Navarro

Chapter 9

His rifle cocked, the barrel resting on the rock before him, Navarro stared at the scrub pinions and low boulders on the other side of the fire. Beyond lay the arroyo from where the sound of the falling stone had come.

Low voices sounded—men talking to one another in hushed tones. There was the thud of a shod hoof.

Navarro glanced around the camp. Captain Ward lay to his right, behind a low, flat-topped rock, his cocked pistol in his right hand and resting in the weeds beside the rock. Ahead and left was Tixier, leaning back against a low shelf extending out from the base of the slope behind them. Charlie Musselwhite lay several yards before the fire, stretched prone, extending his own rifle into the shrubs brushed with amber firelight, and into the arroyo beyond.

“Helloooo the camp,” a voice called from somewhere out in the darkness.

“Name yourselves!” Navarro returned.

A short, tense silence. The fire before Navarro snapped, and the coffeepot chugged. Ward thumbed back his Colt’s hammer, making a soft tch-tch-click.

“Well, our mama’s done already named us,” the stranger said, his voice slow and buoyed with humor. He sounded young, maybe a teenager. “But if you mean, tell you our names, it’s Trav Cheatam and Tall “Sawed-off” Gomez. We’re friendly if you are.”

Musselwhite gained his feet and ran forward into the shrubs, peering into the arroyo with his rifle snugged to his shoulder. “What’s your business?” he called.

“Business? We ain’t got no business. We was just wonderin’ if we could share your fire. We been ridin’ all day, and our horses are spent.”

Navarro stood and moved warily across the camp, sidling up to a scraggly pinion growing out of a sandy hump and peering into the arroyo. He didn’t have to speak very loud for his voice to carry in the hushed night. “Come on in.”

He waited, rifle extended from his hip. He saw Musselwhite’s silhouette in the trees to his left. Tixier had moved up to the arroyo, on the other side of Charlie. They all had a good shot of anyone coming in shooting, and out here, you never knew who you were going to run into.

The clip-clop of slow-moving horses rose to the left, coming from east along the arroyo. Two figures appeared, moving side by side—an average-sized gent in a tall hat and a short, squat man wearing a sombrero, with silver flashing along his saddle. They stopped within a few feet of Tixier and the taller man wearing the high hat said, “There any grass?”

“Down there,” Tixier said.

He, Musselwhite, and Navarro watched the men move westward along the arroyo, dismount, and stake their horses out with the Bar-V mounts and the pack mule. It took them fifteen minutes to unsaddle their horses and rub them down before they appeared out of the western shadows, approaching the camp with their saddles on their shoulders. Navarro and the others had waited, rifles at half-mast but hammers at half-cock.

“Sorry to trouble you, gents,” the taller man said as he and the shorter man wearing the sombrero approached Navarro.

“No trouble,” Navarro said mildly. He stepped to one side, so the two strangers could pass before him. “There’s coffee on the fire, and extra grub. What’s ours is yours.”

“Thank you, mighty kindly,” the taller one said as he and his friend stepped through the brush and headed for the fire tucked back in the hollow. He wasn’t that tall—well under six feet, but he was a good three or four inches taller than his partner wearing the sombrero, who still hadn’t said anything. Both wore six-shooters on their thighs, and walnut rifle stocks protruded from the scabbards they carried with their saddles.

“Cozy camp ye have here,” the taller one said conversationally as he tossed down his saddle and blanket roll. “We couldn’t even see your fire but from one little point on the ridge over this cut.”

“That was the idea,” Navarro said, moving back around the fire but keeping his eyes on the two new-comers. Both had stooped to arrange their gear, but they kept an eye skinned on Navarro and the others, who were drifting back to the fire.

By the guttering firelight, the Bar-V segundo studied each newcomer in turn. The taller man was just a kid, eighteen or nineteen, dressed in sloppy trail garb except for the expensive-looking top hat. He had a long face with dumb eyes and buck teeth making his clean upper lip bulge. His body was soft and fleshy, and he had the rounded hips and thick thighs of a heavy girl.

