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 he was the first. Eugene had all but Sonny's when he got hit. Then Sonny took all of it and he lasted less than an hour.'
Deke said nothing, but his sunken expression seemed more drawn.
They played on in silence and slowly Rich Miller was taking more and more of the money. Deke seemed uncomfortable and he said quietly that he guessed it just wasn't his day. In less than an hour he was down to two hundred and fifty dollars.
'You might clean me out,' Deke said.
Rich Miller said nothing and dealt the cards. The first ones down, then a queen to Deke and a jack to himself. He looked at his hole card. A ten of diamonds. Deke bet fifty dollars on the queen.
'You must have twin girls,' the boy said.
'You know how to find out.'
Rich Miller's next card was a king. Deke's an ace. He bet fifty dollars again. Their fourth cards were low and no help, but Deke pushed in all the money he had.
'That's on a hunch,' he said.
Rich Miller dealt the last cards a queen to Deke, making it an ace, a five, and two queens. He gave himself a second king.
'What you show beats me,' Deke said, grinning.
He pushed away from the table and stood up. 'You got it all, boy. You know what that means.'
'It means I'm giving up.'
'It's too late. You explained it yourself a while ago the man who gets the money gets killed!' Deke was grinning deeply. 'Now I don't have anything.'
'You're dead sure you'll be last.'
'As sure as a man can be. It's the handwriting.'
'What good'll it do you?'
'Who knows?'
'You're so dead sure, go stand in that doorway.'
Deke was silent.
'What about your handwritin'? The pattern says you'll be the last, and even then, who knows? That all the bunk?'
Deke hesitated momentarily, then walked slowly toward the doorway. He stopped next to it, stiffly.
Then he moved out.
Rich Miller's eyes stayed on Deke as his hand moved across the table. He lifted Deke's pistol from the table edge and swung it out the window and fired in the direction of the scaffolding.
A high pitched, whining report answered the shot and hung longer in the air. Deke staggered, turning back into the room, and had time to look at the boy in wide eyed amazement. Then he was dead.
The boy returned to the window after getting his carbine and, with his bandanna tied to the end of the barrel, waved it in a slow arc back and forth.
Once they started up the slope he sat back in the chair and idly turned over his hole card, the ten.
The possemen were drawing closer, up to Ford Harlan's body now. He flipped Deke's hole card. It landed on top of the two queens. Three ladies.
He rose and moved to the doorway as he saw the men nearing the shelf, then glanced down at Deke and shook his head. I sure am crazy, he thought. I never heard before of a man cheating to lose.
He walked through the doorway with his hands above his head.
Saint with a Six Gun
Inside the hotel cafe, Lyall Quinlan sat at the counter having his breakfast. Every once in a while he would look over at Elodie Wells. Elodie had served him, but now her back was to him; she was looking out the big window over the lower part that was green painted and said regent cafe in white looking across the street to the Tularosa jail.
Horses and wagons were hitched there and down the street both ways, and behind the jailhouse in the big yard where everybody was now, that's where they were hanging Bobby Valdez.
Out on the street there wasn't a sound. Inside now, just the noise of Lyall Quinlan's palm popping the bottom of the ketchup bottle until it flowed out over his eggs. Elodie scowled at him as if she was trying to hear something and Lyall was interrupting the best part. Lyall just smiled at her, a young kid smile, and began eating his eggs. Elodie, like about everybody in Tularosa, had been excited all week long waiting for this day to come a whole week while Bobby Valdez sat in his cell with Lyall Quinlan guarding him. Elodie was mad because she had to work this morning. Lyall felt pretty good, so he just went on eating his eggs. . . .
Bohannon, the Tularosa marshal, brought in Bobby Valdez Thursday afternoon and right away sent a man to Las Cruces to fetch Judge Metairie.
Bohannon didn't have a doubt Valdez would not be bound over for trial, and he was right. Friday morning a coroner's jury decided that one Roberto Eladio Viscarra y Valdez did willfully commit murder judging from the size hole in the forehead of one Harley Tanner (deceased) and the .41 caliber Colt gun found on the accused when he was apprehended the next day. A witness testified that he saw Bobby Valdez pull this same Colt and let go at Tanner in a fashion that in no way resembled self defense.
Everybody agreed it was about time a smartaleck gunman like Bobby Valdez was brought to justice and made to pay the penalty. The only ones who'd cry would be some of the girls who couldn't see his handgun for his brown eyes. It was a shame he had to hang, being only twenty two, but that's what would happen. He didn't have to be bad.
Saturday morning, Criminal Sessions Court, the Honorable Benson Metairie presiding, was called to order in the lobby of the Regent Hotel. The courthouse at Las Cruces would have been better, but that meant transporting Bobby Valdez almost a hundred miles. A year ago he'd gotten away when they were taking him there from Mesilla, and Mesilla was like just across the field.
Valdez waived counsel, though there wasn't an attorney in Tularosa to defend him if he'd wanted one. Judge Metairie said it was just as well. Since the case was cut and dried, why waste time with a lot of litigating?
The court called up a witness who swore he'd seen Bobby Valdez plain as day come out of the Regent Cafe that Wednesday evening, which established the accused's presence in town the night of the shooting.
The star witness took the stand and said he was crossing the street to have a word with his friend Harley Tanner, who was standing right in front of this hotel, when Bobby Valdez came out of the shadows of the adobe building, called Tanner a dirty name, and, when Tanner came around, pulled his gun and shot him. Then Valdez lit out.
Bohannon suggested stepping outside to reenact the crime, but Judge Metairie said everybody knew what the front of the Regent Hotel looked like and the fierce sun this time of day wasn't going to make it any plainer. 'Just close your eyes, Ed, and make a picture,' the judge told Bohannon.
It was stated that the next morning Bohannon's posse followed Valdez's sign till they caught up with him about noon near the Mescalero reservation line. Valdez's horse had lamed and left Bobby out in the open, as Bohannon said, 'with his pants down, so to speak.'
Judge Metairie called a man who was referred to as a character witness and this man described seeing Bobby Valdez shoot two men during the White Sands bank holdup last Christmastime. Another character witness was on the Butterfield stage that was held up last June between Lordsburg and Continental. Surer'n hell it was Bobby Valdez who'd opened the door with that .41 Colt gun in his hand, and no polka dot bandanna over his nose
