Elmore Leonard: The Bounty Hunters

He said to Flynn, "They had mules, didn't they?"

"They must have."

Flynn looked up-trail toward the two wagons. The animals that had pulled them were not in sight, but these wagons had not been burned. He heard Bowers say, "I hear 'Paches would rather eat a mule than even a horse."

In the shallow bed of the first wagon they found a woman with a child in her arms and next to her were two children clinging tightly to each other. No one was in the second wagon, but in the brush close by they found others. Most of them had been shot from close range.

Up beyond the second wagon they saw a woman lying in the middle of the trail. Her arms were spread with her fingers clawed into the loose sand. Flynn went to her quickly. Bowers watched him stoop over her then come up, shaking his head. Nita Esteban was not among the dead.

Flynn came back carrying the girl in his arms and placed her gently in the wagon. Bowers saw that she had been scapled; and his head turned to look at other things.

"They're changing their ways," Flynn said.

Bowers looked at him questioningly.

"Have you ever seen an Apache ambush?"

Bowers hesitated. "No."

"Well don't put this down as typical."

Bowers said, with embarrassment, "I'm sorry…about this."

"I knew Anastacio. The others I met only once."

Bowers looked up. "I thought you knew the girl well."

Flynn shook his head. "It only seems that way."

"They must have taken her."

"And perhaps others." Flynn was silent as his eyes went over the ambush-the burned wagons, the dead. "Mister, I'll tell you something. This isn't Apache."

"What other tribes are down here?"

"No other, to speak of."

"Well?"

"It isn't Indian."

"You're serious?"

"It was made to look Apache. And they did a poor job."

"I've heard that Apaches are known to kill."

"With bullets?"

"Why not?"

"Because they can't walk down to the corner and buy a box whenever they feel like it. Almost all the people were killed after they'd given up-with bullets-and that isn't Apache. On top of being hard to get, a bullet's too quick."

"I've been told not to try to figure them," Bowers said.

"That might apply to why they do something, but you can make sense out of how they do it." To Flynn the signs were plain. Many were plain because they were not there. A branch had been used to drag the footprints out of the sand. That wasn't Apache. The wasting of bullets. The scalping. Generally Apaches did not scalp. But they learned quickly. They have learned many things from the white man. They take the children of certain ages, to bring them up in the tribe because there was always a shortage of men. And there were many children here, dead, that an Apache would have taken.

They took Nita, and perhaps others, he thought. The taking of women is Apache-but it is hardly exclusively so.

And there were other things that he felt that told him this wasn't the work of Apaches. But it would take time to tell Bowers.

"Lieutenant," he said then. "You've got your work cut out for you. Get your tactical mind turning while I go up-trail."

Bowers began gathering the bodies, dragging them to a level sandy opening off the trail. His body was tense as he worked. He was aware of this, but he could not relax. He thought: They looked deader because their clothes are white-and because they were shot in the back of the head.

He looked up-trail, up the slight rise over which Flynn had disappeared, then to the high steep banks of the draw. A faint breeze moved through the narrowness; it brushed the pine branches lazily and carried the burned-wood smell of the wagons to the young lieutenant. The redheaded, sunburned, slim-hipped lieutenant who had graduated fifteenth in his class from the Point and was granted his request for cavalry duty because of his high grades and because his father had been a brigadier general. His father was dead five months now. The smooth-faced, clean-featured, unsmiling lieutenant who now felt nervously alone with the dead and looked at the slopes, squinting up into the dark green, his eyes following the furrows of cream yellow that zigzagged up the crest; then, above the crest, the pale blue of the sky and the small specks that were circling lazily, gliding lower, waiting for the things that were alive to leave the things that were dead.

This was not cavalry. This was not duty his father, the brigadier, had described. A year at Whipple Barracks and he had not once worn his saber beyond the parade quadrangle. Four-day patrols hunting something that was seldom more than a flick of shadow against towering creviced walls of andesite. Patrols led by grizzled men in greasy buckskin who chewed tobacco and squinted into the sun and pointed and would seldom commit themselves. Cautious, light-sleeping men who moved slowly and looked part Indian. Every one of them did.

No, Flynn did not. That was one thing you could say for him. He was different from most of the guides; but that was because he had been an officer. One extreme, while the old one with the beard, Madora, was another. That was too bad about Madora, but perhaps he would recover. Flynn did not seem to view things in their proper perspective. He had probably been a slovenly officer. Deneen had said he would have to be watched, but he knows the country and that's what qualified him for this mission. Mission! Dragging home a filthy, runaway Indian who didn't know when he was well off. An unreasoning savage, an animal who would do a thing like this. Flynn is out of his mind thinking it was someone else. Get it over with. That's all; just get it over with.

When Flynn returned he was leading two mules.

"Those must have gotten away," Bowers said.

"Or else they didn't want them."

"Not if they were Apaches," Bowers said.

Flynn nodded. "That's right. Not if they were Apaches."

They hitched the mules to one of the wagons, binding the cut traces, and loaded the dead into the flat bed; they moved off slowly, following the draw that twisted narrowly before beginning a curving gradual climb that once more brought them to high open country. By noon of the next day they would be in Soyopa. They would bring the people home to be buried.

Later, as the trail descended, following the shoulder of the slope, Flynn studied the ribbon of trail far below. It would be dark before they reached the bottom, he knew. They both rode on the wagon box, their horses tied to the tailgate.

First he saw the dust. It hung in the distance, filtered red by the last of the sun. Whatever had raised it was out of sight now.

Then, below-small shapes moving out of shadow into strips of faded sunlight-two riders, moving slowly, bringing up the rear of whatever was up ahead. The riders seemed close, but they were not within rifle range.

"Lieutenant, let me have your glasses."

There was something familiar about the rider on the left, even at this distance. Flynn put the glasses to his eyes and brought the riders close and there it was, as if looking into the future, seeing Frank Rellis riding along with the Winchester across his lap.

Standing in the doorway, Lieutenant Lamas Duro scratched his bare stomach and smacked his lips disgustedly. The taste of mescal was stale in his mouth. A feeling of faintness came on him, then passed just as suddenly and left him wide awake. He swallowed again as his tongue searched the inside of his mouth. And finally Lieutenant Duro decided that he did not feel too badly considering the mescal and the few hours sleep. Perhaps the mescal had not worn off completely. That was it.

He looked at the corporal, who smiled at him showing bad teeth, and he thought: If he is as frightened as I know he is, why should he smile? Why should he curl his diseased mouth which makes me despise him all the more? He shrugged to himself as his hands felt the flatness of his pockets. Then he moved the few steps from the sleeping-room doorway into the front room, and drew a cigar from a packet on the cluttered desk.