The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [11]
“Then what you figure? Calexico? Right on the Border, might be the most lakly bet. Easy to crawl acrosst to Mixico.”
“I doubt it. They couldn’t go anywhere from there. It’s isolated. Sand-dune desert on one side and Baja California to the south—nothing down there but rocks and cactus, they’d die of thirst in that country. No. Either they went all the way to San Diego, which is doubtful, or they came east into Arizona.”
Nye scowled at him. Nye liked to bake his opinions in a slow oven before serving them up. Now he said, “Maybe you going a little too faist. How do we know they on a train?”
“Because they’ve been using dogs to track them. They’d have turned up by now if they were still on foot.”
“Two rivers down there, Captain—the Gila and the Colorado. Dogs can’t follow them in a river.”
“The Gila’s dried up. The Colorado—they couldn’t move upstream against that current, and if they moved downstream much past Yuma they’d get swept up in the tidal bore and drowned.”
“You got it all pieced out, ain’t you? Jesus, I forgot how faist your mind works, Captain.”
“Then think about this. Most likely they got aboard a train. Most likely it was eastbound. Most likely they’re all in a tidy bunch that ought to be fairly easy to pin down, only two shotguns among them. The first train into Tucson from Yuma is about due into the yards—you’ve got about fifteen minutes to meet it, Noel, if you want to try it.”
Nye’s grin split his ugly face wide. He stood up in a single motion, tossing his bowler on the desk and reaching for his campaign hat. “Grab yoseff up that rifle there, Captain, and come on.”
Nye summoned three deputies from the wardroom on the way out of the courthouse. They commandeered the chain-driven water truck and went gnashing and bumping down to the railroad yards at a reckless speed of twenty-five miles an hour, scattering pedestrians and terrorizing horses in the streets. Burgade stood on one of the steel foot tabs alongside the sprinkler tank, like a fireman, one hand tight on the hand grip and the other, in which he carried the rifle, holding his hat on against the wind. For the first time in a year he felt eager about something.
His energy quickly dissipated in the heat and disappointment. They prowled the train with deliberate care, infuriating the engineer, who howled about the delay and insisted he had a timetable to keep. Nye said, “You just hold onto your fucking horses and leave when I tell you you can leave.” They started with the caboose and went through every car. The engineer went petulantly along to the dispatcher’s and complained about the delay, whereupon five railroad yard guards were sent along to help speed up the search, but still it was almost half an hour before Nye and Burgade got near the front of the half-mile-long freight and found the icebox car with its door a foot open.
Nye sent two deputies in first, guns up, and one of them came back to the door after a moment holding his nose expressively. “Sun sure got to this here meat, Sheriff, but ain’t no sign of nobody in here.”
Burgade said, “Let me have a look. Give me a boost up, Noel.”
Nye cupped his interlaced hands into a stirrup and gave him a leg up. Burgade felt stiff in his joints. He stopped just inside the car to accustom his eyes to the dimness, and made his way across the stinking rows of carcasses from corner to corner.
When he came back to the open door and blew out his lungs to clear his nostrils, he had in his hand a handkerchief he had removed from his hip pocket. The corner was stained.
Nye threw his head back. “What have you got up there?”
Burgade tossed the handkerchief down to him, said “Try a smell,” and sat down on the doorframe and eased himself to the ground. His bones felt brittle.
Nye said, “Smells like awl.”
“Light oil. Maybe gun oil.”
“Gun awl