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“Shut up.”
They batted south along the tawny earth, everybody in a bitter frame of mind. It took forty-five minutes to get beyond the line of sight of the Castle Butte village. Nye said, “Maybe you ought to ride back at least as far as the line. You know damn well they go
“I can’t waste that much time, Noel.”
The posse came to a ragged halt. Nye’s unrevealing eyes swept bleakly across them. “Moorhead, you mand swappin’ horses with the Captain? I believe you got the best horse of the bunch there.”
“I’ll keep this one” Burgade didn’t want to have to dismount and climb up again. He said, “But I’d take it kindly if some of you’d let me have a little spare food and a couple of canteens.”
“You heard the Captain. Pony up, boys.”
Hal Brickman kneed his horse forward. “I could use some provisions too, Sheriff.”
Burgade said, “Forget it, Hal.”
“No. I’m going with you.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Hal, but—”
“If I turn back now and anything happens to Susan, I’ll feel exactly the same way you’d feel. You’ve got to see that.”
A gust of wind came along, like a breath from an oven. The hovering glare had given Burgade a headache. He studied Hal over a long stretch of time and finally he said, “You stand an excellent chance of being killed if you ride with me. You accept that?”
“Yes, sir. I know I’m a greenhorn but I can shoot. I’ll do what you tell me to do.”
Nye said, “God knows you could use the hep, Captain.”
“All right, Hal. It’s your decision.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, for God’s sake.”
They looked back a couple of times and saw the posse’s dust receding to the south. Burgade chose a westerly course that kept them below the horizon, ru
An eagle passed high overhead with a steady wingbeat. The empty land was a match for Burgade’s emptiness of spirit. Sixteen million acres, Nye had said, and that was just about exactly the size of it. The Reservation sprawled all over the high desert, overlapping the boundaries of four states. Most of it was just like this—a leafless sun-blasted furnace, broken here and there by craggy mesas and cutbank arroyos and the deep-canyon tributaries of the Colorado: the Grand Canyon was just a little way to the northwest.
It was a hard-mouthed horse, a small tough gray gelding. Burgade set a pace to conserve the animals—walk, trot, canter, then walk again. The gray fought the bit at every turning.
Hal didn’t speak unless spoken to. It was a silent ride for the first hour, and then, partly to keep himself awake, Burgade began to talk. “Can you use that gun?”
“I said I could, sir.”
“I know what you said.”
“I’m a good target-shooter. I’ve never shot at a man.”
“Think it over, then. If the toughs see you with a gun in your hand they’ll assume you know how to handle it. It’ll only encourage them to use theirs first.”
“Yes, sir. But I don’t imagine they’ll need much encouraging from me.”
“Yes, I expect that’s so,” Burgade said. “Look, they’re on the run from the hangman. They killed two prison guards and left a man dead at the smelter. That makes them all equally guilty of first-degree murder in the eyes of the law. Now, even leaving Susan aside, you know what that means.”
“Yes, sir. I have a pretty good idea what they’ll do to anybody who gets in their way.”
“Keep your head down, then, and don’t smile at any strange faces. These men are quick and they’re short-fused.”
About four in the afternoon they found tracks. Burgade didn’t dismount for a close-up look. Hal said, “How do we know these are the right tracks?”
“Not likely to be more than one party this big out here today.”
“Maybe they’re older—maybe they’re from a week ago. How can you tell?”
“By the amount of dust the wind’s blown into the prints. These are only a few hours old. Look there at the horse droppings.”
There was a line of muffin-droppings, undoubtedly still soft and warm: they were still green.
The tracks went straight into the northwest. They kept moving into the waning afternoon. To keep from falling asleep Burgade told Hal everything he could remember about Provo and those of Provo’s men he had known. Hal seemed to take it all in—Portugee Shiraz’s fondness for knives, George Weed’s extraordinary skill with guns, Provo’s weakness for u
“What was his mistake?”
“He didn’t run for it when he should have. He decided to bluff it out.”
“I never did hear about that. How it really happened, I mean.”
“The Santa Fe trains used to stop for water west of Winslow on the way up the Flagstaff grade. Provo planted a whacking big charge of blasting powder along the ties where he knew the express car would stand. He didn’t know much about explosives but he didn’t take any chances. Blew up the whole car—disintegrated it sky-high. There were several guards inside, it blew them all to pieces. Provo picked up the gold while the smoke was still settling and inside of three or four minutes he was headed out on his horse. He had a banda
“But you did. How?”
“Three or four people on the train recognized him.”
“Even with a mask on?”
“Two of them were Indians. They’d known him for years. He’s got a hunched way of moving, very quick, tense. And they recognized his horse and his clothes. There wasn’t any mistake about the identification.”
“But how’d you catch him?”
“He walked into it. He spent five or six days back in the redrock country—up where he appears to be headed now. He buried the gold somewhere back there and then he went right back home to his hogan down near Salina Springs. We were waiting for him.”
“Wasn’t his wife killed?”
The sun dried the spit in Burgade’s mouth. It was a moment before he answered. His words had a dry rustle. “She was.”
“I understand he blames you for that.”
“It was my bullet that killed her.”
Hal didn’t say anything. He looked sorry he’d asked the question. They went down the steep bank of an arroyo, leaning far back in their saddles.
Burgade said, “Provo was being clever. When we showed ourselves he tried to bluff it out. Denied the whole thing. It was no good, it tripped him up. When he saw we weren’t buying it, he elected to try to shoot his way out. I returned his fire. His wife was behind him, inside the hogan where none of us could see her. My bullet went through Provo’s thigh—I was shooting to knock him down, not kill him. Went right through him and struck his wife in the throat. She was a damned handsome Navajo girl, expecting a baby. I have regretted it every day for the past twenty-eight years.”
“If he made a break for it with a gun, he had to expect the consequences. I don’t see how you can go on blaming yourself forever, sir.”
“I don’t blame myself. I just regret it happened. It was an accident, which Provo doesn’t choose to accept.”
“An accident he brought on himself. And on her.”