Scalpers (7 page)

Bertha stared at him in feigned admiration. “I always heard you're a real daisy of a businessman. Now I see why folks think it.”

Pridemore grinned and tapped his forehead.

“I've got tricks the world has yet to see,” he said. He scooted back from the edge, his hand on Bertha's shoulder ushering her along with him. He carried a bow loaded with an arrow in it in his other hand. “We take him alive, you can saw his ears off before we kill him . . . if you've a mind to, that is.”

Bertha stared down at the soldiers riding into sight.

“That pig would've had me killed,” she said. Turning to Pridemore, she added, “You mean I can do anything I feel like to him before he dies?”

“Have yourself a good time with him, my word on it,” Pridemore said with a shrug.

“I could do that,” Bertha said under her breath. “I could do that in spades.”

Pridemore watched her face flush with vengeance at the possibilities at hand. “Power is a wonderful thing, ain't it, Big Darling?”

“Wonderful and then some,” Bertha said, staring at the captain from high above him. “Bigfoot,” she offered, feeling less afraid, more protected than she'd felt in a long time. “I can see where you and I might make a nice place for ourselves.”

Captain Penza's patrol straightened out around the turn in the trail and rode between two high-reaching hills towering on either side of them. From behind the cover of rock and from atop cliff overhangs, Pridemore's men took all the time they needed. As the scout dropped farther back, searching the upper hill lines halfheartedly, the scalpers homed their rifle sights on the unsuspecting soldiers.

The well-coordinated ambush erupted so fast and furious that the soldiers hardly knew what hit them. As the first hard-pounding volley of fire exploded on either side, the mercenaries squalled and shouted among the rocks like wild Indians.

“
Apache!
Take cover!” the sergeant bellowed, yanking his horse around as bullets sliced through the air around him. Soldiers fell from their horses, many never getting their guns raised. Their rearing horses fell too. The captain's horse reared and twisted wildly midair and came down, turning back onto the trail alongside the sergeant. But before their animals could get the move completed, a bullet from Pridemore's rifle knocked the captain's horse off its hooves. Two bullets hit the sergeant at once and slung him from his saddle in a wide spray of blood. As the captain hurried to the cover of rock, Pridemore took close aim and sent a bullet
slicing through the back of his leg. The captain fell forward and crawled away quickly.

In seconds the soldiers were bunched up in the trail, a third of them already down, dead or dying. The fighting wounded threw themselves from their horses and ran to what cover they could take among rocks at the low edge of the trail. A few lay in the trail in the shelter of downed horses. Rifle fire butchered the animals where they lay. Arrows flew in from the hillsides; Pridemore's men yelped like coyotes. They shouted war cries they had learned from their many Indian battles.

Seeing the fight was rapidly drawing to a close, Pridemore fired three arrows down into the dead horses below, then tossed the bow out onto the rocks. Return fire from the ambushed soldiers was sporadic and waning. Looking down, Pridemore saw soldiers on foot bounding away over rock and brush along the high hillside.

“Another terrible attack by the heathen savages,” he said, rising into a crouch, pulling the woman up beside him. “Keep your head down, Big Darling. One of these bullets is apt to find you whether they're seeking you or not.”

“Careful, Bigfoot,” said Early Doss, still firing at the soldiers in retreat among the rocks. “They might yet get collected and fight back.”

“Naw, little chance,” said Pridemore. “These
boys are so scared of Apache they see them when they look down the jake.” He gave a dark little laugh, then added, “Get finished up here; then search the hillside. You see any soldier's hair long enough to look Apache, take it. Bullets cost money—we got to make
something
out of all this.”

He gave a tug on Bertha's hand, pulling her along, the two of them moving crouched among the cover of rock. Looking down at the soldiers and horses lying dead with arrows in them, Bertha gave a faint smile.

“My, my, Bigfoot,” she said, “you manage to play every angle, don't you?”

“I do indeed,” Pridemore said. “If I felt like doing it, I could convince the
capitán
that my mercenaries showed up just in time to chase away the Apache and save him and what few men he's got left.” He chuckled as they moved down toward the trail.

Bertha giggled and ran her hand back over her tangled hair, straightening it as best she could.

