The Bounty Hunters

14

Mescal, like tequila, is a juice of the maguey. As colorless as water unless orange peelings or pieces of raw chicken are dropped in while it's standing. When you see mescal a rich yellow, you'll know that's what it is, chicken or orange peels.

Who told him that? A straining, groaning authoritative voice in a stagecoach trying to out-shout axles that hadn't taken grease in forty miles of alkali…coming into somewhere.

Lieutenant Regis Duane Bowers poured himself another drink.

He drank well, because he had a good stomach; though he would have tried to drink as much if he didn't have a stomach, because it was part of being a cavalryman. You can tell a cavalryman by his walk and the way he wears his kepi and by the amount of whisky he can drink like a gentleman. These as much a part of being cavalry as a saber.

Now he was sitting. He wore neither kepi nor saber. And he was drinking mescal. It doesn't matter. It's something inside. Those things help: a slanted kepi and a saber, but they are only badges; you are a cavalryman because you think like one and feel like one and then you know you're one. That's all. Just one of those things you know…and don't let anybody say different.

One of the Mexican girls was looking at him now, a smile softening her mouth as he glanced at her. She was at the table with the four Americans.

His eyes lowered and he sipped at the sweet liquor. There was a lot to think about. But Flynn makes everything sound simple. He looks at things in their proper perspective, things one at a time, and doesn't worry about something that's supposed to happen next week because there's no assurance there will be a next week. That's a good way to look at things, but it takes some doing. Saying, well, we're here; we might as well do the job. That's the easy way to look at things. No it isn't. It's the hard way…when you don't have any business being here. If what he says is true, it's natural to want to go back to Deneen and tell him to go to hell and next time find some authority. Staying on anyway takes humility, doesn't it? It takes something. Something that wasn't handed out with Cavalry Tactics. But that's assuming Deneen doesn't have the authority, and you don't assume anything.

Flynn can almost convince you that he's right even before he says one word. It's his manner. The way he goes about things. He doesn't get excited. He seems absolutely perfectly honest with himself; that's why you believe what he says. After being with him only a few days part of him rubs off. The feeling you've known him a long time. Relaxing. Maybe he's right about Deneen overstepping his bounds…

Don't get carried away. Maybe he is; and maybe he isn't. Remember, you're talking about a colonel with fifteen years and a war behind him. They don't generally make mistakes like that. There's something between him and Flynn, something personal, so naturally Flynn is against him. But I'm glad Flynn's here. He speaks quietly and sometimes you get the idea he's lazy and doesn't care, but I wouldn't want to be fighting against him.

He wanted to be a good friend of Dave Flynn's, and often since leaving Contention, he wondered if Flynn ever thought about their first meeting, at the cavalry post before Deneen came in. He had been aloof then, maybe snobbish in Flynn's eyes. It bothered him, because he hadn't meant to seem a snob. It was just that he wanted to show them he wasn't a kid, that he knew what it was all about. He wanted Flynn's respect…even if he wasn't sure how right Flynn was about Deneen's authority.

He noticed the Mexican girl get up: the one who had been watching him. The man next to her said something and put his hand on her arm, but she jerked away from his grasp and the next moment was coming toward Bowers.

"May I sit with you?"

Bowers half rose, self-consciously, glancing at the other table. Then: The hell with them. She can go wherever she wants. They don't own her.

"I am enchanted."

She smiled. "You speak our language well."

"That was only a word."

"Now you've said five, equally well."

Bowers smiled. "I have learned in the past year to understand some of what is said, but it is yet difficult to speak. Most of the words I don't yet know."

"You need someone to accompany you, to make interpretations." She looked at him slyly from under dark lashes and smiled.

"I would never learn the language that way."

"Perhaps you would learn other things."

He felt them looking at him. "What about your friend?"

She glanced coldly over her shoulder. "He is not my friend; nor any of them there. I amuse myself with them only." Her glance returned quickly as one of the men rose and came toward their table.

It was Lew Embree. He bumped the next table unsteadily. A two days' beard growth darkened his face; mescal showed in his glazed, watery eyes and in the way his mouth was parted, sticky wet in the corners, loose in his bearded jaw.

The girl refused to look at him.

"Honey, I didn't come to see you, but your friend. When I come for you you'll know it." The sleepy eyes went to Bowers.

"I wondered if you knew your friend Frank was here?"

Bowers hesitated. "Frank who?"

"Frank Rellis."

"I don't know anyone by that name." But he remembered it. As he said it he pictured the two riders through the field glasses and the one on the left with the Winchester; then tying that in with what Flynn had told him before. Frank Rellis. The man who shot Joe Madora. Then Lazair mentioning him.

"Frank told how he knew you and your partner. In Contention, as I recollect."

"I've never met Frank Rellis."

The girl pretended to shudder and shook her head. "That one!"

"Well, he says he knew you and your partner."

"He must be mistaken."

"Frank doesn't say much, so when he does it's something he's sure of 'cause he's had all that silent time to think about it."

