Navarro Page 3

  The rock finger disintegrated, but it had been enough of an obstruction to knock the bullet wide with an echoing spang, stinging Navarro’s face with only shards of rock and lead.

  Cursing, hearing the horse’s final anguished throes to his left, Navarro rose to his left hip, aimed at the second bushwacker just as the tall slender gent in a floppy hat and buckskins levered another shell into the chamber of his Henry rifle.

  Navarro shot the man low in the belly. As the man groaned and dropped to his knees, firing the Henry into the rocks at his feet, the Bar-V segundo remembered the sound he’d heard upslope.

  Jacking another shell into his Winchester’s chamber, he pushed himself to his feet, ran across the trail, and crouched at the upslope’s base, behind rocks and twisted cedars.

  He was edging a look up the steep, rocky grade when a bullet slammed into the rock a foot above his head, kicking up dust and stone slivers, which peppered the trail and dead horse behind Navarro like hail.

  “Think you’re tough now, you son of a bitch!” The screechy, indignant voice of the kid from the cantina echoed around the canyon several times before it faded.

  Pressing his back to the slope and clutching his rifle in both hands, Navarro swallowed the dry knot in his throat and fingered the Winchester’s trigger. The kid. The son of a bitchin’ stupid-ass kid!

  The wiry little firebrand had found some amigos in Tucson, probably sleeping off drunks in the livery barn or the town’s lone boardinghouse. Intending to set up an ambush in the canyon, they’d taken a shortcut from town. Navarro had heard them on the ridge and busted their little fandango wide open.

  Only they’d killed a good horse, one that Navarro had raised from a Colt and gentled in his own little paddock behind his cabin.

  And the kid had the high ground. . . .

  “Come on out here, you old duffer!” the kid called. “Think you can make sport o’ me now! Ha!”

  The rifle popped. The bullet smacked the same rock the previous one had smacked, making Navarro’s ears ring.

  Tom looked to either side. Straight above, the hill bulged, forming troughs on either side. From the angle of the kid’s shooting, he must be snugged up in the left trough. The hill’s bulge would prevent him from seeing what was going on in the right trough.

  Navarro wheeled right and, crouching to keep his head below the bulge, began climbing the trough. The kid fired another round at his old position, the rifle’s report echoing. Navarro climbed between boulders, occasionally losing his footing in the chalky shale. Once he dropped to a knee, but pushed up and on, grabbing at boulders and shrubs for purchase.

  “Come on outta there, ye old bastard!” the kid cried, his voice muffled. “Show yourself now, ye damn coward.” Another echoing shot.

  Navarro climbed between two cracked boulders leaning away from each other, grabbed a pinion, and hoisted himself to the ridge top. Lots of gravel up here and spots of bobcat sign.

  In the west, the sun was falling fast beneath fleecy golden clouds, bleeding deep into the jagged purple ridges.

  On one knee and looking around, Navarro caught his breath, admonished himself to go easy on the rum-soaked Cubans Vannorsdell blessed him with on occasion, and scuttled around the rocky bulge, following the goat path down the other side.

  The kid’s rifle had popped three more times before Navarro, heading downslope one slow step at a time and leveling the rifle out from his right hip, crept around a boulder and stopped.

  The kid was hunkered behind a rocky shelf, his Spencer repeater propped in a notch of a flat rock. The kid yelled another jeering demand from behind his cover and jacked another shell in the Spencer’s breech.

  Ten yards behind him, Navarro said, “Kid, you’re wild as a corncrib rat and dumb as a dog barkin’ at a knothole.”

  The kid froze.

  “I tried to educate you,” the Bar-V segundo said. “But it looks like I’m gonna have to put you down.”

  The kid stayed where he was, facing the downslope, his Spencer cocked and aimed at Navarro’s old position. His right shoulder twitched. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Between the sweaty curls pasted to his shirt collar, his neck was growing crimson.

  Finally, he whipped around, bringing the Spencer to bear, stretching his lips back from his teeth in an outraged snarl.

  Navarro’s rifle spoke five times as Tom stood, gray eyes narrowed, feet spread, shooting and cocking, shooting and cocking.

