The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [73]
Bullets snapped at his heels. He dived and skidded on his chest. Slid right past the pine, on the slippery needles, and brought the double-action up in time to get a shot at Menendez before Menendez wheeled behind cover.
He had a feeling he might have scored a hit, but Menendez was still shooting. Burgade huddled tight behind the pine, counting bullets. It was clear enough Menendez had two revolvers on him; and Menendez was wise enough not to empty both of them. He’d be using the intervals to reload spent chambers. Burgade stopped counting, reloaded his own, and decided on a cheap ploy that might work if Menendez was rusty enough. Menendez was a Border tough, as shrewd as they came, but to a man like Menendez “revolver” meant single-action Frontier model. That was why Menendez carried two: because the single-action was slow to reload. You had to punch out the empties one by one and then reload the chambers one by one.
It was only going to work if Menendez assumed Burgade had the same kind of gun.
Burgade slipped a loaded cartridge out of his belt and held it poised in the fingers of his left hand; turned to study Menendez’s position with one eye, gathered his legs, and sprinted for a tree eight feet away, blazing away as he ran.
He fired all six, double-action, blinding-fast. It kept Menendez’s head down until the last shot was fired. Burgade reached cover and dropped flat, knowing Menendez had been counting. When he hit the ground he already had the side-swing cylinder open. He punched the pin, scattering all the empties at once, plugged the ready cartridge in and slammed the cylinder shut, turning it to line up the brass rim under the hammer.…
Menendez charged, shooting with one hand, holding the other revolver in reserve. He was running wide in a half-circle to spiral in. Wide open.
Burgade fired.
The bullet rocked Menendez, as a .45 would, no matter where it hit. Menendez skidded to his knees. A red spot showed up, high on the front of his shirt.
Burgade thumbed another cartridge into the revolver and took deliberate aim. Menendez’s legs were scrabbling for toeholds, he was trying to swim toward cover but his elbows and boots kept slipping. Burgade finished him with a slow-aimed bullet.
He went back down to get his rifle. Untied the horse and led it up through the trees to where Menendez lay dead. He loaded both Menendez’s revolvers and rammed them into his waistband, and stood a moment getting his breath.
Menendez’s body had cleared itself in the moment of death. There was the stink of human excrement. The straw hat had rolled away a few yards. Burgade picked it up, removed his own hat, and put the straw hat on. He hung his black hat over the saddle horn, and tied the horse up. Then he bent down and tried to pick up the corpse.
Menendez wasn’t very big. But the wiry little body was too much for him. The old muscles refused to lift it. Burgade got it propped up, seated, against a tree, but that wasn’t enough. He went over to the horse and checked out the saddle, but he’d known full well what was on it, and there was no rope. With a rope he might have hauled the body up by slinging the end of the rope over a tree limb and using his own weight.
He sat down to study it out. His mind was slow and vague; there was a red wash of fatigue over his eyes. His body needed nourishment and sleep.
He sat with his mouth slack, breathing with slow lifts and falls of his shoulders. He was like that when he heard the slow cautious clop of hoofs coming up from below.
He got the rifle and walked down through the trees and waited. It might be Hal, it might be a Navajo, it might be just about anybody; it wasn’t Provo or any of Provo’s people, so he was not determined to shoot at first glimpse, but he kept the rifle aimed anyway, on the spot where the approaching horse would appear in the trees below.
It was Hal.
“I heard the shooting. Are you all right?”
“I haven’t been shot, if that’s what you mean.