Beartooth Incident tt-332 Read online

  Beartooth Incident

  ( The Trailsman - 332 )

  Jon Sharpe

  OUT COLD

  In the frozen Beartooth Mountains, Fargo is rescued by a kindly wilderness woman named Mary Harper and her children. But when the brutal Cudgel Stein and his gang decide they want what the Harpers have, the Trailsman is going to give the snowbound sidewinders what they deserve...

  FROZEN FARGO

  Night was falling. Fargo had to get up. He had to keep moving. If he stayed there he’d freeze. His days of roaming the frontier wherever his whims took him would be done. He got his hands under him and pushed but his strength had deserted him. He rose only as high as his elbows and then fell back.

  “Not like this, damn it.”

  Again, Fargo sought to rise. Again his body betrayed him. He lay staring up into an ocean of falling flakes, his consciousness swirling like the eddies in a whirlpool. He felt himself being sucked into a black abyss and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Nothing at all . . .

  The Trailsman

  Beginnings . . . they bend the tree and they mark the man. Skye Fargo was born when he was eighteen. Terror was his midwife, vengeance his first cry. Killing spawned Skye Fargo, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. Out of the acrid smoke of gunpowder still hanging in the air, he rose, cried out a promise never forgotten.

  The Trailsman they began to call him all across the West: searcher, scout, hunter, the man who could see where others only looked, his skills for hire but not his soul, the man who lived each day to the fullest, yet trailed each tomorrow. Skye Fargo, the Trailsman, the seeker who could take the wildness of a land and the wanting of a woman and make them his own.

  1861, the Beartooth Range—where no one ever went because few had ever come back.

  1

  It was the worst blizzard Skye Fargo ever saw, and it was killing him.

  Fargo was deep in the rugged Beartooth Range. Mountains so far from anywhere, few white men had ever visited them. He was there on behalf of the army.

  “Scout around,” Major Wilson had requested. “Let us know what the country is like. Keep on the lookout for Indian sign. And for God’s sake, be careful.”

  It was known that the Blackfeet passed through the range now and then. So, too, did the Crows. Rumor had it another, smaller tribe lived far into the Beartooths, but no one knew anything about them. Like many tribes, they wanted nothing to do with the white man or his ways.

  So far Fargo hadn’t seen any Indians. He’d been exploring for six days when the first snow fell. It was just a few light flakes. Since snow in early September seldom amounted to much, he kept on exploring. The light flakes became heavy flakes—the kind that stuck and stayed if the temperature was right, the kind that piled up fast. Within two hours of the first flake falling, the snow was two feet deep and rising.

  Fargo kept thinking it would stop. He was so sure of it, he went on riding even when a tiny voice in his mind warned him to seek shelter. A big man, he favored buckskins, a white hat and a red bandanna. In a holster on his right hip nestled a Colt. Under his right pant leg, snug in his boot, was an Arkansas toothpick in an ankle sheath. From the saddle scabbard jutted the stock of a Henry rifle.

  A frontiersman, folks would call him. It showed in the bronzed cast of his features, in the hawkish gleam to his lake blue eyes, in the sinewy muscles that rippled under his buckskins. Here was a man as much a part of the wild land he liked to roam as any man could be. Here was a man who had never been tamed, never been broken.

  The blizzard worried him, though. Fargo had a bedroll but no extra blankets and no buffalo robe, as he sometimes used in the winter. He hadn’t brought a lot of food because he’d intended to fill his supper pot with whatever was handy.

  Drawing rein, Fargo glared at the snow-filled sky. A deluge of snow, the flakes so thick there was barely a whisker’s space between them, the heaviest snow he had ever seen, and that was saying a lot since he had seen a lot. He could see his breath, too, which meant the temperature was dropping, and if it fell far enough, he was in serious trouble.

  “Damn,” Fargo said out loud.

  The Ovaro stamped a hoof. The stallion didn’t like the snow, either. Great puffs of breath blew from its nostrils, and it shivered slightly.

