The Scalp Hunters (6 page)

“I have a better idea.” Venom drew his pistol and shot him.

The hard part was not knowing when the scalp hunters would catch up. It was like sour food in the pit of Evelyn' s stomach, an ache that wouldn't go away. The others were worried, too. She could see it in their faces. Except for Plenty Elk. He didn't seem worried at all. Maybe it was the deaths of his friends. He acted eager for a fight, as if he had something to prove. Whatever his reasons, Evelyn was glad he was there.

Waku and his family weren't fighters. The Nansusequa had been a peaceful tribe. They fought only when provoked. From what Evelyn could gather, most eastern tribes didn't esteem counting coup as highly as tribes west of the Mississippi River. Why that should be was another of life's many mysteries.

All morning they rode hard. When the sun was at its zenith, they stopped to rest their lathered mounts.

Evelyn passed out pemmican. She gave a piece to Plenty Elk and he signed his thanks. He had more to sign.

‘Scalp men catch us tomorrow.'

‘No today?'

‘They have far ride where black man kill my friend. They have far ride here.'

Evelyn wasn't so sure. The scalp hunters would push hard, too. ‘Maybe when sun go down.'

‘Question. White men fight night?'

‘Yes.' Evelyn was aware many tribes usually only waged war during the day. Some whites believed it was due to a superstitious taboo. Common sense was the real reason. Fighting in the dark, when a person could hardly see, was an invite to an early grave.

‘Question. You have husband?'

Evelyn was startled. It had been her experience that Indian men, especially Indian men her age, only asked that question when they had designs in that direction. ‘I have no mate,' she signed.

‘You beautiful.'

‘Thank you.'

‘You smell good.'

Evelyn was flabbergasted. Here they were, fleeing for their lives from a pack of demons in human guise, and this young warrior was trying to court her. ‘You smell my sweat,' she signed.

‘Sweat smell good,' Plenty Elk persisted.

Men, Evelyn decided, were too ridiculous for words. She smiled and went over to Dega and gave him a piece of pemmican from the beaded parfleche her mother had made.

“What you two hand talk about?” Dega asked.

“Nothing much.”

Dega had been watching them closely, and he was sure it was more than nothing. He had seen her face, seen how she reacted to something the Arapaho warrior signed. “Him have big ears.”

“Excuse me?”

Dega touched one of his own ears to emphasize how much smaller his were. “His ears too much big. Look funny.”

“I thought the Nansusequa don't judge people by how they look but by how they are inside,” Evelyn reminded him.

“We do.” Dega felt it necessary to justify his lapse. “I not judge his ears. I just say they big.”

“He can't help how he was born.”

That she would defend the Arapaho worried Dega considerably. “You like his ears more or my ears more?”

“Ears are ears.”

“Please. Which ears best?”

Was it her imagination, Evelyn asked herself, or was Dega jealous? “Mountain lion ears are sharpest,” she answered, and went over to Teni. The older girl took a piece of pemmican and thanked her in the Nansusequa tongue.

Dega squatted and held a counsel with himself. Perhaps it was time he told Evelyn how he felt. Until now he had hidden his true feelings, afraid that if he revealed them, she would want nothing more to do with him.

Evelyn faced east and shielded her eyes with her hand. The distant haze was unbroken save by a flock of birds in flight. She turned and nearly bumped into Waku, who had come up behind her. “Goodness. Scare a person, why don't you?”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. I'm jumpy.”

“No sign of the scalp men yet.” Waku had been anxiously watching their back trail all morning.

“Not yet, no.” Evelyn had been thinking, and she had an idea. For it to work, she needed to know something. “Tell me. Will your family kill if they have to?”

“My son and me kill if bad men catch us,” Waku promised.

“No, not just you two,” Evelyn clarified. “What
about Tihikanima and Teni and little Miki? Have they ever killed?”

“They are women. They are not warriors.” Waku liked the Kings, liked them dearly, but they were too prone to violence. In that regard they were no different from the tribes of the region, who waged war for the sheer excitement. An attitude that ran contrary to all he believed. The Nansusequa valued peace above all else.

“Shoshone women will kill to defend their village. The same with the Sioux and the Crows and the Blackfeet,” Evelyn said. “Will your wife and daughters do the same?”

It hit Waku, then, what she was suggesting. “You want them to help kill the scalp men?”

