Three white-tailed does angled up a grassy bluff about two hundred yards south, beyond a stand of cottonwoods and the rocky bed of Tongue Creek. Their hooves thumped softly, crackling the dry grass. A spotted fawn followed from a distance, bleeting like a worried rabbit.
The Trailsman grabbed his rifle, threw himself out of his saddle, and hit the ground flat-footed. At the same time, Prairie Dog’s voice rose in the west, “Pull out, Fargo!”
Sensing it was too late to gallop out of the yard without getting blown out of his saddle, Fargo slapped the pinto’s butt with his rifle stock and bolted toward the stone stock tank. A bullet clipped the lip of the tank with a whining spang, flinging rock shards, then slapped the water.
From the direction of the cottonwoods, a rifle cracked.
Fargo hit the ground beneath the tank, swiped his hat from his head, and edged a look around the tank. More guns barked, black powder smoke puffing up around the cottonwood trunks. Another bullet plunked into the stock tank, and then another chewed a dogget from a corral slat.
Fargo lifted his Henry and fired two quick rounds through the corral slats into the cottonwoods, one round tearing bark from a bole while another spanged off a rock in the riverbank beyond. He fired two more rounds at the smoke puffing amongst the branches, then bolted up and ran west along the corral, crouching and squeezing the Henry in both hands, wincing as several rifle shots tore more wood from the slats to his left.
He dove behind a springhouse, fired three rounds from the west side of the house, hearing a clipped yell from the trees, then continued running southwest, dodging sporadic bullets and tracing a weaving course amongst brush-sheathed boulders. He turned around another dilapidated springhouse nestled between low bluffs, and headed directly toward the cottonwoods in the east from which the gunfire was picking up, most shots apparently directed at someone other than Fargo.
Hooves thundered in the brush before him. Fargo crouched behind a rock pile at the edge of a small irrigated garden. Prairie Dog’s blue roan bounded up out of the riverbed, shaking its head, trailing its reins, and snorting frantically. It galloped over a hummock and disappeared into the thick brush behind and to Fargo’s right, stirrups flapping like wings.
Fargo cursed and rammed a fresh shell into his Henry’s breech. He’d run two steps toward the cottonwoods when a couple more shots crackled. Behind the broadest cottonwood, a man screamed horrifically. Brush thrashed under running feet, and labored breaths rose.
A man bounded out of the trees, angling southwest along the riverbed—a slender young Indian, long hair and trade beads flapping down his back. Grasping a rifle in one hand, he wore a long deerskin shirt and knee-high moccasins. He stopped, wheeled suddenly, and, holding the rifle by its barrel, slung it back into the cottonwoods with an enraged epithet which, roughly translated from the Assiniboine, meant “Fuck you!”
He wheeled again, grunting painfully as he continued running southwest, limping on his right leg.
In the cottonwoods, a pistol popped. The slug barked off a rock a few yards in front of the fleeing brave.
The pistol popped again, and the brave’s head snapped to one side. He cursed again but continued running.
Footfalls sounded from the cottonwoods. Fargo shuttled his gaze from the fleeing brave to the trees just as Prairie Dog emerged from the grove.
Fargo blinked as the stocky, paunchy man in buckskins and knee-high, stovepipe boots bounded over the rocks and sage clumps like a man half his age. Prairie Dog leaped a boulder, losing his leather hat, then stopped and extended the bulky Colt Patterson in his right hand.
“Dry-gulchin’ red bastard!” Prairie Dog shouted, canting his head to stare down the revolver’s barrel.
The Patterson roared, black smoke puffing around the barrel. Climbing the ridge on the other side of the creek bed, grabbing at the shrubs for purchase, the brave stopped suddenly.
He lifted his head and grabbed his back while clutching an ironwood branch with his left hand. Slowly, he released the branch, fell straight back down the hill, and rolled through the shrubs before piling up, unmoving, at the base.
Fargo felt his lip lift a smile as he dragged his gaze back to Prairie Dog. Staring at the dead brave, the stocky scout dropped the smoking Colt to his side and started forward.
“That all of ’em?” Fargo yelled.
Prairie Dog stopped and turned. “Sure as shit.” Then he continued toward the dead brave.
Fargo whistled for his stallion as he walked over to where Prairie Dog stood at the base of the ridge, kicking the brave over to make sure he was dead. “Those three whelps musta been headin’ for the water when they seen us with our hats aimed in the same direction,” said the old scout. “The other two are about his age, maybe a little older.”
“Nice shootin’,” Fargo said, pulling the loading tube out of the Henry’s breech to replace the spent cartridges. “Here I was startin’ to think you were too damn deaf and stove-up to fight Injuns.”
Prairie Dog grinned proudly, squinting one eye. “Shit, what the hell I need you for? I done took out them first two from the hill with my sweet Brunhilda.” He laughed. “Got one through an ear, the other through his brisket while you was dodgin’ their bullets in the yard.”
Prairie Dog looked around. “You seen my horse? Brunhilda’s burp always spooks him.”
“Went thataway,” Fargo said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Where’s Brunhilda?”
“Left her coolin’ back in the trees.”
Fargo turned to his own stallion glaring at the dead Indian from several yards behind the Trailsman. Fargo looked around cautiously as he shoved his Henry into the saddle boot. “Let’s fill our canteens and get the hell out of here. Where there’s three wolves…”
“Yeah, I know,” Prairie Dog said, starting back toward the cottonwoods. “The pack ain’t far away.”
Apparently, the pack was farther away than they’d thought. After filling their canteens and continuing southwest, Fargo and Prairie Dog had no more Indian contact for the rest of the day.
That night, camping in a dry creek bed with no fire, and washing biscuits, venison, and cold beans down with water, they heard nothing but occasional bats and nighthawks, a lone wolf in the northern buttes.
Around three o’clock, Fargo heard the keening mutter and the light tread of a mountain lion passing through the ravine. After his skirmishes with the Blackfeet and Assiniboine, he gave the panther little more concern than he would a garden snake. He merely recrossed his ankles, pulled his hat brim lower, and rejoined the raucously snoring Prairie Dog in slumber land.
They came upon fresh Indian tracks about an hour after sunup the next morning—a good twenty or thirty unshod horses moving west at a ground-chewing clip. Two hours later, they crossed the far westward curve of Squaw Creek, and halted their horses. They stared northwest along the ancient, curving riverbed they’d been following since early morning.
Ahead, a great deciduous forest sprawled for a good two or three miles in the north and south, stretching before them like a lumpy, jade quilt to the far western horizon. Above the quilt, the black smoke of a dozen fires lofted skyward.
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Prairie Dog said, his voice hushed and nervous. He hipped around in his saddle to rake his cautious gaze in a complete circle around them. “I think we might’ve just found what we’re lookin’ for, Mr. Trailsman, sir.”
Fargo had fished his spyglass out of his saddlebags, and directed it toward the trees, lips stretched back from his teeth as he adjusted the focus. “The Box Elder buttes,” he muttered. “Twenty square miles of woods and buttes, and right in the center, Cottonwood Creek meets up with the north fork of the Squaw in a deep ravine.”