The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [39]
He tugged his hat down. “Somebody’s missing.”
“Deppity Wellard,” Nye said. “Provo turned loose of those horses he stole off your friend Rinehart. I told Wellard he could take the horses on back to Rinehart’s and then go home—he was pret’ near played out anyhow. For that matter ain’t none of us in no fit shape for this, Captain. I’m only statin’ a fact. We ain’t quitting.”
“Where’d they find Rinehart’s horses?”
“Just outside the. ranch over there where we hired these. Nobody seen them swap horses but they must of done it not more’n two, three hours ago. Yeah, you was rat—they did come here.” Quiet respect echoed in Nye’s voice.
Settling his stirrups, Burgade caught Hal Brickman’s worried glance. Hal didn’t say anything. Hal hadn’t said much of anything for three days. He was a poor horseman and must be in saddle-blistered agony by now. But his jaw was thick with determination. A good man, Burgade judged: Hal had backbone. Burgade would get Susan back for him. Or die trying. Very likely the latter, he observed without passion.
Burgade’s posse left Winslow at a canter, steel-shod hoofs drumming in the starlight, along the right bank of the Little Colorado River toward the Navajo desert. It was just ten or twelve miles west of here that Provo had robbed the Santa Fe train twenty-eight years ago.
Seven
“Slow and easy, now,” Provo’s voice said in the darkness. “We won’t get another change of horses—these are going to have to do us.” The heavy, raspy voice reached Mike Shelby’s ears dimly, as if through a strong crosswind. Everything was a little hazy in Shelby’s consciousness; all he wanted in the world was sleep. The horse moved like a rocking chair under him and he had to fight to stay upright on the saddle; several times he almost fell off. At times he thought he’d have preferred to stay in the penitentiary and serve out his time. But he’d only served six months and had another nine and a half years to go. He guessed it would all depend on whether Provo was telling the truth about splitting up his buried cache of railroad gold. In the first place Shelby didn’t trust anybody much, and in the second place nobody was a hundred percent sure Provo even had the gold, let alone was willing to part with it. But one thing was certain: Provo was twice as trail-wise as any of the rest of them. Provo wasn’t just bragging when he kept reminding them that without him they’d have been captured a long time ago and sent back to the hole with years added on to their sentences: Provo knew every trick in the book and some that weren’t in any book. But Shelby didn’t like him much and didn’t trust him anymore than he trusted anybody else. Shelby hadn’t trusted anybody since his mother had run off with a drummer in Nineteen-ought-Five. He’d never known who his father was. His mother had kept company with a lot of men but at least she’d looked after her kid, until the drummer came along. Then she left him behind without even saying good-bye, as if he was an old towel she didn’t want to bother to pack.
He was nineteen years old—twenty next month—but he’d covered a lot of ground in his time. He’d been eleven when his mother had left Lordsburg. The fat old Mexican woman who ran the Occidental Café had taken him in, given him bed and board in exchange for the chores Shelby did around the place. About all he could remember about her was standing in the kitchen watching her slap big old corn tortillas from one fat arm to the other. He hadn’t stayed long; after his mother pulled out he didn’t like Lordsburg much at all. One night he’d stolen a horse and saddle and headed for Silver City. The truant officer picked him up less than five miles out of Lordsburg. They sent him to the county work farm for a year and he met some older and tougher kids there. Shelby was a quick learner. He had a talent for picking the toughest and brightest people around and studying how they did things. He’d hooked up with a fifteen-year-old named Dick Larson and they’d become good friends. When they got out of the