Hombre

by Elmore Leonard

  Theirs would run out too, Russell said. But, I said, they can go get more.

  All the way to Delgado’s? Russell said. Who would go, the one up behind us? The Mexican? Then who would watch us? No, Russell said. Some time they have to come up here. They know it.

  I said that may be, but the Favor woman would be dead by then. Russell didn’t answer.

  About two o’clock in the afternoon the Favor woman started screaming.

  It could not get any hotter than it was then. There was no breeze, no clouds; the sun was bright, boiling hot and you would not even dare look up to see where it was.

  The Favor woman sat down there near the bottom of the grade, no hat or anything to cover her head, no shade to crawl into. As I have said, there was a little shack near where she was, but the rope tied to her neck would not even let her stand up straight much less get over to the shack. She had given up trying to undo the rope.

  For the longest time she sat hunched over, her face buried in her arm resting on her raised knees. Now she was looking up toward us, as she had done when the Mexican first put her there, and now every once in a while she would scream out to her husband, calling his name at first.

  “Alex!” she would call, but drawn out and faint sounding, not sharp and loud as you would imagine a real scream.

  “Alex…help me!” Sounding far away almost, like hearing only an echo of the words. She had not had water since yesterday. It was something that she could call out at all.

  Dr. Favor raised up when she started and looked down at her for a while. I don’t know what he was thinking. I don’t even know if he felt sorry for her, because his expression never changed; he was just looking at something. He didn’t call back to her or say a word.

  Some people can hide their feelings very well, so I had better not pass judgment on Dr. Favor. I remember picturing him and his wife alone and wondering what they ever talked about and if they had ever got along well together. (I couldn’t help having that feeling she had been just a woman to him. You know what I mean, just a woman to have around.) I tried to imagine her calling him Alex when they were alone. But it didn’t sound right. He was not the kind of man you thought of as having a first name. Especially not a name like Alex or Alexander.

  There it was though, faintly, coming from out of that big open canyon, “Alex…” And he just sat there looking down at her, not moving much other than to feel his beard, to rub it gently under his chin with the back of his fingers.

  Once she stood up, as far as she could, and yelled his name louder than she ever did before. “Alex!” And this time it was sharp and clear enough and with an echo coming back to give you goose pimples at the sound of it.

  And then again, which I will hear every day of my life.

  “Alex…please help me!” The words all alone outside, echoing and fading to nothing.

  It was strange to be in a room with four people and not hear one sound. Everybody sat there holding still, waiting for the Favor woman to cry out again. Maybe a couple of minutes passed; maybe more than that, it seemed longer. It was so quiet that when the sound came—the sound of a match scraping and popping aflame—everybody looked up and right at John Russell.

  He lit his cigarette, shook the match out and threw it up past his shoulder, out the window.

  The McLaren girl, closer to the window where Mendez and I still were, kept staring at Russell. Do you see how his calm rubbed her? I think any of the rest of us could have lit a cigarette at that time and it would have been all right. But not Russell. Lighting that match touched it off again. Just the way she was looking at him you could see it coming, so I tried to head it off.

  I said, “I’ve been thinking”—though I hadn’t, it just came to me then—“when it gets dark, why can’t a couple of us sneak down and get her? Maybe we could get her up here without them even seeing us.”

  “But if they heard you—” Mendez said.

  “By dark she’ll be dead,” the McLaren girl said.

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “Do you want to wait and find out?”

  “I was thinking something else,” I said. “Braden’s watching her too. What if he sees it’s not working or he feels sorry for her or something and has that Mexican bring her back in?”

  “You just think nice things, don’t you?” the McLaren girl said.

  “It could happen.”

  “The day he changes into a human being.” She looked at Russell smoking his cigarette. “Or the day he does. That’s the only thing will save her.”

  Russell was watching her, but just then the Mexican yelled out from the crushing mill, and Russell’s head turned to look down the barrel of the Spencer.

  “Hey, hombre!” the Mexican yelled, followed by a string of words some of which were in Spanish and were probably as obscene as the English ones mixed in. “Come on down and see me!”

  Russell kept looking down the Spencer for at least a minute. When he turned to us again, he drew on his cigarette and dropped it out the window. The hand came down on the saddlebags next to him. He lifted them up, feeling the weight of them, then let them swing a little and threw them so they fell out in the middle of the floor.

  “You want to save her?” Russell said. He looked at Mendez and me and then over to Dr. Favor sitting with his back to the wall a few feet from me. “Somebody want to walk down there and save her?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Somebody wants to, go ahead,” Russell said. “But I’ll tell you one thing first. You walk down there you won’t walk back. Leave that bag and start to take the woman and they’ll kill both of you.”

  The McLaren girl was watching him, leaning forward a little. “You’re saying that so nobody will take the money and try it.”

  “They’ll kill both of you,” Russell said. “That’s why I’m saying it.” He looked over at Dr. Favor before the McLaren girl could say anything else.

  “That woman’s your wife,” Russell said to him. “You want to go untie her?”

  Dr. Favor, his head down a little, had his eyes on Russell, but he didn’t say one word.

