by Jon Sharpe
Up ahead, Speckled Wolf and his friends were in full flight. They had heard the thunder of approaching hooves and spotted the Nez Perce.
A rifle cracked. Ferret Killer had fired at Kicking Bird but missed.
Kicking Bird raised his bow.
“No!” Fargo shouted.
The shaft flashed into the vault of blue. It was an incredible shot. Rooster looked back just as the arrow caught him in the forehead. The barbed tip penetrated clean through his head and burst out the rear of his cranium. Limbs pinwheeling, he struck the ground.
Kicking Bird notched another arrow. He was guiding his mount with his legs to free his hands.
Speckled Wolf looked back. He had the lead rope and was bent low over his horse.
Fargo was in a quandary. He didn’t want the breeds dead but he couldn’t shoot Kicking Bird for doing what any warrior in Kicking Bird’s place would do. Swearing a blue streak, he lashed the Ovaro.
Kicking Bird was gaining. He raised his bow and drew the string to his cheek.
Unexpectedly, Ferret Killer hauled on his reins and brought his sorrel to a sliding stop. In a whirl of dust he reined broadside. His hand rose from his waist holding a revolver. He aimed carefully, one eye shut, and the weapon belched smoke and lead.
Kicking Bird’s head snapped back as if he had been punched. He twisted at the hips and his arm drooped and the bow fell to the grass.
Fargo flew past him and saw that a slug had caught him in the left eye; there was a hole where the eyeball should be. The body began to slide off, Kicking Bird’s head flopping back and forth.
Ferret Killer had wheeled and was again seeking to escape. He reloaded as he rode, which took considerable practice.
Fargo heard a howl of fury behind him. Motomo and Small Badger had reached Kicking Bird and Motomo was shaking his lance in rage. Fargo focused on Ferret Killer, who kept glancing back.
“I’m not your enemy! I only want the Appaloosas!”
“Like hell!” Ferret Killer yelled, and pointed the revolver.
In a twinkling Fargo had swung onto the side of the Ovaro and was hanging Comanche-fashion. When no shot sounded he pulled himself high enough to see Ferret Killer riding faster than ever. It had been a trick to slow him.
Fargo swung back up. As he did a horse pounded past, the warrior on it oblivious to everything save his quarry. “Motomo!” Fargo shouted. He might as well have saved his breath.
Like an avenging swarthy angel, Motomo bore down on Ferret Killer. He would soon be in casting range. Ferret Killer must have realized as much because he suddenly brought his mount to a stop, reined around, and extended his six-shooter.
Motomo ignored the threat and raised his lance, every sinew tensed for the throw.
Ferret Killer fired. The slug cored Motomo’s left shoulder and nearly unhorsed him but he clung on. His right arm blurred up and out.
Fargo saw it all as if in slow motion.
The lance cleaved the air, the tip glittering bright in the sunlight.
Shock registered on Ferret Killer as he sought to rein around and get out of there.
But he hadn’t quite turned when the lance cleaved his side from left to right and ruptured out of him below his ribs. The force had driven it all the way through his body.
Motomo whooped in triumph.
Ferret Killer reeled and clutched at the lance, scarlet flecking his lips.
His body sagged and his head drooped. He stopped moving but didn’t fall. There he sat, dead in the saddle.
Fargo figured that Motomo would stop.
Not so.
Motomo whipped his knife from his sheath, jabbed his heels, and flew after Speckled Wolf.
Cursing, Fargo pressed after them.
15
Fargo intended to stop Motomo if he could. Speckled Wolf was the only one left who could tell him why the breeds had taken the Appaloosas. He began to gain but Motomo was also gaining.
Speckled Wolf kept looking back. He was tugging on the lead rope and riding as fast as his horse could gallop but it was plain he couldn’t hope to get away. Perhaps that was why he suddenly hauled on his reins. Twisting in the saddle, he jammed his Sharps to his shoulder.
