The Last Hard Men

by Brian Garfield

  “Go on, Captain.”

  “Nine men. They’ve got to get their hands on a sizable pile of cash if it’s going to split nine ways and still look impressive. They won’t find that kind of money in the till of a general store in some whistle-stop. Provo’s got to come up with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars to make those convicts sit up and listen. Otherwise he loses them.”

  “I’m startin’ to get your drift now.”

  “Bait,” Burgade said. “Why not give them something to shoot for?”

  “Spell it out, what you got in mand.”

  “Suppose we set up a fake story about a big shipment of cash arriving in the Tucson bank from the Denver mint. Get the story on the front page of all the newspapers this afternoon and make sure the newspapers are delivered to every crossroads store and whistle-stop in southern Arizona.”

  Nye chugged his beer down. The mug had left a wet ring on the bar. He set it down carefully on the ring. “I don’t know, Captain. Take the lid off that kand of honey jar and a lot of flies bound to come swarming around besides Zach Provo. We could end up with the whole town full of bank robbers.”

  “When you use a net you’re bound to pull in a lot of innocent fish. If they’re too small you just throw them back in the water, Noel. And if they’re big enough and guilty enough then you’ve got a bonus.”

  “Provo ain’t stupid. He sees some story about a big shipment of cash money, he’ll have to expect it’s gonna be protected. He might even figure it for a trap.”

  “Naturally. So let’s give him a little extra bait. Put in the story that the money’s coming in—oh, say, Friday morning maybe, on an armed westbound train. That ought to give Provo time to see the story, a few days to get over here to Tucson and get his crowd set up for it. And put in the story that the money’s going to be trucked from the depot to the bank under guard. With me heading up the guard detail.”

  “You?”

  Burgade finished his beer and ascetically cleaned the foam from his lips with a bar napkin. “Me. I’m the man killed Zach Provo’s wife. I doubt that’s slipped his mind. Quite the reverse. I imagine he’s had nothing to brood about except that, and nothing much to do except brood about it. Offer Zach Provo a chance to kill me and he’ll jump at it.”

  “Oh sure. And you’ll get dead. I don’t like the price of that, Captain.”

  “I’ll have a little advantage, Noel. I’ll know he’s coming. I’ll be looking for him.”

  “But you’re—” Nye didn’t finish the sentence and it was pretty clear what he had meant to say: But you’re an old man.

  “I’ve handled Zach Provo before,” Burgade said stiffly. “I can do it again.”

  “But it ain’t your job, Captain.”

  “I’m offering to make it my job.” For God’s sake can’t you see how much I want this chance?

  Nye stirred. He rubbed a hand abrasively over his ugly face. “I don’t know, Captain. I’ll have to thank on it.”

  “Don’t take too long. The papers are going to press.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Provo’s too smart to get caught unless we bait him into it. You know that.”

  “Aeah. Reckon I do. But I ain’t sure he’s worth catchin’ if it’s at the expense of your life.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Sam Burgade said.

  Nothing to do now but wait. Sweat it out and see if Provo swallowed the hook. Burgade walked home shortly before noon, taking his time in the heat. Big trees arched the street, throwing patterns of shade, and the stately old Spanish houses clung to a decaying dignity. The lawn in front of Burgade’s house looked parched. He went up the tile-bordered walk and let himself in; the screen door flapped shut behind him with a weatherbeaten slap. The thick adobe walls made it cooler inside.

  The gun cabinet was in the front parlor, tall like a china cabinet; the windowed maple doors were not locked, but the guns inside were chained and padlocked, to discourage errant children. Burgade opened the doors and inspected the assortment. Some of the long guns went back a long way. The .45-70, he’d had that one with him when he’d cornered Zach Provo in his hogan.

  No time to reminisce about that now. The Springfield .06 was likely the best all-around rifle in the rack, but it was a bolt-action, not fast enough for close-in work in town streets. He passed it by. Same for the Mannlicher. The Winchester .38-56 was too heavy, too long and ponderous. The .32-20 was a toy, a squirrel gun, no good for man-size targets.

