Bullet Creek (25 page)

Navarro sat back on his haunches, away from the hole. Calmly, he shucked his Colt, flipped open the gate, and pinched out the spent, smoking brass. By the scuffling sounds emanating from the hole, Real's men were climbing the chute. Navarro plucked one cartridge after another from his belt, thumbed them into the Colt's cylinder, then closed the gate.

The scuffling grew louder. He could hear men breathing hard, cursing under their breath.

Navarro spun the Colt's cylinder. He waited. There was no more shooting, just the sounds of climbing.

Presently, the crown of a ratty straw sombrero appeared. Then a swarthy face with a pencil-thin mustache and two coal black eyes slid up from the hole. Spying Navarro, the man dropped his jaw. He didn't have many teeth. His eyes snapped so wide they showed as much white as black.

“Por el segundo.” Tom extended the Colt and drilled a neat hole through the man's left cheek.

The man, dead before he could scream, dropped straight down the chimney. The others behind him shouted and cursed.

Navarro peered into the hole. Three men lay tumbled at the bottom in their bright serapes, sombreros falling off their heads.

Another had avoided the falling dead man and was clinging to the left side of the chimney. He looked up at Tom. As his eyes widened, he snapped up his revolver. Tom shot him in the chest, knocking him back against the wall. His hands lost their grip and he fell straight down, careening off the dogleg.

Tom emptied his gun into the hole, then reloaded the Colt and climbed to his feet. He regarded a boulder a foot to the right of the hole, on a slight upgrade. Holstering his Colt, he threw his right shoulder into the boulder, and heaved.

It took him four good heaves, the veins popping out in his forehead, before the boulder even budged. He heaved three more times before he'd rolled the boulder over the hole. Part of the boulder broke the chimney's rim, dropped a good foot, throwing up dust, and settled there.

By the time Real's men got back to their horses and skirted the chasm, Navarro would be long gone. Stretching the knots out of his back, he snugged Sanchez's Russian .44 behind his cartridge belt, looked warily around at the broken country around him—a maze of chalky buttes, greasewood flats, and boulder-strewn arroyos stretching off to olive mesas dimming under a west-falling sun.

A hawk swooped low for a look at all the commotion. It probably thought it had a meal down here.

Navarro took a heading on Bullet Ridge and started tramping north across the long mesa he'd found himself on, then down the mesa's steep wall and into an arroyo, where the de Cava riders would have a hard time tracking him.

He'd walked for three hours, crossing three ancient riverbeds, and the sun had gone down, when he took a smoke break along an old Apache trail. He built a corn shuck cigarette, touched a match to it, and inhaled deeply. The air was cool but he was sweat-soaked, and now that he was no longer moving, the chill crept into his bones.

He was lamenting the fact that he had no horse, and that it was probably another two hours back to the Bar-V headquarters, when something rattled off in the darkness.

A slug whistled past his ear and plunked into a cactus, followed a half second later by the report of a big-caliber rifle.

Navarro dropped the quirley and threw himself to the ground, grabbing his Colt from its holster. He'd be a son of a bitch if they'd found him out here. No way he could be that unlucky.

He pushed himself to his feet and, staying low, scrambled into a patch of buckbrush and low boulders. Scrub crunched and thrashed to the southwest, the direction from which the shot had come.

“I got him. I think I got him!” a man's voice shouted, pitched high with excitement. Running footsteps grew louder.

“Homer, be careful,” a woman admonished, from somewhere behind the running man. “Don't just go a-runnin' up like that!”

But the man had already pushed between two spindly ocotillo stands, holding a rifle high across his chest. He stopped and looked around—a medium-tall man in baggy dungarees, hobnailed boots, a shapeless wool coat, and a bullet-crowned hat. He stepped toward the rock Navarro had been sitting on when the shot had sizzled past his head.

Under his breath, the man said, “I thought for sure—”

The air left his lungs in one loud exhalation as Navarro rammed his Colt's butt hard between his shoulder blades. The man stumbled forward, dropping his rifle and hitting the ground on his chest.

Raking air into his lungs and giving exasperated cries and grunts, the man turned on his side and reached for his rifle. Navarro's left foot came down hard on his wrist, grinding it into the caliche as he lowered his Colt to the man's face, and ratcheted back the hammer.

