Bullet Creek (19 page)

“You boys all right?” asked Ward, tall and rangy with a thin gray beard streaked with brown. He wore nondescript range garb except for a cream sombrero he'd won from a vaquero in a Tucson poker match. The braided thong dangled beneath his chin.

“The kid's hit,” Tryon bit out, lips stretched back from his teeth. Clutching his right arm, his red-checked shirtsleeve bulging grotesquely just below the elbow, he rocked back on his butt and cursed.

Ward knelt beside Lee Luther and began inspecting the boy's bloody left arm. As if realizing for the first time that he'd taken a bullet, the kid said with a mixture of shock and awe, “I'm hit, I reckon. Sure enough. I never been hit before. It don't hurt too bad.”

Meanwhile, Ace McGraw crossed the trail to Tryon. “You take one, too, Ky?”

“Ever set an arm before, Ace?”

“Heck, no.”

“Well, hand your rifle to Frank, plant your off foot against my chest, and give my arm a good, sound jerk with both hands.”

“Ah, hell, Ky!”

“No cause for foul language. Just do as I say and I'll buy you a drink once we're back to the bunkhouse . . . if I'm still conscious.”

Grumbling, McGraw handed his rifle to Frank Sharpe, who was standing beside him and staring down woefully at Tryon. McGraw shook his head, rubbed his hands together briskly, then reached down, gently took Tryon's right hand in both of his own, and lifted the misshapen limb from Tryon's thigh.

Ky sucked air through his teeth, a pained hiss.

McGraw released the hand like a hot potato. “You sure about this?”

“Do it, Ace!”

McGraw picked up the hand, planted his right boot against Tryon's shoulder, and jerked the arm straight out. The arm gave a crunching sound as the broken bone went together, the bulge flattening.

Tryon screamed. The blood ran out of his face. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell straight back in the dirt.

“Keep his head down!” Navarro yelled to the young cowboy seated in the hurricane deck of the bucking paint stallion. “Keep him away from the fence!”

Navarro and Paul Vannorsdell sat atop the Bar-V's round pen, peering at the horse and rider within, both a blur of motion as the mustang tried to shake free of the young Mexican buster.

“Keep your boots away from his ribs!” Vannorsdell instructed, cupping his hands around his mouth, a cigar smoldering between the thumb and index finger of the right one.

As the horse whipped hard to the right and kicked savagely, his rear hooves rising as high as the top corral slat, the rider flew out of the saddle like a feed sack flung from a moving train.

As the boy careened over the horse's lowered head and hit the ground flat on his back, limbs akimbo, Navarro and Vannorsdell cursed.

To Navarro, the rancher said, “Where'd you find this kid, anyway?”

“I didn't. You did.” Navarro gave a wry grin. “That's Pilar's nephew from Las Cruces. She talked you into adding him to the role.”

Vannorsdell cursed and flicked ashes from the stogie. “That boy's gonna see stars till dinnertime tomorrow. If he ever wakes up, put him on wood cutting.”

Hooves thumped on the trail beyond the ranch yard. The sentry posted at the front gate yelled, “Our men. Trouble!”

Navarro and Vannorsdell climbed off the corral and were moving toward the gate when the six riders cantered into the yard, a couple bloodied, the others mussed and looking owly. Ky Tryon hunkered low in his saddle, his right arm in a sling he'd fashioned from his neckerchief.

“What the hell happened?” Navarro asked as the men reined up before him.

“De Cava riders.” Tryon grimaced. “Caught me and the kid with our pants down. Ace, Hacksaw, and Frank shook us free but not before Billy Bonnie there took some lead.” Tryon indicated Lee Luther, sitting the gold-eyed pie on his left. “We stopped the clock of one, probably two. Billie here thinks he wounded another.”

“What happened?” said a girl's voice.

Navarro looked past the riders gathered before him and Vannorsdell. Karla was striding toward the group from the big house. She wore tight dark blue denims and a crisp white blouse, the tails tucked into the jeans. Twin braids gave her a girlish look in spite of the amply filled blouse and rounded hips.

“Shoot-out,” said Lee Luther importantly, sitting up a little straighter in his saddle and canting his head toward his wounded arm.

