A Fistful of Dynamite

by James Lewis

  Mallory looked up in genuine surprise. “What makes you say that?”

  Juan reached into his pocket and pulled out the clipping. He waved it in front of Mallory’s face.

  “Uh, uh, amigo,” Mallory said. “That’s something else. I wasn’t a bandit.”

  “What’s it for then?”

  “Dynamite. What else? But not for robbing banks. For the revolution.”

  “The revolution? The Irish got one, too?” He was laughing. The idea struck him as absurd. “It must be catching,” he said. “like the crabs.”

  Mallory’s reaction was a sour grimace. Juan didn’t care. If he had learned nothing else in life, he had learned the treachery of revolutionaries. They killed for myths, for illusions, always in the name of some promised paradise, always for their fellow countrymen, never for themselves. Then they turned out the way Madero had, and Huerta after him. Hah. A man who wasn’t selfish, who didn’t act only for himself, wasn’t meant to be trusted.

  “The last revolution we had,” he said, “it was terrible, like a bullfight where the matador wins but gets knocked on the head and comes out loco, with no brain left. People get crazy in revolutions. Good men like Villa, they become generals. You know Villa was a bandit. With iron balls. You know what happened? When he became general, he decided he didn’t like the President. So he became a revolutionary again. For what? So he can become a general again if he wins.”

  Juan spat in disgust. “What bullshit!” he said. Something occured to him. “Hey, you didn’t come here to—?”

  Mallory’s back was to him as he worked on the motorcycle. His head shook slowly. “No, one was enough for me,” he said softly. He stood up and swung his leg over the machine.

  “So?” Juan opened his arms as he said it.

  “So, goodby.” Mallory kicked the starter and the motorcycle came to life. Juan opened his mouth to speak but a sudden roar cut him off. Spraying pebbles, the bike moved off across the rocky terrain. “Hey, wait—” Juan called, but was drowned out as Mallory accelerated.

  Impulsively, Juan drew his pistol and fired at the rapidly retreating machine. He shot without aiming, emptying his gun. The motorcycle shuddered, then slithered to a halt. Mallory turned and looked down at his rear tire. It was flat again. Gasoline poured out of the tank and quickly evaporated on the warm, dry ground.

  Mallory dismounted, stared for a moment at the gasoline streaming from the tank, then began walking back toward Juan. He put his hands in his overcoat pocket and lowered his head. He seemed pensive.

  With his head still down and his lips pursed in thought, Mallory strolled slowly past as if Juan didn’t exist. Juan was puzzled. What the hell was he doin’?

  Too late, it hit him. Mallory was already in the coach when Juan gave a cry and began running toward him. Through the open window he could see the Irishman standing before the small statue of St. Frances. In his hand was—Juan paused. The object looked like a candle. The mad bastard was going to pray!

  Juan watched as Mallory lit the candle and placed it next to the statue. Mallory crossed himself and came down from the coach. He mussed the hair of Chulo, who had been standing on the running board looking in, and gently took the boy’s hand. The expression on his face was serene, almost unearthly, as he came toward Juan. Juan felt a moment of awe at the purity and power of the man’s faith; the Irish must truly be devout. But why the hell pray now?

  “Well, what now?” Juan asked.

  Mallory’s voice was soft and composed when he spoke. “Duck, you sucker!” he said and pulled Chulo to the ground.

  A mournful cry escaped Juan before the coach blew. The explosion knocked him off his feet and sent bits of wood screaming past his head. His ears rang in pain. His shoulder throbbed and his head reeled.

  He got slowly to his feet and looked at the ruins of his coach. The carriage, blown free of the wheels, was tilted at a precarious angle to the ground. Its insides had been completely destroyed. Nothing but tattered fabric and charred wood remained. Pieces of the shattered stove were strewn about the ground.

  In despair, Juan approached the smoking ruins, “My house,” he mumbled, and was surprised at his enormous sense of loss. Crazy, but he had really begun to think of the coach as a house, one on wheels that he could take with him wherever he went.