“We could ambush the whole bunch,” Evelyn proposed. “Plenty Elk says there are nine of them. Well, there are seven of us. I could give one of my pistols to your wife and another to Teni. You and Dega both have bows. So does Plenty Elk. I have my rifle. If we did it right, if we let them come up close so we couldn't miss, we could drop six of them before they got off a shot. That would leave three for us to deal with.”

Waku was amazed she would propose subjecting his wife and daughters to such terror. “Not Tihi, Teni and Miki.”

“I can teach Tihi and Teni to shoot the pistols. It's no feat at all if your target is near enough. You just point and squeeze.”

“No.”

“Why not? It's our best chance of ending this and saving all our lives. The scalp hunters won't ride into an ambush twice.”

“Not my wife and daughters.”

“You don't want them to kill even when they might be killed? Where's the logic in that?”

“You do not understand,” Waku said.

“Enlighten me.” Evelyn was convinced an ambush would work but only once. They must make it count. They must slay as many scalp hunters as they could with their first volley of lead and arrows.

“You are a white girl…”

“I'm half Indian,” Evelyn reminded him.

“Your mother is Indian, yes. But you do not look like her. You look like your father. You are more white than Indian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Tihikanima and Tenikawaku and Mikikawaku are Nansusequa. They live the Nansusequa way. We are raised to not take life unless we must.”

“We have to now, or we're goners.”

Waku sighed. There were times when it seemed that the white solution to every conflict was to kill. His people had been wiped out by whites who craved their land, and the only way those whites could think of to get it was to kill every last Nansusequa. That the Nansusequa wouldn't have given the land up under any circumstance was beside the point.

Waku had noticed the same trait in his new white friends, to a greater or lesser degree. Zach King, Evelyn's brother, was a notorious manslayer. Shakespeare McNair, mentor to her father, had no qualms about slaying an enemy. As for Nate King, he had done his share, but always reluctantly, always when there was no other recourse.

Of all the whites Waku ever met, he respected Nate King the most. Nate's outlook was a lot like his own. It was to be regretted that more people, red and white, didn't share their view. Many fewer lives would be lost.

“Tell me, then,” Evelyn prompted. “What do
you
want to do? How do you want to deal with the scalp men?”

Waku had to think to remember the right word. “Flee.”

“You want to run?”

“If run is the same as flee, yes.”

Now it was Evelyn who sighed. “Do you realize how far we are from the foothills? What chance do you think we have of reaching them alive with the scalp men after us every foot of the way?”

“We must try.”

To Evelyn it was lunacy. The scalp hunters were bound to overtake them. “When they catch us, as they surely will, what will you and your family do then? Turn and fight?”

“If they catch us, yes.”

Evelyn had been raised to respect her elders. Her inclination was to bow to his wishes. Giving in, though, could cost them to pay too high a price for his ideal.

“My family will run,” Waku declared. “We will not fight if we can help it.”

Evelyn's exasperation knew no bounds. Tihi, Teni and even Dega would do as Waku told them. To try to talk them into bucking him would be a waste of her breath. The only one Evelyn could count on to side with her was Plenty Elk, and the two of them alone stood no chance at all against nine hardened cutthroats. “You're making a mistake.”

“It will not be my first.”

Disappointed, Evelyn went off by herself a dozen yards, tucked her legs under her, and gloomily munched on a piece of pemmican. When a shadow fell across her she sensed who it was before he spoke.

“You look much sad.”

“Your pa won't listen to reason.”

Dega sat across from her. “I see you talk to him. I see your face. I come make you smile.”

“Tucking our tails between our legs isn't how we should deal with this. When your back is to the wall you bite and scratch.”

“Tuck tails?”

“It means to run. That's what your pa wants to do. Run until they're on top of us. But unless we whittle down the odds first, I'm afraid we'll all be bald before the week is out.” Evelyn smiled thinly at her poor joke.

Dega repeated her statements in his head. He understood the running part and the bald part but the whittling part was a puzzle. To whittle had to do with carving wood with a knife. Shakespeare McNair liked to whittle. How that had anything to do with the scalp hunters was beyond him. He fished for more information by saying, “You think whittle good idea?”

“It makes sense, doesn't it, to get in the first licks? Catch them with their guard down. Maybe make half of them goners before they know what hit them.”

Once again Dega wrestled with her meaning. Licking was what a person did with their tongue, but she certainly couldn't be suggesting they lick the scalp hunters. As for goners, that sounded a lot like gone, and gone was when someone went away. So she must be saying that she would like half the scalp hunters to go away. But where? And what was to stop them from coming back? He began to despair of ever learning the white tongue.

