Текст книги "The Last Hard Men"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

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The first shadow-streaks of dawn caught them in the foothills, still heading for the river. They were not hurrying the pace but they had kept moving steadily, eating up ground. Someone rode by and passed her a cold hard biscuit and a strip of dried beef, and when she had eaten them she looked up and saw it was Mike Shelby, watching her gravely, holding his horse alongside hers. He handed her a canteen and she drank from it greedily. She didn’t think to hand it back to him, and he took it gently out of her grasp, capped it and slung it over his saddle horn. He seemed to smile a little in the dawn, and then he dropped back toward the tail end of the column.

Daylight grew steadily; it seemed to revive some of them. Portugee Shiraz pulled up beside her and said, “You want some grub, lassie?”

Menendez, behind her, said, “Shelby already fed her.”

“Tryin’ to get the inside track,” Portugee said, and cackled unpleasantly. “Well, that’s all rat, I reckon maybe we all get a turn at you ’fore this is over, lassie. Soon as we get time to stop awhile. Hey, Menendez, she’s a real looker, this’n. I like the tits on her.”

“Turn them upside down, they all the es-same,” Menendez replied with Mexican indifference to cruelty.

Portugee gave a bray of laughter. “Look, she’s sweating,” he said, pleased. “We got her scared. You scared, lassie? Scared maybe we gonna mo-lest you? Haw!”

“Wouldn’t want to get her upset,” Menendez said. “She might wet her pants.”

“Aw, naw, we wouldn’t want that. Naw, you just take it easy now, lassie. Don’t fret yo’seff none.” To Menendez he added, “I always say, a contented cow gives the sweetest milk.”

From up ahead of Quesada, Provo’s voice came floating back: “Shut up back there. Leave her alone.”

She had kept her eyes shut; she kept them shut now. She didn’t know why Provo had any interest in protecting her from the rest of them but whatever his motive she was remotely glad of it.

Provo called a halt in the greasewood at the edge of the hardpan flats. Out across the valley she could see the dark ribbon of greenery that marked the course of the river. There was a tall structure of some kind, made of metal that glittered in the early sun. Probably a windmill, its blades flashing the reflections.

Provo pointed at it. “That ought to be Vestal’s horse ranch. Well ride in and swap for fresh animals. Anybody puts up an argument, show some iron—but don’t kill anybody unless we have to. I ain’t a butcher.”

She saw him look around at the rest of them. “You’ve had all night to think on my offer. What about it? George?”

George Weed said, “I could use three thousand. But where’s this place where the law can’t get after us?”

“Redrock country,” Provo told him. “My people’s place. Arizona law got no jurisdiction there.”

“Maybe—but who says those Navajos will let us come in?”

“As long as you’re with me, they’ll let you stay.” Provo’s glance moved on. “Portugee?”

“I guess.”

“Quesada? Will?”

Nobody said no.

“Let’s go, then.”

Six

The sun burned everywhere it struck and the air was like coarse wool, so hot it was hard to breathe, and the dust was in Sam Burgade’s teeth. Sunday, late afternoon: the heat lay in an intense shimmering layer along the high plateau, and dust devils funneled erratically in yellow wheelings of sand, twigs, and leaves.

Burgade’s eyes were raw with fatigue. He was filled with the agony of muscles that cried out from punishment after long disuse. He pulled up his dirt-caked horse on the hillside and tasted the posse’s dust and unslung his field glasses for perhaps the thousandth time.

Down across the shallow bowl, past a fringe of scrubby trees, there was a sun-scraped ranch house. It had been painted, probably less than two years ago, but the ravenous sun had bleached all color out of it. The field glasses brought it up close and clear: the eaves hung with cobwebs and the man who sat on the porch was as filthy and ramshackle as the place itself—a gaunt gray-stubbled figure in a black clawhammer coat, dusty and drab and shiny from long years of wearing. The man had one leg bandaged and propped up on a small wooden crate; a bottle of whiskey hung in one clawed gray hand.

