The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [133]
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 Asunción. 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. ’Cause 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