Black Hills Badman by Jon Sharpe

Oh, we’ll have to be on our guard. But our camp isn’t anywhere near where they’ll set up their villages. They need water, and a lot of it, and plenty of graze for their horses.” Owen motioned at the timbered hills that ringed the small valley. “We can hide right under their red noses for as long as you need.”
    “I thought as much,” Keever smugly declared. “There you have it, Mr. Fargo. Stay or go. The choice is yours.” He wheeled. “Come, Gerty. We’ll wash up for supper. Rebecca, be sure our meal is prepared on time.”
    Owen and Lichen and the others drifted off, leaving Fargo and Rebecca alone.
    “I could have told you how he would react.”
    Fargo wasn’t in the mood to mince words. “He’s a jackass. Yet you stayed with him all these years.”
    “I have over twenty thousand dollars in the bank. How much do you have?”
    Fargo made a zero of his thumb and forefinger. “All this money you’ve saved, was it worth it?”
    Rebecca bowed her head and slowly shook it. “No. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t. Back then I thought money was everything. Now I know better. You can’t put a price on happiness.”
    Fargo stared at their tent. An hour ago he wouldn’t have said what he was about to say now. “Do you still want me to do you?”
    “What? Oh. I wouldn’t put it quite so crudely, but yes. Please. That is, if you want to.”
    “You wear a dress, don’t you?”
    “Why do you sound so mad? And why are you agreeing? Because you want to? Or to spite my poor excuse for a husband?”
    “Does it matter?” Fargo stretched out his legs. “Wait until him and the brat are asleep and slip out. I’ll be waiting, and when I see you, we’ll go off into the woods.”
    “Just the two of us? In the dark?”
    “What did you expect? We’d take Owen or one of the others along to stand guard while I poke you?”
    “Mad and bitter. You have a low tolerance for fools, don’t you? I used to before I became one myself.”
    Rebecca rose and went about cooking stew for her husband and her stepdaughter. Over at the other fire, Lichen was butchering a doe someone had shot while Fargo was gone.
    For Fargo’s part, he drank coffee and fumed. If it wasn’t for Rebecca, he would light a shuck then and there. He felt a twinge of conscience about Gerty. The girl was the spitting image of her father but she was young yet and didn’t know any better. Give her a few years and she might mature. Not that she would live to see old age. Not with an army of Sioux roaming the hills. She wasn’t quite old enough to make a good wife so the Lakotas were likely to leave her to die of thirst or hunger. Or maybe, if she was lucky, they’d take her under their wing.
    Fargo was on his third cup of coffee when Owen came up to the fire, squatted, and smiled.
    “What the hell do you want?”
    “The girl is right. You are a grump.”
    “Go to hell. And leave me be.”
    “I didn’t walk over here to swap insults. I wanted to talk to you about the Sioux.”
    “We’ve already talked. Maybe you don’t recollect, but you persuaded Keever to go on with his hunt. Nice going, buffalo shit for brains.”
    Owen laughed. “If you were female, I’d swear it was your time of the month.”
    “If I was a female, I’d swear you were as ugly as sin.”
    Again Owen laughed but his mirth was forced. “Look, I’m trying to avoid an argument.”
    “Then you came to the wrong place.” Fargo bent toward him and nearly hurled the coffee in his face. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I wasn’t exaggerating. In a few days these hills will be swarming with Sioux. More of them than you can imagine.”
    “I believe you.”
    “There’s no way in hell we can keep hidden. They’ll find us, and when they do, every last one of us will be turned into a pincushion.”
    “I agree.”
    “Then why didn’t you side with me and tell the good senator to leave while he still can?” Fargo shook his head. “I swear. You make no