“The tracks go down there,” said Sheriff Nye.

“So do we,” Burgade said, and put his horse forward.

The old-timer on the porch had veinshot eyes. He spat tobacco juice off the porch and waited for the posse to come in. Then his face changed and he said, “If it ain’t Sam Burgade.”

Burgade tried to make out the features in the porch shade. The old man cackled: “Shit, Sam, you don’t recognize me.”

“Rinehart. Dutch Rinehart.”

“Sure I am.”

It was beyond belief. This old caved-in wreckage of a man. Burgade remembered him: full of spit and beams, top horse-wrangler on the Hatchet ranch. Burgade wiped a hand across his face to conceal his awe and the dismal rage of knowing he was himself just as old and used-up as the half-drunk human carrion on the porch.

Burgade was looking at the bandage wrapped unsanitarily around the spindly old leg. The old man was a strange sight in clawhammer coat and dirty white drawers, no trousers. “You all right, Dutch?”

“Ain’t but a bullet hole. Went through me clean. I’ve had worse.” The bleary eyes surveyed the posse. “Shit, you still in the man-tracking business, Sam?”

“Looking for Zach Provo, Dutch.”

“I didn’t get their names,” the old man said dryly. “They were eight or nine of ’em. Scairt the pants off me, as you can plainly see.”

Sheriff Nye said, “It was them shot you?”

“Yair, I sure as hell don’t go round shootin’ myself.”

“Why’d they do it?”

“I guess to keep me from walkin’ into Snowflake and telling the law they was here,” Rinehart said, with an amazing lack of rancor. “I only had but six or seven head of horses here but they tooken off with ’em all. You catch ’em, Sam, I’d be obliged if you get me my horses back.”

Burgade had climbed down; he walked up onto the porch and said, “Better let me have a look at that, Dutch.”

“No, never mind. If you happen to ride through Snowflake you might ask Doc Travis to drop out here.” Rinehart waved him away. “Shit, I’m all right. Take more’n a forty-five-caliber hole in the leg to do me much damage. It went clear through—bullet’s in that wall over there. I stuck a hot running-iron through it. Cauterized up fine.”

Behind him, Burgade heard young Hal Brickman whisper an oath in amazed horror. It made Dutch Rinehart grin. “These young ones ain’t got no i-dee what tough is, do they, Sam?”

Burgade’s face had closed up tight. He said in a taut hoarse-weary voice, “They had a girl with them.”

“Yair. Sure was a looker.”

“Was she all right, Dutch?” Burgade had to lick his dry, cracked lips.

“I guess. Hell, she was alive. She didn’t look as if she cared much if she was alive or dead. Like she just didn’t give a shit either way. But I guess she was all right. Why?”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ, Sam, I am sorry.”

“How long were they here?”

“Long enough to rope out all my horses. Listen, you get your hands on them, my Rocking Chair brand ain’t hard to pick out. I’d be obliged.”

“How much of a jump have they got on us?”

“Six, maybe seven hours.” Rinehart spat an amber stream at the ground. His lips peeled back in a mostly toothless smile. “They the toughest bunch I seen in a good spell. That skinny little Mex didn’t bat an eye when he shot me. Just took aim, casual like, as if I was a tin can for practice. I swear I didn’t really think he was gonna do anything until the damn gun went off. He wasn’t even mad. Jesus, I’m sorry about your girl, Sam. I hope you run them down.”

“I will,” Burgade said. “Thanks for your time, Dutch.”

“Hell, I wisht you could set a spell. You and me ain’t jawed in years, we got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Take care of yourself. We’ll send the doctor out.” Burgade went to his horse and climbed up, anguish in all his joints. He turned the horse and heard Nye say behind him, “One little thing, Mr. Rinehart—you happen to notice which way they headed?” Nye’s voice was dry and Burgade didn’t miss the implied rebuke. Getting rattled, he admitted to himself, but he kept right on going and barely heard Rinehart’s reply:

“Northeast. You want to watch out for them hard cases, mister, they don’t—”

Burgade rode out of earshot. Past the deputies and Hal Brickman with his sunburnt, bleak, tired face, and kept on riding, not waiting for the others, angling out to the northeast and scanning the ground for sign. There was an urgency in him and Nye remarked it when he galloped up: “Easy, Captain, let’s don’t windbreak these horses.”

