The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard

by Elmore Leonard

  Eugene ignored him and kept on toward Sonny. The Mexican's hand edged toward his holstered pistol.

  "Gene, you sit down now," Deke said tensely.

  Eugene stepped into the rectangle of sunlight carpeting in from the doorway. He was stepping out of it when the rifle cracked and sang in the open stillness. Eugene's hands clawed at his face and he dropped without uttering a sound.

  MCKELWAY RELOADED quickly. He had got one of them, he was sure of that. And it hadn't looked like the boy, else he wouldn't have fired. Jim Mission told him it was good shooting. After that McKelway did some figuring.

  From the crest of the ore tailing in front of them, they'd be only about fifty yards from the hut. The only trouble was, they'd be out in the open. He told Jim Mission about it and he said why not go up after dark; then if they didn't see anything they'd still be close enough to shoot at sounds. McKelway said he was just waiting for Jim to say it.

  THERE WAS NO poker the rest of the afternoon. Deke had dragged Eugene by his boots out of the doorway and placed him against a side wall with his hands on his chest, not crossed, but pushed inside his coat. He took the money out of Eugene's pockets--six thousand dollars--and laid it on the table. Then he sat down and looked at it.

  Rich Miller pressed close to the wall by the window, studying the slope, wondering where the man with the rifle was. His eyes hung on the weathered shaft scaffolding, and now he wasn't so sure if there'd be any fun.

  Once Deke said, "Now it's starting to show itself," but they didn't bother to ask him what.

  Sonny Navarez stayed by a window. He would look at Eugene's body, but most of the time he was watching the dying sun. Rich Miller noticed this, but he figured the Mexican was thinking about God--or heaven or hell--because there was a dead man in the room. Sonny had crossed himself when Eugene was cut down, even though he would have killed him himself a minute before.

  The sun was below the canyon rim, though the sky still reflected it red and orange, when Sonny Navarez pulled his pistol.

  Deke was raising the bottle. He glanced at the Mexican, but only momentarily. He took a long swallow then and extended the bottle to Rich Miller. But the boy was staring at Sonny Navarez. Deke's head turned abruptly. Sonny's long-barreled .44 was pointing toward them.

  Deke took his time putting down the bottle. He looked up again.

  "What's the idea?"

  The Mexican said, "When it is dark I'm leaving."

  Deke nodded to the pistol. "You think we're going to try and stop you?"

  "You might. I am taking the money."

  "You're wasting your time."

  Sonny Navarez shrugged. "Que va --it's worth a try. From no matter where you die, it's the same distance to hell."

  "You wouldn't have a chance," Rich Miller said. "There's somebody out there close with a rifle dead on this place."

  "For this money a man will brave many things," the Mexican said.

  "And--I am not leaving until dark." Then he told them to face the wall, and when they did, he picked up the bundles of oversize bills and stuffed them inside his jacket.

  Rich Miller said, "Do you think you'll get through?"

  "Probably no."

  Deke said, "You're a damn fool."

  "If I get out," Sonny Navarez said, "I will visit a priest and give his church part of the money, and not rob again."

  "It's too late for that," Deke said. "It's too late for anything."

  No," the Mexican insisted. "I will be very sorry for this crime. With the money that is left after the church I will buy my mother a house in Hermosillo and after that I will recite the rosary every day."

  Deke shook his head. "Things are going the way they are for a reason we don't know. But nothing you can do will change it."

  The Mexican shrugged and said, "Que va--

  "

  It was almost full dark when Sonny Navarez moved to the doorway.

  He stood next to the opening and holstered his pistol and lifted his carbine, which was there against the wall. He levered a shell into the breech and stepped into the opening, crouching slightly. He hesitated, as if listening, then turned to the two men at the table and nodded. As he was turning back, the rifle shot rang in the dim stillness and echoed upcanyon. Sonny Navarez doubled, sinking to his knees, and hung there momentarily, as if in prayer, before falling half through the doorway.

