by Jon Sharpe
“Put out that cigarette, soldier,” Fargo admonished.
The three privates jerked their heads toward him with a start. The quirley dropped to the floor of the ledge, sparking, and the lanky private crushed it under the heel of a scuffed brogan.
Peering west, Fargo said, “One of you boys have a spyglass?”
The soldiers shuffled around to his left, and then a brass-chased binocular was thrust at the Trailsman’s shoulder. He grabbed it, extended it toward the glow, and adjusted the focus.
“How long you been hearing the drums?”
One of the privates sniffed and whispered, “Just a few minutes, sir. It started about the same time our boys laid in with ‘Tattoo.’”
“We seen the fires before,” said one of the others, “but we haven’t heard the drums. They must be movin’ closer.”
Fargo aimed the glass at the umber glow and, twisting the canister slightly, brought up three separate red smudges amongst the dark brown hills about two and a half miles west. The sky above and behind the hills was green with the fading dusk, but the fires stood out on a hill shoulder swathed in brush and gnarled trees.
Fargo couldn’t see much from this distance, but the shadows flickering before the fires were no doubt the silhouettes of dancing Indians.
A war dance.
A young man’s voice trembled. “Y-you think they’re going to attack the fort, sir?”
“They might just be trying to make you soil your trousers, but I’d keep my eyes peeled.” Fargo reduced the spyglass and gave it back to the soldier. “Stay awake and don’t fire any quirleys. The Injuns’ll use ’em for target practice.”
Fargo moved back along the shooting ledge, descended the ladder, and tramped off between the guardhouse and the infirmary, heading for the stables. He’d check to make sure the Ovaro was well cared for and not getting into trouble, then, since he had to be up before dawn, bed down early in the sutler’s storeroom.
He found the stables dark and untended, the Ovaro in the rear paddock with about five other horses, all geldings. While the other horses munched hay or drew water or milled along the corral slats, the pinto stared tensely west, flicking its ears at the war drums that Fargo could no longer hear.
“Easy, boy,” Fargo said, dropping a loop over the pinto’s head and giving a gentle tug. He’d stable the horse for the night to make sure it was well rested by morning. “They’re a long way off…for now,” he added as the horse clomped through the open double doors and onto the hard-packed floor of the barn alley.
Leading the horse into a corner stable a good distance from the other stabled stock, Fargo wondered what kind of nightmares the pinto would have tonight if it knew where they’d be heading before dawn.
He’d filled the stock troughs, gave the horse’s neck a good-night pat, and was backing out of the stall when he heard the crackling rustle of a foot on the straw-covered floor. Fargo moved his hand from the stable door to his pistol grips, wheeling on his heels.
“Skye?” It was Valeria’s silky voice. She stood a few feet from the stable, silhouetted by a sashed window behind her.
The Trailsman sighed, dropped his hand from his pistol grips. “Shouldn’t sneak up on a man. Especially with Injuns about, beatin’ on war drums.”
She stepped forward, into a shaft of ambient light, and extended a burlap sack. “I brought some food for tomorrow—some venison, which Mrs. Hildebrand jerked herself, and buttermilk biscuits. A couple pieces of pie for you and Mr…. uh”—she smiled, green eyes slitting beguilingly—“Prairie Dog.”
“Hell,” Fargo said, taking the bag by the twisted, twine-wrapped neck. “I’m much obliged. You must be feeling a little more neighborly since this afternoon.”
Crossing her hands before her, she dropped her chin demurely. “Yes, I wanted to apologize for my demeanor. I’ve been through a lot lately, as you know, and I’m afraid my nerves are stretched a little taut.”
Fargo dropped the bag to his side. “Apology accepted.”
She stared up at him.
“Was there something else, Miss Howard?”
“No.” She backed away slowly, continuing to stare up at him. “No…I just wanted to apologize and wish you luck on your mission. I overheard you and Father and the other men in the dining room. It sounds terribly dangerous.”
Fargo moved toward her, his broad shadow falling across her willowy, high-busted frame. She wore the same low-cut dress as before, a thin veil draped carelessly across her shoulders. Unlike before, she wore no corset, and her nipples pushed out from behind the cloth like bone buttons. “That all you came for?”