Karla's voice rose with alarm. “Lee Luther, did you get shot?”

“Just a scratch. No need to fuss, miss.”

“Gotta admit,” said Hacksaw Ward, “the lad gave as good as he got.”

“You men better get over to the bunkhouse. Have Three Feathers look you over,” Navarro said.

“He's in the house, checking on Alejandro,” Karla said, wheeling and heading back the way she'd come. “I'll fetch him.”

Later, when the wounded riders were being treated by the half-Comanche blacksmith who doubled as the ranch medico, Navarro, Vannorsdell, and Karla filed out of the bunkhouse, leaving the door open behind them. Inside, the cook was serving up his stew and biscuits, and the air from the rock chimney filled the cooling, early-evening air with cedar.

“Might be best to fire back right away, first thing in the morning,” Vannorsdell said. “They need to know we're not going to take this sort of thing sitting down.”

“They know that,” Navarro said. “That's no doubt why Real's given them orders to hit us wherever they find us.”

“He'd like nothing better than for our men to venture onto their range painted for war,” Karla told her grandfather with a chastising air.

“Listen, young lady,” Vannorsdell said, flushing with anger, “I don't take lightly my men being ambushed on my own range!”

“Neither do I,” Navarro said. “But they have us outgunned.”

“What would you suggest?” Vannorsdell snapped at his foreman, crossing his arms on his chest.

Navarro was about to respond when Frank Sharpe stepped through the door, a square white bandage covering his left cheek. “I hate to add to your troubles, boss.”

“Let's have it, Frank.”

“Out in that shadow country, our tally was comin' up far shorter than what we expected, especially with the good calving season we had.”

His face turning a deeper shade of red and his small eyes slitting, the rancher turned to his foreman. “I'll go down shooting my very last cartridge before I let Real's coyotes rustle me out of a ranch, Navarro. Have all able riders ready to—”

“Wait,” Navarro said. “Let me play a wild card first.”

Vannorsdell stared at him, eyes intense.

“At first light, Alejandro and I'll take us a ride. I'll have a talk with the lady of the house. Lupita's always had pull with the old man. Maybe she has the same pull with the boys.”

“At least, being a woman,” Karla said, “she has more sense. But you riding over there is crazy, Tom.”

“For once, I agree with my granddaughter,” Vannorsdell said. “The first de Cava rider to spot you will shoot you so full of holes you won't hold a thimbleful of cheap liquor.”

“Not if I have Alejandro. If I can get to Lupita, she'll hear me out.”

“You're gambling, boss,” Frank Sharpe said.

Vannorsdell chuffed sarcastically at Navarro. “Just because you and Miss de Cava have had . . . run-ins . . . doesn't necessarily mean she'll listen to your defense of me—if any more than your head even gets to her, that is.”

Tom was aware of Karla's incredulous glance. Ignoring it, he said, “I'll take that chance. Seems to me, I don't have a choice.”

Vannorsdell sighed, studied his foreman. “I suppose it wouldn't be right, sending the men to war without exhausting all our options.” He nodded and started toward the house. “We'll go over the details at breakfast.”

When he'd left and Frank Sharpe had gone back into the bunkhouse for supper, Karla cocked an eyebrow at Navarro. “Lupita de Cava?”

Navarro shrugged. “It was a slow night in Tucson, and the firewater was flowing freely.”

“I was about to wish you good luck tomorrow,” the girl said tonelessly. “Alejandro will be ready to ride at first light. Good night, Mr. Navarro.”

Navarro watched her walk away from him, her back stiff with anger. “Good night, Miss Vannorsdell, ma'am.” He pinched his hat brim, turned, and started toward his cabin.

 

Ten o'clock the next morning, Navarro lay atop a rock scarp fingering out from Blackstone Ridge, training a pair of field glasses on the rocky flat below, where five vaqueros were hazing a small herd of cattle along a dry creek bottom. From this distance, Tom couldn't see much through the ocotillo and ironwood but the rising dust, golden brown in the midmorning sun, and glimpses of sombrero crowns and horse heads and tails, or a man's arm waving a coiled riata.

He had a feeling that if he could tighten the focus down to the left rear flank of one of the beeves, he'd see the Bar-V brand scorched into the hide.