“Motomo!” Fargo shouted, hoping against hope the warrior would stop. He didn’t want him slain, either.
But Motomo had lost his son and he was almost upon the man responsible.
Instead of stopping he raised his knife and gave voice to a war whoop.
The Sharps boomed.
Motomo was smashed back but somehow stayed on. Grabbing his mount’s mane, he straightened. He swept past the mare and past Thunderhoof and was next to Speckled Wolf. The knife flashed. Then Motomo was past and pitching from his horse.
By the time Fargo got there Speckled Wolf was on the ground, too, doubled over. Fargo vaulted from the saddle. One glance at Motomo was enough; the slug had ripped through his sternum and exploded out of his body between his shoulder blades. His eyes were wide and empty. That he had lived long enough to stab Speckled Wolf was a testament to the power of human hate.
Speckled Wolf had dropped the Sharps but still had a revolver and was trying to draw it.
Covering him with the Colt, Fargo warned, “I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.”
Speckled Wolf’s teeth were clenched. His other hand was on the hilt of the knife jutting from his body. Wisely, he hadn’t tried to pull it out. If he did, he might die within moments from blood loss. “I am already dead.”
Fargo sank to one knee and relieved him of the revolver. He could tell by the angle the knife had penetrated that the wound was mortal. “He was the father of the boy you killed.”
“I know,” Speckled Wolf said, his lips flecked with red drops. “A good man. I do not blame him.”
“You’re the strangest horse thief I ever met.”
The pain made Speckled Wolf groan. “There is something I must tell you . . .” he started to say.
The hammering of hooves heralded Small Badger arrival. He leaped from his horse and raised his bow.
Fargo shifted between them. “No.”
“He must die!”
“Look at him,” Fargo said. “He’s already dead.”
“He shoot Motomo!”
“Look at him, damn it.”
Small Badger did, his arms slowly lowering. “Why you do this? After all him do?”
“I need answers.” Fargo turned to Speckled Wolf. “What is it you were about to say?”
Speckled Wolf didn’t answer.
“Why did you take the Appaloosas?” Fargo put a hand on his shoulder. “What were you up to?”
Speckled Wolf’s head drooped. His body went limp and his hands slid to the ground and he exhaled a last long breath and was gone.
“Hell in a basket,” Fargo said.
“He be dead?” Small Badger came closer. “Good. He deserve to die. He kill two Nimipuu.”
Fargo sighed in frustration. Now he would never know what brought all this on. He stood and went to Thunderhoof and the mare and examined them. Neither was the worse for the chase.
“We bury my friends,” Small Badger said sadly.
“We’ll plant all of them.”
They were the rest of the day at it. To dig, they used broken limbs and their hands. Fargo wanted to pile rocks on top to discourage scavengers but there weren’t many to be had.
Small Badger hardly said a word. Not until Fargo had a fire going and was putting coffee on and the sun was half gone.
“I sorry I so mad.”
“Can’t blame you,” Fargo said.
Small Badger stared at the mounds of earth. “They die so quick. It over before I can think.”
“That’s how it usually is.” Fargo had taken part in more violent deaths than he cared to remember.
“Now we take Thunderhoof and mare to rancher?”
“That was the plan. We’ll hand them over and you’ll get the rest of the money you’re due and I’ll get the rest of m
ine and then it’s on to Denver for me. I aim to stay drunk for a month.”
“You like whiskey a lot, yes?”
“It helps a man forget.”
“Forget what?”
Fargo nodded at the graves.
“Oh.”
Fargo opened his saddlebags and took out his bundle of pemmican. He offered a piece to Small Badger but the young warrior motioned that he wasn’t hungry. Fargo chewed without tasting it.
“You ever wonder when maybe you die?”
Fargo shrugged. “Why worry about it? A man never knows when his time will come. When it happens, it happens, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
“It not right,” Small Badger said. “We born. We live. We die. Why life that way?”