The shorter man was slightly older, a moon-faced Mex who grinned continuously and shyly while keeping his eyes lowered, occasionally glancing up from beneath a single black eyebrow.

He wasn’t much over five feet five, his large head sitting without benefit of neck on abnormally wide shoulders. His short arms were as thick as most thighs, his thighs as thick as most rain barrels. He didn’t look cunning enough to be a gunman, but he wore two silver-plated Smith & Wessons down low, in buscadero holsters. Both pearl-gripped revolvers shone through the sparely built holsters, glistening with oil.

“Yessiree, ye can’t be too careful out here,” the kid said, rummaging around in his saddlebags. “Say, you boys ain’t run into any Apache trouble, have you?” Producing two tin cups from the saddlebags, he turned to Navarro sitting on a rock across the fire.

“A little.” Tom leaned forward, picked up a scrap of thick cowhide, and used it to lift the speckled-black coffeepot from the flat rock in the fire. He extended the pot to the kid. “Joe?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the kid said, extending a cup in either hand. When Navarro had filled both cups, the kid gave one to his Mexican friend sitting on his knees to the kid’s right. The Mexican knelt on his stubby thighs, eyes lowered, as though offering confession.

“Careful,” Navarro said. “It’s been on the fire awhile. If your friend there was to drop one of those fancy six-guns in it, why, I’d say it’d probably float.” He cut a quick glance at Tixier sitting on a deadfall to Navarro’s right. Returning his strained amiable smile to the kid and his silent companion, Navarro raised his own cup in a salute, and drank.

“Strong—that’s how we like it,” the kid said, lifting the cup to his lips. He blew ripples on the coffee and sipped. Making a face, he swallowed and shook his head, showing his buck teeth. “And whooo-eee, it sure is strong! Thanks for the warning. Appreciate it.”

Navarro glanced at Ward. The captain assumed his previous position to Navarro’s right, leaning back against his saddle, holding his cup in both hands as he watched the fire. He appeared to have gone back to his previous thoughts, as well, staring into the flames but no doubt seeing the Apaches who had ambushed him and his detail. He seemed no longer aware there were strangers in their midst.

The kid had followed Tom’s gaze to the soldier. “Hidy there, Cap. You is a cap, ain’t ye? I ain’t never served, but my old man, he was in the Army till I was ten, so I savvy the stripes and bars and such.”

Ward had turned to the kid slowly and only nodded, then lifted his cup to his lips and sipped. While Ward leaned toward the pot to refill his cup, Charlie Musselwhite said, “Your old man was in the service till you were ten? He musta got out—what?—five years ago?”

“Ah, I’m older’n that,” the kid said shyly. He blew on his coffee, sipped, and made another face. “Coffee like that, who needs firewater?”

Navarro decided to go ahead and fire off his question. It wasn’t polite, but there was something fishy about these two, and he didn’t care if he offended them. “Where you two headed—Cheatam and Gomez?”

Tixier flashed him a look over the blade he was again sharpening on the whetstone.

The kid regarded Navarro levelly, his eyes cool. He didn’t say anything for nearly a minute. Then he set his cup down and removed his opera hat from his sandy blond head. He played with the hat’s narrow brim. “We’re headed down Mejico way.” He let a little grin pull at the corners of his mouth.

“What’s down Mejico way?”

“Our employers.” The kid glanced at his buddy, the froggy, servile Gomez, then glanced around at the others. “We hunt Apache scalps and sell ’em down there, and then we go visit Tall’s sisters and cousins in Escorpion. It’s a town, in case you didn’t know—in a canyon a hundred miles into Mejico. They say there’s all kinds of spiders in there, and that’s where it got the name, but me, I been down there three, four times now, but I ain’t never seen a single one. But I seen plenty of Tall’s sisters and cousins. Muy bonita!” He chuckled and twirled his hat in the air, caught it one-handed.

Tixier said, “A lucrative business, hunting Apache scalps?”

“When they’re in season!” the kid piped, glancing again at his buddy, pleased with himself. Gomez knelt there, his coffee in his dark hands held low against his round belly, smiling at the ground before his knees. His teeth made a craggy white line below his black mustache, which drooped down around both sides of his mouth.

