Northwoods Nightmare by Jon Sharpe Page A

good-looking. There must be a warrior somewhere lucky to call you his wife.”
    â€œI am too busy taking care of grandfather and my father and mother to think of a husband.” Teit sighed. “My parents had me late in life. My father broke his leg in a fall five winters ago and cannot get around as he used to.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that,” Fargo said to be polite.
    â€œAnd you? Is there a woman you call your own?”
    â€œI like all women. Tall, short. Blondes, redheads, brunettes.” Fargo paused for effect. “White. Red.”
    â€œAnd women like you, I suspect. You are very handsome for a white man. It is your eyes. Looking into them is like looking into a lake.”
    Fargo hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Tell you what. Since you’re heading in the same direction we are, you’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”
    â€œYou can speak for all the whites below?” Teit asked with a sweep of her arm at the riders.
    â€œThey’re not like the badmen you saw. I’m their guide. The man in charge is called Havard. He’s up here searching for his son.”
    Teit gave a slight start. “Havard, you say?”
    â€œYou’ve heard the name before?”
    â€œI do not think so.”
    â€œTheordore Havard, his wife, Edith, and their son and daughter are looking for the other son, Kenneth. Have you run across him anywhere?”
    â€œNo.”
    Fargo was willing to bet every dollar in his poke she was lying. ““He’s lived in Fraser Canyon the past few years, working a gold claim.”
    â€œWe do not go into the canyon often,” Teit told him.
    Now Fargo was doubly certain. Fraser Canyon was at the heart of Knife territory. Only small parts of it were under white control. The rest were roamed by the Knifes. “So you’ve never been to Boston Bar or Lytton?”
    â€œA few times,” she admitted.
    Fargo let it drop, for now. He went to the Ovaro, groped in a saddlebag, and brought out a bundle of pemmican wrapped in a square of rabbit fur. He opened the hide and offered some to them.
    â€œYou are very kind,” Teit said as she picked a piece for her grandfather and another for herself.
    â€œYou’re welcome to more if you want.”
    Tentatively, almost shyly, Teit selected two more. She avoided looking at him. Sitting next to her grandfather, she slowly chewed. “Thank you. This is. . . . how do you say?. . . . delicious?”
    â€œI think so, too.” Fargo liked pemmican a lot better than jerky. It consisted of berries mixed with meat and fat. He wrapped the bundle and replaced it in his saddlebag.
    They ate in silence. Several times Teit glanced at Fargo as if she was going to say something. Chelahit finished his pemmican and carefully eased to the ground with his back to the boulder. He said something to Teit.
    â€œMy grandfather says he is sleepy. He will rest while we wait for your friends,” she translated.
    Fargo moved a few yards down the slope and leaned against a fir, his arm crossed over his chest. The panorama of uplands spread before him to the far horizon. Several peaks were capped with ivory even at that time of year. Below the snow, phalanxes of evergreens grew in their many diversities. A pair of ravens cawed and flapped, the throb of their wings like the beat of a pulse in the rarefied air.
    â€œBeautiful, is it not?” Teit asked as she sat next to him.
    â€œThe only thing more beautiful is a woman’s naked body.” Fargo smiled as he said it but she still blinked.
    â€œAre you always this forward?”
    â€œA popular question of late,” Fargo admitted. “But you should be used to it, as pretty as you are.”
    â€œUsed to what? Most men I know do not talk about female bodies, naked or otherwise.”
    Fargo thought she had risen to the bait but she immediately changed the subject.
    â€œThis Kenneth Havard. His family is sure he