The Return Of Cord Navarro

by Vella Munn

  Sweat broke out on her temple. Angry, she wiped it away. The rest of the time, she kept her hands close to her body so a branch wouldn’t snag her—Indian style, the way Cord had taught her.

  And she prayed to the spirit that moves in all things to shelter and protect a ten-year-old boy.

  Had she lost sight of the creek? For a moment, the sudden change in terrain confused her. Then she realized she was back on rocks where precious little growth could take root. Blinking back tears of desperation, she stared at her surroundings.

  She could see for a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty feet. At the far end of the unexpected clearing, she caught a glimpse of faded denim and white cotton.

  Cord. Kneeling over something, eyes trained on his surroundings, body ready, not for flight, but fight.

  She didn’t know she’d shoved her fist in her mouth until she tasted blood. Somehow she forced herself to stop clenching her teeth, but now she couldn’t make herself move.

  She’d turn around. Walk away.

  That way she’d never have to see if her son had been killed.

  But she was, above everything else in life, a mother. No matter what had happened, she couldn’t leave.

  When she started running again, her legs felt so heavy that twice she stumbled. Still, she couldn’t take her eyes off Cord’s hunched form now holding something—someone.

  Don’t let him die, Cord. For me, for you, for the rest of our lives — don’t let him die.

  “Mommy!”

  Matt’s voice washed over her like a sudden, brilliant sunrise. Stripped of muscle and bone, she dropped to her knees beside father and son.

  “Mommy!”

  Eyes wide and deep and boiling with emotion, Cord clutched Matt tightly to his chest. All she could do was touch her son’s back, run her fingers into his hair, draw in the smell of little-boy sweat. Sob in relief.

  “Are you all right? Oh, Matt...Cord?”

  “They didn’t hit him. Thank God, they didn’t...” Cord gaped at her, then stared at his surroundings.

  Her heart ached. Only embracing Matt would take away the pain. Yet Matt had his arms around Cord’s neck, his face buried against his father and was crying a little, muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over, and she knew that no other sound on earth would ever mean as much as hearing his voice at this moment did.

  Hot tears burned their way down her cheeks. She should wipe them away, blunt a little of her fear and relief so Matt would recognize her as his mother and not a half-insane woman, but she couldn’t take her hands off him long enough for that.

  “I tried. Dad, I wanted you to be proud of me.”

  “I know you did.”

  “But I got lost. You’re never lost.”

  All too soon she became aware of the cadence of silence. Cord should say something to his son, some words of reassurance and love. Instead, he simply knelt on dirt and rocks and held Matt. She couldn’t see his face now, could only guess at what was going on inside him.

  “It’s all right.” She spoke for her ex-husband. “You did a wonderful job, honey. You were so brave, so strong, so —”

  “Mommy?”

  Matt hadn’t called her “Mommy” since he’d started school. Wise in the way of growing boys, she’d learned to respond to a casual “Mom.” Now he was taking her back to when a little boy needed his mother’s loving reassurance.

  That’s what she’d think about—not the bullets that had nearly ended his life.

  “What, honey?”

  “You’ve been looking a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” She ran her hand over his small, wiry shoulders, down his straight back. His shirt was torn and filthy. The warmth beneath the ruined fabric made it possible for her heart to go on beating.

  “Just you and Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  Matt lifted his head off his father’s chest to look at her. His face was wind-chapped and sunburned, and she wasn’t sure any shampoo would repair the damage to his hair. He had a few mosquito bites and two parallel scratches near his right eye.

  This wasn’t the ten-year-old boy she’d been going to make pizza for a few days ago. Dirt and tangled hair and chapped skin made him look older.

  Only, it wasn’t the outward signs of his ordeal that had matured him. His eyes—Cord’s dark eyes—were different somehow. Wiser. Experienced.

  “I’m proud of you,” she whispered when he did nothing except stare at her with those newly mature eyes that so reminded her of the man she’d made love to last night. “So very proud.”

