Stand Up and Die. William W. Johnstone
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eating more bear meat, what looked to be old juniper berries, and chased down with McCulloch’s coffee and the last of the Mexican’s whiskey, McCulloch was trying to figure out what to do with this kid. He couldn’t keep hanging out there forever. If he took the boy to a Comanche camp, he figured the Comanches would kill any white man foolish enough to enter a Comanche camp before anyone had a chance to explain.
While he was considering his options and vaguely wondering Why didn’t I just kill this Indian while I had the chance? the boy cleared his throat. McCulloch set down his coffee cup and stared over the fire as Wooden Arm moved his hands. Why are you in these hills?
How he managed to sign with a busted arm splinted in two places amazed the former Texas Ranger.
McCulloch answered honestly. I seek mustangs.
Why?
Comanches like horses, McCulloch thought. He signed, I like horses. They make me rich. Like Comanches.
The boy laughed.
McCulloch drank more and ate the last of the bear meat on his plate.
The boy signed, I can help you.
McCulloch blinked. Help me do what?
I know horses, too. I am Comanche. No one knows horses better than Comanches.
McCulloch nodded with honesty. That is true. Comanches are the best horsemen on the plains.
I will help you.
Now, McCulloch shook his head. No. Your arm is—
Quickly signing, the boy did not let him finish. A Comanche with one arm is better than ten Texans when it comes to capturing wild mustangs.
Actually, McCulloch didn’t think Wooden Arm used the word Texans. It seemed more like skunks, but he figured Texans had to be the general idea.
As McCulloch tried to think of a way to respond, Wooden Arm signed, You save my life. I must repay my debt.
McCulloch pointed at what passed for the grave of the two dead scalp hunters. You have repaid your debt.
The boy shook his head. Then he smiled and said in Comanche while signing. Then we will be like brothers. You and I will find mustangs. We will become rich. Together.
And in English, Wooden Arm said, “Is right.”
Staring harder, McCulloch wondered how much English this little Indian knew, but Wooden Arm spoke to end McCulloch’s suspicion. “Is right. No mas.” Then he signed, I can speak ten words in the Kiowa tongue, but with these hands, I speak all languages. As do you.
McCulloch brought the coffee cup up, lowered it, and looked over at the two horses. Like that was a sign. Two horses. A Comanche. A Comanche on horseback didn’t need two arms to help work a herd of mustangs. A Comanche could likely find a horse herd faster than McCulloch could alone. And two men, even if one of those men was a boy, would have an easier time driving wild mustangs back to his ranch outside of Purgatory City. Yeah, it was a gamble, but something about it struck McCulloch as right.
Never being one to count those chickens—he knew that plans and dreams often broke like eggs—McCulloch couldn’t help but believe that he might be able to pull off this crazy idea after all.
He nodded. “Is right,” he said, and lifted his hand toward his new partner. They shook the Comanche way first, and then they shook like way of the white Texans.
Wooden Arm grinned, raised his head to the blackening sky, and howled like a coyote.
CHAPTER NINE
Linton had been a scalp hunter since he had first heard about how the Mexican government in towns close to the American border would pay a handsome amount of money for an Apache or Comanche scalp. In all those years, what had it gotten him—other than a lot of money that he usually spent in two or three nights? A dapple horse. A suit of buckskins. Some disease he never brought up, especially to the prostitutes he paid. Fading eyesight. A bad scar across his back. A bullet that the sawbones in Nogales hadn’t been able to dig out of his left knee. And two pards, Bert and Fisher, neither one worth a lick of salt.
“What about Amigo?” Bert asked as they rode into Two Forks, a settlement where horses could be traded, whiskey could be drunk, and a man might be able to rest a spell without answering any questions.
“He’s dead,” Linton answered.
“You sure?” Fisher asked.
“Maybe you boys want to ride back to the Davis Mountains and see for yourselves.” Linton’s knee hurt for he had been riding a long damned time. His horse was as played out as his two pards.
“How about Greasy?” Fisher asked.
“Oh, he’s definitely dead,” Linton said. “Saw the Ranger’s bullet hit him.”
“Hell,” Bert said. “Now that Texas star packer’s gonna collect the bounty on that Comanche kid.” He leaned out of the saddle and pointed, shaking his finger at Linton the way that schoolteacher did him back in Corpus Christi. “It’s yer fault, Linton. You said taking that little kid’s scalp would be easy pickin’s.”
Partners come easy, and Linton considered killing Bert but then he’d have to kill Fisher, too. He was the kind of person who would turn state’s evidence to avoid getting his necked stretched.
“Did I ever tell you about the schoolmaster I had back home down south years and years ago?” Linton didn’t wait for one of his two surviving pards, each of them a damned fool, to answer his question. He never waited. “I had my pa’s razor, and I cut that man’s finger off.” He laughed at the good memory. “That sent Juliette Jameson and all the other ten kids in that school outside screaming their heads off. And then I used that razor to cut that rotten apple’s throat. Boy, I’d never done that before—cut a man’s throat like that, is what I mean. Could hardly believe how much blood poured out of that little slit I’d made. And before the light died in that schoolmaster’s throat, I tried to use the razor to take the lowdown skunk’s scalp. Didn’t get much. Didn’t even keep it. Just dropped it on his paddle.” He nodded with pleasure. “That was the first time I tried to take a scalp. Can’t call it my first scalp because, well, hell, boys, I wasn’t no more than thirteen.” He laughed and climbed out of the saddle beside the stone fortress that made up all there was to Two Forks, except for a few lean-tos, a lot of corrals, and two buildings that passed for barns out in that part of the frontier.
Bert and Fisher remained on their horses.
Linton tilted his head to the door that led to Two Forks’ sole place of business. “You boys ain’t thirsty?”
Bert shook his head, pouting like Linton’s brother used to do after Linton has whipped the kid’s arse.
Fisher said, “Bert and me don’t believe in not avenging the death of a pard.”
“Two pards,” Bert said.
Linton frowned. “You want to go back after that Ranger and that Indian. For a kid’s scalp that’ll bring us twenty-five pesos? That’s not a hundred. That ain’t my idea of good business, boys, but if you want to go, turn around and look. Look up at that ridge over yonder way. Not that way, you damned fools, back where we was comin’ from.”
They looked.
“What do you see?” Linton asked.
“You mean that little bit of smoke?” Fisher answered with another question.
“Exactly.”
“That might be that Ranger’s campfire. Might be he’s takin’ care of Amigo, if that greaser’s still alive,” Bert said.
“That’s Comanche smoke, boys.”
“Well,” Bert said, “Maybe the boy kilt the Ranger. And is roastin’ him for supper. Then we can ride back to that little valley and kill the buck and get