Fargo picked up a stone and slung it after them.
“They’ve been doing that all day,” Valeria said hatefully. “The children come by and throw things. The dogs bark and growl. The braves make lewd gestures. An old woman came out and rapped me with a willow switch. I don’t understand how you slept through all that.”
“Well, I had a long night.”
“I’m so scared. The braves have been gathering wood for another fire.” Valeria’s voice trembled as she turned her eyes to the fire pit, on the other side of which fresh willow and cottonwood branches were heaped. “What’re we going to do?”
Fargo pulled at the leather lanyard binding him to the pole. There was no give whatever, and the expert knots were small and taut as sutures.
He inspected the braided rawhide binding his wrists. Those knots, too, would be impossible to untie, impossible to cut without a knife.
Clarifying rage burning through him, Fargo flung his wrists apart, the rawhide snapping taut and cutting into the chafed skin. If he didn’t think of a way out of here soon, he and Valeria both would no doubt be sacrificed to the Assiniboine war gods, under the sharp knife of demented Lieutenant Duke, and to the ethereal singing of Iron Shirt.
Fargo exhaled slowly and peered toward the dun hills rising beyond the stream, where Prairie Dog Charley had no doubt met a slow, bloody end last night.
“What’re we gonna do?” Fargo mused through a long sigh. “Good question.”
14
Skye Fargo was not a man to give up easily, but after trying several times to loosen both his rawhide bonds and Valeria’s, and receiving nothing for his efforts but broken, bloody fingernails, he threw in the cards.
He’d never be able to break the stout cottonwood post to which he and the girl were tied, but he gave it a couple of furious attempts…receiving little for that effort but a sore back and neck and adding more misery to his throbbing head.
The Indians only watched and laughed, a couple warriors wandering up to point out Fargo’s and the girl’s privates. One grabbed her breast, then sprung away, laughing, as she lunged to slap him. A stocky, middle-aged warrior who seemed to enjoy impressing the younger braves, came up and urinated on the post that Fargo was trying to pry out of the ground. Laughing and tucking himself back into his loincloth, he walked away, muttering to the others about dressing for the ceremony.
Fargo slumped down beside Valeria, on a dry side of the post, and propped his elbows on his naked knees. The girl hung her head and sobbed, which she’d been doing for the past few hours. Fargo didn’t try to comfort her. She’d seen the wood the braves had gathered and chopped and seen, too, the post they’d erected in the middle of the fire pit. She’d read enough stories of Indian atrocities to know what the post was for.
She and the Trailsman were not to be stabbed or run through with war spears. They were to be burned at the stake, naked as the day they were born.
He turned to the boys tossing the chopped wood around the base of the stake, then glanced at the sky. The sun was nearly down, deep shadows bleeding out from the hills and knolls. The water gurgled beyond the cattails and willows.
He was still staring in silent frustration at the brush along the stream when, just after sundown and during the kindling of the first stars in the east, a drum began throbbing somewhere on the far side of the village.
The girl started.
Fargo turned to see five braves walking toward him through the willows, their purple shadows raking the sage and buck brush clumps. Three were bare-chested while one wore a tunic of bobcat hide with several emblems painted on it. Their eyes were dark, faces expressionless. The man in the tunic carried a wide-bladed, bone-handled knife down low in his right hand, while one of the others carried a spear. The other three fixed bows to arrow strings, angling the bow tips threateningly toward Fargo and Valeria.
Fargo stared hard at the approaching braves but directed his words at the girl. “Don’t show fear. They don’t respect fear, only bravery.”
“Does it really matter at this point?”
“Just do as I tell you, damnit. It’ll go worse if you show sign of weakness. And, if you see an opportunity, run to the river and swim for your life.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll put in a good word for you with the war gods.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The approaching braves spread out in a semicircle around Fargo and Valeria. The one in the tunic, the oldest of the five, gestured for the two captives to move back away from the pole.
When his orders had been obeyed, he stepped forward, crouched, and chopped through the two cords connecting Fargo and Valeria to the cottonwood post. As the man straightened, Fargo eyed the knife in his hand. If he could somehow grab it and chop the leather strap binding Valeria’s feet, he might give the girl a chance, however slim, to live.
The Indian followed Fargo’s gaze to the knife in his hand, and smiled. He stepped back, grinned conspiratorially at the other braves flanking him, then turned back to Fargo, open challenge in his eyes. He extended the knife toward the Trailsman in his open palm, as though daring him to grab it.
The Indian then closed his hand about the knife handle, swung his arm down to his right side, and snapped it up. The knife careened about six feet over his head, turning end over end once before falling. Falling, it turned end over end twice more before the handle dropped back into the Indian’s extended hand.
The Indian stared with wide-eyed mockery at Fargo, then grinned broadly, his flat cheeks dimpling. He cut his eyes toward the other braves, who chuckled.
Fargo laughed.
The laugh died on his lips as he lunged off his bound feet, throwing himself up and forward and chopping his bound fists down against the hand in which the Indian lightly grasped the knife. The brave gave a startled grunt and stumbled straight back as the knife hit the ground in front of his moccasins.
Before the other braves realized what had happened, Fargo grabbed the knife, then twisted around and sprang toward Valeria, diving toward her feet. With a single chop, he cut her ankles free.
“Run!” he shouted, as an arrow parted his hair and sliced into the ground behind him. “Head for the stream!”
He quickly chopped through the ties binding his own ankles, and straightened. An iron-bladed hatchet careened toward him at the end of a naked brown arm. Fargo ducked. The hatchet whistled over his head, blowing his sand-crusted hair.
Instinctively, he thrust the knife forward and up.
The Indian grunted sharply, and warm blood gushed over the Trailsman’s right fist. Before he could pull the knife out, an arm snaked around his neck, drawing his head up as it tightened, pinching off his wind and blood, and making his head feel like an overfilled balloon. Each heartbeat felt like a hammer smashed across his brain plate.
As the Indian drew him back and down, he glimpsed Valeria running off to his left, toward the confluence of the two streams. One of the other braves was close on her heels, yowling as he dove, wrapping his arms around her feet, tripping her. She fell face-first in the brush, screaming.
Fargo dug his fingers under the arm of the brave strangling him. Seeing two other braves standing before him, arrows aimed at his face from two feet away, their faces pinched with silent fury, he opened his hands, turned them palm out in surrender.
The arm of the brave in the wolf-hide tunic slackened around Fargo’s neck. One of the braves before him slitted his eyes, drew his aimed arrow back slightly.