The Last Hard Men

by Brian Garfield

  North on Main Street and east on Third, left on Meyer Avenue, around past the old McKinney place and onto the quiet tree-shady street. His pulse started to pound when he drew rein in front of the house. “Step down and hold these horses, will you? I’ll be right out.”

  “Nice and peaceful here, ain’t it, Zach?”

  “Sure is,” he said, feeling grim and jumpy. He walked up the tile-bordered walk to the screen door, trying to look calm and businesslike. Rapped the brass door-knocker and saw movement through the screen. He put one hand inside his duster through the slot pocket and drew his revolver, holding it down against his leg, concealed by the coat.

  She came to the door drying her hands on a towel. A stray lock of brown hair had fallen across her face from under her sunbonnet; she tossed it back with a shake of her head. She was a tall girl in a homespun dress. Provo’s eyes followed the lines of her body as she approached the screen door. Provo put a polite smile on his face.

  She stood just inside the door. “Yes?”

  “Miss Susan Burgade?”

  “Yes,” she said, puzzled.

  “Your daddy asked me to come over, make sure you’re all right. Expecting some hard cases in town this morning, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, not altogether sure of him. “I did hear something a little while ago. Is my father all right?”

  “He’s fine, ma’am. You mean that explosion—doing some blasting up to the smelter, I think. Nothing to fret yourself about. Look, ma’am, you mind if I come inside? Your daddy asked me to keep an eye on you until this business is over with. You never know what those hard cases might try.”

  She didn’t open the door. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

  He didn’t want to show his gun out here in broad daylight. He gave her a broader smile and tipped his hat back with his left hand. “I just come down to help out with this trap of his. Sam and me go back a long way together—I worked for him back when he was heading up the railroad’s security branch. Name of Carlos O’Neill, maybe you heard him mention me.”

  “I can’t say I have,” she said, and unlatched the door hesitantly. “But I’m sure it must be all right. I’m sorry to seem so standoffish, Mr. O’Neill, but this whole thing troubles me, you know—I’m worried about my father, he shouldn’t have involved himself in all this. He’s not young.”

  “Oh, I reckon Sam can always take care of himself,” he said, pulling the screen door open and stepping inside with his smile.

  As soon as the door flapped shut behind him he showed her the gun. The smile dropped off his face as totally as if it had never been there: as if he were an actor, stepping backstage into the wings, shedding his role.

  “All right, missy,” he said in a more abrasive voice than he’d used before. “Now just keep quiet and listen to me.

  Fear quivered in her eyes. She backed up against the wall; her hand went to her mouth. “What is it—what do you want?” It was a tiny whisper.

  A faint miasmic breeze came in through the screen, stirring the tails of his duster around his legs. “Let’s go back to your room, missy, wherever you keep your things. You’ll be needing some clothes—you’re going on a little horseback trip with us.”

  Stunned, she stood back in the bedroom corner, hugging her breasts, staring at him without blinking, too unsettled to move. Provo flung open drawers and the wardrobe, found a carpetbag valise and opened it and put it on the bed. “Come on, missy, I don’t know what sort of things you need. You pack it yourself.”

  She shook her head, mute. There was a thread of moisture on her upper lip. Her face, which had flooded with color in the beginning, had gone unnaturally pale. Her eyes were very large.

  He took two strides and cuffed her hard across the cheek. It rocked her head to one side and left red fingermarks. She reached up with one hand to touch her cheek; she blinked and drew a ragged breath. “You—you’re Provo.”

  “That’s right, missy.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at him.

  “Time’s wasting,” he said. “I don’t want to hit you again.” He pointed his gun toward the open valise.

  Moving like a sleepwalker, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers and began taking things out without discrimination and throwing them into the valise. She went to the wardrobe and took down denim trousers and a shirt and stuffed them in on top. Provo saw an oilskin rain slicker hanging inside and reached for it. “Better take this along too.”

  When she seemed done, he buckled the valise shut and carried it into the front of the house, prodding the girl ahead of him. “Sit down at the table over there and write me a note for your old man.”

