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“Shee-yit.”
Provo said to Menendez, “You scout the livery barn?”
“No good, Zach. Too much law around there. But there’s ten, twelve horses in the ranch stable half a mile north of town, across the tracks. That’s where I es-stole this one.”
“Then that’s where we go now. Lead the way.”
Slow and easy. He let Taco go into the stable alone and saddle up eight horses; Taco was good enough with horses not to raise a ruckus. When he came out of the dark maw of the stable he crouched down by Provo and whispered, “Mos’ly tired old horses, Zach. Tame and slow—but what you expect on a dairy ranch?”
“They’ll do. All set?”
They rode out, swinging wide around Gila Bend; rode south all night, into the Saucedas, and at dawn raised the smoke of a country store’s cookfire. The place squatted in’ a little nest of spring-fed trees in the barren rock mountains. Provo went in at gunpoint, surprised the old store-keeper and his two hired hands, and called the men in. They tied up the locals and ate a huge meal. Provo ate by himself in the kitchen, reading the newspaper Menendez had picked up in Gila Bend last night. His face changed as he read.
They took what they wanted and made off with all the money in the place—ninety dollars—and drove off all the horses and mules, to set the locals afoot and insure it would take two or three days for word to get out that they had passed this way. Provo led them out southward, toward Ajo, and kept to that course until they had gone well beyond sight of the country store. Then he turned east along a hardpan flat where hoofmarks would be hard to track. Sooner or later the pursuit would get to the country store back there; Provo wanted the law left with the impression the fugitives had struck due south for the Mexican border.
They nooned somewhere on the northern quadrant of the Papago Reservation with Tabletop Mountain in sight to the northeast. It was all rock and scrub here, worthless land beaten by the furious sun. Provo’s eyes were gritty from lack of sleep; he’d been up fifty-odd hours. They slept the rest of the day, Provo trading off sentry hours with Menendez. The rest of the crowd seemed too bone-tired to complain about anything.
Toward sundown, he got up and stretched, hearing the ligaments crack, and walked off a piece with Menendez. He showed him the three-column story on the front page. Menendez read it laboriously, his lips moving. Finally he said, “Oh, sure. Sure.”
“Yeah,” Provo said. “Eighty thousand dollars with Sam Burgade guarding it.”
“Ain’t no co-een-cidence, Zach. You know it’s a focking trap.”
“Sure. That’s the way the old bastard’s mind works.”
“They can’t catch us so they want to draw us into Tucson.” Menendez pronounced it the Spanish way, Tooksohn. “They’ll be waiting with every gon in town.”
“Be a shame to disappoint old Sam Burgade, wouldn’t it?”
Menendez blinked at him. “You ain’t seriously thinking about goeen in there, Zach.”
“Not into Burgade’s trap, no. But we’re going into Tucson.”
“You got your brains op your ass or what? They’re waiting for us with everything they got.”
“They’re waiting for us to hit that so-called money shipment. Friday morning when Burgade picks it up at the train depot and trucks it over to the bank. What’ll you bet there ain’t no real money at all? Just an empty box for them to lug along to make it look good.”
“Sure. So why you talking about Tucson?”
“Because come Friday morning, every gun in town will be lined up at the depot and along Congress Street and at the bank. They’ll have every inch of that street covered. You know what that’s got to mean. It means they’ve got to pull deputies and bank guards off every other cash vault in town. Off the express office, off the mercantile savings-and-loan, off the hotel cash tills and the company payroll offices. Friday’s payday, right?”
Menendez smiled slowly. “If you don’t beat all, Zach.”
It was then Tuesday evening. They spent the next forty-eight hours moving into position and equipping themselves according to Provo’s plan. Thursday afternoon they made camp in Rose Canyon, in the Santa Catalinas fifteen miles northeast of Tucson. A crystal creek trickled down from canyons higher up, crowding the defile with greenery; it was cool among the trees. Provo sent young Mike Shelby into Tucson to reco
They had outfitted themselves in various village stores, going in in pairs, not attracting attention, buying what they needed with the cash they’d pilfered from the country store back in the Saucedas. Menendez wore an old straw hat that had turned an uneven brown—he’d stolen it off the hat rack in a café in Marana yesterday noon. Provo wore black stovepipe boots up to his knees, an old-fashioned brown linen duster that came down as far as the boot tops, and a peaked five-gallon hat. It was a sinister costume and he’d picked it for effect. Portugee and Lee Roy had lifted what explosives they needed from a mining construction shack up near Oracle in the Catalinas, and Menendez had augmented the arsenal with rifles and revolvers from the back room of a Marana gun shop. The theft would have been discovered by now but nobody had any reason to co
Shelby arrived at sunset, dismounted, and turned his horse over to Taco Riva. He reported:
“You were right, Zach, our best bet’s got to be the smelter mill. It’s away over west of town, a mill west of the area they’ll guard when the train comes in, and it looks like they’re go
Provo stood back against a tree, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his trousers. His face was hard, ungiving, a blue-steel hatchet. “Then there it is, you gents. Twenty thousand to split—more than two thousand apiece. A man can go a long way on two thousand dollars. What do you say?”
Lee Roy said, “You asking us or telling us?”
“I’m asking you now, Lee Roy. I can’t force you all to help me rob the paymaster.”
“Then how come you din’ ask us before?”
“I had to keep us together. It was no time to take a vote.”
George Weed said, “Hell, quit jawing. We’re all with you, Zach. And if Lee Roy don’t like it he’ll get all eight of us on his neck.”
Lee Roy said sarcastically, “I’m real timid, George. I’ll shake like a leaf if you threaten at me again.”
“Gentle down,” Provo murmured. “I’m going to pass the guns around later tonight and I don’t want you people using them on each other.”