High Plains Massacre (2 page)

Lieutenant Wright knocked, and when they were bid to enter, Wright opened the door and stood aside for Fargo and Bear River Tom.

Colonel Jennings had gray at the temples and the air of a man who had seen it all. He was military through and through, a career man who never let regulations get in the way of doing what was right. “So you found him.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Wright said, and launched into a recital of how he had been lied to, and if not for the knife fight, he wouldn't have learned the truth.

“Knife fight?” Jennings said, arching an eyebrow at Fargo. He motioned at the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

“Did you hear the part about him lying to me, sir?” Lieutenant Wright asked.

“I'm right here,” Colonel Jennings said.

“You should hold him to account. I don't enjoy being treated like a child.”

“He'd have come to see me as soon as the card game was done or he was tapped out,” Colonel Jennings rightly guessed.

“You don't know that, sir,” Wright said peevishly.

“I know Fargo like I know the backs of my hands, Lieutenant,” Colonel Jennings said. “You can quit bitching now.”

Bear River Tom laughed.

“Back to this knife business,” Colonel Jennings addressed Fargo. “Who and why?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Fargo admitted. “I never set eyes on the gent before.”

“Strange,” Colonel Jennings said thoughtfully. “But then it's been a strange day. It started this morning when a patrol returned with mystifying news.”

“‘Mystifying,'” Bear River Tom said. “There's a word you don't hear every day.”

“Why are you here, exactly?” Colonel Jennings asked. “I sent for Skye, not you.”

“What do you have against me?” Bear River Tom asked.

“Besides the fact that all you ever talk about is tits?”

“I will never savvy why people hold that against me,” Bear River Tom said. “Seems to me tits should be as popular to talk about as the weather.”

“What?” Lieutenant Wright said.

“Pay him no mind, Lieutenant,” Colonel Jennings said. “He has none of his own.”

“Hey, now,” Bear River Tom said.

The colonel placed his forearms on his desk and clasped his hands. “As I was saying, this morning Captain Calhoun's patrol returned. I sent him to find out if there was any truth to the report I received about a new settlement in the Black Hills—”

Fargo sat up in alarm. “Hold on. Who in hell would be jackass enough to settle there?” The Black Hills were in the heart of Sioux country. The Lakotas, as they called themselves, regarded the range as sacred, and fiercely protected it.

“That's what I wanted to find out,” Colonel Jennings informed him. “Captain Calhoun found the settlement, all right, which is bad enough. But what he didn't find makes it worse.” Jennings paused. “No people.”

“How's that again?” Fargo said.

“The settlement is there. Calhoun counted seven cabins and twice as many tents and the frame for a house. But he couldn't find a living soul.”

“The Sioux got them,” Bear River Tom declared. “Massacred the whole bunch.”

“That was Captain Calhoun's first thought,” Colonel Jennings said. “But there was no sign of a fight. No blood. No bodies. It's as if, and I'll quote him, ‘every last soul up and vanished.'”

Fargo's curiosity climbed. “How many people were there?”

“Our best estimate is thirty to forty but it could be more,” Colonel Jennings answered.

“How in the world did they start up a settlement without you knowing?” Bear River Tom asked.

Colonel Jennings indicated a large map on the wall behind his desk. “This Territory covers thousands of square miles. We patrol regularly but we can't be everywhere. And we can only go so far into Lakota land without risking reprisals.”

“Give me a hundred men and I'd teach them to mind their betters,” Lieutenant Wright spoke up.

Bear River Tom snorted. “Boy, the Sioux would eat you for breakfast. Tits or no tits.”

“Hush, the both of you,” Colonel Jennings commanded. “And, Tom, I won't have any more of that tit business at my fort. There are ladies here, the wives of officers and others, and if so much as one overhears you and complains, I'll throw you in the stockade and throw away the damn key. So help me God.”

“It's a sad state of affairs when a man isn't free to talk about tits.”

“Talk about them off my post.”

“You have your army, I have my tits.”

