Ambush at Shadow Valley (5 page)

Hector looked the ranger up and down. ‘‘Does this not affect you? Do these people's lives mean so little to you—''

‘‘Stop where you are,
Guardia
,'' the ranger said, cutting him off. ‘‘Don't start thinking you know what I care about and what I don't.'' He nodded toward the land surrounding them and at the hoofprints leading away on the ground. ‘‘For all I know these men could have staged this whole terrible scene, stunned us just enough to catch us with our guard down. I have to try to protect the living. I can't protect the living unless I'm one of them.''

Hector turned his eyes to the rugged terrain. ‘‘But they know you are on their trail. Would they dare stop long enough to set a trap for you?''

‘‘They're
running,
Hector,'' said Sam, stepping out into the water toward the old Mexican's body, ‘‘but they're not running
scared
.'' As he spoke he dragged the old man's body to the bank and laid it beside the girl. ‘‘Yes, they will take time to set a trap, or get drunk, or rob and kill.'' He nodded at the girl's blanket-covered body. ‘‘Or, take time to sate their own twisted pleasures.''

‘‘I must apologize to you, Ranger,'' Hector said. ‘‘I had no right to say such a thing.'' He also nodded at the girl's body. ‘‘All of this has affected me in a way I cannot explain.''

‘‘I understand,'' Sam replied. ‘‘I would be worried about you if it didn't affect you. Remember, we're all after the same thing out here, we lawmen. We just go about it in our own ways.''

"Sí
, I will remember,'' said Hector. ‘‘Now that I am a lawman, like you, I must learn not to let such a sight bother me, no matter how terrible it is.'' Hector's eyes were fixed on the blanketed body. Shaking his head slowly, he added, ‘‘It might take me some time.''

‘‘Learn fast,
Guardia
,'' said Sam. ‘‘Time has a way of stopping short on a lawman.'' Turning to the horses, he took their reins and stepped away downstream, to let them drink in clearer water.

Catching up and taking the reins from Sam, Hector led the horses and said, nodding back toward the bodies, ‘‘Which of these animals do you think did this?''

‘‘Both,'' Sam replied. While the horses dipped their muzzles into the flowing water, he stopped and scanned the winding trail as it reached upward around the hillside, then disappeared into the rock and trees. After a moment of consideration he said, ‘‘Nate Ransdale has been rumored with doing this sort of thing before. But he's never been charged with it. If I were to speculate, I'd say it was his doing, and Suelo Soto went along with it.'' He spit and ran a hand across his lips. ‘‘Far as I'm concerned, anybody stands by and allows something like this to happen is just as guilty as the one who did it.''

‘‘Yes,'' said Hector, ‘‘that is what I say too.'' He patted his horse's neck as it drew water. ‘‘We have been on their trail only one day and already their crimes have grown darker and uglier.''

‘‘They'll only get worse if we don't stop them,
Guardia
,'' said Sam. ‘‘If this is Soto's first time raping, killing and taking a scalp, it's only because nobody introduced him to it before now. We'll find out now what influence Ransdale has on him, even though Soto is the one in charge.'' He gave Hector a grim look. ‘‘If we don't stop them soon we'll find out if Soto has an appetite for torturing and killing innocent women.''

‘‘A woman?'' Hector shook his head. ‘‘She was not a woman, this poor helpless girl,'' he said. ‘‘I saw her. She was
una niña joven.
A child so young and innocent she died not knowing such animals as this live in the world.''

‘‘Yeah,'' Sam said flatly, not wanting to talk about it any further, but seeing that Hector, like any man new to such situations, needed to get some things settled in his mind.

‘‘I have seen it many times,'' Hector continued bitterly. ‘‘These men come into my country and think they can do whatever they please. It is as if my people do not count as human beings to these gringos.''

‘‘Ransdale is a Texan, but Suelo Soto is from far south of here, Venezuela I believe,'' Sam said quietly.

Hector stopped talking and took a deep breath. ‘‘Again I must apologize, Ranger,'' he said. ‘‘Not everyone from your world is bad, and not everyone from my world is good. It is a fact that wise men must come to realize.''

