Well before dawn, Clint was sitting in a handy spot in the rocks watching the desert in all directions. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. The wind was light, just enough to feel cool against his face. At least Felipe had not attempted anything. He was now busy checking the loads in his battered old pistol and Winchester.
As the sky in the east brightened, Felipe took up a position in the rocks facing west, leaving Clint to concentrate on the east. They waited.
The day peered at them over the horizon, then quickly flooded the arid wastes with harsh golden light.
Clint, ever-present toothpick in mouth, watched with squinted hard eyes for the mesquite to start thrashing with Indians.
But the sun lifted full above the horizon, and no Indians. The sun heated the rock so it was hot to the touch, and still no Indians.
“I think we killed them all,” Clint said, standing up and stretching.
“I do not think so, Cleent. They are out there, watching.”
“Well, we can’t wait any longer. Let’s eat something and get moving.”
Breakfast was a nervous affair. For Felipe it was nervous because he remained convinced that the Indians were still about to attack. For Clint it was nervous because Felipe was nervous; he kept getting up and peering from the rocks into the desert, and muttering doubtfully in Spanish.
After breakfast, they saddled the horses, slung the packs on the burros and cleared out. The sun was hot, the wind strong enough to be gritty, and Felipe was still very nervous. Clint felt more relaxed now. He had about convinced himself that they’d either killed all the Indians or had driven them off for good, and he was thinking now about Blake Dixon and about Margaret lying naked and battered in the woods. Dixon was going to pay dearly for his fun. He imagined himself cutting Dixon up with his knife, how Dixon would writhe and holler with pain.
Not having had to round up the burros had gotten them off to a good start, and at first they made good time. Clint was pleased. Felipe, however, still could not forget the Indians. Clint poked fun at Felipe, enjoying himself.
“What’s that, Fats?” he would say suddenly, and Felipe would jerk around and say, “Where, Cleent?” Clint would shrug and say, “You missed it. I thought you might know what kind of bird that was.” Then he would hoot at the sky and slap his knee. It worked three times in a row before Felipe quit jumping.
“Cleent, you are making a joke, but it is no joke,” Felipe said finally. He was sweating heavily. “It is not funny.”
“Ees not funny? Eh? Oh, Señor Felipe Fats López Francisco González Tortilla, I am so sorry you do not enjoy thee joke!”
“Cleent, I have much patience. But I do not like to be made fun off.”
“I don’t like lying thieves either,” Clint said. But he felt lighthearted and had gotten to the point where he didn’t much care what Felipe was or wasn’t. He figured he had it all under control now. He could manage Felipe as long as he had to, and get done with Blake Dixon. Then, well, then he could leave the fat Mexican to his tortillas and tequila.
Sometime before noon, the day’s troubles started. The burros, obstinate and ornery under the best conditions, were working with no night’s grazing in their bellies. After a hot morning they lost interest in moving along when they came on a scrawny patch of grass that was better than the usual run. They halted and began to eat, ignoring tugs on the lead ropes.
“Dad blamed burros,” Clint said. “Keep tugging, Fats. I’m going to cut a switch.”
“Cleent, it will do no good. The burros are hungry. The only thing is to let them eat.”
“Just keep the tension on.”
“Sí, I will do that, Cleent. But it will do no good, I am telling you.”
Clint cut a switch of thorny mesquite and set to work on the rump of the aftermost burro. The animal flinched ahead a few paces and then went back to cropping grass. Clint flailed some more, and the burro repeated the performance, ending up to one side of the next burro. Clint, now sweating wet as standing in a rainstorm, beat first one, then the other of these two burros, moving them up even with the third one. Then he worked on all three. They progressed in this way to the edge of the grass. But here the pattern changed. Instead of jerking ahead, the burros went to one side or just turned around, or sometimes kicked, refusing absolutely to leave the patch of grass, just as though there were a fence around it.
“Cleent, Cleent, heet that one! No no, that one. Watch out behind, Cleent! That one will keek you! No, Cleent, not that one. That one. Por Dios, Cleent, can you not make them go at all?”
