Читать книгу Stand Up and Die - William W. Johnstone - Страница 15

CHAPTER NINE

Linton had been a scalp hunter since he had first heard about how the Mexican government in towns close to the American border would pay a handsome amount of money for an Apache or Comanche scalp. In all those years, what had it gotten him—other than a lot of money that he usually spent in two or three nights? A dapple horse. A suit of buckskins. Some disease he never brought up, especially to the prostitutes he paid. Fading eyesight. A bad scar across his back. A bullet that the sawbones in Nogales hadn’t been able to dig out of his left knee. And two pards, Bert and Fisher, neither one worth a lick of salt.

“What about Amigo?” Bert asked as they rode into Two Forks, a settlement where horses could be traded, whiskey could be drunk, and a man might be able to rest a spell without answering any questions.

“He’s dead,” Linton answered.

“You sure?” Fisher asked.

“Maybe you boys want to ride back to the Davis Mountains and see for yourselves.” Linton’s knee hurt for he had been riding a long damned time. His horse was as played out as his two pards.

“How about Greasy?” Fisher asked.

“Oh, he’s definitely dead,” Linton said. “Saw the Ranger’s bullet hit him.”

“Hell,” Bert said. “Now that Texas star packer’s gonna collect the bounty on that Comanche kid.” He leaned out of the saddle and pointed, shaking his finger at Linton the way that schoolteacher did him back in Corpus Christi. “It’s yer fault, Linton. You said taking that little kid’s scalp would be easy pickin’s.”

Partners come easy, and Linton considered killing Bert but then he’d have to kill Fisher, too. He was the kind of person who would turn state’s evidence to avoid getting his necked stretched.

“Did I ever tell you about the schoolmaster I had back home down south years and years ago?” Linton didn’t wait for one of his two surviving pards, each of them a damned fool, to answer his question. He never waited. “I had my pa’s razor, and I cut that man’s finger off.” He laughed at the good memory. “That sent Juliette Jameson and all the other ten kids in that school outside screaming their heads off. And then I used that razor to cut that rotten apple’s throat. Boy, I’d never done that before—cut a man’s throat like that, is what I mean. Could hardly believe how much blood poured out of that little slit I’d made. And before the light died in that schoolmaster’s throat, I tried to use the razor to take the lowdown skunk’s scalp. Didn’t get much. Didn’t even keep it. Just dropped it on his paddle.” He nodded with pleasure. “That was the first time I tried to take a scalp. Can’t call it my first scalp because, well, hell, boys, I wasn’t no more than thirteen.” He laughed and climbed out of the saddle beside the stone fortress that made up all there was to Two Forks, except for a few lean-tos, a lot of corrals, and two buildings that passed for barns out in that part of the frontier.

Bert and Fisher remained on their horses.

Linton tilted his head to the door that led to Two Forks’ sole place of business. “You boys ain’t thirsty?”

Bert shook his head, pouting like Linton’s brother used to do after Linton has whipped the kid’s arse.

Fisher said, “Bert and me don’t believe in not avenging the death of a pard.”

“Two pards,” Bert said.

Linton frowned. “You want to go back after that Ranger and that Indian. For a kid’s scalp that’ll bring us twenty-five pesos? That’s not a hundred. That ain’t my idea of good business, boys, but if you want to go, turn around and look. Look up at that ridge over yonder way. Not that way, you damned fools, back where we was comin’ from.”

They looked.

“What do you see?” Linton asked.

“You mean that little bit of smoke?” Fisher answered with another question.

“Exactly.”

“That might be that Ranger’s campfire. Might be he’s takin’ care of Amigo, if that greaser’s still alive,” Bert said.

“That’s Comanche smoke, boys.”

“Well,” Bert said, “Maybe the boy kilt the Ranger. And is roastin’ him for supper. Then we can ride back to that little valley and kill the buck and get his scalp.”

Linton stepped back. “Is that what you want to do, boys?”

He waited.

Fisher and Bert glanced at one another, and Bert was the first to bob his head. Fisher nodded, too.

Linton sighed and said, “Look, boys. That Ranger knows what we look like, so scalp huntin’ ain’t gonna be such a good way to make a livin’ in this part of Texas. My plan is to ride north. They’ll be lookin’ for us south. Ride up to the Panhandle. Might run across some Comanche camps. Then cut across New Mexico.”

He grinned. “They pay for bounties in Sonora, down south of Arizona Territory. I met me a fine girl down in Nogales years back, meanin’ Nogales south of the border. In Mexico. We can collect a passel of scalps and sell them to whatever they call the mayor in those Mexican towns. And here’s the real genius of my plan.”

He paused, liked his idea, and said, “Do you know what you’ll find in Mexico and Arizona?” Again, before they could think of an answer, which undoubtedly would be wrong, Linton told them. “Mexicans. Nothin’ but Mexicans.”

He laughed again. “And do you know somethin’ ’bout Mexicans? I never paid that much notice before. Here we know a lot of those greasers, like Amigo, and he would have frowned upon it had he knowed it was somethin’ I been thinkin’ about. But now that Amigo’s burnin’ in Hell, I got no reservations.” Linton thought they might have figured out his scheme, but their faces told him that had not happened, and would not happen.

So he told them. “Mexican hair can’t be told apart from Apache or Comanche hair. We kill us some greasers, scalp ’em, and make their topknots look like it come off some Apache or Comanche buck. Boys, it’s a lot easier to kill a Mexican peon than it is to kill a Comanche Dog Soldier.”

“Dog Soldiers,” Fisher pointed out, “Is Cheyennes. Not Comanches.”

Linton shook his head and asked, “Well. You boys comin’ in? I’ll buy the first two rounds.”

Again, he had to wait for the two imbeciles to look at each other. They shook their heads, frowned, and told him, “Sorry,” at the same time.

Bert continued. “I don’t think I could kill no Mexican who ain’t done me no wrong.”

“And,” Fisher said, “To be honest with you, I’m sort of sick to my stomach about what all we been doin’. I guess seeing Amigo and Greasy cut down in the prime of life, just make me see the light.”

Linton nodded. “Well, boys, if that’s your play, that’s your play.” He gestured, though, again at the smoke rising from the hills. “But you better take a good long look at that before you ride back to check on two dead men.”

They turned in their saddles and stared at the smoke.

Linton shot them both out of the saddles. Their horses bolted, but only for about twenty yards, so worn out they were. Three men came out the door, but Linton grinned at them and said, “They pulled on me, boys. Thought they could take my scalp and pass it off down below the Rio Grande as a Comanche buck’s. Never could stomach a scalp hunter. You boys help me bury them varmints, and I’ll let you keep their horses. Worn out, but a little rest, a lot of water, and some hay and they’ll be good as new.”

He wasn’t sure if Fisher or Bert really planned to go back after their now-dead-as-they-were pards, or if they might have planned to go to the law and try to collect the reward on Linton. But the main reason he shot and killed them both was that he figured it would be easier to find men who wouldn’t mind being scalp hunters in New Mexico and Arizona. And well, if those two men got arrested by that hard-rock Texas Ranger who had killed Amigo, or any sheriff, marshal, or bounty hunter . . . they would likely give a complete description of Linton. Pards weren’t like they used to be.

Hell, he thought, they never was a pard a man could trust.

But in Two Forks, a man minded his business. He could have a whiskey and be on his way. He’d head up north, just like he told those two corpses stiffening on the dirt. Maybe stop in Five Scalps. Then ride west.