Stand Up and Die. William W. Johnstone

Bert was the first to bob his head. Fisher nodded, too.

      Linton sighed and said, “Look, boys. That Ranger knows what we look like, so scalp huntin’ ain’t gonna be such a good way to make a livin’ in this part of Texas. My plan is to ride north. They’ll be lookin’ for us south. Ride up to the Panhandle. Might run across some Comanche camps. Then cut across New Mexico.”

      He grinned. “They pay for bounties in Sonora, down south of Arizona Territory. I met me a fine girl down in Nogales years back, meanin’ Nogales south of the border. In Mexico. We can collect a passel of scalps and sell them to whatever they call the mayor in those Mexican towns. And here’s the real genius of my plan.”

      He paused, liked his idea, and said, “Do you know what you’ll find in Mexico and Arizona?” Again, before they could think of an answer, which undoubtedly would be wrong, Linton told them. “Mexicans. Nothin’ but Mexicans.”

      He laughed again. “And do you know somethin’ ’bout Mexicans? I never paid that much notice before. Here we know a lot of those greasers, like Amigo, and he would have frowned upon it had he knowed it was somethin’ I been thinkin’ about. But now that Amigo’s burnin’ in Hell, I got no reservations.” Linton thought they might have figured out his scheme, but their faces told him that had not happened, and would not happen.

      So he told them. “Mexican hair can’t be told apart from Apache or Comanche hair. We kill us some greasers, scalp ’em, and make their topknots look like it come off some Apache or Comanche buck. Boys, it’s a lot easier to kill a Mexican peon than it is to kill a Comanche Dog Soldier.”

      “Dog Soldiers,” Fisher pointed out, “Is Cheyennes. Not Comanches.”

      Linton shook his head and asked, “Well. You boys comin’ in? I’ll buy the first two rounds.”

      Again, he had to wait for the two imbeciles to look at each other. They shook their heads, frowned, and told him, “Sorry,” at the same time.

      Bert continued. “I don’t think I could kill no Mexican who ain’t done me no wrong.”

      “And,” Fisher said, “To be honest with you, I’m sort of sick to my stomach about what all we been doin’. I guess seeing Amigo and Greasy cut down in the prime of life, just make me see the light.”

      Linton nodded. “Well, boys, if that’s your play, that’s your play.” He gestured, though, again at the smoke rising from the hills. “But you better take a good long look at that before you ride back to check on two dead men.”

      They turned in their saddles and stared at the smoke.

      Linton shot them both out of the saddles. Their horses bolted, but only for about twenty yards, so worn out they were. Three men came out the door, but Linton grinned at them and said, “They pulled on me, boys. Thought they could take my scalp and pass it off down below the Rio Grande as a Comanche buck’s. Never could stomach a scalp hunter. You boys help me bury them varmints, and I’ll let you keep their horses. Worn out, but a little rest, a lot of water, and some hay and they’ll be good as new.”

      He wasn’t sure if Fisher or Bert really planned to go back after their now-dead-as-they-were pards, or if they might have planned to go to the law and try to collect the reward on Linton. But the main reason he shot and killed them both was that he figured it would be easier to find men who wouldn’t mind being scalp hunters in New Mexico and Arizona. And well, if those two men got arrested by that hard-rock Texas Ranger who had killed Amigo, or any sheriff, marshal, or bounty hunter . . . they would likely give a complete description of Linton. Pards weren’t like they used to be.

      Hell, he thought, they never was a pard a man could trust.

      But in Two Forks, a man minded his business. He could have a whiskey and be on his way. He’d head up north, just like he told those two corpses stiffening on the dirt. Maybe stop in Five Scalps. Then ride west.

      CHAPTER TEN

      “You gutless puke.” Sean Keegan cursed the undertaker. “How much does the county pay you to bury a convicted murderer and owlhoot?”

      Undertaker A. Percival Helton wiped his bald head and said in his irritatingly squeamish voice, “That’s not the point, sir.” He was a short man, pale like most undertakers were, but pudgy unlike most of the men who did business with the dead. Maybe that’s because undertaking still proved to be a booming business in the remote frontier of West Texas, and a man could get fat if he ate nothing but chicken fried steaks and greasy enchiladas.

      “It damned well is the point,” Keegan said, and he pointed up at the dead man still swinging from the gallows. “He’s dead, and he needs burying, and from the records I found in the county sheriff’s office, you signed a contract to bury Tom Benteen, also known as Tom Lovely, alias Lovely Tom. Well, that’s him up yonder, you weasel, and I don’t like folks walking by and looking up at him like he was the Lord Jesus on the cross. He ain’t. He’s a rotten, murdering devil whose soul be burning in hell, and I want him cut down and buried. Now. With the rope still around his neck and his face planted down, so he can see exactly where he’s going.”

      “That contract,” A. Percival Helton whined, “Has been invalidated. It wasn’t a legal hanging.”

      Keegan spit on the grass. “He was to be hanged today. Sentenced legally, upheld by the governor of the Great State of Texas, and he was hanged. Just because the hangman got killed—”

      “And there you have it.” The high-voiced, rotten snake had found something he could sink his teeth into. “The Benteens shot the bloody hell out of Purgatory City, and I am far, far too busy preparing the dearly departed for their funerals. Citizens of our county and our glorious town. They deserve burying, and, as the only undertaker in Purgatory City since Willard Carradine coughed himself to death from consumption and Alfred Davidson decided that El Paso was more to his liking, I think my duty rests with tending to the needs of those fine people.” And just to cut Sean Keegan to the quick, the whining miserable excuse for a man added, “Surely, Titus Bedwell, gallant soldier and God-fearing servant to our state and our county and our country, deserves my attention much more than a pathetic killer, whoremonger, bank robber, arsonist, and horse thief like Lovely Tom Benteen. Or, sir, do you disagree?”