Navarro

Chapter 13

“Come on, Tommy. Get your ass up now.”

The deep, gravelly voice came from a long ways away. Someone was shaking him.

“Tommy?”

Behind the voice and high above, rifles snapped. Navarro blinked hard. Sharp nails probed his brain. A blurred figure was hunkered down beside him. Navarro smelled sweat and blood. He wasn’t sure if it was his own or someone else’s or a mixture of both.

Tixier’s emaciated, bristled face took form. The mestizo knelt beside Navarro, his slumped shoulders rising and falling sharply with his strained, wheezing breath. “We gotta get outta here, Tommy. All hell’s broke loose. Can you walk?”

Navarro winced against the nearly overpowering ache in his skull, rolled onto a shoulder, and looked around. He and Tixier were on a sand-and scree-strewn slope. Fifty feet above was the lip of the ridge they’d fallen down.

“Where’s Charlie . . . Ward?”

“Ain’t seen ’em. I was climbin’ down when you fell past me.”

Karla’s voice echoed behind the ringing in Navarro’s ears. “Tommy, don’t leave me!”

He grabbed Tixier’s sleeve. “Where’s the girl?”

“She’s still up there, Tom. Come on. We gotta get outta here . . .”

Navarro gained his feet with effort and stared up at the ridge. “You go, Dallas. I’m not leaving without her.”

“We ain’t in any shape to fight ’Paches no more tonight.” Tixier leaned forward, planted his hands on his knees. He heaved a heavy, wheezing sigh. Blood glistened on his arm, and his knees were shaking as badly as Navarro’s.

Tom studied him, the two images of the man moving in and out of painful focus. Tixier was right. Neither he nor Navarro was in any shape to climb back up the mountain. Even if they could, they’d be of no use to Karla.

Hearing the sporadic shooting on the mountaintop, which evoked in his damaged skull more anxiety than curiosity about who the Indians were still shooting at, Navarro gently pulled Tixier’s good arm. “Come on. Let’s find our horses. . . .”

He tramped heavily down the slope, looking back to see Tixier moving slowly after him, reaching for rocks as though drunk. Crawling over boulders and cat-stepping over sand slides, they made their way down the mountain’s aproning slopes. Twice the banging in Navarro’s head brought him to his knees and Tixier had to prod him with a boot toe and several jerks on his arms to get him moving again.

He’d just stumbled over a cactus skeleton when something to his right, on the other side of a low, square boulder, caught his eye. A human form. Navarro glanced at Tixier mincing sideways down the slope ahead of him, then stepped around the boulder to his right, and looked down.

It was Musselwhite, lying facedown, arms and legs spread, head turned to the left. Blood matted the back of his shirt and his head, pasting his hair against his scalp. A dark stream poured from his lips.

Navarro looked up and back toward the chalky cliff looming behind him. Apparently, Charlie had fallen down the sheer rock wall, at least two hundred feet high. If he’d fallen from a place only a few feet right, he’d have landed on the higher sand slide with Dallas and Navarro.

But he hadn’t, and he was dead.

Navarro ran a hand over his close-cropped scalp, draped his wrist over his knee and stared down at the seasoned tracker; deep lines of sorrow etched his dirty face. He’d met Charlie when they’d started working together at the Bar-V, but they’d grown nearly as tight as he and Tixier, who’d been together for the past twelve years.

Navarro glanced at Dallas, a vague shadow still moving away from him down the slope, the sound of his foot scuffs loud in the desert silence. No point in breaking the news to the old mestizo until they were out of this, Navarro thought. Pushing off his knees, he stood, glanced at Charlie once more.

“Sorry for leavin’ like this, pard. I’ll be back later to bury you proper.”

Nearly losing his balance, he turned around the boulder and began moving carefully down the slope toward Dallas, who’d disappeared over the incline’s brow.

Tixier was still ahead of him, and they were slipping and sliding down the last incline, when Dallas’ feet slipped out from under him, and he fell backward over a yucca clump, his breath an injured bird fluttering around in his chest.

“You go, Tommy,” the old mestizo wheezed. “I’m finished.”

Navarro stumbled toward him, prodded his side with a boot toe. “Get your ass up, you greasy half-breed. We ain’t finished yet, you son of a bitch.”

