Navarro

by Ralph Compton

  With both pistols in the dust, Tom asked, “Why you boys lookin’ to pull my picket pin?”

  After a brief hesitation, the towhead said, “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Mr. Navarro. We were just comin’ over to chat.”

  “We couldn’t sleep,” the other one added. “We wanted to hear some stories about gunfights and such.”

  “Boys, if you don’t give it to me straight, I’m gonna back shoot you both, which is hell of a lot more than you deserve for trying to bushwack me while I slept.”

  Neither one said anything. The coyote was giving his vocal cords a rest, but the crickets continued their raucous serenade.

  “You killed my brother,” the tall soldier blurted, his voice tense. “Three years ago . . . in Abilene.”

  Navarro studied the kid’s back, trying to remember. Abilene. Three years ago, Vannorsdell had sent him and Tixier to Abilene to pick up some breed bulls. While there, a kid wanting to make a name for himself had slapped leather on him in a general store. Tixier had seen it coming, yelled a warning, and Navarro had drilled three pills through the kid’s chest.

  The kid’s younger brother had been in the bawdy house next door, but he’d run over when he’d heard the shooting. The kid had said nothing to Navarro, but Tom knew from the look in the kid’s eyes, as he’d crouched over the body, that he’d be trouble one day.

  That day had arrived.

  “Your brother made a mistake, boy. Don’t you do the same.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “No, I reckon I didn’t have to. But if I hadn’t, I’d be pushing up Texas wildflowers.”

  “He just wanted to see how fast you were. He didn’t want to shoot.”

  “Bullshit.” Navarro looked at the towhead. “What’s your stake in this, private?”

  “Me?” the towhead said, turning a grin over his right shoulder. “I just want the honor of turning you under, Mr. Navarro. You know—somethin’ to tell my grandkids about.”

  Footfalls sounded within the infirmary. Lantern light spilled onto the porch. The doctor poked his head through the door, between Navarro and the would-be assassins, holding a shimmering bracket lamp high above the boards. “What in the name of Christ is going on here?”

  The light momentarily blinded Navarro. He blinked against the glare, leaned his head to the right, trying to see around the lamp. “Go back inside, Doc!”

  Sullivan jerked the lamp back, retreating, but the young shooters had already taken advantage of the distraction. They’d leapt for their guns, both pivoting at their hips and throwing themselves groundward—one right, one left.

  “Shit!” Navarro railed, leveling his revolver on the two flying shadows. “Boys, don’t do it.”

  It was too late. Light shimmered on the weapon the lanky kid raised from a crouch. The gun exploded, stabbing flames. Navarro had thrown himself right, and the bullet barked into the porch post in front of him.

  Navarro’s own Colt jumped. The lanky kid grunted and stumbled backward. Navarro turned left and peered through the smoke. The towhead was hunkered on his heels, thrusting his revolver out from his chest and yelling, “Die, you—!”

  Navarro’s Colt exploded once more.

  From the way the kid’s head snapped back, knocking his forage cap off, Tom knew the bullet had plowed through his forehead. The towhead triggered his revolver into the ground as he fell straight back in the dust and lay stone-still, not even twitching.

  Men yelled to Navarro’s right, and he turned to see two sentries running toward him, Springfield rifles raised. Several windows surrounding the parade ground were lit, and more soldiers were spilling out of the barracks in various stages of dress.

  “Drop the gun, ye son of a bitch!” the sergeant of the guard yelled as he approached the infirmary’s north end—a stocky Swede in a tan kepi with a pinned-up brim. His gold chevrons shone in the light from the doctor’s lamp, once again hovering over the smoky porch.

  Tom holstered his pistol and raised his hands. “It’s Tom Navarro, Sergeant. These privates tried to ambush me.”

  The sergeant lowered his pistol slightly as he approached the two dead soldiers sprawled in the dust. The two sentries marched up on Tom’s right, flanked by a dozen or so soldiers rousted by the gunfire, several looking panicked and wielding firearms. As this was Apache country, they’d probably expected to find themselves under Indian attack.

  “Schultz and Ball,” the sergeant muttered, glancing over the bodies while keeping his pistol half trained on Tom. “What the hell happened here, Navarro?”

