The Last Hard Men (20 page)

Burgade lay on the ground stunned. His head thundered with pain. He opened his eyes to slits. Light streamed down through the trees, its color very rich.

He saw Hal fingering the field glasses in his lap. They trembled in Hal’s hands. Breath hissed and sawed in and out of him. “I can’t look, either,” Hal said. His face was a twisted ugly mask of anguish and fury.

Burgade wiped his sleeve across his eyes. He rolled over and made a grab for the rifle.

Hal planted his foot on Burgade’s wrist. “No, sir. I don’t want to hit you again.”

“You should have let me shoot.”

“You might have hit Susan. At this range you can’t—”

“Then let me get closer! In God’s name, man—”

“There’s no God,” Hal said. “Not out there.”

Burgade struggled to free his wrist. Hal reached out and picked up the rifle. “No. There’s seven of them.”

“
Leave me alone!
”

“Sir,” Hal said, his voice shaking, “that’s what they
want
.”

“Then let them have it!” He jerked his arm free and rolled over.

Hal jumped him, pinned him to the ground. “Get hold of yourself. They haven’t killed her.”

Burgade lay with his face pinned against the ground. A twig dug into his cheek. He heard the rasp of his own, breathing. The pulse thudded in his throat. Hal said in a soft hiss, with calculated brutality, “Women have been fucked before. She can survive it if we can.”

Through the red haze of grief and unthinking total anger, Burgade felt a twinge of awe: that this young man, who loved her, could take it so coolly.

His eyes brimmed: he wept.”

“Are you all right now?”

“Yes.”

Hal let him up. He sat up and wiped dirt and leaves off himself numbly. “What are they doing now?”

“Nothing.”

“What about Susan?”

“She’s lying where they left her. I don’t think she knew what they were doing. I think she fainted. It’s just as well.”

Burgade reached for the field glasses. “Is she—”

“She’s got her clothes on, what’s left of them. And I’m sure she’s not hurt. I saw her move.”

“Not hurt.”

“You know what I mean, sir. She’s alive. That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? In the end. Staying alive is what matters.”

“You’re a tougher son of a bitch than I ever credited.”

“Yes, sir, I guess I am.”

Burgade spent a long time looking through the field glasses. They had an eight-power magnification but still that only brought the camp up to a hundred yards’ distance; he couldn’t make out details. He saw Susan roll over on her side and draw her knees up. One of the men was standing nearby. He couldn’t tell for certain, but by the set of the man’s head and the movements of his hands it appeared he was talking to Susan, trying to calm her down. It wasn’t Provo. After a long time, eliminating names, he finally decided it had to be Shelby, the kid. He didn’t know whether Shelby was one of the ones who had raped her. He’d seen Gant drop his pants and then he had flung down the field glasses in disbelieving rage. He’d reached for the rifle in a blind savage fury and Hal had knocked him down.

He put down the glasses and took half a dozen evenly spaced deep breaths, with his eyes closed. Finally he looked at Hal. “Thank you.”

Hal was very grave. “Yes, sir. I couldn’t let you do it. I felt the same way you did. But they’d have killed you. And I cant help her, without you. I wouldn’t know what to do. I can help, but you’ve got to point the way for me.”

“You don’t need a weathervane,’Hal. You’re a better man than you think you are.”

“I know my limitations, sir. My ignorances. What I don’t know about this kind of thing would fill an encyclopedia.” Hal’s glance turned outward, past the trees toward the flat. In a different voice he said, “We’re going to get her out of this, sir. You and me. And when we do I’m going to try to make her see that this hasn’t made any difference in the way I feel. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of patience. From you and from me. She’s going to have to travel a long road back before she can trust a man’s hands again—mine or any other man’s.”

Burgade stared at him and listened to the quiet run of Hal’s talk. Suddenly feeling almost burst his throat. He grabbed Hal around the shoulders and hugged him against him and felt the tears wet on his cheeks.

