Beyond Squaw Creek Read online

  Fargo dropped his eyes to her shirt. “You want me to stay and help you out of your wet duds?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped, balling the front of the dripping shirt in her fist, the shirt making a slight sucking sound as she pulled it away from her skin. She glanced down the dim hall, lightning flashing in the room’s single window, thunder shaking the floor and rattling a picture hanging on the wall near the door. “You saw the way those men were staring at me.”

  “Can’t say as I blame ’em.” The Trailsman peeled the girl’s hand off his arm and started down the hall. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve tended my horse and grabbed a bottle.”

  “Mr. Fargo?” she said, her voice trembling.

  With a sigh, he turned back to her once more.

  She moved toward him, placed her hands on his arms as she stared up with beseeching eyes, digging her fingers into his biceps. “I’m frightened. I know it’s not proper but…will you stay with me tonight? In…my room, I mean.”

  Fargo grinned down at her.

  She frowned indignantly, dropped her hands, and put a little steel into her quivering voice. “You can stop smiling. I am certainly not inviting you into my bed, sir!”

  Fargo wrapped his arms around her waist and drew him to her brusquely. She gasped as he lowered his head and closed his mouth over hers. At first, she was as stiff as a fence post in his arms, but in seconds she began to soften. He probed her upper lip with his tongue, slipped it inside her mouth. Immediately, as though catching herself, she gave an angry grunt, placed her hands against his chest, and pushed away from him.

  Her chest heaving, she scowled up at him, and slapped him hard across the face.

  He smiled, drew her to him once more. Again she gasped as he pressed his lips to hers. This time, she didn’t fight him.

  When he pulled away, she stared up at him, her eyes soft, lips parted, the clinging shirt outlining each full breast clearly as she threw her shoulders back, the beautiful orbs rising and falling like barrels on a storm-tossed sea.

  “We’ll discuss the sleeping arrangements later,” Fargo said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see to my horse.”

  As he stepped back away from her, she stumbled toward him, regained her balance, and stared up at him, wide green eyes like two glowing agates in the shadows. His pants feeling frustratingly tight, Fargo tipped his soggy hat to her, turned away, and tramped off down the hall. He could feel the girl’s eyes branding his back until he turned and descended the stairs, boots clomping on the scarred cottonwood planks, spurs chinging, the storm booming around him, rain pelting the roof.

  The room hushed as Fargo crossed the main hall toward the bar, heads turning to stare at him from the smoky shadows. The air was so thick with the smell of leather, cigarette and wood smoke, and the spicy aromas of the bear kidney stew that there seemed hardly any oxygen.

  Smiley stood at the bar, laying out a game of solitaire, a half-filled beer mug near his left arm. He looked up as the Trailsman approached.

  “I’m heating water for the girl’s bath. You look like you could use a drink.”

  “Whiskey,” Fargo said. “Give me the stuff without the snake venom.”

  “Shit,” Smiley chuckled, reaching under the bar and setting a brown bottle onto the planks. “It’s all snake venom, Skye. You been through here enough times to know that!”

  The oldster grabbed a shot glass off a nearby pyramid, popped the bottle’s cork, and splashed the murky brown fluid into the glass. “Where did you find little miss, if you don’t mind me askin’. I been in these parts long enough to know she didn’t come from any of the settlements around here.”

  “Major Howard’s daughter.” The Trailsman sipped the whiskey. It did indeed taste like snake venom with two parts gunpowder to one part coal oil and a whole lot of chili pepper. When it had scraped about all the skin from his throat it was going to, he held the glass up to look at it. “I and about nine soldiers were takin’ her to Fort Clark when Blackfeet attacked. Wiped out the whole party except me and her.”

  “The Blackfeet been on the prod of late.”

  Fargo glanced up at the old man leaning toward him on his elbows. “Them and the Assiniboine?”

  “Sure as smelly water in a whore’s boudoir.” Smiley pronounced that last “boydee-are.” He shook his grizzled head and took a swig of beer. “You’d swear they all be usin’ prickly pears to wipe their asses. They took out three cabins just north of here, a ranch out west, and a tradin’ post up on the south fork of Misery Creek.”

