The Right Eye of God

by Bacon Thorn

  What attracted Navarre to the corroded pile of steel was the dry, stiff prairie bunch grass that barely flourished on the western side of the steel mound. It was where shade from the westerly sun was darkest and winds from the far Pacific dropped rain occasionally to water the desert shrubbery.

  Sprouting in the sand also was stiff-rooted soapweed, with its dagger points. When the wind stirred the brittle stalks, their dry seedpods rustled. He had planned to sneak behind the south end of the stacked rails, a distance of about twenty feet from the hackberry, and fire Elidio’s pistol point blank into the passenger’s side of the van, where one of the five-gallon cans of gas was stationed. It was located about two feet behind the steel partition that separated the front seats from the rear benches. Navarre realized almost too late that a bullet hole in the auxiliary gas tank would not guarantee an explosion. Without a spark there would be no blowup. Out of the hole a stream of gas would shoot into the sand. But a spark would be required to ignite the volatile fuel. How could he have been so incredibly stupid? Gasoline did not just burst into flame. That only happened in Hollywood movies.

  He had only one shot to stop Esquivel. He had to be lucky. Fired from a pistol, a round of lead did not generate enough heat in the barrel to raise a high temperature or create a spark. He needed a spark starter, but where would he find one?

  Distracted suddenly, then inspired with an idea, he listened for a moment to the clacking sounds of the long-stemmed soapweed plants swaying in the faint wind coming from the other side of the rusty mound of steel rails.

  Quickly, Navarre crawled to the weed patch. With his fingers he dug clumps of the tall, sinewy prairie grass and pulled up from the sandy soil fistfuls of the hollow, knobby soapweed. Rolling the scratchy weeds between his hands, he fashioned a stiff, dry torch that pricked the palms of his skin and drew little drops of blood.

  Placing his torch aside, he reached into his back pocket and yanked out the box of wooden matches Yuma had found in the van they had stolen. Gathering several matchsticks into a small bundle, he scraped them across the carbonized strip on the box and smiled grimly as they flared into a hot, sulfurous flame.

  Navarre felt dangerous and full of hate when he touched the fiery bundle to his torch. The dry weeds flashed instantly into a searing blaze that soared into a plume of popping, snapping, and sparking yellow smoke, with a sharp, acrid odor that burned Navarre’s nose. That was also the same moment when Esquivel’s van pulled into the narrow lane between the huge rocks.

  Holding his fire-spitting torch high above his head, Navarre plunged across the sand, headed straight for Esquivel’s van. The encounter Esquivel had feared could not have been more deadly or more frightening to Elidio, who flooded the engine when he stamped on the accelerator in panic. He saw that Esquivel had turned pale when he stared out his side window and saw Navarre coming at them, a wrathful, sunburned man with murder on his mind. A sputtering torch was held in one hand; in the other Elidio’s silvery pistol was pointing dangerously.

  Less than fifteen feet away from the van—aware that his enemy was trying desperately to roll down his window and shoot at him—Navarre blew a hole into the side of the vehicle. Out of the round puncture in the metal, a thin stream of gasoline spurted into the desert, making a spreading puddle. The flow reversed direction the instant Navarre pitched his fiery torch into the wet sand. With a crackling roar the inflamed gas leaped backward up the descending stream and blasted a gaping hollow in the van.

  The blast that shook the van was like a roll of thunder, and Navarre was struck with a gust of wind that rolled him over and over like a leaf. He glimpsed blue sky, heard screaming, guttural whining, and snarling, and saw Esquivel clawing at the window and at his burning hair; he saw the front of his shirt ablaze, saw his face turn black and smoky, and he saw him sink beneath the window frame at the same moment a sheet of flames roared out of the rear of the van. It shot out twenty feet, tossing the vehicle up and off the ground.

