The Last Hard Men by Brian Garfield Read Free Book Online Page A

chance of making undersheriff and possibly even sheriff. Burgade had finally learned to like him and had taken Hayes under his wing, teaching him the bits and pieces of wisdom he had picked up along the backtrail of his experience. Two years ago last month Hayes had made undersheriff. A fortnight later Hayes had been shot dead by a store burglar when he’d stopped to investigate on his way home from a night of card-playing at the Cosmopolitan.
    Burgade had brought Susan back home with him. She had cried her grief out but she’d composed herself rather quickly after the funeral—perhaps too quickly. He had a feeling some of it was still bottled up inside her. Very matter-of-fact, she’d gone to work, organized the house-hold, mothered him insufferably, and made utterly no efforts to resume the social contacts she’d had before her husband’s death. Her old friends, her age, had come around to see her but she had greeted them with exact courtesy, nothing more, and they came around less and less frequently. She encouraged no beaux. Once in a while a young man made a determined attempt to get through to her. The most recent was a young mining engineer, Hal Brickman, who had a clean-cut college-dude appearance and usually went around in baggy riding breeches and a snap-brim Eastern hat. Brickman had a good heart and a quick mind; maybe he wasn’t the kind of tough outdoorsman who’d always run in the Burgade family (Sam Burgade’s forebears had fought in four American wars, explored the Northwest with Lewis and Clark, trapped with Carson and Sublette, trailed cattle with Chisum) but he was solid, substantial, steady, sturdy—and Susan was thirty-one years old, and all these things weighed in Sam Burgade’s considerations.
    In reply to his remark about getting married she said, “I wish you’d quit trying to run my life, Father.”
    “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what in my judgment you ought to do. There’s a difference.”
    “I don’t love Hal Brickman.”
    “Seems he loves you,” he said. “Maybe at your age you ought to stop looking to find a storybook romance and settle for something that could turn out to be just as good in the long run—a steady man who loves you and a kid or two to raise and love.”
    “It terrifies you to think of me drying up into an old-maid spinster, doesn’t it?”
    “Susie, I’m an old man and I know about loneliness. I don’t wish it for you.”
    Her expression changed; she looked away quickly, addressed herself busily to her meal. Her lashes covered her eyes but he thought he had seen a moist glint in them. He pushed his chair back and held his arms stiff, braced against the edge of the table. Full of sudden low anger he said, “Goddamnit, Susie, I will not have you waste your young life looking after a tired old man like me. I had no intention of letting that comment about loneliness give you any excuse to think I need you to look after me for the rest of my life. I can damn well take care of myself. I did while you were married.”
    “You were younger then,” she said in a small voice, not looking up.
    “When I’m too old and feeble to look after myself,” he roared, “I’ll move myself in the goddamn Pioneers’ Home.”
    “Don’t blaspheme, Father.”
    He snorted. “I will not have it.”
    She looked up, finally. “You’ll have to throw me out, then.”
    “Don’t think I won’t.”
    “Then go ahead. Do it.” Her eyes blazed.
    Their glances locked: they scowled furiously at each other until Burgade’s nose twitched, his lip-corner turned up, and suddenly they were both laughing helplessly. He laughed till his stomach hurt; he had to get his breath, and then he dropped his napkin on the table and went to the sideboard and got down the cognac. Rothschild 1887. He poured two snifters.
    “Here. Belt that down and listen to me.”
    “You old tyrant.”
    “Yeah.” He sat down and a crafty gleam came into his eye. “You know what