He was old. Too slow to get away clear with a trick that would have worked perfectly thirty years ago. Provo’s bullet exploded into his body. It propelled him bodily forward with its tremendous muzzle energy.
He hit the ground rolling. Flame streaked out of Provo’s gunbarrel. It caught Burgade in mid-turn, smashed his left arm useless, but Burgade had only one purpose in the world and Provo had made the mistake of shooting to cripple, not to kill, and now Burgade completed his falling roll and fired up from the ground, one shot with fifty years of gun training behind it, and it hit Zach Provo in the right eye. It drilled the eye socket empty, sprayed splintered bone fragments from his face. The hole filled with a bursting yellow and crimson pulp and Provo pitched backward over the rim.
Silence fell. Burgade rolled over. Susan was sitting there beside Shelby’s corpse. She didn’t move. She didn’t seem to recognize him, but she was staring at him. He moved again, felt and heard the broken ends of his bones grate together. Blood pulsed below his rib and a bone showed white. He dragged himself toward Susan. Made it to her and lay there, weak and bleeding. He reached up for her hand and clasped it, and the world went black.
A voice nearby, talking, not making sense. He listened to it but it faded in and out of his hearing. He tried to keep it, but it drifted away and he lost it, and fell away from reality again.
He had a feeling time was passing, a lot of time. A faint sense that someone was touching him, doing something to him. Water in his mouth—someone trying to make him drink. He felt a distant irritation: he wanted to be left alone. Sleep.
His eyes opened. The sky was plum-colored. Dusk. Or predawn. He was on his back, a cool wind rushed over him, whipping his white hair across his eyes. He seemed to be wrapped in tight bandaging and blankets and clothing, like a sarcophagus. He began to sort out pain, to locate the sources of agony: his arm, his left side. He couldn’t feel the fingers of his left hand at all.
He turned his head. The voice was talking again, the same soothing quiet run of talk, just one voice, a man’s, very steady and low, talking the sort of comforting nonsense you would talk to a skittish horse. There, there, now, darling, it’s ended, it’s over, you’re all right, nothings ever going to hurt you again.…
He couldn’t see the speaker. He tried to lift his head to look. He got his head an inch off the ground and dizziness overcame him. His eyelids rolled down and he fell back into darkness.
* * *
Daylight was red against his eyelids. He squinted irritably. It didn’t go away. He opened his eyes and saw the sky, fleece clouds scattered across the cobalt vastness. He turned his head.
Hal said, “He’s awake.”
Burgade spoke. “Susan.” His voice was a croak.
“She’s all right, sir. She’s fine. She’s right here.”
Hal slipped fingers under his head and lifted him up so he could see.
Susan sat crosslegged on the ground. Both hands were pressed to her temples, her face was preternaturally white, but she was looking at him and she made a tiny, jerky smile that came and went so quickly he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.
Hal said, “Here. Drink.”
The canteen touched his mouth and he sucked on it greedily. He lay back and groaned.
Hal said, “You’ve got a busted arm and a busted rib. But you’re going to be all right. We’ll just wait here until you’re mended enough to go down.”
“Weed,” Burgade said suddenly.
“I know. I’ll go down and bring him up later today, when you’re a little better.”
Eight of them, Burgade thought, and I killed seven. He felt sick but he held it down.
Wind moaned across the rim. Burgade heard halting little footsteps and when he turned his face he saw Susan getting down on her knees beside him. She reached out with both hands and cupped the sides of his face. Her eyes were very wide and glistening. He saw the tears crawl down her cheeks.
Susan removed one hand from his face and reached for Hal’s hand and drew him down beside her. Hal smiled at her and she sat there with one hand on each of them and cried it all out. Afterward Hal lifted her to her feet and held her in his arms, and Sam Burgade smiled at the sky.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1971 by Brian Garfield
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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The Last Hard Men Page 18