  The kid got off only one shot as Tom’s shots ripped through his chest, drawing a small circle over his heart. The kid’s head snapped back against the rock, eyes blinking rapidly, each shot holding him there for the next. After the last shot had blown through his spine, he sighed and slowly slumped to his right, relaxing, the Spencer slipping from his hands.

  Behind him, the rocks dripped red.

  At the bottom of the slope, a rifle barked. A horse whinnied. The rifle barked again. A man yelled.

  Navarro climbed over the shelf the young firebrand had used for cover, and hurried down the steep, rocky slope, breaking his descent by grabbing pinion and mesquite branches.

  Several more shots rose to his ears.

  “Whatcha think you’re doin’, ye greaser bastard?” he heard Ky Tryon complain.

  At the bottom of the slope, Navarro turned left onto the game path he’d been following when he’d been bushwacked. He stepped around his dead paint, traced a bend around the mountain’s shoulder, and stopped.

  Ky Tryon lay upon the trail, clutching his extended left leg with one hand, his six-shooter in the other. Blood oozed between the fingers of the hand clutching his thigh. Tryon’s face was pinched with pain.

  Right of the trail, downslope, the stocky Mex in the dirty plaid shirt was moving slowly up the slope toward Tryon. His sombrero hung down his back, and his long silver-streaked black hair fell over his shoulders. He moved awkwardly, obviously in pain from his wounded shoulder, his Winchester in his right hand.

  “Stop there, amigo,” Navarro called.

  The Mex wheeled toward him too quickly, then lost his balance and dropping. As his right knee hit the ground, the rifle went off, sending the slug several yards off Tryon’s right shoulder.

  The man cursed loudly in Spanish as, on both knees now, he took the rifle in both hands and began fumbling another shell into the chamber. He didn’t look at Navarro but kept his pain-twisted, sweating face on the rifle as he cried and cursed and fought the lever, caught against a half-ejected cartridge.

  Navarro brought his own Winchester to his shoulder, quickly aimed, and fired.

  The round plowed through the Mexican’s head, just above the hairline. The man flew back onto a half-dead juniper, arms pinwheeling, the rifle clattering onto the rocks and gravel to his left.

  Navarro lowered the Winchester and ran to Tryon. The drover looked at him through pain-sharp eyes.

  “Came up to help you out,” he rasped. “Damn Mex smoked me.”

  “I told you to wait below.”

  “Well, I didn’t—okay, Tom?” Tryon barked and sucked air through his gritted teeth.

  Navarro turned. “You see the other one?”

  “What other one?”

  “Wait here.”

  Navarro moved quickly but cautiously down the slope, peering around boulders for the tall man in buckskins. The light was dying quickly, the shadows thickening, making him look twice behind prospective cover before moving on.

  After he found the thick blood pool where he’d shot the man, it didn’t take him long to track him to where he’d crawled, smearing blood thick as oil, fifty yards down the slope and west of his previous position. The man sat with his back to a deadfall pine.

  He literally cupped his guts in both his ham-sized hands. The wound smelled like fresh blood and excrement.

  When Navarro’s shadow fell across him, he sighed and lifted his chin from his right shoulder. His big face with a mallet nose and tiny eyes was sweat-soaked, the beads turning crimson as a fleeting shaft of d
ying sun broke through a notch in a western ridge.

  “Please, mister,” the man groaned, tongue cracking dryly, “just a drink of water . . .”

  Navarro glanced up the slope at Tryon and at the dead paint—nearly as good a horse as he’d ever owned—stretched across the path as though dropped from the sky.

  “How ’bout some lead instead?”

  Navarro raised the rifle and fired.

  Chapter 4

  Navarro driving, Amado following on his buckskin and leading Ky Tryon’s horse, the Bar-V wagon raced through the descending night, following the deep-scored wagon trail into the high country where the saguaros thinned and cottonwoods began appearing in swales, with cedars, sedge, and broomgrass growing thick along the benches.

