheer chance he happened to glance right at the boulder as a man came vaulting up and over with a blade glinting in his hand.
It was one of Rinson’s men—short, stocky, with a pockmarked face and missing front teeth.
Fargo went for his Colt but he was a shade too late. The man slammed into him, smashing him from the saddle, while simultaneously stabbing at his throat. Fargo jerked aside and the knife missed. They tumbled and the man tried again to bury his blade. They hit hard and Fargo pushed away and up into a crouch, palming his Arkansas toothpick.
“Damn you,” the man snarled, and came at him again.
Fargo didn’t know his name. He’d barely spoken two words to him the whole time he had been with the wagon train. Yet here the man was, fiercely determined to kill him.
The blade flashed at Fargo’s throat. He dived, rolled toward the man instead of away from him, and streaked the toothpick up and out.
A bleat of surprise greeted the thrust. That, and a sudden line of red on the man’s shirt.
Fargo had missed his vitals. The man swore and slashed in a berserk fury, seeking to break through Fargo’s guard and end their fight quickly. But Fargo was no slouch with a knife, himself. They stabbed, parried, cut, feinted. Steel rang on steel. Fargo’s shoulder spiked with pain and he opened a wound on the other’s thigh.
Breathing heavily, they circled. The man was wary now.
Fargo did something he normally wouldn’t do. He spoke. “What is this about?”
“Go to hell.”
“Is this Rinson’s idea? Why does he want me dead?”
“If you only knew the truth,” the man said.
“Suppose you enlighten me.”
“Eat steel.”
Again the man’s blade flashed. This time he went for the heart. Fargo sidestepped, countered, felt the toothpick bite into flesh and was rewarded with more swearing.
“I won’t kill you if you tell me why you’re doing this.”
Instead of answering, the man growled like a wild beast, and like a wild beast he threw himself forward with his knife weaving a tapestry of cold death.
Fargo was hard-pressed to avoid harm. He ducked a stab intended for his eye and speared the toothpick into the man’s armpit. A yelp preceded a spurt of blood, and the man quickly skipped back out of reach.
Balanced on the balls of his feet, Fargo waited, the toothpick low down, dripping scarlet drops. “You’ll bleed out fast if something isn’t done.”
“God damn you.” The man glanced at the spreading stain on his shirt. “He said it would be easy.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say.”
“Drop the knife and tell me and I’ll do what I can to save you,” Fargo offered.
The man hesitated.
“Was it you who shot at me yesterday?” Fargo asked to keep him talking.
“No. That was—”
A shot shattered the morning air.
The slug struck the man’s brow with a loud thwack, snapping his head back and spinning him half around. Eyes wide, he tried to speak but all that came out of his throat was a whine and a gurgle. Then his knees buckled.
Fargo threw himself flat. He twisted but didn’t see the shooter or even a puff of gun smoke. Scrambling under cover, he let the minutes drag by. Eventually, convinced the shooter was gone, he cautiously stood and moved to the dead man. He went through his pockets but all he found were a few coins and a folding knife.
Fargo had half a mind to storm back to the camp and pistol-whip Rinson. But the rest of the protectors wouldn’t stand idly by. And there were too many of them for him to take on alone, not without an edge of some kind.
Fargo came up with a better idea.
Ordinarily, he would bury a body deep enough that the scavengers couldn’t get at it. But since this son of a bitch had tried to kill him, he scooped out a shallow grave using a broken tree limb. Unbuckling the man’s gun belt, he rolled the body into the hole and covered it with a thin layer of dirt. Coyotes and whatnot were bound to get at it, but they had to eat, too.
Five minutes was all it took to find the would-be killer’s horse, a roan that didn’t seem to care that a strange man had hold of the reins.
Fargo shoved the gun belt into the man’s saddlebags. He led the roan to the Ovaro, climbed on, and continued tracking the elk. The extra horse would come in handy later.
By now it was obvious Rinson and company wanted him dead. The question remained: Why? What were they up to, Fargo wondered, that they wanted him out of the way? He never believed for a minute that they were sticking around out of the goodness of their hearts. That business about staying to protect the farmers was so much hogwash.
Another question: What part did Vincent Gore play in all of this? Was the old trapper up to something? Or was he just as he seemed?
In disgust, Fargo gave a toss of his head. He needed answers. But getting them might take some doing.
Elk, like deer, were most active at dawn and dusk and liked to lie up during the day. Fargo figured the herd he was after had sought out cover higher up, and he was right. An hour’s climb brought him to a grassy meadow where there was twice as much elk sign as lower down. A meadow bordered by the heavy growth they f
avored.