  He nodded at the two burly, buckskin-clad men playing poker in front of the fire, both with fat stogies wedged in their mouths. “The mule skinners said a howlin’ group of the red-niggers done burned one of them new settlements on the Cannonball!”

  Fargo didn’t like the debris floating around inside his whiskey glass, but he’d tasted worse and it was tempering the chill in his bones. “They leave you alone?”

  “Hell, they don’t come near me,” Smiley said, refilling Fargo’s glass. “This place is stout as a stockade. Besides, they like my hooch and trade cloth.”

  Fargo reached for his refilled glass. A hide pouch flew over his left shoulder and clattered onto the bar planks before him. A couple of gold coins dribbled out of the neck onto the bar.

  The Trailsman turned slowly toward the room. One of the mule skinners, Pierre Bardot, stood with one stovepipe boot perched on his chair. He was a couple of inches taller than the Trailsman, which put him close to seven feet. He wore a black sombrero thronged beneath his chin, curly red hair tufting out around it. His tattooed arms were thick as fence posts, his red-brown eyes small as trade beads.

  “For the woman,” said Bardot in his faint French accent, giving a self-important nod.

  The mule skinner’s partner, a Scandinavian named Hallbing—a one-eyed blond with a knife scar along his bearded right cheek—lounged back in his chair, one brawny arm draped over the chair back. He grinned at Fargo, showing his small, cracked, tobacco-stained teeth, his lone eye narrowed.

  Lightning flashed in the windows. Thunder rocked the room.

  Fargo glanced at the gold coins, turned back to the man who’d tossed the pouch. “Don’t tempt me,” he drawled, turning back toward his glass.

  Something whistled through the air over Fargo’s right shoulder. The rusty-bladed, bone-handled knife plunked into the bar planks before the money sack, six inches from Fargo’s left hand. The vibrating handle sang like a mouth harp.

  When the song faded, the mule skinner’s voice rumbled like thunder in Fargo’s ear. “Take it or leave it.”

  4

  Glancing at the knife embedded in the bar planks, Fargo again turned to face the room. The French Canadian mule skinner, Bardot, strolled toward him, big boots clomping along the roadhouse’s puncheons. His sombrero shaded his face, but as he approached the bar, a lamp found the tiny, steely eyes set deep in the man’s doughy, red-bearded face.

  He grinned, showing a wide gap where his two front teeth should have been. He spoke slowly, loudly, each word spat out in the freighter’s French accent. “I said take it or leave it, friend.”

  Fargo smiled amiably and poked his soaked hat off his forehead. “She’s not for sale, friend.”

  “No, no, no,” the big freighter said, shaking his head and frowning. “She is for sale, and you can either take the money or leave it. Either way, the girl is mine tonight, and she goes with me and my partner tomorrow.”

  He grinned, but his tiny eyes were hard.

  Fargo maintained his affable smile. “You’re just not gonna take no for an answer, are you, friend?”

  The freighter continued grinning at him.

  Keeping his eyes on the big man before him, Fargo reached back, plucked the coin pouch off the bar, and thrust it against the man’s chest, the coins clinking around inside.

  The freighter dropped his gaze to the pouch, returned it to Fargo.

  The Trailsman held the man’s hard glare.<
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  The freighter lurched forward, red-faced, swinging his ham-sized right fist toward Fargo’s face.

  The Trailsman, anticipating the punch, grabbed the man’s wrist and, pivoting, bulled the man’s back against the bar and thrust the man’s hand out across the planks. Pressing his own back against the man’s chest, wedging him against the bar, Fargo reached out with his free hand, plucked the knife from the bar top, and slammed it through the freighter’s open palm and into the wood.

  “Uhhhh!” the man bellowed like a bull in an abattoir, turning his head toward his hand from which his own knife protruded, pinned to the rough-hewn planks.

  Bright red blood welled up around the rusty blade.

  Fargo heard a chair rake across the room’s puncheons and saw the Norwegian bound up out of his seat, reaching for one of his two holstered six-shooters positioned for the cross draw. The Trailsman palmed his own Colt .44, clicked the hammer back, aiming from his belly.