  By the time he remembered the Irishman, Mallory was already busy unstrapping his suitcase from the crippled motorcycle. “Okay,” Juan said. “Go work for the German. Okay.” His voice sounded tight and hollow.

  Mallory flashed him an ironic smile, scooped up his suitcase and turned to leave. He looked back for a moment. “Which way to Lucainena?” he said.

  Some buried reservoir of joy burst in Juan. It raced like electricity through his body and rippled into his head, where it told him he had not lost after all. It forced him to smile and it made his voice crackle when he said, “Uh, uh, Firecracker. You gotta find it yourself.”

  Mallory shrugged and began walking toward the deserted plain. “Mexico is big,” Juan called after him. “You’ll see. For you it’s gonna be very big.”

  He watched the Irishman’s back grow smaller, the overcoat standing out like a thin black pen against the horizon, the bowler like a drop of ink.

  “Get the horses,” he ordered.

  “You gonna kill him now, Papa?” Chulo asked.

  “Better than that,” Juan said.

  Chapter Five

  They kept to the side and about three hundred feet behind Mallory. He walked briskly for the first two hours, never acknowledging their presence by looking around. He was heading in the best of directions, toward the dryest part of the desert, and Juan did nothing to detract or deter him.

  Mallory walked for four hours after nightfall, not stopping once. An incredibly bright moon, bright as only the desert can make it, lit his way. When he finally stopped, it was in a small gully which gave him shelter from the wind. He lay down abruptly under the lean of the gully wall and went to sleep.

  In the morning he rose, brushed the dust from himself and headed on his way. He tramped over the hard, rocky terrain until nearly noon. His pace slowed with the rising heat of the sun. Dust turned his overcoat and bowler gray. He kept switching the suitcase from hand to hand, and by the time he paused to rest, he had already stumbled several times.

  Mallory set down the suitcase and for the first time took out his flask. He shook it by his ear, measuring the supply, then unscrewed the top and tilted it toward his mouth. Juan quickly pulled a rifle from its sheath and shot the flask from Mallory’s hand.

  The Irishman wheeled around angrily. His hand darted under his coat and came partially away with a pistol. He paused. Juan smiled confidently. Mallory was far out of pistol range.

  “If you change your mind, Firecracker,” Juan yelled, “just call me.”

  Mallory grabbed his suitcase and turned away.

  They rode with him for the rest of the day. In midafternoon, Mallory fell down for the first time; an hour later he was falling every quarter mile. He dragged his feet heavily across the dry ground and paused ever more frequently to rest. Once when he fell, he staggered up facing Juan. Even from a distance Juan could see that the Irishman’s face was burned and his lips were swollen. Soft European flesh, he thought. He was pleased.

  Only one thing was wrong. In his failing state, Mallory had strayed from a straight course. Instead of trekking into the heart of the desert, he was now bisecting a corner of it, stumbling toward the desert edge. The sun would have to do its job quickly.

  By late afternoon Juan could make out the lines of a building a mile or two ahead. Mallory was heading for it. The lines sharpened as they neared. The building was an old shack, crumbling, with the walls half-caved in. Wild grass grew lushly around it. There would be water there.

  Mallory broke into a lurching run as he approached the shack. Cursing silently, Juan kicked his horse and closed the gap between them. Mallory burst through the grass. Behind it, to the side of the shack, lay an
abandoned vegetable garden. A half-dozen watermelons, heavy and green, grew untended there. In a final burst, Mallory reeled toward them. He bent to pick up a melon. Juan took quick aim and shot it away. Mallory reached for a piece of the shattered fruit, but another shot warned him off. Methodically, Juan destroyed the remaining melons.

  Mallory never noticed the small pond to the lee of the shack. He teetered blindly out of the garden in a line that took him away from the desert and the shack. Somehow, he managed to cover another two miles.

  It ended at a muddy puddle which lay at the bottom of a steep incline. Chulo, Napolean, Sebastian, and Nene stood on the crest high above the puddle, which was only a few feet around, and peed down into it just as Mallory began to drink. The Irishman raised half-closed eyes to them. His lips moved in a silent curse. Then he fainted.