  “You aren’t going to punish me?”

  “No. Oh, no. Did you think I would?”

  Instead of answering, Matt planted his hands on his father’s chest and pushed back just enough so he could look into Cord’s eyes. The very forest seemed to pause, almost stop its rhythm. From where she knelt, she was privy to the emotion going through her son and understood it in a way she’d seldom understood anything else. He might have called her “Mommy” and asked if she was going to punish him, but it was his father’s reaction he sought and needed. She had no will or strength to fight her tears; Matt would simply have to see them. If he was as wise as she now believed, he’d understand that her tears traced the depth of her love for him.

  Cord’s hands were at Matt’s waist; maybe Matt could feel something intangible and vital through that silent contact, and maybe Matt hadn’t stopped staring at his father because he didn’t know enough.

  Please, Cord. Say something.

  “Just you and Mom?” Matt’s voice was still that of a little boy’s. “There’s no search and rescue?”

  “No.”

  She thought Matt would ask why not. He simply nodded. “You followed my tracks?”

  “Your dad did, yes.”

  “All—I didn’t do so good. I got pretty lost.”

  Cord didn’t speak, didn’t move. His eyes still locked with his father’s, Matt slowly pulled free and pushed himself to his feet. He glanced down at his dirty boots. “Mom? I’m sorry I scared you.”

  A thousand words rolled through her, but she didn’t try to sort through them. She stood and held out her hands. Cord, please! Say something!

  “It’s all right,” she managed as Matt buried himself against her. “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  He felt wonderful! A dirty, tired bundle of bone and muscle now pressed against her. His arms slid around her waist; she gripped his shoulders, buried her face in his matted hair, and wondered how much longer she would be able to look down at him.

  Matt, alive and well.

  Matt, not a victim of some hunter’s gun.

  Matt, given back to her by Cord.

  Cord, who now stood a few feet away looking as if he didn’t know what to do with his body.

  Talk to him, Cord. Tell him you love him.

  Cord spun and stalked away from them. She nearly screamed at him before she spotted what had caught his attention. Standing at the edge of a bushy thicket were four men, all of them armed with rifles. Cord! No, don’t! They might—

  He couldn’t hear her silent warning, and even if he had, his long, purposeful stride told her he was beyond listening. Without saying a word, he walked up to them and grabbed the rifle from one of the men before slamming it to the ground.

  “Damn you! Damn you! You almost —”

  The rifleless man turned toward one of his companions, a shorter man in a faded red-and-white checked shirt and a face like sun-dried leather. “Chuck! You said it was an elk!”

  “That ‘elk’ was my son.” Cord’s strong fingers had become fists. He kept them at his side, just barely. “You’re hunting out of season, shooting at anything that moves. If you’d been a decent shot...” Although close to a hundred feet separated her and Matt from the others, she saw Cord shudder. He concentrated on the man with the checkered shirt. “Chuck?” he asked. “Chuck Markham?”

  “Yeah?” To her horror, instead of lowering his rifle,
the way the other two men were doing, Chuck kept it firm and steady in his arms—aimed at Cord’s chest. “What of it?”

  “Nothing matters to you except getting what you want, does it?” Cord stalked closer.

  “What’s it to you? Your kid’s safe, isn’t he?”

  What’s it to you? If she hadn’t been so focused on the weapon and her ex-husband, she might have flung the words at the horrible man.

  “You almost killed him.” Cord’s voice was either without emotion or so laden that he could barely get the words out; she didn’t know which. “Damn it, you could have killed my son.”

  “Look.” Shifting the rifle slightly but not lowering it, Chuck leaned closer to Cord. “There’s elk all over here. I’ve been following their signs for days. How the hell was I supposed to know there was a kid out here?”

  If Chuck expected an answer from Cord, he didn’t get it. Cord just continued to stare at the hunter—poacher—whatever he was. As had happened so many times during their days and nights together, his surroundings seemed to lap at him, take over until she wasn’t sure there was anything civilized left in him.

