The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [14]
The gun cabinet was in the front parlor, tall like a china cabinet; the windowed maple doors were not locked, but the guns inside were chained and padlocked, to discourage errant children. Burgade opened the doors and inspected the assortment. Some of the long guns went back a long way. The .45-70, he’d had that one with him when he’d cornered Zach Provo in his hogan.
No time to reminisce about that now. The Springfield .06 was likely the best all-around rifle in the rack, but it was a bolt-action, not fast enough for close-in work in town streets. He passed it by. Same for the Mannlicher. The Winchester .38-56 was too heavy, too long and ponderous. The .32-20 was a toy, a squirrel gun, no good for man-size targets.
It came down to the Marlin .30-30. Lever-action carbine, short barrel, light stock, not much for long-range work but easy to maneuver and quick to reload.
He unlocked the chain and took it down. Found four boxes of cartridges in the drawer, and after a moment’s thought unlocked the cabinet door beneath and dragged out the old holster-belt and the black metal lockbox. He put the lockbox on the dining table and put its key into it, flipped the lid back and poked through the oiled handguns inside. The Army .45 automatic was the newest of them, a carved gilt-inlaid beauty. Presented to him with much fanfare at the banquet when he’d retired from the Territorial Police. Like a gold watch, he thought. He’d never got the hang of shooting the thing: it didn’t point naturally, it kicked like a mule. Hard to hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. He put it back in the box and shuffled the others around. His favorite was the old .44 single-action, he’d carried that one on his hip nearly thirty years and the bluing was worn off to show for it. But old springs got brittle, like bones, and old firing pins tended to crystallize and shatter. Any piece of machinery that was too old and too much used was suspect: undependable.
Sad thoughts: he put them away with the old .44. He picked out the swing-cylinder .45 double-action and slid it into the old holster and threw the tails of his jacket back to buckle the gunbelt around his hips and snug it down. At least the belt still fit. He hadn’t put on an ounce in fifteen years. The belt loops contained .44-40 cartridges and he had to replace them, methodically, one by one, with .45 centerfires. The old .44’s from the belt had turned green from leather corrosion.
The boxes of .30-30’s weighted down his jacket pocket. He walked out of the house with the Marlin rifle in the bend of his elbow and the revolver heavy along his thigh. Walked at a deliberate pace up to Stone Avenue and waited for the streetcar, and rode it all the way to the end of the line at Limberlost Road. It was hell hot. He walked on north toward the trees along the bank of the Rillito, half a mile along a twin-rutted wagon track through the scrub. Along the way he picked up an armload of discarded beer bottles.
He spent half an hour cruising the trees on both banks of the riverbed. Not that he expected to find lovers sparking in broad daylight in this heat. But he didn’t want stray ricochets cutting up somebody’s wandering milch cow. He found no animal life bigger than gophers, and went down into the dry bed of the river. It was deep sand, pale tan in color, marked here and there by clay bars and patches of sun-whitened pebbles. It was a wide river, two hundred feet from bank to bank, but no water where you could see it. This time of the year the water was all underneath, flowing along its underground channel beneath the riverbed. Dig down six, eight feet and you’d hit water. Come the rains in the autumn, a few hours’ rain every day for two or three weeks, and the river would be full—flash floods coming down off the hills, a savage and furious torrent. But right