Bullet Creek, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
BULLET CREEK
Real looked down at Vannorsdell. He and his brother were half turned away from Navarro so Tom couldn’t see their faces. “Told you to come alone, you murdering old bastard.”
“I didn’t kill your father.”
“No? Then who did? You rode up the ridge with him. You were the last one to see him alive. We find him dead, his brains blown out.”
“You want the rancho,” Alejandro said, holding a rifle down low across his thighs.
“I’d have to have some pretty big cajones to kill your father on his own land. And I’d have to be a pretty miserable friend.”
Alejandro turned to his older brother. “Shoot him, Real. You do it or I will.”
SIGNET
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THE IMMORTAL COWBOY
This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.
True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.
In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,
Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling, allowing me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?
It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—havebeen reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.
It has become a symbol of freedom, where there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.
—Ralph Compton
Chapter 1
“They smell the springs,” yelled Tom Navarro. “Turn ’em east!”
The Bar-V foreman, his craggy, sun-seared face shaded by his wide-brimmed hat, hunkered low in his saddle and turned his galloping claybank hard right. The horse ate up the ground, weaving around saguaros and clay-colored boulders, leaping sage and barrel cacti, until it had raced out ahead of the two west-galloping leaders—a big dun with a cream-speckled rump and a bay with an evangelical fire in its eyes.
“Hee-ya now,” Navarro called, throwing up his right arm and reining the claybank gently east. “You git now! Mooove your ornery asses!”
Both leaders jerked their heads stubbornly and slowly turned south, Tom hazing them along with his coiled lariat, yelling epithets and yammering coyotelike, until the entire remuda of twelve half-wild, mountain-bred mustangs was once again trotting and loping east.
The kid, Lee Luther, appeared out of the dust sifting over the catclaw and greasewood on Tom’s right, and put his buckskin into step beside Navarro’s claybank. The lad looked sheepish under his battered Stetson, his faded red kerchief bibbing over his hickory shirt, his chaps flapping on his knees. “Sorry, Mr. Navarro. I forgot about the springs!”
“You gettin’ tired, Lee Luther?”
“No, sir, I ain’t!”
“Oh, then you must’ve been sayin’ your prayers back there in that canyon, when I looked over and you had your chin on your chest.”
The kid, sixteen years old and fresh and new to the Bar-V role, looked outraged. “Wha . . . ? I never . . .” He paused, then looked away as he and Navarro trotted abreast, heading east along the stage road between Tucson and Benson. “I reckon I mighta nodded off there for a minute. Sorry, Mr. Navarro.”
Tom didn’t say anything as he rode along behind the remuda’s bouncing butts and dusty manes flashing in the midafternoon sun. Having grown up in the saddle himself, he knew how Lee Luther felt. A green drover never liked to be out alone with the ramrod. There was damn little fun in it, and too much pressure. Lee Luther would have preferred making this trip with Sparky or Bill Tobias or Ray Fisher or even Bear Winston, the big Welshman who’d never been known to smile.
“I reckon I had you up a little late last night, foggin’ Tomahawk Wash for strays.” With that, Navarro reined out around the remuda’s left flank to gather up a meandering paint and to begin turning the group slightly south.
“I’ll do better next time,” he heard the kid call over the clomps of galloping hooves.
“I know you will,” Navarro said, amazed at himself. Christ, was he getting soft . . . or just old?
Ten minutes later, the Butterfield station rose from the liquid mirages and the chaparral, the long, low cabin puffing smoke from its field rock chimney and the corrals swaying up against the split cordwood behind the barn. Navarro saw that Mordecai Hawkins had the main corral gate open. He waved to the old man, who returned the gesture.
Deftly maneuvering their well-trained cutting ponies, Tom and Lee Luther rode back and forth along the remuda’s left and right flanks, hazing the herd with their lariats and barking orders, breathing into the neckerchiefs and squinting their eyes against the dust.