“Sounds dangerous,” Navarro said.

“No more than sport huntin’ wildcats,” Cheatam said. “Of course, we don’t work alone. We’re ridin’ to meet our bunch at Contention. Me and Gomez here—I call him Tall on account of his name is Tularecito and he’s so short—we got waylaid by the senoritas over in Wakely. They just wouldn’t let us leave—would they, Tall?” He didn’t wait for Gomez to respond. “We’re ridin’ hard to catch up. We’d still be ridin’, but our horses were ready to plum give out.”

The kid stuck his hand inside his hat, held it shoulder high, and gave it a twirl. Watching the spinning hat, he said, “Where you boys headed?”

“After a girl,” Navarro said. “You haven’t seen one out here—a white girl—have you?”

“We ain’t seen no girls since Wakely,” the kid said. “What’s a gringa filly doin’ out here? Don’t she know Nan-dash’s off his reserve and madder than an old wet hen?”

“No, I reckon she doesn’t,” Navarro said, dropping his grim gaze to the rocks around the fire.

“Well, too bad for her, but good for Tall and me and the rest of our bunch. We thought we weren’t gonna get any huntin’ in before headin’ back down to Mexico, but now that Nan-dash is runnin’ off his leash again, we might get a little scalpin’ in, after all.” He flipped his hat in the air and caught it with both hands, then ran his finger against the high black crown.

“Kid,” Navarro said, leaning out over the rifle laid across his knees, “you either set that hat on your head or set it aside. I’m not going to tell you twice.”

The hat froze in the kid’s hands. He looked at Navarro, dumbstruck. The others looked at Tom, as well, the captain’s wide eyes sliding around in their sockets. His right index finger stopped tracing his cup’s rim.

Navarro’s stare didn’t waiver from the kid. Gomez looked up demurely, the fire’s two main flames flickering in his dark eyes.

“Mister,” the kid said haughtily, “I don’t know what’s got into you, but—”

He flipped the crown of the hat toward Navarro and jammed his right hand inside. Navarro bolted to his feet and raised his rifle to his shoulder, the rifle booming twice, the explosions like cannon shots within the hollow. Both shots took the kid in the face, one above his left brow, the other an inch below his left eye. He jerked once with each shot. Jaw slackening, eyes snapping disbelief, he twisted slightly right and fell slowly back to the ground.

A small-caliber gun snapped inside the kid’s hat, blowing a hole through the crown and plunking a wild slug into the fire, throwing up sparks.

The pocket pistol had no sooner popped than Gomez had bolted off his stubby thighs, his small hands a blur as they clawed up his pearl-gripped Smithies. He’d nearly raised both guns before Tixier and Musselwhite, leaping off their heels and grabbing iron, extended their pistols at him and fired, Tixier shooting three quick rounds into the right side of his head, Musselwhite tiggering one shot into his chin, another through his heart.

Gomez was punched up and back, screaming and firing both pistols into the air. He hit the mountain wall, bounced off, and fell in a heap at the base, both blood-splattered pistols still clutched in his small hands. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, working his eyes and mouth and rubbing the hammer of the right Smithy with his thumb, feebly trying to cock it.

Smoke curling from the barrel of his long-barreled Colt, Tixier walked over to Gomez, planted his right boot on the gun he was trying to cock, extended the Colt, and drilled another round through the Mexican’s head, killing him.

Captain Ward had bolted to his feet and stumbled back, his pistol hanging low in his right hand. Mouth agape, he turned to Navarro. “How’d you know that kid had a gun in his hat?”

Tixier and Musselwhite turned to Tom, their eyes puzzled.

“Saw reward dodgers on both of them in Tucson the other day. They and one other son of a bitch are wanted for murder and horse theft up around Prescott.” Tom shook his head. “He was just too damn in love with that hat.”

“Horse theft, eh?” Musselwhite said.

As if on cue, one of the horses whinnied.

“Let’s go meet the third son of a bitch.” Rifle raised, Navarro bolted through the brush.