The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [44]
Susan’s eyes were almost closed. She swayed on her feet. Shelby reached out to prop her up but she shoved herself away from him. Her rigid back expressed rage and terror all at once. Shelby felt vaguely uncomfortable. He didn’t care what happened to Sam Burgade—everybody’s father had to die sometime. But it made him uneasy to see what it was doing to Susan. Listening to Provo talk about his dead wife made him pretty sure Provo had something just as ugly in mind for Burgade’s daughter.
Will Gant, who was shrewder than he looked, said, “Hepping us can get these Innuns in trouble with the Innun Bureau. You must of done a heap of persuading.”
Offhandedly Provo said, “Sure. But I told them where they could go dig up ten thousand dollars in gold to help folks out on the Reservation. Up here ten thousand dollars is more than the whole tribe sees in a year. They’ll side with us long enough to suit me. By the time the Bureau starts leaning on them we’ll be long gone.”
“Ten thousand,” Shelby said. “You said you had forty-eight thousand buried.”
“You don’t think I was stupid enough to cache it all in one place, do you? It’s scattered in four hideouts. One cache, maybe somebody could stumble across it by accident. But not four of them.”
“Smart,” Shelby said, and filed it: one more good lesson to memorize.
Will Gant was looking at Susan with a strange light in his eyes. “What we aiming to do about her, Zach?”
Provo smiled a little, not with his eyes. He quoted softly, “Patient, ever patient, and joy shall be thy share. Bear that in mind and you’ll be all right, Will. Just don’t crowd things.” He looked at the girl and his gentle laughter had the cruel dry sound of dead leaves rattling in an autumn wind.
Don’t get too het up about her problems, Shelby told himself. You got enough of your own.
Provo said, “Taco, Quesada, saddle ’em up.”
The two of them turned and went. George Weed went with them.
Portugee said, “Where we going now?”
“Down the Little Colorado,” Provo said. “Redrock country. I’ve got a place in mind up between Cedar Ridge and Marble Canyon.”
“That where you got the rest of that gold hid?”
“That’d be telling,” Provo said. He smiled with his mouth again. “But I ain’t got a double-cross in mind. I saw you thinking about what happened to Lee Roy, but Lee Roy was no good, you could see that. He’d have found some way to get us all killed. You’ll get your share of the gold, Portugee.”
“That’s right,” Portugee said. “I will. But what then?”
“Then you can go wherever you want. Personally I’d recommend northeast. Nobody’s going to track up through the Rockies. Straight on up through Colorado and Wyoming and Montana. Right into Canada and maybe ship out for Vancouver. But that’s up to you-all.”
“What about you?” Shelby said.
“Me?” Provo laughed unpleasantly. “All I want is Sam Burgade.”
Eight
The Navajo policemen subjected the posse to the long-winded rigmarole of formal protocol. After an hour of argument during which nobody budged and everybody remained excessively polite, Sam Burgade uttered a curse and stamped outside the Agency police shack. A blowsy woman gave him a flat stare of evident dislike and made a point of absenting herself from his vicinity. A stray vesper brought to his nostrils a malodorous outhouse smell.
Nye came outside and said, “We ain’t about to change their mands, Captain.”
“I know. Provo got to them.”
“What you reckon he give them?”
“A lot of sweet talk and some of that Santa Fe gold he’s got buried up here.”
“I’d admire to bust rat through here and keep after them, but I don’t reckon that’d set well with the federal gov’ment. They don’t cotton to anybody pushin’ onto the Reservation without the Navajos allow it. All them bleedin’ hawts back East git all up in arms about white folks bustin’ treaties. My deppities and me could maybe get in dutch, but rat now I don’t reckon that’s my main worry. Main thing is, Captain, I’m a sworn officer of the law. If I go on after Provo now I’m bustin’ the law. I’m out of my bailiwick on Navajo land, I got no authority