The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [72]
He had ridden for two hours with his body braced against an expected bullet. Taking a chance. Now the chances were all used up. It was a feeling like ice across the back of his neck. He felt exposed, vulnerable, sitting his saddle alone in the forest breeze. The thin high air was crisp with pine smell. Sleeplessness laid a glaze on his eyes; his lids blinked painfully and slowly.
He dismounted with great care and tied the horse’s reins to a low branch. Lifted the Springfield in both hands and began to move away to the right. The pitch was steep but the trees gave better cover here, because the high summit protected them from the winds and they grew taller and thicker. He walked very slowly and without sound, placing each foot with caution. But sweat sluiced down his chest and weakness flowed along his fibers.
He heard the revolver hammer snick.
He lowered himself to the ground—fast, but not so fast as to make noise. His chin lifted and he turned his head slowly, staring past the boles of trees. There was no movement, no sound. He thought perhaps the man out there had heard him but not yet seen him. But there was someone, not far away—upwind, because the sound wouldn’t have carried from any other direction.
He stared into the wind. That was uphill, toward the summit. He didn’t see anything.
He looked back over his shoulder. He could see the horse, twenty-five or thirty feet below him where he had tethered it. Wherever the man was, he was not in position to see that point on the trail; otherwise he’d have fired when Burgade stopped to dismount.
Burgade clawed an egg-sized stone out of the ground and hitched himself slowly up against the wide trunk of a tree that would conceal him from above. He stood up, close to the trunk, dragging the rifle in his left hand, and turned around with his back to the tree. Hefted the little stone and measured his throw and tossed it, not terribly hard, just enough to arc it through the air.
It thudded against the horse’s flank. The horse jumped, scrambled around in a half-circle, tried to break its reins. There was a great deal of noise before the horse settled down again.
Burgade lay down flat again with the rifle against his shoulder, pointing past the pine trunk. His view was restricted by the tree trunks but there was no underbrush to speak of; he could see quite well along the ground, between trees. The steep earth was a mat of brown needles and mossy flat rocks.
A figure flitted from tree to tree, quite a distance above him on the grade. A man in a dirty straw hat; Menendez.
Burgade closed his finger around the trigger and waited. He knew where Menendez was now. Menendez would show himself and when he did, Burgade would shoot. Menendez had gone behind the tree from the right. Burgade sighted to the left of it.
But Menendez reappeared at the right, crouched low and moving fast in a spurt. Burgade shifted the rifle and fired.
Too hasty. A miss. Now Menendez knew he’d been spotted. Burgade scraped the side of his chin against his shoulder, irritable—the gunshot would alert the others.
He moved around behind the pine trunk, shifting his position to conceal himself more completely from Menendez’s angle. But Menendez didn’t stir, and Burgade felt urgency building pressure inside him.
Menendez was waiting him out. That was no good: the others could be coming in from either side. Burgade got to his feet behind the tree, aimed the Springfield past the side of it and let go three shots at Menendez’s position. Without waiting, he dropped the rifle and sprinted uphill to his right, dropping flat after a twelve-foot run.
It was just in time: Menendez’s revolver opened up. The rolling echoes of the shots caromed down the hill. A bullet shrieked off the trunk of a pine two feet above him, leaving a white scar. Burgade cocked the .45 and waited