SCALP MOUNTAIN

This is a portion of my novel Scalp Mountain. I have also written Saint of the Burning Heart, Del Norte and The Captive Boy. All of them can be found at Amazon.com. All except Del Norte can be purchased in print.
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Chapter One
 Colum was sitting on a rock, shoving beans and tortillas into his mouth, when the vaquero told him strangers were in Janos, the nearest village, stalking house to house, searching for a redheaded American.

Men on horseback chased cattle across a plain, calves bawled, and wood smoke curled up from branding fires, sweeping north on the wind.

The vaquero stared at spring grass pushing up through rocky ground.

“What do these men look like?”

“Jefe,” boss, “they are Tejano, like you.”

Snatching his hat from his sweaty forehead, Colum wiped his skin with his grimy cotton shirt sleeve.      His red hair slid past his ears and clung to his neck.  He used one freckled hand to scrap dirt off the other.

I could kill them before they know they’re dead, he thought, shoot them from behind the same way they plan to drill me. Or I could hire a vaquero to side me, face them from the front and avoid the rurales coming for me, after.

Or I could run again.

At the last thought, hollowness like a sun-stretched desert filled him, an unwillingness to take one more step, ride one more mile with the banshees howling behind. There’s no end to it, on the jump, my bones crumbling from the long trail, sleeping with one eye open, living on beans until I gag at the scent of them.

My life is no use to me.

“I thank you for telling me,” Colum said. He fished two pesos from his pocket, holding them out for the other man.

“No, Jefe, I don’t want nuthing,” the vaquero said, not moving. He had holes in his boots, where leather would have protected his toes.

Colum waited.

“Señor, I have heard of a place.”

“Yes?”

“This place is in Tejas,” Texas, “a valley, a..un paraíso.”

“A paradise?”

“Yes. Mens don’t go to this place. You mares would get fat, like me,” the vaquero said. He patted his stomach and tried to grin. “Water runs from mountains. Puro.”

“You’ve seen it, have you?”

“My compadre told me. He was there.”

Gray hair fell over the vaquero’s bloodshot eyes.     Tiny blue moles dotted his face.

“Where is this paradise?”

“Near El Paso Del Norte, two days.”

“What’s your name?”

“Panfilo.”

“Panfilo, leaving here, it’s four days to the Rio Grande.”

“Pues,” well, “this is a good horse and you got three mares.”

I have good stock. Colum’s Appaloosa stallion, white with dark gray, spotted hindquarters and dark mane, stood a few feet away, tearing grass from the ground and gulping it down, his head swinging from side to side, greedy for the best parts.

“It’s a hide out? Not that I need one, mind you.”

“This country is sierra, nobody go there.”

“Why are you telling me about this place, I took your starving mother some groceries? You wouldn’t be making some extra pesos by luring me away from this rancho, by any chance?”

“I want to go with you.”

Oh. Let’s see, this man has been with me four weeks. He came in late, after dark, hat in hand, begging for a job. Aye, he has the running look, he needs a way to cross the river, and thinks he can trick me into riding north with him, watching his back. He has spun this place from fairy dust.

Still, Colum could see the valley in his mind, and he had never wanted anything more in his life; pastures filled with springing Appaloosa foals, waking in the morning knowing he was home, in a house he built with his own hands, believing the coming day would be like any other, like yesterday, like next week. He could feel desire on his tongue and it tasted like cabrito, goat meat, cooked over mesquite, melting in his mouth, resinous with smoke and fat.

If the manny here is lying, perhaps I can find another place for myself, he thought, imagining Texas with a rapture he usually reserved for horses and women.

“Tell the peons to load a burro for us, and I will pay the haciendado for the goods. We need corn for the stock, spare horseshoes and nails, a hammer, tortillas, side meat, canned stuff, rope, cartridges for my Winchester and for that Spencer you’re carrying, and anything else you can pack.”

“Yes, jefe,” boss.

“I’m guessing you can shoot, but can you cook?” he asked the squat vaquero, throwing himself on the stallion

“Yes, jefe.”

Riding north, they crossed the Sierra Madre, clinging to skinny trails snaking down mountainsides, leading the mares on long ropes and skidding on melted snow until they found firm ground on the plains; short, clean scrub, with two shadows moving steadily behind them.

Antelope or wild horses maybe, he thought, squinting, but the shadows did not stop to graze; they stayed on his trail like coon hounds, as if they could smell him.

Is it Panfilo, or is it me they’re after? When he was sure hunters followed, he spotted another moving smudge, a third rider hanging further back.

Ash-colored sky replaced sunlight and Colum hid Panfilo, the horses and the burro in an arroyo, then swept their tracks with a creosote bush.

