by James Lewis
Then suddenly, before he could brace himself, the machine roared out of the cloud. Juan had a sudden vision of a lean figure draped in a long black overcoat down to the ankles with an inner tube slung over one shoulder before he was nearly knocked to the ground. The black coat and the inner tube swept within inches of him, and he saw that atop them sat a bowler hat from under which flowed long blond hair. The face between the hat and the coat wore an imperturbable expression, a look oblivious to the men and boys standing in the roadway.
The machine twisted through them like a snake after a lizard and sped past the stage. Juan cursed silently and reached for his pistol. He wasn’t wearing one. He jabbed Pepe, who was standing near him, and the boy turned just enough to let Juan pull a pistol from his grip. Quickly, he sighted down the road and fired.
The motorcycle swerved, nearly tipped over, then slid to a halt.
The man atop it casually dismounted, without even looking around. He bent down and studied the rear tire, which was flat, and unslung the inner tube. He seemed about as disturbed as he would have been had he run over a sharp rock.
Juan regarded him with interest. The man was thirty, forty feet away but he might have been alone in the desert for all the awareness he showed of the clutch of people staring at him. Curious! The length and color of the man’s hair suggested he was European (Americans wore their hair shorter), and the bowler only served to confirm it. But what was he doing here?
The man glanced up at him for the first time. His face was composed, almost serene in its coolness. The features were angular, not sharp at all but firm and direct. The face of a man who was sure of himself. Juan wondered if the man could kill, and his fingers tightened unconsciously on the pistol.
The dust was settling, raining softly down around them all. Juan stared through it at black coat and bowler, who sighed and began walking toward him. He held the inner tube in one hand.
Black coat, bowler, and impervious face drew closer. Juan chewed nonchalantly on his lighted cigar but watched the man warily. The black coat stopped a foot away. Cool eyes studied him. A hand came slowly up and tunneled inside the black coat, making Juan tense. The hand emerged holding a small white cylinder. A cigarette?
“Got a light?” the man said.
His voice was relaxed and easy, beguilingly so. The man’s Spanish was good but curiously accented. Juan had heard the accent just once before. Irish!
He started to answer but the man cut him off with a courteous wave of the hand. Just as politely, the Irishman reached up and eased Juan’s cigar from his mouth. His movements were so slow and casual as to be unthreatening. He pressed the burning end of the cigar against the cylinder, then stuck the cigar back in Juan’s mouth.
Stunned by it all, Juan stood dead still. He would thrash the Irishman if necessary, he thought, but at the moment he was overcome by the man’s style. He watched as the Irishman neatly flipped the cylinder in the direction of the coach instead of smoking it. What the hell was going on?
The cylinder landed on the carriage roof. The Irishman moved with sudden and surprising speed toward the coach. Chulo, sitting on the running board, gazed up at him, transfixed. The Irishman grabbed his arm and gently but firmly pulled the boy off his seat and away from the stagecoach. Juan watched the man and the boy slide rapidly toward him, then heard the Irishman’s calm voice.
“Duck, you sucker!” the voice said.
The air shook and Juan’s ears rang with a hard crash that sounded like a gun going off in his ear. He dove to the ground with the others. Flames flashed momentarily atop the stagecoach and then gave way to a small black cloud that seemed to congeal upon itself and then spurt upward. A wispy trail of gray smoke followed.
Unbelieving, Juan bolted up and ran toward the stage. He pulled open the door and peered inside. Through a ragged hole in the roof he could see the high blue sky. The wood was charred, and a black ring circled the hole, staining the satiny coach ceiling.
Rage gripped him. He wheeled and pointed his pistol at the Irishman, cocking it as he did. It struck him that he was being stupid, but he didn’t care. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Incredibly, the Irishman merely arched his eyebrows and shook his head in admonishment at the sight of the gun, as to a naughty child. Juan paused.
“Tch … tch …” The Irishman was actually clucking.
There was a frozen moment in which everything seemed to await some cosmic event. Juan wondered why he didn’t shoot the cocky bastard, and the mere fact of his thinking about it stayed his finger on the trigger. In that moment, the Irishman unhooked a flask hanging from his shoulder, one of two small, identical flasks Juan hadn’t noticed before. He unscrewed the top.