  The big Norski froze. Around him, the other four men had fallen silent, still seated at their tables, sliding their cautious gazes between the big Norwegian, the Frenchman who was still pinned to the bar with his own knife, and Fargo.

  The Norski freighter stumbled back drunkenly, then, letting his hand fall away from his holster, sagged down in his chair.

  Fargo glanced at the Frenchman. The man had drawn his other hand cautiously up to the bar. Now he wrapped it around the knife handle and, stretching his lips back from his empty, tobacco-dark gums, gave a hoarse grunt as he pulled the knife out of the bar.

  Clutching the bloody appendage to his chest, he dropped to the floor, wincing and cursing and glaring up at Fargo.

  The Trailsman holstered his Colt, turned to the bar, and threw back his second whiskey shot. Setting the glass back onto the bar, he glanced at Smiley, who was scrubbing at the bloody planks with a damp cloth, as though blood were spilled there all the time.

  “I’m gonna see to my horse,” Fargo said above another thunderclap, pulling his hat brim down over his eyes. “Make sure no one goes upstairs, will you?”

  “That includin’ me? I hear the water boilin’ for the lady’s bath.”

  “You can go. Take her some food, too,” Fargo said, reaching for the door handle. He glanced back at the old barkeep, curling his lip wryly. “But keep it in your pants.”

  With that he glanced once more at the redheaded Frenchman sitting with his back against a beer keg holding up the bar planks, still grunting and cursing and glaring at Fargo as he wrapped a blue bandanna around his shaking, bloody hand.

  Fargo tipped his hat to the man, opened the door, went out, and closed the door behind him. He stepped to the edge of the porch.

  The rain was only dribbling off the porch roof now. The thunder rumbled off in the distance. A forked lightning bolt flashed over a distant knoll to the north, but another mass of purple clouds was moving in from the east.

  The bad weather wasn’t over yet. That was all right with Fargo. He didn’t doubt the Indians valued Smiley’s hooch too much to attack the outpost, but he favored the reassurance of the storm.

  A bunch of braves mixing from two separate tribes, broiling with fury and sharpening their horns for the white-eyes, tended to cut a broad swath.

  Fargo stepped off the porch and slogged through the mud and lightly pelting rain to the stable. When he’d unleathered the Ovaro, stabled him, rubbed him down with dry burlap, and fed and watered him, he headed back outside, his rifle in his right hand, saddlebags and bedroll draped over his right shoulder.

  The sun had gone down and the eastern storm chugged and flashed over the southeastern hills, but there was a lull in the rain. The air was fragrant with the smell of damp earth, sage, and brimstone.

  After a cursory inspection of the grounds around the trading post and finding no sign of prowling redskins, the Trailsman walked back around to the front of the roadhouse and, resting one hand on his pistol grips, pushed through the door.

  Inside the lodge, he’d half expected to see a knife thrown toward him, or a pistol aimed his way. Instead, as he blinked through the smoky shadows as though through layers of dirty gauze, he found two men—drovers, judging by their batwing chaps and sun-seared faces—dancing hand in hand and grinning from ear to ear.

  One of the others sang softly of Dakota sunsets, of ancient Indians hunting buffalo, and of walking arm in arm along a creek with a girl named Rose.

  The big Norwegian sat passed out in his chair, head on the table before him. The redheaded freighter, Bardot, sat with his back against the wall beside the snapping hearth, cradling his wounded appendage in his lap like a pet. In his other hand, he held an uncorked bottle. The light was too dim for Fargo to be sure, but the man’s eyes appeared open, his face expressionless.

  Good and soused. Too soused to make trouble, Fargo hoped.

  He removed his hand from his pistol grips, closed the door, and stepped into the room. He’d taken two steps before a French-accented voice rumbled softly from across the room, “This ain’t over, Fargo.” The Frenchman held up his injured hand, and winced. “Ain’t over by a long shot!”

  Boots thumped on the stairs, and Fargo turned to see Smiley descending from the second-story shadows, swinging an empty bucket in each hand. “Filled the lady’s tub,” the oldster said, grinning lasciviously. “Most fun I had in a month of Sundays!”

  “You need to get out more, Smiley,” Fargo said, pouring a fresh drink from the bottle on the bar.

