The Last Hard Men (9 page)

It was hard to breathe in the thick-hanging dust. Provo was untangling empty gunnysacks from under his coat. He passed two of them to Menendez and climbed into the vault.

He heard a sudden volley of gunshots, a flurry of voices bellowing in surprise and anger. Provo beat his way through the smoke. Menendez said, “Where’s all the focking money?”

“In here.” He coughed. Picked up the black steel cashbox and passed it to Menendez. The rest was scorched documents and ore samples. Menendez began to curse in a lackluster monotone.

“Come on then,” Provo said.

“
Leche.
” Menendez scooped the little handful of green-backs out of the lockbox and tossed the box away. “We been dobble-crossed.”

“Burgade,” Provo said. “Burgade put them up to it.” He stumbled out of the smoke. Sunlight lanced down in dusty beams through a ragged hole in the roof. Part of the ceiling hung sagging across the corner above the vault, ready to fall in. Provo tripped on wreckage and almost went to his knees; wheeled into the room beyond and leveled his gun.

Portugee and Weed were forted up behind a desk, training their guns on the front door. It was punctured by half a dozen holes, bullet-size. Provo said, “Back away. Come
on
.”

Menendez sprinted across to the back door, put his head out, looked both ways and said, “Hokay. Portugee—George.” There wasn’t any need to call Lee Roy’s name. Lee Roy lay seeping into the floorboards where Menendez had shot him.

Portugee put a bullet through the front door and whooped and ran for the back at George Weed’s heels. Provo crossed the room, firing deliberately into the front door. He spared the trussed prisoners a single glance and Lee Roy’s corpse none; went out with knuckles wrapped white around his gun and broke into a flat low run, zigzagging.

The others were ahead of him, leaping over the cutbank and dropping from sight into the arroyo. Provo was halfway across when Menendez’s head popped up at the rim. A gun at the outside corner of the building opened up on Provo and some fool’s voice yelled at him to halt. Menendez drove the shooter back with a furious blaze of fire and Provo went over the rim in a flat dive. He somersaulted acrobatically and hit the soft clay bed on his feet; stumbled, got his footing, and scrambled toward the horses.

Taco Riva held the animals patiently; passed out pairs of reins as methodically and unperturbedly as a school-teacher passing out test papers. “Where’s Lee Roy?”

“Not coming,” Provo said, winded. “But bring his horse along.” He swung up into the saddle, keeping bent over low. Menendez fired a final shot and sprinted for his saddle. Weed and Taco were getting mounted. Provo sank his heels hard into horse flanks: the horse broke into an immediate flaying gallop, throwing back clots of earth. He neck-reined savagely around in the center of the arroyo and ran uphill, firing back over his shoulder at the building to keep pursuers’ heads down. The others were getting sorted out in the arroyo behind him, lining out and drumming forward.

Provo went up past the protective shoulder of earth at a dead run and held the horse to that straining uphill gait for a quarter of a mile. He reined in to blow the horse, out of breath himself and streaming sweat.

The others came up and brought their horses to precipitate halts that spewed dust.

Portugee bawled, “What the hell—no money?”

Menendez said, “Maybe a few honnerd.”

“Shit.”

“Never mind,” George Weed said. “We just lost a gamble, that’s all. Shut up your whining, Portugee, you starting to sound too much like old Lee Roy.”

“I ain’t Lee Roy and you better remember it. Nobody’s gonna get to me that easy, Menendez.”

“Nobody’s planning to,” Menendez said mildly.

Provo said, “Shut up. Listen—we need to move. We work north around that, hogback there, quiet and easy, we don’t want anybody hearing us. Let the fools think we faded back into the mountains west. Come on—easy does it. Taco, hang onto Lee Roy’s horse, we’re going to need it.”

He lifted his reins and put the horse forward, a clambering single-foot with the horse’s head bobbing in effort, crossing uneven rocky ground.

