Black Hills Badman tt-333

  Black Hills Badman

  ( The Trailsman - 333 )

  Jon Sharpe

  Sioux territory is no place for a sane man, but that's where Fargo finds himself guiding a blustery senator, his beautiful new wife, and their bratty daughter. And the hunting party soon becomes prey to some mighty warriors led by a medicine man with dangerous magic and a bloodcurdling hatred of the Trailsman. Fargo will have to pull more than a rabbit out of his hat if he doesn't want to end up vulture bait.

  THE HILLS ARE ALIVE

  Something wasn’t right. Fargo slowed to a walk. He didn’t think they had seen him, but then again, all it would take was one warrior with eyes as sharp as a hawk’s to look back at just the right moment.

  His skin prickling, Fargo placed his hand on his Colt. He would go on a little ways yet, and if he didn’t spot them, turn back.

  The last Fargo saw of the six, they were winding between a pair of wooded hills. Both hills were about the same size and shape, and reminded him of a woman’s breasts. He grinned at the notion, and thought of Rebecca Keever, of her full bosom and winsome figure.

  The next moment Fargo promptly lost his grin when the trees to his right and the trees to his left disgorged shrieking warriors brandishing lances and notching arrows to sinew strings.

  He had ridden right into a trap.

  The first chapter of this book previously appeared in Beartooth Incident, the three hundred thirty-second volume in this series.

  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.

  The Black Hills, 1861—woe to the white man who

  invaded the land of the Lakotas.

  1

  It was like looking for a pink needle in a green and brown haystack.

  Or so Skye Fargo thought as he scanned the prairie for the girl. She would be easy to spot if it weren’t for the fact there was so much prairie. A sea of grass stretched from Canada to Mexico, broken here and there by rivers and mountain ranges.

  North of him, not yet in sight, were the Black Hills.

  Fargo didn’t like being there. He was in Sioux country, and the Sioux were not fond of whites these days. More often than not, any white they came across was treated to a quiver of arrows or had his throat slit and his hair lifted so it could hang from a coup stick in a warrior’s lodge.

  Fargo was white, but it was hard to tell by looking at him. His skin was bronzed dark by the relentless sun. He had lake-blue eyes, something no Sioux ever did. He wore buckskins. A white hat, a red bandanna, and boots were the rest of his attire. A Colt with well-worn grips was strapped around his waist. In an ankle sheath nestled an Arkansas toothpick. From his saddle scabbard jutted the stock of a Henry rifle.

  Rising in the stirrups, Fargo squinted against the glare of the sun and raked the grass from east to west and back again. It wasn’t flat, not this close to the Hills. A maze of gullies and washes made spotting her that much harder.

  “Damn all kids, anyhow,” Fargo grumbled out loud. He gigged the Ovaro and rode on, vowing that there would be hell to pay when he got back to the party he was guiding.

  A shrill whistle drew his gaze to a prairie dog. It had spotted him and was warning its friends.

  Fargo swung wide of the prairie dog town. The last thing he needed was for the Ovaro to step into a hole and break a leg. He intended to keep the stallion a good long while. It was the best horse he ever rode. Often, it meant the difference between his breathing air or breathing dirt.

  “Where could she have gotten to?”

  Fargo had a habit of talking to himself. It came from being alone so much. He was a frontiersman, or as some would call him, a plainsman, although he spent as much time in the mountains as he did roaming the grasslands. Wide spaces, empty of people, was how he liked it.

  He came to the crest of a knoll and drew rein again. Twisting from side to side, he still couldn’t spot her. Frowning, he indulged in a few choice cuss words. He began to regret ever taking this job.

  About to ride on, Fargo glanced down, and froze. Hoof-prints showed he wasn’t the first on that knoll. The tracks were made by unshod horses, which meant Indians, and in this instance undoubtedly meant Sioux. There had been five of them. They passed that way several days ago. That was good. They were long gone and posed no danger to the girl.

  There were a lot of other dangers, though. Bears, wolves, cougars, rattlesnakes, all called the prairie home. Most times they left people alone, but not always, and it was the not always that worried him. To a griz she would be no more than a snack. A hungry wolf might decide to try something new. As for cougars, they’d kill and eat just about anything they could catch.

  “The ornery brat,” Fargo groused some more. He kept riding and was soon amid a maze of coulees.

  Fargo could see the headlines now.

  SENATOR’S DAUGHTER RIPPED APART

  BY WILD BEAST!

  Or

  HUNTING TRIP ENDS IN TRAGEDY.

  Or

  FAMOUS TRAILSMAN LOSES CHILD

  TO MEAT-EATER.

  That last one was the likeliest. Journalists loved to write about him, often making up stories out of whole cloth. The more sensational the tale, the better. All to boost circulation. Were it up to him, he’d take every scribbler alive and throw them down a well.

  Fargo rounded a bend, and drew rein. In the grass ahead lay something yellow and pink. Suspecting what it was, he dismounted and walked over, his spurs jingling. The girl’s doll grinned up at him. He picked it up. The blond curls and pink dress were a copy of the girl and the dress she often wore.