‘‘Apology accepted, and your reasoning understood,'' Sam said. ‘‘When a man hunts in the dark it's easy to want to shoot the first target he sees.'' Seeing that his stallion had finished drawing water, he reached down and took his reins from Hector. ‘‘We've got some daylight left. We best push on harder before these two get a chance to kill again.''

‘‘Wait,'' said Hector. ‘‘What about these two? We cannot leave them lying here this way!''

‘‘I didn't intend to leave them lying,
Guardia
,'' Sam said. ‘‘I figure we can lay some rocks over them, keep the wolves and coyotes off them until somebody comes along and finds them.''

‘‘No,'' Hector said firmly. ‘‘We must bury them. There are things that must be done . . . words that must be said over them.''

Sam stopped and looked at him. ‘‘Every minute we spend here makes the odds better that we'll find the same thing waiting for us along the trail. If you want to stay and bury them and say some prayers over them, do it. But I'm more concerned about the living right now. You've seen what these two will do next chance they get.'' He started to walk away.

‘‘Go on then, Ranger,'' Hector said. ‘‘I will try to catch up to you when I am finished here. These are my people! I owe to them in death the same respect I owed to them in life.''

Sam stopped in his tracks and took a deep breath. Maybe the sight of the dead young girl had hurt him more deeply than he cared to admit. Throughout gathering their bodies the question had nagged at him, how much of the mindless torture had happened while they were still alive? His hands clenched into fists as the question came and went again. ‘‘You're right, Hector.'' He let out his tight breath and with it released his fists. ‘‘These people have been through enough. I'll see if there's a shovel somewhere in the cart. We'll get them buried. You can say the words.''

When Soto and Ransdale reached a stretch of flatlands between two towering hillsides, they stopped their horses long enough to sip tepid water from a canteen and look along the trail behind them. ‘‘We wasted too much time with the old man and the girl,'' Soto said, eyeing the fresh scalp hanging from Ransdale's saddle horn. The big paint horse stood beside him on its lead rope.

‘‘Shhh,'' Ransdale said with a strange grin, running his hand down the long, glistening black hair. ‘‘You'll hurt her feelings talking like that.''

Soto shook his head and squirted out a mouthful of water. ‘‘You really are as crazy as everybody in Yuma said you are.''

‘‘Crazy?'' A flash of white-hot anger streaked across Ransdale's eyes, but he managed to mask it with his smile and said, ‘‘Nobody in Yuma ever said nothing like that to my face.''

‘‘Crazy doesn't bother me,'' said Soto. ‘‘I must be a little loco myself, going along with something like that back there.''

Still stroking the long, black hair as if in fond memory, Ransdale said, ‘‘Yeah, I noticed I didn't have to talk you into it very hard, did I?''

‘‘No, you didn't.'' Soto wiped his shirtsleeve across his mouth. ‘‘I expect a man is capable of just about anything once out of a hellhole like Yuma. It's been a long time since I had a woman.''

‘‘Me too,'' said Ransdale, ‘‘if you can call
la
pequeña
here a woman. Right, little one?'' he said to the scalp at his fingertips.

‘‘Young woman, old woman, what's the difference? It's done,'' Soto said, looking away from Ransdale and his morbid conversation with the dead girl's hair, and the way he caressed it as if it were alive. He spotted the thin cut of a narrow trail leading off across a rise covered with tall bracken and wild grass. In the distance he caught a pale spiral of gray smoke adrift on a breeze. ‘‘Are you still hungry?''

‘‘I can eat, that's for sure,'' said Ransdale, still engrossed in fondling the silky, black hair. ‘‘What have you got in mind?''

‘‘I think there's folks over there a few miles, if you can pull yourself loose long enough to go see.''

‘‘I believe I can,'' Ransdale said, bending slightly in his saddle, raising the long hair to his face and breathing in its fragrance. ‘‘Just so you don't think there's something wrong with me,'' he added, ‘‘I didn't take this hair just to be doing it. This thing is worth money in Durango you know.''

‘‘Apache hair used to be worth a few dollars but not anymore,'' said Soto, ‘‘especially not
Mexican
hair.'' He nudged his horse forward as he spoke. ‘‘You've been gone longer than I thought.''