Clint quit, throwing the switch off into the brush, irritated at Felipe. Felipe was about to fall off his horse with laughter.
“Think it’s goddamned funny, do you Fats?” Clint shouted, clenching his fists. “I ought to take you down a peg, you fat thieving lying Mexican tortilla chili bean. I ought to make a Mexican jumping bean out of you, eh?”
Felipe was hooting with laughter, thin black mustache stretched even thinner. Clint charged him, but Felipe wheeled his horse and rode in circles around Clint, waving his sombrero over his head, still laughing. Clint stood helplessly in the dust and yelled obscenities.
~*~
“Guess I had it coming,” Clint admitted, as they sat in the shade of a patch of mesquite watching the horses and burros graze. The apples were gone, but Clint had some sourdough biscuits left from the previous night and he ate them slowly, making them last. Felipe had insisted on cooking a tortilla on a flat rock in a fire in the hot sun. Now he was guzzling tequila and munching the tortilla, rolled up with some godless spices inside.
“Let us be friends, Cleent. Let us trust each other.”
Clint looked carefully at the Mexican. He sure looked genuine about it. If Clint had not had that bad experience waking up in the night to find Felipe fishing his pockets for the money, he would have taken Felipe at his word.
Could it be he was mistaken? The whole event tended to fade into an obscure darkness. Could Felipe have really been telling the truth? Was it possible?
Clint wasn’t sure now. He still tended to mistrust Felipe. But when a man has fought for his life with another man at his side, even gone so far as to save the man’s life, he becomes inclined to trust his companion. In this case, it might not be such a smart thing to do. Felipe had sided him out of the same necessity Clint had sided the Mexican: survival. Neither of them could expect to survive alone against the Indians. It was unlikely good luck that they’d survived as only two against the Indians.
Yet the feeling remained.
“What the hell,” Clint said, throwing his better judgment to the winds.
“Sí, Cleent,” Felipe said, grinning broadly, “what thee hell!”
“I don’t like that grin,” Clint said dubiously. “But like I said, what the hell.”
“You will not be sorry, Cleent. I am your friend for life because I have much gratitude. You are a fine man, Cleent. You do not like people to think you are fine, but I have the sharp eyes and ears, no? I can see.”
“I still don’t like that grin of yours. I ...” Clint broke off, catching sight of something out in the desert. He jumped up, rifle in hand. “Sonofabitch,” he said, and started running towards the burros.
Several Mescaleros were cutting the packs off the burros—they were smart enough not to try to take the burros along too. Clint and Felipe shouldered their Winchesters and started spitting lead at the Indians.
That had the effect of triggering a barrage of fire and smoke from the mesquite thicket behind them. With lead buzzing in the air around them, they both dove with alacrity into the nearest cover, which happened to be another clump of mesquite, thick and thorny. It was not a comfortable dive into the middle of the thorns, but it was better than braving the bullets.
As soon as they were neatly cornered in the mesquite, the Indians quit wasting their lead. The smoke blew away, and there was no way to tell the Indians were still there. But the point was, you knew they were still there.
Out on the patch of grass, Indians, perhaps twenty of them, were quickly dividing up the spoils. It didn’t take long. They didn’t even leave the aparejos, though what good they were without the burros was hard to see. Perhaps they figured to sell them, or use the leather in them. The Mescaleros rode off taking the two horses but wisely leaving the burros.
Clint had meanwhile been trying to struggle his rifle around through the thick thorny brush to get a shot at the Mescaleros. Now, finally, he managed it, sent a few shots after the retreating Indians, got a few parting shots in return, and then the Indians, including those which had been in the mesquite, were gone in a cloud of dust that grew smaller and smaller.
Clint and Felipe struggled out of the thorn bushes and leaned on their Winchesters.
“Goddamned Indians,” Clint said. “Tricky sons of guns, aren’t they. Well damn it, we can’t let them get away with it. That was all our supplies, our water, except for a canteen apiece.”
“All the tequila,” Felipe moaned. “Cleent, we cannot go after them. It will be stupid. And we will never catch them anyhow. No, Cleent, we are just the misfortunates. It is the way the world passes, no? There is nothing we can do.”
