Fort Death (9781101607916)

by Sharpe, Jon

The fresh tracks of the war party were easy to follow.

  Halfway to the settlement, the Bannocks had gone off into the trees. Fargo stuck to the pitiful excuse for a road, making good time.

  It was a pleasant surprise to round the last bend and behold everything as it should be: a few people in the street, horses dozing at the hitch rails, a dog nosing at a barrel, a chicken taking a dust bath.

  Fargo took the Henry with him into the saloon. The barman nodded and went on wiping the counter. Three locals were playing poker.

  At a corner table sat Bear River Tom, a nearly empty whiskey bottle in front of him, his arms around a pair of plump ladies whose bodices threatened to burst at the seams. “Well, look who it is!” Tom heartily roared. “Where have you been, pup?”

  Fargo crossed to the table. “I could ask the same about you.”

  Bear River Tom bobbed his head at the lady on the right and the lady on the left. “I have been up to my eyebrows in tits.”

  The women laughed.

  “Ain’t he a caution?” the one on the right said.

  “I never met a man so fond of my jugs,” the other dove declared.

  Tom removed his arms from their shoulders and smacked the table. “Have a seat, why don’t you? There are plenty of tits to go around.”

  Hooking a chair with a toe, Fargo pulled it out. “While you’ve been sucking teat, a lot has gone on.”

  “I’m all ears,” Tom said with a grin.

  The grin faded as Fargo filled him in.

  “Damnation,” Bear River Tom said, and helped himself to the last of his coffin varnish. “I should have been with you and California. When will I learn? Some things are more important than tits.”

  “You didn’t think that last night,” the woman on the right said.

  “I never saw a man fit two in his mouth at once,” the other woman said.

  Tom looked at them in annoyance. “I never thought I would say this, but enough about tits. Why don’t you ladies go buy some tit perfume or something while we have us a talk.”

  The dove on the right snickered. “Tit perfume?”

  “That was sweat, honey,” the other one said.

  Bear River Tom smacked each on the fanny as she went by. Then he leaned on the table and said gruffly, “Sadie killing scouts. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

  Fargo was toying with the notion of buying a bottle but decided not to.

  “You’re going out after them?” Bear River Tom wanted to know.

  “Need you ask?”

  Bear River Tom stood. “Then what are we waiting for? I liked Jed Crow. Tennessee, too. I’m coming, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Fargo led the way out. He pushed through the batwings and Tom pushed through after him and they stepped to the edge of the overhang.

  “I can’t wait to kill me some hostiles,” Bear River Tom said eagerly.

  Fargo went to step to the Ovaro, and stiffened.

  A rifle barrel was pointed at them from the corner of the general store across the street.

  24

  Fargo dived at Bear River Tom and heard Tom’s bleat of surprise even as the rifle boomed. He heard the slug smack the front of the saloon behind where Tom had been standing.

  “What the hell?” Tom roared.

  Pushing to his feet, Fargo snapped off a shot from the Henry. Chips flew from the corner of the store and the rifle barrel disappeared. Working the lever, he skirted the hitch rail.

  People were yelling and pointing and coming out of buildings.

  Fargo reached the general store and peered around before committing himself. He glimpsed a figure with long black hair and leggings, and jerked back as the figure’s rifle boomed.

  That glimpse had been enough to tell him who it was: Thunder Hawk. The rifle, unless he missed his guess, was Sagebrush Sadie’s.

  Boots drummed, and Bear River Tom joined him. “Who the blazes shot at you?”

  “At you, not me,” Fargo set him straight, and told him who it was.

  “The hell you say!” Tom cried, and before Fargo could stop him, he was around the corner and flying toward the rear.

  “Damn it,” Fargo said, and ran after him.

  Bear River Tom reached the far end, glanced both ways, and plunged into the forest.

  “Tom, wait!” Fargo hollered, but he was wasting his breath. It was a mistake to rush in blindly but he did it anyway. He didn’t want the tit-crazed fool to share the fate of Tennessee and Jed Crow.

  “Where are you, damn you, you skulking savage!” Bear River Tom bellowed, somewhere ahead.

  “Tom, hold up!” Fargo tried once more. Tom, of course, didn’t. The crackle and snap of underbrush guided his steps, but suddenly they stopped and the woods fell quiet.

  Fargo dug in his heels. Crouching, he sought some hint of movement. The wind had died and not so much as a leaf stirred.

  Back in Salt Creek people were yelling and raising a ruckus. Here, everything was deathly still.

  Fargo grew uneasy for Tom. It could be his friend had blundered into an ambush. Against his better judgment he eased forward.

  Without warning, a shape reared. Fargo swiveled and trained the Henry but relaxed his finger just in time. “You damned lunkhead,” he growled. “You almost got yourself shot.”

  “I lost him,” Bear River Tom said in frustration, peering intently into the forest. “I wasn’t more than a stone’s throw back and he gave me the slip.”

  “We’ll pick up his trail,” Fargo vowed. “And when we find him, we’ll find her.”

  “Sadie,” Tom said. “I still can’t hardly believe she is a party to this. And her a female, to boot.”

