The Last Hard Men (25 page)

Authors: Brian Garfield

BOOK: The Last Hard Men

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“Get it. When you get over there, take off your hat and fill it with loose ammunition and keep it on the ground beside you where you can get at it fast. Keep a steady volley of fire going—use up everything you’ve got until you get down to the last ten or twelve cartridges. You’ll want to save those, you may need them if they cut me down. You understand it all?”

“I ought to be the one to go up there. You’re in bad shape.”

“I know the drill—you don’t. It comes down to that.”

Hal brooded. “Christ.”

Burgade turned and got his rifle. “Better make it twenty minutes,” he said bleakly. “That’s a stiff climb for old bones.”

He had to go through shoulder-high scrub trees; he went on his belly, and halfway to the top he stopped to study the rim. It was a long razorback parapet. Probably not more than a few yards wide at the top, with the cliff dropping away on the far side. There were big boulders scattered around, smoothed by the wind. Only one way to get up there from here without exposing himself to a withering fire from the rim—go along to the left and circle up through the field of boulders. It would be taking a chance they weren’t waiting there, rather than on top, but he had a feeling they were all the way up on the summit because it was the only place from which they could see down their own backtrail and shoot at pursuers.

By now they would be getting rattled because Menendez hadn’t showed up. They were somewhere along that hundred feet of rimrock, probably looking down the trail, but from here the rocks were in the way, he couldn’t see anyone. He took a deep breath and moved forward again; there wasn’t much time.

In the boulders a hundred feet below the top, he set the rifle down soundlessly and left it there. From here on he’d be within handgun range and a rifle would be unwieldly. He palmed the double-action in his right hand and made his way forward slowly through the boulders, feeling the dig of Menendez’s two six-guns in his waistband. The sun blasted down through the thin afternoon air, striking painful reflections off the rocks. He slipped forward along the high wall of a rock and paused while still behind it, in its thin stripe of shadow. The rim was only sixty or seventy feet above him, up a forty-degree pitch littered with house-size rocks. The passages between them were big enough for locomotives to get through, but there was no way to know what was on the far side without showing himself. He waited, sucking breath silently into his chest with his mouth wide open and gulping.

He heard the sudden rataplan of hoofbeats and a startled voice, not Provo’s, shouting:

“Jesus, that looks like Burgade!”

And there was a quick succession of reports, crisp in the thin air. Burgade was already moving. He heard Hal’s rifle open up from down below. Bullets cranged and whined off the rocks. He climbed as fast as his halting legs would move him, scrambling through the boulders—up through a notch, onto the redrock rim—and he saw Susan immediately, with Shelby right beside her, shooting downhill at Hal’s rifle smoke.

The hard snout of a gunbarrel rammed into Burgade’s back.

He froze.

Provo’s voice, breathing down his neck, said with savage satisfaction. “You’re holding a bust hand, Sam. You’re all through now. Drop the iron.”

Fighting reflexes were not instincts. They were the product of training.

Instinct—self-preservation—dictated obeisance. Provo had a gun in his back. Provo didn’t intend killing him on the spot; if he’d meant to do that he’d have fired already, without giving warning. No. Provo wanted him to suffer. To die slowly and know what was happening to him.

Shelby had turned his gun toward Susan, not to kill her but to add weight to Provo’s threat.

Burgade’s gun was already aimed at Shelby. In the split instant of time when Provo quit talking—when Provo was convinced he had his man cold—Burgade fired.

It cost no time to shoot the man he was already aiming at. His bullet hit Shelby dead-center.

But Burgade wasn’t watching. In the instant of pulling trigger he rammed back, twisting, elbowing Provo’s gun aside.

He was old. Too slow to get away clear with a trick that would have worked perfectly thirty years ago. Provo’s bullet exploded into his body. It propelled him bodily forward with its tremendous muzzle energy.

He hit the ground rolling. Flame streaked out of Provo’s gunbarrel. It caught Burgade in mid-turn, smashed his left arm useless, but Burgade had only one purpose in the world and Provo had made the mistake of shooting to cripple, not to kill, and now Burgade completed his falling roll and fired up from the ground, one shot with fifty years of gun training behind it, and it hit Zach Provo in the right eye. It drilled the eye socket empty, sprayed splintered bone fragments from his face. The hole filled with a bursting yellow and crimson pulp and Provo pitched backward over the rim.

Silence fell. Burgade rolled over. Susan was sitting there beside Shelby’s corpse. She didn’t move. She didn’t seem to recognize him, but she was staring at him. He moved again, felt and heard the broken ends of his bones grate together. Blood pulsed below his rib and a bone showed white. He dragged himself toward Susan. Made it to her and lay there, weak and bleeding. He reached up for her hand and clasped it, and the world went black.

A voice nearby, talking, not making sense. He listened to it but it faded in and out of his hearing. He tried to keep it, but it drifted away and he lost it, and fell away from reality again.

He had a feeling time was passing, a lot of time. A faint sense that someone was touching him, doing something to him. Water in his mouth—someone trying to make him drink. He felt a distant irritation: he wanted to be left alone. Sleep.

His eyes opened. The sky was plum-colored. Dusk. Or predawn. He was on his back, a cool wind rushed over him, whipping his white hair across his eyes. He seemed to be wrapped in tight bandaging and blankets and clothing, like a sarcophagus. He began to sort out pain, to locate the sources of agony: his arm, his left side. He couldn’t feel the fingers of his left hand at all.

He turned his head. The voice was talking again, the same soothing quiet run of talk, just one voice, a man’s, very steady and low, talking the sort of comforting nonsense you would talk to a skittish horse.
There, there, now, darling, it’s ended, it’s over, you’re all right, nothings ever going to hurt you again.…

He couldn’t see the speaker. He tried to lift his head to look. He got his head an inch off the ground and dizziness overcame him. His eyelids rolled down and he fell back into darkness.

* * *

Daylight was red against his eyelids. He squinted irritably. It didn’t go away. He opened his eyes and saw the sky, fleece clouds scattered across the cobalt vastness. He turned his head.

Hal said, “He’s awake.”

Burgade spoke. “Susan.” His voice was a croak.

“She’s all right, sir. She’s fine. She’s right here.”

Hal slipped fingers under his head and lifted him up so he could see.

Susan sat crosslegged on the ground. Both hands were pressed to her temples, her face was preternaturally white, but she was looking at him and she made a tiny, jerky smile that came and went so quickly he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.

Hal said, “Here. Drink.”

The canteen touched his mouth and he sucked on it greedily. He lay back and groaned.

Hal said, “You’ve got a busted arm and a busted rib. But you’re going to be all right. We’ll just wait here until you’re mended enough to go down.”

“Weed,” Burgade said suddenly.

“I know. I’ll go down and bring him up later today, when you’re a little better.”

Eight of them
, Burgade thought,
and I killed seven.
He felt sick but he held it down.

Wind moaned across the rim. Burgade heard halting little footsteps and when he turned his face he saw Susan getting down on her knees beside him. She reached out with both hands and cupped the sides of his face. Her eyes were very wide and glistening. He saw the tears crawl down her cheeks.

Susan removed one hand from his face and reached for Hal’s hand and drew him down beside her. Hal smiled at her and she sat there with one hand on each of them and cried it all out. Afterward Hal lifted her to her feet and held her in his arms, and Sam Burgade smiled at the sky.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com