Navarro halted his horse abruptly, one hand on his pistol butt.
“Leave that hogleg where it is,” Bontemps warned, lifting his rifle to his shoulder and aiming at Karla. “I may be a poor, one-eyed sumbitch, but I can still kill that girl from here.”
Silently cursing himself for not spotting the man earlier, Navarro slid his hand from the .44’s butt to his holster. “The girls are goin’ home where they belong.”
“I don’t care about the girls. I want you. You’re gonna pay for my eye, you old bastard.”
Navarro stared at the man, feeling as tired as he’d ever felt. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to lift his gun from his holster again. But he had to get the others out of here. “You’ll let the others go?”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the others.”
Navarro turned in his saddle. “Ride on,” he told Louise, who was sitting the wagon’s driver’s seat.
“Tommy . . .” Karla said.
“Go,” Navarro said, more urgently this time, looking around the women at Hawkins.
One hand on his pistol butt, jerking Sister Mary Francis’ mount along behind him, the old hide hunter gigged his horse up abreast of Karla. He reached over and grabbed the Arabian’s bridle. “Come on, honey.”
“Tommy, he’s fast,” Karla said as Hawkins pulled her mount around Navarro’s bay. “I’ve seen him shoot.”
“Take them on out of the canyon,” Navarro told Hawkins. “I’ll be along shortly.”
Giving Tom a worried glance, Louise urged the mules on past him, Billie and the other girls staring fearfully out the wagon’s rear pucker at the man on the knoll beneath the gnarled pine.
When the women and Hawkins had ridden out of sight, Bontemps slid his rifle into the boot beneath his right thigh. He popped the cork on the bottle resting on the pommel of his saddle, and took a long drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a plum in a rain barrel.
The slaver lifted his chin and poured the whiskey over the bandage. Sighing and shaking his head, he corked the bottle and gigged his speckle-gray down the knoll, riding stiffly, the bottle in one hand, reins in the other. The brace of .45s on his hips flashed in the afternoon sun.
Bontemps reined his horse to a halt only a few feet in front of Tom’s bay. He raised the bottle. “Drink?”
Tom shook his head.
“It’s right soothing on my eye, which hurts like hell, as you might imagine.”
Tom stared at the man, unblinking. Bontemps had positioned the sun behind his left shoulder. It bounced like javelins off the rocks. The man might have had only one eye, but Tom knew Bontemps was fast. He’d heard the stories, like the stories others had told about Navarro himself.
He didn’t especially want to die by the gun of a human hookworm like Bontemps. But suddenly he wondered if his time had come. He felt limp as a worn-out fiddle string, his reactions slow as a cat walking through mud. Maybe he’d burned himself out. Even if he was faster than this bastard, did he still have his edge?
It didn’t really matter. He’d sprung Karla and the other girls. How many good years did he have left, anyway?
“Here I am,” Bontemps said, contempt pinching his voice shrill, “facing the infamous ‘Taos Tommy’ Navarro! I’m just sorry you’re so old and dried up.”
“You can call me Tom,” Navarro said, surprised by the steel he heard in his own voice. He suddenly had the very real urge to pay a visit to that stage station in Benson someday. “Since you’re fixin’ to die.”
The men stared at each other, the grin slowly fading from Bontemps’ eyes, his cracked lips straightening.
The slaver flexed his right thumb. His hand streaked to the pistol on his right hip.
Tom’s .44 came up automatically, stabbing smoke and fire. As the bullet tore through the slaver’s chest, Bontemps crouched over his saddle horn and triggered his own revolver.
Navarro’s bay crow-hopped, quarter-turning, carrying Tom from the path of the slaver’s slug. Bontemps’ own horse bucked, and the dying slaver fell down its side, catching his right foot in the stirrup.
The speckle gray bolted down the canyon, Bontemps bouncing along the trail beside it, arms flung out above his head.
Navarro sleeved sweat from his brow and watched until the horse and slaver disappeared around a thumb in the canyon wall. He holstered his pistol and squinted up at the sun, arcing slowly toward the bald crags in the west.
Several hours of good light left. With luck and hard riding, they’d make the border day after tomorrow.
Navarro straightened his hat and kneed the bay into a canter, heading down canyon toward the Arabian and its tawny-haired rider galloping toward him.
SIGNET
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eISBN : 978-1-101-17744-0