The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [22]
“Then you got me pozzled, Zach.”
Provo smiled. “I never said I aimed to shoot him, did I. I spent twenty-eight years coming to this—I don’t aim to let him off easy with a bullet. He’s going to sweat his balls off before I’m done with him. He’s going to bleed slow and long. I told you before—I’m going to peel him down to a whimper.”
“Ahjess. But how?”
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you.”
“I don’ like surprises, Zach.”
“You just take care of Lee Roy when the time comes. Let me worry about the rest.”
“It ain’t Lee Roy I’m worried about. It’s you.”
Provo smiled a little. “Just trust me, amigo. You’ll get rich.”
Menendez spat out the side of his mouth. “I don’ trost nobody, Zach. You know that.”
“You could always get on your horse and ride out. Why not do that, right now?”
Menendez smiled. “You want that?”
“No. I need you to help me keep an eye on the rest of these fools.”
“That’s what I thought,” Menendez said, but he didn’t press it further.
Provo kept checking his snap-lid watch. Presently it was time. He stood up. “All right. Let’s put it in the saddle.”
Provo split them up at the head of the road. Gant rode down first, bypassing the smelter, heading for the telephone line where it sagged across the creek half a mile below. Provo took Lee Roy with him and split the rest of them up, to drift in from various directions so as to avoid attention.
The smelter was a sprawl of smoke-grayed structures, conveyor ramps, shacks, corrugated roofs, a fifty-foot smoke-stack that spewed a rancid cloud into the sky. The last stragglers of the 8:00 A.M. shift were trudging into the buildings, big men in gray coveralls and railroad-style caps. Outside the manager’s building on the hill above the plant stood five or six parked chain-driven trucks and two open horseless carriages. That was where the paymaster’s office was. There was a pay window at the side of the building and a well-worn foot track where the men queued up for their pay. Beyond, to the north, was a neighboring sand-and-gravel operation, making a great racket. Provo sent Lee Roy out in front of him and they rode downslope toward the back door of the manager’s building. They dipped into a canyon and lost sight of the building, but the tall smoke-eruptive stack was still in view above the intervening hump of cactus-clumped ground. A few fleece-ball clouds drifted across the sun; it wasn’t as hot as it had been yesterday:
They tethered the horses in a cutbank-arroyo thirty yards behind the building. As far as Provo could tell, no one had remarked their arrival. Shortly Taco Riva rode in from the far end of the arroyo and dismounted, staying put to hold the horses. Portugee and George Weed came up from the direction of the sand-and-gravel quarry. Weed looking like a black sack of potatoes in the saddle: he was no horseman. Finally Menendez showed up. “Ain’t got moch time now, Zach.”
“Too much time gives a man whiskers.” Provo snapped his watch open. One minute after the hour. He could hear a train hooting in the distance; the train was a couple of minutes late but that didn’t matter, Tucson’s attention would be focused on Congress Street right about now, and that was fine.
Provo cast an eye at Lee Roy. “Got everything you need?”
“I reckon,” Lee Roy said reluctantly.
“You know how to set the charges, don’t you?”
“Ain’t no call for you to tell me how to handle my binness, Zach.” Lee Roy heaved the burlap gunnysack onto his shoulder as if it contained harmless tools instead of highly volatile blasting gear.
Portugee Shiraz unholstered both his .45 Army automatic pistols. The damn things bothered Provo for no good reason other than his ignorance of them; he had no familiarity with newfangled handguns, but Portugee claimed he could handle them fine. The Negroid lips peeled back on his dark vulpine face in an expression that was more spasm than smile.
The roots of Provo’s hair were damp with sweat but his hands were rock steady. He swept them all with his ungiving face. “Let’s go, then.”
Provo