Scalpers (23 page)

The Ranger nudged his copper dun to a quicker pace when he saw how the rise of dust had moved closer across the sand flats. When he looked back a moment later and saw the dust moving up behind him, he pressed his horse even more. It might well be a posse of miners riding from the west, but he had no idea who would be heading this way from the southeast. Whoever it was from either direction, all he wanted was to get Ozzie and head out of here.

Even as he thought about it, he saw a single hatless rider meandering slowly—too slow to stir up dust—at the edge of the sand flats. A number of saddled horses moved along with the rider, none of them appearing to be in any hurry. Keeping watch on the rider, Sam reined his horse down, drew his telescope from his bedroll, stretched it out and raised it to his eye.

“And there he is, Copper,” he murmured to the big sweat-streaked dun as if the horse would understand him. “It's Ozzie Cord . . . or what's left of him,” he added, seeing the bloodstained bandanna that drooped from around Ozzie's swollen face and hung across his chin. He saw Ozzie's nose barely clinging to his face in a black lacework of dried
blood. A wide swollen bruise ran full length down the left side of Ozzie's face.

“My goodness,” Sam said. He shook his head a little as he lowered the telescope and shoved it shut between his palms. “Looks like he might welcome us taking him into custody,” he said to the dun. But as soon as he shoved the telescope back into his bedroll, he drew his Winchester, checked it and laid it across his lap just in case.

He tapped the dun forward, keeping his eyes on Ozzie and the land surrounding him. After the shooting he'd heard from this direction, he warned himself to be prepared for anything. Yet, as Sam rode the horse closer at a light gallop, he noted Ozzie was making no move to even straighten in his saddle, let alone raise a firearm toward him.

Is he dead?

“Ozzie Cord, show your hands,” Sam called out, stopping his horse, the Winchester up and in his hand.

At first Ozzie made no effort to respond. But before Sam called out again, he slowly raised his hands and held them out a few inches on either side of him.

“Nail me up,” Ozzie mumbled in a slurred voice.

Nail him up?

Sam nudged the dun forward and stopped again only a few feet away. Seeing no weapon, and more important, seeing the shape the young man was in, Sam reached behind his back and took out a pair of handcuffs.

“What happened to you, Ozzie?” the Ranger asked, laying the rifle back across his lap.

“When . . . ?” Ozzie said in a dreamlike tone.

Sam sidled in, clamped the cuff around one wrist and noted that Ozzie had enough comprehension to raise his other wrist into reach.

“Never mind,” Sam said, both cuffs in place. “Who do these horses belong to?” He lifted Ozzie's big Colt from its holster and shoved it down behind his gun belt.

“Hell, everybody . . . I guess,” Ozzie said. He shrugged and, answering the Ranger's first question, said, “My horse . . . did all this to me.” He turned his face up a little to show the Ranger the long bruise and his disfigured face. “Nearly bit my nose off. Busted me upside the head . . . with an iron rail.”

Sam winced a little.

“I've never seen a horse do such a thing,” he said, not sure he believed a word Ozzie said in his dazed condition.

“I'll never . . . feel safe sleeping around him again,” Ozzie said, sounding addled from the iron rail batting him in the head.

Sam looked off west at the closing rise of dust.

“Where's the payroll money?” he asked. “If the miner posse catches up to us, the money is all that'll keep them from—”

“It's gone,” Ozzie said, cutting him off. “Don't even ask me where. . . .”

Sam stared at him.

“What do you mean it's
gone
?”
Sam said. “Money doesn't disappear.”

“No,” Ozzie said with a thin, dreamlike smile. “But it . . . changes into pinecones and dirty long johns.”

“Start making sense or I'll give you to the posse,” Sam said, bluffing. “They've got as much right taking you into custody as I do, maybe more.”

“I am making sense,” Ozzie said. “Look back here.” He nodded over his shoulder.

