The Scalp Hunters

by David Thompson

  “Damn it all.”

  “I’m not finished. Nice is for farmers and town folk and those who have blinders on. They think the world is a nice place to live. They think God is nice and they should be the same. Nice is stupid.”

  “Rub my nose in it, why don’t you?”

  Venom shook his head. “You’re not paying attention. This isn’t just about you. It’s about nice. Nice people make me sick to my stomach because the world isn’t nice. It’s hard and cruel and doesn’t give a damn whether people live or die. As for the Almighty, if there is one, he can’t be all that nice if he lets you and me do the things we do.”

  “You’re no churchgoer, that’s for sure.”

  “Now, now. Don’t get personal. How many times must I tell you? This is about nice. You sit there and you say that you’re asking me nice. Well, you can take your nice and shove it up your ass. That’s where it belongs.”

  “So your answer is still no?”

  “You catch on quick.” Venom figured that was the end of it, but Logan had more to say.

  “What if I pay you and just you? All the money I make this time?”

  “That wouldn’t be fair to the others. Some of them are bound to want to have her.”

  Logan brightened. “What if I pay you to let me have her after they’re done with her?”

  Before Venom could respond, Potter called out from down the line.

  “Look to the north!”

  Everyone did. Coils of gray smoke were writhing skyward about a mile off. Not just one coil but three.

  Venom drew rein. “Redskins wouldn’t be so stupid as to give themselves away like that.”

  “It must be white men,” Logan agreed.

  “Let’s go have a look-see. It could be cavalry. The army hardly ever gets out this far, but if it’s a patrol it’s best we find out which way they’re heading so we don’t run into them later.” Venom rose in the stirrups and swept his arm to the north then reined toward the smoke.

  Logan stayed at his side. “You haven’t answered me about the white girl. Can I have her after the rest have a turn? I’ll pay you for the privilege.”

  “I want a million dollars.”

  “Be serious.”

  “You just don’t know when to quit,” Venom said coldly. “My answer now is the same as it was when you first asked. Now get back in line, and send the Kyler twins up here.” When there was potential trouble or killing to be done, Venom relied on the Kylers. The pair had a natural knack for death dealing, just like some folks had a knack for arithmetic or for painting or music. Presently they joined him, each holding his rifle across his saddle with his thumb on the hammer and finger on the trigger. They were always primed, these two.

  “What’s it to be then, boss?” asked the one on his right.

  For the life of him, Venom couldn’t tell them apart. One was called Seph and the other was Jeph, but they were so alike it was impossible to say who was who. “I don’t know yet. If it’s the army, we play at being sociable. We’ll tell them we’re buffalo hunters.”

  “Reckon they’ll believe it?” asked the twin on the left.

  “They might know about those Pawnees we killed,” said the other.

  “It’s not a crime to kill Injuns. But send word back down the line for everyone to keep their scalps in their saddlebags.”

  “I’ll do it,” said the twin on the right, and reined around.

  “What was Logan talkin’ to you about?” inquired the Kyler who was still there.

  Venom glanced at him sharply. The twins tended to keep to themselves and rarely poked their noses into what anyone else did. “What do you care?”

  “Seph and me think he was askin’ you about the white girl, and we don’t like it much.”

  About to answer, Venom noticed that Jeph’s ear had a small nick out of it. Apparently he’d been cut once. “I’ll be damned.”

  “What?”

  “I finally found a way to tell you two peas apart.” Venom chuckled, then sobered. “Now what’s this about the white girl?”

  “Seph and me don’t cotton to the notion of white girls bein’ hurt. Redskins, greasers, darkies, it don’t matter with them. White girls it does.”

  “How come you never said anything before? Don’t tell me Seph and you grew scruples all of a sudden.”

  “Rubicon was sayin’ as how this one is real pretty.”

  “Oh. So it’s all right for Logan to carve up the ugly ones but not the good-looking ones.”

  “White is white. We held our tongues before because you let him and you’re the boss. But it festered some, and we have to speak our piece.”