  Her face came around, hollow and pallid. “What?”

  “We wouldn’t want him to fret about you, would we? He might get all het up if he didn’t know where you’d gone. Now you just sit down there and write him a little note. Tell him you’ve gone away with Zach Provo.”

  “Gone—gone away where?”

  “I guess he doesn’t need to know that, does he, missy?” He shoved her toward the inkstand.

  She still wore her sunbonnet—she must have been out hanging wash on the line. She looked little-girlish when she sat down hesitantly and reached for the pen, dipped it into the inkwell and poised it above a sheet of paper. “I——”

  “I don’t care what you tell him, missy, but write something.” He smiled slightly: “I ain’t illiterate, if it matters. I’ll want to read what you’ve written. But it doesn’t matter what you say. Go ahead now.”

  The nib of the pen scratched across the paper in jerky squeaks. The silence began to unnerve Provo and he stepped forward to read over the girl’s shoulder. She shrank away from him but continued writing until she had filled most of the sheet. Then tears began to drip from her eyes, blurring the writing, and Provo took the pen out of her hand and gripped her by the elbow. “That’s enough. We’re leaving now.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please, I beg you, don’t—”

  He steered her toward the door, professing not to have heard her. When they reached the screen he stopped her. “I’ve got this gun in my hand under my coat, missy, and there’s a big man out at the curb by the name of Will Gant, a good dear friend of mine. You try to bolt for it and one of us’ll put a bullet in your leg, hear? Now you just walk out there right in front of me and climb on that horse and ride out of town between us, and there won’t be any trouble. Nobody means to hurt you, just remember that. I just mean to make your old man sweat awhile and use you for a hostage to make sure we get safe conduct out of this bailiwick. You hear me, missy?”

  She nodded and swallowed.

  He squeezed her arm. “Say it, missy. Say you hear me and you understand me and you ain’t going to act foolish.”

  “I understand,” she said weakly.

  He tightened his grip on her valise, showed her the gun, slipped it back under his coat and nodded to her. She opened the screen door and stepped outside.

  He stayed close behind her down the walk. Will Gant stood watching, burly and muscular, thighs bulging against his trousers. His eyes frankly coveted the girl’s body but Gant said nothing that might have displayed surprise. Provo said, “Meet Miss Burgade, Will. She’s going to ride with us a way.”

  Gant smiled and tugged at a black nostril hair. His thick lips peeled back. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

  “Climb aboard, missy. Time to go.”

  Four

  Carrying the tearstained note, Sam Burgade went, as if against his will, into his daughter’s room. It was sunny in there, the muslin curtains stirring in a warm breeze, womanly things scattered around in disarray, drawers flung open, the wardrobe standing ajar.

  Burgade’s face kept changing. Muscles stood ridged at his jaw hinges and the bones at brow and cheek became harder, more prominent.

  He pushed his solemn glance at things in the room as if to engrave them indelibly on his memory. Then he strode out of the
house and marched, not running, around half the block to Packers little grocery. Packer had a telephone. Burgade got through to the sheriffs office.

  Noel Nye’s voice came at him, scratchy and distant “Oh, there you are. Listen, that big noise from up on the hills, it was them. They blowed up the smelter safe. Left one of their own dead behind—one of my boys recognized him, Lee Roy Tucker. It was them convicts, all rat. They tooken off with a coupla hundred dollars petty caish.”

  “That’s not all they’ve taken,” Burgade said. “Susan’s gone.”

  Nye came into the house wiping his face on his shirtsleeve. His face in all its clubbed ugliness was full of forlorn dignity. “Captain, I cain’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Yeah.” Burgade’s scalp contracted.

  “Well, we doin’ everthang we can to get her back, Captain. Everbody owns a horse and a gun’s out there beatin’ the brush for sign.”

  “Out where?”

  The sheriff spread his hands. “Mostly up in the mountains back of the smelter.”

  “They didn’t go that way. They had to come by here to collect my daughter. They didn’t have her with them when they robbed the smelter, did they? Well, then—they must have come this way. From here they could only head up the valley toward Phoenix or up into the Catalinas.”