“What they don't know,” Pridemore said, “is that the Wolf Hearts and the rest of the Mescaleros have moved on out of here. We whupped them bad. They've rode south to lie up and lick their wounds. No telling when they'll be back.”

They stopped for a moment while three scalpers ran in behind a stand of rock and finished off three soldiers.

“Will you go after them?” Bertha asked.

“Naw, we'll wait, get them when they come back this way. When the Mescaleros move out, the Lipans get a little bolder, start thieving horses and goats
here and there.” He shrugged. “They're Apache too—hair pays the same.”

Bertha shook her head.

“I'm impressed,” she said as they walked out on the trail, the firing all but over. Farther along the rock hillside, halfway up, a voice cried out in terror. Bertha winced.

Pridemore grinned.

“There's a man I'm betting should have seen a barber before riding out here,” he said.

On the trail, scalpers gathered on either side of Pridemore and walked forward slowly with him, keeping quiet as they approached a place where the soldier's heavy gunfire had resounded earlier. Half circling the spot, Pridemore raised a hand, holding the men back as he grinned listening toward the rocks. Then he turned the grin to Bertha.

“Capitán Penza? Are you in there?” he called out. They all listened for a silent moment. After a tense pause the wounded captain replied.

“Yes—yes, I am here,” he said, sounding stunned at hearing the words of a white man. “Who . . . is out there?”

“Hell, it's me, Bigfoot, and my mercenaries, Captain,” Pridemore called out. “Lucky we came by. We just run off two dozen heathen Apache before they made dinner out of yas.”

“Pridemore, thank God it's you!” the captain called out, almost sobbing with gratitude. He stood up from behind a waist-high rock, his bloody hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Pridemore turned to Bertha and grinned.

“See? What'd I tell you?” he said just above a whisper. “This world is mine.”

Around Pridemore his mercenaries laughed at the easily duped captain.

Captain Penza looked confused.

“What is funny, Bigfoot?” he said. “Many of my men are dead. Why do your men laugh?”

“Hell, they're all crazy,
Capitán
,” said Pridemore. “I should have told you.”

“
Sí
, loco,” Penza said indignantly. He looked at Bertha Buttons, her clothes ripped and hanging, one large breast almost completely bare. “What is she doing here?”

Pridemore reached around and pulled Bertha forward, prisoner-style, and held her forward roughly for the captain to see.

“I lured her out here,
Capitán
,” Pridemore said causally. “I figured you might want to see me cut her throat—no extra charge for watching, of course.”

Bertha gave Pridemore a look of terror as he raised a big knife from his boot well. She tried to jerk away from him, but he held fast.

“I did not
want
to,” said Penza, recovering quickly from the ruse Indian attack. “But since you brought her . . .” He looked back and forth, the scalpers having settled down from laughing, serious now. “What about Jim Ruby?”

“Next place you'll see Diamond Jim is in hell,
Capitán
,” Pridemore said. “Watch close now.” As Bertha tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on her and laid the edge of the big knife blade across
her throat. Penza clenched his teeth; a dark gleam of satisfaction came to his eyes, a faint smile.

“Ziiii-iip,”
Pridemore hissed through his teeth, running the dull edge of the knife across her flesh so quickly that Bertha gasped out loud and threw her hands up around her throat.

For an instant Penza's faint smile widened, his eyes gleamed sharper. Then his eyes turned confused as he saw no blood either ooze or spew from between Bertha's clutching fingers.

Even the mercenaries looked a little bewildered by Pridemore's actions.

Bertha swooned a little in relief; she started to sink to her knees, but Pridemore caught her, steadied her.

“Easy, now, Big Darling,” he said. “I thought you'd know it was all in jest.” He let her rest against him. “I wouldn't hurt you. We've still got to consummate and whatnot.” He grinned at her, then looked back at the captain, who'd begun to see this as a madman's ugly game.

“See, Capitán Penza,” Pridemore said. “I told her you paid me to kill her, but I didn't want her to take my word for it.” He looked at Bertha and handed her the knife by its handle.

“You double-crossed me. . . .” Penza slumped, knowing that only death awaited him.

