The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [25]
“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