  “Sure, Captain, you’re rat. Too much goin’ on rat now, I reckon—I ain’t been thanking straight. Hell, I better not set around here and jaw all day.” He clapped on his campaign hat and swung to the door.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “But—”

  “She’s my daughter, Noel.”

  “Sure enough. Hell, come on, then.”

  At noon a council of war was held in the sheriffs office. Reports came in by telephone from the edges of the city. Nothing came in from beyond the town limits; the cross-country wires were down somewhere, doubtless cut by Provo’s men. It might take the linemen a day to find the breaks and repair them.

  “In the meantime,” Sheriff Nye said judiciously, “let’s sort out what we do know. They’s probably eight of them. Five men was seen at the smelter office but one’s dead, Tucker. That’s four, and one to hold the horses makes five. Sixth man down the road between the smelter and town to cut the telephone. Seventh and eighth at both ends of Tucson to cut the wares. All rat. We got to figure they all of ’em armed to the teeth. They cut crosst along the Rillito, I reckon, so they must of rendezvoused somewheres up in the foothills of the Catalinas. That’s where most of our people are lookin’ now. Captain, how do you tote it?”

  Burgade was sitting toward the back of the room, dry-washing his hands. Heads swiveled toward him—the mayor, the chief of police, the undersheriff, the editor of the Star, three or four councilmen, the county supervisor, and the prosecuting attorney. They all watched him with grave concern.

  “They’re on horseback,” Burgade said slowly, weighing his words. “You can’t hope to block off the roads and railroads and catch them that way. They’ve got to be tracked, the old way, by men on horseback. That’s how I tote it.”

  The mayor said, “But is that wise, Sam? If they catch sign of pursuit won’t it put Susan in danger?”

  “She’s in danger with them at all times,” Burgade said in a flat voice. “They expect to be tracked. Provo’s not a stupid man. He took my daughter because he wanted revenge against me—a personal thing. But he also took her because he wanted a hostage, and that means that wherever he’s planning to go, he realizes he won’t be able to hide his back trail. If he planned to head directly into Mexico and hide out in the Sierras he’d have killed Susan by now—she’d only slow him down. No, he——”

  “Wait, Sam,” the prosecuting attorney said “I don’t know how to put this so it won’t twist the knife. But how do we know they haven’t already killed Susan?”

  “They made her pack several changes of clothes.”

  “Is that conclusive enough?”

  “It is to me. Provo wants to keep her alive. He knows if we find her dead, nothing on earth will stop me from finding him and putting him to the most painful death it’s possible for a man to have. No. She’s alive. As long as she’s alive with him, I bleed and he knows I’m bleeding and he also knows I’ve got to keep my distance.”

  “The goddamned bastard’s clever,” the mayor said. “As clever a fiend as——”

  “Let’s not waste time calling him names.” Burgade’s eyes were flinty, glittering, unfathomable: he kept his feelings strictly to himself. His voice was level, under total control. “There’s no reason why any of you should abide by my judgment any longer. I’m the one who created this disaster. I’m responsible for what’s happened this morning—Susan wouldn’t be gone and the smelter office wouldn’t have been blown up if my scheme hadn’t drawn Provo here. Replacing that vault will cost thousands—you might advise the manager that I’m prepared to make restitution to whatever limits my savings can cover. Now, as to the——”

  “Nonsense,” the mayor exploded. “You can’t possibly be held to blame for the mindless animal savaging of these beasts. If anything, the smelter’s in your debt—you advised them to postpone their payday, otherwise the vault would have been full of cash.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Burgade said. “We’re getting off the point. I don’t have the power to insist that anybody heed my advice after what happened this morning, but what I’m going to do is provision myself with a horse and some weapons and get on Provo’s track. I intend to stick to the track until I can get my daughter out of their hands and then I intend to kill Provo and his crew the way you’d kill a pack of rabid wolves, I’m speaking for myself. I’d be obliged for company but I’ve got no authority to ask for it.”

