The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [62]
He heard crickets in the trees. Sweat prickled his scalp, breaking out like needles.
In the eight-power lenses he could see the horses plainly, the prone shapes of half a dozen figures, and two men sitting up with rifles, at opposite sides of the camp. One of them got up, restless, and walked back and forth.
The air was quite still. He’d told Hal to wait for a wind. His hands sweated and he wiped them one at a time on his trousers, and leveled the rifle again, locked it in tight in a marksman’s grip. The steel butt plate was cold through his clothing against his bony shoulder.
The cropped grass began to ripple, long silver glimmers like ocean swell. He locked the field glasses against the bridge of his nose and stared until his eyes ached. The breeze stirred his hair where it curled out under the hatbrim.
Abruptly, through the glasses, he saw a thin ribbon-stripe of light burst into sight at the bottom of the meadow. It looked like the crack of light under a closed door: trees and mountains grew darker behind it. It spread with a rush.
The pacing sentry stood bolt still. Burgade saw his shoulders lift when he filled his chest with air to give the alarm. The shout was thin in the distance. Figures on the ground began to stir.
The fire blasted forward like whitewater cascades. Unsteady winds spread it wider and wider. It raced forward, gathering brightness, throwing diamond sparks; whipped along, low to the ground and vicious.
Several men in camp were on their feet. It took them time to realize what was happening. Voices of surprise and querulous discovery rode the wind. Burgade held the glasses in rock-steady hands. He had them silhouetted against the fire now: he began to sort them out. He was looking for Susan.
The low racing blaze licked out at both sides, hungry for fuel, making its own hot wind now: rolling smoke shot forward from the crest. The fire’s heat expanded the air around it, accelerating the flames, turning them blue-yellow. Spreading like poured oil, it flashed out past its own edges, widening the swath—within seconds it covered half the width of the lower meadow. With quick fury it consumed its sparse spindly fuel and raced on to find more.
The camp was in panic. One man—it had to be Riva—had gone running toward the horses. Four or five of them were rearing and plunging. Riva dodged in among them, bent low in a crouch: Burgade caught the quick flash of light along an outstretched blade—Riva was cutting the hobbles. One by one the terrified horses leaped away and bolted forward until there were only three left. Evidently the three had not been unsaddled. Riva had them by the reins, he was fighting to keep them still. Out there, by now, the smell of smoke must be powerful. Burgade’s own nose caught a hint of it. Through the high-resolution lenses he saw two or three men break for it, running up on foot, not toward Burgade but off at an angle that would bring them into the trees two hundred yards to his right. He focused the glasses on them long enough to make sure Susan was not among them, and swung the glasses back.
Riva was with the horses, climbing up into a saddle, shouting something. The horses were dancing, rearing; nobody ran toward Riva, and after a brief moment more, Riva spurred the horse he was riding and led the other two horses away with him at a dead gallop, heading directly toward Burgade. Behind Riva, three men were moving across the camp on foot, starkly outlined against the flames. Zach Provo’s clawed praying mantis silhouette was unmistakable. Burgade sucked breath sharply into his lungs. Then, for a brief instant, he glimpsed Susan—on her feet, running. She’d been hidden, from his sight behind the horses.
But now Riva came veering forward, cutting off Burgade’s view of the camp: the three horses loomed heavy in the field glasses. Riva was drumming