Scalpers

by Ralph Cotton

  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.

  When he turned and looked back out through the shooting, he counted six warriors racing across the flat toward them.

  Hold your pistol fire until they’re in closer,” he said sidelong to Ozzie.

  “I know how to shoot, Ranger,” Ozzie said with contempt.

  “Good,” Sam said calmly. “I’m going to try to turn them with my rifle.”

  As he took aim from under the shelter of the overhanging cactus, he caught sight of a handful of scalpers riding out of the other cloud of dust and racing diagonally toward the six attacking Apache.

  “I’ll take any help I can get,” he murmured, leveling his rifle sights on the rider at the center of the six Apache.

  Chapter 24

  The Ranger’s first shot fell short of the center warrior, just as he’d wanted it to. He’d hoped that a kickup of dust a few feet in front of his horse’s hooves might send the riders back to join the battle along the edge of the flats. But no such luck. The fury of battle had them thirsting for blood. The lead rider veered slightly but still charged ahead in a full run; the five braves around him spread out abreast. This border fight had brewed too long and too hot for either side to stop it now.

  “Watch that end of the wash,” he said sidelong to Ozzie, seeing three of the five warriors cut away in that direction. Seeing Ozzie turn and direct his attention toward the right end of the wash, Sam leveled the Winchester at the lead rider again. This wasn’t meant to turn the warrior; this one was for keeps.

  A bullet whistled past between him and Ozzie as Sam squeezed off the next shot. The passing bullet didn’t distract him. His shot caught the warrior in the top of his shoulder and flipped him backward from his horse. A mist of blood flashed in the air. The warrior hit the ground and slid in a spray of sand and broken bits of barrel cactus. Sam levered another round and settled in to take aim. Next to him, Ozzie’s Colt barked twice as two of the three warriors rode into the dry wash, three of the loose horses running ahead of them.

  “Got one!” Ozzie hooted and yelled. “I got one of these heathen ’Paches!”

  “Keep shooting,” Sam shouted as he took quick aim and fired again. But this shot flew over the warrior’s head as he and his horse dropped down over the edge of the dray on the other end of their position. Before Sam had levered another round, the second warrior and his horse dropped out of sight also. All the braves were in the dry wash now, Sam reminded himself, turning on his side, away from Ozzie.

  “Yee-hiii! Got another one!” Ozzie shouted and laughed as another warrior on his side fell off his saddle. “You going to help me out any, Ranger?” he taunted. “I’m doing all the work.” He laughed insanely.

  Actually laughed! This raving idiot, Sam said to himself. As he started to take aim along the wash, he caught a glimpse of four more warriors breaking away from the raging battle and heading this way to help their own.

  “More coming, keep firing,” he shouted at Ozzie.

  “I’m out of bullets,” Ozzie shouted as bullets zipped past them from either end of the wash.

  “Grab some from my belt,” Sam said, realizing what a bad mistake that could be, but also realizing he had little other choice at the moment.

  “Got them,” Ozzie said. He started pushing bullets into his Colt.

  Sam fired. This time another warrior fell from his horse. As Sam relevered a round into his smoking rifle chamber, he caught sight of Turner Pridemore and his scalpers. The group rode hard, whooping, yelling and shooting toward the dry wash, as if the thrust of their whole battle had somehow shifted there.

  On Ozzie’s end of the wash, Sam noted that two warriors Ozzie thought he had shot were not shot at all. They had pulled an old Apache trick. They’d gone down from their horses and belly-crawled in closer. At less than fifty feet the two sprang up and charged on foot, shooting and yelping like coyotes. They ran with the loose horses between them and the Ranger. Sam and Ozzie both fired. One warrior went down, his chest blown wide-open—no faking there, Sam told himself. The other had taken cover in rocks and kept Sam and Ozzie busy while the additional warriors rode in and sprang into action.

  The Indians were all inside the dry wash now. The fighting had moved in close. They had no intention of leaving, or slowing down. The only ending here was with one side dying. It was no longer about the five loose horses. Sam and Ozzie fired repeatedly, but the Indians were well entrenched among the rocks, creeping forward inch upon inch. Bullets ricocheted inches from the warriors’ bare backs, their heads. Still they crawled in closer, waiting to charge when they knew their closeness and their larger numbers would overwhelm the single rifle and pistol fire aimed at them.

  “Where’s the scalp hunters?” Sam asked himself aloud, firing and relevering round after round.

  A bullet whined through and lifted the Ranger’s sombrero from atop his head. Another bullet ripped into his forearm at the wrist and left a deep slice the length of his forearm. Sam ignored the blood and pain, knowing it would only get worse before it ended. The only way he planned to go down was in dead-heat battle. Another warrior fell. Behind him he heard Ozzie firing, yelping, screaming, staying with the fight.

