The Last Hard Men

by Brian Garfield

  Burgade stamped the Springfield butt plate down. It squashed Quesada’s skull like an egg.

  He dragged Quesada into the bushes and stepped out immediately onto the track, walking uphill at a slow gait. The third man was out there somewhere; if that man looked this way and saw a figure walking up behind Gant, he’d think it was still Quesada.

  He walked around a few bends and saw Gant up ahead. Gant had reached the horses. He was standing splayfooted, looking down at the point where Burgade’s bootprints disappeared. His back was broad, slightly hunched over.

  Burgade lifted the Springfield. He had a brief moment’s hesitation about shooting a man in the back. But death was no different because of the direction from which it came. He took aim and placed his shot with care. The Springfield laid its hard echo across the night and Gant reeled forward, spinning, his head turning on bulging neck tendons, his mouth sagging in stupefaction.

  Gant pitched to the ground and rolled over. A back shot was always risky: even a .30-06 could deflect off one of the heavy ribs. And Gant had the size and constitution of a truck horse. The bullet had not put him away. He was grievously hurt—he made no move toward his guns, he sat on the ground supported by both arms and hardly moved, nor did he look up toward Burgade.

  That third man was out there somewhere, alerted by the shot. Burgade began to turn into the forest. But then he stopped and deliberately shot Gant in the head.

  A wounded man might shoot him in the back. A dead man wouldn’t. And Gant was one of those who had raped Susan.

  The horses went crashing away. Burgade left Gant there asprawl, dead or too close to it to make any difference. He slipped into the woods to his right and began to stalk the third man.

  He headed into the general quadrant where the man ought to be. It didn’t take long to rouse a response. The man was rattled, and evidently had no rifle; a pistol opened up from a considerable range. Dropping belly-flat, Burgade heard the slugs ricochet off branches and twigs. He saw the thudding muzzle-flames and dragged the Springfield up to his shoulder and fired.

  There was a scream of metal on metal. He saw something arc through the air, something that glittered with a dark oily shine. He knew what it was: his shot, by chance, had struck the man’s pistol—not unlikely, since the lancing muzzle-flash had been his aiming point.

  Burgade rolled swiftly, two times over, and came to rest propped on both elbows, six feet to one side of the point from which he had fired. He didn’t want his opponent to do the same thing to him—use his gun-flame for a target. No telling how many guns the man might have on him.

  Nothing. The man didn’t know where he was; the man wasn’t shooting. Patience quickly drained out of Burgade. He could spend forever waiting. He didn’t have time—only this one was left, then there’d be nobody behind him when he went for Provo and the rest. He had to take this one out, and he didn’t want to spend all night at it. He got up and began to move forward.

  He moved bent over double; crept from tree to tree. Steady and slow: there was no margin for carelessness. It took him fifteen minutes to cross the two hundred feet to where the man had stood to shoot at him, and when he got there the man had faded away into the night. All Burgade found was the smashed pistol.

  His bullet had crushed the slide. It was a .45 automatic pistol. No wonder the man hadn’t hit him at that range. It was hard to hit anything with an automatic. Especially if you’d spent the past few years in prison where you couldn’t keep in practice.… He jerked himself back: his mind had been drifting. What a hell of a time to wander off into speculations about guns and prisons.

  Flat against a tree, he swept the surroundings. The man might be right around here, frozen in ambush. Or the man might have gone after the horses to get away.

  Gamble that he made for the horses. Burgade moved out. It was a risk, but everything was. The men had been rousted by the grass fire, they hadn’t had time to gather belongings. They’d made their run for it in confusion. It was worth the gamble that the automatic had been the man’s only weapon and that now, without a gun, he was on the run. Burgade took a chance and hurried: he wanted to get the man before he got on a horse and rode out of range.

  The noise had driven the horses up in the direction of the mountain passes, but it was doubtful they’d gone very far. Burgade decided to check them out. If he didn’t find the missing man he’d give up on him, get aboard one of the horses, and go around after Provo after scooping up the dead men’s weapons, Gant’s and Quesada’s.…

  That’s two, he thought savagely. Two stupid mistakes tonight. Of course that was where the man was headed. Not for the horses. But back to the trail—to get Gant’s gun, or Quesada’s. And by now it was probably too late to stop him.

