The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [32]
“No,” Burgade said, “they’re headed over the top.”
“Well, Captain, I ain’t so sure about that. And the lights gettin’ poor for tracking. No use trailin’ blind—we better camp here and track at sunup.”
“Camp if you want to. I’m going on. Provo won’t stop tonight—I don’t want to give him an extra eight hours on us.”
“Maybe you’re rat. But if they turn off someplace during the night, we gonna lose more’n eight hours, time we backtrack and pick up the trail again. You fixin’ to take that chance?”
“I am.”
“You always was a gambler.”
“I think I know where he’s headed, Noel, and I mean to catch him before he gets there.”
“Where’s that?”
“Window Rock Reservation.”
Nye’s eyes widened. “All the way up there? Hell, our people in Tucson ought to have the telephone and telegraph wares fixed up by now, Captain. Posses gonna be deploying out of every town between here and Window Rock—and that’s two hundred mile. Provo’d be a fool to run that gantlet.”
“He’d be a bigger fool not to. He’s got a hostage, remember? No posse’s going to brace him. He’ll stay out of their way if he can, but if they jump him they’ll have to give him room to get by. He’s counting on that, otherwise he’d have been covering his tracks by now.”
“All rat, then, since you brang it up. Suppose we do get close to him. What then?”
“Let’s catch him, first,” Burgade said, and put his horse up into the piñons.
Five
When the leader called a halt, Susan dismounted, moving awkwardly, uncomfortably conscious of her body and the way some of them stared at her. She was still in a detached state, like a waking dream—everything. she saw registered on her mind, she was aware of every detail, but she felt stunned. Very little anger had seeped through the haze, and not much fear.
While Zach Provo walked a few paces out onto a promontory slab and extended his collapsible spy-glass, the rest of them stood around dividing up a small sheaf of money. From the talk, she gathered they had stolen it from the smelter. She watched the young one wad up his folded greenbacks and insert them in a chamber of his six-gun. “Rainy-day money,” he said dryly, looking at the cloudless twilit sky. The sun had just gone down with a blaze and a wink.
The young one had a friendly face. His name was Mike Shelby; he had told her cheerfully on the trail. Why don’t we just abandon convention and introduce ourselves? He seemed incredibly easygoing, as if nothing really touched him. She envied him she knew that soon she was going to wake up to the unspeakable terror of it.
As though it were a social Sunday picnic the young Shelby had named all of them for her. Somehow the names had lodged; it was a habit she had developed on purpose as a schoolteacher. Each term on the first day of class she asked each new student his name, and had a way of fixing her stare on the pupil’s face so as to memorize it and associate the name with it. Dear Lord, that classroom was in another world.
The sky was red to the west. The little one, Cesar Menendez, had walked out onto the point of rock with Provo and she heard Provo’s toneless voice. “Coming right along.” Provo lowered the telescope and pushed it shut.
Menendez said, “Burgade with them?”
“Too far away to tell. But he’s got to be. Wild horses couldn’t hold the bastard back.” Provo turned on his heel and came back toward them. His cold stare flicked across Susan; for a moment she closed her eyes, trying to shut it all out, but a twanging voice which she identified as Portugee Shiraz’s said, “I got to take a leak.” She opened her eyes and saw Portugee, unbuttoning his fly, walk off into the rocks, the bad teeth showing in his vulpine face. His skin was dark as George Weed’s but