Scalpers

by Ralph Cotton

Sam saw an old man and woman step out of the brush where they had been hiding. They held their hands chest high.

  With his free hand Sam wiped his lips.

  “What is it you saw me do?” he asked.

  “Nothing! Nothing, señor, like I told you,” the old man replied nervously.

  “Take it easy,” Sam said. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m an Arizona Ranger tracking a killer this side of the border.”

  “A Ranger?” the old man said with relief. “Then thank God it is you instead of another of the Perros Locos chasing us.”

  “Come in closer. Let me see you,” Sam said, looking all around in the darkness. “Why are the Perros Locos chasing you? Where are they?”

  “We are from Casa Robos,” said the old man, stepping closer, the old woman right beside him. “I am Miguel Bovier. She is my esposa, Josefina—she does not talk so much. We have escaped with our lives, when so many of our people did not.” He lowered a hand enough to cross himself; the old woman did the same.

  “One of the Perros Locos pursues us. God forbid what he will do if he catches us.”

  Seeing how excited the old man was, Sam gestured toward the water. “Both of you have some water, sit down and rest. Nobody’s going to bother you here.”

  “Gracias, Señor Ranger,” Miguel said. “He is a devil, this one. He chases us so hard we have to leave our cart, our poor donkey behind. He would already have caught us, except . . . he keeps falling from his horse.”

  “Falling from his horse?” Sam said.

  “Sí, from his horse!” the man said as if having a hard time believing it himself. “They come to Casa Robos and drink everything in the cantina. They kill our goats and eat them. They rob all of our stores—chase the women. Then they set fires and leave.”

  “How far back is he?” Sam asked, looking out along the dark trail.

  “He is not far,” said Miguel. “The last place we see him, he was chasing his horse and cursing it—”

  “Shhh . . . hold it,” Sam said, silencing him. They listened toward the faint sound of a horse’s hooves clopping on the hard path leading to the water hole. “Get back in the brush,” Sam whispered. He backed away to the dun as the old couple took cover. Not wanting to fire a gun unless he had to, he slipped the Winchester from his dun’s saddle boot and moved to the edge of a large rock standing alongside the path the hooves were walking in on.

  As the sound of the hooves grew nearer, Sam stepped higher onto the rock and drew back the rifle for a hard jab when the rider came into sight. Yet, when the horse appeared and walked past him toward the beckoning water hole, Sam lowered the rifle, stepped out and looked back along the trail. In the grainy moonlight he saw a huge Mexican staggering forward on foot carrying something in his hand. Sam could hear him cursing to himself in Spanish.

  At the sight of the big Mexican, the mute woman, Josefina, grew terrified and let out a high, tortured shriek before her aged husband could grab her and stop her.

  “Ah, so there you are, you little piglets, you,” the Mexican said, staggering in past the rocks where Sam stood ready to deliver a blow with his rifle butt. “You have caused me so much trouble that now I have to kill you!” He drew a big pistol from his holster, and pitched the object he carried onto the ground. Sam recognized it as a broken saddle stirrup.

  “Por favor! Por favor, señor!” Miguel said, holding his wife pressed tight against his side. As he pleaded, the Mexican thought the old man was pleading to him for his life. In reality the old Mexican was asking the Ranger to make his move. Which he did.

  “It will do you no good to beg,” the big Mexican said, spreading his feet, getting ready to raise the pistol toward the old couple.

  “Hey, over here!” Sam said, moving quickly from the side, getting the Mexican’s attention. As the big lumbering man turned to face him, Sam unleashed a hard, stabbing blow with his rifle butt to the man’s forehead. The big Mexican dropped back a step; the gun flew from his hand. But then he caught his balance just as the Ranger stepped in and delivered another blow that sent him sprawling on the ground.

  “Oh, Señor Ranger, gracias, gracias!” the old Mexican said, still holding his sobbing, frightened wife. “This man would kill us for no reason except that we fled Casa Robos to keep from being killed. What is wrong with people like this? Do their souls belong to the devil?”

