The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [2]
Lee Roy Tucker picked up the hammer in his lap. His adenoidal mouth was open; he was thin as a sapling, with pinched eyes and buck teeth. “Who elected you to give awders, Zach?”
Provo’s riot gun stirred. “I won’t waste time arguing. Alcorn, get your bunch moving. Now.”
“Shee-yit,” said Lee Roy Tucker, but he stayed put and watched Tom Alcorn and the other four walk away over the hill without remark. They were happy to go: Pete Cruz was talking about his woman in Guaymas when they walked out of earshot beyond the hilltop.
Provo singled out four more and sent them west, told them to wade across the Colorado and lose themselves in the California badlands. They didn’t like the idea much but Provo had the gun, and they went. None of them promised to stick to the route he had dictated, but it didn’t matter to Provo; all he wanted was to get rid of them.
He sent seven more, most of them Mexicans, due south—told them to hold to that course until they got well south of Yuma, across the Border into Mexico. They could walk east along the canals to Calexico. They grumbled, and went. Probably they’d get rounded up within twelve hours.
He sent the three old-timers down the Gila, eastward. The river was dry, only a few sinkholes, but they went, because Provo had the gun and Provo was a tough breed to tangle with; and because Cesar Menendez just stood there with his riot gun, watching them all with his fast little eyes.
Provo counted heads again. “Nine of us. That’ll do.”
“Do what?” young Mike Shelby asked. “What you got in mind, anyway?” Shelby was the only one of them with balls enough to ask that kind of question against Provo’s gun, but Shelby was the only one who knew how to take the sting off a challenge with an amiable smile. He had a wide friendly face and a head full of chestnut hair, and the innocence of his nineteen years.
Provo looked them over, walking around, going from face to face. “This time tomorrow,” he said finally, “those others will all be back in Yuma if they’re not dead. Same thing can happen to us if we don’t work together. Everybody understand me?”
Lee Roy Tucker said, “Maybe some of us might rather not take awders from you, Zach.”
Provo shifted the riot gun to his left hand. His right hand gripped Lee Roy’s arm. Lee Roy burst out in a gray sweat. The steel fingers bit into his arm, the strong thumb casually working flesh against cartilage against bone. Provo said, “When I say jump, Lee Roy, you say How high?”
He let go of Lee Roy’s arm and stepped back. Lee Roy looked unhappy, as if his shorts were bunching up. “I don’t think I want to mess with you, Zach.”
“You bet your ass you don’t.”
Anticipating trouble from Will Gant, Provo wheeled that way. Gant was tugging at a thick black hair in his nostril. The blunt head was anchored on a thick neck that bulged with folds of fat; the eyes were crafty. Provo didn’t bother to watch the eyes, with which Gant would be likely to feint; he watched Gant’s feet instead. “How about it, Will?”
“Depends what you got in mind.”
It was easy enough to read in Gant’s sullen face: he’d sooner herd sheep than follow orders from a half-breed Navajo. But Provo had the gun. Provo said, “I’m going to get us out.”
“All right. You won’t have no trouble with me.” Gant relaxed; his feet shifted and splayed.
Provo turned away, satisfied. “Everybody pay attention now. We’re going to walk straight over to the Colorado and sink ourselves down in the arrowweed over there until dark. Sweat it out. On the far side of the river, so the dogs won’t get to us. Come dark, we wade downriver into Yuma.”
“Into Yuma?” Lee Roy Tucker yelled.
“Shut up and stay still. We wade into Yuma and we wait under the ferryboat dock until sometime after midnight. There’s an eastbound S.P. freight comes in across the bridge about two in the morning. Pulls out for Tucson around three. There’s always half a dozen zinc-lined meat-hanging icebox cars. We climb into one of them. They’ll search all the