"If he's not mistaken then you misunderstood what he said."

"I heard him plain as your face tell Curt that he knew you."

Bowers said nothing and looked at his glass.

"He's over eatin'. He'll be back shortly; why'nt you wait to see him?"

"If I'm still here when he comes then most likely I'll see him."

"He said it was in Contention-"

"Look, I've never met Frank Rellis!" He looked at the man steadily now wondering if he was really drunk, even though it was on his face. The girl was suddenly looking beyond him and now he heard the door and the ching of heavy Mexican spurs. Sergeant Santana stopped at the bar.

Lew Embree looked at him a long moment and then glanced at the girl. "Come on, honey."

"I like it where I am."

"You be nice now."

"Go stick your head in it!"

"Honey, Warren's back there at the table cryin' his eyes out for you."

The girl did not say anything now.

Shaking his head Lew Embree looked at Bowers. "Don't these biddy-bitches get uppity though. She suspects you got more money than Warren, which could be a case." He was standing next to her chair. His hand moved to the cane back rest then idly up to the girl's neck, and suddenly, his fingers gripping the white cotton, he jerked his hand down, ripping the loose-fitting blouse away from her back. She was up out of the chair, screaming, holding the front of the blouse to her breasts, running toward the rear of the mescal shop, past the table where Warren and the others were, trying to dodge an arm that reached for her and caught a shred of material. It pulled her off balance, jerking the front of the blouse from her hands and now she made no attempt to cover herself, standing, cursing Embree with every indecent word she knew before running crying through the rear door.

Warren called to Lew, "She looks like she can't hardly wait!"

Still grinning, Lew Embree looked from Santana to Bowers then turned his back to them indifferently and started for the other table. "For a girl that throws it around like she does," Lew was saying, "she acts awful kittenish."

Bowers watched Embree until he reached the other table, then he looked toward Santana.

"Will you sit here?"

The rurale sergeant pushed back his straw Chihuahua hat, shaking his head faintly. "I will be here only a moment."

Bowers stood and moved to the bar carrying the mescal bottle. "Let me buy you a drink." He said then, "I was wondering what that man's name was."

Santana accepted the bottle that Bowers extended and poured a glass half full. "I've never listened for his name."

"That was something he did to the girl, eh?"

"She had her clothes off in his presence before."

"I had the feeling he did it for my benefit," Bowers said, watching the rurale.

Santana shrugged, then drank. He wiped his mouth and said, "He misses no opportunity to show they have bought these women well. But it makes little difference since the women are bought; it's hardly a winning of their affection."

Bowers said idly, "But it would seem to me to be a matter of principle. I don't know if I could just let these men come in and take over all the women. That's if it was up to me."

Santana was watching the ones at the table. "This is not something that will go on always."

"I should think you'd have enough men that you wouldn't have to stand for such nonsense going on. Those are Lazair's men, aren't they?"

Santana nodded.

"Then you must have about three to one on him."

"We have been instructed to treat him with courtesy."

Bowers half smiled. "Where do you draw the line? If a guest at your home made advances to your wife, would courtesy hold you back from dealing with him?"

"There is a difference."

"You live in Soyopa. The women are yours, of your land. Then these come and take whatever they like and make themselves comfortable. Was it your lieutenant who said this about courtesy?"

Santana nodded. "That one."

"He hasn't been to Lazair's camp, has he?"

"No."

"I'm told there were some women there. Not like the ones that work here, but good girls, from another pueblo. Alaejos, somewhere like that. What they were doing to them I've heard called many things…but courtesy wasn't one of them."

"Where did you hear this?"

"From one of the men of the village. Now I'm not sure, that might have been a time ago and now they are gone."

Santana sipped his mescal; he was thinking, and it was even something physical, tightening his swarthy face. His eyes were small in his face and now they did not show as he squinted to make things plainer in his mind.

"When I heard that," Bowers said, "I couldn't help but be angry myself; but one man cannot do anything against all of them."

"What of your companion?"

"That would make two of us."

"No, I meant where is he?"

Bowers shrugged. "Probably at the house of the alcalde, or visiting others. He also cannot understand this immunity that seems to have been granted them."

"Lieutenant Duro-"

"Yes, Lieutenant Duro…who is forced to associate with them only when paying the scalp bounty. The rest of the time he is alone in his comfortable house with little to do-"

"Not always alone."

"But while you perform his work. I have heard that," Bowers said.

"What?"

"Everyone speaks of it. You're modest. It's said about that Duro would accomplish nothing if it were not for Sergeant Santana."

"That is said?"

"You are modest; for you know this better than I. How often does he come from his house into the sun?"

"Little."

"Perhaps for pleasure, but never for work, eh?"

Santana nodded, thoughtfully.

"It seems such a waste. Yet he is the one who insists that you be courteous to the men of Lazair. Has he led you against the Apaches?"

"That one? That son of the great whore would sooner cut his arm off."

