Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard [Leonard, Elmore]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-03-23T08:36:57.538000+00:00

16 Blood Money

Original Title: Rich Miller’s Hand Western Story Magazine, October 1953

THE YUMA SAVINGS and Loan, Asunción 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 Asunción 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 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.