Bullet Creek (26 page)

It was not yet dawn, but when Navarro walked into the main yard, he saw that the other Bar-V hands were already up, moving back and forth behind the bunkhouse's lighted windows. The bunkhouse door was open, and the riders were heading out, donning hats and cartridge belts, quirleys smoldering between their teeth, some still thumbing cartridges through their rifles' loading gates. A couple held freshly oiled saddles on their shoulders.

There were a few strange faces—the extra shooters Vannorsdell had sent to Tucson for. Bringing in unfamiliar, untested riders went against Navarro's grain, but facing de Cava's hired killers, they'd need every gunhand they could find.

Tom fell in beside Bear Winston and was heading to the stable when he saw Vannorsdell moving toward them, the lit windows of the house silhouetting his bulky, hatted figure clad in a dark duster. He carried two rifles, one in either hand. A freshly fired stogie drooped from his lips.

“Where're you going?” Navarro asked.

The stumpy rancher stopped and removed the cigar from his mouth. “Where the hell you think?”

“Things are gonna get a mite hairy out there.”

“You don't think I been through wars before?” Vannorsdell sucked air through his nose, puffing up his chest. “Or you think I'm too old?”

Navarro lifted a shoulder. Seeing a slender, hatted figure with long tawny hair coming up behind the old man, he said, “What about her?”

“What about me?” Karla said. She had a pistol strapped around her waist and held bulging saddlebags over her left shoulder. “I'm coming.”

Vannorsdell turned to her sharply, as though he hadn't known she was back there. The old man opened his mouth to speak to her, but Karla cut him off. “Don't worry. I don't intend on joining the fracas. I'll stay behind you, well out of harm's way, and help the wounded.”

“The hell you will!” the rancher and Navarro barked at the same time.

“I should say you won't, young lady!” The woman's voice, familiar to Tom, carried down from the porch. Navarro looked behind Karla. Louise Talon strode quickly out from the front yard, a cape about her shoulders, her red hair piled in a loose bun atop her head. “We'll stay here and help when they get back . . . if any get back,” Louise added, sending a half-scolding, half-encouraging look at Navarro.

Tom's frown deepened. Under any other circumstances, he would have been thrilled to see her. “What are you doin' here?”

“Your rider stopped at the stage station on his way to Tucson and filled me in. I came to offer my doctoring services.” She draped an arm over Karla's shoulders. “I hope they're not needed.”

Karla shuttled her gaze between Tom and her grandfather. “Guess I'm outgunned.” She let the saddlebags slide off her shoulder and hit the ground with a thud. She crossed her arms on her chest. “You boys come back in one piece.”

Tom gave them both a stretched glance. Then he and Vannorsdell turned and headed for the stable, from which the other men were leading their saddled horses, including one for Tom and one for Vannorsdell.

Navarro slid his rifle into his saddle boot. “I doubt Real gets out of bed much before noon, but I want to get over there before those drunks he's got riding for him get all their wits about 'em.”

“Shit, they'll be expecting us,” said the rancher, grunting as he pulled himself into the leather.

“Yeah, I reckon,” Navarro growled, gigging his sorrel toward the head of the waiting pack. He glanced again toward the house. Karla and Louise stood there, staring toward him gravely.

“Let's ride!” Navarro yelled to the men behind him and galloped his horse through the open front gate.

Behind him, arm in arm, Louise and Karla watched them go, the ground shuddering beneath their feet.

“How we gonna do this, Tom?” Vannorsdell asked, reaching down and shucking his Winchester from his saddle boot.

He was staring toward the de Cava hacienda from beneath the brim of his shabby leather hat. Between the Bar-V riders and the hacienda, Real's men sat their horses stirrup to stirrup, a cool, killing calm in their eyes. The climbing morning sun canted their shadows across the sage. In the middle of the group, nearly straight ahead of Navarro, sat Real de Cava, his brown felt sombrero thonged taut beneath his chin. To Real's right, Cayetano Fimbres slouched in his saddle under what appeared to be about thirty pounds of brass in his crossed cartridge belts. To Real's left was a lanky kid in white pajamas and a tattered straw hat; he held an old-model rifle across his scrawny chest. Cayetano's brother. The don's killer. Navarro didn't cotton to killing kids, but he was willing to make an exception for this deadly little brush wolf.