  They lifted Mallory gently in the air and layed him across a horse. They threw a poncho over him and led the horse away.

  The crumbling walls of a fort loomed up before them after they had ridden a few miles. The fort’s towers thrust proudly in the air, but no sentry could be seen in them. The iron gates were twisted, useless masses blown open once and never set back on their swingpins.

  Inside, weeds grew in ragged clumps around the courtyard. A low, stone building dominated the yard. Its paint was peeling and its wooden portico rotted in the sun.

  They made a place for Mallory inside the building, spreading a serape on the dirty floor. More weeds sprouted through the cracks in the planking.

  “Watch him carefully,” Juan ordered before he rode away. “Don’t leave him.”

  He left the fort feeling a sense of accomplishment. Only one thing remained to do and Mallory would be his.

  The niños disobeyed Juan as soon as he was out of sight. They left Mallory with their grandfather and went scavenging through the abandoned buildings of the fort. Juan’s men, meanwhile, tended the horses.

  Nino cleared the hearth and lighted a fire. From a pouch he carried with him, he took out some tostadas and baked it over the fire. He ate slowly, listening to the low breathing of the Irishman and wishing for some tequila. Fefe drifted in to tell him he had found the messhall kitchen. They would all be over there for a while, he said, cooking some atole, a thick maize gruel, so be sure to guard the Irishman closely.

  Nino nodded. Okay. A half hour later he was alseep.

  Mallory awoke after Juan had been gone for several hours. He squinted in the flickering light from the fireplace at what appeared to be faces overhead. His eyes took focus. Nene and Benito peered down at him from the ceiling’s disconnected beams. Each was crouched on a beam; apparently they had been playing up there for some time.

  Mallory raised himself on one elbow and looked around. The old man was sitting against a wall in the corner, sleeping with his head on his chest. Sebastian’s face appeared briefly in the window, then vanished. Mallory rolled over and sat up. Pepe smiled at him from his hiding place in a cleft in the wall and stuck out his tongue.

  The sound of approaching horses drifted into the room. A moment later Juan’s voice echoed softly against the stone walls. “Hey, Irish. Hey, niños. It’s me.”

  Nene and Benito dropped from the ceiling and ran toward the door. Pepe shook the old man awake and then dashed after his brothers. Nino followed in a daze.

  Alone, Mallory struggled to his feet and staggered across the room. He was still very weak, but the need for haste drove him on. He fumbled with his suitcase, got it open and reached inside for several sticks of dynamite. As quickly as his trembling fingers permitted, he attached fuse wire to the dynamite and wedged it into a corner of the room.

  Mallory refastened the suitcase, took hold of it and began backing out of the room, paying out wire as he went. He moved directly away from the door toward a breach in the opposite wall. He backed through the breach.

  The night enveloped him. The air from the desert was harsh and the stars sparked dizzily overhead. His head spun off into some hot, dark tomb. He shook it violently to clear it. Still unsteady, he managed to retreat until his back touched a low wall some thirty feet from the building.

  From the suitcase he took out a small detonator. He set the wooden box on the ground and attached the fuse wire.

  On the other side of the fort Juan was calling his name. Mallory held his breath and waited. Through the gap in the building wall he could make out the vague outlines of the doorway. Soon that bastard would come through the door. His hand tightened on the detonator handle.

  The voices stopped. He could hear the crickets but not Juan’s gutteral rumble or the chattering of the boys. Mallory peered through a haze into the building. Nothing. Long moments crawled by. Still nothing. Mallory rose from his kneeling position beside the detonator and lurched a half-dozen steps closer to the building. In the dim light, he could just make out the indistinct silhouettes of four men standing in the entrance.

  He wheeled to go back for the detonator. A voice cut him off.

  “Hey, Irish, what are you doing out here?”

  He felt dizzy. He stood helplessly watching Juan’s bulk emerge out of the darkness. Several other shadowy figures were behind him. His sons. His men.

  His men?