The clothes were matted to Provo’s back and he felt a bilious rage. Somebody had persuaded that paymaster, and most likely every other cashier in town, to leave their money in the bank today. No hick sheriff would have thought of that. It had to be Burgade. Burgade was like that: unhurried, methodical, thorough, prepared for all the possibilities.

Menendez kicked his horse up alongside. “Who’s the spare horse for, Zach?” It was a question but Menendez spoke it flat, as a demand.

“Burgade set this up against us,” Provo said. “Time to start knocking Burgade down.”

“The horse is for
Burgade
?”

“Not hardly,” Provo said, and flicked a thin smile at him.

They worked their way wide around and headed back down toward Tucson. Crossing the Santa Cruz they picked up Will Gant where he was waiting by the severed telephone wires. The six of them trotted up the riverbank in the trees, past the quiet old quarter of town. If anyone noticed them there was no alarm. Sunlight filtered down through the treetops, dappling the ground. Behind the bulk of a freight warehouse Provo called a brief halt.

“I’ll take Will and the spare horse. Menendez, you take the rest of them on up to the Rillito and cut for Rose Canyon. Shelby and Quesada ought to be back there by now. Hole up and wait for us—we’ll be along directly.”

“What the hell you op to, Zach?”

“You’ll see. On the run, now.” He leaned out of the saddle to pick up the reins of Lee Roy’s riderless horse from Taco. Will Gant pulled off the track and let the others ride by. Provo waited until Menendez had taken them north out of sight in the trees; then he said to Gant, “Just back my play, Will, this won’t take but a minute.

Gant grunted incuriously and adjusted his great bulk on his saddle. Provo turned right past the warehouse and rode past freight corrals and a mechanics’ shop and on through a district of adobe shacks toward the big trees of the old residential district. He knew the route as if a map were engraved on his eyelids. They passed a few pedestrians who glanced at them and noticed nothing amiss and went on about their business.

North on Main Street and east on Third, left on Meyer Avenue, around past the old McKinney place and onto the quiet tree-shady street. His pulse started to pound when he drew rein in front of the house. “Step down and hold these horses, will you? I’ll be right out.”

“Nice and peaceful here, ain’t it, Zach?”

“Sure is,” he said, feeling grim and jumpy. He walked up the tile-bordered walk to the screen door, trying to look calm and businesslike. Rapped the brass door-knocker and saw movement through the screen. He put one hand inside his duster through the slot pocket and drew his revolver, holding it down against his leg, concealed by the coat.

She came to the door drying her hands on a towel. A stray lock of brown hair had fallen across her face from under her sunbonnet; she tossed it back with a shake of her head. She was a tall girl in a homespun dress. Provo’s eyes followed the lines of her body as she approached the screen door. Provo put a polite smile on his face.

She stood just inside the door. “Yes?”

“Miss Susan Burgade?”

“Yes,” she said, puzzled.

“Your daddy asked me to come over, make sure you’re all right. Expecting some hard cases in town this morning, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, not altogether sure of him. “I did hear something a little while ago. Is my father all right?”

“He’s fine, ma’am. You mean that explosion—doing some blasting up to the smelter, I think. Nothing to fret yourself about. Look, ma’am, you mind if I come inside? Your daddy asked me to keep an eye on you until this business is over with. You never know what those hard cases might try.”

She didn’t open the door. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

He didn’t want to show his gun out here in broad daylight. He gave her a broader smile and tipped his hat back with his left hand. “I just come down to help out with this trap of his. Sam and me go back a long way together—I worked for him back when he was heading up the railroad’s security branch. Name of Carlos O’Neill, maybe you heard him mention me.”

“I can’t say I have,” she said, and unlatched the door hesitantly. “But I’m sure it must be all right. I’m sorry to seem so standoffish, Mr. O’Neill, but this whole thing troubles me, you know—I’m worried about my father, he shouldn’t have involved himself in all this. He’s not young.”

“Oh, I reckon Sam can always take care of himself,” he said, pulling the screen door open and stepping inside with his smile.

As soon as the door flapped shut behind him he showed her the gun. The smile dropped off his face as totally as if it had never been there: as if he were an actor, stepping backstage into the wings, shedding his role.