  “Look,” Chuck repeated. “It wasn’t me who shot at him anyway. You want to blame someone, blame Owen.”

  The man Cord had taken the rifle from spun toward Chuck. “Wait a minute,” he spluttered. “You’re the one who got us here. You planned this whole damn thing. I’m not-”

  Shannon couldn’t concentrate on the balding man’s words. What did it matter who was responsible for the poachers’—that’s what they were, all right—being here? The bottom line was, their greed had nearly cost her son his life. With a start, she realized that all four men were talking at once. Cord’s silence stood in sharp contrast to the babble of words. Someone, the oldest of the group she guessed, was offering Cord an obscene amount of money in exchange for a promise not to say anything to the authorities. Owen started toward her and Matt, but Cord stopped him with a cold stare. Neither Cord nor Chuck had altered their defensive stances. Nor had Chuck lowered his weapon.

  “Shut up, Elliott!” Chuck ordered. “You don’t get it, do you? I know him.” He jabbed the rifle at Cord. “Know his reputation, anyway. He’s the next thing to the law, works with them all the time. There’s no way he’ll take your money and keep his mouth shut.”

  She’d once seen a massive dog that had been cornered by several men after it had killed a couple of lambs. The dog had been backed into a corner, but she hadn’t for a second believed it was giving up. When one of the men made the mistake of getting too close, the dog had lunged at him. If the others hadn’t pulled the dog off its victim, the man would have had his throat torn out.

  Chuck reminded her of that dog.

  “Cord,” she warned, realizing too late that she shouldn’t try to distract him from the poacher.

  Chuck acknowledged her with a look, the contact lasting less than a second but leaving her with the impression that no sense of humanity, of compassion, of regret, even of relief, existed in the man. She waited for him to say something, but when he didn’t, his silence was as telling as the dog’s growls had been.

  “Mom?” Matt whispered. She stopped him by pressing him against her side.

  No matter how much she wanted to become part of the confrontation, this was between Cord and the man he’d called Chuck. Although the others were nearby, they, like her, were simply bit players in the drama.

  “Put it down,” Cord ordered, his voice as deep and low as the wind finding its way through a canyon. “Now.”

  “You know who I am? How did—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No,” Chuck admitted. “It doesn’t. Nothing does except...”

  She wanted to scream at him to finish because right now nothing mattered more than getting inside Chuck Markham’s head. He had to at least care about an innocent boy’s life, didn’t he? He couldn’t possibly be thinking of taking the father’s life. As if in answer to her question, Chuck curled himself around his weapon, became part of it.

  “No!”

  Everything became a blur of movement, Cord striking out and throwing himself to the ground at the same time, a shattering blast of sound, cursing, Matt screaming and clutching her, a woman’s wailing cry. She fought to escape her son’s grasp, but he held on with fierce and desperate fingers, and she was afraid of hurting him.

  Cord went down hard, his body bouncing off the earth. For a horrible instant, he lay limp as a fallen leaf. Then, although she wasn’t sure he was capable of rational thought or action, he reached out and grabbed Chuck around the ankles. Grunting, Chuck fell on top of him, the rifle trapped between them. She was terrified that in one, no more than two seconds, strength and maybe life itself would pour out of Cord and she would see her ex-husband die before her eyes.

  “No. No. No.” She had to stop sounding like a wounded animal, but how? Dragging Matt with her, she stumbled over rocks and uneven ground until she’d covered about half of the distance. The two men were still locked together as they fought for control of the weapon. Cord wasn’t a killer, but if it came to his own life—

  She couldn’t help him this way.

  “Matt! Please,” she begged. “Let me go.”

  “No! He’ll kill — they’ll kill you.”

  “No, they won’t,” she said, although she might be lying to both herself and her son. The other men were staring fixedly at Cord and Chuck, briefly drawing her attention from her still-forming plan. Chuck, although shorter, outweighed Cord by maybe thirty pounds. That would slow him and make him clumsy, but he could also use his heft to advantage, especially if Cord was injured.

