Blood Money and Other Stories Page 6

  At the desk a sergeant looked up and momentarily there was recognition on his face. But he said nothing, he only listened to the name that was given him, then stepped into the next room and closed the door behind him.

  He reappeared almost immediately. "The major will see you," and stepped aside to let Walker pass.

  McGrail's back was turned. He stood at the window behind his desk, looking out at the sand and glare.

  He did not turn, but when the door closed, he said, "I've been expecting you."

  Walker hesitated. "Why?"

  McGrail turned then. He was holding a revolving pistol in his right hand, and with the other he was wiping a cloth along the barrel.

  "To return the horse you borrowed," he said.

  "Why else?"

  Walker was silent. The surprise was on his face for a brief moment. It passed, and still he did not say anything.

  "How's the leg?"

  "Stiff."

  "I suppose it would be."

  McGrail moved the cloth slowly, steadily along the pistol barrel. Abruptly he said, "You wouldn't know the whereabouts of a man named Beckwith, would you?"

  Walker was startled. "Should I?"

  "You're not one for answering questions, are you?"

  Walker unbuttoned his coat and drew tobacco from his shirt. He made a cigarette and replaced the tobacco, leaving his coat open.

  "I could never wear a shoulder holster," McGrail said. "Would always feel bound."

  Walker exhaled cigarette smoke. "You get used to anything."

  "I thought you might have heard of this Beckwith," McGrail said. "I'm rather anxious to meet him, myself you see, he's a Confederate agent."

  "Why are you telling me that?"

  McGrail shrugged. "Just conversation. Thought you might be interested. You see, this Beckwith thinks he's been putting something over on us, but there are as many people in Valverde giving information to me as there are to him." McGrail was relaxed. His eyes were not tired now, and his full red beard had been combed and trimmed. "People like waiters and bartenders?" Walker said.

  "All kinds of people, doing their bit." McGrail smiled.

  Walker dropped his cigarette to the plank flooring and stepped on it and saw the major frown. "If you have something to say, say it."

  McGrail hesitated, watching Walker closely. He had been leaning against the front of his desk. Now he moved around it and, next to the window, unrolled a wall map by pulling a short cord. He beckoned to Walker with the handgun.

  He moved forward hesitantly and watched McGrail point with his left hand to a dot on the map, but he could not read the name because of McGrail's hand. But east and north of the dot there were other names that could be read. Five Forks, Malvern Hill, Seven Pines. And suddenly he felt the skin prickle on the nape of his neck and between his shoulders.

  "We heard less than an hour ago," McGrail said quietly. "On the morning of April ninth, here at Appomattox, Lee surrendered to General Grant.

  Mr. Walker, the war is over."

  The room was silent. Walker's eyes remained on the map, unmoving. The war's over, he said in his mind, and repeated the words. The war's over. He felt relief. He waited for something else, but that was all. He felt only relief. How are you supposed to feel when you lose a war? he thought. He looked at McGrail now and watched the cavalryman step to his desk and lay his pistol there. He felt his own pistol, heavy beneath his left arm, and now his hand dropped slowly from his coat front.

  "I just now sent a man to Valverde," McGrail said. "You must have passed him. News travels slowly out here, doesn't it?" he said now. "You know April the ninth was two days ago the day before we found you in that draw."

  The cavalryman began arranging papers that were scattered over the polished surface of his desk.

  He looked up at Walker who was staring at him strangely.

  "Mr. Walker, if you'll excuse me, I've a mountain of reports to wade through that have to be done today. That was all you wanted, wasn't it? To return the horse?"

  Walker hesitated. "As a matter of fact, there was something else."

  McGrail looked up again. "Yes?"

  "I wondered if you might have a rig I could buy," Walker said. A grin was forming through the beard stubble. "It's hard going astride, with one leg dragging. You see, I've got a long way to go down the Rio Grande to Cuchillo, then west toward Santa Rita "

  *

  *

  Blood Money.

  The Yuma Savings and Loan, Asuncion Branch, was held up on a Monday morning, early. By eight o'clock the doctor had dug the bullet out of Elton Goss's middle and said if he lived, then you didn't need doctors anymore the age of miracles was back. By nine Freehouser, the Asuncion marshal, had all the facts even the identity of the five holdup men thanks to the Centralia Hotel night clerk's having been awake to see four of them come down from their rooms just after sunup. Then, he had tried to make the faces register in his mind, but even squinting and wrinkling his forehead did no good.

