Beyond Squaw Creek

When thirty or so dancing braves and older, potbellied warriors had circled the fire, women and girls of all ages traced another circle behind them, some dancing to the rattles and drums, some merely walking solemnly and holding the hands of children. The women were dressed in beaded doeskin and moccasins, some with their hair pinned up while others let it hang down their backs, the bear grease glistening in the umber firelight.

When the women had completed their circle behind the men, the drumbeats increased and grew louder. An old man—tall and broad but weathered like an old cottonwood, shoulders bowed, and wearing a warbonnet with streaming eagle plumes—lifted his chin and began singing softly. A buffalo robe hanging off his shoulders, and a necklace of his enemies’ teeth hanging around his neck, he gradually increased the volume until his keening voice echoed shrilly around the canyon, and distant coyotes yammered in answer.

This was Iron Shirt, Chief of the Coyote Band of the Assiniboine—a wily, cunning old war chief with whom Fargo had skirmished on the plains between the Missouri and Souris Rivers, barely escaping with his life each time.

Fargo dropped his spyglass to his chin and glanced at Prairie Dog. “Looks like most of the village has gathered for the hoedown. Duke must have convinced them they’re invincible—that’s why there aren’t many pickets. You stay here. I’m gonna go down and look for—”

“Hold on,” Prairie Dog growled as he stared through his own glass at the fire.

Fargo directed his glass toward the east side of the dancing, billowing flames. A tall, white-skinned figure entered the sphere of firelight.

The man’s pale blond hair hung to his shoulders, held back from his face with a rawhide thong encircling his forehead. His face was painted like that of a warring savage, the eyes deep-sunk and shadowed, broad chest bare and massed with tattoos of many shapes and colors including bright red serpents surrounded by ravens rising from his ribs. He wore a calico loincloth and fringed deerskin breeches, which hung to just above his knees. A dagger jutted from a beaded sheath on his right hip.

As Lieutenant Duke approached the fire, he raised his arms straight out from his chest, slowly flexing his knees. His singing rose to meet that of Iron Shirt, the otherworldly keening of both men becoming one demonic dirge.

The coyotes yammered even more shrilly, a bizarre accompaniment to the cacophony rising from the village.

The hair on the back of Fargo’s neck pricked.

A shadow moved behind Duke. Fargo shifted the spyglass slightly, and adjusted the focus.

“Sweet Christ,” Prairie Dog muttered to Fargo’s right.

Two braves stepped into the firelight. They carried between them a long platform bedecked with deer or antelope skins. On the skins sprawled a pale, naked girl, her slender arms hanging down from the platform’s edge. Valeria’s distinctive hair—long and thick and the bright red of a prairie sunset—hung down from the end.

Valeria Howard.

The braves positioned Valeria beside the fire, to Duke’s left, and lowered the platform to their shoulders. The fire glistened off Valeria’s pale, curving body, the full globes of her naked breasts casting oval shadows across her belly. She lifted one knee, dropped it across the opposite thigh, and wagged her head back and forth, face pinched. She’d been drugged.

Fargo’s heart quickened. He continued staring at Duke and Valeria through the spyglass as he snarled, “Dog, grab Brunhilda and draw a bead on that son of a bitch!”

“What about…?”

Prairie Dog’s voice trailed off as, through his own spyglass, Fargo watched Lieutenant Duke lower his hand to the sheath on his right hip, and draw the bone-handled dagger. The man lifted the dagger toward the fire and continued singing along with Iron Shirt, slowly flexing his knees, staring into the flames with the countenance of a man mesmerized by his own madness.

“Shit!” Prairie Dog lowered the spyglass and grabbed the Schuetzen. He inspected the muzzle-loader, made sure he had a patch seated on the nipple, then snugged his cheek up to the rifle’s sleek stock, and drew back the hammer.

Fargo stared through the spyglass as Duke sang on one side of the fire, Iron Shirt on the other, both raising their hands high above their heads, the war chief’s eagle plumes dancing in the fire wind. The others—women as well as men—sang softly, dancing in place.

Duke’s trembling dagger glittered in the firelight. Slowly, he lowered the blade to the flames, as if to sterilize it. The singing grew louder. Quickly, Duke removed it, swung around toward the girl.

Fargo turned away from the spyglass. “Shoot the son of a bitch, Dog!”

“I told you my eyesight ain’t as good as it used to be,” the old scout spat. “And it’s even worse at night!”

Below, Duke flapped his arms slowly, and the braves lowered the skin-draped platform until Valeria lay writhing on the ground in front of the mad lieutenant. Duke dropped to his knees, raised the knife in both hands above his head as if in prayer, and sent a wolflike howl rising to the stars.

Despite himself, Fargo jerked with a start.

Duke lowered his left hand slowly, leaving the right one holding the dagger high in the air, the glinting, silver blade angled toward the girl struggling languidly upon the skins.

Fargo snapped, “Goddamnit, Prairie—!”

To his right, the Schuetzen belched and flashed, the stench of burnt powder instantly filling the air. Below, a half second after the rifle’s bellow, Lieutenant Duke’s right arm jerked forward. At the same time, one of the two braves before him twisted around and back, grabbing his side with both hands and showing his teeth through a snarl.

Fargo steadied the spyglass as Duke fell forward over Valeria, dropping his knife, then twisting around to glare in the direction from which the shot had come, eyes bright with fury. All at once, the Indians dancing around the fire stopped and turned in the same direction, their singing transforming into a cacophony of angry snarls and exclamations.

An enraged voice rose in English, “Attackers!” Duke translated the shout, and instantly the crowd began scattering, the men dashing northward along the stream, heading for the bluff, the women and children fleeing toward the lodges.

Fargo lowered the glass and glared at Prairie Dog. “Nice shot!”

“It was a pretty good shot for these old eyes, ya damn ingrate.” Prairie Dog stared down the bluff, at the surging black mass sprinting toward the river, the fleetest braves already splashing into the water. “But what the hell we gonna do now?”

Fargo cursed and looked back toward the fire. Valeria lay sprawled atop the animal skins. Duke knelt on one knee beside her, clutching his right arm as he glared toward the bluff.

Fargo cursed again as he dropped his spyglass into his boot well and grabbed his rifle. He and Prairie Dog might have spared the girl for the moment, but, doing so, they’d pretty well blown their own lamps while doing nothing for Valeria’s future. To try to get around behind the approaching horde of raging Indians would be sure suicide.

And, to top it off, Duke was still alive…

“Well,” Fargo said, on one knee as he stared down the bluff at the Indians yowling and crossing the stream, his steady voice belying his frustration, “I reckon we’d better run.”

Down the slope before him, the Indians grunted and yowled, loosing rocks and gravel as they scrambled up the bluff toward the interlopers. Clutching the Schuetzen, Prairie Dog scrambled to his feet and bolted into the trees behind Fargo.

“Skye, old son, I like how you think!”

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