The Bounty Hunters

by Elmore Leonard

  He tested the rungs, the ones he could reach, and as he climbed he pulled carefully on the rungs above him before bringing up his legs. Halfway, the loft was even with his head. He raised the carbine and slid it onto the planking, then raised himself after it. Toward the front, the main loading window showed dimly—a square of night sky, starless, and it grew larger as he crept toward it, easing his weight over the planking. Now and then a squeak, a rusted nail bending—but a small sound that would not carry beyond the building. At the opening he stood to the side and looked straight down over the carbine. There was no sound. No movement.

  Flynn moved back now and eased down until he was lying on his stomach. He pushed the Springfield out in front of him, the barrel nosing past the loft edge, and at that moment he saw the Apache.

  The Mimbre appeared in a doorway directly across the square, then moved close along the wall until he reached the corner of the building. He crouched then and waited, facing toward the rear of the one-story structure. Flynn raised the Springfield and dropped his head slightly for his cheek to rest against the stock, then swung the barrel less than three inches to bring it against the dim figure of the Mimbre.

  He hears something, Flynn thought. That animal sense of his is telling him something. His hand tightened beneath the barrel, feeling the slender balanced weight of the carbine. He wouldn’t know what hit him, he thought now. Probably not even hear it. The oil smell of the breech mechanism was strong with his face so close and two inches away his finger crooked over the trigger guard. His thumb raised. Pull it back easy, he thought. He wouldn’t hear it, but pull back easy. The thumb closed over the hammer and cocked it.

  The figure moved then and the barrel followed him as he glided across the narrow street to the corner of the next house. Flynn saw now that he carried a rifle and was pointing it toward the house behind the one he had just left. It was in the row Bowers would be moving up.

  They know he’s there, Flynn thought. They must have known it for some time. That’s why they aren’t in the square. But where are the others? His eyes inched along the adobe fronts across the square. Nothing moved. He swung back to the Apache on the corner. They’ve filtered back among the buildings and this one is waiting in case he breaks free.

  Maybe they’ve taken him already. And maybe they haven’t. But if he breaks for the street, the one on the corner will get him. This went through his mind quickly as he aimed at the Apache, realizing almost at the same time that there was no choice. He must kill the Apache on the chance Bowers wasn’t already taken. “Look around,” he whispered to the Apache, “then it will be easier.” But the figure remained motionless, his back hunched into a round target, as Flynn inhaled slowly, stopped, squeezed the trigger, felt the shock jab against his shoulder, smelled the powder and heard the report echo through the deserted streets. He saw that the Apache had turned as he was hit and was facing him now, lying on his back.

  9

  The wind rose, bringing clouds to dim the moonlight, and the wind moved through the streets with a low hissing sound, bending the brush clumps and splattering invisible sand particles against the adobe. The wind moved over the dead Apache, spreading his hair, fanning it into a halo about his head. But this was all, only the wind.

  As morning approached, Flynn could see the Apache more plainly. The sun came up behind the stable and a shaft of cold light filtering between the stable and the next building fell directly across the Apache. The shirt would move gently as the breeze stirred, but the curled moccasin toes which pointed to the sky, and the extended arms, palms up, did not move.

  Flynn thought: Your friends are probably looking at you at this same moment. One of them saying, “Poor…”—something that ends in i-n or y-a and has a guttural sound to it. Or else something the Mexicans named you. Juan Ladron. Joselito. Or a name like Geronimo which a few years ago was Gokliya. And now they are begging U-sen not to make you walk in eternal darkness, because it wasn’t your fault, Flynn continued to think. I’m sorry I killed you at night. It was not the way a warrior should die. But you would have killed me. That’s the way it goes. I wish I could light a cigarette.

  Where are they, in that house the Mimbre was pointing toward? Probably. With Bowers. Perhaps one has worked his way around and is entering the livery. Flynn rolled to his side and looked back toward the ladder, then to the loft opening again. Just don’t start imagining things, he told himself. They’ll show sooner or later. It’s their move now.

