He wanted to grab her, tear her hair free of its bun, lift her skirts, and kiss that wide, delectable mouth.
Instead, he grunted and shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He returned his eyes to hers. “You were one hell of a romp—and I’d put you high on my list of the best I’ve had—but it wasn’t anything I’d squawk about. Now, can I come in, or do you wanna send a plate out to the porch?”
Green eyes flashing angrily, she stepped back and jerked the door wide. “Do come in, Mr. Fargo!”
The Trailsman gave his boots an obligatory scrape on the porch boards, doffed his hat, and stepped over the threshold. He found himself in the cabin’s simple, rustic but comfortable kitchen, which was warm from the ticking iron range against the far wall, and rife with the smell of roasting meat.
A stout, gray-haired woman in a bonnet and apron stood at a table slicing a steaming bread loaf—another noncom’s wife, probably, working as the major’s housekeeper. Fargo had heard that the major’s own wife, Valeria’s mother, had years ago died from a fever back east. Valeria had been educated at the best boarding and finishing schools. She’d come to Fort Howard to spend the summer with her father before traveling with wealthy friends overseas.
“The men are in the parlor,” Valeria curtly announced, staring up at Fargo icily. “Dinner will be served shortly.”
“Obliged,” Fargo said, nodding at the housekeeper who’d looked up from her work to greet the newcomer with a wan smile.
Hooking his hat on a rack, Fargo turned through a door in the kitchen’s left wall, and entered the nattily-appointed parlor where four men—Major Howard, Prairie Dog Charley, and two crisply dressed officers—stood in a tight clump before a red divan and a ticking wall clock. There was a thick throw rug on the floor beneath their boots. Beyond them, through an open door, lay the dining room in which a long table stood draped with oilcloth and china place settings.
“Ah, Mr. Fargo,” the Major said, halting his hushed conversation midsentence. “How good of you to join us.”
The others turned toward the Trailsman, including Prairie Dog Charley, all holding glasses quarter filled with whiskey or brandy, and smoldering cigars. Prairie Dog gave Fargo a furtive wink.
“Do come in and meet Captain Rudolph Thomas and Lieutenant Andrew Ryan. Gentlemen, meet Skye Fargo, commonly referred to as the Trailsman.”
Fargo shook hands first with Ryan—a slender, prematurely balding man in his late twenties—and then Thomas, who quirked his upswept mustache in a stiff smile as he said, “Ah, yes, the Trailsman. We were to meet earlier for your debriefing, Mr. Fargo, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Thomas was also in his late twenties—short and pale and bespectacled, with a flawless uniform and a smattering of red pimples across his cheekbones. He and Ryan were obviously West Point lads. They’d come west to bludgeon the savage redskins, but now, realizing they’d had no idea what they’d gotten themselves into nor of the Indians’ fighting abilities and furor, were soiling their trousers hourly. Their faces were stiff, smiles taut, eyes glassy.
“Sorry, Captain,” Fargo grunted, releasing the man’s hand. “There wasn’t much to debrief. We were ambushed, everyone in our party dead but myself and Miss Howard. I had a bath and took a nap in the sutler’s storeroom.”
Prairie Dog chuckled as he lifted his glass to his bearded mouth.
Turning away to fill a goblet from a cut-glass decanter, Major Howard said, “The sutler’s storeroom? Mr. Fargo, we’ve humble accommodations, to be sure, but we can certainly put you up better than that!”
Fargo hiked a shoulder as he accepted the glass. “I like bein’ out of the way.” He sipped the whiskey, which was better than that in the sutler’s saloon. “Prairie Dog here filled me in on the Indian trouble, Major. I know from being out there myself that you’re pretty well surrounded. Any ideas about how you’re gonna get yourself out of this bailiwick?”
The major flushed slightly as he glanced at the other two officers. They and Prairie Dog stood before Fargo in a loose semicircle. Returning his gaze to the tall Trailsman standing before them in smoke-stained buckskins and with a no-nonsense scowl on his rugged features, the major chuckled. “You like getting to the point, don’t you? Well, shall we have a seat, gentlemen? I’d been going to save this part of the conversation until after we’d dined, but since Mr. Fargo would like to skin the cat now, let’s skin it now.”
Fargo sat in a bullhorn rocking chair near the front window. When the lieutenant, the captain, and Prairie Dog had taken seats around him, the major refilled their glasses and sat in a cowhide chair to Fargo’s right. He jerked his gold-buttoned tunic down sharply, cleared his throat, and propped a low-heeled cavalry boot on a knee.
Since Prairie Dog had already briefed Fargo on the situation, Howard merely summarized the trouble from the start of the uprising to present, adding nothing Fargo didn’t already know, including his suspicions about the insane Lieutenant Duke.
“Which leads me to the reason I’d like to extend your contract, Mr. Fargo,” the major said, puffing his stogie, a sheepish cast entering his eyes as he shifted his gaze to the two other officers.
The major paused as if for dramatic effect, and Fargo frowned impatiently. He could occasionally tolerate coyness in a woman, but not in a man. “And that is…?”
Howard returned his gaze to Fargo, flinched slightly at the coldness in the Trailsman’s stare, and nervously flicked ashes into the stone tray on his chair arm. “We’d like you to hunt him down and kill him.”
Fargo was genuinely shocked. “Kill him?” He’d thought the man was going to ask him to try and run the Indians’ gauntlet and seek help from an outlying fort, possibly Fort Buford or from one of the fledgling Canadian outposts on the other side of the border. “It seems to me, from what I’ve heard so far of this Lieutenant Duke’s relationship with Iron Shirt and the rest of his band, the last thing you’d want to do is martyr the man.”
“We’ve discussed the matter thoroughly, Mr. Fargo,” interjected Captain Thomas, adjusting his spectacles. “Believe me, we do not take the matter lightly.”
“We considered the possibility of sending you through the Indians’ lines for help,” added Lieutenant Ryan. “The problem is…and as you doubtless know…the Indians have no lines. We’ve sent four men to tackle the same job…”
“And all four were sent back,” Prairie Dog piped up when the lieutenant’s voice began to quiver and fade, his cheeks blanching. “At least, their heads and hearts were sent back, dangling from their saddle horns.”
Now, that was a bit of information the old cuss had been holding on to.
“I don’t guarantee I’d make it, but I made it here, and I know the country,” Fargo said. “If I traveled at night…”
“Even if you made it through,” Howard said, “the help you sought wouldn’t make it here in time. The Indians have been moving closer to the fort every day. At night, their council fires are quite visible in the hills beyond Squaw Creek. I’m guessing that in two, maybe three—”
The major paused when Valeria poked her head in the door. “Gentlemen, dinner will be served.”
When the girl withdrew into the kitchen, Howard shuttled his glance to Fargo and the others, brows ridged with annoyance and enervation. “Shall we save the rest of the conversation for after dinner, gentlemen…?”
Fargo set his glass on the decanter’s silver tray and followed the others into the dining room. The meal was medallions of venison with wild onions, potatoes and gravy, fresh bread, and spinach from the fort’s garden.