Sam stepped his horse back and picked up a half-empty canvas bag lying across Ozzie's saddlebags. Spreading the bag open, he saw pine needles and cones stuffed against some wadded dirty clothes.

“This is what the shooting was about,” Sam deduced. He stepped his horse back and faced Ozzie.

“Yeah. They're all dead up there,” said Ozzie. “I rode up . . . found the woman and two Perros Locos shot all to pieces. Brought this back with me.” He nodded again toward the bag behind him.

“Why'd you bring it back?” Sam asked.

Ozzie shrugged and said, “It changed once . . . who says it won't change again?” He gave a dark nasally chuckle that sounded as though it had to hurt. Sam looked at him, wondering if he was serious or just making a mindless joke in his addled condition.

Sam shook his head. He half turned in his saddle
and looked back along the edge of the sand flats. The newer rise of dust had moved closer. He brought out his telescope and stretched it out in his hands.

“Step down and bury the bag,” he said. “Hurry up, we don't have much time.”

“Step down and
bury it
?”
Ozzie said. “I'm cuffed. Look at the shape I'm in.”

The Ranger wondered if this was how he'd be all the way back across the border. “You could be in worse shape real quick when the miners see it. They won't find anything funny about their money turning to pinecones.”

“Then your job will be protecting me,” Ozzie said, again with a dark chuckle. He raised the bandanna back across the bridge of his nose and adjusted it into place. He winced in pain while he did it.

Yep, this was how it was going to be.

Sam gave him a hard stare.

“Step down out of that saddle
now
,” he said menacingly.

Seeing the look in the Ranger's eyes, Ozzie decided not to push it.

“All right, calm down,” he said grudgingly. As he managed to swing his leg up over his horse and step down, Sam raised the telescope to his eye and gaze out into the cloud of dust. Now the riders were close enough for the scope to penetrate the heavy dust, the riders coming into sight. Seeing them, Sam stiffened a little.

“Get back on your horse,” he said sidelong without taking the lens down from his eye.

“No, I just got down,” Ozzie said in a childlike huff. “I'm going to bury the bag, like I was told to.”

The Ranger jerked the lens down and stared at his irritating prisoner. “It's not miners, it's Lipan Apache. Get in the saddle or I'll leave you to them.”

Ozzie scrambled into his saddle, yet even as he did so, he still had to make a comment.

“Lipans ain't near as bad as Mescaleros,” he said. “They're just a bunch of gray-skin Texan horse thieves, got run out of their own lands—”

“That's interesting, Ozzie,” Sam said, cutting him short. “I ought to leave you here to tell them all that—” He turned the copper dun toward the sand flats and grabbed Ozzie's reins from his hands. “But you're going with me.”

“Wait, Ranger! My nose will fall plumb off on a running horse.”

“Hold on to it,” Sam said.

“I can't! My hands are cuffed.” He wiggled his fingers.

Sam sidled in close and unlocked the cuffs from his wrists.

“Try making a run,” he said to his grinning prisoner, “the last thing you'll feel is a bullet in your back.”

Ozzie started to say something more, but before he could, the Ranger reached over and slapped his smoky dun on its rump. Ozzie's horse bolted forward at a run; the bandanna lying flat atop Ozzie's head flew away. Sam put his own coppery dun at a run beside him. Immediately the loose horses fell in, running behind the two, out onto the barren
sand flats. Behind them the two clouds of dust closed in on each other from both directions.

*   *   *

Following close behind Ozzie, the Ranger looked back on the length of the flats, seeing the clearer outlines of the Apache, both man and horse emerging from the thick swirling dust. From the opposite direction he saw the tan-with-red-piping uniforms of the Mexican army, riding side by side with the dusty blue uniforms of U.S. Cavalry troops. Bandoleers of ammunition crisscrossed the soldiers' chests; brass bullet casings glinted in the dull dusty sunlight. He had to give it a second to realize that on the right flank of the troops rode Turner Bigfoot Pridemore and his mercenaries. They rode fast, loose and wildly, like demons unleashed from the gates of hell to do the worst on man's bidding.