“All right, missy,” he said in a more abrasive voice than he’d used before. “Now just keep quiet and listen to me.

Fear quivered in her eyes. She backed up against the wall; her hand went to her mouth. “What is it—what do you want?” It was a tiny whisper.

A faint miasmic breeze came in through the screen, stirring the tails of his duster around his legs. “Let’s go back to your room, missy, wherever you keep your things. You’ll be needing some clothes—you’re going on a little horseback trip with us.”

Stunned, she stood back in the bedroom corner, hugging her breasts, staring at him without blinking, too unsettled to move. Provo flung open drawers and the wardrobe, found a carpetbag valise and opened it and put it on the bed. “Come on, missy, I don’t know what sort of things you need. You pack it yourself.”

She shook her head, mute. There was a thread of moisture on her upper lip. Her face, which had flooded with color in the beginning, had gone unnaturally pale. Her eyes were very large.

He took two strides and cuffed her hard across the cheek. It rocked her head to one side and left red fingermarks. She reached up with one hand to touch her cheek; she blinked and drew a ragged breath. “You—you’re Provo.”

“That’s right, missy.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at him.

“Time’s wasting,” he said. “I don’t want to hit you again.” He pointed his gun toward the open valise.

Moving like a sleepwalker, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers and began taking things out without discrimination and throwing them into the valise. She went to the wardrobe and took down denim trousers and a shirt and stuffed them in on top. Provo saw an oilskin rain slicker hanging inside and reached for it. “Better take this along too.”

When she seemed done, he buckled the valise shut and carried it into the front of the house, prodding the girl ahead of him. “Sit down at the table over there and write me a note for your old man.”

Her face came around, hollow and pallid. “What?”

“We wouldn’t want him to fret about you, would we? He might get all het up if he didn’t know where you’d gone. Now you just sit down there and write him a little note. Tell him you’ve gone away with Zach Provo.”

“Gone—gone away where?”

“I guess he doesn’t need to know that, does he, missy?” He shoved her toward the inkstand.

She still wore her sunbonnet—she must have been out hanging wash on the line. She looked little-girlish when she sat down hesitantly and reached for the pen, dipped it into the inkwell and poised it above a sheet of paper. “I——”

“I don’t care what you tell him, missy, but write something.” He smiled slightly: “I ain’t illiterate, if it matters. I’ll want to read what you’ve written. But it doesn’t matter what you say. Go ahead now.”

The nib of the pen scratched across the paper in jerky squeaks. The silence began to unnerve Provo and he stepped forward to read over the girl’s shoulder. She shrank away from him but continued writing until she had filled most of the sheet. Then tears began to drip from her eyes, blurring the writing, and Provo took the pen out of her hand and gripped her by the elbow. “That’s enough. We’re leaving now.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, I beg you, don’t—”

He steered her toward the door, professing not to have heard her. When they reached the screen he stopped her. “I’ve got this gun in my hand under my coat, missy, and there’s a big man out at the curb by the name of Will Gant, a good dear friend of mine. You try to bolt for it and one of us’ll put a bullet in your leg, hear? Now you just walk out there right in front of me and climb on that horse and ride out of town between us, and there won’t be any trouble. Nobody means to hurt you, just remember that. I just mean to make your old man sweat awhile and use you for a hostage to make sure we get safe conduct out of this bailiwick. You hear me, missy?”

She nodded and swallowed.

He squeezed her arm. “Say it, missy. Say you hear me and you understand me and you ain’t going to act foolish.”

“I understand,” she said weakly.

He tightened his grip on her valise, showed her the gun, slipped it back under his coat and nodded to her. She opened the screen door and stepped outside.

He stayed close behind her down the walk. Will Gant stood watching, burly and muscular, thighs bulging against his trousers. His eyes frankly coveted the girl’s body but Gant said nothing that might have displayed surprise. Provo said, “Meet Miss Burgade, Will. She’s going to ride with us a way.”