The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [7]
“How bit of a stake?”
“A few thousand, at the least.”
Will Gant said, “Seems to me that’s worth thanking about.”
Lee Roy said, “I expect I’ll go along, Zach.” His tone said he didn’t like it much but he liked the alternatives even less. That was all right; Provo didn’t care about his motives. But Lee Roy could handle explosives and Provo needed him especially.
Portugee Shiraz said, “I’d surely admire to get my belly around some food.”
Two
Sam Burgade waited on the wooden curb for a steam automobile to pitch by. He waited a while longer, until the dust from its passage had settled back down onto the unpaved surface of Meyer Avenue, and then he stepped down into the powder and walked across the intersection to J. S. Mansfield’s new depot. By the time he got there, his boots had a fine film of silver dust on them, but underneath you could still make out the gloss of expensive leather.
The clerk greeted him by name, with respect, and asked after Susan, and remarked it was going to be a scorcher, and Sam Burgade nodded and said Susan was fine and yes indeed it wasn’t much for wet but it was all hell for hot. After this ritual, the clerk got out Burgade’s reserved copy of the morning Star and gravely accepted Burgades five-cent piece in his palm, and Burgade went up the length of the block and across the street into the dim cool lobby of Orndorff’s Cosmopolitan Hotel.
His crinkly outdoor eyes squinted against the dimness. He picked at the white shirt-front under his suit coat, pulling it away from his damp chest, and tipped his black hat back to cool his brow, and walked to his regular stuffed armchair by the front window. Maggie the waitress was just straightening up, having set down his saucer and cup of hot black coffee, and when she turned, sweeping a stray strand of colorless hair back from her face, she smiled and said, “Right on time, Mr. Burgade.”
“Morning, Maggie.”
She went away toward the kitchen, smiling fondly, perhaps because she liked him, perhaps because he tipped her dependably at the end of each month when he paid his $1.50 bill for coffee and whatever bills he had run up in the saloon bar.
By the Seth Thomas clock over the registry it was seven thirty. Sam Burgade, bored, settled his elbows on the arms of the chair, crossed his legs, laid the newspaper across his upended knee, and reached for his coffee without looking at it. As he ran his eyes over the various front-page adverts and headlines, he kept glancing up to see if anybody he knew had come into the lobby.
The headlines were dispassionate and dull.
CARRANZA REVOLT GATHERS FORCE
IN MEXICO.
BALKAN WAR DISPATCHES:
BULGARIA ATTACKS SERBO-GREEK
POSITIONS.
RUMANIA AND TURKEY ENTER WAR
AGAINST BULGARIA.
GOV. GEORGE P. HUNT ANNOUNCES
ARIZ.
1912 COPPER OUTPUT REACHED
200,000 TONS.
PRESIDENT WILSON PROPOSES
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK SYSTEM.
SOLONS LODGE OBJECTIONS TO NEW
FEDERAL INCOME TAX.
NEW ELECTORAL REFORM LAW IN
EGYPT.
Sam Burgade swallowed a yawn, and some coffee, and blinked, and then his eyes fell on the two-column item near the bottom corner of the page:
PRISON BREAK AT YUMA: TWO
GUARDS MURDERED,
CONVICTS ESCAPE. FOURTEEN
DESPERATE MEN STILL
AT LARGE. LATEST DISPATCHES
BY TELEPHONE.
His instincts and interests stirred, he folded the paper to read the article. He took the reading glasses out of their pocket case and wiped them with methodical deliberation, hooked them over one ear at a time, and settled down to read.
Sam Burgade was a striking man, a straight-backed long-legged figure with thick white hair, deeply tanned saddle-leather face, hand-tailored black business suit, old-style wing collar and cravat, glossy black walking boots. He wore his white hair bushy at the back, in a mane. Deep creases, knotted muscularly, ran like painful wounds from the nostrils to the lip-corners of his seamed brown face. All his bones were long; he was lean, but his chest hadn’t caved in with age. Eyes were the color of quicksilver,