  At the moment, it looked as if her awful prediction had come true. Chuck had straddled Cord and was using the rifle like a wedge to drive him into the ground. She saw—no!—saw that blood soaked the side of Cord’s head.

  “Matt! Hide! Don’t move until I tell you to.”

  “But-”

  “Now!”

  Her scream captured her son’s attention, but he was still staring at her when she whirled and ran back the way she’d come. For a desperate moment she couldn’t find Cord’s pack, then spotted it on a litter of grass and dead leaves. Dropping to her knees, she rummaged through it until she found the two-way radio.

  “Dad!” she screamed into it. “Dad! Where are you?”

  “Here, honey. What —”

  “We need help! Now!”

  “Matt?”

  “Matt’s alive,” she told him as she hurried back toward the men, determined to let them hear and see. “But there are poachers—they have guns. They tried—I think one of them shot Cord.” Cord? Please, Cord!

  Fortunately her father didn’t ask any more questions.

  Instead, he informed her that Sheriff Vollrath was with him and immediately turned the radio over to him. Unable to keep herself from babbling, she gave the sheriff a brief sketch of what was happening. The three other men watched her intently, but if either Clint or Cord heard, they gave no indication. Now Chuck was trying to get free while Cord struggled to keep him with him.

  She was vaguely aware that Dale didn’t sound surprised by the presence of poachers, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that did was giving him as accurate a description of where they were as possible. To her overwhelming relief, Dale said he could get a forest service helicopter in the air in a matter of minutes.

  Still clutching the now-silent radio, she looked around for Matt. She couldn’t see him and prayed he’d obeyed her command to hide.

  “I’ve called the police!” she yelled at the men. “They’re on their way.” Please let that be the truth. “They know who you are.” Do they? “Stop it!” She indicated the fighters. “Make them stop!”

  For what seemed forever but couldn’t be, no one moved. She heard furious breathing and a grunt of pain that tore into her. It was all she could do not to jump into the middle of the battle, but what if something happened to her? Matt could be left with nothing—no one.


  Finally, cursing, first one man and then the other two reached, not for Cord as she feared, but for Chuck.

  “Leave me alone!” Chuck bellowed. “This ain’t none of your business!”

  “The hell it isn’t,” the man called Elliott retorted. “It’s over, damn it. Over.” He wrapped his arm around Chuck’s neck and hauled him back. At the same time, Owen grabbed the rifle and wrenched it out of Chuck’s grip. It clattered to the ground near Cord; to her immense relief, it didn’t fire.

  “The cops are on their way,” Owen rasped, his attention riveted on the rifle. “I can’t—Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Then I’m out of here,” Chuck insisted as he struggled to free himself from Elliott. “You guys will get your hands slapped. Me, I’m looking at jail time.”

  Cord forced himself to his feet and stood with his legs wide apart, swaying slightly. “Where do you think you could go?” He took a deep, hard-won breath. “The sheriff knows about your plane. He’ll be looking for you. Everyone will be.”

  “Not if I—”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” she insisted. “There’s a helicopter on its way. You’ll never get away. You can’t—”

  “Owen! Think, damn it!” Chuck snarled. “You want to be charged with attempted murder? If we get out of here, no one will ever —”

  “You’re crazy. Insane,” Elliott interrupted. “Do you really think we’re going to let you dump this on us? Even if you somehow managed to disappear, the rest of us can’t. We’ve got businesses. Families.”

  “Owen!” Chuck tried to jerk free. “Attempted murder? Do you want that?”

  Owen’s rifle lay on the ground where Cord had thrown it, but he could reach it before anyone stopped him. In a strangely detached way, she wondered if she could place herself between Owen and Cord before he finished what Chuck had begun.

  “I’m no killer. Never so much as hunted anything before this. I thought...thought it would...” Owen’s face contorted. “I almost shot a boy,” he whimpered, and kicked at his weapon. “I don’t ever—don’t ever want to touch that thing again.”