Elmore Leonard: The Bounty Hunters

Calmly, quietly, "When we return to Thomas, Mr. Flynn, you will be confined to your quarters. At the moment, you are in need of the surgeon's attention."

He resigned shortly after that and never again referred to Chancellorsville in Deneen's or anyone else's presence. It would do little good to tell others. Some would believe him, most would not, and either way it would accomplish nothing. He resigned hastily; too hastily perhaps, and regretted it almost immediately.

He did the next best thing-in many respects, the better thing, as he came to know his job more thoroughly-he signed up as a contract guide. He could make his own calculations and patrol officers respected his opinion. He had learned from Joe Madora and that was good enough for most. Many of these officers were new to him, for he made sure he was not assigned to Fort Thomas. But after Deneen was appointed Department Adjutant, he did work out of Thomas for almost a year-seeing Deneen occasionally, seldom speaking to him-until he was assigned to the territorial prison at Yuma. Madora fought it because it was a sheer waste of Flynn's capabilities, but he could do nothing. The order had come from the office of the Department Adjutant.

He resigned again, this time breaking all ties, and went gold prospecting down into the Sierra Madre.

Now you're back, he thought, still watching the sky. Because this is what you like to do and you hoped Deneen might have forgotten. But nothing has changed. Deneen is still Deneen. It's something in his mind. You are the only living man who saw what happened that night at Chancellorsville, which seems so long ago; something he's trying to convince himself did not happen. As if by getting you out of his sight it will cease to have ever existed.

But now you're back and he's going to a lot of trouble to make you quit again. It must be very important to him. What did Madora say: You might be mad enough to do this just so you can throw it back in Deneen's face. Does that make sense? I don't know. But this time there's no quitting. The sooner he realizes it, the better. It will either straighten him out, or drive him crazier than he already is. But it is hard to feel sorry for him.

Early afternoon of the third day, in high timbered country, they looked out over a yellow stretch of plain to see smoke rising from the hills beyond. It lifted lazily in a wavering thin column above the ragged hillcrests.

"From here," Bowers said, "it could even be a barbecue." He put his glasses on the spot and focused, clearing the haze, drawing the thin spire closer. He studied the land silently.

"Coming from a draw beyond that first row of hills," he said then. "I would say-two miles."

"Not much more," Flynn said. "A trail cuts through the trough of the hills directly across from us."

"What's there that will burn?"

"Nothing."

"A house?"

"Not unless it was built in the last six months. It would be a jacale-and brush houses don't burn that long."

"Well, maybe it's…" He would have said, A wagon or wagon train, but he stopped, remembering the Esteban family that Flynn had described to him being only a day or so ahead of them; and he felt suddenly self-conscious, as if Flynn were reading his thoughts; and he said, "I don't know."

"You were going to say wagons, weren't you?"

Bowers nodded.

They had dismounted. Now they stepped into the saddles and nudged their mounts out of the timber diagonally down the slope that fell to the plain, and reaching the level they followed the base of the hill through head-high brush, keeping the plain on their left. They went on almost two miles until the plain began to crumble into depressions and the brush patches thickened, and when finally the flatness gave way to rockier ground they turned from the hill and moved across slowly so there would be no dust. They were beyond the smoke column, which had thinned, and now they doubled back more than a mile before climbing into timber again, following switchbacks single file as the hill rose steeper.

Near the crest, they tied their mounts and both drew Springfield carbines from the saddle boots.

Bowers lifted a holstered revolving pistol which hung from the saddle horn and secured it to the gun belt low on his hip. Watching him, Flynn's elbow tightened against his body to feel the heavy bulk of his own pistol beneath the coat.

"Ready?"

Bowers nodded and they moved up the remaining dozen yards of the hill, brushing the pine branches silently. At its crest the hill flattened into a narrow grove, thick with pinons. They passed through in a half-crouch and went down on hands and knees when the trees ended abruptly in a sandy slope that dropped before them more than a hundred feet. Below, the pines took up again, but here were taller and more thinly scattered. Through them, they could see patches of the trail which passed through the trough of the hill.

And directly below them, through a wide smooth-sand clearing, they saw the charred shapes of three wagons.

They were no longer wagons but retained some identity in a grotesque, blackened flimsiness; two of the wagons, their trees pointing skyward and only half burned, were rammed into the bed of the third which was over on its side. The mules had been cut from the traces and were not in sight.

Smoke from the suffocated fire hung like hot steam over the rubble of partly burned equipment-cooking gear, cases of provisions, clothing and bedding-heaped and draped about the wagons. The smoke was thinning to nothing above the wreckage, but its stench carried higher, even to the two men.

A bolt of red material, like a saber slash across the flesh-colored sand, trailed from a scorched end at one of the wagons to the base of a heavy-boled pine a few yards up the glade. And through the lower branches they saw the arm extended to clutch the end of the cloth. The arm of a woman.

A stillness clung to the narrow draw. Bowers heard a whispered slow-drawl of obscenity, but when he glanced at Flynn the scout's lean face was expressionless. He lay on his stomach looking down the short barrel of his carbine. Bowers nudged him and when Flynn glanced up the two men rose without a sound and started down the loose sand.

They came to the woman beneath the pine and Flynn parted the branches with the barrel of his carbine, then stooped quickly. Bowers saw the figure of a young girl, but Flynn was over her then and he could not see her face, though he glimpsed the sand dark with blood at her head.

Flynn came up slowly and said, "Anita Esteban's cousin," but he was thinking something else. It was in his eyes that looked past Bowers to the burned wagons. "Somebody took her hair," he said.

They separated, Flynn following the sand clearing, and came out on the trail a dozen yards apart. He looked uptrail toward Bowers, then felt his nerves jump as he saw the bodies off to the side of the road.

Two men and a young boy. Worn, white cotton twisted unnaturally. He could see the rope soles of their sandals. They lay facedown with the backs of their heads showing the blood-matted, scorched smear where they had been shot from a distance of no more than a yard. He moved toward Bowers and watched the lieutenant kneel beside another sprawled figure. As he drew closer, he saw that it was Anastacio Esteban.

Bowers looked up at him. "He's dead."

"They're all dead," Flynn said quietly. He looked past Bowers and saw other forms straggled along the side of the trail. Even from a distance he was certain they were dead. Then he knelt down next to Anastacio whom he had known a long time and he made the sign of the cross and said the Hail Mary slowly, for Anastacio and for the others.

Bowers looked at him curiously because he had not expected to see him pray, then motioned up the draw. "There are more up there." The other two wagons were roughly a hundred yards beyond and partly hidden by the brush where they stood off the trail.