“Two days ago.”
Navarro fingered the Winchester. “You the only survivor?”
“Sergeant Tanner and a scout were with me for a while, but they both died from their wounds . . . yesterday, I think.” Ward’s breath caught as, pondering, he suddenly remembered. “The sergeant died yesterday morning. Tingsla died a few hours later. They were hit bad.” Ward’s eyes filled with tears and he dropped his gaze.
“Where did this happen?”
Ward blinked his eyes clear, and he shook his head. “Can’t recollect. A lot of confusion. I remember we entered a canyon. Turned out to be a box canyon. The Apaches were laying for us. I was hit with a tomahawk, and the sergeant threw me over my horse and led me out.”
“Sounds like you might have run into Nan-dash’s reservation jumpers. We ran into a few last night ourselves.”
Ward nodded. “Nan-ta-do-ka-dash. We’d been on his trail for three days, out of Fort Apache.” He seemed to think about that, then balled his sun-blistered cheeks and squinted up at the Bar-V segundo. “What are you doing out here, Navarro?”
“Trailin’ a girl. My boss’s daughter.”
“Good Lord.”
“Ran away from home to be with her vaquero beau.”
“Heaven help her.” Ward looked at the rabbit he’d dropped in the fire. The flames had turned it black.
“Hungry?” Navarro asked.
“I snared that rabbit, didn’t want to risk a pistol shot. I haven’t eaten since the morning before the attack. No canteen, but last night’s rain filled the rock tanks.” Ward snapped his teeth and looked chagrined. “I reckon I’ve been a little disoriented, Mr. Navarro.”
“No horse?”
Captain Ward shook his head. “The sergeant’s horse ran off last night, during the storm. I need to get back to Fort Apache. Can you help me?”
“Fort Apache’s north. We’re heading south. We can drop you off at Fort Dragoon.”
“That’ll do.”
Navarro took the young man’s arm. “Come along, Captain. My two partners and our horses are down below. If you think you can ride, I’d like to get a couple more miles in before nightfall.”
Ward nodded as he climbed to his feet and straightened his dusty tunic. “I can ride.”
Ward was a little wobbly on his feet—Navarro figured that the tomahawk had rattled his brains around plenty—and they took their time descending the slope, Tom leading the way but turning often to help the younger man over the larger rocks and through brush clumps.
When they gained the creek bottom, Navarro introduced the captain to Tixier and Musselwhite, who were smoking black cheroots while their horses drew water from a spring they’d found several yards east. Navarro gave the captain several twists of fresh jerky from his saddlebags, mounted his buckskin, pulled Ward up behind him, and gigged the horse out of the draw and onto the trail they’d been following before they’d spied the smoke.
Navarro heard the captain eating hungrily behind him as they rode. When the captain had finished the jerky, his head fell forward against Navarro’s shoulder, and soft snores rose up from the young soldier’s chest.
“They get younger every year,” Tixier said just behind Navarro’s grulla.
Tom shook his head and reined the horse around a sharp trail bend, flushing a skinny coyote from a clump of mesquite and Mormon tea on his right. The dun-and-cream coyote ran up a knoll, tail down, glancing sheepishly back over its left shoulder before disappearing down the other side.
The riders had just brought the canyon of the San Pedro into view ahead when the sun sank behind them, flooding the canyons and valleys with deep, cool shadows. Night was the best time for traveling in Apache country, because the Indians wouldn’t fight after dark, but Navarro didn’t want to continue and risk overlooking sign of Karla.
She was heading south, but they were leaving country foreign to her, and she might’ve gotten turned around anywhere. Navarro didn’t want to think about the possibility that Apaches might have nabbed her even before she’d reached the San Pedro. He, Tixier, and Musselwhite might be chasing a wild goose, but until they found Karla, either dead or alive, they had to continue scouring all the ground they could.
