The Last Hard Men (8 page)

Lee Roy said, “You crazy in the head. Right acrosst the damn town? Why not fade back into them mountains back of the smelter?”

“Because I say so, Lee Roy.”

At four in the morning he kicked them awake and passed the guns out. When Lee Roy didn’t get one there was a dangerous moment. Lee Roy exploded in a few choice phrases and tended his bony fists. Provo had to level a gun on him. “You’ll have your hands full with blasting powder.”

“That ain’t no goddamn call to——”

“Shut up, Lee Roy. if you want me to spell it out, I don’t want you behind me with a gun. I don’t trust your hillbilly ass, understand? You don’t need a gun. Just blow the safe, that’s your job. It’s worth better than two thousand dollars to you.”

“How do I know you ain’t gonna kill me after?”

“If I was going to kill you, Lee Roy, I wouldn’t have dragged you all this way alive, would I,” he lied.

Will Gant took Lee Roy by the arm and spun him around. “Quit acting like a fool.”

Lee Roy stalked off to his horse in high dudgeon. Provo caught a corner of Menendez’s dry glance in the starlight and wheeled to his horse. “All right. Let’s move.”

There was always the chance a horse would throw a shoe and go lame, or some other delay would crop up. Provo gave it plenty of time to cover possibilities. They reached the canyon behind the smelter a full hour ahead of time. He checked his watch and dismounted them, eased himself down with his back against a rock, and felt idleness trickle through his muscles. Lee Roy’s resentful glance lay against him, harsh and baleful; Provo ignored it. Menendez crouched right beside Provo and spoke low:

“This idea of yours, goeen right across Tucson after we pull it off. That got something to do with Burgade?”

“Maybe.”

“Ahjess. I din’ figure you was goeen to let him off that easy. Bot I don’ want my ass hung on Burgade’s account, Zach.”

“Ain’t nobody’s ass going to be hung.”

“You ain’t maybe thinking of goeen looking for Burgade, are you?”

“No.”

“I thought you wanted him.”

“I intend to skewer the bastard,” Provo said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to go gunning for him right in the middle of that posse of his.”

“Then you got me pozzled, Zach.”

Provo smiled. “I never said I aimed to shoot him, did I. I spent twenty-eight years coming to this—I don’t aim to let him off easy with a bullet. He’s going to sweat his balls off before I’m done with him. He’s going to bleed slow and long. I told you before—I’m going to peel him down to a whimper.”

“Ahjess. But how?”

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you.”

“I don’ like surprises, Zach.”

“You just take care of Lee Roy when the time comes. Let me worry about the rest.”

“It ain’t Lee Roy I’m worried about. It’s you.”

Provo smiled a little. “Just trust me, amigo. You’ll get rich.”

Menendez spat out the side of his mouth. “I don’ trost nobody, Zach. You know that.”

“You could always get on your horse and ride out. Why not do that, right now?”

Menendez smiled. “You want that?”

“No. I need you to help me keep an eye on the rest of these fools.”

“That’s what I thought,” Menendez said, but he didn’t press it further.

Provo kept checking his snap-lid watch. Presently it was time. He stood up. “All right. Let’s put it in the saddle.”

Provo split them up at the head of the road. Gant rode down first, bypassing the smelter, heading for the telephone line where it sagged across the creek half a mile below. Provo took Lee Roy with him and split the rest of them up, to drift in from various directions so as to avoid attention.

The smelter was a sprawl of smoke-grayed structures, conveyor ramps, shacks, corrugated roofs, a fifty-foot smoke-stack that spewed a rancid cloud into the sky. The last stragglers of the 8:00
A.M.
shift were trudging into the buildings, big men in gray coveralls and railroad-style caps. Outside the manager’s building on the hill above the plant stood five or six parked chain-driven trucks and two open horseless carriages. That was where the paymaster’s office was. There was a pay window at the side of the building and a well-worn foot track where the men queued up for their pay. Beyond, to the north, was a neighboring sand-and-gravel operation, making a great racket. Provo sent Lee Roy out in front of him and they rode downslope toward the back door of the manager’s building. They dipped into a canyon and lost sight of the building, but the tall smoke-eruptive stack was still in view above the intervening hump of cactus-clumped ground. A few fleece-ball clouds drifted across the sun; it wasn’t as hot as it had been yesterday:

They tethered the horses in a cutbank-arroyo thirty yards behind the building. As far as Provo could tell, no one had remarked their arrival. Shortly Taco Riva rode in from the far end of the arroyo and dismounted, staying put to hold the horses. Portugee and George Weed came up from the direction of the sand-and-gravel quarry. Weed looking like a black sack of potatoes in the saddle: he was no horseman. Finally Menendez showed up. “Ain’t got moch time now, Zach.”