  In a bleak rage, embittered by his own blunders, Burgade wheeled back toward the trail, crowded by urgency. He came swinging past the thick dark bole of a pine, and that was when Portugee Shiraz jumped him with a knife.

  His sluggish reflexes wouldn’t have been enough to save him if he hadn’t been moving faster than a man ought to move through dark timber with an enemy nearby. Shiraz plunged out from behind the tree, whipping the knife up in a wicked arc that should have split him from crotch to chestplate. But Shiraz hadn’t expected him to be moving so fast. Shiraz had to correct his aim and when Burgade’s slow reflexes took effect and began to wheel him to one side, the knife lodged point-first against his breastbone with Shiraz’s dark lean weight behind it.

  Burgade was in momentum: his unstoppable forward lunge knocked Shiraz’s arm aside. The knife had pricked the skin and scraped the hard bone, that was all, and now he was falling-away to the side in unbalanced reaction to the collision.

  Shiraz was faster, surer on his feet. He had his balance now and he was closing fast against the threat of the rifle. Shiraz’s boot slammed down on top of the rifle, banging Burgade’s knuckles against the earth. The knife was whipping forward again but Burgade saw it in time and blocked Shiraz’s wrist with his own; locked his fist around the dark forearm and twisted, pulling, using Shiraz’s own fast-moving inertia to propel him past. Shiraz went right over him. Shiraz’s boot slipped and turned on the hard surface of the rifle and when Shiraz fell, the rifle skittered away into the brush, propelled by his skidding bootsole.

  Burgade rolled over violently, away from Shiraz, and fumbled for his holster.

  It was empty.

  The revolver had fallen out when he’d rolled over—and Shiraz was coming at him now, no time to hunt for it. He scrabbled away from the attack, getting his feet under him, and Shiraz tripped. Shiraz didn’t fall, but it gave Burgade time to get on his feet. When Shiraz had finished windmilling his arms for balance and straightened up, Burgade was crouching, facing him, both arms wide, ready for him, watching from the pained depths of his red sleepless eyes.

  The air was charged with sudden quiet. Burgade’s breathing was tight and shallow, his sphincter contracted, his palms damp.

  Shiraz studied him, moving slowly with the knife circling in his outstretched fist, slowly driving Burgade back ahead of it. Shiraz’s eye sockets were sunken and charcoal-fiery, emanating hatred. He bit a hangnail on his thumb and knitted the brows of his black vulpine face. “I’m onna admire to stick this knaff in you, Burgade.”

  Burgade didn’t waste wind talking. He felt a tree at his shoulderblade: he wheeled, curled behind it, and used that brief moment of respite to whip his jacket off and wrap it around his left forearm in a heavy muff.

  Shiraz came prowling past the tree, after him, in no hurry, measuring him. Burgade kept circling. Shiraz moved closer, moving the knife in a little spiral, and then Burgade lunged, swiped his wadded coat at the knife, snagged the blade against the cloth and deflected it, spun half to one side and used his foot—cracked his heavy boot-heel against the front of Shiraz’s shin.

  It was a hard kick, almost hard enough to break the bone. Shiraz stumbled, withdrawing the knife. Burgade got both hands on the knife arm, bent it back, used his we
ight to push Shiraz over. They fell into a bush. A branch raked Burgades cheek, almost got his eye. Gripping the knife wrist, he smelled Shiraz’s sour breath and heard gristle snap in his own shoulder; he heard himself gasping.

  Shiraz’s black face was drawn with pain but he had strength and speed all over Burgade. He wrenched himself aside and broke Burgade’s grip and fell off the bush, never losing his grip on the knife handle. The blade ripped away the jacket from Burgade’s arm and Shiraz rolled free.

  Burgade batted his arms at the bush getting free, ripped his flesh on nettles, spun toward Shiraz and, when the man got his hands down to lift himself off the ground, kicked Shiraz in the face.

