Fargo leaped over a dying warrior and stretched his legs in the direction of the brave retreating with Valeria. A couple of arrows stitched the air around him, bullets from the fort whistling over his head, but he continued pushing off his heels, raising his knees high, scissoring his arms, bounding after the brave.
He crested a low hump of ground tufted with young chokecherry shrubs, and felt his gut knot with frustration. About forty yards ahead, a brave on a cream horse led a tall paint toward the brave carrying Valeria. Both braves whooped and shrieked victoriously as the first brave threw Valeria over the paint’s back.
“Skye!” the girl screamed again.
Fargo cursed, his breath rattling in and out of his laboring lungs, and increased his speed. The thunder of hooves suddenly grew out of nowhere to flank him, horses snorting and blowing. Fargo kept his gaze straight ahead, on the brave now mounting the paint behind Valeria.
He closed the gap to within ten yards.
The brave with Valeria turned his head toward Fargo, grinning maniacally while Valeria, lying belly down across the horse before him, kicked and thrashed. Fargo threw himself forward, preparing to bolt from his heels to throw the brave from the paint’s back. But before he could set his feet, a horse’s head smacked his right shoulder blade.
Suddenly, he was airborne, twisting and pivoting. The ground came up to smack him hard between the shoulders, the back of his head feeling as though it had just been cleaved by a war ax. He slid through the grass, the ground raking him, tearing at his buckskins and making his spurs ring.
As the horse that had rammed him continued past, more hooves thundered, making the ground shake. Fargo lifted his head, blinking the stars from his eyes.
A zebra dun closed on him, blocking out the dull green sky and the first kindling stars. The brave on the zebra’s back screamed, mouth and eyes wide, as he stretched a nocked arrow back behind his right ear, aiming at Fargo.
The Trailsman threw himself belly down on the ground. At the same time, he heard the whistle of the arrow and felt the wind of the horse passing over him, a hoof nipping his calf.
The brave who’d just passed over him and the brave who’d sent him wheeling galloped off after the brave who’d nabbed Valeria, all three horses turning gradually west and disappearing into the thickening prairie shadows.
Fargo glanced ahead. Not two feet away, a painted arrow shaft angled up from the ground, its point buried in the short grass between a small sage shrub and a flat, lichen-mottled rock. The arrow was fletched with raven feathers, bespeaking the Raven Clan of the Blackfeet, a people Fargo had last seen in their customary stomping ground near the Milk River paralleling the Canadian border in northern Montana Territory.
Pain lanced the back of his head, driving deep into his shoulders and down his spine. Fargo let his head sag back against the ground, noting the dwindling of the rifle fire and of the hooves clomping around and behind him.
He was vaguely aware of time passing, then, as if in a waking dream, a man’s deep-throated voice called his name. Spurs chinked. Prairie Dog Charley called again, his voice and spurs growing louder. There was a flapping sound, like a holster smacking a thigh. A bulky silhouette dropped down to Fargo’s right, sheathed in the smell of sweat, tobacco, and gunpowder, and a thick hand clutched Fargo’s arm.
Prairie Dog was breathless. “You still kickin’, Skye?”
Fargo lifted his eyelids, which seemed weighted down by an unseen hand.
“I see you still got your hair, you son of a bitch!” said Prairie Dog, kneeling beside Fargo and whipping his head around cautiously. “How you’ve managed to keep that thick mane after all these years in Injun country, I’ll never know!”
Fargo lifted his head slightly, wincing at the daggers of pain. “The girl,” he croaked. “They got the major’s daughter…”
“You think I’m deaf, blind, and stupid?” Prairie Dog gave a tug on Fargo’s arm. “Let’s get you back inside the stockade where the sawbones can tend that wooden mallet wabblin’ around atop your shoulders.”
“Don’t need a sawbones,” Fargo growled, rising clumsily, nearly tripping over his own feet as he stared after the fleeing Indians. “Have to get after the girl.”
“You ain’t gettin’ after the girl tonight. Those savages’d love to pick us off in the dark.”
Fargo cursed and let Prairie Dog lead him back toward the stockade. A few shots rose from inside the wall—no doubt soldiers finishing off wounded Indians. The rolling terrain around Fargo and Prairie Dog was eerily silent in the aftermath of the raid, with here and there a dark body humping up above the grass or a riderless pony dropping its head to graze.
In the far distance, the fleeing raiders yowled like coyotes over fresh carrion.
“How many of our men bought it?” Fargo asked.
“Hard to tell. I’d say a dozen, maybe more. Good thing we had our best riflemen on the shooting ledge.” Prairie Dog spat. “As soon as they got the girl, the whole bunch skedaddled. Almost like she was what they came for.”
He and Fargo were twenty feet from the wall when the double doors shoved outward with a raspy rake of unoiled hinges, the door bottoms crunching cacti and sage and raising dust. Obviously, the doors on this side of the stockade were rarely used.
The silhouettes of a half dozen soldiers in various condition of dress jostled out, holding rifles high across their chests and swiveling their heads around nervously. The group opened to reveal two more men moving slowly behind them. One—an older gent with long gray hair in a ponytail falling over his shoulder and wearing a tattered red robe and slippers—held the other around the waist as they shuffled toward the Trailsman and Prairie Dog.
“Fargo, is that you?” the major barked, his voice pinched with pain. “Don’t tell me those savages got away with my daughter!”
As the soldiers fanned out in front of the wall, crouching over the fallen Indians and prodding the bodies with their rifles, Fargo and Prairie Dog drew up before the major and the gray-haired gent, doubtless the camp medico.
Ten or so inches of an arrow shaft sprouted from the major’s left shoulder, which meant the point was protruding from the man’s back. He must have taken off his tunic before the attack; he now wore only a white, long-sleeve undershirt and suspenders. The blood had formed a dark stain down the front of his shirt to his cartridge belt. His red hair was mussed about his hatless head. Howard’s right hand was wrapped around the shaft where it met his shoulder, blood glistening in the ambient light, and he staggered on his booted feet as though drunk.
“They got her, Major.”
“Christ!” Howard winced and groaned, stumbling back against the doctor. “I told her not to go traipsing about the grounds after dark.”
Fargo felt his face heat with chagrin. He thought he saw Prairie Dog glance at him knowingly, but maybe it was only his imagination.
“Corporal!” the major barked toward one of the soldiers milling about the dead Indians beyond the stockade wall. “Form a contingent immediately! I want those savages run down before—!”
“Now, Major,” Prairie Dog broke in, still holding one of the Trailsman’s arms. “You’d only be sending those men to their graves. We’re badly outnumbered out here, and any contingent you sent out wouldn’t see midnight.”
“For the love of Christ, Robert, come to your senses!” the doctor added in a slight German accent. “That’s just what the Indians are hoping you’ll do, so they can slaughter some more of us. You’ll have to wait till morning. Now, let’s get you over to the infirmary so I can remove that arrow before you bleed to death!”