Ike Mannion was not so much brave as indifferent to danger. The evil of his nature showed on his face. The years of violence showed in every line. Men said that he had gone bad at his mother’s breast. They also said that, if she was as mean as him, that was not surprising, for her milk would have been sour.
Saddle-sore and as sour as his mother’s milk, he sat eating his bacon and hard tack and thinking about the men who were following them. He looked across the fire at Duke Dukar. Duke was a different breed. He had turned bad in the face of an undefeatable world. It had refused to give him what he wanted so he had gotten into the habit of taking it. Duke, they said did not have a nerve in his body. But that was a judgment that came from the scum he ran with. They also considered that he was a deadly gunman and men were kept at a distance by his terrible reputation. Whether he was actually fast with a gun was another matter. All his fellow killers had witnessed were point-blank killings of helpless men. And women.
Duke was smiling and Ike hated that smile. It put him down. Ike hated two things about Duke. One, he was a gentleman. Two, he was educated.
‘For crissake,’ Ike said, ‘what in hell’re you grinnin’ at?’
‘You’re getting kind of edgy, Ike,’ Duke said. ‘Those fellows have been on our back-trail too long.’
‘They ain’t nothin’ to me,’ said Ike stoutly. ‘Once we’re in the hills, they won’t amount to a heap of beans.’ Duke’s grin faded.
‘They found the dead Indians is my guess,’ he said.
Lon Southey, who had just come in from the horses, heard this.
‘They found the Mexicans, too,’ he said. ‘There was two women there an’ one of ’em was a Mex.’
Ike gave a snort of disgust.
‘You’re scarin’ the life outa me. Two women! That purely gives me the shits.’
Duke said: ‘We have to face it, boys. We’ve been over-indulging ourselves lately. We killed too many and somebody’s got mad at us.’
Ike studied him for a moment and said: ‘So we kill these two bastards soon’s we get a good chance. Then we hole up for a while till things simmer down. Once we’re in the Elbow, the frettin’ stops.’
This was El Codo to the local Mexicans, the high canyon with a crook in it with, so far as the rest of the world knew, just one way in and no way out. Which went to show that the rest of the world did not know everything. The ‘boys’ knew of another way out to the south, through the Sangre de Cristo mountains. No wider than a goat-track, it forced anybody who wanted to take supplies through to use pack-animals. It was hard-going, but welcome enough when the law came in at the front door.
Duke said: ‘I have a feeling in my water these two hombres are the staying kind.’
Lon Southey said: ‘Maybe we should bushwhack ’em and get it over with.’
Duke nodded—‘You could be right.’
Ike liked the idea too—‘We kill the two men, then we cut cards for the women. Jesus, I didn’t have a tit in my hand for too long. The Mex’d suit me down to the ground.’
Lon Southey said: ‘Brown’s Crossing. Good cover an’ we’ll have ’em right out in the open with nowhere to go but down into the goddam water.’
The Mexican who had sat apart from the others spoke for the first time. This was Pepe Inclán, a small, taciturn and terrible man for whom the others had no liking but an immense amount of respect. His face was still pinched from the starvation years of his childhood. His eyes showed the bitterness of a man who had never reconciled himself to suffering. His neck still bore the marks of the rawhide reata that had failed to hang him, down in El Paso three years before. The local citizenry had understandably resented his raping one of their more respectable ladies and killing her husband. There were a number of lawmen in the Southwest who would have liked him shackled in their jails. He liked to dress well, but now he had been many days in the saddle traveling through rough country and his clothes were in poor condition. He had lavished money on his hat and his boots. The hat was heavily braided and decorated with conchos. His boots were hand-carved. The spurs that decorated the heels of the boots had been engraved beautifully in silver. They made music as he walked slowly up to the fire. He spoke very careful, but awkward English:
‘I do not like that we do not know who it is that follow us. You know? It is strange, this thing. They are bounty hunters? Lawmen? All we know is they have two women with them. One of the men do not wear boots. A white man with no boots. I never saw this before.’
The other three looked at him. They never knew what to make of him. All they knew for sure was that he was poison. He cocked his head on one side and regarded them one by one without haste, like a man who was confident that his question was an important one and deserved an answer from each of them.
Ike said: ‘So he lost his boots. A feller can lose his boots. It could happen to anybody.’
Inclán said: ‘One woman is of my own people. She is a lady, that I know for sure. Her body has a delicacy … The other is an Indian. Does not this strike you as strange?’
Lon Southey said: ‘What's so goddam strange about it for crissake? One feller fancies red meat, the other feller likes it all pale an’ delicate like you said.’
The Mexican stared away across the plain. He looked dreamy.
‘I am uneasy,’ he said. ‘We have one killed and one hurt bad, but still we do not take these two men seriously enough I think. We do not feel real danger from two men traveling with two women and one man without boots. They make us laugh. Is it not so?’
Ike said: ‘You bet they make me laugh. We’ll rub ’em out at the crossin’ an’ that'll be an end to it.’
Inclán turned his dark eyes to where the still form of the wounded man lay under a single blanket, sleeping.
‘What do we do about him?’ he asked.
Southey said: ‘If he don’t hand in his chips tonight, he’ll be gone tomorrow. You ever hear of a man gut-shot who lasted?’
Duke smiled.
‘No, I never,’ he said.
The Mexican grew suddenly alert. His sharp ears had caught a faint sound the others had failed to hear.
‘A rider,’ he informed them.
Automatically, they reached for weapons. They relaxed when Inclán told them: ‘It is Brazos,’ and a few minutes later a tired and sweating horse bore a man over a nearby ridge and down into the camp.