They strung the horses out single file, three or four wide, and guided the leader through the gate. Not a minute later the entire remuda was inside the corral’s peeled log fence, blowing and shaking their heads.
The dry dust and manure sifted. A big cream in the adjoining corral lifted its long snout and gave an obstinate whinny, setting off several answering nickers and deep-throated chuffs in the new remuda. The big bay pranced around the corral with an insolent, exasperated air, as though looking for a fight.
Mordecai Hawkins, an old hide hunter who’d started hostling for the Butterfield company a half dozen years ago, choked on the dust as he closed and latched the gate. The portly oldster—a good ten or fifteen years older than Tom’s fifty—wore torn duck pants, suspenders, and mule-ear boots. His hide hat sat crooked on
“That’s your job, Mordecai,” Navarro said. “When you don’t have nothin’ else to do around here, you can break ’em to the hitch.”
Hawkins offered a snide grin. “When I don’t have nothin’ else to do . . .”
“This is Lee Luther,” Navarro said, leaning forward on his saddle horn and nodding toward the boy riding up on his right. “Lee Luther, Mordecai Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins is the hostler here.”
“And chief Indian fighter and horseshoer,” Hawkins said. “When I ain’t repairin’ windmill blades or—”
“Don’t listen to that old reprobate,” a woman’s voice said. “I have to roust him out of bed with a shotgun most mornings and fire over his head every so often to keep him from nodding off.”
Navarro turned to see a svelte, brown-eyed woman with cherry red hair walking toward them from the cabin. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid, and her dress, a shade darker than her hair, clung to her long, high-waisted body in all the right places. The low neckline, revealing a modest peak of freckled cleavage, was trimmed with white lace. The cameo pin on her right lapel winked in the desert sun.
“That only happened a couple times,” Hawkins grumbled.
As the woman approached, she gazed up at Navarro, an affable light in her expressive eyes. “Hello, Tom.”
Navarro pinched his hat brim. “Louise, nice to see you again.”
“It’s been a couple months.” She held his gaze and smiled, her teeth flashing in her wide mouth as expressive as her eyes. She had lips neither too full nor too thin, but just right.
Navarro stared back at her for a long, awkward moment, then caught himself and jerked his thumb at the boy on the buckskin. “Louise, this is Lee Luther.”
She reached up with her hand. “Hello, Mr. Luther.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Talon. I heard a lot about you on the way down here.”
She arched her brows at Navarro but spoke to the boy. “What did you hear?”
Under her gaze, Tom’s face heated, and he turned his eyes to the corral, where several horses were drawing from stock tanks.
Lee Luther said, “Just about how you and Mr. Navarro met in Mexico last year, when you was trailin’ them slavers that took your hired girl. Boy, he sure was right, though.” Lee Luther shook his head, his eyes riveted on Louise. “You sure are pretty, Mrs. Talon.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Luther!” Louise slid her gaze back to Tom. “Or should I thank Mr. Navarro.”
“I never thought it was true at all about pretty women,” the boy continued.
“What?” Louise asked.
“That they was mulish and hard to get along with, and that redheaded ones were twice as hard. Why, I knew—” The boy stopped himself, his mouth frozen open. By turns, his smooth face blanched and flushed.
Mordecai Hawkins threw his head back, laughing.
Her smile fading quickly, Louise crossed her arms on her chest. “Who on earth would say such a thing?”
Navarro shot Lee Luther a pointed look, then swung his right leg over the claybank’s rump. “Must’ve been a crazy uncle or some such, eh, boy?”
The boy shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Um . . . yeah, that must’ve been who it was.”
Navarro said to Louise, “I know the stage line only agreed to pay us for the horses, but how ’bout throwin’ in a late lunch? My stomach’s been kissin’ my backbone for the last two hours.”
“It’s already on the table,” Louise said, “if you don’t mind breaking bread with a mulish redhead.”