“How would I know? I’m just passing through.” Fargo gazed out over the mountains. “I remember the time I came across a wagon in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t much older than you. The man had been butchered and scalped. The woman had been raped and gutted. They’d had a baby. Not more than five or six months old, I’d reckon. I found it by the wagon. Someone had dashed its brains out against the wheel.”
“Death ugly,” Small Badger said.
“That was the day I decided this world makes no kind of sense. The day I made up my mind to live as I damn well please and the rest of the world be hanged. I don’t bother anyone and I require that they don’t bother me. That’s all I know worth knowing.”
“There be many whites like you?”
“Some. Most are content to go from their ma’s womb to the grave doing what they’re told to do and thinking what they’re told to think. That’s the sense they make of life.”
“You never talk like this before.”
“Hell,” Fargo said. “A man can think himself in circles if he’s not careful.” He chuckled. “Give me a friendly filly and a bottle of coffin varnish and a card game, and that’s as good as life gets.”
Around them the shadows darkened and the sky went from gray to black. Howls broke the stillness. A roar filled the night. Somewhere an animal shrieked a death cry.
Fargo turned in early. The stirring of the birds at the crack of dawn brought him out of his blankets and they were soon under way.
The next several days passed without incident. On the fourth afternoon Small Badger brought down a doe with his bow and they ate until they were gorged.
Leaning back, Small Badger patted his stomach. “My belly so big I could have baby.”
Fargo laughed.
Small Badger related how his father taught him to ride and shoot and how he once shot another boy in the foot by accident. “Arrow nick him so he all right. But other Nimipuu begin call me Shoots In Foot.”
“You’re lucky the name didn’t stick,” Fargo joked. His grin faded when the Ovaro and the Appaloosas raised their heads and Thunderhoof nickered.
“They smell or hear something,” Small Badger stated the obvious.
Fargo grabbed the Henry and stood. They were in a clearing in a vast forest. Anything, or anyone, could be out there. He took a few steps and a tingle ran down his spine.
A pair of eyes, glowing with fire shine, was fixed on them with fierce intensity. Their size and their shape identified the creature as surely as if it were broad daylight.
“Mountain lion,” Fargo warned.
Small Badger jumped up and strung an arrow. “I see it.”
“Stand still. Maybe it will let us be.”
Drawn by the scent of blood, the big cat was interested in the dead deer.
Fargo could have shot it but cougars rarely attacked people and he never killed an animal unless he had cause. He wasn’t one of those who went around shooting things for the hell of it.
The eyes blinked and the cat stepped into the circle of firelight, its tawny body slunk low to the ground, its long tail twitching.
“Iron Will?”
“No.”
The mountain lion glanced at each of them and then at the doe. They had cut off a haunch and the rest was intact. It took another couple of steps.
“Now I can?”
“Hush, damn it.”
The cat growled and curled its thin lips, baring razor fangs.
“Please, Iron Will.”
Fargo fired. He shot into the ground in front of the cougar and a geyser of dirt spattered its paws and face. Instantly, the big cat whirled and bounded off, moving so swiftly it was a tawny blur. “Happy now?”
Small Badger slowly lowered his bow. “Why you not just kill it?”
“I’ve already ate and I don’t have any use for its hide.” Fargo worked the Henry, feeding a new cartridge into the chamber.
“What if it be grizzly?”
“I’d run like hell.”
Fargo spent the next hour cutting the rest of the meat into strips and setting them to dry over a frame he rigged from tree limbs. The rest of the remains he buried to discourage meat-eaters like the cougar.
Tranquil days ensued. Long hours of riding followed by tranquil nights of rest.
Fargo was in no particular hurry. It made no sense to ride the horses into the ground. They would get there when they got here.
Gradually Small Badger’s mood lightened. By the eighth morning after their clash with the breeds he was his old self.
“When I little I like see shapes in clouds. One time cloud like beaver. Another time cloud like fish.” He pointed at one high in the vault of blue. “See that one? What it look like to you?”
“A cloud.”
“No. What else?”
