He glanced at Iron Shirt. The old chief held Fargo’s gaze with an enraged one of his own, lifting his right fist, clenching it furiously.
The war chief’s expression tightened, and the anger in his eyes was replaced by a vague surprise. Through the undulating heat waves, Fargo saw a black circle in the middle of the old man’s chest.
The Trailsman blinked. Had the circle been there before—some talisman or war marking?
As though wondering the same thing, Iron Shirt glanced down, stumbling straight back and dropping his drum at his feet. He looked up again, brown eyes glazing, and the report of a high-caliber rifle echoed above the crowd’s din.
A fraction of a second later, there rose the buoyant bugling of a cavalry horn.
15
As the peal of the bugle cut across the night, evoking a collective grunt from the Indian revelers, Lieutenant Duke turned to Iron Shirt. The chief raised his hands toward the bullet hole in his chest, and dropped to his knees.
The crone standing between the two pretty princesses to Fargo’s left began shrieking like a witch with wolves on her heels. At the same time, rifles popped above the fierce attack cadence of the growing bugle cry.
The gunfire rose from the buttes above the river, as well as from the flats straight east, and the Indians—women, children, old warriors, and young braves—began scattering south and west. Several of the armed braves loosed war cries, looking around wildly while raising their feathered lances. A half dozen others gathered around Iron Shirt now lying belly down in front of the fire.
Coughing and blinking against the smoke and leaping flames around him, Fargo turned to see Lieutenant Duke running toward the lodges, shouting orders for the others to grab their weapons and hold back the blue army hordes.
Behind Fargo, Valeria gasped and groaned at the wafting smoke and leaping flames.
Rifles and pistols popped from the direction of the river. Hooves thudded in the east. Several braves threw war lances or loosed arrows; several more dropped as slugs plunked into their chests or bellies. The others, taken by surprise, and unprepared for battle, followed the brunt of the crowd south and west through the willows and cottonwoods, fleeing enemy fire.
As one lone, stubborn brave loosed an arrow eastward before clutching his neck and dropping, the hoof thumps rose from that direction, and a horseback rider appeared, galloping into the sphere of tossing firelight. The Trailsman’s saddled pinto followed the bearded, buckskin-clad rider, led by its reins, its tail high, eyes flashing.
Fargo blinked through the smoke and flames stabbing up in front of him as Prairie Dog Charley drew his dun to a halt before the fire and, tossing a brass bugle out of his hands, leaped out of the saddle like a kid half his age. He ran up to the fire, slitting his eyes in their doughy sockets, regarding the fire warily.
“Forget it!” Fargo shouted. “You’ll never make it through the flames, Dog. Do us a favor and give us each a bullet!”
“I didn’t go to all this trouble fer nuthin’, God-blast it!”
Looking around, Prairie Dog grabbed a fallen lance and began thrusting it into the flames, shoveling aside the burning logs and branches. He leaped back as flames shot out at him, soot and sweat bathing his round, bearded face, then bolted forward once more to continue carving a path through the conflagration.
Flames leaped up around the Trailsman’s bare legs, and he winced at the burn, the smoke now funneling up his nostrils like thick pepper, searing his eyes and lungs.
Behind him, Valeria coughed and sobbed. “Oh, God,” she cried. “I’m burning!”
“Not if I have anything to say about it, honey!”
Prairie Dog threw down the lance, grabbed the big bowie off his left hip and, bellowing like a wild man, leaped through the slim corridor he’d carved in the dancing flames. Eyes slitted, coughing, he hacked at the rope coiled around the pole, starting at the top and working down.
When he’d cut through the bottommost coil, he yelled, “There!” and grabbed the girl’s right arm. As he pulled her back through the corridor sheathed in flames, Fargo pushed away from the stake, ripping the severed ropes away from his body.
He turned to follow Prairie Dog and Valeria, but the flames closed the corridor, erasing Prairie Dog’s buckskin-clad back. Peering left, he saw a slight break in the flames and, roaring like a lion about to lunge for freedom, dove through the thickening wall of fire and coiling black smoke.
He hit the ground outside the fire ring, worms of smoke curling up from his shoulders, feeling like a charred shank of venison, smelling the fetor of his own charred hair and eyebrows. He’d fallen just right of Iron Shirt’s slumped form. Shaking his head and blinking the smoke from his watering eyes, he bounded up onto his heels and looked around.
To his left, Prairie Dog had dropped to a knee, extending his Colt revolver. Flames lanced from the barrel as the Colt barked and leaped in his hand. Amidst the willows, a shadow fell, but more braves were dancing around in the brush, no doubt having retrieved their rifles and bows.
Spying his own Henry repeater lying over the slumped form of the warrior in the wolf-hide tunic, Fargo leaped forward, grabbed the rifle, and dodged an arrow that plunked into the fire behind him. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and fired three times at the dancing shadows, one of which flew backward while the others scattered, howling.
Prairie Dog continued firing eastward as Fargo sprang toward him and the horses dancing on the other side of the fire. Valeria hunkered behind a willow, knees covering her breasts, hands clamped to her ears.
“Let’s get the hell outta here!” Fargo grabbed Valeria and tossed her onto the Ovaro’s back.
As he snapped up the sagging reins, Prairie Dog triggered a final shot and wheeled toward his own mount. “But I was just startin’ to have fun!”
Fargo looked around as he swung up into the saddle, hearing another arrow whistle past him and evoking a shriek from the girl. “Where’s your soldiers?”
“They lit out!” Prairie Dog bellowed, swinging heavily into his own saddle. “There was only four of ’em in the first place though we tried like hell to sound like a whole company!”
As Fargo reined the Ovaro into the brush lining the stream, holding the Henry in one hand and wincing as his bare balls ground against the saddle horn, he turned toward Prairie Dog galloping off the pinto’s left flank. “Why the hell didn’t you kill Duke, for chrissakes?”
Both horses plunged into the water as the warriors’ enraged shrieks rose behind them, arrows slicing the air and tearing into the weeds. “I was aimin’ fer Duke but pinked old Iron Shirt instead! I told ya—!”
“I know,” Fargo yelled as the horses gained the opposite bank and angled toward a natural trough in the butte facing them, “your old eyes ain’t worth shit in the dark!” He cursed loudly as a rifle barked in the direction of the villages, the slugs tearing into the weedy, chalky butte face.
“You ungrateful nub!” the old scout bellowed, his tack squawking as he followed Fargo up the butte. “I shoulda just rescued the girl and left you to burn, damn your nekkid hide!”
Valeria clutched the Trailsman snugly around the waist as the Ovaro lunged up and over the lip of the butte. Blowing, it continued over the top and lunged down the other side, the whistling of the arrows and hammering of the rifles dying behind them, the enraged calls of the Indians fading on the night breeze.
Fargo was so relieved to be free of the Indians’ fire that he didn’t even feel ridiculous, straddling the pinto buck naked, the Henry repeater resting across his saddle bows, the naked girl clinging to his back. The cool night breeze felt keenly refreshing against his sunburned, fire-scorched skin.