  Another loud, ear-splitting eruption lifted Navarre with a hot, hard wave of air pressure and slammed him down, forcing the breath from his lungs. When he sucked air into his mouth and rolled over, dazed, he heard a final, belching roar and felt instant heat on his face and shoulders. Something dug a long furrow in the sand at his elbow. It made a sharp click against a buried rock, and, in belated reaction, Navarre dug his face into the sand. His nose was bleeding when he got to his knees, then his feet, and realized that the explosions had scorched the boulders guarding the passage, staining the rocks with smoky signatures of death. He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a smear on his face.

  The van was demolished. Fragments of buckled screen, twisted metal, charred leather, and melted glass were scattered for hundreds of feet in the dry riverbed. The south tower of the rock sentinel was soot streaked and sending up a distress signal of dirty smoke. The gas-soaked van, turned on its side, was burning furiously. His torch had ignited the auxiliary five-gallon can, which must have blown out the partition that shielded the driver, and the burning fuel splotched Esquivel and Elidio. Then, a flowing tongue of flame had run under the passenger door of the four-wheeler, igniting the main gas tank, tearing out the guts of the vehicle, and tipping it over on its side in a final, tidy act of destruction.

  Amid the wreckage were several broiled heaps of charcoaled flesh. They could have been the corpses of men or dogs; there was no way of knowing. The sickening stench of scorched metal and burning flesh hung in the air.

  Never later when he tried to reconstruct the memory exactly in his mind was he able to recall precisely what he saw next: A small, black cloud rose suddenly, separately, from the burning skeleton of the van. It formed in the air as an amorphous, smoky shape, then as it drifted up it seemed to roll and curl into itself and shrink and elongate. Then it disappeared. There was a sharp, piercing cry, a small, sudden rush of wind, a terrible odor of human rot, and a flapping sound. Navarre distinctly saw a large, black-feathered bird fly out of the smoking ruin of the van and gain altitude in unhurried, ascending circles.

  He turned to Yuma, who had rushed out of the shade and stood by his side with her mouth open in awe and fright.

  “Did you see . . . what happened . . . ?”

  Navarre’s throat was dry. It was difficult to speak.

  “Yes . . .”

  Yuma’s eyes were large, the whites showing. Both of them were gazing at the sky, and they watched silently as the big bird grew smaller. Yuma asked, barely in a whisper, “What is it? I’m afraid to know.”

  “A zopilote,” he said.

  Navarre sat down in the sand. He was weary, drained, utterly spent, and his head throbbed like a bell tolling. They could rest only for a short time, for he knew the chase was not over. If anything, the destruction of the van would intensify the search. Not for a moment could Nuños risk the fugitives reaching help. And suddenly, as he rose to his feet, Navarre realized with sinking dread that the fat man would surely figure out where he and Yuma were heading. The mission at Sisiqichuc was the only safe refuge for the American who had enlisted the aid of the priest who had buried Raldon de la Garza. Nuños would block access to the mission, even if it meant placing a cordon of guards across the main trails leading into mountainous Creel, where the mission was located.

  Navarre sighed. He decided for the present not to share his misgivings with Yuma.

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  Chapter XII

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  Leaving behind the smoking ruin of the van, a crinkled metal coffin for men and dogs, Navarre and Yuma trudged through the desert. Weary and hungry, they were haunted by the certainty that if they were lucky, maybe they had gained a head start of one day before others would come to investigate the absence of the dead men. Navarre knew they couldn’t keep up their urgent pace long without food. The small spurt of energy from the pinole they had eaten the night before had dissipated. For three days they had been without substantial nourishment. They had to eat in order to go on.

>   From the position of the sun, Navarre judged that it was about four in the afternoon when he called a halt at the opening of a rocky, shallow, hidden canyon that showed signs of greenery. He was reluctant to promise Yuma that their path, which took them in a sudden descent into the dry arroyo, might lead to water. But as they moved downward, green vegetation appeared and thickened with a mass of prickly pear cactus, sumac bushes, and oak shrubs. Yuma was the one to spot a cluster of century plants blooming in defiance of the lateness of the season. The desert flowers should have died early in October, but the weather had stayed only moderately hot. Navarre heard the sound he was listening for before Yuma lifted her head. It was the musical rippling of running water.

