The Scalp Hunters

by David Thompson

  Evelyn King was close to Tenikawaku’s age. She wore buckskins and moccasins and had a Hawken rifle cradled in her left arm and a pair of pistols tucked under a leather belt. Vitality gleamed in her green eyes, the same vitality that made her every movement as fluid as the graceful leaps of an antelope. “Look at me, Dega.”

  Degamawaku was puzzled. Why did she tell him to look at her when he already was? He was trying hard to master the white tongue, but it was proving as easy as wrestling a mud-slick snake. “I look.”

  “Here I am, wearing buckskins instead of a dress and traipsing around the prairie with you and your family. You’d never think to look at me that two years ago I had it fixed in my head that I was going to move back to the States.”

  “The States?”

  “Yes. Remember? That’s what my people call the land east of what you call the Father of Rivers. I was bound and determined to be a city girl and spend the rest of my days in civilized society.”

  Dega wasn’t sure what all of that meant. He seemed to recall that whites called their villages “cities.” What appalled him was the idea that she wanted to leave the mountains. “You still want go?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “No. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided to stay out here.”

  “Why?”

  Evelyn glanced away. She wasn’t about to tell him of the strange feelings that had come over her lately, feelings the likes of which she never felt, feelings she only felt when she was around him or thinking about him.

  “Why?” Dega asked again to show her he was genuinely interested.

  Evelyn shrugged. “It’s just one of those things. We think we know what we want when we don’t. I reckon if we all knew our own minds as well as we like to think we do, we wouldn’t make as many mistakes.”

  Dega tried to link her words into some semblance of meaning. As best he could work it out, she was saying that it was important to think. “True,” he agreed. Given his limited grasp of her tongue, he had found that simple answers were best.

  Evelyn smiled. “Have you noticed how much alike we are? Oh, I know you’re red and I’m white, and you’re a guy and I’m a girl. But deep down we have a lot in common.”

  Dega uttered the first thing that popped into his head. “We both have noses and feet.”

  Peals of mirth rippled from Evelyn. “Goodness gracious, the things you come up with. You’re a hoot, Dega, and that’s no lie.”

  Dega remembered being told once that a “hoot” was the sound an owl made. But since he hadn’t made an owl sound he must be missing her meaning. “I hoot?”

  “It means you make me smile.”

  “That good, yes?” Dega asked. His people had long believed that making others happy was one of the reasons they came into the world. Making Evelyn happy was especially important to him.

  “That’s very good.” Evelyn glanced away again. She was becoming much too brazen, she told herself. Never once, by word or deed, had Dega so much as hinted that he cared for her any more deeply than he cared for his sisters.

  “I be glad you come hunt,” Dega remarked.

  “That’s another thing. I’ve never been much of a hunter. Oh, I’ve killed for the supper pot. But I never went on a buffalo hunt with the Shoshones even though my mother and uncle practically begged me.”

  “My father want buffalo meat.” Dega had been perfectly content to stay in King Valley and spend every spare moment he could with Evelyn. Then his father took it into his head to go hunt buffalo.

  “Blame Shakespeare McNair. He went on and on about how exciting it is to bring down a big buff, and he got your pa all excited.” Evelyn gestured. “Now here we are.”

  So long as she was there, Dega didn’t care where they were. “Here,” he said happily.

  “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “How life works out sometimes. We’re walking along minding our own business and life kicks us in the britches.”

  Confusion racked Dega. He remembered that “britches” was a white word for “pants,” and that “life” referred to being alive, but he couldn’t fathom what being alive had to do with being kicked in the pants. So he did what he often did when she confused him; he smiled and repeated what she had just said. “In the britches.”

  Evelyn loved his smile. She had never told him that, but he had the nicest teeth. Strange that she should notice. To her best recollection, she’d never paid much attention to teeth before. “My pa likes to say it’s the Almighty’s way of keeping us humble.”

  “Humble?”

  “You know. Meek and mild and respectful.”

  “Respectful?”