  Fargo shivered, too. Annoyed at himself, he gigged the Ovaro on.

  As near as he could tell, he was high on a ridge littered with boulders. Humped white shapes hemmed him in. The game trail he had been following when the storm broke was getting harder to stick to. He hoped it would take him lower, into a valley where he could find a haven from the weather until the worst was over.

  Shifting in the saddle, he gazed about. There were no landmarks of any kind. All there was was snow. Visibility six feet, if that.

  Fargo’s fingers were growing numb and he took to sticking one hand or the other under an arm to warm it. He tried not to think of his toes. He knew a fellow scout who had lost all the toes on one foot to frostbite, and now the man walked with an odd rolling gait but otherwise claimed he didn’t miss his toes much.

  Fargo would miss his. He was fond of his body parts and intended to keep them in one piece.

  Since he couldn’t see the sun, he had to rely on his inner clock for a sense of time. He reckoned it was about one in the afternoon but it could have been later. If the snow was still falling when night fell, he would be in desperate trouble. He tried not to think of that, either.

  Fargo wasn’t a worrier by nature. He didn’t fret over what might be. He did what he had to, and if it didn’t work out, so be it. Some people were different. They worried over every little thing. They worried over what they should wear, and what they should eat, and what they should say to people they met, and they worried over how much money they made, and whether they were gaining too much weight or going gray or a thousand and one other anxieties. They amused him no end. All the worry in the world never stopped a bad thing from happening.

  But Fargo had cause to worry now. He would die if he didn’t find somewhere to lie low until the worst was over. He would succumb to the cold, and his flesh would rot from his bones and a wandering Indian or white man would come on his skull and a few other bones and wonder who he had been and what he had been doing in the middle of nowhere and why he had died.

  “Enough of that,” Fargo scolded.

  It helped to hear his own voice. To remind himself that he was alive and a man, able to solve any problem nature threw at him. He had never been short of confidence.

  So on Fargo rode, looking, always looking for a spot to stop. An overhang would do. A stand of trees, even. A cave would be ideal but it had been his experience that life was sparing with its miracles.

  More time passed. The only sound was the swish of the falling snow and the dull clomp of the Ovaro’s heavy hooves.

  The cold ate into Fargo. By now the snow was three feet deep in most places, with higher drifts. The drifts he avoided, if he could. They taxed the Ovaro too much, and he must spare the stallion.

  Huge white shapes appeared. Boulders as big as log cabins.

  Fargo had no choice but to ride between them. As he came out the other side, he nearly collided with a rider coming the other way. Instantly, he drew rein. So did the other man.

  Squinting against the lash of snow, Fargo could make out the dark outline of the man and the horse, but nothing else. His hand on his Colt, he kneed the Ovaro alongside.

  It was an Indian.

  An old warrior—his hair nearly as white as the snow, his craggy face a testament to a life lived long and hard—studied Fargo as Fargo was studying him. He, too, wore buckskins, only his had beads on them. His mount was a pinto. It had black and white markings,
like the Ovaro, only the patterns were different.

  Fargo stared at the old warrior and the old warrior stared at him, and neither said anything. Fargo didn’t see a weapon but no one, red or white, went anywhere unarmed.

  The old man trembled. Not from fear, for there wasn’t a trace of it on his face, but from the bitter cold.

  Fargo looked closer and realized the old man was gaunt from hunger and haggard from near exhaustion. The eyes, though, were filled with a sort of peaceful vitality. They were wise eyes. Kind eyes.

  “Do you speak the white tongue?”

  The old warrior simply sat there, a shivering stature.

  “I reckon not,” Fargo said. Twisting, he fumbled with his cold fingers at a saddlebag and got it open. Rummaging inside, he found a small bundle of rabbit fur. Carefully opening it, he counted the pieces. He had six left. That was all. Without hesitation he took three out. He wrapped the rest and put the fur back in his saddlebag, then held out his hand to the old warrior.

  “For you.”

