The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [28]
She nodded and swallowed.
He squeezed her arm. “Say it, missy. Say you hear me and you understand me and you ain’t going to act foolish.”
“I understand,” she said weakly.
He tightened his grip on her valise, showed her the gun, slipped it back under his coat and nodded to her. She opened the screen door and stepped outside.
He stayed close behind her down the walk. Will Gant stood watching, burly and muscular, thighs bulging against his trousers. His eyes frankly coveted the girl’s body but Gant said nothing that might have displayed surprise. Provo said, “Meet Miss Burgade, Will. She’s going to ride with us a way.”
Gant smiled and tugged at a black nostril hair. His thick lips peeled back. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
“Climb aboard, missy. Time to go.”
Four
Carrying the tearstained note, Sam Burgade went, as if against his will, into his daughter’s room. It was sunny in there, the muslin curtains stirring in a warm breeze, womanly things scattered around in disarray, drawers flung open, the wardrobe standing ajar.
Burgade’s face kept changing. Muscles stood ridged at his jaw hinges and the bones at brow and cheek became harder, more prominent.
He pushed his solemn glance at things in the room as if to engrave them indelibly on his memory. Then he strode out of the house and marched, not running, around half the block to Packers little grocery. Packer had a telephone. Burgade got through to the sheriffs office.
Noel Nye’s voice came at him, scratchy and distant “Oh, there you are. Listen, that big noise from up on the hills, it was them. They blowed up the smelter safe. Left one of their own dead behind—one of my boys recognized him, Lee Roy Tucker. It was them convicts, all rat. They tooken off with a coupla hundred dollars petty caish.”
“That’s not all they’ve taken,” Burgade said. “Susan’s gone.”
Nye came into the house wiping his face on his shirtsleeve. His face in all its clubbed ugliness was full of forlorn dignity. “Captain, I cain’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Yeah.” Burgade’s scalp contracted.
“Well, we doin’ everthang we can to get her back, Captain. Everbody owns a horse and a gun’s out there beatin’ the brush for sign.”
“Out where?”
The sheriff spread his hands. “Mostly up in the mountains back of the smelter.”
“They didn’t go that way. They had to come by here to collect my daughter. They didn’t have her with them when they robbed the smelter, did they? Well, then—they must have come this way. From here they could only head up the valley toward Phoenix or up into the Catalinas.”
“Sure, Captain, you’re rat. Too much goin’ on rat now, I reckon—I ain’t been thanking straight. Hell, I better not set around here and jaw all day.” He clapped on his campaign hat and swung to the door.
“I’m coming with you.”
“But—”
“She’s my daughter, Noel.”
“Sure enough. Hell, come on, then.”
At noon a council of war was held in the sheriffs office. Reports came in by telephone from the edges of the city. Nothing came in from beyond the town limits; the cross-country wires were down somewhere, doubtless cut by Provo’s men. It might take the linemen a day to find the breaks and repair them.
“In the meantime,” Sheriff Nye said judiciously, “let’s sort out what we do know. They’s probably eight of them. Five men was seen at the smelter office but one’s dead, Tucker. That’s four, and one to hold the horses makes five. Sixth man down the road between the smelter and town to cut the telephone. Seventh and eighth at both ends of Tucson to cut the wares. All rat. We got to figure they all of ’em armed to the teeth. They cut crosst along the Rillito, I reckon, so they must of rendezvoused somewheres up in the foothills of the Catalinas. That’s where most of our people are lookin’ now. Captain, how do you tote it?”
Burgade was sitting toward the back of the room, dry-washing