Bowers said, sympathetically, "You can find little respect for a man like that."

"None. Just the sight of him is an abuse."

Bowers said nothing, watching him.

Santana said, "In the army it isn't uncommon to find men such as he. I know that for I have served. As a boy I was present at the battle of Cinco de Mayo, where at Puebla, under Zaragoza and this same Diaz we now have, we defeated the army of France."

"That was a long time ago."

"Fifteen years," Santana answered. "But with the clearness of yesterday in my mind."

"And you have served all of this time?"

"Most of it."

"I didn't know you were a veteran of such long service."

"But this is not the army," Santana said.

"More a police force?"

"More an association of bandits. Listen…almost every one of my men has lived his entire life outside of the law. These you meet in all armies, but not in such proportion as here. To organize this, Diaz must have thrown open the jails."

"Then there is a problem making them obey orders."

"Listen." Santana looked at Bowers intently. "There is no problem. These that were conceived in stables and have seasoned in prisons…there is not one of them I cannot handle. If it were not for that pimp of a lieutenant, much more would be accomplished here. Lieutenant Duro sometimes believes he is much man, but it is only his rank that tells him so. Inside of him live worms."

Bowers shook his head. "That's too bad. Here you are, a military man, years of experience and with a force you could probably turn into a fine fighting corps…and they saddle you with an officer who has no feeling for service. I would venture that you could have taken your men even against this Soldado Viejo long before this if it were not for Duro."

"With certainty, even though they are not trained properly for the fighting of Indians; that is, as a body, which is the only way to defeat them."

"Taking them into the hills after Soldado would not be wise then."

"No. We have not been given trackers. How would we find them? And if we did, how would we assault them? Firing, puffs of the powder smoke high up, but when you climb to the place, nothing. Then you carry down your dead. It is always thus with the Apaches."

"But to get them in the open, eh?" Bowers prompted. He pushed the mescal bottle toward Santana, watching the sergeant light a cigar, puff hard, hurrying to light it.

"Aiii-to get them in the open. Listen, when that day comes we will flood them; we will sweep through their ranks and you will see riding you thought was not possible. There are many vaqueros among us; these will sweep them, firing, stinging like a thousand ants, then roping them to be dragged behind the horses. Then, instead of scalps, we will take the entire heads and secure them to poles and place each pole a certain distance apart, all the way to Hermosillo."

"If you get them in the open."

"Yes." Santana's voice was lower, the word part of his breath. Then he said, again excitedly, "Listen, tomorrow with the sun I am taking a patrol toward the pueblo of Alaejos. That is a good direction for Apaches. You come with us. Then, if we see Apaches down from the hills, I'll show you something, man, to tell them back home."

"How long would we be gone?"

"We would return the following day…in time for the fiesta. Dia de los Muertos-"

Santana took one more drink, repeating that he had only a moment, then left the mescal shop.

Red Bowers exhaled slowly, a long sigh. Flynn had it right, Bowers thought. Santana arouses easily, and he hates Lazair's men. This could be all right. This could work, if it's handled properly. Just take it slowly. This could be like war from a general's saddle-moving troops, but only hearing the gunfire in the distance. Here's some practice for you. And then there's Duro…something for his ear.

He paid the bartender and started for the door.

"Boy…you goin' to wait for Frank!"

Bowers glanced back at the table where Embree and the other sat. He hesitated, then went out without bothering to answer.

He crossed the square toward Duro's house, leading his mount, hoofs clopping behind a thin shadow with legs twice as long as they should be. The square was still vacant; the two rurales who had been in front of Duro's were not in sight.

He mounted the stairs heavily, slowly. If he were interrupting anything Duro would hear him and have time to clear away whatever it, or she, might be. That was the gentlemanly thing to do. But when he reached the veranda there was no sound from within. He called the lieutenant's name through the partly opened door. He waited, then pushed in when there was no answer. Calling again, he moved to the bedroom doorwayDuro was on the bed, sprawled on his back. A fly buzzed close to his face, close to his open mouth. The mescal bottle was on the floor, but Duro still clutched the glass he'd been holding when he passed out.

"Officer and gentleman," Bowers said half aloud. He left then.

Lazair counted the scalps again as they returned to camp. He knew there were eight, but there was no harm in a recount. His hunch had paid off. With the rain the streams had filled. He had located his men at three watering places on the chance Soldado's people would come to one of them. And they had.

The second evening they came-seven women and two old men to protect them. And now they had eight scalps. One woman had gotten away. It was almost dark, but best to return to camp now than wait for a war party to come storming back for revenge. You could always pick off a few if you found the right water holes, that was the way to do it; but God, don't try and hit the whole bunch!

He'd sent a man to gather the ones at the other two places, and some men were bringing up the rear to cover sign as best they could in the fast-falling dark. Well, it was a worthwhile two days. He'd get a good rest, maybe have a little talk with Nita, and take the scalps in in the morning. A good day to go to town…there was supposed to be some kind of fiesta.