The kid stuck his hand inside his hat, held it shoulder high, and gave it a twirl. Watching the spinning hat, he said, “Where you boys headed?”
“After a girl,” Navarro said. “You haven’t seen one out here—a white girl—have you?”
“We ain’t seen no girls since Wakely,” the kid said. “What’s a gringa filly doin’ out here? Don’t she know Nan-dash’s off his reserve and madder than an old wet hen?”
“No, I reckon she doesn’t,” Navarro said, dropping his grim gaze to the rocks around the fire.
“Well, too bad for her, but good for Tall and me and the rest of our bunch. We thought we weren’t gonna get any huntin’ in before headin’ back down to Mexico, but now that Nan-dash is runnin’ off his leash again, we might get a little scalpin’ in, after all.” He flipped his hat in the air and caught it with both hands, then ran his finger against the high black crown.
“Kid,” Navarro said, leaning out over the rifle laid across his knees, “you either set that hat on your head or set it aside. I’m not going to tell you twice.”
The hat froze in the kid’s hands. He looked at Navarro, dumbstruck. The others looked at Tom, as well, the captain’s wide eyes sliding around in their sockets. His right index finger stopped tracing his cup’s rim.
Navarro’s stare didn’t waiver from the kid. Gomez looked up demurely, the fire’s two main flames flickering in his dark eyes.
“Mister,” the kid said haughtily, “I don’t know what’s got into you, but—”
He flipped the crown of the hat toward Navarro and jammed his right hand inside. Navarro bolted to his feet and raised his rifle to his shoulder, the rifle booming twice, the explosions like cannon shots within the hollow. Both shots took the kid in the face, one above his left brow, the other an inch below his left eye. He jerked once with each shot. Jaw slackening, eyes snapping disbelief, he twisted slightly right and fell slowly back to the ground.
A small-caliber gun snapped inside the kid’s hat, blowing a hole through the crown and plunking a wild slug into the fire, throwing up sparks.
The pocket pistol had no sooner popped than Gomez had bolted off his stubby thighs, his small hands a blur as they clawed up his pearl-gripped Smithies. He’d nearly raised both guns before Tixier and Musselwhite, leaping off their heels and grabbing iron, extended their pistols at him and fired, Tixier shooting three quick rounds into the right side of his head, Musselwhite tiggering one shot into his chin, another through his heart.
Gomez was punched up and back, screaming and firing both pistols into the air. He hit the mountain wall, bounced off, and fell in a heap at the base, both blood-splattered pistols still clutched in his small hands. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, working his eyes and mouth and rubbing the hammer of the right Smithy with his thumb, feebly trying to cock it.
Smoke curling from the barrel of his long-barreled Colt, Tixier walked over to Gomez, planted his right boot on the gun he was trying to cock, extended the Colt, and drilled another round through the Mexican’s head, killing him.
Captain Ward had bolted to his feet and stumbled back, his pistol hanging low in his right hand. Mouth agape, he turned to Navarro. “How’d you know that kid had a gun in his hat?”
Tixier and Musselwhite turned to Tom, their eyes puzzled.
“Saw reward dodgers on both of them in Tucson the other day. They and one other son of a bitch are wanted for murder and horse theft up around Prescott.” Tom shook his head. “He was just too damn in love with that hat.”
“Horse theft, eh?” Musselwhite said.
As if on cue, one of the horses whinnied.
“Let’s go meet the third son of a bitch.” Rifle raised, Navarro bolted through the brush.
Chapter 10
Several yards out from the hollow, Navarro quartered left along the ridge base and stopped, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Farther left along the arroyo, the horses were tethered in a patch of high grass surrounded by mesquite trees. Their shadows moved among the denser shadows of the brush and the arroyo’s western bank.
A shadow wearing a hat moved among the horses and the lone braying pack mule.
Navarro had taken two steps forward when red-yellow light blossomed from between two mesquite shrubs. The gun’s report reached Navarro’s ears at the same time the slug slammed into the rock wall over his right shoulder. He threw himself forward, hitting the ground as another shot rang out.
The horses whinnied and clomped around, snapping brush. Hooves pounded as a couple galloped off.
Gaining his feet, Navarro moved west along the arroyo, remaining near the base of the rock wall and keeping the grass and shrubs between him and the shooter. In his vision’s periphery, several more shadows moved—his own men spreading out across the arroyo.
“He’s near the horses,” Navarro called. “Hold your fire.”
Tom dropped behind the boulder as, keying on his voice, the shooter squeezed off another shot. The slug spanged off the rock wall where Tom had just stood. Navarro extended his Winchester over the boulder, made sure the horses were clear, then fired into the powder smoke webbing around a mesquite tree.
As his slug ricocheted off the ground, Navarro bolted out from the boulder and ran to the trees. Shots exploded to his left. Dropping to a knee, he turned to see the fire blossoms of two pistols—three quick shots, then two more as if in afterthought.
To his right, a horse screamed and hooves thudded in the arroyo’s soft sand. Navarro whipped around as a shadow flitted across the arroyo, faintly limned by blue starlight and heading into a southern cleft.
“Sumbitch’s lightin’ a shuck, Tommy!” Tixier called, his boots thudding as he ran.
Navarro ran after the shadow, his cocked rifle held high in both hands. When he’d run forty yards, he saw the cleft the rider had taken—a narrow, rocky feeder cut meandering south. He walked into the cut, hugging the cactus and shrubs growing along the western edge, then paused, holding his breath.
Hooves thudded into the southern distance.
“Where is he, Tom?” Musselwhite said behind him.
Navarro shook his head and stole along the cut, hearing the footsteps of Charlie, Dallas, and Captain Ward approaching from behind, Tixier’s breath rasping loudly. Someone kicked a rock, stumbled, and cursed.
“Looks like the bastard got away,” Musselwhite said when they’d all walked about thirty yards and were rounding a western dogleg in the narrow defile. “Don’t think he got any of our horses, though.”
Navarro stopped, dropped to one knee, and touched a black smear in the rocks. He rubbed the fresh blood between his fingers.
He stood and walked another twenty more yards, again stopped. A man lay sprawled across a spindly shrub in the lee of a large boulder. One arm had caught on the boulder, the other on the shrub, and his head sagged between, so that it looked like he was half lying, half kneeling. Navarro walked slowly up to the body and saw that half his head had been blown away. The blood glistened faintly in the long black hair curving down the back of his buffalo-hide tunic decorated with large red flowers.
Navarro turned and brushed angrily past the other three men who’d walked up behind him and were staring at the dead man. Tom cussed loudly, the oath echoing, and headed back down the cut.
“What’s he so mad about?” Captain Ward asked Tixier. “At least they didn’t get the horses.”
Musselwhite answered, “No, but we’ll have to move camp now. Every Apache within twenty miles probably heard those shots.”