Scalpers (14 page)

Sam took his hand off the Colt, running out of moves now. He looked at the dark blood down Chase's thigh, a large black circle on his left shoulder.

“You're hit bad,” Sam said. “You'll need help getting out of here—”

“Shut up, Ranger,” Chase shouted, his voice weakening a little from his hours in the sand, and under it. “The only reason you're alive this minute is that I need some help. Here's the deal. Tell your beaner amigos to patch me up after I kill you, and I promise I'll let them live. Otherwise no dice. I'll kill them all after I blow your head off.”

“Your deal sounds shaky,” Sam said, needing an edge, looking for it, hoping for it. Drawing against a cocked rifle hammer was never good—he knew, having been on the other side of this play too many times to count. “Why should I believe you'd keep your word after I'm—”

“To hell with it,” said Chase, cutting him off, feeling himself growing weaker. “I'll make them help me at gunpoint.” He steadied the rifle at his
shoulder. Sam saw him tense himself for the shot. Here it came. Sam had to make the move—no choice— slim though his odds were.

He snatched for the Colt, already knowing it was taking too long, even as his Colt was up and aimed, his finger ready to press back on the trigger. All he needed was a split second—

But he didn't get it. Instead he heard the powerful explosion of a huge-caliber rifle shot. Confusing, though, since he saw no smoke or fire fly from Chase's rifle barrel. Instead he saw the scalper's head explode like a busted bucket of red paint and raw eggs from the nose up.

“This time it worked! This time it worked!” shouted Ramon behind him.

Sam spun instinctively toward the rifle shot, his Colt cocked and ready. He let his gun and his hand fall to his side, seeing Ramon hold the big muzzleloader up over his head in a large cloud of silvery black powder smoke. He breathed in a deep breath and let it out, realizing how fortunate he'd been in escorting the elderly villagers out to collect their horse meat. Had he ridden out alone . . .

But you didn't, did you?
he reminded himself, already wanting to put the close call behind him.

“Now I must reload and wait and see if it works the next time,” Ramon called out, trotting down the rise to him. “I know you said to wait up there.” He stopped ten feet away, the big ancient rifle leaving a trail of smoke behind him and a stream still curling from its barrel. “But I am old and do not always do as I am told. Forgive me, Ranger.”

Sam only gave a faint smile and nodded.

“Good shooting,” he said, lowering his Colt back into its holster.

“
Gracias
, Ranger,” said Ramon, fanning the smoke away from his rifle. “Now to reload, and wait and see if it works the next time I try to fire it.” He crossed himself quickly. “By the saints, I hope it does.”

“So do I, Ramon,” Sam said. He looked toward the dead man, then off into the distance.
One down, two to go,
he told himself. Then he and Ramon turned and walked back up the rise toward the elderly villagers. The elders had looked up at the sound of the gunshot, yet upon seeing no harm done went back to gathering their food.

Twice the two scalpers had started to ride out onto the sand flats to make sure their rifle fire had killed Malcolm Chase, but each time something had stopped them. The first time, when the dust had settled enough for them to get a clear view of their handiwork, they spotted the Ranger and the elderly villagers trekking out to butcher the dead horse. Their second attempt, the loud blast of the big rifle had resounded at the same time they stepped into their saddles.

They stopped and looked at each other warily. Instead of riding out to investigate, they straightened high in their saddles and stared out, only to have their view blocked by the low rise on the other side of which the Ranger and Ramon stood over Chase's body.

This was their third attempt at making sure Chase was dead, although by now they were both certain he was. They'd watched the villagers butcher his horse, pack it onto the donkeys and haul it back to the blackened rubble that had been their homes. The Ranger had ridden with them, lagging behind, keeping watch on the sand flats as they left.

When they rode their horses at a walk past the hooves, hide and innards of Chase's butchered horse, three greasy black vultures looked toward
them and stretched out their wings and scowled them away from their gory feast.

“It all yours, boys,” Stevens called out to the bold scavengers, glancing back over his shoulder at them. “We've et.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Pusser. “Those horse steaks looked pretty good while they was parting out Chase's cayouse.”

“If you're that hungry, I'll wait for you,” Stevens said, giving a taunting grin, nodding back at the bloody mess of horse entrails.

“You know what I meant,” Pusser said crossly.

They rode quietly on, following the Ranger's and Ramon's footprints to the top of the low rise. When they stopped they looked down at a lone young vulture picking through the former contents of Chase's cranium. A few feet from the vulture a mound of fresh-turned sand supported a stack of rocks.

“Think they buried ol' Malcolm?” Pusser asked.

“Yeah, that's what I figure,” Stevens said quietly, his hand on his holstered gun as he looked all around.

“Meaning he wasn't dead after we shot him,” Pusser offered.