  She had been there and dropped the doll. That worried him. She never went anywhere without the thing. She even slept with it. She wouldn’t run off and leave it.

  A scream split the air.

  Fargo was in the saddle before it died. He reined sharply in the direction the scream came from. Half a minute of hard riding and he found her at last. She wasn’t alone.

  Gertrude Keever had her back to a dirt bank and was kicking at the creatures trying to sink their teeth into her. There were two of them: coyotes. Ordinarily their kind stayed well shy of humans but this pair was scrawny. Either they were sickly or poor hunters, and they were hungry enough to go after Gerty.

  Fargo drew his Colt and fired into the ground. He had nothing against the coyotes. They were only trying to fill their bellies. At the blast, one of them ran off. The other didn’t even look up. It kept on snapping at the girl’s legs and missed by a whisker.

  “Kill this stupid thing, you simpleton!” the girl yelled.

  Fargo almost wished the coyote had bit her. He fired from the hip and cored its head.

  Gerty glared at him. “Took you long enough.” She stepped to the dead coyote, squatted, and stuck a finger in the bullet hole. The she held her finger up and grinned as she watched the blood trickle down.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The girl held her finger higher for him to see. “Look. Isn’t it pretty?”

  Swinging down, Fargo walked over, gripped her elbow, and jerked her to her feet. “You damned nuisance. Wash your face with it, why don’t you
?”

  “I’m going to tell Father on you. He won’t like how you talk to me. He won’t like it one bit.”

  Fargo sighed. For a thirteen-year-old, she was as big a pain as some women twice her age. “I’ll do more than talk if you don’t start showing some common sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Fargo nodded at the dead coyote. “What the hell do you think I mean? You nearly got eaten. You can’t go wandering off whenever you want. It’s too damn dangerous.”

  “Oh, posh. You’ve been saying that since the first day and nothing has happened.”

  Fargo didn’t point out that nothing happened because he made it a point to keep them safe. Instead, he shook her, hard. “You’ll do as you’re supposed to or I’ll take you over my knee.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Don’t try me.” Fargo hauled her to the Ovaro. He had put up with her shenanigans because her father was paying him but there were limits to how much he’d abide.

  Fargo had never met a girl like her. Gerty looked so sweet and innocent with her wide green eyes and golden curls, but she had a heart of pure evil. She was constantly killing things. Bugs, mostly, since they were about all she could catch. Although once, near the Platte, they came on a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, and Gerty beaned it with a rock. Her father thought it hilarious.

  Not Fargo. He had seen her pull wings from butterflies and moths, seen her throw ants into the fire, seen her try to gouge out her pony’s eyes when it didn’t do what she wanted. He’d never met a child like her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you back.”

  Gerty stamped her foot. “I don’t want to. I want to explore some more.”

  “Didn’t that coyote teach you anything?” Fargo swung her onto the saddle and climbed on behind her. “Hold on to the horn.”

  “The what?”

  “That thing sticking up in front of you.” Fargo tapped his spurs and went up the side of the coulee, making a beeline for camp. The summer sun was warm on his face, the scent of grass strong.

  Gerty swiveled her head to fix him with another glare. “I don’t like you. I don’t like you an awful lot.”

  “Good for you.”

  “My so-called mother does, though.”

  “She said that?” Fargo liked the senator’s wife. She was quiet and polite, and she always spoke kindly to him. She also had the kind of body that made men drool.

  “Forget about her. It’s me who can’t stand your guts.”

  “As if I give a damn.” Fargo was alert for sign of the Sioux. Venturing into their territory was never the brightest of notions. But the senator had insisted on hunting in the notorious Black Hills.

  “In fact, I’m starting to hate you.”

  “I’m sure I’ll lose sleep over it.”

  Gerty was fit to burst her boiler. She flushed red with fury. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway. You’re mean. You stopped me from poking my pony with that stick. You wouldn’t let me kill that frog by the Platte River. And when I killed that baby bird you called me a jackass. Father didn’t hear you but I did, as plain as day.”

  “You have good ears.”

  Gerty cocked her arm to punch him.

  “I wouldn’t,” Fargo advised. “I hit a lot harder than you do.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. Father would be mad. He won’t pay you the rest of your money.”

  “Then I’ll hit him.”

  Gerty laughed. “You don’t know anything. Father is an important man. You hit him and he’ll have you arrested.”

  Fargo motioned at the unending vista of prairie. “Do you see a tin star anywhere?” To his relief she shut up, but she simmered like a pot put on to boil. She was so used to getting her own way that when someone had the gall to stand up to her, she hated it.

  Her father was to blame. Senator Fulton Keever was a big man in Washington, D.C. The senior senator from New York, Keever made a name for himself standing up for what the newspapers called “the little people.” He was also reputed to be something of a hunter and had the distinction of bagging the biggest black bear ever shot in that state.

  “What are those?” Gerty asked, pointing.