Silence hummed, air cooled. A yellow moon rose, perfectly round, its color deep as a gourd, shiny against the darkening blue sky, and the riders did not appear.

Gray replaced darkness, and the world appeared around them, but they saw no movement. Panfilo held the muzzled horses, and the burro burdened with goods. Colum clung to the top of a juniper tree, his nose clogged with the smell of its sharp needles, his hands sticky with resin, his eyes sweeping back and forth like unsettled green water.

Two men passed. It took them all morning, from the first moment Colum saw them, until they disappeared over the horizon. He couldn’t see them clearly because they rode in wide circles, their heads down, searching for tracks.

Hell gate goblins, thinking we’re green and can catch us easy.

He never saw the third rider. Perhaps I dreamed it.

Colum looked back at Panfilo, at the vaquero’s chocolate skin gleaming in the light, and the Mexican raised his stumpy right hand, throwing it palm up, toward the sky. What do you want to do?

Wait, he mouthed.

The hunters returned, trotting in a widening gyre, then headed east.

Somebody knows ground, Colum thought, like vultures gliding over a corpse.

Darkness brought cold but no fire. The men huddled in their jackets, nibbling on crumbling cornmeal tamales.

“You have woman troubles?” Panfilo asked.

“No, I’m looking for a good wife, do you know a lady would do me the favor?”

“All womens are putas,” whores. “None of them is good.”

“Are you bitter, then?”

“What’s bitter?”

“Have you had bad experiences?”

“I don’t have none of those.”

“The searching men, is it you they’re looking for?”

“Nobody wants me.”

Silence gathered and Colum was relieved he could not see the other man’s face; if Panfilo was a liar, this was not a good time to find out.

Dawn, and they could see El Paso del Norte and the  Rio Grande winding past the town. They rode in with rifles slung across their saddles, scanning rooftops, peering around corners.

Colum’s boots rubbed against swollen feet, his buttocks and thighs ached from days in the saddle, a warm breeze played with his black slouched hat–worn since the South threw up its arms in battered surrender.

Panfilo clapped his hand on his cheap straw sombrero.

Nothing stirred on the dirt street but the clop of hooves and a rooster’s crow.

Adobe houses crowded narrow streets shaded by cottonwood trees, leafed out with the palest of green. A squat bell tower announced the day’s first Mass while a woman with braids falling to her waist sat on her heels by a fire, patting tortilla dough in her hand, ready for customers.

Dragging her grill toward the fire, the metal clanged against the woman’s bowl and Colum’s hands twitched on his reins, spooking the stallion into a fruit cart, which still dozed under canvas.

The mares then whirled and slammed the cart again, hindquarters and legs rising and falling against the hapless wood.

Trembling like a wounded animal, the cart crumpled in a pile of kindling, the fruit rolling over the street; yellow bananas, orange mangos, green limes.

As the stallion scrambled around the cart, kicking and bucking, a bullet sped past Colum’s hat. Only then did he see the man sitting up in his saddle, on the corner, in full sight, aiming at him again. Before he could control the stallion and defend himself, Panfilo shot the ambusher high in the sternum, blasting the man backward and to the ground.

A second shooter appeared at the other corner, to Colum’s right, but Colum did not see him until it was too late. The long black barrel pointed at him, shining in the sun.

I’m dead. He waited, only to see the shooter’s head erupt in a tower of blood, as if an interior volcano lifted the man’s skull and swept him to the dirt street.

Standing by the gunman he killed, Panfilo’s eyes widened with shock.

Colum and Panfilo looked up and down the empty street. Who killed the second gunman?

The man Panfilo killed had red and white paint dotting his face and his three braids lay like black corncobs tossed on the dirt. He wore a Union-blue cavalry shirt. His eyes glared at the sky, a green fly buzzed around his face, then lit and crawled inside his open mouth.

Of course they found us, this man’s a Tonkawa. The entire tribe scouts for the U.S. Army.

The second dead man was sunburned above his beard and he smelled like unwashed long johns and leaking chamber pots. This man camped in saloons, Colum thought, helping himself to the free hard-boiled eggs and pickles, puking under the tables and throwing his money away at the faro game.

Faces peered from cracked doors, from windows. A few men slid outdoors, gathering around the bodies like vultures around a dead dog, hushed, their eyes down.

Spurring their horses, Colum and Panfilo galloped northeast, to the edge of the city–parallel to rock-covered mountains spreading morning shadows on the plain beneath–past tamarisk trees leaning over thatched huts built with wood poles, and goats penned with pricklypear cactus.

Julia Robb published the ebook edition of Scalp Mountain in 2012. Copyright by Julia Robb. All rights reserved. Digitally printed by Amazon.com. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information write juliarobbmar@aol.com.