“How's that again?” Colonel Jennings said.

“You're a military man,” Bear River Tom said. “You think and talk military all day long. I'm not a military man. I'm a tit man. I think and talk tits all day long. Yet people hold it against me.”

“I wonder why,” Colonel Jennings said. “Not another mention of tits in my presence. Understood?”

“Can I at least think tits?”

“So long as they don't leak out your mouth.”

Bear River Tom frowned. “I'll try my best. But don't blame me if I slip up. Blame my mother.”

Colonel Jennings drummed his fingers on the desk. “Your mother got into this how?”

“She had three.”

“Three what?”

“Tits.”

Fargo and the colonel and the lieutenant all stared at Bear River Tom.

“You're insane,” Lieutenant Wright said.

“I sure as hell am not, pup,” Bear River Tom replied. “Some ladies do. They're born with three, not two. My mother had three. It got me started on thinking about tits at an age when most boys were thinking about slingshots and fishing and such, and they've been on my mind ever since.”

“Go,” Colonel Jennings said, and pointed at the door.

“What?”

“You heard me. Get out of that chair and go outside and wait for Skye.”

“What did I do?”

“You are the most exasperating man on the face of the planet. Whenever I talk to you, the subject always turns to tits. And it always reaches the point where I want to shout in your face to shut the hell up about tits before I shoot you.”

“I thought I was the only one,” Fargo said.

“You too, pard?” Bear River Tom said, sounding stricken. “I should think that you, at least, would appreciate tits more.”

Colonel Jennings made a sound remarkably similar to the snort of a mad bull.

With great reluctance, Bear River Tom got up and stepped to the door. “Am I allowed the last word?”

“So long as it's not about tits,” Colonel Jennings said.

Bear River Tom opened his mouth, hesitated, and closed it again. “Damn,” he said, and walked out.

“Where the hell were we?” Colonel Jennings said.

“The missing settlers,” Fargo reminded him.

“Ah, yes. I swear, that man gets me so flustered sometimes, I don't know if I'm coming or going. It's always tits, tits and more tits. Now he claims his mother had—”

“The missing settlers,” Fargo said again.

“Eh?” Colonel Jennings caught himself. “Do you see? Now he has me doing it. When I go home tonight and sit across from my wife at supper, do you know what I'll be thinking of?”

“Good God, sir,” Lieutenant Wright said.

“Need me to go get my bottle from my saddlebags?” Fargo asked.

Colonel Jennings shook his head. “I'm all right. But damn him, anyway. Back to these settlers.” He sat up and squared his shoulders. “You can see the predicament I'm in. I'm under orders not to do anything to provoke the Lakotas. And I can't think of anything that will provoke them more than a white settlement in their sacred hills.”

“So you suspect they wiped the settlers out?” Lieutenant Wright inquired.

“You did hear me mention that Captain Calhoun found no evidence of a fight? If the Sioux had attacked there would be bodies and blood and spent cartridges and broken arrows. There was none of that.”

“Then what in the world happened to them, sir?”

Jennings faced Fargo. “That's what I want you to find out. You're the best scout at this post. Hell, you're one of the best scouts anywhere. I'd like you to investigate and report back to me.”

“Easy to do,” Fargo said.

“There's more. It could be the Sioux don't know the settlement is there, and I'd like for it to stay that way.”

“How can they not know, sir?” Wright asked.

“You'd better study up on the region if you want to be an effective officer, Lieutenant,” Colonel Jennings said. “The Black Hills cover five thousand square miles or more. And from what I understand, the settlement is located far from where the Sioux usually wander. And it's hidden up a gulch.”

“That's something,” Fargo said. He'd been to the Black Hills a number of times. The range was crisscrossed by gorges and gulches where even fifty people would be somewhat safe from the ever-watchful eyes of the Lakotas.

“I sent Captain Calhoun in discreetly, with a small force,” Colonel Jennings continued. “I intend to do the same with you. I'd like you to take Lieutenant Wright and six troopers.”

