The Bounty Hunters by William L. Hopson

Book Details

The Bounty Hunters (1951) – Charley Cogin had plans for the murderer of his sister—plans which included an ant hill, a burning sun, and the privilege of watching an enemy die inch by inch! The rest just think there’s a bounty on Wallace’s head and their greed blinds them to the Mexican bandits and the Apaches they are sure to face.

Only Wallace knows that Cogin was kidnapped by the Apaches when he was a child and raised among them, knows their ways of torture and death. Only Cogin knows that Nino, the Apache war chief, is out to get him personally. The other four? Just more scalps.

An eighteen chapter novel.

William Lee Hopson (1907-1975) was the author of a number of Western stories and novels, writing from the mid 1930s to the end of the 1950s. The Bounty Hunters was first published in 1951.

The Bounty Hunters contains 3 illustrations.

Files:

1. Hopson-BountyHunters.epub

Excerpt: The Bounty Hunters

Chapter I

THEY had told him in Holbrook not to try it; that a man was a plain damned fool to try it alone through Apache infested country to the south. Nino was out with his band, raiding and slashing at ranches, wagon trains, and not ever averse to slugging it out with the soldiers when the odds were anywhere even. He was pretty young to hold such a high position as a raider—about twenty-eight, the same age as Cogin —but the hard riding troopers had been finding out to their chagrin that as a leader Nino had few equals.

He hated the White Eyes as few Apaches hated them, because scalp hunters had killed his mother for the Mexican gold paid for her hair, and one of the White Eyes soldiers had shot Nino’s brother in a skirmish.

But to the well meant advice Charley Cogin paid no heed. His man was only a day or two ahead of him, and the trail had been a long one. All the way from Kansas, through the Indian Nation country to Texas, and thence across New Mexico Territory to the blistering heat of the Arizona desert. He had trailed Wallace patiently, doggedly, like an Indian; he would get him in another two or three days.

He came out of the desert late that afternoon and into a green belt of cottonwood trees to the little settlement nestling among them. More than twelve years had passed since the Apache raid on the place, but it had changed little during the passing of time. Just a line of adobe buildings along one side of the “street” for a distance of three hundred feet. There were cabins and little plots of tilled land scattered around, the population not more than fifty or seventy-five.

This included the floating prospectors, bearded and cantankerous old fellows who were unafraid of the Apaches, bands of Mexican robbers, or the very devil himself; the men wanted by peace-officers; the pack train smugglers from below the border; and now and then the groups of hard-eyed hunters who made a business of raiding small groups of Apache women and children and carrying the scalps down into Sonora and Chihuahua to be exchanged for gold Mexican pesos.

These and others in a land where life was cheap and often depended upon a fleet horse or a good gun.

SUCH was the place that Cogin rode into that late afternoon, leading a pack horse; a tired looking, spare framed man not at all handsome. He wore a heavy brown mustache, as so many men of the period did. His clothes and gear were dusty, the armpits of the dark shirt wet and salt encrusted. The cartridge belt around his waist carried .44 caliber shells for the worn gun at his right hip. The second belt over his left shoulder was much heavier because it was weighted down with .45-70 cartridges for the huge single shot Sharps rifle resting upright in the saddle boot back of his right leg.

A .44 caliber saddle gun might have been all right in cow country, and certainly it would have been more convenient inasmuch as the cartridges were interchangeable for pistol and rifle. But Cogin knew this country better than any in the world, he knew the Apaches and their arms, and he wanted no short range gun in case of a running fight.

He had watered his horses in the creek’s summer trickle when crossing and now he rode in under the trees toward the large, circular corral not far away. It was exactly as it had been the morning of the big raid twelve years before when he’d been shot off his horse by a trooper and returned to his family in Kansas. He swung down with the stiff-legged movement of a man many hours in the saddle and stretched his frame to iron out some of the saddle kinks. From beneath a shed inside the enclosure a man came limping toward him. A small wizened man with a crooked leg. He opened the gate of cottonwood poles, said “Howdy,” and waited as Cogin led his freshly watered mounts inside.

“Any chance to put up my horses for the night?” Cogin asked.

“Be glad to, mister. That’s how I make my living. Can’t get around much any more.”

He stretched out the leg and pulled up his trousers to the knee, displaying a badly scarred shin bone that had been shattered and not properly taken care of. “Got that from an Apache twelve year ago when the red devils pulled a big raid on us here,” he exclaimed. “Some fight, that. Lucky a patrol of soldiers slipped up while they had us cornered. They sure wiped out them red devils. Even caught a white kid who was with ’em. Twelve year ago, that was.”

Cogin had pulled up near the shed and was unsaddling. He thought, yes, I remember the raid and I remember shooting a leg off a man who was running toward another cabin. I remember that Nino tried to grab me up from the ground when I got shot but couldn’t make it.

He said, “I hear they’ve been pretty busy lately.”

The crippled corral man was working at the pack on the other horse. “They have been. We been sticking pretty close around here, all except Big Gert. Nothing ever fazes that woman. One of these days her and them Mexican packers of hern will wind up over a slow fire, tied head down from a cottonwood limb. That Nino is a mean devil if there ever was one. Slick as a coot. He makes fools out of them soldiers. I’ll bet you, mister, that them troopers couldn’t catch that Apache if he was in ten feet distance and they all had lariats.”

Cogin didn’t reply as he dropped the dangling cinch and reached for the saddle to remove it. His face told nothing. It was blank, expressionless. That was what eleven years among the Apaches had done; sunk in deep. And now, after all those years, not much had seeped out. He was thinking of Nino, how they had played and fought with each other by turns, and then become bitter enemies. It made no difference that Nino had tried to grab him off the ground that morning and get him away; they had still been enemies.

Excerpt From: William L. Hopson. “The Bounty Hunters.”