  An Indian sprang up less th
an ten feet from him and bolted forward. Luckily the Ranger had just levered a round. He pulled the trigger as the yelling warrior reached out for the rifle barrel. The shot slammed through the warrior’s throat, leaving a fist-sized hole and a large mist of blood. Sam sprang to his feet, knowing it would all be right here in front of him now.

  As he rose, so did four Indians, too close for rifle work.

  Sam drew the Colt, cocking it, getting off one shot, then another. Behind the Indians who came charging down the dry wash, Sam heard the scalp hunters’ rifles exploding.

  “Here come my pals!” Ozzie shouted.

  Sam watched Indians fall less than twenty feet in front of him. He saw their bare chests explode into bloody rose petals from the rifle fire behind them.

  One more Indian made it away from the scalpers’ bullets. He charged through yelping and shouting and leaped into the air over a waist-high rock toward the Ranger. Sam sent a pistol shot through his chest and watched him fall sidelong streaming blood. Behind the downed Indian, Sam saw the scalpers running in with their knives out, slashing. They begin lifting the heads of both the dead and the dying and slicing their scalps away with one quick flick of the blade.

  Sam turned away from the scalping. Seeing Ozzie backing away along the dry wash, he realized this was the break he’d been expecting him to make when the time was right.

  “Stop right there, Ozzie,” Sam shouted. “Drop the gun!”

  The scalpers looked up from their grisly work, seeing the two squared off at each other.

  “Go to hell, Ranger!” Ozzie said. “My pals are here now. You’re not taking me anywhere! They’ll kill you, if I say the word.”

  Sam gave no other warning. He raised his smoking Colt just as Ozzie raised his. Ozzie was fast, surprisingly so, Sam noted. He might well have gotten the first shot off. But for reasons Sam would likely never understand, instead of firing right away, the young mercenary gunman struck a pose, as if to make some sort of stage show of it. Sam thought he even saw Ozzie cut a glance toward Bigfoot Pridemore and his son, Fox, who had just ridden down into the wash.

  Whatever Ozzie’s reason, the Ranger wasted no time. He dropped the hammer on the big Colt, felt it buck in his hand and watched as Ozzie flew backward and hit the rocky ground. Ozzie’s black-handled Colt flew from his hand and hit the ground ten feet away. Sam walked forward, his Colt up, his elbow cocked, the gun barrel smoking near the side of his face.

  “He’s had enough, Ranger. Leave him be,” Sam heard Fox call out behind him. But he didn’t look around. He walked to where Ozzie lay writhing in the dirt, his hand pressed tight to his upper shoulder.

  “Shut your mouth, Fox, before I box your jaws,” said Turner Pridemore to his son. “This has nothing to do with you, or any of us. You’re lucky this idiot didn’t get you in trouble along with his stupid damn self. I knew he was no good first time I laid eyes on him.”

  Fox started to say something, but he stopped himself and sat staring as the Ranger rolled Ozzie up onto his side and helped him lean back against a rock. As Turner nudged his horse forward through the busy scalpers, Fox put his horse alongside him. Out on the sand flats the battle still raged.

  “Just so you know, Ranger,” Pridemore said, stopping a few feet back and looking down at Sam. “My boy here has had nothing to do with anything this fool’s been into.”

  Sam just looked up at the father and son, knowing better, but not getting into it. Taking Ozzie Cord in for murder was his job, nothing else. Fox was Mexico’s problem.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Pridemore, “Fox has been with us all along. We’ll all swear to that if it comes down to it.” He stared at the Ranger with a poker face.

  Sam turned and starred at Fox with a look that said he knew better, that this was all a lie.

  “Is that right, Fox?” Sam said, letting the young man know that he knew better. “Then I’d be mistaken if I saw you this morning with a couple of the Perros Locos bandits?” He kept the stare strong and steady.

  Seeing what was going on, Turner cut in on his son’s behalf.

  “You might have seen him talking to them, but he wasn’t what you’d call ‘with them,’” he said. “I sent him out scouting this morning, trying to see where these heathen Apache were.” He looked from Sam to his son. “Didn’t you tell me you run across a couple of bandits this morning?”

  “That’s right, I did,” Fox said. Instead of looking at his father, he continued to stare at the Ranger. “Those two were bad hombres, I could tell just by talking to them. I was glad to get shed of them. Made up a story, told them my horse was going lame on me. Then I got away from them quick as I could.”

  It was time to let it go, Sam decided. He let out a breath and looked down at Ozzie, then back up at Fox.