But Clint was angry. He had made up his mind the Indians weren’t going to get away with this, never mind there were twenty-five or thirty of them, armed to the teeth, and with a terrifying reputation for fighting and torture. It did not cross his mind that perhaps he and Felipe had been lucky to have kept their lives, under the circumstances.
He trotted to the burros, swung aboard one, and using the lead line for reins, dug in his heels. The burro was not particularly impressed. It went on cropping grass.
“Get up!” Clint instructed. “Get along you damfool critter.”
The burro’s ears perked around interestedly, but the animal went on cropping grass.
“¡Arre! ¡Burro! ¡Arre!” Clint shouted, remembering the way Felipe talked to the burros. The burro was still not impressed, though the ears kept perked around for listening.
“The burro he doesn’t want to chase Indians,” Felipe said coming up. “I think perhaps el burro is smarter than you in this way, Cleent.”
Clint got down and cut a switch. The Indians were long out of sight over a rise by now, and not even dust marked their position.
Clint got back on the burro and began whaling the animal’s flank with the switch, sinking his spurs in and yelling, “¡Arre, burro, Arre!”
Felipe folded his arms and watched dolefully.
“El burro, he is muy independiente, no?” he commented.
The burro had not budged. In fact, it had eaten everything within reach and would have to move to go on eating, but did not apparently care to encourage Clint into thinking all his efforts were paying off.
Clint, sweating and swearing now, leaped off this burro and tried another—with the exact same result.
“Cleent, I have the good luck with los burros because I do not try to make them do what they do not wish to do. It is plain they do not wish to chase Indians. I believe they have much sense in so thinking, Cleent. Let us seet down in the shade and think about this while los burros have their lunch, eh?”
Clint was not satisfied. He was worried, and that made him angry.
“I want to know which way they went,” he said, and went running towards the top of the rise, leaving Felipe ambling slowly back to the shade of the mesquite thicket.
Clint, breathing hard and drenched with sweat, halted on the crest of the long rise and gazed around the horizon. There was nothing but sun-baked desert. Not a puff of dust anywhere. There was another rise probably a mile off, and he debated running over there for a look, but decided against it.
He’d calmed down some now, and had realized that Felipe was right. Clint knew better. In fact, usually he would have kept his head. It was just having Felipe and the burros to contend with ...
He returned in no haste, taking it easy, trying not to sweat any more than was necessary. It was stupid to sweat off more water than he really had to. One canteen had to get him to the next watering hole, wherever that might be.
Felipe was asleep under his sombrero when Clint returned. How can he sleep in this situation? Clint wondered. Clint had always thought of himself as pretty cool most of the time, but here was this Mexican going to sleep the first thing after a catastrophe. Maybe he wasn’t smart enough to know better?
No, Felipe was plenty smart enough. He was just cool.
“What did you see, Señor Cleent?”
“Nothing.”
“It is good, no? Perhaps the Indians are finished with us, eh?”
“That’s what we thought the last time.”
“Sí. They like to kill. I am surprised they did not kill us. Maybe they try again. Perhaps they are in a big hurry for something. There is a trail three days east from here, and many wagons go by sometimes. Perhaps they know some are coming, eh? And they will be back for us when they have more time.”
“They do, and I’m going to see not one gets away alive.”
“This will be hard to do. And not wise. It is better that we hide, no? We see them coming and we hide. They will not take the burros, as you see. They know the burros will not move fast enough, and perhaps they will not move at all, eh?” Felipe grinned. “Perhaps they will shoot them, but that is a risk we take.”
“Funny about you, Felipe,” Clint said. “Before the Indians scared you, got you all jumpy. Now you are calm. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I was afraid of loss. But now the horses and the supplies they are gone. What is there to be afraid of? You and me, we can hide. We dig ourselves into the sand. It is the old trick. The horses could not hide, and the packs take too much time to hide. But now the worst has happened. It is the way the world passes, is it not? There is nothing to be done. Worry will do no good and much harm. Do not fear, Cleent, we will live.”