  “Who’s in the building?” Mallory blurted. “Who are they?”

  “Well …” Juan said laconically, “it’s a long story.”

  They were all around him now. In the corner of his vision he saw a small shadowy figure move toward the detonator, then pause. Mallory checked an impulse to race for the box. Maybe the niños wouldn’t notice it. He started to say something to Juan. The shock of awareness stopped him. Terrified, he spun violently around. Yes, the shadow had moved again and now held the small box in his hand. He recognized Chulo even as he screamed.

  “NO. NO, DON’T.”

  Too late. The boy had already begun to depress the plunger.

  The blinding glare hit them a fraction before the sound. Mallory felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. The concussion hurled him backward.

  He struggled to stay erect. A chunk of stone debris struck his leg, and he screamed from the sharp pain.

  Juan was down on his rump wearing an astonished look when the dust subsided. Exhausted and in shock, Mallory lowered himself to the ground beside him. He held his head in his hands for several minutes and allowed the nausea to pass. “All right,” he said wearily when he finally looked up. “Who were they?”

  Little Chulo answered excitedly. “Aschenbach, one captain, two soldiers. All blown to hell.”

  Aghast, Mallory felt a dank chill sweep over him. He stared at Juan in mute horror. Juan smiled back at him.

  “Fantastic, eh, Firecracker?” Juan said. “No more contract with the German to worry about. You’re free now.” He snickered. “I’ll even let you drink now.” He opened a flask and offered it to Mallory, who didn’t move.

  “I tell you,” Juan bubbled on. “It was very hard to convince them to come.” He thrust the flask at Mallory again. “Here, go drink. Go on, drink.” Mallory took the flask and put it to his mouth.

  “Aschenbach, he couldn’t believe you sent me to get him. Ha. But when I said you found a big silver vein here, that greedy bastard came running.”

  Mallory stopped gulping water. It took all his energy to speak. “The soldiers. Why the soldiers?” he gasped. He felt drained.

  “Oh, you gotta understand our country. Huerta stole the silver mines when he became President and cut the pay of the miners. So they refused to work. Okay? Huerta sends in his soldiers and shoots a few miners. They go back to work. Then Huerta hires Aschenbach to run the mines. Aschenbach cuts the pay even more and puts the savings in his pocket. Aschenbach is also stealing silver on the side. How does he get away with it? He pays off the army captain. They were in cahoots.”

  Mallory shook his head in disbelief. Could Juan be inventing this? No, not from what he’d heard of Huerta.

  “That captain.” Juan was still gushing. “He almost screwed everything
up. At the last minute he said, ‘You bring the Irishman to us.’ Then when I tell them a dynamite stick blew up in your hand, they moved their asses to get here before you died.” Juan roared. “I never did so much talking in my life.”

  “I don’t understand. Why did you want Aschenbach to come here? What good would it have done?”

  “Oh, I figured I’d hold him hostage for a while and maybe threaten to kill him until you agreed to go with me. That way you couldn’t go to work for him. Now I don’t have a hostage. I got something better.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “Ah, amigo. You got three dead soldiers from your dynamite. Very serious. You’re gonna have to explain it. And what if they don’t believe you? You know the army, they get very nervous if you blow up a captain.”

  Juan put a consoling arm around Mallory’s shoulder. “What you gonna do now, huh? The only one you got to help you is your friend Juan.”

  “Listen, you fuckin’ chicken thief,” Mallory snapped. “I don’t need your help to know when I’ve been screwed.”

  He didn’t say anything else for a long moment. He suddenly felt very tired, defeated. “All right,” he sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  Juan leaped to his feet. His face was aglow. “Let’s go to Mesa Verde,” he cried.

  Chapter Six

  “Hey, Irish, we will be rich.”

  They were following along a railroad track. A vast flat plain that seemed continuous with the sky stretched out before them. The sun was high overhead.

  Juan rode down the middle of the track. Mallory rode sullenly to his right, a stark figure in the black coat and bowler against the high blue sky.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Is the bank the only thing you remember about Mesa Verde?”