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 Miller 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.