The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553900781
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Where Buzzards Fly

The Mexican’s rifle lay over his horse’s body, his pistol near his hand. He had gone out fighting, riddled with bullets. His flat, knife-scarred face was unforgettable, his eyes wide and unafraid, staring up to a brassy sky.

“Well, Zaparo,” Bowdrie said aloud, “it looks like they’ve washed out your trail.”

His eyes swept the narrow gray gravel-and-sand trail that lay along the bottom of the arroyo, littered now with the bodies of men and horses, all dead.

Fourteen men had gone out fighting, fourteen men killed in what must have been minutes. These had been hard, desperate men and they would not have gone easily. This had been an ambush, of course, carefully planned, perfectly timed.

He who conceived the idea had a mind to reckon with. He was cold, cruel, utterly ruthless. Walking slowly along the line of fallen men, Bowdrie stared bleakly at the litter of bodies scattered along three hundred yards of trail. Above, in slow, patient circles, the buzzards were waiting. They had seen such things before and knew their time would come.

Yesterday, probably in the late afternoon, there had been a moment here of blood-steeped inferno, flashes of gunfire, and the thunder of heavy rifles.

Zaparo had moved fast after his swift raid on the ranches and missions, moving along a preplanned route, but somebody had sold him out. Other men, more bloodthirsty than he, had waited with a welcome of gunfire. It was not a nice thing to see or to contemplate. In the hard world to which Bowdrie had been born and in which he lived, death was an old story, and the possibility of death by violence rode along with every traveler. The death of men in gun battles he could accept, but ambush and murder were another thing. In any event, it was his job.

When he had become a Ranger he had known what lay before him, but this was the worst he had seen. Unless he was failing to read the signs, the betrayer had himself been betrayed. That last man, who hung back behind the others, had left his gun in his holster, and he had been shot in the back at close quarters. Whoever planned this crime had not planned to trust the man who betrayed others. He lay dead along with the rest.

For three hours Bowdrie studied the scene, and he was stumped. There were those who said Bowdrie could trail a snake across a flat rock, but now he could find no evidence.

No cartridge shells remained that could have been left by the attackers, no cigarette butts. All had been gathered up with painstaking care. Every track had been brushed out with mesquite branches. Not one iota of evidence remained, nothing that might lead him to the perpetrators. Yet there is no such thing as a perfect crime. There are only imperfect investigators.

Seated on a flat rock, Chick brooded over the situation.

Obviously the killers had known well in advance, for the site had been well-chosen. There had been,

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