  “Maybe that’s it,” the Ranger said, realizing that he himself had no better answer. He stepped over, picked up the big French revolver and stuck it down behind his belt. He reached into the man’s boot well and pulled out a long sheathed dagger. He pitched the dagger to the old man.

  “Gracias,” Miguel said, turning his wife loose. He slid the knife from its sheath and examined it. “What—what about his gun, señor?” he asked haltingly. “May I have it?”

  “In a minute,” Sam said, hearing the Mexican already starting to groan on the ground. Looking down, Sam saw the man shake his large head and try to focus his eyes—eyes that appeared too large and shiny in the moonlight. He started to try to raise himself, but the Ranger clamped a boot down on his chest.

  “Lie still, big fellow,” he said, holding his rifle ready in both hands. “I’ll give it to you again.”

  “Who . . . the hell . . . are you?” the big Mexican said in a thick, deep voice, staring up through eyes that the Ranger could now tell were lit and fueled by cocaine.

  “Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack,” Sam said. “Where are the Crazy Dogs headed?”

  “Perros Locos . . . ?” the man said as if having to let his mind catch up to him. “I don’t know . . . we—we are robbing villages?”

  “Yes, that would be my guess too,” Sam said, helping the man’s memory a little. “But where are you headed next?”

  “Arena Grande?” the Mexican said, still unsure of himself.

  “He says they head to Big Sand, Señor Ranger,” the elderly Mexican said.

  “I heard him,” Sam said. He turned to the elderly couple. “How far back is your mule cart?”

  “Three . . . four miles,” the old man estimated.

  “You’ve got a horse, a knife and a gun.” He lifted the French revolver from his waist and held it out to the old man. “Ride back and get your cart. Take your esposa and lie low somewhere.”

  “You don’t take my horse!” the big Mexican shouted, making a grab for Sam’s leg, pulling himself quickly onto his knees. Sam drew back the big revolver, but before he could swing it he saw the aged man drop down onto the big Mexican’s back like a dark spirit. He saw a glint of steel in the moonlight as the big knife moved around quickly and sliced the big Mexican’s throat ear to ear.

  Sam took a step back as blood spewed. The old man stepped back too, the knife hanging in his hand. The Mexican clasped both hands to his throat; blood gushed between his fingers. He gagged. He fell to the ground and wallowed and thrashed. Then he appeared to relax. He fell silent and still.

  Sam gave the old man a look.

  “Is it wrong what I do?” old Miguel asked.

  Sam didn’t answer. He stood with his rifle in one hand, the French revolver in the other. The dead Mexican’s horse had clopped over and stood at the water’s edge, drinking side by side with the dun and the speckled barb.

  * * *

  In moments, the Ranger and the old man had dragged the dead Mexican into the brush and stacked a few rocks over his body. They’d finished watering the three horses and mounted and ridden away in the moonlight toward Casa Robos. Josefina sat behind her husband with her hands clasped together around him. The big French revolver stuck up from behind the old man’s waist. Two miles down the trail they heard the squeaking of a wooden cart wheel and stopped short for a moment, listening.

  “Ah yes, it is my cart,” Miguel said, relieved. He looked at Sam in the moonlight. “A man who is truly a man knows the sound of his own cart, sí?”

>   Sam only nodded. He nudged the dun and led the barb forward until the donkey stopped the cart in the trail facing them. Beside him, the old man and woman stepped down from the dead Mexican’s paint horse and hurried to the donkey.

  “See? I told you it’s my cart,” the old man said.

  Sam stepped down from the dun and helped Miguel and Josefina turn the donkey around on the trail and point it in the direction of Casa Robos. As soon as the cart was righted, the old woman scrambled over its side and took up the donkey’s reins. She smiled at her husband and nodded vigorously.

  “And now she is happy again,” the old man said, his hand resting on the French revolver in his waist.

  Back atop the horses, Sam and the old Mexican rode alongside the woman and the donkey cart. In the distance several thin glowing firelights seemed to rise from the earth and dot the darkness of the domed purple sky.