This was the battle that had been the talk on both sides of the border for months, he told himself—a joint Mexican–U.S. alliance to eradicate the deserts and plains of the Mescalero and Lipan Apache.
Like it or not, here it comes,
he thought as his coppery dun pounded on right behind Ozzie's smoky dun, the rest of the loose horses running right with them. All he could hope for was to get Ozzie and himself out of their way.

Seeing the set of hoofprints ahead of them on his right, Sam quickly recognized them as belonging to Rayburn and the speckled barb from earlier. He figured Rayburn had seen the coming Apache and didn't wait until dark to clear out.
All right. . . .
With any luck and a canteen of water, Rayburn and the barb had made it well out onto the flats by now.

“Swing right, Ozzie!” he shouted. As Ozzie glanced around, Sam waved him toward the dry wash Rayburn had taken shade in. The wash lay down out of sight from the flats behind them. If the stony wash had been good enough cover for Rayburn, it would be good enough for him. He almost wished Rayburn and his gun were still there. But the tracks leading away told him different.

Without hesitation Ozzie swung his horses toward the dry wash, and in moments, as rifle fire began cracking back and forth on the flats, the two slowed their horses enough to get over the sandy cut bank along the wash and slow to a stop.

“Up ahead,” said the Ranger with a nod. “There's cactus shade and rock for cover.” He nudged the dun forward, Ozzie beside him, the horses still following, but hanging back some now that the hard running appeared to be over.

Stepping down from their saddles, lawman and prisoner quickly led their dun horses to where a half circle of rock and an edge of ancient overhanging cactus provided good cover. Out on the flats rifle fire increased as the two forces drew closer. The thunder of hooves jarred the earth from both directions.

“You need to give me back my gun, Ranger,” Ozzie said in a somber tone of voice. Sam noted he seemed to be coming to his senses a little, for whatever that was worth.

“I'll reconsider that when the time comes,” Sam said. “Until then you sit down there and keep
quiet—if you can.” He gestured toward a short rock alongside the belly of the wash.

“Oh, I can,” Ozzie said. “But you're crazy if you think I'm going to just sit here and be overrun by Apache without shooting back.”

Sam wasn't going to waste time arguing with him. He turned away and climbed up the sandy cut bank with his telescope and Winchester in hand.

“Okay, we've got trouble,” he said to Ozzie over his shoulder. He'd looked along the dry wash edge and saw the five loose horses milling about in full view, saddled and ready to ride. “This is too easy pickings for these warriors to pass up.”

“What you've got to do is shoot the horses,” Ozzie said, hearing him and slipping up the cut bank beside him.

“The shots would draw the Indians' attention,” Sam said.

“So?” said Ozzie, as if nothing made sense beyond his own mindless half-cocked reasoning. “The warriors won't ride out here for five dead horses.”

Sam didn't bother explaining the folly of the young man's flawed logic.

“Go back and sit down,” he said. “Don't say another word.”

Sam looked out through the telescope as Ozzie grumbled and slid down the cut bank. Looking back out at the dust, Sam saw a handful of warriors riding out of the swirl toward the dry wash in spite of the battle raging on the flats.

“They spotted the horses,” he said. “Get back up here, Ozzie. Here they come.”

Ozzie had just sat down on the rock. He shook his head and stood up.

“You need to make up your mind, Ranger,” he said, disgruntled and peevish.

But his eyes almost lit up when he saw the Ranger draw the black-handled Colt from behind his gun belt and hold it out to him butt first.

“Don't make a move against me, Ozzie,” he warned as the young man took his Colt and rubbed a hand over it.

Ozzie appeared not to have heard him. Instead he gave a slight grin. Sam took note and watched until the young mercenary leaned against the sandy bank beside him, the black-handled Colt up and cocked. This was not a man he could ever turn his back on.
No, not for a second,
he warned himself.