  Russell took his time, making it awful embarrassing, so you wouldn’t dare look over at Dr. Favor. Finally Russell turned to us again.

  “Mr. Mendez,” he said, “you want to save her?…Or Mr. Carl Allen, I think your name is, you want to walk down there? This man won’t. It’s his wife, but he won’t do it. He doesn’t care about his own woman, but maybe someone else does, uh? That’s what I want to know.”

  He was looking right at the McLaren girl then and said, “I don’t think I know your name. We live together some, uh? But I don’t know your name.”

  “Kathleen McLaren,” she said. He must have surprised her, caught her without anything else ready to say.

  “All right, Kathleen McLaren,” Russell said. “How would you like to walk down there and untie her and start up again and get shot in the back? Or in the front if that one by the mill does it. In the back or in the front, but one way or the other.”

  She kept looking at him but didn’t say a word.

  “There it is,” Russell said, nodding to the saddlebags. “Take it. You worry more about his wife than he does. You say I’m not sure or I’m not telling the truth—all right, you go find out what happens.”

  Russell did a strange thing then. He took off his Apache moccasins and threw them over to the McLaren girl.

  “Wear those,” he said. “You run faster when they start shooting.”

  He opened up his blanket and took out his boots and pulled them on. While he did, the McLaren girl kept staring at him; but she never spoke. And when he looked up at her again, her eyes held only for a second before looking away.

  It was one thing to know a woman would die if she didn’t get help. It was another thing to say you’d die helping her.

  I kept thinking of what Russell had said right to me “…do you want to walk down there?”

  No, I didn’t, and I will admit that right
here. I believed Braden would shoot anybody who went down there with the money. I think everybody believed it by then. Yes, even the McLaren girl.

  The best thing to do, I decided, was just sit there and wait and see what happened. That sounds like a terrible thing to say when a woman’s life is at stake, Mrs. Favor’s; but I will tell you now it’s easier to think of your own life than someone else’s. I don’t care how brave a person is.

  I will admit, too, that Dr. Favor being there made it easier on your conscience. If anybody should go down there it was him. He wasn’t going though; that was certain.

  Some more time passed. The Mexican, who was patient and had as much time as we did, yelled out at Russell once in a while. Russell stayed with his face pressed to that Spencer longer every time the Mexican insulted him or tried to draw him out. You could see Russell was anxious to get the Mexican. After quite a while passed and the Mexican did not yell at him again, Russell turned around to lean against the wall and make a cigarette. I noticed he threw the tobacco sack away after. It was his last one. He did not light it though; not yet.

  Time passed as we sat there and nobody said a word. Russell was thinking, working something out and picturing how it would be; I was sure of that.

  About four o’clock the Favor woman started screaming for her husband again; the sounds coming not so loud as before, but it was an awful thing to hear. She would call his name, then say something else which was never clear but like she was pleading with him to help her.

  Sitting there in the shack you heard it faintly out in the canyon, “Alex”—the name drawn out, then again maybe and the rest of the words coming like a long moan.

  It was quiet when Russell stood up. He looked out the window, not long, just a minute or so, then went over and picked up the grainsack, emptying out what meat and bread and coffee were left, and brought it back to the window. He took one of the ore bags from the sill and put it in the sack. Nobody else moved, all of us watching him. That was when he lit his last cigarette. He drew on it very slowly, very carefully. We kept watching him, maybe not trusting him either, knowing he was about to do something.

  “I need somebody,” Russell said, looking right at me. Not knowing what he meant I just sat there. “Right here,” he said, nodding to the window.

  I went over, not in any hurry, staring at him to show I didn’t understand. But he didn’t explain until he’d motioned again and I was kneeling there with the stock of his Spencer between us. Russell put his hand on it.

  “You know how to shoot this?”

  “I’m not sure.” Frowning at him.

  “Push the trigger guard down with your thumb. That ejects and loads…uh? Right now it’s ready and maybe you only need the one.” He added, almost under his breath, “Man, I hope you only need one.”

  I said, “I’m going to shoot at them?”

  “The one by the mill.” Russell looked out the window. “He’ll come across and walk past that shack by the woman and stand with his back to you, up this way from the shack a little. Then, be sure then, you keep the front sight on him.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” I said.

  “What’s there to understand?” There was just a little surprise in his voice, mostly it was quiet and patient. “If he touches his gun, you shoot him.”

  “But,” I said, “in the back?”

  “I’ll ask him if he’ll turn around,” Russell said.

  “Look,” I said, “I just don’t understand what’s going to happen. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “You’ll see it,” Russell said. He thought a minute. “Maybe you have to see something else. The money—that it gets up to San Carlos.”

  “Look, if you’d just explain—”

  He touched my arm. “Maybe it’s you who has to take it up to San Carlos after. That’s easy, uh?”

  I kept staring at him. “You never were keeping it for yourself, were you?”

  He just looked at me—like he was tired—or like what was the use explaining now?

  He put his hat on, straight and pulled down a little over his eyes. He picked up the grainsack, swinging it up over his left shoulder. All of us were watching him, the McLaren girl never moving.