  “Yes, what the hell’s going on?” Tom turned to see Phil Bryson wedging through the crowd of half-dressed soldiers, ignoring the obligatory salutes as he knotted the belt around his robe and ambled up to the edge of the porch. Navarro still stood by the bullet-pocked post, hands half raised, in his long johns and pistol belt.

  Tom shuttled his gaze from the major, looking over the dead men one more time, a look of distaste lifting his weathered cheeks. “Same ole, same ole, Phil. The past came a-gunnin’. Two more dead.”

  “They’re dead, all right,” Sullivan said, crouched over the lanky kid’s sprawled carcass. Dressed in striped pajamas and leather slippers, he looked at Bryson. “He had no choice, Major.”

  Navarro saw the look on Bryson’s face. He’d seen the same look before, on the faces of lawmen in whose towns he’d been prodded to defend himself against those seeking fame. Regret. Disgust. Scorn tempered by a general liking for the man at the trouble’s heart, knowing it wasn’t Tom’s fault, but wishing he’d saddle a horse and ride, after all.

  “Well, I reckon you as good as plugged that ‘Q,’ ” the doctor said.

  He turned, went inside, and sat down on his cot. Captain Ward had lighted the candle on his footlocker. He lay propped on his pillow, arms crossed behind his head, watching Navarro sitting on the edge of his own cot, his face in his hands.

  The captain didn’t say anything to the lean, silver-headed tracker, but he watched him for a long time.

  Navarro removed his gun belt, coiled it on his locker, lay back on his cot with a long, weary sigh, and closed his eyes.

  Ward blew out the candle and listened to the crowd disperse outside his window.

  Around eleven the next morning, Karla rode slumped in her saddle, her hands snubbed to the horn. Her head hung low, pressed down by the heavy weight of the interminable desert sun and by the deadening fatigue of the trail.

  The hat and clothes the bandits had given her protected the top of her head and her body from the brassy orb seemingly hanging just a few feet above. But the intense light and the dust-laden wind had managed to burn her face, hands, and unprotected feet, causing the skin to blister and peel. Long miles from home, tied and prodded like an animal by fifteen of the most savage men Karla had ever seen, she was being herded even farther into the bowels of remote, lawless Mexico—with eight other girls even unluckier than she, because they’d endured the slavers’ abuse even longer.

  Karla thought of Juan, Tommy, Dallas, and Charlie—and her chin dipped even lower, eyelids pinching down below the brim of her tattered hat. For Juan she felt a deep, relentless grief. For Tommy and the other ranchmen, grief as well as guilt. If she hadn’t made the impetuous decision to ride out after Juan, the Bar-V men wouldn’t have had to ride after her . . . and die needlessly.

  As the procession rode single-file through a brush-clogged break in the rock wall of a sandstone ridge, six hardcases rode ahead of the eight girls, while six others rode behind. This country was honeycombed with Indians and other men just as bad as the slavers, and worse, so two scouted ahead while another rode behind, watching the group’s flank.

  At noon, the leader, whose name Karla had learned was Edgar Bontemps, called a halt at the base of a pine-clad slope, where a shallow creek trickled across alluviated sand. The girls were untied from their saddles and allowed, one by one, to wander off behind nearby shrubs for nature tending. The men peered throug
h the branches, hooting and laughing.

  When the girls returned, they were tied ankle to ankle along the shaded stream and tossed moldy jerky and stale crackers as though they were dogs. Several avoided the food, choosing only the cool springwater, sprawling prone and dipping their faces or cupping the water to their lips with their hands.

  Karla drank deeply, then sat up and regarded the strip of jerkey near her knee. She took a bite, wrinkling her nose against the rancid taste, and stuffed the rest in her shirt for later. She hadn’t eaten since the slavers had tossed the girls scanty pieces of prairie chicken last night. She’d eaten only a wing, but she still wasn’t hungry. She wondered if she’d ever be hungry again. She felt so defeated that part of her wanted to just curl up and die.

  “All right, ladies,” Bontemps said when the men were finishing their coffee and kicking dirt on the lunch fire. “I know how eager you are to get goin’, so let’s ride!”

  A couple of the hardcases brought up the girls’ horses, from where they’d been tied in a grove of desert willows a few yards downstream. Three of the girls had been set atop their saddles, two of the bandits tying their wrists to the horns, when a short hardcase named Dupree—thin and dark, wearing a ragged black beard on his sharp-featured face—reached for the skinny little fourteen-year-old whose name Karla had learned was Marlene.

