When Navarro’s cigar was lit, the major dropped the match on the floor and stomped it out with his boot. “No chance, Tommy,” he said regretfully, reaching for another match.
“What are you talkin’ about? You’re out here to protect civilians, aren’t you?”
“From Apaches. At the moment, I’m stretched too thin to go after scalp hunters and slave traders.”
“Slave traders?”
“If the men who have your girl are who I think they are, they’re led by Edgar Bontemps. Scalp hunter and slave trader. Ex-Army man. He and his men—mostly deserters like himself—hole up somewhere in Mexico. They raid up here for Apache scalps and young Yanqui women.”
“Where do they take the women?”
Bryson scowled and puffed his cigar. “I’ve followed him as far as the border. Had to stop there. You know as well as I do that going any farther might be viewed as an act of war by the Mexicans, with whom our government has a very precarious relationship.”
“So what you’re telling me, then, Phil, is that nothing’s being done about the slave trading.”
“Even if I had the men, I couldn’t track Bontemps into Mexico, Tommy.”
“So lay for him on this side of the border.” Navarro’s voice rose tightly. “Capture the son of a bitch and force him to tell you what he’s done with the girls!”
“I told you, I’m stretched too thin. Half my men patrol the mining country east and west of here, rounding up reservation-jumping Mescaleros and Chiricahuas when they can find them, and the others ride shotgun on ore shipments.”
“Ore shipments?”
“There’s an American- and British-owned gold mine in Sonora. The company has a special agreement with the Sonoran province. The rurales escort the bars to the border. My troops take it from there, have it smelted, then haul the bars to the federal shipping depot in Lordsburg. Ties up twenty men, a full third of my garrison, fourteen days out of every month. With the others out on patrols, I don’t have enough men for latrine duty. The privies can get mighty smelly around here.”
“Goddamn it, Phil.” Drawing angrily on the cigar, Navarro lay back on the pillow and stared hard at the ceiling.
“You know how it is, Tom,” Bryson said, struggling up from his chair, breathing hard. “You know how it’s always been. We do the best we can with a smattering of green recruits. But, frankly, I’m not sure a full battalion of seasoned fighters backed up with Howitzers and a brace of Injun trackers could do anything for your girl.” He squeezed Navarro’s shoulder. “You rest. I’ll check on you again tomorrow.”
With that, Bryson turned and, boots thumping and creaking across the rough puncheons, headed for the door.
“Who’s this Edgar Bontemps?” Tom asked.
Bryson turned, frowning. “Why?”
Navarro turned his head on the pillow, cigar in his teeth, and stared at Bryson.
The major sighed. “Ex-Confederate guerrilla. Rode with Mosby. After the War, he joined the frontier Army, came west to fight the Indians. Decided he didn’t like galvanization, after all, so he deserted, took several other ex-Confederates with him, and began riding the owlhoot trail.”
The major returned Navarro’s dark stare and growled with an air of warning, “He’s a killer, Tommy. Worse than the worst Apache, they say. Crazier than a tree full of owls. He’s armed with stolen Army munitions, and his gang numbers in the twenties, sometimes thirties.”
Navarro turned back to the ceiling, folded his arms behind his head, and thoughtfully turned the cigar in his mouth with his tongue.
“Doubtful even ‘Taos Tommy’ Navarro can bring this one down,” Bryson warned. He turned and went out.
Navarro puffed the cigar. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 15
Navarro dictated a telegram to Paul Vannorsdell at the Bar-V, explaining the situation, then slept for the rest of that day and most of the next.
When he woke up, he began playing poker for matchsticks with Captain Ward. Several of Tom’s off-duty admirers—soldiers and trackers who’d heard the “Taos Tommy” Navarro legends—drifted into the infirmary to play cards with their hero. Navarro played so much poker and cribbage over the next three days that he was holding, folding, and filling in straights in his sleep.
He didn’t mind.
He’d resigned himself to a mending period before he could set off after Karla again. Just lying on his cot, grinding his teeth as he stared at the ceiling, and imagining what he was going to do to Edgar Bontemps once he caught up with the bastard would have been like cutting off his own head with a rusty saw. Wouldn’t do him or Karla any good at all.
The morning of his fourth day at the fort, he asked Dr. Sullivan for a crutch and something to shoot at.
The doctor had just finished tending a rattlesnakebit woodcutter and was heading back to his office at the north end of the infirmary. Sullivan turned around, his heavy brows knit with incredulity, the eternal brown paper cigarette protruding from the right corner of his mouth. “Something to shoot at?”
“A can, a little box, or a horseshoe. Hell, give me a whiskey bottle.”
“Neither your leg nor you head is well enough for you to be gallivanting around the post shooting things, Mr. Navarro.”
Wearing only his long underwear and socks, Tom hobbled out of bed and, bracing himself with one hand on the window, knelt on his good leg before the wooden footlocker beside it. He removed the lamp from the top, and lifted the lid.
“I’m gonna shoot something, Doc. You can decide what . . . or I can.” He reached inside the locker and pulled out his .44 and cartridge belt.
Sullivan cursed and disappeared into his office. He returned a minute later with a crutch in one hand, a square sulphate of quinia can in the other. With pursed lips and arched brows, he extended both to Navarro sitting on the bed and buckling his cartridge belt around his waist.
Tom took the crutch and the can, pulled himself to his feet, and adjusted the .44 on his hip. He was a good distance from the washwomen of Suds’ Row, so he saw no need to don more than his balbriggans. “Where’s the best place to shoot without ruffling too many feathers?”
“I would suggest the ravine behind the infirmary.”
“Obliged.”
Navarro draped his left arm over the crutch and ambled into the aisle between the beds. The crutch caught in a floor knot, and Tom stumbled forward cursing. Rushing toward him, the doctor helped him free the crutch from the knot and position it back under Tom’s right arm before he fell.
Tom shuttled his weight back to the crutch and, with a wink at Captain Ward looking up from a game of solitaire with concern, continued hop-shuffling forward. “Close one—thanks again, Doc.”
“Nice to know my education wasn’t wasted,” Sullivan grumbled. He grabbed the can from Navarro’s right arm, followed him out of the building and to the sun-blasted arroyo behind it.
On the arroyo’s lip, Navarro leaned into the crutch and shucked his .44. He flipped open the loading gate, checked for pills, then flipped the gate shut and spun the cylinder.
“Chuck the can, Doc.”
With a disapproving chuff, Sullivan threw the can to the opposite bank, thirty yards away, missing the lip by a foot. The can rolled down two feet and snugged up against a rock, label out, nearly perpendicular to the bank.
Navarro stared at the label, blinking. He slid his .44 from its holster, thumbed back the hammer, and extended his arm. Squinting one eye, he sighted down the Navy’s barrel.
The gun popped.
Sullivan removed the quirley from his mouth and looked at the can. He turned to Navarro. “Missed it.”