Tying both horses to a tree, Fargo slid the Henry from the scabbard and stalked his quarry on foot. He made less noise that way, and he needed to catch the elk unaware. For all their size and bulk, they were remarkably quick-hoofed, and could melt into the vegetation in the bat of an eye.
As it was, Fargo almost stalked right by them. They knew he was there, and they were as still as statues until he was practically on top of them. Then the twitch of an ear gave a cow away, and when Fargo whirled and brought up the Henry, the entire herd was up and in motion.
The males were five feet high at the shoulder and close to ten feet long, and could weigh over a thousand pounds. Females were smaller but still weighed between six and seven hundred pounds. A lot of meat was packed on their big bones, meat the settlers could use in the coming months if it was properly cured and salted.
Since it was summer, antlers had sprouted on the males, and it was easy for Fargo to pick a young one. At the shot, the young bull went down. But it was immediately back up and running as if the slug had just grazed it.
Fargo fixed a bead on its head. Working the lever as fast as he could, he banged off three swift shots and at the third the elk went down and this time it stayed down.
The rest went crashing off through the brush.
In no hurry, Fargo spent all afternoon skinning and carving and tying the meat on the roan. He packed on as much as he could but there was still plenty left. He wrapped as much as he could in what was left of the hide and covered it, intending to come back the next day.
Butchering was blood-drenched, gory work. Fargo was an old hand at it but he still got blood all over him and on his buckskins.
Once again the sun was balanced on the rim of the world when Fargo bent the Ovaro’s steps toward the valley far below. It was an uncomfortable feeling, riding back into a nest of vipers. He reminded himself that the farmers weren’t the snakes in the grass. They were innocents, caught up in God-knew-what. He would do what he could for them but it might not be enough.
Fargo never ceased to be amazed at how pigheaded people could be. He’d tried to talk them out of coming. Gore had tried to talk them out of coming. But would they listen? No. They had their minds made up and nothing anyone could say or do would change things.
Shadows dappled the pine-needle-strewn ground. A jay squawked and flew off. Later on a pair of ravens flew overhead, the beat of their wings clear and distinct.
Fargo breathed deep of the dank scent of the forest, and was for the moment content. Were it not for his fondness for whiskey, cards and women, he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his days in the wild. He would as soon sleep under the stars as in a bed and eat roast venison over a roaring fire as eat a slab of beef at a restaurant.
Campfires glowed in the circle. Sentries had been posted. The women tended supper pots while the children played and the men rested from their labors, puffing on pipes or thick cigars.
Fargo’s arrival created a stir. Lester Winston took charge of the elk meat, saying, “We’re obliged. We won’t go hungry for a coon’s age, thanks to you.”
Fargo turned and found his way blocked by the usual three: Rinson, Slag and Perkins. Two other protectors were with them but standing well back, hands near their revolvers. “You’re in my way.”
“We need to talk,” Rinson said.
“Not now. I’m tired.”
“One of my men has gone missing. Clark is his name. And I figure you know what happened to him.”
“You figure wrong.”
“Oh?” Rinson nodded at where the farmers were untying the elk meat from the roan. “That’s Clark’s horse.”
“I wondered whose it was. I found it all by itself up in the mountains and brought it back with me.”
“You didn’t see hide nor hair of Clark?” Slag asked.
“Can’t say as I did, no.” Fargo gestured. “Now are you going to move or do I have to move you?”
Perkins chuckled. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Enough,” Rinson snapped. “No more of that. Not now. Not here. Understood?”
“I savvy,” Perkins said resentfully.
“You’re lucky, mister,” Skag said to Fargo.
Fargo was about to walk on when the sentry gave a shout and hooves drummed. Into the circle galloped Vincent Gore. In his excitement, Gore nearly rode a woman down. But it was what he shouted that galvanized everyone into rushing to their wagons and arming themselves.
“The Nez Perce are coming!”
14
Rifles bristled from wagon seats, from under the wagons, from behind the wagons. For over an hour the settlers were tense with dread, awaiting an attack. But the Nez Perce didn’t show. The sky darkened and night fell, and nothing happened.
“I don’t understand it,” Victor Gore said. “They chased me for miles. They were only a few hundred yards behind me when I reached this valley.”
“Maybe they know we’re here,” Lester Winston speculated. “Maybe they are off in the woods right this minute, watching us.”
