He dropped the pinto’s reins and reached up to help the girl down. She’d forgotten to cover her breasts as she stared into the distance, her face drawn with worry. Fargo couldn’t help letting his gaze linger over the softly rounded, pink-tipped orbs, no less enticing for being rimed with trail dust and belonging to a rather haughty debutante.
She glanced down at him, saw where his eyes were, and gasped. Quickly, she drew the frayed strips of her torn blouse closed. “Isn’t there something besides staring at my breasts you should be doing, Mr. Fargo? Perhaps making sure we’re not attacked
Fargo wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her roughly out of the saddle, evoking another gasp.
“I reckon,” he said, setting her on the ground, glancing again at the pale orbs peeking out between the insufficient flaps of cloth. She smelled sweet, like talcum and lilacs, in spite of the ordeal. “But it won’t be near as much fun.”
He opened one of his saddlebags and rummaged around before pulling out a shirt sewn from flannel trade cloth, with badger teeth for buttons. He tossed the shirt to the girl. “Why don’t you put that on so I can concentrate on my job?”
“Oh, I suppose the Indians surprised you because of
Fargo grabbed his spyglass out of his saddlebags and began climbing the slope rising east of the spring.
The girl called behind him, “You don’t have something a little smaller?”
Halfway up the slope, Fargo stopped and turned toward her. She remained standing with her naked back to him, holding the shirt up to inspect it.
“I wasn’t packing for you!” As he continued climbing, he glanced over his shoulder and said quietly, “Get a drink. We’ll be movin’ out in two minutes.”
“Uncouth bastard,” she grumbled behind him.
Fargo dropped down against the bluff, doffed his hat, and telescoped the spyglass. He’d no sooner trained the glass on their back trail between the two ridges than his back tensed and his gut filled with bile.
Shadows of galloping riders undulated across the grassy southern slopes of the shallow canyon. A few beats later, the Indians he’d spied a little while earlier appeared around a bend, the brave in the buffalo headdress riding point, batting his moccasined heels against the ribs of his chuffing, galloping paint.
Behind Fargo, the Ovaro snorted loudly. Down the canyon galloping hooves rumbled.
“What’s the matter with—?” The girl stopped as Fargo slammed the end of the spyglass against his palm, reducing it, then grabbed his hat and began scrambling down the slope, leaping rocks and tufts of sage and silverthorn.
“Mount up!”
“What is it?”
Fargo hit the bottom of the canyon running, grabbed the girl around the waist, and heaved her back onto the pinto. “Mount
He grabbed the reins, tossed the spyglass into the saddlebags, then leaped up behind the girl who jerked her head around, whimpering, as the thud of hooves rose from down the canyon.
“Hold on!”
Fargo reined the horse away from the spring and into the crease. Immediately, shrill whoops and yowls rose on his left, above the thuds of the pounding hooves.
Fargo turned the pinto westward along the crease, then gave the horse its head. The Ovaro stretched out, bounding through the hock-high grass as the Indians’ enraged whoops and yowls grew behind it, the cacophony punctuated by sporadic gunfire.
“How did they
“The breeze switched.” Fargo glanced back to see the half dozen Indians bolting toward them, the broad chests of their paints and pintos and Appaloosas glistening in the afternoon sunlight, the braves’ yells echoing around the buttes. “They must’ve smelled your perfume.”
“Why didn’t you…?”
“Sorry, honey,” Fargo growled. “I can’t control the wind!”
He glanced behind once more. Whooping like a crazed warlock, the lead warrior held up a feathered war lance dyed red, green, and black, his medicine pouch and necklaces dancing along his broad, muscular chest. The brave’s right cheek appeared covered with a strawberry birthmark beneath the swirling lines of war paint.
“That looks like the son of Iron Shirt,” Fargo muttered darkly as he turned forward, flinching at an arrow sailing across his left shoulder.
Arrows sliced the air above and around them, and a rifle barked, a slug spanging off a rock only a few feet right of the galloping pinto. Ahead, the crease between the buttes curved right, then narrowed to a couple of yards.
“Take the reins!” Fargo yelled above the thunder of the Ovaro’s slicing, grinding hooves, shoving the ribbons into the girl’s hands.
Valeria shot him a wary glance.
“Keep riding. When you clear these buttes, stop and wait for me atop that flat-topped bluff in the distance.”
Stiffly, her cheeks pale with terror, the girl took the reins reluctantly, as though they were on fire, and stared warily down at the lunging horse. “What’re you going to
Fargo shucked his Henry rifle, cocked it one-handed. “I’m gonna clean those wolves off our trail!”
Throwing both arms out for balance, Fargo hopped straight back along the horse’s rocking hips.
He glanced behind. The Indians were out of sight beyond the bend in the crease, but they wouldn’t be for long.
Fargo threw himself straight back off the Ovaro’s rump, hitting the ground flat-footed. Propelled by the horse’s momentum, he rolled through the grass, managing to hold on to the rifle. As he began to slow, his right knee nipped a rock along the trail, and he gritted his teeth.
Cursing, he rolled off his shoulder and shot a look up the trail. The horse and the girl galloped away from him, the girl glancing over her shoulder, red hair bouncing along her back.
Fargo waved her on, then threw himself off the trail. As the whoops and hooffalls grew louder behind him, he scrambled up the steeply shelving butte on his left.
He doffed his hat and lifted a look over the butte’s shoulder. At the same time, the Indian with the headdress and birthmark—Iron Shirt’s oldest son, sure enough—dashed around the bend on his fleet-footed paint, the other five howling braves pushing in close around him so all six could squeeze through the narrow corridor.
The Trailsman pushed himself straight up to the crest of the butte shoulder and, on one knee, snapped the Henry to his cheek. Iron Shirt’s son—Blaze Face—glanced up as his paint approached the gap before him.
The warrior’s spotted face blanched and his lower jaw dropped a half second before Fargo blew him out of his saddle, sending the headdress flying. Fargo jacked another round into the chamber and fired, and continued firing until all six horses were galloping through the gap without riders, or, as in the case of a small-boned Appy, kicking its rider along under its scissoring hooves.
As gun smoke billowed around Fargo’s head, he turned to look up trail. The last rider rolled through the crease and piled up against a boulder.
Fargo scrambled down the butte and ran up to the warrior, who lay against the boulder spotted with the young man’s blood. Several broken ribs poked through his bloody sides. The brave kicked miserably, arching his back and groaning.
The Trailsman racked a fresh shell into the Henry’s breech and held the barrel two inches from the brave’s right eye. “Why are you raiding?” he demanded in Sioux, hoping he had the right dialect.
The brave shook the hair from his eyes and spat several curses which, in good Indian style, insulted not only the Trailsman’s mother and sisters but his female cousins, as well. The brave had opened his mouth to launch another tirade, when he tensed suddenly.
Apparently, one of the broken ribs had pierced his heart. He flung his head back with an audible smack against the ground, gave another couple of kicks, and lay still, eyes glazed with death.
