Free Kiowa Vengeance by Ford Fargo

his eye. Seeing the
man at close range made the highwayman realize he was vaguely
familiar.
    “I’ve seen you before,” Quick said. “But I
can’t recall where.”
    “Probably around town. I’ve been in Wolf
Creek a few months now—I’m John Hix. I’m a barber. But you ain’t
been in my shop—we must have seen each other in the street, is all
I can think of.”
    Quick nodded, and shook the man’s hand, but
was unconvinced. Quick had only been in Wolf Creek once, just long
enough to pay rent for his studio and set it up. He had seen the
barber somewhere else, and not recently. It would come to him.
    For now, there was a lovely young lady
present.
    “And your name, dear lady?” Quick said.
    “Cora Sloane. I’m the new
schoolteacher.”
    She extended her hand, and Quick kissed it
gallantly. “ Enchanté . Your obvious grace will be much
welcome in our little town. I knew your predecessor, if only in
passing—her loss was a tragedy.”
    Quick waved his arm toward his horse.
    “Miss Sloane, your ride awaits. I’m sure
your feet must be throbbing.”
    “Thank you so much, Mister—Courcey, was
it?”
    “De Courcey, madam.” He clasped his hands,
inviting her to step into them, and assisted her into the
saddle.
    “Let us not waste time, dear friends,” Quick
said, “for our red foes travel with alacrity. On to the Manning
ranch.” He gestured at the barber. “Lay on, MacDuff. Cursed be the
first to cry hold, and all that.”
    “My name is Hix.”
    “Indeed it is, sir.”
    They started walking.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Captain Dent’s troop found the buffalo
hunters late in the afternoon. They saw the buzzards long before
they could make out the bodies.
    Of course, it was difficult to identify them
as buffalo hunters, or as anything else, at first. They had been
stripped naked, scalped, and mutilated. There was no sign of
clothing or equipment to identify them, save the Sharp’s buffalo
rifle that lay in the grass a few yards away. The barrel was packed
full of dirt, and the stock was broken off.
    Charley Blackfeather squatted beside the
ruined weapon, turned it over in his hands, and grunted.
    “This was a damn good buffalo gun,” he said.
“Most anybody that came across one of these would snatch it
up—white, black, or red. But somebody busted the hell out of
it.”
    “Busted the hell out of them fellers that
carried it, too, I’d say,” Trooper Amos commented in his Tennessee
twang.
    Charley nodded. “That part makes sense,” he
said. “If you get ahold of an enemy, especially one you hate, you
make him suffer—the more he suffers, the more medicine you get from
his death.”
    Trooper Klein chuckled nervously. “You talk
like you’re speaking from experience.”
    Charley stared at the man, his face
impassive—but inwardly he was amused by how much more nervous Klein
became under his scrutiny. How nervous would the soldier be,
Charley wondered, if he knew how many men the Black Seminole had
put under the knife in the Florida swamps of his youth? Men in
uniforms much like Klein’s. Or the men in gray, for that matter,
that Charley had worked on when he, himself, was the one in
blue?
    After several seconds, a broad smile grew on
Charley’s face. Klein gulped.
    “Like I said,” Charley continued. “That’s
normal enough. But bustin’ up a perfectly good rifle? You don’t see
that often. It seems like the Kiowas took a dim view of these men’s
profession.”
    Sergeant Nagy was bent over one of the
corpses. He rolled it over and examined its features.
    “Don’t look familiar,” the wiry Hungarian
said.
    “That’s Culley Bartlett,” Charley said. “And
the skinny one would be Les Forman.”
    “You ain’t even looked at their faces,” Amos
said.
    “Don’t have to.” Charley stood up, the
broken rifle stock in his hand. He pointed at it. “I can see the
mark scratched into the patchbox of this Sharps. I’ve seen it
before, when they came into Wolf Creek to trade in their furs