  “I’m glad you came to me and didn’t confront him.” Venom could see Logan getting riled and the Kylers making worm food of him. Logan was tough, but when it came to being deadly the twins had him beat all hollow.

  The smoke from the campfires continued to writhe into the sky. Venom took out his spyglass. He counted ten wagons drawn up in a circle near a tract of trees. They were prairie schooners, red and blue with canvas tops. Men with rifles were herding oxen toward the trees, possibly to let them drink at a spring. “Unless I miss my guess it’s a bull train.”

  “Freighters?” Jeph said. “They must be on their way to Santa Fe.”

  “Could be.”

  Through the spyglass Venom saw a man posted outside the wagons cup a hand to his mouth and point in their direction. Others came out of the circle, each bristling with weapons. “Remember to smile and be nice.” He grinned at his use of the word.

  A thick man with powerful shoulders came to the front and planted his stout legs. He put his hands on a pair of pistols wedged under a brown belt and regarded them with the eyes of a wolf. His chin was covered with stubble and he had a short-brimmed hat pushed back on a brown thatch of hair. “What do you want?” he demanded as Venom drew rein.

  “We saw your smoke and thought maybe you might have coffee on.”

  “Indeed we do, but we’re not inclined to share. If it’s a warm welcome you’re looking for, find yourself a pilgrim train.”

  Venom saw why the freighters had stopped; one of the wagons had a busted wheel. A pair of brawny freight men had used a jack to raise the bed and were busy replacing broken spokes. “You’re not very neighborly, friend.”

  “No, I’m not. Nor am I your friend.” The man nodded at the circle. “This is my train. I’m the captain, Jeremiah Blunt. You will notice there are twenty-two of us and only eight of you. If any of you so much as lifts a gun, you will all die in your saddles.”

  “Damn, you’re a mean cuss,” Venom said with genuine respect.

  “I’ve never lost a wagon,” Jeremiah Blunt declared. “Never lost a man, either. I don’t intend to start now.”

  “All we wanted was to share your fire and some coffee.”

  “I don’t make a habit of repeating myself, but your ears must be plugged with wax. Our coffee is ours. Our fires are ours. You have come as close as you are going to and now you will leave.”

  “I can see you treating redskins this way, but we’re white.”

  “You say that as if skin matters. It doesn’t.”

  Venom’s admiration was changing to anger. “I don’t like being treated as if I’m no account.”

  “Do I look as if I care what you like?”

  “We’re buffalo hunters.” Venom tried a new tack. “We thought you might have seen—” He got no further.

  Blunt cut him off. “When trees grow fur.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re no more hide hunters than I am.” Blunt sniffed a few times. “You don’t have the stink.”

  “You can tell what a man does by how he smells?” Venom sarcastically asked.

  “Some, yes. A miner smells of the dust and the earth. A cowhand smells of horses and cows. Buffalo hunters smell of blood and gore. Your stink is different. You stink of death.”

  It was such a remarkable statement that Venom was left speechless for one of
the few times in his entire life.

  “I don’t know what you men are and I don’t care. All I care about is my train. Be on your way and don’t come anywhere near us, or the next time we’ll shoot you on sight.”

  “You’re awful rude.”

  Blunt drew a pistol and pointed it at Venom. The click of the hammer was ominously loud. “Talking to you is like talking to an infant. Make yourselves scarce or we’ll make you dead.”

  The other freighters raised rifles and pistols.

  Venom was fit to explode. It was bad enough to be treated this way. It was worse that his men had to see him humiliated. All he’d wanted was to jaw a spell, maybe find out if the freighters had come across Indian sign. He reined around but paused to say, “I won’t forget this. I won’t forget how you’ve treated us for no reason.”

  “Mister, I have all the reason in the world,” Blunt responded, the pistol rock-steady in his hand. “The freight in those wagons has been entrusted to me. Those who hired me know I’ll get it where it has to go. Neither Indians nor brigands nor Nature itself will stay me in my course.”

