Beyond Squaw Creek Read Online Free

a mass of swollen purple clouds driven toward them by a knife-edged wind.
    The prairie hogbacks turned lemon yellow. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. The sudden gale shepherded tumbleweeds across the short brown grass and thrashed the scattered cottonwoods and oaks. Prairie dogs squealed and ran for their burrows.
    â€œShit!” Fargo said, turning his head forward and tipping his hat brim low.
    Ahead, he could make out the brown smudge of the old trading post nestled between hogbacks about a half mile away, smoke skeining from its large fieldstone chimney.
    â€œHold on!” he yelled above the howling wind and rumbling thunder, clucking the Ovaro into another ground-eating lope.
    They hadn’t galloped thirty yards before the storm converged on them, rain pouring out of the dark clouds, driven slantwise by the wind. Fargo and the girl hunkered low in the saddle as the Ovaro galloped over one rise and down another, hooves splashing through puddles, the wind-whipped rain pummeling the Trailsman’s shoulders and pasting his buckskin tunic against his back and sluicing off the broad brim of his high-crowned hat.
    As they galloped over the last rise, the trading post/ stage station appeared before them, nestled in a broad hollow and fronted by a creek sheathed in cattails. It was a broad, tall, barnlike building of stout logs with a low, brush-roofed stable attached to the side. The post’s windows were shuttered, and the stable doors were closed, but wan lamplight seeped out through gaps between the logs and through the rifle slits in the front doors and shutters.
    Lightning flashed and thunder clapped as the Ovaro splashed across the creek, which broiled with muddy, fast-moving water, and lunged up the opposite bank. It galloped past the stone well house and into the yard that had become a rain-pelted slough, and skidded to a slipping, sliding halt before the stable.
    Three tarp-covered freight wagons sat nearby, wagon tongues drooping, the tarp groaning and flapping in the wind.
    Fargo slipped out of the pinto’s saddle, lost his footing in the soggy mud, and nearly fell before regaining his balance and drawing the stable doors open. He led the pinto into the stable’s murky, musty shadows rife with the smell of hay and ammonia. A couple of horses, hidden in the shadows, loosed frightened whinnies and kicked their stall partitions, frightened by the storm as well as the intruders. In the stable’s far recesses, a cat growled angrily.
    Fargo lifted Valeria Howard out of the saddle. Soaked, she weighed a good ten pounds more than she had when he’d put her there. Her red hair hung straight down her back, and she crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, shivering.
    â€œI’ll get you into the lodge!” he yelled above the wind pummeling the doors and stout log walls, making the rafters creak. He ran his hand down the pinto’s sleek, wet neck. “You stay, boy. I’ll be back to bed you down.”
    He ushered her through the stable doors, led her by the hand along the front of the stable to the porch. She gave a cry as water streamed off the sagging porch roof and down her back.
    â€œCould I be any more miserable?” she said, shivering, hugging herself, as Fargo led her up the porch steps.
    He rapped on the stout log door. Almost immediately, a rifle barrel pushed through one of the two slots in the door’s vertical half logs. Behind the door, a man’s voice squawked, “Friend or foe, red man or white?”
    Fargo glanced at the round musket barrel sliding around in the slot, and at the rheumy blue eye peeking out the hole from inside.
    â€œIt’s Skye Fargo, Smiley. Open up!”
    The musket barrel wobbled around, twitched, and receded into the cabin. A thump sounded from inside, followed by the scrape of a locking bar. The door opened a foot, and a round, bald head poked out, blue eyes wide with caution. When the eyes found Fargo, the old