“Wasn’t his wife killed?”
The sun dried the spit in Burgade’s mouth. It was a moment before he answered. His words had a dry rustle. “She was.”
“I understand he blames you for that.”
“It was my bullet that killed her.”
Hal didn’t say anything. He looked sorry he’d asked the question. They went down the steep bank of an arroyo, leaning far back in their saddles.
Burgade said, “Provo was being clever. When we showed ourselves he tried to bluff it out. Denied the whole thing. It was no good, it tripped him up. When he saw we weren’t buying it, he elected to try to shoot his way out. I returned his fire. His wife was behind him, inside the hogan where none of us could see her. My bullet went through Provo’s thigh—I was shooting to knock him down, not kill him. Went right through him and struck his wife in the throat. She was a damned handsome Navajo girl, expecting a baby. I have regretted it every day for the past twenty-eight years.”
“If he made a break for it with a gun, he had to expect the consequences. I don’t see how you can go on blaming yourself forever, sir.”
“I don’t blame myself. I just regret it happened. It was an accident, which Provo doesn’t choose to accept.”
“An accident he brought on himself. And on her.”
“Just so,” Burgade said stonily. “But you understand it hasn’t been an easy memory to live with, regardless of who was to blame.”
The sun threw a last burst of light along the cloudy horizon. He saw one pale star. They kept running north-westerly, following the tracks through a country which was starting to buckle and heave. Into the breaks of the canyon country. In the next hour the darkness condensed and a heavier mass of cloud moved in. By eight o’clock the night was viscous as syrup. Burgade halted the gray and said reluctantly, “Can’t track till those clouds blow over. Let’s step down and eat.”
“Yes, sir. We could both use some sleep.”
“We’ll see. We don’t want to give them too much of a lead. But it’s just as dark where they are as it is here, and the country’s rougher up that way. They’ve probably been forced to stop too. Anyhow we can get a little rest until the clouds move on.”
“You don’t think it’s going to rain, do you? That would wash out their tracks.”
“It won’t rain tonight,” Burgade said, with only a glance at the clouds.
They loosened the cinches and hobbled the horses. Hal broke out provisions and they ate a cold meal; there was no risking a fire. Pemmican and hardrock biscuits, tinned peaches and canteen water—that was their supper. Afterward Burgade mumbled, “No point trying to stand guard. They won’t double back yet. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you.” Without waiting to see if Hal obeyed, he lay back on the ground with his hat for a pillow and stared at the underbellies of the clouds. He was in a disoriented haze; he had spent so many days fighting to keep awake he was sure he was too tired to sleep. The waking nightmare of reality rubbed inside his brain like coarse grit, driving him toward madness. He saw little likelihood he would ever emerge from it; he had put out of his mind the possibility of surviving this. To get Susan out alive would be miracle enough.
Staring at the black sky, he carefully opened small gates to let Susan’s haunting image flow into his mind. In a while her face hovered before him and he could hear her singing the way she did sometimes in the kitchen, in her small true voice.
He wondered if Hal’s thoughts were like his own. Hal was a good boy. Boy, he thought. Hal was thirty-three or thirty-four, a successful mining engineer—no boy. He handled himself well and had not complained of the endless hours of rough riding. If Hal had a basic weakness, Burgade thought, it was not cowardice or squeamishness. But Hal tended to be too impetuous. He had been an athlete in his school years; he was handsome and self-confident and a lot of things had come easily to him. There was a chance his very abilities would be his downfall. His athletic coordination was great, like his stamina—but if he’d been a little less agile, a little more accident-prone, he’d have taken his knocks by now, learned his lesson, learned how to be more cautious.
Burgade’s mind drifted. His exhaustion was physical, emotional, mental, all compounded by tense strain carried to the taut limits of tolerance. Sleep moved toward him, silent and black.
He awoke fuzzily. He was lying on his side. He did not stir; he kept his eyes shut and his breathing deep and even. Someone was behind him.
He heard a foot crunch gravel and the tentative clearing of a throat, and he made a face and rolled over. “Next time you come up behind a man,” he said, “announce yourself. I almost blew your head off.”
Hal said, “I was deciding whether to wake you up. The clouds have cleared off.”
“Time’s it?”
“About two, by my watch.”
Burgade looked around. Dust around the horned moon was a luminous ring. The light was enough to see by. “I slept six hours,” he said. “Too long. They’ve got another hour or two on us now.”
“From what you say,” Hal observed, “I expect they’ll wait for us to catch up when they get to wherever it is they’re going.”
Burgade grunted. He looked past Hal and saw the two horses standing thirty or forty feet away, saddled and ready. Hal had packed everything up. It annoyed Burgade slightly: people were always doing things for him, this trip. But what irritated him far more was the fact that the noise hadn’t awakened him. I can’t sleep again until we’ve finished this business, he decided.
The sleep hadn’t revived him. He felt logy and weak. He stumbled once on his way to the horse. But Hal was considerate enough not to try to help him climb into the saddle.
He found the tracks without much trouble and lifted the gray to a trot. Hal rode alongside in brooding silence for ten or fifteen minutes before he revealed what was eating him. “Sir, I had better know what you’ve got in mind to do.”
“Do?”
“You told the sheriff you were going to try to trade your life for Susan’s.”
“So I did.”
“Is that still your plan?”
“It never has been. I lied to Noel—to get him off my back.”
Hal’s face was turned toward him. Under the hatbrim his expression was invisible. But his voice was slightly choked. “You mean you never intended to offer a trade?”
“You’re thinking if there was a chance in a thousand you could have Susan’s life by offering your own in exchange, you’d do it like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“You’re damn right I would.”
“That’s very fine and noble,” Burgade intoned.
“You seem to disapprove,” Hal said, stiffly.
“Let me tell you something. Zach Provo’s not going to strike any bargains. Why should he, when he’s got a corner on the market?”
“It appears to me, sir, that we’re still obliged to try.”
“Put it this way, Hal. Two enemies face each other with knives. They crouch and circle each other, looking for an opening. One of them is an expert knife-thrower, the other one isn’t. Suppose you’re the expert knife-thrower. What do you do? Throw your knife?”
It puzzled Hal. “I don’t know.”
“No. You don’t throw. Because your enemy’s in a crouch and you can’t be sure of finishing him with one toss. And once you’ve thrown your knife you’re defenseless. So you keep your knife and you fight your enemy on his terms.”
“I’m not sure I follow that, sir.”
“My freedom of action is the only weapon I’ve got. If I turned myself in to Provo as part of some sort of trade, I’d be giving up my only threat against him. You see, he’s not going to kill Susan as long as I’m out here with guns.”
“Then what’s he going to do?”
“He’s going to try to take me alive,” Burgade said in a tired voice. “He’ll want to force me to watch them do … things … to Susan. He wants me to watch her die. And then he’ll find a slow way to kill me. He’ll take his time because it’s going to dawn on him that killing me will leave a great big hole where his hate used to be. He’s going to miss me—he won’t like the idea of ending all the years of hating my guts.”