  “Yes. When you treat another person the way you’d want them to treat you. Nice. Friendly. With respect.”

  Dega brightened. At last something he understood. “Respect be good. Nansusequa believe respect all things.”

  “A fine philosophy as far as it goes. But how do you respect a bear about to eat you? Or a hostile about to slit your throat?” Evelyn could think of a host of other instances.

  Dega was amazed at how her mind worked. It was always bouncing around all over the place. “Can respect bear. Just not let bear eat you.”

  Evelyn chuckled. “True enough, I suppose. But the last thing on my mind when something is trying to fill its belly with mouthfuls of me is treating it with respect. I’d rather shoot it.” She caught herself, and shook her head. “Listen to me. I sound more like my brother every day, don’t I?”

  Dega answered as honestly as he knew how. “Brother sound like man. You sound like woman.”

  “I certainly hope so, you charmer you.”

  For the life of him, Dega couldn’t recall what a charmer was. She was smiling, though, so he figured it must be a good thing. “Me great charmer.”

  More mirth spilled from Evelyn. She liked his sense of humor almost as much as she liked his teeth. “You know, I’ve never met anyone I can talk to as freely as I can talk to you.”

  “Talking you much nice,” Dega said. Inside he cringed at his poor use of the white tongue. It was so hard to master. His father said it was because the Nansusequa tongue and the white tongue were so unlike. In the Nansusequa language, a word had one meaning and one meaning only. In the white language a word might have five meanings and each was shaded differently so that it must be used exactly right or it made no sense. Recently he had begun to despair of ever learning it well enough to make Evelyn proud.

  “I wonder what it is about you,” Evelyn said. Secretly, she had begun to suspect and the suspicion troubled her. She told herself she was too young. She told herself she had no interest in growing attached to someone. She told herself she was just being silly. Then she would look at him and something stirred deep down inside, something that never stirred before. She shook her head in annoyance.

  “You all right?” Dega had found that her face often gave away her moods much better than her words did.

  “I couldn’t be happier.” The devil of it was, Evelyn truly couldn’t. She liked being with him more than she liked just about anything. Yet more reason for her to be troubled.

  Evelyn took a few slow breaths to compose herself and saw that the rest of the family had stopped. She brought her mare to a halt and wondered why Teni and Miki were grinning.

  Waku said, “We find buffalo soon, you think, Evelyn King?”

  “There’s no predicting,” Evelyn replied. “At this time of year most are to the south, but there’s always some that stick around. I’m surprised we haven’t come across a few by now.” She paused. “There’s no need to be so formal. Just call me Evelyn. I get to call you Waku, don’t I?” She liked the custom they had of allowing those who were near and dear to them to use a short version of their name. Their full names were a mouthful.

  “I hope we find buffalo soon.” The hunt had been Waku’s idea. His wife had seen a buffalo robe that belonged to the wife of Zach King and mentioned that she would like to have a robe of her own
one day. He’d taken that as a hint, and here they were.

  A gust of wind against Evelyn’s back prompted her to swivel in the saddle. To the west, dark clouds coiled and writhed like so many snakes. A thunderhead was moving in. It might pass north of them and it might not. She pointed and said, “We need to find shelter before that hits.”

  “You do not like rain?” Waku asked.

  “I like it just fine. It’s the storm I can do without. I’ve been caught in one or two prairie storms, and believe you me, it’s like being caught in the end of the world. The rain falls in buckets, the wind is fit to blow you over, and then there’s all that lightning.”

  Waku thought she exaggerated, but he used his heels and tugged on the lead rope to the packhorse.

  Dega studied the dark clouds. They didn’t appear particularly ominous, but he had learned to trust Evelyn’s judgment. If she was worried, they should be worried. In his own tongue he said, “We would be wise to do as she advises, Father.”

  Motioning at the expanse of green that stretched to the eastern horizon, Waku said, “Show me where.”

  For as far as the eye could see there was flat, flat and more flat. Not so much as a single tree to the east, north or south.

  Ahead, dirt mounds sprouted out of the earth.