Fargo was skeptical. The Nez Perce had no reason to fear the farmers, not if there were as many warriors as Gore claimed. “How many were there again?” he asked to be certain.
“I couldn’t count them, what with riding for my life, but I’d be willing to swear on a stack of Bibles there were seventy or more.”
“That’s a sizable war party,” Rinson remarked.
Too sizable, in Fargo’s estimation. The only reason a war party would be that large was if the Nez Perce were on a raid against an enemy village.
“Strange they haven’t shown,” a farmer mentioned from his roost on a wagon.
“They better come soon,” a woman said. “My nerves are frayed. I can’t take this waiting.”
“Someone should go see where they got to,” Rinson proposed.
“I agree,” Gore said. “And since I was the fool who led them here, I’ll go.” The old trapper turned toward his horse.
As they had done before, all eyes fixed on Fargo. Inwardly he swore but out loud he said, “It should be me who goes. I stand a better chance of making it back with my hair.”
Gore grinned. “This is no time for false bravery. I’ll gladly let you do it in my stead.”
Fargo made for the Ovaro. “Me and my big mouth,” he muttered, then realized he wasn’t alone.
“Be careful, Skye,” Rachel urged. “There’s no telling what they will do if they get their hands on you.”
Fargo hoped that Winter Wolf, the old warrior he had met, was with them. Winter Wolf might palaver rather than have him killed. Not that it would do much good. The Nez Perce weren’t about to let the farmers stay. “You were idiots to come here.”
“Here we go again!”
“If it were up to me, I’d run the whole bunch of you clear back to the Mississippi River.”
“How can you talk like that after we’ve let you stay with us and my ma has cooked your meals and all?”
Fargo hurriedly saddled. He was about done when Victor, Lester and Rinson drifted over.
“I’m sorry to have brought this on you,” Gore said. “I was scared. I didn’t think to try and lead them away.”
Lester said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Anyone would have done the same.”
Not Fargo, but he didn’t say so.
“If you want,” Rinson spoke up, “I’ll send a couple of my men with you. Slag and Perkins wouldn’t mind going.”>
That was all Fargo needed, a war party in front of him and two killers at his back. “I’ll go alone.”
Anxious faces were pale blots in the dark as Fargo brought the Ovaro to a gap between wagons and forked leather. The saddle creaked under him, and then his boots were in the stirrups. “If I’m not back by sunup—” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
“It won’t come to that,” Lester said. “Not if you don’t let them get their hands on you.”
Was it Fargo’s imagination, or were there tears in Rachel’s
eyes? He touched his hat brim and rode out. The Indians were at the mouth of the valley, Gore claimed. But Fargo didn’t head there. He reined wide to the right so he could come up on them through the forest. His skin prickling, he held the Ovaro to a walk. Less noise that way, and less chance of blundering into waiting warriors.
Fargo supposed he should be thankful he wasn’t going up against Apaches. Compared to them, the Nez Perce were kittens. Riled kittens, with bows and lances instead of teeth and claws.
It took half an hour. Once there, Fargo looked and listened but the woodland lay peaceful under a crescent moon and the multitude of stars. Where the hell were they? he wondered.
The mouth of the valley was too broad, too open. Fargo skirted it, hugging the tree line.
Still no sign of the war party.
Fargo reasoned that they had gone into the forest on the other side. For him to cross the river and go after them was foolhardy, yet that’s what he did. He hated being in the open. But he reached the woods without incident, and for long minutes prowled the benighted vegetation. The only living things he encountered were an owl that hooted at him from a high branch and a pair of spooked does that bounded off in fright.
No Nez Perce anywhere.
Drawing rein, Fargo stared off toward the distant ring of wagons. The farmers had kept the fires going and he could see several figures moving about. When it came to preserving their skin, they had all the sense of rocks. But there was no denying their gratefulness when he rode back and announced that he had searched long and hard and not found anything. “If the Nez Perce were there, they’re gone.”
“If?” Victor Gore said. “Surely you’re not suggesting I imagined them? I tell you, sir, it was a war party, and a big one, and I am lucky to be alive.”
“No one doubts you,” Lester said. “It’s our guns. They’re afraid to show themselves.”
Fargo came close to laughing in his face. One thing the Nez Perce weren’t, were cowards. Should they decide to wipe the settlers out, that’s exactly what they would do. Guns or no guns.
“Well, I guess we should all get some sleep,” Lester proposed. “We need our rest.”
“My men will stand guard as always,” Rinson said. “You have nothing to worry about with us watching over you.”