  Shiraz’s head rocked back. Burgade kicked him again. He heard the snap of cartilage in Shiraz’s nose; blood sprayed over his boot and Shiraz cried out. Burgade stamped his boot down on the knife hand and twisted his boot, grinding, until the fingers splayed open. He reached down, scooped up the knife, and plunged it up in a short sweeping arc into Shiraz’s exposed belly.

  He yanked the knife out and stood wobbling, unable to get breath into his throat.

  Shiraz’s hands clutched his belly, trying to hold the blood in.

  Burgade straightened up very slowly, soaked in his own juices. There was a powerful tremor behind his knees. Vomit pain convulsed his stomach but he stood there motionless and watched Shiraz fall back onto the earth. The hands dropped away and when blood stopped spurting from the long slash he knew the heart had stopped pumping. Shiraz’s mouth hung open, the bad teeth exposed, eyes open and staring at the moon.

  He made sure Shiraz was dead. He closed the eyelids and went prowling for his guns. Found them, straightened up, and said to himself, “Horse, next.” And then the reaction hit him: a chill, a tremor, a hot flush that prickled his scalp. He closed his eyes and felt a dizzy nausea, bright red flickers on the insides of his eyelids, a trembling faintness against which he locked the muscles of his stomach and pectoris and biceps. His whole body began to shake. He had to cling to a tree. There was a wave of flaccid weakness, almost unconsciousness. The quaking tremor seized him again, and he had to grip the tree with all his strength.

  Finally the spasm passed. His muscles loosened. He gasped for breath, sucking and gulping; he felt very cold.

  The horses had gone farther than he had anticipated. Their track was easy enough to follow, even after the moon descended, but he had to stop and rest three times and didn’t catch up with them until almost dawn. Then he just sat down near them and let them get used to having him around, smelling him, watching him. He closed his eyes momentarily, his head back against a tree trunk, but jerked them open immediately. He’d almost fallen asleep.

  Methodically he filled the magazine of the Springfield from the loose shells in his pocket. He examined his revolver to make sure the fall in the dirt hadn’t plugged its muzzle; holstered it snuggly and had a very hard time lifting himself to his feet. He staggered toward the horses, talking low in his throat to soothe them, and although a few of them backed away with alarmed rolling eyes, two stayed put, unconcerned, and he got his hand on a trailing leather rein. He gathered the reins over the horse’s withers and tried to lift his left foot into the stirrup but he just didn’t have the strength. He closed his eyes and leaned against the saddle, dragging breath into his chest. There was a painful sting where Shiraz’s knifepoint had dug into his breastplate, but when he touched it with his fingers inside his shirt, he felt the sticky dryness of a forming scab and knew it was all right, it wasn’t bleeding. His cheek was hot with pain too—a branch had raked him—but that was no more serious than a shaving cut. He was intact, but barely; there was no energy left. Just getting on a horse was beginning to appear beyond his capacities.

  Finally he led the horse over to a steeper part of the hillside and maneuvered it around until its left side was toward the high side of the hill. It was like standing on a box beside the horse—the extra foot of ground elevation was enough for him to get his foot into the stirrup and heave himself onto the seat. He settled himself down firmly in the saddle and gigged the horse gently, and rode down the hill with the first pale streaks of dawn behind him.

  They were on foot; it was just about the only advantage he had over them—that and the fact that they must have heard the shooting and might feel half confident that Gant and Quesada and Shiraz had taken care of him. He ticked them off in his mind, those who were left against him: Provo, and Menendez, and the kid Shelby. They still had Susan. Hal was somewhere around, batting around in the hills, but he didn’t know whether Hal had waited around after setting the fire to see what happened. Hal might have gone back up the mountain to the stream where Burgade had decided to rendezvous if he’d gotten Susan away from them. If Hal had gone up there he couldn’t be expected to get back down here before mid-morning at the earliest. He dismissed Hal from his calculations.

  Daylight grew stronger as he rode slowly down through the forest. He followed the same trail the horses had used in going up. Just on sunrise he came across Gant’s undisturbed body in the trail. The odor was already heavy, a rancid stench; Gant’s color had changed in death.