  It had been Fargo’s experience that women can be as deadly as men and he said as much to Tom. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they can’t.”

  “I know that,” Bear River Tom said. “Injun gals in particular. Apaches, Comanches, Blackfeet women, you expect it from them. But Sadie is white.”

  Fargo didn’t see what that had to do with anything, and told him so.

  “I know white women can kill,” Bear River Tom said. “Especially a gal like Sadie. She dresses and rides and shoots like a man. So naturally she kills like a man, too.”

  “I hadn’t looked at it that way,” Fargo said.

  “If there’s one thing I know,” Bear River Tom declared, “it’s females.”

  “I thought it was tits.”

  “Same thing.”

  They searched but couldn’t find any trace of Thunder Hawk. Reluctantly, they headed back.

  Fargo watched behind them, his thumb on the Henry’s hammer.

  “Relax, pup,” Bear River Tom said. “He’s long gone by now.”

  Nearly every soul in the settlement had gathered in front of the saloon. Almost all the men had guns. Mothers anxiously held their young ones.

  Bear River Tom pushed on through and into the saloon, leaving Fargo to explain.

  “So the savages are only after you scouts?” a man in a bowler said, sounding greatly relieved.

  “None of us need to worry, then,” another exclaimed, happy as could be.

  “The hell you don’t,” Fargo said, and informed them of the attack on the fort, and that Colonel Carlson and most of the troopers were many miles to the north. “You need to post sentries,” he advised. “And gather the women and children in one place where you can protect them better.”

  “To hell with that,” a woman in a yellow bonnet said. “It’s every person for him or her self. I’m taking my kids home and hiding in the root cellar until the soldiers show up.”

  Others shouted that they agreed with her, and before Fargo could stop them, the settlers scattered like chickens about to be swooped down on by a
hawk.

  Fargo called after them but in less than two minutes he was the only one in the street. “Everywhere I go,” he said to himself, “I run into jackasses.”

  A drink was called for. Just one, to wet his throat before he set out after Sadie and her lover.

  The saloon was empty save for Bear River Tom, over at the corner table sucking down bug juice. “Mabel and Martha have gone into hiding,” he lamented, “and took their tits with them.”

  Fargo went behind the bar, selected an unopened bottle of Monongahela, and brought it over.

  “How soon do we head out?” Tom asked.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Fargo said. That should be enough to convince the Bannocks no one was after them.

  “Do you reckon on asking some of these sheep to go with us?”

  “I wouldn’t take them if they paid me.”

  “Good,” Tom said. “We’d only have to hold their hands, anyway.” He chugged and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Doesn’t it make you mad?”

  “The sheep?”

  “No. We were being stalked and none of us knew it.” Tom scowled. “I’ve heard of a crazy bastard who went around strangling women. And an outlaw who went around killing every tin star he saw. And I’ve known a few who liked to kill blacks and redskins. But I never heard of a scout-killer before.”

  “Your point?”

  “We have to put a stop to it.”

  Fargo stared.

  “I know. That goes without saying. But it’s not just Thunder Hawk and his pards, is it?”

  “No,” Fargo said glumly.

  “And that’s my point. I’m not Badger. I can’t kill anybody, anywhere, anytime. I have—what do they call ’em?—scruples.”

  Fargo swallowed more whiskey. So did he. He just hid them real well.

  “I ain’t a woman killer,” Bear River Tom went on. “Blowing out a female’s wick is an awful waste of tits.”

  Smothering a snort, Fargo nearly choked on the rotgut.

  “Well, it is,” Tom insisted. “And the bad part of all this is that the tits belong to Sadie.” He angrily thumped the table. “I like her, Skye. I like her a lot.”

  “So did I,” Fargo said.

  “But she has to be held to account. For Jed Crow. For Tennessee. For that arrow Thunder Hawk stuck into Badger. Hell, for everything her lover has done.”

  “I know.”

  “The thing is,” Bear River Tom said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know if I can. I get her in my gun sights, I’m not sure I can squeeze the trigger.”

  “Maybe you should stay.”

  “And leave you to go up against them alone?” Tom shook his head. “Not on your life. We’re brothers in buckskins, and friends besides.”

  “Brothers in buckskins?”

  “Like it? I just made it up.” Tom grinned, but it immediately faded. “Which would make Sadie our sister in buckskins, wouldn’t it?”

  “When we catch up to them, I’ll deal with her.”

  “You have it in you? You can look her in the eye and do what has to be done?”

  “Maybe she’ll make it easy,” Fargo said uneasily. “Maybe she’ll try to kill us.”

  “And if she doesn’t? If she leaves it up to her red boyfriend?”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” was the best Fargo could come up with.

  “Don’t count on me to cross it with you. I’m only saying all this now so I don’t let you down later. If I hesitate, it could get us both killed.”

  “You’re a considerate bastard,” Fargo said.

  Bear River Tom laughed. “Mostly I’m a horn toad. When a woman jiggles her tits at me, I’m clay in her hands.”

  They lapsed into a moody silence that lasted until Fargo pushed his chair back and stood.

