The Scalp Hunters

Chapter Seven

Venom was in no hurry. The two Dog Eaters who got away only thought they were safe. He would catch up to them presently and relieve them of their lives and their hair.

His company strung out behind him, Venom looked for the marks Rubicon made to guide them. At intervals the grass had been ripped out exposing the dirt. Each mark was about a yard long and half a foot wide and tapered in the direction they were to go.

Venom thought of the blood he had sucked from the scalp earlier and smacked his lips, wishing there had been more. Most folks didn’t realize how delicious blood was. Back when he did it for the first time, when he was dying of thirst on the desert, he’d never imagined how much he would like it or how addicting it could be. He hadn’t been joshing when he said that it was too bad blood wasn’t sold in bottles like whiskey and ale.

Hooves thudded and he acquired a shadow at his elbow.

“What do you want, Logan?” Of all his men, Venom trusted Logan the least. Logan was snake-mean and as shifty as desert sands on a windy day, and Venom suspected he had aspirations.

“How long do you aim to wander all over this grassland looking for redskins before we head for New Mexico?”

“As long as I want. Do you have a problem with that?”

“You’re the boss.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“Damn, you are a testy bastard.” Logan laughed, but the sound rang hollow. “Have I ever complained?”

“You’re too smart to gripe to my face.”

“I wouldn’t gripe behind your back, either. If I didn’t like the way you were running this outfit, I’d say so.”

“Or try to take over.” Venom cocked an eyebrow. “What the hell difference does it make how long we take to get there?”

Logan rubbed the stubble on his chin. He looked at the clouds. Finally he said, “You remember that cantina in Santa Fe?”

“The one you spent all your time in? What about it?”

“You remember Maria?”

Venom snorted in amusement. Maria waited on the tables. She had long black hair and large moon eyes and more pounds on her than a heifer. She was so heavy she waddled when she walked. “What about her?”

“I’ve got plans for her.”

Venom scowled. “You leave her be, you hear me? Too many people would miss her. There’d be folks nosing around, wondering where she got to. I learned my lesson with that Mex in Texas. Never kill anyone who will be missed.”

“No one will ever suspect me.”

“I just said no.”

Now it was Logan who scowled. “You’re not being fair. You get to drink blood all you want, but you won’t let me do what I like?”

“What you like is to tie women down and do things that would get you hung in the States. What you like is to see them suffer. What you like is for them to beg and cry.” Venom shook his head in disgust. “What you like is sick.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve tortured. I’ve seen you.”

“Now and then, sure. If someone makes me mad. Or if I need information. But I don’t get the pleasure out of it that you do.”

“It’s not fair, I tell you.”

Venom resented his tone. “I’ll make it plain. You’re not to touch Maria. Buck me on this and you will by-God regret it.”

Logan was holding his rifle across his saddle. He started to raise it, but then lowered it again. “I don’t like being threatened.”

“I don’t give a good damn what you do or don’t like. You’ll do as I damn well tell you.”

“This is how you treat me when I’ve ridden with you longer than practically anyone?”

“This is how I treat you. Let me hear your word on Maria.”

Logan swore and then growled, “I give you my word I won’t touch the cow when we get to Santa Fe. Happy now?”

“If you need a female so much, we’re bound to come across plenty of squaws. Do them.”

“They’re not as much fun. Most don’t beg or cry.” Logan went to rein around to fall back in line, and stiffened. “Look! Injuns!”

Venom whipped around in the saddle. To the northeast, so far away they were little more than vague shapes in the heat haze, were a lot of riders. Even at that distance it was obvious they weren’t white.

Venom turned and pumped his right arm three times. It was a signal he had worked out. To a man his company promptly dismounted. Each gripped the bridle of his mount. Tugging and pulling, they coaxed their animals to the ground. Then they crouched with their rifles at the ready, their mounts now barriers against enemy lances and arrows.

Venom had a lot of tricks like this. Tricks that kept him and his men alive.

“Use your spyglass,” Logan urged.

Venom disliked being told what to do, but he was about to take a look through the spyglass anyway. He opened his saddlebag, slid out the metal tube, and telescoped it as far it would go. Raising it to his eye, he studied the warriors. Lakotas, unless he missed his guess, or Sioux, as they were more commonly called.

“Well?” Potter nervously called out. “Can you tell who they are?”

Venom told him. “I count at least thirty. I think they’re wearing war paint.”

“You think?” Logan said.

“Have they spotted us?” Potter asked. “Folks say the Sioux are as fierce as Apaches. I sure don’t want to tangle with any.”

“You’re a damn coward,” Venom told him. A loyal coward who would do anything Venom wanted, no questions asked. “You can breathe easy. It appears they have no idea we’re here.”

“That’s a lot of scalps,” Tibbet remarked.

“Go ahead and try if you’re that stupid.” Venom learned early on that in the scalping trade a man must know when to cut and when to fight shy and keep his own scalp.

“By my lonesome? No thank you. I like breathing as much as the next gent.”

Venom kept watching through the spyglass. He didn’t know what to make of it when the entire war party stopped. Then he saw one of the warriors point in his direction, and all the Sioux turned. “Damn!” He jerked the telescope down behind his horse.

“What’s the matter?” Logan asked.

“I think one of them saw the sun reflect off the metal.” Venom should have been more careful. He should have held his hat over the spyglass. It was the little mistakes that did a man in.

“Look again,” Potter urged. “Maybe they’re coming.”