“I wouldn’t shoot if I were you,” he said.
From the top of the flask hung an appendage resembling an eye dropper. The Irishman held it as far from his body as possible and turned the nose down. “If you shoot, I might fall,” he said. A smiled played at the corners of his mouth.
A drop collected at the tip of the eyedropper; it swelled and unloosed itself. Juan’s eyes followed it downward. The drop took about two days to hit the ground.
It hit with an explosion that banged against Juan’s eardrums and made his niños jump back in alarm. On the ground a vapor cloud went from black to gray to white. The smoke cleared to reveal a hole as large as a sombrero.
The Irishman seemed unperturbed. He said, “If you shoot me and I fall, they’ll have to make new maps. Because when I go half of Mexico goes with me. Look!”
He unbuttoned his black overcoat and held it open. The inside was lined on both sides with pockets from which bulged sticks of dynamite, detonators, and fuses. There were also more flasks, filled, Juan assumed, like the others—with nitroglycerin. In all, the Irishman carried enough explosives to destroy all of Cherudado, where Juan was born, and the twenty other villages in the same valley.
Speechless, Juan let his hand relax on the pistol. He stared in mute fascination at the Irishman, then down at the hole. A new emotion suddenly washed over him. The whole of his life stopped at that moment. His years as a farmer, a cowboy, a bartender, as a pimp and a bandit congealed into one overwhelming vision. The vision even had a name.
He was aware that he was smiling strangely. His children and his men, even old Nino, were staring at him in astonishment. Even the Irishman looked perplexed. Juan didn’t care. For the first time in years, perhaps since his days under the scalding sun in the fields, his mind was uncluttered with schemes and calculations. Now only one scheme held him.
“Something wrong?” the Irishman was saying.
Juan showed his toothiest smile and slid his pistol into his pants. “I was just thinking that we were even,” he said.
“Not yet. You’re going to give me a ride now.”
The Irishman walked toward the coach. He flipped the spare tube at Chulo as he passed the boy. “And you, monkey, are going to fix that tire.” His tone left no room for refusal.
Juan let the Irishman pass him and climb into the coach. In disbelief, Chulo charged at him and grabbed his sleeve. “Shoot him, Papa!” he screamed. “When he sits down, you shoot him in the mouth. Okay, Papa?”
Poor Chulo! He didn’t understand. He had never before seen his father bested by another man, except when for one reason or another he was playacting. The boy was stunned and confused now. He could remain confused. In time, a man learns everything he has to.
“Go fix the tire!” Juan barked, and slapped at Chulo’s head.
The Irishman was already sprawled across a divan when Juan hauled himself up. A flask was in his mouth and he was drinking deeply from it. Juan started back and his muscles instinctively tensed in anticipation of disaster. He realized that the flask contained only whisky a fraction before the Irishman held up its lethal mate to show him. Juan uncoiled.
“Where are you going in this buggy?” the Irishman asked. He pulled at his flask.
“Ahhhhh … where you going?”
“At Lucainena?” The Irishman nodded. “Ah, yes, Mr. Aschenbach, the German, runs them. I know him. Nice stuff he’s got.”
The Irishman’s head bobbed in agreement. He tilted the flask to his mouth again.
“Why you going there?”
There was no answer. The Irishman drained the flask and let it fall to the seat beside him, then lowered his hat over his eyes.
“Hey, Firecracker,” Juan called. No answer. Juan stuck his cigar in his mouth and bent toward the man. He raised the Irishman’s hat. The man seemed to be asleep. With a shrug, Juan replaced the hat and backed toward the door. Nino and Fefe were standing there, peering in. “Put a wick in his mouth and he’ll light up for a month,” he said to them, chuckling, then felt his stomach tighten as he realized how close to the Irishman his burning cigar had been.
His niños were swarming like jackals around a fiber suitcase tied to the back of the Irishman’s machine. Juan chased them with a few kicks in the rear and opened the suitcase himself.
Lying flat across the top, neatly folded, was a large green cloth. Juan held it up. The letters IRA were sewed evenly onto the material. A flag? If it was a flag, it was like none he had ever seen. He crumbled it and tossed it to the ground.
