The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [69]
The horses had gone farther than he had anticipated. Their track was easy enough to follow, even after the moon descended, but he had to stop and rest three times and didn’t catch up with them until almost dawn. Then he just sat down near them and let them get used to having him around, smelling him, watching him. He closed his eyes momentarily, his head back against a tree trunk, but jerked them open immediately. He’d almost fallen asleep.
Methodically he filled the magazine of the Springfield from the loose shells in his pocket. He examined his revolver to make sure the fall in the dirt hadn’t plugged its muzzle; holstered it snuggly and had a very hard time lifting himself to his feet. He staggered toward the horses, talking low in his throat to soothe them, and although a few of them backed away with alarmed rolling eyes, two stayed put, unconcerned, and he got his hand on a trailing leather rein. He gathered the reins over the horse’s withers and tried to lift his left foot into the stirrup but he just didn’t have the strength. He closed his eyes and leaned against the saddle, dragging breath into his chest. There was a painful sting where Shiraz’s knifepoint had dug into his breastplate, but when he touched it with his fingers inside his shirt, he felt the sticky dryness of a forming scab and knew it was all right, it wasn’t bleeding. His cheek was hot with pain too—a branch had raked him—but that was no more serious than a shaving cut. He was intact, but barely; there was no energy left. Just getting on a horse was beginning to appear beyond his capacities.
Finally he led the horse over to a steeper part of the hillside and maneuvered it around until its left side was toward the high side of the hill. It was like standing on a box beside the horse—the extra foot of ground elevation was enough for him to get his foot into the stirrup and heave himself onto the seat. He settled himself down firmly in the saddle and gigged the horse gently, and rode down the hill with the first pale streaks of dawn behind him.
They were on foot; it was just about the only advantage he had over them—that and the fact that they must have heard the shooting and might feel half confident that Gant and Quesada and Shiraz had taken care of him. He ticked them off in his mind, those who were left against him: Provo, and Menendez, and the kid Shelby. They still had Susan. Hal was somewhere around, batting around in the hills, but he didn’t know whether Hal had waited around after setting the fire to see what happened. Hal might have gone back up the mountain to the stream where Burgade had decided to rendezvous if he’d gotten Susan away from them. If Hal had gone up there he couldn’t be expected to get back down here before mid-morning at the earliest. He dismissed Hal from his calculations.
Daylight grew stronger as he rode slowly down through the forest. He followed the same trail the horses had used in going up. Just on sunrise he came across Gant’s undisturbed body in the trail. The odor was already heavy, a rancid stench; Gant’s color had changed in death.
Fifty yards farther he glanced into the brush and saw Quesada where he had dragged him back off the trail. The formation of gases had bloated the corpse. Flies buzzed around his head. Here too was the sweet rotten smell of beginning decay. Insects and carrion would clean up everything but the bones, and as the bones rotted their calcium would help feed the ancient and unchangeable forest. Nature was efficient, nothing went to waste. Efficient and indifferent: the forest would not care whether, in the end, it be Zach Provo’s bones or Sam Burgade’s that stayed behind to nourish it.
Young Shelby posed a nuisance, merely because he was a third gun to account for, but it was the other two who made it look pretty close to impossible. Provo and Menendez were faster ‘and shrewder and five times as tough as any of the others. Burgade had only vanquished Gant’s three because they had been stupid enough to split up. Provo wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. Provo would keep close to his comrades