The Last Hard Men

by Brian Garfield

  Menendez said softly, “The viejo is quite a esstemwinder, ain’t he?” There was admiration in his voice.

  Provo stared at him with eyes hard as glass.

  Mike Shelby said in a cranky worn-out voice, “The bastard’s like some kind of mirage.” Shelby’s trousers were charred. He was whacked-out tired, but Provo could sense the tension in him: Shelby crouched like an exhausted beast still ready to spring.

  Menendez moved to a new vantage point, clutching the rifle. It was the only one among them. They all had their handguns, but there was only the one rifle left, and that made it bad.

  Shelby lifted his head with an effort. “Listen, we’ll never lose him, hell chase us clear to Canada.”

  “Nobody can chase you if you don’t run,” Provo said.

  “The hell. You want to stay put and end up like Gant and those others?”

  “Nobody’s quitting. Not until I get his hide nailed to the barn.”

  “Zach, we tried, it was no good. To hell with the old man.”

  “I’m paying you to help me kill him.”

  “You ain’t paid us nothing yet.”

  “There’s thirty-eight thousand in gold left down there. Right down there within half a mile of where we camped. Three caches, two hundred yards apart. You want it, Mike?”

  “It? You mean all of it?”

  “It’s yours to split with Menendez.”

  He saw Menendez’s face change.

  But Shelby said, “Maybe so. Maybe you can pay for my help, Zach, but you ain’t got enough gold to pay for my life.”

  Provo said, “Suit yourself, Mike. But you said it yourself. He’ll track you all the way to Canada. You may as well make a stand and help us finish him off here.”

  “I never should’ve trusted you,” Shelby muttered. “I should’ve learned a long time ago not to trust anybody.”

  “Christ,” Provo said in contempt, “you’re not dead yet.”

  “Why don’ you two es-shut up?”

  Menendez was right. They were reduced to petty bickering. Provo clamped his jaw shut and turned to sweep the canyons behind them.

  He stiffened. “There he is. Menendez!”

  “I see him.” Menendez had the rifle up, but he didn’t shoot. Down below, the horseman was making a quick dash across an open stretch, moving from right to left. Only a quarter of a mile or so—not much more than four hundred yards, well within maximum rifle range. But Menendez was right not to shoot. At that range it would take Menendez’s rifle bullet more than a full second to travel to the target. In a full second a horse would cover thirty feet of ground or more. Shooting downhill was chancy at best; against a narrow target moving sideways it was hopeless. The horseman disappeared into the timber.

  Provo’s voice grated hoarsely. “It’s Burgade, all right.” He made a quick quarter-turn and pointed with his arm. “He’ll come through that notch. He’ll be coming right toward us so it won’t matter how fast he’s moving. Give me the rifle, Menendez, and get down there in those trees inside of handgun range of him. We’ll crossfire him.”

  Menendez tossed him the rifle without objection and vaulted into the trees. He went out of sight into the timber and Provo settled down against a rock, bracing the rifle on the clearing where he knew Burgade would appear if Burgade kept on the boot tracks.

  But Burgade didn’t show up. An overwhelming anxiety slowly poisoned Provo’s patience.

  Shelby said, “He’s not that dumb, Zach.”

  “Shut up.”

  “He won’t show himself. You know he won’t.”

  Provo kept his eyes fixed on the clearing below. “Listen, you just keep watch on missy and let me handle the old man. He ain’t going to get close to us as long as we’ve got a gun on her. You just think about all that gold down there.”

  “Yeah,” Shelby said, but his voice was unsteady.

  Provo cocked the rifle and squinted through the shimmer of sunlight. A pulse thudded in his eyes. He curled his hand sensuously around the grip of the rifle, caressed the trigger with his finger. Come on, he thought. Come on, now. He was going to break Burgade’s right shoulder with the first bullet. Then take him apart limb by limb. It was going to take Burgade a long time to die.

  Twelve

  The sun flickered through the pines like a moving signal lamp. Burgade reined in. The tracks went on up through the trees, out across a little clearing and up toward the summit not far beyond. Provo had to be forted up somewhere between here and there, trying the same kind of ambush he himself had used last night against Quesada. It had to be that way, because Provo had his back to the cliff that dropped away on the west face of the summits. Somewhere in the next three hundred yards, Provo was waiting.

  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 h
is 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 for his breathing to settle down. He wasn’t much of a runner anymore. He bunched his legs and made a run for a higher pine.

  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.”

  “You weren’t up at the creek so I came back. I saw the tracks coming up this way.”

  “Lucky you didn’t ride into an ambush.”

  “What was that shooting, then?”

  “Menendez,” Burgade said. He motioned to Hal to dismount. “Come on—back this way, they’ve got the clearing under a gun.”

