She didn’t open the door. “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
He didn’t want to show his gun out here in broad daylight. He gave her a broader smile and tipped his hat back with his left hand. “I just come down to help out with this trap of his. Sam and me go back a long way together—I worked for him back when he was heading up the railroad’s security branch. Name of Carlos O’Neill, maybe you heard him mention me.”
“I can’t say I have,” she said, and unlatched the door hesitantly. “But I’m sure it must be all right. I’m sorry to seem so standoffish, Mr. O’Neill, but this whole thing troubles me, you know—I’m worried about my father, he shouldn’t have involved himself in all this. He’s not young.”
“Oh, I reckon Sam can always take care of himself,” he said, pulling the screen door open and stepping inside with his smile.
As soon as the door flapped shut behind him he showed her the gun. The smile dropped off his face as totally as if it had never been there: as if he were an actor, stepping backstage into the wings, shedding his role.
“All right, missy,” he said in a more abrasive voice than he’d used before. “Now just keep quiet and listen to me.
Fear quivered in her eyes. She backed up against the wall; her hand went to her mouth. “What is it—what do you want?” It was a tiny whisper.
A faint miasmic breeze came in through the screen, stirring the tails of his duster around his legs. “Let’s go back to your room, missy, wherever you keep your things. You’ll be needing some clothes—you’re going on a little horseback trip with us.”
Stunned, she stood back in the bedroom corner, hugging her breasts, staring at him without blinking, too unsettled to move. Provo flung open drawers and the wardrobe, found a carpetbag valise and opened it and put it on the bed. “Come on, missy, I don’t know what sort of things you need. You pack it yourself.”
She shook her head, mute. There was a thread of moisture on her upper lip. Her face, which had flooded with color in the beginning, had gone unnaturally pale. Her eyes were very large.
He took two strides and cuffed her hard across the cheek. It rocked her head to one side and left red fingermarks. She reached up with one hand to touch her cheek; she blinked and drew a ragged breath. “You—you’re Provo.”
“That’s right, missy.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at him.
“Time’s wasting,” he said. “I don’t want to hit you again.” He pointed his gun toward the open valise.
Moving like a sleepwalker, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers and began taking things out without discrimination and throwing them into the valise. She went to the wardrobe and took down denim trousers and a shirt and stuffed them in on top. Provo saw an oilskin rain slicker hanging inside and reached for it. “Better take this along too.”
When she seemed done, he buckled the valise shut and carried it into the front of the house, prodding the girl ahead of him. “Sit down at the table over there and write me a note for your old man.”
Her face came around, hollow and pallid. “What?”
“We wouldn’t want him to fret about you, would we? He might get all het up if he didn’t know where you’d gone. Now you just sit down there and write him a little note. Tell him you’ve gone away with Zach Provo.”
“Gone—gone away where?”
“I guess he doesn’t need to know that, does he, missy?” He shoved her toward the inkstand.
She still wore her sunbonnet—she must have been out hanging wash on the line. She looked little-girlish when she sat down hesitantly and reached for the pen, dipped it into the inkwell and poised it above a sheet of paper. “I——”
“I don’t care what you tell him, missy, but write something.” He smiled slightly: “I ain’t illiterate, if it matters. I’ll want to read what you’ve written. But it doesn’t matter what you say. Go ahead now.”
The nib of the pen scratched across the paper in jerky squeaks. The silence began to unnerve Provo and he stepped forward to read over the girl’s shoulder. She shrank away from him but continued writing until she had filled most of the sheet. Then tears began to drip from her eyes, blurring the writing, and Provo took the pen out of her hand and gripped her by the elbow. “That’s enough. We’re leaving now.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, I beg you, don’t—”
He steered her toward the door, professing not to have heard her. When they reached the screen he stopped her. “I’ve got this gun in my hand under my coat, missy, and there’s a big man out at the curb by the name of Will Gant, a good dear friend of mine. You try to bolt for it and one of us’ll put a bullet in your leg, hear? Now you just walk out there right in front of me and climb on that horse and ride out of town between us, and there won’t be any trouble. Nobody means to hurt you, just remember that. I just mean to make your old man sweat awhile and use you for a hostage to make sure we get safe conduct out of this bailiwick. You hear me, missy?”
She nodded and swallowed.
He squeezed her arm. “Say it, missy. Say you hear me and you understand me and you ain’t going to act foolish.”
“I understand,” she said weakly.
He tightened his grip on her valise, showed her the gun, slipped it back under his coat and nodded to her. She opened the screen door and stepped outside.
He stayed close behind her down the walk. Will Gant stood watching, burly and muscular, thighs bulging against his trousers. His eyes frankly coveted the girl’s body but Gant said nothing that might have displayed surprise. Provo said, “Meet Miss Burgade, Will. She’s going to ride with us a way.”
Gant smiled and tugged at a black nostril hair. His thick lips peeled back. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
“Climb aboard, missy. Time to go.”
Four
Carrying the tearstained note, Sam Burgade went, as if against his will, into his daughter’s room. It was sunny in there, the muslin curtains stirring in a warm breeze, womanly things scattered around in disarray, drawers flung open, the wardrobe standing ajar.
Burgade’s face kept changing. Muscles stood ridged at his jaw hinges and the bones at brow and cheek became harder, more prominent.
He pushed his solemn glance at things in the room as if to engrave them indelibly on his memory. Then he strode out of the house and marched, not running, around half the block to Packers little grocery. Packer had a telephone. Burgade got through to the sheriffs office.
Noel Nye’s voice came at him, scratchy and distant “Oh, there you are. Listen, that big noise from up on the hills, it was them. They blowed up the smelter safe. Left one of their own dead behind—one of my boys recognized him, Lee Roy Tucker. It was them convicts, all rat. They tooken off with a coupla hundred dollars petty caish.”
“That’s not all they’ve taken,” Burgade said. “Susan’s gone.”
Nye came into the house wiping his face on his shirtsleeve. His face in all its clubbed ugliness was full of forlorn dignity. “Captain, I cain’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Yeah.” Burgade’s scalp contracted.
“Well, we doin’ everthang we can to get her back, Captain. Everbody owns a horse and a gun’s out there beatin’ the brush for sign.”
“Out where?”
The sheriff spread his hands. “Mostly up in the mountains back of the smelter.”
“They didn’t go that way. They had to come by here to collect my daughter. They didn’t have her with them when they robbed the smelter, did they? Well, then—they must have come this way. From here they could only head up the valley toward Phoenix or up into the Catalinas.”