Navarro

by Ralph Compton

  The man, grinning, had lowered his arms. Suddenly, he lunged toward her, whipping his rifle toward Karla’s. Before his Winchester connected with her Henry, Karla squeezed the trigger. The man grunted as the bullet tore through his belly. His momentum carried him another stumbling step forward. Dropping his rifle and slapping both hands to his middle, he fell to his knees.

  Face bunched with pain, he looked up at her, eyes wide with shock. His voice was tight, barely audible. “Why, you little . . .” One hand on his belly, he reached with the other for the rifle angling across his right knee.

  Panting, hearing panicked grunts squirting up from her throat as though from someone standing beside her, Karla backed away from the man and quickly levered another shell into the Henry’s chamber. She centered the rifle on the man’s chest, steeled herself, and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle clicked empty.

  Karla’s thudding heart fell hard. The man was bringing up his own rifle, grunting and cursing, his hand shaking. Karla took her own rifle by the barrel and lunged toward him, swinging the butt in a broad arc. It smacked his head so hard that Karla’s wrists cracked painfully.

  The men fell on his right shoulder and lay quivering.

  “Otis? Where the hell are ye, boy?” The man’s burly voice rose from downslope and several yards right of where the first man had come up.

  Looking that way, Karla saw two shadows darting amid the tall pines and jumbled rocks and boulders. Victorious whoops and laughter rose from the hollow.

  “Come on, son,” the man on the slope called again, his voice filled with laughter. “We done got ’em all, every blasted one. I got ole Nan-dash’s hair right here!”

  Giving a startled cry, Karla dropped to her knees. She set the rifle down and jerked her head around. Before her, rocks clattered under the boots of the men climbing the slope. She peered up the ridge from which Tommy had fallen. If she tried to climb it, the approaching men would see her.

  “Otis, let ’em go! It’s time to dance!”

  Karla heaved herself to her feet, stepped over the dead Indian, and bolted behind three boulders wedged atop one another and shielding her from the hollow and the men climbing the slope. Looking around for an escape route, hearing the footsteps growing in volume behind her, she stole out from behind the boulders, edged over a little lip and into a hollow. A dark crevice shone in the rocks at the base of the lip on her left.

  Moving to it, the sharp stones cutting her bare feet, she squeezed between the rocks and into the hollow, gritting her teeth against the jagged edges slicing her back, belly, and thighs. When she was wedged in the cramped hollow, she peered out from between the rocks.

  She saw little but a pine looming ahead and left, more rocks and shrubs dropping along the slope to the hollow. Flickering light from the Indians’ fire, now taken over by the scalp hunters, edged up from below, giving the night an eerie luminescence. Victorious whoops still rose, punctuating the muttered conversation.

  By the voices, there must have been twenty white men down there.

  Scalp hunters.

  Karla knew the breed. They’d visited the ranch on occasion, seeking water and grain for their horses—hard, soulless, bloodstained men with crusted Indian scalps hanging from their saddles. Enshrouded in flies and reeking of death.

  “Look what I found!” a man shouted, laughing. “Tiswin!”

  Back toward the dead scalp hunter, a man yelled, “Bing, I found him!”

  Running boots clattered on rocks. Silence. The two men spoke, their voices too low for Karla to hear clearly. She drew her limbs together as much as she could in the shallow, irregular niche, and ducked low behind a rock, squeezing her eyes closed.

  After a minute, the rocks clattered again. One of the men grunted deeply, as though shouldering a great weight. “Otis, you stupid bastard,” one of the men said through a strained sigh. “You let that wet-behind-the-ears ’Pache take ye down! Vern, don’t forget his scalp.”

  The footfalls faded as the two men headed back down the slope toward the hollow.

  The tension in Karla’s body relaxed slightly. Listening intently, she heard no other nearby sounds, only those of the revelry below the hill. Smoke wafted to her nostrils, smelling of mesquite and a meat other than mule. Beef. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten in two days. The Apaches had allowed her only a half sip of water from a bladder flask.

  Tommy. How could she get to him?

  Peering around the rock before her, she saw that the glow of the fire had increased. With that much light, she wouldn’t be able to climb the ridge without being seen from below.

  Suppressing her thirst and hunger, she thought through the dilemma. As she did, a horse whinnied somewhere on the other side of the mountain. If she could get to the horses, she might be able to mount one and ride through the narrow crevice the Apaches had used to attain the ridge.