“I’ve managed before, haven’t I?” Staring over his heavy Porter saddle at her, his craggy face so dark he could have been mistaken for an Indian if not for the close-cropped silver hair, he broke into a grin.
Movement at the cabin caught his attention, and he slid his gaze around Louise. Two men had just stepped out of the low shake-shingled hovel and were peering his way. One was tall and thin, with ash-colored curly hair tufting around his water-stained range hat. The other was the first man’s height but heavier, his round, hairless face shaded by an elaborately stitched sombrero. Both men wore revolvers in cartridge belts thonged low on their thighs, gunman style.
The men held Navarro’s gaze. After a time, the man in the sombrero pulled his gloves out from behind his cartridge belt. He lightly slapped the other man with the gloves, and they both turned slowly to the hitch rack, where a silver-gray and a line-back dun stood with dropped heads. The men climbed into the hurricane decks, thanked Louise for the meal she’d served them, then, pinching their hat brims, galloped northeastward from the barn and corrals and onto the main stage road, heading east. The thuds of their horses’ hooves faded behind them.
Navarro shifted his gaze back to Louise, who’d turned to watch the strangers depart the station. “Friends of yours?”
“Just passin’ through on their way from Tucson,” Louise said. “They ride for Grant Sully.”
To Navarro’s left, Mordecai Hawkins said, “I don’t know that I like the way they looked you over, Tom. You butt heads with them boys, did you?”
“Not yet,” Navarro said. “Come on, boy.” Ignoring Louise’s wary glance, he turned and led his claybank toward the gaping barn doors.
When Navarro and the boy had unsaddled their horses and stalled them in the barn’s fragrant shadows, with oats and cool spring water, they retired to the cabin. Louise stood inside, wiping her hands on a towel while her hired girl, Billie, cut into a loaf of steaming bread. When Louise saw Navarro, she smiled. “Ready to eat?”
Navarro stared at her. Her husky voice made everything she said sound sultry. As she held his gaze, her smile turned into a grin, and he felt his own lips pull upward. Damn, but she was a fine woman. He liked her crooked smile and the smoky way she looked at him, one eye slightly squinted as though she were always laughing.
“Are you goin’ in, sir?” Lee said, tentative, from behind him.
Louise chuckled. Navarro shook his head and stepped aside so Lee could get past him.
Looking first at Louise, then at Navarro, Lee shrugged. “Well, she asked if we’re ready to eat. I know I am.”
Navarro dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and returned his gaze to Louise. She enjoyed another moment, then turned her attention to Lee. “You men have a seat and dig in. I’ll get the coffeepot.”
Over a dinner of venison stew, thick slices of freshly baked bread, and strong black coffee, Navarro, Louise, and Hawkins discussed the horses and other details of the stage business. Lee Luther chatted shyly across the table with the pixie-faced Billie, who wouldn’t look at the boy when she spoke and only picked at her food.
Afterward, they gathered in the shade on the east side of the cabin, where a barrel, some mismatched chairs, and a bench had been placed. They sat down to a dessert of dried apricot pie with big dollops of buttery cream. When Billie had replenished their coffee cups and taken away their dessert plates, Navarro leaned over to Louise and whispered, “Care for an introduction to your new hitch stock?”
She looked over the rim of her coffee cup. “Certainly.”
Arm in arm, holding their coffee in their free hands, they strolled across the yard to the corral, where the new horses were still milling, sweat-silvered and nervous in their new surroundings. The other horses regarded them with wary curiosity, a tall bay wandering up close to the fence dividing them, lifting his head and snorting.
“They’re beautiful,” Louise said.
A black-and-white calico pranced back and forth along the far rail, expanding and contracting its nostrils as it blew, the west-angling sun gilding the adobe-colored dust in its coat. “Watch that calico. He tends to shoulder nip when you’re not looking. That dapple gray? He’s a fighter. Might want to separate him from other troublemakers. He’ll make a good lead, though.”