“Why not Calhoun?” Fargo was quick to ask. The captain was a veteran campaigner and had been in the West a good many years. He wouldn't do anything stupid. The same couldn't be said of Wright.

“I'm afraid I need him on another matter,” Colonel Jennings said. “And the lieutenant can use the experience.”

“I assure you, sir,” Wright said, “I will be diligent in my command of this patrol—”

“You're not in charge. Fargo is.”

Wright reacted as if the colonel had slapped him. “But I'm an officer. He's just a scout.”

“There is nothing ‘just' about him,” Colonel Jennings said. “If you stayed out here fifty years, you'd be lucky to learn half of what he knows. You're to do as he says in all things. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Wright said, with the same enthusiasm he would if Jennings had told him to chop off a hand or foot.

“I mean it, Lieutenant. We can't afford mistakes. You're to slip into the Black Hills, find out what happened to those settlers, and slip out again without bringing the Sioux down on your heads.”

“I won't let you down, sir,” Lieutenant Wright vowed.

Jennings turned to Fargo. “There's more. I had Calhoun do some investigating. He heard a rumor that Anton Laguerre is somehow involved.”

“Who?” Wright said.

To Fargo the name was all too familiar. Laguerre was a French-Canadian as infamous in his way as Blackbeard the pirate had been in his time.

“A ruthless cutthroat,” Colonel Jennings informed Wright. “Murder, thievery, rape, you name it, he's done it. He ranges all over, him and his Metis band, although this is the first I've heard of him venturing into the Black Hills.”

“His what band, sir?” Wright asked.

“The Metis, Lieutenant. They hail from Canada. They're part white, part Indian. Most don't give us a lick of trouble. Laguerre and his band are the exception. They're some of the worst killers and bad men anywhere. Frankly, I can't see them wanting to have anything to do with the Black Hills. They're never involved in anything unless it can fill their pokes. But that's what Captain Calhoun was told.”

Fargo was digesting all he'd been told. “None of this makes any damn sense.”

“You could well have the Sioux on one hand and Laguerre on the other, and you caught in the middle,” Colonel Jennings warned.

“One thing,” Fargo said. “Bear River Tom will likely ask to come along. Do you mind if I take him with me?”

“Mind? By all means. And good riddance to him and his tits.”

Fargo grinned.

Colonel Jennings became grimly serious. “Whatever happens out there, do me a favor and make it back alive, will you?”

“We'll sure as hell try,” Fargo said.

True to Fargo's prediction, Tom asked to go along. He also had a brainstorm.

“We're heading out at first light, right? Then we should treat ourselves tonight.”

“To what?” Fargo asked. As if he had to.

“Why, to some tits, of course. We'll pay a visit to Saucy Sally's.”

Her real name was Sally Ferguson but everyone called her Saucy. The sweetest whore anywhere was how she liked to describe herself. She got her start down in New Orleans and worked the steamboats for a spell before heading upriver and somehow winding up at Fort Laramie. She'd set up a tent, hired a few of her sisters in the trade, and soon had enough money to have a log whorehouse built.

“Yes or no?” Bear River Tom prodded. “And if you say no, I'll go myself. I need some nipples to dream about over the weeks we're on the trail.”

Now that Fargo thought about it, it wasn't a bad notion. He could stand to relax for a while. Once they headed out, they'd need to be on their guard every minute of every hour of every day. “Sounds fine.”

Tom laughed and clapped him on the back. “I knew I could count on you. You love tits as much as I do.”

“That's not possible,” Fargo said.

The sign out front of the whorehouse always made him grin. Sally's Entertainment Emporium was the fancy name she had given it in order not to ruffle the feathers of the wives at the fort. The decent ladies were willing to look the other way so long as their noses weren't rubbed in the carnal cravings of their menfolk.

Fargo also grinned at the pink parlor: pink walls, pink ceiling, pink carpet, pink furnishings. A bar ran the length of the room and was tended by not one but three women in pink outfits. The novelty of female barkeeps was an attraction in its own right. Every man who visited the camp and heard about them had to come see for himself.