“Too much time gives a man whiskers.” Provo snapped his watch open. One minute after the hour. He could hear a train hooting in the distance; the train was a couple of minutes late but that didn’t matter, Tucson’s attention would be focused on Congress Street right about now, and that was fine.

Provo cast an eye at Lee Roy. “Got everything you need?”

“I reckon,” Lee Roy said reluctantly.

“You know how to set the charges, don’t you?”

“Ain’t no call for you to tell me how to handle my binness, Zach.” Lee Roy heaved the burlap gunnysack onto his shoulder as if it contained harmless tools instead of highly volatile blasting gear.

Portugee Shiraz unholstered both his .45 Army automatic pistols. The damn things bothered Provo for no good reason other than his ignorance of them; he had no familiarity with newfangled handguns, but Portugee claimed he could handle them fine. The Negroid lips peeled back on his dark vulpine face in an expression that was more spasm than smile.

The roots of Provo’s hair were damp with sweat but his hands were rock steady. He swept them all with his ungiving face. “Let’s go, then.”

Provo went across first, with Portugee. They moved quickly, bent double: up the cutbank, across the flats through the brush, up shoulderblade-flat against the wall beside the back door.

No one inside the building gave any alarm. There was only one window on this side anyhow—possibly a latrine or storeroom. Provo made an arm signal and two heads appeared at the lip of the cutbank. Weed and Lee Roy came humping it over the edge, Menendez right behind them. They came in tight, sweating, and Provo nodded to Portugee. Portugee palmed the latch of the door and tested it. It wasn’t locked. He swung it open and went in. Provo twisted through the doorway right behind him and braced the riot gun against his lip.

They were in a clerical office—four desks: two women secretaries, a clerk type in a green eyeshade, and a middle-aged man at the back desk in shirtsleeves and mining-engineer boots.

“Not a word out of anybody,” Provo hissed, “or you get dead.”

Shock and terror chased each other across the four startled faces. Menendez whipped inside and strode across the office to the nearest door: wrenched it open and went in gun first.

One of the women started to babble something incoherent in a tiny falsetto voice. Portugee took two long strides and clapped his palm over her mouth, digging his thumb and fingers into her cheeks, holding his big .45 auto on the others. Weed sidled toward the front of the room to post himself on the front door.

Menendez came out of the back office prodding a man at gunpoint. That had to be the paymaster. The man was loose-fleshed, florid, overweight, pale hair going thin over a pink scalp. He was swallowing in regular spasms and his eyes looked like the fishy popeyes of a hyperthyroid victim.

Provo wheeled to the door near him and pulled it open. It was a closet, filled with shelves of order blanks and stationery. He pushed it shut and moved deeper into the room. Portugee Shiraz took his hand away from the woman’s mouth. She scrubbed her lips violently but didn’t make a sound. Portugee said, to no one in particular, “Everybody stay quiet like a mouse and nobody gets their-selves hurt.”

Provo said, “We’re going to tie you up and put gags in your mouth.” He talked in a very low voice; he didn’t know how thin the walls were, or how many others were in the building. “Don’t fight us and we won’t hurt you.”

Lee Roy put down his gunnysack and produced cut-up lengths of rope and wads of rags. Provo and Menendez kept guns on everybody while Portugee and Lee Roy went around tying them up. It didn’t take long. They tied everybody in the back corner of the office and left them there on the floor—everybody but the paymaster. Portugee knotted the paymaster’s hands behind his back and prodded him in the kidney with the muzzle of the automatic. The paymaster stumbled forward.

Provo said, “Where’s the safe? Back in that room?”

“Ye-yes. But you won’t——”

“Please don’t tell me I’ll never get away with it,” Provo said. “Just give us the combination.” He was walking the man into the back office as he spoke.

The vault was built into the back wall. Big, substantial, with wheels on it like steamship valves. There were two big combination dials.