  “Time?” Bear River Tom said, and took a last quick gulp. “I reckon I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  No one was abroad. The good people of Salt Creek were shuttered in their homes and their businesses.

  “You see this?” Bear River Tom said, with a sweep of his arm at the empty street. “This is the difference between civilized folks and us.”

  “We’re not civilized?” Fargo said as he stepped to the Ovaro.

  “Not deep down, no. We like life rough and wild and free. We should have been born back when every man was a law to himself. When if someone looked at you crosswise, you could pull out a sword and hack them in half.”

  “Is it me,” Fargo said, forking leather, “or have you had too much to drink?”

  “I’m serious,” Bear River Tom declared, and swung onto his own mount. “I should have been born one of those barbarians they talk about. Had me a harem of dancing girls. All of them naked from the waist up. All those tits to drool over.”

  “I knew it,” Fargo said.

  “What?”

  “Everything comes back to tits with you.”

  “The only tits I’m thinking about now are Sadie’s, and whether we’re up to putting a bullet between them.”

  Fargo crossed the street and rode along the general store and into the woods. Together they roved for a sign, and it was Tom who found it—the tracks of a single unshod horse.

  “Thunder Hawk was alone when he took that shot at us,” Tom realized.

  “Let’s go find him,” Fargo said, “and return the favor.”

  “Don’t forget about Sadie.”

  “No way in hell,” Fargo said.

  25

  Two days.

  Two days they had been at it and still were far behind those they were after.

  Fargo had a hunch that Sadie and Thunder Hawk knew he was after them and were fanning the breeze to the south. That in itself bothered him. Why go south, when it was wiser for them to head north, toward Canada, into country no white man had ever set foot in? Or west, into untracked wastes that had never seen the rut of a wagon wheel? South would eventually take them to the Green River country, to the Oregon Trail, to where they were bound to run into a lot of whites.

  Fargo scowled. He’d been thinking too much of late, and thinking at the wrong time could get a man killed.

  Bear River Tom was in a sullen funk. Whether because of Sadie or some other cause, he didn’t say.

  Fargo decided to find out when they stopped at midday to rest their horses.

  Tom was slow to climb down. He moved to a log and sat, his chin in his hands.

  “What’s eating you?” Fargo got right to the point.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bull. You haven’t mentioned tits once since we left Salt Creek.”

  Tom poked at the dirt with his toe. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  “Of tits?”

  “Why do you keep bringing them up?” Tom shook his head. “No. Tired of the killing. We see a lot of it, the job we do. Doesn’t it ever get to you?”

  “I try not to think of it,” Fargo said. Occasionally, though, he’d remember—bodies riddled with bullets, men who had been scalped, men and women who had been gutted or mutilated in a hundred different ways, freighters tied to wagon wheels and fires lit under them, a trapper who had been skinned alive. On and on it went.

  “When my time comes no one will miss me.”

  “Not that,” Fargo said.

  “I’m feeling sorry for myself, I know,” Bear River Tom said. “But look at Crow and Tennessee. We planted them, and that was that.”

  “That’s all there ever is.”

  “I’d like to think I’ll be missed. That at least one person in this world will toast my memory.”

  The way Fargo saw it, life was hard, sure, so a man had to be harder. But to bring Tom out of his mood he said, “I’ll toast it with California every now
and then.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Tom beamed. “I’m grateful. I have a bad feeling about this. Like my tit days are about over.”

  Just what Fargo needed. He was counting on Tom to back him when they caught up to the hostiles. But the shape Tom was in, he’d be of little use.

  “I can tell by that look you think I’m making a fuss over nothing.”

  “Feelings don’t always amount to much.”

  “I hope to God you’re right.”

  As the hours passed and the miles fell behind them, Fargo kept hoping Tom would come out of himself. But the next day Tom was the same. And the day after that.

  They neared the end of the Salt Range.

  It was a bright morning, and they were descending a series of slopes that would bring them to the flatlands.

  Ahead grew blue spruce mixed with pines. Finches were flitting about, and somewhere a magpie screeched.

  The hoofprints of the nine warriors, and Sadie, were plain enough that a ten-year-old could track them.

  A last incline littered with boulders was all that separated Fargo and Bear River Tom from the shadowed boles of the spruce and pines.

  The Ovaro raised its head.

  Instantly, Fargo drew rein. He trusted the stallion’s instincts more than he trusted his own. “Hold up,” he cautioned.

  Bear River Tom drew rein next to him. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t—” Fargo began.

  Arrows streaked out of the woods, half a dozen or more, all let fly at once.

  Fargo barely had time to haul on the reins and holler, “Hunt cover!” A shaft nicked his hat. Another creased his arm. A third struck his saddle inches from his leg, and glanced off.

  Bear River Tom cursed, and banged off a shot. “Go!” he roared. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Together they raced up the slope and into a belt of saplings. Bringing the Ovaro to a halt, Fargo vaulted down, yanked on the Henry, and ran back to where he could see their back trail. “Come and get it,” he said, wedging the stock to his shoulder.

  No one appeared.

  Fargo stayed put. He was certain the renegades would try to finish them off. “Do you see any sign of them?”

  When Bear River Tom didn’t reply, Fargo turned.