The Last Hard Men

The plain wrinkled up toward the mountains’ jagged upheaval. By mid-morning Burgade was in the foothills. The sun was a merciless, molten orange; the dazzling brilliance made his eyes swim. The hills made hard going for the horses: there were acres of looming boulders that weighed hundreds, even thousands, of tons.

Hal said, “Where are we?”

“Close to the west boundary. These mountains run about thirty miles thick. Beyond that you get into the deep gorge country—Grand Canyon. They wouldn’t be that far west—they’d be cut off with their backs to the gorges. Provo wouldn’t lock his back door that way. They’ll stay in these mountains.”

They climbed steadily at a slow gait. Red cliffs leaned back high above them like exploded wreckage on a deserted battlefield. There were great swaths of pine timber standing in lancers’ order. The meadows and clearings were yellow with shortgrass. Hal said, “These tracks seem to be headed back downhill.”

“No. A man bends the grass down in the direction he’s walking. A horse does the opposite.”

“Do you suppose they’re where they can see us from up there?”

“If they’re not, they will be. Stay inside the trees as much as you can and don’t skyline yourself.”

Black-bellied clouds assembled over the westward peaks during the afternoon. By six o’clock the two horsemen were high in pine country, plodding their tired animals uphill along needle-blanketed slopes. The fugitives’ tracks went into a sun-splattered stream but did not come out on the opposite bank.

Hal said, “They’ve gone in the water to hide their tracks.”

Burgade grunted. He eased himself out of the saddle and had a long look around, turning slowly on the balls of his feet. Finally he took one of the canteens off his saddle—the empty one—and dipped it into the stream. It bubbled and filled. He set it down on the ground long enough for the mud and debris to settle to the bottom before he drank from it. The horses were guzzling from the stream.

“You may as well step down. We’ll wait here a bit.”

“What for?”

“Sundown. They kept going west up this stream, and I’m not about to follow along after them this time of day. Not with that sun in my eyes.”

“But they’ll gain two hours on us.”

“They’re not going far now,” Burgade said. “Beyond that pass to west of here, there’s a steep drop toward the gorge country. Provo’s somewhere right around here. I’d guess not more than three miles from us right now. At sunset we’ll scout around—on foot. Plenty of time. Why don’t you break us out something to eat? A man can’t fight on an empty belly.”

Hal gave him a bleak look of dulled anger. Probably couldn’t understand how he could act so casual and callous. Burgade lay down in a thicket of brush and kept turning his head slowly from side to side so as not to miss any stray sound. A lot of things were flooding back into his conscious memory and he didn’t want to interrupt the flow. It had been thirty years since he’d ridden scout for General Crook but he needed to remember everything now, every nuance. His only chance was to be a better Indian than Zach Provo.

He sat up to eat, and went to the stream to wash the camp pans and scrub his face. The sun was lodged in pinetops upstream and it was a good time for an ambush from that direction, and so he took Hal and the horses and faded back into the timber along the east face of a hill which blocked the sun from view. They waited there for almost an hour. Then he walked back to the stream, leading the horse. The twilight was cool and breezy; pine branches rustled overhead and the stream gurgled. Burgade walked along the bank, upstream, until he saw enough pale dots in the water to be sure. “They went up this way.”

“How can you tell?”

“Horses kicked over a lot of pebbles. Look.” He reached down into the water, up to his elbow, and picked up a small stone. “Rough side up. It’s been turned over recently—otherwise it would have been smooth and slimy like the other side.”

They walked very slowly up the bank. After ten minutes Burgade was trying to conceal the fact that he was breathing hard. He stopped and scowled at the heavy carpet of black clouds that was unrolling swiftly overhead. “We’ll have rain tonight.”

“Does that mean we might lose them?”

“Provo will make sure we don’t.” Burgade had been weighing things in his mind. Now he said with abrupt decision, “He’s not going to leave anything to chance. He’s got to be right around here someplace—three miles, maybe five, but no more than that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to ride in the water.”

“And?”

“He knows we’re close to him. He’s probably doubled back on his own tracks and set up an ambush. I don’t see any point in walking into it.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Nothing. We camp and sit tight. When we. don’t show up, he’ll send somebody out to look for us.”

“What if he does?”

“We’ll just wait for whoever it is to show up.” The trees crowded down close along both banks of the stream. The dusk was thickening, made darker by swelling storm clouds. Burgade spent ten minutes walking around in the trees until he found a spot that satisfied him. “We’ll picket the horses in here and roll up a couple of fake blanket dummies to look like men asleep. Doubtful anybody’ll fall for it, but whoever comes will investigate. Well set a little snare for him.”

“With what?”

Burgade rummaged in his saddlebags. “This.” He took out the coil of fine high-test fishing line.

The rain held off. Burgade showed Hal how to string the line, at shin level, taut from tree to tree. There wasn’t enough to go all the way around but it wasn’t likely an intruder would expose himself by stepping across the stream, so Burgade left that side open. The rest was circled by the tripwire.

By the time they were finished it was full dark. Burgade picked his spot and pushed down on Hal’s shoulder. “Don’t even breathe. We don’t want him to spot us.”

“What makes you think anyone will come?”

“We didn’t cross over the top. Provo had to be watching for us. When we didn’t show up, he must have started to worry. He may even think we got lost. He’ll send a stalking horse.”

“A what?”

“A man to show himself. Somebody we’ll recognize and follow. Meant to lead us into a trap. Now shut up and lie still.”

Burgade sat on the ground with his .30-06 rifle across his lap. Forty feet away, inside the tripwire circle, the picketed horses browsed. He couldn’t really see them; the darkness was complete. He spent a quarter of an hour gathering up dry pine needles and lashing them to the end of a two-foot twig in a torch-sized bundle. When that was done he unwrapped his waterproof match bag and put three wooden matches where he could get at them—one behind each ear and one between his teeth in the corner of his mouth like a toothpick. He set the rifle silently aside and palmed his .45 double-action, and then there was nothing to do but wait, and nothing to think about but Susan.

The shadows were deep and sinister, the darkness all but total. It was possible to make out the darker outlines of the trees overhead against the clouds beyond, and he could distinguish the boles of nearby trees and the shape of the forest ground, but the horses were only vague suggestions and he had to rely mainly on his ears.

It was hard to think about the anguish Susan must be going through; it was impossible not to think about it. Whether or not they had laid so much as a finger on her, she was living at every breath with the horror of it, the awful knowledge of what Provo aimed to do. Even if she could be rescued alive, would she ever be whole again?

Zach Provo had that to answer for. Burgade knew the rage that burned in Provo. It was no more savage than his own.

He heard the intruder long before he saw anything. The man was trying to be silent but he couldn’t help giving himself away. The wind had died, the creek was beyond earshot, there were no sounds at all to muffle the intruder’s movements. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Provo. Most likely it wasn’t Menendez or Taco Riva, either. Those three—and possibly Quesada—would know better than to move as fast as this one was moving. The sound was off to the right, perhaps a hundred feet away and coming forward on the far side of the horses.