“I wish my pa was here. Or Zach. They're better at this sort of thing than I am.”

“You girl.”

“Thank goodness. To tell you the truth, I never
could stand the bloodshed. Ever since I was old enough to remember, our family has had to fight for survival. Fight against hostile Indians, against white scoundrels, against wild beasts, against nature.” Evelyn paused. “When I was small, I'd get down on my knees next to my bed at night and pray that God would let us get through the next day without something or someone trying to kill us. Silly, huh?”

“Smart.”

“It's not like this back East. You can go your whole life long and no one ever lifts a finger against you. There isn't a bear over every mountain or a war party over every hill. A body can go about their business in perfect peace.” Evelyn bit off more pemmican. “That's partly why I wanted to move back there for so long. I was sick and tired of always having to look over my shoulder. It grates on the nerves.”

Dega had noticed that while the mountains were wonderlands of beauty, perils lurked in the shadows. He couldn't go anywhere, even in King Valley, unless he was armed.

“Here I wanted this trip to be fun,” Evelyn said quietly. “We'd shoot a buff and peel the hide and take enough meat back to last your family a couple of months or more. I never counted on anything like this.”

Another shadow fell across her. This time it was Plenty Elk. He pointed to the east.

Evelyn looked and didn't see anything. Only the grass and the sky and the summer haze. Then her eyes narrowed. A speck had appeared, a speck in motion, miles away yet but there was no mistaking the fact it was smack on their back trail. “Their tracker,” she guessed.

“The black man, you think?” Dega asked.

Evelyn nodded and stood. “The others can't be far
behind. We'll have to ride like the wind to stay ahead of them.”

“I tell my family,” Dega said.

Plenty Elk signed, ‘Question. You want do with black man?'

There was no sign for “what.” Evelyn had to fill it in mentally. She responded with, ‘Question. You want do?'

Plenty Elk mimicked drawing his bowstring and releasing an arrow.

‘You me think same,' Evelyn signed, and grinned.

Rubicon liked being a scalper. He got to track, and tracking was something he was good at. He also got to kill Indians, of whom he was not all that fond.

Rubicon had been born and raised in Rhode Island. Most people assumed he was a former slave or the son of a slave, but he was neither.

His father was a minister. Reverend Rubicon made the circuit of the state's Freewill Baptist churches. Some of Rubicon's earliest memories were of sitting in hardwood pews and fidgeting and squirming, wishing his father would get done with the sermon so they could leave. His father was also prominent in the American Anti-Slavery Society and high in the ranks of the Temperance Society. It kept him so busy that Rubicon rarely got to see him. Which was fine by Rubicon.

They had lived in a small frame house on the outskirts of Coopersville, with miles and miles of woodland out their back door. As a boy Rubicon spent every spare moment he could in those woods. He learned the ways of the animals. He learned to hunt and fish. His father didn't approve, but the good reverend prided himself on being fair-minded and on letting the young grow as they saw fit, with the
result that shortly after he turned sixteen Rubicon packed his few belongings, bid his father and those church pews good-bye, and headed west.

Rubicon had heard a lot about the frontier, about mountains that reared to the clouds and prairies as vast as the sea and deep woods where no man had ever set foot. All that turned out to be true. Unfortunately, though, while he was adept at living off the land, he still needed money. He refused to make his own clothes when he could buy them. Then there were things like guns and ammunition and coffee and blankets.

A few scrapes with hostiles gave Rubicon the opinion that the whites were right and the only good red man was a dead red man. So when fate drew him and Venom to the same card table at a cantina in Taos, their small talk led to Rubicon becoming a scalp hunter.

If his reverend pa could see him now, Rubicon reflected, it would put him in his grave. Provided his father wasn't already six feet under. It had been a dozen years since Rubicon struck off on his own, and for all he knew both his parents were dead. He wouldn't lose any sleep if they were. They never had seen eye to eye on much.

Take that slavery business. The reverend had thundered every Sunday from the pulpit about how downtrodden the blacks in the South were and how vile slavery was and how the abominable institution should be abolished. He wanted Rubicon to join the Anti-Slavery Society, but Rubicon refused.

“Have you no conscience, boy?” his father once asked. “Your skin is the same color as theirs. They're your brothers and your sisters. We must do what we can to ease their plight.”

Rubicon had laughed. “Ma only ever gave birth
to me. I don't have any brothers or sisters. As for my skin, a bay horse is the same color as a black bear. That's doesn't mean the horse should let the bear eat it.”

