“I’ll buy you a steak in Tucson.”
“I prefer one of Pilar’s rump roasts . . . buried in onions. . . .”
“Picky bastard.”
When Musselwhite had gone over the ridge, Navarro turned to the loud whoops rising behind him. Shadows bounced among the rocks and shrubs, moving toward him fast.
He grabbed Karla’s shoulders, lifted her to her feet. “I’m gonna climb up, and you give me your hand.”
Using his hands and wincing against the pain in his wounded calf, he climbed the sharp rocks. When he’d gained the ridge, he lay down and reached back over the other side, extending his hand to the girl.
“Reach for it!”
Clutching the blanket with her left hand, Karla rose up on her toes and extended her right. He glanced behind her. A shadow with whipping hair was ten yards away and closing. Navarro extended Musselwhite’s revolver and triggered two shots as an arrow smacked the rock a foot beneath his chin. The Indian grunted and staggered back.
“Tommy!” Karla cried.
Navarro leaned farther out over the ridge and grabbed her hand. He’d lifted her two feet off the ground when something hard struck his forehead. The blunt end of a tomahawk, he knew, as the night dimmed and sounds grew faint.
The girl’s wrist slipped from his sweat-slick hand.
Her brittle voice came from a great distance. “Tommy, don’t leave me!”
Eyes fluttering and dimming, Navarro slid down the slope behind him. Gravity and unconsciousness enveloped him at the same time, and he went rolling down the ridge, into the darkness of the canyon yawning below.
Chapter 12
Karla watched Navarro’s eyes flutter and his head slip back over the ridge. “Tommy!” she screamed.
The exclamation had barely died on her tongue before sharp breaths and running footfalls sounded behind her. She whipped around. An Indian loosed a savage whoop and slapped her once with the back of his hand, once with his open palm. The blows staggered her.
As she fell to her knees, the brave grabbed her wrist. He’d jerked her halfway to her feet and was turning back toward the hollow when a shot sounded behind him. The bullet whomped through his chest and exited his lower back, spraying blood onto the rock wall to Karla’s right.
The brave fell, knocking Karla to one knee.
“Hey!” A man’s voice rose from the rocky slope dropping toward the hollow.
Heart thudding, both cheekbones still numb from the Indian’s blows, Karla cast her gaze down the incline. A white man stood with his feet spread on two separate boulders, a rifle in his hands. It was too dark for Karla to make out his features, but she saw he wore a white man’s shirt, duster, and Stetson.
White men had come. Thank God.
Hope lightened her heart and she wanted to run to the man, but embarrassed by her nakedness, she remained on her knees, crouching low and holding her arms across her breasts.
“My friend fell down the mountain!” she cried, lifting her head to indicate the rocky lip above. “Please help him!”
The man kept his eyes on her and made his way up the rocks, crouching over his extended rifle. As he came closer, she saw the leering grin on his hard, craggy face. Her hope died, replaced by the old, needling fear. The man was white, but the lascivious expression told Karla he was no better than the savages from whom she’d just escaped.
“Well, what do we have here?” he said, lips stretching back from his teeth.
Karla knelt with her arms across her naked breasts, and watched the man approach, his hard features taking shape in the darkness.
In the hollow behind him, rifles flashed and popped. Bullets screeched off rocks. White men whooped and hollered.
“Look at you, little missy,” said the man approaching Karla, the lewd grin frozen on his bearded cheeks. “You ain’t got a stitch on!”
Karla jerked her glance toward the dead Indian. The brave’s rifle lay only a few feet away. She glanced at the white man again. He was only ten yards away, closing slowly, as though approaching a wild animal.
Karla lunged for the rifle, scooping it off the ground, and automatically jacking a shell into the chamber.
“Hold on!” the man ordered. “Just hold on, little miss. You don’t wanna shoot me. Why, I’m your friend! I done saved you from the savages, didn’t I?” He glanced at the dead Indian sprawled near Karla’s feet.
He spread his arms in supplication, the rifle in one hand, aimed toward the sky. His shaggy brows furrowed, but the lewd, confident grin remained as he continued walking toward her, one step at a time.
Karla stood and extended the rifle. She’d fired a Henry before, but this one felt like lead in her hands, which were weak from being tightly bound with rawhide.
“Don’t come near me,” Karla said, fear and fatigue trilling her voice.
The man took one more step and stopped. “Okay,” he said reasonably. “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
“My friend is Tom Navarro, segundo of the Bar-V ranch,” she said nervously, loosening and tightening her grip on the Henry. “He’s fallen down the mountain behind me. He’s hurt. My grandfather will reward you generously for helping us.”
“Sure, honey, I’ll help,” the man said woodenly, running his flat eyes across her chest. “Just put the gun down, and I’ll help you . . . and your friend. . . .”
He took another step. Karla’s jaw tightened, her muscles tensing. “Get away!” A sob slipped through her gritted teeth. Her mind kept returning to Tommy, lying broken somewhere on the other side of the slope behind her. She had to get to him.
The man, grinning, had lowered his arms. Suddenly, he lunged toward her, whipping his rifle toward Karla’s. Before his Winchester connected with her Henry, Karla squeezed the trigger. The man grunted as the bullet tore through his belly. His momentum carried him another stumbling step forward. Dropping his rifle and slapping both hands to his middle, he fell to his knees.
Face bunched with pain, he looked up at her, eyes wide with shock. His voice was tight, barely audible. “Why, you little . . .” One hand on his belly, he reached with the other for the rifle angling across his right knee.
Panting, hearing panicked grunts squirting up from her throat as though from someone standing beside her, Karla backed away from the man and quickly levered another shell into the Henry’s chamber. She centered the rifle on the man’s chest, steeled herself, and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle clicked empty.
Karla’s thudding heart fell hard. The man was bringing up his own rifle, grunting and cursing, his hand shaking. Karla took her own rifle by the barrel and lunged toward him, swinging the butt in a broad arc. It smacked his head so hard that Karla’s wrists cracked painfully.
The men fell on his right shoulder and lay quivering.
“Otis? Where the hell are ye, boy?” The man’s burly voice rose from downslope and several yards right of where the first man had come up.
Looking that way, Karla saw two shadows darting amid the tall pines and jumbled rocks and boulders. Victorious whoops and laughter rose from the hollow.
“Come on, son,” the man on the slope called again, his voice filled with laughter. “We done got ’em all, every blasted one. I got ole Nan-dash’s hair right here!”
Giving a startled cry, Karla dropped to her knees. She set the rifle down and jerked her head around. Before her, rocks clattered under the boots of the men climbing the slope. She peered up the ridge from which Tommy had fallen. If she tried to climb it, the approaching men would see her.
“Otis, let ’em go! It’s time to dance!”
Karla heaved herself to her feet, stepped over the dead Indian, and bolted behind three boulders wedged atop one another and shielding her from the hollow and the men climbing the slope. Looking around for an escape route, hearing the footsteps growing in volume behind her, she stole out from behind the boulders, edged over a little lip and into a hollow. A dark crevice shone in the rocks at the base of the lip on her left.