and the pipe, he figured, had to be around somewhere.
“If you live,” McCulloch said, “I think I’d name you Bear Killer.” To his surprise, he realized he was smiling down at the kid.
All right, he told himself. Get on your feet and start walking. Let’s get that horse and get back here and figure out what to do with this buck before you go traipsing through these mountains looking for a herd of wild mustangs.
A horse whinnied, and McCulloch looked up to see his black coming toward him. He let his right hand fall onto the butt of the Colt.
It was his horse, all right. He knew that whinny, and he knew the color and the saddle, but the horse carried a stranger. Three other men rode with him, two on paints, one on a dapple gray. One had an eagle feather flapping from his black hat. Another wore a Mexican sugarloaf sombrero with bandoliers crisscrossing his chest and a Spencer repeater braced against his thigh. The third was dressed in buckskins. The fellow riding McCulloch’s horse carried a Winchester across his pommel, had red hair down to his shoulders, and scalp locks secured to his vest like medals.
They reined in about twenty-five feet from McCulloch, keeping about ten yards between them. Spread out.
Smart, McCulloch figured.
The Indian boy’s eyes shot open, and he seemed alert, like he knew there were four strangers with them.
“Be quiet,” McCulloch whispered in Spanish, hoping the boy understood that. “Don’t move.” He would have said, “Play dead,” but he couldn’t figure that out in Spanish.
He waved with his left hand and painted on a welcoming smile that wouldn’t fool an imbecile. “Thanks for bringing back my horse.” His head tilted to the man on his far left, the one on his horse.
“Your horse?” asked the man in buckskins, mounted on the dapple. He laughed. “Bert found this horse lopin’ across the valley like it didn’t belong to nobody. And seein’ his come up lame and we had to shoot ’em, he figured it was a gift from God.”
“You shot a lame horse?” McCulloch figured this man to be the group’s leader.
“Well, not really. That’s just a figure of speech. Amigo yonder slit his throat. Didn’t want to risk firin’ a shot. But had we knowed there was a horse lover around us, we woulda brung him directly to you.”
Amigo, McCulloch guessed, would be the Mexican with the Spencer, riding one of the paints.
Bert said, “You got any proof that this horse is yourn?”
McCulloch said, “You’ll find my brand on his left hip. You’ll find my name and my brand burned on the underside of that saddle. You’ll find a book with my name in it in the saddlebags.”
“You got a book with your own name in it?” The leader laughed again. “That makes you famous.”
McCulloch chuckled and nodded. “Hell, boys, I bet that book’s got your names in it, too. It’s the List of Fugitives from Justice. They hand those out every year to Texas Rangers.”
The smiles vanished. The faces tensed. Two hands inched slightly closer to holstered revolvers, but not close enough to make McCulloch lose his cool and make the first move. The one holding the Winchester wet his lips. The man with the Spencer straightened in his saddle.
“You a Ranger?” asked the man on the dapple gray.
“Open that saddlebag,” McCulloch said calmly, “And you might find a cinco pesos star.” That was the Mexican coin most Rangers used to carve out their badges. Some were quite crude, but they all meant one thing. Frontier Battalion.
His Mama would have been pleased. He had not told a lie. He said they might find a badge in there. Hell, they might not. To put it bluntly, they wouldn’t. And that List of Fugitives from Justice was two years old. McCulloch brought it along to rip out pages when he couldn’t find anything dry enough for kindling to light his evening or morning campfire.
“Well,” the leader said, “I guess that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that that horse is yourn, all right. But this is a hell of a place to be left afoot. Since we was kind enough to bring you your hoss back, how ’bout you offer us a reward?”
“Now, wait a minute, Linton,” Bert said.
Without taking his eyes off McCulloch, Linton said to Bert, “Shut up. You was the fool who didn’t realize your hoss had tossed a shoe.” He smiled, even took his right hand away from his holstered revolver and waved. “Trade. The Texas way.”
“What do you have in mind?” McCulloch asked.
The man’s head tilted directly at McCulloch. “That red devil you got there. Looks half dead already.”
McCulloch answered with a lethal stare.
“Mister,” Linton said dryly, “I got three men with me. And I ain’t no slouch with a handgun.”
“You got three scalp hunters with you,” McCulloch said, spitting out the words like a disgusting curse.
“It’s a livin’. We been trailin’ him for nigh on four days.”
McCulloch laughed. “If it takes you four days to find a puny little boy on a vision quest, I’m surprised you even caught my horse.”
The Indian boy’s eyes widened and focused on something behind McCulloch.
He saw relaxation settle over the four strangers and knew he had been stupid. There were five men—not four—and the fifth was behind him. McCulloch saw the boy lunge over, reaching for the knife. Saw the redhead with the Winchester and the Mexican with the Spencer bring up their long guns.
Some extra sense told McCulloch not to worry about the man behind him. Looking for him would put his back to the four horsemen. Besides, he already knew where they were.
The Colt leaped into his right hand, and he fanned back the trigger and shot the long-haired redhead off his black horse. McCulloch moved just as the Spencer barked. From his new position, he took careful aim while the big Mexican was cocking the rifle on his stutter stepping horse. McCulloch touched the trigger and dived before the smoke cleared.
The Indian boy fell as the knife he had ripped out of the ground sailed. McCulloch rolled over in the grass, glanced behind him, and saw a man in leather pants and a white beard trying to pull the rusted knife blade from his belly. His hands kept slipping off the bloody deer-horn handle already coated with crimson blood. Then the man’s eyes glazed over and he fell to his side. The Indian boy didn’t move. McCulloch did. He fired the next three shots as fast as he could, while crawling toward the Winchester. A bullet punched a hole in the dirt to his left, but he grabbed the lever, pulled the rifle to him, and fired from the prone position.
By then, Linton was hightailing it as fast as he could, and the guy with the eagle feather in his hat was trying to control his paint while helping the redhead onto the back of his saddle. Although McCulloch could have shot him out of the saddle, he drew aim on Linton, whose dapple was raising dust like there was no tomorrow. If McCulloch hadn’t rushed his shot, there wouldn’t have been a tomorrow or even another hour for Linton. He could have chanced another shot, or he easily could have shot Bert in the back as he was carried off to lift scalps another day.
Backshooting