  Shortly after he thought this, it came.

  His eyes were swinging along the ramada fronts when he caught the movement in the corner of his vision. His eyes slid back instantly to the street where the dead Apache lay. Bowers was standing at the corner of the building. His hands were behind his back.

  Flynn watched him, surprised. He had not admitted it, but now he realized that he had supposed Bowers dead.

  The cavalryman staggered out from the building suddenly, off balance, and Flynn saw the two Apaches then. One of them pushed Bowers again, staying close behind him, urging him on until they reached the middle of the square and stopped next to the statue. The other Apache followed and now the three of them looked up at the livery stable first, then to the buildings on either side. The Apache behind Bowers jabbed him with his carbine barrel.

  Moving his head slowly along the building fronts, Bowers yelled out, “They want me to say something!”

  You don’t have to say it, Flynn thought. He watched one of the Apaches point the carbine at Bowers’ head and pull back the hammer. Give up, or they’ll kill him. That doesn’t need words. But how do they know I’m still here? And that I’m alone? He thought of their horses then, picketed on the hill. They found the horses. They move fast and they’re very thorough, and they know a man wouldn’t run off without his horse. Not in this country.

  “Flynn…don’t come out!”

  He moved from the opening back to the ladder and climbed down it wearily. He walked out the wide front door of the stable toward the three figures at the statue. Beyond them, now, he saw two other Apaches standing in the shadow of a wooden awning. The square was dead-still.

  The second Apache stepped forward to meet him and he handed the carbine to him, then reached into his coat and drew the pistol and handed this to him.

  He said to Bowers, “Well, we tried. What happened?” He saw the bruised cheekbone and the swelling above his right eye.

  “I walked into the house where they were butchering a steer,” Bowers said. “They were on me before I knew it.”

  “Red, don’t back away from them. Stay calm and we’ll get out of this.”

  Bowers looked at him quickly. It was the first time he had been called that since before the Point. And it had come unexpectedly from Flynn.

  The guide looked at the Apache next to him. He said roughly, in Spanish, “What are you called?”

  The Apache eyed him narrowly. “Matagente.” Then he said in hesitant, word-spaced Spanish, “I do not know you.”

  “Nor I, you,” Flynn said. “But I know you are Mimbreño—and at this time very far from the land of the Warm Springs. But you will come to know us very well. At San Carlos you will see us often.”

  Matagente’s expression did not change as he listened. Now he said, “San Carlos is not for the Warm Springs Apache.”

  “This is something which ones above us have ordered,” Flynn said. “There is no profit in talking about it with you. Where is Soldado? Our words are for him.”

  “You will see him,” Matagente said. He motioned with the carbine, saying no more, directing them toward the house where the others stood. They had carried the dead Apache from the street and now he was under the ramada near the doorway. Matagente looked at him as he prodded the two men into the house, but still he said nothing.

  They sat on the packed-dirt floor with their legs crossed and their backs to the wall and waited. For what, they did not know, wondering why they were not taken to the Apaches’ ranchería.

  Matagente
brought them meat, then sat near the doorway with one of the Springfields across his lap. His hand moved over the smooth stock idly. Before this he had used a Burnside .54 which needed percussion caps and powder, and often it misfired.

  When they had eaten the meat, Flynn said, “Take us to Soldado now.”

  “You will see him,” Matagente said, and again lapsed into silence. This new gun was in his mind—this pesh-e-gar—and he was thinking how good it would be to fire it.

  Through the doorway Flynn could see the other Apaches standing in front of the house, talking to each other in low tones he could not hear. Then he saw them look up. One of them moved off and the others watched after him. In a moment he was back and he called in to Matagente, in the Mimbreño dialect. “They are here.”