This was Bill Weyland, a big long-legged Texan, known for his mild manner and occasional outbursts of maniacal fury. It was in such a fury that he had started his violent career with the murder of three federal Negro soldiers back in his teens. His face was pleasant, his eyes clear blue and his hair, which hung to his shoulders, was fair. Saddle-leather creaked as he stepped down from the saddle.
‘Old Charlie Hedges struck gold,’ he announced.
He waited while the information and all its implications sank in. Slowly, the grins came. Everybody in the Sangre de Cristos knew old Charlie Hedges. The old-timer had twice before found and lost fortunes in the West. Men said he only liked hunting for gold and dreaming what he would do with it. Once he had it, he seemed to lose his presence of mind. Gambling, drink and women ate it up. He speculated wildly. So now, for the third time, he had found the source of fortune in the hills.
Duke asked: ‘You saw him?’
‘I sure did.’
‘What’s more important—did he see you?’
‘No, sir, he did not.’
‘So,’ Pepe Inclán declared, ‘we are all rich man—for the price of one little bullet.’
They liked the way Pepe put it and they laughed. The Mexican looked faintly surprised he had made a joke. Then he screwed his eyes up in deep thought for a moment and said: ‘But we have these men following us. That could make big difficulties.’
Ike yelled: ‘Aw, for crissakes, Pepe, how long do it take to throw a bullet into an old hill nutty?’
Lon Southey saw a snag: ‘Maybe the old man didn’t dig any gold out yet.’
Bill Weyland reassured him: ‘He’s all packed to move. He has more gold than his three burros can carry. This is the way I see it—we move two-three hours before dawn. That way we pull well ahead of these two hombres that’s followin’ us. We hit the old man about one hour after first light. Then we high-tail it for the Elbow. We’ll be safe an’ sound with our asses on a bonanza the day after tomorrow. How’s that sound?’
‘What about me?’
At the sound of the words so softly spoken they were almost a whisper, they all turned. The wounded man was staring at them out of frightened eyes.
Duke said in an unaccustomed gentle voice: ‘We can’t take you along, Jack. You see that.’
Jack Longley held his belly and pursed his lips in silent pain for a moment.
‘You bastards,’ he said. ‘You goddam sneakin’ yeller bastards.’
Duke said: ‘You’d do the same in our boots, Jack.’
‘Leave me a horse,’ Longley said. ‘I’ll follow best I can. Christ, you can’t leave a man out here on his lonesome.’
Ike said: ‘That’s askin’ a lot, Jack. A horse is good cash-money an’ you ain’t going’ no place.’
The wounded man’s reply to this was to produce a gun from the cover of the blanket and say: ‘Saddle me a horse, Ike. Right this minute an’ no foolin’.’
They all listened to the authoritative sound of the gun coming to full cock and none of them missed the fact that the small movement called for enormous effort on the wounded man’s part.
It was the Mexican who shot him. He was no more than on the edge of Longley’s vision, and slid the Remington from leather with no more than a whisper of sound. The wounded man was aware of the movement and made an effort to turn and point his gun at Pepe. He managed to trigger off a shot, but his hand was too feeble to aim the gun properly. The Mexican fired twice from habit. One sure shot to the large target of the torso caught Longley in the chest. The second hit him above the left ear. The result was not pleasant.
Even the hardest men cannot remain unaffected by the killing of a man who has ridden with them for any length of time. While they regarded this as a necessary execution, they still regretted it. But there was no remorse, and they would have half-expected such a fate if they had been in Longley’s place.
Pepe crossed himself and muttered a few quick words in Spanish that passed for a prayer.
Lon Southey said: ‘Poor son-of-a-bitch.’
Even tough Bill Weyland shook his head and said: ‘Hell of a way to go. Let’s plant him right, boys.’
They all agreed that was a seemly idea. They moved away from the fire for a couple of dozen paces and scraped a shallow grave in the hard soil with their knives. They then hauled the dead man carelessly, as if he were no more than carrion, dropped him in the grave and piled rocks on him. They said nothing over the grave, for that would have embarrassed them.
Southey suggested: ‘What say we pull out now? There ain’t nothin’ here for us.’
They all thought that not a bad idea. Their horses were tiring, but they had enough spares for a change of mounts. Those two who were following them had not taken all the Indian ponies. Each leading a horse on a line they trotted steadily into the foothills, the great peaks of the mountains thrusting titanically into the hot azure above them. The riders were microscopic figures in a giant landscape, creeping over its broken surface, dwarfed by nature even in their great villainy. To them, the grandeur and majesty of the scene was no more than a commonplace backcloth of the small sordid dramas of their lives. Yet even they responded in their ways to the change in the scene as they climbed into the hills. The first rash of real green began to show itself. By dark they were among the pale trunks of the silver birch and saw the light green of their leaves reflected in the placid water of a small lake.
Now they could feel the immense relief of men at last rescued from the eternal heat of the merciless sun. Here the recent rains had left their effect. Everything in sight was lush and green. The horses picked up and, as soon as they had filled their bellies with water, they headed for grass and started munching contentedly. The men felt their spirits lift also. They began to laugh and joke among themselves. Even the Mexican produced a wry smile. Even the hard tack tasted better as they lolled around the fire.
Ike Mannion suddenly produced a hankering for fresh fish. He’d bet there was fish a-plenty in that there water. Bill Weyland agreed. He’d been right smart with a rod and line when he was a kid back on the Nueces. Nothing would satisfy the two men but they should catch them a mess of fish. .
As they perched on rocks with crude rods in their hands, Ike started to laugh. He laughed until Weyland asked: ‘What the hell’s so funny?’
‘Just thinkin’ about that old man,’ Mannion replied. ‘Christ, the look on his face when we blow his goddam head off.’
Weyland turned to give him a good look.
‘You really enjoy your work, Ike,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ said Ike, grinning happily. ‘What’s so wrong with that?’