“Another day and they’ll be across the line, Noel.”

“Then let’s get ourselves on into Snowflake and make a few telephone calls, get a couple posses moving out of Winslow and Holbrook to head them off this side of the line.”

But the phones were dead in Snowflake, as might have been expected: the wires had been cut outside the town at both ends. They dispatched the doctor to Rinehart’s and rode on into the dusk.

They had been fifty-six hours on the trail now. Time and heat and jurisdiction boundaries had pared the posse down and changed the personnel: only one of Nye’s deputies was still with them; the rest had gone back to Pima County to be replaced by men from Coconino and Navajo counties. Posses were out all over northeastern Arizona, New Mexico had squads combing the badlands, both Utah and Colorado had statewide alarms out. But it was a big wilderness. Provo had slipped through, cutting every wire he came across. The fugitives had avoided most towns and main roads; they had raided horse ranches frequently enough to keep supplied with fast mounts, and if they were sleeping at all they were doing it in the saddle, on the move.

The moon came up, a horned crescent not yet in its first quarter, only a thin rind; but there were no clouds and the starlight was good enough for tracking. Until they got into the chopped-up rocklands. Here it was all shale and petrified wood and there wasn’t a chance of picking up sign at night. Nye started to curse. “Christ, we know they’re headed north, but northeast or northwest now? That line’s two hundred mile long. They can cross it anyplace.”

“Provo had it planned out this way,” Burgade said. “That’s why he hasn’t covered his tracks before. He knew he’d lose us along here.”

“Bastard,” Nye gritted.

“Let’s get on into Holbrook.”

It was after midnight when they pulled into Holbrook and rode across the Santa Fe tracks. Huge gray moths rustled around the street lamps. The town was asleep. Burgade dismounted in agony and went into the sheriffs office. The place was awake because of the manhunt but the only two people in it were temporary deputies; the permanent staff was out combing the badlands somewhere. Burgade borrowed the telephone and tried to get through to Gallup and Winslow. The line to Winslow was dead, but he reached the telephone exchange in Gallup, which was just over the line in New Mexico, and after some discussion with the switchboard lady in Gallup he finally got a sleepy-voiced deputy U.S. marshal on the line. Burgade identified himself and explained the situation in three or four terse sentences and said, “We’d take it kindly if you’d get on up to Window Rock, Marshal, and try to talk the Tribal Council into giving us permission to come aboard the Reservation to hunt these men down.”

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 gonna catch them now. Ain’t got a prayer.”

“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.

Dawn came slow. There was a lot of wind-lifted dust in the air and a heavy brownish sky hung over the eastern horizon for half an hour before the sun started to red up. George Weed said, “What this place needs is a lot more saloons.” His tongue and gums, smiling, were startlingly pink in the black face.

The country was all chopped-up redrock and clay. Shelby didn’t know the area at all but then neither did many other people except the Navajos. The sky seemed a thousand miles wide and the desert just as big. It was high here, several thousand feet of elevation, but the sun came up molten, and by noon Shelby knew it would be far above a hundred degrees on the plain. He felt sullen and cranky and more whacked-out exhausted than he’d ever been in his life.

Provo was up front, leading them. Behind Provo were Taco Riva and Will Gant and Quesada, who was leading the girl’s horse. Behind the girl rode Portugee Shiraz. Shelby was next, and Weed was behind him, and a little ways back rode Cesar Menendez. There was no particular reason for everybody to ride single-file now, there was plenty of room to spread out, but they’d got in the habit on the narrow switchback trails in the Mogollon country behind them.