  Matagente rose and moved to the doorway as mounted Apaches suddenly appeared in front of the house. These dismounted as others continued to enter the square from the side street, walking their ponies. The sound of this came to Flynn, but he could see nothing until Matagente stepped back from the doorway. He saw the Apaches now, at least twenty, probably more, milling in front of the house, then his view was blocked again as a figure moved into the doorway.

  Matagente said, “Now you see Soldado. Tell him your story, American.”

  Bowers looked at him with open surprise, and now wondered why he had expected this Apache to look different than any other, though he was old for an Apache still active. Wrinkled face and eyes half closed beneath the bright red headband. And skinny—filthy clothes, ill-fitting to make him seem smaller. A buttonless cavalry jacket, a bandoleer crossing his chest holding the jacket only partly closed, and cotton trousers stuffed into curl-toed moccasins that reached to his knees where they folded and tied. He rested one hand on the butt of a cap-and-ball dragoon pistol in his waistband. But the hand only rested there; it was not a threat.

  Flynn watched his face as he sat down in front of them crossing his legs. The cavalry guide had expected nothing. A man is some things and he is not others. A Mimbre Apache is not a fashion plate. He is ragged and dirty and has the odor of an unwashed dog and at night in his ranchería drinks tizwin until it puts him to sleep or sends him after a woman. He has many faults—by white standards. But he is a guerrilla fighter, and in his own element he is unbeatable. That’s the thing to remember, Flynn thought. Don’t underestimate him because he smells. He isn’t chief because his dad was. And a broncho chief doesn’t get to be as old as he is on his good looks.

  He said now, in Spanish, “Do you speak English?”

  The Apache shook his head.

  “Lieutenant, you can take that for what it’s worth. He might speak it better than we do.” Then to Soldado he said, “We did not come here to fight your men. The fight could not be avoided.”

  “But one of them is dead,” Soldado said.

  “I did not wish him to die the way he did, but it could not be helped. It is not the way a Mimbreño should die.”

  The old chief looked at him intently. “Who of us have you known?”

  “I have known Victorio and Chee and Old Nana.”

  “What are you called?”

  “Davíd Flín.” He pronounced the name slowly.

  “I have not heard of you.”

  “This country is wide.”

  The Apache said quietly, “Yet you would force us to live in one small corner of it.”

  “What I do,” Flynn said, “is not entirely of my mind.”

  “Then perhaps you are a fool.”

  “It is only foolish when you fight against what is bound to happen,” Flynn said. “I see the days of the Mimbreño numbered…as well as the Chiricahua, Coyotero, Jicarilla and the Mescalero. The Tonto and Mojave have already been given their own land.”

  “And who is this that gives land which he does not own?” the Apache asked.

  Damn him, Flynn thought. He said, “The chief of the Americans, who owns it because of his power. Let me tell you something, old man, for your wisdom to absorb: your days remaining are few. If you give yourself up now, you will be given good land which still abounds in those things to keep you alive. And you will be under the protection of our government.”

  Soldado said seriously, “And if I were to find my woman lying with someone else and I cut off her nose, what would happen to me?”

  “You would be taken before the agent,” Flynn said, feeling foolish saying the words.

  “For what reason?”

  “For your offense.”

  “And when our women see that they can lie with any man they wish and only the husband is punished if he objects, what will your government do then?”

  “Your women are your own problem,” Flynn said.

  “Man, we have many problems which we would keep our own.”

  Flynn shook his head wearily. What a sly old bastard, he thought. He makes you sound like a damn fool. Maybe you can’t be a big brother. Maybe the only kind of respect they know is a kick in the face. He intimated so just now with that about the women. Only you’re not in a very good spot to do any kicking. All you can do now is bluff—and if it doesn’t work, which it probably won’t, you haven’t lost anything.

  He said now to Soldado, “I tell you this as a friend: If you fight, you will be defeated, and being remembered with distaste you will be treated ill and perhaps be put into prison.”

  Soldado said, “What is the difference in meaning between these words prison and reservation?”