  Potter cleared his throat. “Why are we wasting our time with this cantankerous bastard when there’s that white girl and her friends to find?”

  Jeremiah Blunt glanced sharply at him.

  Venom swiveled to give Potter a look that made him recoil as if he’d been hit. Swearing under his breath, Venom turned back to the freight captain. “Thanks for nothing, you grumpy goat.” He rode off and didn’t look back. He didn’t want his men to see how mad he was. He must always give the impression he was made of iron. Any hint of weakness, and one of them might take it into their head to challenge his leadership. Logan, for instance.

  Suddenly the Kyler twins were on both sides of him.

  “What the hell do you two want?”

  “We can fix him for you. One shot is all it would take.”

  Venom glanced at their ears. “He’s not worth the bother, Jeph. His men might come after us, and like Potter said, we have that white girl and her Injun friends to think of.”

  “I’d never let anyone talk to me the way Blunt did to you,” Seph remarked.

  “No, you’d have shot him and gotten the rest of us killed.” Venom was about to add that they should fall back in line when the rest of his men came up alongside.

  “Say the word, boss,” Potter said.

  “You’re lunkheads, the whole bunch of you.”

  “We could wait until tonight and jump them,” Potter persisted.

  “Maybe lose half of us, and for what?” Venom said gruffly. “To punish them for their insult? Then what? We sell their freight? Because we sure as hell can’t turn in their scalps for bounty money. Hardly any of them had hair dark enough or long enough to be mistook for Injun hair.”

  Logan snorted in what could only be contempt. “If it’d been me the bastard treated that way, I wouldn’t slink off with my tail between my legs.”

  Venon reined up so abruptly that Calvert, who was behind him, nearly rode into his horse. Everyone else also came to a stop. “What did you just say?”

  “A man has to stand up for himself or he’s not much of a man.”

  “You’re suggesting I’m yellow?”

  “What? No. You make an insult where none is intended.”

  “Now I’m stupid as well as yellow.”

  “Damn it,” Logan said. “Stop putting words in my mouth. I don’t blame you for being angry. That wagon boss made you eat crow. But don’t take it out on me. Go back there and knock his teeth in.”

  “I have a better idea.” Venom drew his pistol and shot him.

  Chapter Ten

  The hard part was not knowing when the scalp hunters would catch up. It was like sour food in the pit of Evelyn’ s stomach, an ache that wouldn’t go away. The others were worried, too. She could see it in their faces. Except for Plenty Elk. He didn’t seem worried at all. Maybe it was the deaths of his friends. He acted eager for a fight, as if he had something to prove. Whatever his reasons, Evelyn was glad he was there.

  Waku and his family weren’t fighters. The Nansusequa had been a peaceful tribe. They fought only when provoked. From what Evelyn could gather, most eastern tribes didn’t esteem counting coup as highly as tribes west of the Mississippi River. Why that should be was another of life’s many mysteries.

  All morning they rode hard. When the sun was at its zenith, they stopped to rest their lathered mounts.

  Evelyn passed out pemmican. She gave a piece to Plenty Elk and he signed his thanks. He had more to sign.

  ‘Scalp men catch us tomorrow.’

  ‘No today?’

  ‘They have far ride where black man kill my friend. They have far ride here.’

  Evelyn wasn’t so sure. The scalp hunters would push hard, too. ‘Maybe when sun go down.’

  ‘Question. White men fight night?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evelyn was aware many tribes usually only waged war during the day. Some whites believed it was due to a superstitious taboo. Common sense was the real reason. Fighting in the dark, when a person could hardly see, was an invite to an early grave.

  ‘Question. You have husband?’

  Evelyn was startled. It had been her experience that Indian men, especially Indian men her age, only asked that question when they had designs in that direction. ‘I have no mate,’ she signed.

  ‘You beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You smell good.’

  Evelyn was flabbergasted. Here they were, fleeing for their lives from a pack of demons in human guise, and this young warrior was trying to court her. ‘You smell my sweat,’ she signed.

