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Prairie Dog had had arrows dug out of his hide before. Biting down on a bullet while Fargo worked, cutting down along the shaft to dislodge the steel tip wedged between two ribs, he grunted and cursed, apologizing to the girl for his language.

Valeria crouched over the scout’s back, wincing as Fargo removed the bloody shaft from the wound, and tossed it into the brush.

Panting, Prairie Dog turned his head to one side. “Goddamn, Skye—pardon my blue tongue, little lady—but I do believe you enjoyed that!”

“Ain’t done yet,” Fargo grunted, holding up a needle and length of catgut thread from his sewing kit, threading the needle by the light of the rising quarter moon.

He’d just finished sewing up the old scout’s wound and splashing whiskey over the sutures when Valeria said suddenly, “Listen!”

Fargo corked the whiskey bottle and froze.

Hooves thudded only a few yards back along the gully.

16

Fargo motioned for Valeria to remain silent as he rose from beside Prairie Dog and slipped his Henry from its saddle boot. Quietly levering a shell, he ran a settling hand down the Ovaro’s long, white-striped snout—both the pinto and Prairie Dog’s blue roan had been trained not to start in tense situations—and walked back along the narrow defile.

Near the intersecting ravine, he stopped as guttural voices rose softly, and an unshod hoof clacked off a rock. Fargo cat-footed forward and pressed his back to the rocky wall of the defile a few feet back from the intersecting ravine, half hidden from the ravine by brush and a scraggly cedar.

He held the Henry straight up and down before him, breathed shallowly, listening as the horses moved slowly toward him, hooves clomping, a couple of the Indians muttering quietly. When the horses were close enough to smell, Fargo tensed, pressed his back harder against the rock wall, and squeezed the Henry.

Bulky, black shapes moved on his left. A horse blew. Another shook its head. Men breathed.

Fargo didn’t turn his head to look directly at the intersection of the two defiles, but he knew the Indians were staring down the one he was in. He felt the warriors’ eyes penetrating the darkness and hoped like hell he blended with the rock wall and the cedar.

Someone clucked, and hooves thumped, growing louder until a horse’s head moved into the narrow defile from Fargo’s left. The rider drew back on the rope halter, stopping the horse about ten feet in front of the Trailsman. The horse was a steel dust with a small blue Z within an orange sun painted on its neck.

The horse stared straight down the narrow defile, toward Prairie Dog and Valeria about fifty feet beyond. The dun twitched its ears and lifted its snout, working its nose.

Fargo’s back tightened. Would the horse sense the other two horses, smell the blood that Prairie Dog had lost?

Still pressing his back against the rock wall, Fargo looked up through the branches of the gnarled pinñon. The tall, light-skinned man sitting the saddle was wearing Fargo’s high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, blond hair falling to his shoulders, his chest bare except for a thin, deerhide vest.

Fargo’s pistol belt and Colt .44 were wrapped around the man’s waist and loincloth. His moccasined foot was so close that Fargo could have swatted it with his rifle barrel.

If the Trailsman had been alone, he would have shot the mad lieutenant out of his saddle, but there were at least a half dozen braves sitting horses in the shadows behind Duke. Killing the self-proclaimed shaman would get not only Fargo’s wick trimmed, but Valeria’s and Prairie Dog’s, as well.

Duke suddenly threw his head back and howled like a moon-crazed coyote. Fargo started, slamming the back of his head against the rock wall. The high yammer, so loud that it raked the Trailsman’s eardrums, chased its own echo around the defile and set a couple of actual coyotes yammering in the northern distance.

The Indians behind the lieutenant grunted and muttered, amused. Duke’s horse turned suddenly toward Fargo. The steel dust’s eyes, meeting Fargo’s, widened suddenly, showing the whites. Fargo began swinging the rifle barrel down and tightening his finger around the trigger.

One of the Indians behind Duke spoke loudly and fast, something about hearing movement on the opposite ridge.

Duke drew back on the horse’s reins, clipping the horse’s startled whinny, turning the animal away from Fargo and around toward the warriors. Duke and the Indians spoke too quickly for Fargo to follow, and then hooves clomped, tapering off back down the ravine.

Fargo sighed, the painfully taut muscles in the back of his neck relaxing. He took a couple of deep breaths, then tramped back along the defile to where Valeria knelt beside Prairie Dog, who lay belly down, one of the girl’s blankets draped across his back. The man breathed steadily, deeply, moonlight reflected off his grizzled, bald pate and the single human tooth hanging from his right ear.

“Did they leave?” Valeria whispered.

Fargo nodded, staring down at Prairie Dog. “He’s out?”

“Passed out right after you left.”

Fargo turned to Prairie Dog’s blue roan and unbuckled the latigo strap under the horse’s belly. When he’d set the saddle, blanket, the scout’s saddlebags, and rifle scabbard in the brush, he turned to Valeria. “Sit tight. Try to keep him comfortable. Build a small fire only if it turns cold and he gets overly chilled.”

Holding the ends of the blanket across her chest, Valeria stared up the Trailsman, frowning. “What’re you going to do?”

“I’m going after Duke, and I’m going to kill the crazy son of a bitch if I can get a shot at him.”

A thought dawning on him, he reached down and pulled the old scout’s target rifle out of its scabbard. The Schuetzen was a better long-range shooter than Fargo’s Henry repeater, and a long shot might be the only shot the Trailsman would get.

Holding the fine German rifle in one hand, he pulled the Henry from his own scabbard with the other, leaned it against a rock. “I’ll leave that for Prairie Dog, though I hope like hell he doesn’t have to use it.”

He slid the Schuetzen into his own saddle boot, and glanced at Valeria. She was still staring up at him, her green eyes bright in the moonlight, her full lips parted slightly. Her breasts pushed against the trade blanket. Fargo moved to her, grabbed her brusquely, and kissed her.

“I’ll be back.”

“Be careful.”

He swung onto the pinto and turned the horse down the dark, narrow cavity, heading for the main ravine.

Fargo picked up the Indians’ trail on the northeast side of the gully. He also found the sign of a bobcat—a fresh track and warm scat—which was no doubt what the braves had heard and what had drawn them out of the ravine.

The Indians had continued northeast along the swelling prairie. Fargo followed slowly, keeping a close eye on their trail, which wasn’t easy to follow in the dark and on the relatively hard, grassy ground.

Strips of terrain overgrazed by bison helped to show the tracks of the eight unshod ponies, as did a recent prairie burn. But when daylight streaked the eastern horizon and burnished several long, low clouds, he still hadn’t overtaken the group but counted himself lucky not to have ridden into an ambush.

Lieutenant Duke and the braves obviously figured Fargo, Prairie Dog, and the girl were headed back toward Fort Clark and were hoping to cut them off. Rage at the invasion of their camp and at the killing of Iron Shirt must be driving them, because they sure as hell were tearing up the sod.

The sun had just separated from the eastern prairie and Fargo was climbing the long, low swell of a shale-capped dike, when the clap of gunfire broke the morning quiet. A prairie falcon, its wings coppered by the rising sun, swooped over Fargo’s head and continued north, shrieking.