  It came down to the Marlin .30-30. Lever-action carbine, short barrel, light stock, not much for long-range work but easy to maneuver and quick to reload.

  He unlocked the chain and took it down. Found four boxes of cartridges in the drawer, and after a moment’s thought unlocked the cabinet door beneath and dragged out the old holster-belt and the black metal lockbox. He put the lockbox on the dining table and put its key into it, flipped the lid back and poked through the oiled handguns inside. The Army .45 automatic was the newest of them, a carved gilt-inlaid beauty. Presented to him with much fanfare at the banquet when he’d retired from the Territorial Police. Like a gold watch, he thought. He’d never got the hang of shooting the thing: it didn’t point naturally, it kicked like a mule. Hard to hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. He put it back in the box and shuffled the others around. His favorite was the old .44 single-action, he’d carried that one on his hip nearly thirty years and the bluing was worn off to show for it. But old springs got brittle, like bones, and old firing pins tended to crystallize and shatter. Any piece of machinery that was too old and too much used was suspect: undependable.

  Sad thoughts: he put them away with the old .44. He picked out the swing-cylinder .45 double-action and slid it into the old holster and threw the tails of his jacket back to buckle the gunbelt around his hips and snug it down. At least the belt still fit. He hadn’t put on an ounce in fifteen years. The belt loops contained .44-40 cartridges and he had to replace them, methodically, one by one, with .45 centerfires. The old .44’s from the belt had turned green from leather corrosion.

  The boxes of .30-30’s weighted down his jacket pocket. He walked out of the house with the Marlin rifle in the bend of his elbow and the revolver heavy along his thigh. Walked at a deliberate pace up to Stone Avenue and waited for the streetcar, and rode it all the way to the end of the line at Limberlost Road. It was hell hot. He walked on north toward the trees along the bank of the Rillito, half a mile along a twin-rutted wagon track through the scrub. Along the way he picked up an armload of discarded beer bottles.

  He spent half an hour cruising the trees on both banks of the riverbed. Not that he expected to find lovers sparking in broad daylight in this heat. But he didn’t want stray ricochets cutting up somebody’s wandering milch cow. He found no animal life bigger than gophers, and went down into the dry bed of the river. It was deep sand, pale tan in color, marked here and there by clay bars and patches of sun-whitened pebbles. It was a wide river, two hundred feet from bank to bank, but no water where you could see it. This time of the year the water was all underneath, flowing along its underground channel beneath the riverbed. Dig down six, eight feet and you’d hit water. Come the rains in the autumn, a few hours’ rain every day for two or three weeks, and the river would be full—flash floods coming down off the hills, a savage and furious torrent. But right now it was bone dry between the eight-foot-high cutbanks.

  Burgade set up the empty bottles at the base of the north bank and waded across through the sand to the south side. He thumbed a cartridge into the breech of the Marlin and then filled the magazine with ammunition. Broke open the sidegate revolver and chambered six into it, and holstered it with the firing pin between the rims of two shells. He was too old a hand to get careless at this stage of his life: leave the pin over a live primer and you never knew when the thing might fall out of the holster, drop on a rock and go off.

  He took his time practicing, conserving his ammunition. Dry-fired more that he shot. He had t
o familiarize himself with the old moves and balances all over again: it had been a long time, muscles remembered but not to the exact point.

  He had to quit twice to forage for beer bottles. Late in the afternoon the noise attracted an audience of half a dozen kids, who stood on the bank behind him and watched solemnly. He said hello to them, courteous and distant, and one or two of them knew who he was, passed the word around; nobody pestered him. The kids volunteered to go looking for more bottles for him and he sat in the lengthening shade while they scooted through the trees, found cans and bottles, and raced each other across the river to set up targets for him.