“Well, yeah, sort of,” said Pridemore. “Look at her and then look at yourself. I couldn't kill this big strapping beauty.” He squeezed Bertha. “And I do maintain a rigid rule against giving refunds.”

Bertha straightened and looked at the knife in her hand. She gave the captain a cold, bitter stare.

“Thanks, Bigfoot,” she said, gripping the knife tightly. Three of the scalpers moved in fast and held the captain by his outstretched arms.

“Capitán Penza, Bertha's going to cut a few odds and ends off you. I told her she could, if she had a mind to”—he watched the seething woman stalk forward—“and now it appears she certainly
does
have a mind to.”

*   *   *

Behind the livery barn, Ozzie and Fox plunged their heads down into the cool water of a horse trough and held them there for a moment. When they rose and slung their wet hair, Fox wiped his face with his hand and looked around and batted his red-rimmed eyes. “No more whiskey for me, Oz,” he said. “I don't remember much of last night or this morning, but what little I do ain't good.”

Beside him Ozzie took a drink from their last bottle of whiskey and handed the bottle toward him.

“What'd I just tell you?” Fox said with hangover testiness to his voice. “I'm not getting drunk all over again.”

Ozzie shrugged and stood the half-full bottle on a short hitch post.

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I'm not going to go around hurting all day when a stiff drink will put me back on my feet.”

Fox thought about it. With each beat of his pulse, his head pounded like a hammer on a tin tub.

“Hell, give it here,” he said, reaching a hand over toward the hitch post.

Ozzie chuckled, picked up the bottle, swished its contents, then handed it to him.

“You remember us robbing the mercantile?” he asked as Fox took the bottle. “Remember us tying up the owner and me bashing him over the head with my gun barrel?”

“Yeah, sort of,” said Fox. He took a quick drink of whiskey and made a sour face. When he lowered the bottle, he felt the lumpy coins and dollar bills he'd stuffed down in his trouser pockets. The whiskey spread like warm coals throughout his chest and shoulders. He felt his head already begin to settle.

“I went back and killed him while you was chasing that whore with the shoeing tongs,” Ozzie said matter-of-factly. “Figured it beat taking a chance him telling anybody.”

“You didn't have to kill him,” Fox said. “He wouldn't dare say nothing, not after everybody here seeing Diamond Jim's face nailed to a board. Nobody even wants to come out on the street.”

“Still and all, it's never good to leave a witness behind,” said Ozzie. “My uncle taught me that.” He chuckled aloud, picturing Diamond Jim Ruby's entire face, beard, scalp and all, stretched out and tacked to a pine board. “How'd old man Sickles ever learn to do something like that, you reckon?”

“
Practice
is all I can think of. He's had lots and
lots
of practice,” Fox said.

“If you ask me, old Deacon Sickles is a little peculiar,” Ozzie offered, lowering his voice a little as if Deacon Sickles might hear him.

Fox stifled a laugh, looking over at Diamond Jim's raw faceless head, the wide, dead grin. Lidless eyes stared up at the boiling Mexican sun.

“You think so, huh?” he said.

The two laughed and slung their wet hair. Finger bones and ornaments clacked and clattered on their breastwork. Fox was feeling better. He wiped his face again and looked off along the corral fence where Diamond Jim's body lay in the dirt. Corral horses gave the grisly body a wide berth. They stood back and sniffed toward it, then blew out a breath and walked away.

“Did we eat any breakfast this morning?” Ozzie asked.

“I don't think so,” said Fox. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” Ozzie said.

“Let's go eat, then,” said Fox, picking up his hat and rifle from the hitch post.

“Yep, let's look at Diamomd Jim's face again on the way,” said Ozzie, almost childlike.

They walked from the livery barn to the street and on to Iron Point's public well in the center of a dusty plaza. The board with Diamond Jim's face tacked to it leaned against the front of the well, facing the gates toward anyone entering town.

“Who are they waiting for?” Ozzie asked Fox,
the two of them stopping at the well and looking toward the iron gates of the old fortress.

Fox just looked at him for a moment.

“For any of the soldiers . . . ?” said Fox, trying to jog Ozzie's memory. “Oz, you
really don't
remember much,” he added.

“Like I said, not a lot, just killing the store owner,” Ozzie replied.