The Last Hard Men

Provo’s voice grated hoarsely. “It’s Burgade, all right.” He made a quick quarter-turn and pointed with his arm. “He’ll come through that notch. He’ll be coming right toward us so it won’t matter how fast he’s moving. Give me the rifle, Menendez, and get down there in those trees inside of handgun range of him. We’ll crossfire him.”

Menendez tossed him the rifle without objection and vaulted into the trees. He went out of sight into the timber and Provo settled down against a rock, bracing the rifle on the clearing where he knew Burgade would appear if Burgade kept on the boot tracks.

But Burgade didn’t show up. An overwhelming anxiety slowly poisoned Provo’s patience.

Shelby said, “He’s not that dumb, Zach.”

“Shut up.”

“He won’t show himself. You know he won’t.”

Provo kept his eyes fixed on the clearing below. “Listen, you just keep watch on missy and let me handle the old man. He ain’t going to get close to us as long as we’ve got a gun on her. You just think about all that gold down there.”

“Yeah,” Shelby said, but his voice was unsteady.

Provo cocked the rifle and squinted through the shimmer of sunlight. A pulse thudded in his eyes. He curled his hand sensuously around the grip of the rifle, caressed the trigger with his finger. Come on, he thought. Come on, now. He was going to break Burgade’s right shoulder with the first bullet. Then take him apart limb by limb. It was going to take Burgade a long time to die.

Twelve

The sun flickered through the pines like a moving signal lamp. Burgade reined in. The tracks went on up through the trees, out across a little clearing and up toward the summit not far beyond. Provo had to be forted up somewhere between here and there, trying the same kind of ambush he himself had used last night against Quesada. It had to be that way, because Provo had his back to the cliff that dropped away on the west face of the summits. Somewhere in the next three hundred yards, Provo was waiting.

He had ridden for two hours with his body braced against an expected bullet. Taking a chance. Now the chances were all used up. It was a feeling like ice across the back of his neck. He felt exposed, vulnerable, sitting his saddle alone in the forest breeze. The thin high air was crisp with pine smell. Sleeplessness laid a glaze on his eyes; his lids blinked painfully and slowly.

He dismounted with great care and tied the horse’s reins to a low branch. Lifted the Springfield in both hands and began to move away to the right. The pitch was steep but the trees gave better cover here, because the high summit protected them from the winds and they grew taller and thicker. He walked very slowly and without sound, placing each foot with caution. But sweat sluiced down his chest and weakness flowed along his fibers.

He heard the revolver hammer snick.

He lowered himself to the ground—fast, but not so fast as to make noise. His chin lifted and he turned his head slowly, staring past the boles of trees. There was no movement, no sound. He thought perhaps the man out there had heard him but not yet seen him. But there was someone, not far away—upwind, because the sound wouldn’t have carried from any other direction.

He stared into the wind. That was uphill, toward the summit. He didn’t see anything.

He looked back over his shoulder. He could see the horse, twenty-five or thirty feet below him where he had tethered it. Wherever the man was, he was not in position to see that point on the trail; otherwise he’d have fired when Burgade stopped to dismount.

Burgade clawed an egg-sized stone out of the ground and hitched himself slowly up against the wide trunk of a tree that would conceal him from above. He stood up, close to the trunk, dragging the rifle in his left hand, and turned around with his back to the tree. Hefted the little stone and measured his throw and tossed it, not terribly hard, just enough to arc it through the air.

It thudded against the horse’s flank. The horse jumped, scrambled around in a half-circle, tried to break its reins. There was a great deal of noise before the horse settled down again.

Burgade lay down flat again with the rifle against his shoulder, pointing past the pine trunk. His view was restricted by the tree trunks but there was no underbrush to speak of; he could see quite well along the ground, between trees. The steep earth was a mat of brown needles and mossy flat rocks.

A figure flitted from tree to tree, quite a distance above him on the grade. A man in a dirty straw hat; Menendez.

Burgade closed his finger around the trigger and waited. He knew where Menendez was now. Menendez would show himself and when he did, Burgade would shoot. Menendez had gone behind the tree from the right. Burgade sighted to the left of it.

But Menendez reappeared at the right, crouched low and moving fast in a spurt. Burgade shifted the rifle and fired.

Too hasty. A miss. Now Menendez knew he’d been spotted. Burgade scraped the side of his chin against his shoulder, irritable—the gunshot would alert the others.

He moved around behind the pine trunk, shifting his position to conceal himself more completely from Menendez’s angle. But Menendez didn’t stir, and Burgade felt urgency building pressure inside him.

Menendez was waiting him out. That was no good: the others could be coming in from either side. Burgade got to his feet behind the tree, aimed the Springfield past the side of it and let go three shots at Menendez’s position. Without waiting, he dropped the rifle and sprinted uphill to his right, dropping flat after a twelve-foot run.

It was just in time: Menendez’s revolver opened up. The rolling echoes of the shots caromed down the hill. A bullet shrieked off the trunk of a pine two feet above him, leaving a white scar. Burgade cocked the .45 and waited for his breathing to settle down. He wasn’t much of a ru

Bullets snapped at his heels. He dived and skidded on his chest. Slid right past the pine, on the slippery needles, and brought the double-action up in time to get a shot at Menendez before Menendez wheeled behind cover.

He had a feeling he might have scored a hit, but Menendez was still shooting. Burgade huddled tight behind the pine, counting bullets. It was clear enough Menendez had two revolvers on him; and Menendez was wise enough not to empty both of them. He’d be using the intervals to reload spent chambers. Burgade stopped counting, reloaded his own, and decided on a cheap ploy that might work if Menendez was rusty enough. Menendez was a Border tough, as shrewd as they came, but to a man like Menendez “revolver” meant single-action Frontier model. That was why Menendez carried two: because the single-action was slow to reload. You had to punch out the empties one by one and then reload the chambers one by one.

It was only going to work if Menendez assumed Burgade had the same kind of gun.

Burgade slipped a loaded cartridge out of his belt and held it poised in the fingers of his left hand; turned to study Menendez’s position with one eye, gathered his legs, and sprinted for a tree eight feet away, blazing away as he ran.

He fired all six, double-action, blinding-fast. It kept Menendez’s head down until the last shot was fired. Burgade reached cover and dropped flat, knowing Menendez had been counting. When he hit the ground he already had the side-swing cylinder open. He punched the pin, scattering all the empties at once, plugged the ready cartridge in and slammed the cylinder shut, turning it to line up the brass rim under the hammer.…