  He was not above showing off. He finished the afternoon in a blaze of glory, like fireworks: started with his back to the targets; jacked a chamber into the Marlin; wheeled and began firing at an earsplitting speed, so that the racket of each shot nearly blended into the next; the air was full of flying pieces of glass. When he had emptied the carbine he let it hang in his left hand while he slapped the revolver up from his hip and blazed away, holding the revolver out in front of him at eye level where you were supposed to. He didn’t miss one of his six shots. When he walked away toward town the kids were watching him as if he were William S. Hart. He didn’t let them see his pleased little smile.

  His ears were still whistling and ringing when he walked up. to his front door and went inside. Susan appeared at the kitchen door and began to say something, and saw his guns and stared.

  “Just practicing,” he said. “Up on the Rillito. I had to wait awhile for the tram car. Didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

  I’ve waited supper for you.” She pushed her lower lip forward to blow hair off her forehead. “Lay off your things and get washed up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said dryly. Susan grinned impudently. He put the guns in the front parlor, leaving them out because after supper he would clean them and oil them; he went upstairs, feeling very light on his feet, and worked the pump handle to bring water up to the second-story tank before he went into the bathroom they had built four years ago.

  His clothes were covered with dust. He chastised himself for not having changed into old clothes before he went out to shoot. He had to change; it wouldn’t do to sit down to supper in dusty garb.

  When he came down she said crossly, “It’s getting cold. Maybe I’d better warm it up in the oven.”

  “No. I don’t mind” He held her chair for her and then went to his place at the head of the table. As he sat down he saw she was looking at the grandfather clock. He said, “If you’re going out tonight I’m sorry I held you up.”

  “There’s time,” she said. “Maybe I’ll cancel it anyway.”

  “The Brickman fellow?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a good man, you don’t want to keep putting him off.”

  She said, “Quit trying to marry me off.”

  “Time you got another man, Susan. Time you got married again.”

  She was thirty-one, a tall girl with big eyes and good bones, high strong cheeks, a full expressive mouth. He was too close to her to know whether she was pretty but he’d heard men make admiring remarks about her. She had long hair that shone in the lamplight, dark brown hair like his own had been before it went white; her eyes were dark and dramatic and she had a soft contralto voice, low and smoky. Winters she taught fifth grade; summers she kept the books of the city police department. Nine years ago, to Burgade’s intense displeasure, she had married an unambitious young deputy sheriff named Ned Hayes; Burgade had only slowly, and grudgingly, realized Hayes’s virtues—he was steady, honest, dependable, not as dull as he looked at first glance, and had a good chance of making undersheriff and possibly even sheriff. Burgade had finally learned to like him and had taken Hayes under his wing, teaching him the bits and pieces of wisdom he had picked up along the backtrail of his experience. Two years ago last month Hayes had made undersheriff. A fortnight later Hayes had been shot dead by a store burglar when he’d stopped to investigate on his way home from a night of card-playing at the Cosmopolitan.

  Burgade had brought Susan back home with him. She had cried her grief out but she’d composed herself rather quickly after the funeral—perhaps too quickly. He had a feeling some of it was still bottled up inside her. Very matter-of-fact, she’d gone to work, organized the house-hold, mothered him insufferably, and made utterly no efforts to resume the social contacts she’d had before her husband’s death. Her old friends, her age, had come around to see her but she had greeted them with exact courtesy, nothing more, and they came around less and less frequently. She encouraged no beaux. Once in a while a young man made a determined attempt to get through to her. The most recent was a young mining engineer, Hal Brickman, who had a clean-cut college-dude appearance and usually went around in baggy riding breeches and a snap-brim Eastern hat. Brickman had a good heart and a quick mind; maybe he wasn’t the kind of tough outdoorsman who’d always run in the Burgade family (Sam Burgade’s forebears had fought in four American wars, explored the Northwest with Lewis and Clark, trapped with Carson and Sublette, trailed cattle with Chisum) but he was solid, substantial, steady, sturdy—and Susan was thirty-one years old, and all these things weighed in Sam Burgade’s considerations.