They came up out of a depression in the ground and Shelby saw a great looming monster of a rock four or five miles out ahead. Red-walled, flat-topped, it soared a good thousand feet above the plain. Its shadow ran out a long way along the desert. At the foot of it, hard to see in the shadows, was enough greenery to suggest the presence of water. Provo called back along the line: “Castle Butte. Little Navajo town down there. We’re going in. Everybody act real friendly.”

The Navajo Reservation was bigger than most Eastern states. Here and there, at a crossroads or a good water source, a little community could be found, centered around an Agency trading post and a Navajo Agency police station.

It took them three quarters of an hour to reach Castle Butte. The citizens were up and around: several fat women in elaborate dresses, full of suspicion, watched them ride in. If anybody recognized Zach Provo there was no sign of it. A heavyset Indian in a khaki shirt and a cowboy hat low over his eyes came out onto the porch of the trading post and Provo spoke to him in a tongue Shelby had never heard before. The Indian tipped his head back to see out from under his hat and grinned briefly with very bad teeth and rattled off something to which Provo responded with a grunt and a nod. Provo turned and spoke over his shoulder:

“Get on up to the spring there, under the trees. Get cleaned up and eat and try to get some rest. I’ll be along in awhile. Got some business to transact here. Shelby, you look after missy, she’s your responsibility, hear?”

Shelby knew what that meant. He hadn’t missed the way Gant and Portugee and Quesada had been watching Susan Burgade. It was a mystery to Shelby why Provo cared one way or the other about the girl’s virtue, since Provo wasn’t much of a moralist under the best of circumstances and the girl’s father was the one man in the world Provo hated more than all the others combined. But presumably there was a reason for it. Shelby didn’t want the assignment but he could see why Provo picked him for it. Probably figured he was too young to have eyes for an older woman—she had to be anyhow ten, twelve years older than Shelby—and besides, Provo trusted him more than most of the others. Shelby didn’t know whether to feel flattered or hurt by that, but at the moment he was too tired to care. He didn’t want to sit up nursemaiding Miss Burgade, he resented the assignment, and so he was curt and rude to her when he untied her leg from the stirrup-leather and let her climb down stiffly; he stuck close to her while she went over to the spring and splashed water all over her head and face. She was still wearing the homespun dress she’d had on when they’d first seen her—there hadn’t been time for anybody to change clothes. This was the first stand-down they’d had since Friday noon, and it was now what, Monday morning? He’d lost track.

Some of them had the knack of sleeping in the saddle. Provo, for one; Provo hadn’t looked at all tired when he’d disappeared into the Agency police shack a hundred yards back down the slope from the spring. Riva, of course—Riva had been born on a horse; Riva was fussing over the horses now as if they were expensive Thoroughbreds on a racing paddock and he was their trainer, instead of him being an ex-mountain bandit and them being ordinary old quarterhorse plugs from some working outfit outside Winslow. Riva went around loosening all the cinches and dumping the saddles and blankets, making sure all the horses were within browsing distance of graze tufts, and rubbing them down one at a time with a currybrush he’d stolen somewhere back along the trail.

Not everybody was that solicitous or energetic. George Weed was flat on his back; he started snoring within two minutes after they got dismounted. Portugee Shiraz took the time to find a comfortable bed of leaves under a shade tree fifty yards from the rest of them; Protugee was asleep too. Shelby wished to hell he could do the same, but he wasn’t of a mind to disobey Provo’s instructions—not yet, at any rate. He wasn’t going to follow Provo blindly into the jaws of death but he was willing to suspend resistance until he saw imminent danger. Until then, Shelby judged, he was better off with Provo than without him.

Cesar Menendez sat crosslegged, off a bit from the rest of them, his rifle across his lap, watching with a sleepy-eyed smile, his eyes squinted up so that Shelby couldn’t really tell if he was awake or asleep until he saw Menendez stretch like a cat and roll up a cigarette from the makings he’d pinched off that beat-up old wrangler he’d shot in the leg. Menendez dragged on the cigarette and jetted smoke.

