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When he concluded the call he went outside with Nye and propped his shoulder against the front of the building. He was too tired to stand up without support. He said, “They cut the lines somewhere between here and Winslow. That’s only a thirty-five mile stretch, so we’ve got a fair idea where they went across the Santa Fe tracks. It’s my guess they crossed over close to the east end of Winslow. Two or three big outfits right around there where they might pick up fresh horses and provisions. From there, on a horseback guess, I’d say they’d go north along the Little Colorado as far as Corn Creek and head into the rough country from there.”
“That’s prob’ly as good a guess as any,” Nye said. “But it don’t make no never-mind now, does it? They bound to be acrosst the line by morning. We ain’t go
“Maybe. Let’s go down to the railroad depot.”
“Now that’s an idea.”
They commandeered a switching engine and caboose and left their horses behind; they piled into the caboose with their saddles and kit. Burgade stretched out on a trainman’s bunk and went immediately and thoroughly to sleep. Less than an hour later someone shook him awake. He came pawing up out of his coma like a man fighting an ocean undertow. Nye said, “The boys scared us up some horses.”
“What time is it?”
“Little after two.”
“We’ve still got a chance, then. We must have picked up four or five hours on them.”
“Don’t count on nothing, Captain—don’t be gettin’ yo’ hopes up.”
Winslow town was dead asleep. Burgade stepped down off the caboose and saw Hal Brickman waiting with a pair of horses. Everybody else was already mounted. It registered fuzzily on Burgade’s brain that the waiting horse was already cinched-up and ready to ride. Somebody had saddled up for him; they had let him sleep the extra minutes. It made him spiteful: he didn’t want to be humored or pampered. He climbed aboard, compressing his lips and gamely swinging his leg over, trying not to let them see how close he came to not making it.
He tugged his hat down. “Somebody’s missing.”
“Deppity Wellard,” Nye said. “Provo turned loose of those horses he stole off your friend Rinehart. I told Wellard he could take the horses on back to Rinehart’s and then go home—he was pret’ near played out anyhow. For that matter ain’t none of us in no fit shape for this, Captain. I’m only statin’ a fact. We ain’t quitting.”
“Where’d they find Rinehart’s horses?”
“Just outside the. ranch over there where we hired these. Nobody seen them swap horses but they must of done it not more’n two, three hours ago. Yeah, you was rat—they did come here.” Quiet respect echoed in Nye’s voice.
Settling his stirrups, Burgade caught Hal Brickman’s worried glance. Hal didn’t say anything. Hal hadn’t said much of anything for three days. He was a poor horseman and must be in saddle-blistered agony by now. But his jaw was thick with determination. A good man, Burgade judged: Hal had backbone. Burgade would get Susan back for him. Or die trying. Very likely the latter, he observed without passion.
Burgade’s posse left Winslow at a canter, steel-shod hoofs drumming in the starlight, along the right bank of the Little Colorado River toward the Navajo desert. It was just ten or twelve miles west of here that Provo had robbed the Santa Fe train twenty-eight years ago.
Seven
“Slow and easy, now,” Provo’s voice said in the darkness. “We won’t get another change of horses—these are going to have to do us.” The heavy, raspy voice reached Mike Shelby’s ears dimly, as if through a strong crosswind. Everything was a little hazy in Shelby’s consciousness; all he wanted in the world was sleep. The horse moved like a rocking chair under him and he had to fight to stay upright on the saddle; several times he almost fell off. At times he thought he’d have preferred to stay in the penitentiary and serve out his time. But he’d only served six months and had another nine and a half years to go. He guessed it would all depend on whether Provo was telling the truth about splitting up his buried cache of railroad gold. In the first place Shelby didn’t trust anybody much, and in the second place nobody was a hundred percent sure Provo even had the gold, let alone was willing to part with it. But one thing was certain: Provo was twice as trail-wise as any of the rest of them. Provo wasn’t just bragging when he kept reminding them that without him they’d have been captured a long time ago and sent back to the hole with years added on to their sentences: Provo knew every trick in the book and some that weren’t in any book. But Shelby didn’t like him much and didn’t trust him anymore than he trusted anybody else. Shelby hadn’t trusted anybody since his mother had run off with a drummer in Nineteen-ought-Five. He’d never known who his father was. His mother had kept company with a lot of men but at least she’d looked after her kid, until the drummer came along. Then she left him behind without even saying good-bye, as if he was an old towel she didn’t want to bother to pack.
He was nineteen years old—twenty next month—but he’d covered a lot of ground in his time. He’d been eleven when his mother had left Lordsburg. The fat old Mexican woman who ran the Occidental Café had taken him in, given him bed and board in exchange for the chores Shelby did around the place. About all he could remember about her was standing in the kitchen watching her slap big old corn tortillas from one fat arm to the other. He hadn’t stayed long; after his mother pulled out he didn’t like Lordsburg much at all. One night he’d stolen a horse and saddle and headed for Silver City. The truant officer picked him up less than five miles out of Lordsburg. They sent him to the county work farm for a year and he met some older and tougher kids there. Shelby was a quick learner. He had a talent for picking the toughest and brightest people around and studying how they did things. He’d hooked up with a fifteen-year-old named Dick Larson and they’d become good friends. When they got out of the work farm they’d hitched over into Texas and terrorized the El Paso area for a winter, living like nomadic savages by stealing chickens and selling stolen horses over in Mexico. When Dick Larson judged it was time, they’d moved on. They’d hung around Brownsville for a while and then drifted back west, on over to Nogales after a couple of years.
Shelby’d been fifteen when he had his first woman, a whore on the Mexican side of Nogales. He and Dick Larson had taken turns with the whore and then robbed her of all her cash and headed back into Arizona.
Dick Larson had an old dime novel, dog-eared and yellowed, about the great train robber Zach Provo, and after reading the whole thing Dick Larson had decided it was easy, the next thing they’d do was rob a train. But the express guard had opened up on them and killed Dick Larson and Shelby had barely got away with his skin.
He’d been lonely after that, almost as much as when his mother had walked out on him. It proved to Shelby that you couldn’t depend on anybody for long. He’d lone-wolfed it, strictly, ever since.
He’d done all right until last year when that stupid storekeeper knocked the gun out of his hand and turned him in for armed robbery. Two or three other storekeepers turned up and identified him for several previous crimes, including one he hadn’t done, but they convicted him of that one too. He’d gone to Yuma and about the only worthwhile, thing about that was meeting Zach Provo.
Shelby had remembered the name from the old dime novel, and meeting Provo in the flesh had been something like meeting royalty. Too much water had gone under the bridge for Shelby to try to team up with Provo the way he had with Dick Larson; anyhow Provo wasn’t the type who encouraged hangers-on. But Shelby knew he could learn a lot by watching Provo and studying how Provo worked, He was only, nineteen and with luck he had a lot of years ahead of him, but if he was going to survive he had to learn everything there was to learn. Provo was about as good a man to study as any, even if he had been caught and spent twenty-eight years in Yuma. Everybody had bad luck now and then. It didn’t mean Provo was anybody’s fool.