Navarro by Ralph Compton

Author:Ralph Compton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

When Navarro opened his eyes again, he found himself on a cot, his tightly wrapped head on a pillow. It was a flat pillow, but a pillow, just the same—the cover white and crisp and smelling like starch. The last time he’d rested his head on such a pillow, he’d been in the infirmary at Fort Apache, the stone tip of a Coyotero’s arrow buried in his leg.

Squinting against the dull ache just behind his eyes—he imagined a thin but painful fissure running from his right temple down through his right jaw—he looked around the long, sunlit room he found himself in. To his right and left, cots with wool Army blankets and pillows were lined along both sides of the room. Several of the cots were occupied—blurred humps beneath the blankets. At the left end of the room, two men in white jackets and soldiers’ slacks stood talking quietly, in businesslike tones.

A tall black stove stood two cots down to Navarro’s right, in the aisle running the length of the room. Sun glistened off the iron from the sashed, flyspecked windows cut deep into both adobe walls. A table stood beside the stove, draped with a white sheet and piled with silver trays and medical tools. There was an alarm clock on the table, ticking loudly.

Beneath the ticking, the shouted commands and marching feet of close-order drill rose from outside. A horse whinnied. Closer by, a man laughed, and Navarro gave his aching gaze to an open window across the room and ten feet right.

A soldier in a white shirt, suspenders, and a visored forage cap stood just outside the window, smoking and laughing in the arbor shade with another man Navarro couldn’t see. Tom smelled the rich aroma of their cigarettes. He took a deep breath, yearning for one himself.

He lay back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what had put him here. Then he became aware again of the tight wrap around his head. He lifted his hands to it, felt the gauze strips.

It all came back to him at once, like a half-remembered dream: Karla, the Apaches, Dallas, and Charlie. There was something unreal about the memory. The sun streaming through the windows was too bright, the sky too brassy blue. The world seemed too calm and orderly, for him to have lost not only Karla, but two of his best friends, as well.

Knowing it hadn’t been a dream did nothing to quell the dreamlike quality. At the same time, his heart squeezed with sorrow.

Karla, Dallas, Charlie . . .

“You still kickin’, Mr. Navarro?” The voice came from across the room.

Tom switched his gaze to a man stretched out on a cot on the opposite side of the aisle and two cots down on the left. His vision was still blurred. He blinked hard to clear it, until the round young face swam into focus beneath a bandage like Navarro’s.

The man’s right leg was in a cast and drawn up by wires and pulleys to an iron bar hanging over the end of the man’s bed.

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