  In reply to his remark about getting married she said, “I wish you’d quit trying to run my life, Father.”

  “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what in my judgment you ought to do. There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t love Hal Brickman.”

  “Seems he loves you,” he said. “Maybe at your age you ought to stop looking to find a storybook romance and settle for something that could turn out to be just as good in the long run—a steady man who loves you and a kid or two to raise and love.”

  “It terrifies you to think of me drying up into an old-maid spinster, doesn’t it?”

  “Susie, I’m an old man and I know about loneliness. I don’t wish it for you.”

  Her expression changed; she looked away quickly, addressed herself busily to her meal. Her lashes covered her eyes but he thought he had seen a moist glint in them. He pushed his chair back and held his arms stiff, braced against the edge of the table. Full of sudden low anger he said, “Goddamnit, Susie, I will not have you waste your young life looking after a tired old man like me. I had no intention of letting that comment about loneliness give you any excuse to think I need you to look after me for the rest of my life. I can damn well take care of myself. I did while you were married.”

  “You were younger then,” she said in a small voice, not looking up.

  “When I’m too old and feeble to look after myself,” he roared, “I’ll move myself in the goddamn Pioneers’ Home.”

  “Don’t blaspheme, Father.”

  He snorted. “I will not have it.”

  She looked up, finally. “You’ll have to throw me out, then.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Then go ahead. Do it.” Her eyes blazed.

  Their glances locked: they scowled furiously at each other until Burgade’s nose twitched, his lip-corner turned up, and suddenly they were both laughing helplessly. He laughed till his stomach hurt; he had to get his breath, and then he dropped his napkin on the table and went to the sideboard and got down the cognac. Rothschild 1887. He poured two snifters.

  “Here. Belt that down and listen to me.”

  “You old tyrant.”

  “Yeah.” He sat down and a crafty gleam came into his eye. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put this house up for sale.”

  “What? The house? But—”

  “I know. You were born here. Well, that was a long time ago. The house is too big, we don’t need it. It just keeps you hopping. I’m going to sell it.”

  “And do what?”

  He grinned at her. “Move into a flat in Orndorffs Hotel.”

  She glared at him, but she was amused. “You old stinker.”

  “Yeah. Won’t be room for
you there, Susie. I’ll have maids to keep my room clean and a whole hotel kitchen to cook for me. I won’t need the likes of you fussing around after me.”

  “You’re bluffing,” she said, “but I love you.”

  “I am not bluffing. Next week the house goes up for sale.”

  “Do it if you want,” she said, feigning indifference. “But don’t do it on my account. If you really can’t stand having me around, I’ll leave. You don’t have to sell the house.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “It is if you’re asking for it.”

  Loneliness pressed at him from unseen shadows. But he said, “I’m asking for it.”

  She was studying her hands, turning them over, again and again as if they were unfamiliar objects she’d never seen before. “All right,” she said in the same small voice. “All right, Father. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to marry Hal.”

  The door clapper banged three or four times. Burgade put down his brandy snifter. “That’ll be your young man. Better get your shawl—there’ll be a cool breeze along the river tonight.”

  Her eyes flashed. “What makes you think we’d go walking in that notorious lovers’ lane?”

  He only grinned at her. Color filled her cheeks and she went out of the room in a rush. But he noticed she was moving with a light step. Still smiling, he went to the hall door and greeted Hal Brickman while Susan dashed upstairs to get her wrap. Hal wore the customary jodhpurs and engineers’ boots, a charro jacket and a necktie; he had his snap-brim hat in his hand; his hair was slicked back, parted down the middle. A real dandy—but amused by it, not serious about it. Burgade didn’t understand dudes very well but he liked Hal. They sat in the parlor with brandy and talked weather and crime until Susan came down, her hair freshly brushed and shining, her mother’s lace shawl about her shoulders. She looked a little like her mother—not much, but enough to send Burgade’s memory back twenty years.