The paymaster whimpered and Provo struck him along the cheek with the barrel of his gun. “Quit it. The combination. I ain’t going to ask again.”

“I’ve only g-g-got half of it, mister. I swear to God. The company manager, he’s got the combination to the other d-dial.”

“And where’s this company manager?”

“D-d-d-down at the depot.”

It didn’t surprise Provo. He propelled the paymaster back to the outer office. “Tie him down and gag him. Lee Roy, in here. Get to work.”

Lee Roy lugged his sack in and looked around. “Sheeyit. That’s a big ’un.”

“Don’t stand there griping. Just blow it.”

“Will you quit awderin’ me around, Zach? Jesus.” Lee Roy studied the furniture. “Reckon I’ll have to back that big desk up against it to shape the charge. Christ, Zach, I’m gonna have to use all the blastin’ powder—it’ll make a cocksucker of a noise.”

“Get busy,” Provo said, and went back to the outer office. He set his hip on the corner of a desk and talked mildly at the four bound-and-gagged prisoners. “In a few minutes my associate’s going to blow up that vault in there. You’ll know when it’s coming. When you do, I suggest you open your mouths and breathe easy through your mouths. Otherwise the explosion might bust your eardrums. Hear?”

Portugee shoved the paymaster down on the floor with the other four. Then he went over by the front door with George Weed and stood there cleaning his fingernails with the point of an ugly-looking knife he’d taken off a Mexican in the shack in Gila Bend. Portugee was never comfortable without a knife in his hand.

One of the women was fat and middle-aged. Her swollen cheeks were wet with tears; she was whimpering like an injured animal through the gag in her mouth. Provo glanced at her with his ungiving face but said nothing.

It seemed a long time. Sweat trickled down Provo’s spine inside his shirt and linen duster. Menendez walked across the room and propped the back door fully open, and then came into the center of the room and stood slant-eyed, watching the door where Lee Roy would appear when Lee Roy’s job was done.

Portugee said to George Weed, “Sure takin’ his fucking time in there.” The two black-skinned men stood watching the front door; Weed grunted but made no other answer.

One of the prisoners was breathing hard, in asthmatic rasps. Provo went over to make sure the gag wasn’t choking him, but it was just fear that made the clerk wheeze. The eyes blinked like semaphores. Provo said mildly, “Take it easy, nobody’s going to shoot you,” and ambled back to the desk.

Portugee said, “They seen our faces. They can identify us.”

“It’s all right,” Provo said. “Burgade will figure out who done this quick enough anyway.” He smiled just a little. It occurred to him to go over and open the window inside the storage closet; but he didn’t bother; the blast would probably knock some walls down anyway, and everybody within miles would hear it. That was all right, too. He wanted noise.

In time Lee Roy appeared in the doorway. “All rat. I’m fixin’ to light the fuse. Won’t give us more’n about ten seconds. Everybody get behint some kand of cover. Leave me a space by that desk there.” He turned around and disappeared back into the office.

Provo caught Menendez’s eye and nodded slightly. Then he went across the room and wedged himself under the knee hole of the desk by the trussed prisoners. “Take it easy now,” he told them. “Remember what I said—open your mouths.”

Lee Roy came skittering into the room and dived behind the desk beside Menendez. Portugee and Weed were down behind cover somewhere near the front of the room. Provo shut his eyes and opened his mouth and breathed shallowly, waiting nervelessly.

The explosion knocked him back, rapped his head painfully against the underside of the desk. The ear-splitting thunder beat strident echoes around the enclosed space. There was an immediate smell of plaster dust and sawdust, very hot and acrid, mixed with a sulfur stink of cordite powder. Provo sneezed. Things were still falling down, making noise. He crawled out from under the desk and heard the relatively quiet crack of a small-caliber gunshot. He didn’t glance toward Menendez. “Come on.” He scuttled toward the office door. Menendez came to his feet beyond the desk and Provo could see Lee Roy’s boots lying on the floor beyond it; the boots didn’t move. Weed and Portugee stood up and faced the front door to drive away whoever came to investigate the godawful noise. Provo curled into the smoke, barked his shin against a chair leg, batted smoke with his hand, and climbed across wreckage into the big vault. Lee Roy had done his job well. The door had been smashed. Menendez said, “
Chingado
, what a mess.”