  “You ask many questions.”

  “I only wish to borrow from the wisdom of the American,” Soldado said.

  “You may scoff at these words,” Flynn said, “but what happens, happens. It is above you and me and will come about regardless of what you do, but I am wise enough to see it.”

  “Are you wise enough to see your own fate, American?”

  “I speak to you as a people.”

  “And I speak to you as a man. What does this spirit of yours say will happen to you?”

  “I could die at this moment,” Flynn said. “So could you.”

  “But who would you say this is more likely to happen to?”

  You’re not doing this very good, Flynn thought to himself. He always has the last word and makes you feel like a green kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Bowers touched his arm then and as he looked at him Bowers said, “How does he know why we’re here?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve told him nothing. We could be scalp hunters for all he knows, yet he talks about the reservation. How does he know we came to see him?”

  Soldado said, “The silent one wonders how I know of your mission.”

  In English, Flynn said quickly, “How did you know what he said?”

  Soldado shook his head. “No comprendo.”

  Flynn repeated the question in Spanish and the old Indian smiled faintly. “His question was on his face. It did not need words; though I have been waiting for you to ask it.”

  “Then you have known of us for some time,” Bowers said.

  “Since the day you gathered the bodies of the Nakai-yes and returned them to their village. This was not an act of the killers of Indians.”

  Flynn concealed his amazement. Now he said, “You were very thorough. No one was left alive.”

  Soldado studied him silently before saying, “Do you believe these words you use?” and when Flynn did not answer, he said, “No, you do not believe them, but you would hear it aloud that we did not kill the Nakai-yes. There is no need however to explain these things to the wise American who is able to see the future.”

  But it was the past Flynn was seeing as the old Indian spoke. Burned wagon and the lifeless bodies in a narrow draw, and he tried to picture white men having done this. Before, he had been almost certain that this was not the work of Apaches. Still, he could not bring himself to believe that it had been white men. “How do you know who did this?” he said now.

  Soldado smiled faintly. “Once, at night, I sat before my jacale and in front
of me there was a mound of stones. There were red stones and white stones, which I could see by the light of the fire. And I played this game with myself, taking all of the red stones and placing them here,” he said, gesturing with his hands, “and soon, all of the stones remaining before me were white.” His smile broadened. “That is how I look into the past, American.”

  “These men will be punished for their deeds,” Flynn said.

  “By your government?”

  “Yes, by my government. By men who act in its behalf.”

  “And who are these men?”

  “I speak of this one whom I serve,” Flynn said, nodding to Bowers, “and myself.”

  Soldado said, “Yet the one who serves is the spokesman.”

  “I speak when the ones before us are not worthy of his voice.”

  “But only worthy of his wonder,” the Apache said confidently.

  “You will be the one to wonder, soon, when you are a witness to his power.”

  “And what if you are already dead?”

  “Your threat is nothing against the power of this man who is silent. And remember these words well, old man. As the hunters of Indians are destroyed, so will you be. They have already aroused his vengeance, which is what you are doing now. For I swear by the sacred pollen which you carry to ward off evil, that if you do not follow us in peace, you will be dragged to San Carlos behind our horses.”

  The Apache’s face was expressionless. The eyes half closed, sleepily. He stared at Flynn a long moment, then his gaze swung to Bowers and as it did he drew the dragoon pistol from his waistband. He raised it slowly, cocking it, then straightened his arm, aiming the long barrel at Bowers and said, “Where is his power now, American?”

  Flynn said nothing.

  The Apache lowered the gun, looking toward Flynn again. He said, “Do you speak in the tongue of the Mimbreño?”

  Flynn was surprised, but he nodded. “I speak some.”

  “Good. Then you will come to the ranchería.” To Matagente, he said, “You will conduct them with three men. The rest of us will come at night tomorrow when this raid is terminated.” He said to Flynn, as explanation, “We have only stopped here for meat.”