  A prairie dog town, Evelyn realized, and was about to say they should give it a wide berth when Waku reined to the right to go around. She did the same. Out of the corner of her eye she admired Dega’s handsome profile. He glanced at her, and she quickly averted her gaze and hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  Evelyn couldn’t say exactly when, but a change had come over her. She was different somehow. She’d asked her mother about it, and her mother smiled knowingly and said she was on the cusp of womanhood, and that all women went through it. Which didn’t make the changes any less disturbing.

  A sound filled the air, a rattle like that of dry seeds in a gourd.

  Alarm spiked through Evelyn. She had forgotten. Prairie dog towns were home to more than prairie dogs. They were also home to creatures that fed on the prairie dogs. Creatures like ferrets—and rattlesnakes. Even as she realized what the sound signified, her mare whinnied and reared. Evelyn grabbed at the saddle, but she was too slow. She was unhorsed.

  The jolt of hitting the ground jarred Evelyn hard. She heard Dega and the others cry out, and she went to roll over so she could push to her feet.

  The next instant a reptilian head reared, its mouth spread wide, its fangs bared.

  Chapter Three

  His last name was Venom. Those who knew him said the name fit his nature like a tight sock, but they never said it to his face.

  Venom had a first name, which he never used. It was Nadine. If anyone else used it he kicked their teeth in. He hated it. He hated a lot of things. He hated preachers because they had their heads in the clouds. He hated kids because they were sniveling brats. He hated women because they put on airs. He hated dogs because they were always sniffing the hind ends of others dogs, and he hated cats because they were always rubbing against him and he couldn’t abide being touched by anything or anyone unless it was a woman he paid for.

  Venom hated Mexicans. He hated blacks except when it suited his purpose. He hated Indians, all Indians, with a fierce hate born of the loss of his father to a barbed shaft when he was seven. He hated Indians so much that when he drifted down to Santa Fe after the beaver trade petered out and met a man by the name of Kirker who offered him a job scalping redskins for money, he eagerly accepted.

  The Mexican government was paying bounty for Apache scalps. Good money. A hundred dollars for a warrior’s hair, fifty dollars for the hair of a female, twenty-five for the hair of what Venom liked to call “Apache gnats.”

  Kirker had formed a company of scalpers made up of men who could hold their own against the most formidable warriors on the continent. Men without scruples. Men who regarded killing Indians as exterminating vermin. Men who could take a squalling Apache infant and bash its brains out on the rocks.

  Venom fit right in. He took to his new profession with a zeal that at first amused and then troubled the hard men he worked with. One day he went out and slaughtered a harmless Pima family—father, mother and three small children—and turned their scalps in for the bounty, claiming their hair belonged to Chiricahua Apaches.

  That angered Kirker. Not because Venom had done it; Kirker did it, too. Kirker was angry because Venom bragged about it. The Mexican government turned a blind eye to the slaughter of innocent Indians so long as it was done quietly. Kirker didn’t want Venom spoiling a good thing. He told Venom to scalp-hunt by the rules.

  Venom said the rules be damned, he would kill any redskin he pleased. When Kirker told him that if he couldn’t follow orders he couldn’t be in Kirker’s company, Venom formed his own company. Within a year his company was earning more bounty than Kirker’s, but the more scalps they took, the harder it became. The merest whisper that Venom and his men were coming, and every Indian for a hundred miles, hostile and peaceful, melted away until it was safe to come out again.

  It got so that killing Indians didn’t bring in enough money. Venom started killing long-haired Mexicans and claiming their scalps belonged to Indians.

  Then Venom heard that the government of Texas was offering bounty money for Comanche scalps. He figured that Comanches would be easier to catch and kill than Apaches, so off to Texas he and his company went. He figured wrong. Soon they were back to their old tricks of killing friendly Indians and Mexicans and even a few whites with long black hair.

  One evening Venom and his company came on a lone Mexican rider, a youth in a fine sombrero and expensive clothes, riding a grand bay. An entire silver mine went to decorate the youth’s saddle. The youth’s dark hair, unfortunately for the youth, fell well past his shoulders.