“Ah, shit, Tommy . . .”

When he’d gotten Dallas on his feet again, they negotiated the last incline shoulder to shoulder, hands around waists, like lovers. They continued walking this way, holding each other up, gently guiding themselves forward.

They’d walked a half mile in what Navarro thought was the direction of their horses, when Tixier’s knees bent. The mestizo slipped from Navarro’s grasp and dropped to the ground, his head rolling back on his shoulders.

“Dallas,” Navarro growled, holding Tixier up by his right arm. Clumsily, he dropped to a knee beside his friend, grabbed Tixier’s shirt with his other hand, gave it a tug. “Don’t give up. We’re close to the horses.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but as far as they’d come, they had to be.

Setting his teeth against his own pain, Navarro squinted his eyes at Tixier and shook him hard. “Dallas, don’t you fold on me!”

Tixier’s sweaty head lolled to his right shoulder. His eyes were closed, lips parted slightly.

Navarro shook him again, causing the man’s head to bob. “Bastard!”

Tixier said nothing. His eyes remained closed.

Navarro eased him down onto his right shoulder. Doing so, he placed a hand on the man’s lower back, feeling a sticky wetness. He brought his hand to his face. The hand was covered with blood gleaming in the starlight.

Navarro turned Tixier over slightly, saw the bullet hole over the mestizo’s left kidney. Turning the man onto his back, Navarro lowered his head to his chest and turned an ear to listen.

The bird in the old mestizo’s lungs had fallen silent. There was no heartbeat.

“You old bastard,” Navarro wheezed, shoulders slumping. “You old son of a bitch.”

Hands on his knees, he stared at Tixier. Around him, the night had fallen cool and quiet, not a breath of breeze. The branches around him were slender, crooked etchings against the star-jeweled sky. The velvet hump of Gray Rock shouldered northward—black and silent.

Navarro leaned forward, clutched Dallas’ right hand in his, gave it a squeeze. “You rest easy.”

He straightened Dallas’ legs and crossed his hands on his chest, then grabbed a mesquite branch and pulled himself to his feet.

He turned and stumbled off through the shrubs, arms hanging straight down at his sides.

He’d gone only a little ways before his steps grew even heavier, and he was dragging the toes of his boots in the gravel.

Finally, his knees buckled, he dropped, and his head fell back on his shoulders. His eyes closed, and he lost consciousness before he sagged sideways and hit the ground on his right arm.

“Wait a minute,” the short man said. He stood before Karla at the base of Gray Rock, holding her chin in his gloved hand and running his eyes down her naked body. “You ain’t one of our girls at all, are ye?”

“Please, mister.” Karla drew her knees up and crossed her arms on her chest. Her heart hammered. “I need—”

“Who the hell are you? And why are you—now I ain’t complainin’, mind you—naked as a jaybird?” The short man chuckled.

“I’m Karla Vannorsdell, and I was—”

“Save it,” the short man interrupted again. He stood and jerked her to her feet. “You can tell it to Edgar.”

The paint stood fifteen yards away, reins dangling, cropping at a sage shrub. The short man pulled Karla toward the horse. Halfway there, she jerked her right hand from his grip, wheeled, and ran, leaping a sage bush and dashing between two wagon-sized boulders.

She tripped over a stone, dropped to a knee, her left foot bleeding and aching.

The short man was on her, breathing hard. “You oughtn’t to do that, little miss. You’re apt to make me mad!” Jerking her to her feet and back toward the horse, moving quickly on his short legs, he said, “What you need is for me to take you off in the brush, teach you some respect. But Edgar wouldn’t like it. He don’t like us messin’ with his girls. You’re damn lucky I follow orders!”

Holding Karla’s right wrist, the short man climbed onto the paint, then pulled Karla across the saddle. She lay belly down between the short man and the horn.

She winced as the man reined the horse around and gigged it into a gallop back up through the steep, winding pass. As the horse lunged, Karla bounced across the saddle like fresh eggs in a buckboard, the horn pummeling her ribs. She tensed her neck to keep her head from slamming against the right stirrup fender. The man held her down with a firm hand on her spine.

