The Bounty Hunters

He said to Fly

"They must have."

Fly

In the shallow bed of the first wagon they found a woman with a child in her arms and next to her were two children clinging tightly to each other. No one was in the second wagon, but in the brush close by they found others. Most of them had been shot from close range.

Up beyond the second wagon they saw a woman lying in the middle of the trail. Her arms were spread with her fingers clawed into the loose sand. Fly

Fly

"They're changing their ways," Fly

Bowers looked at him questioningly.

"Have you ever seen an Apache ambush?"

Bowers hesitated. "No."

"Well don't put this down as typical."

Bowers said, with embarrassment, "I'm sorry…about this."

"I knew Anastacio. The others I met only once."

Bowers looked up. "I thought you knew the girl well."

Fly

"They must have taken her."

"And perhaps others." Fly

"What other tribes are down here?"

"No other, to speak of."

"Well?"

"It isn't Indian."

"You're serious?"

"It was made to look Apache. And they did a poor job."

"I've heard that Apaches are known to kill."

"With bullets?"

"Why not?"

"Because they can't walk down to the corner and buy a box whenever they feel like it. Almost all the people were killed after they'd given up-with bullets-and that isn't Apache. On top of being hard to get, a bullet's too quick."

"I've been told not to try to figure them," Bowers said.

"That might apply to why they do something, but you can make sense out of how they do it." To Fly

They took Nita, and perhaps others, he thought. The taking of women is Apache-but it is hardly exclusively so.

And there were other things that he felt that told him this wasn't the work of Apaches. But it would take time to tell Bowers.

"Lieutenant," he said then. "You've got your work cut out for you. Get your tactical mind turning while I go up-trail."

Bowers began gathering the bodies, dragging them to a level sandy opening off the trail. His body was tense as he worked. He was aware of this, but he could not relax. He thought: They looked deader because their clothes are white-and because they were shot in the back of the head.

He looked up-trail, up the slight rise over which Fly

This was not cavalry. This was not duty his father, the brigadier, had described. A year at Whipple Barracks and he had not once worn his saber beyond the parade quadrangle. Four-day patrols hunting something that was seldom more than a flick of shadow against towering creviced walls of andesite. Patrols led by grizzled men in greasy buckskin who chewed tobacco and squinted into the sun and pointed and would seldom commit themselves. Cautious, light-sleeping men who moved slowly and looked part Indian. Every one of them did.

No, Fly

When Fly

"Those must have gotten away," Bowers said.

"Or else they didn't want them."

"Not if they were Apaches," Bowers said.

Fly

They hitched the mules to one of the wagons, binding the cut traces, and loaded the dead into the flat bed; they moved off slowly, following the draw that twisted narrowly before begi

Later, as the trail descended, following the shoulder of the slope, Fly

First he saw the dust. It hung in the distance, filtered red by the last of the sun. Whatever had raised it was out of sight now.

Then, below-small shapes moving out of shadow into strips of faded sunlight-two riders, moving slowly, bringing up the rear of whatever was up ahead. The riders seemed close, but they were not within rifle range.

"Lieutenant, let me have your glasses."

There was something familiar about the rider on the left, even at this distance. Fly