The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [6]
Provo licked his upper lip, like a cat washing itself. It was worth a try, anyway. Menendez was over at the door, watching Gila Bend town through cracks in the splintered boards. The sun was hitting that face of the shack and the others had crowded away toward the cool side of the room, squatting around in little knots of dulled talk. Provo moved casually to the door and spoke in a voice calculated to reach no farther than Menendez’s ears:
“You willing to stick by me a while longer?”
“You asking or telling?”
“Asking.”
Menendez glanced at him out of the edge of his eye. “What you got in mind?”
“You’ll see. Just back me.”
“I don’t know, Zach. If it’s about Sam Burgade—”
“What if it is?”
“I got nawthing against Sam Burgade. That’s your fight, not mine.”
“What if it gets you a free ticket out from under the law?”
“How?”
“Just stick by me.”
Menendez thought it over. “Orrai. For a while, anyhow. I’ll es-stick aroun’ until I see how it blows.”
“Sure. You never know, you might even get your hands on that cache of railroad money I buried twenty-eight years ago.”
“Hell, you prob’ly don’ even remember where you put it, that long ago. I never believed moch in that rumor.”
“It came to pret’ near forty-eight thousand dollars. In gold eagles. Two hundred pounds of gold. They got me but they never got the money back.”
“You making me an offer, Zach?”
“Maybe.”
“You better es-spell it out a little clearer, then.”
“This ain’t the time. But you just keep it in mind.”
“Ahjess. I’ll do that.”
Provo moved away in the center of the shack. “All right,” he said, and got their attention. “Tonight Menendez goes into town for a hacksaw and some food and clothes. Well get fixed up to look like civilians. After that you-all are figuring to steal horses, split up and run for it. That’s all right for them as want it. I don’t particularly recommend it. What chance you going to have, without a cent in your kick? You’ll just get rounded up one at a time. Nothing to show for it but shriveled guts and saddlesores and a few days running like hell through the brush.”
Mike Shelby said, “You’re talkin’ like you got something better to offer.”
“I have. But maybe you people would rather let them surround you with telephone messages and posses out of every county seat from here to Oklahoma. Maybe you’ve had enough of my ideas.”
Shelby said what Provo knew he’d say. “You done all right up to now, Zach. Let’s hear what you got in mind.”
Provo glanced casually at Menendez, met a glance of bland unconcern, and squatted on his haunches. “We’re going to get ourselves a healthy stake and take care of some personal business and then we’re going to head for a hideout where the law can’t touch us. All of us. We stick together all the way through, just like we’ve stuck together up to now. How about it?”
They exchanged glances among themselves. Lee Roy scowled at him but didn’t say anything. Finally Mike Shelby said, “Go ahead, Zach.”
“In a minute. What I’ve got in mind, it’s going to take timing and planning. It’ll take all of us to bring it off. But it’s just like getting out of Yuma—I can’t have any of you people hearing me out and then deciding you don’t want to do it. Nobody cuts out on me. Anybody wants to leave, say so right now, and we’ll wait till after dark when he’s gone to talk about the rest of it. How about it? Anybody want to call it quits?”
He looked around, without expression. Implying if anybody wanted to quit, there’d be no hard feelings. It was a lie: if anybody tried to back out, Provo would kill him. But there wasn’t much point in saying so.
“Lee Roy?”
“I don’t rightly know. I don’t hanker to ride out alone and git my ass blowed off. I don’t rightly know this country arand here. How long this binness take?”
“Three, four days, A week maybe.”
“We split up after that?”
“After that,” Provo said, “I