Beyond Squaw Creek by Jon Sharpe Page A

arms.
    â€œShush now,” the major said, smoothing her hair against the back of her head. “You’re safe now. You’re here.” The man glanced expectantly at Fargo as the girl’s back continued jerking and muffled sobs rose from her mouth buried against the major’s shoulder.
    â€œA war party attacked us on the other side of Smiley’s roadhouse,” Fargo said. The shooting had died off, the Indians apparently giving up the fight, and the soldiers were closing the stockade’s gate with a raspy creak of leather hinges. “Except for your daughter and me, the entire party was wiped out. We had to abandon the stage, rode like hell to the roadhouse. Spent the night there. I saw smoke from that direction earlier this morning.”
    Major Howard sighed darkly, his cheek still pressed to his daughter’s head. “I sent couriers to warn you, but apparently they didn’t make it through.” He turned around. “We’ll talk later this evening. I’m going to see my daughter to my cabin. See to your horse and a bath, Mr. Fargo. Then see Captain Thomas for debriefing. In the meantime, do you know Mr. Charley?”
    Fargo turned in the direction indicated. The only other man Fargo had seen so far not dressed in army blues was descending the creaky ladder, huffing and puffing with the effort. At the bottom, the man in stained buckskins turned and shuffled toward him, grinning in his shaggy, cinnamon beard.
    Fargo ran his gaze across the stout frame of the old army scout and tracker, and sighed ruefully. “Prairie Dog Charley. I reckon I’ve confessed to worse. Didn’t figure the old dog was still howling on this side of the sod.”
    The major, leading his daughter away, said, “Mr. Charley will fill you in and show you the stables.”
    As Howard and Valeria drifted off toward the log huts and cabins on the north side of the parade ground, Valeria glanced back toward Fargo, a vague conspiratorial smile in her red-rimmed eyes. She turned away and rested her head once more against her father’s shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist.
    Prairie Dog Charley pulled up before Fargo, grinning wolfishly after the girl, showing a full set of large, white teeth framed in glistening, brown tobacco juice. “Skye, you didn’t ?” The tracker dropped his voice and canted his head toward Fargo, so the soldiers wouldn’t hear. “The major’s daughter , fer cryin’ out loud? Son, you haven’t changed a bit!”
    â€œAnd you have, you old whoremonger?”
    Fargo ran his gaze down the burly, buckskin-clad, broad-shouldered frame, from the greasy leather hat that covered the scant hair left by a scalp-crazy Comanche down in the Texas panhandle, to his boot moccasins sewn and patched from tanned moose hide and trimmed with the ebony hair of a black panther.
    A small bone-handled knife protruded from a sheath attached to the inside of the right moccasin, and around his considerable waist he wore two Colt Pattersons and a stag-handled bowie. A muzzle-loading German percussion rifle, a Schuetzen with a deeply curved and silver-fitted butt-plate, rested atop his shoulder.
    â€œExcept for wielding that prissy target piece,” Fargo said, “you’re still the ugly old mossy-horn I left at Fort Bliss two springs ago. No doubt still howling at full moons, too.”
    Prairie Dog guffawed and jostled the rifle’s barrel proudly. “This here’s a gift from Sir Frederick Some-such of Manchester. Took him shooting in Colorado, don’t ya know, and even though his wife tore off with a handsome Ute warrior, and the Sir hisself almost went down a wild sow griz’s belly in tiny little pieces , he gave me this here rifle for his appreciation of my services.”
    The old tracker glanced at the sweat-lathered pinto standing behind Fargo, who watched both men with strained patience; the Ovaro was accustomed to a good