Slappy had removed the blindfolds from the horses, and Fargo vaulted into the saddle, reining the Ovaro around.
“You done ’er, Fargo!” Slappy gloated. “I figgered you for a dead’un, but by God, you flummoxed them redskins good!”
“This is no time to recite our coups. In some of the warrior societies, the braves tie their ponies to their wrists when they’re on a campaign. There’s likely a few ponies in the main camp, and some braves just might chase us, Wendigo or no. Let’s tear up some landscape. After what I just pulled, we
12
The moment Fargo and Slappy returned to camp, the Trailsman called the others around him while Slappy began hitching the teams. He explained about the raid on the herd and the fact that it had bought them some time to escape toward Fort Laramie, but only if they traveled to the limits of their endurance.
“Exactly how much time?” Aldritch demanded.
“How long is a piece of string?” Fargo retorted. “We ain’t dealing with a three-minute egg here. These braves been running down horses for centuries. With luck we’ll gain maybe a day, a day and a half.”
“And without luck?”
Fargo lifted a shoulder, irritated equally by the merchant’s mocking tone and the way his fleshy lips pursed in the firelight. “Without luck they might break taboo and chouse enough horses back to their camp in time for a sunrise strike. One of those feather-heads could be eating your warm liver for breakfast.”
“I say, Fargo, that’s needlessly graphic,” Lord Blackford reproved. “You’re frightening the ladies, quite.”
“Fargo is quite frightening with his mouth, true enough, Your Lordship,” Derek put in. “But not so courageous at making a fist.”
Fargo appeared to ignore the barb, but filed it away in memory with all the other nails in this hangman’s coffin. “We can’t waste this opportunity, folks. Instead of laying over, we’re going to take one-hour rest breaks only when we have to. Slappy will whip up some grub that we can eat on the go. Those Cheyennes will eventually walk down their horses, and they’ll be coming after us even harder than before.”
The wind gusted hard, almost laying the fire down flat. Fargo didn’t voice it, but he feared a blizzard might be making up. Cheyenne mounts were small, but good snow ponies. And it wouldn’t take all that much snow to stop these conveyances in their tracks.
He was fairly sure that no braves would have trailed him on those few remaining ponies, not after dark, but Fargo hadn’t survived so long in hostile country by assuming the best view of things. He walked back down their trail for about three hundred yards and climbed onto a huge boulder to see better. The dark, eerie silhouettes of the twisted landscape stretched on over a vast and silent expanse.
“Do you see any Indians?” came Rebecca’s clear, pleasant voice from behind him.
“Nary a one, pretty lady,” he assured her, sliding down to join her. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
She laughed. “I shan’t be coy—there’s no time for that. You saw me earlier when I was bathing, didn’t you?”
“Sure did,” he admitted. “And since we’re being honest—you wanted me to see you, right?”
“Most assuredly. Did you like what you saw?”
“Is Paris a city? You took my breath away.”
“Hmm . . . that means you were appreciative. But were you aroused?”
Fargo had a hunch she wanted to be shocked, so he played it. “Rebecca, I got so hard it hurt.”
“Oh my!” She cast her eyes modestly toward the ground.
“Now, if I offended you—”
“No, I daresay I like it. English men of my class are very reserved about matters sensual, and I desire frankness—at least, I do with you. May I ask another frank question—one many women are curious about but never ask?”
“Please do.”
“What, exactly, does it feel like when a man . . . achieves climax?”
“Achieves?” Fargo repeated, chuckling. “Oh, prob’ly like it is for the woman, I guess. It’s not easy to shape it into words. Tell you the truth, at the moment it happens I’m not able to think about it—you might say that pleasure takes over the mind. Not just the simple pleasure of good food or a hot bath—it’s a pleasure all by itself, and describing it is like trying to describe the taste of water.”
“Yes, then it is much the same for a woman. Do you . . . do you suppose we might find out together?”
Fargo chuckled. “Oh, for me that question was answered when you let me see you bathing.”
“Are you aroused right now?”
Fargo guided her hand to the hard furrow in his buckskins. It pulsated in her fingers.
“Oh,
“Rebecca! What in the dickens are you doing there?”
Sylvester Aldritch came puffing up to join them. “Did I see you touching this peasant’s . . . his . . .”
“She was curious to know what buckskin feels like,” Fargo supplied. “So I invited her to touch mine.”
