Scalped #2

"Indian Country" (Part 2 of 3)
written by Jason Aaron
art by R. M. Guéra

Dashiell Bad Horse's new life is almost defined by duplicity.  And that's not only because of his job as an undercover FBI agent embedded in the Prairie Rose Tribal Police Force, crime boss Red Crow's de facto band of lackeys with badges.  Duplicity is a way of life, sometimes the only way of living, on the reservation.  To the outside world, Lincoln Red Crow is the face of the tribe, but he speaks eloquently out of both sides of his mouth.

Turns out, Bad Horse speaks foully out of both sides of his.  His aggressive don't-give-a-shit temperament has won him no friends in among Red Crow's men, and his growing displeasure in his assignment and his hostile disdain for authority make him persona non grata at the FBI.  He may be a good agent, but he's not a popular one.  He belongs in between Washington and Prairie Rose, mistrusted by many FBI agents, including Newsome, because he's a "redskin punk" (Scalped #2:1) and suspicious to the reservation's criminal elite because he's Gina Bad Horse's son who's been away from South Dakota for far to long to really be local.  A man between.

In a skeevy bar with a jukebox that has what must be the finest selection of depressive anthems, Bad Horse meets his old flame Carol Ellroy, daughter of Red Crow himself, now married to a jealous, abusive asshole in order to survive.  She's the damage Dashiell left behind him, the scarred, hollowed out shell of what she could have been and used to be with him.

"I'm tellin' ya, kid, just one look at you, and I know...  ...somewhere out there is a blaze of fuckin' glory...  ...with your name written all over it."  (22)

But only one week in Prairie Rose and suspects, with his cover blown, he's already the target of Red Crow's assassins, a crew of heavily scarred mercenaries with a fetish for bloodshed.  A set-up in an abandoned building for only Bad Horse and Falls Down, badly outnumbered.  Agent Bad Horse may very well be right.  But then again, if not, then the shadowy horseman who stumbles on his rendezvous with the FBI may very well out him as well.  Falls Down is right:  the hail of bullets is inevitable; the only question is when.

[April 2007]