Another object caught his eye, a piece of yellowing paper covered with large block letters, including, in English, the word WANTED. The paper was thin and had the texture of newsprint. Juan unfolded it. A photograph of the Irishman stared up at him. Under it was a notice that the British government was offering three hundred pounds for the capture of one John Mallory, described as a “dangerous terrorist.”
“Good for you, Firecracker,” Juan muttered to himself. He put the clipping in his pocket.
The remaining contents of the suitcase didn’t surprise him, except in quantity. Dynamite, pyrite, bottles of acid, more fuses, timing mechanisms, small wooden detonators. The Irishman could mine a great deal of silver with that, if that were his intention. Juan wondered how many British he had killed.
“Shit! Not even one peso,” Napolean said.
Juan smiled at the boy. “You aren’t seeing right, muchacho,” he said. “This suitcase is a bank.”
“A bank? If that’s a bank I’m Pancho Villa!”
“You’re smarter than Villa, but not as smart as your Papa.”
His sons looked at him in bewilderment. Only Nino showed any comprehension. The old man began wheezing in alarm. An appalled whisper escaped him. “Mesa Verde! The bank …!”
“Hey, now you understand,” Juan said. “Mesa Verde. El Banco Nacionale de Mesa Verde.” That was the name of his vision. “That suitcase and Firecracker, they’re gonna make us rich.”
Somewhere nearby some crickets were heralding the setting of the sun. For long moments no other sound could be heard.
Fefe finally broke the silence. “Who needs Firecracker,” he grumbled. “All we need is matches and guts, and I got both.”
Juan frowned. Fefe was a southerner with flat features and small, almost beady eyes. His cheekbones were high, like his Indian ancestors, but he lacked the Indian cunning and their faith that life was most intelligently lived by letting others do the hard work. Too much Spanish blood, Juan thought; it weakened the brain. Too many of Fefe’s people forced to grovel on some noble’s cropland had diluted a wise heritage. Fefe shouldn’t be so arrogant; he wasn’t smart enough.
“No, amigo,” he said. “We need an expert”
“Hah. For what? To light a match?”
“Yes, to light a match.”
Juan turned to Benito, grabbed the poncho from the boy’s shoulder and thrust it at Fefe.
“Here, go cover Irish. He might catch cold.”
Fefe gathered the poncho sourly to him and walked away. Juan watched him go. Too bad Fefe wasn’t an expert. Too bad none of them were. Now he would have to find a way to persuade Irish to cooperate in a supposedly impossible task. No one had ever succeeded in robbing the Mesa Verde Bank. Too many guards. Too many precautions. And now all those soldiers would be bolstering the guard because the government feared those fool revolutionaries.
But with Irish they could do it. He, Juan, knew just how.
Chapter Four
They rode for several hours deeper into the Sierras. The evening air came down pale and cool, and a pink sun squatted on the horizon, reluctant to go. They pulled off the road and rumbled a few miles along a dry stream bed, then through a thicket and into a narrow gorge invisible from all directions. Mallory, the Irishman, slept through it all.
They pulled out two of the coach seats and replaced the one under the hole in the roof with an iron stove. The stovepipe poked out through the hole. Between the walls they strung hammocks in a double tier. Nino nailed a shelf to another wall. On the shelf he placed a statue of his patron saint, Frances, and a white vigil candle. Above it, Juan hung a faded picture postcard of a massive building with a lettered portico. The lettering read: BANCO NACIONAL DE MESA VERDE.
A pot of soup was bubbling on the stove when Mallory finally awoke. From outside, where he was eating with the rest of his gang, Juan saw the Irishman bolt up and look about him in confusion. Chulo stuck his head in the window and barked something in a nasty tone that Juan couldn’t make out.
Mallory came down from the coach and turned to study it. Smoke curled out of the stovepipe. The Irishman shook his head in admiration and ambled over to Juan.
Juan sat in one of the two red velvet seats taken from the coach and set up beside a small table set for two. He gestured to the empty seat. Mallory ignored him and, still standing, took a piece of meat from the table and bit into it.
“What kind of work do you do for the German?” Juan said. There was no point in wasting time on preliminaries.