They made camp in a deep hollow at the base of a pinion-covered ridge, staking the horses and the pack mule out on long ropes so they could graze and draw water from a run-out spring. Navarro and Musselwhite gathered wood while Tixier, the best cook of the three, hauled out the utensils, sliced beef and potatoes into a skillet, and boiled coffee. They ate silently, the sky a bejeweled, black velvet blanket arcing over them, coyotes yapping from ridges, nighthawks swooping.
Captain Ward said little, just stared into the fire with the troubled expression of someone who’d endured more than he’d been ready for. In deference to the young man’s condition, the others didn’t say much, either.
When Navarro had finished his supper and scrubbed his plate with sand, he fished a tequila bottle and cloth bandages from his saddlebags, and hunkered down beside Ward.
“Tip your head toward the fire, Captain.”
Ward turned to him, frowning curiously.
“That’s a deep cut those ’Paches opened on your noggin. Looks like you got a couple pounds of sand in it. It needs cleaning.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“You’ll probably live, but I see no reason go around with your head full of sand when you don’t need to.”
“Could pus up on you, Captain,” Musselwhite said as he poured himself another cup of coffee. “If it turns green, one o’ those Army surgeons might decide to amputate.”
Musselwhite chuckled at his own joke. Tixier shook his head. Ward said nothing, just tipped his head toward the fire with an expression of strained tolerance.
“You’ll have to forgive Charlie’s sense of humor,” Navarro said, splashing tequila on a bandage. “The rest of us do.”
“Don’t listen to him, Cap,” Musselwhite said. “I keep everyone in stitches around the Bar-V, I do.” Leaning toward Navarro, he picked up the tequila bottle and splashed a dollop into his coffee, then reached around the fire to splash a finger into that of Tixier, who was enjoying a dessert of sour dough biscuit and prickly pear jam. Pilar, who was sweet on the old mestizo, or half-breed, had given him a jar of jam for his birthday.
Navarro splashed more tequila on the bandage and scrubbed the captain’s temple with vigor. Ward frowned into the fire, his head moving with Tom’s tending.
“Apaches,” Ward said, as though talking to himself. “They don’t fight like soldiers . . . like men.”
Navarro tossed the cloth into the fire, picked up another from his lap, draped it over the lip of the bottle, and shook more tequila onto it. “How’s that, Captain?”
Ward’s nose wrinkled angrily. “They fight like children . . . like cowardly schoolyard bullies.”
“You got that right, Captain,” Tixier said. “That’s why the Army needs to change the way it fights them.”
“I attended West Point,” Ward said, lifting a defiant glance at Tixier. “I trained under the best fighting men in the world.”
“No, you didn’t,” Navarro said, again rubbing around the edges of the captain’s wound. “The best fighting men in the world, second only to the Cheyenne, are the very Apaches that butchered your patrol. Your West Point commanders are fine when it comes to fighting other white men, but when it comes to fighting Apaches, the best teachers are the Apaches themselves.”
Ward turned his skeptical eyes to Navarro. “What would you propose?”
Navarro tossed the second bandage into the fire, took a long pull from the tequila bottle, and reclined against his saddle, crooking an arm behind his head. “I’d propose what I did propose and got laughed at for. That the Calvary of the Southwest abandon the blue woolen uniforms with the shiny brass buttons for buckskins, that they ride unshod horses in very loose formations, and at the first sign of conflict, dismount and take to the hills and the rocks, the way the
Apaches do.”
“Hear, hear, Tommy.” Musselwhite saluted with his cup and drank. “If we hadn’t fought so damn civilized, I’d have a lot fewer friends on the other side of the sod.”
“You men served?” Ward asked, glancing around.
“Sí,” Tixier nodded. He was sharpening his bowie knife on a whetstone—slow, even strokes—occasionally testing the edge on the black hair curling on his corded brown forearm. “Contracto exploradors.”
Across the hollow rose the thuds of a rock rolling down a hill, the sounds sharp in the quiet air.
“Away from the fire!” Navarro rasped, reaching for his rifle and rolling into the shadows.
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?”
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