Riding Shotgun

The four Roper brothers were scavengers who feasted on the misery and bad luck of others. So far, apart from one isolated farmhouse, their hunt for plunder had been disappointing. Behind them they’d left a dead sodbuster, his young wife who’d begged for death long before the Ropers finished with her, and a baby boy abandoned to die in his cradle. Pickings had been mighty slim, twenty-three dollars and eighteen cents in cash, a nickel watch, a shotgun, a gold wedding band, and a woman’s flowered straw hat that Barney, the youngest Roper, took a fancy to and wore in place of his ragged peaked cap.

“Seth, I say we head back to El Paso,” Eldon Roper said, addressing the oldest brother. “There’s nothing for us out here.”

“There’s nothing for us back in El Paso either, except a noose for Jake,” Seth said.

“She was only a whore,” Jake Roper said. “Hell, she told me she liked it rough.”

“But not so rough that you broke her damned neck,” Seth said. “You don’t know your own strength, boy.” He reached into his saddlebags and brought out a bottle. After taking a swig he gave it to Barney. “Pass it around.”

Barney took a drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then said, “Seth, you reckon them rumors we heard about Apaches are true?”

“You seen any?” Seth said. A mirror image of his brothers, he was a tall, heavily built and handsome man with hard, black eyes and the predatory instincts of a lobo wolf.

“You know we ain’t seen any,” Barney said.

“Folks say all kind of things that ain’t true,” Seth said. “Do you recollect the story of the boy who cried wolf? How many times have we heard somebody say, ‘Run! Run! the Apaches are out!’ and it was all a pack of damned lies?”

“So, what do we do, Seth?” Barney said.

“Keep on going until we reach the Brazos. Bound to be settlements around there, and maybe sodbusters ready to be picked clean.”

“Ranches too,” Eldon said.

Seth shook his head. “No, you damned fool. Remember what I’ve always told you, that we steer well clear of ranches. Ranches mean punchers and punchers mean guns. Heed what I say, we don’t want to get into a shooting scrape with a tough rancher and a bunch of riled-up Texas waddies. Just no future in it.”

Seth grabbed the bottle from Eldon and put it back in the saddlebags. “The way my thinking is inclined, is to find us a nice, fat farm, one with women on it, and winter there,” he said. “Come spring, we get rid of the women and ride on.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Eldon said. “Barney, Jake, what about you?”

The brothers nodded, and Jake said, “Hell, we only need one woman, come to that.”

“One like that last little gal, you mean?” Seth said. “Share and share alike, that’s the motto of the Roper brothers, ain’t it?”

Jake grinned, let loose a wild rooster crow, and yelled, “Share and share alike, that’s—” Whatever the man was going to say was choked off as, a stupid expression on his face, he looked down at the feathered arrow that had entered his throat just above the Adam’s apple and protruded three inches out the back of his neck.

With a patience and endurance alien to a white man, the eight Mescaleros had been lying in wait for two hours, fully aware that the four men riding good horses would eventually come to them. A distance away, in the hollow between a pair of shallow hills, two of the younger warriors stayed with the war ponies and would not take part in the ambush.

Short, stocky men with broad faces and barrel chests, the Apaches seemed to rise out of the ground, out of the blasting heat that was a living thing . . . out of the depths of hell.

An arrow took Eldon, a bullet smashed into Jake, killing them both, and to save his own skin, Seth Roper gave Barney to the Mescalero.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he shot the youngster’s horse out from under him and then savagely rowel-raked his own mount into a wild gallop. The sudden move surprised the Indians, and by the time they recovered and shot at Seth, he was bent over in the saddle beyond their range. The warriors didn’t pursue . . . not when there was good sport to be had close at hand.

When Barney’s horse fell, he jumped clear and landed on his feet. He saw Seth gallop into the distance, trailing dust, and knew with a spike of anger mixed with terror that his faithless brother had sacrificed him. Barney turned and ran, stumbling through the long grass in the high-heeled boots he’d once taken from a murdered puncher. Made on a narrow last, the boots were for riding, not walking, certainly not for running. He staggered on, screeching his fear, cursing his faithless brother.

The grinning Apaches thought this splendid and teased him mercilessly, driving him around and around in circles. The young warriors ran alongside Barney Roper, beating him with their bows and riding quirts, and when he tripped and fell they kicked him to his feet again. Barney’s first serious wound happened when he tried to draw his gun, unhandy in the pocket of his ragged Union army greatcoat. As he fumbled the Remington clear, a young Mescalero slashed at his hand with the razor edge of a hunting knife. Barney shrieked as he saw his severed right thumb and forefinger fall to the grass at his feet. That shriek, torn from the white-hot depths of his pain and terror, was destined to be the first of many.

Finally tiring of the chase, the Apaches settled down and worked on Barney for a long, long time with fire and hooks and pincers and red-hot steel, and after seven hours of torture that took him to the screaming, screeching, gibbering pinnacles of torment, he died cursing his brother, his God, and the mother who bore him.

Later the Mescalero talked among themselves for a while and agreed that the white man had died badly. They were sorely disappointed because no power had been gained from Barney Roper’s cowardly death.