“Homer?” The woman's voice was alarmed. The wooden rattling of a springless wagon sounded like oncoming thunder.

“He's over here, Hattie.” Navarro aimed his cocked Colt at Homer Winters's fear-etched face. “Come and pick him up before I stop his clock.”

“Mr. Navarro,” the miner stammered, staring past the Colt's long barrel into Navarro's hard face. “I didn't know it was you. We seen someone movin' around, heard the footsteps, and thought someone was layin' fer us agin.”

Navarro heard the approaching wagon, drawn by two gaunt ponies, roll up behind him. He depressed the Colt's hammer and turned.

Hattie Winters stood in the box, the ribbons in her hands. A thin figure dressed in men's garb and with severely pulled-back hair, she drew back on the reins and cast her gaze from Navarro to Homer and back again. “Sorry, Tom.” She frowned down at her husband, who winced from the stinger Navarro had put in the middle of his back. “I told you to make sure who you were shootin' at, ye damn dunderhead.”

“If he keeps shootin' at Bar-V riders on their own range, he ain't long for this world.”

“I was just—” Homer stammered, pushing himself to his feet.

“Oh, shut up!” Hattie berated him. To Tom, she said, “We were haulin' this deer, which I shot”—she jerked a thumb at the hulking, lank form in the wagon's bed—“back to the dugout when we seen your shadow movin' down that arroyo. I thought we might be in for another bushwackin', so I sent Homer ahead to look into it.”

“Well, he did that.”

“My worthless brother's back at the dugout, drunker than a peach orchard sow. I'd starve if I couldn't shoot.” Hattie was looking around. “What are you doin' out here, Tom? And where's your horse?”

“Long story.” Navarro was looking at the beefy, knock-kneed saddle horse tied to the wagon. Just what the doctor ordered to save his feet and to get him back to the headquarters before dawn. “Mind if I borrow yours? I'll send him back first chance I get.”

“I reckon that's the least we could do . . . for Homer's bad behavior.” Hattie thrust her chin at her thoroughly cowed husband, who was moving stiffly toward the wagon. “Homer, untie ole Jim for Tom here.”

“I got him.” Navarro slipped the reins from a steel eye on the tail gate where the dead black-tail's feet hung slack, and swung into the saddle. Heeling old Jim into a trot, he called without turning around, “Obliged!”

Behind him, Hattie watched him go. She sighed balefully at his retreating silhouette, touched the vagrant strands of hair fluttering about her sun-seared cheeks. “If only I woulda found me a man like that . . .”

Homer climbed up beside her. “Ye ask me, he ain't so damn smart, traipsin' around out here without a horse.”

“I ain't askin' you!” With that, Hattie turned the horses around and slapped them back toward the dugout.

 

Navarro could gallop the old horse only for short stretches on flat terrain. But when he gained the wide, graded trail connecting the Bar-V with Benson and Tucson, he gigged him into a gallop. Old Jim showed surprising power as he snorted and lunged through the night.

Galloping, Navarro and old Jim approached the headquarters ten minutes later—the silhouetted corrals and outbuildings stretched out on the rise before them.

Two gun flashes appeared straight ahead, directed skyward. The reports followed a wink later. Old Jim threw his weight forward as he slowed, his muscles rippling with alarm.

“Name yourself!” a man shouted.

Navarro stared at the spot where the flashes had appeared, frowning. It was custom to call out to approaching riders at night, but the shooting was a little extreme. It meant something had put the Bar-V men on the balls of their boots.

When Navarro shouted his name, the sentry repeated it toward the house. Tom heard the squawk of the main gate and gigged the horse forward. A few seconds later he and the horse plunged through the open gate and into the yard, where several men stood facing him between the house and the bunkhouse, both buildings lit up as though for a barn dance. All the men were wearing pistols on their hips, and several carried rifles. The tension was almost palpable.

“Tom, we was beginnin' to think you was a goner,” said the big Welshman Bear Winston, who was resting the barrel of a Henry carbine on his yoke-sized shoulder.

“I was beginnin' to think so, too,” Navarro said, swinging down from the saddle. “What the hell's goin' on around here?”