  He walked slowly up through the pines. It was an effort just talking to Hal: he spoke in short bursts, his breath coming thin and fast. “There’s only two of them left now. Provo and the kid. Up there with Susan.”

  Hal stared at him. “What happened to the rest of them?”

  “Dead.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Hal said in awe. He caught sight of Menendez; stopped and swallowed.

  Burgade said, “Help me get him on his horse.”

  “Put my hat on him,” Burgade said.

  Hal had to get up on his own horse to reach Menendez’s head. Menendez sat slumped on the saddle, hands tied onto the horn by the ends of the reins.

  Burgade pointed along the slope. “Lead his horse over there with you. Wait on the edge of the trees, don’t show yourself. Take a post behind a good big tree and don’t stick anything out except one eye and your rifle. Give me fifteen minutes to get up there and then whip this horse up the trail. And then start shooting.”

  “Shooting? At what?”

  “The rocks below the summit. Don’t aim higher, you might hit Provo but then again you might hit Susan with a ricochet. Unless you see a perfect target don’t try. Just make noise. It’ll rattle them and the noise will help cover my approach. Have you got plenty of ammunition?”

  “In my saddlebags.”

  “Get it. When you get over there, take off your hat and fill it with loose ammunition and keep it on the ground beside you where you can get at it fast. Keep a steady volley of fire going—use up everything you’ve got until you get down to the last ten or twelve cartridges. You’ll want to save those, you may need them if they cut me down. You understand it all?”

  “I ought to be the one to go up there. You’re in bad shape.”

  “I know the drill—you don’t. It comes down to that.”

  Hal brooded. “Christ.”

  Burgade turned and got his rifle. “Better make it twenty minutes,” he said bleakly. “That’s a stiff climb for old bones.”

  He had to go through shoulder-high scrub trees; he went on his belly, and halfway to the top he stopped to study the rim. It was a long razorback parapet. Probably not more than a few yards wide at the top, with the cliff dropping away on the far side. There were big boulders scattered around, smoothed by the wind. Only one way to get up there from here without exposing himself to a withering fire from the rim—go along to the left and circle up through the field of boulders. It would be taking a chance they weren’t waiting there, rather than on top, but he had a feeling they were all the way up on the summit because it was the only place from which they could see down their own backtrail and shoot at pursuers.

  By now they would be getting rattled because Menendez hadn’t showed up. They were somewhere along that hundred feet of rimrock, probably looking down the trail, but from here the rocks were in the way, he couldn’t see anyone. He took a deep breath and moved forward again; there wasn’t much time.

  In the boulders a hundred feet below the top, he set the rifle down soundlessly and left it there. From here on he’d be within handgun range and a rifle would be unwieldly. He palmed the double-action in his right hand and made his way forward slowly through the boulders, feeling the dig of Menendez’s two six-guns in his waistband. The sun blas
ted down through the thin afternoon air, striking painful reflections off the rocks. He slipped forward along the high wall of a rock and paused while still behind it, in its thin stripe of shadow. The rim was only sixty or seventy feet above him, up a forty-degree pitch littered with house-size rocks. The passages between them were big enough for locomotives to get through, but there was no way to know what was on the far side without showing himself. He waited, sucking breath silently into his chest with his mouth wide open and gulping.

  He heard the sudden rataplan of hoofbeats and a startled voice, not Provo’s, shouting:

  “Jesus, that looks like Burgade!”

  And there was a quick succession of reports, crisp in the thin air. Burgade was already moving. He heard Hal’s rifle open up from down below. Bullets cranged and whined off the rocks. He climbed as fast as his halting legs would move him, scrambling through the boulders—up through a notch, onto the redrock rim—and he saw Susan immediately, with Shelby right beside her, shooting downhill at Hal’s rifle smoke.

  The hard snout of a gunbarrel rammed into Burgade’s back.

  He froze.

  Provo’s voice, breathing down his neck, said with savage satisfaction. “You’re holding a bust hand, Sam. You’re all through now. Drop the iron.”

  Fighting reflexes were not instincts. They were the product of training.

  Instinct—self-preservation—dictated obeisance. Provo had a gun in his back. Provo didn’t intend killing him on the spot; if he’d meant to do that he’d have fired already, without giving warning. No. Provo wanted him to suffer. To die slowly and know what was happening to him.

  Shelby had turned his gun toward Susan, not to kill her but to add weight to Provo’s threat.

  Burgade’s gun was already aimed at Shelby. In the split instant of time when Provo quit talking—when Provo was convinced he had his man cold—Burgade fired.

  It cost no time to shoot the man he was already aiming at. His bullet hit Shelby dead-center.

  But Burgade wasn’t watching. In the instant of pulling trigger he rammed back, twisting, elbowing Provo’s gun aside.