  The old man didn’t move.

  “It’s pemmican.” Fargo motioned as if putting a piece in his mouth, and then exaggerated chewing. He held the pieces out again. “They’re yours if you want them.”

  Caked with snow, flakes clinging to his hair and his seamed face, the old warrior stared at the pemmican and then at Fargo and then at the pemmican again. Slowly, as if wary of a trick, he extended his hand.

  Fargo placed the pieces in the old man’s palm. He asked who the old warrior was in Crow and then in the Blackfoot tongue and then the Sioux language, which he knew perhaps best of all Indian tongues from the time he had lived with the Sioux. He tried a smattering of other Indian languages he knew.

  The old warrior just sat there.

  Fargo resorted to sign language. Fingers flowing, he made the sign for “friend” and asked the man’s name.

  The old warrior never moved nor spoke.

  “I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” Fargo told him. Not given how most whites treated Indians. “I’ll be on my way, then.” He didn’t want to. The warrior might know where to find shelter from the storm.

  Touching his hat brim, Fargo rode on. He didn’t anticipate an arrow in the back, but he glanced over his shoulder to be safe and saw the old warrior staring after him. Then the snow closed in.

  Fargo sighed. He had half a mind to turn around and follow the old man. He must know the mountains well. But it was plain the warrior didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Suddenly the Ovaro slipped. It recovered almost instantly and stopped.

  Fargo leaned to one side and then the other, bending low to examine the ground. He couldn’t be sure because of the snow but they appeared to be starting down a slope. The footing was bound to be treacherous and would become even more so if ice formed.

  “Some days it doesn’t pay to wake up,” Fargo grumbled. He gigged the Ovaro.

  The next hour was the worst. The snow never let up. Twice the Ovaro slipped, and each time Fargo feared he would hear the snap of a leg bone and a terrified squeal.

  He was terribly cold. His skin was ice, and when he breathed, he would swear icicles formed in his lungs. His feet were numb, his hands slightly less so. He shivered a lot. His body temperature was dropping, and once it reached a certain point, he was as good as dead. There was a word for it, a word he couldn’t recollect. But the word didn’t matter. A person died no matter what the word was.

  Fargo never thought he would end it like this. He’d always imagined going down with a bullet to his brain or his heart, or maybe an arrow or a lance. But not in the cold and the snow. Not by freezing to death.

  The Ovaro slipped again, and this time it wasn’t able to regain its balance. Fargo felt it buckle and he instinctively threw himself clear of the saddle. Or tried to. For in pushing off, he slipped on the snow-slick cantle and pitched headlong to the ground. He figured the snow would cushion his fall but he didn’t land in snow; he came down hard on a snow-hidden boulder, his shoulder bearing the brunt, and pain shot clear through him.

  The next moment he was tumbling and sliding.

  Fargo envisioned sliding over a precipice and plummeting to his doom. He clawed at the ground but all he could grab were handfuls of snow.

  A white mound loomed, another boulder, and he careened off it and hurtled lower.

  Dazed and hurting, Fargo sought to focus. He thrust his hands into the snow but it had no effect. In fact, he was gaining speed, going faster every second.

  Fargo swore. Sometimes a man did all he could and it wasn’t enough. Some folks gave up at that point. What was the use? they figured. But Fargo never gave up. So long as he had breath in body, he fought to go on breathing.

  Rolling onto his stomach, he jammed both arms and both legs into the snow.

  It didn’t work. The snow was too deep. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach the ground. He couldn’t find purchase. There was only snow and more snow.

  Fargo had lost sight of the Ovaro. It could be lying above him with a broken leg. Or maybe it was sliding down the mountain, too. He vowed to go look for it. Provided he survived.

  Another mound loomed. Frago threw himself to one side but the snow had other ideas. His other shoulder slammed hard. The pain was worse than the first time. Now both of his arms were numb. He had to struggle to move them even a little.

  And he was still sliding.