  Once down, she could skirt the mountain’s base and, hopefully, locate Tommy and the other Bar-V men.

  She’d wait here until the scalp hunters, drunk on the Apache’s tiswin, had gone to sleep. . . .

  As she waited, the cool of the desert night settled around her naked flesh, raising pimples along her back and arms. It got so cold that her muscles ached and her teeth clattered.

  So gradually as to be almost imperceptible, the firelight faded and the celebration waned. When all but three or four of the voices had died, Karla waited another hour, transporting herself mentally to a summer hay meadow not far from the Bar-V headquarters, where the hot sun enshrouded her.

  But then she thought of Juan, saw him as she’d seen him last, his skinned, blood-drenched face protruding from the ant-covered sand. She heard her own rifle shot, and though she hadn’t looked at Juan after she’d pulled the trigger, she now saw the hole the bullet had drilled through his forehead.

  Her heart contracted. Sobs racked her, tears flowing from her eyes and coursing down her dusty cheeks.

  “Juan,” she cried softly.

  Suddenly realizing all the sounds from the hollow had died, she lifted her head and peered around the rock. The night was still, the stars vivid. A light breeze blew, and a single wolf howled.

  Wiping the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands, Karla crawled out of the niche and looked around. Nothing moved. Except for the wolf, all was silent.

  The breeze biting her, and the rocks chewing at her feet, she followed a path of sorts through the rocks and pines around the edge of the hollow. She moved slowly, swinging her gaze in all directions.

  Several times she found the scalped bodies of dead Apaches, blood on their hairless skulls. By now she’d seen so much horror, and was so chilled and terrified, that the grisly sightings barely registered. Navarro, Tixier, and the others foremost on her mind, she stepped over or around the bodies and, avoiding the very center of the hollow, where the dying fire glowed wanly and where intermittent snores resounded, made her way to the other side of the mountaintop. The Apaches, and probably the scalp hunters, had picketed their horses there, in the willows and curl leaf growing along a spring.

  Amid the scarps and pine snags, it took her a long time to find the horses. When she did, she also found a bridle hanging from a branch.

  Holding the bridle low at her side, she moved slowly toward the herd grazing on long picket ropes or reclining in the grass along the spring. She singled out the shortest one standing off by itself, and moved to it slowly, wincing at the thorny brush beneath her feet.

  Seeing her, the little paint shied, sidled away, giving its tail a single angry swish. Karla cooed to the mount, holding her soiled hands out placatingly.

  “Shhh . . . it’s all right,” Karla said, her voice shaking with the rest of her. “Oh, what a handsome horse you are. . . . That’s all right. . . . Don’t be afraid.”

  As much as she felt the need to hurry, she took her time with the paint, speaking to it softly and letting it get used to her smell, before slipping the bridle over its ears. Because of her sti
ff legs and sore feet, she needed three tries to leap up onto its back, and when she finally got settled there, she reined the horse westward across the brushy bench. Two horses whinnied behind her. Before her and to the right, another jerked with a start, leaping off its rear hooves and running out to the end of its rope.

  She set her teeth against the noise and heeled the horse into the cleft in the rock wall. The trail dropped steeply, throwing her forward over the horse’s neck. Twisting and turning between the jutting stone walls, the little paint picked its way, its hooves clipping stones, the jolting ride causing Karla’s sore muscles to scream and her bare rump to burn against the horse’s coarse hide.

  It took a good quarter hour to get to the bottom of the mountain. When the paint finally leveled out at the base of an apron slope buried in mesquite, Karla reined back and heaved a long sigh of relief.

  She was just about to bat her heels against the horse’s ribs and begin making her way south along the mountain’s base, when the sound of crunching gravel rose on her left. Acrid cigarette smoke peppered her nostrils. She whipped her head toward the sound and the smell. A man in a battered bowler hat stood wielding a rifle and an enraged scowl, a crooked quirley protruding from his thin lips.

  Before Karla knew what was happening, the man had grabbed her left arm and pulled. He was short but powerful, and the tug jerked Karla instantly off the paint’s back. She hit the ground hard, her head glancing off a stone.

  “Goddamn girl!” the short man snapped, dropping to his knees beside her and brusquely grabbing her chin in his callused right hand. He gave her head a violent shake, rattling her brains around. “Where the hell you think you’re goin’? Huh? Where on earth you think you’re goin’?”

  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!”