  Venom pretended to be friendly. The boy claimed to be related to the alcade of San Antonio, but Venom didn’t believe him. In his eyes all Mexicans were born liars.

  So Venom pointed into the distance and asked if that was a buffalo he saw, and when the youth turned to see for himself, Venom buried his knife between the boy’s shoulder blades. He helped himself to the scalp—and the grand bay and the fancy silver saddle, besides.

  All went well for a couple of weeks. Then Venom heard that the law was after him. The boy had been telling the truth about the alcade, and someone got word to the authorities.

  Texas was suddenly too hot for Venom. He decided to hell with Texans and took his company east to St. Louis for a much-deserved debauch. Whiskey, women and cards soon ate up the last peso in their pokes.

  Venom’s company headed west again after more scalps. Since Venom couldn’t return to Texas, he headed for the province of New Mexico. He had barely started out when inspiration struck.

  Friendly Pawnees rode up to Venom’s camp and asked if he had any liquor they could buy or trade for. Venom smiled and invited them to sit by his fire. He passed around a flask and while the Pawnees were sipping and smiling, his men pounced.

  Just like that Venom had seven new scalps. It occurred to him that if he sought Indians out on the way to Santa Fe, preferably the peaceful ones who rarely fought back, he’d have a lot of scalps to turn in. In fact, if he did it right, his packs would practically bulge with bounty.

  So far he had twenty-three scalps.

  Venom wasn’t happy. He paced back and forth, his jaw muscles twitching, and glowered at his company. “You call yourselves scalp hunters? What gall. We had four bucks in our sights and you let two of them get away.”

  A heavyset man named Potter nervously shifted his weight from one pudgy leg to the other. “They were too quick for us, boss.”

  “Speak for yourself, you tub of lard,” Venom snapped. “And since when is a man on a horse faster than a bullet?”

  “We hit one,” declared a tall bundle of whipcord and bone. “That should count for something.”

  “Not when they don’t go down, Tibbet.” Venom gestured i
n contempt. “Here I thought I’d hired the cream of the Injun killers, and all of you are plumb worthless.”

  Of the eight men, five withered under his glare. Three didn’t.

  One was called Logan, and he had been hinting of late that he would make a better leader than Venom.

  The other two were as alike as peas in a pod, with good reason; they were twins. Both had strawcolored hair and blue eyes and freckled complexions. The Kyler brothers hailed from Kentucky. That was all anyone knew about them. That, and they would kill anyone or anything, anytime, anywhere. Now one of the twins said in his slow Southern drawl, “My brother and me don’t much like bein’ insulted, Mr. Venom.”

  His sibling bobbed his chin. “That’s right. We did our part, and there ain’t a coon here who can claim different.”

  “Did I blame you? Either of you?” Venom retorted. “You’re the best shots in the outfit. If you had shot at the two who got away, they wouldn’t have got away. You never miss.”

  “Oh, now and then we do,” said one of the twins.

  “Remember that Comanch that time?” said the other.

  Venom snorted. “He was five hundred yards away. You’d need a damn cannon to hit something that far off.”

  “We’ve done it before,” said the first twin.

  “These rifles of ours ain’t for show nor ballast,” said the other. “But the sun was in our eyes that day.”

  “You don’t need to convince me.” Venom never antagonized the pair if he could help it. Secretly he thought they were as dumb as tree stumps, but they were also quite deadly.

  “Do we go after those two?” asked Rubicon. He was black. Venom tolerated him because Rubicon was the best tracker Venom ever came across.

  “Do buffalo roll in their own piss? Of course we go after them. But there’s no hurry.” Venom stepped to where the two dead ones had been laid out. Drawing his skinning knife, he tested the edge on his thumb and smiled when a thin red line appeared.

  No one objected. They knew he liked to do the cutting. Even those he didn’t kill he often scalped himself. Not that he kept the scalps if he didn’t make the kill. He just liked to lift hair. That, and one other thing he liked.