  Fifty yards farther he glanced into the brush and saw Quesada where he had dragged him back off the trail. The formation of gases had bloated the corpse. Flies buzzed around his head. Here too was the sweet rotten smell of beginning decay. Insects and carrion would clean up everything but the bones, and as the bones rotted their calcium would help feed the ancient and unchangeable forest. Nature was efficient, nothing went to waste. Efficient and indifferent: the forest would not care whether, in the end, it be Zach Provo’s bones or Sam Burgade’s that stayed behind to nourish it.

  Young Shelby posed a nuisance, merely because he was a third gun to account for, but it was the other two who made it look pretty close to impossible. Provo and Menendez were faster ‘and shrewder and five times as tough as any of the others. Burgade had only vanquished Gant’s three because they had been stupid enough to split up. Provo wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. Provo would keep close to his comrades and he would keep Susan tight by him as a shield.

  But there was nothing else to do but keep taking chances until there were no chances left. Burgade rode straight on down to within twenty yards of the burnt-out meadow. The smell of smoke still hung vaguely in the air, enough to make the horse skittish, but the fire had burned itself out against the damp edge of the woods, and only the trees right along the edge had been scorched. Out there on the flat he could barely make out the scorched remains of Taco Riva’s body, where Riva had fallen off his horse with a bullet in his head and the fire had swept right over him. Heat had sucked the yellow fats out of Riva’s body and he was a pale unrecognizable mass out there with birds picking at him. Burgade turned left inside the fringe of the trees and began to work his way around toward the far side of the big meadow, where Provo had taken Susan last night. Most likely they weren’t still there, but it was the place to start tracking.

  Eleven

  Up here on the heights wind had stunted the trees and made them hunchbacked, and the steep earth was a spindly web of sunlight and shadow. The four of them stopped beside a rock parapet that commanded the western plain from the summit. From this high rim the redrock cliffs, smoothed and sanded by millennia of hard west winds, pitched down a thousand feet, almost vertically, into the dropaway mountains below and the desert plain beyond. The razorback summit was so narrow that from this vantage point Zach Provo could see across the divide in both directions, east and west, without moving his feet: the precipice to the west, the steplike tiers of wooded mountains to the east—the way they had just come.

  Provo removed his tattered duster. The coat had flowed and flapped, ripped on nettles, hampered him terribly, but he had kept it because its pockets were filled with beef jerky and water flask, spyglass and rifle ammunition. He hadn’t salvaged much, there hadn’t been time with flames rushing maddeningly into camp, and he’d had his hands full with the girl. Now he took o
ff the coat and threw it on the ground to free his arms and body from its hampering folds.

  Menendez, seeing him throw the coat down, gave him a hooded look that indicated Menendez knew what the act meant. It meant this was as far as they were going.

  Provo’s filthy shirt clung to him like the skin of a prune. In his way he had always been fastidious and the stink of himself offended him.

  Chalk that up to Sam Burgade too, he thought, and glanced at Susan. She sat with loosely sprawled legs, rumpled, filthy, and too beaten to care. The wind blew her long hair across her face and she didn’t comb it away. There were raw red patches on her face and throat that must have come from Gant’s beard, and Shiraz’s and Quesada’s.

  He took note of Menendez’s restless eyes combing the timber slopes behind. A few yards away, Mike Shelby sat down slowly, rocking with groggy fatigue. They were all living on their nerves.

  Menendez said, “Let me have that glass, eh?” And put it to his eye and squinted. Following the direction of its aim, Provo saw he was looking down toward the big meadow four thousand feet below and more than four miles east—where they had camped before. It was a flat black waste now, all coals and ashes.

  Menendez handed him the glass. “That little yellow patch,” he said, “that most be Taco. I thought I es-seen him go down las’ night. Focking bast—”

  “He’s dead,” Provo said. “Cussing won’t help.” He folded the telescope and put it down: he didn’t need it to see the buzzards congregating around the three places on the slopes beyond the meadow. And there was a man on horseback coming up behind them: they had spotted him half an hour ago, a couple of miles below them, patiently tracking. If it was any of their own men he’d be coming along faster. It was Burgade, or Burgade’s partner, whoever that was.