“A chipmunk.”
Small Badger’s face furrowed. “I think it look like turtle. See shell? And head and feet?”
“You’re the chipmunk,” Fargo said. “You chatter a man’s ears off.”
Small Badger grinned. “My father say I born talking.”
“I believe it.”
Fargo looked back at Thunderhoof and the mare, and sobered. On a ridge to the south riders had appeared. “Quick,” he said, pointing. “Into the trees.”
He gave the lead rope a sharp pull.
Oaks closed about them. Fargo peered up through the canopy, Nine warriors, all told, heading west. They were too far off to tell if they wore war paint.
“You think they see us?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“More Blackfeet maybe?”
“More likely Shoshones. Or maybe Crows.” Both were friendly but Fargo knew of a few instances where the Crows had helped themselves to horses belonging to white men so he stayed put.
That night Fargo lay on his back, pondering. It would take them a few days yet to reach the Sweetwater River country but he couldn’t help thinking that the dangerous part of their trek was behind them. The rest should be a cinch.
The Sweetwater River got its start just over the Divide not far from South Pass. It flowed generally east-northeast along a series of high hills and then cut to the southeast between the Granite Mountains and the Green Mountains and on into prime cattle-raising land.
Fargo figured that was where he would find the Circle B. They were barely half a mile past the mountains when he spotted a small herd of cows and two punchers who promptly galloped toward them. He drew rein and waited.
The cowboys had their hands on their revolvers. They came to a stop and a slab of brawn with stubble and a scar looked them up and down. “What do we have here?”
“Would this be the Circle B?” Fargo asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Our boss don’t take kindly to strangers,” said the other man.
Fargo reminded himself that they were only doing their job. “My name is Fargo. Clarence Bell hired me to bring these Appaloosas.” He waved his hand toward Thunderhoof and the mare. “I have come a long way and I am tired. Which way to the ranch house?”
“He might have hired you to bring those horses, mister,” the first puncher said, “but he sure as hell didn’t hire you to bring an Injun.” He put his hand on his
revolver. “And if he did that’s just too bad.”
16
Fargo’s own hand was on his hip. He saw the cowboy start to draw and palmed his Colt. In the bat of an eye it was out and cocked. At the click the cowboy imitated stone.
The other puncher whistled softly. “God Almighty. Did you see that, Hank? I didn’t even see his hand move.”
Hank was staring at the Colt like a man about to climb a gallows. His throat bobbed and he said, “Hold on there, mister. I wouldn’t really have shot the redskin.”
“Take your hand off your pistol, you peckerwood,” Fargo snapped.
Hank obeyed, raising his arms out from his sides. “Buck me out in gore and you’ll have every hand on the Circle B after you.”
“How would they know I did it?”
The other puncher straightened. “Why, I’d tell them.”
“You take a lot for granted,” Fargo said.
The cowboy blanched. “This is between Hank and you, friend. I’m just sitting here.”
“The two of you are taking us to the ranch house,” Fargo commanded. “Ride side by side and keep your hands away from your hardware and you might live to get there.”
“We can’t leave these cows. Mr. Bell would have our heads.”
“What’s your handle?”
“Amos. Amos Barnes.”
“The cows will be fine unless there’s a blizzard and we don’t usually have blizzards in the summer.”
“You’re a hard one, mister,” Amos said.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Fargo was stating fact, not bragging. He motioned. “Lead the way.”
“I won’t forget this,” Hank said.
“Shut the hell up,” Amos growled at him. “If you hadn’t been so damn eager we wouldn’t be in this pickle.”
“How far is the ranch house?” Fargo asked.
“Four hours, more or less.”
“If we run into any of your friends along the way, you’re to smile and wave so they think everything is fine.”
The two cowboys did as they were told. Twice they passed small herds and other punchers but no one challenged them.
Fargo was mildly surprised he didn’t see more cows. A ranch the size of the Circle B could graze thousands but the most he saw was about five hundred.