“What on earth do you mean?” Even shaded by the Trailsman’s broad shadow, Valeria’s green eyes flashed angrily. “What happened before, Mr. Fargo, was entirely due to my…my disorientation.”
“In that case, you wouldn’t want to repeat it.”
Her breasts rose and fell sharply. She glanced around, then returned her gaze to Fargo’s. There was little conviction in her voice. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”
Fargo pulled her taut against him and ran his hands down her sides to her hips. Lifting her skirt, he reached beneath the fine material, ran his palms along the backs of her smooth thighs and warm, naked buttocks.
His face only inches from hers, he grinned. “Disoriented enough to forget to wear underwear when you visit a man in a horse barn?”
He engulfed her in his arms. A gasp escaped her lips as Fargo closed his mouth over hers. As he kissed her, he peeled the dress off her shoulders and caressed her breasts, the nipples rising and pebbling against his palms.
“Not here,” she groaned. “Good Lord—it’s a barn.”
“Few hotels hereabouts.” Fargo crouched, picked her up, then swung around, pushing through the open door of the stable beside the Ovaro’s.
Kneeling, he lay Valeria down in a low mound of hay. She rose quickly, scampered onto her knees, thrusting her hands at the buckle of his cartridge belt. Fargo sagged back in the hay as the girl tossed his gun belt aside, unbuttoned his buckskins, and began pulling the breeches down his thighs while probing around inside his underwear for his shaft.
She’d no sooner found what she was looking for than her lips slipped over the head and her tongue began its beguiling work as her mouth slid slowly down toward his crotch, her red hair cascading across his thighs.
As her head moved up and down, Fargo leaned back on his elbows. She worked him until he was grinding his molars and digging his heels into the hay. She lifted her head suddenly and scowled up at him, pouting, lips glistening.
“You bastard!”
Bare breasts jostling, she straddled him, lifted her skirts, and, holding the base of his member with one hand, lowered herself slowly, groaning and sighing until she sat snugly atop his thighs, plundering her silky, wet depths with his iron-hard shaft.
“I once had dignity,” she moaned, rising on her haunches as she lowered her mouth to his, nibbling his lips. “I’ve let you turn me into a wanton hussy, and I won’t even be able to enjoy you anymore, because you’ll be dead in a few short hours!”
“Easy,” Fargo grunted. “It doesn’t bend that way!”
“Shut up and despoil me!” She rose quickly, descended slowly, digging her fingers into his shoulders while peppering his face with hot, wet kisses. “Ohh…you bastard!”
When she came, she threw her head back, breasts out, and shook as though lightning-struck. The shuddering tickled him deep in his loins and ignited his own explosion, his juices firing like bullets rattled from the maw of a repeating rifle.
She shook even more violently, mouth wide, her fingernails on the verge of opening wounds in his shoulders. Her knees were clamped viselike against his ribs.
A horsy snort rose above and behind her, and Fargo opened his eyes. The Ovaro stared down at him from the opposite stall, a slightly incriminating, ironic cast to his gaze.
Fargo shrugged. The girl sagged down atop him, pressing her breasts again
st his chest and burying her face in his neck. “Oh, Skye…do you have to go out there tomorrow?”
“I accepted the assignment.”
“You’ve seen how dangerous it is.”
“I reckon if Lieutenant Duke isn’t defused, he’ll lead those Indians right up to the gates of this fort and beyond.”
She lifted her head, listening. Clear and thin on the air came the deep-throated throbbing of distant drums. Valeria shivered and placed her hands on either side of the Trailsman’s broad face.
She turned his head from side to side for emphasis, a sharp, beseeching tone in her voice. “You come back to me—do you hear? I know what I said before, but the fact is I’m smitten and I don’t care if you know it”—she quirked the corners of her mouth, and her eyes glistened in the gray shafts from the windows—“or take advantage of me.”
He smoothed the rich red locks away from her cheeks. “I’ll give it my best shot.”
She kissed him, began to rise. “I told Mrs. Hildebrand I was just stepping out for some air. I’d better get back before Father sends out a search party.”