  “Thomas!” she shouted, “Look, water!”

  A thin spray trickled down a tiered wall of rock that towered above them perhaps two hundred feet high. At the bottom was a dark pool draining into a shallow creek that flowed for only a few dozen yards before it was swallowed by thirsty shrubs.

  Navarre grinned, dropped the water bag, binoculars, and rope, and sat upon a smooth rock. “I was hoping for something like this. It means we’ll probably have visitors in an hour or so.”

  “What kind of visitors?” Yuma asked uncertainly.

  “Oh, wild ones we can make a meal of, if we’re lucky. Look, after we drink let’s go back a hundred feet or so, make ourselves comfortable, sit quietly, and watch for what turns up.”

  “Like what?” Yuma asked.

  “Oh, deer, javelina, or maybe a raccoon. We’ve got to eat if we want to go on. I’ve got three shells in the pistol. One ought to bag an animal.”

  “That’s great,” Yuma said with sudden determination, “but I’m taking a bath first in that pool. I’m going to wash the desert out of my hair. I smell like a goat. You smell pretty baaad yourself. Come on,” she said, standing up, pulling him erect suddenly, shedding her clothes, and making a bundle of her garments. Navarre took a quick breath of excitement as she walked ahead of him, naked and natural, aware of his admiration and arousal. She slipped into the pool, sank below the surface, came up blowing. “It’s great, it’s cold, it’s marvelous. Quit stalling. We’re wasting time.”

  Navarre joined her, and as she poured streams of water from her hands into her wet hair to rinse away the dust and grit, she chuckled at him, moved closer, and splashed waves of water until his head was streaming. Deliberately she brushed by him with her breasts touching his chest briefly, then dragged their discarded clothes into the pool and dunked and swished them until they were soaked. Both of them wrung them free of water to spread on a large, flat stone to dry.

  Taking his hand, she led him out of the pool. “Isn’t it nice,” she said, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her breasts as she lowered herself onto their wet clothes, “to have a thin cushion to lie on?”

  It was about an hour later when Navarre and Yuma, sitting in their still-damp clothes on a rounded boulder ringed by desert bushes about a hundred feet away from the pool, heard the sound of twigs and leaves crackling softly. Then the faint noise stopped, and a cactus wren dropped from the left wall of the canyon, twittered, and fluffed its pale feathers in the pool. It drank, raised its tiny head suddenly, and flew off.

  Navarre, with Elidio’s pistol held loosely in his hand, tensed and whispered to Yuma, “Something scared the bird. Not a word now.” Then, just as he had cautioned her, a quick rustling reached their ears and first one, then two other bristly, black, wild pigs, each the size of a small dog, came into view, sniffing the air cautiously. Tusk bearing, ugly, with beady, black eyes, they stood motionless, listening for danger, and then moved to the edge of the pool.

  Slowly, Navarre lined up his pistol on the nearest javelina, which stood exposing his left side. He waited until the animal lowered his head to drink, and then pulled the trigger.

  The sound crashed in the silence, the struck pig squealed, and the others ran as the tumbling sound echoed in the canyon. Navarre was on his feet, pocketing the pistol, and with the dull knife Yuma had used to tear through the saltillo, he rushed to the pig struggling next to the pool. He placed his knee on the heaving body, stuck the knife into its throat, and sawed quickly. Blood spurted on the sand next to the pool, and quickly he turned the head to bleed downhill, away from the water. The bullet had struck behind the front leg near the heart. As the blood drained, the wild pig stopped struggling, and with his dull blade Navarre made a long opening in the body with care not to slit a gut, from vent to chest. The warm entrails slipped out, smoking on the yellow grass. Quickly he removed the gland near the pig’s tail which contained a musky essence, sprayed when the animal sensed danger.

  Yuma, standing over him, watching him work, said, “What can I do? It’s okay to eat him, isn’t it?”

  “Gather up some sticks and wood. We’ll make a fire and roast him after I skin him.”