Navarro shucked his own Winchester and levered it one-handed. He had a brief image of Guadalupe Sanchez thrown toward him with a bullet in his back, then another of Lee Luther lying pale, small, and dead in his coffin.

Snapping his Winchester to his shoulder, Tom drew a quick bead on Cayetano's forehead. The killer, cocky and red-eyed from drink, was slow to react. Spying Navarro's rifle aimed at him, he jerked up straight in his saddle. But he'd only just started raising his big-caliber Sharps when Navarro's rifle barked. The killer's head jerked back, as if he'd been punched in the chin. His eyes blinked a few times, as if he was trying to clear his vision; then his fingers opened and his rifle dropped from his hands.

“Like that,” Navarro said, watching the killer sag back over his horse's rear. The mount suddenly lunged sideways and craned a look at the man sliding off its left hip.

The peon kid shouted, “Cayetano!”

His voice was nearly drowned out as the Bar-V riders, following Tom's lead, extended their own rifles at their counterparts sitting thirty yards away, and began firing. Almost simultaneously, the stunned de Cava riders commenced their own fusillade. Holding his jittery mount's reins in his left fist, Navarro extended his rifle at Real but held the shot. De Cava had ducked from lead fired by Vannorsdell, and his horse was rearing.

Tom turned to his left as two shots cut the air on either side of him, one so close it trimmed several whiskers he hadn't had time to shave that morning. As Tom swung his Winchester over the saddle horn, he lost his grip on his reins. The sorrel swung hard right, screaming and bucking. Tom dropped his rifle to grab for the horn.

He missed it, and the horse's motion swung him hard right. The horse leapt out from beneath him; slung like a rock from a slingshot, he flew out sharply, then straight down, hitting the ground on his hip. His left boot hung up in the stirrup. He gave the boot a yank as the horse lurched him forward so hard his teeth cracked together and his head snapped back with blinding force. Suddenly, he was careening and fishtailing over the rocky, brushy ground.

The screaming sorrel dragged him a good twenty yards before his boot slipped free. Navarro continued sliding on his butt for another fifteen feet, then smashed through a tough clump of silver sage, and stopped with a jolt against an ironwood shrub, his head pounding, the world spinning, the gunfire sounding a good mile away.

He shook his head to clear it, turned over, took quick stock of his condition, then pushed up on his hands and knees. He looked around, blinking, trying to get the world to stop spinning. His ringing ears started picking up the gunfire, the angry shouts, and the screams of the horses.

His eyes focused, and he saw the wafting powder smoke and the fallen horses and men and those men still living crouched behind rocks or shrubs or their dead mounts, slinging lead with their rifles or pistols. Ahead about twenty paces and to Tom's right, Vannorsdell crouched behind a small rock buried in sage. His hat was off and his gray-brown hair hung in his dusty face. He was bleeding from a couple wounds. Extending his old Walker Colt, he cut loose on one of the de Cava men still shooting from his prancing horse.

The man clutched his chest with a groan. He turned his own pistol on Vannorsdell, but the old rancher shot the man off his horse before he could return fire.

Navarro reached for his Colt Navy; he was relieved to feel it still in its holster. He slipped it out, gained his feet, and ran crouching back the way the horse had dragged him. Glancing right and left, he figured the bulk of his men were still alive, while more than two-thirds of de Cava's men were down in bloody humps, one lying half under his own steeldust stallion.

A brown face appeared from the right side of a rock not far from the low brick wall marking the border of the main yard. The man snaked his rifle out, extended it toward Tom. Navarro snapped off a lucky shot without aiming, drilling the man through the right temple and sending him sprawling back in the dust.

As shots continued around him, a slug nicked Navarro's right side, sending a fiery chill deep into his loins. He turned toward the source of the shot. Real was hunkered down behind his dead horse, two smoking pistols extended over the saddle. As Real fired another shot, Navarro dropped to his right knee and fired two quick rounds.

