Scalpers (3 page)

“That's close enough,” Sam said when the seven figures stopped at the water's edge straight across,
twenty feet from him. “Who are you? Why are you trailing us?” He had no idea they'd been trailing him, but he tried it to see what he'd get.

“Blame it on these Lipans,” the big white man said. “They love tracking folks, 'specially if the folks have horses fit to steal or eat.” He touched his hat brim. “I'm the Reverend George Tremble—
former
Reverend, that is. I just got used to saying it.” He gave a dark, flat grin. “I'm taking to saving the Lipans here from hell, or at least making them fear it something awful. Unlike some Apache, they druther speak with their hands than their mouths—it makes for better table manners.” Again the grin. “But some take it as an insult.”

“I don't take it one way or the other,” Sam said. “I have nothing to settle with the Lipan. But you'd better break them of that tracking habit,” he added, the rifle still level and ready. “I might think you came here to kill and rob us.” As he spoke Tremble bent his head a little and looked at the badge on Sam's chest.

“Well, look at you, then, a lawman, no less,” he said, trying to sound half-friendly, half-threatening. “I'm not going to lie to you, lawman,” he said. “You're about half-right. These fellows want your horses. Myself, being red-blooded, I want the womenfolk.” His grin widened. “I told them it would be better to reason with you than just kill you outright, gunfire being as loud as it is.”

“You're not getting them,” Sam said. He eyed his rifle sights on the center of the man's chest.

“One second. . . .” Tremble held his finger up, signaling a pause, as he turned and signed the warrior beside him. Then he turned back to Sam.

“I'm through talking,” Sam warned.

“Now, hold on, lawman,” said Tremble. “We're dickering here. He says to tell you we're only taking the two horses and one woman. Is that so bad?” He tried giving a pleasant expression.

“Adios, Tremble,” Sam said, squeezing the trigger.

“Wait—!” Tremble shouted, but it was too late. The Ranger's shot split a large silver medallion hanging at his chest, picked him up and hurled him backward onto the rocky hillside. Without wasting a second, Sam levered a fresh round into the Winchester and swung its sights onto the leader standing close by. The Lipan leader had already brought his short rifle up. But before he could get a shot off, the roar of the shotgun from inside the mule cart sent him flying backward. The second roar of the double-barrel sent another Indian to his knees. Bloody, he raked and scraped blindly, taking himself over behind a rock, while the others broke and ran.

Sam got off another shot that caught one of the retreating warriors in the back of his shoulder and spun him like a top. Wild shots resounded toward them as the remaining Lipans found cover and began returning fire. But Sam knew it was too late for them to put up a fight. Their leader was down, and so was Tremble, who was no doubt the
real
leader of the ragged group. Looking up, Sam saw the
woman look down at him from the cart's upper edge.

“You are all right,
sí
?” she asked. A bullet thumped into the cart's rear gate.

“Stay down,” Sam said. “Yes, I'm all right. Are you?” He spoke to the rough plank side of the cart.

“Yes, Ana and I are both all right,” the woman said. “What do we do now?”

“Reload and sit still,” Sam said. He saw the leader struggling on the ground straight across the water hole. He took aim on the rocky ground just in front of the wounded, bloody man and fired. Dirt kicked up in the wounded man's face. Sam knew the others had seen the shot.

“How do you want him, dead or alive?” he shouted, hoping someone would understand English. When no one answered he called out, “Get up over the hill. When you're gone, I'll leave him here.” He waited again, this time watching the hillside, noting that the firing had ceased. As he watched, he eased forward, gathered the frightened mule's reins and turned the cart away from the water hole. The horses turned with the cart, their reins tied to its side. “Keep the shotgun ready,” he said to the side of the cart. “We make it to the sand flats we'll be all right. They won't take us on out in the open.”

“I am loaded,” she said. “Do what you must.”

Sam heard the click of the shotgun snap shut.

“Stay inside with your daughter until we reach the flats,” he said. “I'll have your horse ready and waiting.”

