“He never learned to keep his mouth shut,” Pryde said. They were walking back to the team now, the Mexican ahead of them dragging the chain to the next stump.
“There wasn’t any sense to it,” Bowen said. “I saw him do it, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t believe it. You don’t just kill a man like that-like you don’t have anything better to do.”
“Now you know what kind Brazil is,” Pryde said.
“It’s hard to believe,” Bowen said. “A man with only a year left and he had to say the wrong thing.”
“I wonder,” Pryde said, “if Renda will write to his wife.”
“He’s got a family?”
“Sure, a wife and two girls in Wickenburg.”
Bowen shook his head. “If he could’ve held out just one more year, maybe he could’ve made them pay. Like he said.”
“That was talk,” Pryde said. “By the time you get out Renda’ll be in some other business. Even if he’s still working convicts, how’re you going to prove anything?”
“I was thinking-maybe twist Willis Falvey’s arm.”
“If you can get to him.”
“Renda’ll have Willis write the letter,” Bowen said.
“Which is about all Willis’s good for.”
“Ike…do you have a family?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
Bowen said, “Something like that can’t happen too many times. All of a sudden every convict here will start swinging picks and shovels. There’s only so much a man can take. They’ll say it’s better to get killed with a chance of escaping than getting cut down for saying the wrong thing…Ike, what if all of a sudden the thirty of us rushed them? Thirty against four.”
“Thirty against three Winchesters and a scatter gun,” Pryde said.
“But if it was timed right-”
“And if the Mimbres were on our side.”
“Let’s take one thing at a time.”
“It’s all at the same time,” Pryde said. “Soon as one shot is fired the Mimbres are aiming down the slopes, on both sides.”
But it’s got to be done somehow, Bowen thought. And soon. You keep still so long then one day you say the wrong thing and Brazil says, “Go get Renda.” He could say anything. “Go over and get that shovel,” or he could pull the trigger right in front of you. What difference would it make? Nobody’s bringing him to court for it. In the records it’s still killed while trying to escape. Picture six years of pulling stumps and trying not to say the wrong thing. Six years of Renda…and Brazil. After this camp, some other one, and if not Renda and Brazil, men just like them, because you don’t get the love-thy-neighbor kind to boss convicts. Or else you go back to Yuma…to the granite cells and the desert and the Gatling gun over the main gate.
And if not six years, he thought picturing Karla, then how long? A year? Two years? How long do you think it’ll take that lawyer-assuming he’ll get you freed? Longer than you could stand. She’s some girl and it would be fine to know her better, but it even takes a week to get a letter from Prescott. So add up how many letters and how many weeks. Can you stand it even that long, a week? Maybe. But you have to be looking forward to something to do it.
Cross the lawyer off, Bowen thought. Cross off everything that isn’t certain or anything that’s more than a week away. Then concentrate on one thing. She’s some girl, he thought then, but it would’ve been better if she gave you a gun instead of a lawyer.
Renda stopped work at six o’clock. The convicts filed past the equipment wagon to drop shovels, picks and axes, then boarded the two wagons that waited behind. Bowen hitched the team to the third wagon. He walked back to the end gate then to climb on and as he did, Earl Manring held out his hand to help him.
“That was too bad,” Manring said, “about Chick.”
The wagons strained over the uneven ground, were pulled in a wide slow turn and started back up canyon to the wash they had come down that morning. Bowen moved with the swaying, jolting motion of the wagon, his eyes on Renda and Brazil again bringing up the rear.
“I said that was too bad about Chick,” Manring repeated.
“I heard you.”
“Don’t you think it was?”
“Earl, if you have something to say, say it.”
Manring grinned. “I hear you got a sweetheart.”
Bowen turned to him. “That’s the way Chick started. He went right on talking till the end.”
“That was too bad about Chick,” Manring said thoughtfully. “Something that could happen to anybody. Right?”
Bowen shrugged.
“Corey, I got something to talk over with you.” Manring leaned closer to him to say it.
“What about?”
“Later on tonight we’ll talk about it.”
“Then what’d you bring it up for?”
“To see if you were still as agreeable as ever,” Manring grinned.
The last red reflection of the sun showed in the sky behind them as the wagons rolled down the slope toward the camp-toward the silent, cold-looking, deserted-looking adobes that were already enveloped in the dull shadow of this slope the wagons were descending.
Now, at the gate, a lantern flickered, then went up to full brightness. Minutes later, off to the right of the gate, another light appeared showing the black square of the stable entrance. As the wagons neared the gate, a third lantern blinked on, this one to the left. It hung from the ramada in front of Renda’s quarters, and now a shadowy figure could be seen standing close to one of the support posts.
One of the night guards turned the corner of the convict’s barracks as the wagons pulled up. Hestruck a match to light the lantern that hung head-high next to the middle door, then leaned against the wall, the match stick in the corner of his mouth, and watched the convicts unload. When they were lined up he counted them. Then counted them again before looking at Renda.
“You’re one short.”
“We’re supposed to be,” Renda answered. “Feed ’em and put ’em to bed.” He turned away, walking across the yard toward the lantern that hung from the ramada. In the dimness a figure waited for him, then stepped into the light as Renda approached the adobe.
“I heard what that guard said.”
Renda looked up. “Then you got good ears, Willis.”
“You let somebody escape, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t let anybody escape.”
“Damn it, the guard said you were short one!”
“Willis, we buried a man today. That’s why we’re short.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think? He tried to run. Brazil shot him.”
Falvey exhaled slowly. “What if he’d made it?”
“Nobody has yet,” Renda answered.
“But what if he had?”
“What if you stop worrying about it?”
“Frank, if a man got out and told what’s going on here-”
“Who’d listen to him? It’d be your word against his.”
Falvey shook his head. “We can’t take a chance on even the possibility of it.”
“Willis, nobody’s ever escaped from me and nobody’s going to.”
“Those men are thinking about it all the time.”
“Let them. Thinking about it and doing it are about seven hundred miles apart.”
“But sooner or later-”
Renda shook his head. “Not sooner or later or any time. I’ll talk to them, Willis. All I got to do is talk to them.”
After the evening meal, the convicts were marched to the stock tank in back of the stable-a round, waist-high tin-lined tank fed by a thin but steady flow of water that emptied from a rusted pipe connected to the well shaft of the windmill.
They were given fifteen minutes to wash as much of themselves as they cared to, and shave if they wanted to do that. Part of a mirror was fastened to a timber of the windmill structure and above it a lantern hung from a nail. One mirror, four dull razors and a few chunks of soap for thirty men. For that reason few of the men shaved more than twice a week and almost a third of them wore beards. For them, Renda produced a pair of scissors once a week.