  LATER, MCKELWAY and Mission climbed down from the ore tailing and reported to Freehouser. The marshal said three out of five men wasn't bad for one day's work. They were sitting on the porch, cigarettes glowing in the darkness, when the rider came in from Asuncion. He told them that Elton Goss was going to pull through.

  Freehouser laughed and said, well, he guessed the age of miracles was back. A good one on the doctor, eh? The news made everybody feel pretty good, because Elton was a nice boy. McKelway mentioned that it would also make it a whole lot easier on Rich Miller.

  LOOKING OUT into the night, the boy could just barely make out the shapes of the mine structures and the cyanide vats, which Deke had told him held 250 tons of ore and had to be hauled all the way across the desert from Yuma. How did he say it? The ore'd pour into the crusher--jaws and rollers that'd beat it almost to powder--then pass into the vats and get leached in cyanide for nine days. Five pounds of cyanide to the ton of water, that was it. He thought, What's the sense in remembering that?

  It's a strange thing, Rich Miller thought now, how in two days a man can change from a thirty-a-month rider to an outlaw and not even feel it. Almost like the man has nothing to do with it. Just a rope pulling you into things.

  He remembered earlier in the day, being eager, looking forward to doing some long-range shooting, but seeing the situation apart from himself. He wondered how he could have thought this. Now there were two dead men in the room--that was the difference.

  Later on, he got to thinking about Eugene breaking the poker game and about the Mexican. It occurred to him that both of them, for a short space of time, had all of the money, and now they were dead.

  Ford had taken the biggest cut, and he was dead. Toward morning he dozed and when he awoke, Deke was sitting, leaning against the wall below the other window.

  Deke was silent and Rich Miller said, for something to say, "When they going to try for us?"

  "When they get good and damn ready."

  Rich Miller was silent and after a while he said, "We could take a chance and give up--you know, not like surrenderin'--with the idea of gettin' away later on when they ain't a hundred of 'em around."

  "You know what I told you."

  "But you ain't dead sure about that."

  "I'd say I'm a little older than you are."

  Rich Miller did not answer. Damn, he hated for someone to tell him that. As if old men naturally knew more than young ones. Taking credit for being older when they didn't have anything to do with it.

  "What're you thinking about?" Deke said.

  "Giving up."

  Deke exhaled slowly. "You saw what happens if you go through that door."

  "There's other ways."

  "Like what?"

  "Wavin' a flag."

  "You wave anything out that door," Deke said quietly, "I'll kill you."

  HE'S CRAZY, RICH thought. He's honest-to-God crazy and doesn't know it.

  Deke had butted the table against the wall under the window and now they sat opposite each other, Deke on one side of the window, the boy on the other. Deke had divided the eight thousand dollars between them and said they were going to play poker to keep their minds from blowing away. He placed his pistol on the edge of the table.

  They stayed fairly close at first, each winning about the same number of pots, but after a while the boy began to win more often. In the quietness he thought of many things--like not being able to give himself up--and then he remembered something which had occurred to him earlier.

  "Deke," the boy said, "you know why Sonny and Eugene got killed?"

  "I've been telling you why. 'Ca
use they were destined to."

  "But why?"

  "No one knows that."

  "I do." The boy watched the older man closely. "Because they had the money." He paused. "Ford had most of it, and he was the first. Eugene had all but Sonny's when he got hit. Then Sonny took all of it and he lasted less than an hour."

  Deke said nothing, but his sunken expression seemed more drawn.

  They played on in silence and slowly Rich Miller was taking more and more of the money. Deke seemed uncomfortable and he said quietly that he guessed it just wasn't his day. In less than an hour he was down to two hundred and fifty dollars. "You might clean me out," Deke said.

  Rich Miller said nothing and dealt the cards. The first ones down, then a queen to Deke and a jack to himself. He looked at his hole card.

  A ten of diamonds. Deke bet fifty dollars on the queen.

  "You must have twin girls," the boy said.

  "You know how to find out."

  Rich Miller's next card was a king. Deke's an ace. He bet fifty dollars again. Their fourth cards were low and no help, but Deke pushed in all the money he had.