As Sam led the cart farther away from the water, he unhitched the dun and slipped atop it. Once in the saddle, he nudged the dun and led the cart and the other horse at a quicker pace. He heard the woman call out to him from inside the cart.

“Now that this rotten man is dead, Ana and I may choose to go as we please. Is it not so?”

“It's so,” Sam said, finding it an odd time to bring up such a thing.

“Then we choose to go with you,” the woman said.

“I understand,” Sam said, hurrying along, keeping watch over his shoulder. “I'll do my best to get you to Iron Point safe and sound. But from there you two will be on your own.”

The woman looked suddenly bewildered, having been long denied the freedom of her own decisions. Sam glanced at her, then back to the trail.

“Don't worry, ma'am,” he said. “You and your daughter will be all right. You're nobody's slaves anymore.”

A hard wind had kicked up in the late afternoon as Turner Pridemore and his band of mercenaries swung down from their saddles inside the gates of the old Spanish fortress at Iron Point. Mexican soldiers armed with French rifles ran in from every direction through the swirling dust. They filled the street and watched the rough-looking men closely. The captain of the fort, Luis Penza, stepped out of the Dama Desnuda Bordello buttoning his tunic.

“So, you have bounty receipts for me, eh?” the captain said in good English. A hard gust stood his hair straight up; he pressed it down. Behind him two scantily clad women watched from the bordello's open doorway.

“
Bounty receipts?
Scalps, I say,” Pridemore replied, “some long, some short.” As he said the word
short
, he cut a sharp stare at the two women's lower bellies. The women stepped back in terror.

“
Buenas noches
, ladies,” he said, touching his hat brim toward them. The women stepped back farther.

Pridemore grinned and spat tobacco and wiped
a hand across his dust-streaked lips. He gestured for his men to bring up the three large burlap grain sacks they had filled with their wet, bloody trophies. Flies spun and hummed and stayed close to the bags as the men emptied the grisly contents on the ground.

“I did not tell you to dump them here in the street,” the captain said.

“You didn't tell me not to either,” Pridemore said.

The captain eyed him closely.

“I have seen you before,” he said. “You run the trading post on the edge of the sand flats. They call you Bigfoot.” He glanced down at Pridemore's large feet.

“They still do,” said Pridemore. He pressed his hat down on his head and turned his hand toward the scalps and the swirling flies that regathered above them between blasts of wind. “I used to run the trading post. As you can see I've branched out some.” As he spoke above the wind, he pulled a folded contract from inside his shirt and held it out.

The captain took the folded paper and looked him up and down, having last seen him wearing a leather clerk's apron. Now Pridemore wore buckskin and fur clothing he'd taken from a dead scalper after a recent run-in with the Apache. Breastwork on his shirt was made up of finger bones entwined in platted strands of human hair. He wore a stiff leather hat and battered Mexican boots that reached halfway up his thighs.

“This contract is not made with you,” the captain
said, the paperwork fluttering hard in his hand. “It is made with Señor Erskine Cord. I know this man Cord.”

“You don't
know
him anymore,
Capitán
. You
knew
him,” said Pridemore. “He got himself kilt in Mesa Grande by a Ranger name of Sam Burrack. I run this bunch now.” He gestured at the contract in the captain's hand. “You'll see on the back there that he signed the contract over to me, all legal-like.”

The captain turned the contract over and read the back.

“Signed by Cord, witnessed by his
segundo
, Sterling Childs, also recently deceased,” said Pridemore. Both Cord's and Childs' signatures were forged by Pridemore, but it wouldn't matter, he'd decided.

It was true that both Cord and Childs were dead. The Mexican government wanted the Apache killed. Turner “Bigfoot” Pridemore and his newly commanded mercenaries were killing them, almost on a daily basis.

“You can see it's all in order,
Capitán
,” Pridemore said.

He watched as Captain Penza raised his eyes from the paper and gave him a skeptical look. But then the captain folded the contract and handed it back to him. As the two had spoken, Pridemore's son, Fox Pridemore, and the late Erskine Cord's nephew, Ozzie Cord, had stepped in and begun sorting the scalps into countable rows.

