The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [42]
Riva came in and broke out the mess gear and served up some cold food for those who were awake and hungry. The girl ate as if her mind was a thousand miles away on other things. Will Gant dipped his face close to the tin plate and shoveled oversized mouthfuls of food into his face; washed them down with canteen water, only half chewed, his Adam’s apple bulging and bouncing in the thick throat.
Riva, who of them all seemed least disturbed by the nerves of flight, sat down loosely and said in a friendly way, “I feel hound-dog lazy,” and went to sleep smiling.
They had probably been there an hour, but Provo hadn’t appeared yet from the police shack. Shelby began to feel spooked. But then, he thought, if the Agency police had arrested Provo they’d be up here by now. He tried to relax.
Presently Portugee woke up and ambled over to squat down beside Will Gant. Portugee’s feet were like paddles. The two of them sat there and boasted about the fights they had been in and the carnage they had done, as if there was some important kind of machismo in having done and seen such things—or perhaps in being able to talk of it with suitably callous heartiness. Maybe they were trying to impress the girl, but if so, she gave no sign she was listening.
Once, Portugee’s glance came around and lay speculatively against Shelby, and something struggled fiercely behind Portugee’s eyes. Shelby sat like a stone, not liking this. He pinched his mouth tight and breathed deep through his nose. Will Gant looked at him and Portugee whispered something, and Gant laughed silently, his eyes wrinkling up until they were almost shut. Something was going on between those two. Shelby began to sweat.
Shelby got slowly to his feet and tried to look casual. He wandered over to the spring and had a drink, filled his canteen and wandered back. But he stopped much closer to the girl than he’d been before. He hunkered down on his heels not five feet from her and when she looked at him, her eyes widened: plainly the same thought had crossed her mind that had crossed his.
His maneuver had not gone unnoticed. Will Gant stood up and hitched at his trousers with the flats of his wrists. Then he tipped his hat back. The sweatband had indented a red weal across his forehead; he rubbed it with the side of his index finger while he looked unblinkingly at the girl and smiled that slow thick-lipped smile of his.
Damp with springwater, the homespun dress clung to the girl’s body, stuck to the undersides of her nubile breasts. She wore no stays, no evident underpinnings of any kind. Her woman-smell reached Shelby’s nostrils and he knew the fire had caught inside Gant and Portugee; it burned him as well. But Shelby couldn’t fathom the mind of anybody who would take it from a woman who didn’t want to give it. He felt suddenly and unaccountably protective toward her. It had nothing to do with Provo’s orders. Sweating, he wiped his palms dry on the buttocks of his Levi’s.
From where he squatted he could see past the lovely long column of her back and the dark long hair that she had plaited at the side of her head—past her surly and beautiful face to Gant and Portugee. Portugee removed his hat and slicked back his hair and looked at Will Gant, whereupon Gant got to his feet and shoved