  The girls who hadn’t mounted their horses yet had been untied and ordered to stand. Marlene, however, had remained on her knees, silently sobbing, her chin on her chest.

  Dupree prodded the girl’s thigh with his boot toe. “Come on, girl. On your feet.”

  Marlene continued sobbing. When the man kicked her again, harder this time, she sagged sideways in the sand and drew her knees up to her chest. Her sunburned cheeks were pinched, her eyes tightly closed. Tears squeezed out from beneath the lids, staining the sand under her face.

  “Goddamn you, girl, I told you to stand!” Dupree shouted, reaching down and jerking the girl to her knees by a handful of hair.

  Before Karla knew what she was doing, she’d bolted forward and slammed her left shoulder into Dupree’s chest, knocking the hardcase backward. “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!”

  Chapter 17

  Setting his feet beneath him, Dupree looked at Karla with wild-eyed rage. The men who’d been resetting the saddles had turned to watch the show, chuckling.

  “That girl there—she’s got spunk,” one remarked.

  Dupree’s face turned even redder. He drew his right arm back, then suddenly forward, slamming the back of his hand against Karla’s face. Karla spun and flew, falling on her stomach. She heaved herself up on her arms. Her right cheek burning, her lower lip split and beginning to bleed, she turned quickly to see Dupree glaring at her as he moved toward her slowly, hands balled into tight fists, eyes glassy with rage. Karla scooted back on her seat and drew her knees up to protect herself from another blow.

  “No one pushes Derrold Dupree. You hear?”

  “Hold it, Dee.”

  The voice had come from behind Dupree. The leader, Edgar Bontemps, stood beside his horse—a tall Chickasaw with two black socks and two white. One hand shoved down in his left saddlebag, he frowned across his horse’s rump at Dupree.

  Dupree stopped in his tracks, staring furiously down at Karla. Bontemps grimaced, pulled his hand out of the saddlebag, and walked around his horse. As he strolled up to Dupree, his liquid blue eyes softened, and he laid a casual hand on the man’s thin shoulder.

  “You know we don’t hit the girls,” Bontemps said, keeping his voice low and mild, one friend speaking to another. “Those are the rules, Dee. You understand the rules, right? We don’t get paid for damaged merchandise.”

  Dupree stared hard at Karla for several more seconds. Then his shoulders loosened, and some of the flintiness left his colorless eyes. “Right, Edgar.”

  Bontemps looked over his shoulder, where the other men were cinching their saddles and removing the feedbags from their horses’ snouts. Karla’s Arabian stood among the other horses, the hardcases having picked it up somewhere along the trail.

  “Willis, come over here and tend the women, will you?” Bontemps said. “Dee’s a mite frustrated and needs a break.”

  “You got it, Edgar,” Willis said, grinning and waving his coffeepot in the air, drying it before dropping it into a telescoping leather travel bag. “Be happy to.”

  Bontemps smiled at Dupree. “Go tend your own mount. I want you and Granger to scout ahead this afternoon.” He slapped the man’s shoulder twice, puffing dust from Dupree’s black shirt and dyed hemp vest. “Best get a move on.”

  When Dupree had gone, Bontemps jerked his trousers up his thighs and squatted over Karla. She removed her fingers from her swollen lip and peered reluctantly up at the grotesque man.

  His oily, wildly curly hair made his bowler hat sit unevenly upon his head. He had curious and disturbing dark rings around his eyes, and gold earrings in both ears, which caused the lobes to droop grotesquely. On his arms, below the folded sleeves of an orange silk shirt with ruffled sleeves, were tattoos of snakes and trees and naked women. Karla had seen earlier that the palms of both his hands had been tattooed with bright red apples, each missing a bite.

  With exaggerated tolerance, drawing out his Southern accent, he said, “Don’t make my boys mad, young lady. As you can see, you won’t like ’em when they’re mad.”

  Karla brushed at the blood trickling down her lip.

