Free Scalpers by Ralph Cotton Page A

anything I feel like to him before he dies?”
    â€œHave yourself a good time with him, my word on it,” Pridemore said with a shrug.
    â€œI could do that,” Bertha said under her breath. “I could do that in spades.”
    Pridemore watched her face flush with vengeance at the possibilities at hand. “Power is a wonderful thing, ain’t it, Big Darling?”
    â€œWonderful and then some,” Bertha said, staring at the captain from high above him. “Bigfoot,” she offered, feeling less afraid, more protected than she’d felt in a long time. “I can see where you and I might make a nice place for ourselves.”

Chapter 7

    Captain Penza’s patrol straightened out around the turn in the trail and rode between two high-reaching hills towering on either side of them. From behind the cover of rock and from atop cliff overhangs, Pridemore’s men took all the time they needed. As the scout dropped farther back, searching the upper hill lines halfheartedly, the scalpers homed their rifle sights on the unsuspecting soldiers.
    The well-coordinated ambush erupted so fast and furious that the soldiers hardly knew what hit them. As the first hard-pounding volley of fire exploded on either side, the mercenaries squalled and shouted among the rocks like wild Indians.
    â€œ
Apache!
Take cover!” the sergeant bellowed, yanking his horse around as bullets sliced through the air around him. Soldiers fell from their horses, many never getting their guns raised. Their rearing horses fell too. The captain’s horse reared and twisted wildly midair and came down, turning back onto the trail alongside the sergeant. But before their animals could get the move completed, a bullet from Pridemore’s rifle knocked the captain’s horse off its hooves. Two bullets hit the sergeant at once and slung him from his saddle in a wide spray of blood. As the captain hurried to the cover of rock, Pridemore took close aim and sent a bulletslicing through the back of his leg. The captain fell forward and crawled away quickly.
    In seconds the soldiers were bunched up in the trail, a third of them already down, dead or dying. The fighting wounded threw themselves from their horses and ran to what cover they could take among rocks at the low edge of the trail. A few lay in the trail in the shelter of downed horses. Rifle fire butchered the animals where they lay. Arrows flew in from the hillsides; Pridemore’s men yelped like coyotes. They shouted war cries they had learned from their many Indian battles.
    Seeing the fight was rapidly drawing to a close, Pridemore fired three arrows down into the dead horses below, then tossed the bow out onto the rocks. Return fire from the ambushed soldiers was sporadic and waning. Looking down, Pridemore saw soldiers on foot bounding away over rock and brush along the high hillside.
    â€œAnother terrible attack by the heathen savages,” he said, rising into a crouch, pulling the woman up beside him. “Keep your head down, Big Darling. One of these bullets is apt to find you whether they’re seeking you or not.”
    â€œCareful, Bigfoot,” said Early Doss, still firing at the soldiers in retreat among the rocks. “They might yet get collected and fight back.”
    â€œNaw, little chance,” said Pridemore. “Theseboys are so scared of Apache they see them when they look down the jake.” He gave a dark little laugh, then added, “Get finished up here; then search the hillside. You see any soldier’s hair long enough to look Apache, take it. Bullets cost money—we got to make
something
out of all this.”
    He gave a tug on Bertha’s hand, pulling her along, the two of them moving crouched among the cover of rock. Looking down at the soldiers and horses lying dead with arrows in them, Bertha gave a faint smile.
    â€œMy, my, Bigfoot,” she said, “you manage to play every angle, don’t