  “Good thing you left when you did,” he said. “They rode up in the hills and got themselves killed, according to Ozzie here.”

  Fox looked down at Ozzie.

  Ozzie said, “I didn’t do nothing wrong.” Then he looked away.

  “I never figured you did,” Fox said. Beside him Turner Pridemore stood staring curiously, not knowing exactly what they were talking about. Sam knew but he wasn’t going to mention it. He knew that Fox had somehow set this all up to his benefit. But it was none of Sam’s business. He looked back at Turner as the battle began to wane on the sand flats.

  “I’m obliged you showed up when you did,” he said, taking off his bandanna and wrapping it around his bleeding forearm.

  Pridemore touched his hat brim.

  “Don’t mention it, Ranger,” he said. “I’m always one to help the law when it comes to my best interest.” He stared at Sam. “I take it we’re square, then?”

  “I got my man,” Sam said. “That’s all I was ever after.”

  Ian Pusser rode up carrying Sam’s sombrero and handed it to him, the bullet hole showing in its crown. Sam looked at a bloody knife in his hand and the long line of scalps already adorning his saddle. He knew it was Pusser who’d killed the other scalper on the desert floor. Again, none of his business, down here in the deep Mexican desert, he told himself.

  Pridemore saw him looking at the scalps and gave a wide grin.

  “You know, Ranger,” he said, “this land is tough but fair, I always say. Where else can you tack a man’s face to a board and sell it for big money as a novelty? We’re wilder than darkest Africa.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way,” Sam said.

  Pridemore gestured around at his men busily taking scalps from the dead and leaving the bodies for the buzzards.

  “Where else can you turn something like skinning heads into a business and watch it flourish?” He paused, then said, “You’d never guess that I started life as a lawyer.” He nodded. “That’s a fact. But I fell for a young woman in Texas and we come all this way to raise up two sons and start a trading post.” He laughed. “A trading post, right smack on the badlands! Can you beat that?”

  “No, I can’t,” Sam said. He took a folded cloth Ian Pusser handed him and passed it down to Ozzie. The wounded prisoner stuck the cloth inside his shirt and pressed it to his bullet wound.

  “On your feet,” Sam said to Ozzie.

  “But I’m bleeding something awful, Ranger,” Ozzie whined.

  Sam pulled him up by his shoulder. He cuffed him, then raised his hands and shoved one back against his shoulder wound.

  “How can I ride like this?” Ozzie said.

  “Figure it out,” Sam said. “We’re crossing the flats tonight. We’ll have you some help come morning.” As unpredictable as these mercenaries were, he wanted to get his prisoner on his horse and get out of there.

  “You’re welcome to stay, Ranger,” said Pridemore. “We’ll find something to stick over a fire once we get all these scalps pulled and counted.”

  “Obliged,” Sam said, giving Ozzie a shove up into
his saddle. “I want to get this one across the border and turn him in.”

  “They going to hang him, Ranger?” Fox asked from his saddle.

  Sam didn’t answer.

  “What do you care?” Turner Pridemore asked his son. “Be glad you ain’t been a part of nothing he’s done.”

  Sam saw Ozzie’s and Fox’s eyes meet, only for a second, before both of them looked away.

  Turner and Fox Pridemore sat watching as the Ranger mounted and led his prisoner away, out across the sand flats, the same direction Jep Rayburn had taken.

  “You’re damn lucky we run into you when we did today,” Turner said. “Think the idiot Ozzie will keep his mouth shut?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He don’t know nothing,” said Fox.

  “Knowing how you are, this Ranger would’ve had to kill you and that idiot both if you’d stuck around.”

  “I’m not afraid of that Ranger,” Fox said.

  “So? Every man he’s put underground has said that,” Pridemore replied. He paused, then said, “I have to admit, you’re the only one who come out of this standing up.” He gave a proud, stiff smile. “I expect that comes from your raising?”

  “Yeah.” Fox smiled and said, “You should have seen me, Pa. I had all the Perros Locos doing what I told them. Like I was some kind of big-shot desperado—”

  “Well, you’re back now,” Turner said, cutting his son off.

  “I’m not scalping anymore, Pa,” Fox said.

  “What will you do, then?” Turner asked, already having a pretty good idea.

  “I’m going to ride up and get the money I buried. Then I’ll figure things out from there.”

  Turner Pridemore saw one of his mercenaries gesture toward all the dead Apache strewn on out on the sand flats as the battle moved up into the hills.

  “Suit yourself,” he said to his son. “I’ve got work to do.” He nudged his horse away. “If you’re smart you’ll stay down here in Old Mex, let that Ranger get your name off his tongue.”