  "That's on a hunch," he said.

  Rich Miller dealt the last cards--a queen to Deke, making it an ace, a five, and two queens. He gave himself a second king.

  "What you show beats me," Deke said, grinning. He pushed away from the table and stood up. "You got it all, boy. You know what that means."

  "It means I'm giving up."

  "It's too late. You explained it yourself a while ago--the man who gets the money gets killed!" Deke was grinning deeply. "Now I don't have anything."

  "You're dead sure you'll be last."

  "As sure as a man can be. It's the handwriting."

  "What good'll it do you?"

  "Who knows?"

  "You're so dead sure, go stand in that doorway."

  Deke was silent.

  "What about your handwritin'? The pattern says you'll be the last, and even then, who knows? That all the bunk?"

  Deke hesitated momentarily, then walked slowly toward the doorway. He stopped next to it, stiffly. Then he moved out.

  Rich Miller's eyes stayed on Deke as his hand moved across the table. He lifted Deke's pistol from the table edge and swung it out the window and fired in the direction of the scaffolding.

  A high-pitched, whining report answered the shot and hung longer in the air. Deke staggered, turning back into the room, and had time to look at the boy in wide-eyed amazement. Then he was dead.

  The boy returned to the window after getting his carbine and, with his bandanna tied to the end of the barrel, waved it in a slow arc back and forth. Once they started up the slope he sat back in the chair and idly turned over his hole card, the ten.

  The possemen were drawing closer, up to Ford Harlan's body now.

  He flipped Deke's hole card. It landed on top of the two queens. Three ladies.

  He rose and moved to the doorway as he saw the men nearing the shelf, then glanced down at Deke and shook his head. I sure am crazy, he thought. I never heard before of a man cheating to lose.

  He walked through the doorway with his hands above his head.

  Chapter 17 Trouble at Rindo s Station.

  Original Title: Rindo's Station.

  Argosy, October 1953.

  Chapter One.

  THERE WAS A TIME when Bonito might have fired at the rider far below on the road, and for no other reason than to test his carbine, since the rider was a white man. He had done this many times before--sometimes for a shirt, or a fresh horse, usually for ammunition, though a reason was not necessary. But now there was something on the Mescalero's mind. He held his fire and urged his pony down the pinon slope. From high up he had recognized Ross Corsen--the lank figure slouched in the McClellan saddle, head down against the glare, hat low over his eyes. And now, as the Mescalero closed in, Corsen looked up, though he had seen him long before, when Bonito was still high up the slope.

  "Sik-isn, " Bonito said. The word was a hiss between his lips. Strands of hair hung from the shadow of a high-crowned hat, thick, glistening hair accentuating the yellowish cast of his skin and the pock scars that roughened heavy-boned features. A frayed, sweat-stained shirt covered his chest, but his legs were naked, for he wore only a breechclout, and the curled toes of his moccasins hung beneath the pony's belly, ridiculously close to the ground. A carbine was across his lap.

  Ross Corsen smiled at the Apache's greeting and studied the broad, ugly face. "Now you call me brother, " he said in Spanish. "You must want something." He had not seen the Mescalero in almost a year, not since the four-day chase down to the border, and a glimpse of Bonito far off, not running any longer because he was safely in Mexico. Bonito had killed two Coyotero policemen during a tulapai drunk. That had started it. On the run for the border, he killed two more men, plus four horses that didn't belong to him. Now he was back and Corsen studied him, wondering why. The Apache spoke a slow, guttural Spanish and said, as if in the middle of his thoughts, "We have suffered unfairly from your hand; all of us have"--he used the Apache word tinneh, which meant all of the people and in its meaning described the blood tie which bound them together--"and from the other man, the one who directs you. You think only of yourselves."

  "And when did you begin thinking of others?" Corsen said.

  "Those are my people at Pinaleno," Bonito answered him.

  Corsen shrugged. "I won't argue with you. What you do now is no concern of mine. I can't do a thing to you or for you, but maybe suggest you go home and get drunk, which is what you'll probably do anyway."