De Cava spun back away from his horse as Tom's second shot cored his right shoulder. Real climbed to his hands and feet; both pistols still in his hands, he crawled toward the brick wall. Squinting through the eye-stinging powder smoke, Tom triggered two shots, blowing up dirt about a foot right of Real's retreating figure. Again, he cocked the Colt and aimed, but before he could fire, a bullet slammed into a rock just ahead of him, spraying him with sharp rock and lead shards.

Squinting through the blood dribbling through a small wound over his left eye, he glanced left. The shooter ran crouching northward. As he dove behind a dead horse, he screamed and slumped onto his back. Tom turned sharply to see Ky Tryon throw up his left arm in a wave, his Henry rifle in his right hand.

“We got 'em on the run, Tom!”

Navarro squeezed off his last shot, then holstered the empty Navy and pulled Sanchez's Russian .44 out from behind his cartridge belt. He glanced right, where Vannorsdell sat with his back to his rock, reloading the heavy Colt with fresh caps and balls, his left hand bloody.

The shooting had died down. One of the downed pistoleros was shrieking in Spanish somewhere off to the south.

Navarro looked toward the brick wall in time to see Real crawl over it and fall to the ground on the other side.

“I'm going after Real!” Tom yelled to Vannorsdell.

“Go ahead, Tommy. I'll cover you!” The rancher snapped his loading lever down beneath the Walker's barrel, turned forward, and extending the gun over the rock.

As Vannorsdell's ancient Colt roared, Navarro sprinted toward the wall, leaping over several dead bodies and horses and triggering two shots at one of the three or four surviving de Cava men. His left leg was sore from the dragging, so he eased himself over the wall. Ahead, Real de Cava was moving toward the hacienda, skipping and awkwardly dragging one foot. His hat was gone and his leather jacket was torn and bloody.

Navarro walked toward him. “Real!”

The man wheeled, almost fell, and raised both pistols in his hands. Navarro fired the big Russian. Real flinched and stumbled backward, firing both pistols into the ground, then dropping the one in his right hand. Tom fired two more shots, but he wasn't used to the high-shooting weapon, and both slugs tore up dust several yards beyond Real.

“Don't kill me, Taos!” Real turned and stumbled up the grade toward the house now bathed in the lemon light of the rising sun. “You're fighting for the wrong brand. I could make you rich!”

Looking around in case any of the pistoleros had retreated into the yard, and feeling the blood from the rock and lead shards dribbling down his face, Navarro headed after Real. Movement near the house caught his attention, and he turned to see a girl with long black hair and wearing a violet dress and black shoes run toward him through the gate of the main courtyard.

“Real!” she cried.

Startled, de Cava spun toward her and fired his Remington. The girl screamed, did a grotesque pirouette, hair flying, flinging her arms out from her sides. Blood stained the dress over the girl's chest as she he lay on her back in the dust, arms thrown out from her shoulders, hair splayed beneath her head.

Giving the dead girl only a moment's scrutiny, as if she were only a bird fallen from the sky, Real turned into the main courtyard, passed under several long-dead pecan trees, and stumbled up a wide set of stone steps toward open double doors at the top.

He turned as Navarro gained the foot of the steps. He fell with a curse, turned on his right hip. His face was sweat-streaked and pale, his eyes bright with terror. “You can have my sister. She wants you, Taos.”

“You're a blight on the de Cava name, Real. Killed your own father for gold. I'm gonna put you down like the sick cur you are.”

“I didn't shoot mi padre! It was Pepe!” Laughing hideously, Real extended his pistol and fired.

A wink later, Navarro fired the Russian, the .44 slug tearing across the top left shoulder of de Cava's short leather jacket. Navarro climbed three steps. Six steps away from Real, he extended the Russian and aimed at the firebrand's forehead.

Real squeezed his eyes closed and winced, tears dribbling down his cheeks. “Don't kill me, Taos. Por favor!”

Navarro pulled the trigger. The hammer clapped on an empty cartridge. He fired again. Nothing.

Real smiled, chuckled. “I have one more, Taos.” He stared at Navarro, his expression suddenly sober. “You, like mi padre, are old and washed up.” He thumbed the pistol's hammer back. “Say good-bye to life.”

Navarro muttered a curse and stared at the wide maw of the Remington leveled at his head. No Wyoming horse ranch with Louise. Just as well. She deserved better than an aging gunman who'd no doubt have a price on his head until the day he died.