The doves wore pink, too: frilly, lacy, clinging pink that left little of their charms to the imagination.

If the pink wasn't enough, the perfume they wore would smother a horse. Sally was a big believer in perfume. She insisted her girls wear plenty and then sprayed it over everything else.

Fargo once asked her why she used so much and she said that she couldn't stand stink. “Crawl under the sheets with fifty or sixty smelly men a week and you won't like stink, either,” was how she summed up her sentiments.

Her stable was a mix of ages and types, from Sally herself, who, it was rumored, was pushing fifty, to a couple of girls who weren't yet twenty. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, a man had his pick. Sally had also hired a black gal and a Chinese girl because, as she put it, “Blacks and Asians got peckers, too.”

No sooner did Fargo and Bear River Tom stride in than there was a lusty whoop of delight and a pink tent on two thick legs waddled toward them with her thick arms spread wide.

“Skye! Thomas! How are two of my favorite gentlemen in all the world?”

When Sally hugged you, Fargo had discovered, it was like being hugged by a bear. It was a wonder his ribs didn't stave in. That they didn't was because they were cushioned by breasts roughly the size of Conestogas. Sally had the hugest breasts he'd ever seen, and that took some doing. They were so huge, he marveled that she could bend over without falling on her face.

“You get a hug, too, you rascal, you,” Sally said, and turned to Tom.

“Sweet Sally,” Bear River Tom said. He looked to be in heavenly rapture as they embraced. “You don't know how much I've missed these tits of yours.”

“You can tell me all about it in a while,” Sally said with a playful wink. “But before we get to that, how about a drink on the house and you boys tell ol' Sal what you've been up to?”

“‘On the house' are three of my favorite words,” Fargo said.

Sally pulled them toward a sofa. Several girls were there, waiting to be picked, and she shooed them away and sank down in the middle. “Have a seat, fellas.”

Fargo was amazed the sofa didn't buckle. He sat on her left and had to wriggle to fit, she took up so much room. “How's business, Saucy?”

“Never better.”

Fargo surveyed the revelers and realized something. “I don't see as many boys in blue as usual.”

“They've had to cut back on their visits for the time being,” Sally confided. “A few of them snuck away from the fort last week to pay me a visit, and they were on duty at the time. So that colonel of theirs clamped down.”

“That's a shame,” Bear River Tom said. “You have good tits here.”

“I do like girls on the busty side,” Sally said.

Bear River Tom placed a hand on one of hers and said sadly, “A tit is a terrible thing to waste.”

“You're a beautiful man, Thomas,” Saucy Sally said. “For that you get to have me free.”

“Hot damn,” Tom said.

“If one tit is a waste,” Fargo tried, “two tits are a calamity.”

Both Tom and Sally swiveled to stare at him.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That won't earn you a free poke. You're just copying Tom.”

“I'm a beautiful man,” Bear River Tom said proudly.

“You're something,” Fargo said.

Sally raised her arms and clapped her hands and one of the lady barkeeps sashayed over, her hips swinging wide.

Sally told her to bring a bottle of their finest whiskey and three glasses.

“Tall glasses,” Fargo said.

“That's Rebecca,” Sally said as the girl sashayed back. “You might like her, Skye.” She chuckled and jabbed him with her elbow.

Fargo had to admit he was interested. Rebecca was one of the young ones, with auburn hair and green eyes and the kind of full lips he liked to suck on. “You've got her tending bar.”

“I can pull her away for a while,” Sally said. “I'm her boss, remember?”

When Rebecca returned bearing a tray with their drinks, Sally crooked a finger and said something in her ear.

Rebecca nodded and smiled and stepped in front of Fargo. A twinkle in her emerald eyes, she huskily remarked, “I hear you'd like to poke me.”

Fargo stared at the junction of her thighs and his mouth watered. “Would I ever,” he said.