With a wry snort, Navarro stood, walked back across the rock finger, and down the grade to where Alejandro de Cava sat his zebra dun, his good hand tied to his saddle horn, high-topped boots tied to his stirrups. The slender youngster, with his thick brown hair and his tight-fitting, flare-cut slacks and red and gold sombrero, sat slouched in the saddle. His right arm hung in a sling that Three Feathers had fashioned from a pillow case. The youth had lost some weight over the past few days he'd been recovering in Vannorsdell's spare bedroom. He'd lost some color, as well. But beneath the pain in his eyes was bald animosity. His frail, unshaven jaw was set tight.

“What do you see?” he snapped, leaning forward as the zebra dun cropped grass. “Is death coming for you, Navarro?”

“I wouldn't be too cocky,” Tom said, snatching both sets of reins off an ironwood shrub and grabbing his saddle horn. He swung into the saddle. “If it comes for me, it comes for you.”

“You are badly outnumbered.”

“Been there before.”

“Even if you make it to the hacienda, do you really think my brother and sister will believe your lies?”

Navarro turned to him, his blue eyes hard. “Maybe not. Maybe I should stick my pistol in your mouth and leave you here for the buzzards.” He paused. “Your old man should've done as much a long time ago and saved himself some grief.”

Navarro reined the claybank around and gigged it down the deer path they'd been following since sunup. When they came to a low brushy area stippled with cedars and cottonwoods, Navarro turned the claybank off the trail, ducking under low branches and swerving around bull-berry thickets, jerking the young de Cava's dun along behind.

“Where are you going?” the kid complained, the branches knocking his sombrero down his back. “You are off the trail, Navarro. Are you drunk?”

Ducking under the branches, Tom kept riding between heavy brush on his right and a crumbling rock wall on his left.

“Mierda!” Alejandro cursed. “These trees are jarring my shoulder!” He ducked under a sycamore bough, crouching low against the dun's neck and gritting his teeth as the branch tore his hair. “You will pay for this, you son of a sow!”

Navarro stopped both horses, swung down from his saddle, and tied the mounts to a flame-shaped juniper. Removing his bowie from the belt sheath on his left hip, he cut the ropes binding Alejandro's hand and feet to the saddle and pulled him off the horse a little less gently than he should have, given the kid's bullet-shattered shoulder.

Alejandro cursed, suggesting Navarro do something physically impossible to himself. Tom grabbed a coiled rope from his saddlebags, slid his rifle from the boot, then shoved Alejandro back the way they'd ridden.

“What tricks do you have up your sleeve? You're too old for this kind of foolishness, Navarro. Why don't you give up and ride out of here while you still can?”

“Just keep walkin', Junior.”

“Vannorsdell killed mi padre, and he will pay with his life and his ranch!”

Tom just kept walking, kicking the kid along ahead of him.

“Navarro, I am serious. I think my shoulder is bleeding. I am weak!”

“Keep walkin', Junior, or you're gonna be a hell of a lot weaker.”

When they got to the brushy open area they'd traversed a few minutes ago, Navarro pushed the kid down against a gnarled oak growing near the base of the boulders and secured him to the tree with the rope. Ignoring the kid's protests, he tied his feet together, then gathered dry brush and green branches and built a smoky fire about ten feet from the kid's boots.

Savvy to Navarro's intentions, Alejandro threw his head back and called for help.

Navarro produced a neckerchief from his back pocket and picked up a pinecone. As the kid sucked in a deep breath and opened his mouth to give another yell, Navarro thrust the pinecone into his mouth. He extended the neckerchief across the kid's face, slid it like a bridle bit into his mouth, and tied the ends tightly behind his head.

The kid's slitted eyes flared. He grunted and gagged and jerked his head around, beside himself with rage.

“You fight the gag, you'll choke on it,” Navarro warned, straightening and throwing more branches onto the fire.

Great clouds of snow-white smoke billowed straight up in the breezeless air, which smelled like green leaves and sap.

Navarro waited until the fire was going good, crackling flames licking at the green sycamore and oak branches, curling the leaves. He added another large branch to the fire, rolled a smoke, and sauntered westward through the brush.