  The fifth man had been in the hotel lobby most of the night and the clerk knew for sure who he was, but didn't at the time associate him with the others.

  Later, when Freehouser showed him the wanted dodgers, then he was dead sure about all of them.

  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 FT 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 mon
ey.

  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, but near noon he turned into a dead end canyon, a deserted mine site that once had been Sweet Mary No. 1. Ford Harlan had been urging his mount up a slope above the mine works, toward an adobe hut perched on a ledge about three hundred yards up, when Freehouser cupped his hands and called for him to halt. He kept on. A moment later Jim Mission, McKelway's deputy, knocked him out of the saddle with a single shot from his Remington.

  Then McKelway and Mission volunteered to bring Ford Harlan down. McKelway tied a white neckerchief to the end of his Sharps for a truce flag and they went up. Freehouser had said if you want to get Ford, you might as well go a few more steps and ask the rest if they want to give up. They were almost to the body when the pistol fire broke from above. They scrambled down fast and when they reached the posse, Freehouser was smiling.

  They were all up there, Eugene and Deke and the Mexican and Rich Miller. One of them had lost his nerve and opened up. You could see it on Freehouser's face. The self satisfaction. They were trapped in an old assay shack with a sheer sandstone wall towering behind it thin shadow lines of crevices reaching to slender pinnacles and only one way to come down. The original mine opening was on the same shelf; probably they'd hid their horses there.

  Freehouser was a contented man; he had all the time in the world to figure how to pry them out of the 'dobe. He even listened to McKelway and admitted that maybe the kid, Rich Miller, shouldn't be hung with the others if he didn't get shot first.

  Some of the posse went back home, because they had jobs to hold down, but the next day, others came out from Asuncion and Four Tanks to see the fun.

  It seemed natural that Deke should take over as boss. There was no discussing it; no one gave it a thought. Ford was dead. Eugene was indifferent.

  Sonny Navarez was Mexican, and Rich Miller was a kid.

  The boy had wondered why Deke wasn't the boss even before. Maybe Deke didn't have Ford's nerve, but he had it over him in age and learning.

  Still, a man gets old and he thinks of too many what ifs. And sometimes Deke was scary the way he talked about fate and God pulling little strings to steer men around where they didn't want to go.

  He was at the window on the right side of the doorway, which was open because there was no door. Eugene and Deke were at the left front window. He could hear Sonny Navarez behind him moving gear around, but the boy did not take his eyes from the slope.

  Deke lounged against the wall, his face close to the window frame, his carbine balanced on the sill.

  Eugene was a step behind him. He was a heavyboned man, shoulders stretching his shirt tight, and tall, though Deke was taller when he wasn't lounging. Eugene pulled at his shirt, sticking to his body with perspiration. The sun was straight overhead and the heat pushed into the canyon without first being deflected by the rimrock.

  The Mexican drew his carbine from his bedroll and moved up next to Rich Miller, and now the four of them were looking down the slope, all thinking pretty much the same thing, though in different ways.

  Eugene Harlan broke the silence. "I shouldn't of fired at them."

  It could have gone unsaid. Deke shrugged.

  "That's under the bridge."

  "I wasn't thinking."

  Deke did not bother to look at him. "Well, you better start."

  "It wasn't my fault. Ford led 'em here!"

  "Nobody's blaming you for anything. They'd a got us anyway, sooner or later. It was on the wall."

  Eugene was silent, and then he said, "What happens if we give ourselves up?"

  Deke glanced at him now. "What do you think?"

  Sonny Navarez grinned. "I think they would invite us to the rope dance."

  "Ford's the one shot that boy in the bank," Eugene protested. "They already got him."

  "How would they know he's the one?" Deke said.

  "We'll tell them."

  Deke shook his head. "Get a drink and you'll be doing your nerves a favor."

  Sonny Navarez and Rich Miller looked at Deke and both of them grinned, but they said nothing and after a moment they looked away again, down the slope, which fell smooth and steep. Slightly to the left, beyond an ore tailing, rose the weathered gray scaffolding over the main shaft; below it, the rickety structure of the crushing mill and, past that, six rusted tanks cradled in a framework of decaying timber. These were roughly three hundred yards down the slope.

  There was another hundred to the clapboard company buildings straggled along the base of the far slope.