“You make no sense.”

It did to Rubicon. He saw his color as an accident of birth. He could just as well have been born white or red or yellow. So what if other blacks were used as slaves.
He
wasn't, and the only one in his world that mattered was him.

Rubicon remembered how upset his father had been, and grinned. The reverend and his high-and-mighty ways. Always claiming to be right about everything because he lived by the Bible.

That was another thing Rubicon could go the rest of his days without. He had been sick to death of his father always quoting from Scripture. If he had heard “thou shall not” one more time, he would have screamed.

Once more Rubicon grinned, but it promptly faded. He had found where his quarry stopped to rest. Dismounting, he squatted beside a hoofprint and pinched some of the dirt between his thumb and index finger. He reckoned he was an hour behind, maybe a little less.

Hefting his rifle, Rubicon climbed on his horse and used his heels. Venom's orders were to track them but not show himself. He must wait for the others to catch up. Venom claimed it was for his own safety, but Rubicon wasn't fooled. Venom wanted to be in on the catch and the kill.

The tracks continued to the west. Rubicon figured they were making for the foothills. The timbered slopes might seem to offer them sanctuary, but they were fools if they thought they could shake him.
When he was on a trail he was like a hound on a scent. He never gave up. He'd follow them to the ends of the earth, if that was what it took to bring them to bay.

Rubicon rose in the stirrups and scanned the horizon. There was no sign of them. He must be careful not to get too close until after the sun went down or they might spot him.

His rifle across his saddle, Rubicon rode at a leisurely pace. He came to a gully and went down it and up the other side. Beyond were more, an erosionworn maze that would slow the white girl and her friends. Their tracks led down into another and along the bottom.

Rubicon wondered about those friends of hers. He'd never run across Indians who dyed their buckskins green. Mostly, Indians wore ordinary buckskins, or breechclouts like the Apaches sometimes did.

The tracks led around a bend.

Rubicon was almost to it when his horse pricked its ears. Instantly, he drew rein. He listened, but all he heard was the long grass whispering in the breeze.

Alighting, Rubicon let the reins dangle and cat-footed to the bend. A familiar tingle rippled down his spine, a sensation he felt when danger was about to break over him like a wave over a beach. He checked the right rim and the left rim.

A bee buzzed about a flower.

Rubicon crouched, every sense straining. He noted that his shadow was behind him and wouldn't give him away when he crept forward. As silently as a stalking cat, he edged around the bend. No one was there. Rubicon started to lower his rifle.

“Stand as still as can be,” said the white girl's voice, “or so help me God I'll blow out your wick.”

Venom's anger grew to where he abruptly drew rein and wheeled his mount. His company halted, their expressions adding to his anger. “Well?” he demanded.

“Well what?” Potter responded.

“Let's hear it.”

“Hear what?” This from Tibbet.

“Not one of you has said a word for miles. Out with it. Let me hear who thinks I did wrong.”

They looked at one another and one of the Kyler twins, it had to be Jeph by the nick in his ear, scratched his chin and said, “Not me or my brother. You put up with more from him than we would.”

Seph nodded. “It served him right for doin' to girls what he done. I'll kill ‘em and I'll take their hair, but it's not right to do the other.”

“It's sick,” Jeph said.

“How about the rest of you?” Venom prompted, knowing full well none of the others had the grit to stand up to him.

Potter pursed his thick lips. “I'm not saying it was wrong. I'm not saying Logan shouldn't have sassed you like he done. I am saying we should have buried him.”

“Since when did you turn Christian?”

“Now, now. You asked us. I've never liked to leave anyone aboveground when they should be below it.”

“You'll scalp a ten-year-old Comanche boy, but you're squeamish about leaving bodies for the coyotes to eat?” Venom had always considered Potter an idiot, and this did nothing to raise his estimation. “I swear, some of you don't have the sense God gave a goat.”

“We do the best we can,” Potter assured him.

Venom reminded himself that for all their faults, they had stayed loyal to him through all sorts of hardships. “Look. It wasn't just his sass that got Logan dead. It was how he acted all the time, always prodding me, always giving the notion he could do a better job at leading this outfit. I put up with it longer than I should have because he always held his own in a fight and that's when we need each other the most. But there are limits to what a man will take and he pushed me over mine.”

“No need to explain, boss,” said Calvert.

