BBH01 - Cimarron Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

chandelier dripping with light above their heads, their
faces animated with their own company as they passed bowls of food back
and forth to one another.

----
chapter
four
    I woke before sunrise and fried eggs
and ham in the kitchen
and ate them out of the skillet with bread and a cup of coffee on the
back porch. The dawn was gray and misty, the air so cool and soft that
I could hear sound from a long way off—a bass flopping in the
tank,
the creak of the windmill shifting directions, a cowbell clanging on my
neighbor's gate.
    L.Q. Navarro was stretched out on the perforated,
white-painted iron lawn bench under the chinaberry tree, his Stetson
tilted sideways on his head, his cheek resting on one hand.
    I tried to ignore him.
    But when I closed my eyes he and I were on horseback again in
a reed-choked muddy bottom across the border in Coahuila, our eyes
stinging with sweat in the darkness, our noses and mouths filled with
insects. Then the fusillade exploded all around us, from behind
sandhills and scrub brush and mesquite and gutted car bodies, the
muzzle flashes blooming in the dark, our horses caving under us as
though they had been eviscerated.
    But L.Q.' s mare labored to her feet again, a hole in her rib
cage squirting blood like a broken pipe, and began galloping in terror
up an arroyo, flailing her head against the collapsed reins. Then I saw
L.Q.' s boot and roweled Mexican spur tangled in the stirrup and his
body bouncing across the rocks, his arms folded over his head as the
mare's iron shoes sliced the suitcoat off his shoulders.
    My right arm felt dead, useless at my side, the upper bone
snapped in two by a round that had struck it like a sharp, solitary
blow from a cold chisel. I stood erect and fired and fired, until my
nine-millimeter locked empty, then I dropped it to the ground and began
firing my .357 Magnum, not taking aim, the air crisscrossed with
ricochets and toppling rounds that made a
whirring
sound past the ear or
pinged
out into the
darkness like a broken spring.
    Then I heard our attackers begin moving through the brush, the
sand slicks, from behind the rusted car bodies, through the blackened
greasewood and tangles of wire fence. I heard the man behind me before
I saw him, his boots digging hopelessly for purchase into the soil as
he slid down the arroyo. I turned just as his weight propelled him
toward the bottom of the arroyo, the starlight glinting on the barrel
of his rifle, and I pointed my revolver straight in front of me and
squeezed off the last round in the cylinder, the hammer ratcheting back
and slamming down on the cartridge before I recognized the thin,
silvery tinkle of L.Q.' s Mexican spurs.
    I pushed away the frying pan and coffee cup and wiped my mouth
on a paper napkin.
    '
Why'd you pick up that damn rifle?'
I
said.
    He adjusted his cheek on his palm and tipped back his hat. '
I
dropped
my piece. What was I supposed to shoot at them with, spitballs
?'
    'They all made it back into the mountains. We lost
you for nothing.'
    '
I
wouldn't say that. I busted
off my pocketknife
in the guy I took the rifle from. It's that same dude we liked to
smoked a couple of other times. I expect he took his next leak with one
kidney
.'
    'You were sure a fine lawman, L.Q.'
    He cut his head and grinned and stuck a long grass stem in his
mouth.
    I heard a car out front, then the doorbell ring.
    'Come around back!' I shouted through the kitchen.
    The deputy named Mary Beth Sweeney walked around the corner of
the house, the sun like a soft yellow balloon at her back. L.Q. was
standing under the chinaberry tree now, looking at her curiously. She
walked right through him. His silhouette broke apart in a burst of gold
needles.
    I pushed open the back screen for her.
    'How about a cup of coffee?' I said.
    She stepped inside and took off her campaign hat. She pushed a
curl off her forehead.
    'This won't take long,' she said.
    'Excuse me?'
    'You jammed me up with the sheriff.'
    'About the missing evidence?'