She was going to die. She’d been so close to escaping and finding Tommy, but now she was going to die. She was certain of it. She only wished it would come quickly and relieve her of this misery.

Where the trail narrowed and doglegged, her bare feet scraped against the rock wall, evoking a moan. At the same time, she was grateful for the pain. The pain left little room for fear.

She squeezed her eyes shut and didn’t open them again until she felt the horse stop. Her face crumpled as the saddle horn pinched her belly.

“Edgar,” the guard said quietly.

Karla slid a look ahead of the horse. Ten yards away, at the very center of the saucer-shaped hollow, a dozen or so men lay under wool blankets, heads resting against saddles, hats tipped over their eyes. Some were curled on their sides. The fire was out, several ribbons of gray smoke rising gently from gray ashes. Bubbling, drunken snores rose toward the overhanging pine branches from which bloody black scalps had been hung to dry. The sickening smell of blood was relieved intermittently by the wafting pine smoke.

“Edgar,” the guard repeated, louder this time.

A man on the left side of the fire jerked awake with a grunt and snapped a revolver up from a coiled holster, thumbing back the hammer. The sudden movement made the horse shy, and the saddle prodded Karla again painfully. Several more men came alive, then, too, cursing and reaching for weapons.

“Hold it, hold it.” The rider raised his voice. “It’s Ramsay. Got a present for ye, Edgar.”

The man grabbed Karla’s right arm and brusquely tossed her from the horse. She fell on her back. Pain shot through her left elbow. She scrambled back against a boulder and drew her knees up, folded her arms across her breasts.

She raked her gaze across the silhouetted figures staring back at her. The man called Edgar slowly rose, letting his wool blanket fall from his shoulders. His pistol fell to his side as he moved toward Karla on long, skinny legs encased in baggy broadcloth trousers, like those from a man’s Sunday suit. The knees were patched with denim, and he wore red socks with holes in the toes.

Edgar dropped to a knee before Karla, and she recoiled from his cool appraisal. What she first had thought were pimples on his face were actually dried blood splatters. The face itself was long and angular, with an aquiline nose and deep-set eyes under a heavy blond brow.

His hair was blond and curly; heavy peach fuzz mantled his jaws. Karla winced at the fetor of rancid sweat, alcohol, and death wafting from his body.

“Caught her at the bottom of the mountain,” the guard said, still mounted. “Ridin’ like cans were tied to that horse’s tail. Naked as the day she was born, just like she is now.” He chuckled. “Ain’t she somethin’?”

Edgar canted his head this way and that. Set against his blood-splattered face, his eyes were oddly gentle, but in a demented sort of way. Karla flinched, smacking her head against the rock, as he reached up and took her chin in his right hand. He held her gently, caressed her cheek with his thumb.

“Injuns have you?” he asked.

Karla stared at him. She wasn’t sure how to answer. They must not know about Tommy and the other Bar-V men. If they did know, would they help them or kill them?

Instinctively knowing the answer, she nodded and squeezed her shoulders against her fear.

“What’s your name?” Edgar asked. Several other men had walked up behind him now, staring down at Karla. The alcohol and death smell was so strong that Karla’s stomach clenched. To avoid it, she breathed through her mouth.

“Karla Vannorsdell,” she said, her voice brittle. “I was captured by the Apaches.” Tears boiled from her eyes. “Would you please let me go?”

“Seen where she was staked out with the other girl, Edgar,” one of the men behind him said. “The other girl’s dead. Tossed her on the pile with the Injuns. Damn shame. She was near as fine as this one.”

Edgar nodded, his eyes glued to Karla. He gently grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms away from her chest. He stared at her.

“Please . . .” she begged.

“Karla, you are one fine-looking specimen,” Edgar said. “Damn shame. I’d like you for myself, but you’ll bring a nice price from Ettinger.” He glanced over his shoulder. “She needs clothes so she don’t freeze to death, and a hat so the sun don’t fry her tomorrow. Come on, boys. Cough up your spares.”

“Please . . .” Karla sobbed.

Rising, Edgar turned and walked back to his blanket, throwing his lanky arms out and yawning. “Tie her with the others. Good and tight. She’s a runner, that one.”