  She kept staring and said, “You’re going.” Just those two words.

  Russell made a little shrugging motion. “Maybe try something.”

  “What if they don’t think you’ve got the money in there?”

  “They come out and see,” Russell answered.

  “They might,” the McLaren girl nodded. “They just might.”

  “They have to,” Russell said.

  The McLaren girl kept staring at him, wanting to ask why he was doing it, I think. But Russell was looking at Mendez then. “You’ll watch this Dr. Favor. Good this time?” he said.

  Mendez said something in Spanish and Russell answered also in Spanish, shrugging his shoulders. Mendez appeared like he was afraid to breathe. Russell turned to Dr. Favor. He had something for everybody.

  “All that trouble you went to, uh?”

  Dr. Favor didn’t answer, not caring what anybody said or thought about him now. He sat there staring up at Russell, his big face pale-looking with that reddish hair around it and with hardly any expression. He probably thought this John Russell was the biggest fool God ever made.

  We were watching him, every one of us; perhaps still not certain he was going down there and having to see it to believe it.

  He was at the door when the McLaren girl picked up his moccasins and threw them over to him. “Wear those,” she said. “You run faster when they start shooting.”

  Do you see what she was doing? Giving it right back to him. Using the same words even that he had used before. Saying it calmly and watching to see his reaction.

  And seeing his smile then; a smile you were sure he meant. Even with his hat on, at that moment he looked young and like anybody else.

  Russell stood with his hand on the door, looking over his shoulder at the McLaren girl, at her only.

  “Maybe we should talk more sometime,” he said.

  “Maybe,” the McLaren girl answered. She was looking at him the same way, intently, like seeing something in him that was not there before. “When things calm down,” she said.

  I had the feeling she wanted to say more than that, but she didn’t.

  Russell nodded, his strange light-blue-colored eyes not moving from the girl’s. “When things calm down,” he said back.

  He pulled the door open and stepped outside with the grainsack over his shoulder. The next time I was close enough to John Russell to see his face, he was dead.

  Not long ago I was talking to a man from Benson who said they were playing a song now about Frank Braden and the woman he stole for reasons of love, and that I would appreciate it. I said are they playing a song about John Russell? He said who is John Russell?

  What took place that afternoon at the San Pete mine has been written many times and different ways. (Including the song now.) Maybe you have read some of them. All I want to say is the account that appeared in the Florence Enterprise is a true one, even to the number of shots that were fired. Except even that account does not tell enough. (Which is what caused me to write this.) It describes a man named John Russell; but you still do not know John Russell after you have read it.

  I am not saying anything against the Florence Enterprise. Their account was written in one hour or so, just telling what happened. I have been writing this for three months trying to tell you about John Russell as he was, so you will understand him. Yet, after three months of writing and thinking and all, I can’t truthfully say I understand him myself. I only feel I know why he walked down that slope.

  I watched him from the window. I was also keeping an eye out for the Mexican. The Mexican must have seen Russell as he started down, but he did not come out from the crushing mill until Russell was about half way.

  That was when Russell held up the grainsack. “Hey!” He yelled out,
the same way the Mexican had been yelling at him, “I got something for you!”

  The Mexican was being careful as he moved across the grade, keeping his eyes on Russell all the time. By then the Favor woman had seen him; sitting stooped over, her hair hanging and straggly, she was watching him come.

  Russell did not look at the Mexican, though he must have known the Mexican was moving down and across the grade as if to head him off. By then you could see part of the Mexican’s back. I got down lower and, as Russell had instructed, put the front sight of the Spencer square on him, getting an awful feeling as I did.

  At that moment, Early, up above us on the ridge, was probably putting his sights on Russell.

  I kept expecting the Mexican to do something; but as he got over more by that little shack he slowed up so that he was hardly moving; not taking his eyes from Russell for a second, his right elbow bent and the elbow pressed against where he had been shot, his left hand hanging free. That was the hand I had watched, feeling the trigger of the Spencer and ready to pull it if the hand went to the Colt gun alongside it.

  The Mexican stopped.

  He was almost in line but a little to the left; so that from here you would look down past his right side to Russell who was nearing the Favor woman. She did not call out or appear to have said a word; she just kept staring at him, maybe not believing what she saw.

  It was as Russell reached her that Frank Braden showed himself.

  Braden came out of the veranda shade. He was limping some, I think trying not to show it, though he kept his left hand on his thigh, gripping it with his fingers spread.

  The Mexican had not moved. I kept sighting on him, trying to watch Braden and Russell at the same time. Russell was kneeling by the woman, not paying any attention to Braden who kept coming. Braden called something, but Russell did not look up.

  Braden called out again, slowing up and ready, you could tell.

  Russell rose to his feet, helping the Favor woman as he did and you saw she was untied now. You also saw the grainsack lying over on the other side of the ore-cart tracks.

  Russell and the Favor woman had taken only a few steps when Braden called out again. This time Russell stopped, though he motioned the Favor woman to keep going. She did, but looking back as Russell stood there watching Braden. She got up as high as the Mexican. He paid no attention to her. She was walking kind of sideways, coming up but looking back all the time.