“Idiot.” Venom could still see them, off in the haze. They hadn’t moved. He glanced down the line to make sure none of his men was holding his rifle where the sun would gleam off the barrel as it had off the spyglass.

“They’re movin’ on!” one of the Kyler twins hollered.

That they were, continuing to the north, raising dust in their wake.

Venom stayed put until the war party was well gone. Then, rising, he gave the signal to stand.

“That was a close one,” Potter said.

When they moved on, they did so warily. Venom sent the Kyler twins on ahead to ride point and sent Tibbet and Potter out to each side to cover their flanks. He deemed it unlikely the Lakotas would return, but it was better to be safe than dead.

In the excitement, Venom had forgotten to look for Rubicon’s marks. When half an hour went by and none appeared he began to worry they had lost the trail. He was so preoccupied with finding it that when a rider reined in next to him, he glanced up in annoyance.

“What the hell do you want now?”

Logan answered, “It’s not our day.”

“Care to explain, or am I supposed to figure it out for myself?”

Extending an arm to the southwest, Logan said, “I haven’t seen one of those critters this far out in a coon’s age.”

Venom sensed what he would see before he turned. A quarter of a mile off, lumbering on all fours, was a creature as massive as a buffalo but ten times as dangerous, and as difficult to kill as anything. “Hell.”

A huge grizzly was bound who-knew-where. The hump, the tree-trunk legs, the huge head with jaws that could crush bone at a bite—the last thing Venom wanted was to have it attack.

“It hasn’t seen us yet.”

“It’s the nose we have to worry about.” Venom licked the tip of his finger and raised it over his head. The breeze was blowing from west to east—from the bear to them. They were safe so long as the wind didn’t shift. One whiff of their scent and the grizzly might decide to fill its belly.

“That hide would fetch a good price at Bent’s Fort.”

“Scalps fetch more.” Plus, Venom didn’t intend to stop at Bent’s. The last time they had, on their way to St. Louis, Ceran St. Vrain, who ran the place along with the Bent brothers, treated them as if they had the plague. St. Vrain had a low opinion of scalp men, as he’d made clear when he cornered Venom in the stable.

“I’d like a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

Venom had been honing his knife. “I suppose if I do, you’ll have your word anyway?”

“I’m serving notice. You would be well advised to heed, or the consequences will be severe.”

“Damn, you talk pretty,” Venom taunted, but his barb had no effect on the haughty master of the trading post.

“These grounds are a safe haven for anyone who desires to visit. That applies to red and white alike.”

Venom knew that. Tribes at war put aside their animosity when they visited Bent’s or they were banned from trading, and no tribe wanted that, not when Bent’s Fort was the only place within a thousand miles where they could trade for everything from rifles to steel knives to pots and pans. “So?”

“So I’m aware of how you earn your despicable livelihood, Mr. Venom. I don’t approve, but then each man to his own affairs.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“However”—St. Vrain leaned down, his face as hard as iron—“there will be no taking the scalp of any Indian who visits our post. Not here, not for fifty miles around.”

“Fifty miles?” Venom bristled. “Who do you think you are, God Almighty? You have the right to tell me what not to do when I’m within these walls, but you sure as hell don’t have the right to tell me what to do fifty miles from here. You don’t own the prairie.”

“True,” St. Vrain conceded. “But all I have to do is snap my fingers and I’ll have twenty armed men ready to enforce my edict, along with a large number of our Indian friends.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yes.”

The man’s bluntness rankled. Venom wasn’t used to being treated as if he was of no account. “I should gut you where you stand.”

“You won’t find it easy. And keep in mind that if you try, you and your cutthroats won’t make it out the gate alive.”

The hell of it was, Venom was forced to back down. St. Vrain’s men were a salty bunch, and the Indians all thought highly of him. “Listen. I’m not after scalps. We’re here to buy grub and tobacco and whatnot. Then we’ll be on our way.”

St. Vrain turned to go. “Remember what I told you about the fifty-mile limit. Word will get back to me if you don’t heed. You might think you can lift a few scalps and get clean away, but how long would you last with a five-hundred-dollar bounty on your own hair?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me and find out.” St. Vrain walked to the stable door and turned. “Some of us, Mr. Venom, happen to like the Indians. We regard them as human beings. One of my partners, William Bent, is married to a Cheyenne. All he has to do is get word to them and every warrior in the tribe will descend upon you and do what should have been done years ago.”

On that sour note, their talk had ended. Just thinking about it left a bitter taste in Venom’s mouth.

A shout brought him out of his reverie.

“Here come the Kyler twins! And Rubicon is with them!”

To say Venom was surprised was an understatement. He contained his anger as the rest of his men converged, and when the twins and the black man drew rein, he jabbed a finger at Rubicon. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to track those Arapaho bucks.”

“I did,” Rubicon said, his face alight with suppressed excitement. “I killed one and took his hair and was saving the other one for you, like you wanted. But then some others came along.”

“Other Arapahos?”

“No. Indians, the likes of which I’ve never seen, all of them wearing green buckskins.”

“The deuce you say.”

“A whole family, from what I could make out, five in all.”

“This gets more interesting by the moment.”

“There’s a mother and a couple of girls. One of them is almost full grown and as pretty as can be.”

“Well, now.” Venom grinned.

“There’s more. I’ve saved the best for last.”

“Spit it out, damn you. What could be better than five scalps and some fun, besides?”

“There’s a white girl with them.”

Venom’s grin widened. “Did you hear him, boys? Christmas has come early this year.”