“I look for silver lodes.”
“With your eyedropper, huh?” Mallory was silent. “You know, that stuff is like holy water,” Juan said. He scratched at his beard. “It’s a mortal sin to misuse it. And for what? To blow holes in a mountain? To find a piece of silver? And for Aschenbach, that German.” He spat contemptuously.
Mallory sat down and took another piece of meat. “You got any better ideas?”
“Yeah. Gold. That’s a better idea.”
“Forget it. There isn’t any around here.”
“Sure there is, Firecracker. In Mesa Verde.”
A swarm of gnats swam toward the table. Mallory brushed them away and asked, “Isn’t that a city?”
“Sure, Irish. Where are the banks where you live, out in the country?”
“Ah, a bank!” Mallory’s lean face puckered shrewdly. For the first time, Juan noticed something more than hardness in the Irishman’s eyes. Now they flickered in amusement.
“Not a bank. The bank. The richest bank outside of Mexico City, maybe the richest in the country. They’ve got money sticking out of drawers there. They blow their noses in it, they’ve got so much money. Right, Nino?”
The old man, squatting nearby, nodded his head.
“I saw the inside of that bank once when I was eight years old,” Juan said. “Nino took me in there to look it over the day before he tried to rob it.” He turned to the old man. “You remember that?”
“Not too good,” Nino said sadly. He looked at Mallory. “They got me as soon as I got inside. They gave me thirty-two years for it. Thirty-two years.” His voice choked. “They let me out three months ago.”
“That’s okay, Nino,” Juan boomed. “We’re gonna go back and do it right this time. You and me and our friend Firecracker.” He looked at the Irishman’s impassive face. “Hey, what’s your name anyway.”
“John.”
“Hah, like Juan. The same name.”
“So what?”
Hard lines were suddenly edged under Mallory’s eyes and along his chin. His long blond hair swayed gently in the breeze but didn’t offset the severity of his face: the protruding jaw, the gaunt cheeks, the slashed eyebrows. Juan thought, not wit
hout satisfaction, that he would have to watch Irish closely. The man could indeed kill.
“I thought,” he said carefully, “that maybe having the same name was destiny.”
Mallory got up. “Yeah, well my destiny is the silver mines.”
“You don’t wanna be my partner? You don’t wanna get rich?”
“I only want my motorcycle.” He looked around the clearing.
“The hell with your motorcycle. If you want it, it’s over there, leaning on the rock.” Without looking, Juan pointed across the gorge. “But you don’t want it. We got something else to talk about.”
“Where is it?” Mallory snapped.
Juan turned. There was only an empty space where the machine should have been. His sons stood near the space wearing blank expressions. In a shot he was out of the chair hurtling toward them.
“You lousy sons of bitches.” His feet and arms lashed out, sending several of the niños sprawling. “Get that goddamn motorcycle.”
The fading sun suddenly glinted on a polished knife. Juan jumped back. He felt the cold tip of the blade rake lightly across his skin as it slashed his sleeve from the elbow to the cuff. His hand shot out and grabbed little Chulo by the shirt. He held him at arm’s length. Motherofchrist the kid was learning fast. He smiled at Mallory, a boys-will-be-boys smile.
Juan took the knife and pushed Chulo towards his brothers. “Now get it,” he said. The boys vanished into the bushes.
They reappeared a few minutes later. Chulo came out carrying the handlebars. Behind him, Benito shouldered the frame. Nene had a wheel and the chain, Sebastian the other wheel. The gas tank was under Napolean’s arm. They deposited the parts at Mallory’s feet.
It took Mallory an hour to reassemble the machine. Juan watched in dismay, wondering how to stop the Irishman, how to convince him. He paced along the gorge, then went briefly into the coach. The statue caught his eye. Why not? He prayed, his lips moving furiously in supplication. Nothing came to him, no brilliant solutions. He went back outside.
He tried again. “Look, Firecracker. If it’s money, I’ll give you more than fifty per cent.” No answer. Mallory tightened a bolt on the machine. “Come on, you handle the explosives and I’ll do all the rest. Okay?” Still no answer. “Listen, we were made for each other. I’m a bandit and you’re a bandit.”