  "And where is our home, Cor-sen?"

  "You know as well as I do."

  "At San Carlos, where there is little to eat?"

  Corsen nodded to the Maynard carbine across the Apache's lap.

  "Maybe in Mexico. You can't have one of those at San Carlos."

  "Yes, in Sonora and Chihuahua where it is a business of profit to take the hair of the Apache, the government paying for our scalps."

  Corsen shook his head. "Look, I no longer am in charge of the Pinaleno Reservation. The government man has discharged me." He thought for words that would explain it clearly to the Apache. "He is the one, Mr. Sellers, who has taken your guns and decided that you live on government beef."

  "Some of the government beef," Bonito corrected. "He sells most of it to others for his own profit."

  "That is not true of all reservations. You know I treated your people fairly."

  "But you are no longer there and soon it will be true of all reservations."

  The words were familiar to Corsen. No, not so much the words as the idea: he had argued this very thing with Sellers three days before, straining his patience to explain to the Bureau of Indian Affairs supervisor exactly what an Apache is. What kind of thinking animal he is. How much abuse he will take before all the peace talks in the world will not stop him. And he had lost the argument because, even if reason was not on Sellers's side, authority was. He threw it in Sellers's face, accusing him of selling government rations for his own profit, and Sellers laughed, daring him to prove it--then fired him. He would have quit. You can't go on working for a man like that. He decided that he didn't care anyway.

  For that matter it was strange that he should. Ross Corsen knew Apaches because he had fought them. He had been in charge of the Coyotero trackers at Fort Thomas for four years. And after that, for three years--until the day before yesterday--he had been in charge of the Mescalero Subagency at Pinaleno, thirty miles south of Thomas.

  He didn't care. The hell with it. That's what he told himself. Still he kept wondering what had brought Bonito back. He thought: Leave him alone. If he came back to help his people, let him work it out his own Apache way. You tried. But instead he asked carefully, "Why would a warrior of Bonito's stature return now to a reservation? They haven't forgotten what you did. If you're caught, they'll hang you."

  "Then I would die--which the people are doing now on the reservation, under
Bil-Clin who calls himself their chief." Bonito's eyes half closed and he went on. "Let me tell you a story, Cor-sen, which happened long ago. There was a young man of the Mescalero, who was a great hunter and slayer of his enemies. From raids to Mexico he would return to his rancheria with countless ponies and often with women who would then do his bidding. And many of these he gave to his chief out of honor.

  "One day he returned from war gravely wounded and his hands empty, but he noticed that still this chief, who was the son of a chief and he the son of one before him, received more spoils than anyone, yet without endangering himself by being present on the raid. Now this grieved the warrior. He would not offend his chief, but he was beginning to think this unjust.

  "On a day after his wound had healed, he was walking in a deep canyon with this in his thoughts and as it grew unbearable he cried out to U-sen why should this be, and immediately a spirit appeared before him. Now, this spirit questioned the warrior, asking him how a man became chief, and the warrior answered that it was blood handed from father to son. And the spirit asked him where in the natural order was this found? Did one lobo wolf lead the pack because of his blood? The warrior thought deeply of this and gradually he realized that chieftainship of blood was not just. It was the place of the bravest warrior to lead--not for his own sake, but for the good of all.

  "You know what he did, Cor-sen?" Bonito paused then. "He returned to the rancheria and challenged his chief and fought him to the death with his knife. Two others opposed him, and he killed these also.

  With this the people realized that it was as it should be and the warrior was acclaimed chief of Mescaleros.

  "That was the first time, Cor-sen, but it has happened many times since. When one is no longer deserving to be chief, then another opposes him. Sometimes the opposed chief steps aside; often it is settled with a knife."

  Corsen was silent. Then he said, "At Pinaleno Bil-Clin is still a strong chief. And he is wise enough not to lead his people in a war he cannot win."

  Bonito's heavy face creased into a grim smile. "Is he strong . . . and wise?" Then he said, his tone changing, "Do you go away from here?"