5
When the smoke had cleared, Fargo shouted down the stairs for Smiley to cart the French trash out of the hall and to keep better tabs on his guests. Grumbling angrily, he rose naked from the bed, slammed the door, wedged a chair against it, and replaced the Colt’s three spent shells with fresh ones.
Valeria Howard rose up on the bed, her hair in her eyes, looking shaken and disoriented. Feebly, she clutched a blanket to her breasts and stared at the door.
“What…?”
“Nothing to worry about,” the Trailsman said. “I think the frog eater was just inquiring the time.”
Before she could form another question, Fargo climbed back onto the bed, gently pushed her down, turned her over, shoved her hair aside, and peppered her neck, back, and buttocks with kisses.
After the commotion in the hall had faded, the body hauled away, he quelled further questions by mounting her from behind—slow, easy, time-consuming strokes. If she remembered anything about the shooting, she mentioned nothing more about it for the rest of the storm and love-tossed evening before she and Fargo collapsed in each other’s arms, her head on his chest, her hand proprietarily cupping his balls.
Fargo woke at the first wash of dawn and dressed quietly, letting Valeria sleep for a few more minutes, and went outside and scouted around before saddling the Ovaro and leading it back to the roadhouse. He woke the girl, and, sitting at a table downstairs, they enjoyed Smiley’s breakfast of venison sausage and biscuits washed down with hot, black coffee.
All the men from the night before remained at the roadhouse—all except for the dead Frenchman, obviously, and his partner, Hallbing, who before dawn had headed out for Fort Clark with his wagonload of army supplies.
“Too bad Hallbing started out so early,” Smiley said as Fargo scraped his chair back and tossed several coins on the table. “You three coulda ridden together. The Injuns leave that old Norski alone on account of he’s married to a Sioux woman from over by Devils Lake and gives ’em free trade beads.”
“I figured he might have been a little piss-burned over his partner,” Fargo said, donning his hat as he ushered Valeria toward the door.
“Hallbing?”
Smiley laughed and followed Fargo and Valeria outside, where the air was cool and fresh after the storm, the yard pocked with mud puddles from which several sparrows and magpies bathed and drank. Meadowlarks piped on the dawn-washed prairie around the roadhouse.
“Hell, he’s been wantin’ to kill Bardot for a month of Sundays, on account of Bardot got one of Hallbing’s daughters in the family way, if you’ll pardon the expression, Miss Howard.” The bearded oldster laughed again. “He just never had the guts to drop the hammer on him, I reckon. Besides, freightin’ partners ain’t all that easy to come by in these parts. If you see him,” Smiley continued as Fargo swung up onto the Ovaro’s back, “tell him he didn’t leave enough lucre on the bar this mornin’ to cover his bill. If he don’t cough it up, his next time here he’ll be drinkin’ the snake venom I usually serve to the soldiers!”
Fargo reached down, took the girl’s hand, and swung her up behind him. “How would he know the difference?” With that, he pinched his hat brim to Smiley, neck-reined the pinto around, and booted it into a trot across the muddy yard, heading southwest. Valeria sat behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist.
“Very funny, Fargo!” the roadhouse proprietor called, raising his voice as he added, “I reckon I’ll dust off a bottle o’ that coffin varnish for you, too!”
Fargo threw up an arm and put the Ovaro into a jog-trot, looking around carefully as the sun climbed toward the eastern horizon. Gray-purple shadows swelled out from buttes and hillocks and occasional cottonwood stands. The roadhouse was a good nine miles from Fort Clark—nine miles that at first gander appeared as open as a sea but were in fact scored with countless hidden coulees, ravines, and creek beds in which Indians might lie in ambush. The marauding redskins would most likely be holed up because of the rain, but leave it to an Indian to do the unexpected.
Fargo stayed clear of the wagon road connecting the roadhouse with Fort Clark, as the Indians were probably watching it. Traveling cross-country, he kept his eyes open, probing every rise and depression and every clump of bunchgrass and weed-choked boulder, ready to reach for his saddle gun.
Three miles from the roadhouse, and following a well-worn but ancient Indian path, he drew rein in a ravine choked with wild rose and chokecherry shrubs. The ravine was probably dry most of the year, but last night’s rain had sent water churning through it like whipped tea.
Keeping his eyes on the grassy rise south of the stream, Fargo slipped out of the saddle and looped his reins over a stunted oak. When he was sure he and Valeria were alone, he pulled her off the Ovaro’s back and set her down gently. Before he could turn away, she grabbed his arm and stared up at him sheepishly.
“I just wanted to make sure you understood, Mr. Fargo. About last night…”
Fargo looked down at her, a gleam in his eye. “You’re not that type of girl?”
She frowned, and a fire blazed in her green eyes. She hadn’t bothered to put her red hair up; it cascaded richly across her shoulders. “Indeed, I’m
Fargo slipped his Henry repeater from the saddle sheath. “You got it, Miss Howard. Next time, instead of letting you maul me like a she-griz with the springtime craze, I’ll
He turned to push through the cattails lining the creek, jacking a fresh round in the Henry’s chamber.
“Fargo?”
He turned around. She stood beside the grazing pinto, the sun fairly glowing in those angry, agate eyes. Her bosom rose and fell like that of an angry schoolmarm.
“I know how men like to brag about their conquests. With that in mind, I would hope that you might restrain your man’s shameful impulses, and save me the indignity of spreading what happened last night around Fort Clark. I mean, even if I could bear the embarrassment, Father would—”
“This might come as a shock to you, Miss Howard,” Fargo said, “but you weren’t my first
He left her standing on the bank as he followed a deer path through the willows and cattails and pushed out toward the edge of the narrow, churning stream. He took the Henry in one hand, set his feet, and spread his arms.
Just as he was about to spring to the creek’s other side, a scream rose from his left flank, Valeria Howard’s piercing cry of sheer terror echoing around the shallow canyon.
Fargo wheeled and sprinted back the way he’d come, stumbling in the weedy turf. He ran around the pinto, which was prancing nervously and craning its neck to stare over its left hip, and plunged into the tall wheatgrass, heading upstream. Bounding over a low rise, he stopped suddenly, stared into the depression before him.
Valeria stood facing him, her face in her hands. Another fifteen feet beyond her, a man lay in the crinkled, bloodstained grass, several arrows sprouting from his chest, belly, and legs.
Beyond the body, a freight wagon sat at the edge of the brush lining the creek, two mules lying dead before the drooping wagon tongue, their bloody carcasses half concealed by young cottonwoods and willows. The tarp had come loose from the box, revealing overturned barrels and broken crates. Several more barrels and burlap bags lay scattered behind the wagon, dislodged when the freighter had tried to make a run for the creek, Indians nipping at his heels.
Fargo moved around Valeria and stood over the stout body clad in a blood-soaked wool coat, stovepipe boots, and duck trousers. He’d thought the man’s head had been concealed by the brush, but he saw now that the head was gone—chopped off with a hatchet—leaving a grisly, ragged hole atop the man’s broad shoulders.
Wrinkling his nose at the cloying, copper stench of fresh blood, Fargo looked around. A large cottonwood