  The Bar-V sat in a high valley that, from the granite crests looming over it, resembled two giant hands cupped together at the heart of a long, bulky mountain. The sky was lit up like a Mexican Christmas tree when the wagon thundered through the yard’s wooden portal, whipped past the corrals and blacksmith shop, and squawked up to the bunkhouse, Navarro sawing back on the reins and bellowing, “Hoah now . . . hoooo-ahhhh!”

  The bunkhouse door had opened as the wagon passed under the portal, and several silhouetted figures stood on the porch, hatless, cigarette smoke billowing around their heads in the still night air.

  “Why you boys so late?” asked Dallas Tixier, stepping off the porch with several others. “I was beginning to think the senoritas had talked you into staying another night.”

  Navarro wrapped the reins around the brake handle. “A coupla you men help Ky inside. He’s got a bullet in his left thigh. Someone tell Joe to break out his medical kit and put water to boil.”

  In Apache country, bullet and arrow wounds were as commonplace as horse throwings or saddle galls. Without any to-do, three men helped Tryon out of the wagon and inside, one of the men saying, “Ah, Christ, Ky, I seen whores’ hickies worse than that.”

  When the kid was inside and the stove had been fired up for water, the wagon driven up to the back of the main house for unloading, Tixier turned to Navarro. “What happened, Tommy?”

  Navarro curled his lip. “Bushwacked in Arrowhead Canyon.”

  “Apaches?”

  Navarro shook his head. “Some younker fancied himself the next William Bonnie.”

  “You put him down?”

  “Like a chicken-thievin’ hound.”

  Tixier returned his long black cigar to his teeth and lowered his gaze to Navarro’s left arm. “Looks like you need some attention there, your ownself.”

  Navarro glanced at the torn sleeve and dried blood. He hadn’t realized he’d been grazed until after he’d killed the man in buckskins and was helping Tryon onto his horse.

  “Just a scratch.” Navarro turned away, looked westward toward the open range capped in stars.

  Tixier blew a long stream of smoke. “What’re you thinkin’?”

  “I’m thinkin’ I’m feelin’ restless. Might need to move on again soon. Maybe a horse ranch up in Montana.” Tom turned to Tixier, the half-Mexican, half-Pima he’d scouted with out of Fort Bowie, fighting Apaches before they had tired of army ways and had taken up the ranching life. “Would you come with me?”

  “It’s cold up there, ain’t it?” Tixier said around the cigar in his teeth.

  “I’ll get you a fat Indian woman.”

  Tixier shifted the cigar and grinned. “Then, hell, I’d think about it.”

  Navarro retrieved his saddle, which he’d wrestled off the dead paint, and hefted it onto his left shoulder. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

  He’d started away from the bunkhouse, heading for his own cabin near the creek, but Tixier’s voice stopped him. “Trouble up to the house tonight.” He inclined his head to indicate the sprawling adobe fronted with shrubbery and a wide front veranda, several windows sprouting lantern light.

  “What kinda trouble?”

  “The senorita and Don Vannorsdell,” Tixier said conspiratorially. Light from the window flanking him glistened off his gold eye tooth. “Her vaquero came to say hasta luego.”

  Navarro looked toward the house, sighed deeply, shifted the saddle on his shoulder, and walked eastward across the yard. He crossed a narrow arroyo and tramped through the chaparral to the shack that had been here long before Vannorsdell had moved to the valley—a squat, boxlike adobe with a sagging brush arbor silver limned by starlight.

  He mounted the porch and reached for the door latch. The motion was stillborn.

  Wheeling left, he dropped his saddle, saddlebags, and rifle boot and snapped his horn-handled .44 from his holster. Thumbing back the hammer, he extended the gun to the hammock hanging beneath the arbor and in which a shadowy figure lay.

  He stood tensely, gun extended, staring.

  “Go ahead and shoot,” Karla said, her voice small and brittle.

  Navarro tipped the Navy’s barrel up and depressed the hammer with a ratcheting click. “Know how close I just came to perforating your fool hide?”

  “I don’t want to live anymore, Tommy.”

  Navarro sighed and holstered the weapon. He stooped to pick up his saddle, straightened, and threw open the door. “You’ll get over it . . . him.”

