Beyond Squaw Creek by Jon Sharpe

the pistol straight out toward the brave galloping about twenty yards off Fargo’s right stirrup.
    Before Fargo could trigger the .44, the brave’s rifle spoke.
    Fargo squeezed the Colt’s trigger. At the same time that the revolver leaped in his hand, the Ovaro lurched. Fargo knew his own shot had sailed wide of the brave, but the brave’s rifle dropped from his hand, hit the ground, and tumbled back behind the racing mustang. Then the brave himself flew straight back off his striped blanket saddle, as though a noose had been pulled taut around his neck from behind. He rolled off the horse’s rump, flew out over the tail, and hit the ground, rolling and tumbling out of sight in a sifting cloud of dust, grass, and dirt clods.
    The Trailsman glanced at the pinto, relieved that the horse was still striding unharmed, snorting and blowing as it raced toward the stockade looming ahead. As Fargo’s eyes raked the wall, he became aware of pistols and rifles popping and booming, smoke puffing from above the wall’s pointed log tips. Several soldiers stood on the shooting ledge on the inside of the wall, and were firing over the wall toward the Indians, most of whom now drew back on their horses’ reins while another screamed and flew off the back of his racing mustang.
    Movement ahead caught Fargo’s eye, and he turned forward to see the stockade’s double doors split apart and swing toward him. Two soldiers in dark blue tunics and tan kepis pushed out between the parting doors. Two dashed right of the gate, one left, and, dropping to their knees and raising their Springfields to their shoulders, bore down on the Indians now drawing their horses to skidding halts on Fargo’s right.
    Atop the stockade wall, a burly, bearded gent in a leather hat and tanned buckskin jacket beckoned and shouted, “Come on, Skyeeee!” A mad guffaw vaulted above the pinto’s thundering hooves, and white teeth shone in the burly gent’s cinnamon beard. “You done whipped those red savages at their own game!”
    More deep laughter exploded as the Ovaro raced between the soldiers, who were triggering their rifles off Fargo’s right flank. The horse cleaved the open stockade doors and plunged into the fort’s dusty, manure-pocked yard, turning right and grinding its hooves into the chalky turf as the Trailsman drew back on the reins.
    A man shouted, “Valeria!”
    Fargo and the girl raised their gazes to the stockade wall, where ten or twelve soldiers and a rotund hombre in smoke-tanned buckskins milled on the shooting ledge, a couple still triggering their army-issue Springfields over the wall toward the prairie.
    A tall, hatless gent with thick dashing hair nearly the same red as Valeria’s stood facing Fargo and the girl, holding a smoking .44 in his hand. He wore duck pants with red-stitched pockets, snakeskin spats, and a white silk shirt under a cowskin vest bearing a distinctive pinto pattern. Nothing on the man’s attire indicated that he was an army major, but his red hair and fatherly gaze directed at Valeria left little doubt that the man was Major Howard, commander of Fort Clark.
    â€œFather!” the girl sobbed, and Fargo saw her shadow on the hoof-pocked ground clap a hand to her mouth, stemming a cry of both shock and relief.
    â€œOh, my girl!” The major holstered his pistol and moved along the shooting ledge toward a ladder constructed of narrow logs and rawhide. “I never thought I’d see you alive!”
    He descended the ladder quickly and dropped the last three feet to the ground. Fargo had dismounted the horse and was helping the girl down. She ran to her father, sobbing as the major snaked his arms around her slender waist and buried his face in her hair.
    â€œOh, Valeria…you have no idea how relieved…”
    â€œFather, you wouldn’t believe what happened,” she cried, convulsing in the man’s