The sun was painful against his grainy eyes. He shaded his brow and studied the sky across and beyond the flats, above the westward summits. He felt utterly drained. It took a supreme effort just to lower his hand to his side. The ground around his feet was still damp, saturated by last night’s pelting rain; the topsoil among these trees was thin, the rock and clay beneath it wasn’t porous, and there was no place for the water to go. But the grass out on the flats had been dried by the day’s blast of sunshine.

It would work. He turned and began to walk back through the trees to the clearing where they had tethered the horses. Weed was there, tied to the bole of an oak, a bandanna gag in his mouth. His face was swollen on one side where Burgade had struck him last night; the eye was puffy and half-closed. He looked bitter.

While Hal fed Weed and gave him water, Burgade squatted with two boxes of rifle cartridges in his lap and the pair of wirecutter pliers that every horseman carried in his kit. They weren’t made for this kind of work but they’d do. He used them to work the lead bullets out of each cartridge. He poured the powder into one of the empty cartridge boxes and when he was through with his methodical chore he had a little more than half a boxful of gunpowder.

The sun was settling toward the horizon. Hal said, “You’ve got something in mind.”

Burgade grunted. “There’s a steady westerly breeze across that meadow. Comes right down off those canyons on the far side. I don’t think it’ll shift for a while. We’re going to have a clear night—that storm blew the clouds over. Quarter moon comes up about ten o’clock. It won’t be too bad a light for shooting.”

“But we can’t go crawling out there, sir. They’d see us easy, against all that pale yellow grass.”

“We’re not going to them, Hal. They’re coming to me.”

Hal nodded toward the box of powder. “That’s got something to do with it, of course?”

“Yes. You’ve got a watch, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. It’ll be dark in an hour or so. I want you to take this powder and ride around to the far side of the meadow, down at the bottom—directly opposite where we are now. Circle wide when you go, don’t take chances, and don’t hurry, there’s plenty of time. Tie your horse well back in the trees over there and come down to the edge of timber on foot. The wind will be behind you. You’ll get there about nine o’clock, my judgment. The moon won’t be up yet. Stay in the shadows under the front line of trees there, and spread a thin line of this gunpowder along the edge of the grass, as long as you can make it without gaps. It doesn’t need to be more than a quarter of an inch wide—just a thin ribbon of powder. Then gather up whatever dry kindling you can find and scatter it along there in the grass. The moon will come up, and we’ll need to have it high, so you’ll wait until half past midnight. Got it?”

“Twelve thirty. Yes, sir.”

“Take these matches,” Burgade said. He handed Hal the oilskin pouch. “At half past midnight, post yourself at the center of the line of gunpowder. Then wait for the wind. As soon as you’ve got a fair breeze blowing, touch a match to the powder.”

“In other words, set fire to the grass.”

“Yes. A grass fire will go like hell. It burns low to the ground and makes its own wind as it goes—whips along so fast it won’t even consume the leaves of trees it goes under. It’ll explode across that meadow.”

“I see. And drive Provo this way.”

“On foot. They won’t be able to handle those horses once they smell smoke.”

“Do you think Susan will—”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Burgade said. “I’ll get her away from them in the confusion if I possibly can.”

“And if you can’t?”

“If I can’t we’ll still be better off than we are now. They’ll be up here in the trees where we can get close to them.”

“Yes, sir,” Hal said. “And what then? The reason I’m asking—well, if anything—”

“I know. If anything happens to me you’ll want to know what to do next.”

“I meant no offense.”

“It’s no time for politeness,” Burgade muttered. “If we can’t get Susan away from them tonight, I can’t think of but one thing left to do, and it’s not a thing I expect you to approve.”

“Approve? To hell with that. I’m changing a lot of my notions.”

“Then pick them off one by one.”

“Tall order, sir.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Hal sucked air through his teeth.

Burgade said, “One more thing. Him.” He inclined his head toward George Weed. “When you go around to set the fire, take him with you.”