She winked and tossed her hair back from her shoulders. Crouching, bending those fine, creamy legs, she retrieved her dress from the stable floor, then turned to the horse staring at her with brazen interest. Chuckling and clutching the dress to her breasts, she placed a tender kiss on the Ovaro’s nose.
The horse snorted and brushed a hoof against the stall partition.
Valeria laughed. “You and your horse are cut from the same cloth, Mr. Fargo.”
Valeria turned away from both Fargo and the horse, shook out the dress, and dropped it over her head. When she lowered her chin to begin buttoning up, Fargo pulled his pants up, climbed to his feet, snaked his arms under hers, and took her tender orbs in his hands once more, nuzzling her neck.
She pressed her hands over his and relaxed against him, tipping her head to one side.
In the distance, a man yelled and a rifle report rent the quiet night.
Valeria gasped. The Trailsman lifted his head, pricking his ears.
More shots and shouts followed by an Indian war whoop.
Valeria whipped around toward Fargo, covering her breasts with her hands. “Oh, my God—they’re attacking the fort!”
“Stay here!”
As the Ovaro nickered and jerked its head up and down, Fargo grabbed his cartridge belt, wrapped it around his waist, donned his hat, and bolted out the stall door.
“Skye, don’t leave me!”
Fargo turned back to her. Valeria faced him, hands cupping her breasts. Outside, rifles and pistols popped and boomed and the shouting and whooping rose to a cacophony.
Fargo grabbed his pistol from its holster, spun the cylinder. He wished he had the Henry that he’d left in the sutler’s storeroom. “Stay down and don’t come out till I tell you it’s clear!”
He wheeled and ran to the near end of the barn, pushed through the double doors. An arrow whistled past his right ear and twanged into the door behind him.
Fargo flinched, raised his revolver toward the dark, painted brave standing fifteen feet in front of him who was reaching behind his back for another arrow. Fargo’s .44 roared, and the Indian flew back against the wall of another stock barn.
Fargo turned right, shot two more braves running toward him from the north, laying them both out with single rounds through their chests, and peered toward the fort’s north stockade wall—or the short stretch he could see from between the stock barns.
Three soldiers stood on the shooting ledge, yelling and firing their rifles over the wall’s sharpened log ends. One had just turned away to reload his rifle when his head snapped toward his right shoulder, a bloody arrow point jutting from the side of his head.
As the soldier fell from the shooting ledge, the Trailsman broke into a hard sprint for the wall. Ahead, another soldier screamed as an arrow thumped into his neck, driving him back off the ledge to hit the ground on his back, writhing.
The dark head of an Indian appeared above the wall, between two red hands grabbing log points, one hand also holding a war hatchet. As the brave leaped over the wall, shrieking demonically, another bolted over the wall beside him to smash a tomahawk into the head of a sergeant who’d dropped to one knee to reload his Springfield. The hatchet nearly cleaved the soldier’s hatted head in two, killing him instantly.
Fargo stopped and, cursing, shot the brave who’d killed the sergeant, his round plunking through the Indian’s right ear to splash another wall-leaping brave with blood and brains. Fargo turned to shoot another brave, ducked to avoid a war hatchet somersaulting toward him, then blew the brave back off the wall with two hastily fired .44 rounds.
Fargo looked left and up.
A screaming brave leaped toward him, the feathered spear in the Indian’s right hand angled toward the Trailsman’s chest. Fargo snapped off the Colt’s last shot, drilling a small, dark hole in the brave’s upper middle chest. Dropping the empty revolver, he threw up both hands, grabbing the dying brave’s left arm and spear hand, thrusting the spear to one side as the painted, grease-coated body bulled him off his feet and into the ground on his back.
Fargo rolled the brave’s writhing, grunting body off his chest, glancing right and left along the stockade wall. Small clumps of soldiers fought the Indians leaping the wall from the backs of their galloping mounts, arrows whistling while rifles and pistols popped and flashed in the twilight.
Amidst the yells to his right, Fargo heard the rumbling curses of Prairie Dog Charley between angry pistol barks and above the shouted Irish-accented commands of a sergeant encouraging his men against the storming hoard of shrieking natives.
