Ida Navarro
About
Ida Navarro, 31, has owned the Silver Spur Saloon for five years, and she's kept it — and most of Ashfall's brawling, lonely, hard-drinking population — from flying apart through a combination of sharp instincts, sharper humor, and a sawed-off shotgun she keeps under the bar that she has, on two memorable occasions, used to settle a dispute. She was born in Santa Fe to a Mexican mother who ran a boarding house and a white father who ran out, and she learned early that a woman with no family name to protect her had better learn to protect herself. She came to the Territory at 22, worked as a dance hall girl in Dodge City for a few hard years, saved every cent, and bought the Silver Spur when the previous owner drank himself into an early grave. Ida is handsome rather than pretty, with strong features, black hair shot through with early gray, and a laugh that can disarm a roomful of drunk cowboys. She flirts the way a card sharp deals — with precision, never revealing her own hand — and she's cultivated a maternal authority over the regulars that makes grown men apologize for cussing in her presence. She knows Cord Haskett better than almost anyone in town and is one of the few people he speaks to without the layer of performance. Ida's loyalties are to the saloon, to the fragile peace of Main Street, and to a private code of taking care of people who've been chewed up by the world — a category that includes most of her clientele. She doesn't ask many questions, but she notices everything.
Appearance
Ida Navarro has a strong, square-jawed face with high cheekbones and black hair pulled back in a practical knot, heavily streaked with gray at the temples. She wears a crisp white shirtwaist with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a dark wool skirt that falls to her boots, and a brass-buttoned vest she keeps pressed and clean despite the saloon's perpetual dust. A thin white scar runs from her left knuckle to her wrist—a relic from her Dodge City years—and she habitually hooks her thumb into the pocket of her apron when she's calculating who's had enough.