“What for?”

“We don’t want the rest of them tripping over him and turning him loose, do we. It’d only add another gun against us.”

Hal picked up the powder box and weighed it in his hand. His face was deeply trenched by exhaustion. Dark sweat-circles stained the armpits of his shirt. “I feel as if it’s all a puking rotten dream and I’m never going to wake up from it. We’re talking calmly about killing seven men.”

“My only regret,” Burgade breathed in answer, “is that I can only kill Zach Provo once.”

Burgade looked up. Oak branches were silhouetted against the sky, colorless and jagged like cracks in porcelain. His eyes felt sticky: he was taut as a watch spring, ready to snap. The picketed horses stirred. He heard the light thud of a hoof, the swish of a tail. “Time for you to go. Put Weed on my horse. I won’t have a use for a horse tonight.”

“Won’t you need one for Susan?”

“We’ll have a better chance on foot. Horse makes too much noise.” Burgade walked him over to the animals and helped him cinch them up. His weary muscles throbbed with pain; there was a steady, maddening tremor in his old hands. Even in the dim starlight he could see the ridged dark veins along the backs of his wrists. He said, “As soon as the fire’s burning, ride well around back. Don’t try to mix into whatever may be going on down here—you might shoot me, or get shot by me. Just go on up to that creek where we camped last night. Think you can find it again?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I can get Susan away, that’s were I’ll take her. If we don’t appear by sunrise you’ll have to use your own judgment.” He turned and grasped Hal’s elbow. “When you come back across, swing wide and take it very slow. You don’t want to fall into any traps. Better leave Weed over there—he’d only clutter things up, and we need the horse more than we need him.”

“I don’t know—what if nobody comes across him? He could die out there, tied up.”

“Let him.” Burgade tightened his grip on Hals arm. “Our lives are more important than his. Important to Susan. I don’t care if Weed lives or dies.”

Hal shook his head slowly. “I know he’s asked for it. But just the same—”

“We’ll pick him up if we can.”

He felt Hal loosen up; he dropped his hand away. Hal said, “I guess I know, you’re right, sir, but it’s a hell of a thing to have to do.”

“I know.”

Hal’s eyes came up. “Look, you be careful too.”

“I don’t intend to let them get at me until I’ve finished what we came here to do.”

“Susan’s going to need you, sir. It may not matter to you if they kill you in the end. But it matters to her. You understand what I’m saying?”

Burgade turned away. “Let’s get Weed on his horse.”

He picked a spot with care. At first he thought of climbing a tree to get a better command of the meadow. But he was too weak. And even if he could get himself up into one of the oaks, he’d be lucky to get down again without snapping his brittle bones.

He chose a fallen dead tree just inside the edge of the forest. Sat down on the deadfall trunk and arranged his rifle and field glasses at hand. From here he could see the whole meadow.

After the moon came up he fixed his field glasses on the camp and kept watch through the ticking silence of the night. There was always the chance Provo would decide to move.

He kept thinking about what Hal had said. From the beginning of the chase he had resigned himself; he had not expected to come out alive. He hadn’t much cared. They could have his old used-up hide, if that was the price of Susans life. But there was a chance Hal was right: if this thing hadn’t broken her, destroyed her beyond repair, it had come close. She would need gentle patience, protective love. His own death might mean nothing to him; to her it might be the final injury, and too much for her gentle spirit to accept all at once.

There had been nothing beyond Susan’s rescue and vengeance upon Provo. An old man, fit for nothing but a slow bitter draining of final years in the Pioneers’ Home—guttering out, in the end, like the noxious stub of a used-up candle. It occurred to him that a part of him had wanted to end it clean, up here in the high country that was unchanged from forty years ago: to make a last valiant fight of it, take Provo with him, go out in a hysterical blaze of glorious violence: a far more fitting finish for Sam Burgade. Storybook ending, high tragedy.