  As they rode, the old Mexican looked down at the gun in the waist of his peasant trousers and laid his hand back on its butt.

  “I can only imagine what it must feel like to live in a country like yours where all men have guns with which to protect themselves and their loved ones.”

  “It can be a blessing and a curse,” Sam replied, looking ahead toward the firelights in Casa Robos, knowing the Perros Locos would be gone by the time he and the elderly couple arrived there.

  “A blessing and a curse . . . ? No, Señor Ranger, it must be a wonderful thing to stand boldly and demand that such men as that one back there go away and leave you alone.”

  “But in my country men like that one have guns too,” Sam said.

  “Ah yes, but all you must do is take the guns from the bad hombres and give them to the good and honest people, to hunt their food and protect themselves.”

  “Sounds simple enough when you put it that way,” Sam said. He decided not to go any further on the matter. Instead he gazed forward, wondering where Ozzie Cord and the Perros Locos might be headed next. “Any idea where the Crazy Dogs might’ve headed when they left Casa Robos?”

  “Sí,” Miguel said, “they go to the French mines.”

  “You heard them say this?” Sam asked.

  “Sí,” said Miguel. He shrugged. “They speak boldly of robbing the French. But it is no secret that every bandito wants to rob the French mining companies. It has been this way ever since the French invaded my poor country. What their army did not loot from us at gunpoint, their businesses and government leaders take from us these many years with their mineral contracts.”

  “I understand,” Sam said.

  They rode across the sand flats toward the firelights of Casa Robos until the sun revealed its thin silver-white wreath on the eastern horizon. When they drew closer and the flames of the campfires were recognizable, as were the outlines and faces of people gathered around them, a few men with ancient rifles, machetes and farming tools moved in closer and stared coldly at them. Behind their campfires, smoke still rose and drifted from the remnants of buildings the Perros Locos had set aflame.

  “Vecinos,” Miguel called out from his saddle, “it is us, Miguel and Josefina. The Perros Locos did not catch us, as you can see!”

  The armed village men moved in even closer, this time hospitable, recognizing two of their own.

  “The Ranger found us just in time, before the Perros Locos came to kill us,” the old Mexican called out across the campfires. He gestured a hand toward Sam. “Let us make him welcome.”

  Sam nodded and tipped his sombrero as the people cheered. But he knew that as soon as his horses were rested and grained, he would be on his way. This was not the time to stay long in one place on the trail. He was getting closer to Ozzie Cord with every mile. As soon as the villagers pointed him in the direction of the French mines, he’d be back on the trail.

  PART 3

  Chapter 16

  Bigfoot Turner Pridemore stood out in front of the Mockingbird Cantina’s new home, the building where Pancho Mero’s cantina used to be. Three days earlier the bright red-and-green sign reading PANCHO MERO’S CANTINA, had come down and been painted over. The only place Pancho Mero’s name could be seen now was on a wooden grave marker stuck in a fresh mound of earth in the town cemetery. The big colorful sign now read BIGFOOT’S MOCKINGBIRD SALOON.

  “You know what might make me happy, Big Darlin’?” Pridemore said to Bertha Buttons, who stood beside him, his arm looped over her shoulders, a cigar hanging between his fingers.

  “What would that be, Bigfoot?” she asked. Her black eye had mended, except for a dark half-moon smudge against the side of her nose.

  “I’d like to take this pissant country over, see what I can make of it.”

  She just looked up at him.

  “I mean it,” he said, looking out along the trail to the hill country, the direction his three men had taken to follow the Ranger. “These jelly-headed Mexes have no idea what to do with this place. Neither did the French, nor the Germans.”

  Before replying, Bertha glanced at the pine board leaning against the front of the building beside the open doors. The curing, round, bearded face of Diamond Jim Ruby stared out through eyes someone had drawn in with a charcoal pencil. Someone, the same person perhaps, had stretched the lips open in a grotesque grin and penciled in a large row of teeth.

  “That’s real ambitious, Bigfoot,” she offered warily, not sure what might set her new mate into a killing rage.