Stepping forward, Captain Penza swatted a hand through the blowflies rising from the scalps.

“No extra charge for the flies,
Capitán
,” Turner
Pridemore called out to Penza. He grinned and gave the two women a wink. “You gals sure have some lovely hair,” he said with a hungry look. “Shiny as a blacksnake.” He started to reach out toward one of the women. They both jumped back away from him, gathering their hair back out of touch and out of the licking wind. “Ah, now, I just wanted to touch it some.” He chuckled darkly. His voice dropped to a whisper when the captain turned, facing him. “Maybe another time, then, little darlings.” He winked again.

“You, come with me,” the captain said to Pridemore in a firm tone. “My men will count the scalps and I will pay you.” He gestured to a sergeant and pointed at the scalps in the street. The sergeant instructed his corporal to start counting.

“Where can my men go to drink?” Pridemore asked, looking up and down the wide, dusty street. “Killing Apache is some damn thirsty work.”

The captain pointed off toward the far end of the street where a row of plank and adobe hovels stood with ragged tents in the wavering afternoon heat.

“Send your men to
that
cantina,” he said. “It is called the Mockingbird.”

Pridemore eyed a large tent at the far end of town where a small crowd cheered two men who lay rolling and fighting in the dirt.

The Mockingbird. . . .
Pridemore pondered it as he scrutinized the tent.

“What's wrong with
this
cantina?” he asked, pointing at a large adobe cantina straight across
the street from them. A bright red-and-green sign read P
ANCHO
M
ERO'S
C
ANTINA
. Mariachi music streamed through the open doors. The dazzling sound of a trumpet rose above guitar, accordion and castanets.

“Nothing is wrong with
that
cantina,” Captain Penza said, nodding across the street. “That is why I send you and your men to the Mockingbird.” He pointed back in the direction of the large tent where one of the combatants had been handed a long rough board and stood pounding his opponent without mercy. “The owner there is
americano
—a Tejano named Bertha Buttons. She will welcome your men.”

“A Texan, huh?” said Pridemore. He grinned. “I like her already.” He caught himself in afterthought and said, “Say, does she keep a sporting man around named Diamond Jim Ruby?”

The Mexican captain's expression turned sour at the sound of the name.

“
Sí
, she does have such a man with her,” he said. “Do you know this man, Ruby, this woman, Buttons?”

“Know Ruby some, know
of him
a lot more,” Pridemore said. “I'll know Bertha when I see her—every Texan I ever knowed has pounded her a time or two.” He turned to his men and shouted, “Watch the count, men. We don't want to lose money because one of these Mexicans is missing a finger.” He pointed off toward the ragged tent where the man wielding the board slumped and staggered
backward, exhausted. “Then go join the fun. I'll be along straightaway with our cash.”

The fun . . . ?

“I must warn you,
señor
,” the captain said as he and Pridemore turned to walk to his office. “Men with money on them have disappeared from Bertha Buttons' Mockingbird while in the company of Diamond Jim.” His voice lowered. “Those unfortunate souls have never been seen again.”

“Well, no doubt Jim Ruby robbed and killed them,” Pridemore said, taking the news in stride. “He's always been bad about that. That's what sent him and Bertha Buttons packing out of Texas ahead of a rope.” Again the grin as the two walked on. “Obliged you told me, though,” he said. “I never enjoy consorting with a man I know is sizing me up for a gutting.” Now his tone lowered. “If he's a thorn in your side and you'd like to see
him
disappear,
Capitán
, my men's blood is still up from killing Injuns. We'll quarter him out like a steer, if you want us to—Bertha Buttons too, far as that goes.”

The captain stopped abruptly and stared at Pridemore, taken aback by the man's casualness on the matter of killing. “You know this man and woman, yet you will kill them so quickly, so callously?”