Shelby washed some of the grit off his face and told the girl to sit down under a tree and sleep if she could. She made no answer, but she did what he told her to do. She didn’t seem to be asleep. Maybe after all she’d been able to sleep on horseback. God knew she’d had nothing better to do. Shelby slid down with his back against a tree and let his legs sprawl out in front of him and concentrated on keeping his dry raw eyes open, mainly because Will Gant was squatting nearby with his face turned toward the girl. Gant was a tense, huge shape in the leaf shadows. He picked up a twig and burrowed it into his ear, examined it and threw it away. He kept staring at the girl; once his eyes glanced toward Shelby and Shelby saw an abrupt touch of sullenness in his face. Then the thick sun-chapped lips pulled back slowly in a smile and Gant sat back with his hands intertwined across the sag of his paunch.

Riva came in and broke out the mess gear and served up some cold food for those who were awake and hungry. The girl ate as if her mind was a thousand miles away on other things. Will Gant dipped his face close to the tin plate and shoveled oversized mouthfuls of food into his face; washed them down with canteen water, only half chewed, his Adam’s apple bulging and bouncing in the thick throat.

Riva, who of them all seemed least disturbed by the nerves of flight, sat down loosely and said in a friendly way, “I feel hound-dog lazy,” and went to sleep smiling.

They had probably been there an hour, but Provo hadn’t appeared yet from the police shack. Shelby began to feel spooked. But then, he thought, if the Agency police had arrested Provo they’d be up here by now. He tried to relax.

Presently Portugee woke up and ambled over to squat down beside Will Gant. Portugee’s feet were like paddles. The two of them sat there and boasted about the fights they had been in and the carnage they had done, as if there was some important kind of machismo in having done and seen such things—or perhaps in being able to talk of it with suitably callous heartiness. Maybe they were trying to impress the girl, but if so, she gave no sign she was listening.

Once, Portugee’s glance came around and lay speculatively against Shelby, and something struggled fiercely behind Portugee’s eyes. Shelby sat like a stone, not liking this. He pinched his mouth tight and breathed deep through his nose. Will Gant looked at him and Portugee whispered something, and Gant laughed silently, his eyes wrinkling up until they were almost shut. Something was going on between those two. Shelby began to sweat.

Shelby got slowly to his feet and tried to look casual. He wandered over to the spring and had a drink, filled his canteen and wandered back. But he stopped much closer to the girl than he’d been before. He hunkered down on his heels not five feet from her and when she looked at him, her eyes widened: plainly the same thought had crossed her mind that had crossed his.

His maneuver had not gone unnoticed. Will Gant stood up and hitched at his trousers with the flats of his wrists. Then he tipped his hat back. The sweatband had indented a red weal across his forehead; he rubbed it with the side of his index finger while he looked unblinkingly at the girl and smiled that slow thick-lipped smile of his.

Damp with springwater, the homespun dress clung to the girl’s body, stuck to the undersides of her nubile breasts. She wore no stays, no evident underpinnings of any kind. Her woman-smell reached Shelby’s nostrils and he knew the fire had caught inside Gant and Portugee; it burned him as well. But Shelby couldn’t fathom the mind of anybody who would take it from a woman who didn’t want to give it. He felt suddenly and unaccountably protective toward her. It had nothing to do with Provo’s orders. Sweating, he wiped his palms dry on the buttocks of his Levi’s.

From where he squatted he could see past the lovely long column of her back and the dark long hair that she had plaited at the side of her head—past her surly and beautiful face to Gant and Portugee. Portugee removed his hat and slicked back his hair and looked at Will Gant, whereupon Gant got to his feet and shoved his hand down behind his belt buckle into his fly and said, “Mike, what do you say we climb into that saddle of hers? You can go first kid, I don’t mind watchin’.”

Shelby’s lids drooped bleakly. He saw the girl slide her glance off Gant as if he were some kind of zoo animal. With his free hand Gant tugged at the long black hair in his nose. Shelby said, “Cut it out. You heard Zach.”