‘‘I'm not talking about the government bounty on Apache scalps. I know that's over with. I'm talking about private collectors,'' said Ransdale. ‘‘I know a man who buys any kind of hair—Irish red, Swedish yellow. He don't care so long as it's woman.''

‘‘How much money are you talking about?'' Soto asked skeptically."

‘‘Not a lot of money, but some. Every little bit helps.'' He grinned again and nudged his horse along beside Soto, letting the long hair lie draped over his knee as if liking the feel of it. Shrugging he added, ‘‘So, if I can catch myself a woman alone and make a little something for my trouble, what's the harm in it?''

‘‘It's none of my business.'' Soto stared ahead toward the faint waft of smoke in the distance, deciding not to take part in any more of Ransdale's bizarre indulgences.

‘‘Wait a minute,'' said Ransdale. ‘‘Have you got a mad-on because those two are the same as you?''

Soto glared at him. ‘‘They weren't the same as me. They're Mexican. I'm not Mexican"

‘‘I know where you come from,'' Ransdale said confidently. ‘‘It sure as hell ain't from this country. You might talk better English than the rest of us at Yuma did. Your ways might be a little more polished. But you're not American and I know it.''

Soto ignored him as they rode on. When he did speak again, he asked, ‘‘Why did you cut up her face?''

As if resenting the question, Ransdale spit and said defiantly, ‘‘Why not?''

Ten minutes later, at a thin line of trees atop a low rise, the two stepped down from their saddles and walked forward until they looked down at a sun-bleached plank-and-adobe shack. ‘‘Goatherds,'' Ransdale said, eyeing a small corral where a few spindle-legged goats milled near a water trough. A few yards from the goats a large bitch dog with a thick, matted coat lay watching the animals as if they were her pups.

‘‘Looks like dinner to me,'' Soto said flatly, glancing from the goats to the plank shack.

‘‘I can get the rifle and pick the dog's head off from here,'' Ransdale said.

‘‘I see no need to kill it just yet,'' said Soto. He watched a middle-aged woman step out of the shack, her graying hair gathered and tied up in a large bun atop her head. Behind her an elderly man, bowed deeply at the waist, ambled along, clutching a cane for support. ‘‘I bet these folks are accustomed to feeding every wayfaring pilgrim who comes along.''

‘‘Well, that includes us,'' said Ransdale. ‘‘We're pilgrims for sure.''

‘‘Tell me,'' Soto said, stepping back and turning toward the horses, ‘‘how much does your private collector pay for gray hair?''

‘‘I don't know, but we'll damn sure find out.'' Ransdale grinned as they approached the horses. ‘‘I bet you start taking a liking to scalp collecting before it's over.''

‘‘Don't count on it,'' said Soto. ‘‘I'm in the business of opening railway safes without blowing them up. I'm not looking to change professions.''

‘‘I don't mean as a new profession,'' said Ransdale. ‘‘I'm talking about doing it for fun as much as anything else.''

Soto only stared at him blankly as they gathered their horses' reins, the lead rope to the big paint, and stepped up into their saddles.

In the littered front yard the woman stood watching as the two riders moved into sight from the shelter of the trees. She used her hand as a visor across her brow and offered a smile until she got a better look at the men. Then her smile turned troubled, and she said over her shoulder in a German accent, ‘‘Papa, get yourself back inside. Take Big Bess with you.'' She glanced around the yard and saw a smaller, younger dog staring toward the riders. ‘‘Take Little Bobby too,'' she added firmly. Under her breath she said in a worried tone, "This is trouble if I've ever seen it."

‘‘What? What's that you say?'' the old man asked in an ancient, crackling voice, his accent thicker than the woman's. He had to squint to see even a blurred image of his daughter. ‘‘Why must I get the dogs in?''

‘‘Papa, don't question me,'' the woman said. ‘‘Get inside. Stay inside and keep your mouth shut no matter what happens out here.''

‘‘Oh . . . ,'' the old man said warily as understanding came to him. He turned his dim eyes toward the sound of hoofbeats, then shuffled back inside the run-down shack, calling both dogs to follow him.