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.”