  Smiley set the buckets down and grabbed a wooden bowl heaped with steaming kidney stew off the bar’s far end. “I’ll bring her some of my good griz kidney to eat with her bath!”

  As the old man wheeled toward the stairs, Fargo tossed the empty glass on the bar, and grabbed the bottle by its neck. “You’ve done enough, Smiley.” He strolled down the bar and took the bowl from the oldster’s hands. “Let me give you a hand.”

  “Ah, have a heart, Skye!” the old man complained as Fargo climbed the stairs.

  Fargo strode down the hall to the Chicago room, boots clomping, spurs chinking. Rain tattooed the roof and lightning flashed between the logs at the end of the hall where the chinking had crumbled.

  He tripped the lever latch and pushed the pine-plank door open with one hand. Standing in the steaming copper tub and running the soap across her breasts, the girl turned toward him and gasped. She allowed him a lingering peek at her sudsy, pale breasts before she raised an arm, feigning outrage.

  “Can’t you knock?”

  Fargo stepped into the room and kicked the door closed, running his eyes across the girl’s incredible figure—long-limbed, pale, full-busted, and round-hipped. She’d pinned her damp hair atop her head, and several wisps curled down around her sculpted cheeks.

  “You heard me comin’,” Fargo said knowingly, keeping his eyes on her as he set the bottle and the bowl on the dresser.

  Suds moved in miniature glaciers down her arms and thighs, winking in the wan lantern light. She narrowed her eyes accusingly. “What’re you saying?”

  Fargo took a long pull from the bottle then threw his hat on a chair. Unbuttoning his wet shirt, he turned toward Valeria Howard, regarding her coolly, with open appraisal, as he shrugged out of the shirt and threw it onto the floor near the small, cast-iron wood stove in the corner.

  She said nothing but only let her eyes flick across his broad chest and muscular arms as he peeled the wet underwear top off his shoulders, then kicked out of his boots and unbuttoned his buckskin breeches.

  As he kicked out of the breeches and long underwear bottoms, and stepped toward her naked, her gaze dropped to his jutting member. Her green eyes flickered. A deep flush rose from nearly as far down as her breasts to spread into her cheeks and temples.

  Her eyes stayed on his shaft until, grabbing the soap out of her hand, he stepped around behind her, slid his arms under hers, took the soap-slick orbs in his hands, and began to gently massage them, running the soap cake over each.

  As he did,
she threw her head back, sighing. “Father would have you shot for this,” she breathed, pressing her lips against his shoulder.

  Fargo continued working the soap into her breasts, lowering his hands occasionally to caress her taut, smooth belly, dipping as far down as her love nest to evoke a soft groan of pleasure. “And you?”

  “And me?”

  She placed a hand on his face, kissed him, nibbling his lips, then turned her body toward his, splashing water up around her knees in the copper tub.

  “And me?”

  It was barely a whisper this time as, slowly bending her knees and running her hands and lips down his body, she kissed his throat, chest, and belly. She cupped his balls in her slender hands, then slid her fingers up around the base of his bobbing member. Her breasts rising and falling heavily, she lowered her head to his shaft, closing her mouth over the engorged head.

  A muscle twitched in Fargo’s cheek as the hot moistness of her mouth slid gradually down his organ, her tongue flicking, caressing, probing, tickling.

  When she’d taken as much of him as she could, she lifted coy green eyes to his, then slowly slid her lips back up toward the blood-engorged head. Fargo ground his feet into the puncheons and rested his hands in her hair.

  She pulled her face away from his organ for just a moment, studying it dreamily, before lowering her head once again. She took him as far down as she could, then pulled back quickly, bathing nearly his entire length in hot saliva before lowering her head once more, faster this time…faster…until she was groaning, grunting, sighing as she ran her lips up and down his iron-hard shaft, head bobbing, her hands pumping when she wasn’t sucking and running her lips around the head or down the side, flicking her ravenous, snakelike tongue.

  “Christ…” Fargo groaned, fisting his hands in her hair, spreading his feet, and throwing his head back on his shoulders.

  She half choked and groaned with excitement, her body tensing, cupping his balls in her hands as she worked even faster, harder.