  Bontemps reached out, thumbed some of the blood from her chin, then looked at his thumb as though he’d never seen blood before. Rubbing his thumb on a patched trouser knee, he glanced at the sobbing Marlene and said to Karla, “Now get that cryin’ brat on her horse before I shoot her and throw her in a ravine. That girl’ll bring a nice sum, all young and smooth, but I don’t put up with bullshit.”

  With that, Bontemps rose and walked away.

  When Willis came over, stood before Karla, and crossed his big arms on his chest, threatening, Karla knelt down beside Marlene. The girl had stopped crying. She lay on her side, shivering and staring at the ground, her skirts and petticoats fanned out around her legs.

  Karla swept a lock of copper blond hair back from the girl’s cheek. “Come on, Marlene. You have to get up now.”

  The girl said nothing. A shiver racked her like an electrical charge. The desert air had dried the tears on her cheeks, leaving a salty patina.

  “Please, Marlene.” Karla was surprised by the sudden resolve she was feeling. She’d thought she’d given up, but the prospect of the girl being killed forced her to put some steel into her voice as she spoke into the girl’s right ear. “If you don’t get up, Marlene, they’re going to kill you, and you’ll never see your family again.”

  Thinly, the girl said, “I won’t see them again, anyway.”

  “Yes, you will,” Karla whispered in the girl’s ear. “I promise you will.” She knew she had no grounds to make such a promise, but the words were out before she could take them back. She’d spoken them with such quiet force that she found herself strangely buoyed by them. It was almost as if she’d heard them spoken by someone else.

  All the other girls were mounted now, and looking wanly down at Karla and Marlene. One of them—a sixteen-year-old, Billie, who’d worked at a stage station near Benson—had tears in her hazel eyes. “Come on, Marlene. Listen to Karla. We’ll be all right.”

  “Come on, come on,” Willis growled. “We ain’t got all goddamn day!”

  Marlene lifted her head and looked at Karla, hope showing in her eyes. Karla gave the girl her floppy black hat, which had been lying nearby, and tugged on the girl’s arm. Marlene snugged her hat on her head and slowly gained her feet. Karla led her over to her horse, helped her poke a dirty bare foot into a stirrup, then lifted her up into the saddle.

  Stoically, Marlene stared down at Karla as Willis tied the girl’s hands to the saddle horn, the slaver muttering and shaking his head as he worked. Karla patted Marlene’s thig
h encouragingly.

  When Willis finished tying Marlene’s hands, he turned to Karla and gave her a brusque shove toward the pinto she’d been riding. “Come on, Mother,” he said with dry mockery. “Climb into the saddle. I’m tired of this foolishness.”

  As Karla stumbled back toward the paint, she glanced at the skinning knife riding in the beaded leather sheath on the man’s left hip. As she reached up for her saddle horn and poked a bare foot through the left stirrup, the image remained in her vision, as if burned into her retina.

  Having fought off her inertia, she began turning a plan in her mind.

  If she could only get her hands on a knife . . .

  Later, as the group rode across a cedar-pocked flat, Karla found herself positioned off the left rear hip of Marlene’s mare.

  “How are you doing, Marlene?”

  Marlene turned to her, the floppy black hat shading the girl’s small face. She glanced at Willis riding several yards behind Karla, trimming his fingernails with a folding knife, whistling and swaying lazily in his saddle.

  “Am I really gonna see my folks again, Karla . . . or were you just saying that?”

  “I meant every word of it, Marlene,” Karla said, keeping her voice low. As she stared straight ahead, her eyes were resolute. “We’re going to get away from these men.”

  As they continued riding the rest of that day, Karla kept eyeing the knives her captors wore in belt sheaths, ankle sheaths, sheaths hanging from leather lanyards around their necks, down their backs, or protruding from boot tops. One man even wore a small bone-handled knife in his hat, Karla noticed when he’d doffed the low-crowned sombrero to wipe sweat from the band.

  Most of the men wore at least two knives, prominently displayed. Who knew how many more they were wearing, secreted away in their clothes?

  With that many knives around, Karla should be able to get her hands on at least one.

  She mulled the idea until the group stopped at noon the next day. She was freed to tend to nature and, squatting down behind rocks, saw something bright lying in the red gravel ten feet away, between two scraggly pinions. When she finished her business, she glanced around and, seeing that the man instructed to keep his eye on her was smoking and talking to another man to his right, stole over to the object and looked down.