The Trailsman cursed in the Indian’s tongue, then, knowing the gunfire might have been heard by other warriors, turned away from the dead brave and jogged up the trail, thumbing fresh shells from his cartridge belt into the Henry’s loading tube.
He hadn’t walked far before the girl and the pinto rose up from behind a grassy, breeze-brushed knoll. The pinto snorted and trotted forward, nearly running Fargo over before swerving sideways, stopping, snorting again, and shaking its glistening black mane, relieved to find that the Trailsman had survived the Indians. The golden late-afternoon sunshine made the strip of white between the horse’s fore and hindquarters glow. It made the girl’s red hair shimmer like sunset hues reflected off a high mountain lake.
“I thought I told you to wait on that bluff yonder,” Fargo snapped at her, sliding his Henry into the saddle sheath.
She stared down at him, glowing red hair dancing around her head. “I was worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be,” Fargo snapped, grabbing the reins out of her hands and swinging up into the saddle. “Just do what I tell you!”
“Fine, then,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, the overlarge tunic billowing out around them. “Just
Fargo turned the pinto around, heeled it west. The girl, nearly tossed from the saddle as the horse leaped forward, gave a startled cry and lunged for the horn.
3
When Fargo and Valeria Howard had ridden for another twenty minutes, it wasn’t more Indians they found themselves shadowed by, but a mass of swollen purple clouds driven toward them by a knife-edged wind.
The prairie hogbacks turned lemon yellow. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. The sudden gale shepherded tumbleweeds across the short brown grass and thrashed the scattered cottonwoods and oaks. Prairie dogs squealed and ran for their burrows.
“Shit!” Fargo said, turning his head forward and tipping his hat brim low.
Ahead, he could make out the brown smudge of the old trading post nestled between hogbacks about a half mile away, smoke skeining from its large fieldstone chimney.
“Hold on!” he yelled above the howling wind and rumbling thunder, clucking the Ovaro into another ground- eating lope.
They hadn’t galloped thirty yards before the storm converged on them, rain pouring out of the dark clouds, driven slantwise by the wind. Fargo and the girl hunkered low in the saddle as the Ovaro galloped over one rise and down another, hooves splashing through puddles, the wind-whipped rain pummeling the Trailsman’s shoulders and pasting his buckskin tunic against his back and sluicing off the broad brim of his high-crowned hat.
As they galloped over the last rise, the trading post/ stage station appeared before them, nestled in a broad hollow and fronted by a creek sheathed in cattails. It was a broad, tall, barnlike building of stout logs with a low, brush-roofed stable attached to the side. The post’s windows were shuttered, and the stable doors were closed, but wan lamplight seeped out through gaps between the logs and through the rifle slits in the front doors and shutters.
Lightning flashed and thunder clapped as the Ovaro splashed across the creek, which broiled with muddy, fast-moving water, and lunged up the opposite bank. It galloped past the stone well house and into the yard that had become a rain-pelted slough, and skidded to a slipping, sliding halt before the stable.
Three tarp-covered freight wagons sat nearby, wagon tongues drooping, the tarp groaning and flapping in the wind.
Fargo slipped out of the pinto’s saddle, lost his footing in the soggy mud, and nearly fell before regaining his balance and drawing the stable doors open. He led the pinto into the stable’s murky, musty shadows rife with the smell of hay and ammonia. A couple of horses, hidden in the shadows, loosed frightened whinnies and kicked their stall partitions, frightened by the storm as well as the intruders. In the stable’s far recesses, a cat growled angrily.
Fargo lifted Valeria Howard out of the saddle. Soaked, she weighed a good ten pounds more than she had when he’d put her there. Her red hair hung straight down her back, and she crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, shivering.
“I’ll get you into the lodge!” he yelled above the wind pummeling the doors and stout log walls, making the rafters creak. He ran his hand down the pinto’s sleek, wet neck. “You stay, boy. I’ll be back to bed you down.”
He ushered her through the stable doors, led her by the hand along the front of the stable to the porch. She gave a cry as water streamed off the sagging porch roof and down her back.
“Could I be any more miserable?” she said, shivering, hugging herself, as Fargo led her up the porch steps.
He rapped on the stout log door. Almost immediately, a rifle barrel pushed through one of the two slots in the door’s vertical half logs. Behind the door, a man’s voice squawked, “Friend or foe, red man or white?”
Fargo glanced at the round musket barrel sliding around in the slot, and at the rheumy blue eye peeking out the hole from inside.
“It’s Skye Fargo, Smiley. Open up!”
The musket barrel wobbled around, twitched, and receded into the cabin. A thump sounded from inside, followed by the scrape of a locking bar. The door opened a foot, and a round, bald head poked out, blue eyes wide with caution. When the eyes found Fargo, the old man’s lower jaw dropped.
“Skye Fargo! Well, I’ll be skinned! Get on in here outta the damp, ya crazy coon!”
The old man threw the door wide and stepped back inside the cabin. Fargo followed him in, drawing the girl along behind him.
Old Smiley Bristo stood just inside the door, flexing his snakeskin spats and grinning broadly, toothlessly up at the Trailsman towering over him. His breath was fetid with yeasty beer, whiskey, and tobacco. “What the hell brings you up to this country, Skye? How long’s it been, anyways…?”
The old man’s voice trailed off as his drink-bleary gaze slid to the girl stepping up beside Fargo. “Well, I’ll be hanged,” he said, voiced hushed with awe, raking an index finger through his silvery patch beard. “You got a
The word “woman” had no sooner escaped the oldster’s lips than the half dozen men sitting at the tables in the room’s smoky shadows, right of the long plank bar running along the room’s left wall, swiveled toward Fargo and the girl. The Trailsman’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the room’s shadows, which were shunted to and fro by hanging oil lamps and the cracking fire in the giant fieldstone hearth. But one look at the shirt clinging like a second skin to Valeria’s full breasts, nipples jutting from behind the soaked wool, told him what their eyes had found.
Valeria, apparently, had also become aware of the men’s scrutiny. Shyly, she turned her back to the men, and cast Fargo an uneasy sidelong glance.
“The lady would like a room and a hot bath,” Fargo said. “Some dry clothes, if you got any.”
His eyes glued to the girl, Smiley opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when a low voice rumbled from a table near the fire. “Shee-it, she need her back washed, too?”
Chuckles washed up from the webbing smoke and jostling shadows, heads jerking.
The girl sidled up close to Fargo as the old man said, his voice hushed as before, “I usually give the ladies from the stage the Chicago room upstairs, between New York and Abilene, as the curtains is pink and the mattress is goose feathers, plucked and stuffed myself. I’ll heat some water pronto. And I’ll rustle up a shirt and britches though I don’t have much in the way of female frillies.” He glanced shyly at the girl with a truckling bow. “Are you hungry, miss? I got a nice stew on the fire—the kidneys of a sow griz I just shot yesterday. The boys has already had some, and nobody’s been sick so far!”
Valeria splayed her hand on her chest and cleared her throat. “The food sounds delightful, but I think just the room and the bath will do for now.”
“I’ll show the lady to her room, Smiley,” Fargo said, taking the girl’s arm, “if you wanna get started on the water.”