“One would only think so,” said Stevens, still looking all around the small sandy basin. “It's doubtful anybody would waste a bullet on a dead man, don't you think?”

“Yeah,” Pusser agreed. He paused, then said, “So . . . you figure the Ranger finished him off?” trying to work it out in his mind.

“I would not find that
hard
to believe,” said Stevens, getting a little testy from all the questions. “If I ever see him I'm going to ask him, first thing.”

“Are you crowding me?” Pusser asked, getting a little testy himself from Stevens' snide answers.

Without answering, Stevens turned his horse and nudged it toward the charred remnants of the village in the flat, shapeless distance.

Pusser clenched his jaws and rode alongside him.

When they got closer to the burned-out village, they saw the people stretching a large canvas from the top of a blackened stone and adobe wall slantwise to the ground. Rocks were laid to hold the canvas in place both atop the wall and along the ground, forming a lean-to-shaped shelter. Seeing the two scalpers riding in, Ramon and another man stepped out of sight, Ramon with his muzzleloader reloaded, the other villager with Malcolm Chase's rifle. In addition to carrying his muzzleloader, Ramon wore Chase's gun belt around his thin waist.

“
Hola
the village,” Stevens said as the two reined up a few feet from the ongoing work.

A large elderly widow named Natilizar stepped back from the work on the shelter and gave the two scalpers a nod.

“Hola,”
she said. “You can see that our village has burned, and we are preparing a place of refuge from the wind and the sand.”

“Yeah, yeah, we see all that,” Stevens said impatiently, looking around for any sign of the Ranger. “We just need to get our horses watered . . . ourselves too. We'll be on our way.”

“We never hang around where work's going on,” said Pusser with a slight grin.

“Over there is our well,” the widow said. She gestured toward the donkey at the waterwheel. “You are welcome to fill your canteens before you leave.”

Stevens stared at her coldly.

“Are you rushing us off?” he said. “What if we're hungry?”

“Yeah,” said Pusser, “what if we wanted ourselves a good fresh horse steak?”

“We have no horse meat,” said the widow. But upon seeing by the look in their eyes that they knew better, she said, “None to spare, that is.”

“Fix us a steak,” Pusser said, getting demanding. “You best not spit on it either.”

Stevens gave him a surprised and annoyed look and said to the woman before she could respond, “Where's the Ranger? We know he's here.”

The widow looked back and forth between the two, getting nervous.

“Are you going to fix us a gawl-damn steak, or am I going to have to thrash the living hell out of you?” He started to rise and swing down from his saddle.

“Forget your gawl-damn steak for a minute!” said Stevens. He looked back at the woman. “We
just want to know if we're going to get waylaid unsuspecting.” He looked all around again.

The widow looked panic-stricken.

“She told you the truth.” said Ramon. “The Ranger is not here. He left.” He stepped around the corner of the charred wall, the flintlock in hand, cocked and ready. Chase's black-handled Colt stood in the holster at his waist.

“Oh, did he, then?” said Stevens, his hand still clamped around his gun butt. “I know who that black Colt belonged to.” He nodded at Ramon's waist.

“
Sí
, I know you do,” Ramon said solemnly. “But now it belongs to me . . . me and all of us.”

On the other end of the fifteen-foot-long wall, the other Mexican villager stepped into sight with Chase's rifle against his shoulder, cocked, aimed, ready to fire.

“Well, well . . . ,” Pusser said in a low, even tone. “Look what we've got here.” He sat ready to draw his pistol and start firing.

“You must ride on,” Ramon said in a steady voice, “or we will kill you both.” He stared at them. “The Ranger is gone, your
compañeros
are dead and buried. There is nothing here for the two of you—nothing but trouble,” he warned.

“The only thing worse than a Mexican getting a bath is a Mexican getting a gun,” Pusser said. He glared again at the widow and added, “But I'm having me a gawl-damm steak before I leave this burned-out hull—”

“Shut the hell up about your damn steak!”
Stevens shouted at him. “The Ranger's gone, Malcolm is dead.” As he spoke he lifted his hand slowly from his gun butt and stepped his horse back. “This is loco.”

“
Sí
,” said Ramon, nodding, “it is loco.” He looked at the widow. “Wrap some meat and give it to them.”

“By God, that's more like it,” Pusser said. He eased the grip on his gun butt and gave Stevens a look.

“Gracias . . . ,”
Stevens said, looking around at the workers who had stopped and stood watching. The widow walked away behind the wall and returned right away with meat wrapped in a bloody canvas cloth.

As she handed the meat up to Pusser, Ramon said to Stevens, “If you follow the Ranger, you will run into a band of six young Apache. We saw them only moments after he left.”