“At the drop of a hat,” said Pridemore. “I said I know Ruby
some
,
Capitán
. I never said we attend the same church. Not everybody we kill has to be a black-haired heathen Injun. Now that I'm back in the business, I'm what you call ‘profit driven.' You'd be surprised. Everywhere we go somebody asks—”

“That is another thing I must warn you about,” the captain said, cutting him off. He raised a finger for emphasis. “If I find the hair of any of my people among your
receipts
, someone will hang for it this very day.”

“
Capitán
,” Pridemore said in a firm look of sincerity, “show me a scalp from anyone other than a blackhearted heathen Apache, and I will hang somebody for it myself.”

The captain stared at him intently for a moment, as if deciding whether or not he could trust the man. Finally he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Let me say this, Señor Pridemore,” he said, lowering his voice again and glancing back and forth along the street. “If this Tejano
puta
and her man were killed while my men and I are away on patrol and above suspicion, it would be a happy day in my life.”

Pridemore stared at him. “Happy enough to overcount our receipts by, say . . . twenty-five extra?”

“Ha!” The captain waved the idea aside. “Why would I not have my own men kill them and save that much money for myself?”

Pridemore turned shrewd. “See, I'm thinking you can't do that, because some
federale político
has allowed Buttons to open her cantina here, and you know he'll climb straight up your shirt if something happened to her operation.” He pulled his head back with a bemused look. “
Oops.
Did I just hit the target dead-center,
Capitán
, or what?”

“Kill them, then,” the captain said. “Kill them and let me wash my hands of them.”

“Now, there you are,” Pridemore said. “See how easy that was? See how much better you feel already?” The two turned and walked on to the captain's office. “When will you be taking your men out on patrol, and how long are you gone?”

“I will be taking a large patrol out in the morning at daybreak and be gone most of the day,” said the captain.

“How many men will you be leaving here?” Pridemore asked.

“I leave only four guards,” the captain confided, lowering his voice as if to keep from being overheard. “It would be a good time to take care of the bloody business we speak of.”

“Indeed it would,” said Pridemore. “Now put Bertha and her sporting man out of your mind. They're dead before we leave Iron Point.”

They walked on, the captain not even realizing how fast they had gone from discussing Bertha Buttons and her cantina to having her and her sporting man killed. But Pridemore, seeing the possibilities that having him and his men around brought to mind, smiled and stared straight ahead, aware of the evil aura that surrounded his profession.

“Anywhere we come into a town, it's a good time for folks to get caught up on old grudges and whatnot,” he said. He chuckled darkly under his breath.

“So, you are pleased with your bloody craft?” the captain said sidelong.

“Beats the hell out of running a trading post . . . people all the time filling the jakes—keep having to cover them over and dig new ones,” said Pridemore, walking on. “You ever fall into one you'll never forget it.” He shook his head.

“
Sí
, I believe you,” the captain said, walking beside him.

*   *   *

Inside the Mockingbird Tent Cantina, the regular crowds of cutthroats, drifters, rakes, gunmen and thieves had moved aside and made room along the plank bar. A Missourian scalper named Darton Alpine led the rough-looking men across the sawdust-and-mud floor and called out to the bartender as he laid his rifle up across the bar top.

“Whatever you've got to drink, pull it up,” he demanded, “and bring on some lively women!” He snatched the first bottle before a Mexican bartender stood it on the bar. He yanked out the cork with his teeth, spat it away and raised the bottle toward the other scalpers. “Here's to hard drinking,” he shouted.

Against the side of the tent, a musician stood watching the rowdy men with his accordion hanging on his chest.

“Get to squeezing on that thing,” a scalper called out, raising a pistol from his belly holster. “Every time I see one standing still, I want to put a bullet through it!”

The musician struck up a song quickly, seeing the scalper cock and aim the big revolver. As loud, cheerful music began blaring from the accordion,
Alpine laughed and fired a shot straight up through the billowing canvas ceiling. Then he uncocked and lowered the smoking gun. Around the tent men had ducked beneath gaming tables or whatever cover they could find.