  His hat was gone, too. That made him mad. A hat was as necessary as footwear. It shielded a man from the heat of the sun and the wind-whipped dust and falling rain. He’d had that hat for a couple of years now, and he’d managed to keep it in fairly good shape.

  Fargo peered ahead, seeking some sign he was near the bottom. He had the illusion he’d slid half a mile but it couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet.

  Suddenly he shot off into space. He looked down but saw only snow. Flakes got into his eyes, and his vision blurred. He tried to twist so he wouldn’t land on his head and neck, but he was only partway around when he smashed down with a bone-jarring impact. If he counted on the snow to cushion him, he was wrong. It felt like his chest caved in. He slid he knew not how many more feet and crashed against a boulder.

  God, the pain! Fargo hurt all over. He thought half his bones must be broken. He marveled that he was still conscious, and tried to sit up. The attempt blacked him out. For how long, he couldn’t say, but when the stinging lash of falling snow revived him, the sky was darker.

  Night was falling.

  Fargo had to get up. He had to keep moving. If he stayed there he would freeze. His days of wanderlust, of roaming the frontier wherever his whims took him, would be done. He got his hands under and pushed but his strength had deserted him. He rose only as high as his elbows and then fell back.

  “Not like this, damn it.”

  Again Fargo sought to rise. Again his body betrayed him. He lay staring up into an ocean of falling flakes, his consciousness swirling like the eddies in a whirlpool. He felt himself being sucked into a black abyss and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Nothing at all.

  2

  The cold woke him.

  Fargo snapped awake, sucked out of the abyss by ice in his veins. Ice in his veins and in his flesh. Ice in his bones, in his marrow. He stared up into white. A white blanket of some kind. Confused, he tried to remember where he was and what had happened to him.

  Without thinking, he opened his mouth and some of the white filled it. He coughed, and spat, and swallowed, and realized the white was snow, and then everything came back to him in a rush: the blizzard, being unhorsed, the slide, and the fall.

  He was buried in snow.

  Part of him wanted to stay there. Part of him wanted to lie there and let the cold seep through what little of him the cold hadn’t reached, and to go over an inner precipice from which there was no turning back. But another part of him—the part that never gave up, the fighter—refused to go so meekly. That part of
him struggled against the cold. That part of him fought with fierce intensity for his very life.

  Somehow, the inner fight warmed him. Somehow, bit by bit he grew warmer, and bit by bit the cold faded until he felt almost himself again. The snow helped. The snow was a cocoon that once he was warm kept him warm.

  Fargo tried to move his arms and found to his immense delight that he could. There was pain, but not more than he could bear. He moved them slowly at first, half afraid they were broken. They were fine. He wriggled his legs next, and tried his toes. His toes moved, but not as much as they should. He must do something about that soon, or he would come down with frostbite, if he hadn’t already.

  Fargo wanted to sit up but first he must do something about the snow. He thrust upward and it broke away, and clear, cold air rushed into his lungs even as bright sunlight nearly blinded him. Only a few flakes fell. The worst of the blizzard was past.

  The sun was where it would be at about ten in the morning.

  “I was out all night?” Fargo marveled. No wonder he had been so cold. It was a wonder he hadn’t frozen.

  Girding himself, Fargo slowly sat up. He pressed his hands to his ribs, to his hips, to his back. His body was intact. Bruised and battered and scraped, but intact.

  Elated, Fargo made it to his feet. He swayed for a few seconds, in the grip of dizziness, but it went away. He breathed deep, relieved and grateful to be alive. He was even more grateful when he looked up and saw the cliff he had fallen over. It was sixty feet high, at least. The fall alone could have killed him. Fortunately, he’d landed in a deep drift, missing a cluster of boulders by only a few yards.

  Damn, he was lucky. Fargo’s elation, though, was short-lived. He gazed about him to find that he was at one end of a broad valley. Everything in it, and everything on the facing slopes, was buried in white. White, white everywhere, an unending vista of white and more white. And nowhere, not anywhere in that sea of white, did anything move.