“Good try,” said Stevens. “Knowing the Apache is our game.” He rattled the finger bones and bits of scalp and memorabilia on the bib of his shirt. “We know they've all cut out to the deep hill country.”

Ramon started to say more, but he stopped himself.

“Go with God,” he said, raising a hand as Stevens turned his horse and nudged it back toward the trail.

“Watch your language, old beaner,” Pusser said. “God wants to go with us, he better bring his own skinning knife.” He followed Stevens with a smug
look, hefting the wrapped horse meat in the palm on his hand.

*   *   *

Knowing the scalpers were playing cat and mouse with him, the Ranger didn't stop until well after dark when the many shod hoofprints he'd followed from the village became lost in the darkness. He'd traveled all day in silence, keeping the horses quiet and out of sight, avoiding any open stretches or turns on the hill trail. When the sun dropped he'd continued on, adjusting his eyes to the grainy dark until he knew he could safely go no farther. Then he eased off the trail onto the rocky hillside and made a dark camp, keeping the horses a few yards away from his bedroll against the back side of a large boulder. The prints he followed would be there in the morning. One of the horses wore shoes that had an extra-thick ridge at its center. Another horse wore shoes with two missing nails. Easy tracking, Sam told himself.

In the moments before sleep overtook him, he recounted the events of the day. With Malcolm Chase dead, he told himself, one down, two to go. . . . If he could avoid killing the other two, he would. If not, he wasn't going to let them stop him from getting the man he was after.

He had made the right move escorting the village elders out to butcher the horse. Had he gone alone, he realized, there was a good chance Malcolm Chase would have killed him. It was not something he wanted to dwell on, but he had to acknowledge it was a close call. These mercenaries
had spent enough time hunting down Apache that they had learned a lot of their ways. Hiding under the sand was a trick he knew himself, yet Chase had managed to pull it on him—almost gotten away with it. He had to watch his step, he told himself, turning onto his side, closing his eyes for the night.

In spite of the bone-tiring day he'd spent in the desert heat, he slept a light and shallow sleep, the way he'd trained himself to do. The sleep of a tracker, he called it, or the sleep of an owl. Even so, in the middle of the night, his light veil of sleep was pierced by the quiet sound of horses walking past his camp on the trail beneath the boulder. Having also trained himself not to awaken with a start but rather open his eyes slowly and search out whatever sound had awakened him, he did so without moving an inch.

And there it was, the slightest rustle of horses' hooves, of men speaking under their breath in the darkness. But it wasn't English, he realized after a moment of listening, nor was it Spanish. As the riders drifted past him like ghosts in the night, he recognized the short, low, choppy words of Apache. The fact that he heard them and their horses at all made him doubt his findings. Apache traveled as silent as a wisp of desert breeze.

Yet there it was again. He listened closely. Lipan, he decided. Even as he reaffirmed his conclusion, he realized by the thickness and the slur of their voices that the warriors were drunk. That explained a lot, he thought, rolling silently up from his blanket into a crouch. Colt in one hand, Winchester in the other, he
eased over to the back side of the boulder, leaned his rifle against it and stood between the horses, keeping their attention away from the passing horses.

“Good boys,” he whispered near their pricked ears as the last faint click of hoof moved away on the trail to his left. He slipped his Colt back into its holster. “What say we take a different path? It's getting a little crowded up here.”

The horses stood silent as he rubbed each of them on its muzzle. After a moment he unhitched them both, saddled the dun and tied his supply pack atop the barb. In the pale moonlight he led the animals around from behind the boulder, to a thinner trail leading farther up on the steep hillside. By the time he'd found a stop to his liking, the sun had drawn a fine silver thread along the distant horizon. “A long day followed by a long night,” he told himself, slumping down against a boulder and closing his eyes, the horses' reins in his hands.

But he knew his climb would be worth his efforts. Come daylight he would have a full view of the trails below and anyone traveling on them. With Apache traveling the trails—drunk or sober—he needed every advantage he could take for himself.

*   *   *

At dawn, Ian Pusser and Bernard Stevens lay atop a flat rock looking down on a switchback trail below them. At some time during the night they had heard the faintest sound of horses moving along the hard, stony trail. But with their bellies full of
warm horse steak, neither had dragged himself from sleep long enough to investigate.

“Do you see what I see?” Pusser whispered, barely keeping his excitement from showing.

“I'd be blind if I didn't,” said Stevens. The two of them stared down at five sleeping warriors stretched out on the rocky ground over two hundred yards away. Three warriors were loosely wrapped in blankets. Two were spread-eagle on the ground, shirtless, like two men staked to the earth to keep from falling off. A sixth warrior, sitting guard, had fallen over onto his side atop a tall boulder. His rifle lay ten feet away.