Spying a brave aiming a nocked arrow at him from the shooting ledge, Fargo grabbed a war hatchet embedded in the ground near his right shoulder, and heaved it. At the same time the hatchet buried its head into the brave’s chest, his arrow twanging into the ground beside Fargo’s right knee, a high-pitched scream rose above the cacophony.
A woman’s scream.
“Skye!” It was Valeria. “Help meeeeee!”
9
Rising to a knee, Fargo looked to his right, in the direction from which Valeria had screamed.
“Skye!” she cried again.
About thirty yards away, a howling brave broke out from between the hay stables, sprinting toward a ladder leaning against the stockade wall, carrying Valeria across his right shoulder.
“The major’s daughter!” a soldier shouted beyond the running Indian, his voice nearly drowned by the gunfire and yowling savages.
Fargo slipped his Arkansas toothpick from his boot and sprinted after the girl. Above and left, a brave leaped over the wall and dropped onto the shooting platform. The brave loosed an arrow at Fargo. He ducked as the arrow shrieked over his head and plunked into a stable wall. Another brave leaped off the shooting wall and into Fargo’s path. Fargo stopped, pulled his hips back as the Indian slashed at him with a bone-handled knife, then drove the toothpick into the brave’s bare belly.
The Indian howled like a gut-shot coyote.
Shoving the brave back against the stockade wall, Fargo pulled his toothpick free of the man’s entrails, and continued sprinting. The Indian carrying Valeria was halfway up the wall when Fargo reached the ladder. Pounding her fists against the Indian’s bare, glistening back, Valeria’s gaze met Fargo’s, her green eyes alight with bone-rending terror.
“Skyyyyyyyye!”
Fargo leaped up the ladder, slashing at the Indian’s calves with the toothpick but missing, catching the toothpick’s sharp blade into the hide attaching the rungs to the two cottonwood poles. Around him, men were shooting and shouting. Out of nowhere, an Indian grabbed Fargo from behind and pulled him down the ladder, battering the Trailsman’s head and shoulders with his bare fists.
At the base of the ladder, Fargo whipped around and drove his right boot into the Indian’s jaw. As the brave stumbled straight back, groaning and clutching his face, Fargo
lunged up the ladder’s squawking rungs, using his arms as much as his feet.
Above, the Indian carrying Valeria dropped a leg over the stockade wall. Valeria clutched the pointed log tips as the Indian pulled her over the top. Fargo thrust his right arm at Valeria’s hand, wrapped his fingers around hers.
The girl screamed as her fingers slipped from Fargo’s. Fargo lunged for her hand once more. But it was gone, leaving only the sharpened log ends she’d been clutching and a couple of strands of long red hair wisping from slivers.
The shooting ledge bounced and shuddered beneath the Trailsman’s boots. He looked around. Braves ran toward him from both sides of the ledge.
Fargo grabbed a Colt revolver from the holster of a dead soldier on the ledge, thumbed back the hammer, and triggered one shot left, another right. Then he bounded up and over the stockade wall, dropping down the other side and landing on both feet, bending his knees to absorb the shock with his boots.
The girl screamed once more—a thin, vibrating rattle dwindling into the distance. The Trailsman turned to see the brave running north through the ankle-high grass, a gray shadow in the dying light, the girl flopping down his back, red hair flying.
Horseback Indians galloped in circles as rifles spoke from the stockade wall. The attackers seemed to be withdrawing, loping away or sprinting off toward the horses they’d left when they’d stormed the fort. Several lay humped in the grass, bleeding, while a couple crawled, groaning or wailing their death songs.
Fargo leaped over a dying warrior and stretched his legs in the direction of the brave retreating with Valeria. A couple of arrows stitched the air around him, bullets from the fort whistling over his head, but he continued pushing off his heels, raising his knees high, scissoring his arms, bounding after the brave.
He crested a low hump of ground tufted with young chokecherry shrubs, and felt his gut knot with frustration. About forty yards ahead, a brave on a cream horse led a tall paint toward the brave carrying Valeria. Both braves whooped and shrieked victoriously as the first brave threw Valeria over the paint’s back.