  ‘Sweat smell good,’ Plenty Elk persisted.

  Men, Evelyn decided, were too ridiculous for words. She smiled and went over to Dega and gave him a piece of pemmican from the beaded parfleche her mother had made.

  “What you two hand talk about?” Dega asked.

  “Nothing much.”

  Dega had been watching them closely, and he was sure it was more than nothing. He had seen her face, seen how she reacted to something the Arapaho warrior signed. “Him have big ears.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dega touched one of his own ears to emphasize how much smaller his were. “His ears too much big. Look funny.”

  “I thought the Nansusequa don’t judge people by how they look but by how they are inside,” Evelyn reminded him.

  “We do.” Dega felt it necessary to justify his lapse. “I not judge his ears. I just say they big.”

  “He can’t help how he was born.”

  That she would defend the Arapaho worried Dega considerably. “You like his ears more or my ears more?”

  “Ears are ears.”

  “Please. Which ears best?”

  Was it her imagination, Evelyn asked herself, or was Dega jealous? “Mountain lion ears are sharpest,” she answered, and went over to Teni. The older girl took a piece of pemmican and thanked her in the Nansusequa tongue.

  Dega squatted and held a counsel with himself. Perhaps it was time he told Evelyn how he felt. Until now he had hidden his true feelings, afraid that if he revealed them, she would want nothing more to do with him.

  Evelyn faced east and shielded her eyes with her hand. The distant haze was unbroken save by a flock of birds in flight. She turned and nearly bumped into Waku, who had come up behind her. “Goodness. Scare a person, why don’t you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. I’m jumpy.”

  “No sign of the scalp men yet.” Waku had been anxiously watching their back trail all morning.

  “Not yet, no.” Evelyn had been thinking, and she had an idea. For it to work, she needed to know something. “Tell me. Will your family kill if they have to?”

  “My son and me kill if bad men catch us,” Waku promised.

  “No, not just you two,” Evelyn clarified. “What about Tihikanima and Teni and little Miki? Have they ever killed?”

>   “They are women. They are not warriors.” Waku liked the Kings, liked them dearly, but they were too prone to violence. In that regard they were no different from the tribes of the region, who waged war for the sheer excitement. An attitude that ran contrary to all he believed. The Nansusequa valued peace above all else.

  “Shoshone women will kill to defend their village. The same with the Sioux and the Crows and the Blackfeet,” Evelyn said. “Will your wife and daughters do the same?”

  It hit Waku, then, what she was suggesting. “You want them to help kill the scalp men?”

  “We could ambush the whole bunch,” Evelyn proposed. “Plenty Elk says there are nine of them. Well, there are seven of us. I could give one of my pistols to your wife and another to Teni. You and Dega both have bows. So does Plenty Elk. I have my rifle. If we did it right, if we let them come up close so we couldn’t miss, we could drop six of them before they got off a shot. That would leave three for us to deal with.”

  Waku was amazed she would propose subjecting his wife and daughters to such terror. “Not Tihi, Teni and Miki.”

  “I can teach Tihi and Teni to shoot the pistols. It’s no feat at all if your target is near enough. You just point and squeeze.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? It’s our best chance of ending this and saving all our lives. The scalp hunters won’t ride into an ambush twice.”

  “Not my wife and daughters.”

  “You don’t want them to kill even when they might be killed? Where’s the logic in that?”

  “You do not understand,” Waku said.

  “Enlighten me.” Evelyn was convinced an ambush would work but only once. They must make it count. They must slay as many scalp hunters as they could with their first volley of lead and arrows.

  “You are a white girl…”

  “I’m half Indian,” Evelyn reminded him.

  “Your mother is Indian, yes. But you do not look like her. You look like your father. You are more white than Indian.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Tihikanima and Tenikawaku and Mikikawaku are Nansusequa. They live the Nansusequa way. We are raised to not take life unless we must.”