He wheeled toward the house as Bill Tobias took his reins. Paul Vannorsdell and Karla were moving down the porch steps, his bulky figure and her slender one silhouetted by the salmon-lighted windows behind them.

“Trouble,” Vannorsdell said. He paused, dropped his voice. “They shot Lee Luther.”

Navarro didn't move. His heart thudded. “Dead?”

Vannorsdell nodded. Karla's fists were balled at her sides, and her eyes were bright with tears.

“Came right into the yard—Cayetano Fimbres and some shavetail,” the rancher said. “They were aimin' for me and they hit the kid. I sent riders after them, but the rain turned them back. The men were certain it was Fimbres.”

Karla was staring at Navarro. Her voice was thick. “We have him inside.”

Feeling weary, Navarro moved toward the house, only vaguely aware of his burning, blistered feet. Lee Luther was dead. He walked passed Karla and Vannorsdell, who followed him across the courtyard and up the porch steps. Inside, Tom removed his dusty hat. In the parlor, a fire had been laid in the field rock fireplace.

A simple pine coffin had been set up against the far wall, on saw horses. The rug before it was gritty with sand from the boots of the men who'd come to pay their respects. Pilar stood in the kitchen doorway, her face drawn with sadness, her hands folded across her stomach.

Lee Luther looked much smaller than Tom remembered. The boy wore a crisp plaid shirt and dark blue dungarees—his Sunday duds. He had a blue-striped neckerchief knotted around his neck and another, bloodstained one around his head, covering the bullet's entrance and exit wounds. The head lay at an awkward angle, chin tipped down and toward his right shoulder, and his lips were pursed as though from pain. The boy's eyelids lay lightly, so that Tom could see some light reflecting off the eyes beneath the light brown lashes.

Sometimes the dead appeared only to be sleeping. That wasn't how Lee Luther looked. He looked dead, the life drained out of him along with the brains the bullet had shredded.

Staring down at the boy, Tom dug his fingers into the side of the coffin until his knuckles turned white. His lips stretched back from his teeth in a grimace.

Behind him, Vannorsdell said, “I was going to send more men out today, but I figured I'd better wait till you got back—if you were coming back. Didn't want to catch you in a cross fire.”

Navarro turned, stared at the man unseeingly. All bets were off. It was war now. Real had made certain of that. Vannorsdell could call in marshals, but there weren't enough marshals and rangers in the territory to take down Real's riders.

It was up to the Bar-V. Navarro knew it, and so did Vannorsdell.

Peering into Tom's dark face, the rancher said, “What happened over there?”

Tom reached into his back pocket, handed the folded paper to Vannorsdell. “Sanchez wrote this out. It explains everything.” Knowing that Lupita would translate the segundo's Spanish, he began walking stiffly toward the door.

“He still over there?” Vannorsdell asked.

“He's dead.”

The men gathered outside the courtyard watched Tom walk down the steps, expectant looks on their drawn faces. They squeezed the rifles in their hands or smoked fervently, angrily. Tom moved toward them and stopped.

“Be ready to ride at first light.”

“Why not tonight?” protested Ky Tryon, his arm in a sling, a quirley dangling from his lips.

“They could be laying for us along the trail tonight.” Tom shuttled his flinty glare from man to man. “We'll ride tomorrow.”

They stared at him hard, shuffled their feet and squeezed their guns. By ones and twos, they gradually turned and, lowering their rifles to their sides, moved off toward the bunkhouse.

“They'll be ready, Tom,” Bear Winston said, coming up behind Navarro, then moving along with the others.

Navarro sighed and headed toward his cabin back in the chaparral. In spite of his mental and physical weariness, he had trouble getting to sleep. His blood pounded with fury, and images of Lee Luther and Guadalupe Sanchez kept careening before his eyes. He'd slept a total of only three hours before his own inner clock woke him.

He skipped coffee and his usual breakfast, wrapped his cartridge belt around his waist, grabbed his second Winchester, Sanchez's .44, and three extra boxes of .44 shells. Then he headed outside. False dawn limned the eastern sky, behind jagged-peaked mountains. A lone coyote was still yammering, and a night breeze rustled the tops of the aspens behind the cabin.