  He put his hands on his knees and stood up slowly, feeling old in his joints, feeling as if a fist had slammed him low in the belly and crumpled him. Dry-eyed, he walked to the door.

  He hired the best horse Ochoa had in the stable and a good solid double-rig saddle with plenty of concho strings and a leather rifle boot and a long skirt behind the cantle across which provisions could be strapped. He had to hold in the nervous prancing gelding on his way down the crowded streets; the horse danced along half-sideways. He tethered it to the gatepost in front of his house and went inside to make up a field pack for himself.

  He chose each item with studied care. A lightweight rawhide rope, sixty feet long, coiled in a tight ring. A two-quart water canteen. Blanket-roll and rain slicker. Folding pocket knife and a nine-inch fighting knife in a leather scabbard slotted for threading over a gunbelt. Antiseptic and bandage cloth. A folding razor, not for whisker-shaving but for use as a weapon, a slicing blade, and a snakebite remedy. Gloves and a fleece-lined mackinaw for the high country, if the trail should take him that way. Flint-and-wheel firelighter and a waterproof oilskin pouch of sulfur matchsticks. His old Army-style mess kit, with its accordion-collapsible cooking pot and coffee cup, its mated locked cookpans and utensils. Soap, a spare shirt, underdrawers, socks, a thick soft pair of Hopi moccasins, a coil of strong fine fishing line, twine ball, towel, field glasses, steel picket stake, rope hobbles. He packed it all together with tight efficiency, most of it inside the, blanket-roll and the rest in saddlebags which he left as empty as possible to accommodate food and ammunition.

  He went into the front room and unlocked the gun chain. Took down the Springfield bolt-action .30-06. He weighted the saddlebags down with ammunition and went outside carrying canteen, blanket-roll, saddlebags, and rifle. Stowed them all aboard the horse and climbed up into the saddle and rode at a trot around to Packer’s grocery. He went inside and bought enough provisions, as concentrated as he could find, to fill a small gunnysack, which he tied on top of the blanket-roll with piggin’ strings.

  That was it, then. He couldn’t think of anything he’d forgotten. He put his foot in the stirrup and gathered the reins and hoisted himself up. It was a stiff climb for an old man: he had to lift his right leg high over the pile of prov
isions. He got settled with half his weight on the balls of his feet in the wood stirrups, adjusted the reins in the fingers of his left hand, tugged his hatbrim down tight, and clucked to the horse.

  Sheriff Nye came up the street with a mounted posse—young Hal Brickman, very graven-faced, and eight or nine deputies.

  “Here you are,” Nye said. “Thought we missed you back at the house.”

  “Why,” Sam Brigade said, “I’m obliged, Noel.”

  “My job, ain’t it, Captain?”

  They found the camp in Rose Canyon at about four in the afternoon. There was no mistake about it because a bit of cloth clung to an obvious branch. It was torn off Susan’s sunbonnet, the one she wore around the house on washday.

  “Message from Zach Provo,” Burgade drawled. The surfaces of his eyes glittered like hard gems.

  Nye said, “They cain’t have more than four, five hours’ jump on us’” He turned back to his horse. “Come on, the trail don’t get no shorter while we set here staring at it”

  Burgade saw Hal Brickman’s eyebrows contract. The young man was staring around the creek-bank camp ground with a grief-stricken look that was no sham; he had kept it to himself on the ride up from Tucson but he was beginning to look as if he was ready to let loose. He cut a faintly ludicrous figure in his narrow snap-brim hat and dude jodhpurs, a revolver buckled awkardly around his waist, high up in one of those Army-style holsters with a protective snap-down flap. If he’d carried his gun inside his saddlebag it might have been a little harder to reach, but not much. Still, his earnest anger was genuine and he had not whimpered. In other circumstances, Burgade might have had a great deal of room for sympathy toward him: Hal’s anguished face was evidence enough of the sincerity of his love for Susan and the agony of not knowing what he could do to save her.

  Nye was down on one knee. “Look here, Captain.”