Mrs. Talon’s voice betrayed strained patience. “We’re going to buy Billie back.”
“I ain’t sure five hundred dollars is gonna do it, ma’am.”
“Then we’ll take her back . . . one way or another.”
Hawkins sighed and said without enthusiasm, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Mr. Hawkins, you are an infuriating old pessimist!” Louise reined the mare off the trail, overtaking the packhorse and Hawkins’ claybank. “If we’re going to make any headway at all, we’d better pick up the pace.”
She galloped the mare out ahead of him, over the brow of the hill and into a grassy hollow between slopes. A big magpie flew up from a single gnarled cedar left of the trail, screeching.
Hawkins stared after the woman, shaking his head. “We been pushin’ hard enough. These horses need a rest.” She’d dropped from view, but he scowled and raised his chin to add, “These’re the only horses we got—best treat ’em right!”
Later that day, they came upon two bodies in a narrow canyon, about fifty yards from where others had camped. Both men had been shot first in the legs, then finished off with bullets to the head. Hawkins and Mrs. Talon stared down at them. Scavengers had been having a feast.
“Look at that,” Hawkins said. “Take you a good look. Men who would do that to each other would—”
Hooves thudded behind him. He turned to see Mrs. Talon galloping off down the canyon, following the outlaws’ path.
Hawkins cursed, dug a tobacco twist from his jeans pocket, and angrily bit off a sizable chunk. Chewing, he stared after the woman, her back defiantly straight, her saddlebags and rifle boot flapping like wings.
Hawkins cursed again. It wasn’t easy working for a woman who had bigger cajones than he had.
Chapter 19
The morning after the two privates had tried to perforate his hide, Tom Navarro rose early, dressed quickly, and bid farewell to Sullivan, Ward, and Bryson. Riding through the fort’s open front gates, he saluted the two sentries and gigged the horse into a lope, the dun packhorse following on its ten-foot lead.
The morning began desert-fresh, but the sun rose, blistering, the mountains receding and cowering behind a brassy haze. Soon the Bar-V segundo’s new denims and chambray shirt were sweat-stained, and his broad-brimmed black hat was coated with a fine sheen of adobe-colored dust. The only old accoutrements he had were his gun belt and .44, the undershot Justins on his feet, and the red bandanna knotted around his neck.
Navarro preferred familiar mounts for treks into strange country, but his own horse had probably either been taken by the same scalp hunters who’d nabbed Karla, or was still wandering the cuts around Gray Rock, foraging and looking for water. The bay stepped out smartly, and as he wended his way into the rough country near the peak, the bay as well as the dun proved sure-footed and deep-bottomed.
Good stayers both, and they seemed forgiving of long stretches without water. Not bad for Army remounts, which, like most soldiers, often proved over-trained and underexperienced.
The trek back to Gray Rock proved futile. The slavers’ sign had been obliterated by isolated rain squalls, wind, and animals. All that remained atop the mountain was dry horse apples, dirt-caked carnage, and the sickly sweet fetor of death.
The Army had buried the bodies in graves too shallow to thwart predators. Bloody limbs and viscera were strewn about the dust and rocks.
Without tracks, he had no choice but to head south and try to cut the scalp hunters’ trail somewhere along the way, or hope to hear word of where the renegades might be headed.
He camped at the butte’s base, having a few drinks that night in honor of Dallas and Charlie, noting how lonely it felt without either or both at his side. He started south so early the next morning that a mountain lion was still keening and whining atop the peak above him, probably warning wolves or coyotes away from its breakfast.
Two nights later, Navarro rode into Tombstone amid the patter of tin-panny music and the blasts of jubilant gunfire, soiled doves beckoning from cat-house balconies. After stabling his horses, he consulted Sheriff Johnny Behan, who offered no information about a slaver named Bontemps, which didn’t surprise Navarro. Johnny Behan was better known for gambling and carousing than for fogging owlhoot trails.
Not wanting trouble from long-memoried enemies or prospective gunslicks, Navarro drank and ate alone in his Russ House hotel room, then slept with his pillow over his head to blot out the noise from the street below his room, including fiddle music and several bursts of gunfire.
Up with the dung shovelers the next dawn, he saddled his grained and curried mounts, and followed the river courses into Sonora. Combing such vast, rugged terrain was akin to cleaning a buffalo rug one hair at a time. Sitting a ridge and gazing over the thrusting barrancas and pillared rimrocks stretched out between distant, blue snow-mantled peaks, he felt overwhelmed with futility.
He rode on, however. He would not give up his search until he’d either found Karla or settled her score.
He’d been scouring river basins, inquiring in little towns and at farms for two weeks, learning nothing about slave traders or Yanqui girls. Then, one morning, in the sandy creekbed in which he’d camped the night before, he came upon the sign of four shod horses.
One of the track sets caught his eye.
There was something in the horse’s gate, shoe fit, or nail pattern that seemed familiar. He’d tracked many horses over the years, and thousands of prints had been seared into his brain. Maybe he only imagined something familiar about this set, but he followed them, anyway.
He’d trailed the four riders for two hours, and was plodding along a deep-rutted cart trail, with an alkali flat on his left, when a shot sounded to his right and slightly behind. He reined the bay to a halt and, shucking his Winchester from the saddle boot, whipped his head toward the sound.
A rocky ridge heaved a hundred feet off the trail, paralleling it. As he studied the formation, three more rifle shots rang out. They’d seemed muffled, as though fired from inside a building.
A faint yell rose on the breeze.
Navarro reined the bay to the base of the ridge, dismounted, and tied both horses to a spindly shrub. His Winchester in his right hand, he climbed the slope, weaving around rocks and yucca. Removing his hat, he hunkered down behind a cracked, cart-sized boulder at the ridge’s brow, and peered into the shallow draw on the other side.
A sun-bleached adobe stood against the draw’s opposite ridge, which shelved gently back, spiked with yucca, short grass, and mesquite shrubs. Several brown and cream-colored goats milled along the rocks, pulling at the brush.
Inside the cabin, another shot barked, the slug blasting open a shutter on the other side of the house. The ricochet sliced off a rock with a metallic zing, puffing dust and narrowly missing a goat, which craned its head to stare at the bullet-scarred rock for several seconds before turning again to graze.
Ignoring the gunfire, Navarro turned his attention to the brush corral, where four horses and a mule stood statue-still, facing the rear fence and the spindly cottonwood partially shading it. Two horses were duns, one a black barb, the other a white Arabian.
Navarro stared at the Arabian, his spine tensing, his flinty blue eyes keen.
He had little doubt it was Karla’s horse. Not many Mexicans could afford a white Arabian. What it was doing here, he had no idea. Maybe these people knew nothing about the slavers. Maybe they did.
“Santa Madre!” a voice cried within the weathered adobe walls.
A shot barked.