  He walked into the dark cabin that smelled of mesquite smoke, tanning grease, and dry adobe. He dropped the saddle on the floor behind the door, lighted the hurricane lamp on the table, walked back out to the porch, and gathered up his rifle boot and saddlebags. He carried the tack into the dimly lit, rough-hewn cabin, dropped it on the single cot against the left wall, beneath a small crucifix that had hung there when he had moved in, and removed his cartridge belt.

  Bootheels thudded softly. He looked up to see Karla moving through the door, an Indian blanket wrapped loosely about her shoulders, her light brown hair hanging free. Her tan heart-shaped face was drawn, sun-bleached brows furled.

  “You heard?”

  Navarro nodded, dropped the gun belt on the cot, and threw his hat on top of it.

  “The old bastard drove him off,” Karla said.

  Navarro grabbed the red-rimmed washbasin off the table and left the cabin through the back door. He filled the basin at the well pump, having to work the squeaky handle several times before the water came up, then stooped to let the chill stream douse his head. Blowing water from his lips and rubbing it out of his close-cropped hair, he straightened, returned to the cabin, kicked the door closed, and set the basin on the table.

  He sat heavily down in one of the two spool-back, cane-bottom chairs, which creaked under his weight. The water felt good, running down his head and under his shirt, soothing his sweaty sunburned neck. The girl stood by the door, her back to the wall, watching him as though waiting for him to say something.

  “You didn’t really think he was going to let it go anywhere, did you?” Navarro asked, jerking his shirt out of his dusty denims and beginning to unbutton his left cuff.

  “It’s not up to him. It’s up to me and Juan.” Working on the buttons, Navarro glanced at her from beneath his gunmetal brows. “Karla, you’ve been out here nearly three years now. You know better.”

  She pursed her lips and spoked her eyes, making her voice hard. “I love Juan. If my grandfather loved me, that would mean something to him.”

  Navarro unbuttoned his shirtfront, removed the shirt, and tossed it over his hat and tack on the cot. He took a knife from a scabbard lying under a yellowed illustrated newspaper on the table, and began cutting away the bloody sleeve of his long underwear shirt.

  “What happened?” Karla asked.

  “Some younker reminded me why I like to stay to home.”

  When he’d cut through the sleeve above the elbow, he winced as he pulled the blood-soaked cotton away from the graze. He set the sleeve aside and inspected the burn—a half-inch gash along the outside of the arm, about halfway between the elbow and shoulder. The blood had gelled, nearly dried.

  Karla moved away from the wall and slumped in
to the chair across from Navarro. “Did any of our men get hurt besides you?”

  “Tryon took a bullet in the leg. Went all the way through. Didn’t hit the bone.” He winced as he dabbed at the cut with a damp cloth. “Damn lucky.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  “Yep.” Navarro glanced at her. “Bring me that roll of bandages from my war bag, will you?”

  Karla got up, retrieved the torn cloth wrapped around a stout cottonwood stick, and set it on the table. Then she turned to the cupboards against the back wall, and produced a bottle. She set the bottle on the table beside Navarro, then turned back to the cupboards.

  “All my bellyachin’,” she said guiltily. “And you and Ky were shot.”

  Hearing her rummage through his airtights stacked neatly in the cupboard above his larder box, Navarro popped the cork from the bottle, held his arm over the bloody water in the basin, and doused the cut with whiskey. He winced and sucked air through his teeth as he lifted the bottle to his mouth, took a long pull, then set it on the table and began wrapping a bandage around his arm, closing it firmly around the cut.

  He cut the bandage from the roll, took one end in his teeth, set the knife on the table, and tied the knot one-handed.

  “Does your grandfather know where you are?”

  She was opening a can of tomatoes with a rusty bowie knife. “He thinks I’m in my room.”

  “He wouldn’t like you bein’ here.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? You don’t have any bean-eater blood, do you, Tommy?”

  “Don’t get sassy. Your place isn’t here, with me and my kangaroo rats. It’s up at the big house with your grandfather.”

  She set a tin plate on the table beside the whiskey bottle. It was filled with canned tomatoes, crackers, and chunks of roasted venison from the buck he’d brought down from the high country last week. “I’d make you something proper at the house, but I’d just as soon not go near the place again.”