  Pridemore gave the idea some more thought, then lifted his arm from around her and stuck the cigar into his mouth and bit down on it.

  “Hell, I’m talking crazy,” he said. “I wouldn’t know no more what to do with this place than the Germans or the French.” He let out a breath. “Since I started scalping I ain’t used to sitting around this long. I’m just getting restless now that Iron Point is being run the way it should. I need to find some scalps and ply my trade.”

  “What about when the federales come calling?” Bertha asked.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Pridemore said. “We’ve got enough money coming in. We can keep buying them month after month. That’s all you ever get from any government—whatever you can buy from them.”

  Bertha only nodded.

  “How’s Ria and her very young ‘daughter’ working out?” he asked with a grin.

  “Ria got all the sewing caught up. She wants to start tending bar, get herself a dice game going,” Bertha said. “I told her maybe. First I want her to go home, hire some more ‘very young daughters’ and bring them back here.” She smiled. “These French and Cornish miners can’t get enough. Said Ana turns down marriage proposals every night.”

  “I don’t doubt that. She’s the youngest-looking whore I ever seen,” Pridemore said, drawing on the cigar. “How old you say she is—twenty-five, thirty?”

  “I won’t guess,” said Bertha. “What do you care anyway? You’ve got all the woman you need right here.” She hugged in close beside him.

  Pridemore stared out again toward the distant hills. “My three men should have been back by now. So should Fox unless he’s found something that’s got his interest up.”

  Bertha looked up at him, reached her nails between the buttons of his shirt and scratched easily.

  “It’s good what we’ve got here, Bigfoot,” she said, sounding believable. “Don’t go thinking about leaving me.”

  “You don’t want to be telling me what to do and not do, Big Darling,” Pridemore said with a warning in his tone.

  “I’m not,” said Bertha. “I know better than to try. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to you, Bigfoot. Who would I ever find to take your place?”

  “Well . . . I expect I see your point there, Big Darling,” Pridemore said. “I would be damn hard to replace.” He gripped a hand on her buttocks. “But I might have to ride out and stir something up, see what’s keeping Fox and the men. With the Wolf Hearts lying low,
a man needs something to scalp or skin.” He looked off toward the well where Darton Alpine and Ohio Phil walked along with their rifles under their arms, returning from scouting the trails.

  “Both of you come over here,” he called out. “I’m wondering what’s become of my boy.”

  Bertha kept herself from smiling. If only she could get rid of him. If only something or someone would kill him—the Apache, the Ranger or, she didn’t care what, a bear, a rattlesnake bite.

  “What will I do while you’re gone?” she said with a pout.

  “Keep these big sweet legs crossed if you know what’s good for you,” Pridemore said as Alpine and Ohio Phil walked over to them.

  Bertha smiled and pulled away from him.

  “I’ll just leave you fellows to talk,” she said, turning to the open saloon doors.

  “Get our horses ready, Dart,” Pridemore said as Bertha walked inside the big saloon. “We’re going to look for Fox and that idiot Ozzie—see if we can’t find some hair to cut on our way.”

  * * *

  Fox Pridemore, Ozzie Cord and Silvar Stampeto sat atop their horses looking out and down onto the large mining complex that took up an entire terraced hillside a half mile below them. Terese Montoya sat on her paint horse beside Fox. The Mexican gunmen and their horses stood a few yards behind them, all of them feeling better after Fox had decreed a night of drinking whiskey and cocaine after a day of pillaging.

  Upon leaving Casa Robos, they had burned the stores, cantinas and businesses to the ground. At Ranchero Casa Robos, a large spread just north of the village, they had killed four unsuspecting vaqueros and stolen enough fresh horses to make a fast getaway after robbing the mine payroll.

  “So far you’ve done good, Silvar,” Fox said to Stampeto.

  “Yeah, so far you’ve done good, Silvar,” Ozzie echoed, giving Stampeto a sharp stare.

  “Everything has been just the way you said it would be,” Fox said.

  “Yeah,” said Ozzie Cord, “everything has been the way—”