  A sign hanging from the veranda of the largest building said sweet mary no. 1 el tesorero mining co. four tanks, arizona terr. Most of the possemen now sat in the shade of this building.

  Deke raised his hat again and passed a hand over his bald head, then down over his face, weathered and beard stubbled, contrasting with the delicate whiteness of his skull. Rich Miller's eyes came back up the slope, hesitating on Ford Harlan's facedown body. Then he removed his hat, passed a sleeve across his forehead, and replaced the curled brim low over his eyes.

  He heard Eugene say, "You can't tell what they'll do."

  "They won't send us back to Yuma," Deke said.

  "That's one thing you can count on. And it costs money to rig a gallows. They'd just as lief do it here, with a gun appeals to the sporting blood."

  Sonny Navarez said, "I once shot a mountain sheep in this same canyon that weighed as much as a man."

  "Right from the start there were signs," Deke said. "I was a fool not to heed them. Now it's too late. Something's brought us to die here all together, and we can't escape it. You can't escape your doom."

  Sonny Navarez said, "I think it was twelve thousand dollars that brought us."

  "Sure it was the money, in a way," Deke said.

  "But we're so busy listening to Ford tell how easy money's restin' in the bank, waitin' to be sent to Yuma, we're not seein' the signs. Things that've never happened before. Like Ford insisting we got to have five so he picks up this kid "

  Rich Miller said, "Wait a minute!" because it didn't sound right.

  Deke held up his hand. "I'm talking about the signs and Ford all of a sudden gettin' the urge to go on scout when he never done anything like that before. It was all working toward this and now there's nothing we can do about it."

  "I ain't going to get shot up just because you got a crazy notion," Eugene said.

  Deke shook his head, wearily. "It's sealed up now.

  After fate shows how it's going, then it's too late."

  "I didn't shoot that man in the bank!"

  "You think they'll bother to ask you?"

  "Damn it, I'll tell 'em and they'll have to prove I did it!"

  "If you can get close enough to 'em without gettin' shot," Deke said quietly. He brought out field glasses from his saddlebags, which were below the window, and put the glasses to his face, edging them along the men far below in front of the company buildings.

  Rich Miller said to him, "What do you see down there?"

  "Same thing you do, only bigger."

  "I think," Sonny Navarez said to Deke, "that you are right in what you have said, that they will try hard to kill us but this boy is not one of us. I think if he would surrender, they would not kill him.

  Prison, perhaps, but prison is better than dying."

  "You worry about yourself," Rich Mi
ller said.

  "The time to be brave," the Mexican said, "is when they are handing out medals."

  "You heard him," Deke said. "Worry about your own hide. The more people we got, the longer we last. There's nothing that says if you're going to get killed, you got to hurry it up."

  Rich Miller watched Eugene move back to the table along the rear wall and pick up the whiskey bottle that was there. The boy passed his tongue over dry lips, watching Eugene drink. It would be good to have a drink, he thought. No, it wouldn't.

  It would be bad. You drank too much and that's why you're here. That's why you're going to get shot or hung.

  But he could not sincerely believe what Deke had said. That one way of the other, this was the end.

  Down the slope the posse was very far away dots of men that seemed too small to be a threat. He did not feel sorry about joining the holdup, because he did not let himself think about it. He did feel something resembling sorry for the man in the bank. But he shouldn't have reached for the gun. I wonder if I would have, he thought.

  It wasn't so bad up here in the 'dobe. Plenty of water and grub. Maybe we'll have some fun. Look at that crazy Mexican, talking about hunting mountain sheep.

  If you were in jail you could say, all right, you made a mistake; but how do you know if you've made a mistake when you're still alive and got two thousand dollars in your pants? My God, a man can do just about anything with two thousand dollars!

  Freehouser sat in the shade, not saying anything.

  McKelway came to him, biting on his pipe idly, and after a while pointed to the mine shaft scaffolding and said how a man with a good rifle might be able to draw a bead and throw something in that open doorway if he was sitting way up there on top.

  Freehouser studied the ore tailings, furrowed and steep, that extended out from the slope on both sides of the hut. If a man was going up to that 'dobe, he'd have to go straight up, right into their guns. Maybe McKelway had something. Soften them up a bit.

  Standing by the windows, watching the possemen not moving, became tiresome. So one by one they would go back to the table and take a drink. Rich Miller took his turn and it tasted good. But he did not drink much.