The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [55]
“Easy, Mike. It’s me.”
Provo’s voice made him jump a foot off the ground. Shelby turned and said, “Christ, Zach.”
“Can’t see anything in this rain anyway. Let’s you and me go sit with missy.”
“She’s all right. I just checked her.”
“I know. But Burgade might take a notion to come in tonight, use the rain for cover. If he does, he’ll try to find his girl and ease her out of here without us seeing him.”
Shelby went, with him to the girl. She hadn’t moved. Provo didn’t sit down. He stood above the girl, a tall lean shadow in flowing oilskins. Shelby sat down on the wet ground and brooded miserably into the rain. A shaft of lightning sizzled down not half a mile away and thunder crashed immediately. The rain was a steady splashing racket.
The waiting rubbed his nerves. He tried to occupy himself by making plans, thinking about the gold, deciding step by step where he would go and what he would do. Australia, he thought. Or East Africa. Ride from here up across the Four Corners into the Rockies. Get outfitted in respectable clothes in Ouray or Silverton, so he wouldn’t attract attention. They probably had his picture on post office walls, but he had an ordinary young face, likely nobody’d spot him if he just used his head, kept calm, didn’t act like a fugitive. Ride the coach on up through Grand Junction and up into the Jackson Hole country. Up past the Tetons through Cody, on up by Butte and Helena and right through into Canada. If the money looked short he’d knock over a country store or two, but do it at night and wear a mask so nobody’d see his face. Keep moving, that was the trick. As long as you kept moving and didn’t shackle yourself to anybody else, you’d be all right. Loners always had the best chance because there was nobody to betray them.
That was why it bothered him staying here. He didn’t want to rely on Provo or anybody else; and he didn’t like standing still like this. But he’d invested his time and he had the money coming to him. He was going to stick it out until Provo came across with the gold. And Provo would. There wasn’t going to be any double-cross. Not with seven of them against Provo. If he got balky about leading them to the gold, they’d make him talk. Provo was tough, all right, but no man alive was that tough.
Burgade didn’t show up. Neither did Weed. At dawn the sky was dark and wild, but the rain had moved on. There was no reason not to build a fire since they weren’t hiding any longer, but there was no dry wood to be had and Provo vetoed it when Riva and Quesada volunteered to go over to the trees and hunt around for covered fuel. “Why take a chance of getting picked off when you can stay out here safe?”
So they ate cold breakfasts and let the clothes dry on their backs. Susan Burgade sat huddled and dull-eyed, her long hair matted and damp. Shelby gave her something to eat and she pushed it around the plate. She didn’t have any interest in it, but when Shelby came back after twenty minutes to get the plate and scour it out, she’d finished it all. Reflex, probably; she had a vacant look on her face and probably didn’t even remember having eaten.
The sun burned off the ground-water, which had clung to the grass like dew. By ten in the morning it was as if there hadn’t been a rain at all. Riva was fussing over the horses. The rest of them sat around or wandered about on foot, kicking at the ground and brooding and building up nervous impatience. Shelby could tell nobody was going to put up with this for long. Weed hadn’t returned and everybody was speculating about what might have happened to him, but finally Provo put a stop to the guesses:
“You all know damn well what happened to him. He wasn’t smart enough. Burgade set a trap and George walked into