“Yes, there is. We can't have hard feelings. We have to always cover the other's back. It's why I don't let just anyone join us. I only pick those I think we can depend on. I only pick the best.” Venom was flattering them to win them over. He had learned long ago that a carrot worked a lot better than a stick at keeping them content.

“Shucks, boss,” Tibbet said proudly. “We have full pokes thanks to you. There's not one of us who won't cover your back when you need it covered.”

Venom smiled. “That's what I like to hear.” He headed west again. It wasn't long before he came on one of Rubicon's marks. It made him think of the time he'd asked the black how he got such a strange name. Rubicon said it had been his pa's idea, that his pa always intended to stay single, but when he met Rubicon's mom, he'd given in to temptation and crossed the Rubicon, whatever the hell that was.

A killdeer's shrill cry brought Venom out of himself. The bird was pretending it had a broken wing and running in circles to get them to go after it and lead them away from its mate and their nest. Venom almost shot it out of spite.

The warm sun and the steady rhythm of his horse
began to make Venom drowsy. He stifled a yawn and shook himself. A buffalo wallow appeared, and then another, and yet a third. Since most of the buffs had migrated, he didn't give any thought to them until a loud grunt heralded the rise of a massive form from out of a wallow partially hidden by high grass.

“Hell,” Venom said, and reined up.

The bull glared and pawed the earth. It was an old bull, well past its prime, its left horn broken.

“Shoot it!” Potter whispered.

Bulls often gathered in small herds when they weren't battling for harems. The really old ones became loners and wandered the prairie until disease or wolves or something else brought them down.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Hush, you yack,” Venom whispered back. He'd rather let the bull go its ornery way if the bull would let them do the same.

The buff snorted and stamped and shook its huge head.

Venom hoped it wouldn't charge. He couldn't afford to lose any of his men. Worse, he might lose a horse. “Stay still, everyone,” he commanded. “We don't want to rile this critter.”

The bull took a few lumbering steps while rumbling deep in its barrel chest. Again it tossed its head and gouged the ground with a heavy front hoof.

“Damn it,” Venom said under his breath. He thumbed back the hammer on his rifle and curled his finger around the trigger. It was a .75-caliber Brown Bess he had taken from a Mexican he shot and scalped, and could drop just about any animal this side of a whale. But he'd rather not put it to the test against the buff's inches-thick skull.

The bull kept stomping and snorting.

Venom took a gamble. The buff was working itself up to attack. Maybe it would calm down if they showed that they meant it no harm. Accordingly, he reined to the left to go around.

The buffalo's beady eyes followed him.

“Stay where you are, you mangy son of a bitch,” Venom said, holding his mount to a walk. Over his shoulder he cautioned his men, “Nice and easy does it, boys.”

“We should ride like hell,” Tibbet suggested.

Suddenly the bull turned and lumbered back down into the wallow and out of sight.

Potter uttered a nervous laugh. “Thank goodness! I thought for sure it would charge.”

Tibbet laughed, too. “We were lucky. The only thing worse than an angry griz is an angry buff.”

Venom twisted to tell them to shut the hell up, that they weren't out of danger yet and should keep quiet until the wallow was well behind them. He was a shade too late.

Up and over the bank hurtled the old bull. It came at them so fast that it was on them before practically any of them could get off a shot. The twins did. Jeph and Seph fired at the same split second. The bull stumbled, but it didn't go down. It only slowed and then it was up and at full speed again, its head lowered to ram and gore.

Venom took aim but didn't shoot. The bull wasn't broadside, and he wanted it broadside in order to be sure to hit its vitals.

Most of the others were trying to rein to safety.

Potter had his horse halfway around when the bull rammed into it with an audible crunch. His scream and the screech of his stricken mount preceded the crash of both to the hard earth.

“Help me!” Raw fear twisted Potter's face as he frantically sought to push clear. Above him, the bull dug at his mount's belly with its good horn. The horse whinnied and kicked and struggled to rise, but the bull had it pinned to the earth. Intestines oozed from a widening cavity.

Venom gigged his own animal, not away from the bull as some of the others were doing but toward it. He pressed the Brown Bess to his shoulder and the moment he had the target he wanted, he fired. The Brown Bess thundered and spat smoke and lead. He'd hoped to drop the bull in its tracks, but it wasn't to be. No sooner did he fire than the brute left off goring Potter's horse and wheeled with astounding swiftness for a creature so immense.

“Look out!” Tibbet hollered.

“It's charging again!” Ryson yelled.

Venom didn't need the warning. He could see that the bull had a new victim picked out.

It was him.