  Two hours later, in the chill of the Sierra’s late October dusk, with the first stars winking above the soaring silhouette of the arroyo, Navarre and Yuma chewed on tough, roasted pieces of javelina meat. He had found a sturdy, dried limb he ran lengthways through the torso of the pig. The carcass on the stick was placed over large stones he piled on either side of the fire he had lit. The stringy flesh had a gamy flavor, greasy and chewy, and Yuma declared that it was the best meal she had ever eaten.

  Their clothes had dried before the night grew colder and drove the two to huddle together under a drooping juniper tree with light yellow leaves that dangled loosely from its branches as if they were dying. As Yuma snuggled in Navarre’s arms beneath the spread-out saltillo and rebozo, she said sleepily, “Someday I’d like to come back here with you and share the wildness when we’re not being hunted.”

  There was frost on the ground the next morning when they filled their water bag from the pool and washed their faces. By noon they had penetrated deep into the southwest region of the mountains, with long, ridged, buff-colored limestone cliffs and deep arroyos that alternated in rock-strewn waves across the wild, rugged landscape. The terrain they faced when they stopped to find shade at noon was stark and unending. It stretched for miles in the distance as they measured it with their eyes while they ate from the slabs of roast pig. Yuma had insisted she carry the meat in the blouse she’d removed to protect it from the dust rising from their feet as they walked.

  Yuma’s sandals worried Navarre, and when he bent to examine her feet, he was surprised that the leather soles still seemed to be sturdy after the forty miles or so he estimated they had walked from the abandoned van.

  “How far now, do you think?” she asked.

  Navarre straightened and looked at the far horizon. “Two days should take us to an intersection with the Chihuahua al Pacífico railroad, if my estimate is correct.”

  Navarre hesitated. He knew he couldn’t deceive Yuma any longer. Men looking for them were sure to be patrolling likely spots along the tracks where he and Yuma would show up. All they had to do was to wait for the fugitives and shoot them on sight. Navarre had no illusions about being taken alive. Describing them as dangerous killers who had wiped out three men in the desert, where they had fled to escape their crimes, the fat man, he was certain, had issued orders to shoot them on sight. A manhunt was always exciting; it heated the blood and stirred ancient instincts of pursuit. It always ended in a showdown with a taut rope over a limb or the bullet-riddled bodies of the hunted.

  As he turned to Yuma to explain their predicament, his eyes caught sight of a large, black bird sailing high over their heads. It was a turkey buzzard soaring on a wind current. Common in the desert, it was a scavenger, sharp sighted, always vigilant for injured or dead animals on which it could feast below.

  Lowering his eyes, Navarre felt a quick chill and chided himself for the thought that the scary old Indian who had died in the fire had the power to shape shift, to convert himself into another form of life. The idea of transformation was absurd. The desert was hunting ground for dozens of buzzards for
every square mile. But he could not forget the look of shock and fearful amazement in Yuma’s eyes when she saw the zopilote materialize from the cloud of smoke rising from the burning wreck where his body had been incinerated.

  “Is everything all right? You looked strange for a moment,” Yuma asked in a sharp voice.

  “Yes,” he answered hurriedly, “I was going to explain that . . .”

  She raised her hand to stop him.

  “I know what’s been on your mind, Thomas. I know that the closer we get to the mission, the greater the danger. Nuños is not going to stop at anything to get us. What do we do? You’ve got us this far by using your wits. We can’t let him win now.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Navarre said, then turned his eyes southwestward again, avoiding an uplifted glance, and finally said, “We’ve got two choices. If we keep to the mountain heights, where it will be tougher to travel, the only people we’re likely to meet are farmers and woodcutters who cultivate the mountainside or work the high pine forests. Somebody once said that the folks who live up high on farm hillsides walk bent forward because it’s so steep that a farmer can fall off his field with his plow.”

  The other way, Navarre explained, would be for them to strike out in a steady, straight line, which would intersect with the railroad. That way, he was certain, led into an easy trap. The high route was harder, still dangerous, and colder as they climbed higher, but probably they would have to slip by fewer armed men searching for them.