The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [128]
Four were desperadoes. Well known, though with beard bristles and range clothes they looked like anybody else. First, the Harlan brothers, Ford and Eugene. Ford was boss: Eugene was too lazy to work. Then Deke, an old hand whose real name was something Deacon, though no one knew what for sure. And the fourth, Sonny Navarez, wanted in Sonora by the rurales; in Arizona, by the marshal’s office. He, like the others, had served time in the territorial prison at Yuma.
As far as Freehouser was concerned, they weren’t going back to Yuma if he caught them. Not with Elton Goss dying and his dad yelling for blood.
The fifth outlaw was identified as Rich Miller, a rider from down by Four Tanks. Those who knew of him said he was weathered good for his age, though not as tough as he thought he was. A boy going on eighteen and getting funny ideas in his brain because of the changing chemistry in his body. The bartender at the Centralia said Rich had been in and out all day, looking like he was mad at somebody. So they judged Rich had gotten drunk and was talked into something that was way over his head.
A hand from F-T Connected, which was out of Four Tanks, said Rich Miller’d been let go the day before, when the old man caught him drunk up at a line shack and not tending his fences. So what the Centralia bartender said was probably true. Freehouser said it was just too damn bad for him, that’s all.
Monday afternoon the marshal’s posse was in Four Tanks, then heading east toward the jagged andesite peaks of the Kofas. McKelway, the law at Four Tanks, had joined the posse, bringing five men with him, and offering a neighborly hand. But he became hard-to-hold eager when he found out who they were after. The Fords, Deke, and Navarez had dead-or-alive money on them. McKelway knew Rich Miller and said he just ought to have his nose wiped and run off home. But Freehouser looked at it differently.
This was armed robbery. Goss, the bank manager, and his son Elton, who clerked for him, were hauled out of bed by two men—they turned out to be Eugene Harlan and Deke. Ford Harlan and Sonny Navarez were waiting at the rear door of the bank. The robbery would have come off without incident if Elton hadn’t gone for a gun in a desk drawer. The elder Goss wasn’t sure which one shot him. Then they were gone, with twelve thousand dollars.
They rode around front and Rich Miller came out of the Centralia to join them. He’d been sitting at the window, asleep, the clerk thought, wearing off a drunk. He was used to having riders do that. When the rooms were filled up he didn’t care. But Rich Miller suddenly came alive and swung onto a mount the Mexican was leading. So all that time he must have been watching the front to see no one sneaked up on them.
McKelway said a boy ought to be allowed one big mistake before he was called hard on something he’d done. Besides, Rich Miller’s name didn’t bring any reward money.
Tuesday morning, the twenty-man posse was deep in the Kofas. Gray rock towering on all sides, wild country, and now, no trail. Freehouser decided they would split up, climb to higher ground, and wait. Just look around. He sent a man back to Four Tanks to wire Yuma and Aztec in case the outlaws got through the Kofas. But Freehouser was sure they were still in the mountains, somewhere.
Wednesday morning his hunch paid off. One of McKelway’s men spotted a rider, and the posse closed in by means of a mirror-flash system they’d planned beforehand. The rider turned out to be Ford Harlan.
Wednesday afternoon Ford Harlan was dead.
He had led them a chase most of the morning, slipping through the man net,