“Let me see,” Louise said. Hawkins handed the glasses to Louise. When she’d given the town a scan, she turned to Navarro. “Well, what’re we waiting for?”
“Nightfall.”
“Why?”
“If this company town’s bringin’ in slave girls, it’s no doubt run pretty tight. See all those gray uniforms down there? Those are rurales. Rural police. I’d bet the ranch they’ve all been bought and paid for by the company, and they keep a sharp eye out for strangers—especially gringos who might come down here to see what’s become of their kids.”
“Riding in there by day, we’d be about as conspicuous as a Lutheran sky pilot at a prairie Injun sun dance,” Hawkins said.
Staring through the glasses again, Tom said, “That’s one way of putting it.”
Louise stared at Tom, puzzled. “I don’t understand, after all the hard miles we’ve put behind us, how you can just sit here. Can’t you imagine what must be happening to those girls . . . at this very minute?”
“Yep.” Navarro lowered the glasses and canted a glance at the redhead. “But I can also imagine how much good we’d do them locked up in a rurale jail. And how much fun the rurales would have with you.”
Louise held his gaze, slightly squinted one brown eye. “You’re a pleasure to have around, Mr. Navarro.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t relish bein’ here.” He turned onto his back, lowered his head, and tipped his broad-brimmed Stetson over his eyes. “No, we’ll wait for good dark before we go down there and start sniffin’ around all public-like.”
Louise looked at Hawkins, who threw his hands up and shrugged. “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun and crawls when you have a toothache.”
Louise lowered her gaze to Navarro. His broad chest rose and fell evenly; his hands were clasped on his flat belly. She knew he was as anxious about his girl, Karla, as she was about her Billie, but he seemed to have just let go of everything.
She watched him, admiring in spite of herself the taciturn man who’d nearly run her ragged across these bald desert knobs.
Finally, taking his example, Louise lay back, as well, in the shadow of a large boulder. It took her a long time to quell the worries and wild imaginings before she finally fell into a doze. She had no idea how much time had passed before someone nudged her brusquely. Her eyes snapped open to an inky black sky speckled with stars.
“Let’s go,” Navarro said, looking down at her. He turned and headed down the slope toward the horses.
Chapter 22
Deciding they might attract more attention avoiding the main road than taking it, Navarro, Louise Talon, and Mordecai Hawkins rode back along the ridge, picked up the main wagon trace, and followed it into the valley and on into the town.
The streetlamps and torches had been lit, giving a surreal appearance to the two- and three-story wood-frame establishments still smelling of pine and wedged in amongst the ancient thatch-roofed adobe cantinas and restaurantes, on both sides of the cobble-stone trace buried in horse and mule manure.
The boardwalks swelled with rollicking miners, the Americans apparently restricting themselves mainly to the newer, Dodge City-style saloons while the Mexicans were bunched up before the low-slung cantinas from which mariachi music flitted, competing with the ubiquitous pounding of the stamping mill.
As they rode amid the shunting shadows, Tom spotted the whores, freighters, drifters, and cardsharps— gringo as well as Mex—attracted to any mining berg, company-owned or otherwise. Several farm wagons were parked before the cantinas, and campesinos in the traditional coarse cotton slacks, oversized blouses, and ragged-brimmed sombreros milled with the Mexican miners in duck trousers and hob-nailed boots. The mixed crowd was a good sign that he and Hawkins might not stand out as much as he’d feared.
Louise, however, could pose a problem.
To solve it, Navarro looked around for a hotel. Turning left around the regal old Palacio Federal abutting a new mercantile store, he led his two companions and their packhorses down a dark side street and reined up before a two-store adobe bearing a sign reading HOTEL GRANDE DEL ORIENTE. The dirt-streaked hotel had a second-story balcony with a scrolled wrought-iron railing. The building was fronted with columns supporting an arched ceiling over a tile-floored front ramada, where a rain barrel sat against the wall and shipping crates were stacked.
“What are we doing here?” Louise asked.
“We’re getting you off the street,” Navarro said, slipping down from his saddle and approaching the hitch rack.
“I didn’t come here to sleep.” Louise kept her vehement voice low. “I came here to find Billie.”
“You’re not gonna find anything in this town but trouble. I’m gonna hole you up in a room. Then Mordecai and I are gonna peruse the saloons.”
“While I’m doing what?”
“Playing fiddlesticks, for all I care!” Navarro looked around, wincing, hoping no one had heard his explosion. This strong-willed woman reminded him of another—whose pigheadedness got herself and him into this mess in the first place. And two good men dead.
“I can’t just lounge around a room while Billie is—” Louise cut herself off, shaking her head. “I’ll go crazy!”
“Well, do it quiet-like.” Navarro reached up, brusquely pulled her down from her saddle, and mounted the porch.
Behind him Mordecai said quietly, “He’s right, Mrs. Talon. You—”
“Oh, I know!”
Inside, an elegant old Mexican with close-cropped gray hair stood at the front desk, reading an Illustrated Police Gazette laid open beside a water glass half-filled with habanero, a Cuban-style rum that was probably less toxic than the local aguardiente.
“Buenas tardes,” the old man greeted. “Qué quiere?”
“A couple of rooms,” Tom said. “One for my foreman there”—he canted his head to indicate Hawkins before planting a hand on Louise’s slim shoulder—”and one for myself and my lovely wife. We’re down from Arizona on a horse-buyin’ expedition. It’ll be nice to finally sleep in a bed, won’t it, honey?”
Louise didn’t miss a beat. “It sure will, my love.” To the old Mexican she said, “Could we get one of those rooms up front with a balcony? I get a little tight in the chest when I can’t see what’s happening on the street.”
When they’d secured the rooms and were heading up the stairs lit by too few smoky candles, Louise turned to regard Navarro coming up behind her. “You’re taking quite a bit for granted, don’t you think?”
“I’ve seen how you look at me.”
Hawkins snorted.
Louise asked Tom, “Why is it that you get to play my husband, and not Mr. Hawkins?”
“For the simple reason that you and I are closer to the same age. We can switch when we get to the rooms, though, if it’ll make you feel better.”
Louise stopped before her and Tom’s door and stabbed the key in the lock. “No, we might end up with a snoopy chambermaid.”
When Navarro and Hawkins had hauled their gear to their rooms, both men took a whore’s bath in Hawkins’ room, cutting through the thick layers of dust on their faces, then headed back downstairs. They stopped at the front desk, where the old Mexican was pouring himself a fresh drink from a crock jug, his brown eyes looking bleary.
When Tom had inquired about a good livery barn, he poked his hat back on his head, feigned a bashful expression, and rested his arms on the native-wood desk. “Senor, one more question, if you don’t mind.” He looked around the lobby as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping, then jerked a thumb at Hawkins flanking his right. “My foreman here has a lusty streak. He’s wondering where he might find some women of the sporting variety.”