  Fargo wanted to kick himself. He’d let his attention wander. He looked, and felt his pulse quicken. Four riders were silhouetted against the western horizon. They were too far off to note much detail but there could be no mistake; they were Sioux warriors. A hunting party, most likely, but they wouldn’t hesitate to kill any whites they came across.

  Fargo had to find cover before they spotted the Ovaro. A buffalo wallow was handy and he reined down into it.

  “Land sakes.” Gerty covered her mouth and nose and asked through her fingers, “What’s that awful stink?”

  “Buffalo piss.”

  “What?”

  “Buffalo like to roll in the dirt. Sometimes they pee in it and get mud all over them to keep off the flies and whatnot.”

  “It smells terrible. Get me out of here this instant.”

  “We’re not going anywhere just yet.” Not until Fargo was good and sure the warriors were gone.

  Twisting, Gerty poked him in the chest. “My father will hear of this. I’ll tell him all about how you’ve treated me.”

  “That threat is getting old.”

  “You’re a despicable person, do you know that?”

  There had been times, admittedly few, when Fargo wondered what it would be like to have a wife and kids. He made a mental note that the next time he began to wonder, he’d think of Gerty. She was enough to make any man swear off kids for life.

  “Why don’t you say something? How can you stand the odor?”

  “Quit flapping your gums and hold your breath and it won’t be as bad.” None of the buffalo tracks, Fargo saw, were fresh. Which was just as well. It wouldn’t do to have a buff come along and take exception to their being there.

  “Have I mentioned I’m starting to hate you?”

  “Have I mentioned I don’t give a damn?”

  “I hope a rattlesnake bites you.”

  Fargo was commencing to regret ever agreeing to guide the Keevers. The senator was paying him almost twice what most guide jobs earned, but the money wasn’t everything.

  Fargo had been in Denver, gambling, when an older gentleman in a suit and bowler looked him up and asked if he would be so kind as to pay Senator Fulton Keever a visit at the Imperial. Fargo was on a losing streak anyway, so he went.

  Keever had welcomed him warmly. It turned out the senator was on a hunting trip and needed a guide. Keever had heard Fargo was in town and sought him out. Fargo wasn’t all that interested until Keever mentioned how much he was willing to pay.

  “I have a question, you lump of clay,” Gerty interrupted his musing.

  “Hush, girl.” Fargo was tired of her jabber.

  “It’s important.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Are buffalo friendly?”

  “About as friendly as you are.”

  “That buffalo over there doesn’t look very friendly.” Gerty pointed up at the rim.

  Silhouetted against the sun was a bull buffalo.

  2

  “Oh, hell.”

  Fargo raised the reins but didn’t use his spurs. Movement might provoke the bull into attacking. He waited for it to make up its mind what it was going to do. The wallow hadn’t been used recently, and Fargo had seen no other sign of a herd’s recent passage. So the bull might be by itself. No sooner did the thought cross his mind than two more bulls appeared behind the first.

  It wasn’t unusual. Bulls fought fiercely for their harems. Those that lost, or those not quite mature enough to do battle, often gathered in small herds of their own.

  “There’s more,” Gerty said.

  The total was now six. The first one stamped a hoof and shook its shaggy head, angry at the intrusion.

  “Hol
d tight,” Fargo cautioned, and took a gamble. He reined away from the bulls and rode at a walk toward the opposite rim. He hoped the buffalo would let them be, but the brutes were temperamental and hard to predict.

  Gerty giggled. “They sure are funny-looking.”

  “Hush.”

  “I’m tired of you telling me that. You’re not my father. I don’t have to listen to you.”

  Fargo imagined the buffalo charging, and him throwing Gerty in its path, and he grinned. Not that he would. Sure, he’d done his share of what some folks would call wicked things in his life, but there was a line he wouldn’t cross and killing children was one of them.

  “Why does that one keep stomping its foot?”

  “It doesn’t like the sound of your voice.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that so I’ll shut up.”

  Which was true, but Fargo would be damned if he would admit it. They were near the top of the wallow. Once they reached the grass he would give the Ovaro its head.

  Then two more buffalo appeared—in front of them.

  Fargo drew rein. He hadn’t counted on this. Like the others they were bulls. Hairy monsters, weighing upward of two thousand pounds when full grown, with a horn spread of three feet from tip to tip. They had few natural enemies. On rare occasions a wolf pack might bring down a crippled or old buff, and grizzlies were known to go after buffalo calves. But generally, buffalo were the lords of the prairie.

  “They look almost as mean as you are.”

  “They’re trying to decide whether to eat you,” Fargo said as he reined to the right to swing wide of the pair ahead.

  “Buffalo don’t eat people, they eat grass. You’re nothing but a big old liar.”

  “And you’re a pain in the ass, so we’re even.” Her chatter was distracting him and Fargo couldn’t afford to be distracted. He glanced at the other buffs across the wallow. They hadn’t moved.

  “Why don’t you shoot one for our supper? You’ve shot others and I like the meat.”