He turned to spit a weed seed from his lips, then returned his eyes to the glass. “With all those buttes and trees, it’s a right good place for warring Injuns to hole up unseen.”
“Yeah, they got ’em a natural buffer against interlopers, that’s for damn sure.”
“It’s too hard a place to get into twice. Let’s try to find the girl and follow through with our original assignment.”
Prairie Dog looked around again, scrubbed sweat from his bearded jaw. “How you wanna wrestle this hog? Them woods and buttes are probably peppered with pickets. And Miss Valeria—if she’s here—ain’t gonna be unattended.”
Fargo scanned the woods for another minute, then reduced the glass and slipped it back into his saddlebags. “Let’s mosey a half mile back the way we came, picket our horses where they won’t be found. We’ll wait for sunset, then move through the woods on foot.”
Prairie Dog snorted. “You mean, just walk into their camp, say, ‘Pardon me, boys, but I’m here to shoot the crazy fuckin’ white man poundin’ the drum for this here powwow. Oh, yeah, and could you tell me what ya done with the white girl you nabbed?’”
“Well, shit,” Fargo said with feigned exasperation, reining the pinto around. “Why ask if you already know the answer?”
11
The Trailsman and Prairie Dog Charley tied their horses to saplings in a box canyon offshoot of Squaw Creek. They removed their boots and socks, then grabbed their rifles and extra ammo, and crept back along the shallow watercourse toward the woods.
They moved with practiced stealth, heads moving constantly as they scanned the terrain around them for Indians, noses sniffing the breeze for the wild, greasy odor of a native. When they were a hundred yards from the woods, they discovered an Indian picket perched on a southern bluff, hair blowing in the breeze as he stared straight west, a bow beside him, a war lance angled across his outstretched thighs.
Fargo and Prairie Dog ran crouching along a ravine bottom, Prairie Dog narrowly escaping the strike of a coiled sand rattler. They paused at the edge of the woods—mostly ash and box elders with a few giant cottonwoods churning in the evening breeze, blackbirds cawing amongst the branches—then glanced carefully around once more before turning into the trees.
The woods had appeared much denser from a distance. Inside the sprawling copse, the trees were spaced ten and sometimes twenty feet apart, with deadfall humped on the ground or leaning like crutches against standing trunks. Occasional willows clumped with chokecherries or burr oak snags.
There were several winding deer paths, many marked with fresh horse prints. Fargo and Prairie Dog each chose a paralleling path and moved westward through the woods, about fifty feet apart, putting one bare foot down in front of the other, making as little noise as a coup-counting redskin.
The air was rife with the smell of loam and decaying leaves, the wild-rose smell of chokecherries. Dim light shafted through the canopy to speckle the forest floor.
They’d pushed a hundred yards into the woods when something thrashed wildly in a hawthorn snag ahead and right of Fargo. Both men froze, crouching, hearts pounding, bringing their rifles to bear. Fargo threw his left hand up as a white-tailed buck sprang from a hawthorn snag and bounded off to the north, leaping over fallen trees, its knotted, sprawling rack trimming low branches with riflelike cracks.
The men shared a glance as the crunching hooffalls dwindled into the distance. Adjusting the grips on their rifles, they continued forward at roughly the speed of a racing turtle.
They moved at the same pace for over an hour, until the trees thinned. Ahead, the smoke from several fires thickened, scented with the smell of burning wood and roasting meat. A low din sounded, like that of a town heard from a distance, drowned occasionally by dog barks and the screams of playing children.
Fargo and Prairie Dog dropped to their hands and knees and crawled to where the forest stopped abruptly at the lip of a broad, deep canyon. A few feet back from the lip, the men stopped and, shielded by rocks, brown wheatgrass, and shrubs, stared into the broad sweep of the canyon cut by two streams.
One of the streams, only twenty or thirty yards wide, curved through the canyon directly below Fargo and Prairie Dog, flowing from west to east. The other meandered in from the southwestern side of the canyon, joining the first about a half mile right of the men’s position atop the ridge.
The Indian village nestled inside the broad L shaped by the two streams, amongst cottonwoods, willows, and musk grass—a good forty or fifty lodges of tanned buffalo skin, all doors facing east and fronted by smoldering cook fires. Women in doeskin dresses tended the fires or scraped hides stretched between stakes, while naked children frolicked and dogs milled. A stout woman in a calico dress and deerskin leggings chased one mongrel from a bucket of what appeared to be buffalo brains with a bone-handled broom, her voice rising in raucous admonishment while the dog yelped and ran.
Fargo’s gaze followed the dog to the sandy flat bordering the confluence of the two streams. Near the gently churning water, a pit had been dug and lined with red, green, and white colored stones. A couple of braves, clad only in loincloths, were clearing the pit of charred wood, throwing the logs into the stream, while another split logs with a hatchet and stone mallet nearby.
The braves near the fire pit were the only males within sight. The others were no doubt napping in their lodges, waiting for the women to cook their supper, or off hunting or rampaging. A hundred yards southeast of the camp, where the prairie rose away from the streams, a good fifty mustangs milled in a broad brush corral. They grazed or trotted friskily, whipping their manes in the breeze.
There was no sign of Valeria. But then, the Trailsman knew that locating her amongst a group this size would be at least half as hard as rescuing her.
Fargo glanced at Prairie Dog, who scanned the village through his spyglass. “That pit down there near the confluence is for ceremonial bonfires, or I miss my guess.”
“Maybe a powwow tonight.”
Prairie Dog patted his sleek, brass-chased Schuetzen as though it were a beloved pet. “If Duke’s involved, he’ll be well within range of my sweet Brunhilda.”
Fargo fished his own spyglass out of his boot, directed it toward the village. “If we don’t spy the girl soon, I’ll sneak down after good dark, try to pull her out of there. Most of the Injuns’ll no doubt be attending the festivities around the fire pit.”
“You’ll be lookin’ for a needle in a haystack, Skye. If Miss Valeria’s even still alive.”
Fargo shrugged, but anxiety over the girl nagged him.
“What about Lieutenant Duke?”
Fargo stared through the glass, slowly sweeping the village from left to right and back again. “We’ll pass on him till we get the girl.” He lowered the glass and turned to Prairie Dog, pensive. He kept his voice low. “Give me a good hour after sundown. Then, if you get a shot at Duke, take it.”
He raised the glass again and continued scrutinizing the village. He stared through the glass until his vision blurred and his head ached from the strain. Slowly, the sun sank into the western prairie, splashing a painter’s palette of colors into the sky. Then the colors faded and the first stars kindled.
In the village below, torches flickered to life, and shadows began scuttling about the lodges. A drum sounded with the rhythm of a slowly beating heart.
A few minutes later, a soft glow appeared in the fire pit below the ridge and on the far side of the stream. Soon the flames were leaping six and seven feet in the air, sparks rising and dying as they drifted toward the stars.