Read the Bounty Hunters (1953) for Free Online

heavy-boled pine a few yards up the glade. And through the lower branches they saw the arm extended to clutch the end of the cloth. The arm of a woman.
    A stillness clung to the narrow draw. Bowers heard a whispered slow-drawl of obscenity, but when he glanced at Flynn the scout's lean face was expressionless. He lay on his stomach looking down the short barrel of his carbine. Bowers nudged him and when Flynn glanced up the two men rose without a sound and started down the loose sand.
    They came to the woman beneath the pine and Flynn parted the branches with the barrel of his carbine, then stooped quickly. Bowers saw the figure of a young girl, but Flynn was over her then and he could not see her face, though he glimpsed the sand dark with blood at her head.
    Flynn came up slowly and said, Anita Esteban's cousin, but he was thinking something else. It was in his eyes that looked past Bowers to the burned wagons. Somebody took her hair, he said.
    They separated, Flynn following the sand clearing, and came out on the trail a dozen yards apart. He looked uptrail toward Bowers, then felt his nerves jump as he saw the bodies off to the side of the road.
    Two men and a young boy. Worn, white cotton twisted unnaturally. He could see the rope soles of their sandals. They lay facedown with the backs of their heads showing the blood-matted, scorched smear where they had been shot from a distance of no more than a yard. He moved toward Bowers and watched the lieutenant kneel beside another sprawled figure. As he drew closer, he saw that it was Anastacio Esteban.
    Bowers looked up at him. He's dead.
    They're all dead, Flynn said quietly. He looked past Bowers and saw other forms straggled along the side of the trail. Even from a distance he was certain they were dead. Then he knelt down next to Anastacio whom he had known a long time and he made the sign of the cross and said the Hail Mary slowly, for Anastacio and for the others.
    Bowers looked at him curiously because he had not expected to see him pray, then motioned up the draw. There are more up there. The other two wagons were roughly a hundred yards beyond and partly hidden by the brush where they stood off the trail.
    He said to Flynn, They had mules, didn't they?
    They must have.
    Flynn looked up-trail toward the two wagons. The animals that had pulled them were not in sight, but these wagons had not been burned. He heard Bowers say, I hear 'Paches would rather eat a mule than even a horse.
    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. Flynn went to her quickly. Bowers watched him stoop over her then come up, shaking his head. Nita Esteban was not among the dead.
    Flynn came back carrying the girl in his arms and placed her gently in the wagon. Bowers saw that she had been scapled; and his head turned to look at other things.
    They're changing their ways, Flynn said.
    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.
    Flynn shook his head. It only seems that way.
    They must have taken her.
    And perhaps others. Flynn was silent as his eyes went over the ambush the burned wagons, the dead. Mister, I'll tell you something. This isn't Apache.
    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